Director Joel Edgerton's "Boy Erased" Heads to Focus, While the Author of the Memoir Addresses Concerns

By Daniel Crooke

Give or take a big, broad Black Mass or two, Aussie toughie Joel Edgerton has proven himself to be a craftsman of restraint throughout his most recent crop of work, and continues to surprise audiences by subverting their expectations of how a man of his hulking size and stature should emote on the big screen. His performance in last year’s criminally undervalued Loving buries deep currents of sensitivity beneath the protective creases of his brooding face, and he manages to say more and speak louder through the locked intensity of his body language than the volume of his voice in Trey Edward Shults’s apocalyptic downer It Comes At Night. 

However, his most compelling work as an artist to date has been behind the camera...

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More Kidman Birthday Wishes

How are you doing on your 50 Celebratory Assignments for Kidman's birthday? You've only got a few hours to complete them all. Chop chop. Let's close out the festivities by revelling in all the Kidman love online today starting with her BFF Naomi Watts.

Happy Birthday to this beautiful woman. A remarkable human who gives so much love and spirit to all those around her. My friend, I am so happy to have shared incredible experiences with you over the last 3 decades. May there be many more to come... 🍾🎉🎈😍🎂💥👯💃🏻🌹

A post shared by Naomi Watts (@naomiwatts) on Jun 20, 2017 at 5:18am PDT

More Kidman Love for the half century mark after the jump...

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50 Appropriate Ways to Celebrate Nicole Kidman's Birthday

On this very day in Honolulu, Hawaii, 50 years ago, grad student Antony Kidman and his wife Janelle Ann welcomed a baby girl into their lives. Her Hawaiian name was "Hōkūlani" which means "Heavenly Star" and she turned out to be one. Twenty-two years later she was headlining motion pictures. A few years after that she was breaking through and in 2001 she ascended permanently into the canon of great film stars with the one two punch of Moulin Rouge! and The Others. Her name is Nicole Kidman. Perhaps you've heard of her? So happy birthday to the one and only at her half-century mark.

50 Appropriate Ways to Celebrate Nicole Kidman's 50th Birthday
Try them and report back on your success!

01 Have patience with the mere mortals around you who keep expecting you to prove yourself or don't "get" you. Humor them and keep on working because genius comes naturally to you.

02 Vote for Nicole Kidman on your Emmy ballot for her deep dive into Celeste's psyche in Big Little Lies

03 Drift in and out of an Aussie accent all day, mate

04 Kiss someone who can carry a tune or will sing you a country music song...

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Beauty vs Beast: All You Need Is Lovers

Jason from MNPP here with this week's "Beauty vs Beast," which is falling square on Nicole Kidman Eve - the actress, perhaps you know her work, is turning the big Five-Oh tomorrow, and I heard if you put a cube of ice below your pillow tonight she might visit you while you sleep! I kid, don't come as me, Kidmaniacs - I adore her every bit as much as you all do. Which is problematic for this series - where could I possibly find someone to challenge her? I mean there's... no... I couldn't... could I? I am sorry, folks, but this is the only choice. Who else might beat her but the one whose heart beats so big and free...

PREVIOUSLY It appears that none of you learned anything from Rosemary's Baby, and you're all perfectly willing to fall prey to a pretty face covering up a treachorous heart - you gave Guy (John Cassavettes) the win with 56% of your vote over Roman (Sidney Blackmer), and while I'll admit they're both bad choices I really find Guy the most despicable so I can't agree with y'all. He deserves that loogie he gets! Or as Nick T put it:

"I'm sitting by this bag of garbage at work and like. It's less charismatic, sure, but also less morally repugnant, so it's got the edge. Still, I don't think Roman's creepiness is given its due since his wife is way more fun to watch. I'll give him my first born as tribute. It only seems fair."

Aussie Super-Team Tackling Gay Conversion Therapy

by Jason Adams

This weekend you can stare into the wonderful sad eyes of Joel Edgerton onscreen via the small-scale emotional assault of It Comes at Night (I just reviewed it over at MNPP if you're interested) but today he's announcing his next adventure in familial distress, this time behind the screen, and it sounds pretty amazing - he's signed on to write and direct Boy Erased, an adaptation of Garrad Conley's memoir about his time spent suffering in "gay conversion therapy."

Have any of you read the book? Conley was the son of a Baptist minister and was accidentily outed at the age of 19 to his parents - they then forced him into a "Pray Away the Gay" program (basically mental abuse via scriptural brainwashing and isolation) as an ultimatum between everything he knew and explusion.

The film's lining up quite the cast - Manchester by the Sea star Lucas Hedges will play Conley, and in supporting roles Edgerton's supposedly calling in some fellow Aussies... ones that go by the glossy names Nicole Kidman and Russell Crowe. Maybe you've heard of them? One assumes they're playing the parents, but Deadline doesn't specify.

Anyway with religious whack-job Mike Pence one Twitter breakdown away from the Oval Office "gay conversion therapy" is a real hot topic these days, so this could turn out to be a scarily timely story. But it could certainly also be a moving one either way, especially with such a talented group of folks dedicated to giving this real world horror emotional life on-screen. It's definitely a tale in need of telling.