The weather’s gotten chillier, so logic dictates that the movies are about to get a lot better. I’ve already gushed over Patrick Wilson in the trailer for Little Children, and on that note, I think it’s high time I discussed the Oscar bait and other fall adult serious drama-type movies we’re anticipating - with links to trailers and everything!
I’m counting the minutes till Friday’s debut of The Black Dahlia, directed by the utterly deranged Brian De Palma. We hear there’s a scene where Josh Hartnett and Aaron Eckhart box each other (hot), and we can’t wait to see a glammed-up Hilary Swank get it on with The L Word’s Mia Kirshner. Plus Scarlett Johansson in ’40s-siren getup, and all the sex and violence you’ve been missing thanks to a diet of PG-13, family friendly summer blockbusters. Dig the part in the trailer when Swank says, “Elizabeth and I made love once. I just wanted to see what it would be like with someone who looked like me.” Kinky!
We’ve never thought of Clint Eastwood as being particularly gay-friendly, but the cast of Flags of Our Fathers, the first of two movies he’s filmed about the Battle of Iwo Jima (one from the American perspective, the other from the Japanese), reads like the Bruce Weber photo shoot of your dreams: Paul Walker, Barry Pepper, Adam Beach, Jesse Bradford, Ryan Phillippe (!), Jamie “BIlly Elliot” Bell (!!), even that twinkalicious Stark Sands from Die Mommie Die.
Now on to actual queens: Helen Mirren just picked up an Emmy for her HBO role as Elizabeth I, and we’re dying to see her take on Liz II - in the aftermath of Princess Diana’s death, no less - in Stephen Frears’ The Queen. Same goes for Dr. Sunken Tits in Sofia Coppola’s fantasia of pre-Revolution France, the “It’s not supposed to be historically accurate, so just sit back and have fun!” non-biopic Marie Antoinette.
We’re hoping Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz are hot together in Darren Aronofsky’s follow-up to Requiem for a Dream, The Fountain, even without talking refrigerators and “ass to ass!” scenes. We’re already into Clive Owen, fighting to save the human race from extinction opposite Julianne Moore in Mexican genius Alfonso Cuaron’s Children of Men.
Another great Mexican director, Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, has been kind enough to fashion an ensemble that includes both Brad Pitt (yum) and Gael Garcia Bernal (yummer) in Babel. For more of the bombshell Bernal, there’s Michel (Eternal Sunshine) Gondry’s trippy-looking The Science of Sleep.
Challenging Babel for the Hottest Star Combination are Scorsese’s The Departed, featuring the “bring a mop” marquee of DiCaprio, Damon and Wahlberg; and Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige, with Jackman and Christian Bale as dueling, hot magicians. Could happen.
We’re over Augusten Burroughs, but we’re psyched to see what Nip/Tucker Ryan Murphy does with Burroughs’ Running with Scissors. And Infamous, aka The Other Truman Capote Movie, looks like the charity case of the season (every time I’ve seen the trailer in a theater, audible cries of “What the fuck? This again?” are heard), but apparently it depicts the Capote/Perry Smith relationship as more overtly homoerotic. Sign me up!
(All trailers available at Apple, except for Flags of Our Fathers.)
The Black Dahlia
Flags of Our Fathers
The Queen
Marie Antoinette
The Fountain
Children of Men
Babel
The Science of Sleep
The Departed
The Prestige
Running with Scissors
Infamous
Love your blog, it makes me laughing in my wistful cynicism on a daily basis. I saw your list of anticipated movies of the fall. I just got back from Telluride Film Festival and of mention are, Last King of Scotland, Babel and Little Children. Babel is a total mindfuck of a movie, beautifully crafted 4 stories that all come together at the end. Terror and Immigration are prevalent themes with the DILF version of Brad Pitt right in the middle. It is one of those films that sticks with you for a few days… Little Children as you correctly hyped is super sexual. I don’t think anyone in the theater would deny Patrick Wilson some lovin’, he actually is an apt performer when portraying his characters’ inability to grow emotionally past a 14 year old. However, the image of his sweaty thrusting ass in the laundry room will be the fantasy of my 24 year old life. ‘Tis very good. The film itself manipulates you, makes you laugh and feels like a more devious yet genuine version of the “American Suburban Psudo-Tragedy”. That’s what I call it at at least.
They should just give the best actor Oscar to Forrest Whitaker right now. It should be like a Halliburton government contract bid; no competition necessary. He carefully plays the line of a terrifying and endearing Idi Amin, the Uganadan dictator in the 70’s who killed 300,000+ people. I know he isn’t Pen15 boner inducing, but hell, the man is tantalizing like no other. Just my two cents. Keep up the good work, sirs.