Best of Black Sheep: Black Sheep Interviews Jean-Marc Vallée

COFFEE TIME
An interview with CAFE DE FLORE writer/director, Jean-Marc Vallée

On September 1, 2011, at 11:00 A.M., Quebecois director, Jean-Marc Vallée completed his latest film, CAFE DE FLORE. By 5:00 P.M. that same day, he was on a flight to Venice for the world premiere. “I don’t think I have the distance yet to talk well about it,” Vallée explains when we meet at the Toronto International Film Festival, the film’s second festival stop before it’s theatrical release. “In my humble experience, it usually takes a while before I know what words to use.”

To be fair, CAFE DE FLORE can be difficult to describe even after you’ve seen it a couple of times. There are two stories told simultaneously that take place far apart from each other in both time and space. In 1960’s Paris, Vanessa Paradis, looking dowdy and plain, plays a mother to a child with down syndrome (Marin Gerrier) and in contemporary Montreal, a DJ (Kevin Parent, in a surprisingly solid acting debut) leaves his childhood sweetheart (Helene Florent) for another woman (Evelyne Brochu). “I wanted to make a love story but I wanted the film to have something else too,” Vallée attempts to explain. “I just wasn’t sure what that something else was. It’s not easy to describe but I think the ride is great.”

Shooting with Vanessa Paradis

While I flat out refuse to divulge what exactly the connection is between these vastly different plots, I will say that a simple song connects them on screen and that song also served as the filmmaker’s inspiration for the entire film. The name of that song? Why, “Cafe de flore”, of course. When he first heard it, Vallée thought, “It’s so epic. I’m going to make a film with this track.” And so the movie is built around this song as well as a general appreciation for music itself. This aspect of the film is the director’s most autobiographical. “Music makes me feel so good, makes me feel alive, makes me dream, makes me want to make movies,” Vallée asserts right before he starts humming the catchy accordion hook from the film’s title track to me.

Taking a coffee break at Cafe de Flore

Whether you can place your finger on it or not, there is no denying that Vallée’s CAFE DE FLORE most certainly has a pulse. All you need to do is sink into that beat and Vallée will be sure to get move you.

Best of Black Sheep: CAFE DE FLORE

CAFE DE FLORE
Written and Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée
Starring Vanessa Paradis, Kevin Parent, Helene Florent and Evelyne Brochu

When it comes to love, sometimes it feels as if there are greater forces at work and that we have no control over who we’re drawn to or how deeply we can feel. For some, a love as untamable as this is often considered to be destiny, as if it were written in the stars long before we were ever born. This sense of romance intertwined with fate runs rampant if Quebec filmmaker, Jean-Marc Vallée’s latest feature, CAFE DE FLORE, a love story that needs more than one lifetime in order to work itself out.

With CAFE DE FLORE, Vallée finds a voice as a director he seemed to have lost in his last outing, THE YOUNG VICTORIA. While the period piece was certainly beautiful and had its moments, it played out as, well, already played out. None of the urgency or energy Vallee created with his previous feature and biggest hit, C.R.A.Z.Y., was anywhere to be found. Perhaps it was a language thing because in returning to French language filmmaking again, Vallée is alive in all the choices he makes. And he would need to be on top of every moment in order to make this complex tale come off right. Vallée cuts back and forth between a present day Montreal romance involving a husband (Kevin Parent) who leaves the woman he’s been with since he was a teenager (Helene Florent) for another (Evelyne Brochu) and a complicated relationship between a mother (Vanessa Paradis) and her mentally challenged son (Marin Gerrier) taking place 50 years earlier in Paris.

Whether you enjoy CAFE DE FLORE or not will depend on whether you buy into the connection between these two plots. Vallée tells them both with great style; at times, the editing unspools like a record being mixed and scratched by a DJ, surely done to compliment the main character’s career as one. In fact, a general connection to music is a theme that runs throughout and ties characters together when nothing else is working.   Love itself, and the relationships that spring from it, is hard enough to figure out on its own and Vallée infuses this journey towards understanding into his storytelling. To his credit, Vallée inspires a fair amount of curiosity but the anticipation he builds throughout the film ends up being slightly more satisfying than the destination.

Black Sheep interviews Jay Baruchel

THE ENFORCER
An interview with GOON star/writer, Jay Baruchel

For Canadians, it is considered borderline sacrilegious to not be a hockey fan. I know this because I am not actually a hockey fan. Despite this horrible aspect of my personality, I still managed to greatly enjoy GOON, a new hockey movie that practically does away with the sport itself and strips it down to what everyone secretly really wants to see - the moment the gloves come off and these massive guys on skates go to town on each others’ faces with their fists.

GOON co-stars and was co-written and co-produced by Ottawa born and Montreal homed, Jay Baruchel, who is a big, big hockey fan. “Hockey is my religion,” he tells me over the phone, with not a single hint of sarcasm. “The Habs play 82 games a year; I probably watch 76 of them. It’s how I organize my weeks.” And while that might sound extreme, just you wait. “Even as I sit here right now, I’m wearing a Habs jersey, sitting on a Habs pillow and playing with my Habs wallet.”

Yes, I’d say Baruchel is a very big hockey fan. It suits him well too.

Baruchel’s love (read, obsession) for the game served him well on GOON, which was directed by Michael Dowse, of FUBAR fame. The film shines for two main reasons, not the least of which is its authenticity and evident appreciation for the sport itself. “There’s no bullshit you can smell in this movie,” Baruchel jokes. “It is a passion project built by people that love this game and are fascinated by this way of life.”

Baruchel celebrating co-star, Scott

The second reason, is the film’s star, Seann William Scott. Famous for comedic parts in the AMERICAN PIE series and the classic, DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR?, Scott would not be my first choice for the sensitive role of Doug Glatt, a guy going nowhere and getting up there in years, who discovers his calling working as an enforcer for a minor league hockey team in Halifax, Nova Scotia. For Baruchel, there was no other choice.

“We were very lucky that he was able to do it and I can say this now that the movie is made and about to come out, but we didn’t have a backup!” Aside from being glad it all worked out, Baruchel also has nothing but kind things to say about Scott. “Anybody who has ever met Seann for 30 seconds knows that he has a massive heart and is the most humble, disarming guy you’ll ever meet. He puts most Canadians to shame.”

With co-star and fiancee, Toronto native, Alison Pill

While Baruchel has been making waves in both Canada and the USA with acting turns in GOOD NEIGHBOURS and as the voice of the hero in HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON, GOON marks the first time he has written a feature screenplay. “It’s the first time anything I’ve written has ever been made,” he corrects me. For Baruchel, the rewards of writing carried certain expectations but he was still unprepared for the reality of how it all played out. “When you see these people connect to these characters that you created so much so that they start to know the character better than you, that was what was most exciting. These are people I wrote but the actors took ownership of them.”

Baruchel, looking smooth.

Unbeknownst to Baruchel, his own appreciative nature during our conversation was also quite disarming for me. While Baruchel is riotously vulgar as Doug’s best friend in GOON, it is clearly his role as writer that left him feeling smashed against the boards, y’know, in a good way. “It was a difficult movie to make but even at its hardest point, it was still this thing that came from my heart and my head that was now becoming real. I was just on a high the entire time we were filming.”

Best of Black Sheep: Black Sheep interviews Michael Shannon

HEED HIS ADVICE

An interview with TAKE SHELTER star, Michael Shannon

When I sat down to speak with Michael Shannon about his mesmerizing performance in Jeff Nichols’ equally transfixing film, TAKE SHELTER, Hurricane Irene had just paid a visit to his hometown, Manhattan. The media had made out the event to be potentially catastrophic but the weather came and went without much damage to mention. The media may have had egg on their faces but what if they were right? One day, they very well might be.

In TAKE SHELTER, Shannon plays Curtis, a husband, a father, a construction foreman and a good man. Curtis has a secret though; Curtis is having visions that a storm that could end all storms is coming and he isn’t quite sure how to deal with that. “I don’t think he’s a prophet,” Shannon begins to explain of Curtis. “I don’t think Curtis has necessarily even thought it out to the extent that he thinks the end of the world is coming. I think it’s much more poetic than that.”

That it certainly is. When Curtis dreams, he sees rain of a different colour than we are accustomed to, falling from the sky. Whatever it is that is falling from the sky, it is potent and powerful and it will be the game changer humanity has managed to avoid for centuries now. Rather than presume too specifically what that would will be like though, Nichols chooses to keep things ambiguous, which is what Shannon loves about the film. “The sky is such a beautiful poetic image. People ask why can’t he just run but you can’t run from the sky.”

The supernatural elements of TAKE SHELTER are counterbalanced with Curtis’ family life, which is tested greatly by his mounting paranoia. In yet another stellar supporting turn, Jessica Chastain plays opposite Shannon as his wife. Their marriage is already braving its own storm of sorts, with their daughter facing the possibility of permanent and total hearing loss. It was the scenes with Curtis’ daughter (played by Tova Stewart) that Shannon found most disturbing and difficult. “I have a 3-year old daughter. The thought of some disaster happening to her, it’s not something I can digest. I think that’s what is so terrifying about what’s happening to Curtis is that he’s lost the ability to block it out.”

That’s an understatement. Faced with a potentially apocalyptic storm, Curtis begins expanding an underground shelter in his backyard. Naturally, this tips off his friends and family to his increasingly bizarre behaviour. Complicating matters further, Curtis’ mother (Kathy Baker) was diagnosed with schizophrenia when she was roughly Curtis’ current age. This begs the question, is this madness or is this divine intervention?

“I think what Curtis is experiencing beyond schizophrenia is just feeling unsafe because he doesn’t know who’s running the show,” Shannon clarifies. Curiously enough, Curtis is not a churchgoer, unlike the rest of his family, and yet God has chosen him to warn of what’s coming. Or, he’s totally losing it. It could go either way. “For me, one of the reasons I was interested in doing the film, is that more metaphysical, spiritual component,” says Shannon, a non-churchgoer himself.

It is these kinds of delicate layers that inform both Shannon’s performance, one that will certainly come up come awards season, and the effectiveness of TAKE SHELTER itself. “To me, the inherent question is, if you don’t believe in God or if you’re not religious, then isn’t the world a terrifying place?” Shannon asks, of both his audience and himself. “Because everything is arbitrary and nature is very arbitrary. Nature is not malicious; it’s not like it wants to destroy your house but its there and its undeniable. It’s been that way for centuries. Just ask the dinosaurs.”

Would that I could but we all know how that turned out. If only the dinosaur that was having premonitions had spoken up.

This interview originally appeared in Hour Community.

THE RUM DIARY

THE RUM DIARY
Written and Directed by Bruce Robinson
Starring Johnny Depp, Aaron Eckhart and Amber Heard


Paul Kemp: I don’t know how to write like me.

Last fall, I heard some of the most ridiculous comparisons made when the Johnny Depp vehicle, THE RUM DIARY, tanked at the box office. The trades went off about whether or not Depp was washed up because his latest had brought in nowhere near what his PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN outings. Somehow it didn’t seem to occur to anyone that it might stand to reason that a small movie about a journalist who escapes to Puerto Rico in the 1960’s might not be able to take in the billion dollars the latest “Pirates” spectacular had. Sure, Depp stumbles around like he’s drunk in both of them but one of those movies has swords too. THE RUM DIARY didn’t stand a chance.

Expectations were reasonably high for THE RUM DIARY given Depp’s cult following for FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS. Both films are based on Hunter S. Thompson novels so the logic was that the support for the first film would spill over to the latest. The trouble with this rationale is that films about drug and booze addled messes don’t always connect in theatres, meaning home video time is THE RUM DIARY’s time to shine, right? Technically, yes, but the movie does have to be worth watching regardless. Under the direction of Bruce Robinson, who has not made a movie himself since 1992’s JENNIFER EIGHT, Depp’s second dance with Thompson is considerably tame, much less trippy and disastrous than one would expect.

THE RUM DIARY has a certain breeziness to it that make it a much better film to be screened at home than in cinemas. While in Puerto Rico, Depp’s Paul Kemp, gets caught up in excessive drinking, entangled with a woman who is already spoken for (Amber Heard, spoken for by Aaron Eckhart) and mixed up with a bunch of fat cats who want to get even fatter off the backs of the Puerto Rican people and their gorgeous landscape. It all amounts to a lot of meandering moments and conversations that ultimately bring Depp absolutely nowhere. Like that breeze, it passes through, can be somewhat enjoyable for a moment or too but once its gone, it’s forgotten.

Review copy provided by eOne.

SAFE HOUSE

SAFE HOUSE
Written by David Guggenheim
Directed by Daniel Espinosa
Starring Denzel Washington, Ryan Reynolds and Brendan Gleeson


Tobin Frost: Remember Rule no. 1 - You are responsible for your house guest. I am your house guest.

Despite the title, at no point in time while watching SAFE HOUSE will you feel anything close to safe. Director, Daniel Espinosa, an unproven talent in the industry before now, delivers a non-stop thrill ride that provides Denzel Washington with an all too uncommon role worthy of his weight as an actor and co-star, Ryan Reynolds with an opportunity to step up his sometimes all too easy game. Once the chase is on, it is flat out relentless. By the time you do actually get to catch your breath though, you might wonder if there was any real need for all the fuss.

Washington plays Tobin Frost, a former C.I.A. operative who went rogue years ago and is now one of the most wanted traitors on the American watch list. After acquiring a microchip with naturally damaging information on it, he becomes instant prey around the world, allows himself to be caught and then finds himself in a C.I.A. safe house, which is a holding tank of sorts, awaiting his fate. Reynolds plays Matt Weston, a green C.I.A. operative whose job it is to oversee this safe house in Cape Town, Africa. It sounds important but he hasn’t had a single guest in the year he’s been there. Once the safe house is inevitably compromised, Washington and Reynolds begin a dance that finds them both helping and hindering each other as they try to stay alive together.

In the end, SAFE HOUSE plays too safe a hand. Espinosa plays all his cards properly, including shaky camera, grainy tone and off center framing, all devices that heighten tension and keep the viewer on edge, but it’s an exercise in competency at best. At no point does it elevate to a place of originality, which is also due to the oversimplified plot structure. David Guggenheim, another untested player, has written a script that relies too heavily on the genre’s familiarity to make any part of it necessarily memorable. For instance, we don’t know what’s on this microchip until much later on in the film but it doesn’t even matter what is on it really. All that matters is the chase. Espinosa can keep that chase fast and taut, and this is what makes SAFE HOUSE a pretty safe bet, but once the cat catches the mouse, the game is gone and simply forgotten.

MILDRED PIERCE

MILDRED PIERCE
Written by Todd Haynes and Jon Raymond
Directed by Todd Haynes
Starring Kate Winslet, Guy Pearce and Evan Rachel Wood

There are some dream projects that just make me shiver with an almost lustful anticipation. HBO’s 5-part miniseries, MILDRED PIERCE, is definitely one of these projects. James M. Cain’s 1941 novel of the same name has been interpreted on film before (in 1945, directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Joan Crawford in the title role) but never has it been given this kind of honour. Directed by Todd Haynes, one of today’s most fascinating filmmakers, and starring the inimitable Kate Winslet as the 1930’s heroine, MILDRED PIERCE pays homage to Cain’s work by allowing it the time to breathe and settle into the subtle and sumptuous epic that it was always meant to be.

Mildred is a mother first, no matter how trying it is for her to fill the role. When we meet her, she is baking pies to bring in a little extra cash, now that her cheating husband (Brian F. O’Byrne) is no longer bringing home what he used to when business was booming. Shortly thereafter, she kicks him out and decides to take control of her life for her daughters, Ray and Veda (Quinn McColgan and Morgan Turner). With the classes crumbling all over Los Angeles, Mildred is desperate to maintain a certain lifestyle for her girls but to accomplish this, she must go through one obstacle after another. And some of them are pretty devastating! It is Mildred’s determination and resolve that define her though and soon she is achieving great success amidst her emotional turmoil. And it is Winslet’s extraordinary ability to oscillate almost imperceptibly between her internal and her external emotional expression that makes Mildred so captivating. You never know where she will go and what she will do next but you always know that she will be fighting fearlessly no matter what. It’s inspiring.

The MILDRED PIERCE cast is rounded out by Guy Pearce as Mildred’s playboy boyfriend, Melissa Leo as her best friend and Evan Rachel Wood as her mortal enemy, the grown version of her daughter, Veda. The mother/daughter conflict seems almost secondary at first but as it builds, and it does so with great insight and delicacy thanks to the tender hand of Todd Haynes, it becomes apparent that this relationship is the central one in Mildred’s life. It drives her to succeed at all costs but also tears her down to absolutely nothing all too often. To an outsider, many of Mildred’s actions might seem selfish but to those who know her, Mildred’s motivation is almost always for other people and more often than not, for Veda. It is a testament to Hayne’s talent as both a filmmaker and a writer that we actually come to know Mildred well enough to know this about her.

IN TIME

IN TIME
Written and Directed by Andrew Niccol
Starring Justin Timberlake, Amanda Seyfried and Cillian Murphy


Henry Hamilton: For a few to be immortal, many must die.

Depending on how you see it on any given day or what side of the bed you got up on, time is either on your side or running out. For some, all they’ve got is time on their hands, while for others, time is the enemy. There are a number of time cliches one can reference to sum up a number of situations and all of them seem to culminate within Andrew Niccol’s IN TIME, a science-fiction thriller that could have used a little more time in the oven itself.

IN TIME is interesting enough but that isn’t really enough to make it worth something. At some indeterminate time in the near-ish future, the world has figured out how to stop the aging process. At 25, you’re done and a clock starts on your left forearm that, like any good wrist watch, keeps perfect time for you. Only this watch doesn’t keep you on schedule; this watch is a constant reminder as to how many days or hours or minutes you have left on this planet. Everyone gets a year when they turn 25. It is then up to you to keep finding ways to replenish that time so that you don’t suddenly time out. Like I said, it is interesting enough in theory but in execution, IN TIME is nothing more than a vehicle to continue establishing Timberlake as a thing, thinly veiled as a high concept morality tale.

Time is therefore currency and IN TIME wastes no time with subtlety in demonstrating how there will always be have’s and always have not’s, no matter what our current currency is. After kidnapping the daughter (Amanda Seyfried) of the apparent richest man (read, most immortal man) in the world, the twosome naturally fall for each other in their quest to better the planet and equal the playing field. They begin robbing her parents’ banks and giving the time back to those who desperately need it. Suddenly, Niccol doesn’t seem to know what kind of movie he’s making anymore. Is it sci-fi? Is it a heist movie? Is it Robin Hood? Whatever it is, it is only half entertaining, half of the time and Timberlake only has half the gravitas required to carry this film. In the end, I highly doubt that IN TIME will be able to stand the one test it needed to pass and I don’t think I need to even say what that is at this point.

Black Sheep interviews Paddy Considine

WHAT MAKES A MONSTER
An interview with TYRANNOSAUR writer/director, Paddy Considine.

When Paddy Considine decided to write and direct his first film, TYRANNOSAUR, he had no intention of making one of the most bleak films in history. And, depending on how you read it, he may very well have not, but the surface of the film itself might make it difficult for some to see the hope buried beneath the heartache.

“Some of it, I’m still uncomfortable with,” Considine begins to explain when we meet at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2011. “I wanted to make a film about redemption, about how souls are pushed to the limit. I just hope there is something in there that people can identify with.”

TYRANNOSAUR is the unlikely love story between Joseph (Peter Mullan) and Hannah (Olivia Colman). Joseph is a lower class brute, who has just realized that his violent nature is holding him back from any sense of peace. Hannah, a middle class shop owner, has violence in her life as well, in the form of her husband’s (Eddie Marsan) fist. Neither can understand it nor explain it but they each come to know a newfound calm inside after they meet.

“To me they’re heroic because they’re just bearing their soul to you. I couldn’t help but care for them.” Considine says of his own creations. “There were times on the set where I had to take myself to the corner because I was quite upset. I didn’t realize how much I loved them.” Considine, a stoic man in person, is clearly enamored with the process itself and seemingly surprised still by just how much so.

Considine in action

North American audiences will likely best know the 37-year-old Considine for his acting parts in films like THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM or the Oscar-nominated, IN AMERICA. While directing is something he knew he wanted to do, it is not something he ever thought he would just pick up naturally. In fact, it wasn’t until he was on set with Mullan and Colman that he knew he had made the right choice. “They confirmed a couple of things to me. One, that my intuition about casting them was right and two, that I actually could direct.” Considine confides. “It wasn’t just a sort of a notion I had, ‘I fancy directing a movie now.’ No, I had this burning desire and they just grasped the tone of the film.”

That tone, as troubling as it is at times, still came from Considine’s mind, so I cannot help but wonder what inspired this story to be the first he would tell. “It’s just a build up of everything, my life growing up, the people I was around,” Considine admits freely and then quickly denounces any notion of autobiography. “To be honest with you, I suppose a lot of it is me just trying to make sense of a lot of things and a lot of people.”

Colman and Mullan in Tyrannosaur

If you can stomach the pain in TYRANNOSAUR, then you can see the light hiding underneath that pain. It is clear to me that Paddy Considine sees that light quite brightly. “These people, after these wars, are still soul mates. They’re like soldiers who have shared an experience. Their understanding of each other is far beyond attraction; it’s not about that. It’s a higher love that they share.”

This would be the opposite of bleak.

BOARDWALK EMPIRE

HBO has a reputation for producing quality, cinematic television and BOARDWALK EMPIRE is a perfect example of this. Set in Atlantic City during the prohibition era, the show focuses around the city treasurer, one Enoch "Nucky" Thompson, played with great weight and resolve by Steve Buscemi. Often relegated to showy, albeit still mere, character roles, it is incredible to see Buscemi take the lead in this series and to see him do so with such impressive strength. He leads an ensemble made up of actors who are often not given their due, from Michael Pitt and Michael Shannon to Kelly McDonald and Michael Stuhlbarg. Altogether, they make up one of the most dynamic and effective ensembles on television today.

The first season, now available to rent or own on either DVD or Blu-ray, consists of twelve addictive installments. The series itself was created by Terence Winter, one of the main writers on another HBO gem, THE SOPRANOS, but the pilot episode itself, which reportedly cost $18 million to make, was directed by none other than Martin Scorsese. Scorsese, who also serves alongside Mark Wahlberg as an executive producer, is the Godfather of gangster cinema (sorry, Francis) and his gravitas anchors the series from the very beginning, allowing it to go to places that are often shocking and moving. The first season, based on the Nelson Johnson novel, Boardwalk Empire: The Birth, High Times and Corruption of Atlantic City, follows Nucky as he gets his bootlegging business off the ground, falls for a recent widow (McDonald) and struggles to ensure the Republican party, the one he controls from behind the scenes, remains in power. It is at times uncanny how some of the issues people wrestled with then are still prominent today.

BOARDWALK EMPIRE presents the golden age of gangstering and it does so with such class and subtlety that it burns directly into your mind, leaving you wanting to get back to that boardwalk as often as possible. If more television series took as much care with their stories and characters as this one does, I think its fair to say I would have a lot less free time on my hands.

Black Sheep interviews Daniel Radcliffe

THE BOY WIZARD GROWS UP
An interview with THE WOMAN IN BLACK star, Daniel Radcliffe

At this point in my career, I’ve interviewed a fair amount of famous filmmaker types. Still, there was something, dare I say magical, about meeting Daniel Radcliffe - the man, now 22, who played the most famous young wizard the movies have ever seen and spearheaded the biggest film franchise in history. And what did I say to him first thing after congratulating him on his first post HARRY POTTER outing?

“I have to be honest with you; I probably wouldn’t have seen THE WOMAN IN BLACK if I weren’t interviewing you. I just tend to avoid horror films whenever possible really.” I couldn’t believe these words had just come out of my mouth.

Radcliffe’s response: “Honestly, if I weren’t in this film, I’m not sure I would have seen it either.”

Don’t take that out of context. Like me, Radcliffe tries to avoid horror films whenever possible because they “terrify” him. (He cites Stanley Kubrick’s THE SHINING as a personal favourite though.) In fact, it only takes a few moments with him to absorb just how excited he is about THE WOMAN IN BLACK, directed by James Watkins, even though he does not believe in ghosts himself.

“I have never seen a ghost nor do I expect to,” Radcliffe states. “There always seems to be a co-relation between those who have seen ghosts and those who believe in them. As I don’t believe in them, I find it highly unlikely that I will ever see one.” The young man’s sharp sense of sarcasm is unexpected but welcome.

As Arthur Kipps in The Woman in Black

Of course, there is another reason Radcliffe wants to share this new film with his fans. It is an opportunity for the world to see him like they never have before, without the spectacles and sans scar.

“I am under no illusion that people are going to see this film and think, ‘Oh my God, he isn’t Harry Potter anymore. This is a total fucking transformation!’” he says, rather astutely. This is when I lose my train of thought though because suddenly I can’t seem to focus on anything other than how "Harry Potter" just said “fuck”. He does elaborate on his point though. “I can’t focus too much on how I am being perceived at any one time. It’s not constructive for me to think that way. Once people are used to me popping up in other things, it won’t be so much of a difficult stretch.”

Smiling for the cameras at The Woman in Black premiere

One might also think it something of a stretch to go from working on a huge franchise like HARRY POTTER to a film that reportedly cost under $20 million to produce. “People always say to me, if I do a smaller film, ‘Bet it wasn’t like this on Potter!’ and my reaction is ‘No, it was worse.’ People assume that because we had so much money and time, that it must have been a really smooth operation. It wasn’t; it was chaos. All film sets are chaos. Organized chaos, but chaos.”

Still, it was his first time away from the film home he had spent years growing up in. Fortunately, there was a fair amount of familiarity for Radcliffe to draw from. “It’s very hard to work on Potter and then do another British film without knowing anybody.”

On The Woman in Black set

Radcliffe read the script for THE WOMAN IN BLACK on the last day of shooting HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2 and started work on the film six weeks later, with four weeks of intense dance training in between for his successful Broadway run in HOW TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS WITHOUT REALLY TRYING. I would’ve taken a year off personally but Radcliffe is clearly not the kind of guy who likes to sit still for too long. He could barely even sit still during the fifteen minutes we spoke.

“My thing is rather than getting back on the horse, why not just stay on it?” he quips like the cheeky, little Brit he is. Having met him now, I can see Radcliffe eventually riding that metaphorical horse right into the ground. That is, unless he doesn’t get the sudden urge to get off the horse and stand next to it naked first.

Best of Black Sheep: BLACK SHEEP INTERVIEWS RYAN GOSLING

THE DRIVER
An interview with DRIVE star, Ryan Gosling

Ryan Gosling has a dream but its not what you would expect. It isn’t riches or success or notoriety; he has already achieved those lofty goals. No, Gosling has something much more specific in mind. “My dream is to create a character that people go out as on Halloween,” Gosling tells me when we meet at the Toronto International Film Festival. He says this with full sincerity and not a single trace of sarcasm on his beautiful face.

Gosling may have found that character in his new film, DRIVE. Known only as The Driver, his character sports a shiny bomber jacket with a giant scorpion on the back, is constantly fiddling with a toothpick in his mouth and he barely speaks a word most of the time. Aside from his inherent coolness, he is also one of the biggest badasses I’ve seen on screen all year. “He’s got issues,” Gosling quips of The Driver. “He’s a psychopath. He’s gotta get control of that, I guess.”

It was Gosling who pushed for DRIVE to be made and also for Danish director, Nicolas Winding Refn to helm. And once those two got started, there was no stopping them. “Nicolas and I creatively copulated and this movie baby was born and then we had to raise it,” explains Gosling. When he says things like this, he looks straight at you and doesn’t even flinch. It’s impressive.

The buzz behind DRIVE is as loud as the film itself and if it connects with audiences, which I assure you, it most certainly should, Gosling has the chance to continue solidifying his status as one of the most intriguing and marketable stars working today. Not too bad for a boy from London, Ontario. His work in this summer’s CRAZY, STUPID, LOVE was the best of the bunch and he also stars in next month’s THE IDES OF MARCH, directed by none other than George Clooney. Oscar is abuzz.

People are calling Gosling the next De Niro but he’s having none of it. “There is no difference between me and anyone else,” Gosling says both firmly and humbly, clearly somewhat irked by the notion itself. “I hate when that stuff happens,” he says of comparisons. “There’s no where to go after. It just sets you up to fail.”

Comparisons aside, the kind of intensity Gosling gives in DRIVE could not as easily be achieved by too many other young actors today. He is extremely intimidating and all he has to do is stand there and stare at you to accomplish this. When I ask him where he has to go in his head to be that menacing, he answers with three words, “Not too far.”

Gosling would simply prefer that his work speak for itself and his work in DRIVE is some of the best I’ve seen from him. This is likely, at least in part, due to his strong understanding of the material itself, which is based on a James Sallis novel. “Driving can be something of an existential experience,” he explains. “You aren’t being watched; you are just the watcher. It’s similar to watching a movie.”

And if that movie happens to have Gosling in the driver’s seat, all the better.


RYAN AND NICOLAS: A LOVE STORY

If it weren’t for REO Speedwagon’s most memorable hit, “Can’t Fight This Feeling”, Nicolas Winding Refn’s DRIVE may not exist today. The film’s star, Ryan Gosling, brought the idea of a stunt car driver who moonlights as a getaway car driver to Refn as his first pick to direct. The only problem was that Refn was sick with the flu at the time and hopped up on meds so he couldn’t quite get his head around it. When the Speedwagon song came on the radio on their drive home though, suddenly Refn got it and he just started to cry.

Gosling and Winding Refn on set

Ever since then, Gosling and Refn have been almost inseparable. “Ryan and I have become one person,” Refn tells me when we meet at the Toronto International Film Festival. In fact, Refn, a Danish filmmaker who has never worked in Hollywood, only agreed to make the picture because he knew Gosling would protect him from the studio system. “He was the star. He had the power to make this movie happen or not.”

Gosling and Winding Refn locking lips on the festival circuit

The love and admiration is certainly mutual. “There is nobody like him,” Gosling shares with me shortly after I speak with Refn. “For him, filmmaking is a fetish. He only shoots what he wants to see.” The twosome are already scheduled to shoot two more movies together and they even shared living quarters while shooting this one, staying up late pitching around ideas for the next day. Says Gosling, “We were always chasing that moment in the car when the movie was born.”

Best of Black Sheep: DRIVE

DRIVE
Written by Hossein Amini
Directed by Nicolas Winding Refn
Starring Ryan Gosling, Carey Mulligan, Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks and Albert Brooks


Irene: What do you do?
Driver: I drive.

Every now and again, a movie comes along and takes you for a ride you don’t soon forget. It straps you in with its fresh cinematic voice and doesn’t let you go until it has raced through your mind, taken some crazy turns and pulled back into the garage again.  When you step out, your legs might even feel a little weak from the constant barrage of thrills and brilliance. DRIVE is that movie. This year’s breakout director, and the winner of the Best Director prize at Cannes, Nicolas Winding Refn, delivers a smooth ride that will catch you off guard at almost every turn and announces the arrival of a new force to be reckoned with on the road.

While Refn may be the man behind the wheel off-screen, the man in the driver’s seat on screen is none other than Ryan Gosling. Known only throughout the film as the driver, Gosling exudes an eerie calm no matter how fast his life is moving. There are cars everywhere he turns. He works for a mechanic (Bryan Cranston) and drives stunt cars for the movies. He even moonlights as a getaway car driver for petty robberies and might soon start actually racing his own ride on an actual track. Gosling’s driver needs to be in that seat and subsequently in control of his own destiny. He lives a modest life and never gives anything away on his face, that is until he meets his neighbour, Irene (the always understated, Carey Mulligan). Once their hands touch, on the stick shift of his car no less, his engine starts making noises he’s never heard before.

DRIVE is an intense trip and once Refn kicks it into high gear, you can practically feel the rev of the engine emanating from the screen and reverberating through your entire core. It embodies a modern sense of extreme cool, from its pounding soundtrack to its excellent cast (including a deliciously funny, Albert Brooks and a just plain delicious, Christina Hendricks). DRIVE is a rebellious film, a night creature, a total badass of a movie. When it gets rough, it goes places I’ve never even imagined, let alone seen on film. And even though Refn pushes the movie into skids of reckless abandon, he is always clearly and confidently in control of the vehicle. By the time DRIVE screeches to a complete halt, you will instantly want to take it for another spin.

Best of Black Sheep: THE IDES OF MARCH

THE IDES OF MARCH
Written by George Clooney, Grant Heslov and Beau Willimon
Directed by George Clooney
Starring Ryan Gosling, George Clooney, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Evan Rachel Wood


Stephen Myers: Nothing bad happens when you’re doing the right thing.
Governor Mike Morris: Is that your personal theory because I can poke holes in it.

George Clooney has been mulling making THE IDES OF MARCH for a few years now. When he first wanted to make it in 2008, he decided to put his plans on hold because of the political climate. The United States were on the cusp of a monumental election and a financial crisis and he did not want to take advantage of either. Three years later though, Clooney and his longtime production partner, Grant Heslov (GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK) think the timing is now right to unveil their political thriller to the voting public. Apparently, it is acceptable to be critical of their government again.

Clooney plays Governor Mike Morris, a seemingly genuine and upstanding gentleman, who is trying to secure the democratic party nomination for the upcoming presidential race. Naturally, nothing is as it seems and it would appear that no one can get to such great heights without stepping over a few people along the way. To get where he is, you also need a crack team behind you and Governor Morris’ includes actors as diverse and talented as Ryan Gosling, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Evan Rachel Wood. Hoffman is the veteran, Wood is the intern and Gosling is the shiny new guy who is clearly on his way to greater things. In fact, Gosling’s career appears to mirror the position of his character, Stephen Myers. The man is certainly on his own streak and his lead performance here is another that will certainly continue to propel him forward.

THE IDES OF MARCH is a compelling and engaging thriller, despite not bringing much new to the table. Gosling’s Stephen gets caught up in the political crossfire behind the campaign scenes and it becomes a pretty harrowing challenge for him to ensure he still comes out ahead of everyone else. And while Clooney’s execution is smooth and effective, it does cater a little too often to his own political views. Clooney did not want his character to be a republican as he thought the criticism would be too obvious. As a democrat though, he gets the chance to voice all of platforms on topics as heated as gay marriage and tax incentives for the super rich. Everything he says seems so sensible, the film becomes something of a criticism for all politicians, as if to suggest it could be as easy as he claims if they would just get it together. And while Clooney may not be ready to run for president, he earns my vote for being a top notch film director.

IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY

IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY

Written and Directed by Angelina Jolie

Somewhere amidst raising countless kids and attending to the demands of being a giant star, Angelina Jolie found the time to write and direct her first movie. Set against the backdrop of the Bosnian war in the early 1990’s, IN THE LAND OF BLOOD AND HONEY tells the story of Danijel and Ajla (Goran Kostic and Zana Marjanovic), new lovers torn apart by the war who find themselves struggling to keep their love, or even just the idea of it, alive despite being on different sides of the conflict. Jolie shows promise as a filmmaker but she also shows us so much atrocity, that at times, the film is just relentless and borderline preachy.