Happy Valentine's Day (Blue Valentine)

Blue Valentine is about a marriage that’s slowly, if not quite surely, falling apart, yet the movie is every inch a love story. That’s why it stings so exquisitely. Dean (Ryan Gosling) and Cindy (Michelle Williams) have been together for six years, with a daughter they’re devoted to, but their lives are a mess. Dean, a softhearted, blustery screwup with a youthfully receding hairline, is a freelance house- painter who likes the work because he can enjoy a beer at eight in the morning. He says so with a boastful grin. In other words, he’s trouble. Cindy, a kindly, beleaguered nurse who is looking to move up in the medical world, is sick of his slovenly pursuit of pleasure, his slipshod career options, and his refusal to be an adult.

Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling in "Blue Valentine" (2010)

At the same time, we can see what she’s drawn to: Dean is sexy, with a slightly saddened little-boy charm, and he’s forever working his way back into her good graces. They’ve turned the addict/enabler two-step into an elegant rehearsed dance. In one memorable sequence, they take a romantic night off and go to a tacky theme motel, where they’re booked into a room with lunar wallpaper and a sci-fi spaceship motif. In this dingy kitsch palace, the two guzzle vodka and mess around (she asks him to get rough — less out of nastiness than nostalgia), fumbling toward the moment when they can feel those old feelings they used to have.

Trying to set the mood, Dean puts on a scratchy old soul song. It’s ”You and Me,” a curio from the ’70s by Penny & the Quarters, and all we have to hear is a few bars of its warbling sweet plea (”You and me/You and me/Nobody, baby, but you and me”) to know that it’s their song and that it’s a heartbreaker, because the two probably haven’t felt that way in a very long time. As the tune goes on, it sounds more and more achingly beautiful. It becomes the wistful ”our song” of everyone in the audience. Source: www.ew.com

Ryan Gosling and Christina Hendricks attend the "Lost River" premiere during the 67th Annual Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2014 in France.


After having created his own cult of indie thrillers with Drive, Only God Forgives, Blue Valentine and The Place Beyond the Pines, actor Ryan Gosling is stepping behind the camera for his latest project Lost River. Warner Bros. has released the first trailer for this thriller, which stars Christina Hendricks, Saoirse Ronan and Eva Mendes. And it looks like another underground masterpiece for the burgeoning filmmaker. Lost River weaves elements of fantasy noir and suspense into a modern day fairytale. Lost River is coming to select theaters this April, and will be made available on Digital HD the same day. Lost River is produced by Marc Platt and Adam Siegel on behalf of Marc Platt Productions, along with Gosling himself via his Phantasma Films banner, and Michel Litvak and David Lancaster via the Bold Films banner. Source: www.movieweb.com

Derek Cianfrance's thoughtful use of violence in the 2013 drama The Place Beyond the Pines (starring Gosling and Bradley Cooper) was a reaction to his experience with the MPAA. Cianfrance is now in the process of editing The Light Between Oceans, a drama based on the Australian novel about a lighthouse keeper (Michael Fassbender) and his wife (Rachel Weisz) who find a shipwrecked baby. When asked if he worries about a possible NC-17 rating, the director admits that it’s been on his mind. “Yeah, because I’m working on a love story right now, and I want it to be true,” he says. “I think about it all the time.” Source: www.yahoo.com

Derek Cianfrance, one of the screen’s most gifted and innovative new directors, proved to be a master storyteller with a rare and unflinching emotional directness with Blue Valentine, the hauntingly intimate 2010 dissection of a marriage. Reunited with that movie’s star, Ryan Gosling, for another richly detailed and seamlessly calibrated triumph of classical filmmaking called The Place Beyond the Pines, his maturity of vision is repeated and expanded into a broader and more complex tapestry of interconnected family relationships that spans generations and keeps you paralyzed with suspense. Told in a daunting but poetic narrative triptych that pares the film into three sections, the effect is lyrical.

Despite the fact that Romina is living with another man, Luke turns from vagabond loner into caring and devoted father, but to provide for his kid, lure his girl away from her new lover and make a home for them both, building cribs and buying ice cream has limitations. With no parenting skills, Luke turns to robbing banks, in another series of dizzying action sequences, including a high-speed chase through a cemetery with a flat tire.

Enter Bradley Cooper as Avery Cross, the college dropout and loser son of a New York Supreme Court judge-turned-rookie cop who accidentally brings Luke to a violent, premature date with destiny and takes all of the credit. It’s a jarring scene, but in a sense, Mr. Gosling’s impact is just beginning, as Mr. Cooper takes up where his unfinished story left off. Mr. Cianfrance’s artistic vision catapults it above the limitations of contrivance and into a realm of constantly evolving shifts of tone and mood. The film is beautifully photographed by British cinematographer Sean Bobbitt (Shame), with exquisitely nuanced performances by Mr. Gosling (who surpasses all expectations) and Mr. Cooper (far superior to his limited role in Silver Linings Playbook). And Dane DeHaan, as Mr. Gosling’s emotionally damaged son, Jason, adds a magnetic younger accent to the already dark landscape of The Place Beyond the Pines. Source: observer.com


Ryan Gosling may be chugging along with this whole acting thing, but the Drive star, who's currently shooting The Nice Guys with Russell Crowe, does love his music.

And he wants to ensure that his firstborn daughter loves her music, too! "Ryan sings to the baby," a source tells E! News, dishing details on the "infatuated" new dad's relationship with his and Eva Mendes' now 4-month-old baby girl. "He loves it. Sometimes he'll make up his own songs and include her name in them. It's very sweet." Source: uk.eonline.com