Jake Gyllenhaal goes back to school and Anna Kendrick tells us more about 'brutal' and 'startling' End of Watch

Jake Gyllenhaal has been putting in some more hours in the classroom. In addition to helping kids grow food with Edible Schoolyard, and distracting them in English classes with the help of Ethan Hawke (full account here and some pictures here), Jake spent some of yesterday at LaGuardia Arts in NYC with the dramatists and gatecrashers. Unfortunately, we have yet to see any pictures although quite a few of the pupils have been painting an image of the class with words.

From Aiss Ice baby: 'One he was so marvellous.he had on green cargo pants,with a hole above the knee,and a white t-shirt. his stuffed bookbag was on the floor next to him. on his little table there was a  full, un-opened jug of orange juice. he answered questions,and made jokes and told all these wonderful little anecdotes about actors he knows. oh,he was just too good. also he said his only goal in acting was for people to be able to pronounce “gyllenhaal” correctly.'

From Arielleighrose: 'I met Jake Gyllenhaal today with my drama class at LaG. He came to speak to us and answer questions. He was down-to-earth, funny, and generally awesome and I loved him as much as I thought I would. He is a beautiful human being and I told him so and I got to shake his hand. It was amazing.'

It's good to think of Jake inspiring another generation of future actors and performers - as well as making them a little giddy.

Jake has also been seen just about everywhere else since then, including the Town Hall - with the Face Pet - and in shops and in cafes ('The fact that I'm sitting like 3 feet away from Jake Gyllenhaal right now is making it really difficult for me to eat my lunch'.) and in other cafes ('I just saw Jake Gyllenhaal at my coffee place... pretty eyes, nice hair, he's tall, good taste in coffee.... *le sigh* ah, he's beautiful'. And then there's always trains. 

Fortunately, there were no lovely dogs distracting the tweeters this time...

End of Watch

I'm delighted to say that Anna Kendrick has been continuing to do her bit to tell us little bits about End of Watch, this time to the AV Club:

'In End Of Watch, I play a wife who doesn’t have her own storyline outside of being married to Jake Gyllenhaal. That freaked me out a little bit, because I thought, “Oh, this might be really bad,” but I feel like the wives in that movie, even though they don’t have their own storyline, they ground the entire thing, because if these men are putting their lives on the line in a vacuum, it feels like a videogame. It doesn’t matter. If you see their lives outside of that, it means something. There’s a reason for those kinds of roles, in a lot of cases.'

'It’s pretty tough. The script is really startling, but then surprisingly, you find moments of levity in places where you wouldn’t, necessarily. I was thinking about that, like, “Oh God, this is my first movie where there’s no comic angle, no infusion of comedy.” But then you get on set and you think, “Oh no, real life, when it feels honest, is really funny and really light, as much as it can be really dramatic.” I was surprised at that. It’s a startlingly brutal script, but I think there are moments of levity.'

Do read the rest of this interview, there is a lovely tribute to Michelle Williams' work in Brokeback Mountain.

Many thanks to IHJ for the wonderful new old pics from Good Girl's festival appearance at Sundance back in 2002. Thanks too to BBMISwear for the much appreciated help with some of the links.

My review of Melancholia, quite possibly my favourite film of the year so far, is up at MovieBrit.