Manufacturing The Movie Star: Musings On Ryan Gosling

I like to imagine that somewhere in the annals of Hollywood exists a factory. In this factory the overlords/taskmasters/biological engineering geniuses have boxes stacked upon boxes of body parts waiting to be assembled and brought to life in some kind of insane ritual that straddles the line between heretical and miraculous. These Victor Frankensteins toil away all hours of the day mixing and matching parts until the day when the big studios of the world place an order for a superstar. An order was placed some years ago, and the latest creature to be unleashed upon the unsuspecting world was Ryan Gosling, star of Drive and The Ides of March. A man whose star has seemingly risen to insane amounts in the last few months that it has fallen into place, as Bob Dylan may say, so perfectly, it all seems so well timed. But, as a fan of Ryan Gosling's career thus far, I find myself slightly conflicted.

Box Office Battle - July 29th

I should probably reconsider the purpose of this column. In an attempt to show off my amazing knowledge to the world of my many reader(s), it seems I have been caught with my pants down facing the mirror. After last week's mess of a guess where I - and to be fair just about everyone else on the internet - underestimated just how much America loves movies about America...or captains of America as the case my be, I have had to grapple with the fact that I may be trying to gauge the country's cultural pulse with a scalpel rather than a stethoscope. Now with three major motion pictures muscling their way in to theaters I have put aside all misconceived medical metaphors to make my movie money estimates for the coming weekend.