Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Open Your Eyes (1997)

César: We never appreciate the good moments till they're over.

Antonio: Maybe that's why they're good moments.

A happy 50th birthday to the fine (and fine) Spanish actor Eduardo Noriega today, probably best known here in the U.S. for his lead role in Guillermo Del Toro's perfect 2001 ghost story The Devil's Backbone. That is if he's not known for the movie quoted above from director Alejandro Amenábar -- who coincidentally also made a perfect ghost story in 2001 called The Others. I just don't know how well-seen Open Your Eyes is at this point here in the U.S. -- I never hear anybody talk about it anymore, even though it has gotten a blu-ray release and it is currently streaming on Prime.

Anyway it's very good and you should see it if you haven't! And if you're unaware Open Your Eyes was remade in 2001 (good grief what a convergence point that year is turning out to be for this post) as Cameron Crowe's film Vanilla Sky. And while there are things I admire about Vanilla Sky, Amenábar's film remains far superior. Anyway Noriega did a lot of great work around that time -- Amenábar's 1996 film Thesis is another one that doesn't get mentioned often enough (with The Others getting released on Criterion in October maybe more of Amenábar's movies will finally get good releases). And then there's the homoerotic spectacle of Eduardo and Leonardo Sbaraglia (recently seen in Pedro Almodovar's Pain and Glory)...

... in Burnt Money from 2000, which, wanna hear something nuts? I HAVE NEVER SEEN. I have posted about this movie's existence since the very beginning of this website almost twenty years ago and yet I have still never seen it! Even when images like this exist:

I have quite obviously wasted my life. 

Great Moments in Movie Shelves #128

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There are times where I use this series celebrating bookshelves in the movies for more serious purposes, ones of reflection and rumination,. And there are times where I use this series for... less serious reasons.

This is one of the latter. When I was scanning through Alejandro Amenábar's 1997 classic Open Your Eyes earlier this week for another post I caught this glimpse of its star Eduardo Noriega shirtless besides some shelves and how I could I resist? Or rather, WHY should I resist? But where the heck is Eduardo anyway? I miss him.

Which is Hotter?

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Sergi López in Pan's Labyrinth or

Eduardo Noriega in The Devil's Backbone?

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poll by twiigs.com

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A happy 50 to director Guillermo Del Toro! 

Just the other day I went on a rant about how sexless GDT's movies largely are - I was ranting because if he's going to keep making movies with Charlie Hunnam, he's going to have to break that habit. Anyway these two guys, Sergi and Eduardo that is,  do get to be sexy in their respective movies, kinda. (Okay Sergi is mostly terrifying but I found him sexy.) Maybe it's just when he's working in Spanish that Guillermo can feel the pasión. See more of Sergi here and more Eduardo here.

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The Eduardo & Rodrigo Movie

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If I told you there was a movie starring Eduardo Noriega and Rodrigo Santoro, plus Zach Gilford, Peter Stormare, Luis Guzman, Daniel Henney, Forest Whitaker, and Harry Dean Stanton, and it was directed by the dude who made I Saw the Devil, and it is coming out this weekend... you'd be excited, right? Well there is that movie coming out this weekend, only they went and put Arnold Schwarzenegger and Johnny Knoxville on the poster, so not really anybody's excited. Bah. I still plan on seeing The Last Stand, and I plan on seeing the Del Toro produced horror flick Mama as well. So maybe I'll actually review some movies next week instead of just silently watching Breaking Bad? We'll see. So yeah anyway go read my piece on this weekend's movies at Celebrity Beehive! Go! Now! Or Nikolaj Coster-Waldau gets it!

Good Morning, World

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At around the same time I posted those shots of Eduardo Noriega earlier this week I also stumbled upon this scene of him and Vincent Dissez playing around, ahem, in the shower in a 2002 film called Novo. I haven't seen the movie so the context is lost upon me, which is fine - this sort of things works just fine sans context, ya know? The context would probably screw it up, in truth.

A wise man once said tis better to be ignorant than unturned on. Alright I just made that up, but it seems wise to me, so whatever. If you want to see several gifs I made of this and another scene in the movie, hit the jump.

Eduardo Noriega Eight Times

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He looks a lot like Eli Roth in those pictures, doesn't he? I've never thought they looked a lot alike before, but they do here. I am not crazy! Don't look at me like that. They could be brothers here. See?

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poll by twiigs.com

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I mean Eduardo's the sexier less-hirsute more-Spanish brother,
obviously, but it's totally there.

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Noriega's Last Stand

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When Arnold Schwarzenegger finished governating and began threatening to return to movie-making, I never anticipated having to give a shit. But then so much happened to prove me a fool! Like he hooked up with I Saw the Devil director Kim Jee-Woon for a thriller called The Last Stand that basically sounds like "High Noon with drugs," and then they cast Rodrigo Santoro, and then they cast Zach Gilford, and now they've cast Eduardo Noriega, and here I am on my third post about this movie!

I like Eduardo a lot, you might know him from Guillermo Del Toro's The Devil's Backbone, or Brad Anderson's Transsiberian, or Alejandro Amenábar's Open Your Eyes playing the part Tom Cruise fucked up in the remake Vanilla Sky. Or maybe you know him from the muy caliente Spanish thriller Burnt Money where he and co-star Leonardo Sbaraglia memorably can't keep their hands off each other.

Good god, this scene. Here's it in motion:

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Hottest scene ever. Anyway naturally now that I've thought about it I'll be holding out unnatural hopes for this to be recreated in this new film with Noriega and Rodrigo Santoro, and nothing less with sate my appetite! Okay Zach Gilford will do as an alternative. But that's it!

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Good Morning, World

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And happy 38th birthday, Eduardo Noriega!

I Am Link

--- Get Ready for the remake of My Bloody Valentine, that oft-overlooked 80s slasher classic, in, wait for it, bite your pillow with anticipation... 3D!!! Yes, yes, it's true: movie studios are already beating this horse to death. Mind you, I'm still of the mindset that a Final Destination film in 3D is genius, but I'm beginning to wonder if the horror landscape isn't about to start having a lot of Jaws 3D's laying around very soon.

--- There's a hi-def (read: clearer muscles!) version of that Wolverine pic I posted yesterday, as well as a new one (<--- right there), over at JJ.

--- Now that it seems pretty certain we won't be getting competing Harvey Milk bio-pics from both Gus Van Sant and Bryan Singer, since Van Sant's Milk is already well into production and Singer's off doing god knows what, might Singer make a cameo in Van Sant's film?

--- I'm really at a loss as to what the studio's thinking if the rumors about scrapping all of Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are to reshoot the entire thing are indeed true. Stupid studio! I guess "trying something different" was too much to ask them to do this one time. Maybe they can hire Mike Myers or Jim Carrey now and release a large-grossing turd that'll be forgotten before the box office closes. Anyway, AICN has a release date for the film - October 2009 - that doesn't clear things up one way or the other - that gives them enough time to reshoot the entire thing if they see fit to.

--- Speaking of semi-vague release dates, we'll be seeing Brad Anderson's Transsiberian sometime this Summer, says Cinematical. The film stars Emily Mortimer (yay!), Woody Harrelson, Kate Mara and Eduardo Noriega, and I been drooling over it for months. Word at Sundance wasn't as ecstatic as I'd been hoping, but I'm pleased I'll get to see for myself not too far from now.
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