More Like Thirst Trap

Oh blessings be unto us -- it turns out that tthere are a couple of set photos from the scene where Josh Hartnett's gets shirtless in M. Night Shaymalan's film Trap! I am feeling catered to! In case you missed it the movie is out on digital rental now -- it's a fun time! I enjoyed it. Here is my brief capsule review. Just turn off your brain and you'll have a lot of fun. It's great entertainment and Josh is legitimately fantastic in it. Fantastic whilst looking like this. I won't cry about life not being fair -- I will only appreciate he shares his great fortunes with the rest of us.

Thank You, Morgan Spector

Last Friday I shared the above photo but in a far inferior quality copy -- now we've got the goods in hi-fi, baby! (That means click to embiggen 'em.) And then more photos to boot! The shoot is for The Cut, where they chat with him about "How To Behave" and lord knows we want our daddy to tell us how to behave. They all know what they're doing! Anyway he unfortunately keeps his words pretty P.G. rated, but when he said he lurks on Twitter I was like, "Oh he has definitely seen my sordid tweets about him then." So hi Morgan! And thank you for your service. Now we will be your best boys and hit the jump for the four more photos...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Heat (1972)

Sally: And you're NOT a lesbian. 

I mean, everybody has girlfriends. 

Men have friends, women have friends. 

That doesn't make you a lesbian. 

Do you sleep in the same room with her?

Jessica: Sure. How else can I be a lesbian?

Sally: Where does Mark sleep?

Jessica: With us.

Sally: In the same bed?

Jessica: In the same bed.

Sally: Is that a way to bring up a boy? 

He'll be a lesbian!

Today is the 100th anniversary of the one-of-a-kind Sylvia Miles! I just saw Tobe Hooper's The Funhouse at MoMA a few weeks ago and my god she walks away with that entire film in her two scenes. What a goddamned treasure she was. The movies lost one of its brightest and most shining stars when she passed in 2019. If you've got any tell me your favorite Sylvia Miles movie moments in the comments!

Quote of the Day

"[At that time,] I had started to think about this project I had shelved right before the pandemic. It’s a genre film set in late 19th century France, but it feels like the most personal story I could tell in my life right now. The original source material is a short story, but I’m going to say that 80% will be completely made up. Writing it, I’m avid. I’m really excited. It’s playful and [the dialogue has] a lot of humour; the language that these people of literary society – or Les Lumières – were speaking in at the time. I’m drawing, painting – every shot is already described. I even went to the textile merchant the other day to buy fabric for the costumes. I aim to be shooting this in the summer or fall of 2025, which means it’ll be released in 2026. That would mean that it will have been eight years since the shoot of Matthias & Maxime – the span of the first chapter of my career. Eight years of making films, and eight years of not making any. I love that symmetry. "

Good news that Xavier Dolan is quitting his self-imposed "retirement" and getting to work on another movie -- I put retirement in quotes because he made a whole TV series during said retirement (and was about to start another one for HBO) but as fondly as he speaks of The Night Logan Woke Up he seems to not count it since it wasn't a movie. Indeed in this chat at i-D magazine he says a lot of self-indulgent nonsense but that's our Xavier; it's why we love him. (Or many have the exact opposite reaction.) Indeed the entire interview is about how one of his comments got blown up and ruined him -- and yet in the next breath he says he made that TV show and was about to make another one for HBO, so! His ruination isn't quite like everyone else's would be, it seems. All that aside we're happy he's going to make more movies and we're also happy he did another bratty-hot photoshoot (ahh to the real reason we care) and here is that, after the jump...

Bill Skarsgård Fourteen Times

I'll be seeing most of my most anticipated movies of the rest of 2024 over the next few weeks at NYFF starts up -- namely Queer and Almodovar's The Room Next Door -- but my Most Most Anticipated isn't hitting until Christmas and it doesn't appear to be hitting any festivals and of course I speak of Robert Eggers' Nosferatu. So it was nice to get a long chat between Eggers and Bill Skarsgard over the weekend in Another Magazine where they talk in depth about their process creating their monster...

... but if you want to avoid knowing how the film ends, maybe avoid reading it. I mean the film ends like every other adaptation of Nosferatu, because Eggers is smart enough to know that's the only ending worth ending it with. But still -- you could say it's a spoiler, especially if you've never seen Muranu or Herzog's versions. Anyway besides the chat I am also extremely thankful for this photoshoot of Bill that the magazine included, and I think you will be as well. Hit the jump for them all...

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, World

The 2022 version of Hellraiser didn't make a huge impression on me when I saw it, but now that I have put together the fact that the hot dude I vaguely remember being in it (the one that wasn't Brandon Flynn that is) was played by Drew Starkey, soon to seen getting good and sweaty with Daniel Craig in Luca Guadagnino's Queer, I am definitely thinking about a re-watch. I mean. Are you looking at that gif? I bet Luca has looked at that gif.

The Ghost With Even More Most

Extremely happy to say that I enjoyed the hell out of Tim Burton's 36-years-in-the-making Beetlejuice Beetlejuice -- head on over to Pajiba now to read my review now or even better after you've gone to see the movie in the theater yourself. I hope it makes a heap of money this weekend because this is a "legacy sequel" done right. Even if I really hate the term "legacy sequel." The movie might be all over the place but that's totally true to the wacky spirit of the original -- people complained the same thing about the original and yet I have watched that movie enough times to have it memorized from start to finish. Bring on the Winona-ssaince!

Baron Daddy

I don't have a proper link or scan of this photo yet but I think you'll agree with me that it's the kind of thing that needs to be shared immediately, and we'll update those specifics later -- this photo of The Gilded Age's baron-daddy Morgan Spector is in the new issue of New York Magazine, but they haven't uploaded it online yet -- I got this off their Insta stories, reshared by Morgan himself (ever the good sport, ready to self-exploit at a moment's notice). Goddamn he makes me feel things. And not just deep jealousy of Rebecca Hall, although that's inextricable from the rest for certain! 

Red Red Rooms, Stay Close To Me-ee-ee

Heads-up that one of my favorite movies from last year's Fantasia Film Fest is hitting some theaters today -- Quebecois director Pascal Plante's serial-killer-thriller Red Rooms is hitting 50-ish screens in the big cities and you can check this link to see if it's near you. Also you can read my review of the film right here, and I posted the trailer -- which quoted yours truly! -- right here. I haven't seen the movie since last July when I reviewed it and there's been so much good writing on the film hitting this week -- specifically I liked this piece and then this piece -- that I really want to watch it again myself. It does such interesting things with the genre, finding brand new and exciting ways to make your jaw drop in the face of any cynicism you might hold toward the over-worked and oft under-self-contemplative genre. A really fascinating spin on all of it, looking at the dark recesses of humanity through our true crime obsessions. Big recommend!

Aaron Pierre Two Times

Uhh you're gonna wanna click on that photo to embiggen it. It comes to us via Men's Health where Aaron doffed his top -- or perhaps his shirt just shredded to bits Hulk style, or perhaps his shirt became sentient and killed itself and went to heaven, knowing it had reached the height of its existence, being draped upon Aaron Pierre -- and talks his new Netflix movie Rebel Ridge, which believe it or not is actually excellent! An excellent Netflix movie! I know! 

It obviously helps (immeasurably) that the film is from director Jeremy Saulnier, the man behind Green Room and Blue Ruin, two of the best thrillers of the past fifteen years. Rebel Ridge isn't quite up to their level but it far surpasses the usual drivel that gets dropped onto Netflix by the sort of leaps and bounds that only a man of Aaron's shape and form (ahem) could make so easily. In all seriousness I've known ever since I saw Mr. Pierre in Barry Jenkins' The Underground Railroad that we had a big star on our hands, and it's a pleasure seeing him dominate (ahem) an action picture like this. It's more complicated than just "an action picture" -- I don't want you to think you're sitting down to one of those loud simpleminded Hemsworth or Reynolds hunka junks. The trailers might sell it that way but it's very much more than that. Check it out this weekend! And check Aaron out every goddamned day.

Pic of the Day

I have been so singlemindedly focused on the upcoming gay romance starring Paul Mescal and Josh O'Connor (for obvious reasons) that I totally forgot we also had a forthcoming gay romance (sort of) starring Jacob Elordi and Diego Calva! I have posted about the movie before right here -- it's called On Swift Horses and today Vanity Fair has given us the first look (seen above, although cropped to avoid their annoying logo) and a chat with everybody involved, check it right here. The film also stars Daisy Edgar-Jones and Will Poulter and honestly the description of the plot confounded me a little bit -- all that matters is this bit, I think:

"Elordi and Calva, who broke out in 2022’s Babylon, develop a steamy sexual chemistry that includes several rich, emotional, and explicit love scenes. “He’s a real cool customer,” Elordi says of Calva. “We had a week of intensive [prep] in the motel room, and [the director] gave us a lot of freedom to run around and to play and to find that love within those four walls.”"

This movie is premiering at TIFF so I guess we'll hear how steamy soon enough. Hopefully it's out in theaters before the end of the year. I don't like to wait for sexiness. 

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah Etc

An update on yesterday's news about the Challengers score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross finally getting a vinyl drop -- you can pre-order it right here! There was a bit of a oh lket's be nice and say kerfuffle when I first woke up this morning because Milan Records, the distributor that's pressing the thing, was SOLD OUT when I woke up and natch I freaked out -- they're still SOLD OUT but Amazon still has it, so you're safe. Anyway I think we can all agree that they messed up -- or might I say, they dropped the ball, kersnicker -- not printing the record in tennis-ball-yellow, but we do love those playing cards for our favorite sweaty throuple and the Phil's Tire Town bumper sticker rocks so we'll accept.

Good Morning Again, Alex

Three days in a row! As hoped and desired and prayed upon and blood-sacrificed-for yesterday when I posted some more of Alexander Skarsgard's new Calvin Klein campaign, I have now gotten to post brand new gratuitousness from it three days in a row. Wonders, never cease. (Here is yesterday's batch, and here is the day before.) Okay so yes these gifs are from the official video for the campaign which has technically been around since the first day but I somehow forgot to post it then, but whatever -- spreading Alex wide has always been one of my most wished for dreams, and now it's come true! (I really am being filthier than normal this week -- don't mind me.) Hit the jump for the gifs and the video...

It's Tearing Christopher Abbott Apart

I forgot that this was happening, but actress and writer Zoe Kazan is taking a page from her esteemed Hollywood heritage and writing the script for a new limited-series adaptation for Netflix of John Steinbeck's classic novel East of Eden, which her Grandpa Elia himself turned into a legendary star-making vehicle for one Mr. James Dean back in 1955. Florence Pugh's been attached for some time but the reason I'm reminded of this project's existence is this week's news that one Christopher Abbott will be tackling the role of Adam Trask in the series. Which is not the role that James Dean played, by the way... 

... but the role played by Raymond Massey, aka Jimmy Dean's character's father. The 1955 film only adapted the last part of the epic book, the part about Adam and Cathy's children Cal (Dean) and Aron (Richard Davalos), so yes this is a pretty smart idea for a limited series adaptation -- there's an entire three-quarters of the book laying there to be told! Although I do know there was also a 1981 three-part miniseries that starred, amongst others, the ridiculously handsome Hart Bochner...

... and that I would love to see. Anybody seen that? 

Teo Yoo Eight Times

Imagine my excitement this morning when Past Lives heartbreaker Teo Yoo shared (via) a brand new photoshoot for GQ Korea of himself running around the forest in various states of short-shorted-ness! No no I take that back. Do not imagine it, for your heart might buckle under the thrill. Only I am truly capable of holding such immense feeling without exploding apart Scanners-style -- and I do this for you, my beloveds! Such sacrifice. So remember -- whatever extra load you have to carry, give it to me. I can take it. That's right. I said it. Gimme all your loads! (Especially you, Teo.) And then hit the jump for the photos...

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Yeah Times Ten

I'm still furious that Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross's fabulous score for Luca Guadagnino's Bones and All hasn't been released on vinyl yet (although heads-up that word just dropped today that the movie itself is hitting 4K in November) -- and same goes for David Fincher's The Killer. But we can check one of these off our list as they finally announced that the bangin' score from those two fine fellows for Luca's tennis throuple extravaganza Challengers is getting a vinyl drop, and it will be available to pre-order tomorrow at some time. Here is what's included:

-- Deluxe gatefold package with a custom interior gatefold collage of on-set photos 

-- Black Audiophile 180g Vinyl 

-- Printed inner sleeves 

-- Three Collectible Trading Cards featuring Zendaya, Mike Faist and Josh O'Connor as Tashi, Art and Patrick 

-- Exclusive Phil's Tire Town Bumper Sticker

They don't say where it'll be on sale yet but I imagine it will be at Sony's shop or the Milan Records shop, since they're both listed (my money is on the latter) although since it's Trent Reznor there's also the possibility of the Nine Inch Nails shop too. It'd be awesome to have more info but best believe I'll be refreshing all three of those places tomorrow until I have a hot little confirmation email in my hands. I do wish that this vinyl included the remix album that Boys Noize released as well (just digitally) because that shit kicks and has been my running music all summer long, but given the alternate, the Bones and All big fat nothing possibility, I'll take what I can get right now!

Good Morning, Alex Again

Oh yes please let this week turn out to be a week where they keep dropping new photos every day from the prememinent sexiness of said week -- in this week's instance I speak of Alexander Skarsgård's Calvin Klein shoot of course, which I shared a pile of pics from yesterday (and if you only checked it once in the morning make you you click again because I added several more photos across the day). Today (so far) it's only the above shot and a few behind-the-scenes ones that I'll share below, but honestly an entire post for the above shot is no waste. All want! Hit the jump and find yourself wanting...