Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

The Lighthouse (2019)

Thomas Wake: O what Protean forms swim up from men's minds, and melt in hot Promethean plunder, scorching eyes, with divine shames and horror... And casting them down to Davy Jones. The others, still blind, yet in it see all the divine graces and to Fiddler's Green sent,where no man is suffered to want or toil,but is... Ancient... Mutable and unchanging as the she who girdles 'round the globe. Them's truth.

A very happy 42nd birthday to writer-director and so-says-me genius Robert Eggers today! As far as I'm concerned, dude is four for four movie-wise -- each of his four feature films were among my favorites of their respective years, or in the case of the movie quoted above my number one favorite movie of its year. They are all so my shit. I cannot get enough. Should I rank them? Okay let's rank them:

4. The Northman (review)

3. Nosferatu  (review)

2. The Witch  (review)

1. The Lighthouse  (review)

Five minutes from now I might change my mind and swap the middle two around, and then five minutes after that I might swap them back. But numbers one and four are set in stone. Which isn't to say I don't adore The Northman -- any movie that ends with Alexander Skarsgård and Claes Bang having a naked swordfight on top of a volcano is about as good as cinema gets if you ask me. So a very happy day to a man who's brought me more pleasure than almost any other working filmmaker. All of these movies have landed in less than a decade y'all! That's wild. Tell me your ranking of his four movies in the comments!

Good Morning, World

A happy 58th birthday to Danish actor and one-time Dracula Claes Bang today -- these gifs (via) are from a 2003 sex comedy called Rule No. 1 meaning he was a wee 36 here -- I almost called him "twinky" until I did the math. But compared to how we're used to seeing him post-The-Square as a grown adult man, he does seem like a wee babe here right? It's always funny when somebody becomes famous later in life after a full life of work to go back and discover this sort of thing. Anybody in the know have any recs from before The Square, Claes-wise?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Raw (2016)

Justine: I wanted a female roommate.

Adrien: You got a fag; same thing to them.

A happy birthday to the director Julia Ducournau, turning 39 today -- it only seems apt to celebrate the director of the art-house queer cannibal coming-of-age flick Raw here on the day when Luca Guadagnino's art-house queer cannibal coming-of-age film Bones and All is hitting some theaters. (Sidenote: click here for some lovely photos of Raw hottie Rabah Nait Oufella, who plays the "fag" quoted above.) I'd love to know how influenced Bones was by Raw -- there's got to be some overlap. Somebody needs to ask Luca or screenwriter Dave Kajganich about that, please!

Anyway we're dying here waiting for Ducournau's next project after Titane blew our brains out last year -- IMDb tells me she's directing some TV right now, namely The New Look, aka the "Christian Dior versus Coco Chanel" limited series for Apple that stars Ben Mendelsohn as the former and Juliette Binoche as the latter. Also co-starring Emily Mortimer, John Malkovich, and Claes Bang. And if that's not blowing your brains out already they weren't there to begin with. 

Good Morning, World

Until about five minutes ago I'd never heard of an Apple+ series called Bad Sisters -- have you? Maybe you've even watched it? If so let it rip in the comments, I'd love to hear about whether the show's worth watching or not -- for now all I know is that 1) it has one of the Gleeson boys in it -- I don't know, Left Eye or Crazy Town Gleeson, one of the lesser Gleesons. And 2) in its most recent episode has an extended scene of actor Claes Bang "porky-pigging" it (i.e. walking around in just a shirt without pants) and I do enjoy that sort of thing. Enough to make nine gifs out of it, actually! So hit the jump for the gifs and good morning...

Call Them Gods, Boys

If y'all love Robert Eggers' The Northman like I do (here is my review) then you probably already know that the movie hit streaming last Friday (and it is hitting blu-ray on New Years Eve) -- but did you know that they're releasing a book about the making of the film? It's called The Northman: A Call to the Gods and it is out on September 6th and you can pre-order it right now -- it's a little on the pricey side at nearly seventy bucks but Eggers is such a thorough filmmaker I have no doubt that peeking inside his process on this film, which transports us to the weird ass mindset of 10th-century Vikings, would be worth every penny. And hey maybe there will be good nudie shots of Alexander Skarsgard and Claes Bang too! Dare to dream.

Viking Come Home

A new and boisterous batch of set photos from The Northman popped up over the weekend as the film premiered here in the US and I tweeted them but just realized they never got enshrined here at MNPP proper, so let's fix that today! I have a good excuse -- not that staring at naked Alexander Skarsgard and Claes Bang (see below) needs one -- in that the film is already available to pre-order on blu-ray if you can believe it! It's not coming out until December 31st, but still you can buy it here at this link in 4K or plain ol' blu-ray and even DVD, whatever you want. Who am I to judge. Well I say that and then I link you to my (very positive) review of The Northman, which is all about me being the person to judge! I am king of the mixed messages. Anyway I hope if you feel safe going to movie theaters you've gone to see The Northman, or you have plans to before it leaves, because it rules -- on this message I am unmixed. Now hit the jump for several more set photos of note...

Viking Ahoy!

The time has at last arrived! Raise your broad-swords up and smack 'em against your broad-chests, one two times -- here is my review of Robert Eggers' The Northman over at Pajiba! Summed up, it's a rave -- I'm glad I went back and saw it a second time at a second press screening when I was feeling better because I wasn't sure how much of a rave until then. As I say in the review there are some qualifications, and I would definitely at this point rank it as my third favorite Robert Eggers movie after The Lighthouse and The Witch. But it's a treat, an absolute treat, all the same. Go read! And go watch the damn movie!

 

Yo Ho Volcano

I am seeing The Northman a second time tonight -- yes, a second! -- but I'm not ready to talk about it. I will have a review up later this week. For now let's just share with you the brand new red-band trailer, which as seen above showcases a smidge of the Naked Volcano Fight Scene between Claes Bang and Alexander Skarsgard that we've been expecting. Here it is:

Robert Eggers third film is out this Friday here in the US!

And here's a new shot of Alex on set, because drool:

The Vikings Have It

The lucky SOBs (I say through gritted teeth) who have already seen Robert Eggers' The Northman took over Twitter last night with their raves, and the raves were fast and furious -- I had to look away out of extreme spite and bitterness for a lot of it but I definitely saw the word "masterpiece" being thrown around more than once, which makes me a little more than hopeful for when I see the film next week! Not that I wasn't already! I've only been posting about this movie for what feels like a dozen years now! (I also saw someone say this is the movie they wished the "boring" The Green Knight had been, and just... no. No, person. Bad opinion. The Green Knight ruled.) Anyway today a raft of character posters and a new clip were released and as ever here we are, sharing. Not that I am personally going to watch this clip -- I have waited this long, I can wait one more week. (Famous last words, of course.)

The Northman is out on April 22nd!

I Know Where the Red Claes Glows

I know you know about the "naked volcano fight" that Alexander Skarsgard has in The Northman because you're here at MNPP and I won't shut up about it. But I think the above photo is the first real confirmation we've had that the fight is between Skarsgard and former-Dracula Claes Bang -- I had assumed it was, given what we know about his character, but I don't think we get a good shot of him in the trailer. Not this good anyway. This is one of ten new Northman photos that Claes himself posted on his Instagram today -- have we seen the skimpy leather Viking panties glimpsed down below either? Claes really brought the heat! Hit the jump for all of them...

The North-Borg

Last week I shared with you (and bitched about) a new poster for Robert Eggers' The Northman that was full o' Alexander abs yet somehow still managed to stink? Well today they've sent over a new version of the same poster only with no abs... but it's better? Moving all of the characters who were behind Alexander Skarsgard into the front should piss me off since they're all now ab-blockers, but it simplifies the form of the thing and looks much better. I also like the thought that Skarsgard is wearing an apron made out of Bjork and Nicole Kidman and Anya Taylor-Joy, or maybe they are coming out of his stomach like Quato from Total Recall or that one gross scene in one of the Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Also, adding to the amazingness, the long luxurious hairs of Ethan Hawke and Claes Bang are now Alexander's long luxurious armpit hairs, lol. I love it!

Good Morning, World

Y'all do know that I am excited about The Northman right? As was inevitable after whatever Robert Eggers did post-The-Lighthouse, aka my favorite movie of 2019, I've only been posting about it non-stop since the second it was announced, and then once the photos of Alexander Skarsgard ripped to the hills started appearing... I mean, forget about it. The movie's out in less than a month now, I have gotten press emails about screening announcements being forthcoming, and I remain giddy as a gadfly. (I don't know what that means but it rolls off the tongue good so let's make it a thing.) So all of that fervor underlined and circled, can I make one complaint here with the appearance of the new poster? 

The marketing for this movie has been [whispering] a lil' shitty right? Cheap, is the word I am looking for -- cheap. And generic. And cheap. A Robert Eggers is probably not gonna look like a lackluster episode of Vikings, and yet all of the marketing is making me think it might. So I will not say I am worried. But I wish they'd cut a trailer that was all about the no-doubt kick-ass visuals we'll be getting (some of which were glanced in the first trailer) and less about the pedestrian stuff. Give me a reason to see this on a gigantic screen, people! I know there is a naked fight on the side of a volcano -- why is there only a one second shot of that in the trailer? They need to wow us a little better, is all I am saying. Anyway I'll be there at the first screening I can get to, y'all have no doubt about that -- until then below is a variation on the new poster (I think it does work better as a quad, but it's still awfully "video box art" like) and if you hit the jump there's a new image from the movie too...

Good Morning, The Northman

It is a personal attack that they dropped the trailer for Robert Eggers' Viking movie The Northman (aka my most anticipated movie of literally forever) while I was commuting to work so I get to it way later than when everyone else has seen it, but I'll try not to hold a grudge. There's enough of beast-master Alexander Skarsgard tearing through the thing half-naked to calM me down. Well...

... to calm me down in one respect, whilst getting me all worked up in others. Thankfully those "others" are more beneficial to the filmmaker's bottom line. Anyway, The Northman! Starring Skarsgard, WIllem Dafoe, Cales Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicole Kidman, and motherfucking Björk! The director of The VVitch and The Lighthouse takes on the Vikings. Watch:

Wow pretty cool, right?

Same, Alex. Same!

The Northman is out on April 22nd, 2022.

Hit the jump for some stills and the poster...

5 Off My Head: Cinematic Spooge

Inspired by the medieval money shot that graces a more poetical (not to mention horny) moment in David Lowery's gorgeous new Arthurian epic The Green Knight, now in theaters (I reviewed it here) -- a scene which has already spurred on some superior semen contemplation around ye internet across the course the past week (see here for my favorite example) -- well I gots cum on my mind! And you know what happens when that happens...

It does indeed burn, Miss Coco Peru. And so it's best to do something about it fast, before the burning becomes an itching and the itching becomes a rash and the rash needs a cream and isn't that what got us into this sticky situation in the first place? And so I decided to do what I do best, which is slap together a list of the first five cum scenes from mainstream movies that popped (off) into my head. 

And yes "mainstream" means I'm refraining from the legitimately pornographic ones, so my apologies to Karl Glusman's 3D Love geyser for Gaspar Noé or the self-suck sensation at the start of John Cameron Mitchell's Shortbus (and yes those links are NSFW so don't yell at me if you clicked them in front of your boss like a dummy!!). With no further ado let's edge this list right on over to completion...

5 Fave Slick Flick Spunk Shots

Call Me By Your Name -- The Peach Scene

Oh you knew I'd have to include this one. And oh you knew it was the first one I thought of. And no, this is not me giving y'all an opportunity to screech about how the peach should have been completely eaten like it was in the book, I so do not care. 

The Silence of the Lambs -- Multiple Miggs 

Listen I didn't say they would all be sexy-time fun and games. The name of the game is I name the first five that I think of, not my favorites, and it's hard -- excuse me, difficult -- to block this horrific moment from this scary movie from one's mind once it's wedged its way in there. The thing is I don't think I even knew what happened the first time I saw this movie? In related news I was definitely too young to see this movie the first time I saw this movie. It was some time later when I was in film school and we were studying Demme's perfect construction of this scene -- of Clarice Starling's descent into this basement hell -- that I got what we were seeing happen to her.

There's Something About Mary -- Hair Gel

Even here almost 25 years on this still remains probably the most famous jizz moment in the movies, right? I know at the least that it's got to be the first time that man-spunk registered onscreen for me as what it was, and as a thing I had most certainly never seen represented on-screen before. (When I was a kid we didn't have porn access, kiddos! Imagine that!) 

But this definitely raises the question -- what was the first time that semen was sprayed across the screen in a mainstream non-pornographic piece of entertainment? Or just shown? What's the earliest example of spermatozoid representation y'all can think of?  

The Square -- Claes' Condom Caper

I was surprised that this scene popped up in my brain so quickly, as I haven't seen Ruben Östlund's terrific arthouse smash The Square since it came out in 2017 -- and holy shit is it possible that movie's very nearly five already? Anyway I probably just wanted to think about Claes Bang's bang-bag a bit, knowing me. But this scene really is so wildly well-played and funny -- as much praise as she gets for suffering well on The Handmaids Tale Elisabeth Moss always delivers a full comedy load too. You can watch the entire scene here.  

And finally.......

Look Who's Talking -- The Opening Credits

Classic cum comedy for the whole family!

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So what are some of your favorite big screen load blows?

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

you can learn from: 

The Square (2017)

Christian: Okay if I ditch Comic Sans? 

Find something less childish? 

Michael: I didn't pick it. 

It's a 90s all-time favorite.

A happy 47th birthday to the great Swedish filmmaker Ruben Östlund today! I didn't realize he was still just 47 -- that's good news, as we can hope to get lots more from him, I think. And I'd follow him anywhere after The Square and Force Majeure. Have any of you seen any of his earlier films though? There's one called Play from 2011 that's about childhood bullying, and an anthology in 2008 called Involuntary. I haven't seen anything before Majeure and am curious. Speaking of curious...

... he is currently working on his next film; it's called Triangle of Sadness and that is a photo of him (in the shorts) directing the film's star, Woody Harrelson. Woody's gotten some good attention for his acting over the past several years but I still think he's underrated as far as that goes, so I hope this is as exciting and  awesome a collaboration as it sounds. Co-starring with Woody are Harris Dickinson and the great Croation actor Zlatko Buric (from the Pusher films); here is the plot off Wiki, which sounds ripe for Östlund's brand of dark comedy:

"This dark comedy centers on a fashion model celebrity couple (Dickinson and Charlbi Dean) who are invited on a luxury cruise for the super-rich. The yacht –whose captain is a rabid Marxist (Harrelson)– sinks, leaving the duo stranded on a desert island with a group of billionaire jet-setters and a cleaning lady, with the ensuing fight for survival turning the pre-existing hierarchy upside down and changing the dynamics of the group: the cleaning lady rises to the top of the food chain as she is the only one who knows how to cook."

Today's Fanboy Delusion

 Today I'd rather be...

... looking at art photography with Claes Bang.

Just so you know what you're looking at -- Claes' caption on his Insta post made it clear -- that's a nuuuude photo of Claes himself that was taken by his wife, the photographer Liz Kasper, that's on display in the Copenhagen gallery Mikael Andersen. Here let's zoom in!

Art is wonderful.

All Signs Point To Northman

Some terribly exciting news for us to head into our weekends swinging in our side-saddles -- IndieWire is reporting that The Witch and The Lighthouse director Robert Eggers has just wrapped up filming on his third feature called The Northman, aka his Viking tale starring Alexander Skarsgard, Nicole Kidman, Claes Bang, Anya Taylor-Joy, Willem Dafoe, Ethan Hawke, and drumroll please motherfucking Bjork. (The Bjork news got leaked a few months back -- I would have loved to have been surprised about that.) Anyway I was just a couple days ago wondering what was up with this shoot -- despite my loud and lengthy and right-headed proclamations about plague safety I was really hoping shooting had found some way to continue on this... safely of course... and so the news that they have actually now managed to finish that part is making me giddy. Good things ahead, knock on Alexander Skarsgard's tight-whities. All this and The Stand starts in just six days! Speaking of look at this new promotional photo of Alex serving up some serious Jesus Beard Realness in that:

Witch Which Is Witch

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My very first instinct, if asked to write about the performances in Robert Eggers' The Witch, would be to write about Kate Dickie's performance playing Thomasin's malignant tumor of a mum. But that's just because I worship Kate Dickie, forever and always. Anyway instead I challenged myself today (with actually no challenge at all, turns out) to write about Anya Taylor-Joy's work as Thomasin herself, because her X-movie The New Mutants is out in "theaters" this Friday after years and years of delays, and hey, she's great in The Witch. We all know she's great in The Witch. She was really very easy to write about. But I will write about my Kate Dickie some day, I swear it...

BJÖRK IS IN ROBERT EGGERS' THE NORTHMAN (via https://t.co/OpFUcaQZt8) pic.twitter.com/ewxPEXU0cd

— Erik Anderson (@awards_watch) August 19, 2020

... and speaking of did y'all see the news that slipped out about mother-fucking Björk being in Egger's upcoming Viking movie The Northman? Opposite Nicole Kidman and Alexander Skarsgard, she's playing some sort of witch. I'm dead of excitement from that, but -- once again rendering poor Kate Dickie to a footnote -- I was also super excited to see Kate's name show up on the same leaked cast list. Witch Reunion! Honestly, and I honestly say this all the time, Kate Dickie should be in every movie. EVERY ONE. I am in no way shape or form kidding. Imagine her as a slapsticky detective in a Paddington movie! Or voicing one of the Trolls in a Trolls cartoon! As Willy Wonka! Leopold and Loeb! She could do them ALL. We are a Kate Dickie Nation up in this business.

Take a Bite Outta Count

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Okay so sure here in 2020 we've seen the Carpathian Count more times than we can, you know, count, but I'm forcing myself to shrug off my shrugs about a new movie version of Dracula this morning because of who's been hired -- The Invitation and Jennifer's Body director Karyn "fuckin'" Kusama, that's who. She's a big who! We love her! Maybe we didn't love her last movie so much -- that'd be Destroyer with Nicole Kidman -- but everybody's allowed a whiff now and then, and it's not like Destroyer's not an interesting experiment with structure and tone even if I don't think it ultimately worked. 

.

Okay but hear me out what if Karyn Kusama made a Lesbian Vampire Movie instead

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) March 11, 2020

Anyway back to the bloody business at hand -- this is the studio called Blumhouse doing this, who just let Leigh Whannell reimagine The Invisible Man in a way that really worked and made that nearly hundred year old franchise feel fresh, so let's keep hope alive. (Also props to Jason Blum for hiring another female filmmaker after his jackass comments from a couple of years back.) And I mean after all it's not like Plague Times aren't the exact right time for a Dracula resurgence...

Oh I seriously might have to watch Werner Herzog's Nosferatu the Vampyre tonight, I might. That sounds perfect. (And it's on Amazon Prime to boot!) Anyway the conversation now of course turns towards the casting department. I personally think they need to stay far far away from the Count being played by a white man with black hair, as that's been done to literal death at this point -- there's one on Netflix right now, and Claes Bang is pretty damn good at it too. That said I don't know what ideas Kusama & Co. have got in mind for their take -- they could go the route of The Invisible Man and make Dracula a supporting character in his own story, focus on Mina or Lucy, who knows. Thoughts from y'all?

Banging Back Through History

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I have made an UNPRECEDENTED decision to post the above magazine cover with all that aggressively distracting type splashed across Claes Bang's bared torso because that photo's too good to not share and also too good to edit down or photo-shop around the type. The type drives me nuts, but I will allow it this one time. For you! You can thank me for my sacrifice by finding me a physical copy of that 2010 magazine and mailing it to me. 

Anyway we've got news big and good enough here to distract my spazz eyes from their spazzing -- Claes, who's on the verge of being our new favorite bisexual bloodsucker, has next joined the cast of Robert Eggers next film! The Viking one! With Alexander Skarsgard! And Nicole Kidman! I told you about it here! (thx Mac) Even better Deadline accompanies that news with a picture of Claes recently seen rocking a great big beard, no doubt a preview of all the Viking Sexiness to come:

It would behoove me to add here that this means that my boy Robert Eggers -- whose last film starred no less than the Twinkle Pony Edward Cullen himself! -- will next make a movie will feature two, two wah ah ah, bisexual vampires on screen...

polls