Thoughts I Had... While Looking at the Nymphomaniac Teaser

A day or two ago I casually linked to the first poster for Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac though this flippant "oh and..." way of dealing with it doesn't do its succinct brilliance justic. So, it gets a whole post.

• Classic Lars pranksterism
• Although... does Lars love or hate Charlotte Gainsbourg's punani? This is difficult to suss out. I mean he obviously hated it in Antichrist (rusty scissors anyone?) but despite this tagline "Forget About Love" this strikes me as a very affectionate nod to Charlotte's private parts
• Best use of the parenthetical since Me and You and Everyone We Know

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Back and Forth Forever

• Pedro Almodovar probably already has this poster framed... (The Shrinking Lover anyone?)
• I don't see how this would work for a matching penis poster. No, I was not just trying to figure that out on my keyboard. Shut up.
• There's been a lot of talk about "real sex" rather than simulated sex on the set of this movie but we heard that before with Lars von Trier's The Idiots and he actually used body doubles for that so who knows if the starry cast (Shia Labeouf, Willem Dafoe, Connie Nielsen, Jamie Bell, Udo Kier, Stellan Skarsgård, Uma Thurman, etcetera) are being spared the grunt work (get it, "grunt" work? no, never mind) 
• Remember when Charlotte Gainsbourg was married to Heath Ledger in I'm Not There and how great she was in their scenes together? She's so undervalued as an actress but at least Lars gets her.
• In real life Charlotte is married to Yvan Attal who once made a picture co-starring Charlotte in which they played "Yvan" and "Charlotte" called My Wife is an Actress. The plot involved him worrying about her being unfaithful on set. I demand a sequel that takes place during the shoot of Nymphomaniac.

Links of Future Past Right Now

IndieWire Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac won't be ready for Cannes
E! the real life Navy SEAL who shot bin Laden gets all movie critic like, loving Jessica Chastain but taking some issues with Zero Dark Thirty
Erik Lundegaard has a neat interactive chart where you can rank the Best Picture winners from all Oscar years
Pajiba on Lena Dunham fat-shaming and the already famous new episode of Girls
Vulture power rankings of the Friday Night Lights cast post series finale 

In Contention Kris Tapley launches his well regarded annual top ten shots column
TMZ Vivienne Jolie-Pitt gets her first movie role. She'll play the toddler Sleeping Beauty in Maleficent opposite her scary mom
MNPP do dump or marry: Matthias Schoenaerts, Guillame Canet and Jean Dujardin
Broadway Blog fun multipart piece on Broadway's best love songs from Les Misérables through Avenue Q
Gawker loves Madonna's instagram account and so do I
AMPAS last year I did a piece for Slate on the hierarchy of thank-yous in Oscar acceptance speeches that I was super proud of. The research took me so long I made negative money an hour on the piece but now Oscar has gone and done the work for me, unfortunately after the fact, by archiving acceptance speeches. Can't wait to investigate this archive when I have more time.

one of my all time favorite comic book issues. I still remember buying this when it appearedEmpire RIP Oscar nominated editor Gerry Hambling who was 86.
Playbill Les Misérables will hit DVD on March 22nd. Tom Hooper will do commentary. 

Finally...
Cinema Blend Bryan Singer hasn't decided if Storm and Nightcrawler will be in X-Men: Days of Future Past. Alan Cumming told me he'd revisit the character if asked but can we please replace Storm? Since it's a time travel story why not give Angela Bassett the chance she deserved all along as a now older Storm? The cast list currently mixes X-Men First Class alums with previous X-Men franchise actors. Confirmed to appear: Ellen Page (Kitty Pryde), Patrick Stewart & James McAvoy (Professor Xavier), Ian McKellen & Michael Fassbender (Magneto), Hugh Jackman (Wolverine), Anna Paquin (Rogue), and Sean Ashmore (Iceman), Jennifer Lawrence (Mystique), Nicholas Hoult (The Beast), and Rose Byrne (Moira McTaggert)

Who do you hope joins this mashup X-Men team or are you done with that franchise?

Thoughts I Had... While Staring at the First Image From "Nymphomaniac"

Behold the first still released from Lars von Trier's Nymphomaniac which will star Charlotte Gainsbourg (in her third collaboration with the director following Antichrist & Melancholia). These are the thoughts I had in actual chronological order...

• That's a really odd choice for a first still. It's a tremendously vague tease but better this than those movies which release "first looks!" that might as well be headshots of the actors, they're so generic.
• Remember when Laura Dern got high from inhaling glue in paper bags in Citizen Ruth? 
• If that were Michelle Pfeiffer and this were 1992, a bunch of cats could run into frame and resurrect this poor soul.

• Who is this poor soul? 
• This doesn't look as fun as the movie's title. Bleak it looks.
• If this movie is as good as The Idiots (1998), my vote for the single most underappreciated von Trier marvel, I will want to have sex with it.
• Did you see Smashed? That scene where Mary Elisabeth Winstead accidentally smoked crack during a Lost Weekend really threw me.

• Will this movie have a mix of pathos and humor like many of von Trier's films or will it be an across the board icky provocation like Manderlay or Antichrist.
• Oh, I actually just looked up the plot synopsis on IMDb which suggestes that this is an image of Charlotte from perhaps the opening scene of the movie:  

A self-diagnosed nymphomaniac recounts her erotic experiences to the man who saved her after a beating.

• Interesting cast I think: Returning von Trier alum Charlotte herself plus Jens Albinus, Udo Kier, Jesper Christensen, Stellan Skarsgård and Charlotte's Antichrist hubbie Willem Dafoe; Scandinavian von Trier Virgins: Shanti Roney (who was marvelous in a sexually charged uncomfortable scene in Applause) and international actress Connie Nielsen who turns it out when a director challenges her (i.e.  infrequently but enough to make you long for the next time); People we most hope have sex very naked and super often in the movie even if its uncomfortably von Trierian sex: Jamie Bell & Uma Thurman; Stunt Casting: Christian Slater (as Charlotte's father?!) and Shia Labeouf who one assumes wanted to get naked and artsy again. 

p.s. here's a second official image, less vague, less safe for work. 

Where My Girls At? Susan, Tilda, Uma, Sir Ian

The Man Who Loved Actresses Too Much. That's the title of my forthcoming memoirs. Because I love too many actresses I often lose track of their upcoming film projects so let's look at some recent casting notices (by recent I mean I'm sorry I didn't mention them earlier this month!) involving ladies I, and hopefully you, love. 

Susan Sarandon, currently co-starring in Cloud Atlas, has been working consistently since her career peak (1988 through 1995) but her parts haven't been so great or the films have left one wanting. Can The Last of Robin Hood reinvigorate her career or spark passion in her fanbase again? The Hollywood bio film is from the indie directing team of Richard Glatzer and Wash Westmoreland (full disclosure: I used to be friendly with Glatzer) who previously made The Fluffer and Quinceanera. It's about Errol Flynn's (Kevin Kline) affair with a 17 year old actress at the end of his life who he first seduced when she was all of 15. Sarandon will play the young actress's stage mother. Here's why I'm hopeful - the mother Sarandon will play actually wrote a book about this love affair called "The Big Love" so her role could be substantial -- though I'm unclear as to whether this film is based on that or wholly original.

Julianne Moore is a screen queen I never lose track of, per se, but sometimes the projects disappear! Does Being Flynn really exist? Did Shelter? What happened to that period-noir-detective-with-addiction-issues series she was going to star in for HBO? Given the populist genre of her next project, it's less likely to disappear. She's about to reteam with Liam Neeson as screen husband for the thriller Non-Stop. Neeson is an US Air Marshall and they're fighting a mysterious enemy who is texting him. Oh please let it be Amanda Seyfried! #AwkwardChloeReunioin

The ginger goddess will also co-star in Dan Fogelman's directorial debut, a dramedy called Imagine.  Fogelman's credits include writing one of Julianne Moore's best screen jokes for Crazy Stupid Love, well, and the rest of the movie, too. The film stars Al Pacino as a former rock star who discovers he has an adult son (played by Jeremy Renner). Julianne Moore will play the hotel manager where Pacino lives. 

Uma Thurman needs a strong director -- nothing wrong with that if you're great when you get 'em -- and she's had a rough go of it, screen-wise since the Kill Bill series. Wising up now, she's joining Lars Von Trier's increasingly star-studded "porno" Nyphomaniac.  There's no word on what her role will entail (though most believe it's the same role that Nicole Kidman vacated) but it's not the title role. That would be Charlotte Rampling, who isn't shy about onscreen eroticism (see: The Night Porter or Under the Sand). update: LOL. My wishful thinking substituted Charlottes Charlotte Gainsbourg, who is a von Trier favorite (Antichrist, Melancholia). Uma doesn't trade on her own erotic appeal nearly as often but she should. Beyond Tarantino's oeuvre I'd argue that her best performance is in the very libidinous Henry & June. To this day I'm still certain she caused the NC-17 even though she (mostly) kept her clothes on.

Uma's been low key enough lately that I blinked and missed the news that she had her new baby in July and named her "Rosalind Arusha Arkadina Altalune Florence Thurman-Busson"! Take that, Gwyneth.

Tilda Swinton is supposedly filming the new Terry Gilliam film The Zero Theorem right about now. The film is about a computer genius (Christoph Waltz) seeking the answer to whether life has meaning or not. I can solve the puzzle for him. Tilda Swinton exists and that is an inexplicable miracle so life obviously has meaning. The meaning being TILDA.

Sir Ian McKellen, who we'll soon see reprise his Oscar-nominated Gandalf role, is the star of the most hilarious news you'll read all week: Sir Ian McKellen and Sir Derek Jacobi will be co-starring in a British sitcom about two senior gays living together called "Vicious Old Queens". This seems like it couldn't be true but it is, hunty, it is! The title and stars alone make it a must-see but -- even better -- British series tend to be short which still leaves plenty of time for the drama queens to make their film appearances, too. If the show is half as good as the casting and title, we all win.

Are you excited about any of these projects?

Which actress have you recently lost track of?

Nic's No Nympho

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JA from MNPP here with some sad news - Nicole Kidman has dropped out of her reunion with Danish dare-monger Lars Von Trier for his next flick, the sexually explicit Nymphomaniac. She's too busy playing a Princess to mime unspeakable acts with Shia LaBeouf, it seems. The assumption is that the recently added Uma Thurman is her replacement, but (nothing against Uma) I'm hoping it's another name just added to the cast instead - let's see Willem Dafoe fill in Nicole's shoes!

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