Thursday, August 02, 2018

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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Today we're wishing a happy 40 to one of our favorite movies, Irvin Kershner's Eyes of Laura Mars starring Miss Faye Dunaway as a fabulous fashion photographer in 1978 New York who's suddenly been cursed with a psychic link to a murderer - she sees what he sees as he stalks and massacres a string of her besties!

With all due apologies to Laura's agent Elaine Cassel (played by Rose Gregorio) here who's got no good coming to her, no good at all, what we're really here for, what we're really here for every time we watch this movie, is 1) Faye's fabulous fashions and 2) the vision of 1978 New York, mostly Soho, on display.



That's not to say that Kirshner doesn't shoot the heck out of these killing sequences - this one in particular is hella grisly and mean-spirited and shows that he clearly had been watching himself some of the stylish giallo coming out of Europe (mainly Italy natch) during this period as he shot this.


I mean. Blink and that's Bava.



But really all we wanna do is eye that saucy riding cap, those slit-high gauchos, the plaids and tweeds and silks, oh my god every time I watch this movie all I want is to stand up from my desk and walk out onto the street and see every single woman in New York wearing the clothes that Faye wears in this movie. Pushing old ladies you've just stabbed in the face with an ice pick is one thing...



... but running on cobblestones in those boots is quite another!

Man I wish I lived in New York in 1978. Even if 
I had to get murdered by a maniac it'd have been worth it.



Hit the jump for links to the Previous Ways Not To Die...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Happiness (1998)

Trish: Just because you've hit 30,
doesn't mean you can't be fresh anymore.
Joy: That's right.

A happy 56 to Cynthia Stevenson today!
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Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... sun's out with Liam and...
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... guns out with Chris.
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How about you?
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bike trails
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Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?
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Good Morning, Gratuitous Vicky Kaushal

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Two weeks ago I introduced you to the Indian actor Vicky Kaushal with a very pleasant little introduction of seven sweaty bearded pictures worth a look-see if you missed 'em. Well I haven't spent the past two weeks binging his acting work or anything so I haven't got anything new to tell you about his talent...

... but I did spend a few minutes (okay, I spent several "few" minutes) of that time gathering up a few more pictures of him, and since they're gonna make for us another pleasant time I figured I'd share this morning. Hit the jump for more pleasantries...

Wednesday, August 01, 2018

The Full Stache Experience

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I'm finally seeing the new Mission: Impossible movie tonight, well after y'all have chewed it up, spat it out, and wrote the listicles detailing the experience in the most sordid of details -- wish me luck! Actually since I'm seeing it in 4DX what y'all need to wish me is a moment where a theater employee is forced to rub my lips with a bristle brush while I'm ogling Henry Cavill's mustache - I want the full goddamn experience, body soul and stache. Anyway speaking of Henry he's done a full-bore PR blitz for this thing and we've managed to get ourselves several photo-shoots behind thanks to its relentless nature so here after the jump a Henry Cavill picture dump...

Dominic Cooper Two Times

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I missed a whole lot of stuff while I was away this past week, and these shots of Dom in the new issue of Attitude Magazine are among the stuff skittering towards the cracks that I don't dare lose. I don't dare it! Also they asked him about a Gay James Bond Movie for some reason? Read it here. Anyway do any of you watch Preacher or what? Sometimes I feel like I'm the only damn person on the planet who's watching. It's maybe gotten a little too convoluted for its own good this season - it works best when it focuses on the relationship between its core threesome - but there's still nothing else so blasphemously delicious on TV today so you'd best believe I'll be keeping with it.


Around the Armie in Eighty Days

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We have some Armie Hammer news to share today, whoop whoop! (Unfortunately none of it includes where the hell the above picture originated from or who he's with there, but I'm happy to share that anyway.) First up he's lined up a new movie! He will costar opposite Anthony Mackie in Banker, which sounds kind of similar to Sorry to Bother You or Spike Lee's upcoming BlackkKlansman in that it's about "code switching" and putting a "palatable" white face on the front of a black enterprise -- Mackie plays a banker trying to build a real-estate empire who hires Armie's character (a construction worker) to be the company's front. Banker is being directed by George Nolfi, who directed The Adjustment Bureau

Next up we've got news on a project Armie's already done that we were worried about - Hotel Mumbai, his movie about the deadly terrorist bombings in India in 2008 with Dev Patel and Jason Isaacs, among others, was caught up in the Weinstein Company's collapse, but it sounds like things might be sorted out since the film's now premiering in Toronto next month! And yes that means Armie will be in Toronto at the same time as Timothée Chalamet, who'll be there with Beautiful Boy, so let's pray our boys are plotting out their reunion as we speak. If you'd like to see a few more pictures from Hotel Mumbai hit the jump...

Great Moments In Movie Shelves #160

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Reverend Toller (Ethan Hawke) is summoned to the office of Reverend Jeffers (Cedric the Entertainer) twice over the course of Paul Shrader's film First Reformed (hitting bluray on August 21st) and as with everything in the film these moments feel meticulous - in the first, seen above, the two sit comfortably on the office's couches, framed straight-on as equals. But by the end of the film...

...  as their relationship has soured and disintegrated the clean lines have broken, the framing has broken, and heck even eye contact can't keep them afloat. The gorgeously old-school 1.37:1 aspect ratio was made for capturing bookshelves, squares inside squares, but Toller's onset of ecstatic mania is no place for squares. Jeffers just wants you to play the same old damned song, son - fix that organ and stay in your lane.


Will Willem Win Or Won't

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Willem Dafoe, one of our greatest living actors, was widely considered snubbed Oscars-wise last year for his fine subtle work in The Florida Project - I mean he got nominated and all but he should have won over Sam Rockwell's audaciously ham-bony work in Three Billboards. Alas. Well perhaps today's news that his Vincent Van Gogh biopic At Eternity's Gate from director Julian Schnabel is the closing night film of the New York Film Festival (read about it here - the film also stars Mads Mikkelsen and Oscar Isaac and Rupert Friend and Mathieu Amalric and Emmanuelle Seigner) means he might get the chance to steamroll this time around? Whaddya think?
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bike trail guide
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Fantasia 2018: Knuckleball

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Perhaps proving her point I think of Stockard Channing's "Don't think about elephants" line an awful lot. In Six Degrees of Separation Stockard's character is attempting to not think about the elephant in the room - in this case the money she and her husband are trying to make off of a rich guest they're having over for dinner - and she says, "Whatever you do, don't think about elephants." But once the elephants are on parade there's no stopping the...

... and so it went with watching the movie Knuckleball after (importantly, after) having been told that it's an ultra-violent spin on its forefather Home Alone. Suddenly Kevin McAllisters are all you can see, as far as the eye can see. Lucky for us, and them, Knuckleball is fluent in elephant riding. It hops right on the beast's back and rides that bitch like a rodeo pro. There are explicit nods shot-wise, costume-wise, dialogue-wise, but just when you're thinking it's a goof Knuckleball goes for the guts. Literally. Home Alone meets Martyrs? Why the fuck not.

At just over eighty minutes long Knuckleball skins itself down to fighting shape - there's no excess meat hanging off; all the better to bruise. Luca Villacis (in the Culkin role) is a winning kid, adding a dash of haunted to the proceedings with his big woeful gaze, and the weirdo next-door neighbor is given gum-toothed gusto by Munro Chambers. Knuckleball is lean and mean but it'll get your heart thumping, one hard elephant stomp in the snow at a time.


Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?
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Just a Friend From Another Star

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I figured I'd give you something nice to start with so there's that set selfie of Tom Hardy and Jack Lowden from while they were filming Dunkirk -- is that the best that Tom's looked in awhile right there? Cuz godddddddamn. I like imagining where all of their hands are outside of frame. Now for something a little less enthralling...
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... yup it's the second trailer for Venom
(We posted the first one here.) It's got me...

... just a little anxious. Hearing voices...

... weirdly accented little voices.
(A turd in the wind? Really, though?)

Good Morning, World

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When Rosemary's Baby turned 50 back in June I told all of you witches about the forthcoming book called This is No Dream: Making Rosemary's Baby -- well the book's out now, I am flipping through my copy right now, and oh my god it's lovely! It's stuffed to the satanic gills with the set photography of Bob Willoughby, much of it that I've never published before, and knowing what a spazz I am about this movie that should be very exciting indeed. A must own, methinks! Go pick up yours right over here or risk Saint Minnie's wrath...
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A post shared by Jason Adams (@jasonaadams) on
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