Look
Ryan Gosling is in a new movie with Anthony Hopkins -- Fracture. Ryan Gosling was really good in Half Nelson, the low-budget film about a Brooklyn teacher who's addicted to crack and trying to teach 7th graders the dialectical approach to history. That movie was fascinating -- you saw Gosling flailing around in his personal life while still trying to hold it together as a history teacher. Meanwhile he's buying drugs from the cousin and mentor of a little girl in his class he's forming a strong, unsettling friendship with.
Did I already write about that?
Anyway, what about that name, Gosling? Wouldn't that have caused the guy a butt-load of trouble while he was growing up? Would kids yell, "Hey Ryan! Where's the quisling?" or would it be even more abusive?
Maybe living down that name has contributed to the strength of this rising young actor.
posted by La Misma at 7:06 AM
6 Comments:
quisling: a person who betrays his or her own country by aiding an invading enemy, often serving later in a puppet government; fifth columnist.
[Origin: 1940; after Vidkun Quisling (1887–1945), pro-Nazi Norwegian leader]
I had to look that up.
I don't get it.
Someone else told me fracture was good today.
7:31 PM
Oh, weird. I always thought a quisling was like a gosling in some way. Like a female gosling. Isn't there some species who has that distinction?
Thanks for setting me straight. I often sling words around without knowing what they mean. Tonight I was thinking something was 'ineluctably' something and I realized I don't know what ineluctably means, I just know it's an intensifier.
Once I had an essay returned to me with the word 'very' circled by a professor and she'd written lightly in pencil: "Intensifier." I realized from this delicate comment that intensifiers are bad. It was exhilarating to learn that for some reason. Just a thing about writing I'd never suspected.
It's 5:19 am. I can't sleep.
2:18 AM
You know what's weird? I just saw Half Nelson last week. I thought it was an amazing movie.
12:27 PM
By the way, any theories on why Half Nelson is called "Half Nelson"?
12:30 PM
vacuous, that IS weird. I'm really glad you agree with me about that movie.
Was his name nelson in the film? If so, I think the name referred to his damaged state, his less-than-full participation in life. In some ways he wasn't even half-way present -- he seemed numb almost beyond reach.
I really liked how the movie made the point that living in Bush's America is part of what brings an intelligent young men like this to this crushed state. He was in pain from his culture, not from a personal, subjective thing. Or not only that.
12:55 PM
I don't know if he was named Nelson. That would make sense.
The teacher is definitely chewed up by the machine in the same way his students are, but there's more to it than that. One of the things that's so interesting about the story is that it defies glib analysis. At least I haven't been happy with any that I've come up with.
7:00 PM
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