Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

Rubber (2010)

Lieutenant Chad: In the Steven Spielberg movie "E.T.," why is the alien brown? No reason. In "Love Story," why do the two characters fall madly in love with each other? No reason. In Oliver Stone's "JFK," why is the President suddenly assassinated by some stranger? No reason. In the excellent "Chain Saw Massacre" by Tobe Hooper, why don't we ever see the characters go to the bathroom or wash their hands like people do in real life? Absolutely no reason. Worse, in "The Pianist" by Polanski, how come this guy has to hide and live like a bum when he plays the piano so well? Once again the answer is, no reason. I could go on for hours with more examples. The list is endless. You probably never gave it a thought, but all great films, without exception, contain an important element of no reason. And you know why? Because life itself is filled with no reason. Why can't we see the air all around us? No reason. Why are we always thinking? No reason. Why do some people love sausages and other people hate sausages? No fuckin' reason.

In this house we worship director and birthday boy Quentin Dupieux, who's never made a bad movie yet -- I recommend every single one. Granted I haven't seen them all, but I've seen more than I bet most of you have, having seen seven of his eleven full-length features to date. Including the just-recently-released (typically) bizarro superhero comedy Smoking Causes Coughing with Vincent Lacoste and Gilles Lellouche and a few others as Power-Rangers-esque do-gooders who spend more time bickering over nonsense than they do fighting rubber-monsters.

It's a lot of fun but I loved Incredible But True even more, which also came out in the past year -- that one's about a couple who buy a new home that they discover has a time-portal in it, which leads to, yes, even more nonsense. Nobody is doing goofy surrealism like Dupieux is today...

... you get the feeling he just lets his little ideas take him where ever the hell they want to go, saying "and next" and "and next" as he writes the scripts, with nothing off-limits. It's absolutely invigorating. I come out of his itty-bitty small-budget always-90-minute movies feeling the limitless nature of imagination far more than I even have from a single MCU or DC film. Go watch something like Deerskin or Mandibles and tell me that's not truly living!

Good Morning, World

Consider my joy -- Consider my joy! Consider it! -- when I found out that in the latest OSS movie in France (it's a whole series of spy films -- their James Bond basically, only comedic) there exists some homoerotic sexual tension between Jean Dujardin (the star of the latest iteration of the series) and our favorite French Gumby himself Pierre Niney? 

The joy is impressive to consider, I promise you. Almost as impressive to consider as that prominent package that Pierre's packing downstairs in these gifs. Oh I know those briefs are loaded -- that is to say I know his crotch has been stuffed for the gag (insert "gag me on that crotch" gag here). But if I can't play make-believe with Pierre Niney's bulge then I might as well toss in the towel, baby. Oh and...

... that happens too. Yes, also a gag, but I refer you to the previous paragraph. Maybe we should actually see this OSS movie? (For the record it's called OSS: From Africa With Love.) They've never really been my bag -- they're a little broad -- but these gifs and Pierre Niney in general are doing their work on my will. Anyway happy Monday morning, hit the jump for all the gifs...

The Zombie Artist

This is... weird news! Unexpected news today. You remember the Oscar-winning film The Artist? Directed by Michel Hazanavicius it won Best Picture and Best Director in 2012, along with a statue for its leading man Jean Dujardin -- it was black-and-white and silent all over, and a lot of people decided after the fact that they hated it even though...

... it was a perfectly charming little thing. Anyway today comes word that Hazanavicius is re-teaming with his wife, The Artist's leading-lady Bérénice Bejo, as well as the actor Romain Duris (seen above, we love him), for...

... a remake of the Japanese zombie-comedy hit One Cut of the Dead? You see what I mean? Weird news! Not at all the news where you thought all of this was going. (Here is my review of One Cut of the Dead, which is wonderful, which you should see, and which you should stay totally unspoiled for because it has several twists and turns you won't see coming.) Hazanavicius' film just started filming and is called Final Cut (or possible Comme Z in France) and I am ready for this. I haven't seen any of Hazanavicius' films since The Artist -- he's made a couple including Godard Mon Amour with Louis Garrel playing Jean-luc Godard which I wanted to see but never got around to. 

Fringed For His Pleasure

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It begins with the kernel of an idea. Like literally let us say for our argument's sake an actual kernel. A popcorn kernel. What if, instead of paper and metal, we used popcorn kernels for currency? Would they be worth more popped or un-popped? Would movie theaters then become our banking institutions? Picture foiled Jiffy Pop containers piled up like gold bars in Fort Knox, high to the ceilings of the local multiplex. Is butter change? Salt cubes doubloons? Anything's possible in this brave new popcorn kernel world.

That's the sort of childlike imaginarium you feel steeped in whenever you step into one of the films of French director Quentin Dupieux -- a place where car-tires hunt people for sport and TV sets use radio waves to explode us from the inside, just because he thought that first kernel up and went step by outlandish step from there. And now, thanks to his latest miniature wonder of a movie called Deerskin, we will enter a place where Oscar-winning actor Jean Dujardin becomes fixated on stealing all of the jackets in the world so that his own jacket, made of yeah you guessed it, becomes the only most fabulous coat in all of the land. Watch out, Joseph -- The Artist is coming for all of your Technicolor Dreams!

I know it's a bit of an easy gag, perhaps not a friendly, on the face anyway, one either, to say that one of your favorite things about a movie was its runtime was short. But I also feel like, at this point, Dupieux knows where Iright 'm coming from -- all of his movies introduce their central goofy conceit, play it out to its absurd illogical and always delightful conclusion, and never once overstay their welcome. Deerskin gives us 75 straight minutes of exquisite ridiculousness, and then exits stage left leaving me wanting just enough more, and not a whit less.

Dujardin plays Georges, a man who's just lost his wife and who seems to be having, uhh, a midlife crisis of sorts. We meet him driving into a mountain village where he flushes his (it must be said absolutely beautiful) old corduroy jacket down a gas station toilet; he then immediately spends every penny he has on him on the fringed deerskin coat that will come to define him... or really the absence of a Him now -- like a calfskin succubi the coat begins telling Georges things that would've made Richard Berkowitz's dog blush.

As Georges meets the people of this little mountain village -- including a totally up to the challenge Adèle Haenel, matching Dujardin eye-bug for eye-bug, as the local barkeeper -- he and his coat begin hatching their scheme: they will direct a movie as a ruse to steal people's coats from them. I would say this makes sense in context but it's nonsense there too, most delicious nonsense, and I adored every nonsensical frame of it. By the time Georges was dragging a ceiling fan down a darkened street and decapitating people with it I was, mais oui,  entirely enraptured -- wrap me up in this sweet warm Deerskin, it's some toasty nonsense I now call home.

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Deerskin will be begin screening online at virtual theaters around the country (including my beloved FLC here in New York) tomorrow -- you can click here and see if it's playing at one of the virtual cinemas near you. Here's the trailer:

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7 Off My Head: France In My Pants

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First and foremost everybody say hello to the actor Thimotée Robart -- another Thimotée, who knew? Anyway while I don't particularly consider myself a Francophile -- I don't speak French, and I don't really have much desire to visit France, except maybe their portion of the Alps -- I always question that stance when this time of year comes around. This time of year is when FLC here in New York announces their annual "Rendez-vous with French Cinema" series  -- which will run from March 5th to March 15th this year -- and I inevitably find myself wanting to see a dozen at least of the titles they're premiering. You can see 2020's entire line-up at this link, including New Thimotée's movie which looks interesting and is called Burning Ghost. Below I'm going to share several I'm personally jonesing for.

On a Magical Night 

(dir. Christophe Honoré)

I literally just posted about my love for Honoré's previous film, the gay love story Sorry Angel with Vincent Lacoste, so it shouldn't be surprising that I'm fairly psyched to see Honoré's new film, which also stars Lacoste. I've even posted about this one before! 

Proxima

(dir. Alice Winocour)

Winocour's last film was the marvelous Disorder with Matthias Schoenaerts (my review) -- already I'm sold on the strength of that. But this movie stars my beloved Eva Green! Eva Green, so brutally under-appreciated, playing an astronaut! Eva in Space! Bring it on! 

Who Do You Think I Am // The Truth

(dir. Safy Nebbou / Hirokazu Kore-eda)

A Juliette Binoche double-feature! The Truth is the opening night movie and is from Shoplifters director Kore-eda -- I didn't love that movie quite as much as most people did (I love me some melodrama, but that movie was a little soppy for me) but with a cast that also includes Catherine Deneuve and Ethan Hawke and Ludivine Sagnier I'm curious. 

I'm admittedly a little more curious about Binoche's other movie at the fest (and PS she'll be there for both of these movies!) though, which has the greatest actress in the world creating a cat-fishing profile on Facebook. The movie co-stars François Civil -- we are definitely fans, as this gratuitous post attests -- and Nebbou's last movie In the Forests of Siberia with Raphaël Personnaz had this scene in it (cue Tex Avery bulging eyeball effect) so yes please, we want to see this. 

Deerskin

(dir. Quentin Dupieux)

Quentin Dupieux once made a movie about a murderous car tire, and I've followed him ever since. (Read my review of his last film Keep An Eye Out here, which I saw thanks to this series last year.) Anyway I thought that Dupieux working with his new leading man The Artist Jean Dujardin would be plenty to get me excited, and it was, but then I saw that their leading lady is Portrait of a Lady on Fire marvel Adèle Haenel, and I really rocketed right over the moon on this one. Per usual with a Dupieux movie I really have no idea what to expect from this thing's plot summary, which has Dujardin becoming obsessed with a new deer-skin jacket.

Perfect Nanny

(dir. Lucie Borleteau)

This sounds basically like an upscale re-do of The Hand That Rocks the Cradle, and I am a sucker for that shit. Will it probably be a little classier? Maybe. Who cares? Bring on the crazy nanny! It also co-stars Antoine Reinartz from BPM as the bedeviled daddy.
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Joan of Arc

(dir. Bruno Dumont)

John Waters had this movie on his best of 2019 list.

I mean so did Cahiers du Cinéma but really... John said.

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Tickets for this year's "Rendez-vous With French Cinema" series go on sale on February 20th -- again you can see the entire line-up at FLC's website and I recommend you do, there are even more titles I didn't even get to that look exciting. I mean I didn't even talk about the Vincent Cassel movie, or director Claude Lelouche doing a sequel to his 1966 classic A Man and a Woman with original stars Jean-Louis Trintignant and Anouk Aimée. Imagine the nerve.

5 Off My Head: Fur Friends

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Happy National Pet Day, everybody! I don't have a pet (well we do have a fish, one that has lasted an astonishingly long time as far as fish go, but he's more the boyfriend's than he is mine) so I am just living vicariously through everybody else's love for their fur friends today. Give them a big sloppy kiss from me! 

Anyway with Lean on Pete (which is basically a dog movie, just with a horse) and Isle of Dogs (which is definitely just a dog movie) in movie theaters I've been thinking a lot about Man's Best Friend lately, so here let's take a look at this totally random list that I made off the top of my head of the first five favorite movie dogs that popped into my head. Enjoy...

My 5 Favorite Movie Dogs

Max from How The Grinch Stole Christmas

Beatrice from Best in Show

Barney from Gremlins

Zero from The Nightmare Before Christmas

The mutated wolf-dog from The Thing

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What are some of your favorite movie dogs?

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Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

... you can learn from:

The Artist (2011)

Al: You and I belong to another era, George.

The world is talking now. People want new faces,

talking faces. I wish it wasn't like this,

but the public wants fresh meat,

and the public is never wrong.

George: I'm the one people come to see.

They never needed to hear me.

A happy 50th birthday to Oscar winning director Michel Hazanavicius today. I liked The Artist well enough - not Best Picture enough, but well enough - but it still seems really weird that it swept so many Oscars now, right? It's not just me? 

In a weird coincidence before realizing today is Hazanavicius' birthday I'd just been watching this teaser for his new movie called Redoubtable, which has my beloved Louis Garrel playing the director Jean-Luc Godard, and...

... wowza! What a difference a 

bald-patch can make. Watch it at this link.

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Happy Giving Tuesday!

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To give is better than to receive, 

said some dummy one time.

Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... getting baked with Jean Dujardin.

I hadn't thought of looking Jean up in a little while since he seems to have taken himself off back permanently to France (last I saw him was in The Connection in March), but then that dog went and died last week (RIP Dog) and so I looked him up and voila, it's a beach bingo. Hit the jump for a couple more...

Happy Weekend From Gilles & Jean

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I don't know what is making Gilles Lellouche and Jean Dujardin so giggly in this video, but it's infectious, boys. (Maybe they're remembering this, which also makes me glad.)  I'll be seeing their new movie The Connection this weekend thanks to the "Rendezvous With French Cinema" series just starting up here in NYC - I think Gilles is supposed to be there for the screening, so I'll try to ask him in person exactly what gives him a happy.

Let's French Again

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Speaking of attractive gentlemen who can't keep their hands off of each other in public places hey look it's one-time butt-fuckers Gilles Lellouche & Jean Dujardin! God, the French heat wafting off that shot, it smells of fromage and musk and manliness. I actually think that shot's from around the same time the time they made their butt-fucking movie together, but I do have a reason to post it other than I like thinking about their butt-fucking movie - I mean all the links in this post so far have been to different posts about it so clearly I like thinking about it.

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No I'm here today because back in October I took a look at the trailer for Le French, their new movie together - well that movie's just one of about two dozen titles that'll be showing at the Film Society of Lincoln Center's annual Rendez-Vous with French Cinema series, which runs from March 6th through March 15th. There are several movies I'm pretty excited to see, but mostly I'm looking forward to...

... their pal Guillaume Canet being here in NYC in person. Twice! He's going to be there for the screenings of both In the Name of My Daughter, André Téchiné's new film which also stars Catherine Denueve, as well as the serial-killer-thriller Next Time I’ll Aim for the Heart, which I am very much looking forward to. Here's the trailer for the latter:

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And if after watching that you have no idea why I'm looking 

forward to this movie then I don't know what to say to you.

False Advertising, Le French

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The Playlist's post about the just-released trailer for Le French, which reunites one-time-buttfuckers Jean Dujardin and Gilles Lellouche, is full of misplaced insinuations! First off they start it with the above picture of Lellouche in the movie but they only mention Dujardin and if you look quick you might think it's Dujardin, but it is not. No shirtless Dujardin for you! Not that I'm knocking shirtless Lellouche but I like to know who I am looking at. And secondly I figured based on that picture we'd get some good gratuity in the trailer, but nope, it's just a bunch of people shooting at each other and having side-burns, blurgh. There is the below shot of Jean in his little swim-trunks but it's too fast and that dumb little girl's in the way. Get lost, little girl!

Who Wears Short Shorts

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Jean Dujardin wears short shorts. (via) 

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Good Morning, World

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A happy 42nd birthday to Jean Dujardin today - I thought he was older than 42, didn't you? I thought at least mid to late 40s. I guess I just associate him with old-timey things thanks to The Artist, although if that logic stood that would make him be like 100-something so clearly I'm just simple-minded. Anyway I was looking at his IMDb page to see what's up with him and I was surprised to see Gardel, that bio-pic of the Brazilian tango dancer, was up in there - we've been watching that movie for a looooong time since once upon a time (2008, in fact) it was going to star Raoul Bova and Thomas Kretschmann (long sigh). Now it says Dujardin is in there but Bova's still attached? I don't think this movie is ever going to happen. (And even if it does it's not going to involve Jean & Raoul going at it anyway so I should stop caring.)

Good Morning, World

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Have any of you seen Möbius? I don't know if it even got a proper release - maybe in France? I've had my eye on it since way back when I first saw some of these pictures; it's on Netflix now, so I suppose I'll add it to the ol' queue. For a long while (up until oh let's say thirty seconds ago) I actually thought it had something to do with the artist Jean Giraud, like a bio-pic or something, which sounded interesting (Have you read The Incal? You should!), but no it's just some sort of spy-in-love thriller thing. Well it got Jean shirtless anyway, so it's worth something. Hit the jump for more!