Wednesday, December 4, 2013

This and that



A grab bag of Jake Gyllenhaal news today. First up, Jake covers the December issue of Elle Men Thailand. Maybe they will have more of these gorgeous shots inside:















Enemy has been selected for the 13th annual Canada's Top Ten Film Festival:

The 10-day festival runs January 3 to 12, 2014 at TIFF Bell Lightbox and features public screenings of the selected films, accompanied by introductions and Q&A sessions with filmmakers. On January 5, the Canada’s Top Ten Film Festival welcomes Academy Award-nominees Denis Villeneuve and Jake Gyllenhaal to TIFF Bell Lightbox to discuss their recent collaborations.

In Conversation With… Denis Villeneuve and Jake Gyllenhaal — Sunday, January 5 at 3:30 p.m. With the Hollywood studio film Prisoners and the independent Canadian film Enemy, Denis Villeneuve and Jake Gyllenhaal have struck up a potent director-actor relationship. In this conversation with Cameron Bailey, they will discuss inspiration, working methods and the distance between Hollywood and Toronto.


From an article on the casting for Prisoners:

One conversation was about who would play Detective Loki, the investigating officer and an outsider in the town. (Star Hugh Jackman was already on board to play father Keller Dover when Barden and Schnee joined the team.) Villeneuve had just worked with Jake Gyllenhaal on “Enemy,” and when his name came up the director was eager to work with Gyllenhaal again.

“I had not thought of Jake as a down-and-dirty L.A. cop,” says Barden, adding that he watched Gyllenhaal’s police officer drama “End of Watch” while casting “Prisoners.” “I’ve known him over the years, and we cast him in ‘Proof’ years ago. From the work he’s done over the years, he’s just really grown as a man. He’s just such a good actor, so it was kind of fun to cast him in something that was the loner and man out of his element.”


Vote for Jake's rendition of The Great Gatsby in Audible's Best of 2013 contest.

Tuesday, November 26, 2013

Screening Time



The Prisoners screening tour moved to the East Coast this week, with a screening of the movie and a Q&A at the Museum of the Moving Image on Sunday night. I think it's the film that is supposed to move, not the garish backdrop/kaleidoscope.







If it's Tuesday morning, that must have been MoMA last night:






No real reports from the screenings, but Variety has posted a snippet of their Prisoners event:



And from another LA screening last week:



Jake has also done more interviews. Here he is for Gold Derby:



And for Movies.com, plus brief chats with Indiewire and Vulture.

Have we seen this image before? It was posted on Instagram by an Anne Hathaway fan site:

Thursday, November 21, 2013

Questions and answers



Jake Gyllenhaal, Melissa Leo and writer Aaron Guzikowski attended a Prisoners screening, as part of the :A Times Envelope series. You can watch the Q&A here. The moderator, Steven Zeitchik, teases Jake about his hand injury. It's fun to watch the interplay among the participants.

Go to the bottom of the post for a clip on the movie's themes with a funny exchange between Melissa and Jake over their first collaboration on Homicide.





In more Prisoners awards promotion, Jake and Melissa will take part in a live chat on Gold Derby today:
Jake Gyllenhaal ("Prisoners") Thursday, Nov. 21, 9:50 a.m. PT / 12:50 p.m. ET
Melissa Leo ("Prisoners") Thursday, Nov. 21, 12:00 p.m. PT / 3:00 p.m. ET

I found a new/old Youtube video from the Prisoners Toronto premiere, with some funny post-movie stage talk:

Variety's annual SAG preview features actors discussing awards-worthy performances. Here's Richard Jenkins on Jake in Prisoners:

Richard Jenkins on Jake Gyllenhaal as Detective Loki in “Prisoners” Jake Gyllenhaal in “Prisoners” was simply a cop doing his job, and it was a beautiful thing to watch. I didn't know anything about his character, where he was from, if he was married, had any kids, what the tattoo on his neck meant or why he buttoned the top button of his shirt. Nothing. And he wasn't interested in telling me. He was too busy being a cop. But by the movie's end, I knew him. Totally. Completely. And he was never interested in helping me, as an audience member, understand him, or like him, or sympathize with him. He was only interested in doing his job. It's always thrilling to watch a living, breathing human being on the screen. That's Jake. He takes you with him on this journey. Doesn't ask you to come along, doesn't even know you're there, because he's too busy being a cop doing his job. It's the case of a lifetime for this guy and he's working it alone. No other cops to talk about it with. It's internalized, lived, and I could watch all day. Simply a great performance.

The Melissa/Jake exchange:

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Cool Jake hunting



No - this isn't a shoot for Guns & Ammo. Sometimes those google searches turn up hidden gems, like these other photos from the Elle China shoot




Jake Gyllenhaal the actor is human, searching for connections with the people he works with, which explains his closeness to many of his previous co-stars, including the late Heath Ledger, Michelle Williams, and Anne Hathaway. For Gyllenhaal, these intimate experiences shared in front of the camera are benchmarks of his life – one that has been influenced by a familial tradition of movie-making. From his early indies such as “Donnie Darko”, to his breakout role in Ang Lee’s “Brokeback Mountain”, and his new film “Enemy”, he has always been looking for that connection; and when he finds it, that’s when the magic happens. In an exclusive interview with photos shot by Brigitte Lacombe, we connect with Jake Gyllenhaal, and find that curiosity is what makes him tick.





You can see the article here and do a quick google translation to get the gist.

But why read when you can look at the pretty pictures!

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Highway to Oscar?










Jake Gyllenhaal and Jared Leto shared the screen in Highway, a straight-to-video road trip movie that tracks Pilot (Jake) and Jack (Jared) on the run from goons and towards Seattle. And now they share the cover of The Hollywood Reporter's Actors issue, kicking off the magazine's awards season series on filmmakers in the Academy's sights.



The unconventional movie never made it to theaters and was picked by Entertainment Weekly as Jake's worst movie. As Jake and Jared celebrate and discuss more critically acclaimed roles, you have to wonder if they did any reminiscing. Or if they will be celebrating their nominations in a few months…



For a preview of the episode, check out IHJ. For the back of Jake's head, taken by Jared Leto, look here:



The Hollywood Reporter has done well by Jake fans recently. Here's the Q&A Scott Feinberg did with Jake last year:


Jake at a LACMA tribute to Martin Scorsese and David Hockney:

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

'Tis the season

Update: Another DP30 interview with Jake and Jake's HFA acceptance speech below:



Thanks to Gyllencrazy for the find!



That's right, folks. It's the most wonderful time of the year - for Hollywood. The awards deluge has begun with a trickle. The Hollywood Film Awards were presented in LA on Monday night. And Jaake Gyllenhaal received the award for Supporting Actor for Prisoners.






Jake's Prisoners costar, Viola Davis, presented him with the award.






Video of Jake's arrival. And more video. First up, Viola presenting Jake's award:





Hope that one's coming. Here's Jake on the red carpet: