Nivola in the Morning, Nivola in the Evening...

Everything is obviously shit but I woke up in a good mood this morning and I listened to this song on repeat on my commute which kept the good mood rolling so as I sit here I find myself trying to put optimism into the world. A monumnental task I have set for myself! Thankfully one of our faves actor Alessandro Nivola has done a lot of work on that front this week for us, so let's just take his lead. First off he gave us this new photoshoot via Avenue magazine -- there's also a chat with him there, click here for it. Seeing his smiling face always makes the world smile! But there's even more...

... do you remember that time he wore this tennis outfit in JC Chandor's film A Most Violent Year? I did a big post on it because DUH and hysterically the subject came up in a new chat with him at Vulture! It's mostly about The Brutalist but bless my fellow Pajibite writer Roxana Hadadi, who conducted the chat, for flipping the script over to the internet's thirst for him in these shorts. Here's what he had to say about it:

"Someone once sent me, I don’t know what you call it — a GIF, a meme, something — of that scene where I’m in my very short tennis shorts and there was some repeating thing of my ass filling up the camera frame. I figured somebody had posted it. I didn’t know that this was reaching a wider audience. [Laughs.] But I couldn’t be more thrilled."

That "someone" was me LOL and I am glad this Very Important Subject has been  carried out of this here gay ghetto and into the world at large. Give it light! Anyway I wasn't going to post about this but reader Harrison -- hey Harrison! -- messaged me, egging me on, and I figured since we have a lot of Alessandro to talk about today we might as well relive those shorts. Make a full tennis movie, Alessandro! The people demand it! 

Aaaaaanyway yes, there is even more Nivola News to share this morning -- the actor and exceptional silent screamer has just joined the crazy amazing cast of a movie called (wait for it) Diamond Shitter (lol!) that's to be directed by actor Antonia Campbell-Hughes, who you should know from Jane Campion's Bright Star or the recent terrific spy-series Black Doves. And what do those two properties I cherry-picked out of her sizable filmography have in common? They both also star Ben Whishaw, and yes our boy Ben Whishaw, the great gay hope, is also in this movie alongside Alessandro. Oh plus Eva fucking Green! My god! And also up-n-comer Raffey Cassidy who you should know from The Killing of a Sacred Deer or Vox Lux or White Noise -- Vox Lux was of course directed by Brady Corbet, director of The Brutalist (which co-starred both Cassidy and Nivola!) while White Noise co-starred Alessandro's talnted son Sam Nivola (who's about to be seen on the new season of The White Lotus) -- basically there's a lot of incestuous overlap with these folks coming together and I'm here for it! Good sexy talented people all around. And speaking of sexy people! Hit the jump for the rest of this Alessandro shoot...

Quote of the Day

As we put 2024 behind us officially and move on to the year's first film festival with Sundance kicking off today, let's look at one of our most anticipated titles premiering in the next two weeks there -- Plainclothes, Carmen Emmi's film about a closeted police officer (Tom Blyth, seen above for V Man magazine -- more photos here) falling for a hot dude (Russell Tovey) he arrests for cruising a Syracuse restroom. 

It's got everything! Hot men! Gay sex! Upstate New York! It's like my autobiography y'all. In all seriousness I posted about this movie the second it was announced and I'm extremely happy it's one of the few titles on my most-wanted Sundance list that's doing virtual screenings so I will actually be able to see it! (Pour one out for Ira Sachs' new movie with Ben Whishaw and Rebecca Hall which I will not be able to see -- SIGH). Anyway there's a chat with Blyth about the movie in Variety today and because sex scenes get all the clicks they talked Plainclothes' sex scenes between the two fellas and here's what he had to say:

"We had an amazing intimacy coordinator, Joey Massa. I’ve worked with a lot of intimacy coordinators and they’re always amazing. Sometimes I feel they’re called in when the scene isn’t even that intimate just because everyone these days is rightfully trying to correct the course and make sure that everyone’s protected. Sometimes you’ll have a kissing scene and you go, “We probably know how to do this.” But this was genuinely intimate stuff. It was really intimate, really vivid, and Joey was incredible. It felt very organic. It felt like we rehearsed it in a way where I think Russell and I both were made to feel confident and comfortable enough that we could lead it. I think it works best when the actors feel emboldened to be able to take control of the choreography and make it feel organic."

I do like the sound of "really intimate" don't you? Those are the kinds of phrases that make my happy places get happy in the first place. Anyway stay tuned for my thoughts on Plainclothes in a couple of weeks -- the virtual screeners don't drop until the end of the fest so it'll be a bit but there's no way I won't have thoughts on this!

Our Black Doves Babies

This one totally snuck up on me -- I didn't know the Netflix series Black Doves starring Ben Whishaw and Keira Knightley as spy buddies was even a thing until this past weekend, and then within 24 hours of me knowing it was a thing I had binged the entire damned series. Anybody else find themselves in similar circumstances? The show was impossible to turn off once I'd started it and suddenly whoosh my whole Saturday was gone. Here is the trailer:

Not since itty bitty Sarah Michelle Gellar kicked ass as Buffy have I had to set aside my disbelief that a stick figure (or in this case a pair of them) could rough up so many bigger bads, but it was worth it -- what an entertaining and enjoyable (and gay gay gay!) show this is. I mean our super-spy gets fucked in the bum in the first episode -- bless you, Ben Whishaw. This show was manna from ye heavens. Watch it if you haven't yet! It's set at Christmas too so it's a perfect holiday treat. 

Ben Whishaw Four Times

 (via)

Which is Hotter?

Turns out that October 14th is a very gay day as both Udo Kier and Ben Whishaw were born today. Udo is celebrating a milestone -- 80! -- but we already tweeted him birthday greetings, so we turn our happy gay eyes todward Ben now. Or as I've long dubbed him, "The Great Gay Hope" because I've long thought he'll be the first out gay actor to win an Oscar. I will admit that I'm not so sure about that now that Colman Domingo is giving him a hard run for his money -- and now I am trying to picture a movie starring Colman & Ben and what that might be? maybe a Thelma & Louise type thing? Who wouldn't watch that? Only shitheels, that's who. Anyway until then we're gonna face down two of our favorite Bens -- Ben playing adorkable Q in the Daniel Craig James Bond movies and Ben as the stand-in for all of us painfully in love with Franz Rogowski in Ira Sachs' Passages. Two dependable and wispy Ben bests. Now pick!

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Ben Whishaw + Bookshelves...

 ... was just the pick-me-up I needed this morning. (via)

This Marlboro Man Sucks

We are one week away from the finale of the fifth season of Fargo and as I said on Monday -- the show is really rocking it this year. There were things I liked about the fourth season (Ben Whishaw and Jessie Buckley spring to mind) but that season felt scattered, whereas this one is laser-focused and absolutely riveting. And a big part of that is due to itself having a killer villain in Jon Hamm's piece of shit Sheriff Tillman. And so I wrote about just that today for Mashable -- click on over to read that here. It's frankly the best work Hamm's done in quite some time and finally convinced me that the dude should probably only play dicks forever and ever. he's really good at dick y'all!

Ben Wants To Take Your Picture

We've posted about the possibility of this a couple of times previously but now that it's officially officail we're gonna post about it again, dammit -- what, I'm supposed to leave a chance to post a photo of Ben Whishaw on the table? Hardly! Yesterday Deadline confirmed (thx Mac) that Ben is reuniting with his Passages director Ira Sachs next on a bio-pic of the photographer and artist Peter Hujar -- the film will co-star actress (and daughter of Julian) Stella Schnabel as Hujar's friend Linda (that last bit of info comes from this previous post of mine where Ben talked about what the movie was going to be about for the first time). If you're unfamiliar with Hujar's work make yourself familiar -- he's one of the most important gay artists of the 80s dammit!

The Former Year in Queer

I really didn't do much work over the holiday -- if you follow me on social media then you probably caught on that I spent the majority of my time going through the piles and piles of physical media that'd grown up around me and began the ongoing process of listing tons of stuff for sale on eBay -- but I did do one thing and it's a good important thing. I wrote up my list of favorite LGBTQ+ movies of 2023 for Pajiba -- click here and you can read that and it'll give you a good idea of where my head was at for the year since I haven't posted my actual Top 10 (or more likely 20) of the year yet. On that note I am 100% going to try and get that pounded out before I leave for Sundance in a couple of weeks, so stick around maybe.

Franz Rogowski Eleven Times

I felt like the proudest of papas when Franz Rogowski's name was announced as the Best Actor winner for his performance in Ira Sachs' Passages (my review here) during the New York Film Critics Circle award announcements yesterday -- I can't say I saw Franz first but I can certainly say I've been one of his most relentlessly vocal supporters for the past five years since Michael Haneke's Happy End and Christian Petzold's Transit, just check our extensive archives! And I spent most of last year crowing about how his work in Great Freedom (my review here) was perhaps the year's best performance (give or take Bill Nighy's work in Living, of course). I think it's clear we're Team Franz round these parts! 

So anyway yes I whooped and I hoorayed his big win -- I don't think his deeply challenging work in Passages will come anywhere near the Oscars, but I've been proven wrong before. (Hell I've been proven wrong about ten times as many as I have been proven right.) But who cares about awards -- go see Franz Rogowski in anything he does and you'll be enriched, the end. And yes I include these photos of him in GQ Germany from a few weeks back which I somehow missed -- quite enriching, also. Hit the jump for all that I could dig up from the shoot...

Quote of the Day

"Ben has a very nice back!
It’s nice to see him in action!
He’s a good fucker."

LOL that is Passages star and MNPP beloved Franz Rogowski talking about his Passages co-star Ben Whishaw and their NC-17-getting sex scene in that movie -- read the full chat with Vulture right here. The whole interview's worth a read as he's such a damn charmer; I knew he'd be a hit the first second I saw him on-screen in Victoria way back when. He also excitingly talks a little bit about director Andrea Arnold, who he's working with right now on a movie called Bird.

Quote of the Day

"... what I took from Fassbinder for this film was beauty. Meaning, I wasn’t making realistic cinema, I was making iconic cinema. So I thought of the woman’s face, the man’s body, the costumes, the spaces as opportunities for visual impact. So we were looking at Beware of a Holy Whore, but mostly for wardrobe. ... the color of the sweaters is incredible. And I think that in certain kinds of cinema, and Fassbinder more than almost anyone else, what lingers with you is the impact of color and bodies. ... For me, pain in cinema is great pleasure because it’s not my own. ... Like Splendor in the Grass, the most painful movie ever made, is the most beautiful movie ever made."

Interview Magazine spoke to Passages director Ira Sachs and his love for Fassbinder came up and I feel foolish now, that I don't recall thinking of Fassbinder at all when I saw Passages earlier this year. (Here is my Sundance review of the movie, which just hit theaters this past weekend.) It seems very obvious here in retrospect! I had considered going to see the movie a third time (I watched it twice at Sundance) over the weekend but didn't make it, so my memory is admittedly vague now, but recognition of that influence still walked straight up to me and slapped me across my face with its obviousness anyway. Anyway check out the entire chat, Sachs is very smart and very smart about film specifically and it's always a pleasure to see what he's got to say. And he also repeats last week's news that he's making a movie about gay photographer Peter Hujar starring Ben Whishaw next! Very exciting, that.

Quote of the Day

"I’m making a film in November with Ben Whishaw called Peter Hujar’s Day about the photographer Peter Hujar and his friend Linda in December of 1974 in New York City. This is a film about what it is to be an artist among artists in a city where no one was making any money."

Thanks to the two readers who sent me this from Passages director Ira Sachs' new interview with IndieWire (wherein they mostly talk about Passages, out this weekend; see all of our Passages coverage here) -- news of his next movie! If Ira and Ben want to keep working together forever I would be in heaven. And a movie about gay photographer Peter Hujar at that! I know Hujar's work but not a ton about him as a person; that said the scene he was a part of -- downtown New York in the 1980s -- is one of my great obsessions and seeing Sachs tackle it sounds like, dare I say, even more heaven. Let's hope that Ben reenacts lots of Peter's self-portraits...

Quote of the Day

"He had a real awareness of the frame that he was going to be in, his body within that frame, and the meaning of his body in that frame. When I asked him about the dance thing, he doesn’t make big claims for him for himself in that regard. But I do think it’s informed something about the way he thinks. In a way, it could sound like it’s an outside-in process, but it’s not quite that either. It’s not quite a technical thing of, “If I look here, or move my body this way, or do this with my face,” but there’s a bit of that. There’s an awareness that’s very hard to explain. I think there’s also a whole other layer of magic which is just indefinable.

... It just said: “Tomas comes into the bedroom, he undresses, they make love.” It was the shortest scene in the whole script. It’s not the only scene that’s like this, but it was like an improvisation in the sense that we didn’t know how it would go. It was discovered in the moment, and Ira let it just play out more or less in real time. I was like, “Wow, this is going on a long time!” But then I just sort of relaxed into it, and cool, we’re just like filming this like these two people are having sex. This is the length of the sex that they’re having. That was great. It felt completely essential to the story. Not gratuitous or exploitative or anything else like that. I always think that, of course, there should be a sex scene if you’re discussing intimacy between a long-term couple. It seems to me such an important part of life. I thought it was really important, and I think Franz felt the same. We were all adults who really liked—I think loved—and trusted each other.

... It’s one of those things, there was just a really beautiful dynamic between me and Franz. I can’t speak for him, but I just loved working with him. There was a love between us of some kind that was real."

How could I not quote the entirety of Ben Whishaw talking about what it was like working with Franz Rogowski -- and specifically filming a sex scene with Franz Rogowski? This comes via a chat with the actor at Slant on the making of Ira Sachs' Passages -- read the entire thing here. I actually had no idea Rogowski had a dance background but now that I do that makes total sense, and not just because he's got the insane muscular body of a dancer. The way Rogowski moves on-screen is so specific, so notable, that this information clicks right into place.

Anyway Passages, which got an NC-17 rating because of said sex scene (and here is a good piece on that controversy), is out this week -- here is my review of the movie from Sundance. I think I'm going to go see the movie again in the theater -- it's so freaking excellent. Here is the trailer if you missed it. 

Quote of the Day

"There’s no untangling the film from what it is... It is a film that is very open about the place of sexual experience in our lives. And to shift that now would be to create a very different movie... To make an interesting sex scene is not easy. Each of the sex scenes to me is a chapter in the film. It has a story. And I wanted each one to have its own relevance and have its own details and be interesting to the audience. I think making interesting sex scenes is the hardest thing…What I tried to track here was to not look at sex, but to look at intimacy, not constructed through editing and avoidance... We hunger for movies that are in any proximity to our own experience, and to find a movie like this, which is then shut out, is, to me, depressing and reactionary. It’s really about a form of cultural censorship that is quite dangerous, particularly in a culture which is already battling, in such extreme ways, the possibility of LGBT imagery to exist.”

That is Passages director Ira Sachs talking to the Los Angeles Times on the NC-17 rating the MPA just tried to drop on his movie, which stars Ben Whishaw and Franz Rogowski as a married couple whose relationship spirals into chaos because Franz runs off to boink Adèle Exarchapoulos a bunch. I saw and reviewed the film out of Sundance, right here -- there is indeed a lot of sex in the movie, and it is all very hot, and I am very happy that Sachs and MUBI are sticking to their guns and releasing the movie unrated. Go subscribe to MUBI, y'all -- cancel Netflix and subscribe to a streamer that gives a shit about its artists! And go see Passages when it hits theaters on August 4th. You can watch the trailer right here. 

Franz Fucks Everything (Up)

There we have the poster for Ira Sachs' Passages, which premiered at Sundance earlier this year and is being released on August 4th. Here is my review of the film, which stars Ben Whishaw and Franz Rogowski as a married couple who get tossed into upheaval when Rogowski starts having an affair with a woman (played by the always terrific Adèle Exarchopoulos). And down below is the film's trailer in case you missed that. Rogowski is so wildly aggressively unlikeable in this -- he really goes for it, and some people are going to hate this movie because of that, but I find it a pretty brave way to present this story (especially when you know that there's an autobiographical tinge to it coming from Sachs). Anyway "likeability" is seriously overrated in storytelling. Give me complicated monsters! After all I need to see myself reflected by cinema!

Good Morning, Passages

I wasn't at all sure what I could post this morning to kick our day off, and then into my inbox an answer came (that's what she said) -- the first clip from Passages, Ira Sachs' new movie starring our boys Franz Rogowski and Ben Whishaw alongside Adèle Exarchopoulos! Mubi dropped this this morning, along with word that they're releasing this on August 4th -- it's a good summer movie, I think. Hot and sweaty and irritable (I mean that in a good way). Oh yes, right, I have seen it -- I saw it at Sundance and I reviewed it right here at Pajiba. Anyway the clip is brief and doesn't spoil anything that doesn't happen in the first ten minutes so have at it: 

Ben Whishaw Two Times

Ben Whishaw Six Times

Don't ask me where I got these Ben Whishaw photos from -- I don't remember! I'm juggling about one thousand pans in the fire right now -- I think I might be mixing up my metaphors but gosh that sounds dangerous. So these came from somewhere, at some point, I don't know. It's Thursday, also? How? This week's been a lot, y'all. So let's set aside our woes and worries and just focus on the Ben. The Ben makes the everything better. Not sure when we'll get to see Ira Sachs' new movie Passages (which I reviewed right here during Sundance) but let's hope this turns out to be a Ben-full year, we could use it. Until then, or whenever, hit the jump for a few more shots from where ever the hell they came...

Happy Sissy Boy Slap Party

My number one anticipated at this year's edition of the Sundance Film Fest was Ira Sachs' latest film Passages, which stars my beloveds Franz Rogowski and Ben Whishaw as a married couple who run into trouble when the former gets a wandering eye (among other body parts). And I have now seen and written up my thoughts on it -- click here to read them at Pajiba today. (pic via) It didn't disappoint!

I briefly considered doing a post today to update y'all on all of my Sundance reviews that have gone up so far, but then I decided I should be done with all of my reviews by the end of this week probably, so I'll just do a round-up then. For now the tweet embedded down below has links to everything, and will be updated as we go along, or continue checking my Rotten Tomatoes page. That's updated in a timely manner too. 

Slowly but real slowly but surely some #Sundance2023 reviews from yours truly are rolling in! Let's kick it off with my thoughts on Brandon Cronenberg's #InfinityPool for @pajiba, you pervs https://t.co/1zOAHhxQHf @neonrated

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 26, 2023