In Contention

Tag: Drive

  • 9/19 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Toronto Oscar bounces, threads in ‘Drive,’ adaptng le Carre

    • Anne Thompson talks “Rampart” with writer/director Oren Moverman. [Thompson on Hollywood]

    • Greg Ellwood ponders who got an Oscar bounce out of Toronto. [Awards Campaign]

    • Simon Kinnear on the clothing designs of “Drive.” [Clothes on Film]

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  • BOX OFFICE: ‘Lion’ roars at the top

    Disney found a somewhat soft spot for children’s films in the 2011 schedule to slot “The Lion King 3D,” and they came away with a healthy #1 take this weekend. Assuming you’re okay with that being added to the film’s already impressive overall take from the summer of 1994, it leap-frogs “Finding Nemo” to become the third-highest grossing animated film of all time. Now that I look at the figures, “Drive” actually opened on a lot more screens than I thought, but I’m nevertheless a bit surprised it bested “Straw Dogs” (which itself was even held in check by the still-chugging “The Help”).

    (Courtesy: Exhibitor Relations)

  • CINEJABBER: Just enjoy the show

    So, it’s been a big week of announcements here at In Contention, and next week, a bigger week of changes. The current plan is to have the new digs off the ground on Tuesday, so we’ll have Monday to say our goodbyes. But it occurred to me I haven’t offered up a Cinejabber space for you to cut loose about any and everything in quite some time. So, let’s do that before we go.

    I’m stoked that we’re going out with a bang on our “tell us what you thought” posts, as the “Drive” discussion is easily our most engaging and lively one yet. I saw the film again last night (I’m guessing it’s the first opening night film I’ve taken in in three years). It’s such a brilliant piece of work. I hope it does well this season.

    I had lunch this afternoon with the soft-spoken and, following engagement on a studio film and the Toronto grind of last week, rather exhausted Bennett Miller. He’s very passionate about the themes and the main character of the film, as I knew he had to be, given how dense it is. One thing he said really stuck out: “Brad [Pitt] told me, ‘I’m proud of this movie, and I’m proud of it for how hard it was.’” Indeed, it was a “beautiful nightmare” getting “Moneyball” made, but Miller ended up giving the material a delicate touch and one that allowed it to work on his terms within the studio system. He’s proud of it for that, too. But more on all that later.

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  • Tell us what you thought of ‘Drive’

    Lots has been written and spoken about “Drive” around these parts. Guy fell in love in Cannes. I hopped on board at Comic-Con. And now, it’s your turn to weigh in. The film opens nationwide today, and I imagine it’ll be a big priority for many of you. Come on back here when you get around to seeing it this weekend. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

  • You have to care

    Speaking of “Drive,” I just read through Roger Ebert’s review and this pull quote stuck out to me as particularly cogent:

    The key thing you want to feel, during a chase scene, is involvement in the purpose of the chase. You have to care. Too often we’re simply witnessing technology.

  • Albert Brooks talks ‘Drive’

    The great Albert Brooks took playful Twitter umbrage with my yanking him from the predicted five supporting actor contenders recently. I assure you (and him) that it’s a lack of faith in the Academy, which would enter uber-cool territory by giving him (or anything) a nod for this film, not a lack of faith in his work. He’s fantastic in the film and, well, nothing’s impossible. I’d be over the moon. Brooks and the rest of the team recently made the press rounds on the film. So, from our new partners at HitFix, via Awards Campaign:

    We’ll have a “tell us what you thought” post on the film later today.

  • 9/16 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Scientists vouch for ‘Contagion,’ Refn breaks down ‘Drive,’ Toronto takeaways

    • Scientists say “Contagion” is for real. [Associated Press]

    • James Rocchi talks “The Ides of March” with Best Supporting Actress hopeful Evan Rachel Wood. [MSN Movies]

    • Nicolas Winding Refn breaks down a scene from “Drive.” [Arts Beat]

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  • 9/15 OSCARWEB ROUND-UP: Flamboyant ‘Drive’ strategy, Oscilloscope nabs ‘Heights,’ eight minutes of ‘Dragon Tattoo’

    • John Horn talks to FilmDistrict honcho Bob Berney about the flamboyant advertising of Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive.” [24 Frames]

    • Dana Harris chats with “Albert Nobbs” stars Glenn Close and Janet McTeer. [indieWIRE]

    • Oscilloscope picks up Andrea Arnold’s “Wuthering Heights” in Toronto. [Variety]

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  • Why there’s no Gosling “dilemma”

    Kris wrote a thorough piece yesterday on the vast number of hard-working actors this year who seem to have two or more dogs in the Oscar hunt — one to which many of you responded with even more names to add to the conversation.

    In many cases, talk drifted away from serious awards potential and toward the less unusual occurrence of actors who simply had more than one film out this year: lord knows we all love Marisa Tomei, but nobody’s pretending she has more than a 0-for-2 shot at a nomination this time round.

    The name that everyone seems to be zeroing in on, however, is Hollywood’s current man of the hour, Ryan Gosling: with three prominent films to go with his endless portfolio of magazine covers, style-page paeans and blogosphere valentines, many are quick to assume the Academy will naturally fall in line, despite (or, some will reason, because of) their failure to acknowledge his career-best turn in last year’s “Blue Valentine.”

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  • OFF THE CARPET: Strong year for double-dippers

    We find ourselves right in the middle of the big Toronto press junket, er, film festival, where 200-plus films are landing, many of them as world premieres, and the landscape of this year’s Oscar race is really beginning to take shape.

    As I looked out at the various films in play this year, it suddenly occurred to me that, perhaps more than ever, there are a lot of double-dipping actors and actresses in the hunt. Not all of these performances are or will be awards bait necessarily, but there could still be cases for more than a few saddling up to dual nominations this year.

    At the top of that list would have to be Brad Pitt. After already giving what many believed to be his best performance to date in Terrence Malick’s “The Tree of Life,” the paparazzi-hounded star found himself the recipient of a lot of great ink for his work in “Moneyball” when it screened in Toronto at the end of the week. Wisely, Fox Searchlight will be planning a supporting actor push for the actor in Malick’s film, which is both practical (given his clear lead in the other film), and organic (given that, at least in my opinion, he is supporting to Hunter McCracken’s lead in “The Tree of Life”).

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  • ‘Drive’ on an interactive tour of Los Angeles

    It’s no secret both Guy and I are full on in the tank for Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive.” It’s one of the year’s best films, full of the promise of a fresh young filmmaker just beginning to sample his abilities for us all.

    One of the big takeaways for me when I saw the film at Comic-Con, I noted, was a reverence for the city of Los Angeles. “I don’t think another director has so completely captured the aura of the city like [Michael] Mann,” I wrote at the time, “but Refn comes really close.” And when I spoke to Refn later that evening, he mentioned to me that he feels Los Angeles is one of the most beautiful cities in the world, more so, even, than a picturesque burg like New York.

    With that in mind, my esteemed colleague Jen Yamato has come up with one of those ideas at Movieline that I wish I had stumbled on: an interactive tour of Los Angeles with Refn’s thoughts on the locations he used throughout the shoot.

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  • New ‘Drive’ posters

    Or, as a “Top Chef” contestant might title this post, “Drive” Four Ways. The US teaser poster for Nicolas Winding Refn’s Cannes winner unveiled a couple of weeks ago — the one that handily doubles as the cover for Ryan Gosling’s upcoming workout DVD — met a mixed reception. Some liked the kitsch, star-centered romanticism of it (though I can’t top Nick Davis’s “Aaron Carter inspirational cassette single” analogy), while many others thought it did an inadequate job of selling the film’s genre components. The film’s a fast-car thriller — where were the cars? And the thrills?

    Those objectors should be appeased by the film’s new US and UK one-sheets, both of which retain The Gosling Factor while shading in a little more of the action-film context. (A faint hint of camp is still present in the film’s trademark hot-pink cursive.) The US poster wins on the design front — and props for including a glimpse of the film’s key fetish object, Gosling’s leather driving gloves — but loses major points for recycling a tagline indelibly attached to “No Country for Old Men.” What were they thinking? Check ’em out after the cut.

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  • In praise of the modern movie soundtrack

    I generally try to ignore film opinion pieces I think are fundamentally misguided — à chacun son goût and all that, plus the fact that fighting one mind is generally more trouble than it’s worth — but Ben Walsh’s idle article in The Independent today on the supposed demise of the movie soundtrack does such an absurd disservice to the current landscape of film music that it can’t pass without objection.

    Walsh’s standpoint is a dully nostalgic one: movie scores were so much more memorable in the old days, when greats like John Williams, Ennio Morricone and Danny Elfman (who are all dead, apparently) conjured whistle-ready themes by the dozen, while scores today “seem so completely unmemorable” by comparison.

    His pool of case studies for this assertion is a shallow one — he speaks mainly of the recent Oscar winners by Best Picture, Original Score and Original Song, oddly conflating the last two categories as if the two disciplines are somehow comparable — and even through that narrow prism, his preferences are hard to justify.

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  • ‘Drive’ poster

    So, this little movie called “Drive” hits US theaters in just over six weeks, and you may have gathered by now that I kind of like it. After a spiffy trailer debuted last week, a fresh poster was due, and Film District have obliged with a one-sheet that makes no bones about how they’re pitching this thing — as The Ryan Gosling Show first and foremost, with the film’s sleek thriller qualities very much in the rear-view mirror. With American audiences current lapping up Gosling’s charms in romcom “Crazy, Stupid, Love,” it’s probably canny to emphasise the cool of their in-demand star, while the kitsch hot-pink typeface (the same used for the film’s credits) offers a hint of the 1980s pastiche to come. (That corny-sounding tagline, meanwhile, references the film’s most delicious soundtrack cut.) Not the most creative design, then, but one I can see gracing a lot of teenagers’ walls in the months to come.

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  • Telluride guessing game

    (UPDATED: 8/29)

    Now that the Toronto and Venice line-ups have been unveiled (though we have a few more Toronto announcements to come), I figured I’d take a few stabs at sussing out the Telluride crop this year. I haven’t been a good journalist and called around or anything. Just spinning my wheels.

    One studio that always has a big presence at Telluride is Sony Pictures Classics, and this year, honchos Michael Barker and Tom Bernard have a full plate once again. Of that stable, David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method” is hitting both Venice and Toronto. It’s very possible, then, that it will kick things off in the Rockies.

    Roman Polanski’s “Carnage,” meanwhile, was announced as a Venice play this morning. It would be easy enough for the team to bring the film there and not worry about getting the filmmaker in town (seeing as he can’t legally step foot in the country), saving his press run for Venice. (7/28 UPDATE: The film has been set for New York fest, so it seems unlikely we’ll see it in Telluride.)

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  • COMIC-CON: It all ends

    Well, like I said. Another year, another Con.

    For a convention I expected to be a bit more laid-back than usual, it sure was anything but. I guess I put that on myself by hustling back to LA for a concert and back down again to wrap things up, but even having covered just a sliver of the event (compared to the thorough coverage from outlets with multiple on-hand correspondents, who do it so well), boy am I glad it’s over.

    If you’ve read the coverage then you know my extended thoughts, but here’s a recap nevertheless.

    The highlight of the entire weekend was, for me, finally seeing Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive.” The film is an invigorating experience, an artful meditation that takes the most simplistic of narratives and turns it into a thorough character study.

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  • COMIC-CON: Refn’s ‘Drive’ is a bullet of vision

    I’ve had to sit on my feelings on Nicolas Winding Refn’s “Drive,” which had a special screening here Thursday night, because I haven’t found a window to write about it. That’s either good or bad, I don’t know, because the film has just continued to grow in my mind, but I don’t want to over-inflate expectations.

    In so many words, though, I think Refn is the most exciting filmmaker working today. And I haven’t even seen “Valhalla Rising” or his “Pusher” trilogy yet, but just to go by “Bronson” (a personal top 10er in 2009) and his latest, I feel an invigorating injection of originality in the cinema landscape.

    Guy reviewed and enthused about “Drive” at Cannes, so you’ve already digested one thorough assessment here (and one we share completely). So allow me to be a bit more abstract in my thoughts. I’ll just rattle them off as they come to me.

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  • ‘Drive’ red-band trailer

    As you can see from the previous post, Kris is every bit as punch-drunk on Nicolas Winding Refn’s electric throwback thriller “Drive” as I was at Cannes — read my review here — where it deservedly won the Best Director prize. It stands as my favourite narrative feature of the year so far; the rest of 2011 would have to be nothing short of miraculous to dislodge it from my year-end Top 10. Anyway, on the heels of last night’s Comic-Con screening comes a neatly assembled red-band trailer via IGN — and as sleek, smart and propulsive a taster as it is, it still can’t quite capture what a rush the film is. I’d almost recommend saving yourself for the full movie, but who am I kidding? Click on the image to watch it at IGN, or check out the embed after the cut.

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