A Brutalist Man

Another day, another NYFF review -- well that's not exactly true, these have been slow coming, but we're into them now at least. I have written up my thoughts on Brady Corbet's The Brutalist today for Pajiba -- click here to read those. it is mostly all very very positive, although there are a couple of large exceptions to my praise. But still -- it feels like a good and proper big ass movie movie that I see myself watching a dozen more times (I've already seen it twice and it very much rewards repeat viewings). And the second its score is released on vinyl I will buy that shit so fast -- probably the score of the year, right here, give or take a Challengers.  

Riz Ahmed Eight Times

Riz Ahmed is the cover boy for Vogue Singapore this month because he's finally going to be in a few things soon, including that modern spin on Hamlet I told you about (with Joe Alwyn!) and a new Prime series... which as far as I can tell still doesn't have a title? So it might be a minute on that one. Anyway it's always good (that word is a true understatement) to see Riz, and these photos represent the second time today, since...

If you need me I will be in a cooling center recovering from this photo of Riz Ahmed and his trainer pic.twitter.com/1rbWZNYlzO

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) July 10, 2024

... he also posted that photo on his Instagram this morning, which I have been recovering from all afternoon. I mean how dare he. I need a warning on that sort of thing, my Riz. Yadda yadda these photos are fine, because they are of Riz, and Riz is fine. Logic 101. So let's pray this turns out to be a good and proper and rightful Year of Riz, and then hit the jump for all the fresh snaps...

The Kings of Kindness

That there is the first official poster for Yorgos Lanthimos' Kinds of Kindness, designed by the great Vasilis Marmatakis who's done most of Yorgos' previous posters -- and like with all the other ones I'm gonna end up buying this beauty too! Anyway along with that they dropped a new teaser for the movie, you can watch it down below. I have not watched it myself -- I watched the first teaser about five thousand times and now I am done watching things until I am watching the movie on June 21st. In similar news no I haven't watched the trailer for Ti West's MaXXXine yet and I don't think I shall! I decided I will watch it after I watch the movie in full. I don't need trailers for these movies -- I just need these movies dammit! 

Kinds of Awesomeness

One assumes that one and all have already witnessed the teaser trailer for Yorgos Lanthimos' new movie Kinds of Kindess this morning, before one clicked over here to this website -- and yet we post it. We must. It's given us goosebumps, it has! It does exactly what a teaser should do -- tease us, give us no idea of a plot, just a bunch of ridiculously alluring and disturbing images, an idea of the outrageous cast (Emma Stone, Willem Dafoe, Jesse Plemons, Margaret Qualley,  Hunter Schafer, Hong Chau, Mamoudou Athie, and Joe Alwyn) and some goddamned Annie Lennox. What else does one need? Granted I was sold on this movie before insemination so perhaps I don't speak for one and all. But I speak for the people who matter. Watch:

Kinds of Kindess will be out on June 21st.

Kinds of Yorgos-ness

This is yesterday's news, literally, but I'm gonna be real annoyed with myself in a few weeks time when I go searching to see where the post is where I shared the announcement of Yorgos Lanthimos' new movie and remember that oh right you took that day off to play hooky and go see Dune Part Two in IMAX. Anyway we've known about Yorgos' next movie for awhile now (here is my last post about it) -- it used to be called And but perhaps they realized that a movie called And would be lost unto the search engines forever (which I figured was part of the joke) so they have now officialled retitled the film Kinds of Kindess. And they have also given it a release date -- June 21st. (98 days to go!) And they have also announced a big chunk of the cast -- of course Emma Stone because I don't know if Yorgos and Emma are ever going to make another movie without each other at this point. 

I do believe they already have two more lined up after this one! But then there's Willem Dafoe (again), Joe Alwyn (again),  Margaret Qualley (again), plus the supremely talented Yorgos-newbies Jesse Plemons, Hunter Schafer, Mamoudou Athie, and Hong Chaun and god we love Hong Chau. Almost as much as we love a director who has a repertory of players. I do wish he'd work with Rachel Weisz or Colin Farrell or Ben Whishaw or Olicia Colman again. Or Mark Ruffalo. And also I have a list of about ten thousand actors he hasn't worked with I'd like to see him work with. Point being Yorgos don't you dare ever take a break!

Good Morning, I Quit Smoking 15 Years Ago Today

Well it's that time again -- every May 5th I celebrate two personal things (and no neither of them are Cinco de Mayo, but if you celebrate that a happy one to you). One -- it's my anniversary with my boyfriend. And two -- I quit smoking cigarettes on this day in the year 2008, and I have been doing this post here on this website for fifteen straight years ever since. All year long I set aside a folder of images I stumble upon of our favorite sexy actors smoking...

... be it in film, photoshoot, or personal life. I might be happy I quit, and I don't encourage any of you to pick up the habit... but gosh if it can't be sexy to look at all the same. I don't make the rules! Some things are just the way they are. So this morning let's hit the jump and roll around like animals in filth in the hot bad habit of it all...

Which Is Hotter?

I know that Joe Alwyn and Paul Mescal got together with Variety (thx Mac) to technically talk about their "craft" for the annual end-of-year "Actors on Actors" series. And they were even kind enough to spend some of the conversation talking about their "craft" getting them naked and sexy and stuff, too. But I've just got to take it that extra mile and make this a sexy competition. That's just the Wild West of the World Wide Web, boys! Them's thar rules!

online polls

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Sisters Brothers (2018)

Hermann Kermit Warm: This is the great challenge that all prospectors face. How do I get at what's just beneath my feet? There's only two solutions, of course: hard labor and good luck.

Hooray another opportunity to post the name "Hermann Kermit Warm" aka quite possibly my favorite character name of all time, which belongs to Riz Ahmed in Jacques Audiard's 2018 masterpiece The Sisters Brothers. And it's not just one reason I have this opportunity today, but two! Two reasons, wah ah ah. Number one it's Riz's 40th birthday today! Everybody close your eyes and send warm (Hermann Kermit Warm) vibes in Riz's general direction right now. You can send them above or below the belt -- I don't judge.

That's as good a way to spend our time while we wait and wait and wait for one of the four projects he's got lined up to come to us anyway -- he hasn't been in anything at all this year! A year without Riz is not a year well spent, y'all. But the dry spell should end in 2023 -- one of the projects is a new version of Hamlet and yes, sigh, another version of Hamlet. I know. But it's a modern version and it's from the director of that Ben Whishaw movie Surge (which was a good and interesting movie) and best of all Riz's co-stars are Morfydd Clark (from Saint Maud and Fellowship of the Ring) as Ophelia and Joe Alwyn as Laertes. Good cast!

And another interesting sounding project he's working on is called Fingernails from Apples director Christos Nikou -- I still haven't managed to see Apples but lots of people have told me I should, and Nikou is known for his previous work with Yorgos Lanthimos so I really totally should get on that. Best of all alongside Riz this movie co-stars Jessie Buckley and Jeremy Allen White; another groovy good cast. Not much of a shock that people wanna work with Riz at this point, I suppose. But good to see. 

But none of that was my second reason for posting this post today -- the important other news besides Riz's 40th is that the fine folks at Arrow UK are putting out a limited edition 4K blu-ray of The Sisters Brothers in February! This movie's weirdly gone out of print here in the US -- you can get over-priced blus on Amazon still but for a movie that's only four years old I was worried the studio was letting this one slip through the cracks. Granted this is a UK disc so you'll need a region-free player here in the US but well I have one, so I'm set. And that's what matters most. You can pre-order the disc right here; it looks loaded with extras, too. Happy Rizzy stuff everywhere, huzzah.

And Joe Like That...

We have an update on Yorgos Lanthimos' next movie called And -- yes, just And -- and it's a nice one! No not nice news here! Nothing but the nicest! I told you about a month ago about this movie, how it was fonna star Emma Stone and Willem Dafoe and Margaret Qualley. Well today they have added pretty boy Joe Alwyn to the cast. Alwyn has already worked with Yorgos, and Emma Stone for that matter, as he was in The Favourite...

... playing the pretty-boy cuck that Emma Stone's character used to beat-off her way back into a royal title. He was good in that movie. And he was also good in Claire Denis' new movie Stars at Noon, which coincidentally co-starred Margaret Qualley. This is all getting so incestuous! Anyway I saw Stars at Noon at NYFF and didn't ever write about it but I liked it, it's worth seeking out. Which won't be too difficult starting tomorrow when it hits Hulu. Here is the trailer if you haven't seen it yet:

Also worth a look is this photo of Joe on the set:

Good Morning, NYFF

Happy Monday, one and one all. This is a thing I should have heads-upped y'all about last week but me being me I was too busy I don't know googling Colin Farrell in shorts shorts probably -- press screenings for the New York Film Festival begin this morning. So I'm gonna be there off and on -- sporadically, some might say -- for the next couple of weeks. Posting will indeed be erratic, but I'll try to keep you abreast. Today I'll be seeing the lovely and amazing Vicky Krieps there in a movie called Corsage, and later on I'm seeing Claire Denis' new one Stars at Noon that stars Margaret Qualley and Joe Alwyn. Good first day, looks like! But I'll be around here blogging probably this afternoon, in between. So until then!

All Week With Alwyn

I have yet to see a Joe Alwyn performance that I would rank above "Fine, I guess" and as I go look at his IMDb page I realize I am saying this having seen the majority of his screen work -- before this weekend's release on Hulu of his Sally Rooney adapted series Conversations With Friends that I told you about Joe has only so far been in ten things, and I've seen six of those ten, and I wouldn't say he left much of an impression on me in any of them... save some thoughts about him being pretty, of course. Maybe Claire Denis will be able to pull some life out of him with Stars at Noon, her next movie that he's the star of (he stepped in to replace her boyfriend Robert Pattinson after Rob had a schedule conflict) -- and last I heard the Luca Guadagnino remake of Brideshead Revisited with him and Andrew Garfield isn't going to be happening, so seems Luca won't be the one to. At least he hasn't shied away from playing gay, having done it in Boy Erased and the second Souvenir. Anyway, I bring all of this up because this is the third time I'm posting a Joe Alwyn post in the past week and I can't really justify myself -- it's just, with that Hulu show hitting, he's what's been available! And, same as Friday, I am using Joe to say goodbye -- as stated then I'm off for the next week for a wedding out of town. And unlike what I said on Friday I was wrong about my return-date -- I'll be back next Tuesday, not Monday. Please make it until then! And to keep you moderately entertained I have nine more Joe pics after the jump...

Gee It's Joe

Have I mentioned to you people that I will be offline for most of next week? I'm traveling for a wedding -- it'll be my first time on a plane in at least three years, probably longer, and no I am not looking forward to that one little bit, thanks for asking -- and MNPP will be closed for business every day next week save Monday. It's pretty bad timing, I have heaps of shit piling up (not to mention I am having to miss out on my Tori Amos concert -- which, as an aside, I have a Tori Amos ticket for sale if anybody wants to send me a message about that!) -- but I suppose it will do me good to be somewhere else for a hot minute. Anyway that's next week -- right now it's the weekend, and we should all go enjoy the weekend. I recommend the new Doctor Strange movie -- reviewed here -- as I very much enjoyed it myself; if you see it tell me what you think! As a parting gift here is one more photograph of Joe Alwyn in Arena Homme magazine, this coming on top of the nineteen photos from that magazine I shared earlier this week. A nice round twenty then! Bye.

Joe Alwyn Nineteen Times

I was trying to figure out what project Joe Alwyn has coming out to go alongside these new photos for Arena Homme Plus mag -- all I have are the photos, not the interview yet, so I was in the dark. But a five second google, as exhausting as that was, gave me my answer -- he's one of the leads in Hulu's series Conversations With Friends, which is out on May 15th and co-stars Jemima Kirke and Sasha Lane, based on the book by Sally Rooney and directed by Lenny Abrahamson, aka the same duo who gave us Normal People. I don't know about you but I wouldn't be angry if this series shows off as much of Joe as Normal People did of Paul Mescal! Anybody read the book? Hit the jump for all of these fine photos...

Oh and One More Thing...

... this photo of Joe Alwyn & Jack Lowden. That's all. Bye.

This Project's One Hot Potato!

Well here is some interesting and unexpected news -- French director (one might even say "iconoclast") Claire Denis has lined up her next film called The Stars At Noon and it will star that fellow there above (aka Taylor Swift's man, aka Joe Alwyn) alongside Margaret Qualley (aka Andie Macdowell's popular spawn). This news is via Deadline. The studio behind this is A24, who Denis worked with on her last picture, the very fine High Life with Robert Pattinson and Juliette Binoche. Speaking of Denis actually already has another movie in the can, that one called Fire, a love triangle story that stars Binoche, Vincent Lindon (very hot right now thanks to his stellar work in Titane), and Beau Travail star Grégoire Colin...

... whose nips were recently immortalized on that film's Criterion cover. Not a terrible claim to fame, that! (Do you think he's annoyed they blotted out his face though? I bet he is.) Anyway back to Denis' next next film with Joe Alwyn & Margaret Qualley, aka why we're here (I do get so distracted whenever half-naked soldiers come up)  -- Deadline says that Alwyn is replacing Taron Egerton, who left for "personal reasons" (ooh intriguing), and that this was also meant to originally Denis' BFF star Robert Pattinson, who had to drop out because of Batman delays. (I posted about this previously.) Cursed picture, this one already! Here's how the plot's described:

"Based on the novel by Denis Johnson, the story is set in 1984 during the Nicaraguan Revolution and follows a mysterious English businessman and headstrong American journalist who strike up a passionate romance. They soon become embroiled in a dangerous labyrinth of lies and conspiracies and are forced to try and escape the country, with only each other to trust and rely on."

Anybody read the book? It's sounding very Year of Living Dangerously to me, or for that matter Denis' own film White Material, which was also about sexy people (in that case Isabelle Huppert, Nicolas Duvauchelle, and Isaach De Bankolé) getting caught up in wars that they're sort of outsiders to. I did not like White Material though, so let's hope this is more of the Denis from her last couple of pictures, since I've finally come around to her. Anyway since we're talking Joe I got some new pictures of Joe! Hit the jump for them... 

Brideshead Revisited Revisited

Luca Guadagnino is adding yet another project onto his great big project pile! Not sure where he will fit this in in between his Scarface re-do and his Lord of the Flies re-do and his movie about bisexual pimp Scotty Bowers (and those are just the first three that popped to mind -- there are definitely more), but today he's announced he is doing a BBC miniseries adaptation of queer classic Brideshead Revisited, the 1945 novel by author Evelyn Waugh that's already been adapted a few times, most recently in 2008 starring Matthew Goode and Ben Whishaw...

That photo isn't actually from that adaptation, but from its press, but I do love that photo. Anyway as that photo up top clues you into the rumor is that Andrew Garfield will be Luca's leading man. Deadline makes it clear no one's actually been cast yet. That said they have other names in their rumor-mongering, including Ralph Fiennes (who Luca worked with on A Bigger Splash), Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara (I love that our Carol lovers have become our Bogey & Bacall, our Hepburn & Tracy, working together over and over), and then presumably in the Ben Whishaw role they're naming Gorgeous Joe Alwyn!

Good lord, what a cast this would be! Now here is where I admit I have never read Brideshead Revisited nor have I seen any of its adaptations. I think I admitted that when I posted about Ben Whishaw's birthday a couple of weeks ago, but just in case you missed judging me then, feel free now. So should I have myself a little marathon and watch the one with Jeremy Irons too?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Dogtooth (2009)

Father: If you don't drink your orange juice 

while it's fresh, it's no use.

A happy New York 10 to Yorgos Lanthimos' film Dogtooth, which opened here in my city on this day in 2010 after several months of bouncing around the world with film fests and the like. I'm guessing I didn't see it until it hit home video though, because I didn't review it until December of that year? I don't know. Who can remember when and where they saw things? I'm so bad at that sort of thing unless, like, Angela Bassett is sitting beside me or something. 

Anyway it sort of feels like Yorgos has, in the ten years since, become his own genre -- look at Hulu's The Great, which was only written by the guy who also wrote The Favourite, for proof. And I can't think of a more unlikely success story in all my days than this one. Who watched Dogtooth in 2010 and said to themselves, "We've got a hit! This guy's gonna be gobbling up Oscar winners and getting copycatted left and right in less than a decade!" And yet, here we are, and Nicholas Hoult is loosing his buns for this, and I am all in. Yorgos-flavored everything for all of my days, please. In related news aww look at this cute picture of the Favourite cast on set:

Good Morning, World

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A happy 29 to Joe Alwyn today!

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Joe Alwyn Fourteen Times

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I was about to be all, "Where the hell has Joe Alwyn been?" but then I scanned his IMDb page and realized it's more, "Where the hell have I been?" because he's actually in two projects that are in the world right this minute that I just haven't bothered to pay attention to. I guess he's in the Harriet Tubman biopic starring Cynthia Erivo which I still haven't seen (blame that on a truly terrible trailer killing my enthusiasm, but I'll watch it once I have a screener).

And I also guess that Joe is in the latest iteration of A Christmas Carol with Guy Pearce that premieres on FX shortly, on December 19th to be more precise -- Alwyn plays the eternally decent chap Bob Cratchit, father of Tiny Tim. I'll put your Tiny Tim on my shouklders any time, Joe Alwyn... 

So uhh anyway it's not that Joe hasn't been there, it's that I haven't been looking, not the way I oughta. Similarly this photo-shoot for Man About Town magazine's seen here has been out for almost two weeks now! What have I been doing with my time? Because furiously studying Aaron Taylor-Johnson's manhood for clues, anyway. Ahem. On that note hit the jump for the rest of this shoot...

Joe Alwyn Five Times

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Did you guys see The Souvenir? Joanna Hogg's semi-autobiographical film about a rich girl (played by Tilda Swinton's daughter Honor Swinton Byrne) and her dope-addicted come-and-go boyfriend is on streaming now so you've really got no excuse -- I saw it in the theater way back when... and never wrote about it because I never sussed out my opinion on it properly. There were very many things I admired about it but it also felt awfully self-indulgent at times.

That said "self-indulgent" is what's often thrown at say Sofia Coppola for the exact same basically misogynistic reasons -- treating a "rich girl"'s problems as somehow unworthy of attention -- and so I never really felt comfortable coming down on the movie that way. I mean my issues with the film really had to do with class, not sex, but Hogg does directly address that subject in a couple of ways. Anyway I wasn't enamored quite enough in any personal sort of way to really dig deep into my thoughts about the film before we'd all moved on, and here we are, several months later...

... with a lot of news coming hard on Hogg's long rumored sequel to the film. Robert Pattinson was going to star in it for her but he had to drop out and she's now replaced him with two men -- Rob's gotta feel good about that; only two men can do the job he could've! -- and they are Beach Rats star Harris Dickinson and Stranger Things actor Charlie Heaton. So why the hell am I posting pictures of Joe Alwyn then, you ask?

Joe has also joined the movie, but he's playing some other role, not the one split into two by Pattinson's departure. And when I say "joined" what I mean to say is "filmed" because according to that link Hogg's already filmed the movie, and A24 will be releasing it some time next year. Perhaps by then I'll re-watch the first one and have more concrete or complex thoughts and or feelings about it. And wouldn't that be a treat? I can hardly wait, personally. I can only imagine how y'all feel.