I know that we've generally agreed that the concept of a "snub" at the Oscars is kind of dumb but -- who would I be if I wasn't hating on AMPAS? I don't even know anymore. So fuck them for ignoring Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice, which is better than a good three-quarters of the movies that did get nominations. (Here is my review.) It's as timely and as funny and as gorgeously filmed as the probable Best Picture winner One Battle After Another, and it'll be long remembered after a bunch of the other titles fall away, and that's its own reward -- I'm just sick of Master Park getting the shaft. He's too good for them! But the Oscars aren't why we're here -- if they're ever why we're here you should hit the big red alarm button on the whole "pod person" thing. No we're here because there's news on the No Other Choice physical media front. What we can only assume will be a fancy limited edition 4K blu-ray a la the Oldboy release that Neon put out a couple of years ago has been dropped on Amazon for pre-release -- right here -- which will come out on April 28th. It is pricey as fuck -- $76 as of this writing -- which I can only assume will drop closer to the release date. The Oldboy release ended being fifty bucks I think? (Although I see now on Amazon it's going for truly ridiculous prices, good grief.) The annoying thing is we don't have any info yet on what this limited edition will look like or contain, but I imagine that'll be out soon. I went ahead and pre-ordered it now since I will obviously want this, but I'm keeping my eye on Neon's own shop for the information we're missing as well as a probable lower price. If I see it, I'll share!
As a vigorous supporter of all things Liminal Horror you'd think I'd have already watched the original 2022 YouTube phenom Backrooms from creator Kane Parsons -- you can watch it here -- but somehow (i.e. I'm terribly un-hip) I missed it. And now A24 has turned the thing into a feature film that's out on May 29th, and you can watch the teaser trailer down below. I haven't watched the teaser yet because I haven't watched the original short -- so I ask y'all: should I go watch the original short? Or should I just wait for the feature? Any thoughts? I realize that none of you have seen the feature yet so who knows if it's just a big budgeted retread of the short's scares. But I'm leaning towards watching the short ASAP since I assume this new version has been made with the original's fans in mind as its base audience. Anyway with a cast that includes two of my favorite working actors, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve, there's no way I'm not all up in this thing. Here's the teaser (and up top is the oddly hypnotic poster, a version of which which you can buy on A24's site right now):
I still haven't gotten around to watching Atlanta and I don't remember her leaving an impact on me in Watchmen (I was really very distracted by James Wolk in his bat-panties while watching that show, to the point where most everything else was blasted out of my brain) but I can very specifically pinpoint the moment that I sat up and was like, "Danielle Deadwyler is a goddamned rock-star" and it was her small but pivotal role on Station Eleven. And since then she's only gotten better every time I've seen her -- Till was always going to be a hard watch but damn AMPAS to hell for ignoring her performance, she's tremendous in it. Anyway that's all to say I hooted with glee when it was announced this weekend that Ryan Coogler's X-Files reboot has found its leading lady with her -- I was never averse to the idea of bringing this show back with new people because the base idea of it is rock-solid and it could and should keep going for ages. And okay no I don't think Sinners is the Best Picture of 2025 but it's still an immensely entertaining horror film with some great scares and performances so let Coogler be the one to do this. Hiring Danielle gives me even more confidence. Also it's pretty clear that Gillian Anderson wants to show up in some capacity as Scully, and Coogler's on the record that they've talked. I'm in! All in! I want this on the air tonight by the time I get home dammit. Get to it!
Since the last time I posted pictures of Love Story John-John actor Paul Anthony Kelly -- an entire week ago! -- I still haven't started the series. I'm already watching The Beauty and I think I decided that I can only deal with one Ryan Murphy series at a time. i'll watch this once The Beauty's over, then. But I won't wait until then to post Kelly's new GQ cover-shoot...
... for extremely obvious reasons. Look at him! No he's not JFK Jr. but that's like saying the light beside my bed isn't the Sun. It still gets the job done. I have no desire to read the interview that goes along with these photos since I haven't watched the show yet and have no above-surface-level interest in this man but if you do and there's something interesting, do share. Personally we'll just hit the jump and ogle...
Arthur: You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it! Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal. That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity! It is ecological balance! You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations. There are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale? You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.
Howard: Why me?
Arthur: Because you're on television, dummy.
60 million people watch you every night of the week, Monday through Friday.
Howard: I have seen the face of God.
Arthur: You just might be right, Mr. Beale.
Sidney Lumet's Network has been released on 4K blu-ray today thanks to the fine folks at Criterion -- watch it today and despair at how timely it remains. Everybody remembers Howard Beale's speech about getting up and screaming futilely out your windows that you're mad as hell and not going to take it anymore, but it's what's done with that -- how the media and government collude to commodify and dull our rage itself -- that really makes Network tick, and stick. It's wild how long we've been driving off this cliff for y'all!
Me and Raphaël Personnaz are huddling together for warmth today amid the frozen tundra so no new posting! Apologies. Y'all stay warm and safe your ways. (You can however see more from this scene at this old post right here.)
Well today turned into a short day -- got in late, trotting out early! Not complaining! But before I head out lemme link to a pair of reviews I've dropped for this weekend's movies -- click here to read my thoughts on How To Make a Killing with Glen Powell, and click here to read my just-dropped thoughts on the lo-fi sci-fi flick Redux Redux. The latter's great, the former's a stinker, but hey Glen Powell looks like he looks there above so who am I to judge? Well okay yeah with movies, movies I'm exactly the person to judge -- a movie critic. Reputable or not, whatever, I called myself one so it's true. But if Glen wants to come choke me out between those biceps I sure won't argue. Have a great weekend, everyone!
The pervasive sense that the movement of Time has lost all meaning isn't just for our own individual sliding-down-the-shower-wall moments any more! The movies have taken notice! Time Loop Movies might be somewhat more prominent in Japanese cinema right now -- I think it must have been the one-two-punch success of One Cut of the Deadand Beyond the Infinite Two Minutes, which were then followed up by River and the upcoming horror flick Exit 8 (and I should note that every single movie I just mentioned is terrific and you should seek them all out). It's not like we haven't had our own love affair with this subgenre blooming in our cinematic margins, though -- look no further than the entire ouerve of Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead, who've moved on up to the Marvel level of filmmaking after making a name for themselves with small-nudgeted mind-benders a la The Endless.
Point being that while these sorts of movies have been around for ages they seem very hot right now if you know where to look, and where you should be looking is for the nearest theater playing writer-director-brothers Kevin and Matthew McManus' new movie Redux Redux, a wham-bammer or a brain-bender that's in theaters today. I missed it at Fantasia last summer but finally caught up with it this week and this should prove a calling-card of cinematic excellence for the filmmakers previously behind the unnerving horror The Block Island Sound.
That movie also starred McManus sister Michaela, and here she turns up again to play our lead Irene, a broken woman who's taken to jumping through wormholes to chase down and murder the man who murdered her daughter -- and yeah okay so this is a multi-verse movie, not a time-travel movie, but it plays out basically the same as the process has becomes no less than a hyper-violent Groundhog Day for her.
As in all of the previous movies mentioned the tech and special-effects are all lo-fi, battered and beaten crapola a la Ridley Scott's Alien freighter -- the focus remains on the way these science-fiction concepts are mangling with the emotions and mental-stability of our characters, and this quest that Irene is on is a doozy of one. Forcing her to re-live her trauma in an endless circle, violence begetting violence until the very idea of revenge reveals itself to be as empty and useless as it truly is. There can be no catharsis when her daughrter's killer inescapably remains in an infinite number of universes -- it's a brilliant way of showing that there is only sense in trying to fix ourselves, and that the monsters that haunt us will forever haunt us if we can't let them go or find some way to move on.
For Irene this comes in a couple forms -- she strikes up a sporadic one-sided love-affair with dreamy dude Jonathan (played by dreamy dude Jim Cummings), and she gets way too mixed up with another one of the victims of her daughter's killer, a young woman named Mia (Stella Marcus) who wants her own revenge. And to the filmmakers' extensive credit absolutely none of this plays out like we think it will -- their script swerves in all sorts of unexpected ways, managing to be an absolute thrill-ride while never losing sight of its profound emotional stakes. I'll just end with this -- if thoughtful genre movies like Redux Redux were what Hollywood was actually churning out right now we'd be so much better off. As movie-lovers, as a species. Go see this movie.
So has Pillion opened in a theater near you yet? Keeping up with this relentless release has been a thorn in my side for months and months and I'm honestly just glad that as of this week or next it will I think finally have expanded as far as it will be expanding and we can move on to the 4K blu-ray with X-rated deleted scenes being released. That's not even me being my usual just-making-shit-up self -- they're the ones who made that shit up for headlines (see here). The only excised footage we've gotten any confirmation on existing is a straight-on shot of Alex's pierced prosthetic and honestly -- it's a fake penis, who cares? I am curious if the version y'all are seeing in theaters is the same one I saw (and reviewed!) at NYFF though. Anyway stay tuned for physical media news on this probably in the near-ish future -- I already told you that the terrific score is being released by A24 on vinyl, check that news here. Until then we've got this new photoshoot (via) of big boy Alex looking very handsome and unfortunately very clothed after the jump...
Pansy: You can't go in or out of a supermarket without being harassed by those grinning, cheerful charity workers begging you for money for their stupid causes. Why they gotta skin their teeth like that? Cheerful, grinning people. Can't stand 'em. Loitering out there, demanding your hard-earned cash. It's a scam. They're scamming people. Can't trust 'em. They want your phone number, your email. I asked one of them - I, I said, "Why do you want my postcode? I might as well just give you my front door key so you can bruk into my house, tief out my things, and kill my only child." And nobody calls the police on them. Police wouldn't come anyway. They're too busy harassing Black boys walking. And him round the corner with that dog. Got it dressed up in a red coat and green booties. Why has the dog got on a coat? It's got fur, innit? It must be sweating under there, stinking. That's cruelty to animals, that is, putting it under all that plastic. I've got a mind to report him to the NSPCG or whatever they call 'em. And her over there with that fat baby. Cold, cold, cold, and she's walking up and down the street with nothing but a big pink bow on its bald head so everybody can tell it's a girl, like I care. Parading it around in the little outfit. Not dressed for the weather. Nah. With pockets. What's a baby got pockets for? What's it gonna keep in its pocket? A knife?
Funny enough the punchline of this rant just came up in conversation in my house like two days ago -- we were so seen by Pansy. So seen. And I don't even have it in me to get into how robbed Marianne Jean-Baptiste was at the Oscars -- not even nominated for this brilliant, funny, heart-rending performance. The Oscars are a fucking scam. Ahem. No not getting into it! Just wishing the legendary Mike Leigh a happy 83rd birthday today. He's got a new movie coming out this year, did you hear? It doesn't have a title yet but per usual four of his previously-used actors are showing up -- Marion Bailey (she's Leigh's partner and has been in many of his movies over the years including All or Nothing and Meantime and Vera Drake and Mr. Turner to name but a few), Paul Jesson (another many-times-used actor), Kate O’Flynn (Happy-Go-Lucky), and then Alice Bailey Johnson who was in Hard Truths -- she was the girl in the furniture store who memorably got yelled at by Pansy. We don't know anything else about it but any year with a new Mike Leigh movie is incapable of being all bad, so thank goodness for this news. We need it.
Running late this morning thanks to a brief and non-life-threatening plumbing emergency at home -- thankfully Jake shared these balcony espresso fantasy dream-shots with us yesterday so I had something prepped to go quick-like! He's always looking out for us.
A lazy pajama-clad late morning with Jake on the fire escape sipping coffee -- now there's the dream. Sopping up an inch of water from an exploded sink -- notsomuch. I'm just gonna pretend Jake was my morning instead! Voila all's better. Happy Friday, everyone.
Just what I needed today (since the high from those Charles Melton pictures I shared earlier had already worn off; I am very needy these days) -- a new photoshoot of my beautiful Parisian boy Lucas Bravo! These come to us via Vestal magazine whatever that is where you can also read a conversation with the Emily in Paris actor, although I forwarn you since I read it hoping there'd be a quote to share -- it's kind of a snooze. Similarly it's not the greatest photoshoot he's ever done but given the competition he's provided for that title over the years -- and given how beautiful he is just naturally, without much effort needed -- who cares. I'll take staring at him over staring at the news anymore today. Hit the jump for the photos...
I have chosen to believe that Charles Melton received career advice from his May December co-star Natalie Portman while making that Todd Haynes masterpiece and that's why he's become the "fashion brand ambassador" for several brands in the past couple of years -- not because I don't trust Charles to make his own choices, but it entertains me whenever I think about those ridiculous Natalie Portman perfume commercials for Dior and it makes me chuckle picturing her taking him aside and saying, "This. Do this." Anyway these new photos for Davidoff (thx Mac) are hot as fuck -- no surprise given it's a topless Charles Melton! I probably prefer the sweatier stachier Coach commercial he did just because I have my own personal fetishes but either way god he pretty. Hit the jump for them all...
I have developed such a crush on the big-donged 6'5" tall Alpha rage-zombie -- properly known as the actor Chi Lewis-Parry -- from the 28 Years Later movie, ever since 1) I really really loved The Bone Temple and 2) he came out as one of us, one of us, on his Instagram...
Anyway he shared the top photo today to celebrate that The Bone Temple is now on VOD -- if you haven't seen it yet go rent it immediately! As I said in my review I consider this the best of the franchise and yes I am including the first film that kicked the entire thing off, and I'm now emotionally invested in there being a third movie. Since this one disappointed at the box office we need to show the people in charge that there's interest in contiinuing...
Alright I know some of you people are watching Ryan Murphy's Love Story series, detailing the tragic but deeply, deeply sexy romance between John F. Kennedy Jr. and Carolyn Bessette -- I haven't started it yet so tell me what you're thinking in the comments. I'm especially curious (because of course I am, JFK Jr. has a tag on this here website after all) about this fellow seen above's performance, since as incredibly handsome he clearly is I'm still not seeing John-John, at least visually, in the pictures I have seen from the show (as seen below). Oh but there's our boy Alessandro Nivola as Calvin Klein too -- I'm pretty excited to see that. But what are y'all thinking? I have seen mainly positive reviews so far!
"I too quit smoking (2013) AND find this type of pictures cool. Also, PSA: if you're feeling like you want to start smoking again, just remind yourself "I do not want my body and house to stink like stale horseshit", then go drink one more glass of water to entertain your hands and lips. Congrats, btw."
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