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Ryan Gosling… nominated for two Golden Globe Awards.
Billy Suter
DANIEL Radcliffe, young star of the Harry Potter film franchise, may have emerged as the actor who raked in more cash this year than any other – thanks to the huge success of the final film about the boy wizard, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 – but the golden boy of the year is Canadian actor Ryan Gosling.
Not only was the 31-year-old named Man of the Year by influential movie magazine Total Film, but a film in which he stars, Drive, currently showing in Durban, has been rated by both that magazine and another, the equally highly regarded Empire, as the finest of the year.
In addition, Gosling is now a shoo-in for an Oscar nod after being the only actor nominated at the weekend for a Golden Globe Award in both the dramatic and comedy-musical fields.
Gosling is a contender for the Best Drama Actor statuette for Ides of March (opening in Durban on Friday), an award for which co-star George Clooney has also been nominated.
Also in a bit of an upset, Gosling been nominated in the comedy-musical category for Crazy, Stupid, Love.
It’s Drive, however, which has had most critics salivating.
“There’s no question that this was a big year for the Gos. Not only did he break up a street fight in the viral video seen around the world, he also acted the heck out of three great movies: Drive, The Ides of March and Crazy, Stupid, Love,” writes a reviewer on the MTV website.
“We’ve been on the Gosling train for years now, and it’s fantastic to see him getting recognised by the Globes this year. But it’s what he was nominated for that left us shocked. If the choice were up to us, Gosling would be nominated for Drive, not The Ides of March,” the site adds.
The only nod for Drive from the Golden Globes – which are to be presented on January 15 – went to Albert Brooks for his supporting role in the thriller.
Total Film, in its summary of the finest pictures of 2011, says of Drive: “Gosling’s toothpick-chomping wheelman with no name is the kind of anti-hero more likely to be found preening in his rear-view mirror than doing Fast and Furious-style handbrake turns”.
Adds the magazine: “But that’s the beauty of Nicolas Winding Refn’s paean to ’80s B-movies, a superbly shot, neon-lit throwback to early Michael Mann.
“Gosling smoulders brilliantly, whether lusting after Carey Mulligan, delivering splatter-tastic beatings with his bare hands, or pulling on his oh-so-stylised leather driving gloves. He’s an existential enigma.”
Empire, in its summary, labels Drive “ultra-cool, ultraviolent, ’80s-style LA noir”, adding that “it’s as if someone distilled a tincture of the ’80s, all cocaine attitude and Giorgio Moroder, and mainlined it into something like the present”.
The two magazines differ in what movie they rate as the next-best of 2011, Total Film tipping a hat to Terrence Malick’s cerebral The Tree of Life, with Brad Pitt, and Empire opting for the “remarkable and affecting” Ayrton Senna documentary, Senna.
Born on November 12, 1980, Gosling first came to public attention as a child star on the Disney Channel’s Mickey Mouse Club, from 1993 to 1995, reports Wikipedia.
His first serious role was as a fanatic Neo-Nazi in The Believer (2001), and he then built a reputation for playing misfits in independent films such as Murder by Numbers (2002), The Slaughter Rule (2002), The United States of Leland (2003) and Stay (2005).
Adds Wikipedia: “He came to the attention of a wider audience in 2004 with a leading role in the romantic drama The Notebook, for which he won four Teen Choice Awards and an MTV Movie Award.”
