Jake: 'Do you want to smell it?' and Rendition makes waves

I thought that when I saw Jake Gyllenhaal's mimicry of the Drunken Woman exclaiming 'I swear to God you look like Jake Gooberballs!', I couldn't laugh longer and harder. But that was not reckoning with the power that is Comic Jake. I have just seen Conan O'Brien's show and Jake's 'Oh my God! Oh my God!' while swirling his arms round like some insane windmill, in imitation of his friend trying to catch a ball heading kind of roughly towards him but not really in the Monster Seats, made me roar with laughter. So much so I had to play it down the phone to a friend (sorry about that).

And then there was the Japanese moment, not to mention Jake asking Conan 'Do you want to smell it?'. At which Conan did indeed get a sniff of the famous 'Jake Gyllenhaal Beard Effect'. Jake needs a comedy - Japan's not the only nation to have seen the light. And then there's the Gnarls Crazy moment! A comic musical, then.



Thanks again to IHJ for downloading Conan for us all to enjoy. And now we know, Jake IS a Red Sox fan - the Yankees cap was a bluff.



There is more to come - a preview clip from Ellen shows that we can expect to see Jake in the kitchen rustling up something so good for Ellen that she asks him to marry her. For me, the pinny would have been enough, the food is an optional extra. Tonight of course (in the US, and tomorrow in the UK) is the Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Jake may no longer be in the UK but he's left some good stuff behind - Jake is interviwed on ITV's This Morning tomorrow morning and again on the ITV breakfast sow GMTV on Friday.


The interest in Jake's single status or otherwise isn't confined to talk show hosts; in this video, Jake gets a bit of a quizzing outside the studio. His response is to pull one of those Gyllenfaces...



Rendition rings true

Hot on the heels of Jonathan Ross' superb review of Rendition, as well as Amnesty International's endorsement of Rendition as a film that tells a tale that requires telling, is an article in which a Guantanamo lawyer discusses how Rendition rings true for him. The British lawyer describes how terrible and very real extraordinary rendition really is for the victim: "He'll spend the rest of his life in therapy, and he'll have nightmares every night for the rest of his life."


Rendition voted 'best narrative feature'

Meanwhile, Calfornia's Mill Valley Film Festival just ended, having 'tallied 89 sold-out shows during its 11-day run, with attendance rising 12% this year to approximately 40,000.' The audience voted Rendition as best narrative feature. One of the visitors to the festival was Ang Lee, for whom the festival has become a favourite since he presented his 1991 debut feature there. This time, Ang came with Lust, Caution.

Peter and Maggie

Peter Sarsgaard was quoted in the NY Magazine today as saying of the Rendition script: "When I first read it, I was like, oh my God, every scene is going to be like what I always call the 'dead-baby' scene. It's going to be, the baby's dead, the baby's dead, the baby's dead. I need the 'I'd like cream in my coffee scene,' the 'No, that's my parking spot scene.'"


Meanwhile, Maggie was featured in the New York Daily News today for her appearance at NYC's Acorn toy store on Atlantic Avenue, as part of a project to raise money for school libraries while encouraging children to read.

Includes pictures from IHJ.