We Have Proper Hannibal Trailer

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The first dribble of footage from Bryan Fuller's cannibal doctor television program Hannibal only gave us a delicious little taste of what he's got in store for us - well here comes the torrent. Here's a two-minute trailer for the show that sets it all up beautifully. (via)

How freaking good does that look??? The doctor will see us on April 4th on NBC. If you hit the jump I took a bunch of caps... mostly of Hugh being totally totally adorable. How adorable is he?

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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King Kong (1923)

The 80th anniversary of the original King Kong is this Saturday. It was released on March 2nd, 1933. Probably my favorite random ridiculous bit of Kong arcana is this bit via Fay Wray about how director Merian C. Cooper got her to take the part:

"According to her autobiography, On the Other Hand, Wray recounts that Cooper had told her he planned to star her opposite the "tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood". She assumed he meant Clark Gable until he showed her a picture of Kong climbing the Empire State Building."

I prefer the ape to Gable, personally.

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Or maybe my favorite bit of Kong arcana is the bit about how Nazi Germany banned the film because of "the threat to Aryan womanhood." One of those two. (That video is of Marlene Dietrich stripping out of an ape suit in Blonde Venus; it seemed an appropriate place to insert that.)

The film was a big smash in NYC when it opened - in four days it grossed nearly 90 thousand dollars! It premiered at Radio City Music Hall; tickets were about 35 cents apiece. It went on to make about two million bucks in its initial release. Reviews were stellar.

I find the film tremendously moving still today; the film has such extraordinary empathy for the monster. Peter Jackson's remake (and especially Naomi Watts' performance therein) taps into that feeling pretty substantially, and besides being a little on the bloated side I think it does a smashing job updating the film. Even if the original really didn't need it. Eighty years on it still towers.

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Previous Ways Not To Die: Bad Head -- Valentine's Day Massacred -- Belly Buster -- For Being Not The Babysitter -- Splat In Slo-Mo -- To Be Dis-Continued -- 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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Quote of the Day

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Only one episode left of Enlightened's second season and there's still no word from HBO whether they'll be renewing it or not - I am pretty well prepared for news of the most foul sort but man I hope my instincts prove themselves foolish (wouldn't be the first time). For now Mike White's making the rounds trying to drum up some attention for his most amazing and incredible show; here's him talking about part of why why he thinks his show's been a bit of a tough sell at Vulture:

"If I have a male protagonist, it’s a studio movie, and if it’s a female protagonist, it’s an indie movie. That’s just how it is. It’s not about the studios. It’s about America and who goes to see movies. Women are interested in men and women, and men aren’t interested in the woman’s story. They just aren’t. There are exceptions, but by and large … I mean I do think that it’s feminizing for a guy to go see a movie with a female lead unless it’s Angelina Jolie shooting people or Zero Dark Thirty or something that feels like it’s in the male sphere. The devaluation of the traditional female roles or the traditional female approach, it starts to feel like this is what’s wrong with our country.

... There so many people in this world who are in their own way little heroes, people who are cleaning up the messes created by the guys with the guns or the overgrown kids fucking everything up. There is a little part of me that feels like I have a little bit of creative capital, and I’d rather use it to put a different face forward as the center of the world." 

As usual here's the part where I say - go read the whole interview! Mike White gives great interview, just like he gives great show. Love the bit where he compares making the show to having a good shrink. .

My Moment In Salo

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That's all I saw of the town of Salo - the town forever linked to coprophilia and sodomy thanks to Pier Paolo Pasolini - when I took my trip to Italy in 2011; we took a boat trip down Lake Garda and we didn't have time to get off in the town so I could only watch from the water for spectacles of fascist excess. It randomly struck me this morning that I never posted that picture here, though. Exciting, innit? I did post a few shots from Venice where I stalked the red-coated dwarf in Don't Look Now though. 

I think I might have dreamt about Sirmione last night, which is why my Italy trip was on my mind. Sirmione is at the southern part of Lake Garda; it's where we were headed as we passed through Salo. There are ancient Roman ruins just outside Sirmione, called the Grotto of Catullus (seen above and below), which were some of the most striking scenery we saw on our whole trip - they're on a cliff overlooking the lake, filled in with olive trees; basically you feel as if you're on the set of a Jason and the Argonauts movie. There was a storm coming in when we were there, and it couldn't have been more perfect - the wind, the water beginning to tumult around us; Neptune was going to strike at any moment!

Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?

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Affleck's Only Worthwhile Argo Moment

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A big whatever to Argo's Best Picture win - oh it's a perfectly serviceable thriller for the most part [my review], although I could list some really exhausting cliches in its execution (watching Alan Arkin and John Goodman slowly make their way to that ringing phone was like watching paint dry). But it's biggest fault if you ask me, which you didn't, is Affleck himself, who's just a huge ball of suck smack-dab in the center. Which is one of my main reasons for a zero tolerance policy when it came to that pity-parade he was getting during the awards season - a real director would have looked at that footage and realized what a shitty lead actor he had and done something about it. Anyway he got in shape for his shirtless scene, so props to him for that.

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I Am Link

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--- Apple Maker - The Piemaker has a new TV show! Lee Pace is set to star in a pilot for AMC from the executive producer of Breaking Bad - it's called Halt & Catch Fire, and it's about the dawn of personal computing in 1980's Dallas. Sounds like Lee's playing a Steve Jobs type. 1980s Dallas - I am worried about Lee's hair-do already.

--- Candy Man - Our weird Zero Dark Thirty crush object Jason Clarke has a new role lined up - he'll co-star with Chris Hemsworth in the new movie from the director of Syriana called Candy Store. I think I posted about this movie before but I'm totally not looking it up right now. That link has the deets!

--- Go Go Goblin - The wonderful Chris Cooper has joined the cast of the second Amazing Spider-Man movie as Nomran Osborne, aka the Green Goblin, aka that part that Willem Dafoe did in the Sam Raimi movies. Chronicle's Dane DeHaan was cast as his son Harry (aka the James Franco part) awhile back.

--- Speaking of, Slash has a few new pictures from the currently-filming set of Spider-Man and Andrew Garfield is looking typically geek-adorable. Love his giant tufting head of hair!

--- Teevee Psycho - TV Line got some more out of Ryan Murphy about the character that Kathy Bates will play in the third season of American Horror Story - he says that she's super excited to play it because the character is "five times worse" than her character was in Misery (remember - her character in Misery was a child murderer, besides other things) and that it's all based on something that actually happened.

--- Smash Solo - Joss Whedon is touring with his Shakespeare movie and answering people's questions about The Avngers 2 as he goes - here's him talking about what's ahead for the Hulk, and the possibilities of a stand-alone film for the big green fella.
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--- Fatigue Fatigued - Tom Hardy is going to play a soldier returning from Afghanistan with PTSD - I was going to say something about how the last time he played a soldier he wagged his dick around much to all of our delight, then I noticed that this movie will actually be the feature-debut from the director of that same short film where Tom wagged his dick around to our delight! So let's hope for more of that, then.

--- Last Picture Show - What are your ten favorite movies from the 1970s? I'm so bad at listing these sorts of things - brain overload. So much good Woody Allen! So much good horror! Nathaniel's put forth the query over at The Film Experience and the answers he's getting are smashing.

--- Fine Dining - Have you seen these promo shots of the cast of Bryan Fuller's Hannibal yet? Mads and Hugh and Caroline Dhavernas and Laurence Fishburne and even Scott Thompson are all in the house! We've only got a few weeks until the show premieres on April 4th - I trust we've all set up our cannibal-themed viewing parties?

--- Super Buzz - Alhough it's all coming from people intimately associated with the flick - executives and family members of the cast and crew - the buzz out of an early screening for those folks of Zach Snyder's Superman flick Man of Steel is very very good, which gets me excited even though I ought to know better. No bulge reports yet.

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You Know Like The Back Of Your Hand

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For some strange reason it never occurred to me that Atoms For Peace - Radiohead front-man Thom York'e side-band - would make any music videos, but here we are, and there it is. That's for the song "Ingenue," and I haven't watched it yet nor have I gotten to the point where I know any of the songs off of their new album Amok by name, so I don't know what to tell you. Have you listened to the album yet? Me likes it but that's a given, I have no critical faculties where Yorke is concerned. He is God here.

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

East of Eden (1955)

Cal: Man has a choice

and it's a choice that makes him a man. 

Jon Steinbeck was born 111 years ago today.

The Wise Kids in 300 Words or Less

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I have such a longstanding difficult relationship towards religion that sometimes I unjustly stay away from religious themed entertainments altogether - I recall the hours upon endless hours of getting preached at in my youth, and I shudder at the thought of revisiting it. I know where I stand - I'm not a believer now, not in the slightest. But I am still entirely fascinated by religion - it was a massive part of who I was growing up and I know from experience that there are plenty of good people who mean well wrapped up in it. Considering that shift in myself, how and why it happened, is probably gonna be good for a life's worth of reflection. And it takes real honest effort to contemplate that place without being reductive.

Which is what The Wise Kids is just brimming with. Genuine respect for all of its characters, from every angle, and a deep sense of empathy - it would be really easy to slip off the tight-rope, to get preachy one way or the other, to turn these folks into saints or punchlines, and it never does. Watching it you really feel as if it knows each and every one of them to their cores, and it loves them for all of their willfull weirdnesses and foibles and good natures. And at film's end I was desperately sad to see them go - I want the adventures of Tim and Brea in New York! What happens with Austin and Cheryl? And Laura! Poor "Don't call me dumb!' Laura. The character I was most naturally inclined to resent and pick apart - she kept breaking my heart.

Who Wore It Best?

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Sexual suspenders?

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poll by twiigs.com

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James Makes His Mark

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It sure does look like James McAvoy and Mark Strong spend a lot of time in Welcome to the Punch pointing their pistols at each other and then wrestling. (See lots more pictures here)

All Hail Ragnor

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You know those commercials that they force us to watch while trapped inside the theater waiting for our movie to start? I've gotten pretty good at tuning them out at this point, but I'm glad that the History Channel's new series Vikings (starting this Sunday, March 3rd) caught my eye because Hello Again, Travis Fimmel. 

Best remembered for those scorching Calvin Klein underwear ads awhile back (see lots of him here and here) he's since bounced around trying to be an actor - anybody remember when he was Tarzan? - and I gotta say, I like the years on him. Also the beard and the beefiness and the general brutish demeanor. Oh and the part in the one commercial where they hint at a Viking threeway.

She's saying, "Come join us," just in case you failed Viking lip-reading classes. Okay so clearly this thing's aiming to be A Game of Thrones minus the dragons, and clearly the dragons are why we watch A Game of Thrones, so I don't know about the prospects here. Do I care? I do not! His character's named Ragnor! Fantasies, ahoy.

Conjure This!

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Once upon a time there was the Saw franchise, and I was an unhappy little boy. Boo, I yelled! Boo! But then the director of the first Saw movie made Insidious, and I couldn't be angry any more. The clouds moved out and the sunshine came and we danced, oh how we danced! And now James Wan has another new movie coming out - it's called The Conjuring. And that's the story of how I came to be looking forward to The Conjuring, against all odds. Great story, am I right? Really in all truth I could have just said that Patrick Wilson was enough for me to be looking forward to anything, and scene. But I like to yammer! Point being, there's a great jump-in-your-seat trailer for The Conjuring now. Watch it here!

There's also a poster for the movie over at Fangoria.
The Conjuring is out on July 19th.
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Laurence Killed My Heartbeats

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MoMA just announced their annual Canadian Front series - where they take a look at movies coming down from our esteemed neighbors northward - and they're doing a Xavier Dolan retrospective (as much of a "retrospective" as you can call it, since he's only made three movies), including a chat with the hipster savant himself and a screening of his newest flick Laurence Anyways, which I have heard very fine things about (it stars the very handsome Melvil Poupaud as a man becoming a woman). It's in mid-March - of course it is, that's when everything is happening! That's when the Pam Grier retrospective is happening too! And now I want to see a Xavier Dolan movie starring Pam Grier.
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Hamish Linklater Three Times

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(pics via) The Future actor just joined the cast of Sarah Michelle Gellar's new show from David E. Kelley. Smidge and Robin Williams (!) star as a father and daughter who run an ad agency. Also on the show will be James Wolk, who will hopefully be entirely banned from clothes this time around.

Quote of the Day

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"Bobby's got a big mouth."

That's David Lynch responding to the news that one of his friends, Trancendental Meditation leader Bob Roth, had let it slip that Lynch "was working on a new script and that it was typically dark."Can't you just hear those words coming out in David Lynch's particular voice? His voice has become as easy to summon up inside my head as Herzog's, practically. Although it might just be that it's so close to the lyrics from that psychotic "Crazy Clown Time" song of his - he repeatedly says "Bobby screamed so loud he spit!" in that song. I will include the truly mind-boggling video below so you can see what the hell I'm talking about.This is David Lynch's world, people. We're just dreaming it.

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Five Frames From ?

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What movie is this?

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