Skip to main content

Gosling Shot

Continuing the Canadian theme of recent posts, Eyewear wants to briefly celebrate rising Hollywood star, Canadian Ryan Gosling, whose latest turn was opposite Sir Anthony Hopkins (as he is called in American press releases) in a surprise early summer hit, Fracture, co-starring lithe Brit thesp and Bond Girl Rosamund Pike (pictured).

Gosling was not the first actor you'd think to cast as a grasping, smooth and libidinous Southern trial lawyer looking to jump ship from the LA DA's office to a big firm that defends rich creeps, although his earlier roles as a Jewish neo-Nazi and a drug-addicted teacher suggest he is drawn to morally challenged characters (to state the blinking obvious). Gosling was not anyone's idea of a leading man, but all that has changed with Fracture, directed by G. Hoblit, the man who brought us, about a decade back, Primal Fear, another courtroom drama with a twist and a young male lead thereby catapulted to stardom (similarly thin Edward Norton then).

What I find startling and seductive about Gosling's performance in this middle-brow thriller pleasingly punching above its weight with 80s style and 70s-era pacing (it has moments as languorous as Chinatown) is how good it is. He manages to be as yearningly beautiful and ripe for manhood as the younger Paul Newman in The Hustler, say, or Hud. Which is why when Pike plucks him from the tree of innocence, we know his fall will feel good - though office sex usually happens, if it does, after at least a day on the job, one would think.

How he does this is the magic of great acting. By acting exceptionally handsome, he becomes so. Sounds easy, but too often handsome actors can't do it. Gosling exudes the cool of late 60s icons like Newman, like McQueen, and that bodes well for his forthcoming body of work. Peter Jackson is starring him in The Lovely Bones for 2008, and that'll be intriguing.

Meanwhile, what of Hopkins? If Gosling was an odd but inspired casting choice, Hopkins was a no-brainer. Who else to play a sociopath playing cat and mouse from behind bars with a hick agent of the law? Just change the Southern drawl to an Irish brogue, and hey presto! Hopkins should do a few more The Remains of the Day films before he dies, or he may end up being the second most wasted Welsh onscreen acting genius (Richard Burton was the first).

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise