All Ghosts and Gay Boys

George Mackay giving hot tradie is the theme of the weekend as Femme, the queer thriller starring him and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as haters-turned-lovers is finally finally finally hitting U.S. theaters. It's been a long road, baby, but we made it. I saw the movie at Fantasia last August and I reviewed it for Mashable right here -- then my review got quoted in the trailer right here -- and now it's out for all of you people to see whether you agree with me that it's hot, dangerous stuff. 

But wait! This is actually a crazy thick weekend for good movies. For one Pixar / Disney are re-releasing Luca into theaters -- when it came out at the height of the pandemic it went straight to streaming and I called it "Pixar's best film in years" and that remains true from where I stand; just now you can finally see it on a big screen! So make sure you do. Call Me By Your Name Jr. deserves the love. 

And then there is Problemista -- a movie I adore and yet a movie I have not had the chance to write a proper review of yet. I saw it at NewFest last summer but I haven't had the chance to see it again, which I need to do before I write about it. This has been out in some cities for a couple of weeks but it's going wide this weekend -- anyway once I do see it again don't be surprised if this makes it into my favorite films of 2024 list. Yes it's early, but come on. This thing's a hilarious beauty with some of Tilda's funniest work to date. Here is the trailer.  

And then there is the horror movie Late Night With the Devil also out today! Set in 1977 this found-footage gem is sort of a spin on the great Ghostwatch -- here is the gorgeous poster and the trailer if you missed that. I'm counting my words here because I still might write a review of this. Maybe today even. Stay tuned. it's worth writing about. And going to see!

But yes wait, wait, and keep on waiting -- there is even more. EVEN MORE. Like I said today is truly ridiculous. But don't worry I saved the worst for last. The new Ghostbusters movie called Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is in theaters now and... well I did write about this one. Click on over to Pajiba and you'll hear my thoughts. They are not kind, but they are not as unkind as my words for the previous one, Afterlife. So that's something! The franchise is making incremental mini-steps towards not totally sucking. Maybe if they make fifty more they'll get around to making a good one. 

Quote of the Day

"We went to different acting schools, but we had the same teacher, Ron Van Lieu, who was a huge, formative figure in our lives. We really bonded over that and our experiences in theater. I think that shared vocabulary can help bridge the gap between these very different styles that are in the same movie... I hadn't met him before. But he was actually more familiar with my theater work. It was really cool. I've been watching his film work; I remember seeing The Last Black Man in San Francisco and was just like, "Who is that?" He has this presence and this ability to use stillness to draw the audience in. He uses that to great effect as Kang."

I could listen to Corey Stoll lavish praise on Jonathan Majors all day long. I could watch Corey Stoll lavish all sorts of things on Jonathan Majors too, and for much longer than just days at that, but we won't get into that right now. Anyway that comes via GQ where they chatted with Corey on his return to the MCU in Quantumania (thx Mac) so check it if you care. I didn't like the movie very much (Majors escaped unscathed, because of course he did) and I really didn't like what they did to Corey, but I'm not angry at thoughts of Corey bonding with Jonathan so at least some good has come out of it. They should play boyfriends in something. Like, immediately.

Good Morning, World

Gotta type this post fast so it's still morning when I publish it, since I am running late this morning -- Paul Rudd is on the cover of the new issue of Interview Magazine and I found the above photo amusing, for a dumb reason which will become clear to you shortly. They had him pose with his May 2000 issue of Interview and chatted with him about that time in his life a bunch -- the dumb reason I was amused is I for some reason have multiple copies of that exact issue of that exact magazine for sale on eBay right now? I went through a bin of stuff a few years back and listed lots of things and those were among them. The reason I have them actually isn't random,  if I told you what my real day-job was -- the thing I do to pay my rent and eat my food since writing this blog doesn't do either of those things -- but I don't cross those streams, so it'll have to be left to your imaginations. Anyway I laughed. Go buy my magazines off of eBay, I am tired of them gathering dust. Indeed why don't I go ahead and be fully gross about it -- you can check out my entire eBay store right here! It's always linked there in the right-hand column too. Instead of just donating money to me to live and continue doing what I do you can exchange money for goods! Everybody wins. Anyway I will now shut the fuck up and share the rest of the Paul Rudd photos with you after the jump, if anybody's even still here at this point...

Jonathan Majors Four Times

Yesterday I posted some very fine photos of Jonathan's Creed co-star and director Michael B. Jordan and said that I should try to give Mikey some attention too, since it's technically his movie but all I do is post about Jonathan... well I'm back on my bullshit less than 24 hours later! Oh well! I can't help it that The Cut went and dropped these four fine-ass photos today, alongside an interview where Jonathan says his way of flirting is to text invite someone over and then "only wear sweatpants." HOW DARE HE. PS I saw the new Ant-Man movie last night and, uhhhhh, well maybe I will review it properly in a bit. I can report that Jonathan is good at least. Anyway hit the jump for the photos...

I For One Welcome Our New Kang Overlord

As far as Marvel movies go I have enjoyed all of the Ant-Man movies -- they've been nicely their own thing, not too dependent on the bulk of the rest of the MCU to appreciate. And yet I have continued to need to remind myself that I care about the next one all the same -- call it just general superhero malaise at this point. But the new trailer for Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania reminded me -- dude shut the fuck up, this is the one where Jonathan Majors finally gets to blow the lid off of everything as Kang. Indeed the new trailer...

... is like 50% Kang! He's even the still they use to promote the trailer itself, as seen above! And I wouldn't have it any other way. My beloved is really and truly a Movie Star now, isn't he? Or at least he's really and truly about to be with this and the third Creed movie, anyway. Couldn't be happening to a more talented (and hotter) dude, I say! I mean you know you're a Movie Star when the Marvel movie finds an excuse...

... to rip the sleeves off of your super-villain costume. You can just hear the bros in Kevin Feige's office being like, "Dude... did you see that issue of Men's Health though?? Shredded!" I don't know about you but when I am working out it's Majors I have in my head now, not Chris Hemsworth anymore. Sorry, Thor! Time for the next gen! Aaaaanyway this movie is out on February 17th, so rip off your super-villain sleeves and get in line! Now for the rest of us I have made a dozen Jonathan Majors gifs -- basically a gif of every shot of him in the trailer! -- so hit the jump and let's look at him...

Jasons Shouldn't Play With Dead Things

Yeah well you're right to wince, Paul Rudd! Don't know if you guys have been paying attention but Jason Reitman's Ghostbusters: Afterlife is out this weekend -- it purports to be a follow-up to the first two movies (forget them Lady Ghostbusters, eww girls) and drags a bunch of the original stars back (no doubt upon stacks and stacks of delicious cash). Anyway lo behold my thoughts on all of that have just gone up over at Pajiba today. These thoughts... they are not good. Not good at all. Indeed I felt as if I needed to take a Silkwood shower after writing them down, so vehement was my vitriol. Thankfully for Paul he's not to blame -- he does what he can with the garbage material. This one's totally on the script. Anyway even if the Sexiest Man Alive 2021 Edition isn't to blame I still needed to perk myself up Rudd-wise, and tweeting this earlier helped me, as I'm sure it will you: 

Today's random sadness is that I didn't get to see Paul Rudd do Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center in 1998 pic.twitter.com/SSQBwXzsDJ

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) November 17, 2021

Which is Sexier?

This shot is from People magazine's new "Sexiest Man Alive" issue that gave that title to Paul Rudd -- they always have some runners-up included and Orlando's included, looking much sexier than Paul did in any of his photos. Don't get me wrong, Paul Rudd's great (although ten years on I still have PTSD from the crap that was This is 40 and automatically wince when I see anyone involved with it) but... sexy? Adorable, sure. And to pull off adorable at 52 is something. But Orlando (especially in the wake of the revelation of his nudist inclinations) just reads as sexier to me. Hrm why don't I let you people decide...

free polls

13 Needles of Halloween #7

Today's entry in our season-appropriate ongoing "13 Needles of Halloween" series was not one I had planned on doing, but that's okay because I kinda wing these things and had the room. I hadn't planned on this one because I never would have remembered it, since I hadn't seen these films since high school. But over the weekend the so-called "Thorn Trilogy" of Halloween films (that would be parts 4-6) which dive into the ancient druid cult that cursed Michael Myers upon birth... 

... I know. I know. It's ridiculous. It doesn't even make a lick of sense in the films themselves as they explained it, and it certainly doesn't help that the sixth film, which is where they really get into this, they give most of the exposition to Paul Rudd who, while very cute (this is the same year as Clueless so Prime Paul Rudd), is bust giving one of the worst performances of his career, if not the worst. He plays things goofy when they should be serious and serious when they should be less -- it's really embarrassing and he's really lucky he booked Clueless this same year so nobody noticed. 

Anyway as you can see needles factor really heavily into the final action sequence in Part 6, up to and including the very last shot of the film seen up top of Michael's mask laying on the floor beside an emptied syringe. So clearly I had to post about this sequence even though watching it I had no fucking idea what was going on. To be honest I was so tuned out by the end -- this movie is bad, real bad! -- this is maybe partially my own fault, but I had no clue what they were signaling with Michael getting injected in this lab. They show...

... a bunch of fetuses and genetic sequencing charts that I guess are supposed to mean something? No idea. But this is what Google is for! So I looked it up. Basically this entire sequence got butchered when Donald Pleasance died in the middle of filming. The genetic stuff just has to do with the passing of the curse; the stuff in the needles, as far as I can tell, is just "corrosive liquid" and nothing to do with genetics at all. None of it means anything! That sounds about right. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)

Montgomery: Let us give each other the courage 

to see beyond the stories we were born into!

Even though I'm sure he's rightly in mourning for his Lovecraft Country co-star slash genius-in-his-own-right Michael K. Williams (and a big "Rest in Peace" that that great one) I do wanna wish the happiest of possible happy birthdays to our favorite new actor of the past couple of years, Mr. Jonathan Majors. He's turning an exquisite 32 today and if you ask me his 30s-to-be are looking rather bright. Just even by the measure of the very next year, with his villainous turns in both the third film of Creed franchise as well as the MCU, where his Kang the Conquerer, already symphonically previewed to much acclaim on Loki...

... will supposedly show up next in the Ant-Man sequel. Oh and also that WWII fighter pilot movie with Glen Powell called Devotion. Oh and also that Netflix Western with Idris Elba called The Harder They Fall. And I wouldn't be surprised if his name gets attached to a dozen more things next week, that's how hot he is. And he deserves the heat. I might have to re-watch TLBMISF for the ten-hundredth time tonight in his honor. Check our Archives on Mr. Majors here, they are thorough. Have a fine day, Mr. Majors.

Good Morning, World

James Gunn's Suicide Squad sequel, imaginatively titled The Suicide Squad, premiered in Los Angeles last evening -- look here is a photo of Jai Courtney looking real hot in white with a stache at that event at this link! -- and so here for our morning are these two photos of co-stars Joel Kinnaman & David Dastmalchian (via the latter's Insta) being friendly with one another in a water-based location. Aww, adorable. Dastmalchian is one of those character actors who shows up literally everywhere -- he was in Nolan's Batman movies, he's in this new DC movie, he's in the MCU's Ant-Man films -- he's in Dune for god's sake. He was on the new season of Twin Peaks!  I think he just has to cross Star Wars off still and then he'll have Nerd Bingo. Who does he think he is, Mads Mikkelsen??? Anyway Suicide Squad -- excuse me, The Suicide Squad -- is out everywhere inside of theaters on this Friday -- are you going to go see it? I actually do want to see it (I like Gunn) but I'm nowhere near ready to go see a blockbuster in a crowded opening weekend theater yet, especially with things surging everywhere again! Small movies with barely any crowds? Sure. A packed theater with nobody wearing masks? Not gonna happen any time soon! So we'll be waiting for on demand.

Majors Getting Major

Do I do or do I don't have a killer eye for superstars? On the one hand I hate that I've had to hand so many of my starter-kit obsessions on over to you, the people, to get chewed up en masse... but on the other I feel as if this gives me more cache to say louder for the ones in the way back that hey, y'all should always listen to me. What am I rambling about? Oh just today's news that my 2020 boyfriend Jonathan Majors, of The Last Black Man in San Francisco and Lovecraft Country burgeoning fame, has just signed on for a Marvel movie.  Specifically he's going to (probably) play the bad guy Kang the Conqueror in the third Ant-Man movie.

There's no way I'm skimming through Kang's entire ridiculously convoluted character page on Wikipedia so let's just say that he can time travel and he has managed to get up in a ton of characters business over the years. As I've said many times I was never a reader of superhero comics so I prefer to just let the movies educate me, and whittle the billion years of arcs down to one little essence. We'll see how the movies use him when we do -- hopefully it's more Loki than Mandarin. I do find myself wondering what a character based on "time travel" says about where the Ant-Man (and Avengers from there) storylines are going in their next Phase, but... not wondering too hard. We'll see when we see, if the world doesn't end before then at least. Who the hell knows?!?! Whatever! If you wanna hit the jump here are four more Jonathan Majors pictures!

Good Morning, World

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Happy Monday and an even happier birthday to Paul Stephen Rudd better known as the actor Paul Rudd, who's turning 51 years young today. Have you ever seen his 2006 movie Diggers, which these gifs of him in some very 2006 American Apparel type tighty-reddies are from? I have never. But I definitely, given our current state here in 2020 trapped in our homes, am feeling the vibe seen here of a man having a panic attack while getting drunk in his house and staring out a window in his underpants, wanting to leave but being unable to. That... that I feel. On that note I welcome you to another week of Armageddon, and please do hit the jump for several more...

This Picture of Paul Rudd Amid Shelves...

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... is an attack.

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When There's No More Room in Utopia...

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I guess I'm just gonna be reporting every batch of names added to the Utopia cast as they come in -- on Monday we told you about Cory Michael Smith, but seen here is Desmin Borges, known for playing "Edgar" on the series You're the Worst by people who watch the series You're the Worst (I'm not one of those people), who has also just joined the cast. Borges was also just in Tamara Jenkins' Netflix film Private Life with Kathryn Hahn, and he will also co-star in Paul Rudd's upcoming Netflix series Living With Yourself -- he's switching streamers by working on the Utopia remake with Amazon! I hope Netflix doesn't take it personally! Three more people also joined the cast today, you can see them all at Deadline.

Paul Rudd Six Times

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It's so totally not my style but I kinda love that Keith Haring detailed jacket that Paul Rudd's seen wearing in the above photo from his new shoot for GQ Taiwan (via, thanks Mac). He's really gaying it up for us right now, between that and his bearded bottom role in the upcoming homo-comedy Ideal Home, which we posted the trailer for yesterday. I guess he hadn't felt the Object of My Affection crowd's attention in a bit? We're still here, Paul! Quoting Clueless and ogling your butt. Hit the jump for the rest of the pics...

I Shaved My Balls For This?

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I'm way late to the party on this one (thanks to this tweet here for smacking me upside the head with what I was missing) but the trailer for the upcoming homosexually-themed comedy Ideal Home starring Steve Coogan and a sexily styled and colorfully angry Paul Rudd -- the haircut, the beard, the glasses, I am here for all of it...

... popped up online earlier this week and we should post it! Coogan and Rudd are a couple; Coogan finds out he has a grandson he didn't know about, and cue kid-based shenanigans that complicate their unabashedly gay lifestyle. I love how angry Rudd is in this trailer - I relate, as an oft-angry gay myself. Watch:

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The movie is out on June 21st (man there are a lot of good-looking movies coming out in June that aren't blockbuster material - this and Hereditary and Under the Silver Lake and American Animals (which we just posted the trailer for earlier) - could we actually see a summer that's not entirely about superheroes and big dumb Michael Bays? Could the star of this summer just be Paul Rudd's cute butt?

PS this trailer features a lot of Paul Rudd's Cute Butt:

I don't know about you but I feel catered to.

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Great Moments in Movie Shelves #131

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Duncan Jones' new Netflix movie Mute is not as bad as some critics are saying (I didn't find it "almost unwatchable" for instance) but it had two big strikes against it from the get-go - first, we just expect better when the director of Moon and Source Code decides to make a new sci-fi movie. Especially with a cast like Alexander Skarsgård, Justin Theroux, and Paul Rudd. And second -- Mute came out the same weekend as Annihilation, which proved Alex Garland (who's also from London and is only one year older than Jones, almost to the day) could return triumphantly and then some to the genre. Mute is no Annihilation.  

But Mute does have this magnificent library in it, so it can't be all bad! I wasn't sure if it was real or a set but I knew the film was shot in Berlin so a quick google solved that question and turned up the Grimm Library at Humboldt University; see more pictures here. That place is a wow. Honestly the sets and location shooting on Mute is probably its true highlight - the movie looks great. Expensive. And I appreciated the fact that for all its cribbing from Blade Runner visually it tried to set its own tone and tell a different sort of story than we're used to seeing set in these worlds.

And I also appreciated all of the swimming sequences.

But the film does ultimately end up erring on the side of incoherent - by the last half you're not really sure what you're supposed to be rooting for. I wasn't even sure what the characters were doing half the time by that point - only when the revelations about what was happening started revealing themselves did I realize those were the questions I was supposed to be asking. That's a problem.

I know, it hurts my head too, Alex.

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I Refuse To Stay Silent

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The highlight of the trailer for Duncan Jones' upcoming Netflix film Mute, which hits the streamer on February 23rd, is clearly the above shot of Alexander Skarsgard wearing well-tailored trousers and suspenders and sitting on a bed - those are some haunches - but that's about as close to sexy as Alex gets the whole trailer...

... and meanwile Justin Theroux and Paul Rudd are all goofed-up in wig / stache paraphernalia... consider me officially discouraged. I know Alex is an Award Winning Actor now, la di dah, but let's not forget our roots, buddy. And come on, Duncan! With a cast like this (see also Sam Rockwell), well, his heterosexuality is showing. His father would've sexed this up so much.

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