"This one... I don't even have to ask but, I will. What do you think of this one?"

I tend to go through these phases where I decide I really like an actor or actress and then I proceed to watch almost every movie they have ever been in.

I first did it with Ryan Gosling, now my favorite actor of all time. I had first seen him in Remember the Titans as the adorable Alan Bosley who loves country music. But, like what happens so often, he was a minor role and I didn't pay much attention to him. I next noticed him in the trailer for Murder by Numbers with Sandra Bullock, but I'm not a huge fan of scary movies so initially I did not see it. Then came The Notebook. I read the book first, and made my mom read it too so that she would go to the movie with me :o) It's a pretty sappy romance, but you cannot not fall in love with Noah Calhoun...especially when he is as gorgeous as Ryan Gosling :o) I then proceeded to add every movie he had ever done to my Netflix queue....

Side note: I have been a member of Netflix since the middle of my sophomore year of college (2003) and there are currently 221 movies/TV shows in my queue. I don't think it has been below 200 in several years because I just keep adding to it.

Now, aside from the random TV shows he did before Remember the Titans, I have seen every movie Ryan Gosling has ever made. Granted, that's only 10 movies, but still :o) Between Titans and the Notebook, he mostly played weird, sometimes slightly deranged characters, but he was always phenomenal. Titans, The Believer, Fracture and Lars and the Real Girl being my favorites. I liked Half Nelson, and definitely thought he deserved the Oscar nomination (I have not yet seen The Last King of Scotland, so I cannot say if he deserved to win) but it was a little too depressing for me to want to watch over and over...and over again, and that is pretty much how I determine my favorite movies. I did eventually see Murder by Numbers and it was good, as was The United States of Leland and Stay. The Slaughter Rule was just a little too weird for my taste. All of them are definitely worth seeing.

According to People.com, Ryan Gosling is now working on an album. The group is called Dead Man's Bones and I've only heard one song called "Name in Stone", but it sounds pretty good. The video is different, but I like it...

His next two movies coming out are:

All Good Things with Kirsten Dunst and Jeffrey Dean Morgan about "a detective that begins to unravel a missing-persons case that looks to spell doom -- and quite possibly death -- for the heir to a New York real estate dynasty." Not sure when it'll be released.

Blue Valentine with Michelle Williams about "a contempo married couple, charting their evolution over a span of years by cross-cutting between time periods." Out next year sometime.

I look forward to both, and many more of his movies hopefully, to come.

I do this because I feel like you cannot really say that you like or dislike an actor until you have compared his entire body of work. I definitely do not have time to do this with all actors - if i could somehow find a way to get paid to watch movies all day every day, it might be possible - but for now, I must be more picky about to whom I devote my time.

xoxo

c