Upper West Side Story

I am admittedly going into Bradley Cooper's Leonard Bernstein bio-pic Maestro with a chip on my shoulder due to my annoyance that Cooper bolted out in front and ruined our chance of getting to see a Leonard Bernstein bio-pic directed by Steven Spielberg and starring Jake Gyllenhaal -- actual Jews making a movie about a famous Jew, imagine that. (That big fake nose that Cooper is rocking remains A LOT to expect us to deal with.) That said the teaser trailer released today certainly makes the film look beautiful, and my feelings about Carey Mulligan -- playing Bernstein's wife, who had to put up with his gay infidelities -- reach to the Moon and back, so... I dunno. We'll see at Thanksgiving when the movie's out. You watch...



... and you tell me what you think in the comments. If it's good there's probably no way Cooper doesn't finally win that Oscar he's been pleading for for years (and no, I don't think he's overdue, as his Star is Born movie was and remains trash.) The fact that he might beat a openly gay man playing a gay man (Colman Domingo for the Bayard Rustin biopic) by playing a gay man while he is presumably straight? Don't get me started. 

And the Missus Maestro Goes To...

For awhile there were competing Leonard Bernstein projects that had Bradley Cooper (see here) and Jake Gyllenhaal (see here) both attached to play the closeted composer, but I think that maybe Cooper has thrown down the gauntlet with today's news that he's landed the great Carey Mulligan to play Bernstein's wife Felicia Montealegre Cohn Bernstein. Since, you know, the last time Carey Mulligan played a wife it had her married to...

... Jake Gyllenhaal and all. Cooper's movie has a title now too -- Maestro. No word on who's directing it but it'll probably be Cooper again, because a bunch of you people convinced him he did a good job (when he did not) with A Star is Born. That said before the Mulligan news I was totally rooting for Jake's movie -- which was supposed to be directed by Cary fuckin' Fukunaga! -- but this Mulligan bomb's got me capital-F flummoxed, seeing as how she's one of my favorite actresses around. SIGH!

Matt Makes A Maestro

Well it looks like Maestro, Bradley Cooper's biopic of the composer Leonard Bernstein, is finally moving forward again -- the last thing we had heard about it was way back in September of 2020 when Carey Mulligan was cast as Bernstein's wife. Cooper is directing and starring in the film for Netflix, this being his first turn in the canvas-backed  folding chair since A Star is Born, and today Deadline says that he's in the process of casting one mister Matthew Bomer to play one of Bernstein's (many, many) male lovers. No word on who, exactly -- Netflix isn't talking. Anyway it's hard not to be excited about this news -- all puns implied -- even if this movie is presumably sacrificing the one that Jake Gyllenhaal was going to make about Bernstein with Cary Fukunaga. I hated ASIB, sure, but I like the thought of Bradley & Matt going at it enough to temporarily forget all of that. Scruples and standards, what scruples, what standards...

Pics of the Day

Bradley Cooper's movie Maestro, the biopic about Leonard Bernstein (the one that he stole from Jake Gyllenhaal), is currently filming here in NYC right now and some pap snaps from the set have captured Mr. Cooper and his co-star Matthew Bomer lip-locked! Their lips?

Are locked! I'm a little pissy about this movie because Gyllenhaal had been trying to make his for longer before Cooper swooped in and Jake, as you might be aware, is actually Jewish -- you add on the fact that Bradley is wearing a gigantic fake nose to play a Jew and we have waded into some sticky business!

But now the pretty boys are kissing and I am confused! I don't know how to feel. Y'all tell me in the comments how I should feel, please!

Matt's the Maestro

Now that Bradley Cooper's terrible biopic of Leonard Bernstein Maestro has dropped onto Netflix it's time to revisit my review of the movie that originally dropped back when the movie played briefly in theaters -- if you missed it read it here. I uhhhhhh am not a fan.

"Maestro is a movie about acting, not music—it’s a movie about Bradley Cooper acting, specifically. Or less a movie than an excuse."

That said there are worse ways to spend two hours of one's life -- the movie is gorgeously lensed and Carey Mulligan is solid and Matt Bomer momentarily shows his butt. Bomer doesn't have much else to do but given how uninterested in Bernstein's gay experiences the movie is except to make Mulligan cry we'll take some butt. And also these nice photos of Matty in the NYT -- you can read the chat with him here. It's a nice one. And now over the holidays I pinky-swear I will fiiiiiinally watch Fellow Travelers...

Good Morning, World

For a lack of having anything else to post, or the energy to go digging any further, here is a photo of the famous composer Leonard Bernstein brushing his teeth back in the day that I saw somebody share somewhere a couple of days ago. (Too many social media networks now -- who knows where it came from.) (As an aside I have created both Bluesky and Threads accounts in the past week or so -- not that I have used them a ton just yet -- and you can find links to them over in the right-hand column, or here at MNPP's Linktree.) Anyway speaking of Lenny -- I saw somebody say somewhere (this was probably Twitter) that it would make sense for Maestro, Bradley Cooper's biopic of him, to premiere at NYFF this fall, since Bernstein's history is so interwoven with that of Lincoln Center, which is where that festival happens. Makes sense to me! Let's just hope that we get some proper Bradley-on-Bomer action. Or the pitchforks will be out, Cooper! I'm already annoyed he stole the role from Jake.

Getting Nailed By Michael Fassbender, Etc

Netflix dropped a trailer this morning teasing all of their 2023 slate and the only one we True Cineastes (TM) took notice of was David Fincher's The Killer starring Michael Fassbender -- even though we all just lived through Mank, even! (I kid, I kid, I thought Mank was fine.) But The Killer is more in tune with we tend to love about Fincher -- namely killin' and style and anti-hero shit. I was sold with the return of Michael Fassbender obviously, after an excruciatingly long absence off our screens, but the shot of him in the five seconds of Killer footage weilding a nail-gun in front of bookshelves seems as especially tailored to my interests as that worker's uniform is to Fassy's sleek form. 

Something something bookshelves something something getting nailed by Michael Fassbender #TheKiller pic.twitter.com/rfiRvlt21n

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 18, 2023

Anyway there are actually other projects of note that Netflix has coming this year -- I think The Pain Hustlers starring Emily Blunt and Chris Evans and Catherine O'Hara looks good, and while the glimpses we get of A Family Affair in the trailer are really broad and wacky-seeming (that's the one starring Nicole Kidman and Zac Efron), the movie was directed by Richard LaGravenese, who blessed the world with Living Out Loud back in the day. So, you know, let's pay attention.

(See my previous post about this movie here.) Then there is Maestro, Bradley Cooper's biopic of Leonard Bernstein (see all of my previous posts on that one here), which I'm not sold on (given I fucking hated Cooper's Star is Born and all) but which will if nothing else involve Bradley and Matt Bomer kissing and possibly more. A bright side! And speaking of gay...

... there's also Rustin, the long awaited bio-pic of gay black civil rights hero Bayard Rustin starring Colman Domingo. A story extraordinarily overdue in the telling, starring one of our current best and overdue-for-his-moment actors (openly gay to boot) -- this one should be a big deal, hopefully. We love you, Colman! Bring this baby home! (In related news there's also Shirley, a bio-pic of Shirley Chisolm starring Regina King! Score! The final title from Netflix's press release (not glimsped in the trailer) that caught my eye -- "UNTITLED WES ANDERSON / ROALD DAHL FILM" with no date except 2023. Those things fall under my interests though. Anyway here's that trailer, tell me in the comments what you're looking forward to:

Quote of the Day

"This is the thing. No one likes to admit this, but, we got beat at our own game. That’s basically what happened. There’s really nothing more to say about it than that. There’s always another project. Sticking your neck out, hoping to get to tell the stories you love and that have been in your heart for a very long time is something to be proud of. And that story, that idea of playing one of the most preeminent Jewish artists in America and his struggle with his identity was in my heart for 20 some odd years, but sometimes those things don’t work out. In this business, if you’re lucky enough to stick it out for a while, we can easily forget that getting to tell the story isn’t the most important thing. I mean, this is our life. Gotta enjoy it. Bottom line, and this may be my Achilles heel or it may be my superpower, but I wish them the best."

With The Guilty out in a couple of days (reviewed here) we're getting lots and lots of Jake content this week (including several other shots of him in that pink sweater seen up top, although somebody was wonderful enough to photoshop the text off of one, much to my eyeball's delight), not that we like it any other way -- this quote comes from a new chat with Deadline (thx Mac) and it's him talking about his Leonard Bernstein project, announced in May of 2018, and how the rival production starring Bradley Cooper and directed by Steven Spielberg came around after (literally nine days later!) and stole their thing. I still think Jake is better casting than Cooper personally, but I guess this officially puts the nail in Jake's take -- I don't think I'd seen confirmation of that before this quote. Sigh. I was hoping it'd be like Capote or volcanoes and we'd get dueling versions! Moving on, some new Jake fashion moments:

And just now seeing Jake in his short-sleeved red sweater on TV this morning and gonna need a moment.... pic.twitter.com/5pNmdex2Ic

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) September 28, 2021

All That Razz

We were doing so well, me and 2023! But it was bound to happen that I'd have a movie this Awards Season that would rub me the wrong way, and... well, it's not a huge surprise that it turned out to be Bradley Cooper's Maestro. I also loathed his last movie (A Star is Born for those of you who blocked that one out) and I went into Maestro annoyed that Jake Gyllenhaal wasn't the one playing Leonard Bernstein. That said I have eaten crow plenty of times, and am more than willing to admit if something works even if I went into it with low expectations -- no crow will be eaten today. Maestro, despite Carey Mulligan doing typically good work and the costumes and production design and such all being beautifully rendered, is not a good movie. Click here to read my review of the film out of NYFF, where it just played this past weekend. I will say that I didn't choose the headline, I maybe wouldn't have gone that hard right out of the gate, but seeing as how it is using my own words from inside the review I suppose I can't argue. And dearest Carey Mulligan, please don't hold it against me -- I left you out of my vitriol and when I write up Saltburn you'll be getting so much love, I promise!

Closet Case Apocalypse

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Remember when families were torn apart and love affairs ruined during the great "Volcano versus Dante's Peak" civil wars of 1997? Twas brother against brother, my friends -- I still bear the scars from when I drowned my own father in our bathtub after he slighted Anne Heche's box-office staying power. Well it seems that madness is re-descending, only this time instead of dueling lava bombs it's furry-chested musical composers with a taste for same-sex strange that're coming to movie-screen fisticuffs - nine days after Jake Gyllenhaal announced plans to make a Leonard Bernstein bio-pic with director Cary Fukunaga we've gotten word that Bradley Cooper wants to write and direct his own! 

Sanctus! Dominus! Prepare the bunkers, 

homosexuals, the end is nigh!!!

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