BlackBook just snagged a few black-and-white shots from the set of Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master—and by the looks of things, they’re in full-on gray flannel suit territory. The ’50s are coming, gentlemen.
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The red bow tie is hard to pull off, but if you’ve recently lost your fortune and are wandering the city in search of authentic life, you might get a pass.
We wouldn’t normally recommend loafers with a suit—but in the case of the fictional idle rich, we’ll make an exception.
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While Leo’s suit gets all the attention, we’ve got a different favorite from the latest batch of Gatsby pics: Nick Carraway/Tobey Maguire’s gloriously broad shawl collar. It’s remarkably close to the Ovadia & Sons cardigan that’s been making a splash in menswear circles lately—although finding that rounded club collar shirt outside of a custom shop would be quite a trick.
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Once upon a time, Warren Beatty was a pretty sharp guy. And circa 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, he was one of the sharpest men in California—pushing the French New Wave into Hollywood, head-faking studio heads for a percentage of the gross and walking away from the movie with a cool $27 million.
So we thought we’d take a look back at the classic bank robber flick, and all its glorious gangster suits, billowy shirtsleeves and invisi-ties.
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We’ve always got time for French movies about sex.
And as it happens, one of our favorites is arriving on DVD and Blu-ray tomorrow. It’s called The Rules of the Game, and it’s a regular on Sight & Sound’s “10 Best Movies of All Time” list—but the movie is more accessible than the parade of gushing film critics might suggest.
At its core, The Rules of the Game is just an unusually sharp, exceedingly well-dressed sex farce—all canoodling and careless wealth circa 1939. There are hunting parties, a few illicit tumbles in the servants’ quarters and at least one murder, most of which should sound familiar to anyone who’s flipped through Gatsby recently.
Trust us: it’s worth a few subtitles.
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With the release of the long-awaited film version of Hunter S. Thompson’s The Rum Diary, we thought we’d lend a hand in separating debaucherous fact from debaucherous fiction.
In particular, we’re going to see how the rum-soaked shenanigans described in the book/film stack up against the real-life shenanigans that inspired them. We’ve teed up some of the most notable (notorious?) moments in the film below…
Photographer Scott Toepfer has been exploring the Western U.S. by motorcycle for the past few years, but he’s finally finished his grand diesel-smelling opus. It’s called It’s Better in the Wind, and it’s a solid 13 minutes of brilliant biker photography, along with some wheezing harmonica and earnest narration. Mountains! Moto jackets! America!
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The first pics from Ryan Gosling’s The Place Beyond the Pines just arrived online. In a radical departure from Drive, he plays a taciturn, bank-robbing motorcycle expert—but if the platinum hair is any indication, he’s a little more punk this time around.
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One of the best parts of Casino is the endless parade of exquisitely tacky suits worn by Robert De Niro over the course of the film. (It was Vegas in the 80s, after all.) But if you don’t feel like sitting through three hours to see them all, a clever designer just rounded up 45 of the salmon- and mint-hued wonders for this tribute poster. Do not, under any circumstances, use it as a shopping list.
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Baz Luhrmann’s Great Gatsby adaptation continues to trundle along, and a few set photos leaked out this week to prove it. By the looks of it, Tobey Maguire makes a pretty good Nick Carraway, right down to the summer suit. Just don’t try that straw boater at home.
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The lab coat can be a tricky item to navigate, but we’ve finally found a blog post to teach us the finer points with a few movie stills. Our favorite quote, concerning Independence Day: “Unkempt hair is a great style for any academic pursuit, but throw it together with a fresh white lab coat and you, sir, have got yourself a look.” We’ll leave that one to the professionals.
This snap comes via the upcoming Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, in which Tom Hardy conducts spy business in a tan Baracuta. Note the tiny hint of a pattern peeking out from behind the lapel and the cigarette gripped in the manner of James Dean. Nicely done.
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Foreign action movie villains have given us a lot over the years. So when news came down the transom yesterday that Werner Herzog was joining the illustrious accented fraternity (opposite Tom Cruise, no less), we couldn’t resist a quick tour of the most memorable (and most accented) villains the movies have to offer. They seem to favor designer suits…
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We don’t normally go for souvenir jackets, but this one’s too good to pass up. Spurred on by the whims of just about everyone we’ve talked to in the last week, someone’s finally put together a replica of the satin scorpion jacket from Drive.
Naturally, it’s hard for us to be impartial about this—so we’ll just say it’s good news.
We’ll be the first to admit, the jacket’s not perfect. It’s sold through an unusually sketchy site and we can’t vouch for the quality—even compared to your average, non-film-related satin souvenir jacket. Still, Halloween’s closer than you think.
Now, to find a plastic hammer.
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We thought we’d take a moment to salute Blue Velvet, on the 25th anniversary of its original wide release. The psychopaths get all the press, but it’s a more stylish movie than you remember—full of Orbison kitsch, invisi-ties and the same sense of creeping dread that fueled so much of the 80s underground. And as The Squid and the Whale reminded us, masterpiece or no, it’s still the worst date movie ever made. You can see a fond remembrance and that Orbison cover here.
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With film blogs are currently buzzing about Martin Scorcese’s planned remake of The Gambler, we thought we’d take a moment to salute one of our favorite subgenres: the gambling movie. This isn’t about high-stakes games of skill like poker or pool; it’s just one blind chance after another, following the ebbs and flows of chaos. And maybe the occasional casino heist…
Since we’re still feeling for surfboards, we thought we’d take a spin through an underrated pastime: the surf film.
The classics are Endless Summer and the exhaustive doc Riding Giants, both of which are good to have on deck for your next Sunday afternoon. (They also both happen to be on repeat at Montauk’s Surf Lodge, if you’re passing through.)
But we’re talking about something a little more casual and a little less well known: the string of sun-dappled flicks that emerged out of acid-era southern California. They’re less about a coherent narrative than beautiful shots of surfers in mid-wave. We’ve gathered together a few of our favorites after the jump, for a little wave-riding by proxy.
Check out clips from the best of late 60s and early 70s surf film»
Just like the army, there’ll always be a counter-culture. And even in Gekko-era Wall Street (quite possibly the squarest setting imaginable), there’s always a chance for a change in style
Something Wild arrives on Criterion tomorrow, quite possibly the perfect parable of counter-cultural temptation. The prospect of buying a car from John Waters, hitting the road in a thrift-store suit and seeing the Feelies play a high school reunion still sounds pretty good—even if you like your suit the way it is.
Some new pics from Terrence Malick’s long-delayed Tree of Life made it to the web today, bringing a healthy dose of 50s style along for the ride. By all accounts, the movie gets pretty far out there (there are dinosaurs, for starters), but anything that casts Brad Pitt in the Ward Cleaver role has earned our $12. We’re crossing our fingers for a khaki-themed voice-over.
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Last night was an emotional roller coaster for anyone who cares about stammering royalty or Kirk Douglas’ well-being, but we thought we’d offer a few extra awards as a palette cleanser, starting with the best penguin suit of the night. Statuettes are available on request.
For all the pageantry associated with black tie events, they tend to be a bit…uncreative.
Take this Pete-Campbell esque suit for example, worn by Darren Aronofsky to the Academy Awards luncheon earlier this week. You’d never get away with this sort of thing in black tie territory, but at an event where a fair number of the attendees were wearing jeans, it’s entirely fair game. And, as it happens, it’s pretty sharp.
And while we’re not giving up the tux-watch entirely, but we’ve gotten a lot more out of this year’s luncheon class pic than anything we’ve seen on a red carpet. Between Aaron Sorkin’s old-man suit and the Coen Brothers’ grad-student scruff, you can actually get a sense of personal style, which is more than we can say for the last few telecasts.
But the main lesson, as usual, is that Jeff Bridges always looks fantastic.
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The Great Gatsby has seen a lot of half-hearted film adaptations, but they’ve finally put together one we’re excited about. The advanced snap above is a pretty good indication of why: a pitch-perfect Carey Mulligan as Daisy. But after that…let’s just say, things get complicated.
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At the risk of getting all misty, we’d like to a minute to sing the praises of Mr. Dino de Laurentiis, the film producer of film producers, who just finished up a pretty spectacular 91 year run.
He gets most of his rep for Barbarella—and we’re certainly not complaining—but he also had a hand in more flat-out classic than almost anyone in Hollywood can claim as theirs. The short list includes La Strada, Serpico, Manhunter and Blue Velvet. Along the way, he wrote the playbook independent producers have been following for decades, a nifty little trick involving foreign release rights, pre-production distribution guarantees and enough financial sleight-of-hand to rival anything on Wall Street.
In short, he was a player—talking fast, handling business, and wearing awesome sunglasses to the end. We salute you, sir.
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For a movie getting a lavish update, the original Tron’s been pretty quiet. There was talk of a Blu-Ray release earlier in the year, but it disappeared almost as soon as it was announced. Last week saw a pretty good guess as to why: it’s embarassing. The CGI is all neon grids and pre-Pixar geometry, the lost-in-a-computer storyline feels obsolete in an age of smartphones, and the live-action elements stick out like a forehead tattoo reading “1982.” An HD release would only emphasize the awful truth: this is how we thought computers worked back then.
Which is to say, it’s pretty fantastic—as long as you’re not the type to be embarrassed about the past.
