Has Chris Pine Seen Zachary Quinto Naked?

.

Or vice versa? That's what I want you to be thinking about when 

you watch Star Trek Into Darkness this weekend. Enjoy!

.

The Hoodoo That You Do

.

If you've seen the trailer for The Conjuring - James Wan's spook-stuffed follow-up to his shockingly great shocker Insidious - then I have bad news for you. You need to try to unsee the trailer. Stick your head in a microwave oven and aim its death rays at that portion of your brain, or you know, do not do that, not that specifically, but maybe just conk yourself on the head a couple of times with something medium-to-medium-heavy dense. Whatever it takes - forget the trailer. And if you have not seen the trailer, do not see the trailer. Because the trailer gives away far too much, and unfortunately for The Conjuring, The Conjuring doesn't have enough to be giving away anything.

And now I am about to get into giving away things, so be prepared for mild spoilers ahead. See, I bring up the trailer at the start because of a specific point, which I think elucidates the problems I had with the movie as a whole as I saw it. In the trailer we see this game that Lily Taylor plays with her kids that they call "The Clapping Game." It's basically hide and go seek, only the seeker is blindfolded and goes about finding the hiders by making them clap on command. It's a great set up for a scare - you've got a person in a weakened state (blindfolded) totally unaware that they should be scared, being led into a space where all is not what it seems - the tension comes from the fact that we the audience can see what they cannot, and it activates our "Oh hell no don't go in there!" sense that horror movies so thrive on.

So in the trailer this whole thing plays out somewhat predictably, but it's got a great jump scare at the end that utilizes space nicely - those clapping hands do not come from where we think those clapping hands are going to come from. One of the greatest things about Insidious was tricks like this, and I wish horror movies were on the whole better about it - leading our eye in one direction, setting up our expectations for one thing, and then zinging us with the unexpected. In my favorite scare in Insidious, when you see that demon half hidden behind Patrick Wilson's head, that shot smashes a whole bunch of set-up in a way you don't see coming at all. They cut to that shot of Wilson a few times before the demon shows up in the frame, so that last time, when that demon is there but barely there, just around and behind him, you're looking at the shot for a second before you even realize what you're seeing - your eyes are working over the image and it just doesn't gel at first... but when it does, wham. And that's just one example - that film does it enough times that it totally won me over. I don't tend to be a jumper at horror movies, but Insidious had me hopping like Frogger.

So the trailer for The Conjuring with that unexpected clap coming from the darkness over Taylor's shoulder like that, it gave me hopes that Wan & Co were on-board with keeping it smart about playing with the frame and all that jazz in smart unexpected ways. But something happened at some point in the making of The Conjuring - I don't know if they got nervous in post-production or just bored maybe or if the studio wanted it or what, but this unexpected scare has been changed, and for the worse. Now, right before the clap comes out of the darkness there is a ghost voice that whispers I don't even remember what, some stupid shit, and my god does it just murder any momentum dead dead a million times over dead.

It reminds me of Sinister, that recent Ethan Hawke horror flick that was supposed to be about snuff movies but by the end became a terrible hodge-podge of Ghost Kid nonsense (here's my review of Sinister) - I don't know who it is on this entire Earth who finds little kids done up in drug-store quality ghost make-up actually scary, but they need to step off and stop ruining my horror movies. Insidious had some of that in the last act that I try to forget about - all those ridiculous Doll People in the mist or whatever. And because James Wan is obsessed with dolls he crams one into this movie too, never really going much of anywhere with it. 

But as I did with Insidious those are flaws that I could look past if the editing and camera-work is lively and on its toes, but I can't think of one scare in The Conjuring that lifted me out of my seat. Okay there is one really terrific (yet brief) sequence, where one of Lily Taylor's daughters is convinced there is something in the room with her - the camera stares and stares and stares at the darkness where she says she sees something, and it's monstrously unsettling. But when the bangs and booms start piling up and the moments come like the one with the clapping game, Wan just can't seem to get out of his own way. Why is that damned whisper there? It doesn't add anything except a complete deflation of all of the tension he'd been building. When the bad things start revealing themselves I can see him straining for the sort of affect he got time and again in Insidious, without result. The camera swerves towards unexpected angles a few times to reveal something, but it keeps feeling half- or over-baked. It keeps feeling as if you're waiting for the scare to come so long that tension turns into annoyance, and then the scare comes right when you're past caring. The rhythm is all off, somehow.

Thing is, I saw this movie two months before it's being released, so I kind of hope they're still in the editing process - there's good stuff in here that can probably be tweaked to make something out of. The actors are all giving it their all. I'm not entirely nuts about the turn it takes in the last act, but Taylor and Farmiga do some great work in there anyway. I do wish the movie were having as much fun as Farmiga's costumes were promising - that collar promised me entertainment of the loopiest variety, but Wan keeps the proceedings pretty much entirely straight-faced. And they need to shave down the Giant Arrows they have pointing towards where things are headed, too - we're willing to follow you; there's no need to shoot off flares illuminating the whole landscape time and again. Can the ghost whispers and trust the silence, and the darkness, and aim your camera deep deep deep into those ever dark spaces. We want to stare into it - it's what we're here to do!

.

On Set Dom

.

(via) Here are a couple of pictures of Dominic Cooper in Georgia filming Need For Speed... and yes that's a movie based on that racing video-game,...and yes it is directed by the dude who made Act of Valor... and yet here we are talking about it. So is the power of Dominic Cooper. That's his co-star Dakota Johnson, the daughter of Melanie Giffith and Don Johnson, pictured along with him. The film also stars Aaron Paul and Michael Keaton. Anyway I have to go now, I must catch a midnight train to... somewhere...

Which Is Hotter?

.

Kirk or Spock?

.

poll by twiigs.com

.

Five Frames From ?

.

What movie is this?

.

Matthew Wilkas Three Times

.

Gayby actor Matthew Wilkas proved pretty popular in the 2012 Gratuitites - he topped his division, and made a good showing in the finals, too. So I know y'all like him. He got good news this week - he's on that show with Jonathan Groff that got picked up by HBO, the one from Weekend director Andrew Haigh that everybody's referring to as the "gay Girls." So we're looking forward to watching his pecs bounce around in the future.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Inland Empire (2006)

Neighbor: Is there a murder in your film? 

Nikki: Uh, no. It's not part of the story. 

Neighbor: No, I think you are wrong about that. 

Nikki: No. 

Neighbor: Brutal fucking murder! 

Nikki: I don't like this kind of talk; 

the things you've been saying. 

I think you should go now. 

Neighbor: Yes. Me, I... I can't seem to remember 

if it's today, two days from now, or yesterday. 

I suppose if it was 9:45, I'd think it was after midnight! 

For instance, if today was tomorrow, you wouldn't 

even remember that you owed on an unpaid bill. 

Actions do have consequences. And yet, 

there is the magic. If it was tomorrow, 

you would be sitting over there. Do you see?

Happy 72, Grace Zabriskie!

.

I Am Link

.

--- Spy Inception - If I were a betting man (I most certainly am not) I'd wager something big against this ever happening, but let the geeks toes curl for a moment - rumors abound that Christopher Nolan is in talks with the James Bond producers to maybe direct the next Bond movie. He's already got a film lined up though - that one called Interstellar with Mtthew McConaughey, so I can't see this happening unless they feel like waiting three years for another Bond movie. But what the fuck do I know? Who the fuck am I? Exactly.

--- Sympathy For The Devil - The guys who made the gay-centric doc The Times of Harvey Milk (a masterpiece if ever there was one) and the gay-centric biopic Howl are set to turn their historically-inclined eyes upon anti-gay activist Anita Bryant, and Uma Thurman is going to star. This is crazy but really interesting news, right? Totally out of nowhere but I want to see this movie right now.
.

--- All About Adam - Hey I haven't mentioned Frances Ha in an hour or so, that's no good! Our pal Joe is talking about the actor Adam Driver over at Tribeca - Driver, best known for playing Adam on Girls, has a small but memorable part in Frances Ha, you know. We very much like him, we do.

--- And Speaking of people we very much like, Emily Blunt has landed the leading lady role in that Into the Woods musical with Meryl Streep and Johnny Depp (and maybe Jake Gyllenhaal and Chris Pine!) for director Rob Marshall. Can she sing? Who cares! She's Emily Blunt! Alright alright musical-theater-fans don't get your panties in a bunch, I am only jesting.

--- Sexy Drifter - Garrett Hedlund has just replaced Jason Clarke in William Monahan's new movie called Mojave, which is about a "tortured artist who goes into the desert to sort his head out, only to come across a murderous drifter." I am attracted to both Clarke and Hedlund, though in very different ways - it's interesting to think on how they would play such a role differently.

--- Difrent Places - I saw Showgirls! The Musical! the other night - see, I took a picture! - and had a blast at it but I'm not going to review it since all I could really say is, "It's the tits!" Thankfully Rick Juzwiak wrote up more on it over at Gawker. If you're in New York and you love Verhoeven's stripper-bomb then you should definitely go see this.
.

Happy Unofficial Frances Ha Day!

.

I flirted with the idea of making today Frances Ha Day, but I lack the focus to pull that off - as soon as I said it was Frances Ha Day something crazy like Jake Gyllenhaal being photographed making out with Michael Fassbender would happen and whoosh bye bye Frances Ha Day. But let's unofficially call it that anyway. The movie is out in theaters in New York and Los Angeles today and as I tweeted last evening y'all owe it to yourself to seek it out even if you have to buy a plane ticket to do so. I mean in the time it took me to write that sentence Star Trek Into Darkness just made more than Frances Ha will make in its entire run, so we need to make a little extra effort for some quality cinema, methinks.

Here's my review from the New York Film Festival where I first saw it last Fall. In the New York Times critic AO Scott, who seems to adore Greta Gerwig nearly as much as I do, called the film "a bedtime story for young adults," and that seems like an entirely lovely way to put it. I actually saw the film a second time last weekend, and my adoration didn't diminish a smidge. Here's a lousy picture I took of director Noah Baumbach and Greta Gerwig at the Q&A after that screening...

The lighting was really bad, it wasn't my fault! (So was the Q&A, which you can read about here. The dude asking the "social context" question was a total douchebag.) Anyway if you are in New York or LA and are planning on seeing this wonderful wonderful movie, you should know that Noah Baumbach will be at a few screenings here in new York, while Greta Gerwig will be at a few screenings in LA. That info's below. I'm seeing the film a third time, yes a third time, on Sunday. And I can't wait!

Two more things - go read this piece over at TFE about why Frances Ha probably won't make Greta a giant star and why that's a good thing. Lovely work by Tim there, and I totally agree.

And then you owe it to yourself to read through this glorious piece at the NYT where Miss Gerwig herself goes through a single scene in the film that they did forty-two takes for, take by take by take, forty-two times, and breaks down what worked and what didn't in each one, and what was going through her mind as both an actress and a writer during the process. This woman... she is the best woman, full stop. (thx Mac)
.

Good Morning, World

.

A happy 39th birthday to Sendhil Ramamurthy, best known for playing Mohinder on Heroes. I hated him on that show but I guess enough time's passed that we can move along. At least to the ogling portion of the program. He's been working pretty steadily ever since with roles on Covert Affairs and now that Beauty and the Beast show which I never remember is actually a thing.

I Know Just How You Feel, Vera

.

Stay tuned...

.

What A Lovely Bunch Of Nymphos

.

(via) I may have called that shirtless picture of Hugh Jackman today's "picture of the day" too quickly, because this cast photo from Lars Von Trier's Nymphomaniac is like they plopped "Where's Waldo?" down on the set of a sex snuff film and I love it. I love it! I embiggened the shot above from the original, which is terribly small for our purposes... which mainly consist of zooming in on Jamie Bell as much as we can where he stands in a wife-beater beside a mouth-taped Lars in the background while holding a roll of paper towels which are obviously meant for, you know, all that quicker picker upping. Dirty dirty dirty. I love it!

.

I Am Link

.

--- Revving With Refn - Here's a truly delightful chat over at The New York Times with director Nicolas Winding Refn from Cannes, in which he talks about falling in love with Ryan Gosling, his fetishization of masculinity, turning Kristen Scott Thomas into Donatella Versace, and all of the pills that Lars Von Trier is on. I told you - delightful. (thx Mac)

--- All Mandy - My pretend best frenemy Amanda Seyfried has a new role - she's going to star in Z For Zachariah, which is an adaptation of a sci-fi young adult-ish book from the 1970s I guess.  Anybody read it? Chiwetol Ejifor and Chris Pine are set to co-star - what's neat is it's Ejiofor that's playing her love interest. It's a shame that it's still a thing I notice right away - interracial romance - but we really don't get it all that often still.

--- Space Mien - Cabin in the Woods director and Joss acolyte Drew Goddard has lined up a second film! It's called The Martian and it's about an astronaut who gets trapped on Mars. I guess it's based off an e-book. The influx of smart science-fiction, which I assume this will be, or try to be, as of late is a very happy thing, innit?

--- The Cannibal - Deadline is reporting that there is interest from at least one cable network as well as Amazon to pick it up if NBC decides not to renew Hannibal. They don't name the cable network. Hannibal is apparently the only primetime drama that we don't yet know the fate of, but then it started later than all the rest didn't it?

--- Good Mother - Also on the TV beat - we were just talking about Anna Faris' sitcom called Mom yesterday, and now there's a trailer! I have not watched it yet. I am so scared it will look terrible. Somebody tell me it's safe!

--- Dickies Everywhere - Yesterday The Film Experience took on The Talented Mr. Ripley for its "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" series, and I think Nat's write-up might be one of my favorites he's ever done. Course it helps that I love the movie so much. Wish I'd gotten around to rewatching it in order to play myself! Maybe this weekend. Although who am I kidding, this NSFW one is totally gonna win. See all of the picks for best shot right here.

--- Her Vice - Reese Witherspoon's joined the cast of Paul Thomas Anderson's next flick Inherent Vice, marking a reunion between her and her Johnny Cash, Joaquin Phoenix who's the film's lead. Also joining - Jena Malone, who circa Donnie Darko I loved but have grown a little wary of lately.

--- And finally, I haven't have a moment to watch this new trailer for Guillermo Del Toro's robot-versus-monster-mash Pacific Rim yet, but according to the people who have it is chock-filled with more hot monster action. Somebody let me know if there's any hot Hunnam or Elba action and I'll make it a priority, watching this right away.

.

.

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

.

Salem's Lot (1979)

It's been a shamefully long time since I've seen Tobe Hooper's Salem's Lot, which is by far the best out of all the television versions of Stephen King's stories, so I had totally forgotten about this scene until earlier this week whilst reading this interview with Bryan Fuller that I'd linked to, wherein he name-checks this as a formative moment both for him and for his new series Hannibal:

Buzzfeed: Let’s talk about some specifics. The crime that sets things off is a serial killer who impales his victims on antlers. We then see that imagery a lot. How did you arrive at it? And how did you think about showing it?

Bryan Fuller: In Red Dragon, there were a few pages about the Minnesota Shrike. And the Minnesota Shrike was a serial killer who was murdering young women in the Minnesota area. That was about as much as we knew from the books, so it was about coming up with a striking visual motif that could also serve as a psychological time bomb for Will Graham. If we’re going back to root inspirations for impalations on antlers, there are quite a few horror movies where we’ve seen antlers used as weapons in one way or another. For me, it was as a pre-pubescent lad in the Pacific Northwest, watching Tobe Hooper’s Salem’s Lot in the late ’70s, and being terrified when James Mason picks up a man and trots over to a wall of antlers and impales him. That image stuck with me as a 7-year-old. "

So this one's for you, Bryan! 

That attic of antlers did seem awfully familiar...

... now that he mentions it. Although...

... I personally first think of Silent Night Deadly Night when I think of people being killed with antlers. I've long wanted to do that SNDN scene for this series but it's so boob-heavy, you know? We're just not really the place for that. But bless the amazing Linnea Quigley - she's an icon.
.
.
But back to Salem's Lot - what this scene most reminds of watching it now is the first time we see Leatherface attack in Tobe Hooper's other white-meat masterpiece, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. It's shot really similarly. You can watch the scene above, but here's a breakdown...

We have a character all by himself - in TCM's case it's the adorable Kirk, while in Salem's Lot it's the slightly less adorable Dr. Norton - wandering into a dark space that he most certainly should not be wandering into all by himself, when...

... he sees the presence of dead animals.

 Which he heads towards.

And there he meets his maker.

His dead maker.

And now that I think about it, bones

are awfully important to Poltergeist too...

I don't know that we can say whether Hooper was working something out with this recurring motif or not; maybe he just found something that worked, and ran with it. But work it does, in the creep out way whilst totally resonating on a deeper thematic and symbolic level. DEATH IS HERE it says in big bold letters, yet his characters are drawn towards it again and again. Knock knock, let me in...

Links to all the previous Ways Not To Die after the jump...