Films in Frame - My own private Idaho, Maurice, Call me by your name, Moonlight, Brokeback Mountain, Kill your Darlings, Another country, Dorian Gray, I killed my mother, Happy Together
Teaser trailer for Felix van Groeningen and Charlotte Vandermeersch’s THE EIGHT MOUNTAINS starring Luca Marinelli and Alessandro Borghi.
Photographer Alessio Bolzoni purged his IG and left only the Luca Marinelli snaps he took for Fantastic Man magazine.
I totes understand, Alessio.
I didn’t notice you can see a hint of Luca’s tat.
-Among the pictures that Bolzoni purged from his IG were the promo pics for Luca Guadagnino’s HBO series WE ARE WHO WE ARE and a few CALL ME BY YOUR NAME promo pics.
“You had a beautiful friendship. Maybe more than a friendship. And I envy you. In my place, most parents would hope the whole thing goes away, or pray that their sons land on their feet soon enough. But I am not such a parent.”
In just a few days we will be traveling to NYC to see “Straight White Men.” Grace & I are very excited to make the 10hr trip from Michigan (not only to see the show but to also visit The Big Apple again for the 3rd time.) If anyone sees a girl (me) with a yellow Labrador Service Dog (Grace) on Tuesday at the show or stage door after, feel free to say hello.
So excited to see this guy on-stage in less than 3 weeks! Will be my first on-Broadway play in several years. Randy & I are going to try to catch a musical as well, not sure which one yet though.
Secured my tickets to see this guy on August 14th in NYC! Going to be a fun 10hr roadtrip with my longtime best-friend (it will be his 1st trip to New York, my 4th.) A 3-day Big Apple Whirlwind Extravaganza awaits!
For those of you who have already seen ‘Straight White Men’: How long is the stage door wait? Do the actors tend to sign for everyone or only do a few minutes? Will they sign non-Playbills (ie. Artwork)? Do they do the stage door at both matinee and evening performances?
My bestfriend and I will be going 10hrs to see the show in mid-August, just trying to plan some other things too.
So, I just got home from what turned out to be a 17hr shift and opened my mail to find this…I think I actually squee’d a little.
One of my closest friends from college, who is now a Police Detective in California, attached a note that said: ‘Hey, so I worked private security at a film festival event in the area a while back and thought you might like this. Armie spent quite a bit of time listening to our stories while he signed some pics. Couldn’t have asked for a nicer guy.’
So, my best friend bought me a print of this photo of Armie off of Amazon…but she forgot to check the size. It arrived today and it is 24" x 36". LOL. She bought me a poster! It is awfully pretty though.
Through quirks of media mega-mergers and studios shunting movies to streaming during the pandemic, Kennth Branaugh has relased three films since 2020. Belfast is probably the universally agreed upon best and Artemis Fowl the worst. Death on the Nile is somewhere in the middle, un victim je pense, of a mediocre script adaptation and too-serious tone.
What happened to make this movie so bleh? I think Michael Green happened. Some of his changes from book to film are modern and inspired (the Otterbournes and the Schuylers); some are odd (the crew announcing “we’re going ashore” then not having that be significant? Flashbacks, really serious flashbacks, Poirot getting Hulk-angry.) These tonal choices are consistent with his and Branaugh’s adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express and I think they misfired in that adaptation as well.
The cast is … not bad. Agatha Christie’s work merits more context than I’m putting on it here, but the people caught up in a murder plot are usually rich, glamourous, and largly assholes. To that end, disliking anyone in the cast won’t necessarily negatively impact your viewing. But back to Christie for a moment: her characters frequently exhibit racist, xenophobic, sexist, greedy behavior. Sometimes we’re meant to see these as flaws and sometimes it’s Poirot’s benevolent sexism or something akin to the “period racism” tag on AO3. Christie definitely trucked in sterotypes we’d call racist and would apply them to characters of which we’re supposed to be suspicious. This is stripped out of this movie and that’s a good thing.
Despite the music being slightly less ponderous than Murder on the Orient Express (Patrick Doyle provides the music in both) the whole journey remains too serious. I don’t mean that murder isn’t serious but the prologue is Poirot’s flashback to WWI, a scene that I suppose only Branaugh’s staus saved from being cut. We witness Poirot’s emotional breakdown discussing love with Jacqueline and his impressive anger which makes him seem a little unhinged. I’d be unhinged in these cricumstances but he gets so worked up it undermines our confidence in the great detective.
What makes this worth the watch are the costumes and setting. Venture any farther upriver and you’re bound to be dissapointed.
