A face in the crowd

Jake Gyllenhaal celebrated his Drama League nomination yesterday by joining the other 19,032 nominees at Madison Square Garden to watch the Celtics/Knicks playoff game.












Looks like Jake got a kick out of Spike Lee:

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The first still from An Enemy:

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Random shots: Jake on the street:





Jake with Glen Hansard prepare for the Poetry & the Creative Mind benefit last week:



Jake at the Edible Schoolyard benefit last week:

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(Thanks to Jake Gyllenhaal Brazil/Monica for the second shot, which looks lke a screen grab of Jake on the jumbotron. And to Stephanie, as always.)

The streets of New York

Jake Gyllenhaal on a SoHo stroll in New York on Friday. Jake wasn't just snapped by the paparazzi. A Chinese blogger posted these pictures of Jake walking into his/her shot:




And here's Jake in front of SoulCycle NoHo:

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I listened to this chapter of The Great Gatsby last week; it's Nick Carraway describing the city:

I began to like New York, the racy, adventurous feel of it at night and the satisfaction that the constant flicker of men and women and machines gives to the restless eye. I liked to walk up Fifth Avenue and pick out romantic women from the crowd and imagine that in a few minutes I was going to enter their lives, and no one would ever know or disapprove. Sometimes, in my mind, I followed them to their apartments on the corners of hidden streets, and they turned and smiled back at me before they faded through a door into warm darkness. At the enchanted metropolitan twilight I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others–poor young clerks who loitered in front of windows waiting until it was time for the solitary restaurant dinner– young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.

Again at eight o’clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were five deep with throbbing taxi cabs, bound for the theatre district, I felt a sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes outlined unintelligible gestures inside. Imagining that I, too, was hurrying toward gaiety and sharing their intimate excitement, I wished them well.

Jake's performance received a nice review in the South China Morning Post:

Australian director Baz Luhrmann's film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel about ambition, materialist success, identity, romantic obsession and failure is one of the most hotly anticipated movies of the year. Besides reading Fitzgerald's silky, sinuous prose on the page, you can now prepare yourself with this audiobook read by Jake Gyllenhaal. So smooth, cool and balanced is the Academy Award nominee's narration that it begs the question: why wasn't he chosen to play Nick Carraway instead of Tobey Maguire? His voice mellifluously conveys the beautiful rhythms of Fitzgerald's unsurpassed writing yet is supple enough to capture Carraway's satirical amusement at the doings of his cousin, Daisy, and her brutish husband, Tom Buchanan, and the weary melancholy of his grand disillusion - embodied by the titular Jay Gatsby, whose love for Daisy inspires the grandest of illusions. My only gripe is that Gyllenhaal doesn't quite capture the famously elegiac ending, both defiant and deflated. And the crashing piano doesn't help.

Amen to the Tobey Maguire casting. I haven't reached the end of my listening yet, so I can't comment. Nothing can match actually reading the end for the first time, so I don't think I'll be disappointed.

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A few shots from last week's gala for the Academy of American poets at Lincoln Center:

Prisoners peek

In the classic Gyllenhaal tradition, we have more breaking news today. It doesn't rain but pour!







The good folks at Jessica Biel Central found some Nailed stills. They've been hot on the scent of Nailed news, and this is more evidence that maybe, just maybe, the movie will finally see the light of screen.

And those stills? I think we need to see this movie!

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The cast and crew of Prisoners. From Facebook:

Officially finished today on Prisoners. One of the hardest movies I had the opportunity to work on, but I'm so proud of the results and know this is going to be a fantastic film to see on the big screen. It has been a pleasure and honor to work with a truly talented group of filmmakers and an amazing and gracious cast.

Entertainment Tonight will have a sneak peek of Prisoners on its show tonight.

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Here's a sneak peek of the sneak peek:

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Photo of Jake at the 11th annual Poetry and the Creative Mind benefit: Until I saw this on IHJ, I had been afraid this FB photo would be the only one in existence!

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(Nailed photos courtesy of Jessica Biel Central.

Jake At 25 and at 27

Thought it would be a good time to take another look at a poem that Jake's father wrote for him:

At 25
a man now stand you
on roots no one can claim
as good as you
(pure born god-son
look at you anywhere
across the globe).
At birth you were blue
I witnessed you suck
that first breath in and turn
as white as snow on top
of Everest. Pure. Pure.
Goodness and Mercy.
Jumble of words my only
clue to give to you
for your mountain view
to burn the libraries
and burn us too
(all that’s come
before you.)
Your (my side) grandfather’s
head handed him
on a silver Salome platter (he knew
more than he could hold on to)
and your great grandfather
stumbled and I shamble
and out of the phoenix ash
of my/your ancestral men you flew
out of the John Baptist ash
you flew beyond the pebbles
in the Jordan where we, the men
before you wash our sad, sad feet
but not for naught—the truth
when sung soothes far beyond
all gold.
I remember your grandfather
(not sober) singing, weeping
in my high gliding stone dead
gothic church—
“A voice of one, crying
in the wilderness, prepare ye
the way of the Lord.”
I remember holding you, screaming
with good rage in a Sea Ranch night.
Taking you outside under the moon
and the giant pines—screaming, screaming.
Holding you. I didn’t know what else to do.
Kicking. Screaming with good rage
till you slowly trembled yourself into rest.
Forgive us, Lord, we know
not what we do.
Good rage. Burn us to the ground.
Good rage. So little good seems
to have come of John the Baptist
and what followed. Your grandfather
loved John the Baptist. Wept and sung
his words and went too easily
into their good night
which I won’t do.
All these words and others too
are here for you, may they be true.

~written by Stephen Gyllenhaal. Originally published in Claptrap: Notes from Hollywood, (Cantara Books, 2006)

(taken from a post on IHJ)

Thanks to IHJ for today's birthday surprise - a new picture of Jake (with Reese and her children):



Jake has probably gotten some wonderful insight - about his father, himself and how children will affect his own life - from reading his father's words.

(Photo courtesy of IHJ.)

Birthday bonus - outtakes from the Esquire shoot:





More at Jake Gyllenhaal Info.