Nicolas Winding Refn

[wilder]

Miles Teller To Star In Nicolas Winding Refn’s Amazon Series ‘Too Old To Die Young’
via Deadline

Miles Teller (Whiplash) is set as the series lead for Amazon’s upcoming original drama series Too Old to Die Young, from Nicolas Winding Refn.

Written by Refn (Neon Demon, Drive) and Ed Brubaker (Captain America: Winter Soldier, Westworld), Too Old to Die Young explores the criminal underbelly of Los Angeles by following killers’ existential journeys in becoming samurai. The entire series will be directed by Refn.

Teller will play Martin, a police officer entangled in the world of assassins.

[Sleepless]

Introducing byNWR

Sources: Playlist, Variety, Mubi

TLDR: Nicolas Winding Refn launching free curated film streaming service. Launching February 2018. First quarter will be exploitation films from the American South. Second quarter will focus on lesser known works from American independent cinema. MUBI is partnering with the Danish director to premiere these newly restored movies on our platform before they are available on byNWR.com. Films included in these first 2 quarters include The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds, Shanty Tramp, Hot Thrills and Warm Chills, Night Tide, Spring Night, Summer Night, If Footmen Tire You, What Would Horses Do?, The Burning Hell. Highlights from Volumes 3 and 4 will be announced later this year.

If you want to get a free month of Mubi, here's my affiliate link.

[jenkins]

a classic ad

[wilder]

Introducing byNWR

Sources: Playlist, Variety, Mubi

TLDR: Nicolas Winding Refn launching free curated film streaming service. Launching February 2018. First quarter will be exploitation films from the American South. Second quarter will focus on lesser known works from American independent cinema. MUBI is partnering with the Danish director to premiere these newly restored movies on our platform before they are available on byNWR.com. Films included in these first 2 quarters include The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds, Shanty Tramp, Hot Thrills and Warm Chills, Night Tide, Spring Night, Summer Night, If Footmen Tire You, What Would Horses Do?, The Burning Hell. Highlights from Volumes 3 and 4 will be announced later this year.

If you want to get a free month of Mubi, here's my affiliate link.

This arrived in my inbox today:

[wilder]

This never turned out to be anything more than a promotion but I wish it were real.

[jenkins]

last night he moderated a Jodorowsky Q&A at the Egyptian. i only didn't go because Holy Mountain isn't an example of how i'm a fan of Jodorowsky.

so i googled their backstory and google worked like it should. here's Jodorowsky saying Refn saved him from film depression

Refn dedicated Only God Forgives to Jodorowsky, oh that's right. here's the article that reminded me and a quote from it

Refn explains how the hyper-expressive Jodorowsky is the one
that gave Refn the courage to avoid the big blockbuster sinkhole. “I called
Jodorowsky in Paris and he says to me, ‘What is this shit in Hollywood, why?’”
Refn says, launching into an impassioned Jodo impersonation. “And I thought I
was being yelled at! ‘You must not let your vision be destroyed!’ And I was
like, I know, I know, I was wrong. ‘You have to stay true, or else I’ll not
like you anymore!’ He’s like ninety, but he has the mind of a comet.

wilder's post of that article. i guess the news was the Q&A, kind of minor news, really i remembered things out loud oh okay sure.

[wilder]

First images from Too Old To Die Young, which may not premiere until 2019. Refn is also posting production videos on Facebook (log in to view…they’re long, like 45 min to an hour)

[wilder]

Refn's streaming service, byNWR.com, is launching later this month, for free.

Over recent years, I’ve bought and had restored scores of old movies as a hobby. I wondered what to do with them. Then I realized I should share them for free, so I set up a website where they could be streamed. There’s no catch; you’re not being sold anything. Take it or leave it.

Why these particularly movies? I knew director Curtis Harrington, who passed away in 2007, so Night Tide was a very personal choice for me. Curtis had been so disappointed with his career, and yet he had made what I consider to be one of the most important films of the pre-counterculture movement. And the film was rapidly disintegrating because of the condition of the negative. I had to rescue it. It reminds me of a Hans Christian Andersen fairytale: it’s almost naively adolescent in its expression of falling in love, being obsessed with something delicate and fragile.

Bert Williams’ The Nest of the Cuckoo Birds proves a movie can be the impossible, lonely burden of just one person. Bert’s name appears in the credits more than even mine is in my films – and I admire such obsession and megalomania. Maybe, like Bert, you only need to make one movie in your life. Bert – an artist who created the outrageous poster for the film – decided to paint on film instead of a canvas. Cuckoo Birds is a strange, singular example of an unidentifiable genre, because it’s a bit of everything: horror, sex, melodrama.



Ron Ormond’s The Burning Hell is a fantastic marriage of extreme propaganda and lowest-common-denominator pandering. It’s so aggressive in selling you the Bible, it’s practically an attack on your senses. Yes, it’s laughable, maybe even terrible, but this only serves to make it more unique. It’s almost an installation art piece. And some might consider the star of the show, Reverend Estus Pirkle, to be a bit of a Trump precursor.

Dale Berry’s Hot Thrills and Warm Chills is a prime example for the argument that art doesn’t have to contain a single drop of good taste. My fetish for Berry is so great that I not only bought all of his films, I bought all of his clothes – a collection of Nudie western suits. Low-budget regional cinema fascinates me. These were movies made by people who had no ideas of what a film was supposed to be, and feel more as if they were made for the people at the bar on the corner or the cafeteria down the street than for Americans at large.

[wilder]

‘Maniac Cop’ TV Series Reboot From Nicolas Winding Refn Picked Up By HBO & Canal+
via Deadline

Maniac Cop, a TV series reimagining of the cult classic film franchise from Nicolas Winding Refn and John Hyams (Black Summer, Universal Soldier: Regeneration), has been greenlighted by HBO, which will carry the event series in North America, and by Canal+, which has taken French rights.

The series makes the first production for byNWR Originals, ab independent studio launched by Refn as an offshoot of his byNWR.com Web site. He and Hyams will executive produce and direct.

Set in Los Angeles, Maniac Cop is told through a kaleidoscope of characters, from cop to common criminal. A killer in uniform has uncaged mayhem upon the streets. Paranoia leads to social disorder as a city wrestles with the mystery of the exterminator in blue – is he mere mortal, or a supernatural force?

[wilder]

June 2, 2020

US blu-ray premiere from IFC Films

[wilder]

Laurent Duroche's 2012 documentary NWR is back online. Watch before it gets pulled again.

[wilder]

The Pusher Trilogy is coming to the Arrow Video Channel in May