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Nicolas Winding Refn’s Commercial for Hennessy X.O is a Pretty Weird Ride

A lot of big-name directors these days got their start in commercial work these days, and in between major films it isn’t at all uncommon to see major film makers keep their skills sharp by doing ads. Just a few weeks ago we reported on a car commercial directed by horror darling Sam Raimi, don’t …

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‘My Life Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn’ Movie Review – explores artistic failure

The Life of Nicolas Winding Refn Directed by Me might have been a more appropriate title for Liv Corfixen’s first documentary, which provides a behind-the-scenes insight into the making of her husband’s latest film Only God Forgives. Following on from his remarkable critical and commercial success with Drive, Refn is under pressure to produce more of the same and in doing so satisfy both his financial backers and his artistic ambitions. It is also the first time that Corfixen and the couple’s two daughters have joined Refn for an extended shoot abroad, creating a completely new environment in which he must balance his personal and professional lives.

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Nicolas Winding Refn returning to LA with ‘The Neon Demon’

After a trip to Bangkok, it seems like writer/director Nicolas Winding Refn is returning to the electricity of Los Angeles and Drive for his next feature, The Neon Demon. Deadline reported the news on Monday and called the film a horror tale with a female-lead. The site added that Refn spoke on the reason he …

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‘Only God Forgives’ a bizarre, excessively gory reunion for Refn and Gosling

Style oozes from every frame of Only God Forgives, tinged in red, like the blood that so frequently sprays across the screen and lands in artfully designed splatters. Writer-director Nicolas Winding Refn and star Ryan Gosling, reuniting after the cult success of 2011’s Drive, have collaborated on a truly baffling, bizarre, and gory crime drama that’s wall-to-wall striking, pretty images. Unlike Drive, however, Only God Forgives is hollow underneath all the model-like posturing and the flashes of excessive, gratuitous violence.

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Only God Forgives is This Summer’s Big Inaction Movie

Only God Forgives, the next film from Drive director Nicolas Winding-Refn, has been near the top of most film nerds most-anticipated movie lists this year, if not sitting mightily atop all of them like a cinematic gargoyle. After storming on to the North American scene in 2011, all eyes have been on the weird little bugger, waiting to see what he’d do next.

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‘Only God Forgives’ Image Gallery

Synopsis: Julian (Gosling) lives in exile in Bangkok where he runs a Thai boxing club as a front for the family’s drugs smuggling operation. When Julian’s brother Billy is killed their mother, Jenna (Kristen Scott Thomas), arrives in the city. She wants revenge and forces Julian to find the killer. Julian’s contacts in the criminal …

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‘Pusher’ remake barely deviates from Refn’s original, with almost no worthwhile additions

Pusher Written by Matthew Read Directed by Luis Prieto UK, 2012 1996’s Pusher launched the career of director Nicolas Winding Refn, and was followed by two sequels in the early 2000s. With some recurring characters but differing leads in each of the trilogy’s films, the first in the series concerned a man growing increasingly desperate, …

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EIFF 2012: Remake of Refn’s ‘Pusher’ deviates little and adds nothing engaging

Pusher Written by Matthew Read Directed by Luis Prieto UK, 2012 1996’s Pusher launched the career of director Nicolas Winding Refn, and was followed by two sequels in the early 2000s. With some recurring characters but differing leads in each of the trilogy’s films, the first in the series concerned a man growing increasingly desperate, …

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Supporting Actors: The Overlooked and Underrated (part 1 of 5)

With the Academy Awards for the 2011 film year in the rear-view mirror, it’s time to take a look at one of the event’s most consistently fascinating categories: Best Supporting Actor. The most interesting story in the category this year isn’t who got nominated, it’s who didn’t. More specifically, Albert Brooks was completely robbed of …

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Refn and Gosling’s ‘Drive’ Movie Review: A little too cool for its own good

Drive Written by Hossein Amini, from a novel by James Sallis Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn USA, 2011 In one of Albert Brooks’s first scenes in Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive as b-movie-producer-turned-mobster Bernie, Brooks dismisses his former occupation’s body of work. “One critic said they were ‘European.’ I thought they were shit.” Bernie likely wouldn’t …

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Bronson

BRONSON (cue “Digital Versicolor” by Glass Candy) While non-Americans win very few of the top acting awards at the Oscars, we see it happen from time to time (Daniel Day-Lewis, Roberto Benigni, etc). As a result, I’d love to see Tom Hardy, the English actor who brilliantly portrays Michael Gordon Pederson in Bronson, be considered …

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