Real Boy Ryan

It's really frustrating that most of the movies I want to see are released during the time of year I have the least time to see them: mid-October to late November. Sometimes I just have a brown out due to the wealth of choices and decide to see lesser works as I did today with Lars and the Real Girl. I can always say that it was an excuse to see a preview of I'm Not There on a screen larger than the one of my VAIO (also the name of my favorite beach near Osaka). Seeing that preview on the big screen was worth the price of admission. I also have to admit that Lars, which has been receiving decidedly mixed reviews, is one of the first films where I did not look at my watch once.

I would go to about any movie with Ryan Gosling in it, and he is certainly the best method actor younger than my niece with both the Mickey Mouse Club and experience playing a Jewish neo-Nazi on his resume. In fact, I can't think of an actor I've been so smitten with in ages. It's all the more remarkable that his blond boy smoothness defies every predisposition of my past states of being smitten, though he closely resembles my first...well, I won't get into the details of that in this post. As in The Half Nelson, his Lars is another irresistible mess though of a completely different order. Interestingly, Lars has been critiqued most frequently for a lack of cynicism and for presenting a kind Middle America that the likes of Alexander Payne have long educated us does not exist. Personally I've grown increasingly tired of Payne's dark portrait of the great muddle in the middle. Election, yes; Schmidt, no. Seeing Lars in a church lady knitting circle with pro-gay grannies didn't bother me and wasn't that unbelievable either. Even as a chubby Lars, Ryan was fetching, but certainly not in the intense Half Nelson way, in which he made even a band aid take on a life of its own.

According to recent sightings of Gosling in Manhattan on Gawker/Stalker (he reportedly shops at Urban Outfitters -- wonder if it's the same one in Soho I frequented weekly in the early 1990s?), he's very pleasant and approachable in person compared the predictably jerk-off Russell Crowe (much less talented and far less attractive). He also hangs out at a bar named Mr. Biggs. (Hmmm. True Junk Thief insiders will get the multiple meanings of that one.) In interviews he won't even take the bait to trash fellow Mousketeer Britney. Then again, maybe it's the Canadian thing, further evidence that it is a country known for producing comics and people with good manners.

Too bad they don't make a blow up Ryan, unfortunately. Would I be as disciplined as Lars as to have him chastely waiting upstairs in my dead parents' bedroom if they did? Probably so. I'm much more romantic than many of you would be led to believe. But my blow up Ryan would accept my wedding proposal and all would eventually be consummated. By the way, I agree that the movie is totally manipulative, but I also cried during the last third.