Updated: New PoP featurette - Source Code Parkour, Gemma's 'hot man', movie surfers set visit, Indiana Jones with a mullet, & much more!

Update! A new Prince of Persia featurette called Story... lots of Parkour and some Hassansins (please imagine Mike Newell saying that...)



Right! Lots to get through tonight so I recommend you make yourself comfy and chomp on those dismembered bits of chocolate bunny that always get left til last. You can tell that many of the reporters and gamers have made it home from San Francisco - the place is awash with a Jake Gyllenhaal flood. Never a bad thing - we just need to get the waders on.


1. In this video for About.com, Jake describes bringing his Parkour skills to the Source Code set: 'I was on set the other day and there's this pole hanging from the stairs as we were shooting on a second storey and so I grabbed on to the pole. I jumped down the stairs and then I grabbed on to the pole and I swung over and landed and everyone... on the set was like 'what are you doing?!' [Jake mimics them below] I was like and that's what I did everyday on the Prince of Persia set.'


2. Jake describes his Mini Jake Lego to PopSugar: 'It feels to me like they've basically just buffed up Indiana Jones and they put a mullet on him.'


Jake also reveals that he quotes from Indiana Jones right, left and centre ('Wave it at anything that slithers!' that's my favourite).



3. Mike Newell and Jordan Mechner discuss some background to the film, including why it wasn't shot in 3D and we get Jordan's verdict on WonderCon 2010: 'First of all, seeing WonderCon from the stage with Jake Gyllenhaal and 4,000 people, it's different.'

4. A Jakism from People: 'So now that the movie’s wrapped, is it just a matter of time before the big guns disappear? Says Gyllenhaal, “I enjoy being active as part of my daily insanity anyway, so I’ll keep doing that."'

5. The Nerd Society interviews Jake (and I'll go to the foot of my stairs if that's not our Favourite Bodyguard behind Jake).


Jake tells the interviewer that 'I am not a card-carrying gamer, definitely not. I like to travel in and out and lose badly.' He then recounts his list of games and wins the accolade of the title 'Old School Gamer'.



6. We now have a transcript from the press conference that preceded the panel. Jake on mixing game and movie: 'We had that pressure on our shoulders the whole time, but yet at the time time, I think transitioning from making a video game into a movie, I think Mike [Newell] and Jerry from the beginning said we need to make anything the Prince does, and his name is now Dastan, has to be based in some kind of reality. In fact, there were times on set when we would do some sort of stunt that mimicked something from the game, and Jerry would say, well, wait a second, why did he do that? We need to have that be based in the storyline, and everything had to be based emotionally in the storyline, so we’d have to come up with a reason why he flipped upside down over a horse (laughs). And we did.'


'Well, it’s a very physical role, and I’ve always found myself inhabiting a role starting from the physical level. Whether you’re changing the shape of your body and losing weight, gaining weight, you’re figuring out what the character would look like on a physical level. So for this it was very physical, which I love, which I’d never really done this intensely before. But I don’t think it’s any different at all. When you’re committed, you’re committed, and as soon as I decide to be in a movie or play a part, it’s 120 percent commitment no matter what.'


Mike Newell: 'we did a huge amount of work at the script stage, at the rehearsal stage, all of it, to make it absolutely real. So the fights, for instance, you should have seen what I saw which was Jake rehearsing fights like ballet, but because it’s like ballet, it’s also got to have an emotional reality to it as well, and that was always the big pressure – to take it into an area where a game couldn’t go, while not destroying the game side of it. So emotion.'


Jake: 'Yes, I played [Jordan]’s video game first when I was a kid so I played the first original when I was I-don’t-know-how-old, and then I only started playing the game really intensely when I was doing research, particularly for stunt research. We would be in the middle of shooting and I would go back to my trailer and I’d be playing a game and I’d see a move and call the stunt guys into the trailer and be like, hey you guys, check out this move – can we try it? And they would be like, alright mate!'

'In one way or another, every character you is based somewhere or with some understanding of where you are in your life, some understanding of that. But with Prince of Persia, yes, and getting to know David Bell and learning parkour and being as physical as I was, now I wish I was British because I feel like I’m proficient enough at a British accent that there are hopefully those vestiges I do keep. And occasionally, I do throw out a British accent at the dinner table with my family. So yes, they do stay with you, and this one definitely has. I do always carry a sword, and I keep the dagger of time and I’ll use it at this press conference if there are any weird questions (laughs).'


Weeping knees? 'It got a little bit dicey towards the end because everybody saw that I liked doing things that were a little bit dangerous and so we tried our hands at things that were pushing it a little bit. I think in the end there was this fight towards the middle of the movie that we shot at the end with my brother where he has an axe and I’m fighting him with my sword and a shield that I have left, and we really got dangerous with that fight. There were a few times when the axe came so close to my face almost that everyone was like, awwww that was so good! And I’m like [sobbing], oh, it looks so good! So definitely that axe fight was an intense one, and some of the jumps got pretty [tough] when I’d go, it’s okay guys – you don’t have to give me so much. Let it go. And I’d go bam! And my knees would be secretly weeping inside, but besides that, there was a big, 35-foot jump I did that got a little hairy a couple of times, particularly when I was like, let me try it again!'


7. We hear about those PoP boots at Gamasutra: '“It was exciting,” said Gyllenhaal. “It’s great fun, you know? And my boots literally took 20 minutes to get on, so they were indeed hard boots to not only get on, but also fill.”'

8. In another video interview, Jake tells MTV what it was realising that he was the Prince of Persia: '"I was actually kind of tripping out on that with Jordan the other day," Gyllenhaal said of portraying a character he once could only play with a controller in his hand. "I was saying to him, Who knew when I was playing it — after I closed out 'Oregon Trail' and went over to my 'Prince of Persia' game when I was I don't know how old, maybe 8 or something — who knew I would be playing the Prince of Persia? It's kind of awesome."' Oregon Trail... Now that's not a game you hear discussed everyday.


9.One thing we know about Dastan is he likes princesses and lest we forget the strong and feisty Tamina, Gemma Arterton covers the May edition of InStyle (UK edition) and in it she not only looks gorgeous she also talks about what it was like working with a movie star - aka Jake, the 'hot man': 'I saw Jake every day for six months... You get to know them and you realise that these people are just like you - only, like, a hot man. Yes, they are these action-hero movie stars but, really, Jake loves basketball, Daniel [Craig] loves a whisky... Every single one of them made me feel really comfortable, so I never felt, 'Oh my God, it's a movie star!''


'Well, initially, you do get a bit flustered... I always feel a little bit like I don't want to bother them. but I got over it. And I'm glad I did, because otherwise I'd just be a giggling wreck all the time.' (That'd be me... except you can add 'unconscious' to the 'giggling'.)


10. We see more of Gemma and Jake in the Disney Movie Surfers Prince of Persia set visit video, which has finally been released!



Jake looks fabulous in this video and the set looks amazing - gold elephants and all. It also looks hot. There are also some extra shots of Jake, which show just how hands on with the stunts Jake was. We see Jake performing a huge leap (is this the dicey 35m leap he mentioned) and we also see Jake (for it does look like Jake) leap backwards over a horse as mentioned earlier in the post. These kids look far scarier than any ostrich.



11. And finally... if you have any energy left - vote for Jake.

Do remember to check out the last few posts for videos, interviews and news...