Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... taking a peek with Chris Meloni 

and Dylan McDermott. (via) 

Pics of the Day

.

The first batch of official photos from Ryan Murphy's forthcoming Netflix limited series Hollywood have dropped today -- see our previous posts about the show right here -- and they have made it clearer than ever that Mr. Murphy is going to be leaning in to the version of Tinsel Town history that we heard from the juicy (and possibly made up) autobiography of Scotty Bowers, the supposed gas station gay pimp of the Golden Age.

On the left there is the gorgeous David Corenswet (who is probably the only takeaway from Murphy's series The Politician) and on the right that's Murphy stalwart Dylan McDermott -- neither's character according to IMDb is named Scotty but one of them (David, really) oughta be. That said most of the main characters seem to be made-up, while they'll be surrounded by people playing Rock Hudson, Rock Hudson's creepy super-gay agent Henry Willson (who's being played by Jim Parsons), the gossip writer Hedda Hopper, et cetera so forth.

The seven episodes of Hollywood -- which also features Patti Lupone,  Darren Criss, Jeremy Pope, Samara Weaving, Laura Harrier, Holland Taylor, Jake Picking, and Joe Mantello -- will premiere on Netflix on May 1st. So just try to survive for four more weeks, y'all! Then we'll have a new show to binge while we're trapped in our houses still. A silver lining, that. Silver... like nitrate film, or whatever! I'm clever! Oh god get me out of this house, I am losing it. Hit the jump for a few more pictures...

Good Morning, Gratuitous Jeremy Pope

.

I'm sure one of you theater fans can tell me more about the actor Jeremy Pope, who made a splash I guess on stage with the one-two punch of Choir Boy and Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations -- enough of a splash anyway that he just landed a big role in one of Ryan Murphy's forthcoming seeming dozens of Netflix series that've been announced this week. 

Specifically Pope will star in Hollywood, which Murphy calls "a love letter to the Golden Age of Tinseltown" -- he'll be playing a "gay, aspiring writer in writer in 1940s Hollywood" where he'll supposedly come face to face not only with screen legends like Rock Hudson and Spencer Tracy, but also as an actor he'll be face to face with a slew of Ryan Murphy Regulars in those roles, people like Darren Criss and Patti Lupone and Dylan McDermott and that hot boy from the trailer for The Politician that we already posted about. (His name is David Corenswet and honestly I could see him playing Rock Hudson.)

But we're getting distracted! We're like Ryan Murphy in that way. We're here for Jeremy Pope right now. Hollywood will mark only his second screen role, after playing a character called "Jerk" in last year's basically ignored horror flick The Ranger (I only recognize it because it had a terrific poster). Did anybody see that? I doubt a character named "Jerk" had a lot of substance, so Hollywood will mark our true introduction to Mr. Pope I guess. Well that plus the couple dozen photos I've gathered up this morning, which you can see after the jump...

Nice To Meet You, David Corenswet

.

That there is one of the first pictures released from Ryan Murphy's forthcoming series for Netflix called The Politician, which stars Tony winner Platt as a preppy high schooler with his eyes on no less than the Presidency of the United States. You know, eventually. The show's about him being all aggressively Tracy Flick future-minded. Anyway naturally the picture that grabbed the most of my attention is the one that has Platt sitting alongside a dimple-cheeked dreamboat named River who's played by David Corenswet, a relative newcomer credit-wise but who's already got us on notice. 

And of course since this is a Ryan Murphy production the show also co-stars Jessica Lange, Bette Midler, Judith Light, Dylan McDermott, and Gwyneth Paltrow among others, so there's gonna be a lot going on everywhere, I'm sure. Personally I'm hoping for a crazy satirical Popular vibe, which remains the second best thing Ryan Murphy's ever come near (after the Versace series, which is a stone cold masterpiece). The Politician premieres on September 27th on Netflix. In summation you should probably immediately follow David Corenswet on Instagram...

View this post on Instagram

Through every ceiling is a sky.............. unless there’s another ceiling, in which case you’re f*cked.

A post shared by David Corenswet (@davidcorenswet) on Oct 14, 2018 at 6:46pm PDT

Pantys 2018: My 10 Favorite Scary Movies

.

Before I dive head-long into my Top 20 films of 2018 for our "Golden Trousers" awards (although you can see 10 runners-up we posted last week right here) I wanted to spotlight the best of my favorite movie genre -- what scared us in 2018? Well I think y'all know the answer to that. Its a big blobby wailing monster whose skin and hair is just about the same color as those pants to the left. So we took refuge from the real world's frights in movies that were almost to a tee about finding one's self in a world gone wrong, where the things you thought you could count on were upended, poisoned, curdled bad. Relationships, whether romantic or familial, were not to be trusted, while the world out of doors is enthusiastically sharpening its knives. You know. That ol' spooky junk. Been there, crapped my pants, bought the t-shirt. So here's my big ten boos, with a bonus favorite bit to chew on each...

10. What Keeps You Alive

(dir. Colin Minihan)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: The upstairs fight scene

9. The Ritual

(dir. David Bruckner)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: The creature knocks

8. Revenge

(dir. Coralie Fargeat)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: Glass removal

7. 7. The Clovehitch Killer

(dir. Duncan Skiles)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare:
Watching dad from under the bed

6. The Night Eats the World

(dir. Dominique Rocher)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: Drum breakdown

5. The House That Jack Built

(dir. Lars von Trier)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: Simple

4. Cam

(dir. Daniel Goldhaber)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: "Lola"'s gunplay

3. Good Manners

(dir. Marco Dutra & Juliana Rojas)

Best Moment / Scare: Cat Hunting

2. Hereditary

(dir. Ari Aster)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: Telephone Pole

1. Suspiria

(dir. Luca Guadagnino)

-- read my review here --

Best Moment / Scare: Anke Comes Home

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

Runners-up: Empathy Inc., The Little Stranger, 

Blue My Mind, Mandy, Cargo,
Strangers: Prey at Night, Unfriended: Dark Web

.

Let the Great Movie Flood Come

.

When last Friday rolled around I didn't have anything to say about the weekend's new movies, as I hadn't seen any of them - this weekend on the other hand is a whole different bag of beans. There are by my count six movies out today that I've already offered up my thoughts on  (two of them just this afternoon), and in case you care what I have to say - and I hope you do, otherwise WTF you doing here? - here are links to what I went and said...

Here are my thoughts on Steve McQueen's Widows.

Here are my thoughts on Green Book, in limited release.

Here are my thoughts on Van Gogh biopic At Eternity's Gate.

Here are my thoughts on the horror flick Cam, out on Netflix.

Here are my thoughts on the fine horror flick
The Clovehitch Killer, which is in limited release.

And here are my thoughts on the Coens' The Ballad of Buster 

Scruggs, which is also on Netflix right this very minute.

I'm seeing the new Fantastic Beasts tonight, which... looks terrible.

But if you wanna share your thoughts on any of these movies

feel free to do so in the comments! Have a nice weekend, y'all.

.

BHFF: RIP 2018

.

The Brooklyn Horror Festival came to a close for its 2018 edition last evening, and while I didn't cover quite as much as I'd hoped to since that cold came along and knocked me on my butt all weekend I did manage to get several reviews out of it, and saw some real quality stuff. I appreciate them letting me cover this year, and hope to return next! Let's round up all of my coverage for easy clicking. Here was my introduction to the slate, and now for the reviews...

Knife + Heart -- A giallo set in the gay porn underground of 1970s France, this movie's the best thing I saw at the fest, and might make my list of favorite movies of the year when it comes down to it. Stylish and insane. I adore it.

Welcome to Mercy -- You can't really call this movie an Evil Nun movie because its story is a little too complicated for that catch-all, but there's visual inventiveness in spades, making ye olde exorcism act seem fresh as a dewy morning, imagine that.

Empathy Inc -- It's being sold as an especially dark episode of Black Mirror which is fitting - it's about future tech gone very very wrong.

Tower. A Bright Day. -- A strange little Polish nightmare about the wrong-headed reunion of a family that shouldn't have happened. Mostly mood, lots of tension - I was squirming with ill ease.

The Clovehitch Killer -- Charlie Plummer and Dylan McDermott play father and son in this deeply disturbing suburban serial killer flick. IFC Midnight is releasing this movie on VOD in November - I'll definitely keep you informed. It's terrific.

Boo! -- A family of four in Detroit gets cursed on Halloween night and diabolical forces slowly peel them apart. 

Blood Harvest -- I gaped in something akin to awe at the paint-streaked cojones of this 1987 clown horror film starring a deranged Tiny Tim (I know, that's redundant) not to mention a very young Peter Krause in very tight jeans...

BHFF: The Clovehitch Killer

.

Reporting from the Brooklyn Horror Film Festival this week!

Shakespeare's quote "There are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy," has been stuck in my head this week since it's repeated several times in the just-released (and very fine) Haunting of Hill House series on Netflix. It's a great quote for a Ghost Show to swipe - gives a sheen of serious historical and literate heft to the funny business of spooks and specters popping out of a series of ever smaller boxes. 

And there are moments in that show (or in something like Hereditary earlier this year) where the film-making's good enough that they manage to twist up this atheist's doubts (of which, yes, I have many) in sturdy emotional allegories - that is to say I stop caring that I don't believe in the afterlife and its movie monsters because what they're signifying with their horror story gets to the root of something true and scary about people, human people, you and me, and what's been done or what is in the process of being done to us every practical day to day.

So yes ghosts can be scary, as can satanic chants, to somebody that doesn't believe in a soul. That being said I tend to reserve my biggest and most lingering frights for the practical matters. The men in masks, those made of plastic or skin or what's under skin. The stuff that stuck in Hereditary, after all the crab-walking across the ceiling, was the sense of familial betrayal - of the should-be-unbreakable bonds being used to strangle instead. And that's where The Clovehitch Killer gets it right. And The Clovehitch Killer gets it very right.

Tyler (Charlie Plummer) is a boy scout. Literally. He's got the badges and the neckerchief to prove it. His Dad (Dylan McDermott, middle-aged out) is the Scout Leader, and together they make a do-gooder tag-team of serious un-hipness. Tyler goes to church, and he smiles sweetly, chastely, at the girl he likes across the aisle. Decency radiates off of him with a sheen some might mistake for acne cream - he is a good boy. So one night when he tempts fate and invites that nice girl to go driving with him, well, you'd be forgiven for being as surprised as she is when she digs a photo of a topless girl bound up with ropes out from under the front seat.

Tyler, you dirty dirty boy. The girl runs. The rumors spread. Only thing is, well, that's not Tyler's picture. That's not Tyler's car. Tyler borrowed Dad's car. Cue the unravelling. Before you know it he's hooked up with the bad girl (an atheist, gasp) from the bad side of town and, shades of Blue Velvet, they're investigating the small-town serial killer that gives the film its knotty title and before you know it Tyler ends up, as inevitably he must, back on his own front stoop, staring in.

If you think you can guess where the film's going from there you might not be wrong, per se - the horror lies not so much in the destination, but the journey, and I was shocked by how wrong The Clovehitch Killer was willing to make that journey seem and feel. Not "wrong" as in poorly made" by any stretch of the imagination - 'wrong" as in "fucked the fuck up." I sat in mid-day sunlight watching this movie growing steadily more unnerved - director Duncan Skiles and screenwriter Christopher Ford aren't afraid to really test the ropes, as it were; see how far they can stretch without breaking.

It doesn't break. The ropes hold. Dylan McDermott is committed like mad here - put this on his clip-reel for eternity; I'll never look at that big handsome lug the same way again. And Charlie Plummer, one of our finest young actors, strikes the mark yet again, making the sink of moral quicksand beneath Tyler's feet an unsteady and palpable dread - never has watching a boy become a man felt so diseased and sickly. The world is a corruption - we are the children of nightmares, made flesh from nowhere and nothing.

6 Off My Head - Fresh Frights For Fall

.

Do you feel that? I think there's a chill in the air! And I think we all know what that means - Autumn is nigh and pumpkins and co-eds are due a good carving, one of them fictionally but I'll leave those choices up to you and your own personal moral compass. Halloween is a mere 44 days away now (meaning the holiday; the remake of Halloween is just 32 days away!) and the lead up to that  means one thing now in NYC - the annual Brooklyn Horror Film Festival is here!

And we'll be covering the fest this year -- thankfully it comes in (on October 11th) just as NYFF is about to leave... probably to murder it, thematically appropriately. Anyway BHFF runs a week, from October 11th to October 18th, and showcases all kinds of killer cinema -- the entire line-up can be scoped out on their website. Tickets are on sale right this very minute! But here, listen to me first, and let me share the six movies (six for evil!) that they're screening that I'm most looking forward to seeing. (Sidenote: I have already seen Cam and it is really great; read my review here.)

Knife + Heart (dir. Yann Gonzalez) -- We have already posted about this movie, when the trailer came out (see it here) - it's the arty gay (is anybody gonna yell at me if I say "Art Fag"? I can say it, I am one!) French slasher movie that played Cannes in the spring that stars Vanessa Paradis as a gay porn director who gets caught up in a murder spree. It looks very neon giallo, like Nicolas Winding Refn and Bruce la Bruce fucked and had a baby and it was a movie, this movie. (Buy tickets here!)

The Clovehitch Killer (dir. Duncan Skiles) -- I'm one hundred percent in on this movie, about a "church-going boy scout" who comes to fear his father might be the titular serial killer, because that boy scout is played by Charlie Plummer, and we're all in on Charlie Plummer after King Jack and Lean on Pete. But we're also pretty excited to see Dylan McDermott playing his maybe murderous pops, too. (Buy tickets here.)

Welcome to Mercy (dir. Tommy Bertelsen) -- This the season for blasphemous nuns (see also: The Nun) and so here's one about a young woman (Kristen Ruhlin) who starts having terrifying visions and goes to visit an isolated convent for assistance, and well you know, isolated convents being isolated convents and all, bad juju time. (Buy tickets here)

Starfish (dir. A.T. White) -- You basically have me sold on something the second you say it is "Cosmic Horror" because I do love me a good shoggoth. But then they went and described this movie - which is about a young woman mourning her best friend who is then suddenly caught up in an apocalypse - as playing "like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind as remixed by H.P. Lovecraft" and, well, for sure. yeah. I'm there. (Buy tickets here.)

The Field Guide to Evil (dir. various) -- No genre does the Anthology Film better than the Horror Genre, a truth as old as time immemorial. And this sucker's selling itself with its line-up of up-and-coming foreign genre directors each taking a turn at tackling their home country's scariest myths - there are short films by Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala (the directors of Goodnight Mommy), Can Evrenol (the director of Baskin), Agnieszka Smoczynska  (the director of The Lure), and Peter Strickland (who made Berberian Sound Studio and The Duke of Burgundy), among others. (Buy tickets here.)

In Fabric (dir. Peter Strickland) -- And speaking of Strickland he's got a new movie of his own playing here, in its NYC premiere - it just played Toronto and the little bit I skimmed (to stay spoiler-free of course) sounded very positive indeed. Anyway this movie's about a killer dress (a la Queen Elizabeth's noted fright frock, although probably a more consciously diabolical sort) so who cares what anybody else has to say -- I am seeing this for myself the first second I can. (Sorry folks, this one's already Sold Out!)

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

And that's just scratching the surface - again, go check out the whole line-up right here. And on top of all the new stuff they're also screening an amazing batch of classics, including Sleepaway Camp, The Burning, The Funhouse, and the original and glorious My Bloody Valentine, so... you know. For sure. I am so so there. Save me a seat, Harry Warden...

I Am Link

.

--- Baby Maker - IndieWire has a wonderful chat with director Sebastian Silva over here - his new movie Nasty Baby, starring himself and Kristen Wiig, has apparently gotten some strange reception from the festival circuit, which he hilariously details. The movie sounds amazing, I hadn't heard anything about any of the walk-outs or anything, I'm even more excited than I was before. And I was excited before, not just because of Wiig, but because I loved Crystal Fairy tons and tons. Also he's seriously cute, who knew?

--- The Oscars Of Everything - I don't know how he finds the hours in the day for all of this but our pal Joe Reid's been on fire with the articles this week - here's a piece at The Atlantic on the disconnect between the Best Actress nominees and the movies their performances are in getting any correlating Oscar respect! Here's a piece at Slate on Joe's yearly project of seeing every single Oscar nominee wherein he ranks all of the movies from best to worst! (High placement of garbage like Birdman gives me slight agita, but I'll make due, especially with such a great number one.) And here's a piece at Vanity Fair on the nominees for Best Original Song in 1999, aka the greatest years of movies ever. Damn Joe, you're making me tired on your behalf!

--- Joke's On Us - It's amazing how quickly Jared Leto's able to make my skin crawl nowadays - in this new interview with Billboard magazine I went straight from "his beard does look lickable in that picture" to "oh my god shut that asshole up" in like half a second flat. He talks about wanting to gain weight for The Joker and then "vegan tacos" are mentioned and oh my god shut that asshole up.

--- Fall Guys - Taking a breather from the Oscars stuff for a hot second at The Film Experience Nathaniel wrote up some thoughts on a recent binge-watch of The Fall, that serial-killer starring the goddess Gillian plus that perfectly crafted set of abs with legs standing opposite her. I guess the second season is showing up on Netflix soon? They are good, you should watch them. I also wrote up some thoughts on the first season awhile back.

--- Dick Friendly - I suppose some other garbage dump for zombies will just fill in the hole that Two and a Half Men is leaving, having just aired its final episode last night, but I still feel some tension leaving the world now that it's gone. Ahhh. The air feels fresher today, doesn't it? Anyway point being here's Ashton Kutcher talking about his gigantic fake dick.

--- Serious Movie - I want to say it's been awhile since Oliver Stone's been relevant but he did flash Aaron Johnson's anus at us that one time not too long ago so me and Ollie, we're totally good. His movie about Edward Snowden starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who's clearly angling himself towards baity-roles these days (not mastur-baity, but awards-baity, that is) just picked up another hot piece, one Timothy Olyphant! I don't know if an Edward Snowden movie will find room for an anus flash, but let's cross our fingers and toes.

--- Milk The Dead - I wish I could figure out what character she played but an actress named Jill Marie Jones, who was apparently on American Horror Story: Asylum, just scored the leading lady role in Sam Raimi's upcoming Evil Dead television series. Oh wait I just googled it oh god gross I'd forgotten about this scene. You're a big pervert, Dylan McDermott.

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Conversation (1974)

Harry Caul: I'm not afraid of death, 

but I am afraid of murder. 

God I love The Conversation. I wish I was watching The Conversation right this minute. Anyway a happy 85th birthday today to the great great Gene Hackman, who is sorely missed from the movies. Missed so much that the internet - specifically Dylan McDermott - tried to murder him the other day!

.

Did Dylan McDermott just murder Gene Hackman?
— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 28, 2015

That was in reference to a tweet, since deleted (although he did mention it in a follow-up), wherein McDermott gave Gene the RIP tweet treatment, although he's still very much alive, which seems to have been born out of confusion over a Grantland article earlier this week which was celebrating Gene's career and was titled "Gene Hackman Is Gone But Still in Charge" -- the article's title has since been changed to "Gene Hackman Is Retired But Still in Charge," but the damage was done. That sad say day when Hackman passes... all eyes will now turn to Dylan "Bloody Hands" McDermott.

Happy 45, Josh Hamilton

.

I wouldn't mind if...

... they brought him back...

... for American Horror Story next season.

He and Dylan McDermott could play incestuous conjoined twins.

.