Pics of the Day

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I had been bitching for awhile, in my extremely priviledged way, that the cast of Robert Eggers' Nosferatu hadn't been doing Q&As here in New York City the way they had been doing for the past several weeks all over the map -- well it turns out they were saving the best for last! And so last night I got to see the movie (a fourth time!) with Nicholas Hoult, Bill Skarsgård, Willem Dafoe, and Lily-Rose Depp all there alongside their director and above you'll see several videos and photos from the experience. And let me just tell you -- being five feet away from Nicky & Bill being buddy-buddy was certainly an experience. 

But unbelievably that was not the high point of the night -- the most memorable part of the evening came just beforehand when I was waiting in line for the screening in the movie theater's lobby. They have one of the repliucas of Nosferatu's sarcophogus in the Lincoln Square lobby (yes the same ones you can buy on Focus Features' website for 20K lol) and I was leaning on it while waiting to check in, when who should appear through the revolving doors but a live rat. 

Y’all a LITERAL FUCKING RAT just ran past my feet and under the #Nosferatu sarcophagus in the lobby of the AMC while I’m waiting in the line for a NOSFERATU screening — talk about viral marketing

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— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) December 17, 2024 at 5:01 PM

I feel like I should be making this story up given how prominent the press push about all the live rats they used in this movie has been, but I am 100% telling the truth. A rat came into the movie theater through the revolving doors and ran past my feet under the Nosferatu sarcophogus. I am not the only person who saw this -- the people in front of me in line did, and the PR rep for the movie leapt on her chair and screamed. I am in awe. Talk about getting me in the mood.

Anyway the movie plays better every time I watch it -- click here to read my review of the film if you haven't yet. or wait one week, see the movie in theaters yourself, and then read my review. Whatever. Just see this gangbusters horror flick. Eggers made something deeply fucked up in all of the right ways. Exceptional stuff.

Tonight We Feast!

I never ever do this because I am always woefully running behind but my review of Robert Eggers' Nosferatu was burning a hole in my brain so I have it for you, today, at the exact second the review embargo has broken! The movie isn't out until Christmas Day but I just wanted to get the word out as soon as my purpled fingers could muster -- click here to read my thoughts on the film at Pajiba. To say I loved it would be uhhh fair, I would wager. (I've already seen it three times!) Go buy your tickets!

Happy Pride From Criterion!

June is Pride Month and Criterion is hitting a home run right off the bat with their June 2024 slate of announcements -- Rainer Werner Fassbinder's final film Querelle, a surreal Jean Genet adaptation starring a sizzling hot Brad Davis that has been a real pain in the ass to get for years (out of print et cetera) is entering the collection on June 11th! We've posted a million and one times about this movie here at MNPP, it's been one of our faves since it was first introduced to us in a college class on queer cinema -- I'm a little sad they're not releasing it in 4K (just regular blu) but I will not complain! It will just be nice to replace my ancient DVD! But that's not the only gay goodness they've got in store for the month...

... as they're also dropping the Wachowski's 1996 lesbian noir masterpiece Bound! And this one IS getting the 4K treatment! If you've never seen Bound before... well don't even wait for the June 18th release date. Watch Bound tonight! You will not be disappointed. It remains my favorite Wachowski movie, and it was their first! But the hits don't stop there...

... as they've also slated Barry Jenkins seriously underappreciated 2021 masterpiece of a miniseries The Underground Railroad. I guess because the world felt like it was falling apart (not that that feeling has stopped) when this was airing it really felt like it didn't get enough attention at the time -- maybe it was also the fact that it was on Amazon Prime and lord knows the black hole that is streaming does the legacy of art no favors. But this is the best thing Jenkins has done to date and I say that as a person who felt Moonlight deserved Best Picture. Just an astonishing accomplishment, not to be missed. 

The rest of their June slate ain't no slouch -- David Lynch's 1986 masterpiece Blue Velvet is getting the 4K upgrade for one. This is probably my favorite Lynch movie? It's nigh impossible to choose given his filmography but it's the one I keep coming back to the most often anyway. And I cannot wait to see how it looks in 4K. Also getting a 4K upgrade is Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. And then there's the one movie of the June bunch I am unfamliar with -- Emilio Fernandez's 1951 film Victims of Sin, which sounds like a Mexican noir melodrama? I'm in. Once I finish watching Querelle for the 50,000th time anyway...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from: 

Cry-Baby (1990)

Judge: Mrs. Malnorowski, there is no

smoking in this court-room.

Hatchet's Mother: I pay taxes on cigarettes, don't I? 

And what do I get for those taxes? Happiness? 

Hell no! I get tuberculosis!

John Waters' Cry-Baby was released 32 years ago today!

HAPPY 32 TO CRY-BABY pic.twitter.com/91U4Uc03io

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) April 6, 2022

Pics of the Day

How in the ever-humping world have I never seen these photos of John Waters bookended by Willem Dafoe and Johnny Depp (when he was still Johnny Depp) on the set of Cry-Baby in 1990??? (via, thx Lisa!) Also please do take note that John is fully copping a feel of Willem above. (Copping! See what I did there?) I've only seen Cry-Baby a couple of times (it's never been a fave) so I don't even remember Willem being in it, but I coincidentally just got it on blu-ray so maybe this is the world telling me I need to re-watch it immediately? And is this the hottest that Willem has ever looked?

Can This Candy Man Can

Of course most people's immediate reactions to today's news that Timothée Chalamet will be starring in a Willy Wonka prequel -- titled just Wonka -- has been to think of Gene Wilder's classic performance in the 1971 film, and I get that. But I have to admit that my first thought reading this news was actually of Johnny Depp, and this is coming from someone who's watched the 1971 film dozens of times and Tim Burton's abysmal remake starring Depp exactly once and that was one too many times. (Except for Missi Pyle, who was very funny, because when isn't Missi Pyle funny?) No I thought of Depp because Timmy's path keeps crossing with Depp, and Johnny Depp would not have been my first thought (or hope) if I was the person mapping out Timmy's adult career. 

First and foremost there is of course the fact that Timmy dated Johnny's daughter Lily-Rose for awhile (I can't remember if they're still together), but there was also that Edward Scissorhands themed commercial that had Timmy playing OG Edward's son opposite Winona Ryder. The first time I thought of the two as linked was that uber-goth acting video Timmy did for The New York Times in 2017 during the awards-run for Call Me By Your Name -- it was very Sleepy Hollow, and if you wanna talk about a role you can picture Timmy in with great ease then I recommend you mentally face-map him onto Ichabod Crane. Real easy!

Anyway I don't think most people think Timmy is the problem with the Wonka news -- this rumor went around in January anyway, and everybody seemed to agree that Chalamet was a better pick than the other stated option on deck, Spider-twink Tom Holland. I think most people's problems with this news is just a lack of need with regards to this project in general. Who's thirsting for this movie? Hollywood seems real in love right now with Origin Stories a la the Cruella movie coming out any day now and I'll agree, they're just so lazy. If there's one good bit of news here it's that Paul King, the guy who directed the two Paddington movies, is directing this, and those movies unexpectedly ruled.

King of Candy

Did you hear the rumor going around earlier this week that the folks at WB are thinking about making a Willy Wonka prequel movie -- meaning they would like to tell the story of Lil' Willy and how he came to be the King of Chocolate... not to mention the slaver of untold Oompa Loompa millions -- and that the two names in contention for the lead-role are the Spider-twink Tom Holland and the peach-fucker Timothee Chalamet? Before I get to my logic in my own choice between those names I will just ask you to choose...

free polls

As for me I personally think, out of those two names, that Timmy's the better pick. I love Tom but there's something unabashedly normal and practical about him, which works well for his Peter Parker, grounding him inside the MCU's big flights of fancy. Hhe brings a ton of heart to the films, which is why the end of Infinity War is such a gut-punch. But as great as that is I don't think any of those qualities are what you want from a Young Wonka? Timmy's got the boyish enthusiasm but at an angle -- a little wacky, off-center, too much. He'd be a better fit, in my own humble pie opinion. Although it must be said...

pic.twitter.com/r689flzhrS

— rachel syme (@rachsyme) January 19, 2021

What Are You A Wizard

I'm not sure if I even feel like covering the Fantastic Beasts movies anymore now that J.K. Rowling's proven herself such a ghastly crumb of a person -- and let's be honest they were totally forgettable anyway -- but I admit I am intrigued by the news that Mads Mikkelsen is rumored to be replacing Johnny Depp (speaking of ghastly) as the big bad (and I might mention, homosexual) of the series, Gellert Grindenwald. A lot of people (myself included) thought they'd just go back to Colin Farrell -- Farrell was in the first Fantastic Beasts film...

... and spent a lot of time being molesty with Ezra Miller (god I love that gif), until that film ended with his big revelation being that he was really a hideous Johnny Depp underneath. One shudders! Must be Farrell's busy or not interested -- either way, Mikkelsen is supposedly "in early talks" for the role, which has him playing the evil ex-lover of Young Dumbledore, played by Jude Law in a series of ever-tightening tweed trousers. 

So... the Fantastic Beasts films do have their draws, I'll admit it. But they're never going to "go there" with Dumbledore and Grindenwald it seems, and J.K. Rowling is trash, so the little I was caring has sloughed off a good portion of itself. We'll see, I guess.

Hypnotizing Fishermen Isn't Acumen!

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What, you thought I'd let Eva Green's 40th birthday slide by with nary a mention? Well... technically I did, since it was yesterday. But I was working on it! I went above and beyond y'all, and forced myself to suffer in the name of Eva.

Rewatching an aggressively awful movie in order to write about a wonderful performance contained therein — the sacrifices I make for you people!

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) July 7, 2020

Yup I was speaking there of Tim Burton's terrible 2012 Dark Shadows movie, which she's nevertheless one hundred percent fab in, and which I just wrote up today over at The Film Experience for this week's "Great Moments in Horror Actressing" post. Who could have guessed? I mean who would have wanted to think of this terrible movie again long enough to guess it? Somebody send me in the direction of a supercut of just her scenes, please...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Cry-Baby (1990)

Allison: What's the matter, Cry-Baby?

Cry-Baby: Everything's the matter!

Allison: It's just the thunderstorm. 

Heat lightening. It's sexy.

Cry-Baby: It's not sexy! 

Electricity makes me insane!

John Waters' Cry-Baby came out thirty years ago today. I'm pretty sure that Cry-Baby was the first John Waters movie I ever saw (either it or Serial Mom) -- Johnny Depp's sweet face on the videocassette cover would've made it an acceptable pick-up at the video-store for a 12-year-old... little did my parents know! Not that Cry-Baby is Waters' dirtiest movie, by any means -- I guess I'll admit here that I've never felt a deep affection for it? 

Johnny Depp is at his absolute prettiest in it, which is definitely a plus in the plus column, but it kind of always feels like Waters is in automatic pilot to me. It's mildly amusing, but I'm never scandalized or gasping from air from chuckles. But please tell me how wrong I am in the comments, and share what you love about the movie, if indeed anything. I think we can all agree on Hatchet Face:

Wolf Boy Becomes Wolf Man

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1917 star George Mackay, aka the cream that rose to the top of this past awards season -- that works in the sense that he's a terrific actor finally getting some attention after several years of great work and in the sense that dude is real pasty -- has just lined up a new gig, and it sounds possibly pretty interesting. He's going to star in Wolf, playing a young man who has "species dysphoria" and actually thinks he's a wolf. (So basically he's playing Sheila the She-Wolf on GLOW.) His family sends him to a clinic for brain treatment, as one does, and there he meets a young lady (to be played by Lily-Rose Depp) who thinks herself a wildcat. One assumes an interspecies romance then ensues.

What this actually most reminds me of is Park Chan-wook's criminally under-rated 2006 romance I'm a Cyborg But That's OK, which had the singer Rain romancing Soo-jung Lim, who believes herself to be half-robot and has elaborate fantasies -- or are they? -- where her mechanics take over at great moments of stress and the like. The tension between one person's belief in another and how that feeds the increasingly dangerous fantasies becomes, in Park's hands, the perfect engine to explore What Love Means. Let's hope it's like that!

On an interesting side-note the original star of this movie was apparently supposed to be our favorite spritely lil' weirdo Barry Keoghan, making this the second project in the past month -- alongside the Y: The Last Man series -- that Barry's either dropped out of or been booted from, not sure which in either case. We're giving him the benefit of the doubt that his big Marvel movie Eternals has swallowed up his time, but if another project drops we might begin to worry. Funnily enough in a weird bit of overlap the director of Wolf is Nathalie Biancheri, whose last movie Nocturnal starred Cosmo Jarvis, aka Barry's co-star (and MNPP crush) in Calm With Horses, which we just posted a trailer for the other day.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Sleepy Hollow (1999)

Ichabod Crane: Villainy wears many masks,
none so dangerous as the mask of virtue.

When we talk about the spectacular year of movies that we got in 1999 Tim Burton's Sleepy Hollow is usually mentioned but it's usually a ways down the list -- it should be higher, says me. It's one of Burton's greatest, a perfect little gothic creeper with some of the most beautiful stage-bound scenery and cinematography from Emmanuel Lubezki, costumes from Colleen Atwood, and delightfully cartoonish turns from Depp and Christopher Walken and hoo boy Miranda Richardson. It's Burton going all-in on making his own Hammer Movie...

... with no less than our love Christina Ricci offering up the requisite heaving bosom. And besides all the pretty pretty Burton ladles on full heapings of outrageous squicky goofy gore. It's absolutely magical, I adore it. How do y'all feel about Sleepy Hollow? (And they just recently released a blu-ray of the film with the a book of the Washington Irving short story included, how cool is that? Physical Media Rules.)

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1994

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Okay it's been awhile since we've done one of our "Siri Says" series -- I take longer breaks in between each so I can make this last, since we're running out of possible years now, and also I get lazy -- so let me re-explain the idea: I pick up my iPhone and I ask Siri to choose me a number between 1 and 100. The number she gives me I then correspond to a year, and I pick my five favorite movies from that year. Today Siri told me the number "94" and so today we shall take a look at The Movies of 1994.

I'm actually pretty surprised that we haven't covered 1994 in this series yet -- sure Siri's fickle, but 1994 is one of those formative years in my movie-obsessing, and I'm glad to get the chance to look at it now. I was working in the home video department of the local Wegmans grocery store and devouring every video-tape I could get my hands on -- to the kiddies out there, this was what we did in the 90s, especially in the year Quentin Tarantino made Pulp Fiction, you see. 

Scanning through the movies for that year my first thought was wow, a lot of these have not aged well -- yes I'm looking at you, Forrest Gump -- but once I dove down into the cracks of it a whole lotta awesome bubbled up to the surface. And even the bad movies from this time period left a pretty indelible mark on me about what the movies mean, good and ill. So let's do it. I hereby give you...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1994

Muriel's Wedding 

(dir. PJ Hogan)

-- released on September 29th 1994 --

Heavenly Creatures

(dir. Peter Jackson)

-- released on October 14th 1994 --

Hoop Dreams

(dir. Steve James)

-- released on October 14th 1994 --

Ed Wood

(dir. Tim Burton)

-- released on October 7th 1994 --

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Serial Mom 

(dir. John Waters)

-- released on April 13th 1994 --

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Runners-up: The Lion King (dir. Minhoff), Speed (dir. Jan de Bont), Dumb and Dumber (dir. Farrellys), Interview With the Vampire (dir. Neil Jordan), Pulp Fiction (dir. Tarantino), Bullets Over Broadway (dir. Woody Allen), Reality Bites (dir. Ben Stiller)...

... Natural Born Killers (dir. Oliver Stone), Quiz Show (dir. Robert Redford), Jason's Lyric (dir. Doug McHenry), Wes Craven's New Nightmare (dir. Craven), Little Women (dir. Gillian Armstrong), 71 Fragments of a Chronology of a Chance (dir. Michael Haneke)...

... The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (dir. Stephan Elliott), Chungking Express (dir. Wong Kar-wai), Crumb (dir. Terry Zwigoff), The Last Seduction (dir. John Dahl), Nightwatch (dir. Ole Bornedal), Leon: The Professional (dir. Besson), Priest (dir. Antonia Bird)...

... Shallow Grave (dir. Danny Boyle), Three Colors: White (dir. Kieslowski), Three Colors: Red (dir. Kieslowski), To Live (dir. Zhang Yimou), The Shawshank Redemption (dir. Frank Darabont), The Hudsucker Proxy (dir. Coens)

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Never seen: Crooklyn (dir. Spike Lee), Tom & Viv (dir. Gilbert), Wolf (dir. Mike Nichols), The Madness of King George (dir. Hytner), Ashes of Time (dir. Wong Kar-wai), Backbeat (dir. Iain Softley)...

...... Amateur (dir. Hal Hartley), Eat Drink Man Woman (dir. Ang Lee), Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (dir. Alan Rudolph), Once Were Warriors (dir. Lee Tamahori), Queen Margot (dir. Patrice Chereau), Vanya on 42nd Street (dir. Louis Malle) 

-------------------------------------

What are your favorite movies of 1994?

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Jail Bait (1954)

Dr. Gregor: This afternoon we had a long
telephone conversation earlier in the day.

With dialogue like that you know you're in an Ed Wood film and sure enough, this is one! Jail Bait was Wood's second picture after the infamous Glen or Glenda, and right before Bride of the Monster - somebody's who's seen Tim Burton's 1994 bio-pic Ed Wood recently will have to remind me if Jail Bait gets any mention in that movie - I haven't watched Ed Wood in far too long but don't recall Jail Bait being mentioned and the film's Wikipedia summation skips right over it too. So why do I bring up Jail Bait today?

Because Jail Bait was the first movie that future Hercules Steve Reeves ever acted in, and it's Steve Reeves' birthday today, that's why! Reeves would be turning 93 if he was still around. I found an interview with the actor from 1994 (right before Ed Wood came out) and this movie came up; here's what Steve had to say:

"The picture was originally called The Hidden Face. It's about a criminal who goes to a plastic surgeon who changes the criminal’s face to resemble his own. Somewhere in the film there was something about 'jail bait,' so they decided the title Jail Bait was more commercial. It was my first film, and I got my Screen Actors Guild card for it.... Wood was a very cooperative guy who let you do things the way you wanted to, and if they weren't quite right he would direct you. But he wasn't the kind of director who was always on you. The shoot lasted two or three weeks for me, off and on. I played a young detective, and I had a suit on at all times. I even had a tie. Only took my shirt off once. Those were the days, huh?"

"I even had a tie." Oh, Steve. You can watch all of Jail Bait right here if you, you know, feel up to it. It's not even an infamously bad Ed Wood movie like Plan 9 From Outer Space so it takes a real adventurer to brave those wilds but I'm sure I've got a few of those around here. Anyway we were just speaking of Steve Reeves a couple of weeks back...
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... on a big screen today was all the Xmas gift I need pic.twitter.com/SdOZ2dRmxO

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) December 27, 2018

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... when they screened The Giant of Marathon at FSLC for their Jacques Tourneur series, which was a ton of fun. Portions of it were filmed by Mario Bava and they're easy to tell because things go ultra-colorful and hyper-violent all of a sudden. It's a decent sword-n-sandal flick as far as those things go - I'm not the biggest fan of the genre but if you wanna see Steve Reeves in obscenely short skirts wrestling dudes you do what you gotta. (And all of The Giant of Marathon is on Amazon Prime, btw.) But I won't make you go through all that to see some Steve Reeves skin -- all you gotta do is hit the jump for the Total Steve Reeves Birthday Suit Experience...

Hangin' Toff

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Wanna know why one of the year's best films is Widows (review here) while one of the year's worst is the Fantastic Beasts sequel? Well there are dozens of reasons but for the purposes of this post we'll stick to one - Widows has Colin Farrell, and FB2 replaced Colin Farrell with Johny fucking Depp. Hermione Granger would never. Anyway I bring all of that up as a good sign for Guy Ritchie's next next movie (the one after his live-action Aladdin, that is), which has just cast Colin Farrell as an MMA coach named, wait for it, Coach. The movie is called Toff Guys and weirdly they aren't baking seasonal toffee-flavored treats, but rather doing big brawny classic Guy Ritchie kinds of things like talking with accents and punching. Also in the cast -- Matthew McConaughey, Michelle "Lady Mary" Dockery, Hugh Grant, and Henry "Dreamboat" Golding as a gangster. Could he be a gangster who wears diabolical eye-liner? I think Henry Golding will look real good in eyeliner, you guys.