Withering Glance: Ryan Gosling is our guy

RN: So, Ryan Gosling.

CP: No recession for him. He's been in every other movie this year. Not that I'm complaining.

RN: How many other actors are as pretty as he is, sport what my friend Dana used to refer to as the B.O.D. -- the Body of Death -- and still exude a raging heterosexuality?

CP: His B.O.D. is a recent phenom. In earlier movies, like "Half Nelson," Gosling was indie-scrawny. But if you're going to go all Hollywood, and get action movies ("Drive") and leads in George Clooney movies, you gotsta get with a trainer.

RN: His Royal Buffness certainly made a splash as a GQ cover boy earlier this year. The magazine poured him into some D&G stretch-fiber togs that no doubt flew off the shelf. I suppose he's probably too serious an actor to flaunt his eight-pack across Men's Health. Besides, that's Jason Statham's territory.

CP: As a politico's press secretary in "Ides of March," Gosling's fitted oxford shirts were almost unable to contain him.

RN: So true to life on the campaign trail, right? Although I did appreciate how director Clooney cast first-class schlubs Paul Giamatti and Philip Seymour Hoffman as career political operatives. Those two look like they've been feasting off Marriott happy-hour buffets since the 1996 Clinton-Dole slugfest.

RN: I'm guessing not. I enjoyed him more in the stupidly named "Crazy, Stupid, Love," where he plays a reformed Lothario. The script's most memorable line is when Emma Stone sees a shirtless Gosling for the first time and laughs. "Seriously?" she says, gazing at his sculpted, dipped-in-honey torso. "It's like you're Photoshopped!"

CP: Having briefly fainted, I missed her laugh line. Another attribute that helps make Gosling a star is his nose.

RN: I know. Not since Streisand has a shnoz gripped the nation.

CP: "Ides of March" opens with a long take on his spotlit head, in profile, prepping for a campaign debate.

RN: That scene made me wonder if Clooney, like 98 percent of mankind, has a crush on Mr. G. Or, at the very least, covets that proboscis.