Feeling the 'Drive' To Survive

Drive"
Premiering at the L.A. Film Festival
June 17, 2011.
In "Drive," the new film by Danish-born director Nicolas Winding Refn, Ryan Gosling channels Steve McQueen's turbo-charged antics from films like "Bullet" and "The Getaway." In fact, McQueen would have been a shoo-in to play the hero, here known simply as "Driver," if the movie was filmed 40 years earlier.
There's a fair amount of burning rubber, screeching tires and gunshots -- not to mention copious amounts of blood spilled in sometimes rather gruesome fashion.
The story centers on Gosling's character, an L.A. movie stunt driver who races and flips over muscle cars as cameras roll and catch the action. At night he pursues another, but not entirely different, vocation. He's a getaway driver for stick-up artists.
A crush develops between him and his next door neighbor, Irene (Carey Mulligan). Trouble is, she's married. But she's got a little boy, and he and Driver bond.
Difficulties start when Driver takes on another crime assignment. This time he thinks he's going to help save Irene's husband from harm, but things don't go well, to say the least.
Among the cast are Albert Brooks and Ron Perlman, who play wonderfully sleazy crime partners, and Bryan Cranston, of AMC's "Breaking Bad," who nicely inhabits the role of Driver's employer and sidekick, Shannon. He's got a dark past of his own. Christina Hendricks, of AMC's "Mad Men," makes an all-too-short appearance as Blanche, the woman who knows more than she's telling.
"Drive" lacks the richly detailed inner turmoil we sense in other recent crime thrillers, such as that between the deeply conflicted brothers-turned-robbers in Sidney Lumet's "Before the Devil Knows You're Dead." But for those who take their crime films with a large dose of action, that might be a good thing. "Drive" floors the accelerator -- liberally. Go for the adrenaline rush and buckle up.

--Paul Parcellin

Cast Lines Up For 'Gangster Squad'

Just when you start to think that the studios have given up on the gangster film genre, a new crime film comes along and restores your faith – at least for now.
Warner Bros., the studio with one of the most storied rosters of crime films, is behind “The Gangster Squad,” based on the Los Angeles Time’s seven-part series on corruption in City Hall and the Police Department, and the East Coast mob’s attempt to infiltrate the City of Angels.
The movie’s logline – something about the LAPD's fight to keep East Coast Mafia types out of Los Angeles in the 1940s and ’50s, doesn’t exactly shout clear, high-stakes goal. But that will likely be fixed in copious script rewrites that are no doubt taking place as we speak.
The question is, will the movie breathe new life into standard gangster faire: a detective with a dark side; cops tempted to accept graft; horror upon horror, a detective discovers his colleagues are on the take? By all accounts, L.A. was as corrupt as Chicago during this era, and crime mostly centered on liquor, gambling and brothels – oh, yes, and murder. All of this is excellent fodder for retelling the story of smog-choked L.A. of yore.
The director, Ruben Fleischer, will determine whether it’s a stylish character study with brains (“L.A. Confidential”) or a well-intentioned misfire (“Mulholland Falls”). Fleischer did himself proud helming “Zombieland.” We’ll see in August how he does with a crime comedy when “30 Minutes or Less” opens. Clearly, he’s got a knack for funny, but his directing credentials are lacking thus far when it comes to straight-ahead drama.
Still, Sean Penn is an apt choice to play gang leader Mickey Cohen. I can think of few other stars who have the acting chops and physical presence to tackle the role. Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Fernando Lara and Michael Pena have also signed on to the cast. As yet, IMDB doesn’t list which role Brolin will play.
If all goes well, “The Gangster Squad” will be unreeling at a multiplex near you sometime in 2013.

Touring Scenes of the Crime (Film) II

Here's more about familiar sites you might take in if you wander the streets of Los Angeles.
Venice Beach stands in for a Mexican border town in Orson Welles' 1958 noir, "Touch of Evil." The film begins with a close-up of a man setting the timer on a bomb. The camera pulls back to show a long columned arcade, and then the man plants the bomb in the trunk of a sleek convertible.
A man and woman, laughing and embracing, get into the convertible and cruise down a crowded night-time street in a Mexican border town.
This shot, about four minutes long, was filmed as one long tracking shot, and is praised by film critics for the tension, atmosphere and cinematic sleight of hand it displays. The car drives through the crowded streets, passing the shabby arcades with their old-fashioned columns. As it stops for traffic cops, pushcart vendors, and herds of goats, we wonder - when will it explode? Who will it kill?
The introduction of the film's hero and his new bride, walking along with the slowly cruising car and standing beside it as they clear the border crossing, heightens the suspense.
Orson Welles used Windward Ave. in Venice as the location for this shoot. The car passes the columned hotels and liquor stores on the north side of Windward, then turns onto Ocean Front Walk, passing what is now the Sidewalk Cafe, and the remains of the Mecca Cafe - by then a bingo parlor.

Hong Kong Noir Makes French Connection

Let the bonding begin. Hong Kong is featuring a two-month-long arts festival -- Le French May. In addition to music, dance and theater, a film program titled, "NOIR - A Film Noir Retrospective Bridging France and Hong Kong," has rolled out.
The festival features some of the best French crime movies from the last decade, it also includes a selection of classics from masters of the genre such as Jean-Pierre Melville, Bertrand Tavernier and Claude Chabrol.
The highlight of the program, however, has to be "Carte Blanche to Johnnie To" -- a collection of the very best Hong Kong gangster films influenced by the film noir genre. Arranged in close association with Milkyway Image and featuring the director's own personal choices, the festival will give audiences the chance to see films like "A Better Tomorrow," "City on Fire" and "As Tears Go By" on the big screen, as well as rarities such as Ann Hui's "The Secret," Wong Tin Lam's 1960 thriller "The Wild, Wild Rose." And Tsui Hark will be introducing the director's cut of his controversial "Dangerous Encounters: First Kind," which has not screened in Hong Kong for three decades.
The festivities kicked off last night with such luminaries as Johnnie To, Jacques Audiard and composer Xavier Jamaux in attendance, who will also be conducting a special filmmakers masterclass on June 5 free of charge. The program runs until June 26.

The official website includes information about the films screening and ticketing.

Thanks to Twitchfilm.com

Subscribe to this blog by clicking the "Follow" button on the right.

Noir Served Asian, Italian Style

In a recent post I lamented that U.S. studios aren't interested in making crime films anymore, but on other shores things are different. Here's further evidence that the film noir genre thrives overseas:

CANNES - The Weinstein Company has landed one of the first big deals in Cannes this year, taking worldwide rights outside of Asia and French-speaking Europe for Dragon (Wu Xia), the martial arts film noir from director Peter Ho-Sun Chan (Bodyguards and Assassins), which premieres in a Midnight Screening here Saturday. Dragon stars Donnie Yen, Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tang Wei and features Hong Kong legend Jimmy Wang Yu (One Armed Swordsman) in his first film role in 17 years.

"The Double Hour," a spiffy new Italian film noir (see photo above), combines mystery and suspense with a love story in a twisty plot that’s worthy of Alfred Hitchcock. Viewers are kept guessing until the final denouement. The romantic leads, Ksenia Rappoport and Filippo Timi, though little known at the time, won best male and female acting awards at the 66th Venice International Film Festival in 2009. The Double Hour also received the Young Cinema Award at the Venice event.

The title refers to the moment on a digital watch when the minutes and hours are the same, for example 12:12. When this coincidence is noticed, the observer gets to make a wish. “It’s about the second chance or one’s capacity for grabbing that chance when it comes,” says director Giuseppe Capotondi. A Samuel Goldwyn Film release, the movie debuted in New York and Los Angeles in April, followed by a national rollout.

Thanks to Below The Line and Shockya.com

Subscribe to this blog by clicking the "Follow" button on the right.

Raoul Walsh Biographer Intros Two at Egyptian

If you live in the L.A. area you'll want to be at the Egyptian Theater Friday, June 10, when two of director Raoul Walsh's towering achievements in crime cinema, "High Sierra" and "The Roaring Twenties," will be screened. And to celebrate the first book-length biography of Walsh, Marilyn Ann Moss, author of "Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood's Legendary Director," will be on hand to introduce the double feature. Both films are 35mm prints and star Humphrey Bogart.
"High Sierra" (1941) is the quintessential gangster romance. Humphrey Bogart plays Mad Dog Earle, an outlaw looking for one last score, sidetracked by love, hounded by inescapable fate. With the incomparable Ida Lupino and Joan Leslie. Remade twice, as "Colorado Territory" and "I Died a Thousand Times."
With "The Roaring Twenties"(1939), Raoul Walsh came bursting onto the screen in his first Warner Bros. directorial outing. This gangster tale stars James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart as World War I vets who return to an unwelcoming American society and go straight to the criminal life instead.
The script is by Warner Bros. writing team Jerry Wald and Richard Macauley, and the film was produced by erstwhile journalist Mark Hellinge.
Also starring Gladys Cooper as Cagney's saloon-owner friend and Priscilla Lane as the woman who just can't love Cagney the way he wants.

To subscribe to this blog, click the "Follow" button on the right.

How Do They Know About Noir?

Video gamers are taking to recent release "L.A. Noire," a game based on films noir crime stories. The game is set in 1947 Los Angeles, and its story includes the stuff that makes up hard-boiled detective fiction that inspired several decades of crime films released after World War II.
Most video gamers are younger folks -- at least that's the impression I get whenever there's a new release. The store across the street from me in L.A. has a line of teens going out the door whenever a hot new item goes on the market. So, I wonder, how does this young demographic know about, and it would seem, identify with something buried so deeply in Hollywood's past? Hell, the original films noir haven't been in theaters since their grandparents' day. Would they know Barbara Stanwyck from Lady Gaga?
Maybe that's why the Web is offering primers on film noir, such as this (click here), and this. Here's a list of noirs from IMDB. Kids will need to catch up on actors such as Robert Mitchum, Bogie, Edward G. Robinson, Paul Muni and Ralph Meeker (in photo above in a scene from "Gun Crazy"), to name a few.
Somehow in the arena of video games, films noir seem to communicate with a younger generation, and translate into a medium different from the celluloid fabric from which they came. Maybe that speaks to the power of the original films. They were well designed and executed. And great architecture is eternal.

To subscribe to this blog, click the "Follow" button on the right.