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.
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:
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.
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. A few shots from last week's gala for the Academy of American poets at Lincoln Center:
Audible is releasing The Great Gatsby audiobook next week, read by Jake Gyllenhaal. You can listen to the first four minutes or so here:
For those who don't know the story, here's the Audible summary:
F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic American novel of the Roaring Twenties is beloved by generations of readers and stands as his crowning work. This new audio edition, authorized by the Fitzgerald estate, is narrated by Oscar-nominated actor Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain). Gyllenhaal's performance is a faithful delivery in the voice of Nick Carraway, the Midwesterner turned New York bond salesman, who rents a small house next door to the mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby. There, he has a firsthand view of Gatsby's lavish West Egg parties - and of his undying love for the beautiful Daisy Buchanan.
After meeting and losing Daisy during the war, Gatsby has made himself fabulously wealthy. Now, he believes that his only way to true happiness is to find his way back into Daisy's life, and he uses Nick to try to reach her. What happens when the characters' fantasies are confronted with reality makes for a startling conclusion to this iconic masterpiece.
This special audio edition joins the upcoming film - as well as many other movie, radio, theater, and even video-game adaptations - as a fitting tribute to the cultural significance of Fitzgerald's Jazz Age classic, widely regarded as one of the greatest stories ever told.
And the first review, from an Audible editor:
Editors Select, April 2013 - I knew I always liked The Great Gatsby, but having not read it since high school, I couldn’t remember exactly why. After listening to Jake Gyllenhaal’s superb narration, I was reminded of what I found so great about F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic. Gyllenhaal strikes the right chord as, Nick Carraway, who exists within the hyper-privileged world of Long Island’s upper crust but manages to avoid becoming jaded and swept up by the materialism of his cousin, Daisy, and the titular Gatsby. Fitzgerald’s elegant yet simple prose still holds up, and Gyllenhaal treats it with the utmost respect, allowing the vivid descriptions of mansions, landmarks, and 1920s New York to flow at just the right pace. While ultimately tragic, The Great Gatsby is full of light and beautiful moments that kindle a nostalgia for the Roaring Twenties, and I was glad to have been reintroduced to a favorite book this way. —Chris, Audible Editor
The Brothers Carraway. (Tobey Maguire plays Nick Carraway, the narrator of the story, in the upcoming film.)
You can listen to snippets here or download it here. (There are links for inside and outside the U.S.) The first snippet is 20 minutes. I think the shorter ones make up the longer one.
Also, if you have a Nook or the Nook app, you can listen to Jake read Make Way for Ducklings, a children's classic.
Another snippet:
Jake was nominated for a Lucille Lortel award for his role in If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet: It’s an Off Broadway awards show, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of stars lined up for it: The roster of actors to score nominations for the 2013 Lucille Lortel Awards includes Jake Gyllenhaal, Vanessa Redgrave and American Ferrera. The Lortels, which consider only Off Broadway productions eligible for their annual kudofest, is one of the earliest in the round of Gotham legit trophies to announce nominations and winners. ... Gyllenhaal snagged a featured actor nod for his role in Nick Payne’s “If There Is I Haven’t Found It Yet,” which the Roundabout Theater Company produced last fall. I miss Terry! Jake sent a note to a fellow L&OD castmembers on her 90th birthday: Just wanted to wish you a Happy 90th Birthday. I cherish our onscreen romance! Here's to you! I love that scene in the electronics store, where she gets annoyed when he doesn't give her his full attention. Go, Joan! Jake did a fashion shoot for Elle China, and the stylists posted an instagram from the shoot:
