Penny Dreadful and Other (NSFW) Randomness
Sunday, May 3, 2015 at 8:30PM My mood of late has been 'fourgy with the cast of Ex Machina' That cast! Or at least a private moment with Oscar Isaac. When I'm not thinking of that movie I am thinking of The Avengers and when someone tweeted "Ava > Ultron" I immediately pictured a full two hour mash-up of those titles in which Alicia Vikander with all her little subtle whirring process noises seduces Scarlet Johansson in black leather and Mark Ruffalo in green muscles and Paul Bettany in fresh synthetic body and now I need a cold shower. My point is this: The Lusty Month of May is upon us.
In keeping with that mood, let's talk about the Penny Dreadful premiere tonight and 5 other not safe for work things after the jump...
Gaspar Noé to Cannes
I assume you saw the very wet, very French poster for Gaspar Noé's Love (2015) to your left a month ago. That's an advertisement for the latest film from Gaspar Noé who scarred many of us for life with Irreversible (2002) The follow up poster is... it's so not safe for work that it startled me when I saw it online... which doesn't happen often.
In fact the new poster is so porny, that I'm even slighly embarrassed to post it after a jump. So if you wanna see it, please be over 18, before you click this wee thumbnail to embiggen
Love is billed as "a sexual melodrama about a boy and a girl and another girl" and it was added to the Cannes line-up last week. Feel free to picture Sienna Miller, Xavier Dolan and Jake Gyllenhaal watching it together... maybe acting out scenes back in their hotel room - a jury melodrama about a girl and a boy and another boy. In 3D.
Anyone have any leads on how much Cannes Jury flash fiction has already been written about Gyllenhaal and Dolan?
-Nick Davis
Okay okay. I got carried away.
Technically the jury doesn't need to watch Noé's provocation since it's not "in competition" but added as a midnight screening. But we'll still be busy wondering what Rossy de Palma thinks of it okay?
Who is watching Penny Dreadful?
[MINOR SPOILERS FOR EPISODE 2.1 AHEAD]
The premiere episode, arriving tonight has been available on Showtime Anytime for awhile as a freebie even if you don't have a subscription... albeit with the nudity blurred out. The thing that is upsetting about this particular show ain't the nudity unless you believe in equal opportunity flesh because the men don't get naked. There have been exceptions: Josh Hartnett (freshly revealed as a werewolf) and Reeve Carney (as Dorian Gray) had a brief sex scene in Season 1 that was hilariously unmotivated, disconnected to the narrative and entirely random (not complaining) and never mentioned or repeated again (complaining). And then there was Frankenstein's second monster who let it all hang out before he was brutally murdered by Frankenstein's first monster who is far more modest and never seen without his clothes on (not complaining).
Now Frankenstein is working on his third monster, but this time it's a Bride for his Frankenstein monsters... naturally she is pretty and even her scars are symmetrical where the male monsters were ugly with unflattering scars since she's played by the fetching actress Billie Piper (not complaining) and she is a lady. And Penny Dreadful loves beautiful nude ladies. Dead or Living, doesn't matter. They ain't picky.
But I need to talk about these ladies above for a second who attack the carriage that's carrying our lead players Eva Green and Josh Hartnett in the first ten minutes of the show...
mysterious bald scarred women start tearing the carriage to shreds
Screeching dead language obscenities at Eva Green -- the only recognizable word is Lucifer.
This fallen undone threat expression, when Eva speaks back in the dead language and says something about "Christus" was particularly unnervin
I'm not sure if these naked ladies are dead or living or somewhere inbetween but, and this is given away in the first 10 minutes of the show, the Big Bad for the second season is a psychic we've already met in the first season played by the undervalued Helen McRory. Only she's not a psychic as it turns out but a bride of Satan and these "witches" are basically her coven/henchmen.
They are scary as f*** when they first arrive 10 minutes into the premiere, descending on our antiheroes like bloodthirsty vampires (though they're not that), bald and pale with deep scarring across their bodies. I accidentally watched the premiere without logging into my Showtime account and realized during this scene which had lots of weird floating blurry bubbles that I was watching an episode with the nudity blurred out. LOL. Trust me Showtime and the MPAA over at the movies, Satanic utterances, bodies with huge deep open wounds, violent dismemberments, villains bathing in pools of blood and the like (none of which were blurred out) are way way more R rated and scarring then boobies.
Anyway the witches are super scary until we see them morph back into normal looking ladies. CGI morphing is just not scary and the morphing effect hasn't been a visual wow since like that Willow sorceress did it in the late 80s or Michael Jackson did it in that "Black or White" music video in the early 90s. Why so filmmakers still think it's cool 25 years later? Always go with practical makep up effects when you can!
Nice ass, Chloe.
W Magazine shares the news that there's a coffee table book on Chloe Sevigny coming out. The few photos they've shared are a reminder that that girl has style for days years. So photogenic. And such a good actor. How many modern actresses can claim they've inspired their own drag queen. I mean classic Hollywood actresses who are dead can claim that frequently (Garson, Crawford, Davis, etcetera) but contemporary actresses? notsomuch.
Nice bush, Jamie
Bless My New Plaid Pants for always keeping us up to date on the important stuff. Like Jamie Dornan's everything. When I saw 50 Shades of Grey the only moment that actually seemed to get a rise out of the audience (no pun intended) was that gif'able moment above. I'm still stunned, months later, that that movie was supposed to be this epic mainstream moment of titillation. Movies were much much racier than that one as recently as the 90s. We've had Best Picture nominees with more dick than that! What happened to Hollywood's nerve?
Anyway for some reason there's also a teaser for 50 Shades Darker (embedded above) already even though it's not out until 2017
Also...
Kotaku "an abridged history of video game dicks". Huh, I actually didn't think they existed.
Sploid an infographic about which superheroes have banged each other in the Marvel-verse (I didn't know that Mystique & She Hulk & Wolverine got around that much. Daredevil is suprisingly chaste considering that Foggy thinks of him as such a ladies man: only Black Widow, Elektra and Typhoid Mary)
Mother Jones interviews Toni Morrison. This is kind of great. The awesome novelist took inspiration for her protagonist "Bride" via the sexual aggressiveness of today's celebrities, all the breasty dresses at the Oscars and our prudery about nipples while writing her new novel...
The slits are higher, the breasts are prominent, which they always were, but now it's just about nipples—the only part you cannot show. It just seems hysterical, because that's the first thing any human gets in his mouth! I don't know. I'm 84, so you can imagine how many phases of this I have witnessed.
What if Man of Steel were in color?
Excuse me I'm going to need a moment alone.
This is totally SFW you say? Then you are no colorologist. This is porn to me. I miss bright colors at the movies we've been suffering through desaturation buttons and sickly steel blue / green filters for far too long. Bring back Technicolor. Or Tru Color. Whichever. I'm easy.
Finally...
New Now Next recently informed us that manginas are the hot new selfie trend. You know where men hide their junk between their legs. You can see lots of photos here and somehow it skirts prohibited nudity on Instagram. Even though this is theoretically cute, brah... in a frat boy way, it's no new trend.
TFE, ever imparting pop culture history lessons, must remind anyone that people have probably been doing it forever in the privacy of their own homes and it already peaked back in the early 90s when Brad Pitt was caught by paparazzi doing it for Gwyneth Paltrow in a hotel penthouse (left)
...and then Ted Levine's Buffalo Bill ruined it for everyone in Silence of the Lambs.
So... no.
If you have no comments on any of these things I have no idea what to do with you and will assume you are indeed at work, where all of this is unsafe... especially the part about Superman in full color.
Reader Comments (10)
I didn't know you disliked moody color schemes. One of the reasons for the popularity of blue and green in the movies is because it shows well on home video. Red does not. It bleeds---literally. Although you'll be happy to find out that is all changing with ultra high definition with a lager color space and we getting additional bits from the standard 8 to 10 and 12 editions. Which means red will no longer be a marginalized choice for filmmakers. Men as they age are drawn to cooler colors. And a lot of auteurs especially those in special effects and style tend to embrace it. Woody Allen prefers reds and warm colors for the attractiveness of people's skin tones. Although I'm thinking white people look great to him on film with red lighting.
I saw that poster for Love more than a week ago. That makes me want to see it even more.
"IN 3D"?!?!
I was saving up my Helen McCrory love for the next "What's on Your Cinematic Mind" but I'm glad you beat me to the punch!! What a treasure. Between this, Peaky Blinders, Skyfall and hubby's quick rise (look him up), she's everywhere now. And how well earned! I look forward to her being even more well used. Anyone else a fan?
Embiggen--- is that a medical, technocal term?
I love Billie Piper. Good to see her back at work.
I have the 1st season of Penny Dreadful in my que "to be watched.". I have to admit that the prospect of Josh Hartnett in a sex scene with another man is pushing it higher up the pile.
Wtf. I've never seen that pic of Pitt before, is it real?
Someone has a lot of Brad and Angie gifs.
Anonny - it's very real. it was a big scandal at the time and Brad & Gwynnie sued the paparazzi.
Those naked demons in "Penny Dreadful" are very scary. And for a show created and written by a gay man I would think there would be more male nudity and gay sex
Very excited for the Noe film. I'd also be excited for some dolanhaal fanfic. Just sayin'.