Twinks In Space: The Trailer

I think you'll all forgive me for forgetting this movie was happening since I posted my original "Twinks In Space" post announcing this movie in April of 2019 and, uhh, some stuff's happened since April 2019. But one of those things was the actual shooting and the editing and all that jazz of the movie itself... which is technically called Voyagers but come on, there's still time to change that title to Twinks in Space -- you know you wanna! 

The main twinks in this case are Tye Sheridan and the original Dunkirk-branded twink Fionn Whitehead -- supposedly the great Kelvin Harrison Jr. is in there somewhere too (not to mention the ever-welcome non-twink Colin Farrell) but apologies to them I was too distracted by the sexual electricity between Tye & Fionn...

... and so I had eyes for nothing else. The film was originally described as "Lord of the Flies in Space" and yeah, that's what it looks like alright. Watch the teaser here:

This was written and directed by the same guy who made that movie that ahd Bradley Cooper taking a smart pills and getting smart... with dire consequences... which makes all of that liquid medication in the trailer snap into place. Drugs is bad! Voyagers is being released "in theaters" on April 9th. And I made a few more gifs, after the jump...

McCaul Lombardi Thirteen Times

Been awhile since we caught up with Indie It Boy To Be (and John Waters Fave) McCaul Lombardi, who first caught our eye (was that my eye?) in Andrea Arnold's American Honey, inspiring this great big gratuitous post here... and then hey whaddya know a second great big gratuitous post here. These photos today are from Wonderland mag this month, and the interview attached makes a point, one I'd wondered about, of mentioning what this past year has been for actors who were poised right on the precipice of buzz at the start of this year when the pandemic went and threw a wrench in it. (His movie Port Authority, with Dunkirk Twink Fionn Whitehead, has been delayed until who knows when.) He seems chill about it but then, he exudes chill. He exudes a lot of stuff. And you can see some of it after the jump... 

Good Morning, Gratuitous McCaul Lombardi II

.

Well it's been awhile since I last checked in with the model turned American Honey actor McCaul Lombardi -- not since John Waters told me to watch him in the movie Sollers Point during the winter of 2018, at least -- and sure enough, I missed some stuff. Like...

... this Instagram video of him dancing on the set of his movie Port Authority with his co-stars Devon Carpenter and Dunkirk Twink Fionn Whitehead (aka my favorite of all the Dunkirk Twinks). Port Authority - which is a love story between Fionn and transgender actress Leyna Bloom --  premiered at Cannes last May and got good notices, from what I recall, so I'm surprised it hasn't gotten a US release yet. I'm not sure who McCaul plays...

... but him and Fionn seem to have hit it off. I love their love. Anyway even worse than the film being in some kind of limbo is the fact that that's the only film I see lined up on McCaul's IMDb page. Somebody snatch up this talented young man and put him in front of me please! I can only click through that great big gratuitous post I did in 2017 so many times dammit. I suppose I have to do everything myself, dammit. Hit the jump for a not quite as gratuitous as the last one but still decent sized collection of previously unposted McCaul pics...

Fionn Whitehead & Stéphane Bak Eight Times

.

I never wrote up my thoughts on Sebastian Schipper's film Roads when it screened at Tribeca last year cuz my TFE compatriot Nathaniel really loved the film, more than I did, and he wanted reviewing duties. That's not to say I didn't like the movie, I did, but my feelings were a little more ambivalent. At least from that's what I recall -- it's been a year since then, and I'm not sure if this film ever got a release here? It definitely got released in Germany though, where Schipper's a bigger name, and so their edition of Interview Magazine interviewed and photographed the films leading men, Stéphane Bak and Dunkirk twink Fionn Whitehead, seen here. That chat's auf Deutsche so I don't know what they say in it, but I do have the blessed photos, and they're after the jump...

Twinks in Space

.

You know a casting person has done their job when I don't even have room to use a picture of Colin Farrell -- a movie called Voyagers was just announced, which is describe as "Lord of the Flies in space!" (I added the exclamation point, but really, it earned that), and it will star Farrell alongside Tye Sheridan, Fionn Whitehead, Keean Johnson, Kelvin Harrison, and Isaac Hempstead Wright (BRAN!) among others. Johnson (middle below) was in Alita: Battle Angel while Harrison (left below) you should know from Mudbound. And of course our boy Fionn from Dunkirk and Bandersnatch. There are also actresses listed but well you know, whatever -- you can read their names at the link. I have my own priorities of coverage.

Fionn Whitehead Seven Times

.

As if summoned by my mild besmirching of the Dunkirk Twinks on Twitter this afternoon here we have a brand new photo-shoot of my favorite of the lot, Fionn Whitehead, last seen choosing our own adventures in Netflix's Bandersnatch thingie. (via) Next he'll be seen in Roads, Victoria director (and adorable star of Tom Tyker's Three) Sebastian Schipper's new film that's playing Tribeca -- one of the five I mentioned being amongst my most anticipated at that fest thanks to, you guessed, it, everything I just regurgitated a second ago. Tribeca press screenings have actually begun and I'm seeing this on Monday! Hooray for me! Anyway you can now hit the jump for the rest of these new photos...

Coming Soon to a Tribeca Near You

.

As mentioned in passing yesterday I have now delivered unto you a list of some just-announced movies playing at the Tribeca Film Festival 2019 that immediately caught my eye -- only thing is you have to click over to The Film Experience to read it. One click! It's easy! And yes one of the movies stars our favorite Dunkirk twink Fionn Whitehead -- I'm not just posting a picture of him because, you know, because. Not that "because" isn't enough! Anyway Tribeca has got some super stuff it looks like -- I barely made a dent in all I wanna see -- so click on over and check it out, yo.

.

Good Afternoon, Gratuitous Fionn Whitehead

.

I really could've sworn to you that I'd posted some Fionn Whitehead pictures here on the site before this but a quick scan turned up next to nothing -- perhaps they went onto the old Tumblr before it got deleted? He's been mentioned alongside all the other Dunkirk Twinks (example one and example two) but no love for poor Fionn alone. Not even after he was so good on that Queers series! Well here and now in a post Bandersnatch World that's just not gonna cut it. I assume all y'all have watched that Black Mirror choose-your-own-adventure by now? 

I sort of watched it, but the only device I could get it to work on was my iPhone which led to me watching it in bed which led to me watching it in bed after having taken Ambien and long story not quite short enough Bandersnatch plays on Ambien like a fucking nightmare. So I should give it another whirl when not under the influence of mind-altering substances, or at least that exact mind-altering substance anyway. Consider the twenty odd pictures after the break my reminder, then...

American Movie Review

.

Have I become too hard of a cynic in my middle-age? I fear so - signs and symbols keep slapping me to and fro. Take for instance American Animals, the college heist movie out this weekend starring Evan Peters and Barry Keoghan as wannabe bad-asses a la Tarantino but a bit too John Hughes to make it quite there. I watched American Animals with perhaps too much of a side-eye because I didn't believe jack-shit I was watching. 

I don't mean the actors were bad at selling the circumstances (they were fine) or that the directing was weak (it was fine) or anything like that - I mean I went into the film knowing nothing about the true-life story the film's based on and the harder the movie worked at reminding me of its "This is Based on a True Story" bonafides I kept watching it through Fargo-tinted "True Story" glasses. Like uh huh true story sure get a load of these guys nudge nudge. Sure there's a place called Transylvania University. (Whoops there is.) And sure a bunch of kids tried to rob the library of great big bird books. (Whoops they did.)

I spent so much misplaced mental energy watching the film thinking myself clever for poking holes in its fabrications, energy that actually ultimately proved me dumb as a box of hair, that I even convinced myself that the real-life criminals who are interviewed throughout the film were actors themselves - the film plays like an ongoing series of reenactments as these real folks lay out what happened, or what happened as they remember it anyway, and I thought I'd unlocked its secret key and that the movie was doubling down on its fakery. I was actually utterly convinced by the film's midpoint that Spencer Reinhard, the real-life person that Barry Keoghan's playing and who we see on screen, was being played by Barry's Dunkirk co-star Fionn Whitehead!

Whoops... it wasn't. All this makes it a hard film for me to really review because it turns out I watched a movie that this movie was not. I only realized I'd burrowed my brain into the wrong end of the basement when the rug wasn't pulled out by the film's credits - that I'd gone and made the film more byzantine than it ended up being. Since so much of the movie is explicitly about people deluding themselves into being people they aren't, talking about just that, I'd figured hey, what a trick!

What a trick that wasn't. And so... what a review this isn't? Lesson learned, then - don't rob fancy libraries, especially ones staffed by Ann Dowd (I mean for god's sake) and don't out-think movies before they've thought through their thoughts themselves. American Animals might ultimately be half-thought-through but it's not my job to then go and have an over-compensating fit thinking it all the way around the world and back for them. That's no good for nobody.
.

I Am Link

.

--- Queers Queued - I mentioned this here once before and then I mentioned watching it on Twitter but now you'll all get the chance, and it's worth the chance -- BBC America is going to air the series of eight short monologues titled Queers that the plain ol' BBC just got done airing in the UK. They will show them in October. Each one is around 20 minutes and features a single actor (including Ben Whishaw, Russell Tovey, and Dunkirk's Fionn Whitehead, among them) giving us a little piece of gay history in the form of some character's experience in a different time period. Like Ben Whishaw plays a WWII era soldier who tells us about falling in love with another soldier (and he is typically brilliant while doing so). (thx Mac)
 .
--- Bozo the Gay Basher - I started to re-read Stephen King's It earlier this year but I'm no good with books that are too big to lug around on the subway and It is way too fucking big to lug around so I only made it part of the way through, much to my chagrin. I've got to give it another go before the movie comes out next month, and this piece my pal Tom Blunt wrote up on one specific scene in the book is giving me some renewed vigor - head over to Signature to hear his spin on the importance and strength of the gay-bashing scene in the book. Honestly I don't even remember the scene it's been so long since I read it and that scene obviously wasn't getting anywhere near the TV movie.
.

--- Just Say Milla - We were already on board with the Hellboy reboot the second that they announced Neil Marshall was doing to direct it - while he's been relegated to TV for a few years (just little things like Game of Thrones, ya know) his "D" trilogy of the Aughts - Dog Soldiers, The Descent, and Doomsday - are all super duper genre works. Then they stuffed chunky-bummed David Harbour in the lead and we signed on for that too. But now the underrated and delightful Milla Jovovich has joined the cast and we feel even smarter about our early enthusiasm than before.

.
--- Libraries Are Literally Heaven - This is probably the coolest thing that has happened to NYC cinephiles this year (and we get some pretty spectacular stuff here, let's be real) - the public library system has teamed up with a streaming service to offer free movie streaming to anybody with a library card. (thx Mac) I've admitted this before but for all my supposed big-time library fetish I don't have a library card - it's a dumb long story - but this got me over it real quick.
 .

--- Nic the Destroyer - Super happy to hear that Karyn Kusama is getting together her next project after The Invitation blew me away, and super happy to hear she might get Nicole Kidman to star in the thing! If it does happen (it hasn't been officially announced yet) the movie is called Destroyer and it's a "crime thriller" that Kusama says is "another chapter in investigating how we come to face ourselves as lonely people on this planet." Mkay.
.

--- Ah Woo Hoo - It feels really very weird, getting old enough to have the silly cultural artifacts of your childhood become the stuff of very serious attention in somewhat serious magazines, but here we are and it's the year 2017 and Vanity Fair has written up an oral history of sorts of the theme song from DuckTales. What a world, what a world. It also feels weird to me because my DuckTales fandom happened in the most solitary period of my life when I had less than zero friends in Junior High School, and so it always surprises me that other people were watching too. If I'd had the internet back then i could've known I wasn't nerding out all alone.
.

--- Everything After Adam Bomb - And as long as we're talking about my child nerd obsessions here's something even better - the documentary about the Garbage Pail Kids is finally coming out! I'm too lazy to look up the last time we posted about this but it was quite awhile back. BD says the movie will actually get a small theatrical run on August 18th (and I'm guessing that means it will play here in NYC somewhere since we are the place of small theatrical runs so I will keep my eyes peeled) and then it will hit VOD on September 30th.
.
--- And Finally I forgot to share this a couple of weeks ago when it dropped but today's "Siri Says" post where I listed my favorite movies of 2017 (so far) reminded me - the trailer for My Friend Dahmer was finally released, and you can see it below. The movie is out some time this fall. I reviewed it out of Tribeca, and I highly recommend it. (thx Mac)
.
.

Good Morning, World

.

I made myself some tea and cakes and crawled under a warm woolen blanket (oh my god in this heat - can you imagine? I did none of these things) and pretended I was in Merry Ol' last night and watched a bunch of BBC programming that hasn't aired here in the US yet thanks to the wild wonder of the world wide internet - namely I watched the first two "episodes" of Queers (I told you about that series here) with Ben Whishaw (typically astounding) and Dunkirk's Fionn Whitehead (Fionn actually got to give a performance in this; it was something to see! He has talent!) and I watched the first half of Man in the Orange Shirt, which...

... I have told you about plenty (here's the trailer) and which these gifs are from. Man in the Orange Shirt, you guys, is really lovely so far. The first half tells the WWII era tale of two soldiers (Oliver Jackson-Cohen and James McArdle) who fall in love but what with the 1940s and all, t'ain't meant to be. I've been saying this for years but makers of romantic movies really need to realize what a wellspring they've got in Gay Stories - talk about obstacles to overcome! We've got 'em in spades. 

OJC & McArdle have fabulous chemistry though and their scenes together (which are always too brief as befits their story) are full on British Romance Porn (think Matthias Schoenaerts in Far From the Madding Crowd + Michael Fassbender in The Light Between Oceans, fucking) with all the lovingly shot sweaters, tweeds and passionately fumbled suspenders and dropped britches you can imagine.

.

This thing is indulging in some EXTREME FABRICS PORN pic.twitter.com/vefb63N17c

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) August 2, 2017

The second half hasn't aired yet but it promises a modern-setting and Julian Morris (who I believe is playing the grand-son of OJC's character) getting gay, so you best believe I'll be on top of that the second Julian lets me on top. Of it, that is. The show will air on PBS here in the US in June of 2018, for Pride, so stay tuned. As long as we, you know, exist by then.

I Heart Queers

.

Don't you heart queers? And some of our most favorite queers are getting together to make a series of short 15-minute monologue films for the BBC called, you guessed it, Queers, to mark the 50th anniversary of the "Sexual Offenses Act of 1967," which "partially decriminalized sex between men," as Variety puts it. For more specifics on the law click here. But to think dirty thoughts about the actors they've lined up for this thing, stay put! MNPP faves pictured above Russell Tovey and Ben Whishaw will both participate...

... that's a picture of Ben in his segment, which is called "The Man on the Platform" and will be about a soldier returning from WWI. The series will, and I quote, "explore some of the most poignant, funny, tragic and riotous moments of British gay history and the personal rites of passage of British gay men through the last 100 years." Mkay. Among others the series will also star Alan Cumming and Kadiff Kirwan and Fionn Whitehead; Whitehead can also be seen in Christopher Nolan's upcoming film Dunkirk...