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Film

Flavorwire’s Endearingly Exhaustive 2013 Summer Movie Preview

By Jason Bailey on

It’s the first weekend in May, so you know what that means: there’s a new Marvel movie in theaters, and the summer movie season has officially begun. It’s a tricky minefield to navigate, rife with sequels and reboots and sequels and adaptations and sequels, but Flavorwire is here to help: our summer movie guide takes you through the entire season, month by month, spotlighting the films that might be worth seeing (Might! Maybe! No promises!) and delicately averting your eyes from the certain dogs. Take a deep breath and put on your 3D glasses; here we… Read More

Partner Buzz

‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ and Other Films About Breaking the Law With Good Intentions

By Doug Levy on

Ryan Gosling’s latest big-screen foray is far from traditional Hollywood fare. The Place Beyond the Pines — also starring Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, and Ray Liotta — re-teams the A-list actor with director Derek Cianfrance, the man behind the brilliantly devastating Blue Valentine. As we’ve hinted at before, revealing exactly what makes this film so different would spoil part of the (bleak) fun, but what has been made clear is the basic setup: Gosling plays Luke Glanton, a tatted-up stunt biker who discovers he has a previously unknown son. To try to support his newly found progeny, he turns to a life of crime, robbing banks to bankroll his child’s care. … Read More

Film

Your Favorite Actors on Their Favorite Actors

By Jason Bailey on

The Ryan Gosling fan club is getting even more crowded. Recently, James Franco took to the Huffington Post to do what countless fans and stalkers have spent the past several years doing: writing on the Internet about Ryan Gosling. “I want to make love to this section,” Franco writes of the first, Gosling-heavy hour of The Place Beyond the Pines. “He played the role to a T. Look at the funny glasses he wears when he robs banks, green on the sides; look at the writing on the bike before he paints it black; Gosling touches, all, I’m sure of it.” Actors obsessing over actors — they’re just like us! And let’s be honest: there’s something kind of wonderful about actors and actresses who genuinely love each other’s work, and who can articulate what makes it great. So we went on the hunt for the favorite actors of some of our favorite actors, to find out who they love, who inspires them, and… Read More

Film

A Director’s Dreamboat: 7 Smitten Filmmakers on Working With Ryan Gosling

By Chloe Pantazi on

Since Ryan Gosling announced that he’ll be taking a break from acting, prompting the heartbreak of fangirls everywhere, we’ve been urged to get it together and stop being silly about the actor. But with today’s release of his latest movie, The Place Beyond the Pines, Gosling’s not going anywhere just yet. Flavorwire’s own Jason Bailey spoke to the film’s director, Derek Cianfrance (who also directed Blue Valentine), about how working with Gosling “felt like destiny.” As we suspected, the actor is also “a magic person.” Cianfrance added, “I feel like he makes the world a better place, and he makes the movie, when you’re making the movie with him, a better movie… he makes me a better filmmaker.” Here are a few other directors’ fond reminiscences of working with Gosling – it’s possible that they’ll miss him even more than we will. … Read More

Film

It May Star Gosling As a Stunt Rider, But ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ Is Far Stranger Than ‘Drive’

By Jason Bailey on

Derek Cianfrance’s The Place Beyond the Pines opens with a long, weary tracking shot through a carnival midway and into a raucous tent, where motorcycles are revved and an announcer cranks up the crowded assemblage of looky-loos. The camera is following Luke (Ryan Gosling), a stunt rider, who proceeds to climb on top of a motorcycle and follow two of his fellow riders into a steel ball, where they cross within inches of each others’ paths. The audience goes nuts. But the camerawork is casual, almost bored; this doesn’t do it for Luke anymore. It’s as dull and uninspiring as working in a cubicle. … Read More

Film

Director Derek Cianfrance on ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ and the Magic of Ryan Gosling

By Jason Bailey on

It’s tricky to talk to Derek Cianfrance about his new film The Place Beyond the Pines, due to a series of bold narrative turnabouts that would fall squarely into the realm of “spoilers.” I explained my hesitancy to him in a recent telephone interview. “It’s challenging for reviewers,” he grants. “You can’t just go and spend two-thirds of your review describing plot – unless you hate the movie. The reviewers that hate the movie have no problem… they’re excited to go out there and crush it for people.” I don’t hate the movie, and I don’t want to crush it for people. Suffice it to say that it starts as one thing, and then unexpectedly becomes another, and then something else entirely. That seems a safe way to put it — and for Cianfrance to explain how he arrived at the picture’s unique “triptych” structure. … Read More

Film

Flavorwire’s Guide to Movies You Need to Stream This Week

By Jason Bailey on

Welcome to Flavorwire’s streaming movie guide, in which we help you sift through the scores of movies streaming on Netflix, Hulu, and other services to find the best of the recently available, freshly relevant, or soon to expire. This week, we’ve got great flicks from Jack Nicholson, Ryan Gosling, Robert Pattinson, Clive Owen, Michelle Williams, Kirsten Dunst, Catherine Keener, Viola Davis, Harvey Keitel, Pam Grier, Toni Collete, Stanley Kubrick, and David Cronenberg. Check them all out after the jump, and follow the title links to watch them right now. … Read More

Pop Culture

12 Actors and Directors on Shooting Sex Scenes

By Alison Nastasi on

This week, we learned that director Harmony Korine cast a woman who could balance “three or four Coke cans on her ass” in his debauched Spring Breakers. It also turns out that star Gucci Mane couldn’t stop smoking weed long enough to successfully perform a sex scene with her in the movie. Vulture interviewed Korine, who revealed that the rapper-actor — who plays a rival drug lord to James Franco’s Alien — fell asleep during his big sex scene. “As he is getting f*cked, I start to hear snores,” said Korine. “He had literally passed out!” It’s an amusing anecdote, but it left us wondering how actors and directors handle those moments on the big screen. Do they really enjoy them? Is it always awkward? Check out the on-screen sex confessions of film and television’s finest past the break. … Read More

Film

Flavorwire’s Flick of the Week: ‘Gangster Squad’ Is Brash, Stylish, and Better Than You’ve Heard

By Jason Bailey on

Ruben Fleischer’s Gangster Squad, as everyone knows by now, was originally slated for release last fall, a release postponed due to the reshooting of a climactic sequence that rather unfortunately echoed the theater shooting in Aurora. That scene was replaced by a set piece in Chinatown, and when it comes up, the movie buckles a little under the weight. It’s an encroaching of reality, of the world outside the frame, that’s wildly unfair. Opening disclaimer aside, this is not a film “Inspired by a True Story”; it’s inspired by movies, by the way classic crime pictures look and feel and sound, which is then revved up and kicked out as pure flash. Those who are calling it shallow and cartoony and clichéd are missing the point. It is all of those things, purposefully — gleefully, even. … Read More

Film

Flavorwire’s Most Anticipated Movies of 2013

By Jason Bailey on

2013 promises about what you’d expect: lots of sequels and comic book movies and sequels to comic book movies. But we’re not snobs — some of those look awfully exciting, and some of the smaller, more indie-minded titles have got us mighty interested as well. Join us for a look ahead at the ten pictures we’re looking forward to the most — and, of course, add your own in the… Read More