Aaron Pierre Fifteen Times

Usually I don't bother reading the profiles of actors in Men's Health because -- well I mean come on this isn't Playboy, we're not reading Men's Health "for the articles." And yet I'm glad I did read the one that goes along with Aaron Pierre's new cover-shoot for the magazine because how else would I know that his career got kickstarted by Barry Jenkins sliding into his DMs? LOL it's not quite as sordid as it sounds -- Jenkins went to see Moonlight star André Holland do Othello on stage where Aaron was playing Cassio opposite him, and Jenkins immediately saw the movie star we all saw the first time each of us saw Aaron Pierre. Still -- thank you, Barry Jenkins! (The two went on to make The Underground Railroad together, which allows me to remind y'all for the dozenth time that if you still haven't watched that masterpiece, do.) Anyway let's get back to what we "read" Men's Health for -- the photos! Hit the jump for the whole shoot...

The Best Part of Breakin' Up

I guess the little nip of a taste of awards heat that Zendaya felt for her work in Challengers got to her because she's signed up for the surest thing going, nomination-wise -- a music biopic! She's going to star in a movie about the legendary singer Ronnie Spector. Thankfully she's hauling along some Grade A behind-the-scenes talent to make it happen though -- it will be written by Bones and All and Suspiria scribe Dave Kajganich (so one of Luca's right hand men) and it will be directed by, drum roll please, one Mr. Barry Jenkins! And the crowd goes wild. That's the good shit right there. So happy to have Barry off of Disney live-action-ing duties. Ronnie Spector of course had a wild life and the film will focus in on the wildest part, her marriage and partnership with Phil Spector. So uhh who plays Phil then? Any casting suggestions?

In Space No One Can Hear Barry Jenkins Scream

It hasn't been the greatest week on record just in the general sense of, you know, everything! But here is one good nice story to come out of it, one which hopefully come to fruition as long as, you know, "everything" doesn't murder us first. THR is reporting (thx Mac) that good and proper movie star (we can call him one now right?) Glen Powell is going to make a movie with good and proper auteur (we can definitely call him that) Barry Jenkins to make a movie! And there won't be any animated wildebeests this time -- it's about human beings and for adults this time! It's called The Natural Order and it's based on a story by Coco screenwriter Matthew Aldrich and all we know beyond that right now is that it's "a sci-fi thriller centering on the search for eternal life." I will watch a Barry Jenkins sci-fi thriller! And even better I will watch a Barry Jenkins sci-fi thriller starring Glen Powell! So sign me up. In all seriousness this sounds like a solid compromise between Barry making the tiny independent masterpieces he'd been making and then churning out depressing IP nonsense like the Lion King sequel  because that's the only sort of trash Hollywood is interested in. So bring it on. 

Aaron Pierre Five Times

Oh looky it's another photoshoot that dropped over the holiday break that I haven't gotten around to posting! The ridiculously stunning Aaron Pierre, star of Jeremy Saulnier's highly entertaining Rebel Ridge and Barry Jenkins' masterpiece The Underground Railroad, was photographed and interviewed in Interview Magazine -- read the interview part here. In my belated defense the photos -- save the one above (swoon) -- are kind of boring, or as boring as looking at Aaron Pierre can be (so... not much) and so I wasn't in the biggest rush with them. But today I was ogling that shot above (swoon times two) and decided that the time has arrived! Hit the jump for everything...

Good Morning, Kelvin

A good Monday to one and all, which we will christen with this very fine new photoshoot of actor Kelvin Harrison Jr. for Numero Netherlands magazine -- I didn't know that he was voicing Lil' Scar (who goes by the name "Taka" pre-scar) in Barry Jenkins' forthcoming The Lion King prequel Mufasa, which isn't quite enough to make me excited for Mufasa; if Barry Jenkins directing it isn't enough to make me excited nothing would be. (Did y'all see Barry basically saying, "Get me the hell out of here already" in an interview last week? LOL cash that check and run, my man!) But hopefully that translates into Baryr making a real movie with Kelvin because I think he's a wonderful actor and they could probably make flesh-and-blood magic with one another. Anyway speaking of flesh (you saw that one coming right) this photoshoot has some and we're rather pleased with that fact so hit the jump and feel the Kelvin...

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:

Moonlight (2016)

Kevin: What you cry about? 

Chiron: I cry so much sometimes

I feel like I'mma just turn into drops.

Kevin: Just roll out into the water, right?

Roll out into the water just like all these other

motherfuckers around here trying to drown their sorrow.

Happy 5 to the best Best Picture winner since 1992.

Aaron Pierre Six Times

I scavenged these photos of Underground Railroad and Old actor Aaron Pierre from a few different Instagram accounts because Glass Man magazine's website is only showing off the cover -- a good cover obviously, since Aaron Pierre's got one hell of a face. But I -- and I think it's safe to say you -- need more. (He is, after all, more than  a face.) And more you'll have, after the jump...

Aaron Pierre Five Times

Jiminy Crickets, where did Aaron Pierre even come from? I guess he was on that show Krypton, but all of a sudden this year he's gone and wham-bammed us with the two-fer of Barry Jenkins' masterpiece of a series The Underground Railroad (which I just shared some new news on yesterday) as well as playing the immediately iconically named character "Mid Sized Sedan" in M. Night Shyamalan's film Old (reviewed here). Quality-wise one of these things is not like the other, but that's still a high profile year and then some... and I sure ain't complaining given what a pleasure it is to look at Aaron Pierre. So let's! Hit the jump for more...

The Railroad Comes To Queens

Have y'all watched Barry Jenkins' series The Underground Railroad on Amazon yet? I heartily recommend you do, it's exquisite and unforgettable -- it does of course have its share of devastating moments emotionally but you can see how hard Jenkins worked to keep it from being the kind of Misery Porn that slavery fiction can often slip into. It's honestly unmissable, so go watch it! (And bonus points for Aaron Pierre, pictured here.) And if you're in NYC or will be in NYC in the next several months (sidenote: I am not encouraging travel given there's still a pandemic) there's an exciting development regarding the show -- the Museum of the Moving Image has just announced an exhibition, running from this Friday until Halloween, that's all Underground Railroad. They'll also be screening some episodes, too. I've got the press release after the jump...

Don't Fear the Fred

A fresh obsession in my household is the actor Fred Hechinger, who's had a big few months popping up unexpectedly in front of me with Joe Wright's (rightly-excoriated) The Woman in the Window, Steven Soderbergh's Let Them All Talk, an episode of Barry Jenkins' The Underground Railroad, Paul Greengrass' forgotten Oscar-contender film News of the World, the Tribeca film Italian Studies (which I reviewed right here), and finally the biggest ongoing two-fer real reason for this post -- the Fear Street horror trilogy on Netflix and Mike White's HBO series The White Lotus (which I wrote about over here). This is an astonishing run, y'all -- most of us only saw him for the first time in Bo Burnham's Eighth Grade just three years back...

... and now he's everywhere! And I'm great with that! Most of those roles I just rattled off were small but those last two especially, Lotus and Fear Street, have proven him a delight. He played such a fun weirdo in Fear Street: 1994, far and away my favorite thing going on in it, and in Mike White's hands he's... well he's also a fun weirdo there but the performance is dialed down and surprisingly introspective, and I found his whole arc, without getting spoilery, pretty moving. 

Anyway he is very much somebody we should all be keeping our eyes on, and learn his name if you don't know it already. He's good stuff! In related news here's the trailer for the final part of the Fear Street Trilogy, subtitled 1666, which premieres on Netflix this Friday. Have y'all been watching these movies? I think they're a lot of fun -- don't take them seriously, just enjoy the ride. 

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ...you can learn from:

Animal Kingdom (2010)

Barry: Did you wash your hands? 

Joshua : No.

Barry: You had your hands on your cock. 

Your hands go anywhere near your ass or 

your cock, you wash 'em after. Jesus, c'mon.

Bit of soap, get a lather going. Rinse.

Alright that's enough, now stick 'em under there.

A happy 47 to Joel Edgerton today! If you haven't watched Barry Jenkins' limited series The Underground Railroad on Amazon yet you're missing not just one of the premiere television offerings of the decade at least -- I'll no doubt be willing to extend it to "of ever" once I let a little time pass; hopefully watch it a second time -- but you're also missing also one of Edgerton's finest and quietly terrifying turns as the slave-hunter Ridgeway, who's unrelenting in his chase of Cora (an astonishing Thuso Mbedu).  

It's funny, as I was trying to decide which role of Joel's to quote from for this post -- and of course the one that involves him using the word "cock" twice won out; what do you expect from me? -- I was reading some of his lines Baz Luhrman's The Great Gatsby where he played Tom Buchanan, and I hadn't recalled his Tom being quite so racist, but half the quoted lines were Tom being racist. That in itself isn't the "funny" part -- the funny part was how that made me realize how much of Edgerton's work has been concerned with the subject of race (also consider Loving) or sexuality (his movie version of Boy Erased and fingers crossed the gay stuff in The Green Knight). We should talk more about his cinematic activism, I think. ETA and we should also talk about how he went to the beach for his birthday thereby giving all of us fans the gift today, which is three pictures of him at the beach (thx Mac), after the jump...

GALECA Goes Small Screen

As mentioned with terrific pride on several occasions I became a member of GALECA, the guild for LGBTQ entertainment journalists and critics back in 2018 -- that's right, the year of Call Me By Your Name, which I loved so much I decided I had to lobby for it as hard as I could. Y'all know I'm not the biggest pusher of Awards Season narratives but I think our little group does a better job than most, and I think that's showcased in our just-dropped nominations for this year's TV Awards, which I've got for you below. 

This is the first year our Dorian Awards have been split up, with our Movie Awards happening during the usual Movie Awards Season and our TV Awards happening, well, now. And it makes sense to me -- pre-halfening the list of awards was hella long! This is much more manageable. There are a couple of shows I lobbied hard for this year that didn't make a dent at all (Raoul Peck's Exterminate All the Brutes, which I wrote about at Pajiba awhile back, is an absolute masterpiece that didn't get a single mention) or not much of a dent at all (just one nomination for shows like PEN15, The Underground Railroad, and blasphemies of blasphemies -- and bringing us back to my beginning with this guild -- Luca Guadagnino's We Are Who We Are, although I recognize that show was divisive... 

... but the haters are hella wrong). Still those last three shows did get mentioned, and Steve McQueen's Small Axe masterful miniseries got three nominations, and that's more than most of the TV academies will probably recognize those things. Plus plenty of love for It's a Sin and Hacks and Mare of Easttown, all predictable as far as these things go but excellent all the same. Our winners will be announced on August 29th, but for now hit the jump for the full list of nominees...

Aaron Pierre Three Times

Is there any filmmaker working today who's better at finding fascinating faces and then straight up making love to them (the faces, I mean) via their camera than Barry Jenkins? I watched the first three episodes of Jenkins' unbelievably accomplished Amazon series The Underground Railroad yesterday -- although I suppose it'd only be "unbelievable" to a person who hasn't seen any of Barry's previous works -- and there are a million compliments to be made but the one I just kept coming back to was casting, casting faces, fascinating beautiful weird faces. The series is stuffed with them, but none more gorgeous than that of Aaron Pierre here, who plays Caesar. I'd never seen Pierre before -- he's fairly new to acting but he was a regular on the Krypton show apparently -- but I will never forget his face now thanks to Barry Jenkins shooting it. Have any of you watched this series yet? (pics via)

25 Off My Head: Siri Says 2016

I guess this website you're on is nursing some separation anxiety today after two weeks of holiday silence, because my intention to do a new entry in our "Siri Says" series -- where I ask my phone to choose a number between 1 and 100 and then choose my favorite movies from the corresponding year -- came at me with a huge ask this afternoon. One I had been dreading for awhile. See, Siri came back at me with the number "16", forcing me to choose my favorites from The Movies of 2016, and... 

... well I don't know if you remember 2016, but there was a lot happening in 2016. Especially at its stinger of a tail-end. The bottom dropped out, a nightmare swallowed us up, and I couldn't focus on making silly little lists. Or much of anything. It's been four years of this so maybe you can't recall how we all died, a lot, inside right around then... but we did. And so I never awarded my annual "Golden Trousers" awards for the movies of 2016. They just got lost in the mix of sturm und drang and shit. 

And I have regretted this gaping absence ever since, but... well politics aside, 2016 was actually a wonderful, seriously wonderful, year for the movies. Insanely good! (I mean it's even the year where I first heard about Call Me By Your Name, for goodness' sake!) And so the task of actually mounting this list always seemed daunting. Super massive daunting, really. And if there's one thing you know about me it's that I love Jake Gyllenhaal. But if there are two things you know about me there's that I love Jake Gyllenhaal and I am lazy. So this list just kept being put off, and off, and off. 

But now, well, why not? This is one way to put a cap on the past four awful years. And... also I'm just sitting here, trying to get myself back into the blogging frame of mind after two weeks off. Why not set myself a massive task? So usually when I do these "Siri Says" lists I just give you five movies in no particular order from the year in question, but this will not do. It doesn't seem to meet the demand of this moment, this year of movies. So not only am I ranking the films, but I'm giving you a Top 25. 2016 was too good for any less than too much, man!

My 25 Favorite Movies of 2016

25. Pee-wee's Big Holiday

(dir. John Lee)

24. Silence

(dir. Martin Scorsese)

23. The Love Witch

(dir. Anna Biller)

22. The Ornithologist

(dir. João Pedro Rodrigues)

21. Always Shine

(dir. Sofia Takal)

20. Arrival

(dir. Denis Villeneuve)

19. Neon Bull

(dir. Gabriel Mascaro)

18. Green Room

(dir. Jeremy Saulnier)

17. Wiener-dog

(dir. Todd Solondz)

16. Julieta

(dir. Pedro Almodovar)

15. Certain Women

(dir. Kelly Reichardt)

14. Aquarius

(dir. Kleber Mendonça Filho)

13. Christine

(dir. Antonio Campos)

12. A Monster Calls

(dir. J.A. Bayona)

11. Jackie

(dir. Pablo Larrain)

10. The Invitation

(dir. Karyn Kusama)

9. Kubo and the Two Strings

(dir. Travis Knight)

8. Elle

(dir. Paul Verhoeven)

7. A Bigger Splash

(dir. Luca Guadagnino)

6. The Neon Demon

(dir. Nicolas Winding Refn)

5. Moonlight

(dir. Barry Jenkins)

4. The Witch

(dir. Robert Eggers)

3. The Handmaiden

(dir. Park Chan-wook)

2. 20th Century Women

(dir. Mike Mills)

1. American Honey 

(dir. Andrea Arnold) 

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Runners-up: The Autopsy of Jane Doe (dir. André Øvredal), Train to Busan (dir. Sang-ho Yeon), Hail Caesar! (dir. Coens), The Light Between Oceans (dir. Derek Cianfrance), High-Rise (dir. Ben Wheatley), The Eyes of My Mother (dir. Nicolas Pesce), Demolition (Jean-Marc Vallee), Nocturnal Animals (dir. Tom Ford)...

... Nocturama (dir. Bertrand Bonello), Under the Shadow (dir. Babak Anvari), I, Daniel Blake (dir. Ken Loach), Things To Come (dir. Mia Hansen-Løve), Shin Godzilla (dir. Cris George), The Shallows (dir. Jaume Collet-Serra), Captain America: Civil War (dir. Russos), Swiss Army Man (dir. Daniel Scheinert), Spa Night (dir. Andrew Ahn)

Never seen: Sausage Party (dir. Conrad Vernon), Dirty Grandpa (dir. Dan Mazer), Handsome Devil (dir. John Butler), My Life as a Zucchini (dir. Claude Barras), Fire At Sea (dir. Gianfranco Rosi), Snowden (dir. Oliver Stone), Sully (dir. Clint Eastwood), Pete's Dragon (dir. David Lowery), The B.F.G. (dir. Steven Spielberg), Eddie the Eagle (dir. Dexter Fletcher)

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What are your favorite movies of 2016?