While You Were Sleeping, Everyone Was Squealing Over Wes Anderson’s Grand Budapest Hotel

The trailer to Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel will make you wanna grow a moustache

Ah, embrace the whimsy! The Grand Budapest Hotel, Wes Anderson’s follow-up to Moonrise Kingdom, follows the misadventures of classy concierge Gustave H. (Ralph Fiennes, flexing his deadpan comedic chops), and a looming battle over his much-coveted painting about a boy with an apple (titled Boy With Apple). Despite the pre-war setting, the whole thing is signature Wes Anderson: all pastel colours, excellent zoom shots and excellent moustaches, although this time there’s a distinct lack of Futura fonts.

Alongside Fiennes, the film stars pretty much everyone in the world, including an almost unrecognisably elderly Tilda Swinton, Adrien Brody, Owen Wilson, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Harvey Keitel, Saoirse Ronan, and Jude Law in a bathtub, although Jason Schwartzman’s the dude whose hair we’re gonna copy this morning.

The Grand Budapest Hotel is due out in cinemas on March 7 next year.

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Morrissey’s autobiography was finally released, and it sounds incredible

The much-anticipated autobiography from Morrissey — the former lead singer of The Smiths, musical icon, and heavenly hero of pompadours and gladioli — was released in UK and Europe overnight, through the Penguin Classics imprint, because it’s Morrissey and that makes complete sense.

According to reports, the book sees Morrissey taking swipes at usual targets (the NME, former bandmates), as well as opening up about his famously guarded sexuality (particularly, his first serious relationship, with a guy named Jake Owen Walters: “Morrissey talks of sharing hotel suites, of being photographed with his head ‘resting on Jake’s exposed belly’, and of Jake bringing him tea in the bath,” as The Guardian puts it). There are other highlights making the rounds too:

On his calling:  “All human activity is fruitless when pitted against the girls and boys singing on pop television, for they have found the answer as the rest of us search for the question. I will sing, too. If not, I will have to die.”

On hanging out with pal David Bowie: “David quietly tells me, ‘You know, I’ve had so much sex and drugs that I can’t believe I’m still alive,’ and I loudly tell him, ‘You know, I’ve had SO LITTLE sex and drugs that I can’t believe I’m still alive.'”

On Australia being stupid: “The censorious moral guardians of EMI Australia had refused (!) to allow my first solo album to be called Viva Hate, and had decided instead upon Education In Reverse. As a result, civilization enjoyed a new birth having been spared the blackness of Hades.”

On that time he was almost on Friends: “I am asked if I’d jump in on a newly jumbled plot-line with the character Phoebe in the Central Perk diner, where I am requested to sing ‘in a really depressing voice.’ Within seconds of the proposal, I wind down the fire-escape like a serpent, and it’s goodbye to Hollywood yet again.”

Sigh, Moz forever.

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Michael Bay got beat up for real on the set of Transformers 4 

Michael Bay, the much maligned director of bang-bang-explosive things, was reportedly attacked by two brothers on the set of Transformers 4 in Hong Kong after ignoring their requests for HK$100,000 (approx $12,900) in extortion money. In a post that’s sure to get meme-fied pretty shortly, the director colourfully wrote about the incident on his personal website:

Hi, it’s Michael.

Yes, the story is being passed around is not all true! Yes, some drugged up guys were being belligerent asses to my crew for hours in the morning of our first shoot day in Hong Kong. One guy rolled metal carts into some of my actors trying to shake us down for thousands of dollars to not play his loud music or hit us with bricks.

Every vendor where we shot got paid a fair price for our inconvenience, but he wanted four times that amount. I personally told this man and his friends to forget it we were not going to let him extort us. He didn’t like that answer. So an hour later he came by my crew as we were shooting, carrying a long air conditioner unit. He walked right up to me and tried to smack my face, but I ducked threw the air unit on the floor and pushed him away. That’s when the security jumped on him. But it took seven big guys to subdue him. It was like a Zombie in Brad Pitt’s movie World War Z—he lifted seven guys up and tried to bite them. He actually bit into one of the guards Nike shoe, insane. Thank god it was an Air Max, the bubble popped, but the toe was saved.

Then it took fifteen Hong Kong cops in riot gear to deal with these punks. In all, four guys were arrested for assaulting the officers. After that, we had a great day shooting here in Hong Kong.

Holy s**t, I’d pay to see Michael Bay film that Nike Air Max bubble explosion.

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Parks And Recreation celebrated their 100th episode with waffles

So many waffles. It looked beautiful (sob).

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