The Year of the Baby Goose
Ryan Gosling, like a lot of other goslings, is Canadian. This one’s an actor. He’s been around so long it’s hard to believe he just turned 30 years old, and yet he’s probably still best known for a romantic, weepie of a soap opera called The Notebook released back in 2004.
That’s about to change. Although he’s got indie cred up the wazoo (Stay, directed by Marc Forster and written by Game of Thrones co-creator David Benioff, Half Nelson in which he played a heroin addicted jr. high school teacher who befriends a troubled student, pre- Fright Night Craig Gillespie’s directorial debut, the incredible Lars and the Real Girl about a shy, emotionally wounded man who has a ‘relationship’ with a doll and gets his town to go along with the illusion, and last but not least Blue Valentine, last year’s idie darling. An honest and painful look at the relationship of two fragile and damaged people, Gosling and his costar Michelle Williams are so raw and open it’s difficult to watch. Brilliant!)
This week Gosling stars with Steve Carrell, Emma Stone and Julianne Moore in probably his most mainstream film since The Notebook, the directing team of Glen Ficara and John Requa’s (I Love You Philip Morris) Crazy, Stupid, Love. The trailers look hilarious, but this is Carrell’s movie for the most part. Gosling will probably be remembered for shedding not only his clothes (although seriously, that’s probably enough) but also shedding some of that indie angst and proving he has a sense of humor.
Of greater interest are the two other films that are due out later this year, during the time period when the awards traps are laid. Drive, is Nicolas Winding Refn’s film about a stunt driver who becomes a wheel man for the mob with dire consequences, that won him the award as Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival in May. We posted the trailer last week and frankly, it blew me away. It looks like an ode to 70′s era psycho action thrillers of the 70′s like The Driver (In which Ryan O’Neal was called “The Driver”; Gosling’s character is known simply as “Driver”), Thief and even a little Bullittfor good measure. it’s an arty action movie, of which there are going to be quite a few this season (Ralph Fiennes’ Coriolanus comes to mind.)
Below are a couple of new images from Drive, one of which features Carey Mulligan who plays his love interest, Irene. The film also stars Bryan Cranston, Christina Hendricks, Ron Perlma, Oscar Isaac and Albert Brooks.
Then there’s The Ides of March, which I am really looking forward to and which will warm up for awards season at the Toronto Int’l Film Festival in September. Gosling plays Stephen Myers, an idealistic staffer for presidential candidate, Governor Mike Morris (George Clooney), who gets a crash course on dirty politics during his stint on the campaign trail.
Gosling and Clooney could be epic. It feels something like the pairing of Newman and Cruise in The Color of Money. Not so much as a torch being passed, since Clooney’s race is nowhere near the finish line, but a master anointing an apprentice.
Clooney directed The Ides of March from a screenplay he co-wrote with his writing/producing partner Grant Heslov. The film has a cast with almost as much mega-wattage as Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy: Marisa Tomei, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Evan Rachel Wood, Jeffrey Wright and Paul Giamatti.
Crazy Stupid Love is in theaters this Friday July 29 in the US and 23 September in the UK, Drive opens September 16 in the US and the 23rd in the UK (oooo Gosling double feature!), The Ides of March opens in the US on October 7 and the 28th in the UK. Depending on the legs of Crazy, Stupid, Love, Ryan Gosling could possibly have three films in theaters at one time. *coughubiquitouscough*
