In shape and far from home - Jake gets ready

We can all heave a big sigh of relief - not least Jake Gyllenhaal - because, according to The State today, Nailed has wrapped. Whether or not, this film will ever see the light of day is another matter, not helped by the production company, Think Film, having their office as good as boarded up in Toronto. Time will tell. Meanwhile, I just hope Jake has some much needed fun on the set of the Prince of Persia.


So, at the end of July, Jake will be back off to Morocco to begin filming. At least, with his previous visit for Rendition so recent, he shouldn't need any more immunisations. But I'm reminded of this article, from the Rendition days, when Jake spoke about filming far from home: '“For me, being far away from home is a learning experience,” he explains. “This was shot in North Africa, in a different country with a lot of different rules, and I felt very isolated. It was a very good thing for me. You need to ostracize yourself to learn.”'


This is also one of my alltime favourite articles, because of this - it is always worth a revisit: 'Y"ou look like a nice mint chocolate chip cookie,” he suggests in reaction to the mint green blouse and a dark brown skirt I am wearing. “I do?” I ask, blushing and feeling like a 14-year-old. At my advanced age, it really does take a great actor to make me feel that way. “That’s my favorite flavor, so I’ll take that as a compliment,” I offer. ““You should – that’s my favorite flavor too,” he replies.'


'Now I’m totally flustered. As a mature professional, I like to think I can handle any curve ball that’s thrown my way, but Gyllenhaal is looking at me with his adorable blue eyes and incredibly long eyelashes. “Okay, where do we go from here?” I say, stalling for time while I try to recollect my next question. “Let’s just talk about ice cream,” he offers, oozing boyish charm.'


Jake is back in shape, reminding me of his Jarhead days, although, fortunately, with a full head of hair (with the potential of going the other way and having too much hair, thanks to a headful of extensions). Back in 2005, Jake discussed the tough regime he endured to be in top Marine shape for Jarhead: '"Physically, I was ready for all the running after I killed myself working out, but then mentally it started," he explained. "The first night of boot camp, I got an hour and a half worth of sleep."


"I woke up in the middle of the night because I later found out Lucas Black had thrown a bottle in the air and it hit me on the head when I was sleeping. Those things were constantly happening and, by the end of that week, I had gotten cumulatively 10 hours of sleep. My head was in such a weird space." He added, "I had a 10-and-a-half wide and a 10-and-a-half regular [boot size] and I had loaned one of the guys my 10-and-a-half wide boots. I thought my other boots would stretch and it would be fine but I was standing there for two and a half hours and my left shin was hurting so badly."' Fortunately, Prince of Persia will require far fewer clothes, ill-fitting or otherwise.


Includes pictures from IHJ and fotolog.

Prince of Persia filming to begin on 28 July - Brokeback: a new classic

There's good news and there's bad news... The good news is that the filming of Prince of Persia has a start date - 28 July in Morocco - the bad news is that the possibility of a screen actors' strike may postpone it. However, such a date, a little later than expected, may have been set with the prospect of a short strike in mind.


This is what the LA Times are reporting today: 'More than 1,800 people, both in the U.S. and abroad, are lined up to work on Disney's nearly $200-million-budget "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," a video-game-based tale starring Jake Gyllenhaal that's set to begin production in Morocco on July 28. "Of course, we're concerned," said the film's producer, Jerry Bruckheimer. "We'd have to shut it down and everybody goes home. . . . But I can't believe either side wants a strike." Bruckheimer said if the production was delayed, the crew nonetheless would continue working on visual effects, editing, set building and other areas not requiring actors. Moreover, if halting production pushes the eventual start date of "Prince of Persia" too far into the future, the film would risk missing its planned release date next summer.'


It looks like the Prince of Persia will be employing an army of people, all with Jake and director Mike Newell at its front. Quite a prospect and a world away from Nailed.

Talking of which, a poster on IMDb has claimed that Nailed is now mostly in the can - I hesitate to use the word 'safely' - and the filming is over. The restaurant scene, the last to be filmed, is to be polished in an LA studio.


Brokeback Mountain - a new classic

Entertainment Weekly has been refining its top movie lists, celebrating the new movie classics from the last 25 years. Brokeback Mountain is placed at No. 31: 'The cool move here would be to ignore the fact that Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal enacted a truly groundbreaking love story — and simply concentrate on what a gorgeous, nuanced, heartbreaking movie Brokeback is for people of any sexual orientation. But Ang Lee's undeniably romantic movie did break ground. It reached, and moved, mainstream audiences in ways that no ''gay'' movie ever had before.'


Brokeback also contains one of EW's new classic romantic gestures: 'Heath Ledger finds and keeps the shirts Jake Gyllenhaal had saved from their first trip to Brokeback Mountain (2005).' There are some other very memorable moments on this list.


The Brokeback Mountain poster, with its intentional homage to the Titanic poster, is also regarded as one of the perfect film posters. Brokeback is placed at No 7, with Sam Mendes' American Beauty at No. 3 and Almost Famous at No. 1. Titanic's poster doesn't make the list.


Includes pictures from IHJ, here and EW.

Jake - 'Can I go back and do my part over again?'

According to Variety, Nailed may be back up and running today for its last push before the next uphill struggle - getting the film put together, distributed and onto our screens. Only two days are left for filming, although probably without Jake Gyllenhaal who has probably reached that happy stage where he can put Nailed behind him. The last shooting will cover a key restaurant scene. Incidentally, a poster on IMDb has said that Jake's character's name in Nailed is not Howard Ryder but Howard Birdwell, which, if it's true, sounds a little better.


When Anne Hathaway arrived at the Australian premiere of Get Smart on the Gold Coast this week, her thoughts were also on the role that gave her confidence as an actress:


'But there was one other role she considers a personal breakthrough - playing Jake Gyllenhaal's wife in Brokeback Mountain. Hathaway said she had sobbed for an hour after seeing the film. "That was the film that I decided I wanted to be an actor," she said. "I didn't know if I had the chops for it. It was the first time I really came up against my own limitations and surpassed them. I remember thinking if this possible once, it's possible again and it's worth spending the rest of my life trying to get back to this place. Before then, I was having a lot of fun acting but it didn't feel inevitable."'


Talking of Jake's co-stars, and how actors can grow from particular roles or from working with particular actors, I liked this tribute from Jake to Peter Sarsgaard, regarding working with the older actor on Jarhead: 'Gyllenhaal was left in awe. "I spent the whole movie going, 'Is Peter just lazy? Does he care to be here?' "Gyllenhaal says. "And in that remarkable big moment, the crux of the film, I sat there after three or four takes, all phenomenal, and I shook my head. You could see all the dominoes that he'd lined up, in his performance, up to then. He knocked them over, and I was like, 'Whoa. What? Can I go back and do my part over again? From the start?' You never know what he's doing. But he's just lining up the dominoes."'



Includes pictures from IHJ.

'Heath was the captain of the ship' - Brokeback's Brokies (oh, and Nailed's on strike again...)

It's a special day for me today, for the first time in two and a half years I will see Brokeback Mountain on the big screen and for the first time ever I will see it in the company of people who love it as I do and have been changed by it as I have. One of the most extraordinary pieces of the Brokeback Mountain experience is how this film affects its audience.


Ang Lee said that he had no idea when he edited the film together that it would have such a pull on the emotions of viewers: 'All the time I was directing it and editing it I never thought people would react with so much emotion. I never thought people would cry. I always hoped it would move people, but I never dreamed it would move them to tears.' But when Ang travelled back to Calgary to watch the film with the people who had made it, he saw this firsthand and also realised, as we all do now, of the emotional investment so many people (including himself) have in Brokeback Mountain - as a film, as a short story and as a love story. And this is true whether you are a member of the audience, part of the crew, the actors and their families and friends, or if you're the director. Or a critic.


Jake Gyllenhaal commented that Ang had been surprised by the reaction of critics and journalists as Brokeback Mountain did the rounds of the film festivals: 'Ang said people don’t really come up and ask him questions. They tell him how they’re feeling. So as we were talking to journalists, even the critics, we all felt like it was a different feeling than usual, and it was like they were an audience for the first time.'


When the film showed in Venice, Jake described turning round to see Maggie's reaction: ' all I could see in her [face were two swollen eyes. She'd been crying that hard... When the lights came up after the screening in Venice, you could sense just how deeply the film had affected people... The same was true at the screening at the Toronto Film Festival.'


Author Annie Proulx wasn't quite certain what to expect from the film either. She told Advocate: 'It was really quite a shock because I had nothing to do with the film. So for 18 months I had no idea what was happening, I had no idea if it was going to be good or frightful or scary, if it was going to be terribly lost or sentimentalized or what. When I saw it in September, I was astonished. The thing that happened while I was writing the story eight years ago is that from thinking so much about the characters and putting so much time into them, they became embedded in my consciousness. They became as real to me as real, walk-around, breathe-oxygen people. It took a long time to get these characters out of my head so I could get on with work. Then when I saw the film, they came rushing back. It was extraordinary – just wham – they were with me again.'


And Annie said of Jake and Heath's performances: 'I thought they were magnificent, both of them. Jake Gyllenhaal's Jack Twist...wasn't the Jack Twist that I had in mind when I wrote this story. The Jack that I saw was jumpier, homely. But Gyllenhaal's sensitivity and subtleness in this role is just huge. The scenes he's in have a kind of quicksilver feel to them. Heath Ledger is just almost really beyond description as far as I'm concerned. He got inside the story more deeply than I did. All that thinking about the character of Ennis that was so hard for me to get, Ledger just was there. He did indeed move inside the skin of the character, not just in the shirt but inside the person. It was remarkable.'


Although referring to another film, Jarhead, Sam Mendes' words here about Jake, told to W Magazine back in January 2005, could also be applied to Jake as Jack: 'Jake is like one of those Japanese fighting fish that can constantly change their appearance. When they're threatened they go bright orange, and when they're safe again they're next to invisible. So many things flicker across Jake's face, and the camera catches them all.'


Michelle Williams said that when she saw Jack and Ennis on the screen: 'Honest to God I did not see the two boys I know. I did not see Jake and I did not see Heath when I saw that movie. And I know both of them well - one of them better than the other. [laugh] I did not see them anywhere on that screen.' Of the atmosphere on set, Michelle said: 'It was a loving set. Heath was the captain of the ship and he’s a soft-spoken loving guy and that’s what he emanated and what everybody else followed suit.'


No great surprise - Nailed shuts down for a fourth time

These days, this story hardly merits surprise or a headline, but on Friday the plug was pulled yet again on Nailed - the fourth time. The crew are still not being paid. I like to think that this film can survive its production company - Capitol Films - but one wonders if Capitol Films can survive Nailed.


Pictures from IHJ.

London Jake - 'I can see why American actors like to come here'

As Brokies from across the globe arrive in Oxford for a celebratory weekend, it seems therefore rather appropriate that a possible sighting on IHJ has Jake Gyllenhaal himself arriving in London for the weekend - just a short hop and skip from the dreamy spires.


So, as I can never resist just the thought of Jake being in London, in Britain or in Europe, I thought I'd reflect on Jake in the Big Smoke. Whether queuing for cash, eating at a pavement cafe, cycling in the face of city traffic, doing award-winning theatre or collecting an award, Jake seems to manage to both fit in and stand out. During Jake's stay in London for This Is Our Youth, Jake got to know the town very well:



'While in London, he has been struck by the collegiate nature of stage acting culture: "There's definitely a respect for growth and potential, rather than the feeling of having to have it all at once." Hollywood's money-driven star system, he thinks, exerts a stunting effect on film acting there: "I can see why American actors like to come here and do theatre." In his spare time, he has seen several theatre matinees, and explored Notting Hill and Hampstead Heath on foot - an odd sensation for an LA native: "It's weird, using your legs for anything but pushing a gas pedal."'






Pictures from IHJ.

UMP on the wane - Unnamed, Unscripted, Unplotted and a long way off (...but it is Patriotic)

It looks like we were right not to hold our breath or raise our expectations too high - for now - with Jake Gyllenhaal's advent into space for Doug Liman's Unnamed Moon Project. In fact, this project is a lot more (or less) than Unnamed - it's also Unscripted, Unplotted and not a little hazy. In this recent interview with MTV News, Doug reveals:


'I want to have a locked script before I start shooting. That’s my goal.' However, Doug does know what he wants and where he stands: 'It’s a celebration of America. Even though it’s a present day story it’s a celebration of the fact that in 1969 we sent a man to the moon... Just think about what a car in 1969 looked like! It’s insane that we pulled that off. No other country on the planet could have done something that great.'


I have only one thing to say - thank heavens that Doug is no longer writing the script. As keen as I am to see Jake in Space, I am really hoping that Jake takes a good look at this one before finally committing himself.


Whispers

The troublesome tale that has been the development of the play Farragut North may now be untangling. Without Jake and without Mike Nichols, and away from Broadway, the Atlantic Theater Company has now announced that it will be producing Farragut North in October under the direction of Doug Hughes and starring John Gallagher of Spring Awakening. It feels like the end of an era, this story has been around for so long.


And talking of plans that come to nothing, it appears that the talk of Jake opening a restaurant with friend Chris Fisher may also just have been wild whispers. According to Variety: 'Perhaps the only celebrity not getting into the food biz is Jake Gyllenhaal, who was recently reported biking around Italy with Reese Witherspoon investigating concepts for an L.A. organic restaurant. But his reps now say that the announcement was just as insubstantial as a parmesan foam topping.'


Pictures from ViewImages and Jake's 2004 appearance on TRL, a show that also featured Avril Lavigne.

'One of the good guys' - Get ready for a celebration of Heath's work

July is approaching, which means that we can expect much more from the sensational publicity campaign that is heralding The Dark Knight to our theatre screens. Hot on the heels of Empire magazine's Dark Knight cover, we have Total Film. The whole article is presented as an exercise in Joker vandalism, with all of Maggie's words as Rachel ('Stupid girl') Dawes words scribbled out, photographs of Batman grafittied and comments about the Joker highlighted - all in big red pen - the colour of the Joker's smile.


But left untouched is a section in which Christian Bale, Emma Thomas (producer) and Christopher Nolan pay tribute to what it was like to work with Heath Ledger who brought this terrifyingly charismatic Joker to larger than life.

Christian Bale: Heath's performance is fucking fantastic. As was working with him. he was great fucking company. Wonderful guy. Fantastic working with somebody who will immerse themselves as he does... did. I hope that this will celebrate his work... People love to talk about actors staying in character all the time but it's just totally implausible for seven months straught, You do what's appropriate, you do what's necessary... It's not for me to tell anybody or pretend to have insights beyond what I absolutely know, but my instincts are that [the idea Heath was disturbed by playing The Joker] is ridiculous. Heath was somebody who, like myself... it's what I act for... I act for that immersion. It's not an unusual thing. And from working with him and knowing him, I don't think that was unusual for him, that's all.


Christopher Nolan: It was absolutely wonderful working with Heath. I'm very, very excited for people to see his performance. I think he really has done something pretty incredible in the film. And at this point I'm just very, very keen for people to get their eyes on it and enjoy it.

Emma Thomas: Heath was a hugely talented actor and really just one of the good guys. With a role like that - and being as serious an actor as he was - going in, I wondered if he was going to be somebody who would inhabit the character at all times. He was really amazing, in that he could turn it on and then switch it off between takes.


Includes pictures from Total Film.

Maggie in hot NYC

Rachel Dawes may not have got a word in edgeways with this article, thanks to the Joker, but here we have Maggie Gyllenhaal at the end of last week in the heat of NYC.


More pictures at Pop Sugar.

In need of some Jake

And because I don't feel able to do a post without some Jake...