Ryan Gosling - Half Nelson #2: Who's Your Generation's Budding Brando? (Minor Spoilers)

**-Bianca-** · 10-29-2006, 07:30 AM

The title is semi-ripped from this review.

HN's official site.

Cast:

Ryan Gosling .... Dan Dunne
Shareeka Epps .... Drey
Anthony Mackie .... Frank
Monique Curnen .... Isabel (as Monique Gabriela Curnen)
Karen Chilton .... Karen
Tina Holmes .... Rachel
Collins Pennie .... Mike
Deborah Rush .... Jo
Jay O. Sanders .... Russ
Bryce Silver .... Bernard
Sebastian Sozzi .... Javier
Nicole Vicius .... Cindy
Tristan Wilds .... Jamal
Stephanie Bast .... Vanessa
Nathan Corbett .... Terrence
Thaddeus Daniels .... Referee
Deidre Goodwin .... Tina
Susan Kerner .... Motel Slow Dancer
Adepero Oduye .... Woman in Motel Room
Christopher Williamson .... Charles

Summary:

An inner-city junior high school teacher with a drug habit forms an unlikely friendship with one of his students after she discovers his secret.

IMDB

**-Bianca-** · 10-29-2006, 07:39 AM

Quote:

Axiom grapples 'Half Nelson'
Newcomer snaps up U.K. rights to Fleck's U.S. indie
By ADAM DAWTREYAxiom Films has bought all U.K. rights to Ryan Fleck's U.S. indie drama "Half Nelson."

Sold internationally by ThinkFilm, pic bowed at Sundance and went on to win prizes at Locarno and Deauville. It had its U.K. premiere Friday at the London Film Festival.

Ryan Gosling plays a drug-addicted teacher in an inner-city high school who forms an unlikely friendship with one of his pupils.

Variety.com - Axiom grapples 'Half Nelson'

**vc318** · 10-29-2006, 01:27 PM

Go Ryan!

**-Bianca-** · 10-30-2006, 04:47 PM

There's something about that emoticon that always makes me smile.

Quote:

All three of the main actors are superb. As has been echoed in most reviews of the film, Gosling deserves an Oscar nomination for this performance. Whether he will get one remains to be seen - this is a woefully underseen film - but it's a terrific performance nonetheless and the high point in his career thus far. (If you've ever seen his film "The Believer," you know how high this must be.) The relationship between Dan and Drey is quite touching, but as Dan spirals out of control, there is a scene near the end that will absolutely break your heart.

The Crimson White Online - 'Half Nelson' features sterling performances

**heaven85** · 11-01-2006, 12:25 AM

Cool. Awesome.

**-Bianca-** · 11-01-2006, 07:26 AM

HN is showing at the Pensacola International Film Festival.

**heaven85** · 11-01-2006, 10:54 PM

Thanks for the link.

**-Bianca-** · 11-03-2006, 08:05 AM

Quote:

If he put aside put-upon, would Gosling still be a star?
Published November 3, 2006

It was as if I had my own Ryan Gosling film festival. I saw his movie Half Nelson at Enzian Theater and an earlier movie, Stay, on a premium channel.

I love what Sentinel movie critic Roger Moore calls Gosling: Edward Norton Lite.

R.G., who always looks tired and put-upon, plays his specialty, troubled young men, in both Half Nelson and Stay -- a druggie in the former, a mental case in the pretentiously arty Stay.

It's hard to believe R.G. was on The New Mickey Mouse Club with such lightweights as Britney and Justin. How great are their movie careers? Does Britney even have a career?

As good movies do, Half Nelson, in which Gosling plays a teacher, reminded me of a couple of incidents when I taught junior high: A colleague started coming to school with liquor on her breath, and another teacher and I tried to help her, to little avail. Then one morning about 3, she called me and said she had a gun and was going to kill herself. I went to her apartment and talked her down (it wasn't easy), and last I heard she got her act together, married and had kids -- which is a more satisfactory ending than the one in Half Nelson.

If he put aside put-upon, would Gosling still be a star? - Orlando Sentinel : Columnists

Quote:

On the other hand, Ryan Gosling has been a critics' darling since Henry Bean's The Believer, but his role in Ryan Fleck's indie drama Half Nelson is a new career high. Can indie distributor THINKFilm get Oscar voters to see the movie?

The Oscar Warrior's '07 Awards Preview - ComingSoon.net

Quote:

Ryan Gosling, who's been up and coming for the last few years, gets his best big-screen showcase in Half Nelson, a hard-hitting urban melodrama that allows him ample opportunity to display his range.

RelishNow | Excellent cast, good script turn out a moving urban drama in 'Half-Nelson'

Quote:

Ryan Gosling is electrifying in the role, delivering a performance that is sure to catapult him into the front ranks of stardom. He is at once invisibly naturalistic and hypnotically watchable, believably wise and a little nuts (there go those dialectics again).

What happens in his work here is something beyond reciting lines and pretending; it's a kind of imaginative alchemy.

:: TheSouthern.com - The Southern Illinoisan ::

**heaven85** · 11-04-2006, 12:35 PM

all the Ryan praise. He so deserves it. Thanks for posting Bianca.

**-Bianca-** · 11-05-2006, 09:10 PM

YW.

The Kalamazoo Film Society is showing HN.

**heaven85** · 11-08-2006, 12:42 AM

Thanks for the link Bianca.

**-Bianca-** · 11-08-2006, 12:05 PM

Quote:

The outside man
Ryan Gosling's performance in "Half Nelson" is arguably the year's best reviewed. Yet Gosling isn't at the top of many Oscar lists. He could probably be a bigger star — a leading-man, Hollywood-actor type. Rather, with performances such as his startlingly alive turn in "Half Nelson" as a drugged-out high school teacher taking tentative first steps toward changing his life, the actor is charting a path entirely his own.

"There is this idea in Hollywood," Gosling says, "and I've seen it work for people, where the unspoken rule is 'Do two for them and one for yourself.' And that's kind of considered a fact. I've never really found that to be true for me. I've gotten more opportunities out of working on things I believed in than I ever did on things that weren't special to me."

Gosling is unabashedly direct as to why he has become so specific about the roles he'll take on.

"Listen, I've done a lot. I've been working since I was 12. I worked a long time without any freedom, where I was just selling ad space on TV and saying the lines I was supposed to say and trying to please people. And it took me a long time to get to a place were I felt I could work for myself and work for the experience."

http://www.fanforum.com/f216/half-ne...lers-62783004/

**heaven85** · 11-10-2006, 12:32 AM

Cool. Thanks Bianca.

**-Bianca-** · 11-10-2006, 08:58 AM

A positive review of HN's soundtrack.

Quote:

While the story is strong, this really is an actors’ movie. Without the assembled acting talent, a quiet film about relationships wouldn’t have a leg to stand on. Gosling’s wide-eyed innocence, hiding behind a grown up beard, makes the potentially loathable Dan into a sympathetic character.

The Daily Evergreen Online - Life - Movies

Quote:

Try something: I'm sure many of you missed Ryan Gosling's engaging performance in "Half Nelson," the carefully constructed tale of an idealistic teacher who befriends a student who could be in for trouble. If you like movies that eschew stereotypes and focus on real human interactions, catch this little indie at Carlisle Theatre this weekend.

PennLive.com

Quote:

One hallmark of a great acting performance is when it leads you away from the predictable response.

[...]

And yet, the stunning, almost-wordless dramatic dance between Canadian boy Ryan Gosling and newbie actor Epps (no relation to Omar) eventually overpowers everything that's wrong about their relationship. Theirs is a real rapport, a friendship based on respect, and minus any hint of sexual impropriety.

[...]

It doesn't add up to a complete picture, though Gosling works wonders with what he has.

edmontonsun.com - Weekend - Chemistry binds unique relationship

Quote:

A history teacher who remembers the past but is doomed to repeat it anyway, Dan is a difficult concoction brought to remarkable life by Gosling in a performance of such intelligent subtlety that you doubt there's another actor who could have done it.

"You're just a big baby," says his former girlfriend Rachel (Tina Holmes), who drops by for a visit to her lovable disaster of an ex, but he's also feisty and hopeful and hopelessly addicted for reasons we can only guess at but that Gosling makes believable.

[...]

Half Nelson grew out of a short film called Gowanus, Brooklyn, that also featured Epps, whose sunshine smile and knowing face make her a match for Gosling in their scenes together.

Gosling wrestles with addiction in Half Nelson

**heaven85** · 11-10-2006, 11:06 AM

Yeah!!! Thanks for the reviews Bianca.