Thank You For This, Jake

Good doggy.

Ben Whishaw Four Times

 (via)

November 6th, 2024

I don't have any starting point or ending point for this post. I just need to write. I had to come into work today, pretend it's a normal day like that, when I just wanted to stay in bed. I am thankful to be surrounded by people who are all just as depressed as I am by last night's election results but I don't want to talk about it with them. And I don't want to listen to them talk about it from across the office. I don't want to skim social media. This is a post written out of a need to shut everything out -- to just focus on my fingertips typing away without knowing where they're going. It probably won't be interesting as such, but it's helping me get through this morning so I'm just going to go with it -- whether I actually hit publish at the end is right now a question mark, one you'll already know the answer to if you're reading it.

On the subway ride to work this morning I was sitting minding my business when a woman tried to shove herself into the small space between me and another woman. I was already up against the bars on the side, over as far as I could go, but apparently this wasn't enough room and the two women - strangers to one another - both turned on me together all of a sudden. To them I was taking up too much space. I wasn't "man spreading" - I am a six foot three not small man, I just take up some room. But they began commiserating on how this was apparently "Trump's America now." I turned my music up - I was comfort-listening to Tori Amos as I do in times of need -- but they went on this way for the entire ride. I was suddenly emblamatic of Trump's America. 

I had a political tweet that went viral a couple of weeks back where I angrily railed against those not voting or voting third party, saying that those actions would do nothing to help the Gazans experiencing an ongoing genocide. It was an angry tweet aimed at someone I know in my own life who was choosing that path -- not close enough to confront her personally, but enough for me to want to vent. Anyway I had to mute the tweet pretty fast as the comments got extremely aggressive quickly. I'd been avoiding even looking back at it since, but yesterday I did, and I saw a bunch of people commenting that of course a white middle-class man would be so blind to the needs of POC and the poor.

Both of those experiences sit on me today, holding hands. All my life I've felt trapped in this giant fumbling white man's body. As I've gotten into many many times here on this site and in my film reviews I was raised poorer than poor -- when my parents separated when I was seven my mother and I moved into two rooms in the house of my former babysitter where I lived until I graduated from high school. We were on food stamps and welfare. My father often skipped or forgot about his visitation weekends. It was just me and my mom, and I was furious and mean to her much of the time. 

It didn't help that we were deeply Pentecostal, and I spent my teenage years falling darker and darker under that spell, becoming more and more convinced as I realized I liked boys not girls that I was evil and destined for hell. I compartmentalized everything. I really still don't feel like an entire human being -- just a pile of boxes stacked up in the shape of one. My father is rotting in a nursing home right now, dementia apparently eating away at him, and I feel nothing about it. I am numb and angry and broken. And I just don't know what to do with strangers looking at me and seeing the problem. I want to fold up into nothing most of the time.

I don't have any answers. You get older and you think you will have answers -- my beard if full of gray hairs but I feel like a child in so many ways. I just want my friends and my loved ones around me. I want to tell them that I love them. And I want to say thank you to each and every one of you who come here and dutifully read my nonsense -- I am extremely shy in person and this site has been in many ways my only outlet. I have built a persona on here that is an expression of some part of me, but nothing like the person you would meet in real life. I suppose it's just another box. But it's been, and meant, so much to me over the years. To have people come and comment and laugh. To help y'all have distractions from the bullshit at our doors. It does give me a little bit of purpose. So thank you. 

One fucking step in front of the other, I guess.

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Stay In Bed, World

 We can pretend it's all just a bad dream, right?

Seb the Man

I haven't watched Sebastian Stan in The Apprentice yet even though it is now on streaming because I have been mentally incapable of spending two hours watching anything about you-know-who before we know the results of today's you-know-what -- I'm hoping all will go the correct way and then I think that I will feel fine watching that movie. But a different Sebastian Stan movie is hitting streaming today that you might want to give a chance, to distract yourself -- his film A Different Man which I saw and adored at Sundance. You can rent ADM right here. If you're made of stronger stuff than I you could watch both movies, even! Seb might not be America's Ass but he's got plenty else going on! (That link is NSFW y'all.) All that said if you need me I'm gonna be over here doing this pose for the next several hours:

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Suspiria (2018)

Madame Blanc: I don't know how aware you are of what times we lived through here 40 years ago, out of which this piece was made. We learned at great cost through those years the value of the balance of things. Every arrow that flies feels the pull of the earth, but we must aim upwards. We need to get you in the air.

Happy birthday to mother Tilda Swinton! 

And let's all get in the air today!

PS you do know a 4K edition of this movie's out next week right?

Pics of the Day

There is a sexy ass photo of Jeremy Allen White meeting Bruce Springsteen on the set of the Bruce Springsteen bio-pic that JAW is starring in -- I maintain that those jeans on Jeremy should be at least two sizes tighter...

... because who could ever forget how tight Bruce wore his back in the day. But I wouldn't be angry if they started making out. Bruce has still got it!

I say this only for the sake of historical verisimilitude obviously but those jeans definitely need to be tighter pic.twitter.com/Xp90MA0PRt

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) October 30, 2024

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Good Morning, World

Haaz Sleiman says it all.
Go vote, sexy people!

ETA oh wait Russell Tovey has something to add!

Good boy, Russell.

Heretic Believes In Peace, Bitch

Is it enough for a movie to simply ask interesting questions in an entertaining manner? Not when they're as offensively and -- even worse, rotely -- answered as they are in Heretic, the religious thriller out this weekend from the screenwriters behind A Quiet Place. Really "the screenwriters behind A Quiet Place" should have been my first warning that this movie was going to be at its heart conservative gibberish, seeing as how that earlier film was at its heart a family-values tradwife fantasia. And really I don't know why I expected anything different going off Heretic's trailers which very clearly lay out that this movie was going to be anti-atheism. 

I suppose I was hoping it would have more up its sleeve? That perhaps it would find more complicated ground to land upon than "The atheist is a maniac and these religious girls are goodness personified." The sad thing is is that all of the actors are terrific, including Hugh Grant as the villain who calls into question all aspects of organized religion. The film's at its best in its first two-thirds when he is accosting Sophie Thatcher's "Sister Barnes" and Chloe East's "Sister Paxton," two Mormons who make the mistake of stumbling through his door one stormy afternoon, with his ideas. It does, as I said up top, at least ask the questions, and put some uncomfortable truths about religion out there for mass public consumption.

But it is quite honestly irresponsible in the year of nobody's lord 2024 to land on the laziest of imaginable conclusions that Heretic lands on, equating people who don't believe in your harmful fucking fairy tales with sicko freaks. 

I've taken a couple of movies in recent years to task for borrowing liberally from Pascal Laugier's 2008 masterpiece Martyrs without really grappling with what Martyrs was getting at -- Barbarian most recently, which turned the pointed pain and suffering at the heart of Laugier's angry film into a yippee fun rollercoaster ride. But Heretic borrows pretty liberally from Martyrs while outrageously flipping that movie's entire point around -- if Martyrs was about the terrifying danger of religious zealotry then Heretic is about the terrifying dangers of, uhhh, disbelief and doubt. What the fuck is this, the Inquisition? 

Really, honestly, though -- is there anything lazier than villainizing disbelievers at this point in time? It's difficult to get into details since it's the last act where Heretic really shows its cards and stops having interesting thoughts about doubt, just grabbing firmly onto the easiest of answers, obliterating any goodwill it'd built up before then. Its skillful performances and manipulating of tension just blaze straight into the same old bullshit in defense of the status quo. So there's only so much credit I can give a movie for being "brave" talking about things other movies refuse to talk about when every conclusion it comes to is this craven. Heretic wears a loose skin-suit of edgy and thoughtful only to slip into something more comfortable -- conventional thinking. This is a horror movie that will make all the wrong people feel right.

Quote of the Day

"... how can you show the love if not the behavior, from the way in which bodies interact, and their faces interact, and their saliva mixes? There was a huge level of commitment from these incredible actors who are basically so happy to do what they love doing — perform!"

That is Luca Guadagnino talking to Variety about filming -- what else? -- sex scenes in Queer, his William Burroughs adaptation out on November 27th starring Daniel Craig and Drew Starkey. Click on over for more thoughts on intimacy and semen from those actors -- I was just amused by Luca's exclamation at the end of that quote -- "Perform!" Click here to read my review if you haven't already -- and no I won't stop pushing it until the movie's out... on blu-ray. Let's be honest. Love these snaps of Craig included at Variety -- looking sharp, Danny boy.

Now a Warning

There is a nice photo of Andrew Scott. Isn't that nice? Ahhh. Nice. Well now that nice is out of the way something less nice -- don't know if you've noticed but there's an election happening in the United States tomorrow. A very very important election. And I'm not going to tell you to vote -- you should fucking well know to vote, and to vote for Kamala Harris; I am generously assuming my readership isn't full of repugnant assholes and that you already understand all of that. But I am going to say that the election has my head in a tizzy so I don't expect to have much of substance to say for the next oh let's be kind to us and say the next 48 hours. My fantasy is that I go to the voting booth tomorrow morning and after insert my Kamala ballot into the machine a little mist-gun pops out and sprays a fine sleeping mist over me and the poll workers then cart us all into a back-room where we sleep until the second the election has been called. And then we all go dance in the streets because the evil shit-ass Republican fuckers have been banished forever, huzzah! That is my fantasy and my wish. But I don't foresee that happening -- meaning the sleeping-mist part; I am honestly optimistic about the election results going our way right now, although due to lasting 2016 PTSD I'm hesitant to say that out loud. So instead I will probably just be off violently refreshing news-sites to stress myself out and curling into a ball and eating everything within reach and probably popping three of four Xanax. Point being -- I don't know that I have a point. At this point I am basically just typing so I don't go back to curling up in a ball. If anybody has anything nice to share, tell me about it in the comments. And if nice stories come into my view and I find the wherewithal to share them I will do so, so maybe I can return the favor and momentarily take y'all's minds off the very real anxiety we're all experiencing. Like -- here's a gif of Jonathan Bailey. Enjoy it. We can do this! (Vote.)

Five Frames From ?

What movie is this?

Andrew Garfield Pants Pornography Parade

I try not to post new photoshoots back to back like I am posting this Andrew Garfield photoshoot here back to back with the new Franz Rogowski one -- it's nice to have a break with you know words or something so we're not just a "hey look at the pretty man" blog -- but I am so infatuated with all of the pants that Andrew wears in this shoot that I can't control myself. They're all so comfy looking! We went through a period of me hating the way actors were being styled for awhile but right now I am feeling represented. I would happily wear every single item of clothing in these photos. Maybe it's the Fall styles? Give me sweater weather and I'm in my element! Hit the jump for them all...

Franz Rogowski Eleven Times

If you'd have asked me last week if we'd be getting Bird star Franz Rogowski cosplaying as a Wall Street douchebag for the cover of the Financial Times magazine this week I'd have said, "You know what? The election is happening next week so it's entirely possible we might pop out the ass-end of a worm-hole and I am keeping all of my options open." So here's another weird sign o' the times -- exactly that has happened. The Rogowski thing, not the worm-hole thing, although who can even tell? 

Anyway seeing Franz dressed up this way has me picturing him playing Patrick Bateman in the American Psycho remake that Luca Guadagnino is supposedly working on (honestly I'll eat my shoe if that film really happens) and... well it would certainly shake that project up. It would be a totally different take than Mary Harron's was! Oh who are we kidding -- Franz would knock it out of the park. He always does. It would be a bold choice though! Hit the jump for the entire photoshoot... 

Good Morning, World

 Got a case of the Mondays? No worries --

Logan Marshall-Green is here to wake you up.

Lucas Bravo Wants Freedom!

Did y'all see the interview at Indiewire with Lucas Bravo earlier this week where he very clearly tried pulling a Caruso (as in David) and complained in depth about the way his character on Emily in Paris has been written lately? (Hilariously calling his character "guacamole.") I never started watching EIP even with all its hot men because it looked truly insufferable, so I think you can guess which side I am on in this -- Lucas is no David Caruso! Look at him for god's sake! Anyway this comes along with...

... him having a new movie out today, so clearly he's got his gorgeous eyes turned big-screen-ward. The movie is called Freedom (aka Libre) and it tells the true story of "the gentleman robber" Bruno Sulak who commited a heap of robberies in France in the 1970s and 80s -- it was directed by Inglourious Basterds actress Mélanie Laurent and you wanna know what? It's pretty good! It's sleek and sexy...

... and fun in the way of movies like The Thomas Crown Affair, and Lucas is genuinely terrific in it. I dug it but I will admit -- he's so easy on the eyes I possibly cannot be trusted. I mean... he gets naked in it. Just saying! I'm supposed to retain my critical faculties in the face of such a barrage? But you can judge for yourselves since the movie was released here in the U.S. right onto Prime Video. And to prep yourself hit the jump for the rest of these photos...

Speaking Of Physical Media...

... and why would we speak of anything else... the unbelivable has happened! The fine folks over at Vinegar Syndrome have finally, finally, FINALLY, got the rights to release Richard Brooks' 1977 film Looking For Mr. Goodbar  -- and on 4K no less! This film contains my favorite Diane Keaton performance -- which is saying a lot since I'm a huge fan -- plus peak Richard Gere. It also has one of the most disturbing endings ever put on-screen so, you know, that's fun. Anyway this hasn't gotten a release since VHS way back in the day -- the story was that the rights to the music in the film made a new release cost prohibitive, but it would appear they got that sorted out! Pre-order the disc right here -- they won't ship until sometime in December but do expect to use up your pateince waiting, VS tends to be kind of slow on that front. Especially when it comes to these big sales. I cannot believe we're finally going to get Richard Gere doing push-ups in a jockstrap in 4K!! Just think how much better this gif will be:

That's not all Vinegar Syndrome has of import this month, though -- they're also releasing Red Rooms, the Quebecois serial killer thriller that I reviewed at Fantasia Fest last year and which I just re-watched a week or so ago and loved even more with a second view. This movie is fantastic. And they're releasing Bent, the searing gay holocaust drama that stars Clive Owen and which features Clive & Nikolaj Coster-Waldau memorably going at it in its opening scenes... 

Heads Up, Happy People

Heads-up, happy people! The vast library of our beloved Criterion Collection is on sale on Amazon right now at 50% off! This will presumably be for the entire month of November as they do this to compete with the same sale at Barnes & Noble that typically starts a little later in the month. That means it also includes pre-orders for movies out before the end of November, which includes Guillermo Del Toro's The Shape of Water, the original Godzilla in 4K, and Paper Moon in 4K! And of course it includes last month's barnstormer of an excellent drop with Todd Solondz' Happiness, a Val Lewton horror double-feature, All of Us Strangers, and that to-die-for Gregg Araki trilogy! And then there's the issue of that massive 40-film 40th anniversary box-set that Criterion is releasing on November 17th -- that's not priced at the full 50% off right now but it is priced at $400, so $10 a movie, which seems like a damn good deal already. Anyway point being click on those links and treat  yourselves to some movies, it will distract you from... [gestures wildly]