Good Morning, World

Although I was tempted several times by the sheer bulky muscular weight of its casting announcements as they occurred, I now today that it is here have less than zero desire to go to a movie theater this weekend to see DC's new superhero flick Black Adam starring The Rock and Noah Centineo and Pierce Brosnan and Marwan Kenzari and best and most importantly of all Mr. Aldis Hodge, seen photographed here (via). Even with a love of the film's director (Jaume Collet-Serra directed motherfucking Orphan y'all!) I've been burned by DC too many times by now, and the word on this one is mixed enough to put the firm kibosh -- the firm kibosh! -- on that possibility. I'll watch it at home sometime where I can do seven other things and look up whenever the boys are being hot, as the lord intended. But if y'all go see it tell me what you thought, please. Now hit the jump for a few more Aldises (Aldisi?)...

Taron Plays With Packages

I hadn't intended on posting this Taron Egerton photoshoot for Flaunt magazine that's been around for a solid week now because it's all so dour and unsexy, I just didn't feel like encouraging such behavior. We have seen what you look like unclothed at this moment in time, Taron -- this is your moment to do the slutty photoshoots, dude. Anyway I'm breaking my own ban because casting news has broken involving Taron that I actually want to post -- he's signed on to star in the new thriller from Jaume Collet-Serra, director of Orphan and The Shallows and other such goofy thrillers that have had no business being as thrilling as they ended up being but did so via the power of JCS's impressive talent. 

The movie is called Carry On and it will star Taron as a TSA agent "who gets blackmailed by a mysterious traveler to let a dangerous package slip through security and onto a Christmas Day flight." And yes this returns the director to the transportation playgrounds he seems to so adore, given his Liam Neeson duology of The Commuter and Non-Stop. (As a sidenote looking at JCS's IMDb page just now I had no idea he directed Black Adam, the forthcoming DC superhero movie with The Rock and Noah Centineo and Aldis Hodge -- suddenly I find myself wondering if Black Adam might actually be good?) Anyway this movie sounds like it might be something to look forward to, huzzah. Now hit the jump for the remainder of this fairly boring photoshoot if you dare...

Good Morning, World

Apropos of nothing -- no seriously these aren't even morning related -- here are five photos of Noah Centineo that I'd never seen before this weekend but enjoyed once I did. I thought maybe there was a Black Adam teaser I could share, I thought I'd seen something about that, but all I could find was this and you don't see Noah's character -- Atom Smasher! -- anywhere in there. You don't really even see the Rock and he's the lead. Whatever. Here are five pictures of Noah Centineo, just cuz, and goos morning! Hit the jump for the rest...

Today's Fanboy Delusion

Today I'd rather be...

... elevating my heart-rate with Aldis Hodge.

DC's Black Adam movie is only just filming now, I believe, but it's already been one of the greatest gifts to mankind since the first wrestling singlet was sewn together from eagle's flesh -- as previously stated on many, many occasions this forthcoming superhero flick is somehow managing to cram Dwayne Johnson, Noah Centineo, Marwan Kenzari, and Aldis here all on top of each other in an all-out battle of the bulging fill-in-the-blanks. Biceps, pectoral muscles, my pants. Everything's a'poppin!

We've gotten loads of social media looks at Noah Centineo getting buffed up for his role, but he is the youngest of the cast obviously and social media's more his game, so this here video for Men's Health magazine has been our first and long long awaited look at Aldis doing his own personal Iron Man for our viewing pleasure (save this one admittedly incredible-edible gym selfie) and... it's a welcome add. Is it ever. I made some gifs! They're after the jump...

James Cusati-Moyer Three Times

Interview Magazine shared these stunning photos of Broadway actor James Cusati-Moyer back at the start of February but I didn't post them then because what do I have to say about a Broadway actor? I never got a chance to see Slave Play, I probably will never get that chance. But today came a good reason to go back and grab these snaps for those of us left behind -- Cusati-Moyer has just joined the ridiculously gorgeous cast of DC's Black Adam film, which already stars (deep breath) Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Aldis Hodge, Noah Centineo, and "Hot Jafar" Marwan Kenzari. Oh and something for the Boomers...

... Pierce Brosnan has shown up on the cast-list since the last time I checked! I mean this is just an insanely gorgeous gathering of men. Oh and the "interview" portion of James' Interview Magazine piece was conducted with some lady named Julianne Moore, if you want to read that. I mean she's great and all -- The Hand That Rocks the Cradle forever, lady! -- but it's a shame they didn't have Slave Play producer Jake Gyllenhaal go deep with James. I'd have liked that. Those two, going deep.

Good Morning, World

I think it's safe to assume that you, like I, have been paying the most minute attention to actor Noah Centineo's gym transformation from a perfectly hot young man into a Superhero Movie Actor over the past few months -- I have been documenting it here on the site in case you missed it! -- but he's really leveled up in the past week or two, presumably since I think DC's Black Adam movie, in which he'll play the Atom Smasher, will start shooting relatively soon. I'll admit I like Noah a little less bulked up, but I can't really blame him, given he'll be standing across from Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, and Marwan Kenzari in this movie. Hopefully after the movie he'll let the puffery relax! Until then we'll enjoy this, as a phase. Hit the jump for some snaps he shared a few days ago (I am terribly behind)...

Good Morning, World

As mentioned last week Netflix heartthrob Noah Centineo is co-starring in the DC superhero sausage-fest Black Adam opposite Dwayne Johnson, Aldis Hodge, and Marwan Kenzari, which would explain why his Instagram as of late has been nothing but training videos -- if you were gonna stand among all those legendary pectoral muscles you'd hire a trainer too. Anyway all that means -- besides I am breaking out my Shrub Costume so I can go chill on the set of Black Adam -- is that I've fallen behind on curating that gratuitous content, so I've gathered up a few highlights (including the full video of that ridiculous spectacle giffed above) for us this Monday morning; hit the jump for it...

A Marwan You Can't Refuse

At first I wasn't super interested in seeing a DC superhero movie starring Dwayne Johnson, an actor I've grown less enamored with over time ("time" hasn't really been the culprit, more like "every political statement he's ever given"), but Black Adam has filled out its cast with so many MNPP crushes at this point -- not to mention it's being directed by Orphan director Jaume Collet-Serra!!! -- that it's become impossible to ignore. Oh well! First it was Noah Centineo (as Atom Smasher), then it was Aldis Hodge (as Hawkman), and today comes word that Marwan Kenzari (aka Hot Jafar and more importantly one half of the gay couple in The Old Guard) will be playing... well THR says the role is undisclosed, but online sleuths have sleuthed he's playing Sabbac, who looks like a big hot gay devil:

Let's hope they keep that character look -- lover me a bulging devil hunk, and too often they put shirts on shirtless comic book characters who don't need them! When you're shaped like Marwan Kenzari you don't need no damn shirt! (On that note you should definitely click here.) (And also definitely here.)

Pimps Don't Commit Suicide

In the run-up to today's drop of Arrow's fancy schmancy blu-ray of Richard Kelly's mucho maligned 2006 flick Southland Tales -- which includes the also mucho maligned longer "Cannes Cut" of the film -- there have been approximately eleventy billion interviews with Kelly talking about the movie (this has been compounded by the 20th anniversary of Donnie Darko). Far more than I could ever begin to link to. Just google his name, they'll all come up, I promise. And I even watched the "Cannes Cut" a few weeks ago hoping I'd have something to say about the movie here. But... this movie, man. This movie still defeats my ability to say anything coherent about it. I both hate it and love it in equal measure -- it confounds me. I thought it might be better, 15 years on, but...

I AM GOING IN
WISH ME LUCK pic.twitter.com/qaCHHTdBnz

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) December 27, 2020

... no. Nope. Nada. I still just kind of sit there dazed by the thing. (By the way that tweet above, if you click over to Twitter, will give you a Twitter thread from December when I re-watched all three of Richard Kelly's movies -- Tales, Darko, and The Box -- within a 24-hour span.) I feel like I could make two columns, a Love and a Hate column, and diagram Southland that way, and maybe that flatness might approach the actual way Southland makes me feel, but then I'd be no better than the Jim Cunninghams & Kitty Farmers of the world, would I?

I love that Kelly got to make Southland Tales more than I actually love the experience of sitting through it -- it's always inspirational when batshit of its magnitude gets funded. I just don't think Southland, and what it is about, speaks to me like Darko did and does and forever will -- even The Box on this re-watch felt like it had more to tell me than Tales does. But if Kelly ever does get to make the sequel like he keeps saying he wants to in all of these interviews (he will not) I will be there opening night, that I promise.

13 Rats of Halloween #9

My pal Stacie Ponder of Final Girl fame has branded this "The Rumpelstiltskin Effect" (actually she maybe hasn't used those exact words, but I am) -- where you keep going back to a movie you know is awful because some deranged lever snaps inside your brain and whispers to you that hey, you, maybe it's not so awful. For Stacie that movie is the 1995 Leprechaun rip-off Rumpelstiltskin -- and if you're already ripping off a rip-off like Leprechaun then you know you're in trouble. But for me, at this exact moment, that movie is the 2018 video-game adaptation Rampage. Oh my god it's bad! I know it's bad! But Marley Shelton fights a gigantic mutant rat in outer space! 

How can I not be suckered in by that time and time again? Am I not human? Do I not bleed? Speaking of you know who else bleeds? Gigantic mutant rats in outer space, that's who!

And looking back at my previous post on this movie I see so much else to love. Joe Manganiello eaten by a giant wolf? Okay! Malin "Baby Girl" Akerman eaten by a gorilla? Sure! That gorilla then flipping the bird? Why not? Is Rampage actually perfect? Who am I to say it's not perfect? I'm nobody, that's who -- there is no Jason, only Rampage now.

Jason Statham One Time

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(via) I also just posted a quartet of photos of Jason looking rough on the set of Hobbs & Shaw in that patented Statham sorta way over on the Tumblr -- click here to take those in. Did any of you end up seeing H&S? If so, there's no reason on Earth why I'd need to see it, right? I feel like I'd have been told by one of you by now if there was a long slow shot of Idris Elba walking naked out of a shower. 

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You Could Do Worse Than Looking At Idris

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Having never seen a Fast Furious film you won't be seeing me at that Hobbs Shaw thing this weekend -- it took me awhile to even figure out it was a Fast Furious film in the first place -- but I will take this opportunity to highlight a couple of Idris Elba photos from his 2016 Interview Magazine photoshoot that I didn't highlight well enough when it originally came out due to that being a hell of a photoshoot and my eyes being all over the damn place. I mean, really.

Anyway that movie is the big expensive one of the movie weekend but if you're in a city I recommend you seek out two smaller and devastatingly excellent pictures instead -- there's Luce, which I reviewed here, and then there's Jennifer Kent's Babadook follow-up The Nightingale, which I haven't reviewed yet because I'm seeing it a second time tonight and wanted to do that before I wrote up my thoughts. I plan on trying to do that tomorrow though, even though MNPP is still on its Summer Fridays Off schedule. So stay tuned!

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Do Dump or Marry: Dirty Boys Edition

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I have never seen a Fast Slash Furious film and I'm heck no not about to start now with this Hobbs and Shaw movie out later this summer, but hey this new photo of its stars Dwayne Johnson and Idris Elba and Jason Statham (via) is good enough for one of our "Do Dump or Marry" queries, I think! Go on and tell me in the comments who you do, who you dump, and who you marry...

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Jason Statham Six Times

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Although he's not on the cover -- they saved that honor for French star Gilles Lellouche, seen here -- Jason Statham here was photographed for the new issue of GQ France and if you know French click here to read whatever the hell they talked about. I think it's about his Fast & Furious spin-off with The Rock? Well whatever the interview is about the photoshoot is all about his feet for some reason, so if you're down for that hit the jump for lots of feet...

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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Rampage (2018)

One of our briefest "Ways Not To Die" posts in ages thanks to the dumb brute simplicity of this year's monster movie Rampage -- what a refresher! I watched Rampage this weekend while I was sick (it is a perfect Sick Movie) after seeing Malin "Baby Girl" Akerman proudly offer up this scene for, uh, consumption...

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View this post on Instagram

Yeah 😵 #proudmoments #2018 #memories #spoileralert #rampagemovie

A post shared by Malin Akerman (@malinakerman) on Jan 5, 2019 at 11:13am PST

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I mean... how could I resist that? I had forgotten this movie even had even out this year - which is weird, given what a staple the video-game was of my childhood - but I'm glad I went back and watched it... while sick and weak in the head, at least. It was all the big dumb fun it promised to be. I got to see the above happen - Aunt Sassy does need to see that! And I got to see the rehabilitated were-man Joe Manganiello eaten by a gigantic wolf...
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... I got to see a city block dropped on Jake Lacy, of all people.
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I mean who the hell wants to hurt Jake Lacy, of all people??? 

Rampage does, and... sure, why not?
Hit the jump for links to all the Ways Not To Die...
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Pugh is Park's Little Drummer Girl

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I paid a lot of attention to her co-star Cosmo Jarvis (because I know my audience and our predilection for furry little fuckboys) when Lady Macbeth came out earlier this year, but it should be known I thought that Florence Pugh in the lead role was fuckin-a fantastic. And so today's big news that she is going to star in a miniseries adaptation of John Le Carre's book The Little Drummer Girl for no less than PARK CHAN-WOOK... well that is exciting, you guys. Here's what TLDG is about via Amazon:

"On holiday in Mykonos, Charlie wants only sunny days and a brief escape from England’s bourgeois dreariness. Then a handsome stranger lures the aspiring actress away from her pals—but his intentions are far from romantic. Joseph is an Israeli intelligence officer, and Charlie has been wooed to flush out the leader of a Palestinian terrorist group responsible for a string of deadly bombings. Still uncertain of her own allegiances, she debuts in the role of a lifetime as a double agent in the “theatre of the real.” Haunting and deeply atmospheric, John le Carré’s The Little Drummer Girl is a virtuoso performance and a powerful examination of morality and justice."

Have any of you read it? This is Park's first project since The Handmaiden blew our socks off (after blowing up our knickers) last yea; Pugh meanwhile's got a ton stacked up on her late, including a WWE family comedy with The Rock & Lena Headey (okay????), that Liam Neeson movie set on a train, and being the token female in that movie starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson's gigantic beard that I told you about. I have to say that this here project with Park looks the most promising for her out of that batch. (Although I am totally into the Liam Neeson train movie, but my guess is her role isn't huge.)
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Put Zac Efron's Speedo On Your Face

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Dunno how I missed this in the lead up to Baywatch back at the start of the year - perhaps by that point the negative critical word about the movie had begun to leak out and/or The Rock was stroking his no doubt considerable ego with talk of running for President (I had to bail the fuck out when that happened) but hey look him and Rob "The Gronk" Gronkowski did a fun little skit about sex play with Zac Efron's speedo or something, wheeee. Watch it over here. 

Anyway this is as good a time as any to mention that Baywatch is hitting digital in just a couple weeks on August 15th and then the blu-ray comes out on August 29th. It's apparently got a bunch of extras so fingers crossed for lots of Zac Efron behind the speedo scenes. Did any of you actually see the movie?

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Beach Balls For Brains

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For all the posting I have done about the Baywatch movie (see here) the Baywatch movie was never a movie I was going to spend money on to go see in a movie theater, but something tells me that it'll do fine without me and my fifteen bucks (even if Dwayne Johnson still feels the need to whine repeatedly on Twitter about critics being out of touch). Anyway I am guessing that some of you might take advantage of the holiday weekend and go see the movie; if you do let us know what you thought here in the comments. 

I suppose I can also use this post as a heads-up that after today I will be off-line until Tuesday, so prepare yourselves - make sure you buy plenty of water and canned goods and batteries and porn. It'll be a slog but somehow we'll make it.

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Thursday's Ways Not To Die

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Donnie Darko (2001)

"The world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes, and 12 seconds," says Frank the Rabbit... I'm still not sure though - is that timed to this event seen here, when Frank himself dies, or is it timed to the jet engine falling through the ceiling of Donnie's bedroom? 

Probably the latter right? I have a feeling this might be spelled out in Richard Kelly's "Director's Cut" of this movie, the one with all of Roberta Sparrow's mad time-travel scribblings included on-screen, but I can't with the "Director's Cut." I can't. I love you, Richard Kelly, but you can be your own worst enemy. Always take off one piece of costume jewelry before you walk out the door, dude.

As mentioned yesterday Donnie Darko is getting a 4K restored theatrical re-release this weekend here in NYC and also in LA I believe - I've got to try and make it out; I haven't actually sat down and re-watched this film proper-like in several years. I might make a whole Richard Kelly Retrospective out of it - I have been dying to see Southland Tales again lately, for some insane reason. 

Most of you probably weren't around here back when that film came out in 2006, but I made one of the most violent swerves opinion-wise that I have ever made on a movie with Southland - I hate hate hated it on my first viewing, but I went back and watched it again and it was like a switch flipped, and I got it, and loved it. Ive stayed in that camp ever since, even though I ackowledge it's a mess. But an ambitious and funny and beautiful mess.

Hit the jump for links to the Previous Ways Not To Die...