Jake Gyllenhaal out for a drive, Mike Newell on his prince (Jake 'worked his socks off') and stuff, lots of stuff

Lots of Jake business to get through this evening, so I suggest you pour yourself something warming (or cooling if you're in a kinder hemisphere) and settle down with your feet on the furniture. First off, Jake Gyllenhaal has obliged by showing himself - yesterday Jake was seen driving with a friend, who looked a little bit more startled than Jake who seemed much more relaxed. Important thing to note here - see that ring on Jake's little finger? Enlarge the pictures and I think you'll agree - it has WDW written on it. Oh yes.




Jake Gyllenhaal is the Prince of Persia. And Mike Newell is definitely out of the Disney woodwork now, talking about this movie of his, and his prince: 'Well, I’ll tell you what it was. I mean, I can tell you what it was; I don’t want to lose part of the audience, but I knew what the guy looked like, I knew the world that he was in, I knew about sixth century Persia, I knew that he was a fantastic athlete and I had the huge good fortune of having Jake Gyllenhaal, who was a good athlete but who worked his socks off. You can’t know how hard he worked to make himself the physical personification of that tiny little video game character. And there he is, he’s real and he can ride and he can fight and he can shoot and he’s a marvelous action hero as well as being the guy that we know from ‘Brokeback Mountain’, who’s a fabulous actor. I was very, very fortunate with Jake. And so, what I was aiming to do was to not produce a simple copy of what was in the video game, but I wanted him to look like that, I wanted him to be able to fight like hell, and I wanted him to be a great action character. And that’s what he gave me. Then, we were very careful about certain kind of key sequences, big sequences in the movie. There’s a sequence– there’s a pursuit in a market, there are several huge fights, there’s the taking of the town…'


'So the casting process, I never had any doubt. It was me that brought Jake in toward this. From the very first moment that I read it, I knew that he was, for me, the one to beat. I saw lots and lots of excellent people, but I never found anybody who beat my idea of the character, who did my idea of the character, better than Jake, and I convinced Jerry of that.'


Heat magazine has done it again! Yet again Jake Gyllenhaal is their Torso of the Week! The image they picked is much like their last Jake Torso tribute (September 2009) but this time they have left out the offending and oh so innocent B-A-T. Many thanks to a friend who alerted me to this honour in an email that had so many red flags and IMPT, IMPT, IMPTs all over it that I thought I'd won the lottery for a moment. Obviously, Jake's better...



Talking of honours, Maggie Gyllenhaal has today been attending one of the Oscar perks - The Luncheon. I have stayed in the Beverly Hilton on a number of occasions and I can say that its wine is Very Expensive. I hope these stars budgeted for an expensive do. Maggie posed with Peter Sarsgaard - and Carey Mulligan also looked just gorgeous.

During the luncheon, Maggie revealed some more advice from brother Jake about how to deal with Oscar hoopla: '"I hope this isn't too much of a downer, but the one thing he did say to me, before I was nominated actually, was, 'There isn't actually anything at the end of the rainbow, it's a lot of fun, just enjoy it'.' Next, Jake will be saying there's no Tooth Fairy.



I've learned a lot of things today, including the fact that people across the Americas are today celebrating The Carnival, especially the Mardi Gras. However, not to be outdone (although obviously it's not a competition) the English celebrate today with a little bit of flour, egg and milk and maybe a dash of lemon and sugar. Who says we don't know how to have a good time? Show me who and I'll make them a cup of tea. And no doubt we all remember Maggie's earlier Oscar allegations that Jake was so excited by her nomination that he made her pancakes that even Ramona wouldn't eat. Thanks to everyone for sending me their receipes, which are now part of a future GyllenProject. If you have anymore, do send them to me. I'm considering the ingredients of a Mardi Gras Pancake now.

I would like to finish this evening by saying that it has been commented upon that I show unfair favour for the ostrich whenever I post about the Prince of Persia. To counteract such a claim...


Includes pictures with thanks from IHJ and links.