Haywire Will Be Out On May 1st

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So you won't have any excuses for not seeing it after that. Go here and buy it! I don't get why it did so poorly, box office wise - you may recall that I enjoyed the hell out of it (here's my review) so even besides all that hot Fassy towel action I say there's other wonders to behold. Channing and Ewan and Soderbergh's super style, all that jazz. And Carano might've been wet behind the ears acting-wise but Soderbergh utilized her well, I thought.

Oh and I swiped these gifs straight from the ever-awesome Simone at Fassinating Fassbender, but how could I not? She understands.

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Haywire Will Be Out On May 1st

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So you won't have any excuses for not seeing it after that. Go here and buy it! I don't get why it did so poorly, box office wise - you may recall that I enjoyed the hell out of it (here's my review) so even besides all that hot Fassy towel action I say there's other wonders to behold. Channing and Ewan and Soderbergh's super style, all that jazz. And Carano might've been wet behind the ears acting-wise but Soderbergh utilized her well, I thought.

Oh and I swiped these gifs straight from the ever-awesome Simone at Fassinating Fassbender, but how could I not? She understands.

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TGT11: A Moment of 2011 Awesomeness

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This has been a moment of 2011 awesomeness.

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TGT11: A Moment of 2011 Awesomeness

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This has been a moment of 2011 awesomeness.

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TGT11: The Scary Movies of 2011

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While there were no straightforward horror masterpieces like Martyrs this year - every year I want another Martyrs and every year I am let down - there was a lot of fun and jumps and scariness to be had at the cinemas in 2011. Now is the moment when we honor them. The top three films on this list were already named on my Top 20 Films of the Year countdown, but we'll get to that semi-anticlimactic moment when we get to it. Y'all will probably haggle with me over my definition of horror at that point, anyway. Onto the spooks...

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (directed by Troy Nixey) - I still haven't seen the original TV movie which apparently freaked out an entire generation of slightly-older-than-me folks, but I found Nixey's film a real treat - a dark and nasty-spirited fairy-tale for the twisted kid in all of us. Bonus points for what happens to Mrs. Tom Cruise. (original review)

The Tunnel (directed by Carlo Ledesma) - I have a hunger inside my belly and the only thing that will sate it is more Blair Witch rip-offs! Seriously though I have an apparently undying affection for a solid found-footage effort, and this more than fits the bill with its [REC]-ish creepy sewer people and darkness so much terrible darkness into which we stare and stare and oh yeah there is something moving there and oh my god oh my god make it go away. (original review)

TrollHunter (directed by André Øvredal) - If there's anything I enjoy more than found footage of horrible underground swamp-people, it's found-footage of giant fantasy man-eating monsters laid out from big to bigger to biggest in excessively descriptive almost textbook form. And then we met this one, and hold god was it big, and here's all the stats from the backside of its monster baseball card. I love this shit so much. (original review)

Final Destination 5 (directed by Steven Quale) - Almost as good as the second one, which is the highest praise I can give without saying it's better than the second one, which is nigh impossible. I enjoyed part four more than most, but then I am genetically incapable of not adoring this series, but then this one reinvigorated the whole shebang all the same. (original review)

Kill List (directed by Ben Wheatley) - I don't know at what point I'll feel comfortable talking about the last twenty minutes of Kill List, but it's not yet. I think that there must still too many people out there who don't know what's coming. My original review's even vaguer than what I'm giving here. Just see it! Even before things go wrong so wrong the film's dripping with an uneasy and bizarre dread... and then things go so wrong. 

I Saw the Devil (directed by Jee-won Kim) - A year ago I couldn't get enough of this movie and it probably would've topped this list, but my enthusiasm has dampened a little bit with more viewings - the visceral shock of that first time through wore off some with revisits, and the lulls between incredible scenes begin to stand out a little bit. But man, the incredible scenes in this thing are hardcore, and it's spectacular to look at. (Especially Lee Byung-hun.)

Insidious (directed by James Wan) - Yes I had and still have some issues with that slack-jawed poppet-netherworld that Insidious builds to, but for sheer "make me jump out of my seat" chills and thrills nobody topped Wan's ode to things that go bump in the morning afternoon and still of the night. I'm not really a jumper either, but this thing had me bouncing around in my seat like a pinball. (original review)

As for the movies I consider horror that already made my earlier Top 20 list, they are Contagion, Martha Marcy May Marlene, and Take Shelter. I don't think anybody will argue over me classifying Contagion as horror - and Contagion freaked me out so badly I literally had to stop it every fifteen minutes to catch my breath before I totally hyperventilated - but I know pushing MMMM and Shelter under the genre umbrella might engage a few side-eyes from y'all... but side-eyes be damned, I says. They both present us with worlds where our protagonists crumbling grips on reality render the world a deeply unsettling and eerie place filled with monsters, albeit less fanged or troll-footed than these other picks. And they both end on notes of that incomprehensible non-reality tilting over into the real deal, sealing our dooms. If that ain't horror then consider that mewling off-screen kitten or a dripping wet  and dead-eyed Jessica Chastain fingering a fly-covered kitchen knife and get back to me.

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TGT11: The Scary Movies of 2011

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While there were no straightforward horror masterpieces like Martyrs this year - every year I want another Martyrs and every year I am let down - there was a lot of fun and jumps and scariness to be had at the cinemas in 2011. Now is the moment when we honor them. The top three films on this list were already named on my Top 20 Films of the Year countdown, but we'll get to that semi-anticlimactic moment when we get to it. Y'all will probably haggle with me over my definition of horror at that point, anyway. Onto the spooks...

Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (directed by Troy Nixey) - I still haven't seen the original TV movie which apparently freaked out an entire generation of slightly-older-than-me folks, but I found Nixey's film a real treat - a dark and nasty-spirited fairy-tale for the twisted kid in all of us. Bonus points for what happens to Mrs. Tom Cruise. (original review)

The Tunnel (directed by Carlo Ledesma) - I have a hunger inside my belly and the only thing that will sate it is more Blair Witch rip-offs! Seriously though I have an apparently undying affection for a solid found-footage effort, and this more than fits the bill with its [REC]-ish creepy sewer people and darkness so much terrible darkness into which we stare and stare and oh yeah there is something moving there and oh my god oh my god make it go away. (original review)

TrollHunter (directed by André Øvredal) - If there's anything I enjoy more than found footage of horrible underground swamp-people, it's found-footage of giant fantasy man-eating monsters laid out from big to bigger to biggest in excessively descriptive almost textbook form. And then we met this one, and hold god was it big, and here's all the stats from the backside of its monster baseball card. I love this shit so much. (original review)

Final Destination 5 (directed by Steven Quale) - Almost as good as the second one, which is the highest praise I can give without saying it's better than the second one, which is nigh impossible. I enjoyed part four more than most, but then I am genetically incapable of not adoring this series, but then this one reinvigorated the whole shebang all the same. (original review)

Kill List (directed by Ben Wheatley) - I don't know at what point I'll feel comfortable talking about the last twenty minutes of Kill List, but it's not yet. I think that there must still too many people out there who don't know what's coming. My original review's even vaguer than what I'm giving here. Just see it! Even before things go wrong so wrong the film's dripping with an uneasy and bizarre dread... and then things go so wrong. 

I Saw the Devil (directed by Jee-won Kim) - A year ago I couldn't get enough of this movie and it probably would've topped this list, but my enthusiasm has dampened a little bit with more viewings - the visceral shock of that first time through wore off some with revisits, and the lulls between incredible scenes begin to stand out a little bit. But man, the incredible scenes in this thing are hardcore, and it's spectacular to look at. (Especially Lee Byung-hun.)

Insidious (directed by James Wan) - Yes I had and still have some issues with that slack-jawed poppet-netherworld that Insidious builds to, but for sheer "make me jump out of my seat" chills and thrills nobody topped Wan's ode to things that go bump in the morning afternoon and still of the night. I'm not really a jumper either, but this thing had me bouncing around in my seat like a pinball. (original review)

As for the movies I consider horror that already made my earlier Top 20 list, they are Contagion, Martha Marcy May Marlene, and Take Shelter. I don't think anybody will argue over me classifying Contagion as horror - and Contagion freaked me out so badly I literally had to stop it every fifteen minutes to catch my breath before I totally hyperventilated - but I know pushing MMMM and Shelter under the genre umbrella might engage a few side-eyes from y'all... but side-eyes be damned, I says. They both present us with worlds where our protagonists crumbling grips on reality render the world a deeply unsettling and eerie place filled with monsters, albeit less fanged or troll-footed than these other picks. And they both end on notes of that incomprehensible non-reality tilting over into the real deal, sealing our dooms. If that ain't horror then consider that mewling off-screen kitten or a dripping wet  and dead-eyed Jessica Chastain fingering a fly-covered kitchen knife and get back to me.

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TGT11: The Great Movies of 2011 #20-11

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I probably could have made a top thirty for the year if I were (more of) a crazy person, and gone to yammer even more about movies from the year that I loved, but I've got to show restraint once in awhile or nothing will ever get done and we'll be counting down last year straight through the end of this year. As is I feel lousy for leaving in the cold a couple of coulda-been's - namely Raul Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon and Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre and Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff and Leon Ford's Griff the Invisible and Hong-jin Na's The Yellow Sea and... see? I could keep going but I need to stop myself. Let's see what made the first half of our top 20! They're good! I like them!

Margaret (directed by Kenneth Lonergan) -- Like a sprawling novel, this movie has no interest in not following any of the twenty thousand strands that make up our titular heroine and egads does "heroine" seem like too small a word to contain this girl. She's as maddening as she is decent as she is selfish as she is intelligent, and on. The movie's a bit of a mess but so is she, and dulling down any of their sharp edges would have made either of them far less fascinating creatures. (original review)

Bridesmaids (directed by Paul Feig) -- What felt sloppy here the first time  through (the film is kinda long) gets more and more forgiven with repeat viewings... and speaking of repeat viewings, I have watched this four times since it came out on DVD. And I can't imagine it will let up any time soon. I'll be laughing at the sight of Kristen Wiig punching a giant fucking cookie on my death-bed, fingers crossed. 

13 Assassins (directed by Takashi Miike) -- Not that any human being is capable of keeping up with Takashi Miike's output, but out of the dozen or so that I have seen this is his best film since Audition and might even top that, and if you know of my affections for Audition then you know this is love. The slow as molasses build is some of his most restrained classical work and then comes the epic forty-five-minutes-or-so battle royale that takes the film to wild roaring-in-your-seat heights. (original review)

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (directed by David Fincher) -- So much better than the Swedish version, with a far more interesting Lisbeth out of Rooney Mara than I ever got from Noomi Rapace. How Fincher managed to make me enraptured by material I was bored by the first go-through I might never comprehend. He's firing on all cylinders and every recycled tidbit somehow feels alive and icy and hard and sexy and new in his hands. (original review)

Contagion (directed by Steven Soderbergh) -- The night I watched this movie I tweeted that I was buying a giant bottle of Purell as soon as I could, and every morning and every night since then when I douse my hands in it while riding on the subway I think of this movie, and I shudder. (original review)

Weekend (directed by Andrew Haigh) -- A pitch perfect little romance that manages to feel genuine while also packing some heat - when's the last time a straight love story managed that trick? I usually run screaming from what passes for queer cinema these days but if there were more Weekends out there waiting for me, well what a blessing that would be. (original review)

The Muppets (directed by James Bobin) -- I don't think there was a movie that I sat with a stupider giant grin on my face from start to finish more than I did during The Muppets. Oh wait, I was simultaneously crying the entire time, i can't forget that. Basically I'm incapable of being fair-minded where Kermit & Co are concerned, but Bobin and Segel and everybody involved could have messed it up, they could have misstepped, and they did not. Total joy. (original review)

Hanna (directed by Joe Wright) - I'm as shocked as anybody that Hanna comes it at number thirteen on this list, but it gets really crazy from here on out you guys. Not to slight anything that came already but I could rearrange these top 13 tomorrow and it could sit very different and it could be just as right. Anybody complaining about a lack of great movies isn't watching the right movies. All that said, Hanna's fucking rad! (original review)

Beginners (directed by Mike Mills) -- This movie came out of nowhere. Oh sure by the time I saw it on DVD I'd heard everybody say it was wonderful. But I didn't believe any of them. Nothing about it was really calling to me - I love Ewan but he's done a lot of things I haven't loved and this felt like it might fall into that camp. The "Oh yeah that movie" camp. Good god, I am a fool. It treads along the finest of threads, simultaneously melancholy and whimsical, and it soft-shoes like a pro. (original review)

The Future (directed by Miranda July) -- Just beating out her husband Mike Mills' sad little love song, my beloved Miranda July's The Future kind of renders me incapable of speech. The ways she finds to express feelings I've never seen quite captured in the same way, the way she pushes herself into these new little nooks, it devastates me, and it makes me remember there are things out there left to say in the world, about the world, when sometimes it feels like we're just repeating ourselves. The Future might seem to meander strangely, but it's cutting across razor-sharp insights, never as dewey-eyed as it might appear to be. (original review)

COMING SOON... #10-1

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TGT11: The Great Movies of 2011 #20-11

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I probably could have made a top thirty for the year if I were (more of) a crazy person, and gone to yammer even more about movies from the year that I loved, but I've got to show restraint once in awhile or nothing will ever get done and we'll be counting down last year straight through the end of this year. As is I feel lousy for leaving in the cold a couple of coulda-been's - namely Raul Ruiz's Mysteries of Lisbon and Cary Fukunaga's Jane Eyre and Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff and Leon Ford's Griff the Invisible and Hong-jin Na's The Yellow Sea and... see? I could keep going but I need to stop myself. Let's see what made the first half of our top 20! They're good! I like them!

Margaret (directed by Kenneth Lonergan) -- Like a sprawling novel, this movie has no interest in not following any of the twenty thousand strands that make up our titular heroine and egads does "heroine" seem like too small a word to contain this girl. She's as maddening as she is decent as she is selfish as she is intelligent, and on. The movie's a bit of a mess but so is she, and dulling down any of their sharp edges would have made either of them far less fascinating creatures. (original review)

Bridesmaids (directed by Paul Feig) -- What felt sloppy here the first time  through (the film is kinda long) gets more and more forgiven with repeat viewings... and speaking of repeat viewings, I have watched this four times since it came out on DVD. And I can't imagine it will let up any time soon. I'll be laughing at the sight of Kristen Wiig punching a giant fucking cookie on my death-bed, fingers crossed. 

13 Assassins (directed by Takashi Miike) -- Not that any human being is capable of keeping up with Takashi Miike's output, but out of the dozen or so that I have seen this is his best film since Audition and might even top that, and if you know of my affections for Audition then you know this is love. The slow as molasses build is some of his most restrained classical work and then comes the epic forty-five-minutes-or-so battle royale that takes the film to wild roaring-in-your-seat heights. (original review)

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (directed by David Fincher) -- So much better than the Swedish version, with a far more interesting Lisbeth out of Rooney Mara than I ever got from Noomi Rapace. How Fincher managed to make me enraptured by material I was bored by the first go-through I might never comprehend. He's firing on all cylinders and every recycled tidbit somehow feels alive and icy and hard and sexy and new in his hands. (original review)

Contagion (directed by Steven Soderbergh) -- The night I watched this movie I tweeted that I was buying a giant bottle of Purell as soon as I could, and every morning and every night since then when I douse my hands in it while riding on the subway I think of this movie, and I shudder. (original review)

Weekend (directed by Andrew Haigh) -- A pitch perfect little romance that manages to feel genuine while also packing some heat - when's the last time a straight love story managed that trick? I usually run screaming from what passes for queer cinema these days but if there were more Weekends out there waiting for me, well what a blessing that would be. (original review)

The Muppets (directed by James Bobin) -- I don't think there was a movie that I sat with a stupider giant grin on my face from start to finish more than I did during The Muppets. Oh wait, I was simultaneously crying the entire time, i can't forget that. Basically I'm incapable of being fair-minded where Kermit & Co are concerned, but Bobin and Segel and everybody involved could have messed it up, they could have misstepped, and they did not. Total joy. (original review)

Hanna (directed by Joe Wright) - I'm as shocked as anybody that Hanna comes it at number thirteen on this list, but it gets really crazy from here on out you guys. Not to slight anything that came already but I could rearrange these top 13 tomorrow and it could sit very different and it could be just as right. Anybody complaining about a lack of great movies isn't watching the right movies. All that said, Hanna's fucking rad! (original review)

Beginners (directed by Mike Mills) -- This movie came out of nowhere. Oh sure by the time I saw it on DVD I'd heard everybody say it was wonderful. But I didn't believe any of them. Nothing about it was really calling to me - I love Ewan but he's done a lot of things I haven't loved and this felt like it might fall into that camp. The "Oh yeah that movie" camp. Good god, I am a fool. It treads along the finest of threads, simultaneously melancholy and whimsical, and it soft-shoes like a pro. (original review)

The Future (directed by Miranda July) -- Just beating out her husband Mike Mills' sad little love song, my beloved Miranda July's The Future kind of renders me incapable of speech. The ways she finds to express feelings I've never seen quite captured in the same way, the way she pushes herself into these new little nooks, it devastates me, and it makes me remember there are things out there left to say in the world, about the world, when sometimes it feels like we're just repeating ourselves. The Future might seem to meander strangely, but it's cutting across razor-sharp insights, never as dewey-eyed as it might appear to be. (original review)

COMING SOON... #10-1

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Quote of the Day

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If for no other reason then he says the words "butt cheek(s)" twice therein and thereby  reminds us of his own amply displayed pair, here's Joe Manganiello in a new interview with Out magazine explaining his oh-so-thespianish beefcakery on True Blood:

"As far as the butt cheek stuff goes, it just makes sense. It’s not gratuitous; it’s realistic. If you’re a werewolf and you transform, you lose everything and there are your butt cheeks. The show is a deconstruction of supernatural creatures. It’s not like other werewolf projects, where you magically reappear with tiny jean shorts on.”

Ooh, somebody wants to wrestle Taylor Lautner for werewolf dominance! And everybody wants to watch that. Anyway there are a couple more pics of the Big Man at that link. Plus we learn that at some point he'll be painted gold in Magic Mike. And I have to give props to Steven Soderbergh for making me laugh by saying this about that film:

"It’s kind of a buddy movie. We wanted the feel of Saturday Night Fever, but without the rape scene in the backseat."