Showing posts sorted by relevance for query lighthouse eggers. Sort by date Show all posts
Showing posts sorted by relevance for query lighthouse eggers. Sort by date Show all posts

Friday, October 18, 2019

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Fitzcarraldo: What's he saying?
Don Aquilino: We must be quiet. He says whoever talks
will be swallowed up the evil spirits of the whirlpool. Shh.

Somehow it being Klaus Kinski's birthday on the same day that The Lighthouse is hitting theaters (read my review here) seems totally and tonally appropriate -- men and madness and all that muck. Werner Herzog totally could have made The Lighthouse with Kinski in Willem Dafoe's role 40 years ago, while I could see Robert Eggers making something like Fitzcarraldo now. In that vein I don't suppose it's a coincidence that Eggers also wanted to re-do Nosferatu! Which reminds me...

... that Lighthouse star Dafoe already played that role in Shadow of the Vampire; do you think Eggers would have -- I hate that I keep talking about his Nosferatu in the past tense but he really did seem to be speaking of it in the past tense when I saw him talk the other day -- cast Dafoe as his own Carpathian Count Orlok? 

I digress -- Eggers' well-documented obsessions with getting realistic realistic period details, right down to Robert Pattinson really jerking off again, and Herzog's own grueling obsessions that drove his actors and crew to near madness making Fitzcarraldo  and other films -- watch Les Blank's astonishing doc Burden of Dreams as soon as you possibly can -- do seem a neat fit. I'm glad this random confluence of dates made me think of them together.
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Friday, March 03, 2023

Sweet Sexy Nosferatu!


Big huge massive abs-shredding news today, as word comes from Focus Features that Robert Eggers has finally begin filming his remake of Nosferatu! And not only that -- the dude cast on this thing is stacked as high as The Northman's pectorals, with the previously announced Bill Skarsgård being joined by both Nicholas Hoult and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. What what what???


A project that Eggers has been talking about doing ever since he popped on the scene with The Witch in 2015 (and we should definitely talk about how it hasn't even been a decade and dude has gifted us with three straight genre masterpieces), this one kept getting delayed and delayed because he really wanted his Witch star Anya Taylor-Joy for his leading-lady -- he finally had to give up because Anya is just too damned in demand, and in September it was announced that (sigh) Lily-Rose Depp was taking the part. I am admittedly not over-the-moon about this -- Depp did come close to impressing me opposite George MacKay in Wolf and as I said in September she certainly has the look for the part. Not to mention she's gotten sucked on by her fair share of pasty cadavers before... 

But she's no Anya, ya know? Hopefully Eggers will bring out heretofore unrealized potential; she'll certainly be surrounded by greatness, since besides the three hot dudes I mentioned up top the cast will also reunite Eggers with his Lighthouse keeper Willem Dafoe (who of course gave Nosferatu life one time already with the masterpiece that is Shadow of the Vampire). New Nosferatu is now filming in Prague! In related news -- get me to Prague!


Friday, March 06, 2020

Pantys '19: Fave Films, Part Two

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Well, we've done it! Our 2019 Pantys are coming to a close today with this, our favorite 10 movies of last year. I'll do a round-up post later today to help you find links to everything that's come before, but before we get to this specific list let me first summarize what I posted on Monday, my numbers 25-11 favorite films...

25. Parasite
24. The Mustang
23. Transit
22. Us
21. The Irishman
20. Piercing
19. To Dust

18. Atlantics
17. This Is Not Berlin
16. The Nightingale
15. Invisible Life
14. Peterloo
13. Waves
12. High Life
11. Pain and Glory

And now, what we've all -- and by "we all" I mean "me" because thank god I am finally done with this and can move on to the year that is 2020 properly -- been waiting for, it's time for the other 10. One more quick note first, though -- when I gave you My Favorite Horror Films of 2019 earlier this week the Top 4 of that list was missing, because I didn't want to spoil this list. So you'll see a note alongside the four Horror Films on this list where they fall on that other list, as well. That said, here we go...

My 10 Favorite Movies of 2019

(dir. Greta Gerwig)

Indelible moment: Beth by the sea

(dir. Yann Gonzalez)
(this is my #4 horror film of 2019)
-- read my review here --

Indelible moment: Cruising Part II

(dir. Lucio Castro)
-- read my review here --

Indelible moment: We met before
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(dir. Christophe Honoré)
-- read my review here --

Indelible moment: Three in the bed

(dir. Peter Strickland)
(this is my #3 horror film of 2019)
-- read my review here --

Indelible moment: Sale at Dentley and Soper's

(dir. Joe Talbot)
-- read my review here --

Indelible moment: First and last performance

(dir. Céline Sciamma)
-- read my review here --

Indelible moment: Singing by the sea

(dir. Marielle Heller)
-- read my review here --

Indelible moment: Bedside Photograph

(dir. Ari Aster)
(this is my #2 horror film of 2019)
-- read my review here --

Indelible moment: A pair of jumpers

(dir. Robert Eggers)
(this is my #1 horror film of 2019)
-- read my review here --

Indelible moment: Fonda Me Lobster

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No doubt there's no surprise on that last one, ye barnacles and deck-swabbers alike, given how I've been calling The Lighthouse my favorite film of the year since I first saw the movie in October -- the marrow-deep love was immediate and complete. But that's given me a lot of time to wonder why this movie about two wacky dudes trapped on one wacky island, out of all the movies of 2019 that speak to our political and cultural moment, was The One for me, above all of the others. 

Well as I argued in my review I personally choose to read and enjoy the film as a a gay male love story -- a fucked-up love story obviously, but love, my loves, is fucked up. In its wackadoodle symbolic way The Lighthouse is, for me, just as specific about what it means for two men, with all that turbulent masculine baggage attached, to make a home together, as is Paul Thomas Anderson's Phantom Thread about the same subject just for the straights. I mean I love Phantom Thread and saw all of that in Phantom Thread too, but with The Lighthouse it gets to be all dudes playing out the push pull power dynamics of a long-term commitment. I like that.

But then, like my favorite movie of the entire last decade -- I never officially made that list but do you really think that'd be anything except Call Me By Your Name? -- The Lighthouse is also just a movie that swallows me whole and carries me away from this world, and I like want and need that too. The look, the sound, the dialogue, the sweat and the fervent masturbation -- when I watch these movies there is nothing in the world but these movies. Cinema isn't just an escape, but what a goddamned escape it can be.


Wednesday, October 16, 2019

And Then There Were Vikings

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At last night's Q&A with The Lighthouse and The Witch director Robert Eggers -- which I just posted some videos from a bit earlier, check 'em out here -- he kept referring noncommittally to a new project he was working on, but he refused to give us any details. I just assumed he wasn't close to realizing it and didn't want to jinx himself -- he made a sly reference to his belabored and perhaps undone remake-to-be of Nosferatu, which made him seem paranoid about such things. But if I'd known his brand new project was going to be announced to the trades today instead of feeling generous I'd have been annoyed about it!

THR is reporting he is next going to make a Viking Saga called The Northman that will reunite Big Little Lies co-stars Alexander Skarsgard and Nicole Kidman, while adding Eggers' Witch leading lady Anya Taylor-Joy, Alex's brother Bill, plus Lighthouse force-of-nature Willem Dafoe on top of that beautiful two-some. THR says specifically:

"Written by Eggers and Icelandic poet and novelist Sjón, Northman is described as a grounded story set in Iceland at the turn of the 10th century that centers on a Nordic prince who seeks revenge for the death of his father."

Last night Eggers talked about loving the experience of working with a co-writer and he made it clear he won't be making any non-period films anytime soon -- he loves doing historical research too much -- so all of these pieces fit. I'm kind of sad he won't be turning his sharp eyes towards the Carpathian Mountains just yet (if ever) -- I really do think he could make something stunning out of Murnau's play-set -- but there's plenty of fertile Viking shit to play around in I suppose. That plus the Skarsgård Brothers being together on-screen is plenty enough to capture my fancy.


Beans Will Be Spilled

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The fine folks at A24 have just shared that thar new poster for Robert Egger's film The Lighthouse this afternoon -- I keep checking their store for Lighthouse related merch, hopefully they'll have something good. Anyway you can expect plenty more from me on The Lighthouse soon, as it opens on Thursday night and I revealed on Instagram last night when I saw Eggers do a talk about the movie at Film of Lincoln Center...
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... that the movie is indeed my favorite movie of 2019 so far. I really sort of want to see the movie a second time (and a third, a fourth, a twentieth) before writing my review, so bowled over was I by it the first time that I feel the need to really elbow my way down into its innards to capture what I love about it so, but things probably won't happen in that order -- I will probably have a review posted before the end of the week. Not that we'll stop writing about our love for this movie any time soon! Expect a long, long line of such raves...
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Wednesday, August 25, 2021

Quote of the Day


"All my friends are always like, ‘What are you doing?!? Take ... a ... break.' But the roles are too good. I wouldn’t be able to deal with it if I didn’t say yes. I wouldn’t cope. I’d rather just go for it and do my best.”

When I was off-line yesterday a big chat with actress Anya Taylor-Joy popped up in the Los Angeles Times that I recommend checking out, and not only because the photos of her alongside are spectacular, clearly riffing off her upcoming role in Edgar Wright's new giallo Last Night in Soho (if you missed the trailer it's here). Anya speaks the above quote after the interviewer rattles off a list of her forthcoming projects, and if you were getting the chances she's getting you'd keep going to. She's got Soho, she's got Robert Eggers' Viking epic The Northman, she's got David O. Russell's new film and then she's got the Mad Max Fury Road prequel Furiosa which will have her playing a younger version of Charlize Theron's character! 

Oh and the big news out of this interview, and the entire reason I am doing this post -- I mean I do love Anya, but this is the shit worth sharing -- is that she's also listing Robert Eggers' long long delayed and thought-dead-by-me remake of Nosferatu as still in the works! Eggers has been talking about this since 2017, maybe even earlier -- I posted about it here at that time -- but in 2019 I saw him speak at an event for The Lighthouse and he made it sound as if Nosferatu was dead. So to speak. It sounds like there might be like in ye olde buzzard after all, and this makes me happy. I have come to be wholly convinced that Eggers could do pull off a new Nosferatu. That said everything that Anya has lined up for after Furiosa I am sticking a pin in, because we all know how that Fury Road shoot went! I mean the finished product was worth the struggle and insanity, but let's see how George Miller fares this time around -- that shoot could end up being ten years long for all we know.



Wednesday, May 04, 2022

Pics of the Day


There isn't much of fresh interest in Backstage Magazine's interview with The Northman duo director Robert Eggers and actor Alexander Skarsgard that dropped today, at least not if you've kept abreast of what the duo have been saying for months now -- I've heard all of this already. (Eggers does hint that he wants his next project to be smaller and more intimate though.) But the photos of the two are real nice and will probably have you like me screaming "Kiss!" at your computer screens, so I figured twas my duty to share them at least.

Kiss! Anyway since we're here and I never did post this on the site I will take advantage and refer you to an interview Robert Eggers gave to Letterboxd like a week and a half ago where he did indeed give a quote worthy of sharing with regards to The Northman:

"At one point, The Lighthouse was intended to include a shot of the titular structure moving like an erect penis, followed by a match cut to an actual erect penis belonging to Robert Pattinson’s character. Financiers had been on board with the film’s 35mm black-and-white presentation, boxy Academy-ratio format, and delirious storytelling, but they balked at the full-frontal male nudity, which would have brought the film into NC-17 territory. Eggers said that was fair enough. Was there a similar give-and-take on The Northman?

“Before I answer that question, I want to say that this is another film where I wanted penises and didn’t get them,” he says with a sigh. In the final fight between Amleth and Fjölnir, stylized as a miasma of fire and blood, both characters are naked but cast in silhouette, as if their battle were already inscribed along a cave wall inside some nearby mountain.

“It’s probably good that we don’t see any penises there; it might distract from the story and the tension, because human beings are such sad creatures that we would be trying to catch a glimpse the whole time,” says the filmmaker. That said, he does think full-frontal nudity could have added to an earlier sequence. “In the berserkers’ raid of the Slavic village,” he notes, “I think if some of those berserkers had been entirely naked, that would have been a lot scarier.”"

Yes... "scarier"... ahem. Anyway I hope y'all have gone to your movie houses if you feel safe to do so and seen The Northman by now, but if not -- go do that! Here's my review of the film. It's not hitting blu-ray until December (pre-order it here) so you've got some wait to wait if not. But I won't make you wait to stare at more photos of Alex & Rob, I have those right here after the jump...

Friday, April 03, 2020

Our Suppliant Souls

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"How long have we been on this rock? Five weeks? 
Two Days? Where are we? Help me to recollect." 

I'm far from the first person to mention this but Robert Eggers' film The Lighthouse -- aka my personal favorite movie of 2019 -- sure turned out to be a timely tale, what with us all now locked up in our own individual psycho cabins losing our collective shits. Who'da thunk last Novemby, innocent times then. (Sorry I always slip into mangled old-timey seaman talk when I talk about this movie, I can't help myself.) 

Anyway timely is as timely do, and Amazon is helping us all out by giving our fears slippery sea-foam shape and form, putting The Lighthouse onto their Prime streaming platform in two weeks, on April 16th. (You can rent it now, but it'll be totes free for Prime members that day.) And I had an idear!
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I can only imagine, with some trepidation, what my mental state is going to be like after two more weeks of this... I might be screaming at Poseidon by then myself. But I know we've got to weather it, and longer even. So having a thing to look forward to might help? So let's pencil it in.

Join me on Twitter for a live  
The Lighthouse watch party & tweet-along!
🦞🦞 April 16th at 7pm 🦞🦞


Monday, February 19, 2018

Yo Ho Rob

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Two weeks ago Robert Pattinson was pap-snapped beef-caking himself up on the beach and we wondered what he might be needing them pectorals for, work-wise - we couldn't quite figure it out. But maybe now we know - he has joined the cast of The Lighthouse, Willem Dafoe's movie about, uh, a lighthouse, that The Witch director Robert Eggers is directing. We already told you about this movie right here but we've got a lot more info now - THR is calling it "fantasy horror" and it is apparently "set in the world of old sea-faring myths, taking place in Nova Scotia in the early 20th century."

That sounds much more in Eggers' wheelhouse than what I was originally picturing. Anyway now I'm imagining Rob all ripped with old-timey hand-drawn sailor tattoos and I am not mad, I am not mad at all. Since Eggers is all about nailing realism with his period film-making  details I recommend this book to him, a favorite of mine, for this project. It's not specific to what he's doing but it should give him some ideas worth thinking about, anyway.
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Tuesday, December 10, 2019

Yer Fonda My Lobster

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In ten days you'll be able to rent Robert Eggers' The Lighthouse on Amazon, if you didn't get the opportunity to watch it in a theater... a thought that makes me very sad. I got to see it four times in theaters, the last of which was on the biggest movie screen in the United States at the IMAX at Lincoln Square here in New York. That was fucking something! On that note I can't recall if I shared this here on the site previously...
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Anyway the film is also hitting blu-ray on January 7th, although for some reason Amazon hasn't posted that yet -- I'll surely do a post when they do. Surely, seeing as how The Lighthouse (spoiler alert) remains my favorite movie of 2019. (Here's my review if you missed it.) If you wonder why I'm feeling even more cynical than usual this Awards Season look no further than nobody much finding any room at all for this perfect wackadoodle film -- in 20 years we'll look back on this mostly unbroken streak of ignoring this movie with the deepest of shames.
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But bless A24 for trying -- there's a brand new featurette that they have just released (via). It's probably more about the movie hitting streaming next week than it is them thinking it will get much more awards traction this year, but let's stay positive. it did get a bunch of Indie Spirit nominations at least. They're always so much more interesting than Oscar.... and don't get me started on the Globes. Don't even get me started!

Friday, September 30, 2022

The New Creatures of the Night


Robert Eggers has been trying to make a new version of Nosferatu for basically his entire career -- we've been documenting the teases we've gotten on that front since The Witch came out 2015 and we immediately began caring about what Robert Eggers made. Then came The Lighthouse and The Northman and now we really, really, really care. Like, really. Nosferatu was supposed to happen several times but things kept falling apart at the last minute, and the main problem as of late has been the actress he wanted to star in it -- Anya Taylor-Joy, who worked with him on The Witch and The Northman, has just become too damned busy. 

And so, the inevitable -- it sounds like he's moving on with the project without his muse. Deadline is reporting that Bill Skarsgard is going to play the lead bloodsucker, which is wonderful casting (and I guess Robert liked working with brother Alex and wanted to keep it in the family, a notion we deeply understand) while actress Lily-Rose Depp is in talks to play the "haunted young woman" at the heart of the tale. You know, the Isabelle Adjani role. I'll admit that the nepotism of Depp got on my nerves at first but I don't think she's actually a bad actress -- I liked her in the first thing I saw her in, which was Louis Garrel's film A Faithful Man, and she was good in Wolf with George Mackay last year as well. I wanna be clear -- she's never blown me away like ATJ has, and I mourn the loss of ATJ deeply. But Lily-Rose does have a face that will look good for the goth purposes required by this role, so we'll see. I trust in Eggers.


Tuesday, July 23, 2019

The Lighthouse of Horror

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When TIFF announced its line-up earlier today I mentioned they're screening Robert Eggers' follow-up to The Witch called The Lighthouse, a film we've been following from the split second it was announced -- well somehow in all my following I missed this the first teaser poster for the movie last week, so there's that. (via, click to embiggen a bunch) The Lighthouse stars Robert Pattinson and Willem Dafoe as two keepers on an isolated Nova Scotian island in the 1890s who're confronted with, well, I don't know and I don't want to know until I manage to see the movie but it all sounds kind of Lovecraftian. People I trust to get such things went nuts for the movie at Cannes in the spring, so my immediate enthusiasm seems on the right track. I dearly hope this plays NYFF -- it still doesn't have a proper release date.
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Monday, March 22, 2021

Quote of the Day


The human-special-effect known as Alexander Skarsgard has Godzilla vs Kong out here in the US next week -- and you'll definitely be hearing more from me on that subject soon -- but more importantly out later this year (presumably) is his leading turn in The Lighthouse director Robert Eggers' Viking epic called The Northman, about which we've been scouring the internet every second of every day for new tidbits of information don't you worry. That's how I came across a new interview with actor Ralph Ineson at NME -- he played the father in Eggers' film The VVitch, and he's got a role in The Northman too, and he had this thrilling update on that:

"It’s an enormous movie. I saw a four-minute montage of some of the stuff they’d already shot and I was really blown away. The marriage of Rob Eggers’ imagination and Viking folklore… Jesus, man. Alexander Skarsgård looks like an absolute beast. [There’s] a scene where he beats this guy in a battle; bends down and rips his throat out with his teeth, screams to the gods and he’s got his shirt off – and you think: ‘My god that’s not a bodybuilder doing a scene, that’s like a proper serious actor!’ He’s made himself look like some kind of monster for the part, the dedication’s incredible. I think it will be a bit of a masterpiece, to be honest. If I was to put bets on any film being an absolute banger, it would be that one.”


Thursday, October 31, 2019

The Keeper of My Flame

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If I had all the funds in the world (and perhaps more importantly somewhere to actually go) that's what you'd see me dressed as for Halloween tonight -- Robert Pattinson in The Lighthouse chic! And with Willem Dafoe's character it's the perfect couple's costume this year to boot. (If you're a throuple somebody could be the seagull.) You wouldn't want to run into director Robert Eggers though -- he'd start tearing pieces of your costume off if they were in the slightest historically inaccurate. Of course...

... Robert Eggers ripping your clothes off isn't necessarily 
a bad thing. It sure worked out for Rob. 
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Anyway this is my way of wishing everybody a Happy Halloween tonight -- I'd love to hear what y'all are dressing up as! I already did the Vincent Price thing this past weekend (see below) so we're taking it easy tonight, staying in and watching something scary TBD. Have a great holiday, land lubbers!

Friday, February 09, 2018

I Am Link

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--- Release The Hounds - I wasn't one hundred percent sold on the Aussie serial-killing-couple flick Hounds of Love last year when I saw it at Tribeca (here's my review) like I know some people were - I wasn't convinced it wasn't fetishizing its ugliness past its own clarity of purpose - but it certainly introduced a filmmaker with talent in director Ben Young. Anyway I hadn't heard he was making a sci-fi movie with Universal his next project (a big step up!) until this week when word came that the movie, titled Extinction, had apparently been yanked off their schedule months ago... but Netflix has now come to the rescue. The really exciting thing about this is the movie stars Michael Pena and Lizzy Caplan. No word on a release date but we'll keep our eyes peeled!

--- Not So Amazing - Things aren't looking great for the Amazing Stories reboot right now - Bryan Fuller left the series earlier this week after several solid years of working on it, and today comes word that his producing partner on the project has also left. Ye olde chestnut "creative differences" is invoked. Sad this didn't come together with Bryan, I'd heard some of his ideas and they were fantastic. Guess we've got to focus all our happy hopes upon his Anne Rice Vampire series now, which is good with us! bring on the sexy gay vamps!

--- Lady Metcalf - Sometimes you read an interview and you can just feel the decency sliding off the page and I got that feeling read this chat with Laurie Metcalf in The Guardian the other day - she just seems like such a nice lady. It's mostly about Lady Bird of course but she talks about Roseanne as well as her early career, and I especially loved this part (mostly because of the Joan Allen shout-out:

"The adolescent Metcalf grew up in Carbondale, Illinois, with a certain amount of talent, but no clear vision of what to do with it. “I had accidentally gotten a laugh on a line in a play I was in during high school. I got hooked but I had no idea I would ever be able to support myself by acting. I knew no one in the business. I was from the midwest. No one within a radius of a thousand miles was doing anything like that.” While attending Illinois State University in 1976, Metcalf fell in with a group of fellow drama students including John Malkovich, Gary Sinise, Joan Allen and Terry Kinney. “They used their horrible magic on me and turned me into one of them.”"

--- Fishmonger MenfolkThe Witch director Robert Eggers has written and is directing The Lighthouse, about a lighthouse keeper in Maine (it will be filmed in Nova Scotia though?), and it will star Willen Dafoe. That all sounds swell! It's shockingly easy to picture Willem Dafoe dressed like the Gorton Fisherman, isn't it? Anyway like I said that sounds swell, but what's not so swell is this means that Eggers' Nosferatu is on hold. I was really looking forward to seeing him apply his old-timey fascinations onto that turn-of-the-last-century vampire tale. I hope he does it next, then.

--- Eight The Great - I'm ashamed that I haven't written up my own thoughts on the spectacular experience of seeing Rainer Werner Fassbinder's eight hour long 1972 television miniseries titled Eight Hours Don't Make a Day at MoMA a couple of weeks ago - it was so overwhelming I want to do it properly but time's not been on my side. But there's a really wonderful take on the series over at Film School Rejects that I recommend reading! And if you're in NYC in march the whole thing is going to screen at Film Forum from the 14th to the 27th. And one should assume a blu-ray release later, I think.

--- And Speaking of titanic sized directors of the New German Cinema even though it's somewhat mean-spirited towards one of my faves I found this piece dissecting Werner Herzog's commercialization of his "outsider" brand pretty fascinating - I hadn't realized that his 2016 internet documentary Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World had been funded by an internet security company as a sort of "soft" brand marketing strategy. I have always found the entire idea of "selling out" fairly lame personally - Werner gotta eat! - but this does represent a new age of "content" conceptions worth reckoning with.

--- And Finally the best thing about the video Tom Hardy made of himself wearing his cup - as in the little dick shield that male athletes wear to protect their precious, precious testicles - over his face and doing Bane dialogue through it to his dog, is his dog's insistence on licking said cup. SMART DOG. (thx Mac)
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