Whatchu Dune

I've only ever read the first Dune book and I never watched the Children of Dune miniseries, so my knowledge of the weirdnesses that happens down the road in the Dune stories is limited to hearing random things here and there -- some sort of galactic space worm or something? Anyway the teaser for the third Dune movie Dune Messiah has just dropped today (or are they just calling it Dune Part Three now? Yawn) and I am excited! Especially with Robert Pattinson looking like such a freak in it. Freaky Robert Pattinson is always a good sign. This movie isn't out until December 18th though, so let's not let ourselves go too wild. Practice patience! And watch:

Thoughts?

Nothing will ever top Matt Keeslar as Feyd-Rautha in the 2000 miniseries though - the height of Cinema!

[image or embed]

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) March 17, 2026 at 2:55 PM

On Weapons & Its Gay Stuff

Nobody likes a killjoy yet I've found myself falling into that role over and over and over again when it's come (mostly) to horror movies in 2025; I just haven't been on consensus this year. God forbid. But it seems to've been my review of writer-director Zach Cregger's Weapons, which stormed the box office this past weekend, which seems to've annoyed people the most... even though I gave the movie a mostly good review! I gave it a fresh Red Apple on that dastardly Tomatometer! I just have several nits to pick with the film that seem to really be killing people's joy, if the comments on said post are to be believed, and there's one I really want to address since it's a subject I've spent most of my writing career (lol "career") contemplating. 

Annoyed at the should-know-better homosexual’s comment on my review saying we fought for the equality to be played as weirdo jokes and get murdered in horror movies so I’ll probably go off on that at MNPP tomorrow, stay tuned!

— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) August 10, 2025 at 10:05 AM

Yeah that's the one. Specifically people seem annoyed with the following passage from my review (and yes I'm diving head-first into SPOILERS at this point so beware if you haven't seen the movie and care):

"And oh right lest we forget there’s the homophobic portion of our evening’s entertainment, the chapter involving Marcus (Benedict Wong, great and not in the least at fault for the way these scenes are framed). He’s the school’s gay principal and he’s who, along with his hissing stereotype of a partner (they love weiners and have Mickey and Minnie t-shirts, haha!), the film really relishes giving a heftily violent what-for. Killing your gays is so in y’all."

Marcus' partner is named Terry and I honestly don't know if I'll see a more offensive-to-me image in the movies this year than the one of Terry mincingly holding up two boxes of Fruity Pebbles in the grocery store. And that really has nothing to do with the "killing your gays" trope -- although yes I'll get to that -- it has to do with it feeling as if Weapons is actively laughing at these characters for being gay. It's not that I mind "sissies" in real life -- nobody's ever mistaken me for the captain of the football team y'all. It's that the movie thinks these gigantic queens are weird and hilarious and so fucking gay -- aren't they so fucking gay??? So many weiners! Plates and plates of weiners! High-larious!

And yes I will admit I've lost some of my humor here in 2025 on this subject. But I feel as if any sane fucking queer person should be right there alongside me in the same humorless goddamned boat. Look around. Our rights are being ripped away. Marriage Equality is probably going to be gone in the next year. Trans service members are being ripped out of service and denied retirement benefits right now, right this second, and it'll be the rest of the rainbow next. They are coming for us all with terrifying methodical swiftness and all of our systems of defense are failing.

So yeah ten years ago I also might've been making the case, as has been made in the comments on my review, that some modern version of cinematic equality sees gays getting to die in horror movies just like straight characters do. And sure, okay -- in a utopia there's something to that. Maybe just don't turn them into cartoonish stereotypes before that? Maybe we can be main characters once in awhile? And maybe don't have it be the gay characters love for one another that becomes what kills them. Weapons gives us no reason to give a shit about Marcus & Terry's relationship before Marcus is forced to murder Terry by smashing their faces together over and over again, which -- it's not a fucking stretch to see this as "men kissing men" weaponized. 

So yes -- we argued that we gays should be able to die in horror movies just like straights. It's just -- JFC did the storytellers immediately take us up on that offer, like gangbusters. In the past month I've seen (SPOILER for The Gilded Age ahead) a gay dude trampled by horses in front of his lover on The Gilded Age. I've seen a gay couple in the horror movie Together (SPOILER for Together ahead) turn out to be the weirdo freak cult leaders who've come to pervert the straight couple and turn them into non-binary monsters. And now I have seen this sequence -- in a movie I mostly liked otherwise! -- and... I dunno. I'm just pretty tired y'all. So cut me some slack if I kind of come off like this most of the time:

I Wanna Run To Glen Powell

The trailer for Edgar Wright's remake of The Running Man -- okay I suppose we can call it a new adaptation of Stephen King's story, whatever -- has arrived and it looks like an absolute blast. I knew I was in for something special the second we saw Glen Powell smacking his tighty-whities-clad ass two times. We kept a running tally of people who got cast in this last year and the names were wild -- Colman Domingo, Josh Brolin, Michael Cera, Katy O'Brian, Lee Pace, Karl Glusman, Sean Hayes, and William H. Macy just to name the bigger names -- but the trailer mainly focuses on Glenn, Michael, Josh and of course Colman in the greatest showman role previously made iconic by Richard Dawson. And is it just me or...

... is Colman going to get a lot of comparisons to Tramell Tillman's showstopping work in the TV series Severance? That's all I could see. But lord knows I love Colman and he seems to be having a helluva time so bring it on. Everything looks hella fun actually -- this is definitely Wright bringing that sweet sweet Scott Pilgrim energy. (And the presence of Cera obviously underlines that.)  I don't think I spotted Glusman or Pace though -- do you think one of them is that masked man with the grenade? I'll have to go back and listen to the voice. Anyway watch:  

The Running Man (2025 edition) is out on November 7th.
How the hell is this not a summer movie???

You Can Run But You Can't Hide From Colman

There are moments -- not often, but more than once -- where I wonder if I might Jekyll out sometimes and sneak off under the guise of a different personality to be a casting director. Some movies just have such Me Casts that I can't imagine anyone else being responsible. Maybe I have a twin I was seperated from at birth and we're communicating telepathically? Anyway that's where I am at today with the news that Colman Domingo has now joined the cast of Edgar Wright's remake of The Running Man -- Colman being perfectly, exquisitely, cast as the evil game show host character that Richard Dawson played in Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1987 (classic as far as I'm concerned) version of the movie. How great is that casting though? Colman has got Game Show Voice and Showman Swag for dayssssss. Anyway he's joining a cast that already includes Glen Powell, Katy O'Brian (our queen from Love Lies Bleeding), Lee Pace, Josh Brolin, Michael Cera, William H. Macy, and my beloved weirdo Karl Glusman. Put this movie down my mouth please!

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

No Country For Old Men (2007)

Ed Tom Bell: I was sheriff of this county when I was twenty-five years old. Hard to believe. My grandfather was a lawman; father too. Me and him was sheriffs at the same time; him up in Plano and me out here. I think he's pretty proud of that. I know I was. Some of the old time sheriffs never even wore a gun. A lotta folks find that hard to believe. Jim Scarborough'd never carried one; that's the younger Jim. Gaston Boykins wouldn't wear one up in Comanche County. I always liked to hear about the oldtimers. Never missed a chance to do so. You can't help but compare yourself against the oldtimers. Can't help but wonder how they would have operated these times. There was this boy I sent to the 'lectric chair at Huntsville Hill here a while back. My arrest and my testimony. He killt a fourteen-year-old girl. Papers said it was a crime of passion but he told me there wasn't any passion to it. Told me that he'd been planning to kill somebody for about as long as he could remember. Said that if they turned him out he'd do it again. Said he knew he was going to hell. "Be there in about fifteen minutes". I don't know what to make of that. I sure don't. The crime you see now, it's hard to even take its measure. It's not that I'm afraid of it. I always knew you had to be willing to die to even do this job. But, I don't want to push my chips forward and go out and meet something I don't understand. A man would have to put his soul at hazard. He'd have to say, "O.K., I'll be part of this world."

A wise movie knows that you give Tommy Lee Jones a monologue to deliver and then you just sit back and listen to Tommy Lee Jones deliver it, and No Country For Old Men is a wise movie, perhaps the wisest, because it does this twice -- at start and at finish. I was torn between which speech to quote honestly -- I do love his retelling of his dreams that closes the film -- but the above one, from the film's opening, just feels a little too meaningful to this moment in time not to highlight it here on the day that Criterion has blessed us with the Oscar-winner on 4K blu. 

Anyway I do remain of the mind that Paul Thomas Anderson's There Will Be Blood is the number one movie of 2007, but this masterpiece from the Coens' is just a trifle behind it in my humble -- and I was a bit shocked when I looked back at my 2007 Top Ten list because NCFOM isn't on it at all! (Funny sidenote: 2007 is the first time I tried posting a Top 10 and other assorted year-end awards and it's amusing, in a semi-mortifying way, to look back at that link to see the state of my still relatively early blogging efforts. Phew. We've come a long way baby.) Then I noticed that I do give a note there why it's not included -- I wanted to see it a second time before deciding where I came down on it. Well I've seen it ten more times by now and baby, it's second. Which one tops for you?

online polls

Keep Running Up That Pace

Enough things coming up Lee Pace (what a phrase) these past couple of days that a Lee Pace post was demanded of me! Firstly his 2006 film The Fall from the director Tarsem has gotten a re-release in theaters  this weekend which has been wonderful news for people like me who have loved that movie since day one and the rest of you who were dummies who didn't see it but now have the chance to. It's also on Mubi but I recommend going to the theater and taking this beauty in on the big screen -- click here for wheres and whens of that -- as I did last night! And it ruled. I hadn't seen the film in quite some time but it rocked my world all over again. On that same note there is a terrific chat with Pace over at The Playlist today reflecting on making the movie so read that! And now we begin our countdown until Mubi drops the 4K disc of the film -- really hoping it lands before the holidays. 

But wait! This is not all of the Lee Pace news fit to print! Yesterday it was announced that he's joining the cast of The Running Man re-do from director Edgar Wright! I just posted about this movie earlier this week because it already gained a hot ass cast with Glen Powell and Karl Glusman and Josh Brolin set to star in it -- now with Lee it's a veritable smorgasborg of beefcake set to slip into those skintight bodysuits. Good work, Edgar Wright -- now just be gayer than usual about it, please. All of that said hey look it's a photoshoot (via) of Lee I've never posted! Let's do that! Hit the jump for that...

You Got a Permit For Those Guns, Alden

Now here is a cast worth eyeballing -- Alden Ehrenreich is going to star opposite Julia Garner in the next horror movie from Barbarian director Zach Cregger! The movie is called Weapons and it was supposed to film last year but got delayed due to the strikes -- there's not much info on specifics except that it "promises interconnected stories surrounding the disappearance of high schoolers." I don't think Alden or Julia can play high schoolers anymore -- he's 34 and she's 30. Maaaaaybe Julia, although I think it'd be pushing it. Also in the cast is Josh Brolin, who is definitely too old to be playing a high school student. Anyway I was mixed on Barbarian -- here is my review -- there was stuff I liked about it (specifically its structure) but I think it botched its tone in the end in ways that really didn't work for me. But I think Cregger's got talent and hopefully this one will win me over. This cast is a good start!

Off To Fuckboi

Okay well I'm going to go watch Dune 2 now, bye.

Like Sandworms Through the Hourglass

If you're excited about the imminent release of Denis Villenueve's Dune sequel, smartly titled Dune 2, then perhaps you might get it inside yourself a whisper sooner with a pre-order of cinematographer Greig Fraser's resplendant photography book Dune: Exposures, which collects his set photos into a grand hardcover edition that hits stands on Valentine's Day aka Wednesday of next week. Stick it in your loved one's chocolate box! (Ewww, that sentence was too far, Jason.) That's two whole weeks before the movie hits theaters so you can just press your face against the pictures of Timmy's windswept hair and toss some sand in your face and it'll be like you're right there! Pre-order your book right here. Me, I'm seeing Dune 2 in six days! So stay tuned for my opinion... as if you wouldn't. You don't do anything unless I say so, dammit! 

Here is the Dune: Part Two Trailer

I don't really feel like giffing it -- it's really just a bunch of Timmy standing around in the desert and then sliding down some sand, with a couple of brief glimpses of Austin Butler playing the Sting role. But I'm excited! Don't think I am not excited because I am. I very much dug the first one. It's out on November 3rd. Thoughts?

Good Morning, World

For some random reason I watched the 1986 skateboarding film Thrashin' last night? A terrible movie, truly terrible, not even great enough of a time-capsule to overcome how ineptly made it is -- it is a movie which there is really just one reason to watch it and that reason was thankfully the reason I watched it...

... Josh Brolin and Robert Rusler (the hot friend from the gay Elm Street sequel, among other things) spend the majority of the movie in some state of undress, either shirtless or with all of the buttons ripped off their shirts or with inexplicable ab-revealing slashes across their shirts. These are not bad reasons to watch a movie! Indeed they were enough to get me to sit through the entire damn thing. As a reward I made some gifs from Josh Brolin's very first scene in the movie, see em' all after the jump...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge (1985)

Jesse: Hey Grady,
do you remember your dreams?

Grady: Only the wet ones.

Well this is weird -- a happy birthday to the actor Robert Rusler today! It's not weird that it's his birthday -- it's weird because I was just looking Rusler up a bunch last night, when I mistook another actor for him. And once you start thinking about Robert Rusler in the 1980s you kinda can't stop.

You know what I mean, wink nudge et cetera. Anyway Rusler still works (and still looks great) but he had a real hot streak there in the early to mid-80s (and I mean that in both senses) -- there was this the gayest Nightmare film, there was Vamp...

... and Weird Science and the
 skateboarding flick Thrashin'...

... which I have never seen? And it co-stars 1986-era Josh Brolin? Yeah I will be seeing Thrashin' soon. And I was going to say that all sounded super gay to me "except" Thrashin' -- then I saw all the mascara he's wearing in Thrashin' and yeah, that's a totally gay filmography. I mean Weird Science might be all about Kelly LeBrock in half-shirts to those my age who appreciated such things, but Weird Science is all about raging sublimated homo-erotica for the rest of us...

Big Dune Energy, Take II

Alright well I'm off to see Dune a second time -- I saw it at NYFF and dug it and I haven't watched it on HBO Max since because I was hoping to see it on a big screen one more time, since it's so clearly a movie that demands (or at least rewards) that experience. And I also didn't want to see it at a public screening because I'm still wary of those (you know -- the pandemic or whatever). So I got me a guild screening! Even better I got me a guild screening tonight that's got Denis Villenueve & Oscar Isaac there for a Q&A! So maybe pay attention to my Twitter and my Instagram tonight, as I'm sure I'll post something about all that. And hey maybe Denis will whip out Oscar's cock-sock again...

The moment Denis revealed that he had Oscar’s final outfit from @dunemovie in his pocket (spoiler alert- It’s a cock sock)! pic.twitter.com/1V3BW1hyXz

— Rajendra Roy (@rajroynyc) November 16, 2021

An Oscar-less Future

While I think it's bull-crap -- I know, such harsh language! -- that Denis Villenueve & Co didn't shoot the two parts of Dune back to back, I'm still excited to see that they are kicking into gear on the sequel so fast with today's word that the second film will begin filming in July. At this rate we'll have the second one by... 2024 or something? They say October 2023 but I think they're underestimating reality, which -- as the past year and a half has taught us if we didn't know already -- has endless ways of tossing wrenches into the works. Anyway I look forward to seeing it... right now. We'll see how I feel in two plus years (if I feel anything) (that is to say "If we're not all dead.") (Optimism, ho!) And, in summation, this has all been brought to you by any excuse to post that photo of Oscar Isaac, even though he probably won't (spoiler alert) be in the second film. The end.

Which is Hotter?

Today we finally got confirmation that Dune: Part 2 is coming in October of 2023 -- now they just have to go and, you know, film the thing or whatever -- and this seems like the perfect moment to poll them holes and ask the most important question of them all...

survey service

Good Morning, World

Oscar Isaac's wife was kind enough to share that photo of her perfect husband napping yesterday, and what better way to greet Dune Day than by sharing that with y'all -- yup Denis Villenueve's forever-delayed part one of Frank Herbert's book is finally finally finally out in US theaters now! I saw it at NYFF a few weeks back and I didn't review it then and I am probably not going to review it now, but I did write the following tweet and I think it sums up my feelings fairly succinctly. (You should go see it, on a really big screen if that is a safe thing for you to do -- it's grand.)

DUNE is tremendous. Space Cenobites, Glitter Storms, Hairdos, Spit Fetish Parties, Oscar Isaac Side Butt, A Desert Smize Fashion Show, Lots of Loud BRAMMMM Sounds, Charlotte Rampling Torturing A Twink, and as promised more Vibrating Buttholes than you can shake a Timmy at #nyff59

— My New Dead Pants (@JAMNPP) October 7, 2021

Big Dune Energy

Big weekend for Dune fans as the film will be having its long long loooong awaited World Premiere at the Venice Film Festival tomorrow -- I'll probably be forced to see some reactions on Twitter but I'm doing my best to avoid them before its NYFF screening in a few weeks (fingers crossed, considering I haven't gotten NYFF approved yet). Anyway in anticipation of people getting their eyeballs on this flick for the first time they dropped a new clip, which you can see over at Vanity Fair. In other news I've got a screening this afternoon -- no it is not Dune, but it is one I have been wanting to see for awhile now -- and I'll be offline for the rest of the day. So, you know, bye. See ya Monday.

Who knew all ya need is Oscar Isaac in a red t-shirt pic.twitter.com/G3LvS3rRzw

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) September 2, 2021

It's Timmy Time!

That there is an outtake from that 2019 photo-shoot Timmy did alongside Saoirse Ronan for Entertainment Weekly when Little Women was about to open -- thanks to this Timmy fan-site here for sharing; you can see the entire shoot at that link. Aaanyway maybe you remember how I told you a few weeks back that the Paris Theater here in NYC was going to be screening my beloved Call Me By Your Name twice in August? Well both of those screenings are tomorrow and yes indeed I am a big enough spazz about it that I have taken the whole damned day off and just plan on camping out in the theater for several hours. So that's where my Tuesday will be spent! It will not be spent online posting nonsense for you, my apologies. Well... I'll probably tweet some. But blog not! I think you'll make due! To help you out a wee bit here's a poll you can vote in, regarding this brand new photo (click to embiggen) from The Dune Movie:

bike trail guide

Good Morning, Kwisatz Haderach

I don't know whose schedule studios are working on but things used to wait to be released by the time I got to work in the morning around 9am -- now they're going up all willy-nilly at all hours; it's chaos! Chaos! Anyway at some point during my commute this A.M. the newest freshest fullest Dune trailer to date dropped, and it shows a lot but it also feels like it's holding back a lot too -- we don't really see much more of the sand-worms than we did in the teaser trailer approximately one million months ago before the plague... just enough to remind us that yes, indeed, they do resemble buttholes. I know they showed an entire sand-worm attack scene at an IMAX event this week that I almost went to but chickened out on because, hello plague still happening. But I'm glad they're saving that for later. For now, let's watch Jason Momoa feel up Timmy's non-existent bicep, and other stuff...

Make It Huckabees Two

Y'all think I love famous people -- well wait til you get a load of the director David O. Russell. He's always been known for gathering up big casts of name actors -- he might not have had the clout with his first film Spanking the Monkey but what clout he had off of Spanking the Monkey's small success (and I remember that movie being pretty buzzy when it came out in 1994) he immediately threw into casting with his next flick, the road-trip comedy Flirting With Disaster...

... which starred Ben Stiller, Tea Leoni, Patricia Arquette, Alan Alda, Lily Tomlin, Mary Tyler Moore, George Segal, Richard Jenkins, and Josh Brolin. (Plus bonus points for Celia Weston, of course.) And his casts have only grown starrier from there, reaching probably their apex with American Hustle back in... 2013? Is that movie really seven years old? WTF.

This shot of Christian Bale on the set of the new David O. Russell movie is speaking to me in a language I don't understand pic.twitter.com/qVeHQUxtcM

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 13, 2021

Anyway we might have thought that was the apex, but his new project is putting all of those movies to shame. We don't have a title, we don't know what it's about -- except it's based on "an original idea" from Russell himself -- but we just got nine new names added to the already insane cast in the past 24 hours so let's list off the people who're signing up to get berated on set by him. First we heard about Christian Bale, Margot Robbie, and John David Washington. That's already a big movie right there. Then a couple of days ago they added Rami Malek and Zoe Saldana. But then! Last night! Last night the cast added (deep breath) Robert De Niro, Mike Myers, Timothy Olyphant, Michael Shannon, Chris Rock, Anya Taylor-Joy, Andrea Riseborough, Matthias Schoenaerts, and Alessandro Nivola.

Russell has of course worked with a few of these people before -- Nivola and Bale and De Niro, of course -- but, I mean... did his casting people just come here to MNPP and start grabbing names after that? It's like that meme that says "We're gonna give the gays all that they want" but it's not "We're gonna give JA all that he wants." Olyphant, Riseborough, Shannon, Taylor-Joy and Schoenaerts in one place is literally breaking my brain. Literally. I would take a picture with my phone and show you my brain oozing out of my ears but my brain just oozed out of my ears and so I don't remember how to take pictures with my phone any longer. I am broken. Right, Andrea?