Short but sweet

Looks like Jake Gyllenhaal is back in London after a brief visit home:

After spending each and every waking moment with gal pal Reese Witherspoon over the weekend, Jake Gyllenhaal was seen arriving at Heathrow Airport in London today to resume filming of the Prince of Persia flick.

The 27-year-old hunk was all smiles as paps drilled him with an array of questions ranging from engagement rumours to his parents’ impending divorce.






Back to the drought days? It was fun while it lasted...


(Photos courtesy of Faded Youth.)

He's back

Edited to add some more new pics, Jake and Reese on Thursday. Thanks again, Stephanie!


I think Reese popped an extra button :)


I think she likes to keep close contact - can you blame her?


Is Reese goosing Jake?


They are both making very goofy faces here:)




It's like old times! More pictures of Jake Gyllenhaal out in Los Angeles yesterday.




Stephanie also put up the HQs from the jogging set. Thanks, Stephanie!



In stride!
And some new old-news, from London. Love this set!




Celebutopia has some of the joging pictures. Not solo Jake, but they do have the smiling one. I love gigantic Jake's big smile. And those arms!







(Photos courtesy of IHJ.)

And I ran...

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad never looked so good! Jake Gyllenhaal and Reese Withersppon out for a run in LA:








A few other pics from Popsugar:







Will post bigger ones as available.

It's good to see you again, Jake!

(Photos courtesy of TMZ.)

Back to LA

Jake Gyllenhaal winging his way back to Los Angeles. Okay, he's not actually flying, just walking through Heathrow.






Thanks to Stephanie for the quick work!

Like sands of time through the hourglass...

Jordan Mechner talked to EW about Prince of Persia. Sadly, no Jake Gyllenhaal mentions. Here's some of what he had to say:

EW: This is Hollywood, so you've probably had to come to terms early on that there would be some liberties taken with the source material. What's the number one thing about Prince of Persia that you, as its creator, feel shouldn't be changed or compromised under any circumstances?
Mechner: This goes all the way back to the original 1989 game: somewhere in the story, there has to be an hourglass.

EW: In a paper about game design you wrote a few years ago, you said that while the storyline is king in movies, it should always be subordinate to action and gameplay in videogames. What's the rule for videogame-based Hollywood blockbuster films produced by Jerry Bruckheimer? Story seems to have the clear disadvantage here…
Mechner: For a movie, it's all about the story. No matter how spectacular, the action is only gripping if it's happening to characters we care about. Otherwise, in the midst of all the Dolby fireworks and exploding horses, we'll start to get that restless feeling... you know, wishing we had our ten bucks back and that we were back home playing a video game.

A couple of new/old set photos from Morocco:




ETA: Some new old photos from IHJ. First up, an outtake from one of my least favorite Jake photoshoots ever.

You don't know what you're doing, do you?

God bless Dustin Hoffman!

It's like a family generations portrait gone wrong!


(Photos courtesy of IHJ, flickr/albertstoter and flickr/petravangrieken.)

Via Memoria

This article is a reminder that this was Rendition weekend in the U.S. last year. Kudos to Box Office Prophets for recommending that people take a look at Rendition now. And to Esquire, among too few others, for recognizing Jake Gyllenhaal's acting in it:

It's a near-silent performance, apart from some minor heroics near the end, and most actors would likely have felt the need to signal their disapproval to the audience via exaggerated winces. Gyllenhaal refrains, allowing us to project our own turbulent, conflicted emotions onto his placid expression. Knowing when to do nothing is one of the least appreciated of an actor's skills; here's one who's learned it early.

It's a criminally underrated movie, and Jake is stunning, visually and emotionally.



Of course, this time last year was the culmination of Jake media week. Oh, what a fun time that was.



Gooberballs



Conan O'Brien

Regis and Kelly

Of course, Rendition weekend in America was the Roma(nce) Film Festival in Italy:






I had to post those side by side because I am convinced that they coordinated their outfits, as they did at the premieres in Toronto and LA. And if you're going to coordinate, you should have your picture taken together, damn it!

Oh, look - they did, at least once.


The title of the pic is "Jake/Reese/Brindisi" or "Jake and Reese make a toast." It put me in the mind of La Traviata's Brindisi, so watch/listen, enjoy and raise a glass to Rome, to Rendition (the movie!), to whatever makes you smile!

(Photos courtesy of IHJ.)

Encore: Vive la France !

Reese Witherspoon is Vogue's November cover girl, and there are a few Jake Gyllenhaal tidbits in the story. Plus some gorgeous photos of Reese.





Along the Avenue Montaigne again, this time at Theyskens's atelier, where Reese is dressed in a bustier-like Nina Ricci dress that, aside from being sexy, is a work of art. The mirrors of Theyskens's office have become a spiraling prism of Reese Witherspoon in black, complemented by Olivier's long, raven-black hair. She is talking about dinner the night before, when her boyfriend, Jake Gyllenhaal (who dropped by during makeup), wrote cute remarks in the restaurant's guest book (something about French melons), which his girlfriend found charming, her smile now bubbling like champagne in a black crepe flute. "He wrote, 'Vive la France!' " she says, laughing. Ah, Paris and love!


On Bastille Day, Reese is at another café. She has done her share of cafés in Paris. "It's the first time I've taken my kids," she says. She believes in taking the kids. "My girlfriend was saying the other day that it's like that famous Mark Twain line, about how travel is fatal to bigotry and narrow-mindedness—I'm paraphrasing, but it's something like that." Travel is also good for discovering croissants, crepes, and macaroons. Also for introducing her son to the toy boats at the Jardin du Luxembourg, or the French sewer tour. And then there's the Métro, a five-year-old boy's thrill. "He goes from one stop to another; it makes his day," Reese says, beaming. And on that very evening, as the French celebrated, she and Monsieur Gyllenhaal would take her nine-year-old daughter out late to see the fireworks—the Seine glowing, the Eiffel Tower a sparkler.



As far as the boyfriend goes, she doesn't like to talk about him so much, and it can make you feel a little tabloid about asking. Still, this is Paris, city of light and love, and if you've heard the song by Carla Bruni about French president Nicolas Sarkozy—"I give you my body, my soul, and my chrysanthemum/For I am yours/You are my lord/You're my darling/You're my orgy/You're my folly"—then you figure, what the heck, it's Paris. You ask. "He's very supportive," she says. You press her. "Suffice it to say, I'm very happy in life, and I'm very lucky to have a lot of really supportive people around me who care very much for me, and, you know, that's all you can hope for in life. I am very blessed in that way."




She will tell you that she was with the guy she'd rather not blab about some weeks earlier—in Rome, speaking of beautiful cities—and that one night they went out to see the Trevi Fountain. It was late, it was beautiful, and she threw a coin in and made a wish. What did she wish for? Come on. Do you really think she's going to tell you that? "If I tell you," she says, "it won't come true."


(I know it's not the Trevi, but hey, they managed to go unpapped on the trip she's mentioning!)

And because I can't resist:



(Pictures courtesy of Vogue and IHJ and flickr.)