First of all, no, that is not the new image of Ryan Gosling from Nicolas Winding Refn’s Only God Forgives. But hold on! We’ve kept the new image after the jump since it’s a little spoiler-y. The above image is the first one we brought to you in February and trust me when I say that Gosling looks much worse off in the new shot. It only makes sense, since the violence of Only God Forgives has been reported to surpass that of Gosling and Refn’s previous collaboration, Drive. In this film, Gosling plays Julian, the owner of a Thai boxing club that has strong connections within the criminal underworld. The film also stars Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient) as Gosling’s mob-boss mother. Hit the jump to see the new image and read up on the official synopsis of Only God Forgives.
Here’s the official synopsis for Only God Forgives (also a touch SPOILER-Y for my tastes:
Bangkok. Ten years ago Julian killed a cop and went on the run. Now he manages a Thai boxing club as a front for a drugs operation. Respected in the criminal underworld, deep inside, he feels empty.
When Julian’s brother murders a prostitute the police call on retired cop Chang – the Angel of Vengeance. Chang allows the father to kill his daughter’s murderer, then ‘restores order’ by chopping off the man’s right hand.
Julian’s mother Jenna – the head of a powerful criminal organization – arrives in Bangkok to collect her son’s body. She dispatches Julian to find his killers and ‘raise hell’.
Increasingly obsessed with the Angel of Vengeance, Julian challenges him to a boxing match, hoping that by defeating him he might find spiritual release… but Chang triumphs. A furious Jenna plots revenge and the stage is set for a bloody journey through betrayal and vengeance towards a final confrontation and the possibility of redemption.
Ladies, look away. Here’s the new shot of Gosling (via Yahoo):
Benjamin Walker Time Index
RIDLEY SCOTT: It’s easier to carry it out, but it’s still as difficult to write something. In fact, it’s getting more difficult because there are almost too many movies being made. 
How did you approach the android and what he would be capable of?
MICHAEL FASSBENDER: I could never swim in the ocean after seeing Jaws. 
FASSBENDER: You want to play with as many of those human traits as possible. You’re essentially trying to build a computer that has a physicality to it, that can respond and understand human behavior. It’s programmed to be able to incorporate itself within a human environment. You’re going into space, so you’ve got to get certain personalities that will get on in space. He has to be very flexible. So, what happens when you program that and the program then starts making its own connections and joins up to its own electrical linking to other areas and forming its own ego, insecurities, jealousy and envy? I don’t really think too much about things. I just try to explore what’s happening within the scene, moment to moment. What I thought was very interesting was that you have this guy who was on his own for two and a half years while everyone else was in cryostasis, so what did he do to amuse himself? The idea that there is something of a little boy there, and that he has to rely on his imagination to keep himself occupied, imagination is a very human trait. The fact that he’s curious, how far will that curiosity go? The way that Damon [Lindelof] wrote it, people treat him as a robot and there’s a bit of contempt towards him because he has all the answers. He’s hyper-intelligent. His physicality is more advanced than human beings. So, people don’t really embrace him. He’s sort of used and abused. How does that make him feel, if robots can feel? I didn’t want to make a direct, definite choice. I played with the ambiguity. Is this robot starting to develop human personality?
SCOTT: Jerry Goldsmith has been around for awhile. I still think that was probably one of his best scores. The score is always a challenge. Every element you put into it, you always try to find something else. Before it’s done, it’s not written. Everything is abstract. It doesn’t really matter how good or bad the words in the screenplay are. Once you’ve got that hundred and some pages, you’ve got something to talk about. It’s the same with the music. You can get a lot of pretty good demos now, where you get the physical keyboard demonstration. It’s not a real choir or a real cello, but it’s digitalized. You don’t really know what you’re going to get until you’re actually in Abbey Road. That’s where I did all the music, in The Beatles’ place. You start to hear it then, and then you start putting it onto the film. Everything is trial and error. You’re always looking to find something more. That’s what’s interesting about filming, certainly for me. It’s always about, “Yes, but . . .” But, you have to always try to keep reins on it and keep yourself within the parameters that you create, early on. A three act play is a drama box. Create your ground rules and stay within that, and the chances are that you’ve got a good play. As soon as anything goes, it doesn’t work. It’s bullshit. Some writers work on the script with a board with every scene laid out, so they’re literally moving things around like chess pieces. Some people just start at the beginning and go through to the end, and then read it and go, “Christ, that does work,” or “That does work,” or “I have to do that and that.” Everything is always on the move.
Damon, going from working on a very large canvas where you could explore your ideas, on Lost, what was it like to pare it down to something more streamlined?
Getting back to the good news, the folks behind 21 Jump Street have a lot to be happy about this weekend. Along with claiming the ‘number one movie in America’ title, their first weekend estimate came in well above the mid-twenty million that Sony was projecting. Based on R-rated comedy comps, 21 Jump Street was on par with 2005’s Wedding Crashers and 2007’s Superbad (not adjusted for inflation), which is pretty good company to keep. In addition, 21 Jump Street also claimed one of the highest-ever starts for a television-to-screen adaptation. 2008’s Get Smart ($38.6 million) and 2003’s S.W.A.T ($37 million) opened higher, but both of those were released during the summer.
Looking pretty damn good at a fraction of the price is the indie-release, Casa De Mi Padre. The Spanish-language comedy starring Will Ferrell launched in 372 locations on Friday, surprising many when it earned enough to break into the day’s top ten. Originally expected to fall short of this weekend’s chart, Casa De Mi Padre managed to earn estimated $2.2 million and hold on to its spot in the top ten – leaping ahead of films like last weekend’s Silent House, which was off by 69% for a ten day total of just $10.5 million.
I’ll be honest up front, I was a huge fan of the first Resident Evil film but the movie franchise quickly lost favor with me with the atrocious handling of the Nemesis character in the sequel, Resident Evil: Apocalypse. That being said, it’s still impressive what the filmmakers have been able to do with the property, making Jovovich the first female action hero to star in give installments of the same franchise and maintaining (even growing) a huge fan base over the years. But I digress.
After the clip, Anderson and Jovovich led into a panel discussion. Their comments follow below:
The Lockout panel started off with the trailer that was previously released by Open Road and Film District. It doesn’t highlight Snow’s (Pearce) charisma and sarcasm as much as other trailers, which I find to be a strong selling point to the movie. The addition of Besson lends some gravity (pardon the pun) to the project and his influence is readily apparent. The panel also screened five minutes of footage from Lockout which focused on Snow’s entry into the facility, a nice anti-gravity fight between Snow and a random prisoner and his daring rescue of Emilie Warnock (Grace). It also touched on a bit of the madness and personality of the prisoners involved as they force a prison engineer to open a locked door standing between them and the president’s daughter. While Pearce’s wise-cracks were welcome, some of the plotting was simply inane, as in [SPOILER] Emilie’s bodyguard blowing his own brains out to preserve the remaining oxygen in the room or Snow jabbing a “self-directing” needle into Emilie’s eye in order to jump-start her brain functions.
Grace was present for an intimate Q&A after screening the footage. I’ve posted her comments below:
Let’s start off with a walk-through of the trailer for Looper. It opens with a narration by Gordon-Levitt explaining to us what it’s like to live the life of a Looper, assassins hired by the mob to execute criminals sent 30 years in the past. While Gordon-Levitt talks about how rewarding the profession is, the image on the screen shows him standing in the dirt next to a corn field with a white sheet laid out on the ground about twenty feet in front of him. Out of thin air, a man appears on his knees with his hands bound behind his back and a hood drawn over his face. Gordon-Levitt’s character wastes no time in blowing the target away with a modified “Looper gun.” Back at whatever time-jumping station he works out of, Gordon-Levitt drop the gun off in a conveniently labeled bin that reads “Looper Guns Here.”
While the trailer moved too quickly to get a good look at Gordon-Levitt’s make-up, the still images do a fantastic job of letting us see what the Younger Willis will look like. Then, director Rian Johnson and Gordon-Levitt himself took the stage to talk about the film. Their comments follow below:
Gordon-Levitt compared Johnson to a young Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg. Johnson spoke to the influence of a lot of different elements in the film, saying “part of the fun is the way it surprises you.”As Johnson and Gordon-Levitt worked together in Brick, Johnson says he feels like he learned a lot on that film and knew more of what he was doing on Looper. Gordon-Levitt said that he was being humble and that Johnson knew exactly what he was doing on Brick. He compares their working relationship to the early years of high school vs your senior year, where things are similar but you know each other better.Johnson reveals that Looper will deal with all sorts of moral quandaries involved with time travel, especially the basic questions around finding yourself standing across the way from your future self.For fans of Breaking Bad, Johnson will be directing another episode.Gordon-Levitt expressed interest in doing a musical if a good enough project came along.Johnson expressed a desire to be lucky enough to work with Gordon-Levitt for the rest of his career.As a big fan of sci-fi, Gordon-Levitt is most excited for fans to see Looper, even though he has The Dark Knight Rises, Premium Rush, Lincoln and Django Unchained opening this year!Johnson brought in Shane Carruth, the writer/director/star of time-travel flick, Primer, as a consultant on time-traveling.Gordon-Levitt’s make-up was so convincing that his own mother and best friend were freaked out because he acted like himself but appeared completely different.
While we have the entire summer to get through before we can see Looper, which opens September 28th. Luckily for the film, the heavy hitters will have come and gone by then (even Resident Evil: Retribution opens a full two weeks beforehand). With the excellent caliber of filmmakers both in front of and behind the cameras coupled with the always-entertaining mash-up of mob movie and time traveling, Looper is already on my list for most anticipated films of the year.