News & Notes Inside the Week in Film

The Appeal Of Ryan Gosling

There’s perfect… and then there’s Ryan Gosling

by Chris Neumer

If you’ve spoken to a woman in the last three years, you’ll know that the current Hollywood heartthrob is actor Ryan Gosling.  The mere mention of his name is enough to produce a small smile on the faces of most females ages 15-55.  Gosling is not only good looking, but a talented actor to boot.  However, there are a lot of good looking guys who are talented actors—Michael Fassbender, Hugh Jackman, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Pattinson to name but a few—but none of them engender the across the board love that Gosling does.

This is a phenomenon that men including myself don’t always understand.  Fassbender, like Willem Dafoe, has that dark je nais se quois to him, Jackman is physically ripped and seems like a funny guy, DiCaprio is a guy who loves going out and Pattinson has an artistic, brooding vibe about him.  It’s easy to understand how any of the aforementioned actors could turn heads.  However, Gosling isn’t dark, doesn’t seem that funny, doesn’t to party much and generally won’t come off as artsy or brooding.

Well, here’s what Gosling has going for him that isn’t always put on display: he is currently in the running for the title of the ‘Sweetest Celebrity in the World’.  He takes his mother to the premieres of his movies, he hugs his fans and graciously signs autographs for them, he has pulled people out of the way of getting hit by taxis and once even broke up a street fight in what I will conservatively call the cutest most adorable video of a street fight ever; I could watch it all day.  He is supremely humble and amused by his own standing in Hollywood.  He also completely disagrees with his status as a sex symbol.  In an interview with The Metro, Gosling opined, “I know from just being a guy and looking at a billboard and you’re like: ‘That guy’s not a sex symbol. They’re trying to sell us on that?  No way!  That’s never gonna stick.’  And then suddenly he’s like a huge deal and you can’t believe it.  I used to hate on those guys and now I am one… You show me someone who really thinks [that I’m a sex symbol] and I’ll show you a liar.  It’s not true.”

And while these things are all very sweet and nice, they don’t hold a candle to the crème-de-la-crème of Gosling sweetness.  In an interview with GQ about his ex-girlfriend, Rachel McAdams, whom he met when the two were filming The Notebook, Gosling stated, “God bless The Notebook.  It introduced me to one of the great loves of my life.  But people do Rachel and me a disservice by assuming we were anything like the people in that movie.  Rachel and my love story is a hell of a lot more romantic than that.”

I repeat, Gosling said this after the two had broken up.

There’s perfect and then there’s Ryan Gosling.  Now, I understand.

 

Actors Be Cray

Jamie Foxx took a chisel to his own mouth to prepare for a role.  Actors be cray.

by Chris Neumer

I was talking to several people at an event recently and the topic of actors came up.  One woman said, “I hate how fake the stories are about them getting into character.”  She shook her head and continued, “It’s just made up for marketing.”  I had to laugh at her comments.  If there’s one thing that can be said of Hollywood actors, it’s that they generally do take their roles rather seriously.  How seriously?  Funny you should ask…

There is a rather famous Hollywood story involving Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier.  Working together on the seventies era thriller, The Marathon Man, the two came from very different backgrounds.  Hoffman is a method actor.  If he’s out of breath on camera, it’s probably because he was actually running before the scene started filming.  Olivier is an actor.  If he’s out of breath on camera, it’s because he is consciously breathing harder than usual.

Rumor has it that Oliver showed up on set one morning and found Hoffman looking like absolute hell.  Olivier questioned him about it and Hoffman explained that they were shooting a scene where his character had been up all night… so he’d stayed up all night to prepare.  Olivier frowned at him and said, “Why not try acting, it’s far easier.”

At this point in time, it doesn’t even matter whether this story is true or not.  It’s such an established legend that its validity is secondary.

However, this exchange between Olivier and Hoffman doesn’t hold a candle to one of the most under reported bits of ‘crazy’ in recent memory: the time Jamie Foxx took a chisel to his teeth to get into character.  Foxx revealed to Maxim Magazine that, while attempting to feel like a homeless man during pre-production of The Soloist, he had taken a chisel to his mouth and had “put a gap in my teeth.  I had chipped one out with a chisel.”  Foxx went on to explain that, “My teeth are just so big and white—a homeless person would never have them.  I wanted to break up my big, shining piano keys to give them a little character.  Some might think I fucked up my grill for nothing, but I just want to come up with some shit to make the part unique.”

The only other actor I can think of who physically messed with his teeth for a role was Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber.  Carrey had chipped one of his front teeth earlier in life and had his dentist take out the cap before shooting began.  He did not, however, grab the nearest tool he could find and start whacking it against his teeth.

Charlize Theron played a homeless prostitute in 2004’s Monster and even she did not stoop to this level of self-mutilation.  She put on weight, caked herself in dirt and didn’t wash her hair, but even she had a set of false teeth made that she could wear over her actual teeth.  It’s what most (read: all) other actors do.  I wonder if Foxx was aware of how unusual his method of preparation was and how bizarre the whole thing seems.  Stated Foxx, “We’re all a little crazy out here in Hollywood, but going to that edge was really scary.”

That would be a loud ‘affirmative’, ghost rider.*

* I’m not even going to get into the whole part where Foxx lost track of what was actually happening to him on set that enabled him to make the comment, “Sometimes I didn’t know what was real.”

 

Just Asking…

Lindsay Lohan has a new boyfriend.  How?

by Chris Neumer

Recent paparazzi shots have actress Lindsay Lohan kissing her new boyfriend, club promoter Avi Snow, before his band’s concert in a bar.  When later asked about Lohan, Snow stated that Lohan was “really awesome” and “a lot of fun”.

When I read this, I did a double take.  Lindsay Lohan.  Has.  A.  New.  Boyfriend.

What more does a human being have to do to make the thought of dating him or her more repulsive than Lohan has done?  How are there still men out there who look at her and think, “Yeah, I want to date her!”

In the last four months, Lohan has, deep breath, been charged with multiple crimes including one banner day where two different states filed four different charges against her, had her father state that she’s escorting for cash, delivered one of the worst and most hyped acting performances in recent memory in Lifetime’s Liz & Dick, had her bank accounts frozen by the IRS for not paying back taxes (after, mind you, Charlie Sheen gave her $100,000 to do so), made headlines for directing racial slurs at people, consuming more than two liters of vodka a day and having her own assistant tell her that she needs help, has been forced to include provisions in her acting contracts that she won’t kiss people if she has an outbreak of herpes or drive or even get into any vehicles other than the one paid for by the production company and, most recently got a judge to agree to a plea proposed by her lawyer that she serve her 90 day jail sentence in “lockdown rehab” (marking her such third stint), but not before begging him to push the start date of her “lockdown rehab” back so she could go to Coachella first.  Yeah…  And I haven’t even gotten to the part where “lockdown rehab” doesn’t exist.

That’s the last four months!  And I know I’m missing a lot of stuff; I just didn’t have the time or energy to go more in depth than the above.

Legally unable to drive?  Check.

Horrendous financial situation?  Check.

Massive addiction and court ordered rehab?  Check.

Apparent escort with an STD?  Check

Multiple felony charges?  Check.

An even worse family dynamic?  Check.

And she is dating someone after all of this transpired.  All of which leads me to the question: Lindsay Lohan has a new boyfriend?  How?

 

 

The Photo of the Week

This Must Be The Place

 

Yup.  Sean Penn in white faced makeup, emo-glam rock wig in This Must Be the Place.  Again.  This time he’s apparently performing for an awestruck kid.  It might just be the wig though…  This Must Be the Place will continue to be the Photo of the Week as long as there are photos of Penn in full Robert Smith-esque get up that haven’t been used.

 

The 5 Things I Learned This Week

Fascinatingly true things to broaden your mind

 

1) Singer Demi Lovato is Hispanic.  Her real name is Demetria Lovato.

2) So is Raquel Welch.  Welch’s real name is Jo Raquel Tejada.

3) Between 1981 – 1996, model Christie Brinkley was married to four different men.

4) John Francis Daley, the lead in the cult hit Freaks & Geeks, is one of the writers for the movie The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.

5) Hermes is selling a T-shirt in its New York store for $91,000.

 

 

This Week’s Stories

New Releases

The Collection

THE PLAYERS: Starring Josh Stewart, Emma Fitzpatrick, and Christopher McDonald; written by Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan; directed by Marcus Dunstan. Released by LD Entertainment. Rated R.

THE PLOT: A serial killer is on the loose again in this sequel to the 2009 film The Collector.

THE SKINNY:
+ Great for fans of the Saw series who just didn’t think the films had a high enough body count.
+ I’m kind of pleased to think that we live in a world where this type of plot is considered reasonable enough to put at the center of a major motion picture.  The serial killer at the heart of this movie, The Collector, is a wildly intelligent psychopath (who used to work as an exterminator) who sets up a series of absolutely elaborate like death traps, including one in the city’s hottest underground dance club that manages to kill hundreds of people, as a way to… uh… imprison one person, I think, whom he then takes to his lair, which is located in an abandoned hotel in an abandoned part of town where is seems to always be night.

Let me say this again: the killer (whom the police have been searching for for more than three years) somehow managed to get inside a dance club and set up something that resembles the reaping mechanism of a combine that spans the entire club and is outfitted with razor sharp blades, so that he could then kidnap one of the people there.  After the majority of the club goers have been decimated from the aforementioned reaping mechanism, The Collector then implements his secondary plan, where the ceiling of the dance club is lowered ala Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom thusly smooshing everyone in the club who hadn’t been killed already.

And that’s merely a portion of the setup for the movie.  The actual meat and potatoes of this thing are far more whacked out, obsessive and unusual than that.  Did I mention the experiments that The Collector has been performing on people while attempting to turn them into insects?  Or the fact that he has kidnapped, at bare minimum, two dozen people prior to the opening of this film?
+ If you like your killers to wear leather sex hoods, you’re going to flip out while watching The Collection.
– If everything I’ve written about this so far seems horrible and ridiculous at the same time, there isn’t a worse movie on the face of the planet than The Collection.

YES, IT’S TRUE: Speaking of serial killers, 1978’s Halloween actually had a very small budget. They created Michael Myers’ infamous mask by painting a Captain Kirk mask white and made the eye holes larger.

Killing Them Softly

THE PLAYERS: Starring Brad Pitt, Ray Liotta, Richard Jenkins; written by George V. Higgins and Andrew Dominik; directed by Andrew Dominik. Released by The Weinstein Company. Rated R.

THE PLOT: Markie Trattman (Liotta) hires two men to rob his poker ring, thus disrupting the local gamling scene. A hitman (Brad Pitt) is then hired by the mafia as an attempt to strengthen the inconvenience.

THE SKINNY:
– This feels like one of those nineties indie crime movies that featured the behind-the-camera talents of Roger Avary and/or Lawrence Bender.
Part of what separated the indie and mainstream film worlds in the nineties was the foreboding sense of grittiness and coldness that was present in the indie world.  Part of this was thematic, but part of this was also the film stock and the lack of budget the indie filmmakers had to work with; everything looks dark and run down when you can’t light it properly.

There were scores of indies that were produced during the nineties that didn’t feature any characters that you could really identify with.  The genius of Pulp Fiction wasn’t its non-standard script or its ensemble cast, it was the fact that people truly got into the movie without there being any truly sympathetic characters in the movie (Bruce Willis’ boxer may have fallen into the category, but was introduced late in the film and was, lest we not forget, a professional athlete who was supposed to take a dive and didn’t).

Killing Me Softly has this same vibe about it.  It seems insanely hard to care about any of the people we see on screen, save for Richard Jenkins’ character, Driver.
+ Richard Jenkins is one of the most underrated actors in film today.  He brings such a solid presence to the screen and inhabits all of his characters so thoroughly, it’s hard to go wrong with him.  I love me some Richard Jenkins.
– No one else in America has any clue who Richard Jenkins is.
– When you’re making a movie about the mob, James Gandolfini should not be at the top of your to-call list.  He should be at the bottom. Every scene I see him in, I think the same thing: what is Tony Soprano doing here?  Ditto with Ray Liotta.  Can we please usher in a new generation of on-screen wise guys?

YES, IT’S TRUE: Al Capone’s bullet-proof Cadillac was used as Franklin Roosevelt’s limousine after being seized by the U.S. Treasury Department.

Lincoln

THE PLAYERS: Starring Daniel-Day Lewis, Sally Field, David Strathairn; written by Doris Kearns and Tony Kushner; directed by Steven Spielberg. Released by Buena Vista. Rated PG-13.

THE PLOT: Based on the book by Kearns, this historical drama covers Lincoln’s life during the period in which he proposed the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery.

THE SKINNY:
+ Lincoln is a fantastically well made film courtesy of Hollywood’s universally acclaimed director, Steven Spielberg, that stars arguably the best actor of all time, Daniel Day-Lewis.  What’s not to like?
– Not especially heavy on the vampire killing that some have come to expect from our 16th president.
+ Not many other movies have caused the state of Mississippi to ratify varying parts of the constitution that they have, up until last year, put off doing.
+ Day-Lewis won his record breaking third Best Actor Oscar for his role in Lincoln.
– I am a huge Joseph Gordon-Levitt fan and am of the opinion that he can do very little wrong.  That said, the very little that he can do wrong, he does here.  Suffice it to say, period pieces and mustaches are not Gordon-Levitt’s friends.

YES, IT’S TRUE: Lincoln was a wrestler and had a natural advantage because of his 6’4″ frame. He actually became an honoree in the National Wrestling Hall of fame in 1992.

Parental Guidance

THE PLAYERS: Starring Billy Crystal, Bette Midler, and Marisa Tomei; written by Lisa Addario and Joe Syracuse; directed by Andy Fickman. Released by Fox. Rated PG.

THE PLOT:  Shenanigans ensue when Artie and Diane (Crystal and Midler) agree to watch their three grandchildren while their daughter is out-of-town.

THE SKINNY:
– This movie stars Billy Crystal and Bette Midler.  Unfortunately, it’s not 1992.
– I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: I feel strangely out of place watching movies with elderly leads where the focus of the movie is on being old and out-of-touch.
– Features many great scenes of Crystal trying to be younger and cooler and coming off as supremely old and clueless.
– These scenes feature the 65-year old Crystal in hip-hop wear, using words like ‘yo’, ‘homes’ and ‘slice’.  This wasn’t funny when Steve Martin did it in Bringing Down the House or any of the times that Eugene Levy has done it.  Especially when Levy does it.
+ I am always pleasantly surprised when someone takes a stand against the way that youth athletic leagues have stopped keeping score. Parental Guidance doesn’t do this in the most classy, elegant fashion, but nonetheless calls attention to it and shines a bright light on it… right until a kid hits Crystal in the balls with a baseball bat.
– … Which reminds me: Crystal’s groin seems to be a magnet for the children in this movie.  They are constantly squirting it, hitting it or banging things into it.

YES, IT’S TRUE: Carol Burnett, Jack Nicholson, and Oprah Winfrey were all raised by their grandparents.

The New Releases were written by Chris Neumer and Kevin Withers