Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Showing posts with label film. Show all posts
Tuesday, 18 March 2014
Monday, 17 March 2014
Spike Jonze's Her: The Digital Muse & Postmodern Culture
Click on the image for an illuminating critical perspective of the Spike Jonze film 'Her' by Amy Edelstein.
Friday, 14 March 2014
Thursday, 13 March 2014
Tuesday, 11 March 2014
Monday, 10 March 2014
Wednesday, 12 February 2014
"Drive" Intro in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
(Music by Kavinsky - Nightcall (feat. Lovefoxxx))
"Cool Short Film Puts Ryan Gosling Inside Two Grand Theft Auto Games"
Cited by Evan Narcisse
Ryan Gosling’s "Drive" Jacket Is In GTA V?
"It was the film that inspired a million man-crushes, countless Halloween costumes and now, the biggest game of the year. Yes, Ryan Gosling's iconic jacket from the film Drive makes a guest appearance in Grand Theft Auto V. Dubbed the "champagne Driver blouson", the silver-and-brown bomber is emblazoned with a yellow crab - a nod to the film's scorpion - and can be purchased by Trevor in the discount stores of Blaine County. (Although we'd have thought, as the team's driver, it would be more suited for Franklin). Hijack a Mustang-esque Dominator and equip yourself the hammer (it's available as a weapon in the Special Edition version) for full Gosling effect. Our only complaint? That Kavinsky's "Nightcall" is missing from the soundtrack, so you'll have to make do with Kendrick Lamar."
By Oliver Franklin
Drive: "The Greatest Grand Theft Auto Film There Will Never Be"
"Every couple of months, rumours of an impending video game-to-movie adaptation of the Grand Theft Auto series rears its head. And with good reason; taking their cues from iconic gangster flicks from the silver screen, RockStar Game's infamous crime sims have become very cinematic (particularly Grand Theft Auto 4), and as much about weaving a deep and considered morality-challenging story as they are indulging our desires to drive fast and blast guns.
I for one had eagerly been awaiting news of an almost inevitable GTA film.
But I won't be any more. Last night I saw Drive, the latest movie from Nicolas Winding Refn. Full of car chases, heists, gangsters, neon lights and nail-biting tension, it's everything a great Grand Theft Auto film could be and should be. It's so good as to warrant any GTA movie-pipe-dreams wholly irrelevant. It ticks all the boxes. Here's why:
1) Ryan Gosling's nameless driver is every bit the brooding GTA anti-hero
Drive centres around Ryan Gosling as a nameless, Hollywood stunt driver. He's the best in the business, and makes a fair bit of cash on the side moonlighting as a wheelman for robberies. Just like GTA IV's Niko Belic, he's as cool as ice and doesn't flinch when forced into a dangerous, potentially violent situation. However, just like Niko, Gosling's driver is also a complex man whose slow-burning romance with his vulnerable neighbour Irene (played by Carey Mulligan) force him into an abyss of underworld trouble. Despite both characters' dubious actions, we cant help but sympathise with Niko and the driver.
2) Both are effortlessly stylish and cool
We all know that a life of crime doesn't pay, and both GTA and Drive go a long way towards cementing how destructive a lifestyle it can be. That doesn't stop it from being alluring though, and both GTA and Drive know this too. From Gosling's monosyllabic phrasing to his trend-setting wardrobe, the tooth-pick chewing driver cuts a very James Dean-style figure. Likewise the LA setting, sports cars, neon lights and 80's synth-inspired soundtrack hand picks all the greatest excesses of cult gangster flicks. GTA over the years has likewise styled itself as the premier "cool" game, always highlighting the hippest artists on its soundtrack, tipping its cap to the best gangster cinema has to offer and always oozing a "don't give a f*ck" attitude.
3) Both have smoking-hot cars
I'm not much of a car man, truth be told. But even I can appreciate the sleek lines of a Chevy or a Mustang, as seen in Drive. Though it doesn't have real world cars, Grand Theft Auto is, as its title suggests, all about storming down the highway in a stolen sports car. If you like the sound of a revving super car engine, both Drive and GTA will be right up your street.
4)The soundtracks for GTA and Drive are so, so good
The quality of the Grand Theft Auto series soundtracks are well documented. From Blondie to Michael Jackson in Vice City, to Les Savy Fav and Justice in GTA IV, RockStar have their finger on the pulse not only in terms of songs that get the blood pumping when speeding down the highway, but also those that perfectly evoke the feelings of the setting and era that the games are trying to recreate. Drive, though set in the present day, is clearly inspired by 1980s aesthetics, and the soundtrack likewise reflects this to stunning effect. Tracks by College, Desire and Kavinsky add a hauntingly icy accompaniment to the shocking events on screen, every bit as memorable as the footage they support.
5) Both are shockingly, but fittingly, violent
Whether you sit on the side of the fence that brands GTA excessively violent, or the side that sees it as a fitting representation not only of the dangers of the underworld lifestyle but also clearly inspired by the gritty Goodfellas and Godfather flicks, there's no denying the series has spilled a fair bit of blood. Likewise, Drive is punctuated by a few scenes of intense violence. Like, REALLY intense. However, in both GTAs story missions and the plot and characterisation of Drive, it never feels out of place considering the unique pressures the characters are put under.
This list could go on and on, but at the end of the day, I just wanted to highlight how great a film Drive is, and how much fans of the Grand Theft Auto series will enjoy it. The fact that GTA has become so massively popular means that any potential movie probably couldn't indulge the same art-house tendencies that Nicolas Winding Refn's film does, which is a crying shame as the genuinely beautiful moments in Drive make its bloodier scenes all the more harrowing. Any GTA film would now undoubtedly become a dumb exercise in "The Fast and The Furious" style car porn.
Head down to your local multiplex and catch Drive if you can; I defy you not to go home afterwards and immediately want to go for a spin around Vice or Liberty City in GTA."
By Gerald Lynch
Monday, 10 February 2014
Drive: Ending Explained
"If you’re reading this, then you’ve already had the chance to watch Nicolas Winding Refn’s pulpy crime-drama Drive, and hopefully enjoyed it as much as we did (be sure to read our Drive review).
Though Drive seems like a standard action/thriller (albeit with some art house style and flare), a lot of movie goers have walked away with questions about the movie’s final moments, which leave a fair amount of ambiguity hanging over the fate of “Driver,” the character played by Ryan Gosling.
In the past with our Shutter Island and Inception Ending Explanations, we here at Screen Rant have had to rely on our prowess as movie aficionados in order to form some logical deductions about what transpired in some of our favorite mind-bending movies, and what filmmakers intended with their ambiguous endings. In the case of Drive, however, we were fortunate enough to snag an explanation right from the primary source: director Nicolas Winding Refn.
When we last see Driver – bleeding out while behind the wheel of his car, before pulling himself together and speeding off into the night – there is a certain amount of lingering doubt about the literalness vs. figurativeness of what we are seeing. When I asked Refn first-hand what the ending of Drive was all about, I expected the typically coy filmmaker to hand me an equally coy answer. However, he was surprisingly straight forward in his response:
“Well all my films always have open endings. All of them. Because I believe art is always best when…you talk about it and think about it, so forth. Maybe once in a while I’ve gone too far, but I always believe in finding the right balance. And in ‘Drive’ he lives on for more and new adventures.”
So there you have it – if you were wondering whether or not the ending of the film was to be taken literally, or was some metaphoric death scene, you at least now know how the director sees it.
Refn has continuously referred to the film as a modern Grimm fairytale (unlikely hero rises to battle evil king, saves princess) and I for one always saw the ending as the hero saving the girl, while also being denied the “happily ever after” cliche he may want. Indeed, the implications of the film are such that Driver will likely speed off into new adventures, as Refn claims, albeit still stuck in the lonely and isolated existence in which we found him. The only difference is: he now knows what kind of hero he can be."
Written by Kofi Outlaw
Drive: Soundtrack
The soundtrack to Drive includes an original score by Cliff Martinez that was inspired by ’80s-style, synth-pop. In addition to crafting his own compositions, Martinez built the film’s sonic landscape from ideas pioneered by European electronic bands, such as Kraftwerk. Other songs in the set — which were recorded and arranged with a similar retro edge – include “Nightcall” by Kavinsky and Lovefoxxx of Brazilian dance-rock outfit CSS, a tune by the Chromatics, and others.
01 Nightcall – Kavinsky & Lovefoxxx
02 Under Your Spell – Desire
03 A Real Hero – College feat. Electric Youth
04 Oh My Love – Riz Ortolani feat. Katyna Ranieri
05 Tick of the Clock – The Chromatics
06 Rubber Head
07 I Drive
08 He Had a Good Time
09 They Broke His Pelvis
10 Kick Your Teeth
11 Where’s The Deluxe Version?
12 See You in Four
13 After The Chase
14 Hammer
15 Wrong Floor
16 Skull Crushing
17 My Name on a Car
18 On The Beach
19 Bride of Deluxe
Tracks 6-19 by Cliff Martinez
Violence: A History Of Violence (2005) Dir. David Cronenburg
A History of Violence is a 2005 American crime thriller film directed by David Cronenberg and written by Josh Olson. It is an adaptation of the 1997 graphic novel of the same name by John Wagner and Vince Locke. The film stars Viggo Mortensen as the owner of a diner who is thrust into the spotlight after killing two robbers in self-defense.
The style of violence is reminiscent to that in Drive. It is visceral and brutal. Is it real or hyperreal? How do you feel when you watch violent scenes like this and why do you feel the way you do? Are your experiences of violence informed by other media texts?
Cult Film: Drive
With his hyper-stylised approach to filmmaking and curt, dismissive approach to seemingly everything else, Nicolas Winding Refn is a man who really couldn’t help but acquire an avid cult following. That said, up until 2012, his career was characterised primarily by the maddening sense of great potential being left untapped: Pusher, Valhalla Rising and Bronson all effectively advertised his eye for alluring visuals and talent for visceral ultra-violence but none of them fully came together as films. While this year’s disappointingly self-indulgent Only God Forgives suggests that Refn has returned to old habits in a way that leaves the true extent of his talent as a filmmaker as questionable as ever, last year brought about the movie that would instantaneously fire itself and its helmer into the highest ranks of cult phenomenon, to stand alongside Big Lebowskis and Donnie Darkos forevermore. That movie was Drive.
The plot is pretty standard Hollywood fare: a mysterious young man falls for the girl next door, tries to use his talent as a wheelman to help out her and her young son, and quickly finds himself in a desperate struggle to protect them from the local mob boss after a seemingly simple heist goes badly wrong. Under many directors, that storyline could easily become a Fast & Furious-style, testosterone-fuelled exercise in mindless excess. This is a neon-drenched piece of neo-noir, an electro-infused Taxi Driver, a slickly minimalist thriller, a postmodern fairytale and, above all, a ninety-three minute masterclass in style.
One of the film’s greatest strengths is the confidence it carries itself with. Legendary filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki once spoke about the cinematic importance of the Japanese term ‘ma’. Roughly translated, it means ‘emptiness’; in film, it refers to the quiet moments in between those filled with action and emotion. Whilst the Michael Bay school of cinema demands a neverending stream of explosions, gags and leering chest-shots to scream for the viewer’s attention at every turn, Refn’s faith in his work and his audience allows him to move at his own pace. He knows that his movie oozes style; that every frame is so meticulously composed and perfectly complemented by Cliff Martinez’s ethereal electronic score that he can afford to dwell, to draw you into the film’s quiet moments before blowing you away with its loud ones. Few films create the same degree of exhilaration emptying entire clips that Refn manages with Drive’s single nerve-shattering report.
It’s possibly this patience that allows Drive to get away with its more exuberant tendencies because, in many ways, it’s a film that absolutely should not work. Take the opening credits: a shot of the illuminated LA cityscape with the film’s title emblazoned across it in hot pink cursive as Kavinsky’s Nightcall blares and we slowly cut to our satin-jacketed hero stare wistfully into the middle distance before driving off into the night. What should be ridiculous is instead made impossibly, ineffably cool, partially because of what preceded it: a near-silent, car-bound game of cat-and-mouse with the police that slowly cranks the tension up to bursting point before finally exploding into the aforementioned musical queue. Again, the quiet moments earn the loud ones.
Drive is a movie destined to become a vital pop culture touchstone in years to come, one whose rabid fans will proselytise its glory to anyone who’ll listen, never to be deterred by the fact that the majority are never going to love it quite as they do. If not for the fact that it is an expertly crafted thriller featuring an eclectically-chosen cast all on top form and one of the best soundtracks of recent years, it’s worth seeing just to see which side of the line you personally land on.
By Ross McIndoe
http://www.strathclydetelegraph.com/2013/11/cult-film-drive/
Drive (2011)
By day, the mysterious, taciturn young man (Gosling) works as a Hollywood stuntman and a mechanic at a dirty Los Angeles garage, while by night, as a driver with inhuman skills, he lends his services to criminals. His idyllic, peaceful triple life becomes complicated when he falls in love with his beautiful neighbour (Mulligan) with a small child and a husband in prison.
Numerous enthralled critics and viewers characterised Drive as “one of the greatest surprises of 2011” and a “Tarantinoesque film”. The latter notwithstanding, instead of a postmodern pastiche, a citation of and homage to road movies, heist films, film noir and 1980s cinema, Refn actually managed to create something more: he merged all the mentioned references into a unique whole, an entirely new model of auteur genre film for the new millennium, which simultaneously shocks and seduces with its honest mixture of brutality and elegance, existentialism and romance. Drive is Frankenstein’s monster built piecewise by Walter Hill, Monte Hellman, Richard Sarafian, Dennis Hopper, Robert Bresson, Nicholas Ray, Chris Petit, Wim Wenders, Clint Eastwood, Warren Oates and Steve McQueen, but it is a seamless monster that learned to walk in Victor Erice’s school.
Drive was adapted from the eponymous novel by James Sallis (who last year already followed up his instantaneous 2005 literary cult with a novel published under no less a laconic title, Driven). On the level of the story, the plot, and partly also the level of dramaturgy, it does not bring anything essentially new. The fundamental surplus, the very core of the film, lies in its form, in the exclusive authorial signature of Nicolas Winding Refn. As with his previous masterpiece Valhalla Rising (2009), we could again say that the story (or its germs) arise from the form, from the audiovisual, that is, the inherently filmic. Similarly, the surplus of Sallis’ novel lies almost exclusively in its form, a crossbreed between Carver, Bunker and Chandler. This admittedly evident thesis is confirmed by Refn himself, who tersely and wittily characterises Drive as a story “about a man who drives around listening to pop songs at night.” In short, the main hero’s character does not proceed from any in-depth psychology, or even a surface one, but is born entirely out of the mentioned night melodies that surround him, from the monumental way he is filmed, from the unexplained drive that propels him from scene to scene, from one story line to another, from one gear to another, to the end and beyond. It concerns real mythology, a timeless film for every moment.
“A brilliant piece of nasty business that races on a B-movie track until it switches to the dizzying fuel of undiluted creativity. Damn, it’s good. You can get buzzed just from the fumes coming off this wild thing.” Peter Travers
http://www.isolacinema.org/en/programme/films-and-sections/drive
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