I'm really loath to be a sour bitch about the news of Park Chan-wook making another movie -- and a movie back here in the U.S. no less, his first since Stoker! (He has made two T.V. series in English since then -- The Little Drummer Girl in 2018 and The Sympathizer in 2024.) But much like the casting of Robert Downey Jr. in The Sympathizer the casting news today is making this news more bitter than sweet for me -- Variety is reporting that he's planning on making a Western called The Brigands of Rattlecreek next (fantastic title) that will star two people I like in Pedro Pascal and Tang Wei, and two people I very very much do not like in Matthew McConaughey and Austin Butler. To be fair McConaughey and Butler have both given performances I've liked in the past -- McConaughey in Magic Mike, Butler in The Bikeriders and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood -- but seeing their names generally fills me more with dread than it does anticipation. I find the hype around Butler particularly inexplicable. (He is terrible in Dune 2. TERRIBLE.) And since The Sympathizer remains the only project of Park's that I have very little desire to revisit thanks to RDJ stinking that thing up, lisping around like a gross caricaiture, the still sore burn of recent bias eats away at me, reading this news. SIGH. I will attempt to be a bigger man, dig up some tatters of optimism from deep, deep within. Here is how they describe the story:
"The Brigands of Rattlecreek is described as 'an iconic tale of vengeance and retribution set in the American West.' A synopsis of the project explains: 'A capstone of the themes Park Chan-wook has plumbed across his entire body of work to date, the film is an emotionally explosive and visually stunning meditation on the consequences of violence, the value of family, the power of memory, and the true cost of life.'"
A twenty-four second long teaser for Park Chan-wook's new film Decision to Leave has been dropped on our lucky faces here today before it premieres at Cannes in a couple of weeks, and there is more evocative imagery in that twenty-four seconds than some filmmakers can seem to manage in a lifetime. I've said this before... no seriously, I have proof:
There is no director working today that is better with color than Park Chan-wook and every single shot in The Little Drummer Girl proves it anew pic.twitter.com/YR4VEYTjlZ
... but there is no director working today that is better with color than Park Chan-wook, and every single shot in this teaser for Decision to Leave proves it anew. I don't think I will watch any longer trailers when they come -- this is a feast enough until the whole movie itself, baby!
The smart smart smart folks at MUBI snatched this movie up already before it's even premiered, and are planning on releasing it this fall -- if anyone at MUBI is reading this I beg you, please release it sooner. I will die. I will actually die, if I have to wait for this movie until the fall. Do you want that on your conscience? I am the voice of a generation! Well, some generation. Like, the voice of one of the middling cavemen generations, anyway. Imagine life without that!
Anyway should I say what the hell this movie is? I have said it before -- I've been saying it since I first heard about this several years back -- but perhaps this is a good moment to regroup. Decision to Leave stars Bong Joon-ho regular Park Hae-il and the great Tang Wei (so excellent in Ang Lee's film Lust, Caution) and as a detective investigating a murder and the murdered man's wife respectively, and yadda yadda we all know how these noir-esque plots but of course PCW will make it his own.
Because that's how greatness rolls, baby. Anyway add this one to the pile of movies I am dying for this year -- along with Peter Strickland's Flux Gourmet and David Cronenberg's Crimes of the Future (that one just got a trailer today too!) -- this year is turning out to be a goddamned lot isn't it??? Well, I mean movie-wise -- everything else has been 'a goddamned lot" for several years now. But the movies are helping us out, at least. Anyway because I am that spazz I went through this twenty-four second teaser and made gifs of basically every shot except two or three that were too brief to bother with, and if you hit the jump your eyeballs with say thank you...
Today's big news, worthy of its own post really, is the news that Parasite director Bong Joon-ho has just announced his next movie and it will be his first English-language film and it will star Robert f'ing Pattinson. Deadline has all the deets but the gist is its an adaptation of a book called Mickey7 that has not come out yet -- it's a sci-fi novel about space travel and clones that's out in February, read the plot or pick up a copy at this link. Anyway that's the actual news, but whenever I read about Bong it makes me think about my actual favorite South Korean director, Park Chan-wook, and ask myself when the hell are we gonna get his next thing?!? It's been six years since his last film The Handmaiden came out and four since his miniseries The Little Drummer Girl, and it's been a year and a half since his to-be-next project was announced -- called Decision To Leave it stars Lust Caution's great Tang Wei, and the fella you see here named Go Kyung-Pyo...
... and the actor Park Hae-il, who's actually previously worked with Bong Joon-ho a lot (he was in Memories of Murder and The Host). I know the story is about a detective (Hae-il) investigating a widow for possibly murdering her husband -- I wonder if Go (who's a comedian and TV star I think mainly) is playing the dead husband? Anyway IMDb thankfully has this movie listed as "Filming" so maybe we will finally get a new Park Chan-wook movie dammit. That's all I want. Well that's not true -- also I want to look at this photoshoot of Go Kyung-Pyo looking bright and goofy for Esquire. Hit the jump for it...
I think you'll all forgive me for using that photo of Alexander Skarsgard in Park Chan-wook's miniseries The Little Drummer Girl a few years back -- and excuse me for a moment while I go check Amazon to see if that series ever got put out onto blu-ray... oh it got a UK release, on DVD at least, I might have to buy that since that series rocks -- even though that is only tangentially related to the news I am sharing. I mean I suppose I could've posted a photo of Margaret Atwood or one of her book covers but I know what grabs your eyeballs!
So the news is that one of the producers of The Little Drummer Girl (by the name of Mike Lesslie) has just attached himself to the long-gestating adaptation of Atwood's MaddAddam trilogy of books! We've been posting about the possibility of this series as long as we've been posting about anything on this website; we fell in love with the first book Oryx & Crake the minute it was released in 2003 and wanted a movie of that, but then several years later came the second and third books, and talk of a series for Hulu, and Darren Aronofsky was even attached for a second. It's been a journey. I mean it looks like we'll be getting a Y: The Last Man series before this, which is the other long long long delayed property I've been following.
In case you don't know what the trilogy's about here, I will steal Deadline's plot description:
"At the center of the trilogy are the events leading up to the near destruction of mankind and civilization by a malicious bioengineered pandemic. The catalyst for it all is Crake, a brilliant and complicated young man so disturbed by the injustices of the world that he spends his young life developing a virus that will wipe out humans and replace us with a new species of hominid. The series not only looks at the events that lead up to that big moment, referred to in the books as the “waterless flood,” but also what happens after — including who and what shall inherit the earth."
Anyway Hulu's been yapping about making this for awhile, we'll see if anything happens. The annoying thing is is that Atwood was clearly ahead of her time fifteen years ago, but now by the time Hollywood gets around to it our times are catching up with her prognosticating. Pretty similar to how she put The Handmaid's Tale out in 1985 and then twenty years later the TV series felt like Current Events. On that note this article also mentioned the news that The Handmaid's Tale will have a fifth season; for some reason I thought the upcoming fourth season (premiering on April 28th!) was the show's last. But they're gonna plug on. I like the last season more than most people seemed to but I do sort of wonder if they might not be pushing their luck. Will the show still feel so vital without a Trump in the White House?
I was going to wish the actor slash living legend Song Kang-ho a happy 53rd birthday today by posting a quote from my favorite performance of his, which is as the priest in Park Chan-wook's 2009 vampire-flick Thirst, but then I did a search and realized I'd posted the same speech from Thirst twice before! Funny enough when I did this exact thing in January of 2018 I mentioned a little something you have maybe heard of lately called Parasite...
"This year is supposed to bring another reunion with his other (aka not Park Chan-wook) great collaborator Snowpiercer and The Host and Memories of Murder director Bong Joon-ho - they're supposedly making another horror movie called Parasite, which IMDb says is about "A man [who] gets infected with a parasite that changes his paradigm in unforeseen ways." IndieWire says the movie is about "a family going though a disturbance." Okay. Well I think these two could sure make something out of those ideas."
I don't know if this is an especially good moment to mention this, or if there is ever a good moment to mention this -- yes I am aware there is room in the world for two South Korean directors! -- but here goes: in the pantheon of current South Korean Gods, even with Parasite in all kinds of Oscar contention right now, I remain Team Park Chan-wook over Team Bong Joon-ho.
Fairly certain I'm in the minority with this opinion but as much as I like Bong's movies they almost always get somewhat over-rated to me, while Park's get continually under-appreciated. If forced at gunpoint to choose I'd take Stoker and The Handmaiden and Park's Little Drummer Girl series over Snowpiercer and Okja and yes even Parasite any day. So now I ask...
I got the competing schedules a little bit mixed up for Park Chan-wook's The Little Drummer Girl series since it was airing on UK television separately from American TV and I'd started by watching it via the former and ended, I think, via the latter - point being I'm pretty sure the show has run all of its episodes for everybody now on both sides of the pond, all the sides of the pond, but I'm not one hundred percent on that so I'll refrain from getting into spoilers here. Broadly, I thought it was good! It looked fabulous - if you like vintage lamps and concrete buildings and half-naked Alexander Skarsgard, and I do like all of those things, this thing was a goldmine. And Florence Pugh proved Lady Macbeth was no fluke. If anybody's got deeper thoughts (not hard) share in the comments!
Well I haven't done one of these link round-up posts in ages and ages; they're time-consuming and what with that steady stream of film fests I was caught up in for a couple of months there twasn't meant to be. There's all sorts of news I've missed mentioning, but I'm going to try to keep these links more recent, since one assumes you guys get your news from other places. I know, I know, a nutso assumption, but we'll entertain the thought for today. Here goes...
--- Crazy Rich Christmas - Gorgeous Henry Golding was to the shock of nobody looking gorgeous and exuding charm in Paul Feig's A Simple Favor earlier this year, and so it wasn't a shock when Feig announced he was re-teaming with the Crazy Rich Asians star for his next project, a romantic holiday comedy called Last Christmas that'll have him wooing the elf-pants right off of the mother of dragons herself, Emilia Clarke. Today's news that Henry's CRA co-star and eternal goddess Michelle Yeoh is joining the cast though, that's something to jig fresh over.
--- Divine Interference - I'm heading down to Baltimore myself in a couple of weeks to see the John Waters exhibit that the Baltimore Museum of Art is currently staging, I'll surely report back on that once I do, but if you'd rather hear what John Waters himself has to say on it well I suppose you could click right here for a chat with him in the Washington Post. (thx Mac)
--- Bateman Below - As if the Muriel's Wedding musical wasn't enough to already have me contemplating throwing out my thumb to catch a ride Down Under now the entire continent of Australia is really going out of its way to make me crazy, musical-style - they're staging my belovedAmerican Psycho musical in Sydney in the spring. The only show I've ever gone to see thrice! I don't know who Ben Gerrard is, I guess he's a well-known personality down there, but it's a shame they couldn't coax Benjamin Walker out of whatever hole Meryl Streep tossed him into after he abandoned that Gummer.
--- The Next Killer - Have you guys watched Cam on Netflix yet? The "cam girl" horror movie starring Madeline Brewer from The Handmaid's Tale? Here's my review in case you need convincing - the movie is very smart and fine and I recommend it. Well writer Isa Mazzei and director Daniel Goldhaber, the team behind the film, just let slip that they're teaming back up to make another horror flick next - it's a "semi-autobiographical" female-led serial-killer flick. Mazzei also reassures that the "semi" means she is not a serial killer, so that's good. In related here's a chat with Madeline Brewer about Cam.
--- Follow That Bird - Being so busy the past week I've fallen an episode behind on Park Chan-wook's miniseries The Little Drummer Girl, but if you've happened to be on Twitter while I am watching an episode then you know I am mad about what I have seen so far - it's gorgeous stuff. And happily the Atlantic got to chat with PCW about the visual style, particularly the show's vibrant color palette, you can read it all right here. I'm holding off on reading the article til the show's done myself though, since I don't want to color, har har, the experience of watching the show as it unfolds.
--- Twits Ahead - Every time a new Roald Dahl adaptation has come up over the years, and there have been many, I've always whined about the one story of his that nobody was adapting, his 1980 book The Twits, which was a childhood fave. It's an over-the-top goofy and brief book so whining aside I've always mostly understood why nobody's bothered. But now comes word that Netflix is making "an exclusive new and first-of-its-kind slate of original animated event series and specials" based on all of Dahl's works - basically it sounds like they're doing for Dahl what Castle Rock did for Stephen King and creating a "shared universe." So I expect me some Twits!
--- And Finally a new trailer for Patty Jenkins' miniseries I Am the Night with her Wonder Woman leading man Chris Pine popped up earlier this week - we shared the first look at the show back in June right here; this is about the Black Dahlia killing in Los Angeles in 1949. The series premieres at the tail-end of January. Watch: . .
Earlier today EW dropped the first trailer for Park Chan-wook's upcoming AMC miniseries The Little Drummer Girl, starring Florence Pugh, Alexander Skarsgård, and Michael Shannon - see all of our previous posts here (especially this one) - and it looks as stylish and sexy and sun-dappled as you'd expect for a Park-Chan-wook series starring those people and filmed partly on the beaches of Greece.
Yes there are people in it besides Alexander, but I'm not gonna gif them! The copy of the trailer on YouTube isn't as crisp as the one EW uploaded so you should probably just click over to EW (they also have the poster for it) but since I can't post EW's video here (they're all weird about links) I'm gonna post the less crisp YouTube one, whatcha gonna do...
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The Little Drummer Girl hits early November! (thx Mac)
That is how many days you have until Park Chan-wook's miniseries adaptation of John le Carré's bookThe Little Drummer Girl starring Florence Pugh (as the girl in question) opposite Michael Shannon (as the mustache seen above in question) and Alexander Skarsgard (as the gams in question) premieres on AMC. If you don't feel like getting out a paper calendar and putting a big red X across ninety days to figure that out it premieres on November 19th, and the six part series will then run two hours a night for three nights in a row through the 21st, aka Thanksgiving Eve. Let's hope the only turkey we get that week's on the dinner table, wokka wokka. (thx Mac)
All the headlines touting this news today have been about Florence Pugh but leave it to me to shake it up and center us back in on the beefcake - the cast for Hereditary director Ari Aster's next film is coming together and so far it includes yes Pugh but also Will Poulter and Jack Reynor, the latter seen above. I was just talking about Reynor recently, saying I hoped he'd find a role worthy of my attraction to him, so I hope this is the one. The funny thing is...
... Poulter and Reynor both co-starred with Hereditary supernova Toni Collette in Glassland back in 2014! I still haven't gotten to see Glassland - it just sort of vanished? Have any of you seen it? I remember looking forward to it and then... nothing. I should seek it out, especially as a Collette Completeist. Anyway the most important thing about this news is that we have info on what Ari Aster's new movie is about now and it sounds very Wicker Man...
"Pugh and Reynor will play a couple that travels to Sweden to visit their friend’s rural hometown for it’s fabled mid-summer festival. What begins as an idyllic retreat quickly devolves into an increasingly violent and bizarre competition at the hands of a pagan cult."
Speaking of dudes working with Florence Pugh though...
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This picture of Alexander Skarsgard in Park Chan-wook’s THE LITTLE DRUMMER GIRL was a real nice thing to come home to (thanks @mac20) pic.twitter.com/YftGYZi6UD
We've been hearing lots (and rightfully so) about Lady Macbeth's leading lady Florence Pugh lining up films after the success of that picture - most enticingly is Park Chan-wook's Little Drummer Girl miniseries with Alexander Skarsgard - but until today we hadn't heard much about her leading man Cosmo Jarvis, who we sure took a shine to. (See this gratuitous post for all the shine you can handle.) Today though, good news! Cosmo has signed on to co-star opposite one of my favorite up-n-comers, the boy who gave the second best film performance last year, The Killing of a Sacred Deer's Barry Keoghan, in a film called Calm With Horses. It's about an ex-boxer who's being recruited into violent shenanigans while trying to take care of his autistic son. Not sure who's playing who, but Cosom sure looks like an ex-boxer. (Then again, look at this picture of Barry.) Oh and the whole thing is being produced by Michael Fassbender? Okay!
One of our Most Anticipateds has started filming this week - Park Chan-wook's The Little Drummer Girl, a miniseries adaptation of the usual spy-thriller sorta book by John Le Carre, was spotted filming at the Temple of Poseidon in Greece yesterday. Specifically its stars Alexander Skarsgård, looking all kinds of goofy (for such a big Swedish stud-muffin Askars can be the downright goofiest) and Florence Pugh were sighted - you can see a few more shots of them at JJ. Not on view just yet: Michael Shannon, who's the third lead in the cast. Oh and I just checked IMDb to see if anybody else had joined the cast that we hadn't heard about - Max Irons is up in it too. We like Max Irons. Well looking at Max Irons anyway...
Michael Shannon has just joined the cast of Park Chan-wook's upcoming miniseries The Little Drummer Girl, which will air on both the BBC and AMC - we've told you about this series twice previously, both times because of amazing enticing casting happenings, and this marks the third so you can imagine we are pretty gosh-darned psyched for number three. The previous two were Lady Macbeth's breakout star Florence Pugh (read here) and the super-Swede Alexander Skarsgard (read that here).
This series is based on a John LeCarre book about a woman on holiday (Pugh) who gets entangled with a sexy dangerous man-stranger (Skarsgard) - Shannon will be playing "an Israeli spy-master" that is plotting against them. Park sounds like he's a big fan of Shannon's and is himself pretty psyched to be working with him; here's what he told Variety:
“The first time I saw Michael was as one of the genius actors who delivered wonderful performances in ‘Revolutionary Road,’ and ever since I’ve remained his loyal fan. I believe Michael will make the perfect Kurtz, a man scarred by history and carrying burdens all too heavy on his shoulders, an Israeli ‘Captain Ahab’ obsessed by his biggest and most elusive nemesis yet.”
Seconded, Park! Anyway no word on when this thing will air - seeing as how it hasn't filmed yet I think we're safe supposing it will be sometime in 2019. Anyway if you'd like six more shots of Michael Shannon wearing suits and being his sexy creep self hit the jump...
We have a new project to officially be very very very very excited about, y'all! I mean we was already excited - we told you back on the 3rd about Park Chan-wook's next project, that he's making a BBC/AMC television miniseries out of John le Carré book The Little Drummer Girl that will star Lady Macbeth's big up-n-comer Florence Pugh. Well he's just cast the male lead in the thing and it's (you guessed it already, I am guessing, given that great big beautiful picture I have posted) ... Alexander Skarsgard! Park Chan-wook filming Alexander Skarsgard - my knees be weak. (thx Mac)
Alex did pretty well the last time he tried prestige TV, winning an Emmy for getting his erect dick hit with a tennis racquet in Big Little Lies, so I don't blame him for sticking around on the small screen, especially with prestige like this. The small screen has been very good to Alex. Anyway if you want to know more of the plot, here:
"... the six-part miniseries follows brilliant young actress Charlie (Pugh) who strikes up an acquaintance with an intriguing stranger while on holiday in Greece, but it rapidly becomes apparent that his intentions are far from romantic. The man is Becker (Skarsgård), an Israeli intelligence officer, who entangles her in a complex and high stakes plot which unfolds as she takes on the role of a lifetime in the ‘theatre of the real’."
I paid a lot of attention to her co-star Cosmo Jarvis (because I know my audience and our predilection for furry little fuckboys) when Lady Macbeth came out earlier this year, but it should be known I thought that Florence Pugh in the lead role was fuckin-a fantastic. And so today's big news that she is going to star in a miniseries adaptation of John Le Carre's book The Little Drummer Girlfor no less than PARK CHAN-WOOK... well that is exciting, you guys. Here's what TLDG is about via Amazon:
"On holiday in Mykonos, Charlie wants only sunny days and a brief escape from England’s bourgeois dreariness. Then a handsome stranger lures the aspiring actress away from her pals—but his intentions are far from romantic. Joseph is an Israeli intelligence officer, and Charlie has been wooed to flush out the leader of a Palestinian terrorist group responsible for a string of deadly bombings. Still uncertain of her own allegiances, she debuts in the role of a lifetime as a double agent in the “theatre of the real.”
Haunting and deeply atmospheric, John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl is a virtuoso performance and a powerful examination of morality and justice."
Have any of you read it? This is Park's first project since The Handmaiden blew our socks off (after blowing up our knickers) last yea; Pugh meanwhile's got a ton stacked up on her late, including a WWE family comedy with The Rock & Lena Headey (okay????), that Liam Neeson movie set on a train, and being the token female in that movie starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson's gigantic beard that I told you about. I have to say that this here project with Park looks the most promising for her out of that batch. (Although I am totally into the Liam Neeson train movie, but my guess is her role isn't huge.) .
If you follow me on Twitter then you probably read that I shot lightning bolt like across the city after work last evening to see Edgar Wright, Michael Cera, Anna Kendrick, and Jason Schwartzman in person at the Apple Store in Soho for Scott Pilgrim. How could I not? I wish I'd gotten there earlier, they were tossing out copies of the film's soundtrack on vinyl but I was too far back to get my mitts on one. After seeing the movie - my review - I've been going insane with lust for a copy of the soundtrack but it's not out until August 10th. Ugh! Why must I wait? Now now now! It's sooo good. Ahem.
Anyway I sped over there after work and watched this fabulous foursome in person and I didn't take notes but I figured I'd ramble off five random things I remember about the conversation cuz it was a fine time and I was there and should commemorate it somehow.
1 - My favorite acknowledgment was that Jason Schwartzman and Edgar Wright based Jason's character of Gideon Graves on Swan from Phantom of the Paradise and Z-Man from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls . Of course they did!
Perfection!
2 - Anna Kendrick plays Scott's sister Stacey and got to meet the character's real life inspiration, Bryan Lee O'Malley's sister Stacey, who told her she needed to play the role more "half-Asian." The name tag that Anna's wearing in the film is actually real life Stacy's name-tag from the same coffee shop. It actually says under her name "Certified Coffee Agent," which Edgar Wright found hysterical. Kendrick commanded us to go add that to the film's IMDb trivia page. It isn't there yet! Come on, people! But I'm not doing it myself.
Anyway I liked Anna Kendrick well enough before this but she really won me over last night. For one she seemed sorta... excited... in the way I'd be excited... about Chris Evans getting cast in the movie. And then they were talking about the first big read-through of the script, which she couldn't be there for, and she said she'd heard that Mae Whitman was doing an impression of her and she seemed terrified of that, and I totally agree - if Mae Whitman's doing an impression of you, it's probably something to be terrified of.
She also said that her entire part could've been shot in a day, a few hours even, but she ended up being on set for four weeks because she'd need to be in the background of several fight scenes making an "OH!" face, over and over again. Ha.
3 - The 9 year old stand-in for the little girl that plays the drummer of Crash and the Boys was a weirdo. Michael Cera told this hysterical story - and that important to know, because you need to imagine this tsory coming from Michael Cera - A bunch of people including Cera and this 9 year old stand-in were all sitting backstage in the middle of shooting on some big green leather couch and the little girl suddenly asked if anyone had a knife. Everyone said no, little girl, we do not have a knife. And she said that she really just wanted to cut that couch open and go live inside of it. My kinda girl!
4 - Jason Schwartzman told this funny story about how the stunt coordinators - people that've worked with Jackie Chan for years - sat him and Michael Cera down after a particularly epic day of shooting their big fight scene and showed them an edited-together compliation of the moves they'd just shot and the video ended and Jason and Michael were all, "Yeah! We looked awesome!" and super excited but then it slowly dawned on them that the video was shown to them as a sort of "How Not To" guide, and their every move was then dissected and torn apart for how terribly wrong and awful it looked. Aww.
5 - I can't remember the exact number but the musician Beck threw up approximately a million songs for all the different bands in a tiny little span of time and they had them all before the movie even started. So they were able to listen to them while shooting, and edit them into the DV cuts on set, and even listen to them for that first script read-through. Edgar Wright said they had the easiest time getting bands to sign on to play all the different bands music - apparently Radiohead (amongst many others) producer Nigel Godrich makes it easy to get anybody you want. The soundtrack is so good! I want it I want it! Damn back to the beginning again, then... ..
"I too quit smoking (2013) AND find this type of pictures cool. Also, PSA: if you're feeling like you want to start smoking again, just remind yourself "I do not want my body and house to stink like stale horseshit", then go drink one more glass of water to entertain your hands and lips. Congrats, btw."
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