Guten Morgen, Gratuitous Alexander Fehling

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I contemplated connecting the dots on what got me onto an Alexander Fehling kick yesterday but it's not really very interesting - let's just say it started with his fellow countryman Ronald Zehrfeld, who stars in a movie that's playing the Film Comment Selects program here in NYC this weekend, and leave it at that. (And yes, we will be doing one of these posts for Zehrfeld at some point too.) Anyway eventually I was staring at Alexander, and here we are.

If he seems familiar to you and you're not German then it's probably from Inglourious Basterds - he was the Nazi in the basement scene that was drunkenly celebrating the birth of his child. Although it wasn't that that I was recognizing him from at first - it was this post at The Film Experience from last fall's Toronto Film Festival, where Nathaniel named Fehling's performance in the WWII thriller Labyrinth of Lies one of the fest's best.

I remember stowing his name and face (and yes, bosom) away for future reference, and, to bear repeating myself, here we are. Does he look like a blonde Jeremy Northam to anybody else? Anyway I have a ton of pictures of him to share, so hit the jump, and they will be shared.

Once More, With Fehling

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When I listed all the shows coming back on the air yesterday I forgot a biggie - Homeland is back this weekend! If you'd told me twelve months ago I'd care that Homeland was returning I might've smacked you senseless (what can I say, I'm testy) but the show really made up for its weak couple of seasons last year with its stellar run set in Germany. Sadly my two favorite parts of that season --  1) The German Ginger Hotness of Alexander Fehling, and 2) Miranda Otto's discount purse shopping...

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Happy birthday to Miranda Otto, whose online stress shopping this season is easily my fave #Homeland plot ever pic.twitter.com/kSw6we7ucn

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) December 17, 2015

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... (oh my god that gif make me so happy, I am the greatest)won't be returning this year, so let's pour one out for those two. Or in the case of Alexander pour several stiff drinks and hope he gets loose and happy, perhaps not in that order. Hit the jump for a couple more pics of him in a recent photo-shoot for L'Officiel Hommes by photographer Stefan Armbruster...

Do Dump or Marry: Meine Deutschen Lieblings

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I can't believe I'm just now seeing this -- GQ Germany did a photo-shoot and a trio of interviews with actors Alexander Fehling (he just played Carrie's boyfriend on the last season of Homeland) and Tom Wlaschiha (he's the Faceless Dude testing Arya on Game of Thrones) and Max Riemelt (he's the one who can't keep it in his pants on Sense8), you guys! It's more than I can handle, almost. I haven't even translated the interviews to read them yet but looking at the pictures I knew I had to ask you guys to Do Dump or Marry them. If you need more, you know, information, click the links on their names, and then have at it in the comments!

Let's Play in the Shadows with Logan

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Did any of you watch The Bridge, that Texas-set crime-drama starring Demián Bichir and Diane Kruger? I never did but I'm curious if it was any good now that its creator Måns Mårlind is working on a new show and he's lined up yet another killer cast. It's called Shadowplay and it's set in Berlin in 1946 and will be about an American cop, played by Taylor Kitsch, coming to town to set up some post-WWII law and order -- it already sounds like a Western and a Noir all at once right? (Thx Mac) Logan Marshall-Green, seen up top, will be playing a Nazi-hunter; joining those two will be Michael C. Hall...

... as well as German actors Sebastian Koch (who will forever and always be the Sexy Nazi in Black Book to me) and no less than Nina fucking Hoss, world-class actress of Christian Petzold flicks Barbara and Phoenix fame. Funny enough both of them have been seen on Homeland recently -- if you need good representatives of Germany look no further! (Hey maybe Alexander Fehling can show up too? Pretty please???) Anyway we'll keep our eyes on this one but for now let's just keep our eyes on Logan Marshall-Green, with five more pictures after the jump...

The Beach Boys

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Put on your big man boots a la Matthias and sidle up close -- you hear me, Matthias? I said CLOSE -- the Cannes line-up has been announced and it's a ten inch dick of gay goodness. I don't entirely know what that sentence meant but just roll with me, it's early and I'm trying to distract myself with nonsense from all the political bullshit happening in my country this morning. So Cannes. Terrence Malick's film Radegund starring our boy Matthias has apparently been renamed to A Hidden Life and it's playing Cannes. See our previous posts about it here. It's about Austrian objectors during WWII and it also stars the incredible international cast of Michael Nyqvist and Jürgen Prochnow and Bruno Ganz and August Diehl and Franz Rogowski and Alexander Fehling, among many. Phew!

But that's not all! (Imagine if it was all. "Oh sorry everybody, Cannes is just one movie this year. Malick's movie is five thousand hours long so we had to go with just that.") Pedro Almodovar's Pain & Glory, which we just talked about earlier this week (it's already out in Spain) it playing, as is Ira Sachs new film Frankie with Marisa Tomei and Isabelle Huppert (Cannes is legally bound to accept your film into competition if it stars Isabelle Huppert, don't you know), as is Xavier Dolan's Matthias and Maxime, his gay romance partially inspired by Call Me By Your Name.

And then there's Parasite, Bong Joon-ho's latest, which we just showed you the poster for last week as well. Add on the Dardennes and Desplechins and the like and you've got a very Cannes-y Cannes line-up indeed. You can check out the entire thing right at this link.

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Good Morning, World

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Just shows to go ya how bad I am at keeping up with most everything until you slap a half-naked somebody in front of me -- apparently our boy Alexander Fehling (who's celebrating his 38th birthday today) has a German-language series that's on Amazon Prime called Beat about a techno club promoter party man who lives an excessive  life of excess; have any of you watched it? I will be watching it. Besides that this year Alexander is also in Terrence Malick's new film Radegund opposite Matthias Schoenaerts and August Diehl so you better bet that I am looking forward to those red-carpets. Stand close and hug a lot, fellas!

Become Unhidden, Mr. Malick

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Even if Terence Malick's new film A Hidden Life hadn't gotten raves when it premiered at Cannes earlier this year I still would've been excited about it -- I was excited about it before those raves, although somewhat hesitantly -- because of the cast he'd gathered up. When Matthias Schoenaerts was cast we were immediately on board -- although that gif above is literally Matthias' only moment in the just dropped trailer (we'd recognize that nose anywhere), which makes us wonder how substantial his role might be -- but besides that there's August Diehl and Alexander Fehling and Franz Rogowski and Bruno Ganz and Jürgen Prochnow and Michael Nyqvist, all names that perk us right up.

But great casts are things Malick's gotten good at wasting -- hell I haven't even bothered watching any of his films in full since The Tree of Life, a film I wouldn't call myself a fan of by any stretch of the imagination. He can get any actor he wants still -- what makes A Hidden Life different? Well watching the trailer now I count two things. One, he's shooting the Austrian mountainsides, aka my favorite landscapes there are in all of the world, and if there's one thing Malick's maintained even through his thinner moments it's astonishing travelogue prettiness.

The other thing is it feels like he's got a plot for a change. There is real actual tension in the just-released trailer -- it's not (just) spinning in wheat fields and stern mothers banging soup spoons from inside a fish-eye lens; this movie looks like it has something to say besides yadda yadda spiritual nonsense I don't traffic in. Oh I'm sure that element's involved since it's about a conscientious objector to violence coming up against the Nazi regime, but that's a thing I can wrangle with on practical terms. It doesn't insist I the viewer be or become a spiritual person, like his other movies have felt so insistent on without giving me anything else to get ahold of. Anyway here's the trailer, decide for your own damn selves:
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A Hidden Life is out on December 13th. Do we 

think Malick might catch the Oscars' fickle eye?
ETA oh and here's the very pretty poster:

Good Morning, Ronald

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Today is the 39th birthday of the German actor Ronald Zehrfeld and I am actually quite disappointed about that -- see, I've been meaning to do a great big gratuitous post on Ronald for about a year now, at least ever since I first saw him in the terrific movie Barbara last spring. I mentioned him when I did do a great big gratuitous post (for the first time) on his countryman Alexander Fehling. And I mentioned Ronald again last week when I wished also-German Max Riemelt a gratuitous happy birthday. 

But Ronald keeps being delayed! And today I have an appointment this morning that's keeping me from doing an appropriately large post on him. So these gifs from the 2008 German TV movie Der russische Geliebte will have to suffice until I can organize myself. Sorry, Ronald! Until I do right by him y'all need to watch both Barbara and his more recent film Phoenix though - they are both wonderful, wonderful films. And until we meet again hit the jump for a couple more gifs of the birthday boy...