"The Dead Don't Die": By-the-numbers Zombie Apocalypse, with some gay subtexts and Josh O'Connor's dick

  

The problem with Movie Night is, I'm asked to choose something from the "new selections" on Hulu, Netflix, Amazon Prime,  and MAX, with no research, just a cover blurb.  Then, if it turns out to be awful, I get blamed: "You picked this!"  

Last night I selected The Dead Don't Die on Hulu, because it starred Bill Murry and it was about zombies in a small town.  I was wondering if anything new could be said about zombies after so many years of being blasted by Zombie Apocalypses.  

No. Other than a few absurdist touches, like characters being aware that they're in a movie and an alien spaceship that appears out of nowhere, picks up Tilda Swinton, and vanishes, it's the standard. Due to..um...fracking?,,, day and night get mixed up, cell phones don't work, and the dead re-animate.  

They crawl out of their graves, fully corporeal,  even though some have been dead for centuries -- and eat the living in a small Pennsylvania town.  Maybe everywhere in the world. The only suspense is wondering who will get eaten next.

This movie needs an editor.  Cop #1 enters the diner to look at the two zombie-eaten waitresses. We see one, then the other, with their innards turned into spaghetti.  Cop #2 enters to look.  We see one, then the other again.  Cop #3 enters to look.  We see one, then the other a third time!  

But on the bright side, there is no hetero-romance, and we see many gay subtexts.  Probably unintentional.

The main zombies and zombie-dinners are:

1.-3. Three big city hipsters:Austin Butler, top photo; Luka Sabbat; and Selena Gomez.  They stop for gas and for some reason decide to stay overnight in the town's decrepit hotel instead of continuing on to Pittsburgh. Selena flirts with every guy in sight, even when she doesn't want to get something from him, but there's no indication that she's dating either of her companions.

4-7. Police officers Bill Murray and Adam Driver, second photo.  Adam asks the female police officer at the station for a date, and Bill had an affair with town drunk Carol Kane.  But the two end up together, with a sort of buddy-bonding going on before they are killed.

8-9. Neither racist farmer Steve Buscemi nor cat-loving hotel manager Larry Fessenden, left, have wives at home, mention dead wives, or flirt with the gals at the diner.

10-12. Caleb Landry Jones, who played a gay guy in Stonewall, runs the gas station/horror movie memorabilia shop, seems to have a crush on delivery  driver RZA.  He almost asks him for a date, but loses his nerve. Later he is trapped in a hardware store with Danny Glover, and almost grabs his hand before they are eaten.

Bonus: Caleb Landry's butt

More after the break

Nude New Orleans: Eight Cajun cocks and bulging backcity boys for your crewe

 

So many of my recent profiles have been of guys from New Orleans that it seemed apropos to post a photo collection. I've been three times, once for spring break, once for a conference at Tulane University, and once for Halloween, so I've actually met two or three of these guys.  I'm not saying which.

The Halloween visit was my favorite.

This dude is actually from Donaldsonville, about 60 miles west.  Close enough.

I'm interested in the Afro-Caribbean religions, the religions that enslaved West Africans brought with them and kept hidden under their forced Christian practices.  When they were forced into Roman Catholicism, as in New Orleans and Haiti, they found a lot of statues of saints that could be used for venerating their orishas.  The result was what we now call voodoo.

But avoid the tourist-trap voodoo shops.

A cute naked guy, lapsed Pentecostal.

An actor, mostly in local theater, not nearly as big has his photo suggests.

More after the break.  Caution: explicit.

Jacob Sartorius: Femme teen idol into heterosexism, cowboys, and frontal nudity

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Asa Butterfield: A dozen "boy meets girl" movies, a dozen nude photos, and a boyfriend

I keep thinking that Asa Butterfield is American due to his old-fashioned name -- maybe Moravian or Amish -- but he's actually British, born in Islington, 30 minutes by underground from the British Museum.  It has pubs called The Earl of Essex, The Duke of Cambridge, and the Pig and the Butcher.  Can't get more British than that.

He got his start in horribly depressing movies like After Thomas and The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, 2007, which of course were on my "run away fast" list.  

Then came Hugo, 2011, a fantasy with an ending that made me cringe -- the photo looks like two boys have the adventure, but it's actually a boy and a girl.  When Hugo announces that he's got a girlfriend, the adults throw confetti, high-five each other, and scream with joy.  That happened to me every time I mentioned a girl, no matter how casually: "A girl in my class did a book report on Finnegan's Wake."  "Hallelujah, he's straight!  He's normal!  We don't have to worry anymore!  Here, have some money and the keys to the car!"

Although it did allow me to get away with anything: "Sorry I left my jacket on the bus.  I was talking to this girl, see..."  "Hah-hah, of course, boys will be boys!  Here, have some money and the keys to the car!"

I didn't see Ender's Game, 2013, because the original novel was written by the horribly homophobic Orson Scott Card, or A Brilliant Young Mind, 2014, because the brilliant young math prodigy gets a brilliant young girlfriend. 

The novel version of Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children contains no heterosexual romance, but in the 2016 movie version, there are three of them. It's boys and girls gazing into each other's eyes all the way down. 

Are you noticing a pattern here?

Then Came You, 2018: A boy falls in love with a dying girl. This seems to be quite a trope.  Why do girls never fall in love with dying boys?  Of course I'm not seeing it.

Time Freak, 2018.  At least Asa has a gay-subtext relationship with Skyler Gisondo en route to winning the Girl of His Dreams.

Your Christmas or Mine?, 2022.  Isn't Asa a little young to graduate to Christmas romcoms?

Asa's biggest role to date is in the tv series Sex Education, 2019-23.  He plays Otis, a boy whose mom is a sex therapist, so he and his friends get the idea of opening a clinic to solve teenagers' sex problems. There are some gay characters, but Otis is straight.  And naked a lot.

More after the break. Caution: Explicit