Jacques lheureux

Compared to most weeks, this has been a good one for gay movies. Moonlight* scored a stellar eight Oscar nominations on Monday. I Am Love director Luca Guadagnino’s adaptation of André Aciman’s beloved 2007 novel Call Me By Your Name debuted at Sundance on Sunday to such effusive praise, “raves” feels like an understatement. Also unveiled at Sundance to glowing reviews was Eliza Hittman’s Coney Island cruising flick Beach Rats. For civilians nowhere near Park City, two new gay movies are in theaters today: Olivier Ducastel and Jacques Martineau’s Paris 05:59: Théo & Hugo and Justin Kelly’s I Am Michael. As is the case with most queer movies that aren’t Moonlight (and the Sundance selections mentioned above), both of these films focus on the sexualities of a few white characters, with only nominal recognition in Michael that non-white people can be queer too. There’s your caveat that while 2017 is off to a good start … [Read more...] about Just Weeks Into 2017, Its Movies Are Already Very Gay

Moviemaking is a fundamentally collaborative process. But even by the standards of this all-hands-on-deck medium, Charlie Kaufman is a born team player. Possessed of a radical and almost limitless imagination, Kaufman cut his teeth in the writers’ rooms of network television, before breaking into Hollywood by penning the feature directorial debuts of Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich), Michel Gondry (Human Nature), and George Clooney (Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind). These films belong both to their screenwriter and the filmmakers who brought his vision from page to screen; they are unique syntheses of sensibilities. All of which is to say, Kaufman works well with others, even if his neurotic, existentially terrified characters do not. But Anomalisa, Kaufman’s second film as both writer and director, is collaborative even by his standards. For one thing, it’s a feature-length stop-motion project, meaning that you can add a team of tirelessly toiling animators to the … [Read more...] about Charlie Kaufman and Duke Johnson on the soulful stop-motion of

As if creating a line of world-beating racers stretching back from last Sunday to 1985 wasn’t enough, Red Bull’s technical director is rather happy flooring it at Le Mans in a product of his great rival Ferrari. Advertisement Even in this age of wind tunnels and supercomputers, designing racing cars is more black magic than rocket science. Don’t tell that to Adrian Newey, though: the second most famous son of Stratford-upon-Avon received his degree from the University of Southampton in Aeronautics and Astronautics, which officially makes him a rocket scientist. Graduating in the gap between the Apollo and the Space Shuttle programs, Newey dived headfirst into racing instead of rockets. He spent the 1980s in America, and his great talent was already evident in the tender age of 26, when he designed the March car Rick Mears won the 1984 Indy 500 with. Newey entered Formula One in 1990 and two years later designed one of the all-time dominant F1 cars, the Williams … [Read more...] about This Is F1 Designer Adrian Newey On His Day Off

The story is familiar: A scared young kid gets incarcerated for a minor crime and is absorbed into a prison system divided by race and gangs, where he really learns how to be a crook. What distinguishes Jacques Audiard’s A Prophet is the attention to detail. Tahar Rahim stars as a shaggy, skittish young Muslim who becomes an errand boy behind bars for a Corsican mob boss. As the kid takes on more responsibility—and advances his criminal career during furloughs—Audiard dwells on the mechanics of prison life, as well as how the naïve Rahim responds to his changing status. A Prophet documents how the machines in the prison laundry work, and the importance of daily baguette distribution, but it also covers Rahim’s reaction to his first plane ride, and his first view of the ocean. This is as much a coming-of-age picture as it is an object lesson in how a wayward youth finds his place in the underworld. Advertisement Of course, Audiard doesn’t neglect … [Read more...] about A Prophet

If you love puns and often chuckle at the drollness of NPR shows—or if you’ve just always thought a miniature statue of the world’s pre-eminent linguist and anarcho-syndicalist would spruce up your lawn—you’re in luck. Though the descriptor sounds like something generated by a game of Mad Libs, Just Say Gnome is a purveyor of artisanal garden gnomes. Their flagship product, Just Say Gnome sculptor Steve Herrington explains, was first thought up over a decade ago but is newly getting attention online. Gnome Chomsky The Garden Noam, named, naturally, for linguist, philosopher, and political activist Noam Chomsky, runs between $75 and $195, plus shipping, depending on which of two versions a buyer wants and whether it’s ordered unpainted or painted. Gnome Chomsky sports its namesake’s appearance, but the proportions, cap, and boots of a standard-issue garden gnome. Both versions are currently out of stock, though Herrington says on the Just Say … [Read more...] about Now you can buy a Noam Chomsky garden gnome