Halloween Costume: "Drive" and "Fury Road"

by Tony Ruggio

Before I was 24 I never used Halloween as an excuse to tout one of my favorite movies. I’ve been a self-described cinephile since the age of 14 and yet somehow it had never occurred to me to dress up as a character from any film, less it was an already uber-famous character like Batman and such. When I discovered that, lo and behold, there were replicas being sold of the iconic scorpion jacket from Drive, I jumped at the chance to purchase one for myself and have some Ryan Gosling cool rub off on me...

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The New Classics: Drive

By Michael Cusumano 

Scene: Elevator
When people talk about missing the communal experience of movie theaters, it’s moments like the elevator sequence in Drive, Nicolas Winding Refn’s neon-bathed synth-noir, that come to mind. I can vividly recall the total silence as time slowed down to let Ryan Gosling’s never-named Driver live in his stolen kiss with Carey Mulligan's Irene a few moments longer, just as I can recall the sound of the oxygen rapidly exiting the screening after the gut punch transition back into real time, when Driver dispatched his would be assassin and then just. kept. stomping...

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Soundtracking: Blue Valentine

by Chris Feil

“You and me, you and me. Nobody baby but you and me...”

Ryan Gosling’s Dean breaks a makeout session and produces the romantic gesture lost to our time: a playlist burnt to a cd. It’s the ultimate young love gesture and met in kind with wide-eyed affection by the young woman its meant for, Michelle Williams’ Cindy. He’s chosen a song for them, in the tradition of all romances, one that will belong just to them. Before the soulful murmur of “You and Me” by Penny and the Quarters, Dean acknowledges the cliche of it as quickly as he shrugs it off. They will be different from all those other couples going honoring the ritual, he promises her. They will be special.

Blue Valentine charts the degradation of such romantic fantasies, showing us how painfully average their broken love will become, with music the embodiment of that fading vision of romance...

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National Ice Cream Month is Sweet Torture.

by Nathaniel R

You put that ice cream in your mouth and you are in very very very big trouble.

You guys. I recently gave up dairy for health reasons [insert huge hangry sigh]. Well, "gave up" in this case means severely cut down. An occassional piece of cheese is allowed and I also have two pints of Nina West endorsed ice cream still in the freezer which I'm veeery slowly metering out as rewards for the good behavior of not eating ice cream. But really --what is good about not eating ice cream? NOTHING. NOTHING AT ALL. 

So after the jump let's celebrate ice cream at the movies...

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Showbiz History: Lady Godiva, RMS Titanic, and a Good Girl Gone Bad

15 random things that happened on this day, May 31st, in history as it relates to showbiz...

1279BC Ramasses II becomes Pharoah in ancient egypt. He grows up to look like Yul Brynner in the 1950s. yum. 

1057 Lady Godiva takes a naked ride. 898 years later Maureen O'Hara fills her shoes...er... saddle (she weren't wearing no shoes) in an G-rated wig in Lady Godiva of Coventry (1955)

1790 President George Washington signed the first US copyright act into law...

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