Prick Tunes: College featuring Electric Youth "A Real Hero"

Look, I waited four whole entries in this series to put this up. I can tell you that this required a lot of restraint. Featured in the fantastic film Drive, John Belushi's shirt and a Debbie Gibson tribute band came together to pump out this sweet-ass tune.

So apparently the Debbie Gibson tribute band Electric Youth are from Toronto. I cannot wait to hear their cover of "Lost in Your Eyes." If they chose to take a stab at "No More Rhyme," I'd be fucking ecstatic. College--in addition to being a t-shirt on a dead comedian--is apparently a French producer, so I would imagine 'college' is pronounced oddly. Do not pronounce in public it with any shred of confidence.

Come get some.

Man on Film: Drive

Holy fucking shit.

Really, those three words could aptly sum up my reaction upon walking out of the theater after seeing Drive. Remember a little while back when I credited TSLF with pointing out that you kind of trust Ryan Gosling at this point. Drive sets this in stone.

In Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn has crafted an action film that sits down and makes itself at home in the ordinary. Much of the first half of Drive does little more than follow Gosling's nameless Driver in his day-to-day life. He drives around Los Angeles, does a stunt on the set of a film, goes grocery shopping, and goes to work at the auto shop.

While Refn revels in the mundane, he sets these scenes against the sonic backdrop of Cliff Martinez's ethereal score and a smattering of synthed up electronic pop gems hearkening back to the 1980s. When combined with Driver's oft-out-of-time attire (namely his killer scorpion jacket) and the neon titles, the film manages to feel as if it is happening in a time unbound to a single era--both now and in the 80s--almost as if it were a dream.

It is in this dream- or trance-like state that the Driver seems to operate within. This is evident early on. After getting his wheel man spiel via voice-over, we see Gosling waiting curbside for two men pulling off a heist seen in part here:

Throughout the film, Gosling affects a calm that nearly spills over into aloofness. He is the modern Spartan. For the most part, he speaks in simple sentences and only when addressed. The one time he does speak at length, his wheel man spiel, comes via voice-over, so it is almost as if his only lengthy lines of dialogue come from the ether.

It is this tone that is struck in the majority of the opening half of the film that makes the violence that ensues in the second half of the film so jarring. The calm that pervades the film early on is broken suddenly and shockingly, and the random intermittence at which it explodes keeps the audience on edge. This is what sets Drive apart. Nicolas Winding Refn sets a tone to make the violence resonate. It can come at any time, and it goes just as fast as it came. And the driving scenes are unique in that Refn keeps the focus tight on the Driver, which causes a much more personal reaction to the sequences.

Now, the way that I've talked about the film makes it seem like acts of violence just break into an otherwise dreamlike movie about the mundane. There is a healthy dose of comedy and lightheartedness mixed in, just enough to sprinkle in a little levity.

As for the acting, Bryan Cranston, Ron Perlman, and Christina Hendricks are all perfectly fine. After what seems like at least a decade since Albert Brooks has had a role to do anything with, he gets his Robert Forster in Jackie Brown opportunity and relishes it with elan. As for Carey Mulligan, she plays an endearing quasi-single mother injecting a gentle humanity into the core of the film.

And then there's the star. As always, Ryan Gosling brings it. His performance is reminiscent of Brando or McQueen. He says next to nothing yet the camera is almost always focused on him. His scenes with Irene (Mulligan) and her son, Benicio (Kaden Leos), are great and he gets to show a slightly goofy side. When it comes time for him to unleash hell, he is up for the challenge.

All in all, what Refn has crafted is a stellar action piece that vacillates between a near-dreamlike state and storms of action and violence with unpredictability. It is also one of the best films of the year.

Man on Film: Crazy, Stupid, Love.

As we were trying to choose which movie to head out to over the weekend, our choices narrowed down to a few films. When Crazy, Stupid, Love. came up, TSLF made a comment that rings truer than any positive buzz could have:

It's weird, but I sort of trust Ryan Gosling's choices.

She is right. Half Nelson, Lars and the Real Girl, and Blue Valentine were all great. The decisions to sign on to Stay and All Good Things (neither of which I've seen, but both of which were poorly received) were clearly defensible, as he was working with the man coming off of Monster's Ball and Finding Neverland on the former and Capturing the Friedman's on the latter. For what it was, The Notebook is fairly good. And as far as what's coming up for Gosling, Drive and The Ides of March both look to be promising if judged by the trailers.

As for Crazy, Stupid, Love., it seemed as though everyone who saw it came out loving it. Given that and Gosling's trustworthiness, it seemed like Crazy, Stupid, Love. could very conceivably overcome its awkward/awful title and lackluster trailer and actually be a decent flick.

For the most part, it was.

Sure, it is a romantic comedy, generally the kiss of death for dudes. Its trailer doesn't do it any favors on that front either. Somehow this film doesn't feel like a rom-com. Maybe it's the emotional rawness at its center as its protagonist has been cuckolded. The destruction of a marriage is not often at the center of a rom-com. In a world that deals almost exclusively with two singles who aren't supposed to be together getting together, seeing a separated couple trying to piece together their lives after one's infidelity tears them both apart is refreshing in a world other than that of the tiresome adult-oriented family melodrama.

Honestly, the film is just entertaining. The potential liability, Julianne Moore, has been cast in the only sort of role that she can actually pull off: the woman whose marriage is falling apart. While one has to wonder what this says about her own marriage, she is not thrust into the authoritarian roles that she is so ill-suited for like in Next or Children of Men where her inability to match the tone of the film grates one's nerves for every second that she's on screen. Past her, Carell is typically likeable, Gosling owns the role of lothario, Emma Stone gets to play an adult, and Marissa Tomei gets a great cameo. The narrative is well-crafted.

If Crazy, Stupid, Love. has a fault (other than that goddamn name), it is that its climax is too schmaltzy. It probably could have done without the About a Boy ending with a graduation speech supplanting the talent show performance, and the soul mate shit didn't work, but you can only punish a film so much for this. When a film is genuinely surprising for 110 minutes, an unsurprising eight minutes at the end don't necessarily sink the ship.

(After talking about how crappy the trailer was, you didn't think I was gonna put that up, did you?)