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01st Jan 2016
Remember last year? All those awful geopolitical happenings? The storms and the people who dismissed you when you pinned the weird weather on global warming? Jamie Dornan? If 2015 was any male celebrity’s year, it was the gruff Northerner who didn’t get his slacks off for Fifty Shades of Grey. You couldn’t escape his face and beard. Rising-out-of-the-ashes-of-the-Celtic-Phoenix hotel bars in Dublin’s city centre had door policies only allowing men imitating his chestnut hair pass. He was the internet’s non-threatening rash.
However, this year, Jamie is having a quiet year. He won’t be?fulfilling any misguided female fantasies as a dominant billionaire who simultaneously loves driving cars but also employs a driver. (So mysterious!) In 2016, the father-of-one’s resume will count lowkey war dramas?Anthropoid and Jadotville, meaning we need a new man to cast in our day dreams. Thankfully, we’ve got a radar for finers, especially ones set to make a proper splash in this year of our Lord.
This is the horoscope forecast for your heart/horomones/secret YouTube shipper videos habit.
James Norton and his beautiful leading man hair are familiar to period drama fans. He made an impression in the underrated Belle and as a sexy crime-solving post-war vicar in television series Grantchester –?those collars were impeccably laundered and the parish gave him a lovely spacious house. Although you definitely will not fancy him in kidnapping drama?Happy Valley… Norton is currently starring in BBC’s new epic miniseries War and Peace as Prince Andrei. The swoon level is high.?We have a feeling he’ll have some major casting news later this year.
Television junkies have fancied Mike Colter since his recurring role on The Good Wife as a charismatic and dangerous drug kingpin. He seemed like a good dad, in fairness to us, and the heart wants what the heart wants. Hypothetically. Colter was pretty impressive in last year’s breakout Netflix show Jessica Jones as the titular character’s ally and love interest, seriously strong Luke Cage. He’ll be taking the lead in his own show, Luke Cage, sometime this year. Trust us, you will binge, and fall hard.
Oscar Isaac‘s star has been rising steadily these past few years – see Star Wars and ensuing global mayhem. He has come a far way from W.E., the Madonna-takes-on-Wallis-Simpson movie wherein he played a sensitive security man slash widower who sensitively hooked up with a Wallis Simpson obsessive and had a piano in his New York loft apartment. While?we wait for his sexy rebel fighter return to a galaxy far, far away, we can gaze upon his beautiful face in upcoming movies like The Promise (a love triangle set during the dying days of the Ottoman Empire and he’s ‘a brilliant medical student’) and X-Men: Apocalypse. Actually, maybe not the latter. They seem to have put blue m?la on his face because he’s the villain or summat.
Last year was meant to be Michael B. Jordan‘s year. He was in a Marvel movie! As a hero called the Human Torch! Sadly, the rebooted Fantastic Four movie was dire. Michael’s flame dwindled somewhat, all the promise he had shown in Friday Night Lights and the decent enough That Awkward Moment?seeming woefully mismanaged. But like all the best protagoinists, Michael B. got himself a semi-comeback. And with a boxing movie no less. He’s the lead in Creed, a sorta sequel to the Rocky franchise. Jordan is Adonis Johnson, the son of Apollo Creed, Rocky’s fiercest rival, who seeks Sylvester Stallone’s guidance. Creed is in Irish cinemas latee this month. Expect montages, intensely dramatic scenes, too many abs. Uphill is the only direction for this striking man.
Middle-eastern cinema rarely gets it due in this here part of the world, which is why we make the effort to attend the Dublin Arabic Film Festival every year. The films are fascinating, tackle emerging issues and tell important stories. They also sometimes star Adam Bakri, a young Palestinian actor who graduated from the Lee Strasberg school of acting and took the lead in 2013’s groundbreaking Omar, a thwarted romance set amid the heartbreaking intrigue of the West Bank. While Bakri has been quiet since, he’s about to make a splash as the male lead in Asif Kapadia’s adaptation of Ali and Nino.?Ali and Nino is a romantic period drama?about an Azerbaijani man who falls in love with a Georgian princess. Their cultural differences come to a head as the political danger of the First World War seeps into their country. Pride and Prejudice this is not. And we’re thankful for it. We’re fed up of bonnets. Kapadia’s last two features were critically acclaimed documentaries Amy and Senna, so the industry is watching. We sense Bakri is going to be very busy.
‘dgar Ram’rez is going to make himself familiar to audiences in Joy – he plays Jennifer Lawrence’s single-mother-turned-entrepreneur’s ex-husband – so let’s all learn where the fadas go. Ram’rez is an Aries, the swarthiest of all the astrological signs, and hails from Venezuela. He’s been plodding away in bit parts for a while, but 2016 should see him enter the public consciousness as a Very Handsome Man. Movies he’s going to be in this year include the adaptation of The Girl on the Train, Gold with Matthew McConaughey, and Point Break, which looks fairly awful but it’s about a ring of wanted thieves?who are into extreme sports so we will be there with warm cans in our bag.