Nicolas Winding Refn‘s forthcoming Only God Forgives is the story of a director in search of cool toys to collect, but in front of the cameras, it’s the tale of a policeman in Bangkok getting into a Thai boxing ring with a notorious gangster. It stars Ryan Gosling, Kristen Scott Thomas, Yayaying and Vithaya Pansringarm, and by the looks of these first images, it looks like the bruises are still fresh.

Ruben Fleischer is two for two. Zombieland and 30 Minutes or Less both exhibited an energetic brand of comedy that showed off the chops of a new talent. Now it’s time for that talent to change genres and show some range. The Gangster Squad was a black list script from Will Beall that made its way to Warners. The first trailer boasts a stellar cast of Josh Brolin, Ryan Gosling, Nick Nolte, Emma Stone, Sean Penn and a ton of familiar face. Plus, Gosling comes off as a total pansy here, no matter what size gun he’s got. That’s an interesting reversal after the stoic badass in Drive. It looks like a standard gangland story, but the visuals are dynamic and everything points to it being a solid flick. Check out the trailer for yourself:

And just when you thought awards season was over! In continued proof that MTV doesn’t give a sweet biscuit about anything like music or television, the network has today announced their nominees for the 2012 MTV Movie Awards. As ever, the kids are still going for the big franchises (like Harry Potter, The Hunger Games, and Twilight), but even they’re not immune to the awards push for The Help (kids liked The Help?). Yet, this year, the MTV Movie Awards appear to have done right by at least one film that got snubbed by the big dogs during the traditional awards season – Nicholas Winding Refn‘s Drive. Despite massive critical acclaim (and, let’s face it, a metric ton of cool points), Drive was only nominated for one Oscar – Best Achievement in Sound Editing, better known as the “Sorry, Albert Brooks and Ryan Gosling Snubb-o Award.” The MTV Movie Awards nominated the film for Best Male Performance (Ryan Gosling), Best Gut-Wrenching Performance (also Gosling), and Best Music for ”A Real Hero” by College with Electric Youth (though the song will inevitably lose to LMFAO’s “Party Rock Anthem,” because, you know, kids these days). As totally bitching as that all is, let’s take a moment to question just how all those MTV-consuming kiddos got into Drive in the first place. And were they texting the entire time they were watching the film? Of course, it’s still the MTV Movie Awards, and they still feature categories like “Best Kiss,” “Best Gut-Wrenching Performance” (which includes a nod

The team of Glenn Ficarra and John Requa just keep on trucking. The pair, best known for scripts like Bad Santa and Bad News Bears, have lately turned their attentions to writing and directing films, such as I Love You Phillip Morris (which they scripted and helmed) and Crazy. Stupid. Love. (which they directed from Dan Fogelman’s script), and now they’re set to again write and direct a production. Deadline Thousand Oaks reports that Ficarra and Requa have made a deal with Warner Bros. for their newest script, called Focus, and the pair already know who they want to start in the film – Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, who exhibited such delightful chemistry and comic timing together in Crazy. Stupid. Love. The film is a fair bit different than their latest team-up, but perhaps many of the same tones from Crazy. will pop up in this one. Focus is described as “the story of a veteran conman who gets involved with a newcomer to the grifter business. They get involved romantically but that becomes perilous in a business where they lie and cheat for a living. The complications of the encounter haunt them when they meet up again in the future.” Based on what we saw from the pair in Crazy., this actually sounds like quite the fun fit.

Have no fear, internet. April Fool’s Day is over, and (probably since it fell on a Sunday) the laundry list of fake casting announcements and crap development deals was relatively short. You can still check out our Print Edition of Film School Rejects, but here are a few good, bad and grotesque fakes that might need some clarification alongside a few geek products that should be real in a fair universe.

Looks like Hollywood has picked their next big action director, and they’re not wasting much time setting him up with his next project. Daniel Espinosa likely made Universal very happy with his first English-language film, Safe House, which has already grossed $135m, and now Warner Bros. wants in on what the Snabba Cash helmer is dishing out. The studio is reportedly in negotiations for Espinosa to direct The Outsider, “a gritty action film” that centers on “a POW in Osaka in WWII who goes to work for the Yakuza.” Grit? Action? Bad people? Yup, that’s Espinosa’s wheelhouse. The script’s been written by newcomer Andrew Baldwin, and he comes with his very own pedigree. While Baldwin hasn’t seen one of his scripts hit the screen yet, he’s a hot commodity in Hollywood. Last October, he was hired on to rewrite the Logan’s Run remake that Nicolas Winding Refn and Ryan Gosling have been all over, and he’s been on the Black List twice – once with The Outsider in 2011 and once with The West Is Dead in 2008. When it appeared on the Black List, the logline for the film read “In post World War II Japan, an American former prisoner-of-war rises in the yakuza,” so yeah, that’s about what we’ve got for now.

McG’s latest film, the spy thriller/romantic comedy This Means War, just hit theaters this week, and, so far, I haven’t really talked to anybody who likes it. That’s pretty par for course at this point though, because it’s rare that I talk to anyone who likes any of McG’s movies. Despite that fact, the guy must be making somebody somewhere some money, because he keeps on getting new jobs. Speaking of which, McG recently talked to The Playlist about what he’s going to be doing next. First off, he described his new project, Puzzle Palace, as a “thriller” that is “tonally similar to Die Hard,” and then went on to give a more lengthy plot synopsis by adding that the film is about, “A kid who has to clear his father’s name by breaking into One Police Plaza in New York, which is the most secure building imaginable in a post-9/11 world. It’s a smaller picture, it’s designed for a [Ryan] Gosling [type actor]. It’s not as small and antithetical as Drive, but it’s not a big giant over-the-top action picture, it’s meant to be a fun, intelligent action character study.” If it manages to be either fun or intelligent, then it will be a huge break from the stupid, visually frustrating things that McG’s done so far; so I’m excited to hear him say that he’s planning on branching out.

Today is Valentine’s Day, and a big part of what that entails is time spent thinking about the one you adore. And, for me, it means thinking about romantic movies. So what has happened is I’ve found myself reflecting a lot on my current mancrush Ryan Gosling, what films he’s done that explore the concepts of love and romance, and how I feel about each of them. And surprise, surprise, a column idea sprung forth. Today I’ll be looking at The Notebook, a film that a lot of people respond to very strongly, a film that most every girl you know loves, and a film that’s an instant panty dropper when thrown into casual conversations with hormonal coeds. Also, I’ll be looking at Lars and the Real Girl, a movie that’s well regarded among the people that have seen it, but that was too strange for many moviegoers to take a chance on, or for any mainstream award shows to champion. And also, it’s a movie that can mean instant death if you try to explain it to a girl in a bar.

Due to her Oscar-winning role in Black Swan and her pregnancy-imposed break from acting, Natalie Portman has been the subject of much talk in the movie world. When will she come back to work? What will her first post-Oscar role be? There have been reports of filmmakers as big as the Wachowskis actively recruiting her to come on board their projects, but still no word of an official signing. That is until now. Sorry, Hollywood directors, but Terrence Malick has beaten you to the punch. And, just to smear some dirt in your wounds, he’s done it twice. Deadline Ottawa is reporting that Portman has signed on to be in not one, but two of Malick’s upcoming projects, both shooting in 2012, which will mark her much anticipated return to acting. The first film is the Christian Bale and Cate Blanchett-starring Knight of the Cups, which is scheduled to start shooting this summer. The second is a film called Lawless, which sees Portman teamed again with Bale and Blanchett, in addition to other notable names like Ryan Gosling and Rooney Mara. This film is scheduled to shoot in the fall.

As we approach Valentine’s Day (yes, it’s just a few weeks away) I think it’s only fitting that the topic of romance come into play in anticipation of the day meant to celebrate all things feelings. I’m not sure about you, but I have actually never celebrated Valentine’s Day with a loved one not related to me. Instead I spend the day (or week) loading up on conversational hearts, Reese’s Peanut Butter cups, and a collection of melodramas so depressing I become skeptical that love can actually end in anything but death. Regardless of my tendency to eat my feelings while crying over the tragic love found in Douglas Sirk films, I do enjoy happy love stories and tend to pair the sadder movies with some of my must-have romances. In honor of the big V-Day, I’d like to share my favorite 14 romantic scenes and also open it up the floor to hear your suggestions. Today is my bottom seven romantic scenes, and next week we’ll post the remainder. I like to keep you all on tenterhooks.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s a nightly movie news column born exactly one year ago today. And it’s very happy to still be around and well on its way to taking over the planet. It is convinced that it will have a very productive 2012 in that area, especially once humanity’s reign of terror ends later this year. In the mean time, it would like to thank you all for reading. Now enough of that mushy stuff, lets do the news. We begin this evening with an image of biker Jemaine Clement in Men in Black III. He’s playing an alien biker who turns out to be the villain in this time-traveling storyline…. And we wonder why that movie has had so many production problems? Either way, I’ll watch Jemaine Clement eat soap if I have to, as that guy is quite funny.

In our final 2011 edition of Scenes We Love, a column you’ll be seeing a lot more of in the coming year, we’d like to celebrate the scene that, in our humble opinion, was the definitive and most memorable scene of the entire year. A great deal of care and collaboration went into the choosing of this winner, with every FSR staff writer first submitting nominations then a fierce round of voting. In my final thoughts, I’ll reveal the runners up. But for now, lets just enjoy the majesty of a moment that is all at once romantic and violent, sweet and salty, quiet and louder than a bomb.

Usually I’m quite cynical about end-of-year lists, as they demand a forced encapsulation of an arbitrary block of time that is not yet over into something simplified. I typically find end-of-year lists fun, but rarely useful. But 2011 is different. As Scott Tobias pointed out, while “quiet,” this was a surprisingly strong year for interesting and risk-taking films. What’s most interesting has been the variety: barely anything has emerged as a leading contender that tops either critics’ lists or dominates awards buzz. Quite honestly, at the end of 2010 I struggled to find compelling topics, trends, and events to define the year in cinema. The final days of 2011 brought a quite opposite struggle, for this year’s surprising glut of interesting and disparate films spoke to one another in a way that makes it difficult to isolate any of the year’s significant works. Arguments in the critical community actually led to insightful points as they addressed essential questions of what it means to be a filmgoer and a cinephile. Mainstream Hollywood machine-work and limited release arthouse fare defied expectations in several directions. New stars arose. Tired Hollywood rituals and ostensibly reliable technologies both met new breaking points. “2011” hangs over this year in cinema, and the interaction between the films – and the events and conversations that surrounded them – makes this year’s offerings particular to their time and subject to their context. This is what I took away from this surprising year:

Is there a chance that current Hollywood it boy Ryan Gosling could be working with super weird Argentine director Gaspar Noé (Irréversible, Enter the Void) on his next project? If you listen to author Bret Easton Ellis (“American Psycho”), there is. Here’s the story so far: Ellis has been working on a screenplay for a while, it’s called The Golden Suicides, and it’s about the true story of artist couple Jeremy Blake and Theresa Duncan, who killed themselves back in 2007, allegedly after harassment from the Church of Scientology. Originally Gus Van Sant was meeting to come on and direct Ellis’s screenplay, but that fell apart for one reason or another, so eventually the job went to Noé. Now that there is a director in the bag, it’s time to find a leading actor, and Ellis seems to have his sights on Gosling. Recently he’s been taking to his Twitter account to tease followers about the fact that Gosling is close to signing on to the project. Last week he was saying things like, “Ryan Gosling is going to have to wait this year out and then win the Oscar for playing Jeremy Blake in The Golden Suicides,” and this week he’s been tweeting details of a meeting he, Gosling, and Noé had at the Chateau Marmont. In addition to talking about how good Gosling looks eating an apple, Ellis also stated, “Ryan came to meet Gaspar Noé who is directing The Golden Suicides. The 25 year-old broke up with

Good morning from Los Angeles, where we announce major award nominations at 5:30AM on a Thursday morning. That’s how much we value your sleep patterns and sanity. Now that I’ve pulled myself out of a state of under caffeinated shock over some of the Golden Globe nominations – namely, that Ryan Gosling was nominated for lead actor in both the drama and comedy and musical categories, though neither of those nods was for Drive (Crazy, Stupid, Love.? really? I had no idea that the Hollywood Foreign Press Association was so into abs!). Beyond that jolt to the system, there were a number of standard choices for the awards. The Artist? Well, of course? But all that Ides of March love? Interesting. The Artist leads with six nominations, followed by The Descendants and The Help with five each, and The Ides of March, Midnight in Paris, and Moneyball with four nods. But despite the overwhelming sense that (per usual) the Globes are just softball awards, there are some surprisingly good picks buried amongst the fluff – Tilda Swinton getting a lead actress (drama) nomination, Michael Fassbender earning a lead actor (drama) nod for Shame, Bridesmaids and Midnight in Paris up for Best Picture (comedy or musical), Charlize Theron getting a lead actress (comedy or musical) nomination for Young Adult, The Skin I Live In up for Best Foreign Film, and Albert Brooks getting his nod for supporting actor for Drive (drama). The Golden Globes will air live on January 15. Check out

It’s impossible not to be impressed by the folks at the SoundWorks Collection. Time and time again, they find great projects to feature and highlight one of the most atmospherically impactful elements of modern film: sound. In a time when we’re talking Oscar for a unique film without sound (The Artist), it’s also important to continue to celebrate the incredible work that goes into engulfing us with audible stimuli. In this particular instance, they feature Supervising Sound Editor Lon Bender’s work on the throbbing world of Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive. Combined with the incredible Clint Martinez (which Allison featured as part of Aural Fixation a few weeks back). Through this behind the scenes featurette, you get a look at what it took to move back and forth between the moments driven by score and the moments driven without score, a perfectly balanced effort.

What is Movie News After Dark? It’s not the nightly news column you want right now, but it’s the one you need. Because you need a nightly news column that will be strong in the face of adversity, cover the things you care about, and publish videos of Ryan Gosling being sexy without words. We begin tonight with a shot from the set of The Dark Knight Rises, something we’ve refrained from covering too much. However, I found this particular photo — one of a batch from Mail Online – that shows a tender moment between our hero, as played by Christian Bale, and his new foe Bane, as played by Tom Hardy. Just a little hug as Chris Nolan’s production occupies Occupy Wall Street in New York.

Terrence Malick has long been thought of as a difficult-to-work-with perfectionist. He once went a stretch of twenty years without making any movies at all, and when he is actively making them, they usually only come out once every five years or so. But lately he’s been filming things at a pace completely new to his career. After finishing his 2011 release The Tree of Life, he jumped pretty directly into making a still-untitled romantic film starring Ben Affleck and Rachel McAdams. Also, there have been rumblings that even before that film was finished, Malick had already lined up another movie that would star Christian Bale. It turns out that wasn’t all of the story, though. In somewhat shocking news, Variety is reporting that Malick already has plans to make two more movies, which will shoot back to back in 2012. The common thread between both films is that they will star Bale and Cate Blanchett in featured roles, but this isn’t some kind of series. Both films are separate stories, completely independent of one another. The first is said to be called Lawless, and in addition to Bale and Blanchett, Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara, and Haley Bennett will also star. The second project will be called Knight of Cups, and will see actress Isabel Lucas join the duo.

As the temperatures turn just the slightest bit colder and the fall colors settle in the landscape (if you’re lucky enough to live near trees), we should start directing our film focus to the fall movie season. We love summer for its mind-numbing fun, but the last season of the year tends to offer some of the most vulnerable, honest, and captivating films (you know, just in time for that other “big O”). Fall supplies films meant to scandalize our minds and even our naughty bits, and there is nothing wrong with that. But with so many films and film festivals to choose from between now and December, it becomes overwhelming to sort through all the goodness being dispensed our way. Lucky for you, my love of highlighting full-frontal male nudity and questionable sexual conduct happens to pay off for a change. Below you’ll find a helpful collection of five sultry features sure to stimulate your brain and your nethers.

If there’s any true horror movie this Halloween, it’s eclectic filmmaker George Clooney‘s The Ides of March. The play adaptation follows a hopeful and naive young hotshot, Stephen Myers, as he loses all of his morals to get ahead, which is apparently what the world of politics requires. If someone in the film sticks to their respectable rules, things most likely won’t turn out too well for them. Like a great paranoia thriller, everyone’s constantly on edge about their place on the political food chain. However, The Ides of March isn’t so much a film about politics, but the downward spiral of a once idealistic campaign runner. Clooney’s fourth directorial feature is a dark and cynical character drama underneath the surface of a low-key thriller. Co-writer/producer Grant Heslov (director of the very underrated The Men Who Stare at Goats) and Clooney delved into the idea of trying to stick to one’s rules in a bloodthirsty world with Good Night and Good Luck, but while that story lent itself to a more optimistic feel, the duo took a far more cynical approach with The Ides of March. Here’s what Heslov had to say about getting this dark character drama made, the film’s idealist-turned-ruthless protagonist, and why he doesn’t wake up dreaming about writing in our spoiler-filled conversation: