Blue Valentine

Derek Cianfrance's "Blue Valentine," starring Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling, is a beginning and an ending, an intensely intimate rendering of love that limits itself to that first falling in and that last falling out. Without a middle, the writers ? Cianfrance, Joey Curtis and Cami Delavigne ? have still put in everything we need to know about a relationship that is fraying faster than either Cindy (Williams) or Dean (Gosling) grasps. It is painful and moving to watch as they lose hold of the few threads still connecting them, including 5-year-old daughter Frankie (a soulful young Faith Wladyka)

Ryan Gosling, currently starring opposite his real-life love Eva Mendes in the darkly wrought drama of "The Place Beyond the Pines," is always chemically combustible on screen. That romantic power crystallized early on in 2004's "The Notebook. " His rain-soaked embrace of co-star Rachel McAdams, also an off-screen love for a time, made him into an overnight heartthrob. But Gosling was never a one-night stand. Over time the roles, and the performances, have only gotten better - opposite Michelle Williams in "Blue Valentine," showing killer charm with Carey Mulligan in "Drive," the player gone soft on Emma Stone in "Crazy, Stupid, Love" with that impossible "Dirty Dancing" lift.

He's played a Jewish neo-Nazi, a crack-addict schoolteacher and a man who falls in love with an inflatable doll. But suggest to Ryan Gosling, an independent-film poster child for the better part of a decade, that he chooses roles for their complexity rather than their commercial appeal and he'll wave you aside. "When I make these movies, I don't think, 'I want to make a little indie movie and I want to stay in the indie world because I think it's cool,'" says the twinkle-eyed Canadian actor.

Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper have proven their box-office mettle over the past few years but what about Derek Cianfrance? The indie director, who astonished audiences in 2010 with his debut feature "Blue Valentine" starring Gosling and Michelle Williams, is becoming a box-office brand in his own right. This Easter weekend the 39-year old director dominated the new releases at the specialty box office with his sprawling 15-year epic "The Place Beyond the Pines. " Opening in just four theaters in New York and Los Angeles, the film earned an estimated $270,184, for a per-theater average of $67,546.

Michelle Williams and Ryan Gosling have seen The Future. And it isn't pretty. After taking a month off to gain some weight, pick some fights and prepare to tear down the happy relationship they'd spent more than four years creating for "Blue Valentine," Gosling and Williams showed up for work at the Radisson in King of Prussia, Pa. They'd finished shooting their film couple's courtship, a loose, spontaneous experience full of song, dance and lovemaking,...

Fittingly, it began with a date. Last year, Anton Yelchin, 21 and coming off his performance as Chekov in the film "Star Trek," was sitting nervously in the bar of a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, waiting for a woman five years his senior. On a flight from London, his dinner companion, the British actress Felicity Jones, was also trying to squelch the butterflies. "I remember thinking, 'I just hope he's a good guy,'" she recalled. The two were indeed rendezvousing to see whether they'd make a good couple — only not in real life.

Steve Carell didn't mind the slapping. But the man-kissing was too much. During filming for his new movie "Crazy, Stupid, Love," a romantic dramedy about a father attempting to remake himself after his marriage hits the skids, Carell found himself on the receiving end of some surprise high jinks from costar Ryan Gosling. Like smacking. And smooching. When Gosling improvised a scene by administering a strike across the face, Carell didn't break. "All I wanted was for him to hit me harder and harder," the actor said.

Violence is the trigger in "The Place Beyond the Pines," Derek Cianfrance's latest love letter to bad breaks. But it's the ripple effect of responsibility, regret, limited resources and guilt that makes "Pines" particularly relevant in a time when so many struggle from paycheck to paycheck. Starring Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes, Bradley Cooper, Ray Liotta and Dane DeHaan, the movie is intimate in its telling, sweeping in its issues and stumbles only occasionally. The idiosyncratic Cianfrance tends to gravitate toward the economically challenged who live lives of desperation.

Ryan Gosling and Bradley Cooper have proven their box-office mettle over the past few years but what about Derek Cianfrance? The indie director, who astonished audiences in 2010 with his debut feature "Blue Valentine" starring Gosling and Michelle Williams, is becoming a box-office brand in his own right. This Easter weekend the 39-year old director dominated the new releases at the specialty box office with his sprawling 15-year epic "The Place Beyond the Pines. " Opening in just four theaters in New York and Los Angeles, the film earned an estimated $270,184, for a per-theater average of $67,546.

Ryan Gosling, currently starring opposite his real-life love Eva Mendes in the darkly wrought drama of "The Place Beyond the Pines," is always chemically combustible on screen. That romantic power crystallized early on in 2004's "The Notebook. " His rain-soaked embrace of co-star Rachel McAdams, also an off-screen love for a time, made him into an overnight heartthrob. But Gosling was never a one-night stand. Over time the roles, and the performances, have only gotten better - opposite Michelle Williams in "Blue Valentine," showing killer charm with Carey Mulligan in "Drive," the player gone soft on Emma Stone in "Crazy, Stupid, Love" with that impossible "Dirty Dancing" lift.

Violence is the trigger in "The Place Beyond the Pines," Derek Cianfrance's latest love letter to bad breaks. But it's the ripple effect of responsibility, regret, limited resources and guilt that makes "Pines" particularly relevant in a time when so many struggle from paycheck to paycheck. Starring Ryan Gosling, Eva Mendes, Bradley Cooper, Ray Liotta and Dane DeHaan, the movie is intimate in its telling, sweeping in its issues and stumbles only occasionally. The idiosyncratic Cianfrance tends to gravitate toward the economically challenged who live lives of desperation.

TORONTO--The Big Green Egg is a culinary device that allows chicken and meat to cook for as much as 15 or 20 hours before it's ready. Derek Cianfrance can't get enough of it. The director of "The Place Beyond The Pines"--the family drama that was  one of the breakout titles of the Toronto International Film Festival that ends Sunday--has a thing about time. Specifically, taking a lot of it. PHOTOS: Toronto International Film Festival 2012 For "Pines," he spent a Green Egg-like eon (five years, more than 30 script drafts)

TORONTO -- Ryan Gosling's character lacks for affection in "The Place Beyond The Pines," his new movie that has him as an outlaw-ish bank robber with few human connections. The actor himself is a different story. Even by Goslingian standards -- en masse squealing, constant camera flashes, earnest declarations from total strangers in front of other total strangers about how sexy they find him -- the crowd went over the top for "Pines," in which Gosling reunites with his "Blue Valentine" director, Derek Cianfrance, for a nearly 2 1/2-hour drama, when the movie premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on Friday night.

SERIES Chuck: Chuck and Sarah (Zachary Levi, Yvonne Strahovski) plot their next move on a new episode of the action comedy (8 p.m. NBC). Nikita: Nikita (Maggie Q) and her former protege Alex (Lyndsy Fonseca) cross paths on a new episode of the action drama (8 p.m. KTLA). Extreme Makeover: Home Edition: The team comes to the aid of a legally blind Iowa widow and her six children on back-to-back new episodes (8 and 9 p.m. ABC). Great Performances: The Los Angeles Philharmonic's opening-night gala features the music of George Gershwin, with special guest Herbie Hancock (9 p.m. KOCE)

Her eyes were searching the grounds of the Beverly Hills Hotel, peeking over the bougainvillea at a row of terra cotta-roofed buildings. "I always wonder which bungalow was hers," said Michelle Williams, staring into the distance at a lodging that could have been home to Marilyn Monroe. The icon, whom Williams plays in the film "My Week With Marilyn," lived at the hotel in the late 1950s while in production on the movie "Let's Make Love. " "Is it too pretentious to say I feel I have a relationship with her?"

Fittingly, it began with a date. Last year, Anton Yelchin, 21 and coming off his performance as Chekov in the film "Star Trek," was sitting nervously in the bar of a Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles, waiting for a woman five years his senior. On a flight from London, his dinner companion, the British actress Felicity Jones, was also trying to squelch the butterflies. "I remember thinking, 'I just hope he's a good guy,'" she recalled. The two were indeed rendezvousing to see whether they'd make a good couple — only not in real life.

TORONTO--The Big Green Egg is a culinary device that allows chicken and meat to cook for as much as 15 or 20 hours before it's ready. Derek Cianfrance can't get enough of it. The director of "The Place Beyond The Pines"--the family drama that was  one of the breakout titles of the Toronto International Film Festival that ends Sunday--has a thing about time. Specifically, taking a lot of it. PHOTOS: Toronto International Film Festival 2012 For "Pines," he spent a Green Egg-like eon (five years, more than 30 script drafts)

With the actors that we follow for a lifetime, there is always that one movie that you go back to, the one that represented the moment of discovery, when you knew as you left the theater, you wanted to know what they would do next. For me, with Ryan Gosling, it was "Half Nelson" in 2006, his inner-city junior high teacher idealism clashing with his drug addiction in ways that were both incredibly complex and intimate. With Jessica Chastain, it was more recent, "The Tree of Life" last spring.

With the actors that we follow for a lifetime, there is always that one movie that you go back to, the one that represented the moment of discovery, when you knew as you left the theater, you wanted to know what they would do next. For me, with Ryan Gosling, it was "Half Nelson" in 2006, his inner-city junior high teacher idealism clashing with his drug addiction in ways that were both incredibly complex and intimate. With Jessica Chastain, it was more recent, "The Tree of Life" last spring.

Steve Carell didn't mind the slapping. But the man-kissing was too much. During filming for his new movie "Crazy, Stupid, Love," a romantic dramedy about a father attempting to remake himself after his marriage hits the skids, Carell found himself on the receiving end of some surprise high jinks from costar Ryan Gosling. Like smacking. And smooching. When Gosling improvised a scene by administering a strike across the face, Carell didn't break. "All I wanted was for him to hit me harder and harder," the actor said.