my new plaid pants

Thursday, October 17, 2024

Drew Starkey Two Times

Have you read my Queer review yet?

You can read it right here at Pajiba.

I know I just posted it but I am, let's say, fixated.

Yeah. Fixated.

Queer is Here (Well My Review Anyway)

The time has come! I toiled over this one for a bit but my NYFF review of Luca Guadagnino's latest, the William S. Burroughs' adaptation Queer, has dropped today -- click on over to Pajiba to read my thoughts. My extremely positive thoughts (surprising precisely nobody). This (like Nickel Boys) is another NYFF movie I made sure to see twice before writing about it and I was extremely glad I did because it benefitted from a re-watch. But then I'm of the mind that nearly everything benefits from a re-watch -- well if you're going to write about it anyway. I didn't even make it halfway through Deadpool and Wolverine before giving up and I won't be "re-watching" that shit nonsense. But Queer is another ball of wax! I'll be re-watching this one a hundred times over. All that said -- Queer is out in limited release at Thanksgiving! Because nothing says "movies with the fam" like Daniel Craig snowballing sperms into Drew Starkey's mouth. In all seriousness I really fretted and sweated over this one, so please click on over to read -- I'm pretty proud of it. Thanks!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Suddenly Last Summer (1959)

Dr. Cukrowicz : Nature is not made
in the image of man's compassion.

Montgomery Clift was born 104 years ago today.

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, World

After seeing this much appreciated seflie from Sam Claflin yesterday -- PS thanks for not shaving your chest anymore, Sam! -- I had to go look up what he's been up to because I haven't seen him in anything in awhile. That's when I was reminded I didn't watch that 70s rock music series he was in with Riley Keough -- my bad. Did any of you watch it? My bf did -- his Riley love knows no bounds -- and he did not like it, but I am open to other opinions. So please share if you have one. Anyway looking forward via his IMDb page I see he's about to star in a Count of Monte Cristo series (yawn) but more interestingly he's in what sounds like a horror movie called All the Devils Are Here with Rory Kinnear, Eddie Masran, and Burn Gorman. Pheonomal cast, that! It might just be a thriller, the description is vague, but we also hope for horror. Keep hope alive! And keep not shaving your chests!

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Run This Way, Man

I am not sure that the Arnold Schwarzenegger classic The Running Man needs a remake -- and I am being unironically serious, as I genuinely love that movie -- but if it is going to happen I suppose having Edgar Wright direct it and having Glen Powell and our boy Karl Glusman star in it isn't so bad a way to go. The latter was announced today via Deadline which reminded me that I somehow don't believe I have posted about this project before even though it's been ticking some boxes all along -- I mean also in the cast is Love Lies Bleeding queen Katy O'Brien! Anyway I guess I can see how an update on the movie would work and Wright know how to shoot kinetic nonsense like a pro -- plus Glen Powell might be a perfect leading man for him, and for this prokect specifically, since he's as funny as he is studly. Wright will surely go at this with a lighter touch than the doom-minded original did. All I know is they better put Glen and Karl in those same kind of skin-tight jumpsuits that Arnold wore in the original dammit. Or we rebel!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Margaret (2011)

Emily: This isn't an opera! And we are not all
supporting characters to the drama of your amazing life!

Oh god, Margaret is so perfect! Perfect movie. Exquisite movie. Love Margaret so so much. On that note a happy 62 to Kenneth Lonergan! Please make another movie soon! It's been eight years since Manchester-by-the-Sea! I know J. Cameron has been bringing in the big bucks thanks to Succession but we're growing impatient, my man.

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, World

Honestly anything that makes my job easier I will grab, and so as long as Russell Tovey wants to keep posting these pictures I wll you know GRAB at them. And yes I am literally making grabbing motions at his tit right now. Sue me. I have no concept of the divide between the internet and real life any more obviously.

Tuesday, October 15, 2024

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Fight Club (1999)

Tyler Durden: Warning -- If you are reading this then this warning is for you. Every word you read of this useless fine print is another second off your life. Don't you have other things to do? Is your life so empty that you honestly can't think of a better way to spend these moments? Or are you so impressed with authority that you give respect and credence to all that claim it? Do you read everything you're supposed to read? Do you think every thing you're supposed to think? Buy what you're told to want? Get out of your apartment. Meet a member of the opposite sex. Stop the excessive shopping and masturbation. Quit your job. Start a fight. Prove you're alive. If you don't claim your humanity you will become a statistic. You have been warned.

Happy 25 to another movie like American Psycho where all the wrong people that the movie is making fun of saw a movie that read to them the opposite of that. I don't think it's quite as clear in Fincher's hands as it was in Mary Harron's, but he's gone on with movies like The Killer last year to underline his points often enough about the show-offy fragility of masculinity that we know his heart's always been in the right place anyway. To be honest I haven't actually sat down and watched Fight Club start to finish in quite some time -- it'd be great if we got a 4K of this first but watching the way Fincher's been tinkering with the 4K release of Seven for a few years now, delaying its release over and over, I won't hold my breath. Dude is too tinkery! Stop tinkering and go make the next season of Mindhunter goddammit!

Jo Jo Grifter, Your Winchester is Calling

And speaking of Criterion! (Which we just were.) I just realized that today is also New Announcement Day for the fanciest physical media brand around -- okay I didn't "realize" so much as "get the PR email that told me it is" but whatever, cut me some slack, I am very scattered and busy right now. So Criterion today has announced their January 2025 line-up and it shocks me how good they are at plucking movies out of thin air that I have never heard of and plunking them down in front of me like rare gems of great beauty. I don't know half of these movies but I look forward to finding out. The one I do know and have seen is Stephen Frears' 1990 neo-noir The Grifters starring John Cusack, Annette Bening, and Anjelica Huston -- I have spent my entire life being terrified of bags of oranges thanks to this movie and I haven't seen it in decades. It'll be nice to revisit, and in 4K no less. That's out in January 21st.

Next up there is Richard Pryor's semi-autobiographical 1986 film Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling, which is apparenrtly a fractured bio-pic that he starred in himself -- how have I literally never heard of this movie? I mean I've never been the world's number on Richard Pryor stan but I have always liked him when I've seen him -- I guess this was way outta my wheelhouse when it came out and I was 8-years-old but I have no excuse for the many many years between then and now. And then there's Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore from 1973 -- this one I have heard of but that's it,;I haven't seen it nor do I know much about it. Sounds like a threesome movie from their description but one with two ladies circling the dude, which is sad to me as Jean-Pierre Léaud looks really cute on the cover of the disc and I'd prefer this co-starred let's say Jean-Paul Belmondo as his side-piece. Somebody use AI and stick Belmondo into this for me! Use AI for good!

The final batch of movies for January include a 4K upgrade of Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Sanjuro double-feature (and no I somehow have never seen these ones yet either) and then Anthony Mann's 1950 western Winchester '73 which, well it's a Western. I just can't be made to care. It doesn't matter how many great Westerns I see, and I have seen plenty -- I just cannot stir excitement in myself over sitting down and watching a Western. That said Winchester does have Rock Hudson playing a Native American so I might have to watch this out of a sick curiosity.

Demon Pond Ahoy

The artwork by Yuko Shimizu on the new Criterion cover of Masahiro Shinoda's 1979 fever dream Demon Pond is so beautiful I am just posting it again even though I posted it in July when this disc was announced -- anyway today is the day, this movie is out! Go buy it here or over on Criterion's site -- I watched this a few weeks ago and it's so hypnotically strange and beautiful, it will make for a killer Halloween afternoon watch. Not necesarrily Halloween night when you want to scare yourself but the afternoon when you wanna edge yourself into the spooky mood -- it's perfect. It kind of feels like the ketamine you take to bring down Hausu's amphetamines.

The Boys of Nickel

Per usual I'm behind behind behind on reviews here in the red hot month of October -- NYFF finished this past weekend and I'm still plowing out my write-ups from there even though I'm knee-deep in NewFest and Brooklyn Horror begins on Thursday! It's impossible -- I am but one man. Anyway today my write-up of the NYFF Opening Night film (so you know the one that somehow screened 18 days ago -- what????) has arrived, -- click on over to Pajiba to read my thoughts on Nickel Boys, the adaptation of Colson Whitehead's Pulitzer-Prize-winning novel. There actually is a legitimate reason for my delay with this one -- I really wanted to see the movie a second time, and I was right too; it helped me a lot in sorting out my thoughts. Anyway you'll know soon enough because Nickel Boys is out in NYC October 25th, LA the week after, and rolling out from there. Now let's see if I can finally get my Queer review finished...

Paul Mescal Ten Times

Has anyone considered yet that Paul Mescal might be the devil? I didn't believe in the devil, not since I was a kid anyway, but looking at this new cover-shoot for GQ magazine I have begun to find my religion, as it were, at least in so far as there might be a man of such unbridled sexy charisma that I would sell my soul for him, and he's about to star in a Ridley Scott Gladiator picture.

Anyway that's where I am after looking at these pictures, I don't know about you. He's coming straight for us though, and I am fine with that. I wasn't using my soul anyway. He can have it. It's yours, Paul! I am fingers crossed actually going to be in a room sharing air with Mr. Mescal next week -- anybody have anything you want me to scream at him as I get dragged away by security? Hit the jump for the entire blessed, cursed, devil shoot...

There is life before you've seen this photo of actor Dino Fetscher in a 2019 stage production of Torch Song Trilogy, and there is life after you see it, and we're all now happily, firmly ensconced in the latter camp. Long live the theatre!

Monday, October 14, 2024

Which is Hotter?

Turns out that October 14th is a very gay day as both Udo Kier and Ben Whishaw were born today. Udo is celebrating a milestone -- 80! -- but we already tweeted him birthday greetings, so we turn our happy gay eyes todward Ben now. Or as I've long dubbed him, "The Great Gay Hope" because I've long thought he'll be the first out gay actor to win an Oscar. I will admit that I'm not so sure about that now that Colman Domingo is giving him a hard run for his money -- and now I am trying to picture a movie starring Colman & Ben and what that might be? maybe a Thelma & Louise type thing? Who wouldn't watch that? Only shitheels, that's who. Anyway until then we're gonna face down two of our favorite Bens -- Ben playing adorkable Q in the Daniel Craig James Bond movies and Ben as the stand-in for all of us painfully in love with Franz Rogowski in Ira Sachs' Passages. Two dependable and wispy Ben bests. Now pick!

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Today's Mood

I'm really feeling this recent photo of James McAvoy this afternoon -- I just finished writing another NYFF review (that'll be up tomorrow) and I'm looking for something, anything, to post here on the site but just kind of ending up glaring at the empty exapanse of the dumb internet with disdain instead. Sigh. And I suppose it's my job to fix this, as a person who posts on the internet -- I should be entertaining us like the little dancing monkey that I am! But I'm not feeling so dancing-monkey today. Anyway all of that said James McAvoy's angry face makes me as the kids say "hot under the collar" so that's also a good reason to post that photo as well. Va va voom, baby.