Good Morning, World

The first trailer for David "Hell or High Water" Mackenzie's film Fuze starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Sam Worthington and Gugu Mbatha-Raw dropped yesterday and hilariously kicks off with these two shots of Aaron half-naked -- I love being pandered to. Watch the trailer here. I told you about this movie previously when Aaron & Theo were announced as co-stars because obviously, although there's not much in the way of interaction (i.e. explicit oral sex) between them in this trailer -- let's hope that changes for the final product. I don't see a release date yet so just twiddle your damn thumbs til then!

I should add that Theo & Aaron were very much seen hanging out on set together (see below sexy evidence) so let's hope this movie does actually understand its assignment:

MORE PROOF THIS MOVIE LOOKS REAL GOOD ALREADY pic.twitter.com/pM95y6azlF

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) August 31, 2024

Murder in a Blue World

I know you're not supposed to review the movie you had in your head, you're supposed to review the movie you watched -- the one the movie-makers actually gave you -- but allow me a minute to indulge that destructive impulse of mine first. Because the second Avatar movie, 2022's The Way of Water, really made me think I knew what we were getting next (from a franchise I have mostly enjoyed, even while acknowledging that the films are obviouly very dumb) and I was excited about seeing it. 

In WoW we see Kiri (the young Sigourney clone) start to exhibit, with wicked coolness, super-powers where she can telepathically command the strange creatures of the sea to do her bidding. Now if you know anything about Cameron's extra-filmic obsessions you know he's all about deep sea exploration -- back in 2012 he became the first human being to pilot a one-man submersible into the Mariana Trench for god's sake! 

So anyway it didn't seem an extraordinary leap for my mind to imagine that the next film really would be capitalizing on Kiri's powers and taking us deeper into the ocean, allowing Cameron and his special-effects wizards to dream up an entire world of wild new creatures down there. Just imagine! I sure did. Deep sea life has been one of my obsessions since I was a wee little kid and saw my first image of a giant squid fighting a whale (pretty sure that's the image every kid sees first). I found myself giddy over the possibilities. Cameron using his seemingly bottomless access to hundreds of millions of dollars to deliver my childhood dreams? If the Avatar franchise is for anything that is very much what it is for. (Remember how the first movie really made us feel like we were flying on the back of a dragon like nothing had before?)

Anyway there's one scene in the disastrously boring and redundant Avatar: Fire and Ash where Cameron sort of goes there, unleashing a carnivorous pod of deep sea squid monsters -- well I guess it's two scenes since these creatures show up twice, but the second is really just more of the first. These creatures are very cool! And in so being only serve to highlight what the film is lacking otherwise -- imagination.

Because the entire story of Fire and Ash is been there, done that two times already, was sorta bored the second time so there's no excuse to be doing this all yet again, dude. We're introduced to a new colony of Na'vi, an aggressive deep-jungle tribe who worship fire and become obsessed with humankind's weaponry, hellbent as they are on killing everybody and becoming top of the heap. Which leads to a bunch of scenes we've seen a dozen times already with the kids getting in danger and fighting on sinking ships and yadda yadda so very many yaddas. 

There is one other highlight -- Oona Chaplin absolutely murders it as the leader of the Ash people, Varang. Pure camp, slinking around, hissing and shrieking, being a total vamp (she fucks!), one imagines if the Avatar franchise ever comes anywhere near drag culture it will be to celebrate sweet psychotic Varang. 

But as I said on Bluesky right after my press screening a few weeks back (seen below), all I could think wading through the unbearable sludge of Avatar: Fire and Ash's three-plus-hour runtime was the word "enough." I have had plenty. More than plenty. I am positively sick with plenty. James Cameron, we're begging you -- make something else! Cameron's ability with crafting an action sequence remains exquisite -- these scenes all look great and move great individually. We've just really seen enough of this blue shit, James! Enough for several lifetimes, and enough for several clone's lifetimes after those.

Oh guess that AVATAR embargo broke. I considered just writing one word: ENOUGH. I liked the first two but watching this one in a post-AI-poisoned world, a longing for reality overwhelmed me from the first frame & nothing rose above. Oona Chaplin and the squids are great. Otherwise... well, ENOUGH.

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— Jason Adams (@jamnpp.bsky.social) December 2, 2025 at 1:35 PM

I, Blue Boys

I think there's only one movie out this weekend in theaters and that movie is James Cameron's Avatar sequel, which I reviewed right here -- it's worth seeing, I think. If you can go into it with an open mind, just expecting what it is. Anyway above is a photo (via) of actor Jamie Flatters, who plays the oldest son of Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldana's characters, meaning no he looks nothing like all that in the movie, unfortunately. In the movie he looks like this:

I never know how much of those Na'vi bodies to take as real bodies -- I mean is any of that butt-cheek even based on Sam Worthington butt-cheek? What a confusing world we live in today. No wonder everything is collapsing. Anyway for me personally there won't be any going to the movie theaters -- I'm planning on re-watching White Noise and The Eternal Daughter and probably Triangle of Sadness this weekend. (All of which I have screeners of.) The boyfriend hasn't seen any of those and I'm thinking about my list of favorite movies for 2022 and could use a re-watch on all of them. If y'all watch anything good -- or if you want to share your thoughts on Avatar -- hit up the comments, and have a great weekend!

Na Na Na Na'vi I'm Living Without You

It took me about an hour into Avatar: The Way of Water to feel the question, "Why the hell am I watching another Avatar movie again?" had been answered. It wasn't like some plot switch was flipped where the story or the characters suddenly became complex -- like the first film, Cameron is more than happy to just glide along with all of the ol' War and Westerns cliches and tropes. It's not really an answer I can pin down to words. (Like the script and its dialogue, hardy har.) No it's more of a feeling -- or perhaps the lack of one. A gleeful numbness. I suppose it just took that first hour for me to stop caring about any of those things and to find myself once again submerged under the spectacular weight of James Cameron's limitless visual imagination. I'll admit upfront I was a sucker for the first movie in 2009; I went to see it three times in the theater because goddamn what an exhilarating ride it was, once that same sensory-overload took over.

Avatar: The Way of Water does it again. Its last two hours fully beat me into giddy dumb submission. Cameron remains the finest director of action scenes alive -- nobody but nobody can cut together a sequence like he can that will have you truly feeling the wind in your hair... or I suppose in this case the water. This sequel feels like Avatar times Titanic times T2 plus a dusting of The Abyss on top for good measure. He wrings immersive beauty over and over and over again from sheer ridiculousness -- nothing about this should work, but we fully doubt James Cameron at our own folly. 

I don't feel much need to drown us in plot descriptions, because who cares? Some time has passed, Jake Sully's a dad and Neytiri's his big blue mama bear, and so we've got a raft of kids to get to know -- don't ask me to distinguish them all beyond "Teen Bad Boy" and "The Littlest One" yet, save most importantly the one called Kiri, inexplicably resurrecting Sigourney Weaver into the franchise (her character died and was like turned into a tree in the original right? Don't make me look that up please). Kiri is a waifish teenage horse-girl who dreamily stares into space and starts to discover hidden powers, and Kiri is a delight. One of the twenty Avatar sequels needs to be The Kiri Movie, I demand it. Avatar: Kiri O'Clock or whatever. Cameron makes the moolah, he can name the damn thing. As long as he makes the damn thing.

Point being Avatar: The Way of Water makes even the best MCU movies look like chin dribble. Cameron is so relentlessly efficiently skilled at the busting of blockbusters at this point that I don't know why anybody would even fuss to argue. Do I want other things in my cinema, of course. Will this come anywhere near my favorite film list of the year, of course not. But goddamn it's ruthlessly epic and entertaining and a staggering behemoth of big screen wizardry to behold. So get over yourselves and just behold the thing. Forget four quadrant filmmaking -- this sucker's fifteen wide. It's speaking immersive gibberish to the whales, so blow baby blow.

Jonathan Majors Takes A Lickin'

Leaving my desk a little early today for a couple of screenings -- I'm actually going to a theater to see the trailer (yes just the trailer) for the new Avatar movie. I liked the original Avatar a lot and am of the school that it's top-tier foolish to doubt James Cameron at this point, so I'm excited, naysayers be damned. And then I am seeing the new Doctor Strange film -- a little dispirited after Sam Raimi leveled our expectations last week when he said we should expect this to be less Sam Raimi and more typical MCU, but... it's okay. I liked the last Doctor Strange movie and I love Elizabeth Olsen as the Scarlet Witch (even if I hate that she only acts in MCU projects now -- let the woman do something else dammit!) so I think I'll probably like this well enough, fingers crossed. What I'm really hoping...

... is that Jonathan Majors makes a surprise appearance as his Loki character (or some iteration thereof) before his already-expected return in the next Ant-Man -- that's my one wish. We will see. But speaking of Majors, y'all remember those beefcake-tastic photos I shared from the set of the third Creed film several weeks back? I missed him briefly talking about the shoot to Variety, so here's what he said about that experience:

"He trained for at least a year to prepare. His hands have become so big he couldn’t even squeeze on a wristband for the Chanel pre-Oscars party. 'Over time, they just got bigger and bigger,' Majors says. Despite playing a boxer in the movie, which marks Jordan’s directorial debut, Majors insists he wasn’t left with any injuries: 'I got punched in the face about 100 times, but it’s all OK!'"

Netflix Is Coming For Your Kids This October

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Netflix has released the first disorienting poster (above) and the first image (below) from Vincenzo Natali's forthcoming horror flick In the Tall Grass, which is adapted from a short story by Stephen King and his son Joe Hill. And they're also letting us know the movie will hit Netflix on October 4th -- that's only 21 damn days from now, holy crap! And we've been posting about this one forever -- well since 2015 anyway, which is "forever" now. The film is about two little kids who get lured into a field by the sound of a crying boy, which turns out to be a trap of some sort. I never read the story, but somebody in this will be played by Patrick Wilson so I'm there.

Netflix is doing us all a big scary favor this holiday season though -- they're releasing a brand new horror flick every single week in October! They're calling it "Netflix and Chills" and ITTG is just the first thing on the menu -- October 11th will bring us Fractured with Sam Worthington and Lily Rabe as parents who take their injured daughter to an emergency room that turns into a nightmare. Most excitingly Fractured was directed by Brad Anderson, the great director of Session 9 and The Machinist.

Then October 18th brings us Eli, the latest scare flick from Citadel and Sinister 2 director Ciarán Foy starring Max Martini and Kelly Reilly as the parents of a dying child who put their faith in a doctor (played by Lili Taylor) with an experimental program that leads to, well, happenings. And finally come October 25th we get Rattlesnake, which stars the always welcome Carmen Egojo as a mother whose kid is bitten by that thing in the title and who's then forced to make a deal with the devil (not sure if that's literal or not!) to save her. Anyway here's a trailer for the whole shebang which gives us first glimpses of every one of those titles:

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Kinda funny how every one of those is about putting kids 

in danger, right? Not really "funny ha ha," though. Just... funny.

On Top of Spaghetti

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I keep having to reference the Brian De Palma documentary that I watched at the New York Film Festival without actually being able to review it (that'll come later over at The Film Experience once the fest properly begins) but BDP has so much to say about creating cinema therein that it's kind of infects your brain, once you've seen it, with lessons. And so watching Everest I kept thinking about what he had to say about delineating space in a film, and how important it is to make sure that the audience knows their layout, and understands what is happening where. It's an old lesson, one Alfred Hitchcock was always incredibly strident about too, but it's a basic building block that too many directors cannot seem to get ahold of... and Everest suffers for this sin mightily.

Compare Everest to Mad Max Fury Road -- this might not seem immediately obvious, but they both have the same basic narrative thrust: Mad Max Fury Road is about a bunch of characters running away from one location and then turning around and running back towards where they started. Meanwhile Everest is about a bunch of characters starting at the bottom of a mountain, getting to the top, and then just trying to get down again.

And yet Everest bungles our understanding of this straight line at every, dare I say it, turn. It never gives us a clear sense of where things are or how far apart they are -- Sam Worthington's team is glimpsed through binoculars at one point on the "kiddie slopes" which seem to be over on another side of the mountain, but it's never really clear, and then he's in their base camp not long after that. Jason Clarke somehow ends up on some strange little fold of the mountain at one point but we really don't know where it is. There are a bunch of examples like this -- points of interest are name-dropped, but we're never given enough information to map the spaces out in our head, so when the entire narrative devolves into characters at different locations trying to desperately make it to the home point we can't suss out what it all comes down to.

And so this flaw built right into the foundation of the film collapses it from the inside. What we end up with is too many characters in too many locations stretching our attentions too far apart, past the break. There are individual pieces that work (some very good bits of acting set on top of some beautiful and scary displays of Nature at her best and worst) but the base shakes out from under rendering the highest of peaks as flat as a pancake.

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Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... getting high with Jake Gyllenhaal.

So two trailers for Everest just got released, a US one and an Internatonal one, and leave it to the latter to deliver the majority of the Jake skin. No we don't see his butt like we did on the set, but it's implied. Will some of that actually make it into the movie? Let's cross all our bits and pieces and whisper some gypsy curses to make it so, but until the movie's out on September 18th...

... we'll just have to make do with this stuff.

Here's the international trailer:

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And here's the US version:

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What do we think? I'm not capable of 

critical thinking, of course, so don't listen to me.

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Good Morning, World

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When I posted those Sam Worthington pictures yesterday I was withholding some information. I know - will you ever trust me again? Have I spoiled this thing we had going with my deceitful cover-ups? See, there were also pictures of a half-naked Hugh Dancy in that same miniseries... and I didn't mention them! Gasp! Horror!

I was holding them off for today. If you'd gone to the link I offered in yesterday's post you would've seen them anyway. But I know. I know. You count on me to tell you the pertinent information, and I held something back. Our love affair is doomed. Well here are the Hugh Dancy pictures, after the jump. I hope they bring you some solace in this difficult time.

Good Morning, World

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I saw these old pictures of Sam Worthington in his underwear in the 2002 movie Dirty Deeds posted online the other week and considered posting them but there were more pressing matters, like everything not called "Sam Worthington." But then this morning one of MNPP's readers (hiya Larry) sent us some new pictures of what purports to be a naked Sam Worthington in some new miniseries called Deadline Gallopoli and I figured hey, when in Rome (the "Rome" in question here being "possibly Sam Worthington's ass"). So hit the jump and I will post those pictures and more...

The Pitt & The Fury

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Last night The Playlist shared the first footage and the first couple of pictures from David Ayer's upcoming WWII movie called Fury, which stars Brad Pitt and Logan Lerman and Shia LaBeouf and Michael Pena and Jon Bernthal as a bunch of army dudes in fatigues with sexy military haircuts stuck in a tank together. Sweatiness ensues! 

Right here I was going to say that David Ayer's last movie was the gung-ho terrific "Jake Gyllenhaal is a bald cop" movie End of Watch (and god I've been dying to post that gif for ages) but then I checked IMDb and apparently something called Sabotage came out last month that Ayer wrote and directed which starred Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sam Worthington and Joe Manganiello? Did any of you hear anything about this movie? I swear I heard nothing about this movie.

Hey that's gratuitous recipient Max Martini that Big Man Joe's fondling! Clearly I have to see this movie. Anyway Fury is out in November; I don't know that it's the sort of movie that'll get awards attention, but Ayer is a fine director and I fully expect this to be a solid film.

Plus they all have sexy haircuts. Did I mention that? 

Here's that footage from it below. It looks beautiful.

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Pics of the Day

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Via an assortment of Tumblrs here are a few shots from the set of the next Terminator movie (going by Terminator: Genesis I believe) starring Jason Clarke and Emilia "Khaleesi" Clarke (no relation), Jai Courtney, and a very old looking Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I want to bone at least 50% of this cast.

I can't remember - is this a reboot of the series? I feel like it is because I'm sure I remember Nathaniel bitching about that over at The Film Experience, because of how you don't ever need to reboot a series that's about time travel, as the new X-Men movie just pointed out. Anyway I'll take Jai over Edward Furlong or Nick Stahl or even Sam Worthington any day. I mean come on.

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I Am Link

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--- Vacay Cray Cray - I forgot that they've actually made movies together already (Take Me Home Tonight anyone?) so it felt fresh and exciting to find out that Chris Pratt and Anna Faris, awesome husband and awesomer wife, are making a new movie together. Til I remember the shitty movies. There's always tomorrow! This one's called Vacation Friends and it's about two couples who meet in Mexico and have fun but then the crazier couple follows the less-crazy couple home. (Hmm I wonder if Chris and Anna will be playing the crazy couple.)

--- Go Deep Streep - We've all been begging Meryl Streep to make some movies with more accomplished directors lately, so hearing she's signed on to make a movie with Jonathan Demme sounds not so bad. Add on the fact that Diablo Cody wrote the script and it's even less so bad. it's about a woman who returns to her abandoned family many years later.

--- Space Balls - Ridley Scott is definitely probably making a second Prometheus movie, they've got a new writer (the guy who wrote the Green Lantern movie, so you know this will be quality!) and a date and all that jazz. The most exciting news I'ms eeing is the rumor that the film apparently involves multiple copies of the David android, aka there will be more than one Michael Fassbender on-screen. I want every single character on-screen played by Michael Fassbender, that's what I want. And then rename the movie Orgy. And have it be an orgy. With just Michael Fassbenders. I should be writing this thing dammit.

--- Worth What - I feel like James Cameron is calling in some favors and getting Sam Worthington cast in things again so it doesn't seem so "Who the hell is that guy again?" when he puts out the new Avatar movies in ten years or whenever he gets them actually made. So here's news that Sam Worthington has joined the cast of Jake Gyllenhaal's Ass on a Mountain. Also Robin Wright has joined the cast too.

--- And Speaking of people from Avatar who need a new agent, a new picture from NBC's Rosemary's Baby remake-ish thingamajig with Zoe Saldana and that Suits dude can be seen over here. (thanks Mac)

--- Bald Beauty - Corey Stoll is probably joining Edgar Wright's Ant-Man movie, but the role's a secret. I interpret that to mean he will be either Paul Rudd or Patrick Wilson's love-slave, and I will accept no less. My boyfriend is watching House of Cards right now (I still haven't seen the show) and I walked past and there was Corey half naked on a bed and I can't get the image out of my head...

--- Cherish Valerie - I don't believe I've mentioned this news even though it's a week or so old and I am a crazy fan of the original, so obviously the only excuse for why I'm just linking to the word that Lisa Kudrow might be making some more of The Comeback, in some form with HBO, is a psychotic break. Actually I'm just too scared to jinx it. I want it too much to even breathe until it happens. I am prepared to die for Aunt Sassy.
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I Am Link

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--- Gimme Chance - The Playlist shares that there the first picture of Nikolaj Coster-Waldau in Susanne Bier's upcoming movie A Second Chance, which is about a pair of policeman friends, something something, baby in a closet, something. I don't know if it's the painkiller medication I am on right now but the story they describe didn't make any sense to me. But hey, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau!

--- Full Heart - Nina Persson of The Cardigans has her solo album called Animal Heart out today, buy it it's great, and here's a nice brief little chat with her over at CBS, including more positivity towards the idea of a new Cardigans album.

--- Wedding Wars - This project sounds aaaaaaamazing - I Am Love director Luca Guadagnino is going to direct A Reliable Wife, a thriller adapted by Se7en's screenwriter Andrew Kevin Walker from a book set at the turn of the 20th Century in Wisconsin about a guy who puts out an ad for a wife and gets some hot crazy broad in response, and they both set about murdering each other or something. I wanna watch that movie right this minute. Anybody read the book?

--- Hot For Hot - I hope everything's alright with Matthias Schoenaerts - Deadline says he had to pull out (mmm) of the movie Alive Alone, which he was going to star in with Noomi Rapace, which is about a criminal turned taxi driver on the run with a prostitute... really? That's a story that somebody wants to tell again? Anyway Matty is out... and IDRIS ELBA is taking the role over. So obviously, cliched as it sounds, I'll be watching it all the same. If only it was Noomi who stepped out and Matthias and Idris were playing the criminal-prostitute duo. Anyway Sam Worthington is playing the bad guy they're running from.

--- Truth or Death - The guys who made Catfish and a couple of the Paranormal Activity movies are adapting the YA book Nerve for the screen - it's about an online Truth or Dare game getting out of hand for a high school wallflower. Their words. My favorite thing from this story, also their words: "the game evolves and soon she finds herself in a dangerous and life-ending situation." LIFE-ENDING SITUATION. It's like those prescription commercials that warn of "suicidal actions." Anyway a writer from American Horror Story wrote the script.

--- Strip Search - And finally, Channing Tatum has begun working on the script for the second Magic Mike movie, says Channing Tatum. Who do you want to be in it? Should they bring back some or all of the old gang? (We all want to see Matthew Bomer's in a thing again, obviously.) What new actors are on your wish list?

I Am Link

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--- Ant-Man's Best Friend - Michael Pena, who is generally always awesome (he was so so good in End of Watch last year) and is pretty much criminally under-used, is maybe up for a part in Edgar Wright's Ant-Man movie. Marvel is denying it but they always do that til the t's are crossed.

--- Be The Best - Head right on over to The Film Experience for this year's Team Experience Awards, wherein my TFE fellow contributors voted on their faves of 2013. Full admission: I opted out this year because I haven't even come close to figuring out my ballot for the year yet. I just don't even want to think about it right now. I'm kind of pissed off at myself for not participating looking at the list though because I can't help but wonder if I could've been the vote to push Frances Ha over the top.

--- A Hate Story - The Playlist has the first clip from David Wain's They Came Together, his rom-com convention take-down starring Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd. It co-stars a ton of awesome people, as David Wain movies always do, like Melanie Lynskey and hey-we-were-just-staring-at-his-nipples Ken Marino.

--- Rich Bitch - I feel as if I gave some side-eye when we first heard that criminal douchebag slash Leonardo DiCaprio hero Jordan Belfourt say he wasn't making anything off of The Wolf of Wall Street, and sure enough here comes word that his claims are being investigated by the Justice Department.I mean obviously he was making money off it in the first place - no doubt his business is booming thanks to the notoriety he's getting from the film. But this takes that further.

--- Blue Man Group - I kind of felt like James Cameron might've just gone ahead and chosen to tell somebody else's story with the next Avatar movies since Sam Worthington's career has completely fizzled out here in the US, so I actually am surprised Sam's been announced as returning for all 3 sequels now.

--- Ghost House - The remake of Poltergeist starring Sam Rockwell and RoseMarie Dewitt has been scheduled for February 13th, 2015. So it's gonna be sold as a Valentine's Day movie then? I can't wait for the guy who rips his own face off in the mirror to spell out "I Love You" with excess gore and pus.
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--- No Glory - Joe Reid is terrified that he's going to have to watch a bunch of shitty movies if they get nominated for Oscars come Oscar morning. I think he might end up liking The Hobbit more than he fears. Also I've actually been dying to watch Bad Grandpa, but I like the Jackass movies.

--- And finally ooh hey everybody it's the first teaser trailer for the 2nd season of Bates Motel! Vera-riffic! The show's back March 3rd.

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The 13 Snakes of Halloween #6

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Oh my god, Medusa turned Olive Oyl into stone! Whatever will Popeye do? Will he just toss her into the river and move in with Bluto his real true love?

Bah, I guess not. He's a tricky devil! Everybody knows all an ancient villainess needs is the promise of a good facial and she'll toss aside all of her evil schemes. Women! Anyway here's the whole thing:

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That 1961 cartoon represents the first credit that IMDb gives to the character of Medusa. Doesn't it seem like it must be incorrect that she was never in anything before that? That seems crazy to me. I suppose creating the snake-hair is a difficult special effect, maybe it just took time. Since then the Greek Gorgon's popped up all over the place of course - Ray Harryhausen's take for the 1981 Clash of the Titans has yet to be topped though.

She still terrifies me. I'm not even going to bother doing a "Which is hotter?" between her and the version from the 2010 remake because that is not even a question I mean come on.

Nobody really gives her tragic back-story it's due though - it's always just "Chop the bitches head off!" She's a rape victim who's further tormented by her rapist's wife, for god's sake! I think we should get a full-on Medusa movie, that's what I think. Wait, what's that? We're only interested in Hero's Journeys, you say? Of course. Silly me. Nevermind. Sorry, Uma! No movie for you. Keep looking.

Previously

#1 - Anaconda

#2 - The Witches

#3 - Pee Wee's Big Adventure

#4 - Temple of Doom

#5 - Whedon Snakes

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I Am Link

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--- Mister SMG - Well hello there, Freddie Prinze Jr. - I guess taking some time off with your awesome wife was good for you. Did anybody see any of Witches of West End? I don't know how I stumbled into ten minutes of it but man, it is just Charmed, right? Totally Charmed.

--- Where There's Will - He didn't mention this yesterday when I spent the afternoon with him (sorta) but Alexander Payne's lining up his next project after the Bruce Dern starring Nebraska, which is playing the New York Film Fest this week - it's called The Judge's Will and it's based on a story from The New Yorker about an old man in Bombay who's trying to make sure both his wife and his mistress are taken care of after he dies.

--- Mind Over Matter - I haven't had the chance to watch this yet but it sounds fun, even if I'm not keen on the Carrie remake - the folks behind that movie set up a fake coffee shop in NYC and secretly videotaped patrons who were confronted with a girl's telekinetic freak-out, and here's the results. I wish I'd stumbled upon this!

--- Kidnap Me Kwanten - Three cute guys for the price of one (I mean they are cheap) - Ryan Kwanten, Jim Sturgess and Sam Worthington have joined the cast of Kidnapping Freddy Heineken, about the real-life kidnapping of the beer heir back in the 80s. It's already got Anthony Hopkins starring; dunno who's playing who though.

--- Rough Cuts - Didn't get a chance to link to this befroe so here's some words I wrote up at The Film Experience earlier this week about Bong Joon-ho and the controversy surrounding Harvey Weinstein's re-editing of Snowpiercer.

--- Heart Beat - You'd be wise to be paying attention to the folks over at Tribeca Film all this month because they've got a daily dose of Halloween-themed mayhem on the docket, but here's our pal Joe talking about the classic trailer for Dario Argento's masterpiece Suspiria to start things out. Oh and here he is comparing the ghost hunters in Poltergeist and Insidious. As an aside, I am hoping to do something Halloweeny here once all this Film Festival stuff is out of the way, so stay tuned!

--- Hump Day - It's just your standard "Oh it's so weird humping on another person in front of a crowd of smelly teamsters and recent film school graduates!" comment, but we'll always link up to Michael Fassbender talking about shooting sex scenes (this time around it's for Ridley Scott's The Counselor) because we want to think about Michael Fassbender plus sex whenever we can. Honestly though, I just don't believe Michael Fassbender finds shooting sex scenes awkward. Nothing in Michael Fassbender's life is awkward. Everyone and everything turns to melted butter in his presence.

--- Freaky Happening - There's nobody attached to making it yet or anything, they just released a press release about wanting to, but somebody somewhere wants to make a movie about the making of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls - specifically the friendship between Russ Meyers and Roger Ebert - and we're so entirely on board with that idea.

--- And finally I can't believe Gremlins is turning 30 next year - that seems impossible. But the math stands! Damned math. So anyway The Playlist dug up this old behind-the-scenes special about the movie with some footage from the set and what not, watch it below. Vintage Zach Galligan is everything.

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