Jo Jo Grifter, Your Winchester is Calling

And speaking of Criterion! (Which we just were.) I just realized that today is also New Announcement Day for the fanciest physical media brand around -- okay I didn't "realize" so much as "get the PR email that told me it is" but whatever, cut me some slack, I am very scattered and busy right now. So Criterion today has announced their January 2025 line-up and it shocks me how good they are at plucking movies out of thin air that I have never heard of and plunking them down in front of me like rare gems of great beauty. I don't know half of these movies but I look forward to finding out. The one I do know and have seen is Stephen Frears' 1990 neo-noir The Grifters starring John Cusack, Annette Bening, and Anjelica Huston -- I have spent my entire life being terrified of bags of oranges thanks to this movie and I haven't seen it in decades. It'll be nice to revisit, and in 4K no less. That's out in January 21st. 

Next up there is Richard Pryor's semi-autobiographical 1986 film Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling, which is apparenrtly a fractured bio-pic that he starred in himself -- how have I literally never heard of this movie? I mean I've never been the world's number on Richard Pryor stan but I have always liked him when I've seen him -- I guess this was way outta my wheelhouse when it came out and I was 8-years-old but I have no excuse for the many many years between then and now. And then there's Jean Eustache's The Mother and the Whore from 1973 -- this one I have heard of but that's it,;I haven't seen it nor do I know much about it. Sounds like a threesome movie from their description but one with two ladies circling the dude, which is sad to me as Jean-Pierre Léaud looks really cute on the cover of the disc and I'd prefer this co-starred let's say Jean-Paul Belmondo as his side-piece. Somebody use AI and stick Belmondo into this for me! Use AI for good!

The final batch of movies for January include a 4K upgrade of Kurosawa's Yojimbo and Sanjuro double-feature (and no I somehow have never seen these ones yet either) and then Anthony Mann's 1950 western Winchester '73 which, well it's a Western. I just can't be made to care. It doesn't matter how many great Westerns I see, and I have seen plenty -- I just cannot stir excitement in myself over sitting down and watching a Western. That said Winchester does have Rock Hudson playing a Native American so I might have to watch this out of a sick curiosity. 

Nobody Puts Madsy in the Corner

Well it's that time! What time? Time for me to head off to places unknown (read: my couch) for five straight days. It's a holiday weekend here in the U.S. and I'm off until next Wednesday. I put in the work this past week though -- I reviewed the new Indiana Jones (here), I reviewed the new Jennifer Lawrence (here), I reviewed the new Rock Hudson bio-pic (here), I reviewed the new Wes Anderson (here), and I reviewed a forthcoming Jude Law (here). Oh and I answered the question of which role of Harrison Ford's was the hottest right here. PLUS I have a big piece that has not been not published yet which I will update the site with a link to over the break. That's a lotta goddamned writing y'all and I ready for that goddamned couch.

But like I did just say -- I will be updating the site a little bit over the break; not just that coming piece (heh I said "coming piece") but there's our annual July 4th ridiculousness as well, which will land on (you guessed it) July 4th. So come back and visit over the break for these and perhaps other surprises! Or per usual keep your eyes on my social media accounts -- it's not like I'll be off of those for longer than five seconds. Have a happy 4th, y'all! And even more importantly -- Happy 11 to Magic Mike!

They Called Him Rock

Rock Hudson has finally gotten the proper documentary treatment with All That Heaven Allowed, which just premiered at Tribeca earlier this month and is hitting HBO Max or Max or whatever the hell they're calling it today -- click here to read my Mashable review of the film. While a little bit on the rushed side, I think this doc lays the table pretty well, and it'll serve as a great foundation for the inevitable biopic when the day comes, since it tells the story the way it needed to be told, which is to say it finally talks to all the gay men in his life! What a revolutionary concept! (And Armistead Maupin lays down one of the greatest lines ever spoken about Rock, which I quote in my review.) Below is the trailer -- you need to watch this flick!

Good Morning, World

Rock Hudson's got the right idea -- fingers crossed
this will be a stellar week, for one and for all. Thanks, Rock!

Holly Jolly Heave Ho Ho

Well that is that -- I'm off for the holidays, as forecasted in last evening's mention. MNPP proper will most likely be stock-still quiet til January 3rd... I always say I might post and I am always a big fat dumb liar. I'll surely be active on the social medias all linked in the right-hand column though, and I will have a couple of reviews hitting Pajiba over the next week (you can keep track of me there in particular at this link)...

... like my take on Babylon goes up tomorrow, you won't want to miss that. I asked my editor's permission to swear a lot! And two old reviews for movies I saw at film festivals will be re-upped as the films get released, including Living (with a career best Bill Nighy) right here and Noah Baumbach's White Noise, which hits Netflix next week and which I talked about here. Both of those are terrific and 100% worth seeking out.

Other than that I just wish you all a happy holiday and a happy New Years and let's see if we can make 2023 a year to remember for good reasons. If anybody wants to make a donation to MNPP's coffers out of appreciation for my annual nonsense efforts, you can do so right here -- every penny's and nice comment is appreciated. Hell even the nasty comments are appreciated -- just pay attention to me dammit! In all seriousness I love my readers, y'all rule, thanks for coming back all these many years. I would still do this without you because my brain is chaos but y'all make it easier! Thank you!

5 Off My Head: Siri Says 1956

It is Election Day here in the US and I am desperately trying to distract myself -- I mean I have real work I should be doing, but I can't focus on that. But it's easy enough to focus on one of our "Siri Says" series posts, they ask very little of me while also being extremely time consuming at the same time. It's perfect! It's been a few months since the last one of these that I did, as film festivals began eating up my time, but as I've made clear a few times this year we have very few years left to choose from at this point! Only a handful, and today's pick -- the movies of the year 1956, which the post's title gave away -- brings us to the end of the 1950s. We've now chosen our favorite movies from every year that decade! 

Here are my favorite movies of 1950

Here are my favorite movies of 1951

Here are my favorite movies of 1952

Here are my favorite movies of 1953

Here are my favorite movies of 1954

Here are my favorite movies of 1955

Here are my favorite movies of 1957

Here are my favorite movies of 1958

Here are my favorite movies of 1959

It's a pretty great decade for movies, right? One of my favorites mainly because you had Brando and Dean and Clift and Newman and Rock Hudson and Steve Reeves (good lord), and you had two of my favorite film directors -- that'd be Sir Alfred Hitchcock and Douglas Sirk -- hitting their strides. Hitch alone has faves in like half of the years from 1950s, and both of them make today's list twice, including a runner-up each.

One other weird side-note about this year in the movies -- an inordinate number of movie titles were very long this year. Around the World in 80 Days, The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Girl Can't Help It, The Teahouse of the August Moon, Somebody Up There Likes Me, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, The Best Things in Life Are Free.... and those are just a handful. I feel retroactive pain for all of the people who worked putting titles up onto the movie theater marques in 1956, truly. Anyway let's get to it...

My 5 Favorite Movies of 1956

Written on the Wind

(dir. Douglas Sirk)

-- released on December 25th 1956 --

The Bad Seed

(dir. Mervyn LeRoy)

-- released on September 12th 1956 --

Forbidden Planet

(dir. Fred M. Wilcox)

-- released on March 23rd 1956 --

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

(dir. Don Siegel)

-- released on February 5th 1956 --

The Man Who Knew Too Much

(dir. Alfred Hitchcock)

-- released on May 16th 1956 --

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

Runners-up: Giant (dir. George Stevens), The Searchers (dir. John Ford), Somebody Up There Likes Me (dir. Robert Wise), The Ten Commandments (dir. Cecile B. DeMille), High Society (dir. Charles Walters), Ilya Muromets (dir. Aleksandr Ptushko), Bigger Than Life (dir. Nicholas Ray)...

... The Red Balloon (dir. Albert Lamorisse), The Girl Can't Help It (dir. Frank Tashlin), Friendly Persuasion (dir. William Wyler), Rodan (dir. Ishirō Honda), Baby Doll (dir. Elia Kazan), There's Always Tomorrow (dir. Sirk), The Wrong Man (dir. Hitchcock)

Never seen: The King and I (dir. Walter Lang), Love Me Tender (dir. Robert D. Webb), Around the World in 80 Days (dir. Michael Anderson), War and Peace (dir. King Vidor), The Rainmaker (dir. Joseph Anthony), Bus Stop (dir. Joshua Logan), Lust For Life (dir. Vincente Minnelli), Bob Le Flambeur (dir. Melville), Carousel (dir. Henry King), The Killing (dir. Kubrick)

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

What are your favorite movies of 1956?

Good Morning, World

I finally watched Mark Rappaport's weird little documentary Rock Hudson's Home Movies from 1992 this past weekend -- our pal Glenn Dunks had recommended it at The Film Experience some ages ago... and now that I have looked it up I see that my brain has turned "March of this year" into "some ages ago" lol -- well, you know how time has been lately! Anyway the doc has Rappaport (gutsily, I might add) narrating the doc on-screen as if he is Rock Hudson himself, speaking from the afterlife I guess? And it's mostly an assemblage of clips of Rock being real gay on-screen, talking about how mainstream America was clueless even though all the information was right there if they'd known what they were looking at. Anyway the doc is interesting as a time-capsule for how we talked about these kinds of things in 1992, and as an collection of clips of Rock being hot -- like the above moment from the 1962 adventure-drama The Spiral Road. Anybody seen it? I meant Rock Hudson's Home Movies but I guess I mean The Spiral Road as well. He does look like this for the majority of it:

Good Morning, World

I almost did a post wishing Hollywood actor Jake Picking (he played Rock Hudson on that series) a happy birthday on Wednesday, but since I hadn't seen this photo here that his good buddy KJ Apa posted on Instagram at that point that post would have turned out to be a half-assed shame in retrospect and I am glad that I waited! Happy belated, Jake! If you'd like to see more of him click here. Isn't friendship a beautiful thing?

Good Morning, World

Today would have been Rock Hudson's 96th birthday and this photo of Rock circa his prime is also counting towards "Today's Mood" because I had a hell of a time climbing out of bed this morning and climbing back in right there beside him sounds to my ears like the greatest prospect that's ever been prospected. Anyway do yourself a favor and watch one of Rock's movies today, whether it be one of his charming comedies with Doris Day or my particular favorite John Frankenheimer's 1966 freak-out Seconds...

Criterion'd on the Wind

Happy Criterion Announcement Day! The four titles for next February have just been unleashed and top billing goes as it must to Douglas Sirk's 1956 grand camp melodrama Written on the Wind, one of the most over-the-top and enjoyable flicks where everyone is constantly and totally miserable that you will ever in your life see. It's one of my favorite movies -- I've seen it dozens of times and it never fails to perk me up. Guess I'm upgrading my DVD. This one will be a new 2K restoration, no doubt making those psychotic technicolors pop even poppier -- cannot wait to abuse my retinas upon this one.

ME SEEING THAT @CRITERION IS FIIIIIINALLY UPDATING DOUGLAS SIRK'S WRITTEN ON THE WIND TO BLURAY: pic.twitter.com/hBorFHhu9a

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) November 15, 2021

But wait, there be more -- the Coens' classic Miller's Crossing is also getting the 2K upgrade treatment, and this one sounds stuffed with interviews with everybody involved. Then there's Ann Hui's 1982 "Hong Kong New Wave" classic Boat People, which sees a Japanese photojournalist taking in the horrors of Vietnamese refugees escaping due to the war (anybody seen this one?) as well as Leo McCary's 1939 classic weepie Love Affair starring Charles Boyer and Irene Dunne as star-crossed and doomed lovers in New York. I've never seen this version, only McCary's own 1957 remake An Affair to Remember with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr. I actually don't think I ever saw Warren Beatty's 90s version either? I guess I should do a triple-feature come February!

Jake Picking One Time

Hollywood star (as in the Ryan Murphy series, not the whole of Tinseltown) Jake Picking was kind enough to share with us this photo today -- and if you quick check his Insta-stories you'll see some of his pals KJ Apa and Charles Melton as well, who're apparently playing in the desert with him. I hope they're being responsible, and wearing protection! Ohh I mean "masks" of course...

Ring Ring Rock Here

I'm seriously distracted with off-blog stuff this morning, so here's a pair of vintage Rock Hudson photos to pass some time. I'd seen the top photo before today but never the bottom one, and I... apologize already for using those words in the Rock context. Anyway today would have been Rock's 95th birthday! Imagine little old man Rock puttering around -- what would he have thought of the world in 2020? When would he have finally come out? The mind boggles.

Luca's Giving Us the Full Service

.

This was not a news story I intended to write today! Or any day, ever, in my life. But here we are and Deadline has just reported that Luca Guadagnino, director of Call Me By Your Name and other Tilda-ier projects, is turning Scott Bowers' fantastical Hollywood Hooker tell-all into a movie! (thx Mac) 

This... is a lot of information. I have been talking about Bowers' book for several years here on the site -- it's called Full Service: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Live of the Stars, and it details how Bowers moved to Hollywood in the 1940s with dreams of acting and instead ended up turning a gas station into the premiere Whorehouse To The Stars. To call Bowers' stories lascivious is just to get the tip in.

This was, of course, used as a fictionalized backdrop for Ryan Murphy's show Hollywood earlier this year, with Dylan McDermott playing a spin on Scotty. But after the first couple of episodes that stopped being a focus of the show. Bowers' book (and the documentary that was made before Bowers died, which I also recommend) purports to share all sorts of outrageous sexual secrets of very famous people, including a ton of information about that period in gay history. Rock Hudson and the beautiful boys of super-agent Henry Willson are heavily featured in the telling (as they were also in Murphy's show). 

How much of it is actually true? Nobody seems to know. People have disputed many of Bowers' claims, especially the more outlandish ones -- were the Duke and Duchess of Windsor really whoring it up across Hollywood? -- but everybody who was there is dead, basically, and these are the kind of salacious secrets that people, especially famous people, take to their graves. 

That said I don't know if the truth matters. If the movie manages to find a way to tread the line, like I think the documentary did, between Bowers' own self-aggrandizing myth-making and the actual hidden history of the time and the place, a lot of which is more than well-documented otherwise, I think, I know, it's a fascinating and rich enough playground for movie-making. 

Here's the twist -- the script is being written by (of all people) Seth Rogen and his longtime writing partner Evan Goldberg, who're known for giving us all of the goofy man comedies like Pineapple Express, Superbad, the Neighbors movies. I like all of their movies, and I love Preacher, their irreverent comic-book TV show. And I actually think they're inspired choices -- a comic tone is maybe exactly how this story could best be told. Am I admittedly a little wary of the fact that both men are heterosexual? I might be! That said Luca's there, I trust him, and I know Seth has proven himself to be a solid gay ally. I don't think we need to worry about any "Eww Gay Is Gross" humor from them in 2020. Still those two and Luca are an odd pairing!

But now on to the most important question: 

Who the hell do you cast as Scotty Bowers?

Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... swabbing Jake Picking's poop-deck.

Hollywood actor Jake Picking -- he's the fella who played Rock Hudson on that Netflix show, if you're unfamiliar with his name -- did a nautical-themed photoshoot for Attitude magazine's latest issue,  and by "themed" I mean he took his clothes off on a boat. This was dropped last week when I was on vacation so I almost forgot it and then Jake showed up with Charles Melton and KJ Apa on Instagram...

... and that jogged my memory. Don't know or care how these guys know each other, although I'd be lying if I wasn't immediately reminded of Hollywood's scenes of tighty-whitied exploitation in Henry Willson's side-office...

I did make mention of Picking's friendship with Apa before, when Picking first got cast on this show, but the Instagram photo that I linked to back then has been taken down which is as good a reminder as any that I should never just post Instagram links, I should always download and post those photos on their own. Anyway! Forget this exquisite peek behind the curtain of the making of MNPP's sausage and just hit the jump for the rest of Jake's Attitude shoot, which is a good'un...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Elmer Gentry (1960)

Lady in red on Christmas Eve: That's the trouble
with this stinking world. Nobody loves nobody.

108 years ago today the director Richard Brooks was born.

That's a picture of him (with some actor guy). Maybe you don't recognize Brooks' name? I wouldn't hold it against you because until a couple of weeks ago I could never remember it myself, even though the man's responsible for one of my all-time favorite movies (that would be Looking For Mr. Goodbar) and several others that I might not think of as "favorites" necessarily but that I still consider near perfect -- they would be the one-two "Paul Newman does Tennessee Williams" punch of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof & Sweet Bird of Youth...

... and then his brutally gorgeous 1968 adaptation 

of Truman Capote's true-crime tale In Cold Blood.

A man who directs those four movies should have his damn name remembered -- his understanding of how violence does and should register on-screen via just Goodbar and Blood alone is top tier! But for some reason Brooks' name was like sand through fingers and I never could keep it in place. Then TCM screened those two Tennessee Williams adaptations a couple of weeks back and I had this realization, regarding my Richard Brooks blindness, I really registered it, and I did what I usually do -- I tweeted about it!

I feel like, given the evidence of these four fantastic films, I should do a dive into Richard Brooks. What else should I see? I have never seen Elmer Gentry... https://t.co/1v7q3VlnYk pic.twitter.com/SQyO92WFUg

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) May 2, 2020

If you follow that tweet over to Twitter you'll see a lot of fine folks who follow me there then schooled me on what else I oughta been watching from Mr. Brooks' career, outside of those four films, and for once in my godforsaken existence I actually did the homework. In the past couple of weeks I've checked out Brooks' 1971 bank-robbery caper titled $ (yes just a dollar sign, although I think you pronounce the title in plural, as in Dollars) starring Warren Beatty and Goldie Hawn...

Thanks to those of you who recommended $ (typing that title still feels silly), the 1971 bank robbery caper with Warren Beatty & Goldie Hawn -- watched it this morning and it's a ton of fun (And BONUS Warren gets real sweaty in his white dress shirt at one point) pic.twitter.com/IGrpyTpMtQ

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) May 2, 2020

... and I liked the film quite a bit. In fact it's one that's been sitting pleasantly on my mind, making space for itself, in the two weeks since -- I can feel that "like" turning into a maybe "love." I'm not a huge fan of Heist Films (I talked about this in relation to Hustlers last year) but $'s last act really goes weirder and more idiosyncratic than I expected, and now the movie kinda won't let me go. I have a feeling I'll be revisiting it often.

To make an already long post longer the second movie I did my Richard Brooks Homework with I just watched this past Saturday afternoon, and it's the one this post began with -- the Oscar-winning (and really very timely with regards to the world right now) movie Brooks made smack-dab in between his two Paul Newman adventures: Elmer Gentry with Burt Lancaster playing the drunk turned barn-storming phony-ass Christian Evangelist. The film got nominated for several Oscars and won acting statues for both Lancaster and for Shirley Jones as the preacher's daughter that Gentry long-ago corrupted, who comes back to get her vengeance in the film's final act.

Jones is good in the movie but seeing just now that she beat Janet Leigh in Psycho for that statue really clenches my fists into tight little balls -- no, she certainly did not deserve to win over Janet Leigh. If I was going to give an acting statue to any actress in Elmer Gentry it would've gone to Jean Simmons, who gives the best performance in the whole damn movie as Sister Sharon Falconer, a cynical maybe maybe-not true believer -- Simmons truly keeps you on edge every moment she's on-screen.

Lancaster though is great as well -- I never think of myself as a Burt Lancaster fan but then I see him in something and remember what a truly surprising and risky career he really gave himself. Going to Italy in 1963 to make a glorious movie with Luchino Visconti; strutting around butt-ass naked for a film truly as weird as they come with The Swimmer in 1968...

... he really didn't rest on his football-stud shoulders and call it a day. As an aside, speaking of those shoulders, you can see some pictures of Lancaster in his 1947 prison movie Bruce Force (which was written by Richard Brooks) over on our Tumblr. But I digress -- I'm not here to talk Lancaster but rather birthday boy writer-director Brooks. I can now say I have liked-to-loved all six of his films that I've seen, and I think I should dig deeper. Maybe his 1966 Western The Professionals with Lancaster again and Lee Marvin? Bette Davis and Debbie Reynolds in The Catered Affair?

Brooks worked with Sidney Poitier a couple of times -- I've seen pieces of Blackboard Jungle but never the entire thing so maybe I should give that a go? Or what about Something of Value, Brooks' 1957 movie with Poitier that also starred Rock Hudson? Before I keep listing Richard Brooks' entire filmography let's end on that note, and hit the jump for a bunch of pictures of those two fine-looking movie-stars making for a mighty fine-looking pair...