I’m late to the Michael Fassbender appreciation party, but I’m here now, and I’m not going anywhere! He is pretty stinkin hot! He’s one of those guys that I know I’ve seen in movies before…. and then I watched ‘X-Men’. Now – I’m hooked.

Here he is promoting his new movie, ‘Shame’, which is a film about a sex addict (no comment).

Soaring above them all is Shame, Brit filmmaker Steve McQueen’s portrait of a sex addict starring Michael Fassbender (winner of Best Actor at Venice). Arguably TIFF’s hottest film (every sense), Shame not only deals with sex addiction, but leads with full frontal views of its stars Fassbender and Carey Mulligan — as if to say let’s get THAT out of the way — and then offers enough boobs, masturbation, internet porn, and bobbing and throbbing to delight Larry Flynt. At moments what language there is pushes the envelope even further.

Shame is also a spectacularly fine film (picked up in a much-publicized sale by Fox Searchlight) that displays the outsize talent of director Steve McQueen. While Fassbender’s searing portrayal of a handsome, tortured corporate type and sexoholic, more than justifies his win in Venice. The actor has traveled a ways since his recent Mr. Rochester in Jane Eyre.

Shame isn’t big on story, since story’s not really the point. Video-artist-turned-filmmaker McQueen brilliantly works the intersection of art, narrative, tone poem, and social critique to get into the skin of a man for whom sex is pure compulsion, his sole raison d’etre. Cast as a companion piece to McQueen’s first film, Hunger, about a man with no freedom, Shame examines a man with every western privilege who uses his body to create his own prison.

McQueen has stated in interviews that what partly inspired a film on sex addiction is all the porn available 24/7 on the internet — two clicks and you’re in. Yet for me Shame embraces a larger subject. The character of Brandon channels a type of hyper-detached urban male — perhaps most prevalent in the corporate and financial sectors — who by perpetually using others to serve his own needs, has become a monster — especially to himself. Though he’s dressed better and has a good job, Brandon is as lost as those riders in the subway. Fassbender has so gotten into the skin of this male mutant, it’s hard to imagine Shame without him. “Michael is a genius, really,” McQueen has said. “I want to work with the best actor there is, and I think he is, basically.”(MORE)

I could lie and tell you I won’t see it – but I will… just because I respect his body of work.

Source, Photos: Fame