Links: Exciting Memoirs, Luscious Italians, and the Out100

• The Hollywood Reporter Paul Mescal and Josh O'Conner to star in early 20th century gay love story, The History of Sound (the curious part is that it's about America and both stars are British and the director is South African)
• The Guardian Eternals banned in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait over gay content
• People actor Kal Penn (Harold & Kumar) has come out publicly before his memoir "You Can't Be Serious" hits. He'll be marrying his partner of 11 years soon

More after the jump including a Paul Newman memoir, new roles for Joe Alwyn and Gael Garcia Bernal, Titane's Oscar dreams, luscious Italians and the annual OUT100 list...

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How Had I Never Seen... "Beau Travail"?

by Cláudio Alves

People cope with stress in different ways. Earlier this month, when the US presidential election was unfolding and the world held its breath, I turned to Twitter to reminisce about 2020 cinematic excellence and try to calm my nerves. I also scoured the internet for good deals on physical media, a bit of retail therapy, adding more DVDs and Blu-Rays to a collection that has long ago surpassed a thousand films. Part of the new additions were my first ever Criterion editions! 

All this to say that the discs arrived this week and, since the Criterion Channel has a new collection of Claire Denis films, I decided to finally watch the much-lauded Beau Travail and write about the experience. And what an experience it was…

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Would you rather...?

Our celebrity-fantasy Instagram check-ins feel especially needed now when fantasy is all we have since we're all cut-off from human connection in our individual quarantines. So would you rather...

...do yoga with Illeanna Douglas and her dog?
...paint Amanda Seyfried's face?
...shower (outdoors) w/ Miguel Angel Silvestre?
...hike with Julia Louis-Dreyfuss and Ellen?
...get creative with face masks / protection with Claire Denis?
...have an intimate relationship (by phone) with Noah Centineo?
...foster puppies with Cara Delevigne?
...or champagne-time with Jessica Chastain?

Pictures are after the jump to help you decide.

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New Podcast: High Life, Sauvage, and Mary Kay Place in Diane

by Murtada Elfadl and Nathaniel R

 

Index (50 minutes)
00:01 Claire Denis' High Life starring Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, and the Fuck Box
16:00 A gay hustler movie from France Sauvage/Wild
24:10 Mary Kay Place is Diane in Kent Jones' intimate narrative debut starring a slew of underutilized older actresses
34:50 What we've been seeing on Broadway as the Tony nominations approach
44:44 Coming Soon & miscellaneous silliness since Murtada wants to know if Cate Blanchett is in Avengers: Endgame)

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? 

Sauvage Diane

Soundtracking: "Let The Sunshine In"

by Chris Feil

Etta James’ “At Last” has to be one of the most cliched romantic song choices in the movies, diminished over the decades through overuse and reductiveness, its swooning sexual pull often taken for granted or sanitized in gauzed lensing. But leave it to an original like Claire Denis to capture the oft-revisited song with new ears.

With Let the Sunshine In, Denis delivers us her take on a romantic drama, with all of the structural turns outside of genre convention as she approached vampire films and science fiction alike. Instead of the kind of romcom story developments we expect to see in our stories of women struggling to find love, this film is turns that into a more expansive character study with Juliette Binoche as our protagonist Isabelle. It is essentially examining the desire to be in love as a state of being.

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