Maggie in Spain and on Radio 1 - Jake entrances with the 'timeless art' of the theatre

Maggie Gyllenhaal and Christian Bale and the Batmobile have reached Spain - the premiere there was held last night at the Barcelona Coliseum Cinema and Maggie looked just sensational. Apparently, The Dark Knight has now taken more at the box office, in a little less than a week, than Batman Begins did during its entire run.





Before Maggie left the British Isles, she recorded an interview with Vernon Kay (British presenter and husband of Tess Daly) for Radio 1 of the BBC. You can listen to it here. If anyone has trouble listening to the interview - especially if you're overseas or if you're Twisted Logic - do email me. Interestingly, Vernon plays Mad World, the theme of Donnie Darko, and asks Maggie if she enjoyed making that film. She did - it was 'fun' and 'wild', mostly because it was made with her little brother. And thanks to Sheba for the link to a Sky video interview with Maggie on the London red carpet - I have still to find the one that I saw recorded but great to see this.


A timeless art

Inspired by a great conversation about the theatre in the comments to the last post, I wanted to do a link to these two articles from the Telegraph, which date from he days that Jake Gyllenhaal was striding the boards of the West End. Despite the critic's stated belief that Jake was in Jurassic III, which I believe he was not (I think we might have noticed), he declares that the influx of three hot American youths was just the thing to rejuvenate London theatre.


Jake played Warren: 'Just the sight of Warren's awkward dancing and over-eager snogging reduced me to tears of laughter and poignant recognition of my own distant youth. Laurence Boswell directs this marvellous trio of actors with both confidence and an illuminating attention to detail. Gyllenhaal seizes all his chances as Warren, a beautiful and befuddled loser. But he also movingly suggests a lovable, vulnerable character just beginning to grow into maturity.'


And here, you can read another reporter from the Telegraph write about the 'extraordinary thing' happening at the Garrick Theatre. She concludes: 'I discovered theatre in that way. I arrived in London on cheap day returns, bought student standbys and began to explore this strange world where you sit quietly in the dark and let someone take you by the hand and tell you a story. I was quickly hooked, but sometimes, even now, I am struck by the oddity of the habit. When a play is dull, or the production doesn't convince, and the queue for the loos stretches all the way to out to the street, I wonder why I am wasting my time. But then I see a play like This Is Our Youth, and I am entranced all over again. So, to all those first-timers, I say stick with it. You may suddenly find yourself in love with this timeless art in which people pretend to be someone else and touch a chord in your own heart.'


As someone who, as a student, did line up for returns at London's theatres every Saturday afternoon and saw duds as well as some amazing performances I'll never forget, I love to hear that Jake is seen by some to have played a part in the rejuvenation of a much loved art form and source of enormous pleasure and satisfaction, for both audiences and their actors.


Jake himself has said of the theatre: 'I just think I’m fed by it. I’m sucked dry by film and I think I’m fed by theatre. There’s a start and stop to film where you give and you give and you give, and you don’t have that give and take like you do in the theatre, and I think it’s just necessary. I get rid of bad habits, but it just fills me.'


Includes pictures from Popsugar and IHJ.