Good Morning, World

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I did that post about Travis Fimmel's cup of spooge last night and it's only a hop skip n' jump, mentally-speaking, from Travis to Vikings and Vikings to Alexander Ludwig, his co-star on that show, and here we are. (via) Thing is I have encountered a bit of a mystery and anybody that actually watches Vikings you can feel free to clear this up for me -- there have been some shots of Alexander's bum going around over the past week...

... reportedly from Vikings, but all I've been able to find are still shots, and so I thought I'd make a gif and I went looking for the clips and I can't figure out where this happened. There's a scene in the 3rd episode where this happens...

... but as you can see we don't get a shot involving buttocks there. Perhaps the butt-shot is off an uncensored cut of the show for the blu-ray release and that's why we're only seeing it now, so long after this episode actually aired? Ideas? Or is just looking at the butt enough for you? Thinking is overrated when butt is available, that's what I always say.

Ewan Ewan Everywhere

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(via, thx Mac)

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Great Moments In Movie Shelves #80

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There isn't much I have to say about Rebecca Miller's pleasant film Maggie's Plan - which stars Greta Gerwig as a "Greta Gerwig type" who breaks up a marriage and then tries to put it back together once she realizes they were all better off before - it's pleasant? I don't have much enthusiasm for watching Ethan Hawke on-screen anymore so that probably dampened my reaction to the movie, since watching goddesses of the Gerwig & Julianne Moore kind fight over him kinda rankled. 

But the film does have one glorious moment that brings together so many of The Things I Love that I had to give it love in return. Greta Gerwig? Check. Greta Gerwig dancing? Check. Greta Gerwig dancing in front of bookshelves? Check! Greta Gerwig dancing in front of bookshelves while Travis Fimmel and his great big bushy beard jerks off and then waves his jism around proudly?

CHECK!!!!!

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H Is For Happy! Haneke! Huppert!

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I was at a party filled with like-minded movie-lovers this past weekend and Isabelle Huppert came up - as she must - and I just started frothing at the mouth - as I must - about her work in Paul Verhoeven's upcoming rape-comedy Elle. (If you missed my review of that film you can read it here.) But there's a (hysterically funny) moment in Elle that calls back to a moment her performance in Michael Haneke's film The Piano Teacher, and in a brand new interview Huppert has shared some info on her new collaboration with the director titled Happy End...

“I’m just finishing Michael Haneke’s film now. This is also the reason for my presence here in London. We had two days of shooting here. This movie is completely different from what I did on, say, The Piano Teacher. And certainly different to Amour. It is an ensemble film, with lots of characters. He calls it a ‘freeze frame’. It’s a portrait of a family, and everything that implies. It’s a very quick view of a family. There’s no psychology. It’s very factual. Just the facts. It sounds like Code: Unknown, but it’s different to that. It’s certainly more like Code: Unknown than The Piano Teacher, where you follow a single character. The aim is that everyone who sees it will be able to create their own film."

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971)

Willy Wonka: A little nonsense now and then 

is relished by the wisest men. 

RIP Gene Wilder,

you giant amongst men.

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Ice Ice Baby

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Nobody ever agrees with me on this but it's alright, I know I got it right and will one day be vindicated -- Joel Schumacher's Batman & Robin is a stone-cold camp classic, y'all. I know I'll get ridiculed for sharing that opinion over at The Film Experience, which I just did for this week's "Beauty vs Beast" contest, but I am frozen stiff... with conviction on this one.

Jax Got Jacked

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Charlie Hunnam was caught by the paps getting a flat tire over the weekend -- most importantly Charlie Hunnam was caught by the paps getting a flat tire over the weekend while wearing a wife-beater and sweats. The boy can work some slob-wear. The funny thing is that in L.A. even your tow-truck driver is a hot dude with an Instagram account full of gym selfies, so this happened...

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Had the pleasure of meeting Charlie Hunnam today. One of the perks of towing in Hollywood. #charliehunnam #sonsofanarchy #soa #winning #kristenisjealous

A photo posted by John🤘🏻🖕🏻⚡️ (@j_leist_fit_912) on Aug 27, 2016 at 1:40pm PDT

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Here are a couple other pictures of this guy...

This was so close to being gay porn, you guys.

So, so close. Hit the jump for more Charlie...

Most Extraordinary Craft

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Apropos of nothing but the strange head-space I find myself in this Monday morning I got to thinking about the fact that two of the most endearingly cheese-tastic acts of the 70s put out trippy tracks with atypical sci-fi themes within the space of a couple years -- The Carpenters' astonishingly weird song "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" was released in 1977; it was a cover of a song by the prog band called Klaatu (who're delightfully named after the alien in The Day the Earth Stood Still, which will always be Evil-Dead-themed in my head since that came first for me).
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Thing I just learned as I wrote up this post -- this song did so well for Richard & Karen that they did a related TV special called "The Carpenters...Space Encounters" -- which is uploaded entirely onto YouTube (split into eight parts) because we live in an incredible world where nothing, no matter how bizarre, is more than a click away, and which you can watch beginning right here at this link. I must watch it immediately. Next up...

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... we have "The Visitors," the title track from ABBA's 1980 album, which I have always heard as a song about aliens coming to carry poor Frida off to their spaceship, but which Wikipedia is telling me is actually about "protest against the mistreatment of political dissidents in the Soviet Union at the time." Ummm okay? I guess that aliens wouldn't ring the doorbell so it was silly of me to read the song that way in the first place, but I'll never let it go.
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Godfrey Gao Seven Times

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Hey Hollywood! You seein' this?

Can you get on this? (Lots more of this right here)

Please and thank you. Hit the jump for five more...

Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?
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Good Thor-ning, World

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It's sort of a stretch associating this wanna-be-viral video of Chris Hemsworth showing us what Thor's been up to over the past several months with "Morning" because nothing much morning-related happens - I s'pose we see the Hammer tucked in to bed at one point? I was really hoping we'd get the Golden One reenacting Ferris Bueller's shower routine (I'd be curious to see if he could make a mohawk with that hair of his). Alas. But we do get to see a bearded Chris Hemsworth in shorts sitting in front of bookshelves so I'm gonna post this right this second, morning be damned.

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Billy's End Is Our Beginning

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Well I can't think of a better way to finish the short week off than with Billy Magnussen's bare behind waving us towards the great yonder. Let's just pretend that this picture's not a full week old, and that we've stayed on top (heh) of his Instagrams like we should be keeping on top (HEH) of this kind of thing, okay? Okay. Have a good weekend, Billy and people-who-are-not-Billy!

Jason Says Jump, You Jump

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There are two beefcake-fests out this late summer weekend - besides Edgar Ramirez in the boxing-drama Hands of Stone (which we exploited pretty thoroughly yesterday, click here for that) there is also the latest Jason Statham masterpiece, Mechanic: Resurrection, the sequel to his 2011 film. 

In case you missed the trailer (aka footage of Jason Statham shirtless for a second, which we made last forever) click here for that. Jason posted these pictures on his own Instagram this week, because he knows how to sell his damn movies. (See also here.) Bless you, sir!

I Am Link

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--- Boo Witch - I won't be watching it (I still haven't watched the first one) but there's a new trailer for the new Blair Witch and you can watch it over here - there are also several stills from the film which consist of a bunch of people I don't recognize standing around in the woods, and I wouldn't want it any other way! I just realized I'm going to be traveling the weekend this movie comes out, so I guess I'm going to some bizarro movie theater on the road to see it.

--- Darker Things - Go director Doug Liman is very busy right now - we told you a couple of weeks ago about how he recently attached himself to Chaos Walking with Daisy Ridley, which is an adaptation of a book series we liked very much; well he's just had to drop off his Gambit movie with Channing Tatum, which he was also set to direct, because he's making a Justice League Dark movie - which I maintain is just the silliest name; it sounds like a chocolate bar - which is like The Avengers but with weirdos... you know, like Suicide Squad. Or Guardians of the Galaxy even! Anyway this group of weirdos includes "John Constantine, Swamp Thing, Deadman, Zatanna and Etrigan the Demon." I am down for some Swamp Thing.

--- Ride 'Em Cowboy - Pedro Almodovar has come up this week a bunch, he's been doing lots of press for Julieta, but I can't not mention all his talk about what his version of Brokeback Mountain would've consisted of (he almost made it before Ang Lee did) because I would watch this!

"More sex, more sex. And this is not gratuitous. Annie Proulx’s story is about a physical relationship, an animal relation. So sex is necessary, because it is the body of the story. So I always had the image — these two guys start making love to each other like animals, like they were taking care of . Against the cold, in the mountain; almost a way to survive in the mountains. In the end, they discover that it was something else and they were surprised; it was like a big accident. But the physical part, [the story] is about that. "

--- Poor Peggy - I wanted to quote something from this interview with Kirsten Dunst in the New York Times, in which she talks lovingly about her character from Fargo (I liked the bit about her grandma) but I have hit the paywall on their website and they're not letting me reload the article so whatever, go read it, unless you're paywalled out too, in which case we can commiserate together on our shared cheapness.

--- Gold is the Warmest Color - I liked the sci-fi romance Equals with Nicholas Hoult & Kristen Stewart quite a bit when I saw it at Tribeca, so I am excited to read that that film's director is making yet another weird romance next, and it will star Charlie Hunnam and Lea Seydoux! I guess he wants a blond bookend to that brunette one. No word on what makes this story "unique" but with Charlie around I am hoping it's set in a nudist colony.

--- Night and the City - Writer-director Dan Gilroy is finally lining up a project to direct after he knocked at least me out with Nightcrawler - it's called Inner City and it looks like it will star Denzel Washington; not much on specifics but they're comparing it to the Paul newman movie The Verdict (which I have never seen) in that it is "a character study as much a courtroom drama and is set in Los Angeles."

--- Happy Easter - I don't know how this slipped by me posting about it (I knew the news, but I didn't exclaim the news) but Kristin Chenoweth has reunited with her best Pushing Daisies boyfriend Bryan Fuller  on American Gods! She will be playing the character called Easter, and Bryan posted that shot of Cheno in character, with bonnet, on Twitter yesterday. Oh heavens I am excited!

--- And Finally it's brief - you might say it's a tease! - but here's the teaser trailer for the third season of The Fall with Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan, a show I have enjoyed very much even if I think Jamie Dornan is not the greatest actor in the bunch still. Gillian more than makes up for his woodenness. We still don't have a release date for this, though.
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Riz Ahmed Four Times

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Anybody been watching The Night Of?

Should I watch it?

I do love me some Riz...

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Which Is Hotter?

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Beautiful and perfect, twenty feet tall and blond and sculpted from marble, Swedish with talent and teeth and muscles poking out of every crevice... but you are older than me, Alexander Skarsgard! You are older than me! Hahahahaha I win! (Sigh. I win nothing.) Today is Alex's 40th birthday so if he's not hanging out in the woods with strange men anymore (ahem) I hope he's celebrating well. Or maybe hanging out in the woods with strange men is his celebration, in which case I say -- I AM STRANGE, ALEXANDER. I am a strange man! I should have been invited. Anyway...

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from: 

Pink Flamingos (1972) 

Connie Marble: Oh, I love you Raymond. I love you more than anything in this whole world. I love you more than my own filthiness, more than my own hair color. Oh God, I love you more than the sound of bones breaking, the sound of death rattle - even more than the sound of my own shit do I love you, Raymond.
Raymond Marble: And I, Connie, also love you more than anything that I could ever imagine: more than my hair color, more than the sound of babies crying, of dogs dying - even more than the thought of original sin itself. I am yours, Connie, eternally united through an invisible core of finely woven filth, that even God himself could never ever break. 

The happiest, filthiest of birthdays today

to Mink Stole, Icon. We love you, Mink!

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Haints & Bugs & Good Good Times

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Because I'm trying to put Greg McLean's wretched wreck of a film The Darkness out of my mind (which I just reviewed here) I am forcing my brain to happy places, and there's nothing making me happier than these two things right now, which I haven't talked about here on the blog nearly enough. Number One, the horror comic Harrow County, which my friend Dan Walber pushed upon me with the wisdom of a wise crone - any fans in the house? I plowed through the first dozen issues in the space of a few days but I've now slowed my pace, knowing I am near catching up with all there is and I don't want to grow restless staring at my mail-box for new issues.

The other thing, which I've been rather vocal about on Twitter but only mentioned once or twice here (and really only as a chance to stare at Aaron Tveit's exposed flesh) is the CBS series Braindead starring Mary Elizabeth Winstead -- its ratings have been terrible, I keep hearing, so I won't ask if you're watching because you're probably not. Instead I will scream at you for this perceived slight - watch the damned show already! 

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My love for #Braindead has tripled by each episode's end - I haven't been this infatuated with a new show in ages pic.twitter.com/LFxAq59EbX

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) August 24, 2016

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I mean Brooke Adams, star of the 70s masterpiece Invasion of the Body Snatchers, recently showed up! And any show that's got her on deck is playing with a full set of cards, right? It's probably for the best that it wasn't her Body Snatchers co-star Veronica Cartwright that showed up, because if Veronica Cartwright showed up I would most definitely go postal when (if...) the show gets canned. Brooke Adams is just genius enough. Watch this show!

A Darkness Has Swallowed My Soul

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If I could turn back time, if I could find a way, I'd never watch The Darkness - heck, I'd pretend The Darkness didn't exist. I think it would be better for everybody - me, actors Kevin Bacon and Radha Mitchell and various underlings, the writers, the prop people, the production assistant who had to drive Kevin Bacon and Radha Mitchell and various underlings to the set every day...

But most most especially, next to me, I think it would be best for director Greg McLean if The Darkness didn't exist, because I felt better about Greg before watching it then I did when it ended, and I'd like us to return to that happy place we were in before. A simpler time, when Wolf Creek was plenty. In all its variants - the sequel, the TV show - each one might be slightly not-as-awesome as the preceding but they're all good in their ways (and the original is a straight-up masterpiece).

Wolf Creek is the sort of thing that carries you a career's length. It's the giant slab of wood that carries Kate Winslet to freedom, and The Darkness is Leonardo Dicaprio - let go, Rose, let goooooooooo.

The Darkness is just startingly, alarmingly inept - at least coming from a director that's proven himself so capable in the past - it's so inept that it made me worry for Greg's health after watching it. It made me think about the stories that have dogged Tobe Hooper on Poltergeist about his drug use and how Steven Spielberg maybe might have shot that movie because Tobe was in too much of a drug funk to aim the camera - it made me hope that Greg McLean had become a drug addict and some half-assed A.D. had actually made this movie instead of him. Enjoy the drugs, Greg! We all need a bender now and then. But come back to us!

Anyway Poltergeist is a reference point because The Darkness rips that movie off at every turn - creepy suburban kids and a haunted house and eventually a spiritualist come to rid the homestead of its spectral presence. I really thought maybe a spin would be spun, a reason or purpose would reveal itself at some point, so I kept watching against my better instincts - the instincts that were telling me, "Turn off the TV! Run from this room! Forget this movie exists! Stick a wire brush in your ear-hole and scrub it from your brain if need be! This will only hurt you!" 

Alas, I didn't listen. I kept plugging onward, a dutiful foot-soldier for my Wolf Creek friend. I did neither of us any favors. Today, you Greg McLean and me, movie blogger, and everyone reading this alongside us, today we will make a pact - The Darkness didn't happen. I know, I know - I have seen A Nightmare on Elm Street, I know what happens when a community tries to bury the horrible past instead of allowing themselves to learn and grow from it. But I'm willing to take that chance. I am willing to offer up to Hell the souls of the next generation if I can just go another day without The Darkness set upon me. I am sorry to those who might suffer in the future. I am not strong. I am not strong.