Cate Blanchett Living

Listen. Cate Blanchett remains wicked cool and I love her. But I can't pretend I've spent decades of my life jonesing for a biopic of Martha Stewart, which is the latest project that the actress has attached herself to. I mean Cate sure does love a bio-pic! I guess being nominated for Oscars for several of them -- playing everyone to Queen Elizabeth to Katharine Hepburn to Bob Dylan to the very real composer Lydia Tár -- will do that to you. All of that said I am excited about this project anyway because of who's directing it -- it's being directed by Janicza Bravo, the director of my beloved Zola. (Also my beloved but lesser-known Lemon.) Now THAT rockets this news straight from "yeah okay sure" to "put it inside of me" territory. I guess all we need to know next is -- who will play Snoop Dogg?

Putting the Supreme in Marty

Before I scurry away from the computer for a week and a half like it's injecting poison into my fingers with every button push (and really do we even have proof that computers don't do this?) I do have some stuff to share with you! Awww. I'm a peach. But really, it's not nothing -- there are a heap of movies hitting theaters over the holiday and I reviewed a couple! Starting with, you guessed it, the biggie -- click on over to Pajiba to read my thoughts on Josh Safdie's Marty Supreme, starring one Timmy C. I know y'all have soured on him given the comments I get every time I post about him but he's absolutely top-notch in the movie and I'm rooting for him to get that Oscar y'all. The other options are, what -- Leo already has one (although I do think he's better in One Battle After Another than he was in the role he won one for) and if they give Ethan Hawke a statue for his limp-wristed shrieking in that Richard Linklater movie I am so fucking done. Timmy's legit giving the performance of his career to date in Marty Supreme and all this talk of a hype backlash is bullshit. The boy's doing his job, getting eyeballs on his movie! In 2025 Hollywood ya gotta fucking hustle, man. This is a two and a half hour movie about an asshole playing ping-pong ffs. And it rules. 

The other review is one that's been around for a bit since I saw it at NYFF, but Jim Jarmusch's wonderful Father Mother Sister Brother is hitting theaters tomorrow and it's one of my favorites from him, so you should go see it. But don't let me here convince you -- let me over at Pajiba convince you where I wrote about the movie in actual depth. Jarmusch is hit-or-miss with me but this is a real hit from where I stand. I tend to like it most when he does funny. I think he and I have very similar senses of humor. 

The Jarmusch Don't Die

My feelings on the movies of writer-director-hairdo Jim Jarmusch have long been all over the place -- some I like, some I hate, but I can't say I've ever deeply loved anything he's directed. Night on Earth is probably the closest that comes to that. I'm also a fan of Broken Flowers and I seem to be one of the few who really liked his zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die. Anyway that was all true until I saw his latest at NYFF a couple of weeks ago -- click over to Pajiba to read my thoughts on Father Mother Sister Brother, the director's "rumination on the unfamiliarity of family" as I put it, which seems to've immediately become a personal fave from the white-haired iconoclast. A triptych of unrelated stories about three very different families who have had some issues connecting, the film stars Charlotte Rampling, Vicky Krieps, Cate Blanchett, Tom Waits, Adam Driver, et cetera et cetera -- Jim Jarmusch can get whoever he wants and he usually does. Krieps gives my favorite turn in the film but then she often does -- thank you Paul Thomas Anderson for the gift of Vicky! FMSB is out in U.S. theaters on Christmas Eve; here's the recently dropped trailer:

Paging Mister Page

This seems like the right and correct place to note that Regé-Jean Page has a shirtles sscene in Steven Soderbergh's ace spy thriller Black Bag that's in theaters today -- I didn't mention it in my review because I's respectable elsewhere, but here well here we let it all hang out. As you well know. Anyway it's a very brief moment and it's not particularly memorable as far as skin scenes go, but it is notable for being the only bit of skin we get in the movie and yet the movie manages to remain sexy as heckfire all the same! If you missed my review yesterday click over to Pajiba to read it -- I really kept it profoundly spoiler-free so no need to worry about that. I barely mention the plot at all, but then it's all Macguffins in service of hot talented actors being smooth and sexy and expensive looking. AKA Cinema! Point being y'all should go see it and let the studios know there is room for an adult entertainment like this in actual movie theaters. I promise you'll have a terrific time in exchange for your effort. Otherwise -- a very fine weekend to you all and goodbye!

Sexy Spy Time

Extremely happy to have loved Steven Soderbergh's new movie, the spy thriller Black Bag starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett as a pair of married spies who find themselves doubting -- or do they? -- each other's motives when there turns out to be a mole among their agency. It's a smashing good time, sexy and stylish as hell -- head on over to Pajiba to read my thoughts. And here's a bonus photo of Fassy with his ridiculously handsome co-star Regé-Jean Page because duh:

Welcome to Michael Fassbender's Spy Era

I don't know what I was doing on Wednesday when this dropped that I didn't post about it -- that was even the day I shared with you Michael Fassbender in next to nothing on a spy show! But the first official image and the trailer for Black Bag -- Steven Soderbergh's spy thriller starring Fassy, Cate Blanchett, Naomie Harris (god I love Naomie Harris), Regé-Jean Page (hopefully he and Michael will make out), and oh right Mr. Bond, aka Pierce Brosnan himself -- all dropped that day so here is me catching up with that. Fassbender has done "spy thriller with Steven Soderbergh" before, having starred in the best scene in the director's 2011 actioner Haywire, but this looks like a very different beast (the "beast" being that asshole Gina Carano, natch -- good riddance to her). It's basically Mr. & Mrs. Smith just slightly more serious? I was going to say that it starred actors not movie stars but that shortchanges Fassbender & Blanchett on the movie star front as well as short changing Pitt & Jolie on the acting front so nevermind... but it's sort of that.

Anyway Black Bag is out on March 14th. 

We All Go a Little Maddin Some TImes

Heads up -- or I suppose in this context great big throbbing forest brains up! Guy Maddin's latest wackadoo movie Rumours, which stars Cate Blanchett, Denis Ménochet, Alicia Vikander, and several other international actors of note, is now available to rent! Click here to do so. It is as I have said several times this year the funniest movie I've watched in 2024 and honestly after last week's election it seems even more meaningful. I think it will land differently, watching it now, than it did back when I was a person who had "hope" inside of me. We'll see because I'm dying to re-watch myself. Here is my Pajiba review of the film from when it screened at NYFF in October. Oh and it's also getting a blu-ray release in January -- pre-order it here if that interests you. This movie might just turn out to be the most prophetic movie of our time which uhhh is terrifying. 

Let's Spread Some Rumours

I don't think I called it this in my review (what, am I supposed to go re-read my review to check?) but I have taken to calling on social media Guy Maddin's new movie Rumours with Cate Blanchett and Alicia Vikander "the funniest movie of the year" and I mean it -- also I should have said that in my review if I didn't, I could've gotten on the damn poster or trailer or something. I am so bad at this job. Wait what are we talking about? Right, Rumours -- Rumours is out today! Here is a link to my review that I apprently refuse to re-read and here is a link to the film's trailer -- yes the same trailer that does not include my quote that may or may not be in said review. Did you hear that this movie is the funniest movie of the year though? Somebody said that and it's totally true. Go see this thing! Zombies jerk off! Cinema!

The Rumours Are True

Well now we're getting somewhere! This here Monday brings you my first review out of this year's New York Film Festival -- I am a slow one, I will be the first to admit it. But I really prefer to let movies marinate in my brain before plopping out a pile of thoughts and thankfully my editors at Pajiba are okay with that. Anyway I'll be dropping several reviews this week so our long national nightmare of waiting for my personal opinion has finally ended, huzzah. First up are my thoughts on Rumours...

... the new, weird, and completely hilarious Guy Maddin flick (co-directed by the brothers Evan and Galen Johnson, who've co-directed Maddin's last several films) -- this one has Maddin's biggest name cast to date (including Cate Blanchett and Alicia Vikander) and I don't think I have laughed harder in a theater this year? Read my review right here. This one is out super soon -- it hits theaters on October 18th! So below is the trailer. I don't recommend skipping this one -- it's very funny and very smart about the overwhelming hopelessness of right now. Yes -- somehow that's funny! Bless Guy Maddin. 

Big Hogs For Everybody

Biker gangs are apparently the next hot trend -- this news I am about to share is the second bit of news today announcing a movie involving them, for goodness' sake! (See my previous post on Alexander Skarsgard's upcoming "kinky queer" biker movie here.) Add all that to the fact that out this June there is Jeff Nichols' film The Bikeriders with Tom Hardy, Austin Butler, Jodie Comer, and Karl Glusman -- Glusman who co-starred in 2022's fantastically queer Please Baby Please, which I am choosing to see as the real spark that started this Biker Gang Fire -- and we're calling it a trend. Anyway onto the second Biker Gang news of the day -- Cate Blanchett is going to star in Alpha Gang from the Zellner Brothers, whose wonderful film Sasquatch Sunset (starring Jesse Eisenberg and Riley Keough as sasquatch) is out in theaters now. As with all Zellner Bros movies there's nothing straightforward about Alpha Gang though, which is described thus:

"Alpha Gang follows alien invaders sent on a mission to conquer Earth. “Disguised in human form as an armed and dangerous 1950’s leather-clad biker gang, they show no mercy… until they catch the most toxic, contagious human disease of all: emotion.”

Is that description making anybody else think of John Cameron Mitchell's dementedly under-appreciated 2017 movie How to Talk to Girls at Parties, which starred Nicole Kidman as a leather-clad punk rock alien? 

Soderbergh Steals All the Stars

A quick search through our archives shows a grand total of zilch posts on this forthcoming movie project, but that seems bonkers to me -- I feel as if anybody was gonna write a post about Steven Soderbergh making a movie starring Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett that somebody woulda been yours truly. And yet here we are and only with word that Bridgerton actor Regé-Jean Page has also joined the cast am I getting around to it. Huh. Aaaanyway the thing is called Black Bag and all we know plot-wise is that that it's a spy thriller based in London. The script was written by Jurassic Park screenwriter David Koepp which, well if I hadn't just been mildly disappointed by Soderbergh & Koepp's haunted house movie Presence (my review here) at Sundance last month that news would excite me more. But I can't not be excited about this. Soderbergh of course worked with Fassbender previously in Haywire, and with Blanchett in The Good German. And now one more picture of Regé-Jean looking gorgeous in a sweater for good measure:

Living For Living

I re-watched Oliver Hermanus' Living and Todd Field's Tár (both films on my favorite movies of 2022 list) this past weekend -- not strictly because the Oscars are happening this upcoming Sunday and the two lead performances from those films are both nominated. But that wasn't not the reason, either. I wanted to re-visit both Bill Nighy and Cate Blanchett's work just to make sure and yup-- it turns out they're still my favorite performances of the past year. Here is my review of Living and here is my review of Tár. Honestly I think they're both about as good as movies get -- my allergy to using the word "masterpiece" until a few years have passed keeps me from throwing that around but let's be real, we'll be using that word soon enough.

That said as I lamented on Twitter yesterday as I re-watched Living, that movie really got dicked over awards-wise this season, Nighy and screenwriter Kazuo Ishiguro aside. The tremendous score from Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, the costumes from Sandy Powell, the cinematography and production design -- I would have nominated it all. Living is lush, gorgeous, sweeping, heartbreaking -- it's everything I go to the movies for. Which is all my way of seeing that you should go watch Living if you still haven't seen Living. It's still not streaming anywhere as far as I can tell, although you can rent it for twenty bucks from all of the streamers -- here it is on Amazon. And they just announced that it is hitting blu-ray on April 11th -- you can pre-order it right here. Now I just pray somebody drops that score on vinyl cuz I need it in my bones. All that said...

... What were your favorite performances of 2022?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Tár (2022)

Lydia Tár: It is always the question that

involves the listener, it's never the answer.

A happy 59th birthday to writer-director Todd Field, who's had a very good year -- besides Tár's nomination for Best Picture he is personally nominated for directing and screenplay at this year's Oscars, and best of all his movie landed at #7 on MNPP's favorite movies of the year. It's the only Best Picture nominee in my top 10, so I guess that tells you what I'm rooting for. (Here is my review of the film from NYFF last year.) I mean I'll be fine with several of the films nominated winning -- Everything Everywhere All At Once, which I have a feeling is gonna take it, would be a terrific atypical winner. I mean how many Best Pictures have martial arts fights involving butt-plugs? Not nearly enough, I say! Talk about making How Green Was My Valley accessible to modern audiences. Anyway I loathe calling movies this fresh a "masterpiece" but I imagine in ten years time I will be fine calling Tár one. I might re-watch it tonight now that I'm talking about it! I haven't seen it in a few months. That said good luck and happy birthday, Todd! Make another movie sooner than it took to make this one, please.

Team Experience the Awesomeness

I knew I should have waited a skinny minute to post those two polls I'd participated in yesterday, because I knew that this third example would be revealing itself any minute and here we are -- today our Team Experience 2022 nominations went up at The Film Experience, wherein all of us who write for that website (save our glorious leader Nathaniel, who has his own awards as befits the king) voted on our favorite movie things of 2022. And I know that plenty of other people voted on these but I feel as if my influence is actually felt -- Franz Rogowski for Best Actor for Great Freedom! Love for Bones and All and Decision To Leave and Mad God! These are me things and I approve. Go look and gape in awe at out awesomeness y'all. Our winners will be announced on February 7th.

Your Nerd Purchase of the Day

Never have I bought anything quicker than when I just saw somebody on Twitter hyping the forthcoming vinyl release of Hildur Guðnadóttir's score for Todd Field's terrific Tár, which hits on January 20th -- just for the cover art alone this is worth it if you've seen the movie. That thoughtful pose, lol. Also this is indeed a movie that loves bookshelves, bless it.) But obviously this score goes balls deep and will make any collection just that wee bit more complete. Here is my review of Tár if you missed it; Martin Scorsese is right (you know, just this one time) -- this movie's incredible!

Four From NYFF

A slew of my first reviews out of the New York Film Festival hit the 'net yesterday whilst I was in more press screenings of New York Film Festival movies all day long so I can write more reviews -- the film fest cycle is really something y'a.. Anyway I haven't been able to link to all of these reviews properly yet -- unless you keep track of my Rotten Tomatoes page -- so let's do that! First up here at Pajiba is my review of the fest's Opening Night film, Noah Baumbach's White Noise, starring Adam Driver and Greta Gerwig in an adaptation of Don DeLillo's "unadaptable" 1985 novel. I was a bit dazed when I walked out of this one but by the time I sat down to write about it my opinion had cemented better than I anticipated.

Next up here at The Film Experience is my review of the surgery documentary De Humani Corporis Fabrica from the duo filmmakers behind Leviathan. This movie got a lot of understandable walk-outs as it's filled with microscopic close-ups of real live human bodies being dissected and smashed and probed and everything you can imagine, but I found it hypnotic and contemplative and fascinating. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.

Thirdly I will send you over to my review of Kelly Reichardt's triumphant reunion with muse Michelle Williams in the art-world observational Showing Up, which you can read right here again at The Film Experience. As I said on Twitter...

I just wanna live in the world the way Kelly Reichardt sees the world

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) September 27, 2022

I cannot overstate how much I love watching Kelly Reichardt movies, I really can't. Anyway lastly for today is another fantastic outing -- although this one far more cutting than anything Kelly Reichardt would ever, could ever, attempt -- here is my review at Pajiba of Todd Field's Tár starring a maybe never better Cate Blanchett. The rumors are true! She's astonishing in this. Given what she's gifted us with in the past it seems crazy to be contemplating a new peak, but here we are.

10 Off My Head: NYFF's 60th Main Slate!

As I sit here swampy and miserable from the relentless August sun there's one bright light that's not making me shield my eyes out of exhausted horror -- the New York Film Festival has today announced their full Main Slate of movies and man oh man am I excited! And it's not just because when I think of NYFF I think of myself comfortably wearing sweaters in the autumnal cool of late September, but that don't hurt. It's also because once again this fest is offering up the auteurs I come for -- this fall is promising to be a great one for us movie-lovers and NYFF makes it a one-stop-shop every damn time. 

I'll share the full press release down below, but first I'm going to highlight the ten titles from the Main Slate that leapt right off the page at me. Please note I am not including here the four gala films, which were announced earlier this month -- those are Noah Baumbach's White Noise is the Opening Night film; Laura Poitras’s doc All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (telling the dueling tales of photographer Nan Goldin and the billionaire family Sacklers prescription drug empire) is the Centerpiece film; Closing Night goes to Elegance Bratton's film about queer soldiers called The Inspection (see my previous posts about that right here); and finally there will be a special screening of James Gray's coming-of-age drama Armageddon Time. I am going to focus on just the Main Slate titles for this list.

My Most Anticipated 10 From NYFF60's Main Slate

Decision To Leave (dir. Park Chan-wook) -- I have been posting about this movie for two full years now, ever since the first whisper of it weaved its way through rando corners the internet; I shared the first trailer right here. Sounding like a Noir only shot in vivid color it's about an inspector falling for the wife of a murdered man (played by Lust Caution's great Tang Wei). Anyway Park is a Top 5 Living Filmmaker for me so this one's The Event of the fest from where I stand. This is PCW's first movie since The Handmaiden six years back, for god's sake! I am thirsty!

The Eternal Daughter (dir. Joanna Hogg) -- I liked Hogg's Souvenir sequel better than I liked the first one, but I'm glad she's making something else this time, and a lead role for Tilda Swinton will do the trick just fine, thank you. 

Pacifiction (dir. Albert Serra) -- I'm not an expert on Serra's filmography, having still only seen Liberté, his last film, at NYFF three years back. But when i think about memorable viewing experiences at NYFF the first one that comes to mind is Liberté, which they screened for press at nine in the morning and which consists mainly of an excruciatingly drawn-out and grotesque orgy in the woods astride 17th century royal France. It stunned me in a way that was often repugnant and a week hasn't passed since where it hasn't popped into my head. (Here is my review, by the way.) Anyway this new movie stars Benoît Magimel (best known here in the US as the hockey player that Isabelle Huppert's obsessed with in The Piano Teacher) in a "gripping, atmospheric thriller" about a French bureaucrat visiting a Polynesian island that includes "a resort that caters to the prurient exoticism of foreign tourists" and yeah, this sounds like the stuff.  

Stars At Noon (dir. Claire Denis) -- I posted about this one before when it was supposed to reunite Denis with her beloved vampire boyfriend Robert Pattinson; Rob dropped out because of Bat-related responsibilities and Joe Alwyn took over the role instead. Margaret Qualley stars opposite him -- it's an erotic political thriller or something of the sort, that's set in Nicaragua? I'm picturing Denis' version of The Year of Living Dangerously, basically.

Master Gardener (dir. Paul Schrader) -- Speaking of Sigourney Weaver movies, we have ourselves a Sigourney Weaver movie! I personally consider Paul Schrader more hit-and-miss than most critics and film fans seem to but there's no denying he's a writer and a director with a vision and a voice and it feels like it's been ages since Sigourney had a real proper leading role with one of those. That said I don't know if she is a leading role actually -- she plays the owner of a fancy estate garden which is kept up by Joel Edgerton's character, and he's one of Schrader's patented "dude with a troubled past come back to haunt him" types. But let's hope Schrader feels like reminding us what Siggy's capable of!

R.M.N. (dir. Cristian Mungiu) -- Anyone who's seen 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days knows that Mungiu is obviously a great director, but I'm in this one for the plot, which is about a rural Transylvanian butcher whose wife goes mute after witnessing something horrible in the woods. I don't think it's going to be quite as horror-themed as that sounds, but it's the closest one in NYFF's line-up to horror! 

Showing Up (dir. Kelly Reichardt) -- Kelly Reichardt has never made a not great movie, full stop. And this is his first movie since her greatest movie First Cow came out in 2019. Not only that it reunites her with her favorite star actress Michelle Williams! There is no "no" here. Michelle's playing a sculptor in Portland; Hong Chao her landlord. Plot-wise it all sounds lighter than usual, but it will inevitably crack open out hearts and smash them into a million billion pieces because that's what these women do.

Scarlet (dir. Pietro Marcello) -- Per usual most of my reasons for seeing these movies are based on "I like the director's past work" and Marcello's last movie was the great great great Martin Eden -- consider me sold. And this is a French fable co-starring Louis Garrel! Consider me double!

TÁR (dir. Todd Field) -- Field hasn't made a movie since Little Children in 2006, which is totally and entirely inexplicable. But I suppose he only made one movie before that, the indelible In the Bedroom in 2001, so we don't know him well enough to know what's explicable really. All those two movies show is he's a director who should be directing more movies. This one is a big return though, starring Cate Blanchett as an orchestra conductor who loses her shit.

Triangle of Sadness (dir. Ruben Östlund) -- I shared the trailer for this movie just a few hours ago! Watch it here! Harris Dickinson is a male model on Woody Harrelson's super-yacht, cue depraved social commentary. I'm a big Östlund fan and this one seems as tailored to my specifications as The Square was a few years back.

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

The New York Film Fest runs this year from September 30th to October 16th, and you can expect lots of coverage from your truly here and on other websites, as I have been doing for something like a full decade now? I should go check and see which NYFF was my first press-accredited one. I've been going since I moved to NYC twenty-plus years ago of course, but I think I've only been official press for about a decade? Anyway it's my hometown beloved, and I can't wait. Now you may hit the jump for the full press release with the full Main Slate...

Cowboys on the Verge of a Nervous Ho-Down

Later this year Pedro Almodóvar has announced he will be directing a 30-minute Gay Western -- what he calls his "answer to Brokeback Mountain," which he almost made before Ang Lee -- called Strange Way of Life, which will star Ethan Hawke and Pedro Pascal. Indiewire has an interview with Almodóvar all about it -- he's talked in the past about why he turned down Brokeback, because he knew Hollywood wasn't going to let him make the super sexy cowboy fuck-fest he saw in his head. And Strange Way appears to be his chance at finally making his Gay Western... although if it'll be a fuck-fest we've yet to see. Here's what Almodóvar will share:

"He was reticent to reveal too many details about the storyline, but said that Hawke plays a sheriff named Jake, while Pascal will be the gunslinger Silva, and the characters live on opposing sides of the desert. The pair haven’t seen each other in 25 years. “So one of them travels through the desert to find the other,” Almodóvar said. “There will be a showdown between them, but really the story is very intimate.” Could it even be…romantic? Almodóvar chuckled. “You can guess,” he said. “I mean, masculinity is one of the subjects of the movie.”

He's filming the short in Spain’s Almería region, which is where a bunch of spaghetti westerns were filmed back in the day, but Almodóvar says they aren't an influence on what he's planning. He's filming it later this year before he gets to work on his full-length English-language feature-debut, the one with Cate Blanchett that I told you about previously. Now I suppose we will just wait and see if Pedro Pascal will go and give any interviews about his personal life in relation to this, long sigh inserted here for purposeful effect...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Knock Knock (2015)

Bel: It's like destiny that we were meant to meet.

Do you believe in destiny, Evan?

Evan: I'm an architect, so obviously I believe in things

happening by your own design.

Bel: Well... I do. I don't think people just pick randomly.

I think that, if we are here together, it's because there's

something we have to learn from each other.

A happy 50th birthday to Eli Roth today! Listen, I don't miss the Aughts era of "Bro Horror" anymore than any sane person would, but I still maintain that Eli Roth's early films -- meaning the original Cabin Fever and the Hostel movies -- were smarter about the xenophobia and sexism that they've been bluntly labeled with as of late. I still think those movies were sending up our shitty American instincts more than they were being a straightforward indulgence of them. That said I'll admit I haven't watched them in a decade, so maybe a re-watch would disabuse me of my romantic notions towards them? But he still made Knock Knock in 2015 and that movie's feminist as hell, and presaged the #MeToo movement pretty smartly. Plus Cate Blanchett loves working with him -- she's re-teaming with Eli for his Borderlands video-game adaptation next, alongside Jamie Lee Curtis and Haley Bennett and Gena Gershon and Cheyenne Jackson and Edgar Ramirez! (Not to mention it was co-written by the dude who made the phenom Chernobyl series!) Oh my! So who are you to question Queen Cate? In summation...

A Manual For Cleaning Out My Wallet

I'm working under the assumption that all of you have already read last week's big news that Cate Blanchett will indeed officially be starring in Pedro Almodovar's English-language debut feature-film called A Manual for Cleaning Women, which has long been a rumor -- I first posted about the project in February of 2020 when I also first posted about Pedro making his English-language short-film debut with Tilda Swinton and The Human Voice. And we all know how that one turned out (i.e. incredible). Cleaning Women is based on Lucia Berlin's short-story collection of 43 stories (!!!) about different women with demanding jobs -- in my 2020 post I had Pedro quoted saying he'd narrowed it down to five of those stories for his film; no word on whether that's still the case now, and one wonders...

... will Cate be playing multiple characters like she did in Julian Rosefeldt's art installation film Manifesto in 2015? That ruled. But I guess we'll have to wait and see where Pedro's going. One doesn't worry about quality though, not with these folks at the helm. Quality's a goddamned given. Anyway I assume y'all saw this news last week but it's a Monday and I am distracted with other things so I'm sharing this news in hopes maybe it's news to you, or maybe we can just look at Cate for a second -- win win, baby.