Honey Bunches of "Oh Shit!"

Don't ever let anyone get away with saying that promotional materials don't matter anymore, because the upcoming horror movie Honey Bunch wasn't on my radar until they just dropped this killer, killer poster today -- that is a great fucking poster! I would like to know who designed that poster, and I would like to own that poster. Anyway now that the movie has my attention -- Honey Bunch is a "Genre-Bending Relationship Thriller"that sars Grace Glowicki, Ben Petrie, Jason Isaacs, and Katie Dickie -- KATE DICKIE!!! -- about a woman (Glowicki) who awakes from a coma with fragmented memories and so heads with her husband (Petrie) to a "remote facility" (is there any other kind) for "experimental treaments" (I repeat, is there any other kind) to solve her issues. Something tells me they don't work like she's anticipating! Not with Kate Dickie involved, they won't. (God we love Kate Dickie.) Anyway this movie (which is from the team behind 2020's extremely fucked up film Violation) hits Shudder on February 13th so clearly, a new Valentine's classic. Watch the trailer below:

Quote of the Day

“We had a lot of sex... And then I kissed Daniel and he was so easy with it. And then I was easy with it and we were really easy with each other’s bodies and I thought, oh, it’s just that... God, I built this up and, and we had to lie naked on under the sheet for an hour every night. And it was easy.... He was the perfect [James] Bond because he’s the only person I’ve ever met who is or maybe more comfortable naked than he is dressed. He’s very easy in his body... I used to drag him to showers to make him shave because I got a stubble rash off him,... We used to pinch each others bits under the sheets to make each other laugh.” 

I've posted a couple pictures before -- right here ... oh and here as well -- of Jason Isaacs and Daniel Craig performing with each other in the original British stage production of Angels in America, but these quotes from Jason Isaacs reminiscing about the experience (via) on a recent podcast are too wonderful not to share. This is turning out to be a fairly horny Monday morning huh? I guess we're all looking for expressions of life, reasons to keep going, in dark days. Keep it coming!

Pic of the Day

White Lotus three-timer Jon Gries (dude pictured in the middle above who plays Greg / Gary) seems to've had the best time out of anybody on the seven month long shoot in Thailand -- his Instagram has been a non-stop beefcake-fest. But the above photo of him sandwiched between his co-stars Patrick Schwarzenegger and Arnas Fedaravičius really takes the cake. Cakes, even! Lucky man. See a few more below:

Jon Gries (aka that cad Greg / Gary on #TheWhiteLotus) has shared some noteworthy photos of the cast! (See more here www.instagram.com/p/DHBg1v4JAp...)

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— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) March 11, 2025 at 11:17 AM

Good Morning, World

Happy Monday! I hope you're all caught up on The White Lotus -- otherwise look away! Not that this scene is a "spoiler" exactly, except to a good gag. (And I'd give Jason Isaacs a good gag if you catch my meaning.) Yes another character's dropped trou on the show -- if you'd like to hear Isaacs talk about the scene click over to EW where he "unpacks" it lol. The real question, the one nobody's answered so far as I can tell, is whether that's all Jason Isaacs or not. My vote is not -- that it's a prostetic -- but why don't y'all unpack your magnifying glasses and go all Jessica Fletcher on it after the jump and tell me in the comments your thoughts...

Parker Posey! The White Lotus! Ahhh!!!

Okay we can shut down for the day, we've reached our pinnacle and nothing's gonna top this -- Parker Posey is going to be in The White Lotus' third season. She was on our wish list of names last year -- Parker is on our wish list for every thing, every time, every where -- but the fact that it's actually happening is too good to believe. Parker Posey and Mike White working together -- it's a dream pairing and I am tingling tip to toe y'all. It honestly seems insane that they've never done anything before, and the fact that it's happening feels so monumental like a prophecy being fulfilled. 

That said what I most want from The White Lotus' third season is for it to be subtitled TANYA'S REVENGE and include a scene where a miles tall Jennifer Coolidge rises Kraken-like from the depths to wreak her vengeance pic.twitter.com/uglJComZnp

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) January 5, 2024

That also would be epic. Anyway my apologies to the other names that Deadline drops in its announcement -- those being Leslie Bibb, Jason Isaacs, Michelle Monaghan, and Tayme Thapthimthong -- but all I want to talk about is Parker... oh and one other name! A well-known Thai actor named Dom Hetrakul who is extraordinarily hot and who I will now share several photos of after the jump...

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

Much Ado About Nothing (2012)

Claudio: Behold how like a maid she blushes here! Would you not swear, all you that see her, that she were a maid, by these exterior shows? But she is none! She knows the heat of a luxurious bed! Her blush is guiltiness, not modesty.

Sorry to trigger everybody's Joss Whedon traumas but it's the actor (and now director) Fran Kranz's 40th birthday today and I still like to think about his sexy turn in this adaptation, Whedon be damned. He of the Perfect Chest! I was gonna say "I hope he keeps acting" after his recent directorial success, but a quick scan of his IMDb account shows he's not going anywhere. He's got like five things in the works.

But speaking of "his recent directorial success" I guess I didn't review Mass when it screened at Sundance earlier this year -- that's Fran's directorial debut about the emotional repercussions of a school shooting that stars Ann Dowd, Martha Plimpton, Jason Isaacs, and Reed Birney, who all give tremendously good performances therein -- but yesterday it was announced the film's coming out on October 8th and all four leads will be gunning for Supporting nominations at the Oscars. Which makes sense I guess, as far as "awards" ever make sense to me. They're all worthy though. It's a beautifully-acted showcase for all four of them.

Bravo For This Movie

Well we've all got a Most Anticipated Movie to look forward to now -- it's called Mrs Harris Goes To Paris and it stars Phantom Thread queen Lesley Manville in the story of a 1950s British cleaning-lady named Ada Harris who scrubs and starves and saves her every penny in order to buy herself the Dior dress of her dreams. That, on its own, is the sort of 90s-sounding throwback movie we are always here for, so we're already sold -- especially with someone so talented as Manville getting a leading role -- but there's more. More! The film co-stars Isabelle Huppert! 

Deadline doesn't say who Huppert is playing -- something tells me she'll be a French person that Manville's character encounters during her quest for dress, though! -- so I checked IMDb and got confused for a second because they list Huppert's character as "Claudine Colbert" and I was like, wait, is she playing the famous 1930s actress? But that's Claudette Colbert. Not Claudine. Right? I know Claudette Colbert was actually French. Intriguing! Has anybody read Paul Gallico's original 1958 novella on which the film will be based? I guess it's been adapted twice before, in the 1950s and the 1990s. 

Anyway as seen above by that production still the film's already been filmed, and besides those two legends already mentioned the cast includes Jason Isaacs, Lambert Wilson, and saving the hottest-for-last some hottie who's apparently on Emily in Paris (shocker I do not watch Emily in Paris) called Lucas Bravo. And, uhh...

... holy hell, Lucas Bravo! Where has Lucas Bravo been all my life? Why didn't any of you tell me about Lucas Bravo??? Well now I know I guess, and I've got a couple dozen Lucas Bravo photos for us all to share in the wealth of that knowledge right here after the jump...

Which is Hotter?

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Last night came word that director David Lowery -- who made one of my favorite movies of the decade with A Ghost Story, although his remake of Pete's Dragon (which I still haven't seen) is probably more apt to the conversation at hand -- is going to tackle Disney's live-action Peter Pan movie, following in the footsteps of blah blah all of their other live-action remakes of their animated features which I have totally stopped watching at this point. But I might see this one? David Lowery is very talented, and Peter Pan exists as an idea outside of the Disney movie more than say The Lion King, which i think gives him more room to wiggle. They're also titling it Peter Pan and Wendy so I imagine they'll maybe recognize that Peter Pan is actually a girl's story this time out? Imagine that! Anyway I'll also probably watch it because Jude Law is probably going to play Captain Hook, and as Colin O'Donoghue attests I love me a Hot Hook. On that note I ask y'all...

panel management

Armie Hammer Gets Lei'd

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It's Armie Hammer's most challenging role to date, playing a beautiful rich blond man on vacation! (Awww I kid, y'all know I love him.) That shot's from the just-dropped trailer for Hotel Mumbai, a film that's been bouncing around in limbo for a bit thanks to the Weinstein Company collapse but which is finally getting a theatrical run come March 22nd. 

We shared some shots from the movie previously right here, which co-stars Dev Patel and Jason Isaacs and tells the story of the deadly terrorist attack in 2008 -- it looks like, at least via this trailer, a real heart-racer. Watch:

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Around the Armie in Eighty Days

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We have some Armie Hammer news to share today, whoop whoop! (Unfortunately none of it includes where the hell the above picture originated from or who he's with there, but I'm happy to share that anyway.) First up he's lined up a new movie! He will costar opposite Anthony Mackie in Banker, which sounds kind of similar to Sorry to Bother You or Spike Lee's upcoming BlackkKlansman in that it's about "code switching" and putting a "palatable" white face on the front of a black enterprise -- Mackie plays a banker trying to build a real-estate empire who hires Armie's character (a construction worker) to be the company's front. Banker is being directed by George Nolfi, who directed The Adjustment Bureau. 

Next up we've got news on a project Armie's already done that we were worried about - Hotel Mumbai, his movie about the deadly terrorist bombings in India in 2008 with Dev Patel and Jason Isaacs, among others, was caught up in the Weinstein Company's collapse, but it sounds like things might be sorted out since the film's now premiering in Toronto next month! And yes that means Armie will be in Toronto at the same time as Timothée Chalamet, who'll be there with Beautiful Boy, so let's pray our boys are plotting out their reunion as we speak. If you'd like to see a few more pictures from Hotel Mumbai hit the jump...

Today's Mood

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First things first just LOOOK how enormous the six foot five inch Armie Hammer's hand is in that picture. Thank you, Jason Isaacs, for sharing. But a second and perhaps even more significant thing - did you see Jason's screed against the presence of noxious little man Sean Spicer at the Emmys? I am so glad SOMEBODY called that shit out - go follow this hero on Instagram immediately.

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Good Morning, World

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A happy 54th birthday to the ever-slightly-sinister Jason Isaacs today - these shots are from the 2012 TV series Awake that starred him as a cop stuck between two different realities that I never saw a single second of (did any of you?) thereby making me part of the problem, again. Jason has a few such projects scattering his filmography - but he also has, you know, the Harry Potter franchise - but perhaps his upcoming role as a Captain on the new Star Trek will finally gain him some brand new firm footing. Just don't don a red shirt, dude. And you can see some more of Jason right here that's worth seeing.

Good Morning, Gratuitous Ethan Embry

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Our long National Nightmare is over! Okay okay not that National Nightmare, a different National Nightmare -- the long long wait for the new movie from Sean Byrne, director of The Loved Ones, is over! The Devil's Candy starring Ethan Embry is out in "theaters" and on demand today. Hooray! In case you missed the trailer watch it here.

I put "theaters" in quotation marks because even here in NYC the film's only doing midnight screenings at one theater as far as I can tell, so seeing it in a theater might be a task for most of us. (I sure as fuck am too old for midnight screenings myself.) But technically they can get away with saying that. Anyway, hi Ethan Embry!

This is not your teenage girlfriend's pretend boyfriend Ethan Embry anymore. Can't Hardly Wait? To get a really very close look at those tattoos, maybe. I'm loving hardcore Ethan though - he's been on a roll with horror movies. In the past couple of years he's been in The Guest with Dan Stevens (my review) and Cheap Thrills with Pat Healy (my review) and Late Phases with Nick Damici (my review) and now this. All absolutely solid flicks, or in the case of The Guest, absolute gems. Keep it up, Ethan!

Anyway let's get to ogling part -- in case you're wondering most of this stuff is from the TV series called Brotherhood, which Ethan starred on for a couple of years a decade ago, which starred Jason Isaacs and Jason Clarke as brothers...

... who sit really close to one another on beds in hotel rooms. This sounds like my kind of show. I mean all that and Ethan Embry filling out a pair of tighty-whities rather... substantially... what else do you need? Hit the jump for the rest...

Comfortably Dumb

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I like weird things. I like going to the Mutter museum and staring at deformed fetuses in glass jars. I like the scene in The Abominable Dr. Phibes where we see how Vincent Price's skull-face is hidden under his human mask. Well so clearly does the director Gore Verbinski, but Gore Verbinski has never met a fun scary idea that he couldn't just strangle the fuck dead. A Cure For Wellness could have been an entertaining 90 minute creep-fest but instead what we get is going on three hours of interminable incoherent bullshit. 

Oh Verbinski certainly has a way with dream-like imagery - the endless corridors of a steam-bath haunted by four-legged creatures and black pools of water; a manic dance of white robes swirling and twirling fiendishly. They just don't add up to anything. Wellness is kind of like if the videotape from The Ring had been one of those 90s two cassette bundles like how James Cameron's Titanic was packaged - its just that by the time the curse has gotten to you you've already fallen asleep out of boredom.

He also doesn't know how to make his nightmare logic consistent -  watch something like Suspiria and yes, what the characters do might not make any sense, but there's a horrible inevitability to it; it makes its own fateful sort of irresistible sense. Nothing anybody does in A Cure For Wellness makes the slightest lick of sense but there's no captivating mystery to it; I could have written the entire movie after the first 20 minutes of set-up. Instead it just feels as if the film was filmed enough to make twelve versions and then they grabbed the footage off the floor in armfuls and said, "This will do! This is movie shaped!"

It's got a terrible case of Wander-Around-icitis - Dane DeHaan could've gotten to the bottom of what's going on if he'd simply ended any conversation he begins, instead of mid-conversation just walking off in another direction on some random tangent. And that's all that ever happens - the laziness on display in keeping him going in circles is staggering. There's just not enough mystery to unravel though, so he just walks in circles, hitting the same notes again and again and again until I just wanted to go set the damn castle on fire myself so we could get to the end we'd seen coming for hours.

The frustrating thing is that Verbinski does like the things I like and a good movie could have been assembled with these ideas... if he hadn't been in charge. Watching Wellness I thought often of what Ken Russell - an actual mad-man - would've done with this material. But everything Verbinski does, even down to the most deviant, feels worn to the nub, as if he and a boardroom of executives drew up pie-charts and diagrams about how much tooth-abuse or incest was a millisecond too much. His weirdness is by committee.

And he's a humorless filmmaker, so a role that Vincent Price would've gloriously sissified up here gets turned into a black hole of anti-charisma by Jason Isaacs in a parade of starchy white jackets. We know thanks to Harry Potter that Isaacs is game for some sneering camp, so its clear direction was at fault, especially since it sucks the like out of Dane DeHaan as well - these are actors possible of flourish, of having actual derangement in their eyes, but A Cure For Wellness isn't interested. It's anesthesia for the imagination.

Pics of the Day

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Everybody who's anybody is spending today reading Slate's extensive oral history of Tony Kushner's play Angels in America, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary - when I say extensive I mean extensive; I'm saving it for lunchtime but scanning down through it it might take dinner too! Anyway what did catch my eye scanning down through it you've no doubt by now taken note of yourself -- apparently once upon a golden age the play included Daniel Craig and Jason Isaacs in its cast, and pictures exist! Not enough pictures, clearly, never enough, but a pair at least. This sort of thing makes one cuckoo crazy for time travel's invention, ya know?

The Boys From Brazil

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Let's see, the just released trailer for the omnibus film Rio I Love You (in the vein of the earlier Paris and New York iterations) features prominent Rodrigo Santoro and Vincent Cassel...

... not to mention Jason Isaacs amd Ryan Kwanten...

... hmm... do we think I might be interested in this movie?

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Meet The New Men In New Rosemary's Life

Well they're plunking ahead with the Rosemary's Baby remake at NBC, even though I've sent numerous evil hexes their direction - I guess I'm not a very good Satanist after all. Everything I learned I learned from Samantha on Bewitched and I guess she's turned out to be a lousy piece of shit teacher. Thanks for nothing, Samantha! We learned last week that it's Zoe Saldana that's grabbing her career by the ears and tossing it straight into the dumpster by taking on Mia Farrow's iconic role; now we've got word of who's playing the two main men in Rosemary's life. 

Guy Woodhouse aka Rosemary's baby-chucking hubby, who was played with what some people say was too much obvious devilry by John Cassavetes in Roman Polanski's film, is going to be played by Patrick J. Adams. Adams is on that Suits show. I have never seen it. He kind of has a baby face so I guess they're angling for the opposite tack than what Cassavetes brought. I'll defend Cassavetes to my grave - I think it's Rosemary's inability to see the evil right in front of her that is the scary thing. Anyway then there's the new Roman...

... who's going to be played by Jason Isaacs. Straight up: Jason Isaacs is a sexy beast. This is going to drastically alter the relationship between Rosemary and Roman. Jason Isaacs is not a father figure (hell, a grandfather figure) to someone Zoe Saldana's age. He is a love interest. 

That said, I don't mind this change? I mean I mind all of this even happening, but if it has to, well I'm not saying it will be good, but it does alter the dynamics at play and it will be interesting to see how it plays out. Kind of like it's interesting to watch a snake devour a mouse in slow-motion on YouTube. And I'm assuming this means that Roman's wife Minnie will also be played by someone much younger than Ruth Gordon, too. Basically it's just going to be a bunch of sexy people in an apartment building. It's going to be that failed television show 666 Park Avenue, just set in Paris. Everything interesting, all of the weird relationships, are going to be sanded down to generics-ville. And then we can all go watch our the Mia Farrow version on DVD and forget this ever happened. It's a plan!

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Good Morning, World

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A happy 50th birthday to Jason Isaacs, who - probably to his annoyance - will always be Draco's sneering papa from the Harry Potter movies to me. Or maybe it's not annoying to him - he probably made a good penny off of his two sneering scenes per movie. Whatever. That shot above is from some 1995 miniseries called Dangerous Lady, and yes, he was in bed with another dude therein. I'm not sure who the other dude is, but that's Jason's bum he's handling.

And here's some video, with them kissing and what not, although it should be forewarned that things go downhill from sexy to psychotic pretty quick... not that I personally mind, but mayhaps you've got more delicate less disturbed sensibilities...

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Order of the Kick-Ass!

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Harry Potter's one of those entities I just can't talk about reasonably. I love the books and the world too much; my fan-dom gets in the way. Even putting a grade next to my last-night screening of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was incredibly difficult because I can't really divorce myself from the geek-overload I experience seeing certain things visualized that I've had bouncing around in my imagination for years now - I know in my cinephile-brain that the movie was a bit of an intermediary chapter in the Potter series, just like the book was; that it was a lot of set-up for things to come and as a movie standing on its own it maybe failed in that regard. A lot happened, but there wasn't a lot of with regards to that "beginning, middle, end" stuff that something that stands on its own usually has.

But, even while I can acknowledge such a thing, kind of if I float outside of my own body, if I drift back down into what's actually going on within my own consciousness it's all "EEEEEEE!!!!!" reverberating from ear to ear, cheek to cheeks. So I can't possibly review this movie, except in tiny sound-bites: Imelda Staunton was Dolores Umbridge and reminded me of how I had to set aside the Phoenix book several times because I wanted to crawl into the sheets of paper and throttle the life out of her. I wish there'd been more of Helena Bonham Carter as Bellatrix because she juiced up the screen every time she appeared. Far and away the best work done by all three main kids - Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson have really come into their own by now. I also thought Michael Gambon came into his own as Dumbledore here and I didn't think of Richard Harris at all this time, and find myself really looking forward to what Gambon will do with the stuff he's given in the next chapter. Other high points - Jason Isaacs got more to do, yay! And Evanna Lynch was magical (pardon the pun) as weird-witch Luna Lovegood.

All in all it was a great adaptation of the book and a fine film; I'd still rank it behind Azkaban and Goblet, but definitely before Chris Columbus' first two of the series (not to knock Columbus' contributions; they were just, like the books, all about getting us into the world). I think director David Yates was a completely valid choice and can't wait to see what he'll do with the next installment.

I got to see the movie on IMAX 3D as well (hence me seeing it so late; damned sold-out shows!), and man that was fun. Also, occassionally disorienting. But when it worked - like that awesome battle between Voldemort and Dumbledore - it was stand-the-hairs-on- the-back-of-your-neck good.
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