Good Morning, World

One of the things that's fallen by the wayside over the past couple of weeks of my busy-ness with my trip home and the Fantasia Film Fest has been television shows, several of which i have some catching-up-with to do, but I did managae the night before last to finally watch the first episode of Surface, Apple's new series that obviously has a casting director who loves MNPP as the cast stars MNPP-beloveds like Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Stephan James, François Arnaud, Ari Graynor, Marianne Jean-Baptiste, and, seen here flaunting that full bush (top half edition) of his, Mr. Oliver Jackson-Cohen. (I previously shared the trailer here.) I know there have been a few more episodes released so y'all don't spoil anything for me please and thank you, but if you want to share your vague non-specific thoughts do so in the comments! I'm drawn in already, but mainly because of the cast -- it feels like it's hitting the Big Little Lies / Little Fires Everywhere with its mystery and world notes a little hard though, right? Like it's underlining all of the prestige-cable lady-story points really hard. We're rich and terrible people! We will see. Anyway hit the jump for one bonus gif (this scene shoulda been longer)...

The Stacked Cast of Surface Says Howdy

Here is one I have been looking forward to for ages now -- Apple+ has debuted the trailer for their upcoming series Surface today, which stars (and you're about to get why I have been looking forward to this one forever) Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Stephan James, Ari Graynor, François Arnaud, and Marianne Jean Baptiste (I mean! Phew!) and is about a woman (Gugu) who has amnesia after "falling" over the side of a boat and who tries to put the pieces of her memories back together, all while that hubby of hers (OJC) becomes more and more sinister-seeming by the second. It's all very upscale Lifetime. I kind of love that Olly has become the go-to for Hot Scary Husbands...

... and y'all know how very very very much I am reading into this shot of him with François Arnaud in the trailer, right? Right. Oliver Jackson-Cohen playing a closet-case would be very funny though! Haha. Sigh. Let's just hope they give them an actual sex scene and it's not just lots of leaning towards each other with weighted meaningful glances. Also let's give it up for...

... some Ari Graynor looking fabulous! We've been rooting for Ari ever since she gifted the world with the world's most disgusting toilet scene in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist thirteen years ago (good grief) and we're always happy when she pops up. All that said here's that trailer...

Surface premieres on July 29th! Can't wait...

Good Morning, World

Pretty sure I hadn't even heard of a movie called National Champions until this morning when these shots of Timothy Olyphant in a movie called National Champions presented themselves to me -- have you heard of a movie called National Champions? It's relatively new as far as I can tell, and it's streaming on Amazon and other places right now, and it's got quite the cast -- Olyphant alongside Stephan James, Alexander Ludwig, J.K. Simmons, Tim Blake Nelson, Kristin Chenoweth, Uzo Aduba, Lil Rel Howery, Jeffrey Donovan, and David Koechner. It's a football movie about players striking for fair compensation yadda yadda all I need to know is how much time is spent in the film's locker-room with James & Ludwig specifically, and I'll be there.

HAPPY INDEPLAIDPANTS DAY!

Last year we birthed a new tradition here at MNPP -- it was actually a reader's idea (shout-out to The Futurist!) but I liked it enough that I snatched it up and ran with it. Every year for the 4th of July I shall here henceforth post a gallery of men wearing Plaid Pants, in honor of this website's Dada-esque nonsense title. In case you're unaware -- I've been asked over the years, "What's with the site's name?" And the answer is, "Nonsense." It means nothing. I'd randomly bought a pair of plaid pants the day I started this site, I was trying to figure out something to call the little Blogger blog I was beginning to ramble my thoughts on movies to I assumed an audience of absolutely no one -- I looked down, I saw the pants, a name was born. 

It really was genuinely meant to be Dada-esque, as that's my favorite school of Art -- telling that story ascribes more meaning to it than it actually deserves. I wanted to pick a name that meant absolutely nothing. Now that more than "an audience of absolutely no one" have shown up to read my nonsense though I will admit that I sometimes wish I'd picked something actually Movie-related -- I have ended up on lots of PR lists for fashion emails somehow, as if this site was actually about Plaid Pants, haha. And the site's title, WTF & goofy as it is, makes me doubt many Movie PR people will ever put it on a trailer or movie poster. ("Schindlers List is Devastating," says My New Plaid Pants.) Oh well! It is what it is at this point, 15 full years on, we embrace it. With a gallery of actors wearing Plaid Pants for the American Holiday of July 4th, apparently! Keeping things nonsensical, right on after the jump...

I Am Link

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everything You Ever Need To Know About Life...

 ... you can learn from:

If Beale Street Could Talk (2018)

Fonny : It don't seem to me like there's 

a reason to treat two Negroes so nicely. 

I mean, clearly we ain't got a pot nor much 

of a drink to make piss with. Pardon my French. 

Levy : Look, man, with me it's pretty simple. 

I dig people who love each other. Black, white. 

Green, purple. It doesn't even matter to me. 

Just spread the love, you know?

This is one of my favorite scenes in Beale Street -- it's just such a lovely little bubble of happiness before, you know, it bursts. It doesn't hurt that Stephan James and Dave Franco had some chemistry going on and I might have momentarily imagined another movie, ahem. I mean, James Baldwin would have agreed! Anyway a real happy 27th birthday to Stephan James today -- I recommend you check out our Stephan James Archives to celebrate alongside him. (Oh especially this post.) I'm pretty excited for his next project, the big Vietnam War anthology film The Things They Carried, which has him co-starring alongside Tom Hardy, Bill Skarsgard, Martin Sensmeier, the list goes on and on. Now hit the jump for a new-to-me photo-shoot...

I am Standing to Attention

I imagine (or hope, anyway) y'all don't expect a lot from me for the next forty-eight hours -- I'm gonna try to "write" "things" but I don't know if I'll be able to focus real good. And "forty-eight hours" is of course up in the air -- who knows how long this chaotic-mindset will drag on for? Anyway! Let's give this one a go because this is some news shot straight up my alley -- a Vietnam war movie called The Things They Carried (based on a collection of short stories by Tim O’Brien about the individual members of a single platoon) has just been cast with So Many Hot Actors. Stephan James is one...

... then you pile on top of him Tye Sheridan!

And Bill Skarsgård! And Ashton Sanders

from Moonlight! And Tom Hardy!

Ohh and Martin Sensmeier!

We love Martin Sensmeier. I very much recommend clicking on this link if you'd like to love Martin Sensmeier too, or already do and would like a reminder. Anyway supposedly this book is well-regarded -- I surely haven't read it because I have very little patience or energy for War Fiction, but I'll see the movies once all the Hot Actors get cast in them! Have you read it? Bad news though: the movie is going to be directed by that douchebag Rupert Sanders -- he's not even a good director, Hollywood! No need to toss him a bone. Anyway I'm cheap and vulgar so I'll forget that information the second I see Tye Sheridan in a uniform, pay me no mind.

Stephan James Thirteen Times

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Has anybody else watched the second season of Homecoming on Amazon yet? I wasn't sure after a couple of episodes if I was into it but I ended up digging what they went for by the end; its ideas are fairly simple and all of the episodes are kind of over before you realize it's over, but I think that's a feature not a bug, ultimately. Something going down smooth ain't the enemy! Best in show from me goes to Hong Chau but that's been a recurring theme lately -- Hong Chau is in your thing, Hong Chau is best in show -- but there's stellar work up in here from Joan Cusack, Chris Cooper, Janelle Monae, and most especially Stephan James here, who we were real happy to see come back from the first season. On that note I gathered up two more never-before-posted photo-shoots of the gorgeous Mr. James for our visual enjoyment if you'll follow on after the jump...

Stephan James One Time

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Let me take this opportunity to give y'all a heads-up that the second half of this here pre-Xmas Friday is about to get hella busy for me as I try to get all my off-line work-load completed so I can properly head into these immediate two weeks off for the holidays -- all's I'm saying is expect it to be pretty quiet here at MNPP for the rest of today. That said I don't think the site will be totally mouse silent over that entire two week span -- I'll be popping my head in here and there. Check back, is my point. Or don't! Go with gods...

Good lord Tom Holland just posted this picture to Instagram pic.twitter.com/L9NVy6f8oO

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) December 20, 2019

Stephan James One Time

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Yes, Variety. yes. (via)

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Stephan James Ten Times

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Stephan was photographed and interviewed for The Last Magazine back in February, you can read the chat at this link -- it's mostly about If Beale Street Could Talk, which... remember Beale Street? Damn that was a fine movie. Go re-watch it right now and get back to me and I'll do the same. (I need to buy the soundtrack, now that I'm thinking about it.) Anyway next up for Stephan is the action movie 21 Bridges with Taylor Kitsch and Chadwick Boseman, while next up for the rest of us is hitting the jump to stare at the rest of this fine photo-shoot...

Stephan James Three Times

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Y'all know that Beale Street is out now
for your viewing pleasure right? Go n' get it. (via)

Great Grautity of 2018 #10

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Although Barry Jenkins' camera doesn't exactly shy away from Kiki Layne's body in this vital flashback sex-scene set around the middle point of If Beale Street Could Talk it's much more interested in taking in Stephan James as he disrobes across the room and walks towards us, waiting, watching. And this moment, with its gorgeous warm browns and Nicholas Britell's music swooning, is a rapture, as are most of the scenes involving James & Layne. The second their eyes lock and the horns start up it all makes the sweetest of sense -- all the shit the world wants to fling their way can never corrupt these dreams, these raptures, always theirs no matter what digressions and devastations happen next.

Smile Stephan Smile

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Heads-up! I've got super exciting off-blog plans -- my kitchen sink is busted (not a euphemism) and I've got to go meet the plumber (not the Plummer, unfortunately) -- and so the rest of the day's looking sketchy, here-wise. That is to say I am really really very bad at blogging from home (when I have my couch and TV right in front of me, forget about it) but we'll see. I'm working on a review and I might be able to get that much done. Until then here stare at Stephan James' easy breezy gorgeousness for a bit, why don't you? Bye.
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Stephan James Three Times

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These are via Vanity Fair, where there's also a brief chat with Stephan about If Beale Street Could Talk and Homecoming, his two big hits of this past year, plus the action movie he's doing next called 17 Bridges that co-stars Chadwick Boseman and Taylor Kitsch. 

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Good Morning, World

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It's not Stephan James' birthday (that was back in December right around the time we posted this here phenom photo-shoot) - I just felt like posting Stephan this morning because of how goddamn he looked at the Globes this weekend, and because I'm getting real irritable (with the BAFTA noms this morning) at how under-appreciated Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk is turning out to be this awards season. You want a gorgeous and humanistic movie about race made in 2018 you go to the source, you go to Beale Street, not fucking Green Book. (Here's my review from the NYFF.) But that's just my two cents. Okay, ten cents. That's a dollar, man. 

(Click here to see more from this scene; this will have 

to do until I can gif him in his tighty-whities in Beale Street.)

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We All Globe A Little Mad Sometimes

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Since I usually only pay enough attention to Awards Season to scream about its indignities I had not a clue that the Golden Globes were set to air this Sunday until about 48 hours ago - it's a good thing I'm a loser with no friends then, so I could pencil it right in in between "taking down the holiday tree" and "touching myself." That said now that I am voting for prizes (and getting wooed in a minuscule way with screeners and screenings in order to do so) I do find myself paying a bit more mind to these things - I'm way ahead of where I usually am at this point in the new year, seeing stuff wise, and so I can lay claim to... well if not exactly a worthwhile opinion (not more than anybody else's that is) an educated one. So looking through the Globes nominations (you can see them all right here) I give you...

5 Wins I'm Rooting For at the Globes This Weekend

-- Best Actress, Drama --

Melissa McCarthy in Can You Ever Forgive Me?

I know that Lady Gaga is going to win this (and then lose to Glenn Close or Olivia Colman at the Oscars, thank goodness) but man alive does she not deserve to, especially with a marvelously funny and firing-on-all-cylinders McCarthy right there in a film I've already watched five times and might very well watch once more before the Globes ever air, hell let's put it in right this minute, it's always a good time for some Lee Israel Cat Antics! (Read my review here.)

-- Best Screenplay --

Deborah Davis and Tony McNamara, The Favourite

My vote would've just barely gone to Nicole Holofcener and Jeff Whitty for CYEFM over this but that one insanely did not even get nominated, so The Favourite it is. And it's has no runner up feeling to the vote either, since I've been quoting this movie just as much as the other this season. "I like it when she puts her tongue inside me," being a particular fave. (Read my review here.) 

-- Best Limited Series or Motion Picture Made for Television --

The Assassination of Gianni Versace

Believe me I never thought I'd be calling something starring 

Darren Criss a masterpiece, and yet here we are.

-- Best Performance by an Actor in a Television Series, Drama --

Stephan James, Homecoming

Real happy that Sam Esmail took some time off the increasingly burdensome Mr. Robot to make this humdinger of a series, which I haven't been able to get out of my brain for weeks - I went into it skeptical but it totally had me in its palm by the end, and even with the star-wattage of Julia Roberts right there it's usually Stephan James' face I keep coming back to. (Helps that it's a hell of a face.)

-- Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a

Series, Limited Series, or Motion Picture Made for TV --

Ben Whishaw, A Very English Scandal

Since none of these idiots are giving him his deserved statues for Mary Poppins Returns, I'll take this as trade. And speaking of trade, Ben sure made for some good trade in this miniseries. In all seriousness Ben is never not great and he's on point here - complicated and heartbreaking and yet funny and alive stuff. Per usual. We really need to stop taking him for (Hugh) granted.

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So who are you rooting for?

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Kitty Smut & Other Fine Stuffs

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Welp, it's Friday already! How does this keep happening? Every week it seems. Well as long as it's Friday let's take a look at the movies that're out today; be helpful and shit. First things first to my fellow New Yorkers, two of this month's big retrospectives are starting -- the Quad Cinema is running "Rated X" a really rather unbelievable series of films that all got slapped with that rating. The series runs from the expected (like the Swedish art-house smut I Am Curious Yellow, co-starring the handsome Börje Ahlstedt, seen above) to John Waters movies to a grand cavalcade of horror flicks like The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Evil Dead and Dawn of the Dead and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Oh and then there is...

... Salon Kitty, a truly insane looking 1976 movie from Tinto Brass, the director of Caligula, about a Nazi Brothel starring Helmut Berger and Ingrid Thulin. HOW have I never seen this??? I am seeing this. Oh and besides that also opening at the Quad today is their restoration of Visconti's Death in Venice, which I mentioned before...

... and speaking of "things I have mentioned before" the second series premiering today here in NYC is FSLC's retrospective of the director Jacques Tourneur; see my original take on this series right here. They are screening both Cat People and I Walked With a Zombie this very evening!!! Ya can't go wrong.

Okay so those aside for the rest of us schmucks in wide release there is Spider-Man Into the Spiderverse - I didn't write a full review but I mentioned this morning that this thing is fantastic and funny enough my opinion hasn't changed since then - it is still fantastic. Go see it. Also opening today -- Barry Jenkins' gorgeous If Beale Street Could Talk (read my review here) and then of course there is ROMA, which I finally wrote up yesterday and which is on your Netflix machines right now -- it is the year's best film. See it in the theater if at all possible, but see it whatever way you can.

Stephan James Eight Times

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It's been a helluva year for Stephan James with the one two punch of his series Homecoming with Julia Roberts and his movie If Beale Street Could Talk from Moonlight director Barry Jenkins. I haven't talked much about Homecoming but I loved it, I flew right through the whole thing over Thanksgiving, and Stephan was one of the best things about it - did any of you watch? Anyway Beale Street's finally hitting the streets this tomorrow, and it's very much worth seeking out - here is my review from way back at the New York Film Festival. I'm looking forward to seeing what Stephan does next (which will probably be big since he just signed with CAA this very day.) You can hit the jump for the rest of this fine photo-shoot...
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