Thursday, September 26, 2024
Super Schoenaerts Away
Evil Does Not The Beast
Andrew Scott Four Times
Good Morning, World
Wednesday, September 25, 2024
Happy 75, Pedro Almodóvar
James McAvoy Fifteen Times
Quote of the Day
"It was tragic in a lot of ways... The most tragic part about it is that Todd Haynes is 62. He’s not old, right? But there is a finite number of films that he’ll be able to do in his lifetime... [He is] one of the most extraordinary film artists of his generation, and the idea that his time was wasted and that a movie is not a result of those years of working closely with Joaquin… That is the tragedy to me. And that I can’t get over, that we as a cultural community, lost the opportunity to have another movie by Todd Haynes. That is just criminal.”
That is Todd Haynes' longtime producing partner -- and general fucking movie icon -- Christine Vachon talking in broad terms at the San Sebastian Film Fest this week about the bullshit that unfolded with the gay romance that Haynes had been working on with Joaquin Pheonix for the past few years -- the one that Joaquin backed out of just a couple of days before shooting was set to begin. And that is basically exactly what I said at the time. It's uhhh actually weirdly similar:
"That said this especially pisses me off because Todd Haynes is 63 years old and probably only has a handful of movies left in him, and this neurotic douchebag just wasted more or less two years of Haynes' creative life for nothing. It's not like it's getting easier for iconoclasts like Haynes to make movies. Joaquin can go roll around in the twenty million bucks he got from Warner Brothers for the Joker sequel -- Todd Haynes is back to the drawing board, ekeing out financing for whatever small movie he can cobble together next."
Anyway preach, Christine. You -- we -- said it!
Good Morning Sir Redux
Tuesday, September 24, 2024
Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...
... you can learn from:
Totally F***ed Up (1993)
Patricia: Let me tell you what the problem with the stupid fucking world is. All the stupid people are breeding like mad having tens and tens of kids, while the cool people aren't having any! So, the population just keeps getting stupider and stupider! I mean, it's no wonder the whole world's going down the toilet.
The day I really never thought would come, has come -- today Criterion has released a 4K box-set of Gregg Araki's "Teen Apocalypse Trilogy" aka his 1993 movie Totally F***ed Up, his 1995 movie The Doom Generation, and his 1997 movie Nowhere. The latter two were extremely formative for yours truly -- the earliest one I didn't see until awhile later (it was hard to find) but adore just as much as the rest now. And now I've got all of them sitting on my shelf ready to watch at any moment, looking better than they ever have! Bless you, Criterion!
Today's Fanboy Delusion
Today I'd rather be...
Gahhhhh this devil knows what he is doing. He's too much. Too too much. And yet... just right. Hit the jump for several more photos he just shared from a recent trip with his missus...
Good Morning, Sir
Monday, September 23, 2024
Kit of the Day
Real Quick, By Billy
Aaron has got to be kidding me with that second pose 🥵 pic.twitter.com/274bphOEHP
— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) September 22, 2024
Friday, September 20, 2024
Gone Fishin'
I've Made My Bed, I'll Die In It
I'd often wondered how the Whatever Happened To Baby Jane? horror sub-genre of Grand Dame Guignol could be updated to our current age where a lot of people at a certain point simply don't age anymore -- they just freeze in place. Wonder no more -- Fargeat found the way, the sweet spot through where Dorian Gray meets The Swan by way of Society. The latter influence seems especially on point to me -- when Brian Yuzna's 1989 body-horror class comedy came out it never even got a proper release here in the U.S.. But now our culture has evolved -- or perhaps devolved, but this movie counts as a perk of our devolution -- to the point where one of the biggest movie stars of all time will star in a body-horror freak-out comedy that goes every ounce as hard as Society did. And it will premiere at Cannes for fuck's sake!
That said, while I won't say I'll eat my shoe if Demi Moore is nominated for an Oscar for a movie where... well everything that happens in the last act of The Substance happens... I don't anticipate that happening. She'll have to make due I think with the praise of being the cool pick -- the one too cool and too too out there for the Academy, even if the Academy has proven itself a little riskier than in the past recently. But what am I even talking about awards for? The Substance is one fuck-ton of a movie, man!
The Substance is a movie I can see myself putting on in the background of my life for the entire rest of it. It's grotesque, obscene, hilarious, meanspirited, gorgeous, heartbreaking, exquisite. It's an M&M with a cockroach inside; a long trail of innards curled up like a golden crown. To hold its excesses aginast it is to deny the excesses of its targets. Sometimes a punch to the face is needed. And I want to marry The Substance, punches and all, if it will have me. I promise I will be good to you, movie! Punch me unto nirvana!