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

i haven't seen the notebook and eons and despite lamp's tsk-tsk'ing i'm not about to go back to it but while eric may be right i do have a weakness for actors that could have been leading beefcake who "took another path."

haven't seen the notebook in eons, that is

After the Brando comparisons, I look forward to 250 lb Gosling in 20 years.

the horror

I look forward to Ryan Gosling's Freshman reprise of the Driver.

while eric may be right i do have a weakness for actors that could have been leading beefcake who "took another path."

screw you for "enabling" the career of Leo DiCaprio.

marto scorsesington

Actors that could have been leading ribeye.

DiCaprio is a Boca Burger.

anyway The Gosling wrings whatever could be wring from that part in The Notebook, and McAdams does wring Gosling alright.

Gosling and McAdams made Garner and Rowlands' acting look like senile high schoolers.

Guess maybe that was part of the point.

fuck y'all, yr not gonna make me watch the notebook again

amateurist, sometimes your reactions surprise me so much I think someone else must be using your login

er... thank you? or maybe not...

"not enough driving" - s1ocki

:D

It was a compliment.

marto scorsesington

lol'd

fwiw i wld never encourage anyone to watch 'the notebook' just more rmde at ppl who act like its a worse or more manipulative film than like, 'half nelson'

Wouldn't really argue with that, though the general story/atmosphere of Half Nelson was better than The Notebook (which is hardly the worst film ever made).

s1ockster otm

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.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Wednesday, September 21, 2011 3:50 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

you do this thing where you pop out of a hole like a gopher every once in a while to take another poster down a peg and it always makes you look like an imperious asshole

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

― strongo hulkington's ghost dad, Wednesday, September 21, 2011 5:27 PM (5 hours ago) Bookmark

he was doing stuff like the believer and the slaughter rule before the notebook!

oh yeah 'the believer' may actually (hmmm) be my fave gosling role

i guess i'd have to admit that 'the driver' has a lot more driving than 'drive'

sorry for seeming like an asshole, princess TT. dr morbius gets on my nerves when i poke into a thread like this one b/c he's all pithy condescension -- it's like he (she?) makes argument-like gestures without making arguments. i suppose that criticism could be leveled at all of us, though.

or at me, anyway.

This movie is violent, but I never felt it really lingered on the gore in any way. A guy gets his head caved in, sure, but you never actually see his head iirc, it's all a low-angle shot of Gosling stomping. I think it's almost the opposite of that Tarantino/nerd violence fetish in the way it never lingers. By the way people were talking, I was expecting extended takes akin to the guy with the blown-off jaw in A History of Violence. But maybe I just missed bits.

i think there's a quick shot of his caved-in head, but a very quick one

the final bit of violence was handled extremely elliptically -- i don't think we ever see blades hitting flesh, it's all sudden movements and reactions (and shadows of course)

One of my favourite moments, that final bit. Quick shots, mostly shadows, intercut with the previous scene.

This movie avoids a lot of the groany-winking form of postmodernism Tarantino loves. It might be heavily referential, but it all feels a part of the piece as opposed to explicit citation. I'd also argue that the movie is so much from the Driver's perspective and his clearly adolescent views on love that Mulligan's character would never really have been allowed to be fully fleshed out because he sees things so simplistically -i.e. in terms of pop songs. It's more of the feeling of love than actual love. Although obviously there's a point at which I'm probably just making excuses because I found it quite beautiful stylistically.

There's a lot of self-mythologizing going on, though it's never pointed out because, again, it's his point of view. The lyrics to that College song are a little on-the-nose because he wants them to be. That's how he sees things. Telling, perhaps, that they cut out the spoken word bit in "Under Your Spell" which gives the song a sense of coming from a delusional, lovestruck teenager/stalker.

I really liked this a lot, but I'm probably just defending it harder because I listened to the Slate Culture Gabfest for about 7 minutes and got really annoyed.

the violence in this was great. love ott shit like that. more!

I'd also argue that the movie is so much from the Driver's perspective and his clearly adolescent views on love that Mulligan's character would never really have been allowed to be fully fleshed out because he sees things so simplistically -i.e. in terms of pop songs. It's more of the feeling of love than actual love. Although obviously there's a point at which I'm probably just making excuses because I found it quite beautiful stylistically.

no, i think that's a good point. my friend compared him to Pinocchio, which i also think makes a measure of sense. refn was inspired by fairy tales and thinks of driver as a knight stranded in the real world, which explains the character's purity and deployment of brutal, 'chivalric' violence

i don't buy the subjective argument at all. but then i rarely do. i don't think the film is inside his head at all. i don't think you need to motivate it that way. the character is blank because that's the sort of film it is: he's like ryan o'neal's driver mixed with all the other stoic taciturn macho action movie stars you can name. i think it's really beside the point to speculate on his psychology, because he doesn't have any.

kind of agree with the post above mine, though.

also think the contrast between the 'chivalry' of the character and the unnecessary brutal violence (i mean, sheesh, you can stop kicking the guy's head in now) is supposed to be kind of distancing. a way of measuring distance between this film & its time & its models & their time. i don't mean that to be deep nor does the movie i think. it's just kind of there.

in that sense i guess it's like every other contemporary reprehensible genre rehash but this one has more style so

btw when i step back from discussions about screen violence i realize how i've gotten sucked into this world where you have to justify it. which i don't really believe.

Don't be sorry, Am. Morbs hasn't once posted here without some level of condescension, pithy or otherwise.

I mean, it is Morbs. That's kind of what he does on movie and politics threads!

Just remembered: the shotgun blast interrupting what was a nearly silent scene that was building tension was good!

the rest of that scene was kind of eh

This was shared by the people who do the FB page for the film:

A tweet from Bret Easton Ellis: “After seeing Drive today was told: ‘Sorry, babe, but I'd leave you for Ryan Gosling...’ My response: ‘Um, babe, I'd leave you for him, too.’”

Salon dissects the "dreadful word of mouth":

http://www.salon.com/entertainment/movies/drive/2011/09/23/drive_convo

Eric, I sometimes wish E.G. was here to provide higher-quality pith and condescension, but that's life:

For Salon, Thomas Rogers and Andrew O'Hehir discuss why audiences are rejecting Nicolas Winding Refn's pretentious, feels-like-it-was-made-by-a-Pitchfork-loving-hipster Drive.

lol

I am not sure what this "dreadful word of mouth" thing is about, since I saw it after a friend had recommended it and I told several others to do the same.

C- Cinemascore

and smug writers laughing at internet/critic hyped 'failure' blowing it out of proportion

it's a very deliberately paced movie - lots of quiet scenes that make normie audiences uncomfortable. one of my friends who hates anything artsy thought it was super boring.

^^^The backlash, if anything, is due to that more than the extremeness of the violence or the lack of obvious sex.

kids today. smh

What do you mean kids? It was mostly people in their 30s and 40s yawning and looking pissed off in my theater.

just joking there

mh acts bewildered about negative word of mouth, then admits entire theater hated movie

I meant that characterizing the word of mouth effect for this movie as completely negative is wrong. Don't get me wrong, most people in that theater told their friends not to go!