Hoults Have More Fun

I guess we'll have to wait and see if another movie is smart enough to get Nicholas Hoult to dye his hair blond again or not (or if he's smart enough to realize what a sexy stir he caused, slutting it up this way) but for now the dumb movie that was indeed smart enough to have him do just that is out in theaters -- it's called How To Rob a Bank and I reviewed it today at Pajiba, read that here. And if you'd like to run through the highlights (hehe get it, highlights, cuz he's blond) of Nicky's blond ambition tour click here, I posted a'plenty. What a time was had!

The Sweet Hereafter of Kung Fu Hustling

I know I saw that the monthly Criterion announcement sneaks up on me every mid-month but I'm not just blowing smoke today because they jumped the gun by two entire days! Usually these drop on the 15th but I guess they don't take the Dowager Countess' approach to that whole "weekend" thing -- they know what one is. But sure, let's do this -- I was sitting here thinking I was exhausted and had nothing to say today so this gives us some... oh he's gonna say the word... content. (Sorry.) Especially since they're dropping a huge load on us, and it includes one of my all-time favorite movies -- Atom Egoyan's 1997 masterpiece The Sweet Hereafter! This movie is long long overdue a proper release -- I don't think it's been upgraded since DVD? My tired old copy can finally be buried in the backyard, sent off to the glue factory. Any other fans of this movie? It's definitely the first time I ever took notice of Sarah Polley and for that alone it owns my heart but this story of the reverberations of a catastrophe in a small town is mesmerizing, heartbreaking, and beautiful stuff. Hugely recommended.

Next up they're giving Noah Baumbach's Jay Kelly a physical release -- for most streaming movies this is not guaranteeed but it seems like most of Baumbach's films are safe in Criterion's loving grasp. Even ones as middling as this movie. I am not a fan. I am not one of your faaaaaans, Jay Kelly! There's only so much rumination on George Clooney's ego I can suffer and we passed that tipping point several decades ago. Better that they're upgrading Martin Scorsese's 2019 streaming picture The Irishman to 4K in February as well -- now there's a stunner that actually earns its place. And I'm glad I held off on ordering the blu-ray all this time! It paid off. For once. Not so with Gus Van Sant's Mala Noche, which is also getting an upgrade... right after I finally broke down and bought their old DVD of it. Dammit.

After that there's a little box-set of three films inside what they're calling Victor Sjöström’s Hollywood Masterworks -- the Swedish director's films He Who Gets Slapped with Lon Chaney and The Wind and The Scarlet Letter, both starring Lillian Gish, are featured. I personally have seen two of these three before -- He Who Gets Slapped (wonderfully bizarre) and The Wind -- they're both terrific, so this set is probably a safe bet. 

On my own I probably wouldn't usually think to put Ruggles of Red Gap, a 1935 Leo McCarey comedy starring Charles Laughton, right next to Stephen Chow's slapstick masterpiece Kung Fu Hustle, but Criterion went and made their cover-arts of a similar feel so here we are. I've never seen the former and I haven't seen the latter since it came out -- any fans? Finally the final film on Criterion's February line-up is Spanish filmmaker Carla Simón's latest called Romería, which they've also had playing on the Criterion Channel for awhile now but which I haven't had time to watch yet. I'm a massive fan of Simon's film Summer 1993 though so I will watch this when I've finally got some breathing room. And thus endeth the February haul! What are you most looking forward to?

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, World

Happy Friday!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

Héloïse: It's a life that has advantages. 

There's a library. You can sing or hear music. 

And equality is a pleasant feeling.

Happy birthday to director Céline Sciamma today!

Pick a Bond, Any Bond

I'm not really a Bond person -- I hadn't seen a single 007 movie until Daniel Craig got cast, and then I did go back and watch a few of the older ones, mostly the Connery films but a couple of Moores too. But I have been paying attention to the rumor mill for the new Bond star in Denis Villenueve's reboot because -- well every single name that's been bandied about is a young actor whose name is over there on MNPP's side-bar. I'm invested! Anyway as my friend Andrew runs down at Pajiba today there are five names in contention as of this minute -- we thought they'd narrowed it down to Callum Turner or Jack Lowden when the rumor was those two were testing, but then suddenly Josh O'Connor, Robert Pattinson, and Nicholas Hoult all flared back up again as possbilities. They're jerking us around, they are. (Honestly any of these five men can jerk me around, I am fine with that.) But since we're sitting here twiddling our thumbs instead -- why not a poll? I put it to y'all:

online polls

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Good Morning, World

Miguel Ángel Silvestre is here to stretch you out.

I Hear Hell's Coming

Wait, what's that? An excuse to post a photo of Charles Melton? Why yes I will take advantage of that, shocking exactly no one. (As an aside this led me to scanning through my Melton Archives and oh my god has this boy been good to us over the past few years.) But this news transcends just Chuck, if you can believe it -- it was announced today that the legend the icon the genius Pino Dinoggio will be getting a vinyl release for his Her Private Hell score! It's out in February and you can pre-order it right now at this link. This score is classic Pino, all the sinister luxurious swoon that you'd want from the man who scored Body Double and Dressed To Kill, and I was worried it might slip through the cracks after Refn's movie did just that. Personally I remain one of Her Private Hell's biggest champions -- even with all the truly great movies I've seen this year post-July you'd best believe this movie will still feature high and proud in my favorites of 2026. I'm completely and utterly thrilled that the score is actually getting the release it deserves. 

Matthias Schoenaerts Four Times

I was just thinking about Matty here earlier today (probably because he's been active on Instagram, but not with anything very exciting -- the boy does love a sad-boy meme) and as if summoning news into existence he's suddenly got a new project announced! (And perhaps even more importantly this led me to discovering this photoshoot, via.) He is reuniting with his Disorder co-star Diane Kruger -- y'all have seen Disorder right? It's so good -- for a film called The Writer (thx Mac), which is about a graffiti artist whose work gets stolen from a tunnel and ends up on the auction block. I'm sure much gnashing of teeth about art versus commerce will entail -- hopefully good gnashing. And if y'all have paid attention to Schoenaerts on social media in the past then you probably know he is actually a graffiti artist in real life, so he's probably been dying to get something like this made. Good for him. The dude making the movie is named Matthew Cirulnick  and this will be him directing for the first time, having been a screenwriter before -- he's also really attractive for a screenwriter, so hopefully him and Matthias become a couple and live happily ever after, whilst hot. Now hit the jump for a couple more photos of Matty doing just that...

Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... scrubbing my dirty somethings across

Noah Centineo's washboard. (thx Mac)

Rejoice Pillion Lovers...

... our favorite ruinous dom-sub couple Harry Melling and Alexander Skarsgard are reuniting! Unfortunately not for Pillion 2: Who's the Sub Now?, in which Harry leads Alex around on a dog leash for two hours -- although Hollywood hit me up, I already have that script mentally written! But it's not not good news, what the news actually is. They're going to co-star with Maya Hawke and Hunter Schafer in the new film from Canadian iconoclast Guy Maddin called The Confessions, which is about, and I quote, "a group of condemned nuns bearing witness to the accursed, globe-spanning love triangle of a missing sea captain and his poet wife." Sure! That sure sounds like a Guy Maddin movie. As with Maddin's past couple of films this will be co-directed with Galen Johnson and Evan Johnson -- personally I fucking love love love Rumours, their last movie, so I am fine with this. (And I noticed that Rumours made its way onto Netflix recently so really you have no excuse for not watching that hilarious and bizarre movie immediately.) Anyway naturally I'm hoping that the "love triangle" isn't an entirely hetero one because SNOOZE but even if so... well it's Guy Maddin and he doesn't really do "snooze." But Harry & Alex have such wonderful chemistry, i8t really would be a loss to us all if they didn't capitalize on it. 

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Nicky Buzzes Off

When The Face magazine dropped this photoshoot for Nicholas Hoult back in June I expressed a lot of annoyance that there was no link and no physical magazine to buy, but I did have forty images to share at least -- see all of them here. Now this photoshoot has sprung back up in my timeline, I assume because the movie that Nicky was blond for -- David Leitch's How To Rob a Bank (more to come on that movie soon) -- is out in theaters this weekend. And yet we still don't have a link to share or a physical magazine to buy! I am very frustrated. That said the above and below photos are new ones, not previously shared, so we'll obviously post that shit as quick as our finger-guns can make it happen. Pew pew!

Good Morning, World

Good boy Garrett Wareing was, in his own words, back on his "bullsh*t", by which he means crawling around in the mud in his underwear and then posting lots of photos and videos of it for us all to enjoy. Hooray for Garrett's bullsh*t then!  He'll make coprophiliacs of all of us because we eat it up. (Too early for coprophilia jokes?) Aaaaanyway we look forward to him playing Baby Patrick Wilson in the next Cojuring movie (okay maybe not, I came to hate that franchise) but until then, let's look directly forward, downward really, after the jump specifically...

We're Having a Grandier Time

This has appeared a day early so information is scarce at the moment but Amazon went and dropped their pre-order link for the 4K box-set of Ken Russell's The Devils -- the brand new remastered director's cut edition that's been causing all the fuss this year -- and you can pre-order it right now right here. As I mentioned last week Clockwork WB  was teasing tomorrow as their news-drop day on this so the specifics so far -- an actual release date, what's included in the box-set -- are nil. I imagine they plan on sharing more info tomorrow, in which case I will update this post; but for now, you can pre-order whatever the hell it is at that link! There's also a less thorough special edition for half the price at this link. And Amazon does share the below photo which gives us some idea of what's included in the set. Three discs of material is exciting! And the art is gorgeous. Anyway stay tuned! What an exciting [complimentary?] time to be alive.

ETA okay the official ass announcement dropped this morning whilst I was in a screening, so we're sharing this presumably well after y'all done seen it -- still here I am, due diligence and what not. The Amazon link up above had gone down for a bit but it's back up as of this writing, and we've got all of the details on the set's contents now as well. Hit the jump for the full list...

Five Frames From ?

Good Morning, World

Like, I know he was a slut [complimentry], but were there ever any gay rumors about Warren Beatty? Whilst slutting it out for several decades did he ever you know  broaden his horizons, so to speak? Asking for a friend. (Me. I am asking for me.) Anyway happy Tuesday!

Jonathan Bailey Gets Sacked

Jonathan Bailey has a new project, a new gay project, in the works! Gay gay gay, we love gay. He's going to star opposite Bill Nighy in Insomniac City, an adaptation of an autobiographical book by photographer Bill Hayes about his romance with famed neurologist and noted hottie (see down below) Oliver Sacks. Of course those photos were obviously a long time after this story's being set, since Nighy is 76-years-old and I don't think has a De-Niro-esque transformation in him haha. But still Sacks was a fascinating figure -- I really recommend the doc on his life that came out in 2020 -- and this no doubt will be a great yarn. Dominic Cooke, the director of On Chesil Beach, is directing, along with co-writing the film alongside Hayes himself.  Click here to see a photo of the real-life couple. I think it'll be fascinating to see a film tackle a gay relationship with this much of an age gap -- it's a dynamic in our community that gets ignored but is everywhere and plays out very different from the ones between men and women I think. The power dynamics are not at all the same. Interesting stuff, great actors, cannot wait. 

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