Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Truman Show (1998)

Truman: The early bird gathers no moss!

The rolling stone catches the worm!

Happy 25 to Peter Weir's great and prophetic movie!

We are all Truman now.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Human Nature (2001)

Nathan Bronfman: What is love anyway? From my new vantage point, I realize that love is nothing more than a messy conglomeration of need, desperation, fear of death and insecurity about penis size.

A happy 60th birthday to Eternal Sunshine director Michel Gondry today! It's been almost eight years since Gondry directed a feature-film -- he's done lots of shorts and eight episodes of Jim Carrey's series Kidding (which I never saw any of, did you?) but his 2015 film Microbe & Gasoline was his last full-length picture. I thought that movie was fine -- not terrifically memorable but a big step up from the movie he did right before that called The We & I, which I loathed with such fierceness I literally winced upon being reminded of it while writing this post.

Anyway just because he hadn't reached the heights of Eternal Sunshine again doesn't mean I don't want him to keep trying -- his music-videos have always been a wonder, and there's nobody else like him.  I remember going to an art exhibit of his around the time The Science of Sleep came out and it was a lo-fi magical wonderland, entire cities built of out toilet paper tubes,

That said Gondry has a new movie coming out this year! Soon in fact if you're going to Cannes this month, where it's premiering -- it's called The Book of Solutions and it stars French actor Pierre Niney, who feels like he'll translate to Gondry-dom exactly right. Hopefully it's a return to form and we'll see it everywhere else sooner rather than not sooner.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Mary: Adults are, like, this mess of sadness and phobias.

This masterpiece was released 19 years ago this Sunday!

Try not to turn to dust realizing it's almost 20 - too late for me.

I am dust, typing this out with my dust fingers.
Well here's this gif to cheer us up:

Ordinary People on Maple Drive

I gifted myself the random but obvious when you think about it double-feature yesterday afternoon of the 1980 Best Picture winner Ordinary People (which just hit blu-ray last week) and the 1992 TV movie Doing Time on Maple Drive, which are both excellent little movies about white people suffocating under their repressive awfulness. Timothy Hutton won an Oscar for his role as the son falling apart under Mary Tyler Moore's thumb in the former (a weird win, given how often that category goes to The Oldest Person Available, but also -- Supporting?? Noooo), while that TV movie starred one of my big-time 90s crushes with William McNamara, playing the closeted and suicidal son in a family full of dysfunction.

Oh my god I am going to get SO much use out of this clip pic.twitter.com/sAzkw16vXk

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) April 5, 2022

Jim Carrey got a lot of attention for his role as McNamara's brother; it was the first time he was taken seriously as an actor and not just a screaming fart-box, and he's terrific in it. (If you're looking to memorialize his acting career, which he says he's stepping away for for a bit, this a fine place to start and the whole thing is on YouTube.) Anyway Hutton's character isn't gay in OP, a lot of the film has him finding his way through all his pain by romancing a boy-haired Elizabeth McGovern, but it's also not one of the biggest strains I've strained in my life, to read that film as gay-adjacent. I think it speaks to Gays anyway, with all of The Best Little Boy In The World expectations, and the whole complicated Mother Thing. Maple Drive dives into the exact same territory only making the gayness central -- character actress Bibi Besch, who was in one episode of absolutely every 1980s show you can think of, turns in fine work doing the whole complicated Mother Thing therein. Anyway I recommend these two as a double-feature, is my point, and in summation I ask you...

online polls

5 Off My Head: 50 Off Ewan

Last night I was watching the screener of a movie that's out this upcoming weekend which co-stars Jonny Lee Miller, and it only took about five seconds upon seeing him for my brain to trail off to Trainspotting and his friendship with Ewan McGregor -- speaking of yelling "Make out!" at the screen! I might have strained my larynx the first time I saw those two sitting side by side on a couch. But then that's the sort of energy that Ewan's brought to film-screens opposite every single person, place, and thing, for nearly 30 straight years, isn't it? Well today's his 50th birthday (I know, how even) and so we're gonna celebrate some of those performances now...

My 5 Favorite Ewan Performances

Renton, Trainspotting (1996)

"You see if you ask me we're heterosexual by default, not by decision. It's just a question of who you fancy. It's all about aesthetics and it's fuck all to do with morality."

Curt Wild, Velvet Goldmine (1998)

"The world is changed because you are made of 

ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history."

Christian, Moulin Rouge! (2001)

"... What I really mean

Yours are the sweetest eyes

I've ever seen"

Phillip Morris, I Love You, Phillip Morris (2009)

"Enough romance. Let's fuck!"

Oliver, Beginners (2010)

"Rabbit. What is real? Does it hurt? Horse. Sometimes Rabbit. Does it happen all at once Horse. It takes a long time. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes dropped out and you get a loose in the joints. But these things don't matter at all, because you are Real and you can't be ugly except to people who don't understand."

Runners-up: The Ghost Writer, The Impossible, 

Fargo, Shallow Grave, Down With Love

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What are your favorite Ewan performances?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

I Love You Phillip Morris (2010)

Steven: Sometimes you have to shave a little 

off the puzzle piece just to make it fit.

A happy 10 to Glenn Ficarra and John Requa's maybe-a-little-ahead-of-its-time gay rom-com starring Jim Carrey as a compulsive liar who falls, like we all once fell, for Ewan McGregor. I was really hoping to re-watch it here before this anniversary but haven't found the chance -- I loved the film when it came out though! Have you seen it lately? I could see this one aging like wine or like milk -- not sure which way it's gone but I'm dying to check for myself. Especially those Rodrigo Santoro scenes...

15 Off My Head: Siri Says 1998

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Siri is giving me the whiplash! The last few editions of our beloved far and wide "Siri Says When" series -- in which I ask the voice inside of my telephone for a number between 1 and 100 and then use that number to name my favorite movies from the corresponding year -- have taken us from the 1920s to the 1960s to the 1990s to the 1930s and now, today right on back into the 1990s again. I think the fewer numbers that remain the wilder these swings will get, but funny enough Siri gave me a number we've never done on the very first try today -- 98! So I guess Siri really wants us to look at The Movies of 1998 today! Whatever you says, Siri!

And you know, 1999 gets all the credit for being an amazing year of cinema -- which it really admittedly was, and funny enough 1999 remains the only year of the 90s I have yet to do one of these posts for -- but 1998 really should get more credit than it does, because hot damn there are a ton of movies from 1998 that rocked my face off. So many that today's list isn't the usual 5 -- it's not even the occasional stretched-out-to-10. No today we're doing a Top 15 because I couldn't possibly chop off a single one of these 15. I refuse! And unless you can find the secret sub-basement from which I am now posting this post and chop off both of my hands before I hit "publish" you can't make me! Ha!

My 15 Favorite Movies of 1998

The Truman Show

(dir. Peter Weir)

-- released on June 5th 1998-- 

Happiness

(dir. Todd Solondz)

-- released on October 16th 1998 -- 

Wild Things

(dir. John McNaughton)

-- released on March 20th 1998 -- 

The Opposite of Sex

(dir. Don Roos)

-- released on May 22nd 1998 -- 

Babe: Pig in the City

(dir. George Miller)

-- released on November 25th 1998 -- 

Hands on a Hardbody

(dir. S.R. Bindler),

-- released on July 10th 1998 -- 

Love is the Devil

(dir. John Maybury)

-- released on October 7th 1998 -- 

Velvet Goldmine

(dir. Todd Haynes)

-- released on October 23rd 1998 -- 

Dark City

(dir. Alex Proyas)

-- released on February 27th 1998 -- 

Pleasantville

(dir. Gary Ross)

-- released on October 23rd 1998 -- 

A Simple Plan

(dir. Sam Raimi)

-- released on January 22nd 1998 -- 

Out of Sight

(dir. Steven Soderbergh)

-- released on June 26th 1998 -- 

Gods & Monsters

(dir. Bill Condon)

-- released on November 4th 1998 -- 

Living Out Loud 

(dir. Richard LaGravanese)

-- released on November 6th 1998 -- 

Rushmore

(dir. Wes Anderson)

-- released on October 9th 1998 -- 

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Runners-up: Saving Private Ryan (dir. Steven Spielberg), There's Something About Mary (dir. Farrellys), A Bug's Life (dir. John Lasseter), Shakespeare in Love (dir. John Madden), Apt Pupil (dir. Bryan Singer), Great Expectations (dir. Cuarón), The Big Lebowski (dir. Coens), The Spanish Prisoner (dir. Mamet)...

... Lost in Space (dir. Stephen Hopkins), High Art (dir. Lisa Cholodenko), The Last Days of Disco (dir. Whit Stillman), The X-Files (dir. Rob Bowman), Buffalo '66 (dir. Vincent Gallo), Pi (dir. Aronofsky), Lolita (dir. Adrian Lyne), Halloween: H20 (dir. Steve Miner), Snake Eyes (dir. De Palma)...

... The Slums of Beverly Hills (dir. Tamara Jenkins), Blade (dir. Steven Norrington), Pecker (dir. John Waters), 54 (dir.), Cube (dir.), Your Friends and Neighbors (dir. Neil LaBute), Urban Legend (dir. Jamie Blanks), Beloved (dir. Demme), American History X (dir. Tony Kaye), Psycho (dir. Gus van Sant), Croupier (dir. Mike Hodges), The Faculty (dir. Robert Rodriguez), The Thin Red Line (dir. Terrence Malick)...

... Hurlyburly (dir. Anthony Drazan), I Stand Alone (dir. Gaspar Noé), Ringu (dir. Hideo Nakata), Meeting People is Easy (dir. Grant Gee), Very Bad Things (dir. Peter Berg), Beseiged (dir. Bertolucci), God Said "Ha!" (dir. Julia Sweeney), Hideous Kinky (dir. Gillies MacKinnon), The Butcher Boy (dir. Neil Jordan), Clay Pigeons (dir. David Dobkin), How Stella Got Her Groove Back (dir. Sullivan)

Never Seen: Life is Beautiful (dir. Robert Benigni), Mulan (dir. Barry Cook), Little Voice (dir. Mark Herman), Affliction (dir. Paul Schrader), The Prince of Egypt (dir. Brenda Chapman), Spice World (dir. Bob Spiers), Bulworth (dir. Warren Beatty), He Got Game (dir. Spike Lee), Clockwatchers (dir. Jill Sprecher), Sliding Doors (dir. Peter Howitt)...

... Hilary & Jackie (dir. Anand Tucker), Can't Hardly Wait (dir. Harry Elfont), The Wedding Singer (dir. Frank Coraci), The Boxer (dir. Jim Sheridan), The Celebration (dir. Thomas Vinterberg), Rounders (dir. John Dahl), Henry Fool (dir. Hal Hartley), Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss (dir. Tommy O'Haver), Practical Magic (dir. Griffin Dunne)

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What are your favorite movies of 1998?

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In Memory of You

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This week's banner is marking an especially special occasion! Tomorrow marks the 15th anniversary of our beloved Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which hit theaters on March 18th 2004 and immediately became one of our forever favorites. We've watched it dozens of times since then, and our affection for the twisty romance between Joel and Clementine only deepens with age. Click on over to The Film Experience where we're zooming in on a pair of smaller but no less vital performances in the movie.

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Truman Show (1998)

Mike: Christof, let me ask you, why do you think
that Truman has never come close to discovering
the true nature of his world until now?
Christof: We accept the reality of the world with
which we're presented. It's as simple as that.

Peter Weir's master-class in existential comedy turns 20 today!

There's a good piece at Vulture talking about how the film

for-saw our future but it's all there in those lines above.

Seems as if people have given up their desire to even

choose their own realities now - think? Why think? 

I Am Link

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--- Truth Hurts - I haven't bothered watching this myself because the trailer is in French without subtitles but the first trailer for Roman Polanski's new movie has been released, and seeing as how his new movie is an erotic update on Single White Female (or given the fact that Single White Female was already a bit erotic you can call this one "erotic-er") starring Emmanuelle Seigner and EVA GREEN then maybe you don't care it's in French, maybe you just wanna look anyway. The movie's called Based on a True Story and it's out in France in November but we don't have a date here yet. Gimme!

--- Pickles Fever - Liking Jim Carrey has become a dangerous proposition lately due to real-world crazy-person circumstances but I fear I won't be able to help myself now that he's making a TV series with his Eternal Sunshine director Michel Gondry. It'll be called Kidding, it'll air on Showtime, and it's about Mr. Pickles, a kiddie show icon (think Mr. Rogers) whose entire personal and eventually professional life implodes around him. Which, you know, sounds very much like a role the current iteration of Jim Carrey can play.

--- Goodbye Dougie Jones - This week's banner friend David Lynch was asked about the possibility of more Twin Peaks at an event in Belgrade this week and he said it is possible but we shouldn't hold our breath because such a thing would take several years and if we hold our breath for several years that isn't called Transcendental Meditation it is called Dead. Oh and he also tweeted out the news that the blu-rays of the latest mind-fuck of a season will be out in December, just in time for stocking stuffers! (I love that David Lynch uses Twitter, btw.)

--- White Knight - I pointed you to one fantastic Mike White interview yesterday, but can we really have too many Mike White interviews? No, no we cannot. So here is one for Slate, and then over here is one for Backstage magazine (thx Mac). And I'm glad to hear from some commenters that his new movie Brad's Status, the one he's giving all these interviews for, is good and the bad trailer is not at all indicative of the movie's quality. I didn't really ever doubt that, but personal confirmation is peachy keen. Now let's all go see it this weekend together and make sure a Mike White movie does well, okay?

--- Horror Orchestras - David Gordon Green is a nerd just like you and me (well okay he's a nerd with an extraordinary amount of talent and success, so maybe there are some differences) and so he's determined when he makes his horror movie remake it will have music from the person whose iconic music made the original work in the first place. We heard it when he was re-doing Suspiria and he was going to get Goblin to do the music, and now that he's moved from that project (leaving it to Luca Guadagnino) onto the reboot of Halloween he is saying that he's trying his damndest to get John Carpenter to do the music for that.

--- After Dentata - Hey remember Teeth? Of course you do, Teeth was wonderful. (And also it had Hale Appleman in it, who I think of often.) But Teeth was also ten fucking years ago. Where oh where has its director Mitchell Lichtenstein been all that time? Well he made a movie in 2009 called Happy Tears with Parker Posey that I missed (anybody see it?) and he made another movie in 2015, it just hasn't been released... until now. It is called Angelica and it 's a gothic horror movie starring Jena Malone and Janet McTeer and it's getting dropped onto VOD on November 17th and you can watch the trailer right over here. Good things fall through the cracks sometimes so maybe this is one of them, fingers crossed.

--- Mutants United - This news is several days old but still worth a heads-up - Drew Goddard, the talented Buffy alum who hasn't directed another movie since he directed the still wonderful movie The Cabin in the Woods five whole years ago, has signed on to make X-Force, the X-Men and Deadpool spin-off that will apparently put Deadpool 2's upcoming Josh Brolin character of Cable more front and center as the lead dude of a gang of militant mutants. I don't read the comics so I don't care about the geek side to this - I'm just happy that Goddard's finally taking another spin in the director's seat. (He was supposed to make a Spider-man spin-off a couple of years ago but that all fell apart.) (Sidenote: Josh Brolin has gotten enormous for the role of Cable and his Instagram account has become a love letter to his own muscles, so you should probably be following him.)

--- And Finally Radiohead has teamed up with BRAMMMM artist Hans Zimmer to re-do their song "Bloom" off of The King of Limbs album for the soundtrack to the upcoming BBC nature doc series Blue Planet II - the remix is oh so cleverly called "(ocean) bloom" and it'll be attached to a short prequel for the series proper, I guess. Apparently the original version of the song was inspired by the first Blue Planet, so this was meant to be. Oh and speaking of Radiohead if you haven't seen their latest music video for their old song "Lift" (which finally got a proper release, twenty years later, on the anniversary reissue of OK Computer you should, it's lovely and it's below. Pitchfork talked to its director who gave a bunch of behind-the-scenes dirt and Easter Eggs, if you're a Thom Yorke Nerd like me. (thx Mac)

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Good Afternoon, Good Evening & Good Night!

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We already wished Peter Weir a happy birthday earlier with some Naked Gay Mel Gibson but we like him enough as a director to keep the party going and so we devoted this week's "Beauty vs Beast" at The Film Experience to his absolutely terrific 1998 flick The Truman Show - click on over to vote!

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The Batch Ain't Bad (But It's Getting There)

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Phantom Limbs dog The Bad Batch, but it's not the arm that Arlen (Suki Waterhouse) gets shucked by a gaggle of hungry desert ghouls early on in the movie that troubles the most - it's the ghost of Imperator Furiosa's robo-limb in Mad Max Fury Road, and it's the Machine Gun Leg of Cherry Darling in Planet Terror. Namely it's the amputations of better characters played by far far more interesting actresses - they're the real villains of The Bad Batch, because they ain't never gonna let a haughty posturing cipher whose best asset is her winking choice in booty shorts play their cool girl reindeer games. Sorry, Arlen. There's no room at the Inn.

And sad, without such a limp noodle in the lead I really could've gone places with The Bad Batch - there's whole lots to love stuffed and sauteed at its margins. Director Ana Lily Amirpour carries along with her all of the primo stylings she deployed so gorgeously in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, plus a few new tricks to boot; where that movie was all slo-mo atmosphere and strange smoky shades-of-grays this one's burnt embers and bright cannibal chaos, popping with a full regiment's worth of forward-marching funk-a-delic capital C characters, all juggled with confident jazz hands from Amirpour behind the camera. Except the one that matters most.

Still when you've got Jason Momoa peering over both his bifocals and his two massive breasts, saying it all with a sly sheepish grunt and a grin; when you've got Diego Luna shimmying loose-limbed to a skittish beat as he crams cancer sticks down his boot-scooting y-fronts in a neon cowboy fog; when you've got Keanu fucking Reeves doing Late Stage Elvis astride an army of Uzi-wielding sister-wives... when you've got all this local color and flavor for the appetizer and the dessert, well you've got it pretty damn tasty. Just wish some salt could've made its way onto that main course, is all.