Good Afternoon, Drew Starkey

My mea culpa for being offline this A.M. -- I had a screening dammit! -- is sharing these photos of Drew Starkey for GQ Hype... as if I wouldn't have shared them either way. Look at our Queer boy! All wet and bothered, just the way we like him. Anyway I haven't read the full chat in GQ yet but apparently he gets real sly about it when Luca Guadagnino's possible American Psycho movie comes up -- he drops a "no comment" when asked but then he also goes and admits that he has read the script. Sneaky devil. 

I remain unsure about the entire prospect of making another version of this movie when Mary Harron's film and Christian Bale's performance therein are both perfect things, but Luca already proved me wrong once with Suspiria so I will shut my filthy mouth and I will watch whatever he does. I will admit that I can see interesting ways that a gay man's adaptation of the book would be different from a straight woman's. So it could be also great but different, in a different way? I see that possibility. Anyway I'm rambling when all you wanna do is stare at Wet Hot Drew Starkey, I get it. So hit the jump for him...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Notorious Bettie Page (2005)

Bettie: I'm not ashamed. Adam and Eve were naked 

in the Garden of Eden, weren't they? 

When they sinned, they put on clothes.

Happy birthday to the great Mary Harron today! I'd really been hoping that this tremendous film of hers quoted above was going to finally get an upgrade from its out-of-date DVD last year when it celebrated its 20th anniversary -- but then I realized it's not actually a 2005 movie as listed; it is a 2006 movie! It celebrates its 20th on May 5th! So there's still time! This movie remains so deeply under-appreciated though. But then when you hear the words "deeply under-appreciated" you should probably just go ahead and picture Mary Harron herself. Well we love and we appreciate you, Mary Harron! And somebody give this movie a 4K release in the next four months please and thanks!

Did You Know I'm Utterly Insane

Luca! Have I not supported you? Have I not praised you far and wide? Well I don't know what I have done to make Luca Guadagnino unhappy and spiteful but I feel personally attacked twice in a row now with this American Psycho remake that he's planning on making -- first with the fact that he's doing it at all since Mary Harron's 2000 film with Christian Bale is literally perfect; one of my favorite movies, period. And now comes the word (thx Mac) that he's getting one of my least favorite It Boys of the moment Austin Butler to star in it? Luca, baby, why? I've found almost everything Butler has done in the past several years of making a name for himself to be phony and try-hard -- no matter the praise they received his Elvis and his turn in Dune Part Two were both flops as far as I'm concerned. Flops! Credit where credit's due -- he was fine playing a pretty boy poseur in The Bikeriders and I liked how Quentin Tarantino used him as a blowhard in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood...

... but I'd say it's his Dune work that landed him this gig and I have no idea what anyone sees in that performance. I find it laughable. I re-watched the movie last week and I still find it laughable. He has no presence in it -- he's the least scary villain since Jared Leto dyed his hair green. I will admit that there's something to be said here about Luca casting someone who reads as a total void to me as Patrick Bateman, the ultimate void. Lord knows I owe Mr. Guadagnino the benefit of the doubt at this point! His remake of Suspiria -- another film that never should have worked but managed to become one of my favorite horror films of all time -- proved my anti-remake mindset before that to be mostly foolish. But going into that I loved all oif the actors he'd hired, and that is just not going to be the case with this if this ends up happening. When I posted the remake's announcement in October I just figured this'd go onto the director's extensive never-happening heap of projects, but this casting news makes it seem like it is really happening. Granted Ellis' book and Harron's movie are very different, and having a gay man approach the material will probably give it a different hook. Also there is the real-world angle of our political reality to mine -- the poison of the 1980s New York Finance Bro misogyny mind-set which has had some, you know, consequences. I don't know. I don't know, dammit! Why can't Luca just be nice to me?

Franz Rogowski Eleven Times

If you'd have asked me last week if we'd be getting Bird star Franz Rogowski cosplaying as a Wall Street douchebag for the cover of the Financial Times magazine this week I'd have said, "You know what? The election is happening next week so it's entirely possible we might pop out the ass-end of a worm-hole and I am keeping all of my options open." So here's another weird sign o' the times -- exactly that has happened. The Rogowski thing, not the worm-hole thing, although who can even tell? 

Anyway seeing Franz dressed up this way has me picturing him playing Patrick Bateman in the American Psycho remake that Luca Guadagnino is supposedly working on (honestly I'll eat my shoe if that film really happens) and... well it would certainly shake that project up. It would be a totally different take than Mary Harron's was! Oh who are we kidding -- Franz would knock it out of the park. He always does. It would be a bold choice though! Hit the jump for the entire photoshoot... 

Luca Guadagnino's American Psycho Wait What

I fully changed my attitude toward "remakes" thanks to Luca Guadagnino's 2018 master-class on how to do them right called Suspiria -- I've always been a big fan of Dario Argento's original and I thought a remake was a terrible idea, and then Luca's version came out and he slapped my fucking mouth shut to the point where I now refuse to baldly criticize them on first glance. If an artist is willing to do something as different and interesting with the material as he did there, then by all means let the remakes happen! 

And yet! Luca himself has come to test me today! Because Deadline is reporting that Luca himself is working on remaking one of my absolute favorite movies of all time, one I love way more than I ever loved the original Suspiria -- specifically he's thinking about making a new adaptation of Bret Easton Ellis' novel American Psycho, which I am sure you are all aware Mary Harron turned into a horror comedy masterpiece in the year 2000 with Christian Bale. For god's sake I just posted a gif from that movie less than 24 hours ago!

The thing is -- American Psycho the film works so well exactly because of who made the thing. The team of Mary Harron and screenwriter Guinevere Turner gutted the book's POV and made the character of Patrick Bateman into a much deserved punchline. It's much more of a comedy than it is a horror film, althought the terror of toxic masculinity is very real and felt palpably throughout. 

And I have no doubt that Luca gets all of that -- Steven Soderbergh's favorite screenwriter Scott Z. Burns, who Deadline says is working on the new script, I'm far more dubious about. Which isn't to say I haven't liked many of Burns' scripts -- he wrote The Informant! for god's sake. But perspective is everything, especially with material this questionable, and it'd be very very very easy to slide off the mark with this. It's honestly a miracle that Harron's movie got made and ended up the way it did -- one I wonder at anew every time I think about the movie. Which is quite often here 20+ years on!

And I say all of this with Luca's new film Queer very much at the front of my brain -- I reviewed that yesterday and it's as good as anything Luca has ever made. The man is killing it right now. I should not doubt in Luca. He's proven that time and time again. And the man can direct some horror! And I should also keep in mind that Luca attaches his name to a thousand projects that never get made, so maybe this will go the way of his Brideshead Revisited or his Lord of the Flies movies. Or maybe he'll make a movie of the musical! I love the American Psycho musical!

I am just... listen, in the Deadline article the head of Lionsgate is quoted saying they're thrilled to have a filmmaker like Luca coming on board this "potent and classic IP" and I know that quoite isn't Luca's fault and he would never put it that way but that dude needs to read the room. "Classic IP" rings all of the alarm bells of terror. So..... thoughts???? Help me out here, people. I am bewildered. 

Today's Mood

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Fight Club (1999)

Tyler Durden: Warning -- If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned.

Happy 25 to another movie like American Psycho where all the wrong people that the movie is making fun of saw a movie that read to them the opposite of that. I don't think it's quite as clear in Fincher's hands as it was in Mary Harron's, but he's gone on with movies like The Killer last year to underline his points often enough about the show-offy fragility of masculinity that we know his heart's always been in the right place anyway. To be honest I haven't actually sat down and watched Fight Club start to finish in quite some time -- it'd be great if we got a 4K of this first but watching the way Fincher's been tinkering with the 4K release of Seven for a few years now, delaying its release over and over, I won't hold my breath. Dude is too tinkery! Stop tinkering and go make the next season of Mindhunter goddammit!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from 

Dogfight (1991) 

Eddie: Why do we bullshit each other like this? 

Berzin: Let me tell you something about bullshit. It's everywhere. You hit me with a little, I buy it. I hit you with a little, you buy it. It doesn't make us idiots. That's what makes us buddies. We buy what the corps hand out, and that's what makes us marines. And the corps buy all the bullshit from President Kennedy, and President Kennedy is buying all the bullshit from everybody in the US of the fucking A, and that's what makes us Americans.

Criterion has done the world a favor this day and given Nancy Savoca's 1991 masterpiece Dogfight a proper blu-ray release -- click here to buy a copy. Set in the early 1960s Dogfight is about a bunch of soldiers about to head to Vietnam who throw the titular party, where whoever brings the ugliest girl to their party wins -- River Phoenix is one of the soldiers and Lily Taylor is a folk-singing waitress he decides should be his date only to regret it once he actually starts liking her. The movie is about as lovely and intimate as they come; I hadn't seen it in years but re-watching Criterion's edition I remembered immediately why I'd always thought well of it. 

Phoenix and Taylor are absolutely perfect and the movie never sugarcoats a single moment or overly villainizes its characters -- they all feel deeply human. And it's also surpisingly funny, given the dark subject matter. One of the great films of the 1990s and we're absolutely blessed to have this fresh release so people can rediscover it. Oh and the blu-ray has a killer special feature -- a great chat between Savoca, Taylor, and director Mary Harron! Pick this one up stat, you will not be disappointed.

It's Raining Criterion Awesomeness This April

Besides Criterion putting out Lone Star today (which I just posted about) they're doubling down on awesomeness because it's the middle of the month and they're announcing their new releases! These releases are for April, and they kick off with (like Lone Star) a vastly underrated 90s drama -- Nancy Savoca's 1991 sweet-as-heck love story Dogfight starring River Phoenix and Lili Taylor. And also like Lone Star this is a movie I haven't seen since it came out so this will be a wonderful chance to refamiliarize myself with its wonders. Specifically River Phoenix with a buzzcut. I was young when this was out but this was the movie where I finally got River's dreamboat appeal. Boys in them 60s clothes and haircuts -- swoon. This hits disc on April 30th, check out all of the extra features (which includes a chat between Savioca, Taylor, and the great Marry Harron!) at the above link. 

And April is a big month for 4K upgrades from our fave physical media label -- they're upgrading three masterpieces with new restorations of Matthieu Kassovitz' La haine (mmmm Vincent Cassel). Mikhail Kalatozov’s legendary 1965 portrait of revolution I Am Cuba, and Peter Weir's perfect sumptuous and haunting Picnic at Hanging Rock (which is one of my favorite movies of all time). You can literally never go wrong with Peter Weir. And then to top off the awesomeness on April 16th they're dropping a 4K restoration of  Béla Tarr's hypnotic wonder Werckmeister Harmonies from the year 2000 -- this was the first Tarr film I ever saw and it is burned deeply in my brain. An incredible black-and-white astonishment, this one.

Pics of the Day

Well somebody at Paris Fashion Week knows and shares my kinks because they suited up our current new fave crush Lucas Bravo in full American Psycho drag -- blood splatter included -- at the Louis Gabriel Nouchi show yesterday (pics via) and I am here, so here, so very very here, for this. This is what the kids call "erotic cinema."

13 Toilets of Halloween #12

Hey not every entry in my list of the "13 Toilets of Halloween" has to be gross or scary says me. And so if I want to include the moment in American Psycho where Peak Christian Bale wearing nothing but tighty-whities takes his morning leak while staring at himself reflected in his Les Miz poster I am going to include the moment in American Psycho where Peak Christian Bale wearing nothing but tighty-whities takes his morning leak while staring at himself reflected in his Les Miz poster. My house, my rules! Oh, Patrick....

Peak Christian Bale in Crisp 4K

I admitted yesterday in my New Criterion Announcement post that I still haven't bought the bullet on buying a 4K blu-ray player (Criterion is going to start releasing their movies on 4K come November) so this news update is more for y'all than it is for me (and you'd be surprised how much news I post here for my own personal enjoyment alone, haha) -- a super-fancy 4K steel-book of Mary Harron's masterpiece American Psycho is hitting the shelves of Best Buy on October 5th, says BD (thx Mac) and it's loaded with cool-sounding special-features. The extra-iest one is probably the slipcase though (seen down below), which shows Christian Bale's Patrick Bateman peeling off his legendary face-mask -- even without a 4K player I kinda wanna buy this just for that case! Here is a direct link to Best Buy's website to pre-order.

Pic of the Day

I don't think I knew that American Psycho and I Shot Andy Warhol director and genius Mary Harron was making Dalíland, a movie about painter and bestached bon vivant Salvador Dalí's later years, but there's the proof! (Edit: I did know, and here's an old post about it.)  Deadline's showing off our first look at Ben Kingsley in the lead role but even more importantly the extremely talented former Fassbinder-muse Barbara Sukowa in the role of Dalí''s wife Gala. Here's a picture of the real-life pair:

I'd say that's pretty spot-on, ehh? The person you see on the left side of the photo up top is Andreja Pejić playing Dali's muse, the model Amanda Lear -- it's kind of weirding me out how much she looks like Harron-regular Cara Seymour -- right? If you'd told me that was Cara Seymour I'd have believed you. 

Looking through IMDb it doesn't look like Cara is in this one though, which makes me a little sad. There are other reasons to perk up, though -- playing the young Salvador Dalí in flashbacks is Ezra Miller, which ought to be colorful, I imagine. Also Rupert Graves is in this, playing Dali's so-called "right hand man" Captain Moore -- I'll always take the opportunity to stare at my beloved Scudder! Here's how Deadline describes the plot:

"The movie tells the story of the later years of the strange and fascinating marriage between the iconic Spanish painter and his domineering wife, Gala, as their seemingly unshakable bond begins to stress and fracture. Set in New York and Spain in 1973, the story is told through the eyes of James, a young assistant keen to make his name in the art world, who helps the eccen­tric and mercurial Dalí prepare for a big gallery show."

Which brings us to the apparent leading man of the film, the dude playing this young assistant named "James" -- the actor is named Christopher Briney and he's basically a total newcomer, film-wise; here's him:

LOL that photo made me laugh, I had to use it -- it's swiped off of his Instagram over here. I'll add a couple more professional photos (via) down below. He looks very young! But there's your lead. And I'm sure Mary Harron chose well. But I'm mainly watching this movie for Mary Harron and for Barbara Sukowa, I am...

My Favorite Horror Movies! Of Ever!

It's the day I've been waiting for slash dreading -- over at Final Girl my beloved pal Stacie Ponder has shared with everyone my Top 20 Favorite Horror Movies list! Actually my list is actually 21 because I changed my mind after sending it and she gave me the bonus. On that note I say "dreading" because there's nothing more difficult in all this world than narrowing down this sort of thing, and my list could have been one thousand titles long. You make all sorts of qualifications in this sort of whittling down process -- you want to represent yourself, as a whole person, so entries that feel redundant get excised in an effort at a larger vision, if that makes sense? 

Anyway click on over, see my 21 picks with a few rambling thoughts about each one tossed in for good bad measure, and make sure you keep checking Final Girl all month long as Stacie's annual "Shocktober" celebration keeps churning out the quality content. And make sure you're listening to Stacie's podcast Gaylords of Darkness (with the wonderful Anthony Hudson) too! It is literally -- I'm not even exaggerating -- the only podcast I listen to. I'm not a podcast person. But Gaylords got me through quarantine and I'm now a hardcore addict to their weekly fix.

The Nightstream Cometh

I'm feeling a little dull-brained today (more than usual, even) so I'm taking advantage of this coinciding with all this Fall Festival News to simply, happily, barf up the news of them instead of being my usual daringly creative self -- I might apologize but this is probably preferable reading material to at least sixty to seventy percent of you, and that's me being extra kind to my ego. And with that! I don't know if you'd heard but five of the annual regional genre festivals scattered across this beautiful country of ours -- those being the Boston Underground, the North Bend, the Overlook, Popcorn Frights, and our ol' pals at the Brooklyn Horror Fest -- have teamed up Voltron like for the 2020 season turned virtual, to present us with the Nightstream Festival, a massive online horror fest that will run October 8th thru the 11th.

Nightstream will feature almost forty films, including several world and North American premieres; it will feature a bunch of online conversations with filmmakers including one with Nia Dacosta on her forthcoming Candyman sequel slash re-do and one with Mary f'ing Harron on the 20th anniversary of her masterpiece American Psycho. There is a party hosted by Peaches Christ! There's something called "Dinner With The Masters Of Horror" that'll feature Mick Garris, Joe Dante, Mike Flanagan, and more. If you dig horror this is a four-day place to get diggin'.

Anyway today Nightstream announced their whole line-up and as I did earlier today with NYC's big queer-movie-palooza NewFest I will now highlight a couple of films from the enormous slate that immediately popped out at me. Well this being a horror movie fest they did more than just pop out -- they scooped out my eyeballs with hot spoons, they did! The Opening Night film, for instance...

... is called Run and stars Sarah Paulson and no, it is not a big-screen remake of that recent HBO series starring Domhnall Gleeson's beautiful ginger hair. It's the new movie from the director of Searching with John Cho, and is about a teenage girl (no Sarah paulson does not play the teenage girl; Paulson's range is good but not that good -- she's played by newcomer Kiera Allen) who's trapped in a wheelchair who starts to notice weird shit happening around her house. The movie is premiering on Hulu on November 20th, but why wait? Watch it at the start of October, I say!

Nightstream is also screening as their Closing Night picture the latest French nuttery from Rubber and Deerskin director Quentin Dupieux called Mandibles, which is unfortunately not an adaptation of Lionel Shriver's dystopian family drama but is (and I retract my "unfortunately" after reading this description) a comedy about two friends who discover a gigantic housefly in the trunk of their car and figure out how to monetize the thing. Sounds like a Quentin Dupieux movie to me.

Other highlights -- the new movie from Versus director Ryuhei Kitamura called The Doorman starring Ruby Rose; Jackie director Pablo Larraín's dance-epic Ema; Mickey Reese's truly wackadoo flick Climate of the Hunter, which I reviewed out of Nashville last year and which is a one-of-a-kind load of fun; there's a rural horror flick called Honeydew that stars Steven Spielberg's surprisingly hot son Sawyer...

(I guess those are the Kate Capshaw genes.) There's the new flick from Persepolis director and artist Vincent Paronnaud; there's a movie called Jumbo that stars Portrait of a Lady on Fire star Noémie Merlant and the description of which sounds like might be a movie entirely about a big dick? 

"Merlant gives a fearless performance as a shy amusement park worker whose life changes when a new star attraction shows up and immediately enthralls her with  “his” magnificent machinery in this fantastical and heartfelt debut from writer/director Zoe Wittock."

Right? Anyway I am only cracking the surface of everything 

that they've got planned, check it all out on their site! 

It's Hip to Be Bale

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Today marks 20 years since Mary Harron's American Psycho slashed and strutted its way onto the stage -- it is, quite plainly, one of my most favorite movies of all time, and so obviously I had to do a to-do about it. And if you click on over to The Film Experience you'll see I did just that and wrote up my thoughts on not one, not two, not three and not four of its performances, but five, five of its performances for my "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series. All those ladies are wonderful, hella worthy additions to my pantheon of The Queens of Scream. That said that was a lot of lady talk, so here on MNPP I will also share these two gifs of Christian Bale... sigh. What a gift this film was. Such boundless riches...

PS here's a terrific new chat with Marry Harron at LWL about the film this week, filled with smart insights from a seriously underappreciated genius on her timeless masterpiece... which is my way of saying it's worth ten minutes of your time. Choice bit:

“Whenever I film a TV show, somebody always comes up and tells me how much they loved American Psycho. I’m surprised by the intensity of people’s reaction to it. People tell me they’ve seen it 30 times – I haven’t even seen it 30 times! It seems to have touched a nerve, and it’s nice that people are still watching it.”

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Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... believing in taking care of myself with 

a balanced diet and a rigorous exercise routine 

with Kumail Nanjiani.

Kumail is on the cover of the new issue of Men's Health (thx Anna) showing off his brand new Eternals bod -- something we've all known was coming ever since he first posted those great big beefcake photos back in December -- and oh lordy it doesn't disappoint. Besides the workout video (which I have dutifully capped the ever-loving shit out of below)...

... and the interview with him, they have had him recreate several icons of meaty man testosterone iconography, such as Patrick Bateman (up top), Hugh Jackman's Wolverine, and the infamous Top Gun volleyball scene. (Of which I'm tempted to do a "Who wore it best?" with Glen Powell in the trailer for the sequel.) It's all so sweaty and veiny and goofy and stupendous I feel like I've gotten my own workout for the day just looking at these things. While I get some rest y'all hit the jump for a few dozen snaps...

Monsters Wanna Costume Too

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As I mentioned earlier there wasn't a lot that stuck in my craw during last night's Oscars, since they got a lot right -- or you know, right with the limited options they had presented themselves with, nomination-wise, anyway. But there was one big thing I found myself annoyed about, and that was the way they used costumes from both Midsommar and Us as dancing props for the opening musical number even though neither of those movies got nominated. If you follow me on Twitter you saw this happen in real time:

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The Midsommar dresses just make me sad :(

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) February 10, 2020

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Wow -- riveting Twitter feed, Jason. Anyway I turned that tweet into action and today over at The Film Experience I wrote a little bit about the Oscars' truly lackluster history with the genre's endlessly iconic costuming. When I really started thinking about all of the egregious oversights over the years it really piled up! Even just this past year there are two hands worth of examples!

I know it's just one of many, many examples of the Academy hardly ever allowing themselves outside of the box, but it seems like all we ever talk about with regards to that are the bigger categories when, if you dive into the smaller crafts that make up our shared movie history, you see it's just as infuriating. As much as I loved Greta Gerwig's Little Women -- and I deeply deeply did -- who's going to remember anything Florence Pugh wore in that movie more than they'll remember her day-mare floral May Queen extravaganza?

13 Cakes of Halloween #6

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I was insistent on using American Psycho's opening credits as one of our "13 Cakes of Halloween" posts yesterday even though it's not precisely a "cake" we see there because I wanted to build from that to today's post, which is looking at the opening sequence of Lamberto Bava's wonderful 1985 Demons sequel, one of my favorite pieces of nonsensical 80s Eurotrash cinema, and which uses basically the same gag. But with actual cake!

There is absolutely no reason whatsoever for this strange extended opening sequence here -- the cake isn't the thing that possesses anybody a few scenes from now when we see this woman Sally having her big birthday bash; it's just a damned birthday cake! 

Although I suppose the cake does have a role to play, as birthday girl Sally is in her bedroom in the process of being possessed by malignant puss-spewing devils through her television set (I tell you, this movie rules) as the party-goers party and light candles in the other room, and when they turn the lights off to sing her "Happy Birthday" by said candle-light it's what allows the demon-possessed Sally to get the sneak on them all.

How dare I doubt Lamberto Bava's mad master plan.

PS Sweets will fuck your teeth up, yo.

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