An inspired 'attitude of perseverance' - Nailed and Once

A late post this evening and it's all Jake's fault - on his recommendation, I have been watching Once and it has consumed my evening and in a pleasant way. In the words of one critic, this is a film for the lovers of music, film and love. As Jake Gyllenhaal told Film 2007, when asked for his favourite film of the year: 'I saw that movie Once. I loved that movie... I just thought it was a brilliant piece of moviemaking'. Heath Ledger also recommended Once: 'It was really sweet.'


Harry Potter himself, Daniel Radcliffe, recommended Zodiac as his film of the year, forever sealing his place on my Christmas Card List, and, at long last, at the end of this month, Zodiac is about to get its Director's Cut release in the UK. This means Zodiac is getting some extra plugging, as in this feature for Time Out, which includes an interview with David Fincher.


'Zodiac is a mystery movie with no solution. ‘This may be my particular perversity, but for me, those films are the most interesting. I don’t think we’ll ever know the answers.’ So does Fincher suffer from the kind of obsessive behaviour that crippled and galvanised reporters like Graysmith? He’s currently editing his new film, ‘The Curious Case of Benjamin Button’, for a Christmas Day release in the US. ‘I don’t think of myself as obsessive,’ he says uncertainly. ‘But you only get so many hours to make a movie. If you want to make it as good as you can, you may have to stay late.''


While Jake's relationship with David Fincher was possibly irritating at times, but definitely productive and creative, we have had concerns about Jake having to work with the notoriously bad tempered David O Russell on Nailed. But, despite the James Caan cookie moment, it all seems to have gone surprisingly well. Could this partly have been, ironically, because of the other pressures on set? In a feature this week, Nailed's ladies, Catherine Keener and Jessica Biel, were keen to show that they pulled together under Russell's leadership and for the first time we hear what it was like to have to work through all those shutdowns:


'“He’s wonderful,” Catherine Keener said. “I love him,” co-star Jessica Biel echoed. “He pulled such a bizarre cool interesting performance out of everyone. It was quite an interesting experience. David was amazing.” What’ll be equally interesting, no doubt, is how the final film, a political satire Keener called “a screwball comedy” about the adventures of a brain damaged waitress in Washington D.C winds up, given the massive delays and stoppages in production. “That was the only really sh–ty part. The shutdowns were killing us,” Biel said. But if there’s a silver lining, it’s that the stoppages have inspired an attitude of perseverance in the cast, Keener insisted. “This felt like it was happening despite all of the obstacles,” she said. “It felt like us against the man. We were like — you cannot shut us down!”'


Includes pictures from IHJ, Just Jared and Fitz News.