Have an Excellent Weekend

Y'all go forth and prosper and shit.

He Picked Me, Mommy

I've got a couple of big pieces that've gone up today that I must now share -- and I'm going to do it in separate posts because hey, more posts that way! First up! For The Film Experience I wrote about Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan here on its 10th anniversary... okay its 10th anniversary is actually on Thursday, but I wrote about it today. If you feel the need to wait until Thursday to read it when you've got your ceremonial swan costumes on for your already-scheduled Zoom celebrations I totally understand. Anyway I am specifically writing about Natalie Portman's terrific work in the movie, and I dropped the bait that she deserved her Oscar on purpose because I knew y'all would take it, haha. I mean I think she did deserve to win, I didn't make that part up. I just so rarely wander into Oscar conversations of my own free will and I know that's a take some people have issues with. Me I say viva Portman! She got her statue and then went and became an even riskier actress after it, making us all blessed.

REC Yourself

Wanna know a horror film that still works as well as it did thirteen years ago? [REC], baby! I re-watched the original 2007 found-footage film over the weekend for today's episode of "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" over at The Film Experience and holy hell y'all is that movie some scary-ass gangbusters still. I hadn't seen it in quite awhile and when I turned out the lights afterwards twas a hard, hard time falling asleep with all of them visions of The Medeiros Girl dancing in my head. O, Frights!

You Can See My Hand Through It

The 2020 version of Rebecca, directed by ben Wheatley and starring Lily James & Armie Hammer -- is hitting Netflix tomorrow! Here's the trailer if you missed it -- I haven't been able to see the new film myself yet so I have no toughts to offer just yet, except what I've been saying all along: let's try to go into this thing with an open mind. I'm no longer using any energy crusading against "remakes" -- Luca Guadagnino's Suspiria, masterpiece that it is, totally broke me of that habit. So I dearly hope that Wheatley's indeed able to mine new shit from old shit! We'll all win! Anyway for today I'm looking back at the best thing about Hitch's 1940 classic, Judith Anderson's turn as the infamously lesbionic housekeeper Mrs. Danvers, for my "Great Moments in Actressing" series at The Film Experience -- click on over to read that! It remains the gold standard by which all other creepy queer servants will forever be judged. I do wish Kristin Scott Thomas the best though!

On a sidenote I was looking thru old posts & in 2013 there was talk of remaking REBECCA (gasp, imagine that) and these were the people I play-cast in the main roles - do note I totally got one, the important one, right https://t.co/fYMaWDJyn9 Also this cast would have RULED pic.twitter.com/N0HZN5uX8h

— Ki ki ki Ma ma ma (@JAMNPP) October 20, 2020

Not The Hunger But The Thirst

A couple of weeks ago when I wrote about Mia Wasikowska's performance in Stoker for my "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series at The Film Experience I mentioned that I was feeling myself on a Park Chan-wook kick -- well this week the kick keeps kickin' as I write up my thoughts on Kim Ok-bin's outstanding work in Park's 2009 vampire film Thirst over there -- click on over, read it! And then you should probably maybe plan on re-watching PCW's film The Handmaiden soon too because that's an itch I feel myself real on top of scratching...

Smile For Your Sins

Thought I'd start with a happy image, one totally at odds with the film itself, before diving back into David Fincher's Se7en for the second time of the day, here on its 25th anniversary. Enjoy that smile while you got it, kiddos. And that goes to everybody, all the time. Now onto the serious business -- I wrote a "Horror Actressing" thing about Se7en, specifically Gwyneth Paltrow's performance in Se7en, today at The Film Experience! Click on over to read it. I know it's "cool" to hate on Gwyneth (and lord knows she's earned her vitriol now and then) but I've always been of the mind she's a terrific actress, and she remains terrific in Se7en in a smaller-than-I'd-remembered part. And I know you're lying if you say you wouldn't want to go back to the mid-90s right now. Even as a gay person who had far fewer rights back then, with AIDS still raging, I would 100% go back there then. Look how simple things were, at least if you were a beautiful blond(e) rich movie star...

Queen Mia, Queen of Queens

Around this house we stan Mia Wasikowska and we stan her hard, and so when over this weekend I watched Netflix's new thriller The Devil All the Time -- it's out on Friday, I'll review it before then I promise -- and saw how itty bitty Mia's part ended up being, well, I decided that wasn't good enough. I had to get some more Mia in my timeline! So I re-watched Park Chan-wook's 2013 flick Stoker right after and gifted myself with Mia, more more Mia! And then I wrote it up for this week's "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" post over at The Film Experience, click on over to read it!

I should want y'all that I find myself on the precipice of a "re-watching all of Park Chan-wook's movies binge" so there might be a lot of Park talk around these parts over the next couple of months. I have been hankering real hard for The Handmaiden and Thirst and I'm a Cyborg But That's Okay -- everything except the "Vengeance Trilogy" as of right now, but once I re-watch all of these I presumably won't be able to help myself and I'll end up re-watching the "Vengeance Trilogy" for the umpteenth time. I did just get the whole thing on blu-ray recently...

Make Way For Miss Malone

Just now linking up to yesterday's "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" post here a day late since it went up last night after I'd already skedaddled my ass home for the evening -- but that is right, that thought that you had seeing that picture of Jena Malone above, this week's subject is indeed Miss Jena Malone! We love her -- from the glory of Donnie Darko on through her recent collabs with Nicolas Winding Refn...

... she's proven herself a former child actor with genuine adult-sized talent. And the first time I really took notice of that was in Carter Smith's 2008 horror flick The Ruins, which is this week's subject over at The Film Experience, click on over for that. In related news Malone is the villainous Plantation Belle in next week's horror flick Antebellum, which... I will review next week. But I shared the poster and trailer over here, way back in March when the film was meant to come out, pre-COVID.

Love(craft) First

This week's "Horror Actressing" post over at The Film Experience is going all in for the queen of Stuart Gordon's Lovecraft machine, Barbara Crampton in 1985's Re-Animator, a film which I have found myself watching and re-watching here in 2020 more than any other movie -- it's on Shudder (although the recent Arrow bluray is also killer!), it's only 85 minutes long, and it is crazy enough to make a person forget how crazy the real world is for a minute. Eighty-five of them actually. 2020's turning into a banner year as far as Lovecraft goes, what with the HBO series, the Kristen Stewart movie, and the Old Ones rising from the earth and enslaving the entire human population oh wait that happens in November. Let's put a pin in that for the moment. Man I love Barbara Crampton, don't you?

Witch Which Is Witch

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My very first instinct, if asked to write about the performances in Robert Eggers' The Witch, would be to write about Kate Dickie's performance playing Thomasin's malignant tumor of a mum. But that's just because I worship Kate Dickie, forever and always. Anyway instead I challenged myself today (with actually no challenge at all, turns out) to write about Anya Taylor-Joy's work as Thomasin herself, because her X-movie The New Mutants is out in "theaters" this Friday after years and years of delays, and hey, she's great in The Witch. We all know she's great in The Witch. She was really very easy to write about. But I will write about my Kate Dickie some day, I swear it...

BJÖRK IS IN ROBERT EGGERS' THE NORTHMAN (via https://t.co/OpFUcaQZt8) pic.twitter.com/ewxPEXU0cd

— Erik Anderson (@awards_watch) August 19, 2020

... and speaking of did y'all see the news that slipped out about mother-fucking Björk being in Egger's upcoming Viking movie The Northman? Opposite Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgard, she's playing some sort of witch. I'm dead of excitement from that, but -- once again rendering poor Kate Dickie to a footnote -- I was also super excited to see Kate's name show up on the same leaked cast list. Witch Reunion! Honestly, and I honestly say this all the time, Kate Dickie should be in every movie. EVERY ONE. I am in no way shape or form kidding. Imagine her as a slapsticky detective in a Paddington movie! Or voicing one of the Trolls in a Trolls cartoon! As Willy Wonka! Leopold and Loeb! She could do them ALL. We are a Kate Dickie Nation up in this business.

The Other White Massey

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I am most familiar with actress Anna Massey -- who was born on this day in 1937 -- thanks to two thrillers she made for two of my favorite directors. There's Alfred Hitchcock's Frenzy in 1972 and there's Michael Powell's Peeping Tom twelve years the previous, which is the one we're here to actually talk about. Actually we're not here, we're over at The Film Experience, where her performance is the topic of this week's "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series -- click on over for it. But since we technically here right this second before clicking over, and...

... I did just bring up Frenzy, let me add that I consider Hitch's treatment of Massey's character (named "Babs" because of course she is) in Frenzy to be the most misogynistic thing he ever put onscreen. Which, considering some shit Hitch got up to, is saying a lot. He paints Babs as just awful and unlikable every second she's on-screen, and after she's murdered her body becomes a comic prop for some of the pitch-blackest mad-cappery of Hitch's career -- I don't like watching it, to be frank. Thankfully Massey fares better in Powell's Peeping Tom, a stone-cold masterpiece with a truly fascinating character to play, and one who should be considered, as I argue in my piece at TFE, Film's First Final Girl.

Are You Not the Greta Gerwig Fan

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Listen, this is just a fact -- I was a fan of Greta Gerwig before you were. I don't care if you are Joe Swanberg, the director of Greta's first movie reading this; hell I don't care if you are Greta's mother reading this! I am her first fan, my love is longer and lovelier than yours, and she's mine! Mine dammit! That baby of hers ain't got nothin' on me! And in the spirit of that particular insanity I invite you to go read my ode to her work in Ti West's 2009 horror film The House of the Devil today, here on the occasion of her 37th birthday. Is so good! And then we will all join hands and summon whatever unholy power we must in order to get Greta back in front of the camera again. It's been too, too long.

Everything would be okay if Greta Gerwig would just ACT AGAIN pic.twitter.com/ecz1elFDjE

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) July 30, 2020

Good Morning, Gratuitous Arash Mirandi

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My intention was to do this post last week in correlation with my Sheila Vand in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night episode of my "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series, since Arash Mirandi here is that film's beautiful dripping-with-Dean leading man and I never much mentioned him in that piece. I intended to, then didn't. I don't know. There's a lot going on in the world, man. Cut me some slack. We're here now! 

Mmmm Arash Marandi pic.twitter.com/Lzd382RoGH

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) July 21, 2020

Anyway I didn't realize that Mirandi is a German actor -- he was born in Iran but raised in Germany and seems to work there mainly. Besides A Girl Walks Home he's got one other super good horror movie under his belt -- he played the doctor in Under the Shadow, Babak Anvari's 1980s post-Revolution Tehran-set thriller about a woman and her daughter trapped in their apartment building with a bomb lodged in the roof. That movie rules -- I reviewed it here.

Looks like he also played gay in 2018 in a flick called Fireflies, about an Iranian in exile in Veracruz, Mexico. Anybody seen it? Anyway re-watching A Girl Walks Home Alone last week reminded me what a treat he is, visually...

... Ana Lily Amirpour knows how to shoot male beauty (see also Jason Momoa in The Bad Batch) and then some. Fingers crossed that Mirandi shows up in more stuff that makes it here to the States but until then, his Instagram's worth a follow, and hey he's made it into a post here on MNPP! Hit the jump for the rest...

My Best Friend's Nightmare

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I'm going to have to assume that most of you have not yet seen Shudder's latest Indonesian horror flick Impetigore, since it's only been available there on that streaming service for a few days now. But I think you should seek it out, and I wrote up some of the reason why over at The Film Experience today for this week's edition of "Great Moments in Horror Actressing." So click on over and check that shit, yo. I'm definitely going to have to go watch Joko Anwar's previous film called Satan's Slaves next, which I'd also heard good stuff about. Impetigore surprised me! Real solid and spooky.

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Listen to the Children of the Night...

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Have I really made it entirely clear how much I love, just love, Sheila Vand? She's in a new horror movie out this weekend called The Rental (directed by Dave Franco of all people; more on that later this week) and it reminded me of this cold hard fact -- Sheila Vand rules. I mean I knew she ruled when I first saw her in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night -- which is the subject of this week's edition of "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" over at The Film Experience, click on over for that -- but I knew she both ruled and I totally adored her when she caught my eye next in my beloved We the Animals. Sheila Vand is totally enough all on her own to be excited about a thing now, is my point. One of our stone cold faves!

Scream Lambs Scream

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There's been a noticeable uptick in "Hannibal the Cannibal" chatter as of late thanks to Netflix putting both Jonathan Demme's 1991 film The Silence of the Lambs and Bryan Fuller's 2013 series Hannibal on their streaming service -- didja catch the cast and crew of the latter doing a Reunion Zoom last week? Anyway I felt like adding some chatter of my own sort to the din so this week's edition of "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" is tackling no less than Miss Starling herself -- click on over to The Film Experience for some thoughts I had while watching Jodie Foster do her inimitable thang ranglin' bad guys and rasslin' Big Patriarchy for the ten billionth time this week. I miss Jodie. Anybody else miss Jodie?

Aww she's still such a BABY pic.twitter.com/R7BiO7jQzb

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) July 13, 2020

Hypnotizing Fishermen Isn't Acumen!

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What, you thought I'd let Eva Green's 40th birthday slide by with nary a mention? Well... technically I did, since it was yesterday. But I was working on it! I went above and beyond y'all, and forced myself to suffer in the name of Eva.

Rewatching an aggressively awful movie in order to write about a wonderful performance contained therein — the sacrifices I make for you people!

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) July 7, 2020

Yup I was speaking there of Tim Burton's terrible 2012 Dark Shadows movie, which she's nevertheless one hundred percent fab in, and which I just wrote up today over at The Film Experience for this week's "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" post. Who could have guessed? I mean who would have wanted to think of this terrible movie again long enough to guess it? Somebody send me in the direction of a supercut of just her scenes, please...

If It Bleeds It Leads

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It's funny -- as I write up this post, the one you are reading right now, I have in another tab on my desktop a new piece at Vox from trans writer Emily VanDerWerff about reading Ari Aster's film Midsommar as a stealth trans-narrative. And that reading aside it does strike me that Midsommar and Andrzej Zulawski's 1981 masterpiece Possession, which I wrote up for this week's edition of my "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series, do have some weird overlaps! They're both about the central heterosexual relationship failing spectacularly, as the woman decides to choose chaos over the almond-paste cuck-boy she's partnered with when the movie starts...

You might read this as a failing of my person but I've seen Possession three, maybe four times now, and I never once got that Sam Neill's character is supposed to be playing a spy? It's a piece that makes sense in the narrative, which has its characters sneaking around along the Berlin Wall and play-acting out Film Noir plots that grow more and more ludicrous as the film's grasp on any sense of sanity slips. (By the time a row of cars are spontaneously exploding and Margit Carstensen's poor dead body is ejecting itself from a trunk you'd be forgiven for thinking of the absurd climax of American Psycho, where Patrick Bateman's fantasies have got over the top too.

My point is that I never got that Sam Neill's character is a spy because he's pudding -- person pudding, tapioca pathetic, impossible to love, and you one hundred percent get why Isabelle Adjani is so frantically scratching to get away into the arms, excuse me the tentacles, of another... uhh, man? Just like with Midsommar you one hundred percent get why Dani chooses to light Christian up in that bear suit. And both films were directed by heterosexual men (although truth be told the jury's still out on Ari Aster, if you ask me) detailing the recent dissolves of their relationships. Both films clearly, I think, take the woman's side in the break-ups, and showcase their leading men as poisonous. 

Anyway I wouldn't have immediately thought of Possession and Midsommar as a good bed-fellows but now that the double-feature has presented itself by random way of my brower-tabs I don't think I'll ever think of anything else. They work! Alright so go read my new piece on Isabelle Adjani and Zulawski's film over at The Film Experience... and in summation, Sam Neill has a rooster named Michael Fassbender.

No wonder that Pig is so damned fat . And #MichaelFassbender the cock. That is one overweight chicken . Still , at least they share. pic.twitter.com/9LYcHQmBB0

— Sam Neill (@TwoPaddocks) July 1, 2020

Not In Flames, But In Mist

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I've mentioned it on social media here and there but I've been re-reading Stephen King's The Stand for the past few weeks in quarantine  -- nothing like diving right into Plague Fiction during a plague! Coincidentally I actually finally finished the book last night, timed pretty much right to the end of said quarantine as I returned to my office, and now tonight I plan on  starting up and re-watching the 1990 miniseries... which I remember as being somewhat terrible? We will see. (I'm very much looking forward to the new version with Alexander Skarsgard and James Marsden later this year, though.) Anyway all of that nonsense went and got me in a Stephen King mood pretty hard, and so this week's edition of our "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series over at The Film Experience is devoted to one of the great King cinematic villains, Marcia Gay Harden's turn as Mrs. Carmody in The Mist from 2007. She's so great at being so awful, is't she? Boo hiss, chef's kiss!

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Yo Ho Psycho

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It's the 60th anniversary of one of the most monumental of horror films -- Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho premiered in NYC on this day in the year 1960, immediately exploding with word of mouth into the biggest hit of his entire career, not to mention a nasty lil' number that rewrote the rules for all of film-making while it was at it. It still shocks and surprises me today, even after having seen it countless times, and so today I wrote a little ode to it's (half) leading lady, Miss Janet Leigh, for my "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" series over at The Film Experience. Bow down to your queen, or else...