Josh Hutcherson's Jungle Fever

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Have a good weekend, everybody.

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To Bullhead And Beyond

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I noticed a couple of weeks ago a spike in people getting to MNPP by searching for the Belgian actor Matthias Schoenaerts - we'd fawned over him in a rather sturdy gratuitous post way back in September - and wondered why, but only today did we realize that his big buzzy movie Bullhead was just now coming out. Back when we ogled him then was when we'd first heard about the movie, but we didn't know anything about it getting a release yet - well, it got a surprise Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Film and now here it is primed for center stage and buoyed by enthusiastic critics. I can't wait to see it...

... although I think I might have to wait, because this is one of those weekends of confluence where I suddenly have too much to do to even think I can properly keep up with it. Mainly, this year's truly amazing Film Comment Selects at the Film Society of Lincoln Center is starting. You might recall I wrote up what I am seeing a few weeks back. That's eating up a whole bunch of my time for the next week.

But on top of that there's this Austrian movie Michael that just opened at Film Forum that sounds very very up my alley: 

"A chilling debut feature from the casting director of Michael Haneke’s THE WHITE RIBBON. Michael is a timid insurance agent, a milquetoast loner with a secret: he’s holding a 10-year-old boy captive in a locked room in his basement. Chronicling a five-month period, MICHAEL is a tense portrait of how seemingly mundane lives may hide the darkest of secrets — and how monstrous individuals walk inconspicuously among us."

Obviously, they had me at Haneke. Beyond that, I might want to try and, I don't know, breathe air and sleep some this weekend. Sigh. It's so very difficult being me.

Those two arty-farty subtitle-type movies aside, I wrote up my thoughts on everything coming out this weekend over at Celebrity Beehive. That includes the second Ghost Rider movie (hey sexy directing duo Neveldine and Taylor) and This Means War (hey sexy acting duo Chris Pine and Tom Hardy) - why could't those four have just pooled their resources and by "pooled their resources" naturally I mean "explicit fourgy action." Naturally.

This Weekend's Homework Lesson...

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... is to read up on the "Ulster Cycle" of Irish mythology, because Michael Fassbender has just announced a movie project for the time being called Irish Myths in which he will play Cuchulain, who is apparently this branch of mythology's central hero. (Way to cast yourself high, Fassy.) The story has been written by the writer of (snooze) Public Enemies; there's no director attached yet. Anybody have anything to share on this subject, or should I just dive right into Wikipedia then? Lernin iz fun! (pic via)
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When There's No Room Left In Hell Or Basic Cable

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I assume that by now some of you have watched the latest episode of The Walking Dead that aired this past Sunday? I've made it clear previously that I think the show's pretty much terrible and I only watch it now for the beyond stellar zombie work by Greg Nicotero (although I did think they gave us a great final ten minutes to December's mid-season finale). 

And I still think the show's pretty much terrible now, don't get me wrong. I know a lot of people who've had problems with the show had problems with the stagnancy of the survivors - that they just seemed to sir around doing nothing episode after episode - but that's not really where my problem lay. I imagine there'd be a lot of boredom to the post-apocalypse, and if the show were deft at handling its characters this could be fascinating stuff. But no, there's no deftness. Just blunt broad obviousness, time and again, and it's laid on cartoonishly by too many of the actors - when you want nothing more than to see approximately 75% of the people on-screen have their intestines sucked down like spaghetti by undead ghouls, then we have a problem. 

Anyway besides that a part of me is as much as ever living on the fumes of hope that we'll get to see Jon Bernthal and Sarah Wayne Callies torn limb from limb, I did think this most recent episode did a couple of small things right. (beware slight spoilers for the most recent episode) First, that little comic bit with Lori having to chase down the severed arm that fell off the truck was funny, and "funny" is a word I'd come to think the show was allergic to. More dark humor like that, show! Sitting around watching everybody huff and puff like hyperventilating spray-tanned skeletons grows a little bit wearisome. 

And secondly, that scene in the bar with Michael Raymond-James (hey Rene!) was killer (pun obviously intended). Maybe I was just glad to see somebody else's face for a change, but it felt like a moment straight out of the far-superior comics - something that spun the show's reason for being off into an interesting episodic way. It asked something from us as viewers - the most basic question of apocalyptic fiction really: what would we do if we were placed in this moment? - it didn't just smash us in the face with it. Credit where credit's due. Now if only the other forty minutes or so hadn't been a tedious stew of unbearable accents and brow-furrowing we'd be getting somewhere.

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Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Starship Troopers (1997)

Zander: My God. How could this happen?

Carmen: We thought we were smarter than the Bugs.

If there's one thing I have learned from the movies, it is that Denise Richards is not smarter than bugs. Aww that was mean. I love Denise Richards, seriously. That crazy woman is smart as a fox really - she was in Starship Troopers, Wild Things, Drop Dead Gorgeous, she played a Bond Girl (ha ha as a scientist), and she threw her laptop out of a hotel window and hit an old lady in the head with it - how could I not love Denise Richards? Happy 41st birthday, Denise!

I Am Link

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--- Get Roman - Some attractive young chap named Jamie Blackley - he kind of looks like James Franco? - has been cast in what they're calling the sort-of-lead-role in the sequel to 300. Mkay. I suppose he looks good in a leather diaper then? He seems kind of scrawny, and if that tattoo is real they will have some extensive CG work to do on him. Hmm. Not that they don't basically turn the men in the 300 movies into cartoons, I suppose.

Also at that link they say that Rodrigo Santoro's been confirmed for the film to reprise playing the giant golden weirdo Xerxes, which I can't remember having heard was happening before. I did love the sight of him in his big spangled underpants.

--- Spider Bum - There's a gallery of Amazing Spider-Man pictures over here and it has several shots of Andrew Garfield in the costume - assuming it's him in most of them since he's got the mask on - that I hadn't seen before which is, of course, always something worth looking at. Especially one of the least touched-up clearest HQ versions of the infamous bum shot that I have seen, seen there to the right. Click it to grow, and grow, and grow. I will never ever get tired of that.

--- Z Man - Teeny tiny human being Gael Garcia Bernal is going to don the littlest black cape and mask you ever did see to fight thimble-sized villains as the lead in a new version of Zorro. they're calling it "a futuristic reboot," so I guess they'll be robots he's fighting, or whatever. Teeny tiny robots. Coffee-makers, perhaps.

--- Red Ruffalo - I clicked on this link because it was about Gregg Araki's next movie (it's going to be "a twisted police-thriller" of all things, called The Womb; even though I enjoyed Kaboom, his return to his old sophomoric stomping grounds, it'll be good for Gregg to shake things up, I think) but the link also gave news on another movie that sounds interesting - something called Red Light Winter, which will star Mark Ruffalo and Billy Crudup as best friends (you have me already, movie) and Kirtsen Dunst as the prostitute between them. Hot!

--- Fassycentric - The screenwriter for the second X-Men Muppet Babies movie spoke to MTV News and told them that this new movie will be "Magneto-centric," and does that really surprise anybody? That the world would want to focus in on Michael Fassbender? I thought not. Let's just hope they keep those snug trousers he wore that one time around for a reboot of their own.

--- And finally, I hear that Disney is bracing themselves for a big flop with John Carter? That would be a shame, we wouldn't mind staring at Taylor Kitsch in his tattered little costume for several more movies. (Although I hope they realize that if they'd had him totally naked like he is in the books they wouldn't have to worry, they'd be having a five hundred billion dollar opening weekend.) Plus the second book is where the story gets seriously anti-religion, and I want to see Disney try to squirm out of that! Anyway there's a big new gallery of pictures from the movie right here - lots Kitsch-nips on display - and AICN has a couple new clips, and this one where JC meets alien-pup Woola is pretty amazing. And not just because it involves a lot of Kitsch writhing around in his tattered little costume.

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Jon Hamm Five Times

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Call Me Gay Sherlock

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Sniffing out sexual peccadilloes everywhere I look! (I just wanted to use the word "peccadilloes." I don't think I have ever used that word in a sentence before! This is exciting.) Anyway. Don't call me Gay Sherlock. But do listen to what I have come up with. I saw two bits of news this morning that had me putting my double-billed hunter's cap on and striking a thoughtful pose. First up, I saw this:

"Sophia Bush and her long-time boyfriend Austin Nichols have called it quits. The 29-year-old actress has been dating Austin, 31, since they co-starred on One Tree Hill together. A source told Us Weekly Sophia “didn’t think he was the one,” and added “she’s moving on.”"

So Austin's single, eh? Or you know, "single," since I have my doubts about the state of his relationship-status as its stood for a few years now. Ahem.

Anyway how is he spending his "newly single" time? Via his Twitter:

He's in Berlin at the film festival meeting Meryl Streep, is he? Hmm I swear I heard something about somebody else being at the Berlin Film Festival presenting this very same Meryl Streep person with an award just the other day...

What a coincidence! Just a couple of "single" guys on the town,
tearing it a new one, is all...

Good Morning, World

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A happy 31st birthday to Joseph Gordon-Levitt today. Pickings be slim for what's left of him for me to post that I haven't already - I was tempted to post more pictures of him in his tighty-whities in Hesher but I've already posted so many... these moderately satisfying shirtless shots above are from the 2009 movie Uncertainty, which certainly was. The most memorable thing about that movie was the fact that Joe was actually at the screening of it I went to and sat right across from me at a vantage point so I could stare at him the entire time, so I only half paid attention to the movie anyway. This was especially weird slash awesome during the film's sex scene, which he seemed not at all weirded out by but... kind of into. He leaned a little bit forward. I don't want to read too much into some vaguely remembered body language but I bet you he had a full-on boner, is my point. (I think of Joe as being the type to like showing off, thanks to that Shortbus jerk-off rumor.) So anyway it took all I had in me not to jump on him right then and there, the end.

There are Fifty-Seven Days...

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... until the Joss Whedon-scripted Drew Goddard-directed and Chris Hemsworth-starring The Cabin in the Woods comes out on April 13th. 57! That's not really that much considering the fact that we've been waiting for about four years. For real, I just went back through all my Joss Whedon posts and found what I think is my first mention of the movie, and it was in July of 2008. To give you some perspective on that, looking at the surrounding posts at that time I was also really excited about the trailer for Quantum of Solace and the fact that Helena Bonham Carter might have a tiny part in the new Terminator movie. Good grief.

Anyway, 57 days. I can deal with that. I also might be very very quiet on the movie until then, because I thought the trailer for it might have given away too much and I don't want to see any more footage, lest I spoil myself completely. The fact that I've made it four years and not had it ruined already is incredible, really.

So anyway, keeping with what I just said about trying not to spoil myself for it in these last 57 days, hey look there's a new interview with Joss Whedon talking about the movie! And since it's Joss Whedon talking about horror, I just have to go and quote all of it, because it's better than the union of chocolate and peanut butter, Joss and horror. Man I cannot wait for this thing!

“It’s basically a very loving hate letter... On some level it was completely a lark, me and Drew [Goddard, director] trying to figure out what the most fun we could have would be. On another level it’s a serious critique of what we love and what we don’t about horror movies.

I love being scared. I love that mixture of thrill, of horror, that objectification/identification thing of wanting definitely for the people to be alright but at the same time hoping they’ll go somewhere dark and face something awful.

The things that I don’t like are kids acting like idiots, the devolution of the horror movie into torture porn and into a long series of sadistic comeuppances. Drew and I both felt that the pendulum had sung a little too far in that direction."

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Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... doing the three R's: 

reading and riding and Ryan.

(click to embiggen) Oh boy, a new chance to indulge my two favorite things in the world - good looking fellows in some state of undress, and bookshelves. Hooray! When the twain ever do meet it's a celebration, and this time's an especially good one, because it involves Dick. Casablancas, that is. Ryan Hansen, who played with Dick on Veronica Mars and Kyle on Party Down and got shot through the face with an arrow in the Friday the 13th remake...

... that is, aka one of our most favorite people, and one we don't get to talk about often enough. And there he is striking a pose for us in front of bookshelves! I do, Ryan!

These pictures are from some show he was on called Friends With Benefits that I'm pretty sure I never even heard of. He apparently spent a whole lot of time on the show taking his clothes off though, which you'll see since I've got a thousand and a half pictures to post, but can I just say first off that Ryan has aged well. Really well. He's let his natural fuzziness come in for one, which magnifies his sexiness to the Nth degree.

Nnnnnth. So like I said I've got a whole lot of pictures from this show to post, but all of this was actually brought about because of actual real news, and not just my hormones. Deadline take it away:

"Party Down and Veronica Mars alum Ryan Hansen has landed the lead in the Fox comedy pilot El Jefe. The project, from writers David Guarascio & Moses Port and Sony TV, centers on an affable but lost 30-year-old (Hansen) who, tossed out of his Brentwood home, moves in with his longtime Latin American nanny and goes head to head with her strong-willed son and finds himself in a family and work life very different than the ones he grew up in."

So it sounds for the best that I never watched Friends With Benefits, because that shit is obviously super dead. But Ryan moves on, and I hope this show's good, because my beloved Dick deserves good things. HIT THE JUMP for a mountain of pics.

Voss Is Boss

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This Saturday February 18th marks the 30 year anniversary of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's second-to-last movie Veronika Voss, of which I am a big stinking fan. I wrote up a few thoughts on it over at The Film Experience today in its honor... and I couldn't help myself, I had to take the opportunity to once again holler about how Jeremy Renner needs to set aside the action movies for a minute and make the Fassbinder bio-pic his face was made for. I'm somewhat obsessed with making it happen. But seriously.

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Thursday's Ways Not To Die

Shark Night (2011)

I guess we now know who would win in the battle between a shark and a jet-ski. Wait, what's that? We already knew the answer to that age-old question thanks to the 2002 mega-classic Shark Attack 3: Megalodon?

Oh goodness. I guess we did. Well, I guess we now know what would happen if it was a hot person on the jet-ski, like Chris Zylka. That's something new.

What I love about this scene - well, you know, besides the fact that it features Chris Zylka getting eaten by a giant shark while riding a jet-ski - is how poorly they managed the day-for-night. The scene was obviously shot in the daylight, but then they just sort of murked it up with these dark splotches that never sit still. I lightened the frames up above so we could see what the hell was going on except in that gif, where you can see its original murkiness. Here's a picture from how it was originally shot:

It's just one more sign of quality from this movie, along with the top-notch acting and plot. It really is impressively amazing watching the knots it has to tie itself into to keep getting these kids to go into the water, even though the water is filled with hundreds of bloodthirsty sharks! It's so easy to keep getting them into the water! Bunch of brainiacs, this lot. 

I wish I'd bothered to see the thing when it was in theaters because I'm sure the 3D added some pizzazz, but I think all the same I probably enjoyed it about as much as I would have either way. It's no Piranha 3D, but it's got its moments.

Yeah, those are most of its moments.

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Previous Ways Not To Die: Hot Oil Treatment -- Tucked In By Jason -- Just A Pair of Snowbodies -- Poison Pellet Kibble Swap -- Dolly Disassembled -- Fire Escape Fall Out -- Unbuggered -- Tell 'Em Large Marge Sent'cha -- Blue Man Gooped -- Tongue Stung -- Now Wouldn't Cha, Barracuda? -- Leaving on a Rat Plane -- Panthers! -- Fashion Faux-Pwned -- "It's Just A Box." -- Blasted Pigeons -- Taunting Ahnuld -- The Too Hot Tub -- Beyond the Veil -- Sunken Prayers-- Super Crack -- Brains Blown -- Fur For The Boogens -- White Hot Bunny Rabbit Rage --Dragged To Hell -- The TV Van That Dripped Blood -- Don't Mess With Mama -- Heads Ahoy --Martyred For Sheep -- Heads Nor Tails -- He Loves Me Knot -- The Great Bouncing Brad --Miss Kitty's 8 Mishaps -- Boat Smoosh -- Meeting the French-Tipped Menace -- A Magic Trick -- Slick Suck -- We Who Walk Here Walk Alone -- Raptor Bait -- Kneegasm'd -- Dare to Dream in Fincher -- Reach Out and Throttle Someone -- De-Faced -- Voluntary Drowning -- Cross Borne -- Pulled Up Hell's Sphincter -- An Arrow Up The Ass - The Numerous Violent Unbecomings of Olive Oyl -- Ack! Ack! Zap! -- Baby's First Acid Splash -- Chop, Drop and Sashimi Roll -- Forever Rafter -- Can't You Hear Me Now? -- Daisies Ways #5 - Harpoony Side Up -- Acid Dip -- On a Wing and a Prey -- For Standing in the Way of Sappho -- Busting Rule Number Three (For The Purpose of Number Two) -- Daisies #4 - Window Dressed To Killed --Hands Off the Haas Orb -- Bullet Ballet -- A Single Vacancy at the Roach Motel -- A School Bus Slipped Thru The Ice -- Trache-AAHHHH!!!-tomy'd - For Mel Gibson's Sins -- A Wide Stanced Slashing --- Daisies Ways #3 - Scratch n' Snuffed -- The Victim of a Viscous Hit & Run-- Curled -- Kabobbed -- Daisies Ways #2 - Aggravated Cementia -- Boo! Nun! -- 2009's Ways Not To Die -- Bug Scratch Fever -- Daisies Ways #1 - Deep Fat Fried in My Own Unique Blend of 500 Herbs & Spices -- By the Yard End of the Stick -- Screwed From A Very Great Distance-- A Righteous Bear-Jew Beatdown -- Fisted By Hugo Sitglitz -- Xeno Morphed -- Fuck-Stuck -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 4 -- Lava Bombed -- The Cradle Will Rock... Your Face Off!!! -- The Food of the Nilbog Goblins -- The Slugs Is Gonna Gitcha -- Phone Shark -- Hide The Carrot -- Sarlacc Snacked -- Avada Kedavra!!! -- Hooked, Lined and Sinkered -- "The Libyans!" -- Axe Me No Questions -- Pin the Chainsaw on the Prostitute -- The Wrath of the Crystal Unicorn -- The Ultimate Extreme Make-Over -- Drown In A Sink Before The Opening Credits Even Roll -- The Dog Who Knew Too Much -- Don't Die Over Spilled Milk -- Inviting the Wrath of Aguirre -- An Inconceivable Outwitting -- The Five Point Palm Exploding Heart Technique -- Nipple Injected Blue Junk -- Your Pick Of The Deadly Six -- Thing Hungry --Don't Fuck With The Serial Killer's Daughter -- DO Forget To Add The Fabric Softener -- Any Of The Ways Depicted In This Masterpiece Of Lost Cinema -- Rode Down In The Friscalating Dusklight -- Good Morning, Sunshine! -- Mornin' Cuppa Drano -- The Cylon-Engineered Apocalypse -- Tender-Eye-zed -- Martian Atmospheric Asphyxiation -- Maimed By A Mystical Person-Cat -- The Sheets Are Not To Be Trusted -- Handicapable Face-Hacked -- I Did It For You, Faramir -- Summertime In The Park... Of A Pedophile's Mind -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 3 -- Strung Up With Festive Holiday Bulbs By Santa Claus Himself -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 2 -- A Vengeful Elevator God: Part 1 -- Decapitated Plucked Broiled & Sliced -- Head On A Stick! -- A Trip To The Ol' Wood-Chipper -- Pointed By The T-1000 --Sucking Face With Freddy Krueger -- A Pen-Full Of Home-Brewed Speed to The Eye --Motivational Speech, Interrupted -- A Freak Ephemera Storm -- When Ya Gotta Go... Ya Gotta Go -- Hoisted By Your Own Hand Grenade -- Having The Years Suction-Cupped Away --Criss-Cross -- Turned Into A Person-Cocoon By The Touch Of A Little Girl's Mirror Doppleganger -- Satisfying Society's "Pop Princess" Blood-Lust -- Done In By The Doggie Door-- Tuned Out -- Taking the 107th Step -- Rescuing Gretchen -- Incinerated By Lousy Dialogue-- Starred & Striped Forever -- Vivisection Via Vaginally-Minded Barbed-Wire -- Chompers (Down There) -- Run Down By M. Night Shyamalan -- Everything Up To And Including The Kitchen Toaster -- Sacrificed To Kali -- Via The Gargantuan Venom Of The Black Mamba Snake -- Turned Into An Evil Robot -- The Out-Of-Nowhere Careening Vehicle Splat -- "Oh My God... It's Dip!!!" -- Critter Balled -- Stuff'd -- A Hot-Air Balloon Ride... Straight To Hell!!!-- Puppy Betrayal -- High-Heeled By A Girlfriend Impersonator -- Flip-Top Beheaded --Because I'm Too Goddamned Beautiful To Live -- By Choosing... Poorly... -- Fried Alive Due To Baby Ingenuity -- A Good Old-Fashioned Tentacle Smothering -- Eepa! Eepa! -- Gremlins Ate My Stairlift -- An Icicle Thru The Eye -- Face Carved Off By Ghost Doctor After Lesbian Tryst With Zombie Women -- Electrocuted By Fallen Power-Lines -- A Mouthful Of Flare --Taken By The TV Lady -- Bitten By A Zombie -- Eaten By Your Mattress -- Stuffed To Splitting -- Face Stuck In Liquid Nitrogen -- Crushed By Crumbling Church Debris -- Bitten By The Jaws Of Life -- A Machete To The Crotch -- Showering With A Chain-Saw -- In A Room Filled With Razor Wire -- Pod People'd With Your Dog -- Force-Fed Art -- Skinned By A Witch -- Beaten With An Oar -- Curbed -- Cape Malfunction -- In The Corner -- Cooked In A Tanning Bed -- Diced -- Punched Through The Head -- Bugs Sucking On Your Head

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