Ambition, but Not the 'Gravity' Kind: Derek Cianfrance's The Place Beyond the Pines

The Place Beyond the Pines (2012) / US / Out on DVD now / Directed By Derek Cianfrance / Written by Derek Cianfrance, Ben Coccio and Darius Marder / Starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper, Eva Mendes, Ray Liotta, Dane DeHaan, Emory Cohen, Rose Byrne

A long while ago, when I was a young, precocious and naive girl filled with a fanciful imagination, I used to think up movies in my head. They'd end up getting far too complex and ambitious, and then I'd flag that possible masterpiece, and move on to the next creation. They weren't complex in the way that say, Inception is complex. They were complex in the way that they were essentially three or four movies in one, connected by the tiniest of threads.

When I sat down to watch Derek Cianfrance's sophomore effort The Place Beyond the Pines, I was prepared for this movie where Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper would face off for, you know, the entire movie. Alas, The Place Beyond the Pines instantly reminded me of the movies I used to work tirelessly on in my brain - and this is not at all a bad thing. It is the kind of film that is thorough in its complexity, sometimes to a fault. This is not the sort of film where Ryan Gosling plays the tattooed rebel and Bradley Cooper plays the cop trying to bring him down. It is about much, much more than that.

Cinematic Paradox Turns Four!

As I said yesterday, this may be the fourth anniversary of the day I sat down at my Dad's PC and wrote my first one paragraph review of Let the Right One In, but technically I can only claim this as my blog's 3.25th birthday, since I deserted y'all for eight months.

The thing that I find strange, though, is that when I sat down to write that first review, I was a little grasshopper just about finishing my first year of high school. These days, I'm an overly emotionally attached year thirteen ten days out from finishing proper school, one and a half months away from handing in my badge as head girl, and three months away from leaving the North Island to become a South Islander.

Needless to say, times have changed a lot since those naive days where we all took school way too seriously for no apparent reason.

And yes, my reviews got longer, and more in depth than "you all suck for loving Twilight lulz".

Alas, through all of the changes, achievements, turns and toils of growing up to be classy enough to watch Blue Jasmine with a glass of wine in the glass holder, movies and this blog have been a constant (with the exception of this year, but they've always been there in my heart...or something like that). So over the four years, I've seen some good films, some bad films, some wow-that's-arty films, and some films that came to define my years of not only blogging, but my years at high school. In celebration of the fourth anniversary of my fingers hitting the keyboard of the blogosphere, I decided to make a list of the definitive films, film-makers, actors and actresses who have boosted my love for film. I guess I can say that these were the things I "grew up with".

Films:

The definitive films of 2009

Let the Right One In / The Hangover / 500 Days of Summer

Of course, we should start with the film that started it all. Let the Right One In, I believe, was the first foreign film I ever saw, and while all I could say about it back then was "I hate Twilight", I have definitely come to appreciate that beautiful film a lot more. (500) Days of Summer was one I saw just a couple of weeks before seeing this film, and one that has been a go-to film ever since. And I couldn't miss out The Hangover, as I have probably seen that movie the most out of any movie, and if you ever asked me to I could recite the whole movie. Such a shame they decided to give it two copy-and-paste sequels.

Late Night Thoughts with Stevee #2

-Yes, I am really bad at prolific bloggery. I do promise that in my spare time I have been slaving away over a The Place Beyond the Pines review, but I keep getting confused at what I'm trying to say about it so I may as well just do incoherent thoughts about life instead.

-Yeah, this was a busy week. Last full week of school ever (whaaaaaaaaaat). There were school dramas or whatever, but a couple of good things happened: a) I got an Excellence in that 1950's essay I was dying over in the holidays, which means I got solid Excellences through all of my English things I've done this year, and I hope to repeat that in the exams and b) this is totally nerdy and up myself, but in assembly the principal remembered what I said in my speech about why I wanted to be a leader at school, and said it would be part of the school's history. I've made my mark.

-Movie wise, I saw a grand total of two films this week. Which is utterly ridiculous. The first was Mud, which I really adored. Matthew McConaughey for all the awards and all that - yes, I'm still in love with him. Then I watched the 1974 version of The Great Gatsby. It was actually terrible. Everyone was overacting, particularly Mia Farrow. I get that Daisy has a sing-song voice, but not a bad-audition-on-American-Idol voice. It was rather faithful to the novel, apart from not ending on the best ending lines of all time. Karen Black, who played Myrtle, was really the only person who I enjoyed seeing on screen, since she actually got her character right. Just everything about it was so...ugh. Or maybe that is just my huge aversion to the 1970's.

-So I'm trying to figure out what papers to do next year within my Bachelor of Arts and I have a sneaking feeling I may have made a slightly wrong choice with Canterbury, as they are offering less than I thought they were, film studies wise. However, this doesn't really bother me as I just wanna obtain my BA in what is probably the best city in New Zealand. I keep seeing on the news how all of these new buildings are going ahead and it makes me excited, because it is the only place moving forward. So good vibes all 'round.

-Random thought I had at work: how many of you have seen The Details? The film that has Tobey Maguire, Elizabeth Banks, Laura Linney, Ray Liotta and Kerry Washington? I found it to be rather polarising, so would love to hear your thoughts.

-Just remembered that the blog turns four tomorrow. Or 3 and 1/4, since I stopped blogging for eight months. Will hopefully try and put something celebratory up.

-Oh, I started watching Breaking Bad. Please do not alert me of spoilers, as I know absolutely nothing about it. I'm two episodes in, and I can tell I'll love it. Now, someone find me some more time in the day?

-So the Carrie remake came out. Like, I never really prepared for this to actually happen. Carrie was the first film I ever truly loved, but now Chloe Moretz is Carrie and that just does not sit well with me. Carrie works as a 1970's film (and here I was just talking about my aversion to the 70's movies), not a film in our era right now.

-Mind you, is anyone feeling like 2013 may be one of our best years in films for years? America has 12 Years a Slave and All is Lost out this week, which both have over 95% on Rotten Tomatoes. There's also Gravity and Captain Phillips in the high 90% range. Rush is in the high 80% range, Prisoners is a little bit behind it. And then we have some of the older releases, like Short Term 12, Mud, Before Midnight, Stories We Tell, The Hunt, Blue Jasmine, Blue is the Warmest Colour, The Spectacular Now, Frances Ha and Enough Said all in the 90% range. Sure, there's not hundreds of great movies out yet, but as a cinema lover, this makes me very excited to see a movie open every week with such a high rating. And we have films like American Hustle, The Counselor, (wow, just saw that Jessica Chastain's first film Wilde Salome is coming out next week in America, exciting times), The Wolf of Wall Street (???), Catching Fire, Inside Llewyn Davis, Her, The Monuments Men and The Hobbit 2 still to keep us excited. Very good times to be alive and kicking in cinema right now.

-However, we still have our bad films, and Diana seems to be one of the worst of the lot. Which is hilarious because the ads that are going around on TV right now keep saying "See the film that everyone is calling "stunning", "compelling" etc. Oh well, they may as well use any of the good press they can get.

-And that's life in the fast lane right now. I'll try rustle something up in between The Crucible rehearsals and Photoshop and Othello and hominins. I could even write you a whole post on the allegory in The Crucible or how bipedalism increased hominins' cranial capacity. You know you want it.

How has your week been?

This is Our Generation's Phenomenon: Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity

What do I have to say about Gravity that hasn't already been said? You've heard it all:

-It is phenomenal.
-A simply amazing cinematic experience.
-Easily the best film of the year.
-And maybe one of the best ever.
-Holy shit Alfonso Cuaron how did you manage this?!
-Sandra Bullock gives her career best work, and definitely the performance to beat this year.
-Is the best example of cinematic technology?
-Give Emmanuel Lubezki his Oscar already.
-Best use of 3D?
-Ground-breaking etc etc etc.
-This is cinema, as good as it gets.

And let's just remember that all of this acclaim has been piled on a movie that just came out last week.

Late Night Thoughts with Stevee #1

If you should remember, most of my writing is just pointless rambling, so what better than to fill a post with my late night thoughts which have about as much cohesion as an Adam Sandler movie? Not that they have the quality of an Adam Sandler movie. Since no one actually ever puts any thought into an Adam Sandler movie.

-So my last ever term holidays have come to a brisk end, but that's no matter - I'm actually looking forward to going back to school. To be honest, I've hated the holidays this year (apart from the sleep ins) because they have gotten in the way of all of the projects I've had on the go. Except for the first holidays. That was all stage challenge. I don't remember how I survived that. Anyways, as you may know I went to Sydney at the beginning of the holidays, which was great fun, especially buying all of the DVDs I wanted. I saw Captain Phillips and Blue Jasmine, which were both terrific, and Frances Ha (which I loved) and Stoker (which I didn't love) on the plane. And I went to Madame Tussaud's which was awesome. I bought an Oscar from there and posed with Leonardo DiCaprio (as seen above). Because I'm hilarious. Then I came back and I've literally done nothing but toil over this essay I have to write for English that's somehow gotta find connections between A Streetcar Named Desire, The Crucible, Breakfast at Tiffany's and The Catcher in the Rye, and also how these novels proved the influence of the time they were written in. It is the worst thing I have ever written, with four pages and absolutely no cohesion at all. Please help.

-This week has been a bit crazy, though. I got accepted into the hall I wanted at University of Canterbury, and also won a $5000 scholarship for being Head Girl. Now I just have to enrol in my courses (a Bachelor of Arts with Cinema, English, and possibly a History and Linguistics paper - but I don't get university courses at all) and start selling drugs so I can pay for the rest of it.

-Speaking of being Head Girl...ah, I really wish I got the epiphany to start blogging again earlier so I could outline this craziness a bit more. Alas, since Stage Challenge, everything started to get really bad for a number of reasons (mostly just missing Stage Challenge - honestly, it was like having a leg cut off when that all ended) but that's all done now. I focused my energies on trying to help a whole lot of redundant workers in town, which wasn't successful. And I got nominated for this community services award as well. I honestly don't remember much else, aside from being very tired and cleaning the common room lots, but here's the point where things get scary. I have exams around the corner, and then I have to do my valedictory speech, which I've been thinking about all year, but now it is about to happen, I'm kinda scared about it. Oh and yeah, this year has gone way too fast.

-In other exciting school news, my drama class is performing The Crucible by Arthur Miller. I'm playing Elizabeth Proctor. Would be great if I were Joan Allen right now.

-Anyway, off the topic of school, and on to the topic of movies. So I saw Gravity today. I have a 'review' all set to go, which is pretty pointless since every man and his dog has written about it, but I tried to make it a little different. It just needs a heck of a lot of editing so I can use the thesaurus to give me 27 more variations of the word 'amazing'.

-Aside from rewatching a whole lot of movies so I could also toil over that bloody English essay, I saw most of the week's new DVD releases. First up was The Hangover Part III, which I liked more than the terrible second one but still not all that much. I laughed quite a bit, but there were way too many unnecessary animal deaths I found. And then there was Sharknado, which was every bit as terribly entertaining as I thought it would be. Deadfall was next up, which was okay but man, Eric Bana was crazy in that. Straight after I watched The Paperboy, which I really quite liked, even though it was ridiculously violent and greasy. Nicole Kidman killed it, though. Lastly, I watched The Hunt, which was definitely one of the most depressing films I've ever seen. But it is sooooo very good.

-The film that I'm most obsessed with at the moment is The Place Beyond the Pines. I rewatched it over the weekend and was absolutely won over this time. Every time I see the trailer at work, I just want to see it over and over again. I'll get around to reviewing it, but this is definitely in my Top 3 for 2013 now.

-The Nymphomaniac posters are pretty much the worst/scariest things I've ever seen. I know that Lars Von Trier was trying to be all against the grain and stuff, but...that's not cool.

-American Hustle has a new trailer and I love it and I need this movie right now. Amy Adams looks fantastic. Jennifer Lawrence looks amazing. I love it already.

-Diana is getting thrashed, huh? Poor Naomi Watts, she's not having a good year. Remember how Jessica Chastain was supposed to be in that film? Luckily she decided to do Zero Dark Thirty instead.

-Speaking of J-Chas, who has been stalking around on her Facebook page? Her big status about Oscar Isaac was absolutely adorable, as was her link love for Awards Daily's post on women in film. She is easily the best person in Hollywood at the moment, maybe even the planet, I dunno.

This is honestly my most used movie quote of all time.

So, can anyone offer any help on my English essay? Or, an easier question: what's everyone been watching lately? What's on your cinematic mind?

Everyone, Tom Hanks is Back: Captain Phillips

Captain Phillips (2013) / US / Out in NZ cinemas Oct. 24th / Directed by Paul Greengrass / Written by Billy Ray / Starring Tom Hanks, Barkhad Abdi, Barkhad Abdirahman, Faysal Ahmed, Mahat M. Ali, Catherine Keener, Michael Chernus / 134 mins.

I've always had this notion about films being these fantastical things, capable of anything that couldn't possibly occur on Earth. However, after all of the CGI cheesecakes that have shown us about as much ground-breaking technology as we can get, it would seem that the thing that wows us most these days is realism. The films that don't feel like films. Naturally, being a true story helps, but in the past we've seen these true stories deviate from the reality and hit it home with sentimentality.

And then there's Captain Phillips.

There are not many contrived moments in this film. There aren't any really inspiring speeches with violins pulsating in the background. There are no great reunions at the end. While I don't claim to know every single detail of what it would be like to have a ship hijacked by Somalian pirates, this felt like the real thing.

Boats Against the Current: Baz Luhrmann's The Great Gatsby

I've seen Baz Luhrmann's version of The Great Gatsby five times now. I'm not even ashamed to admit it. If I were to somehow become Alien out of Spring Breakers, it wouldn't be Scarface I'd have on repeat, it would be The Great Gatsby. Anything remotely Gatsby I snap up - whether it be reblogging my 100th gif of Jordan Baker or changing my cover photo on Facebook or finding something pretty to adorn my bedroom walls with.

Despite all this, I don't actually like The Great Gatsby as a film all that much. Let's put all of this into context: last term I did this huge research project about modern adaptations of classic films. Now, I won't bore you with the gory details since that thing ended up being like, 40 pages long, but The Great Gatsby was my main focus. This was because I had never seen so many people around my age go absolutely nuts for this one movie. Admittedly, this was mainly because of the fact that Leonardo DiCaprio is descended from angels and we're all materialistic magpies that will swoop in on anything that glitters (so you can imagine the field day we had with this). Let's just say, I wasn't the only one reblogging, cover photo-ing or adorning everything Gatsby.

The Big 'Return'

Greetings there, fellow bloggers/readers. Long time no see. In the time I have been absent from the blogosphere, I have become an 18 year old, won a bit of money off some scratchies and have run around trying to find all of the R18 movies I couldn't buy until now. I have also just returned from a wee break in Sydney, which was amazing (I also caught up with Andy and Sam and watched Captain Phillips - more on that film later if I can be bothered reviewing it). It has taken a little while, but I must say that I finally miss blogging. It kind of happened around TIFF, when all of these fabulous movies were coming out and I went from not really caring about movies (August and September were such boring months for movies) to freaking out about every word written about films like 12 Years a Slave, The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby and Don Jon.

But something kinda weird happened the other night. I went to the Dendy at Circular Quay (which is where the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge and all the ferries are) to go and watch Blue Jasmine. I sat down in the cinemas with a glass of wine - just to abuse my 18 year old privileges, but they didn't even ask me for ID - and sitting across the aisle from me was this girl who may have been around 16, sitting alone all ready to watch Woody Allen's latest. For all I know, she was probably 23 or something, but she reminded me of myself so much. I'm not saying that Woody Allen is the most obscure you can get, and heck, Sydney is probably a hell of a lot more cultured than Palmerston North, but I remember the good old days when I was a fresh young 16 year old going to Cinema Gold to watch films like The Tree of Life and Midnight in Paris. Films that my peers had never heard of, films that didn't have Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson or Vin Diesel in them. Instead of carting everyone to the cinemas to watch the latest blockbuster (though I did cart my whole biology class to see The Great Gatsby on a trip, but that's totally okay), my true happy place is alone at the arthouse cinema. And up until now, I had never seen someone of a similar age doing what I did.

When I saw that girl in the cinema I felt both happy and sad. Let's just take a moment so I can completely change lanes and talk about Lorde. By now you've probably heard the song Royals (which was big here back in February, but finally the rest of the world has caught on). She's this totally cool 16 year old from Auckland who is obviously making some big waves in the music world. Thanks to her magnificent album Pure Heroine, I have become so interested in her (she's like my Lana Del Rey for this year), particularly because of the way she writes her song. There's this song on her album called 'Ribs' (seriously, check it out, and the rest of her album), with one of the lines being "it's so scary getting old". Truer words have never been spoken. Right now, school is coming to a close, with my last official day at school coming in a month, and then my last official day as Head Girl coming a month later. I have had a lot of fun this year - despite some really crappy times, it has been actually so great working mind-spinningly hard on stuff. But it is kind of weird to think that there will come a time when I don't have this role, and even scarier, I won't see the people I have known for the past 5-13 years every weekday. Of course, I am excited to move down to Christchurch and study film for three years. But even though there's like, five cinemas down there and DVD stores that are filled to the brim with actual DVDs, it'll be weird not coming to Blockbuster every weekend or begging mum to take me to Palmerston North to see the latest Oscar hopefuls.

And even more bizarre is the fact that I'm getting 'old', and that was honestly the biggest thing for me when I was a more prolific blogger. It used to be all about "hey look, I'm only 16 and I love Shame!", and that was mostly because I was quite isolated in my movie loving in Dannevirke. For a long time, I felt like as I was getting older, I didn't have anything quite so special to say about film, which is actually quite absurd, come to think of it. Sure, there are films I understand a lot more now - like Atonement, which I first saw at the tender age of 12 and while I was shocked by the twist, it is fair to say that after studying every single detail of it in class I didn't understand half of it back then.  But the best thing about discovering film at a young age was that I've grown up with them. I have been influenced by them, and I can honestly say they changed my life for the better. I've grown up with the work of Nolan, Bigelow, Luhrmann, Linklater, have been in awe and shock by what they can do, and most of all, have been lucky enough to throw my thinklings on their work into the vast movie blogging ring. I admit to neglecting this passion this year - alas, there's truly not enough hours in the day, and I can honestly say I've been extremely happy in my leadership role - but it is nice to go back to film and laugh or cry, feel inspired and fall in love. And that's been the thing I've always had right from the age of 11 until now. Writing about them has taken me to some extraordinary places, and for some reason, seeing that girl in the cinema made me want to get my fingers back on the keyboard again.

I realise that like usual, absolutely none of this makes any sense but I guess that what I'd like to say is that I'd very much like to resume my place in the blogging world. I'd like to muse over the films that have been boggling my brain at the moment, like The Place Beyond the Pines and Spring Breakers. And if y'all will have my messy thinklings back in your feed, I'd very much like to give them to you. Of course, I don't have the time that I used to or the articulate thoughts that I used to put into reviews, and it's gonna be way too hard for me to keep up all the design work, but I just need to fill that void. It's not enough to rave about a film on Instagram. Sometimes you just need a few hundred words, y'know?

Of course, this all depends on if Blogger will stop being a grade A pain in the ass and let me continue on with my custom domain. But watch this space, because I'll be back to visit more often.