Good Friday, World

Let's let Karl Urban be our light unto the weekend.

Less Is More For Thor

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Karl Urban just posted that picture of his newly shaved head for the third Thor movie with this post's title as its caption, and there are so many just delightfully depraved and disgustingly filthy ways that I want to read into all of that I don't even know where to begin. Deep breaths, me; deep breaths.

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What Are You Seeing This Weekend?

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I'm surprised by how much there suddenly is that I want to see in the theater! There are three movies out tomorrow that I long for to varying degrees - I've already got my tickets to Star Trek Beyond but I could be persuaded to see both the new horror movie Lights Out and the Absolutely Fabulous movie. Add to that Swiss Army Man (which I just mentioned regretting not catching yet) and how I'm seeing an early preview of Ira Sachs' new film Little Men with Greg Kinnear & Alfred Molina tonight, and... well time is short, too short. But never too short for you three...

Good Morning, Karl

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The American remake of The Loft (I never saw the original) isn't a good enough movie that you should worry about me spoiling it for you but that's not really for me to decide, so beware spoilers below. Anyway it does have the sight of James Marsden & Matthias Schoenaerts wearing leather gloves and roughing up a naked Karl Urban, so it has its moments! Today's Karl Urban's 44th birthday and so, uh, that's why we're here! Happy birthday to him. Hit the jump for the spoilery remainder of this scene...

I Am Link

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--- Dance With The Devil - My month of Broadway has pretty much come to an end (okay I am seeing Gillian Anderson do Streetcar a second time tomorrow because as I said before it's the greatest thing I have ever seen and the thought of never being able to see it ever again filled my heart with unspeakable panic) and having seen the American Psycho musical twice I can heartily agree with our pal Nathaniel's rave for the show over at The Film Experience last night. Honestly I'm really glad that Psycho is scheduled to run all Summer because there's no way I won't be going back at some point.

--- Gods & Women - I definitely haven't been doing these link round-ups often enough lately because I go through the list of things I want to talk about each time and there's always something where I'm like, "Wait I haven't mentioned that yet?" Like the fact that I haven't mentioned the news that Marvel finally officially announced the Supporting Cast for the third Thor movie and it includes Cate Blanchett as the big bad Hela, Jeff Goldblum as The Grandmaster, Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie, and Karl Urban as Skurge. My goodness.

--- Trilogy Of Terror - At Cannes, when he wasn't busy getting booed or beefing with Lars Von Trier, Nicolas Winding Refn announced he is producing remakes of three count 'em three great old horror films - he's setting up remakes of Maniac Cop (which will have a daunting task matching the hotness of Young Bruce Campbell lemme tell ya what) and Witchfinder General (which will have a daunting task re-casting a role once played by Vincent Price lemme tell ya what) and then he's remaking the 1972 giallo What Have You Done To Solange?, which, well... yeah. I hope he casts Solange Knowles? Oh and here's a new interview with Refn that I haven't read yet, perhaps there's something fun.

--- And Speaking of things I haven't read yet here's a long talk with Pedro Almodovar for Variety -- I guess it's mostly about his new movie Julieta, which I believe is out in Spain now. I mean that's what it should be about I suppose, since it's out. He tells them that the film was once meant to be his English-language debut and it was going to star Meryl Streep! So many gay people just exploded.

---  War Mongers - Christopher Nolan probably isn't too worried about my opinion, but let me just tell him anyway - because if I personally stopped caring about my opinion I don't know what I'd do - that he needs to win me back after the several heapings of crap he's served recently. And I hope he can with Dunkirk, his new WWII movie, because it's got a helluva cast - Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Kenneth Branagh, and Mark Rylance for starters. Anyway all of that we already knew but the movie has begun shooting and if you click here you can see some promising shots from the set; it looks pretty epic.

--- Girl Powered - It struck me a few days ago that Joss Whedon's all but vanished from the world, and I thought to myself that maybe he'd just pop up with a new Shaekspeare movie one of these days a la the glorious surprise that was Much Ado About Nothing, but before I could entertain that thought for too long a new interview with him appeared and it sounds like he has been working on a fresh script, about, and I quote, "a girl who goes through some unbelievable shit." That's all he offers, and that's basically the log-line of everything he's ever made, so I am going to pretend it's a big-screen Buffy movie is what I am gonna do. 

--- The Dandy Man Can - We should've mentioned this news yesterday when we posted that photo-shoot of Finn Wittrock but we spaced - he's got a new role! One not on American Horror Story! He's going to co-star in Jenny Slate's new movie (thanks Mac) directed by her Obvious Child collaborator Gillian Robespierre - it's called Landline and it will also star Edie Falco, Jay Duplass, John Turturro and Abby Quinn, and it sounds like it (unsurprisingly) will focus on the female members of that cast with the men-folk playing second fiddles. And yes it's been difficult for me to make it through this paragraph without mentioning the fact that Jenny Slate is dating Chris Evans and goddamn her! Ahem.

--- Myers Oh Myers - The first headline I saw about this story last night was terribly misleading and made it sound as if John Carpenter was going to direct the next Halloween movie, but that is not the case - he is merely executive-producing, which is a job title that translates in my ears to "slapping his name on so the movie feels more justified and then he pockets a bunch of cash in return." I mean I always read the title "Executive Producer" that way, it's not personal to Mr. Carpenter, but I have very little belief he'll be all that much involved with the project.
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Back To The Boys Club

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It's been awhile since we heard anything about this movie (save some whispers that it's godawful); we posted about the US remake of the Belgian thriller The Loft, starring an abbreviated who's who of my manly fantasies (namely James Marsden, Karl Urban, Wentworth Miller, and Matthias Schoenaerts, the latter of whom's reprising his role from the original flick), way back in August of 2012 and noted at the time that we'd been hearing about it for quite some time before that. Anyway somebody decided to dust it off and drop it in January, and now there's a new trailer... and new trailer with the Best Money-Shot Ever! Okay second-best, given that with this movie's cast "Best Money-Shit Ever" could go to "All the male leads having an orgy" and we don't quite get that... but we do get...

... Margarita "Lisa P"  Levieva  exuberantly flinging keys in my boy Matty's face and swirling around with smirking vigor! And that brings me much, much, much, much, much joy. So I'll totally go ahead and post the new trailer just for that.

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I Am Link

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--- Meet The Spectre - I suppose you've got to be a fan of the British zombie show In the Flesh to be excited about this news, but, well, you should be a fan of that show, I've been telling you for months to watch it. Anyway Emmett Scanlan, who was on the show's second season and I documented gratuitously right here (you wanna click that link), has signed on to play the DC comics character Jim Corrigan aka The Spectre in NBC's upcoming Constantine show. I wasn't going to watch this show because of the whole de-gaying thing but I dunno if I can resist Emmett. Maybe they're lying to us about Constantine not being bi and we'll find out when he and Emmett start making out all of a sudden. Emmett's played gay tons by now, he wouldn't let us down. Keep hope alive! And related to that there's still no word on a third series for In the Flesh, I think? Really really keep hope alive.
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--- Girl Detective - The latest name tossed on the True Detective heap (sidenote: did you see that I rode on an elevator with cary Fukunaga last week? No that's not a euphemism, unfortunately) for the second season is Rachel McAdams; apparently she and Elizabeth Moss are the two up for the female lead. Is it weird that I'm leaning towards McAdams? I feel like Moss already did this sort of thing with Top of the Lake, which she's gonna have trouble topping. Toss Rachel a bone.

--- Freaks Leaks - The first proper trailer for American Horror Story's upcoming fourth season subtitled Freak Show has arrived - it doesn't actually have footage from the show but we do get to see everybody in character, from Kathy Bates and her bushy beard to Angela Bassett's extra boobie to two-headed Sarah Paulson and the grande dame herself Jessica Lange, getting shadowed by a little person. If Evan Peters had shown his ass it'd have everything we'd need in one little minute.

--- Up North - I'm not going to link to a bunch of reviews from the Toronto fest because we'd be here all day (there is a lot showing there I wanna see) but our pal Joe Reid is reporting from up there and he met Greta Gerwig and has been in rooms with Laura Dern and Juliette Binoche in them so he can just go to hell! Bastard person. I've really gotta try to go next year.

--- Mat Dancer - I've been meaning to watch the "Paul Newman plays a boxer" movie Somebody Up There Likes Me for a very long time because, well, I just said "Paul Newman plays a boxer" weren't you paying attention? Anyway the film is by the director Robert Wise and Wise has a centennial coming up which The Film Experience is celebrating, so here's Nat talking about Somebody Up There Likes Me. Pictures of Paul Newman included.

--- Give Me Fever - Well this is a big fucking deal - Todd Haynes has announced his next project (after Carol, the Patricia Highsmith adaptation with Cate Blanchett that we're literally dying for) is going to be a bio-pic of the singer Peggy Lee, and it will star Reese Witherspoon. Oh and it was written by Nora Ephron. I know absolutely zilch about Peggy Lee; did she have an interesting life or something? Anybody?

--- Dredd Second Steel - A pair of unexpected sequels getting mentioned over at DH today that I won't hold my breathe about - first off Karl Urban says there's a chance we could see a prequel to his Dredd movie; there was stuff I liked about the first one (although I wasn't as nutty over it as some people were), including Karl Urban himself, always, so I wish him well even as I remain terribly skeptical. And secondly director Shawn Levy says there could be a Real Steel 2, which I'm only mentioning because Hugh Jackman sure did bounce around wearing sweatpants a lot in that first one didn't he? Sigh.
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--- Boston Strong - Matt Damon is re-teaming with Margaret director Kenneth Lonergan to make Manchester-by-the-Sea, which will be about a plumber who returns to his hometown of Boston when his brother dies and finds himself having to take care of his brother's teenage son. Sounds like You Can Count on Me and Margaret kinda mashed up doesn't it?

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Gratuitous Aden Young

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I put it to you guys to tell me about this Aden Young person - I'm fairly certain I've seen him in absolutely nothing. It was a review of his show Rectify headlined by his picture that caught my eye yesterday, and immediately I thought to myself - When did Karl Urban and Tom Hardy have a baby? And why wasn't I there for the moment of indubitably immaculate conception?

Anyway from what I have gathered he's Australian, although he was born in Toronto. Uh... he's 42-ish (his actual birth day isn't listed anywhere). I don't even know what his show's about - I didn't bother reading the review where I saw his picture; I saw the picture and went to find more pictures. Ta-dah!

So y'all tell me whatever y'all know about him if you know anything in the comments, after we stare at some more pictures (including prison nudity and the ability under extreme duress to keep one's genitals covered from all angles) after the jump. Deal? Deal.

Who Wore It Best?

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poll by twiigs.com

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I suppose this post can count towards wishing a happy 45th birthday to Wes Anderson, right? Right. Happy day, Wes! I hope the reason that I saw you and your bestie Noah Baumbach walking around is something super cool (I mean isn't it well past time you put Greta Gerwig in one of your movies anyway?)

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I Am Link

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--- Fig Leif - Ryan Kwanten is going to star in a movie about the Vikings (the old-timey ones not the football team), which reminds me of Karl Urban's peekaboo loincloth that was kept way too covered up in that movie Pathfinder. What a waste. But back to Kwanten - I know I shouldn't worry since he does such an ace Southern accent on True Blood that I constantly forget he's Aussie, but I am worried about his Viking accent anyway. If he wears a loincloth I promise to not care.

--- Camera Action - The New York Times made a list of twenty young directors that we ought to be paying attention to, and I talked a little bit about the list over at The Film Experience this afternoon. Emphasis on a little, since I haven't totally made it through the entire piece at the NYT yet. Still, Sarah Polley! Always cause to get excited.

--- Bombs Away - Also at the Times today, here's an economist's take on why the Summer Movie Season we just trudged through was been filled with duds, bombs, doody nuggets and the like - her chicken-egg hypothesis makes a lot of sense to this person.

--- Say Yes To Edgerton - Wanna know what a great big upgrade looks like? Joel Edgerton replacing Johnny Depp in a movie. Big ass upgrade! Edgerton's set to star in Shantaram, which Depp was once attached to, and which is about, and I quote, "[a man who] starts as an Australian heroin addict who escapes a maximum-security prison, reinvents himself as a doctor in the slums of India and eventually uses gun-running and counterfeiting skills to fight against the invading Russian troops in Afghanistan." Indeed. That be bonkers.

--- September's Tidings - What movies should you see this month? Joe Reid's telling you what's what over at Tribeca. There are actually a few I'm really very excited about, all of which I'm sure you could already name if pressed. October's still where it's at though, all thanks to Gravity.

--- I don't even want to post it here since I think it's so lousy so I'm just linking you over to the first trailer for the Robocop remake, which I wanted to be watchable only because I want Joel Kinnaman to be a movie star, he's so pretty on screen. Alas, this thing looks terrible, like a re-do of the Total Recall remake, like they sucked all wit and POV out of everything Verhoeven was getting at again. And good lord Abbie Cornish just cannot win.

--- Dark Adriana - Before I started watching The Sopranos I would not have given a shit about this news, but now that I am knee-deep in it (in the middle of the fifth season right now) I'm totally excited to hear that Drea DeMatteo has just joined the cast of Charlize Theron's new movie, that adaptation of Gillian Flynn's book Dark Places. Love Drea. If I listen really hard at any given moment I can hear her saying, "CHRISSY!"

--- Dean For Dane - We heard way back in May that Control director Anton Corbijn was planning on making a movie about the friendship between James Dean and a photographer who traveled with him a bunch; now we've got a cast - Dane DeHaan is playing James Dean (apparently he only wants to play roles that are James Franco related) and Robert Pattinson is playing the photographer. I liek Dane a lot but I don't see Dean.

--- Bye Mamet - While I'm always happy to hear that Cate Blanchett's working, I have mixed feelings about seeing her hook up to make a movie with David Mamet now that he's clearly revealed himself to be a right-wing nut-job. I mean, I love The Spanish Prisoner a whole heckuva lot, but Mamet can still kinda go fuck himself.

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Viva Space Gratuity

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Personally I find the supposed brouhaha over the shot of Alice Eve in her panties in Star Trek Into Darkness beyond silly - if we need to start having legitimate "reasons" to want to look at gorgeous people in their underpants then I'm moving to the Moon! And there upon the Moon I will build a society that embraces gratuity, in all its forms. I mean I don't so much care to see Alice Eve in her panties but once they come for one, they come for all. Stand united against the puritanical ninnies! (I mean wouldn't our time be better spent casting a critical eye upon the movie's appropriation of 9/11 imagery and the sight of millions of people getting killed, rather than a pair of lovely breasts, anyway? Just maybe?) And anyway, the movie had totally already leered at Kirk once.

I could've used more of that (when can't I) - the first movie did a marvelous job keeping Chris Pine in some incredibly snug skivvies for lengthy scene - but I figure they threw us a bone, at least. And that's not even getting to Mr. Pine in that wetsuit in the opening scene...

Mmmmm. (via) Well JJ Abrams was on Conan last night talking about this ridiculous controversy and you can watch the clip here but he showed a deleted shot from the movie which I think we'll all appreciate, since it's Benedict Cumberbatch in the space-shower...

Equal opportunity leering!
Leering for all!
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I Am Link

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--- Mission To Mars - Everybody had something to say on the Veronica Mars crowdsourcing explosion yesterday and a whole lot of it was nonsense, so I'm just gonna link over to all that matters - the show's creator Rob Thomas and the show's star Kristen Bell kicking up their heels with excitement about how massive and awesome the response was. Everything else is just noise. We're gonna get a motherfucking Veronica Mars movie! 24 hours ago that was not happening! Oh and here Rob addresses the international thing; they are working on it. Believe it - they want your money!

--- Quite Fonda - The Film Experience & Friends took on Roger Vadim's sci-fi camp classic Barbarella for "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" yesterday - read Nat's take on it here and see all of the images lined up beside each other (with links) here. Such a great looking time-specific thing, that movie.

--- Shake & Quake - Aftershock, that Argentinian Chilean earthquake movie produced by and starring Eli Roth, will be out in theaters on May 10th says BD. The trailer makes it look like a natural disaster spin on a Final Destination movie kinda sorta, and I am great with that. Although I hope Eli does us a solid and takes off something clothes-wise at some point.

--- Sight And Sound - The Playlist rounds up some choice quotes from a recent interview with cinematographer Christopher Doyle, in which he calls the Oscar win for Life of Pi's cinematography "a fucking piece of shit" and then proceeds to shit all over Spielberg and Lincoln too for good measure. My new hero? Perhaps. Not that I totally 100% agree with him, but I like an ornery chap, I do.

--- Picture Maker - Danny Boyle gave a one-hour interview here in NYC last night; I contemplated going but somehow listening to Danny Boyle for only an hour didn't seem worth the 20 dollar price tag. Sorry, Danny. If you were showing Trance too I'd have been there in an instant! Anyway here's a round-up of what he had to say, for all of us who weren't there because we're cheap or for other unspecified reasons.

--- Urban Defense - JJ Abrams is apparently producing a TV show about "robot cops" (you know, as opposed to RoboCops) and his sexy Star Trek star (say that five times fast) Karl Urban has just joined it.

--- Maybe Raptor - Rumor of the day: pre-production of Jurassic Park 4 has picked up and locations are being snapped up and offices are being maintained and all of this apparently implies that there's a top secret director who nobody will name running the show and everybody's assuming it's Steven Spielberg who's behind it and will end up directing the thing after all. I am totally great with that!

--- Have At Ha - Have you watched the trailer for Frances Ha as many times as I have? I seriously doubt it, my friends. Unless you're Joe Reid, he maybe has. Over at TribecaFilm he's talking about the spectacular use of the David Bowie song over it.
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--- And finally, hey look it's a new trailer for Hannibal! As an aside, didja all see Bryan Fuller's tweet last night congratulating the Veronica Mars team on the movie? He hinted at the phenomenon's relevance to getting more Pushing Daisies into the world, he did - this is why this is to be celebrated y'all! Nobody has to pony up money for something they don't give a shit about. Relatedly, EW is asking us to vote on what shows we'd like to see take a stab at the VM model and you can vote for Daisies therein. I voted for it obviously - it's much more likely than either of the Whedon shows happening right now - but making me pick just one is mean. I want several of those things!

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Good Morning, World

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(image above via) I feel bad that I did all that yammering about Dredd yesterday and I never even mentioned Karl Urban one single time, while he's technically the star of the movie. I say technically because good lord do they give him nothing to do. We never even get to see him with the mask off!

The problem is well beyond that though - Dredd remains an action figure from start to finish; he's handed a couple of arbitrary ethical decisions but mostly he's just point and shoot and quip from start to end. It really made me miss that time when it was important for these types of dudes to have real character - hell, even an excess of it. Think anyone played by Kurt Russell ever. These movie really could have used a Snake Plissken. Olivia Thirbly as the rookie standing alongside him does some heavy lifting (or you know, "heavy"), and I like Olivia Thirlby; I don't really blame Urban, he had purposefully been handed a cipher because that's somebody's definition of cool. But it didn't work for me, and it left a big black hole (with very fine lips) at the film's center.

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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Because Dredd hasn't even come out onto DVD yet (it comes out this upcoming Tuesday) and because its box office was abysmal I am assuming most of you people have not seen it yet, so I'm putting this all after the jump, lest I spoil it for somebody. So click on for more... or don't - it's your business.

Hobbit Into Darkness

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Did anybody see The Hobbit in IMAX this weekend and get to see those several minutes of Star Trek Into Darkness footage that were promised? I did not, but I'd love to hear what you thought of them if you did. Now we've got a trailer, which is about 45 seconds longer than the first teaser, so whoopdie doo to that. (via)

But back to The Hobbit - What did you all think? I don't think I'm going to be able to really write much of a review to it - I had a Christmas party yesterday right after seeing it and the best I could muster when it came up in conversation was, "It's good? It's definitely... long." I enjoyed it, I will say that. I'm strangely struck dumb when I try to say why though. I think it's just I've got too many other things on my mind right now. I liked it more than I though I was going to - I'd begun to fear a stinker, and it weren't a stinker. It was fun, and tonally very different from the LotR films, which was a good idea. It's much sillier. And somehow they made Gollum scary again - I'd forgotten how scary he could be. The 48 frames per second thing was a mixed bag - at first the clarity was indeed somewhat distracting and cheap-looking when it was just a normal scene of people talking on sets, but then I would stop noticing it for awhile. And then in the big eyefuls of CG scenes, it was incredible. And then they'd be sitting around talking somewhere and it would seem cheap again. So... so?

In Space No One Can Hear You Cumberbatch

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Everybody and their trekkie uncle will be sharing this, the first glimpse of Star Trek Into Darkness aka Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Cumberbatch, today, but I suppose I'll give 'er a whirl as well. Whatcha think?

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Gyllen-Bonanza

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(pics via) There sure is lot of Gyllenhaal going around these days. His bald cop action-drama End of Watch is finally out today - here's my review from several months ago. He's on Broadway in the show If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet (which I'm seeing in a couple of weeks). And hey lookie this he's on Anderson Cooper today!

That is to say he's on Anderson's show. 

(But who knows what's going on backstage.)

He's also grown a very large beard. So, you know, busy! I'm glad of this. We had too much Gyllen-silence there for awhile. I hope he keeps it up. I said, I hope he keeps it up.

Anyway besides End of Watch and besides the documentary How To Survive a Plague that I just reviewed a little bit ago there are some other flicks in theaters and you can read what I've got to say about them in vague terms over at Celebrity Beehive.

Do it, or the dog gets it!

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I'd Like A Key For This Loft Please

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It seems utterly beyond reason, completely unfathomable, that I've never posted on this movie until now, but here we are. Day late, dollar short. The movie of which I speak (now, not earlier, to my shame) is called Loft, and I will now list the people who star in Loft, and you will see why it's crazy I have never spoken of Loft: James Marsden, Karl Urban, Matthias Schoenarts, Wentworth Miller, and Margarita "Lisa P" Levieva. (There are a couple other people but these are the ones I care about.) OH MY GOD I KNOW. Just those first three alone are enough to make my brain explode but you add on Lisa P. and I am foaming at the mouth.

The film sounds like a mash-up of The Apartment with Very Bad Things - some guys share a loft space to use for mistress-humping, and when a dead chick turns up inside all bets are off!

Anyway it's a remake of a 2008 Belgian film that also starred Matthias Schoenarts, in the exact same role he's got here even. Anybody seen it? I need to know if I should see it first, or wait, or what. I feel like the Belgian one won't shy away from male nudity while this here Hollywood one might. Although judging from the trailer, perhaps I'm being quick to judge. Yup, there's a trailer, a NSFW one at that (via), which is what inspired this post...

And a quartet of promising caps from the trailer...