Love and Other Drugs gets a cast injection, Brokeback Mountain remains AfterElton's Best Gay Movie

With Jake Gyllenhaal getting ready to go back to work on Monday, with all that that entails (washing and - optional - ironing clothes, getting one's body clock back into the rhythm of the daily grind, perhaps buying some new stationery), it must be a comfort for him to know he will not be alone. After reports that Gabriel Macht from Whiteout would be joining the cast of Love and Other Drugs, today we have had confirmation that Oliver Platt and Hank Azaria have signed up for duty as well. We also get confirmation that Jake will be called Jamie and needless confirmation that he will be 'charming'. And with Jake playing the role, you can expand that to mean 'Very, Very, Very Charming'.


According to The Hollywood Reporter: 'Macht plays a hotshot Prozac salesman who's invovled romantically with Maggie (Hathaway), a free-spirited woman with Parkinson's disease who enters into a relationship with charming Viagra salesman Jamie (Gyllenhaal). Azaria plays an unscrupulous doctor and client of Jamie's, and Platt plays his boss, a beleaguered pharmaceutical rep desperate to boost Jamie's sales.'


Oliver Platt will forever be known to me as the crocodile whisperering Hector of Lake Placid and Babish of The West Wing, but he also had roles in Kinsey and Casanova. Hank Azaria (Kahmunrah of Night at the Museum) is known for doing every other voice in The Simpsons. Hank and Oliver recently acted together in Year One, which I'm sure they were funny in even though I've never heard of it. I'm delighted in particular to hear that Oliver Platt will be acting in this film alongside Jake and Anne.


The consensus around the net is good, with Empire, for example, saying that this is a film with 'a heck of a cast'. We should definitely expect much more from this project than a typical romcom, with wit, satire, fine acting, an unconventional plot, sizzling chemistry and a charming Jake Gyllenhaal to boot, all competing for our attention.



Last night, it looked like other aspects of Jake Gyllenhaal could have been dominating our attention in May 2010 - a 3D bare-chested, multi-belted, leather trousered, booted and strapped, wet and leaping Prince Dastan! However, this morning, Disney dashed our 3-dimensional hopes. This was probably in the interests of health and safety. One cannot easily envisage the effect of a 3D Jake on audiences, especially IMAX audiences (a 2D Jake is more than enough to cope with). A 3D pecking ostrich and a 3D spitting camel would have been awkward.


Brokeback continues to change lives

AfterElton today announced its new 50 Best Gay Movies and yet again Brokeback Mountain tops the list and yet again it is by a landslide. What particularly struck me about AfterElton's piece on the film is its assertion that Brokeback is as real a place as any and I don't just mean a cinematic location.


'Brokeback Mountain a pretend place? On the contrary, it was the controversy that surrounded the movie’s release that turned out to be the illusion: that ridiculous six-month orgy of conservative outrage and mean-spirited jokes from late-night comedians – not to mention an Oscar snub that was clearly motivated by Hollywood’s fears that the town might be perceived as being too “liberal” as well as plain old-fashioned homophobia.'


'Four years after the movie’s release, we now know that Brokeback Mountain, both the mountain and the movie, was something very real. Did it change Hollywood? Did it change America? I don’t know, and I don’t really care. But I know for a fact it changed me, profoundly and dramatically. And for most of you who voted in our movie poll, I suspect it changed you too.' He suspects right.

And finally...

The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus has been on display in Toronto and the reviews are coming in. Here is Cinematical's review of an eye dazzling spectacle.


Includes pictures from IHJ.