Is there not yet a thread for DRIVE, the forthcoming Ryan Gosling vehicle (geddit)?

style _is_ substance

never heard that before, soooooooo deep

Mulligan underwritten - and she couldn't bring anything more to it through her skills, sadly - but I think that works for that creepy, "protective" comment reason.

havent seen this yet, want to but wont have the cash til its on netflix prolly, but 3D characters in a movie about a face-stompin super-driver strike me as something that might be a bonus, not the draw.

sure - but the problem is when you spend an excessive amount of time with those cardboard characters

sometimes blank flatness can be really engrossing (can't think of an example tho, heh). sometimes you have to take it as a given that the people you are watching are true in their non-3d-ness.

speaking a little too generally i guess, and no i haven't seen this movie either.

imo stock characters are sometimes best utilized when not fleshed-out too heavily

carey mulligan is awful and I do not understand her appeal. What a dud.

In this film or in general? I thought she did a decent enough job of awkwardly smiling.

she was v pretty in this yeah

Just in general, she seems kind of BLAND

Mulligan was great on Doctor Who as Sally Sparrow

most people are bland, but most actors are all about effusing PERSONALITY

thank you carey mulligan for seeming real

hey when does this come out in britain?

Friday

gettin' down on Friday

style _is_ substance

never heard that before, soooooooo deep

― incredibly middlebrow (Dr Morbius), Wednesday, September 21, 2011 10:23 AM (4 hours ago) Bookmark

i don't intend to be deep -- it's how i feel. it's what i think. i mean think about, say, jacques tati. his (v great) films make total hash of the style/substance dichotomy. they are patently the same thing.

btw a few folx (e.g. glenn "never met a film-crit inside-baseball argument i didn't like" kenny) are comparing this unfavorably to walter hill's the driver, an obvious (even overweening?) influence. that's fine. but the terms on which the comparison is made are often fishy. well-rounded characters? psychologically realistic? the driver is one of the most (gloriously, on occasion) stylized and pretentious films to come out of new hollywood -- the characters there are even blanker and more axiomatic than the ones in drive. there is nothing resembling character psychology in that film. there is also a fuckton of stuff in hill's film that is dubious, even risible. that doesn't diminish its orginality. but like drive it is a formal exercise--and i feel like people are donning their rose-colored glasses in claiming its inevitable superiority to this new film.

also someone kinda mentioned this upthread but i thought the way some of the songs' lyrics were on-the-nose was itself part of the retro vibe.

but honestly i don't think there are many folx (except maybe those allergic to graphic violence, fair enough) who wouldn't find this really exciting/ entertaining.

morbs btw i am not claiming your tastes are universally highbrow, just that your persona seems characterized by this sort of aching condescension toward everything -- highbrows like "lowbrow" fare, in fact it's part of the job description since sontag et al. we probably share a lot of tastes, in fact, it's just the "pithy" way that you put down everything that irks.

often when people criticize a film for "style over substance," when i watch the film what i find are actually failures of style. trying to think of an example. a lot of neo-noirs, maybe. just not really this one.

amateurist I think you're maybe right for ilx but the moviegoing public in my theater seemed to be going nuts at the long shots of landscapes and facial expressions with no dialogue

I was going nuts because the middle-aged dude down the row from me couldn't figure out how to text message without his phone beeping or realize he could move his ass out of the theater

come on amateurist, everyone knows the 'point' of criticism is to voice only opinions that have never been spoken before

i.e.:

that a movie is made for nerds who fetishize 'hypermasculine' slick violence is usu reason enough

I feel sorry for the folks that show up late and miss the opening chase, because it settles the action jones for awhile.

amateurist I think you're maybe right for ilx but the moviegoing public in my theater seemed to be going nuts at the long shots of landscapes and facial expressions with no dialogue

― so i had sex with a piñata (mh), Wednesday, September 21, 2011 2:53 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah i suppose it's a little arty for some audiences, i suspect folks on ILX would love it though.

Johnny Jewel wrote a score that wasn't used

The opening job is up there with some of the better movie opening set pieces I've seen. And the first couple minutes of it are on youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE1tqMUd4R8

(Note that this is also somewhat of a misleading opening, as the movie is not car-action heavy)

ryan gosling is beautiful amirite?

Some publications having a laugh at internet folk/critics for always saying Gosling is "The Next Big Thing" and then the totals for this movie came in. Really snarky shit. Which annoys the hell out of me. Gosling could probably be a big star if he really wanted to, but he seems to have very little interest in fronting the kind of projects that would crossover.

Also the whole "stars can carry a movie" thing seems to be largely over anyway.

he's been in some (moderately) succesful movies! it's probably to his credit that he's doing more drives and blue valentines than the sub-notebook bullshit he probably coulda been sleepwalking thru since.

.. Gosling appears to be in every movie coming out this year so, regardless of what the publications are saying, it seems that Hollywood definitely considers him to be The Next Big Thing

this movie hasn't really opened wide has it? here it's in the "art" cinema and will open to the multiplexes next week.

did it really tank on per-screen average? coz i can see this building word of mouth.

i mean the key thing really is not total gross but per-screen avg.

ok per-screen avg is $3,929

ok so yeah that's bad but maybe not disastrous?

the problem w/gosling is that hes best in notebook shit

people LOOOOOVE that movie, what's the deal w/it?

I have no idea, it's a decidedly average, not at all special movie

weeping, making out, weeping iirc

It opened on 2,300-odd screens or something like that. Third behind The Lion King and Contagion is not bad at all, and it's probably made it's budget back by now. Fared much better than Straw Dogs or I Don't Know How She Does It, but box-office reporters love to rub arthouse/critics/the internets "failures" into everyone's face.

Not that this is the same thing. Critics liked Scott Pilgrim and, to a lesser extent, Kick-Ass, but those were triumphed by the Comic-Con, Aintitcoolnews Geek contingent, which is a whole different thing. These publications don't seem to understand that.

srsly when people started being all "ryan gosling, adventurous actor" between half nelson and b.v. i was like "the notebook lug"?

Aye, The Notebook wasn't much of a thing when it came out, but it has built a huge reputation from saddo-Nicolas 'I Don't Write Melodrama" Sparks fans. And girls who just think Gosling is hawt - which is fair enough.

the notebook would be part of the new cult cannon if ppl who wrote abt cult films didnt h8 women

hmmm

I mean, yeah, probably

dont syh at me cuz you dont understand romance

no head shakin'! my first thought was, "but it's a shitty film", but then I remembered that most films in the cult canon are shitty films.

I reaaaaaally wanted Gosling to fuck Gena Rowlands on a beach, but I missed that scene.

the notebook would be part of the new cult cannon if ppl who wrote abt cult films didnt h8 women

― #@_@# (Lamp), Wednesday, September 21, 2011 4:29 PM (9 minutes ago)

Can't figure out if I'm cringing because I realized a blind spot of mine has been illuminated, or because Lamp is trying to con me into watching The Notebook.

wait, the lion king?