Mine Eyes Have Seen the Glory of the Coming...

... of a ten movie 4K box-set of Wes Anderson movies! Have you ever seen anything so perfect? It's knocked the wind right out of my adjectives -- all I can exclaim is "Perfect! Perfect! Perfect!" The set drops on September 30th and you can already pre-order it at Criterion right here right now. It includes his movies (deep breath) Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenebaums, The Life Aquatic, The Darjeeling Limited, Fantastic Mr. Fox, Moonrise Kingdom, The Grand Budapest Hotel, Isle of Dogs and The French Dispatch -- correct me if I'm wrong but I do believe the latter two are the only ones that Criterion hasn't previously released in some form, although several of these have only been on blu-ray so the 4K is an upgrade. Checking Criterion's site right now tells me...

... they're also releasing the two previously-unreleased films outside of the set in September, as standalone discs, just in case you already have all of the others and you don't want to double-dip with a four hundred dollar box-set. You can get Isle of Dogs right here and you can get The French Dispatch right here. But back to that box-set because holy fucking hell is it beautiful! Hit the jump and I'll share the massive collection of special features... 

First Comes Peace, Then Comes Out

Well I hate to do it to y'all but I'm making like Will Poulter there and peacing out for the weekend -- leaving now for a screening and then I've got a big fun root canal happening tomorrow morning so I'm just taking off the entire day. Wheeeeeeee, that will surely be a blast -- I'll think I'll spend some time going through more movies etc. to list on eBay. Sort through the pain! Speaking of though if you missed my begging post yesterday about my neediness click here -- this looming dental work is a part of that that I didn't mention! But thanks to everybody who's been kind enough to donate already -- it means a lot to me. Moving on -- I haven't got any reviews hitting this weekend but I will say that if you feel like seeing that "Naomi Watts and a big dog" movie The Friend I recommend it -- I saw it at NYFF in the fall and it's surprisingly low-key and moving and Watts is wonderful in it. I know when you hear it's a movie about people dealing with big animals in small apartments you think you've immediately got the entire movie written in your head but I promise you The Friend will surprise you. It's a lovely little piece of work. 

Oh and since I brought up Will Poulter up top this is also a good moment to share the below clip from his new movie Death of a Unicorn (also out this weekend), which showcases a scene that was the movie's highlight for me. Which isn't to say that I didn't like the movie -- it's a lot of goofy fun (Teo Leoni and Richard E Grant are hilarious) if perrrrhaps a tad too long -- but rather that if you have now-era Will Poulter in nothing but a pair of soaking wet shorts getting out of a hot tub, then that's gonna be your movie's highlight for me. That's just math. Have a good weekend, everybody.

All Ghosts and Gay Boys

George Mackay giving hot tradie is the theme of the weekend as Femme, the queer thriller starring him and Nathan Stewart-Jarrett as haters-turned-lovers is finally finally finally hitting U.S. theaters. It's been a long road, baby, but we made it. I saw the movie at Fantasia last August and I reviewed it for Mashable right here -- then my review got quoted in the trailer right here -- and now it's out for all of you people to see whether you agree with me that it's hot, dangerous stuff. 

But wait! This is actually a crazy thick weekend for good movies. For one Pixar / Disney are re-releasing Luca into theaters -- when it came out at the height of the pandemic it went straight to streaming and I called it "Pixar's best film in years" and that remains true from where I stand; just now you can finally see it on a big screen! So make sure you do. Call Me By Your Name Jr. deserves the love. 

And then there is Problemista -- a movie I adore and yet a movie I have not had the chance to write a proper review of yet. I saw it at NewFest last summer but I haven't had the chance to see it again, which I need to do before I write about it. This has been out in some cities for a couple of weeks but it's going wide this weekend -- anyway once I do see it again don't be surprised if this makes it into my favorite films of 2024 list. Yes it's early, but come on. This thing's a hilarious beauty with some of Tilda's funniest work to date. Here is the trailer.  

And then there is the horror movie Late Night With the Devil also out today! Set in 1977 this found-footage gem is sort of a spin on the great Ghostwatch -- here is the gorgeous poster and the trailer if you missed that. I'm counting my words here because I still might write a review of this. Maybe today even. Stay tuned. it's worth writing about. And going to see!

But yes wait, wait, and keep on waiting -- there is even more. EVEN MORE. Like I said today is truly ridiculous. But don't worry I saved the worst for last. The new Ghostbusters movie called Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire is in theaters now and... well I did write about this one. Click on over to Pajiba and you'll hear my thoughts. They are not kind, but they are not as unkind as my words for the previous one, Afterlife. So that's something! The franchise is making incremental mini-steps towards not totally sucking. Maybe if they make fifty more they'll get around to making a good one. 

Wild Things At 25

It only seems in keeping with the moment that I use the sleaziest possible gif from the movie to introduce my piece upon it (and yes this moment is even sleazier than Kevin Bacon's dong, if you ask me) -- John McNaughton's sleazeterpiece Wild Things turned 25 this week and I wrote up some thoughts on the movie for Mashable -- click here to read them! I love this movie more than I love champagne on my titties. It has everything. Champagne on titties! Kevin Bacon's dong! Theresa fuckin' Russell! That is literally my definition of everything. Anyway I need to add that if you can you should watch this movie via the 4K disc that Arrow dropped last year -- it looks amazing. I'm not 100% one of those film-over-digital people but movies like this look tremendously elevated thanks to being shot on film. I mean LOOK at this drop-dead gorgeous title card:

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Royal Tenenbaums (2001)

Royal: You know, Richie, this illness, this closeness

to death... it's had a profound affect on me. I feel like a

different person, I really do.

Richie: Dad, you were never dying.

Royal: But I'm going to live.

Happy 20 to this perfect movie.

Jasons Shouldn't Play With Dead Things

Yeah well you're right to wince, Paul Rudd! Don't know if you guys have been paying attention but Jason Reitman's Ghostbusters: Afterlife is out this weekend -- it purports to be a follow-up to the first two movies (forget them Lady Ghostbusters, eww girls) and drags a bunch of the original stars back (no doubt upon stacks and stacks of delicious cash). Anyway lo behold my thoughts on all of that have just gone up over at Pajiba today. These thoughts... they are not good. Not good at all. Indeed I felt as if I needed to take a Silkwood shower after writing them down, so vehement was my vitriol. Thankfully for Paul he's not to blame -- he does what he can with the garbage material. This one's totally on the script. Anyway even if the Sexiest Man Alive 2021 Edition isn't to blame I still needed to perk myself up Rudd-wise, and tweeting this earlier helped me, as I'm sure it will you: 

Today's random sadness is that I didn't get to see Paul Rudd do Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center in 1998 pic.twitter.com/SSQBwXzsDJ

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) November 17, 2021

On the Rocks in 150 Words or Less

Super low-key and low-stakes but as smooth as a banana smoothie in a crisp white shirt standing on a SoHo corner watching ice skating videos on your iPhone -- that said that specific easiness means Sofia Coppola gave me the exact New York City Movie I needed right now. One where the world's not on fire, where people go places, together, and do things. There are low energy office parties suffuse with awkward half-banter between people who will never meet again. There's a ballet dancer serving expensive drinks in a mid-afternoon. There are strolls down avenues and through lobbies, sitting around in hotel bars watching hundred-year-old paint dry. Some stuff happens with Rashida Jones and her married relationship or whatever but that's all just backdrop to the real show, which is my pre-pandemic home making me cry just by being itself, the self and city I love and miss so. 

I Might Have Known it Would Be Red

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Today the New York Film Festival announced their "Spotlight" line-up, which includes the new film by Sofia Coppola starring Bill Murray; a documentary about voter suppression here in the US as well as one about police brutality in France; Spike Lee's concert film showcasing David Byrne's stage-show American Utopia; a doc about an unearthed conversation about filmmaking between Orson Welles and Dennis Hopper, and drumroll please Pedro Almodovar's short-film English-language debut called The Human Voice starring Tilda Swinton in an adaptation of a Jean Cocteau story. I have talked about the latter a lot! Anyway you can read all of that on the NYFF's website, but here I've got the very first, very brief, but stunningly red clip from Almodovar's film for you to check out!

City en Scène #4

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Ghostbusters (1984)

-- 4 North Moore St --

As a kid of the 1980s so much of my youth was built on movies set in New York, a booming time for Big City Representation... something I felt cooler about before the worst aspect of that "Greed Is Good" NYC mentality became our current nightmare president slash tormentor. Sigh. Anyway I'd be remiss doing this series, where I'm celebrating my 20th year of surviving this place, if I didn't mention Ivan Reitman's formative flick Ghostbusters at some point. Hell I might end up having to mention it more than once when it comes down to it. An excellent place to start though is with that firehouse the dudes end up buying in Tribeca...

... since it's literally a five minute walk from where I sit every day typing this blog -- where I sit right this second! -- a fact that would've blown my baby brain apart if you'd have shared that info with me as I sat there sipping Ecto Cooler watching The Real Ghostbusters cartoon every Saturday morning. I've been slimed... with awesomeness!
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ONLY IN NEW YORK can you make a Ghostbusters reference and realize a second later that you were standing next to the Ghostbusters firehouse as you did it pic.twitter.com/XvnYuPL9tq

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) April 4, 2018

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Double D is for Dope Dispatch

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So many people hate Wes Anderson. Every time another Wes Anderson project announces itself they come out of the woodwork -- they are all very happy to be very vocal about their opinions on him. And so it always feels like, to me, that Wes Anderson walks jauntily into a room twirling his cane saying howdy-do, only to be met every single time with a room full of chattering people who go silent, snap their necks in his direction with furious force, and start hissing. Perhaps you are one of them. I know plenty.

I'm not. I feel a deep compassion for and commiseration with his frantically compulsive picture-making -- leave me to my devices and I will stack every stack of papers just so, I will swivel the knick-knacks on every shelf for hours until they sing with just right off-right harmony. His movies speak to me on a primal obsessive level. The airlessness some decry feels like life to me -- like order and truth and poetry. It's like a visual puzzle, a person's insides put on display, and it's my job to figure out the patterns that make them them. I find it so fascinating!

Anyway in case you didn't get it already the trailer for Wes' The French Dispatch dropped this morning, and another chapter -- or winkingly obvious chapters plural, given its how-many-ever-furcated story-telling device -- in the Book of Wes feels imminent; another opportunity to scale the highs and plumb the lows of figuring out the way another curious person sees the world.

That's the fascination of his movies to me -- they are blisteringly auteurist and interiorized and I suppose some people don't find that space fun, but I think the entire world we live in, the entire process of life itself, lives in the process of opening up another person's brai, outside of our own, and trying to decipher the intimate sphinxes therein. so I am good. This is what I live for and I am happy here. Also...

... Timmy says he's naked. 

Here's the trailer:

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The French Dispatch unveils itself on July 24th.

Pics of the Day

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I was never gonna be patient with regards to that French Dispatch poster with its promises of a naked Timothee Chalamet this morning, but that impatience does require a second post on the same movie today -- and presumably a third tomorrow when the trailer will supposedly be dropping -- because The New Yorker just unleashed the first ten photos from the movie. And...

... it sure looks like a Wes Anderson Movie. (SHELVES!!!) I'm loving the midcentury drab color scheme though, the soft mustards of it all, and I'm fairly excited that a portion of the film appears to be in black and white. Also dig those Body Snatchers trees alongside Timmy and a stern-faced Fran McDormand...

Now we know what the deal with his scraggly mustache was, as well. It's Wes Anderson's fault! I won't share all of the photos here, you can see them all at the original link, but here's one more for good eye-pleasing measure, and make sure you click on these, the minute details are typically dazzling.

French Me, Wes Anderson

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The first poster for Wes Anderson's forthcoming The French Dispatch of the Liberty Evening Sun (which we'll all refer to as French Dispatch from now on probably) was released today and you're definitely gonna want to click that to embiggen as it's an adorable little marvel -- shocking nobody acquainted with anything Wes Anderson related -- of boxes inside boxes and character's in lil' vignettes. I may sound sarcastic here but I am a Hardcore Wes'ser, on Team Him since time began, and I am into it. I am especially into Timmy's square...

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Hey remember how Wes Anderson's THE FRENCH DISPATCH got Rated R for GRAPHIC NUDITY cuz that's what I'm sure thinking about zooming in on Timothee's square in the movie's poster pic.twitter.com/Tl5rAaYIwr

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) February 11, 2020

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We told you about the R rating just a couple of weeks ago -- the film got that rating for and I quote "graphic nudity, some sexual references and language." I don't think Female Nudity often warrants an immediate R, it's almost always Male Nudity... but I might just be putting the cart before the, uhh, horse here. We'll find out in July when the film's out! Actually we'll find out before that when it probably screens at Cannes and all the loudmouth Cannes queens start a'yapping. (Bless you, my Cannes queens.) I'm also hearing there will be a trailer dropped tomorrow.

Happy Timmy Time

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There's been enough Timothée Chalamet news this week since I told you he's presenting at this year's Oscar ceremony on Tuesday to justify another post, I think -- it'd be even better if I had a new photo-shoot of him to go along with all of the words but we'll make due with what we can scrounge up. And revisiting Timmy's sparkle harness is always welcome. 

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WHAT ARE YOU DOING TO US TIMMY pic.twitter.com/3fF5mQjmPx

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 30, 2020

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Anyway on to the news! A logo for Denis Villenueve's Dune movie, which is out in December, was photographed at some movie studio event thing a couple of days ago and made the rounds on social media, although the studio kept erasing the image off the web so I never bothered posting it. But there's a doctored version of it, replicating it pretty close, at this link. Original Kwisatz Haderach Kyle Maclachlan had good things to say about Timmy, also at that link. Next up is word on Chalamet's other big 2020 project...

... it turns out that Wes Anderson's French Dispatch movie is actually titled The French Dispatch of the Liberty Evening Sun (although none of us are gonna be typing all of that) and will be out on July 24th. You can see the big names of the cast listed above -- it's quite the troupe. Oh and it got Rated R for ""Graphic Nudity" which is, you know, a surprise. I can't wait to see how perfectly framed and arranged all of the genitals are by Wes Anderson. Anyway it sounds like it's going to be a set of small stories smashed together:

"[The film] brings to life a collection of stories from the final issue of an American magazine published in a fictional 20th-century French city.”"

Obviously we don't know if that means it will be a series of unconnected vingettes a la the Coens' recent film The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, of if this "collection of stories" will be interwoven across one long-form narrative, or what. We don't know! It doesn't matter! Just put July 24 on your calendars, hike up your pants, and get yourself to the theater on that date, mkay?

Quick On Three Before The Storm

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View this post on Instagram

Let’s get this party started, 2019 Edition #nyff #newyorkfilmfestival #film

A post shared by Jason Adams (@jasonaadams) on Sep 16, 2019 at 6:07am PDT

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I don't know if you heard me one or two of the five billion times I mentioned it in the last week but I'm currently immersed in press screenings for the New York Film Festival. Which is great! That said I've got today off and I'm not quite immersed in writing those up yet so I figured this is probably my last chance, before my brain's one hundred percent washed away by that, to toss out a few words on some movies that have nothing to do with NYFF that I nonetheless managed to see recently and actually, you know, have words for. A few anyway. 

The Death and Life of John F. Donovan -- As appealing as some individual moments in here that are coming at us from the ridiculous pool of talent that Xavier Dolan managed to gather up for this, his English-language debut -- Natalie Portman has a couple of lovely moments and you can't point a camera at Kathy Bates without coming away with something interesting -- man this thing flounders. My only thought at its end was what, pray tell, was the point of all this? 

Dolan seem to've felt forewarning on that front in the process of making the movie because he actually gives a character a speech about Why All This Matters -- that no it's not War And Famine but beautiful people feel things too, dammit! But that only serves to underline the vacuousness, like setting off fireworks at a three-alarm fire. Dolan has always been self-indulgent and self-obsessed but he's made that work to his advantage before -- Donovan feels like he's squeezed the rag dry. Definite bonus points for Kit Harington making out with Chris Zylka, though!

Tigers Are Not Afraid -- Even if Guillermo Del Toro hadn't been its biggest fan and sung its praises left right and everywhere it would have been impossible not to bring up Guillermo Del Toro, since the debt this mystical film about Mexican orphans owes his work -- specifically his kiddie ghost stories  Pan's Labyrinth and The Devil's Backbone -- is plain.

That's not meant as any sort of slight, since writer-director Issa López has acknowledged the influence and more importantly she turned it out -- out enough that she manages to stand clear of his big shadow, even. Tigers Are Not Afraid is a low-key marvel, surprising and rough and emotional, at times darkly beautiful to behold. Like Del Toro she's not afraid to walk into those dark places and confront the things she finds there -- there are moments here that held me and held my breath in awe and sheer terror. S'real good!

The Dead Don't Die -- Well I think I have a new favorite Jim Jarmusch movie? That's not saying an especially lot given he's never been a film-maker I've connected too fiercely with -- he comes off as so posturing to me; like Patti Smith you get the feeling he couldn't possibly remember a person's name if they have never been mentioned in Interview Magazine. And yes that's describing my impression of him as a person, but that East Village brand of smug has heretofore bled all over his work, even when he's tackling a genre film like Only Lovers Left Alive, which Tilda aside -- always Tilda aside -- didn't strike me as having to say much of anything except the worn out "Vampirism is Drugs!" thing. 

But his zombie movie here seems a different beast -- maybe it's just that he's older and gotten the Cred he's plainly felt so owed for so long, but The Dead Don't Die finally just feels relaxed in the best of ways. Perhaps it's the Adam Driver Factor -- I feel like that big dude could loosen even the tightest of wads. The vibe is just so pleasantly off-kilter -- something about the humor so dry it's deserted smacking up against the wet slap of cartoon gore and severed heads straight on hit my sweetest of spaces. It's the correct sort of goof, for me, for me now.

Man in Black

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It's been a weird week for me movie-wise as I haven't watched a single movie this week at all, as I've been busy with a dear friend visiting -- not many weeks go by without me watching something! Weirder still I haven't seen any of the new releases out tomorrow, and judging by the reviews for the new Men in Black (sorry Chris!) and the new Shaft I might want to keep it that way. Even the reception for the Jim Jarmusch Zombie Movie seems kind of muted...

Anyway I am sure I, like most of you, will find some way to entertain myself over the next three days, hashtag this is a reminder that I am not here on Summer Fridays. But here below if you do find yourself in need of a quick something to entertain you is a video I took at The National concert in Brooklyn last night; there are more here, and some photos that I took on my Instagram. They are a good band and I like them! Bye!

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ETA it's just been brought (back) to my attention that Nicholas Winding Refn's series for Amazon called Too Old To Die Young (we told you previously) is dropping on Amazon tomorrow, we had forgotten, and so fuck everything I just said -- there is what we're doing!!!

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❤️👁🔻The wait is almost over 🔻👁❤️#TOTDY #byNWR pic.twitter.com/iw8PBY9LhA

— Too Old To Die Young (@TOTDYTV) June 13, 2019

I Am Link

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--- Hero Worship - Now that he's Batman (try hearing that phrase in your head in anything but Christian Bale's rasp, I dare you) Robert Pattinson is abandoning the art-house movies that made us respect him, the sellout - he's dropped out of Joanna Hogg's sequel to The Souvenir, which is apparently a thing that's happening? (I'm just teasing Rob, by the way, save your hate mail.) On the Souvenir tip though I saw the film last week and thought it was fine but I don't really entirely get the rapturous responses it got earlier this year. It's certainly aware of its privilege (the main character expresses some guilt) but that didn't make the privilege of its world feel any less exhausting to maneuver as a viewer.

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--- My Commitment - This interview is a real long one so you'll have to set aside some time for it but if you haven't yet read Collider's long chat with our beloved character actress and saint Beth Grant then I recommend you do - give or take a couple of big star names its interesting folks from below the title like this who have quirks and are individuals that I'd much rather read pieces like this devoted to. Beth has stories and has lived and is a hoot.

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--- Jude Island - Jude Law is heading back to TV again, this time with nary a Popemobile in sight, to make The Third Way for HBO (alongside ITV in the UK) -- it's a six-part miniseries (produced by the guy who made the original Utopia) that sounds kind of like The Island of Dr. Moreau or maybe The Wicker Man, something like that, with an island and a bunch of isolated weirdos and hallucinations. Basically me on vacation. Speaking of vacations Jude was recently on his honeymoon (congrats!) in Sardinia and JJ got a bunch of pictures of him looking mighty fine a la that shot to the right, see them here. (Thx Mac)

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--- More Scary - When we listed our most anticipated movies of the remainder of 2019 one of the runners-up was the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark film that Trollhunter director André Øvredal has coming out in August -- well Rue Morgue sat down with Andre to chat about his next much anticipated by me flick, which is an adaptation of Stephen King's short story The Long Walk, read that chat here. TLW is kind of a teenaged They Shoot Horses Don't They, or maybe Forrest Gump meets Battle Royale. Okay I'm just saying movie titles now. You get the idea.

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--- Ears and Ears - I am a couple of episodes behind on Years and Years but Russell Tovey's already gone and signed on for another television miniseries in his homeland -- this one's called Flesh and Blood and it's another tale of a large sprawling family in which he's a sibling, this time about a trio whose old-age mum (played by Imelda Staunton) gets romanced by a dude (Stephen Rea) they don't trust. 

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--- Gesserit Who - Denis Villeneuve is currently shooting his Dune movie with Timothee Chalamet & Co -- see some pictures we shared a couple of weeks back right here if you missed 'em -- and that's probably going to be going on for awhile, and now an even longer while because he's also making a Dune TV series now too. It'll be about the Bene Gesserit, the female religious order of Frank Herbert's stories who predict all sorts of spicy shenanigans with their witchery. In the movie Rebecca Ferguson is playing Lady Jessica who's a part of the order, so perhaps she'll be a part of the television show too; Villenueve is only set to direct the pilot.

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--- Man o' Paradise - Josh Hartnett, so very good on Penny Dreadful, is returning to TV for a series called Paradise Lost, which apparently has nothing whatsoever to do with the Milton book -- it's about a married couple (Hartnett alongside Bridget Regan from Jane the Virgin) who return to the husband's Mississippi hometown only to "uncover shameful secrets that irrevocably change the lives of everyone involved." That is vague enough a description that I have absolutely no idea what this show might be, except they also call it a "Southern Gothic mystery" which helps a little. Barbara Hershey and Nick Nolte are also set to co-star. 

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--- Cue the Keymaster - It's become completely impossible to keep straight what's happening with the Ghostbusters franchise - I think where we stand is Jason Reitman is making a direct sequel to his father's films with all the original 'Busters in tow? Anyway Sigourney Weaver has let slip that she's returning for the movie as good ol' dog-lady Dana Barrett once more, so whatever it is I am there.

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Queen of the World

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Too much of my life as of late has been Winslet-less so I'm pretty happy with all the killer roles she seems to be lining up as of late -- Saoirse Ronan let it slip that Kate's doing a small role in Wes Anderson's new movie The French Dispatch, which already has a crazy loaded cast (previously posted about right here) as is usually how Wes Anderson movies go. I hope that Kate shares the screen with Timmy Chalamet or Tilda Swinton! My mind would kaboom. Anyway this makes two movies Kate & Saoise are starring in together this year -- back in December we told you about the lesbian romance Ammonite that they're leading from the director of God's Own Country, which is a thing we are needless to say absolutely slobbering over. 

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I Am Link

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--- The McDonagh Family Business - I thought Calvary, the 2014 "Brendan Gleeson's a crazy priest!" flick was better than decent, and War on Everyone at least has a bunch of Alexander Skarsgard in his briefs, so sure, we'll look expectantly on the future films of writer-directer (and brother of Martin) John Michael McDonagh, especially if he keeps getting promising actors like this. His next movie is called The Forgiven and it's gathered up Caleb Landry Jones (seen last year in Martin's Three Billboards... sigh) and Rebecca Hall and Ralph Fucking Fiennes (also a graduate of Martin's filmography with In Bruges, duh) and Mark Strong and Saïd Taghmaoui, and it "deals with the reverberations of a random accident on the lives of an English couple, their friends and local Moroccans who all converge on a luxurious desert villa during a decadent weekend-long party."

--- Death To Zero - Well I guess I should slow down my roll through the four seasons of SyFy's anthology series Channel Zero, which I was just praising to the heavens a couple of times last week, since SyFy has just announced today that they've canceled the damn show. I guess they took a look at the moron who just climbed on-board too late and said "The hell with this, we're out." I murder everything with my love. Beware!

--- Rocksy Start - Two years after The Beguiled Sofia Coppola has finally set up her next movie (I'm still sad her version of The Little Mermaid isn't happening, tbh) and it's reuniting her with a glorious ol' pal - Bill Murray, perfect and bright shining light from her Lost In Translation, that is. It's called On the Rocks and as I said on twitter yesterday I'm even more excited about the film's other star, who's Rashida Jones, a tremendously under-utilized actress at this point. EW says it's "set in New York... and follows the story of a young mother reconnecting with her playboy father." It films in the spring. I should stalk the set!

--- And Speaking of Bill Murray, uh, there's going to be a Ghostbusters 3. I don't know that they're going to call it Ghostbusters 3 but Ivan Reitman's son Jason - a filmmaker of some renown as long as the movie he's making stars Charlize Theron anyway - is directing it, and it's set in the universe of the original two movies, therefore ditching the Lady Ghostbusters universe that semi-flopped a couple of years back. No word on anything else, like who is returning, but one assumes it's set in the original universe because they've got people returning, so we'll sit and wait for further announcements. (Can I get a Sigourney, please?)

--- Meet Mother - I know I wasn't alone in hoping that Tilda Swinton would get cast in the role of Reverend Mother Mohiam in Denis Villenueve's Dune reboot (y'all have left comments saying as much) but if it absolutely cannot be Tilda I suppose we can manage with Charlotte Rampling. I suppose! Rampling just got cast yesterday, joining the recently announced Stellan Skarsgard and Dave Bautista and Rebecca Ferguson, all of them bowing in service of their leader, our leader, the whippet Chalamet.

--- Ladies In Space - Toni Collette has just lined up her next project and she's strapping on a space-suit alongside Anna Kendrick and shipping off to Mars for a movie called Stowaway, which is about "an unintended stowaway accidentally causes severe damage to the spaceship’s life support systems." It's being written and directed by Joe Penna, a Brazilian musician who I guess was a big smash on YouTube? I don't know. Just bring me more Toni Collette, please. (Speaking of I finally watched the first episode of Wanderlust last night and I'm already hooked.)
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What Happened To My Sweet Boy

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They say you shouldn't speak ill of the dead (although if somebody would give me a microphone at George Bush's funeral I'd sure test that theory) -- in a similar vein you probably shouldn't speak ill of 90 year old Oscar winners either, so I've been pleading "no comment" to James Ivory's snide comments about the Call Me By Your Name sequel. Although for a man so creatively talented you'd think he'd have a little more imagination on hand? Seems to me you shouldn't cast aspersions at a man who just did the impossible and re-wired the entire way a lot of us think about the concept of "the remake" with Suspiria. But I digress! Go with god, James Ivory; we're not here to talk about him anyway. No we're here because...

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Wait WHATTT Timmy is starring in Wes Anderson's new movie??????? pic.twitter.com/Dy34reu1zt

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) December 2, 2018

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... of this weekend's very exciting news that Timmy's going to star in The French Dispatch, which is the just revealed title of Wes Anderson's next movie, which we've been hearing about for a bit now. There was a rumor for awhile it was going to be a musical but a producer dispelled that a couple of weeks ago - for now what we know is it is "a love letter to journalists set at an outpost of an American newspaper in 20th-century Paris and centers on three storylines." Oh and did we mention the other names officially attached so far are Wes regulars Bill Murray, Frances McDormand, and Tilda Swinton (!!!), plus Benicio del Toro and Jeffrey Wright. This being a Wes Anderson movie there will surely be more to come - there have been longstanding rumors about Brad Pitt and Natalie Portman, for instance. But for now I'm just praying Timmy shares scenes with Tilda, because I need this Luca-verse Cross-over if Luca's not willing to do it himself.