Drive is coming back to the Arclight Hollywood for a week-long run starting Friday, January 6. FilmDistrict is raffling off a scorpion jacket from the movie and 10 prize packs during the Q&A with Albert Brooks after the 7:20pm show in the theater on Friday night, January 6!

If tickets are sold out already for the Friday show, fear not. The film will play at the ArcLight through January 12, and the contest will be running all week long on The Drive Facebook page.

Here’s how to enter:

Take a picture of yourself next to the Drive poster in the main lobby of the Arclight Hollywood (by the coffee bar), then post this photo of yourself on the Drive Facebook page NO LATER THAN Thursday night, January 12, 2012.

Easy right?

One random and lucky contestant will win a scorpion jacket, and another 10 people will win Drive prize packs. 

Drive comes out on DVD/Blu-ray on January 31, but you can pre-order it now from Amoeba.com (with free shipping to US addresses, of course):

Drive Nicolas Winding Refn $26.98 - (Blu-ray)  Continue reading...

I have always been a sucker for shoegaze and dream pop. I just can't get enough of it. I have always loved it and I always will. I just love the dreamy and hazy feel of a really good dream pop album. It can take me away from reality to some other sort of magical place. It is my new age music. Sometimes I hear an album like this for the first time and I immediately fall in love. Sometimes it takes a bit longer. This happened the first time I heard Washed Out. I immediately fell in love. This happened again with Teen Daze. The new album, A Silent Planet, immediately became one of my favorites. I can't get enough and I keep going back to it. It is one of those perfect albums for a hazy overcast morning. Teen Daze is sort of the Canadian version of Sigur Ros. The new album is just six songs. But it really is no shorter than many full length albums these days. It really will transport you to another dimension. I fell in love with the album after just seeing the album artwork. It reminds me of a 70s sort of futuristic painting. A very specific view of science fiction. I sort of expected the album to be all instrumental. Sort of in the style of the amazing album The Days of Mars by Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom. But this album by Teen Daze is full of vocals. It could easily fit in with any band on Sarah Records like Secret Shine or Brighter. But with a more futuristic synthy element. I really do love this album. It is currently near the top of my list.

Check out "The Harvest" by Teen Daze from the new album A Silent Planet...

                 Lars... whoops- David Arquette                                                               The real Lars

In Lars and the Real Girl, Ryan Gosling plays a shy loner who is henpecked by nagging family and friends determined to engage him. He reacts to their attempts to set him up on dates and hang out in familiar and realistic shy guy fashion. Then he buys a sex doll which he falls in love with and all at once we're transported to a world I could only recognize as the familiarly formulaic "quirky indie film." Of course it's in the Middle West (Ontario in real life), the last bastion of quirky, lovable, soft-headed townsfolk with hearts of gold and fresh-baked good intentions.

What I had hoped was going to be a semi-comic observation along the lines of Punch Drunk Love or Chuck & Buck in one contrived bit plunged straight into the territory of an SNL sketch-cum-movie or an Improv skit that goes on for way too long (i.e. over 3 seconds). OK, it's not as bad as those examples, mostly because of the casting and because you don't have Horatio Sanz cracking up at the hilarity of it all. Ryan Gosling goes a long way in making Lars a character we care about even while the script or direction provide almost no insight into what's going on in his head aside from contrived instances with a psychiatrist. We never know if he really thinks the doll is real; does he ever have moments of clarity? What made him change from a believable loner into a delusional cinematic joke? We never know much of anything that goes on inside. You won't laugh, you won't cry, even though it's calculated to make you do just that. Ultimately Lars is just an icon with funny hair, funny clothes, a funny name and a funny relationship with others a la Napoleon Dynamite. Here's hoping he doesn't similarly inspire a legion of "hipster" imitators or else I'm going to have to make a lot more calls to the Redneck Squad.