Movies: Ryan & Jason, Tom & Joel, Judy & Friends

Yep, you guessed it. That massively meaty back can only belong to Tom Hardy, who next stars in the boxing drama WARRIOR (before they bury that beautiful mug in the Bane mask for The Dark Knight Rises). One month before the film opens (September 9th) they're releasing a photography book "The Men of Warrior" detailing the training and the bodies of Hardy and his co-star Joel Edgerton (Animal Kingdom). 

Here's a gallery of preview images from the book.

THE CLASSICS

For those of you living near New York City, make sure to catch a film or two from the huge Judy Garland retrospective hosted by the Paley Center and The Film Society of Lincoln Center. If you're not in NYC, play along at home with Netflix.

This week I caught For Me and My Gal which is Gene Kelly's film debut! You can see his learning curve a bit but Judy is spectacular doing "After You've Gone". The next day, I watched an underseen gem from 1943 called Presenting Lily Mars in which Judy plays a relentless wannabe actress out to land a big part in Van Heflin's latest Broadway show. (Old movies are so obsessed with Broadway!) Lily Mars was very funny and surprisingly tart what with a running joke about an illicit pregnancy, one sequence with a man pretending to be gay and hot for his best friend, and a musical sequence in which Judy mocks her operatic co-star Márta Eggerth.

Upcoming shows in the series include In the Good Old Summertime, Summer Stock, my personal favorite Meet Me In St Louis, I Could Go On Singing and Judy's greatest performance in A Star is Born, the one that really ought to have won her the Oscar. Damn you Grace Kelly!