my new plaid pants

Thursday, April 24, 2025

If you'll excuse me I'm gonna crawl back into the backseat with Josh O'Connor for a bit, I could use a few more Zzzs... or whatever else one might get up to in the backseat with Josh O'Connor. Whatever. (We really don't talk about these blue shorts he wears in Challengers enough. Right? Right.) When Josh and I do finally get up though don't be surprised if I stare at it until you let me eat your breakfast sandwich. (Not a euphemism.)

Wednesday, April 23, 2025

Pic of the Day

I've got a screening to run to this afternoon -- I'll be back in a couple of hours and might even blog then too! But to hold you tight in its arms and keep you safe and happy here is a new photo of Jai Courtney playing a shark-wielding maniac in Dangerous Animals, one of my most anticipated movies of 2025. I posted the trailer here a few weeks ago -- the movie is premiering in the "Director's Fortnight" section of Cannes next month so I imagine those lucky assholes who go to Cannes will be blah-blah-blah-ing about this shortly. This movie was directed by Sean Byrne, the director of the exquisitely deranged 2009 horror film The Loved Ones, thus making a movie I'd already want to see -- see the aforementioned "Jai Courtney playing a shark-wielding maniac" thing -- a movie I'd throw myself into shark-infested waters to see. Down below is the uncropped image which annoyingly includes the Cannes logo, but maybe one of you freaks needs to see Jai's ankles. No judgement!

Jock Horror

As I've said numerous times here on this very website I've stopped watching movie trailers if I can help it, and most especially horror trailers because they're the worst offenders at giving away too much. With that said I've seen this image from the Jordan Peele produced football horror movie Him going around since that movie's teaser dropped a couple of days ago and how could I resist? I couldn't obviously. That's why we're here. I mean I still haven't watched the teaser and I won't as long as I can avoid it, but I will most certainly share that image of the film's star, footballer turned actor Tyriq Withers, half-naked and covered in blood. And y'all can make your own decisions from there. Him also stars Marlon Wayans, Julia Fox, and Tim Heidecker, and it's out on September 19th. Punt it into my end-zone or whatever!

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Refn Winds His Way To Charles Melton

Even though Riverdale was made for perverts like me I never watched it, and I can't say I ever foresaw a muse of serious minded auteurs ever coming from the show -- shows me to be such a snob! Charles Melton, fresh off working with Todd Haynes and Alex Garland, is teaming up with no less than Danish provocateur Nicolas Winding Refn for Refn's grand return to big-screen moviemaking -- Indiewire, where I read this news, frames this story in a really odd way though, making it sound like Refn's not been doing anything since 2016's Only God Forgives and positing him as extremely "anti-content", all of which ignores the man spent the past decade making two of the best streaming series of, dare I say, all time with Too Old To Die Young for Prime and then Copenhagen Cowboy on Netflix. I know those shows aren't for everybody but thank goodness they're for me -- they're among my favorites of Refn's work which is saying a whole lot since I think he's a flat-out genius.

ANYWAY. Back to the new news. The movie is going to be called Her Private Hell and it doesn't just star the cute boy from Riverdale -- it also stars Sophie Thatcher of Yellowjackets and Heretic and Companion fame, and we like her very much and 100% understand why she's the one who's taken off from Yellowjackets. She's got it. I might not have loved either of those horror movies I mentioned, but she was not the issue with either. Almost as exciting to me -- the movie will also co-star actress Havana Rose Liu, who I fell completely head over heels for as one of the cheerleaders in the movie Bottoms...

... as well the upcoming queer thriller Lurker (my review here) -- I think she's got one of the most beautiful faces I've seen among the upcoming crop of actors and I bet Refn's gonna make her a star. Absolutely magical on-screen presence. This is a hot cast y'all! There's not a lot known about the movie plot-wise but Nicolas has spoken about making a movie in Tokyo next (and he said it "will have a lot of glitter and lot of sex and violence" -- shocker!) so this is probably that. Nicolas Winding Refn shooting the neon nights of Tokyo -- how has this not happened already??? I need this right now.

Damn Fine Coffee

The streaming service MUBI is bringing all three seasons of David Lynch's masterpiece Twin Peaks -- including the brain-breaking The Return, which aired on Showtime 25 years after the first two aired on ABC in 1990 -- on June 13th! This year marks the show's 30th anniversary so this is a nice way to honor that -- another nice way to honor that is to start listening to the watch-along podcast "The Detective and the Log Lady" which has been gifting us with weekly recaps for the past several months and which I'm sure I've mentioned here previously since one half of its hosting duties are performed by our forever blogging pal the Final Girl herself Stacie Ponder. The other half is the great Mike Muncer of "Evolution of Horror" fame -- Stacie's watching the show for the first time while Mike is a longtime fan and it's a lot of fun to listen to their takes on the series episode by episode. And it's given me a good excuse to re-watch the entire thing. We're in the smack-dab middle of The Return right now, so nearing the end -- just nother nine episodes to go I guess? That makes me sad! But it's not like Twin Peaks isn't made to be revisited. Now that it'll be streaming on MUBi maybe I'll just start it all over again when we finish! There are such wonders to behold...

Good Morning, Gratuitous Garrett Wareing

All it usually takes is an actor getting one sizzling photoshoot that grabs my eye -- the greatest example being Chris Evans' legendary shoot for Flaunt magazine of course -- and even if you've never made an impression on me with the whole "acting" thing I'll still file your name away for further reference. But with Garrett Wareing here, who's been acting since he was 12 (all of 12 years ago), he's had several shoots over the past few years that should've caught my eye but... didn't. Until this week that is, when...

... the latest one for Vulcan magazine appeared. And consider my eye caught. But after doing some digging I found several earlier photoshoots that should've done the trick (his Instagram was especially helpful in this regard) so now we'll play catch-up and post them all. Acting-wise the only thing I've seen Mr. Wareing in appears to be the 2023 film God is a Bullet where he was opposite Nicolaj Koster-Waldau and Karl Glusman, but there was a lot going on in that movie (obviously given those two names I just named) so I didn't notice him. Sorry, Garrett! That said...

... he is in the upcoming adaptation of Stephen King's infamous short story The Long Walk that Constantine director Francis Lawrence has directed, and which also stars Cooper Hoffman, Charlie Plummer, David Jonsson, Judy Greer, and Mark Hammil, so I assume 2025 will be the year this beautiful boy leaves a mark. I can say that assuredly because he already has, looking through these photos! (God I love furry blonds.) So hit the jump and brand him on your brains too...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Pecker (1998)

Jimmy: Pubic hair causes crime.

How in the John-Waters-loving world had I never done that quote for one of these posts until now??? Talk about one of the most important life lessons one can learn! I guess it's because I only recently, like post-pandemic, decided I love Pecker with all of my heart -- I think it was when I wrote a piece on its 25th anniversary two years back that did it. When it Criterion going to give us a fancy edition of this one anyway? A proper re-evaluation of this movie's far overdue -- it's one of John's greats. Aaaaanyway to get to the point -- a very very very very happy 79th birthday to our favorite Uncle Pervert himself! And let's make 2025 the year where he finally gets a new movie greenlit goddammit.

Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... sharing a joystick

with Jon Bernthal & Charlie Cox.

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Nobody was able to guess this movie last week

so here are Five more Frames to guess with!

So what movie is it?

Okay! Still going! Tough one, I guess!

Here are five more frames...

Well... what movie is this?

Good Morning, World

Inspired by his moment to shine in yesterday's Mesh Shirt Off post here is the rest of Indian actor Ishaan Khatter's photoshoot for V Man magazine, where he was also photographed in said mesh shirt as seen in said post. The rest of this shoot might be even hotter than the photos I shared yesterday though -- give this boy a career in America stat! He has already had two small (I'm guessing, since I haven't seen one and the other I don't remember) roles in big U.S. projects -- he was in Nicole Kidman's series The Perfect Couple (which I didn't watch) and he was apparently in that awful all-star comet-apocalypse comedy Don't Look Up. We can do better! Scroll through his Instagram and you'll understand. Or just hit the jump for this full photoshoot (with video!) anbd you'll understand doubly....

Feast On This

Having missed Spa Night when it came out in 2016 I only came around to writer-director Andrew Ahn when I saw his 2019 film Driveways at Tribeca that year. But that movie stirred something deep in me (see my review here) so I've been ecstatic to see bigger name actors running wildly toward Ahn ever since -- in 2022 with his sweet queer comedy Fire Island and now this past weekend his updated re-do of Ang Lee's The Wedding Banquet, which on paper feels blasphemous but in practice is turned into a glorious ode to queer family by Ahn. The new film stars Bowen Yang, Lily Gladstone, Kelly Marie-Tran, Han Gi-Chan (seen above, a real revelation in the swoon department), Joan Chen, and Youn Yuh-jung, and as I say in my just-dropped review of the film over at Pajiba -- everybody's great in it but it's Youn who steals the whole thing, giving a performance I immediately fell head over heels for. I love this even more than the performance in Minari that she won her Oscar for (and I loved that movie and that performance). All around another grand success for Ahn, and for the rest of us a soothing super-gay balm in trying times. A warm and funny gift of a film!

Who Wore It Best?

I'm kind of annoyed that the Instagram account Portiswasp beat me to this punch because it'd popped into my head last week when I saw actor Brandon Skelnar (above right) wearing this stylist-fave mesh shirt for Interview Magazine and realized I'd seen it everywhere lately and had since then been meaning to do this exact poll. Alas I was too slow and you can see the entire collection of menfolk who've rocked the shirt at their link. Me I'll focus in on four of the fellas, all of whom (save Skelnar until now) had already been featured here at MNPP in this nip-barer of a fashion choice. (Glen Powell here, George MacKay here, and Kit Connor here.)