Mike Mills Doesn't Live Here Anymore

Earlier today what I am still calling a "rumor" broke that Criterion will be releasing Alexander Payne's first and still best movie the 1996 abortion satire Citizen Ruth on 4K soon -- I thought that might come officially with their announcement for July's releases, which I knew would be landing today since it's the 15th of the month... but no. It did not. Maybe next month. We do have the slate of their July releases though and there's no reason to be disappointed -- this is a slam dunk of a month! Starting with a box-set that I literally squealed at the sight of -- on July 28th they're dropping "I'll Remind You of Everything: The Films of Mike Mills", a three-film 4K set that includes Beginners, 20th Century Women, and C'mon C'mon, which are as far as I'm concerned every single one masterpieces. (Here is my review of the latter.) None more than 20th Century Women, which is truly one of the greatest films of... well it feels like the millennium is the marker we're measuring things by now and it's that, but as far as I'm concerned it's one of the greatest films of all time, period. When I think about how Annette Bening wasn't even nominated for Best Actress, much less didn't deservedly win for the greatest performance of her career, I get hives. So let's move on...

... which is easy enough given this slate! How about a double-feature of Martin Scorsese's 1974 masterpiece Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore starring Ellen Burstyn (aka the finest tipped spear through the argument that Marty doesn't know what to do with women characters) alongside Paul Newman's greatest performance in 1963's Hud from director Martin Ritt? I somehow only saw Hud for the first time in the past decade and it's a stunner of a film. Stunning to look at -- and I don't just mean Paul Newman in those jeans...

... although I don't not mean that either -- and stunning emotionally. Newman and Patricia Neal are just absolute fire in this. And of course both of these will be the first time these classics will be on 4K -- if I stopped there July would already be a month for the record books from Criterion. But I ain't! I ain't stopping there. They've also got Neil Jordan's The Crying Game hitting 4K for the first time on July 14th! This movie really got done dirty by the press and comedians at the time, with its focus on  Jaye Davidson's genitals -- this movie is so much richer than the way its title has become synonymous with unexpected trans revelations. It's truly a great film. 

Now we come to the one film of their July's releases that I haven't seen -- Nagisa Oshima's Cruel Story of Youth from 1960, which stars Miyuki Kuwano & Yusuke Kawazu as a pair of sexy teenage criminals on the run... and yes it sounds very Bonnie & Clyde slash Badlands coded, although it came out first, one should note. Criterion's description of it as a film "bursting with vivid color, this visually scintillating, furiously nihilistic film howls with rage" sold me. 1960s era Japanese films that are described as colorful always end up being my bag -- the pop look of these films is very much my wavelength. Anybody seen this one? Moving along to the last two titles -- Hlynur Pálmason's 2025 feature The Love That Remains is getting its disc debut (I saw it last year and it is very good!) while David Lynch's masterpiece (how many times have I used that word in this post??) The Elephant Man, the blu-ray of which has been out of print for awhile now and going for enormous prices, is getting the 4K upgrade treatment on July 7th. Much needed! WHAT A MONTH!

Time to (Night) Watch Nikolaj Again!

This is unexpected but exciting news -- a sequel to the 1994 Danish classic horror flick Nightwatch is happening, with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau reprising the role that proved to be his big breakout. Well, sort of -- most people would say that it wasn't until Game of Thrones that he broke out and they'd technically be correct, but it was Nightwatch in my eyes because I saw it (and more specifically his jaw-dropping nude scene) and I paid attention to him from there on out! And then a couple of years later he played tongue-hockey with Clive Owen in Bent and I was fully lost. Anyway if you've never seen the original Nightwatch it's absolutely ace -- far better than the 1997 remake with Ewan McGregor. 

This 30-year-later sequel is called Nightwatch: Demons Are Forever and is from the same director as the original, Ole Bornedal. And the sequel co-stars Bornedal's own daughter Fanny Leander Bornedal, who's playing Nikolaj's daughter and which sees her sucked into the same nightmare that plagued her pops three decades earlier. That said it's been awhile since I watched Nightwatch so I'll refrain from sharing more details, mainly because I don't want to read any more of the press release before re-watching the original myself. Thankfully both movies are dropping thanks to Shudder on May 17th. When we get a trailer I will share it but for now just enjoy looking at Nikolaj in 1994, truly a special-effect of a human being:

Get Your Bodies Ready...

... it's Criterion Announcement Day! Per usual I completely lost track of time and didn't realize this monthly holiday has sneaked up on us already -- in my defense this time I have been buried in film fests, but that's hardly kept me from the same thing happening every single month now has it? Anyway a little earlier today Criterion announced their January 2024 release schedule and if that gif above of sheer junkie sexiness didn't let on Danny Boyle's 1996 masterpiece Trainspotting is among them! Hitting both 4K and regular old blu-ray the set is per usual jam-packed with extra special features up to and including...

... glow in the dark packaging! God I love this nerd shit. It brings me such pleasure. (As will seeing that shot of Ewan McGregor getting out of bed naked in glorious 4K.) Next up on the docket -- a boxed-set of Chantal Akerman movies! Titled "Chantal Akerman Masterpieces, 1968–1978" the set includes nine movies, from her 1968 debut Saute ma ville past the astonishing Jeanne Dielman (aka the current Greatest Film Of All Time according to Sight & Sound) up through 1978's The Meetings of Anna. Check out all the info at the link. That set hits the street on January 23rd. 

A week earlier on the 16th they're dropping John Sayles' great 1996 film Lone Star on 4K, which was one of my favorites back in college -- I haven't seen it since then so I've no idea how it holds up, but this new attention here seems to indicate it might. Starring Chris Cooper and Joe Morton and Elizabeth Peña and Kris Kristofferson, Lone Star is about a sheriff (Cooper) investigating the discovery of a skeleton in the desert outside his border town, and I remember it being unlike anything I'd seen at the time -- that said in 1996 I'd seen far fewer movies than I have now. But it stuck, so we'll see. 

Other January releases -- Dee Rees' Mudbound is finally getting a physical release (I feel like they've been promising this one for ages so it's good to finally have a date) while both Satyajit Ray’s The Apu Trilogy and the Coens' Blood Simple are getting upgraded to 4K. Just a cavalcade of masterpieces per usual from the best ones doing it!

The McGregor Goldmine Continuum

Are any of you watching that Obi Wan show? You know... the one about... an "Old Ben Kenobi"? Sorry that dad joke will never not make me chuckle, because it's one of the few Star Wars lines I remember. Anyway that show sucks! I have tried, and I have tried again -- which is to say I have now watched two episodes -- but I don't think I want to try a third time. I know the prequels have been on the receiving end of some critical reevaluation as of late, mainly because the people who were kids when those movies -- which were made for children -- came out are now old enough to write about such things online. But I haven't had an ounce of desire to revisit them and Obi Wan is giving me bad flashbacks to them. 

Specifically all the cloying child acting. Not to rag on an actual child -- I will not get specific -- but why is Star Wars so bad at making kids not annoying? It's not the child's fault -- when they're that young it's just a product of bad direction. Anyway I suppose I'm just not invested enough in Star Wars and never have been, even though there are things about that universe I do find very entertaining. I'll take some Princess Leia strangling Jabba with her chains any day! 

And I know two episodes isn't enough to judge a performance, especially given the arc that the character is clearly written to be on, but Ewan's just given me nothing to hold onto so far. I imagine it picks up further down the line but I don't feel invested enough to wait for that. It's not like they can kill him or the little one he's protecting, so there's no tension to any of the action. We know these characters will live to ripe Old Ben Kenobi age!

Anyway I don't want to exclusively rag on Ewan so here are two happy Ewan things -- one, he is looking incredibly fine in these photos for GQ magazine -- you can read the interview here. And two -- there's a rumor going around the internet that a brand new restoration of Todd Haynes' masterpiece Velvet Goldmine, which features one of Ewan's greatest performances, will be getting the Criterion treatment in the not too distant future! Now that is a thing to celebrate -- that movie's been out-of-print for awhile now. So let's celebrate with the rest of this shoot after the jump... 

5 Off My Head: The Mad Count Chris

The singular legend Christopher Lee was born one hundred years ago today! While I've made no secret about the fact that when it comes to May 27th Horror Legend Birthday Boys I'm more of a Vincent Price (who was born 111 years ago today) than I am a Christopher Lee, that doesn't mean I don't love Lee! I love him loads. Indeed ever since Severina couple of years ago  put out that amazing "Eurocrypt" boxed-set of more obscure Lee titles (which is on sale for a measly 85 bucks right now, by the way) I've found a new appreciation for him -- and also on that note Severin recently announced they're putting out a second set of even obscurer titles (out in July you can pre-order it over here) so I'm sure there'll be even more amazingness to be mined. That said given what a truly epic run Lee had career-wise, working across eight (!!!) decades of the movies, narrowing down one's faves is a fool's errand. But I'm gonna try anyway, because I am nothing if not an epic fool.

My 5 Favorite Christopher Lee Performances

Count Dracula, Horror of Dracula (1958)

Saruman, Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Count Drago, The Castle of the Living Dead (1964)

Lord Summerisle, The Wicker Man (1973)

Duc de Richleau, The Devil Rides Out (1968)

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Runners-up: Hugo, Gremlins 2: The New Batch, Horror Express, The Whip and the Body, Hercules in the Haunted World, The Hound of the Baskervilles, Corridors of Blood, Star Wars 

What are your favorite Christopher Lee performances?

I Am Link

--- Now Them's Some Women -- I was already pleased as a punch to the happy-places when it was announced back in December that not only was Sarah Polley planning on directing her first new movie in nine years (an adaptation of the book Women Talking) but that it was going to star Frances f'ing McDormand, so trying to measure my renewed enthusiasm when a big batch of absolute queens were further announced to fill out the film's cast this week would be a folly's errand. Stratospheric shit! Said queens include Rooney Mara, Claire Foy, Jessie Buckley, and Ben f'ing Whishaw, oh my! The story "follows a group of women in an isolated religious colony as they struggle to reconcile their faith with a series of sexual assaults committed by the colony’s men." This is gonna be something y'all.

--- Friends No More -- I'll admit that my enthusiasm for In Bruges director Martin McDonagh has been dulled a bit by the projects he's done since that -- Seven Psychopaths and especially Three Billboards (ugh) were big letdowns for me -- but today's news that he's reuniting with the stars of his original masterpiece, Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson, for his next one well that gives me renewed vim n' vigor, McDonagh-wise. The film will be called The Banshees of Inisherin and will film in August and is about a pair of lifelong friends who're navigating the awkward space where they no longer want to be friends.

--- Ain't No Mountain -- Similarly it's hard to get too worked up over a new Doug Liman movie, even though his earliest work I glommed onto, 1999's Go, ranks among my all-time faves, since he hasn't made anything as good since. But I'm gonna give him another chance with this next project because it stars Ewan McGregor and Ewan is always worth a chance. It's a biopic of adventurer George Mallory, who tried to climb Mount Everest back in the 1920s, and it will co-star Mark Strong and Outlander hunk Sam Heughan.  Oh and it'll be called Everest, just like the Jake Gyllenhaal movie from a couple of years back, but I have a feeling that if Ewan has a nude scene in his Everest movie he'll let them leave it in, unlike Jake, so Ewan wins.

--- Step Up -- Another addition to the incredibly stacked cast of that true-crime adaptation The Staircase, which already had Juliette Binoche, Colin Firth, and Toni Collette -- ex-twink Dane DeHaan will now also be sleazing around the joint. I was going to make a joke about how he could play The Owl but I don't know if any of you will get that joke. Anyway I apparently missed the news that the series will also co-star Parker freaking Posey too! Everyone, literally everyone, will be there. get me to this set!

--- What's Good For The Gigolo -- An update on a project we've been keeping tabs on: the series re-do of American Gigolo starring Jon Bernthal got picked up by Showtime, a ten-episode order. It's actually technically a sequel to the movie starring Richard Gere; Bernthal's playing the same character, just years later after he's gotten out of jail. See all of MNPP's previous coverage on this series here, but pay special attention to this post. That's the winner.

--- Til Death Do -- Kristen Wiig is going to star in an adaptation of the upcoming book called The Husbands, which "follows an overworked mother who, while house-hunting in a nice suburban neighborhood, meets a group of high-powered women with enviably supportive husbands. When she agrees to take on a legal case involving the untimely death of one resident’s husband, she risks exposing not only the secrets at the heart of her own marriage, but the true secret to having it all, one worth killing for." I can't for the life of me tell the tone from that description; it could be dead serious or it could be Desperate Housewives. Even a gender-flipped Stepford Wives maybe?

--- Channing Sandwich -- Speaking of movie descriptions that I can't get a handle on the tone for, Zoe Kravitz has gone and written herself a star vehicle called Pussy Island (indeed) that will have her heading to the orgy-centric tropical getaway of a tech-billionaire (to be played by Channing Tatum, somehow); while there things go from sexy to dangerous, or something. I don't know. Just throw me in a Channing Tatum Orgy and I'll figure it out as I go.

--- And Finally since I began this post with a crazy stacked cast I'll finish with the same - Apple is producing a psychological-thriller series called Surface from the creator of the High Fidelity series, and it will star several MNPP fave babes including Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Stephan James, Ari Graynor, François Arnaud, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Marianne Jean Baptiste. Good grief -- Get me to that set! To all of the sets! I gotta get the fuck outta my house! Ahem. Surface is described as "an elevated thriller about a woman’s quest to rebuild her life after a suicide attempt, and her struggle to remember – and understand – everything that led up to the moment when she jumped." Gugu is the lead. (And hopefully Oliver & Francois are sharing a trailer.)

Hedonism, by Halston

Most people are oohing and ahhing over the micro-seconds of Eternals footage in the latest Marvel trailer that popped up this morning, but my superheroes don't wear capes -- they wear caftans with necklaces adorned with cocaine spoons! So the just-dropped trailer for the Halston miniseries starring Ewan McGregor is much more my flavor. You start showing gay orgies...

... and maybe we'll talk, Marvel. This trailer comes on the heels of the photos I shared last week -- see here and see here. The show drops on Netflix in a scant 11 days and the press, it's ramping up. That said for all the skin and sin on display in this trailer, the thing that caught my eyes the most was...

There is plenty of gay sex in the HALSTON trailer but all I want to know about is that woman inhaling the jockstrap pic.twitter.com/33oYtbFSuL

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) May 3, 2021

To quote Harold in The Boys in the Band (which seems an appropriate place to run for a quote) -- "Who is she? Who was she? Who does she hope to be?" I can't wait to find out. Here's the trailer:

And if you'd like a couple more gifs hit the jump...

Pics of the Day

Besides the lovely bearded photo-shoot of Ewan McGregor in THR this morning (shared here) and his interview (and no Ewan doesn't mention his penis, although he does talk about the happy experience of having an Intimacy Coordinator on the set of Halston for the first time in his career, with the sex scenes, i.e. letting us know there will be sex scenes) they also gifted us with a big batch of new Halston photos! (We previously posted a couple last week.) You can see more at this link, with plenty of contextualizing, or you can see the ones I deemed important enough to snatch and share here on MNPP (like, speaking of sex scenes, this new look at actor Gian Franco Rodriguez playing Halston's lover), right on after the jump...

Good Morning, World

Ewan McGregor is on the cover of The Hollywood Reporter today looking mighty fine with his beard sweater combo -- he's also interviewed inside the mag, about Halston I think primarily (see previous post) although I just started reading it, came over to make this post, and once that's done I will go back and find out if he, you know, talks about his penis or something, in which case I will come back and make sure y'all know that. Before I leave let me say the obvious -- yes after yesterday's weird sick day I am back, I am fine, thanks for the well-wishes. Let's get on with it! Oh and there are three more Ewan photos after the jump...

Gian Franco Rodriguez Three Times

Once I saw who was playing Ewan McGregor's boyfriend in Netflix's Halston limited series -- posted about earlier today, if you missed it! -- it took me fractions of a second to head to his Instagram page, where these treasures above were unearthed. Let's hope the show delivers on the gay front! Gian Franco doesn't have too many previous credits on his IMDb page -- wonder where he caught producer Ryan Murphy's eye? Anyway here's a poster Netflix dropped not long after my earlier post:

Pics of the Day

I was just wondering what was going on with Ewan McGregor's Halston miniseries for Netflix about a month ago when I shared a magazine photoshoot of the actor wherein he discussed playing the famed designer -- today we have news! Netflix just dropped a batch of "polaroids" of the cast in character as well as the release date, which is May 14th! Yes, May 14th as in three weeks from now. My, people come and go so quickly here!

Seems apt to quote Judy as Dorothy since we've got a person playing Liza Minnelli here -- the actress is named Krysta Rodriguez and I'm unfamiliar but she's done a ton of TV before this -- she looks the part in these snaps, anyway! More than Ewan, honestly, but I love Ewan enough to overlook (for now) the fact that he really looks absolutely nothing like Halston. I am sure he will be good -- he always is. Of course I'd be remiss...

... if I didn't share that photo of the actor Gian Franco Rodriguez playing Halston's partner Victor Hugo (yes like the author of Les Mis), who was also an artist and a window dresser (he was also an assistant to Andy Warhol at The Factory). It's pretty clear why he was so popular, at least as portrayed by Gian Franco there! This series was of course executive-produced by Ryan Murphy (who else) while long-time TV director Daniel Minahan directed it; we'll probably be getting a trailer shortly! Oh and I almost forgot to mention -- Rory Culkin as Joel Schumacher!

5 Off My Head: 50 Off Ewan

Last night I was watching the screener of a movie that's out this upcoming weekend which co-stars Jonny Lee Miller, and it only took about five seconds upon seeing him for my brain to trail off to Trainspotting and his friendship with Ewan McGregor -- speaking of yelling "Make out!" at the screen! I might have strained my larynx the first time I saw those two sitting side by side on a couch. But then that's the sort of energy that Ewan's brought to film-screens opposite every single person, place, and thing, for nearly 30 straight years, isn't it? Well today's his 50th birthday (I know, how even) and so we're gonna celebrate some of those performances now...

My 5 Favorite Ewan Performances

Renton, Trainspotting (1996)

"You see if you ask me we're heterosexual by default, not by decision. It's just a question of who you fancy. It's all about aesthetics and it's fuck all to do with morality."

Curt Wild, Velvet Goldmine (1998)

"The world is changed because you are made of 

ivory and gold. The curves of your lips rewrite history."

Christian, Moulin Rouge! (2001)

"... What I really mean

Yours are the sweetest eyes

I've ever seen"

Phillip Morris, I Love You, Phillip Morris (2009)

"Enough romance. Let's fuck!"

Oliver, Beginners (2010)

"Rabbit. What is real? Does it hurt? Horse. Sometimes Rabbit. Does it happen all at once Horse. It takes a long time. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes dropped out and you get a loose in the joints. But these things don't matter at all, because you are Real and you can't be ugly except to people who don't understand."

Runners-up: The Ghost Writer, The Impossible, 

Fargo, Shallow Grave, Down With Love

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What are your favorite Ewan performances?