Monday, December 31, 2012

Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Justin Theroux Three Times

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This has nothing to do with Justin (although helloooooo Justin) but I did want to mention, since I had forgotten to, that I'm off until after New Years. So any blogging for the next week will be minimal, at best. I hope everybody's having nice holidays or whatever! I'm doing my usual and watching piles of movies. Django tonight!
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Tuesday, December 25, 2012

Happy Xmas

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Hello, dear readers! If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you have a great day! If you don't celebrate Christmas, I also hope you have a wonderful day! Just without all that Christmas junking it up. :)
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Sunday, December 23, 2012

"Dale Asked Me To Marry Him."

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That is without a doubt one of the greatest reaction shots in the history of cinema. It needs the sound though! The shuddering "Ahhhhooooohhhhhhhhhhhungh..." that comes out of Kristen Dunst just completes the whole deal. Fucking brilliant. Believe you me when I get around to my 2012 awards she will be getting some serious affection. (As will Bachelorette as a whole. I've already seen it five or six times, I've lost count.)
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Suffy Night, Holy Night

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Guess who I saw last night? Oh right that picture and this post's title already gave that away. Whatevs, I'm riding giddy and stupid on an extended wave of gleefulness - what a lovely fun night! Sufjan singing holiday songs and being the silliest Christmas goose - what more could one ask for? I even caught him lifting his shirt to wipe off some sweat and exposing skin at one point!

I tell you what! For an idea of the chaos, check this:


I know for a lot of you, your mileage may vary with regards to your ability to take this scene - indeed I don't really know how I, most cynical I, ended up in this place. I suppose you should never underestimate the power of a pretty pretty boy who writes pretty pretty songs, eh?
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That is one of my favorite of his Xmas tunes,
"Justice Delivers Its Death," which is a rework of sorts
of my favorite Xmas song "Silver and Gold."


That's "Lakes of Canada," which is not an Xmas tune,
but it is loveliness turned into music all the same.
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And that is my most favorite Xmas song of his of all.


There are a couple more videos that I took over here
And if you want to see some pictures I took, hit the jump!

Saturday, December 22, 2012

Shake Rattle and Heads Will Roll

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Dear lord the trailer for Aftershock is here - it's that Chilean earthquake movie starring Eli Roth that we've told you about before - and I want to see this movie so much! It has a real Final Destination meets Hostel vibe to it. In other words, heaven. If Eli gets his fur out then shut down the Oscars, we already have 2013's Best Picture.
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Friday, December 21, 2012

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Naughty & Nice & Nicer & Nicest

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Hey hey it's Friday and that means I have a post at Celebrity Beehive telling you about the new movies. It's one of them rare weekends where I have a leg up and have seen several of the films coming out - I have seen On the Road (reviewed here), Zero Dark Thirty (reviewed here), Amour (reviewed here), and This is 40 (reviewed here). Three of those movies are worth your time; two of them very much so. The fourth is a blight that should be stabbed. God the further I get from Apatow's movie the happier I am to be further away. On the other hand, I'm dying to watch ZDT again. And while I wouldn't say I'm dying to watch Amour again (Emmanuelle Riva is doing enough dying for everybody!), it's an astonishingly powerful film. Haneke strikes again!
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I See You, Mandy

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I just saw Amanda Seyfried on the street. I just saw Amanda Seyfried on the street and she was with an UGLY man. What the fuck? I mean no offense Ugly Man, but for Amanda Seyfried's birthday a few weeks ago Hugh Jackman put his dick on her. He did this in front of an audience of people. An audience of people probably including his wife and/or children. That is the magic that Amanda Seyfried casts. The hottest men in the world splay themselves dick-up at her feet. This is why I simultaneously love and loathe her. We have a very complicated one-sided relationship, me and Amanda Seyfried, built entirely upon the dreams of her magical slutty powers. And my dreams? You have turned them into nightmares!!!
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Scott Speedman Five Times

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Some left-over shots from that failed Navy show of his. If he'd spent more time in wet t-shirts and short shorts then maybe the show would still be around, dammit!
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I Am Link

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--- Bless Nicole - Over at The Film Experience, Nat got to interview Nicole Kidman! How he kept it together to ask such a bunch of great questions I'll never know but he did, and it's one of the best chats with her I've ever read - they talk mostly about The Paperboy and how she managed to come up with the insanity that is Charlotte Bless, but other favorites - like Birth! - get some unexpected but much deserved love too. (Sidenote: I was super tempted to photo-shop Nat's head onto Zac Efron in that picture.)

--- Bad Girl - The title of Kristen Wiig's next movie has been changed from Imogene to Girl Most Likely... uh, no. Not a good change. It sounds like a Kate Hudson movie now. Change it back, please. Oh I'll still see the movie of course. It's scheduled for mid-July.

--- Death Masque - Over at Stale Popcorn Glenn just watched Roger Corman's terrific Masque of the Red Death, and gives some thought to its Phantom of the Opera influences and vice versa. And speaking of, Roger Corman has announced he is remaking several of his old Poe movies from the 60s, including Masque. He says he's excited to update them with the new technology available today. (As if the old creaky lo-fi nature of the originals isn't 95% of their interminable charm.)

--- Snow Queen - We'd been hearing about Disney's next animated movie Frozen for so long that it seems weird to me that they've just cast Jonathan Groff to voice the male lead, but I guess that's the way animation goes. Kristen Bell's been slated to voice the main character for awhile. Add in Idina Menzel as the evil Snow Queen and yup, this is some gay shit.

--- Carrie Forth - Sean T. Collins tells us the best moments of the second season of Homeland; he was harder on the show than I was, but its second season definitely had some real problems and became something the astonishingly good first season didn't seem to be heading towards, to my sadness. It seemed more intent on its characters the first season; this time around it was more about bizarre twists and turns that never really added up. 

--- Go Boom - I haven't watched the trailer for Seth Rogen and James Franco's end of the world comedy This Is the End yet, but here it is if you want to. I just hope they don't go making Edgar Wright's end of the world movie The World's End seem redundant. There's plenty of room for all the apocalypses, fellas!
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Good Morning, World

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I finally saw Tom Sturridge in something! Hooray! I'd posted a hefty Gratuitous post on him back in October but he was another one of them "Golly he is adorable, yet I have no idea if he can actually do his job or not"'s. And now I can say with one film down, hey he's not bad! He plays Carlo Marx (the gay poet, the Allan Ginsberg stand-in) in On the Road, a movie I was surprised to find myself really liking. Here's my review. I only make passing mention of him, but he had a tough job selling some of the more obnoxious art-stoner dialogue, and he did a fine job. 

Anyway Sturridge turns 27 today. These shots are from The Boat That Rocked, aka Pirate Radio, or whatever it ended up being called. I stayed away from that thing. And yes in doing so missed this. Silly me. His next film was written by Emma Thompson and stars her and Dakota Fanning - I'll totally see that!
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Thursday, December 20, 2012

Hardy To The Max

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That sucker right there is our first look at Tom Hardy in the new Mad Max movie! (via) And... it looks like Tom Hardy with some dust on him in a post-apocalyptic landscape, so... so far so good. He's got so much face here though - I wonder when his well-documented big bushy beard comes into play?
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The Apocalypse's Ways Not To Die

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2012 (2009)

I can't imagine a worse fate than to die 
as an eensy weensie pixelated nobody 
in the background of a John Cusack movie. 
So let's give some love to these folks today, 
here on the cusp of Most Terrible Mayan Armageddon.

Frame 1 - That guy's name is Jeremiah. He was on his way to buy some cigarettes at the corner store. He forgot to walk his dog this morning, but figured he can do it when he gets home. His dog's name is Jonesy, after the cat in Aliens.

Frame 2 - That's Mary and her son Connor. They live five houses down from Kate Curtis (Amanda Peet); Mary just had a pool party a couple of weeks ago, but Kate couldn't come because Kate has constant fucking drama in her life. Connor smokes a lot of pot, but he gets good grades so Mary doesn't say anything.

Frame 3 - This is Manuel. He just got off work, and is going to run a few errands (and maybe grab a beer) before going home to take over with the kids so his wife can go to her night job. He has three daughters.

Frame 4 - That's Eric. He's an accountant, and he loves it. He takes off the entire month of August every year to go skiing in the Alps. He's very good at it. He's saving up to buy a place in Switzerland and retire there some day.

Frame 5 - That's Jack and his wife Mindy. She just found out she's pregnant. They've been trying to a few years, although Mindy is kind of ambivalent. She thinks Jack is cheating on her. (He is not.)

Frame 6 - The majority of the Hausmann family are here, lined up in several cars, on their way to a funeral. Mama Hausmann was 97 years old when she died two days ago. She just drifted off while watching Wheel of Fortune. The last thing she ever saw was Vanna White's smile.

Frame 7 - That's Mark, Tom, Jennifer and Salvatore. They don't know each other, but when the ground started rumbling their cars were close. Tom immediately thought to himself how cute Jennifer was, although he didn't know her name. Jennifer was thinking about her sister, who's in the hospital two blocks away.

Frame 8 - That's Dawn and Hillary and their daughter Stephanie. Dawn and Hillary have been together for twenty-five years; in fact their anniversary was just last week. They met at a bar, which Dawn is embarrassed about so she usually tells the story differently. Hillary thinks that is cute. Stephanie wants to be a politician when she grows up, because she thinks it's wrong her mothers can't get married.

Frame 9 - That's Kevin Costner.

Frame 10 - Folks on their way to work. Just like me this morning, just like you where ever you are. Reading the newspaper, playing a video game on their iPods, thinking angry thoughts about their spouses or happy thoughts about the upcoming weekend or wiping a smear off breakfast of their sleeve while thinking absolutely nothing at all. Their coffee is light, their hangover is thick, the change in their pockets clangs and clacks against their thigh when they walk. They have down comforters on their beds at home, nightlights in their bathrooms. They owe money to their uncles. They watched a movie the other day, they can't quite remember the name of it, it starred that guy who was in that other thing, you know. It wasn't very good, but it passed the time.


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Previous Ways Not To Die: For Being Mouthy -- Do You Smell What Billy's Mom Is Cooking -- The Milk Done Gone Bad -- An Inability To Stop Drop and Roll -- Bug Sprayed -- Extreme Makeover: Leatherface Edition -- Window Seat Suck -- Razor Bunting -- Stabbed Thru The Heart And Witches Are To Blame -- Shark Kibble -- Is That a Straight Razor In Your Trunks Or Are You Just Happy To See Me -- Bad Dates -- Fry Guy'd -- Super Battle Bystander Shrapnel Shred -- Staring Contest of the Dead -- Satanic Self Sacrifice -- Fist and Fortune -- Psychedelic Penis Slice To Window Toss -- For Crimes Against Accent -- Sacked -- Speed Bumped For Traffic Spikes -- Shark Versus Jet-Ski -- 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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Good Morning, World

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A happy 23rd birthday to sexy vampire Eric Northman's sexy maker Godric, aka the Danish actor Allan Hyde. We were just talking about him the other day! Or, you know, "talking." Which means "ogling" in the MNPP to English translation. Anyway you can never "talk about" Allan Hyde too much!
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Wednesday, December 19, 2012

Quote of the Day

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"Plus, the dragon's cool. Who doesn't like a dragon?"

-- Professor Marty Banks, a professor of optometry and vision science at Berkeley, on why we should just shut up with our complaining about The Hobbit and get to liking 48 frames per second. Well said, sir! Who doesn't like a goddamned dragon?
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Today's Mood

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Wolverine Versus The Budgy Smuggler

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I would pay to see that movie. (via)
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The Fog Of War

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Most of the conversation these past few weeks about Kathryn Bigelow's masterful new film Zero Dark Thirty (and yeah, I already tipped my hat there with that "masterful") has been focused on the back and forth about whether it is pro- or anti-torture. I won't go into the specifics, I feel as if they've already been laid bare ad nauseum and the movie's only out properly in limited release today. 

What strikes me about the conversation is just that right there - the conversation! Were we having this conversation in any meaningful way before this movie arrived? Is this not a conversation we ought to be having? I don't mean the movie, specifically - I mean about torture. I mean whether it works or not, and whether that even matters. Oh sure scattered clumps of political wonks were having that conversation, and people like myself who pay attention to political wonks were seeing that conversation, but what Kathryn Bigelow has done has plunked that tremendously important conversation right down in front of a big ol' audience in the guise of a tremendously effective thriller-of-sorts and said, hey, look at this shit. We did this. And it's fucking terrible. 

Personally I think the people who criticize the movie for not taking a stand do a disservice to the power of those scenes, and to Bigelow's sleight of hand - show don't tell, y'all. She has chance after chance to throttle the edge right off of this sucker, and she sticks to her guns. She could have made things easy for us, given us shots out of the latest Michael Bay epic, slow-motion shots of sun-dappled soldiers and Coca Cola signs, while big-dicked guitars pounded Lady Liberty. What she gives us instead is a cold-as-ice cipher swaddled in black sunglasses and smart cottony seemingly too expensive for her pay-grade sweater-shirts that's not gonna give us an inch. 

And god I drank it right up. How refreshing this film's calculating coldness is! I kept trembling with fear we'd get a scene where Jessica Chastain would telegraph too much, would be given some sordid slash cloying moment of affection, of history, of impossibly Hollywood-ian "Here lay my soul!" penetration, and she and Bigelow up-end the whole machinery - Maya's emotional collapse at film's end is the biggest most beautiful fuck you of all! I have no idea why she was crying! And that was some riveting shit!

Oh I can fill in the blanks. I can fill them in in ten different entirely satisfying ways. It's not that the film shirks its responsibilities. But it trusts its audience, and it believes in the power of us to get our little minds up in there and manage it. Indeed it won't have it any other way. It's exhilarating, and difficult, and not-nice film-making at its finest. You simultaneously want to cheer and to vomit, and if you ask me that's precisely where you should be watching this.
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Four Reviews

Another week, another set of movie reviews I'm woefully behind on. In the spirit of catching the eff up then, here are some brief thoughts on things I have seen.

Compliance -What a frustrating thing, this movie. I spent so much of it forcibly reminding myself that "This really happened!" while fighting against the movie's own inability to convince me of that fact. I think the problem is this, and you'll probably tell me I'm wrong but I think I've got something - I think the movie likes it characters too much. It's at least too divided against itself - it shows them doing total and complete moronic things, but seems afraid to call 'em as we see 'em, ya know? Ann Dowd is great, I think everybody in the film is good, but it's too schizo an experience - it's impossible to buy that things happened the way they're presented as happening for more than ten seconds at a time. These people are too... well, nice. It's a weird thing to say about people shown doing such horrible things, but they just are. I never bought that these people as they are shown to us would go as far as they go. I know the film-makers were straining to make a point, but they strained for that point at the expense of an ounce of credibility.

Safety Not Guaranteed - Pleasantly peculiar, but not tremendously memorable - for a movie starring two people that I like as much as I like Mark Duplass and Aubrey Plaza, I should've been a little bit more enamored then I was, probably. But it's nice! It causes smiles. They should put that on the box - This Product May Lead To Smiles. I just wanted more from it, I guess. And Mark's hair was just grody. I could never fall in love with someone with that hair.

The Deep Blue Sea - If Safety Not Guaranteed causes smiles then The Deep Blue Sea causes frowns. Send Terence Davies the bill for your plastic surgery, because this movie is responsible for exacerbating deep-set frown lines! But it's some positively exquisite sadness on display, so he'd probably win in a court of law. It was the perfect movie to watch while laying in bed on a rainy weekend afternoon while feeling like crap and wanting something to tell you that yes, things are crap, but beautifully so. The colors are so lush - I kept being reminded of In the Mood For Love, and not just because of the death throes of romanticism on display in both cases. Rachel Weisz is as terrific as she ever is. I don't think it was a particularly challenging part for her though - it depends on how hard you think it is for someone as gorgeous and serene as she is to stand and smoke and get across beautiful depression and too-smart-for-her-own-good-ness for two hours. Oh she looked spectacular doing it! And I can't hold it against her for being great at doing what she does great all the time. But I was more impressed with Tom Hiddleston, who had a trickier wire to balance on - insufferable and desirable, cruel and kind, brutally realistic with his head in the clouds. He made the impossible positively wanton.

The Collector - Ugh, what a dump.