Pics of the Day

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That picture of Brad Pitt and Dead Brad Pitt from behind-the-scenes of The Assassination of Jesse James is cracking me up. I would so have that thing in my home if I were him. Can you imagine the practical jokes you could play with a fake corpse of yourself? Angie's coming downstairs in the middle of the night to warm a bottle for the twins and there's Dead Brad sprawled across the linoleum, a bottle of pills spilled beside it, some shaving cream foaming from its mouth. Hilarity ensues! (I bet you ten to one she'd have the body tied down with rocks and tossed into the nearest river by her child army within an hour.)

Anyway I'm not even sure how I stumbled upon this but Christien Tinsley is an Oscar-winning make-up artist (he won for Passion of the Christ, so think "multiple lacerations") and on his website he's got a terrific gallery of his work, like Dead Brad Pitt up top. Beware there's some gory stuff at that link, but awesome as that is that's not what we're actually talking about this for. What we're excited about is the gallery of custom tattooing he's done for movies, specifically of the "on hot males" variety. Case in exquisite point:

Just the fact that there's a shot of Justin Theroux circa Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle that I haven't seen before (and a really large copy at that, click it to embiggen) is enough heaven, but there's so much more. If you hit the jump I've collected my favorite shots, including Jason Behr, Eric Balfour, Ben Foster, Vin Diesel, Johnny Knoxville, and Justin Timberlake.

Pics of the Day

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That picture of Brad Pitt and Dead Brad Pitt from behind-the-scenes of The Assassination of Jesse James is cracking me up. I would so have that thing in my home if I were him. Can you imagine the practical jokes you could play with a fake corpse of yourself? Angie's coming downstairs in the middle of the night to warm a bottle for the twins and there's Dead Brad sprawled across the linoleum, a bottle of pills spilled beside it, some shaving cream foaming from its mouth. Hilarity ensues! (I bet you ten to one she'd have the body tied down with rocks and tossed into the nearest river by her child army within an hour.)

Anyway I'm not even sure how I stumbled upon this but Christien Tinsley is an Oscar-winning make-up artist (he won for Passion of the Christ, so think "multiple lacerations") and on his website he's got a terrific gallery of his work, like Dead Brad Pitt up top. Beware there's some gory stuff at that link, but awesome as that is that's not what we're actually talking about this for. What we're excited about is the gallery of custom tattooing he's done for movies, specifically of the "on hot males" variety. Case in exquisite point:

Just the fact that there's a shot of Justin Theroux circa Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle that I haven't seen before (and a really large copy at that, click it to embiggen) is enough heaven, but there's so much more. If you hit the jump I've collected my favorite shots, including Jason Behr, Eric Balfour, Ben Foster, Vin Diesel, Johnny Knoxville, and Justin Timberlake.

(Wander)Lust For Blood

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Wanderlust is a lot of fun so I wouldn't hold it against y'all if you went to see that this weekend - give David Wain money and make Wetter Hotter Americaner Summer happen! - but the best movie that I've already seen that's coming out today is The Forgiveness of Blood, the new movie from Maria Full of Grace director Joshua Marston. Granted I've only seen two of the movies coming out this weekend, and they are Wanderlust and The Forgiveness of Blood, but nevermind all that. Blood is the best! It's also presumably coming out on several thousand fewer screens than Wanderlust, but you should keep an eye out for it.

The film tells the story of how an Albanian family in a rural town get trapped inside their house by a blood feud with a neighboring family after a deadly spat occurs between them. It plunks us down in a place with rules very different from our own and then goes about showing how similar we still are under that - Martson, an American who lives in New York, seems to have made this his mission, showing the ill fit between these other cultures with their lingering pasts and the modern world creeping in at the edges. The kids in Blood are literally trapped by the arbitrary and archaic rules of their elders, with the foremost patriarchal figure in their lives having let them horribly down and abandoned them. The film's most riveting, as was Maria, in showing the powerless of women in these structures - best in show goes to Sindi Lacej as the teenage daughter Rudina, full of promise only to have it all snuffed out in a flare of macho.

Besides the movies I have seen, there are a few others - like for instance Tyler Perry's new movie Good Deeds, starring himself and my nemesis Thandie "Ugh" Newton, which might just be the answer to what the equal and opposite force to all the goodness inside of me would be. Also there's propaganda piece Act of Valor, and Gone with Amanda Seyfried and Wes Bentley. Read what I gots to say on them over at Celebrity Beehive.
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(Wander)Lust For Blood

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Wanderlust is a lot of fun so I wouldn't hold it against y'all if you went to see that this weekend - give David Wain money and make Wetter Hotter Americaner Summer happen! - but the best movie that I've already seen that's coming out today is The Forgiveness of Blood, the new movie from Maria Full of Grace director Joshua Marston. Granted I've only seen two of the movies coming out this weekend, and they are Wanderlust and The Forgiveness of Blood, but nevermind all that. Blood is the best! It's also presumably coming out on several thousand fewer screens than Wanderlust, but you should keep an eye out for it.

The film tells the story of how an Albanian family in a rural town get trapped inside their house by a blood feud with a neighboring family after a deadly spat occurs between them. It plunks us down in a place with rules very different from our own and then goes about showing how similar we still are under that - Martson, an American who lives in New York, seems to have made this his mission, showing the ill fit between these other cultures with their lingering pasts and the modern world creeping in at the edges. The kids in Blood are literally trapped by the arbitrary and archaic rules of their elders, with the foremost patriarchal figure in their lives having let them horribly down and abandoned them. The film's most riveting, as was Maria, in showing the powerless of women in these structures - best in show goes to Sindi Lacej as the teenage daughter Rudina, full of promise only to have it all snuffed out in a flare of macho.

Besides the movies I have seen, there are a few others - like for instance Tyler Perry's new movie Good Deeds, starring himself and my nemesis Thandie "Ugh" Newton, which might just be the answer to what the equal and opposite force to all the goodness inside of me would be. Also there's propaganda piece Act of Valor, and Gone with Amanda Seyfried and Wes Bentley. Read what I gots to say on them over at Celebrity Beehive.
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Justin Theroux One Time

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Not as spectacularly pubeariffic as the last photograph

we got of Justin, but it will do. Wanderlust is out today!

Justin and his pubes are ripe for the plucking!

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Justin Theroux One Time

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Not as spectacularly pubeariffic as the last photograph

we got of Justin, but it will do. Wanderlust is out today!

Justin and his pubes are ripe for the plucking!

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Which is Hotter?

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(clockwise) Patrick Bateman's "bone, Silian Rail"

Van Patten's "Eggshell, Romalian" or

Bryce's "Raised lettering, pale nimbus white" or

Allen's "subtle off-white, tastefully thick, watermarked"?

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poll by twiigs.com

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Which is Hotter?

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(clockwise) Patrick Bateman's "bone, Silian Rail"

Van Patten's "Eggshell, Romalian" or

Bryce's "Raised lettering, pale nimbus white" or

Allen's "subtle off-white, tastefully thick, watermarked"?

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poll by twiigs.com

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Paul Rudd Twelve Times

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(click to embiggen) Wanna know who's adorable in person? Wow if I said somebody other than Paul Rudd to answer that question - Albert Fish! - that would be weird. (It would especially weird if I said Albert Fish.) Anyway yes as you can see from those pictures above, Paul Rudd is indeed every inch of adorable live you hope he will be. Those are from the Film Comment Selects screening of David Wain's Wanderlust that screened here in NY last night. Also there with Paul was Wain and his co-stars Ken Marino, Kerri Kenney, and Alan Alda.

I'd put Wanderlust about on par with Wain's last movie Role Models - so very funny, but maybe undone a little bit by an erratic tone - towards the end there's some sappy story machinations that even the movie half-rolls its eyes at. Sometimes you feel with Wain's movies this sense of, "Oh fine, we'll actually bother to do some plot now, whatever." It's a real showcase for Rudd though, and he's his ever charming yet vulgar self. That he can maintain such sweetness while using a broad southern waitress voice to say the word "dick" over and over again is a testament to his abilities.

And of course the rest of the cast runs deep with talent - Aniston's perfectly charming, while Ken Marino has his blustering jerk thing down pat. And I was surprised not at how funny Micheala Watkins was as Marino's suffering wife but at how much the movie allowed her to be so funny. Hers is a usually thankless role that Wain mined more than you expect him to. And then you've got Kenney, Alda, Malin Akerman, Joe Lo Truglia, Kathryn Hahn, Lauren Ambrose, Linda Lavin (!), so so many people hitting so many funny notes. And Justin Theroux is a bushy-bearded sex bomb. This thing I tweeted last night about says it all.

Oh and during the Q&A Paul Rudd and Ken Marino were asked about a Party Down movie, and that managed to be the only bit I recorded on video. Spoiler alert: they totally dodge the question, but are adorable while doing it.

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Paul Rudd Twelve Times

.

(click to embiggen) Wanna know who's adorable in person? Wow if I said somebody other than Paul Rudd to answer that question - Albert Fish! - that would be weird. (It would especially weird if I said Albert Fish.) Anyway yes as you can see from those pictures above, Paul Rudd is indeed every inch of adorable live you hope he will be. Those are from the Film Comment Selects screening of David Wain's Wanderlust that screened here in NY last night. Also there with Paul was Wain and his co-stars Ken Marino, Kerri Kenney, and Alan Alda.

I'd put Wanderlust about on par with Wain's last movie Role Models - so very funny, but maybe undone a little bit by an erratic tone - towards the end there's some sappy story machinations that even the movie half-rolls its eyes at. Sometimes you feel with Wain's movies this sense of, "Oh fine, we'll actually bother to do some plot now, whatever." It's a real showcase for Rudd though, and he's his ever charming yet vulgar self. That he can maintain such sweetness while using a broad southern waitress voice to say the word "dick" over and over again is a testament to his abilities.

And of course the rest of the cast runs deep with talent - Aniston's perfectly charming, while Ken Marino has his blustering jerk thing down pat. And I was surprised not at how funny Micheala Watkins was as Marino's suffering wife but at how much the movie allowed her to be so funny. Hers is a usually thankless role that Wain mined more than you expect him to. And then you've got Kenney, Alda, Malin Akerman, Joe Lo Truglia, Kathryn Hahn, Lauren Ambrose, Linda Lavin (!), so so many people hitting so many funny notes. And Justin Theroux is a bushy-bearded sex bomb. This thing I tweeted last night about says it all.

Oh and during the Q&A Paul Rudd and Ken Marino were asked about a Party Down movie, and that managed to be the only bit I recorded on video. Spoiler alert: they totally dodge the question, but are adorable while doing it.

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Finally A Justin Theroux Picture Worth Posting

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Those of us who love Justin Theroux have worn out twenty copies of Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle by now, since proper exploitation of Justin's so rare. For somebody who dates Jennifer Aniston, he's way too hard to come by. So this new picture of him in New York magazine is appreciated. Very, very appreciated.

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Finally A Justin Theroux Picture Worth Posting

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Those of us who love Justin Theroux have worn out twenty copies of Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle by now, since proper exploitation of Justin's so rare. For somebody who dates Jennifer Aniston, he's way too hard to come by. So this new picture of him in New York magazine is appreciated. Very, very appreciated.

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5 Off My Head - Film Comment Selects

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(First off, that picture to the right there really has nothing to do with this post except it's a picture that once appeared in an issue of Film Comment magazine and came up while I was googling "Film Comment magazine covers" to illustrate what's to come in this post, but if you don't want to look at a ripped Brad Pitt covered in blood then I can't help you.)

So this list isn't strictly "off the top of my head" because there's nothing random about it - I am going to see five movies at the Film Comment Selects series that the Film Society of Lincoln Center just announced, running from February 17th through March 1st, and this will be a list of them. Easy peasy. 

It might make more sense to make a list of five movies that I'm not seeing that I would like to see but cannot for various whatever reasons - movies like Rainer Werner Fassbiner's Despair, his only English language film and one of his that I have never seen, but I'll have to skip the screenings of it because it's only showing in the afternoon and I have a day job, yo. Same with Ingmar Bergman's Face to Face. Or then there's the American remake of the single-shot horror flick The Silent House starring Elisabeth Olsen, which I'll also have to miss because I already have plans that night. Or then the Russian futurist nightmare Target sounds interesting, about a cosmic fountain of youth and the wealthy people who take advantage of it, but I can't make that one either. 

But that's all sad junk since I can't go to any of those movies, 

so let's look at the ones I am going to see. Hooray for the positive!

1- First and foremost, tickling the tips of my toes with excitement, is Yorgos Lanthimos' follow-up to Dogtooth, called ALPS. I've talked about this one several times here at the blog - I adored Dogtooth with every fiber of my being, and I cannot wait to see this. 

2- David Wain made Wet Hot American Summer, so I will see anything he ever makes for the rest of forever, even if it stars Jennifer Aniston. His new movie Wanderlust is actually out in theaters only a couple of days after it screens for this series, but Wain and stars Paul Rudd and Kerri Kenney are scheduled to be at the screening, so I'm totally there. Paul Rudd! Have you guys seen the new TV commercial for it? Justin Theroux saying "Suck it." to Paul Rudd over and over again is what heaven looks like, right?

3- Even though my only real knowledge beforehand of the Aussie snuff flick Snowtown is the fact that Glenn of Stale Popcorn hated hated hated it, the hate was so hot and palpable that it's kind of drawn me in with fascination. So I won't blame you, Glenn, when I'm horribly offended, you warned me.

4- The Forgiveness of Blood is the second feature from Joshua Marston, who directed the very very fine Maria Full of Grace. If it's as good as Maria, then I will be very happy indeed.

5- And finally how could I resist going to see James Franco bringing his pretentious homosexually-tinged artiste persona to we the people for a screening of his re-edited take on Gus Van Sant's My Own Prive Idaho and its star River Phoenix, which he calls My Own Private River. I have a feeling my eyes are going to roll right out of my head with this one, but I'm sure at the same time I'll be thinking about how I have something to shut him up with, and so it goes.

Alright, so tickets are on sale now, 

head over here to check it out y'all! 

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5 Off My Head - Film Comment Selects

.

(First off, that picture to the right there really has nothing to do with this post except it's a picture that once appeared in an issue of Film Comment magazine and came up while I was googling "Film Comment magazine covers" to illustrate what's to come in this post, but if you don't want to look at a ripped Brad Pitt covered in blood then I can't help you.)

So this list isn't strictly "off the top of my head" because there's nothing random about it - I am going to see five movies at the Film Comment Selects series that the Film Society of Lincoln Center just announced, running from February 17th through March 1st, and this will be a list of them. Easy peasy. 

It might make more sense to make a list of five movies that I'm not seeing that I would like to see but cannot for various whatever reasons - movies like Rainer Werner Fassbiner's Despair, his only English language film and one of his that I have never seen, but I'll have to skip the screenings of it because it's only showing in the afternoon and I have a day job, yo. Same with Ingmar Bergman's Face to Face. Or then there's the American remake of the single-shot horror flick The Silent House starring Elisabeth Olsen, which I'll also have to miss because I already have plans that night. Or then the Russian futurist nightmare Target sounds interesting, about a cosmic fountain of youth and the wealthy people who take advantage of it, but I can't make that one either. 

But that's all sad junk since I can't go to any of those movies, 

so let's look at the ones I am going to see. Hooray for the positive!

1- First and foremost, tickling the tips of my toes with excitement, is Yorgos Lanthimos' follow-up to Dogtooth, called ALPS. I've talked about this one several times here at the blog - I adored Dogtooth with every fiber of my being, and I cannot wait to see this. 

2- David Wain made Wet Hot American Summer, so I will see anything he ever makes for the rest of forever, even if it stars Jennifer Aniston. His new movie Wanderlust is actually out in theaters only a couple of days after it screens for this series, but Wain and stars Paul Rudd and Kerri Kenney are scheduled to be at the screening, so I'm totally there. Paul Rudd! Have you guys seen the new TV commercial for it? Justin Theroux saying "Suck it." to Paul Rudd over and over again is what heaven looks like, right?

3- Even though my only real knowledge beforehand of the Aussie snuff flick Snowtown is the fact that Glenn of Stale Popcorn hated hated hated it, the hate was so hot and palpable that it's kind of drawn me in with fascination. So I won't blame you, Glenn, when I'm horribly offended, you warned me.

4- The Forgiveness of Blood is the second feature from Joshua Marston, who directed the very very fine Maria Full of Grace. If it's as good as Maria, then I will be very happy indeed.

5- And finally how could I resist going to see James Franco bringing his pretentious homosexually-tinged artiste persona to we the people for a screening of his re-edited take on Gus Van Sant's My Own Prive Idaho and its star River Phoenix, which he calls My Own Private River. I have a feeling my eyes are going to roll right out of my head with this one, but I'm sure at the same time I'll be thinking about how I have something to shut him up with, and so it goes.

Alright, so tickets are on sale now, 

head over here to check it out y'all! 

.