Beauty Break: Almodóvar's Eye Candy

by Cláudio Alves

César Vicente in PAIN & GLORY (2019).

Before Martin Scorsese ignited the internet's fury with his comments about the MCU, another master filmmaker had already made headlines with less than complimentary opinions on the matter. Back in April, before he took his glorious Pain & Glory to Cannes, Pedro Almodóvar criticized superhero movies for having no sexuality. According to the Spanish auteur, they are neutered.

When compared against his passionate filmography they are piteously sexless indeed. But so are most movies. Few filmmakers have explored the many permutations of desire as thoroughly as Almodóvar has, usually with a patina of irreverent queerness. From killers in skimpy white briefs to ballets of bulges and sculpted asses, his camera is always ready to lick an actor's body and crystalize them into divinities of wantonness.

You're invited to peruse the director's gallery of beautiful men, starting at the dawn of his career and ending with Pain & Glory's first bloom of desire. Come see Almodóvar's NSFW eye candy…

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Review: The Laundromat is an entertaining swing and miss.

by Tony Ruggio

Steven Soderbergh's fingerprints are unmistakable and unknowable simultaneously. He bounds from genre to genre, and studio to indie and back again with such regularity that he’s difficult to pin down. The only thing you can count on is that he’ll try new things and, unless he’s indulging in Ocean’s Eleven fun, and attempt to push the boundaries of what we know as cinema. That all sounds like embellishment and it is, because Soderbergh is nothing if not a bit pretentious. His newest film, The Laundromat, is a big swing aimed at uncovering the morbid, funny, and messed-up nature of the scheming that went on behind the Panama Papers scandal. He misses the mark by half an hour. It’s The Big Short if The Big Short was in a hurry to fill you in on the minutiae, or didn’t bother to impart to you the gravity of its subject matter.

The film is only ninety or so minutes long and for a topic as heady as financial con-artists around the world, and the all-seeing, all-ignoring facilitators who allowed for them, well, the world is not enough...

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Podcast: Judy's Pain & Glory

with Murtada Elfadl & Nathaniel R

 

Index (58 minutes)
00:01 Pain and Glory - Pedro Almodóvar's career, the moment we fell for the picture, and Antonio Banderas tender dazzling homage/star turn.
14:50 Oscar's Best International Feature competition. How they vote, movies we love, and what might get nominated.
27:27 Renée Zellweger as 'The World's Greatest Entertainer' in Judy. The performance and the film.
43:11 The Best Actress Race: Scarlett, Cynthia, Renee, Alfre, and more...

Related Reading/Listening
Murtada's Pain & Glory Review
Nathaniel's episodes of Las Culturistas
Foreign Submissions you can stream right now

 You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Pain and Glory, Judy

Cannes: Pedro's "Pain and Glory" is a hit at Cannes

by Nathaniel R

Antonio, Penelope, and Pedro together once again.

Hang this photo in the Louvre, s'il vous plaît. Loyal readers know that Pedro Almodóvar is my favourite living director so I bring you glorious news from Cannes -- Pedro's latest, Pain and Glory, starring his only real male muse Antonio Banderas and featuring his current female muse Penélope Cruz, is winning reviews that are much closer to glorious than painful. It could well be in contention for prizes with the jury...

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Showbiz History: The Vamp, a Psycho, and The Others

8 random things that happened on this day in history (Aug 10th)...

1918 Today is the centennial of Salome, one of Theda Bara's key pictures. Sadly, the film is lost as are so many silents of historic significance and almost all of Theda's films. She was nicknamed 'The Vamp' setting an archetype that would stay with the cinema forever basically. Theda was in her 40s by the time sound killed off the silents; she never even attemped a talkie.

1933 Hedy Lamarr marries her first husband (of six!) when she is just 19 years old. If you haven't yet watched Bombshell the Hedy Lamarr story on Netflix I urge you to do so. She's fascinating. Currently both Diane Kruger and Gal Gadot are planning to play her in different biographical projects for film and television. 

1950 Sunset Boulevard, only one of the all time greatest films, has its world premiere at Radio City Musical Hall in NYC

1959 Rosanna Arquette born in NYC. She's the first child in what will become a bustling family of acting siblings.  

1960 Antonio Banderas born in Málaga Spain. Meanwhile over in Los Angeles Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho premieres in Los Angeles. Banderas will later play three psychos superbly for Pedro Almodovar in Law of Desire, Tie Me Up Tie Me Down! and The Skin I Live In. 

1971 Justin Theroux is born in DC. 

2001 The Others opens in movie theaters just two months after Moulin Rouge! making it the summer Nicole Kidman went supernova.

2007 Stardust opens in movie theaters with Michelle Pfeiffer terrorizing Claire Danes and Charlie Cox with her ooh ah ah sorcery.