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Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Gwyneth Paltrow photoshoot for COACH Fall 2011

Jake Gyllenhaal with Gwyneth Paltrow and John Madden attending the Toronto International Film Festival Premiere of "Proof" (2005) on 12nd September 2005

First look: Gwyneth Paltrow for COACH Fall 2011 photographed by Peter Lindbergh

Gwyneth Paltrow in Detour magazine, photoshoot (1997)

"Gwyneth's latest star turn, back to playing the all-American good-girl as the star of the new adverts for Coach, the American It-handbag brand which has serious designs on the UK and Europe. Coach is sort of a bit like an American version of Mulberry, but in the Somerset rather than Alexa Chung era. All blonde and uptown and well-bred in this campaign, Gwyneth is going back to her roots. Maybe it's time for the Gwyneth-haters to forgive and forget. But probably not until she gives up the Goop". Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Jake Gyllenhaal at 'Source Code' Press Conference in Beverly Hills

Jake Gyllenhaal poses at 'Source Code' Press Conference on 18th March 2011 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles

Jake Gyllenhaal and Michelle Monaghan attending The Cinema Society & Coach Host A Screening Of "Source Code" on 31st March 2011

"The three lead performances from Jake Gyllenhaal, Michelle Monaghan and Vera Farmiga are all excellent in their own right. Gyllenhaal turns in a pitch-perfect turn as Captain Colter Stevens, letting the character have a few light moments by acknowledging the convolution of the premise, but switching back to a convincing state of stubborn determination and disorientation on a dime (factoid: attained in part by Jones cycling random bits of obscure music through an earpiece he gave Gyllenhaal with reckless abandon!).Michelle Monaghan’s Christina Warren is adorable and her incredulous responses to Colter’s loony behavior are understandable and often hilarious. Despite how bored the writer seemed with making the budding attraction between the pair work-Colter’s initial proclamation of love is “You’re very decent”, oh how that would woo the ladies-Gyllenhaal and Monaghan are able to brew what little chemistry is needed here for an emotional investment. Vera Farmiga’s role takes place almost entirely in a swivel chair via webcam chat, but she too manages to soar above the limited nature of her character, playing Colleen Goodwin as a stern professional struggling with an internal, moral tug-of-war regarding her participation in the Source Code program". Source: collider.com

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

Frank Sinatra, an 18-karat manic-depressive superstar with self-help philosophy

Jimmy Van Heusen with Frank Sinatra

"Accordingly, while Frank Sinatra got dressed in the hospital room, shooting his cuffs to cover the bandages (the doctor had just walked out, shaking his head, after warning Sinatra that he was leaving against Medical Advice), Jimmy Van Heusen looked his friend in the eye and told him he had to have a word with him. The two men looked at each other in the mirror as Frank looped his tie. And Jimmy, his voice serious, told Frank that he had to see a headshrinker when he got back to Los Angeles". -"Frank: The Voice" by James Kaplan

''Being an 18-karat manic-depressive, and having lived a life of violent emotional contradictions, I have an overacute capacity for sadness as well as elation''. ''Whatever else has been said about me personally is unimportant. When I sing, I believe, I'm honest'' -Frank Sinatra.

Kim Novak and Frank Sinatra in "The man with the golden arm" directed by Otto Preminger in 1955.

"He’s a once in a lifetime star. That’s exactly what he is—a superstar. Brighter than anyone. Bigger than he thinks he is—and it scares him; Champagne explodes when you bottle it in beer bottles” -Frank Capra on Frank Sinatra

"The melancholy in Sinatra’s singing is not a sometime thing. I think it’s a constant in his art. It’s a lot of the reason why he’s so appreciated by black musicians and indeed a lot of black people in general. In a certain way, it’s an almost operatic version of the blues. He was a tortured man. He was an incredibly complicated man, impatient, obsessive compulsive, diagnostically, volcanic temper, like his mother. Even as so much seemed to come easy to him, nothing felt easy to him. I think you hear that in the music” -James Kaplan on Frank Sinatra

Hoboken, New Jersey, 1950s, photo by Robert Frank

"Frank Sinatra was born in Hoboken, a town that he rarely visited after achieving his success and which he regarded as having held him in insufficient esteem. In public declarations he offered the traditional gospel of self-help as his philosophy of making good. Sinatra believed in concepts of dignity and compassion, but he did so on his own terms. His moral code was paleolithic". -Chris Rojek in "Frank Sinatra" (2004)

The Barbara Sinatra Children's Center was founded in 1986 by Barbara and Frank Sinatra in Southern California's Coachella Valley to meet the community's need for a permanent facility that would help to children victims of sexual abuse.

Frank Sinatra: character and personality (I'm a fool to want you)

Frank Sinatra at a Capitol Records recording session, circa 1959 for "Come Dance with Me"

"The first commercial radio station, for example, was established in 1920; by 1922 there were 508, and by the end of the decade Americans were spending $850 million a year on radio equipment. Until around the time Sinatra was born, the United States was predominately a culture of production: its social values, material conditions and economic realities (like relatively high labor costs, which fostered technological innovation as well as the immigration of intellectual capital from abroad), helped create a society in which making things was paramount.

Starting in the 1920s the U.S. became a culture of consumption: the future success of capitalism depended on nation’s ability to absorb incredible productive capacity via buying, spending, using up. Indeed, it was precisely the difficulty in absorbing this capacity that was widely blamed for the advent of the Great Depression. This new culture of consumption had important psychological ramifications that reached deep into the roots of mass consciousness. In the words of cultural historian Warren Susman, a society that once placed emphasis on character now prized personality. “Character” has a moral connotation; it suggests the essential nature of an individual in a way that transcends surface appearances. But “personality” suggests the allure of precisely such surface.

Frank Sinatra worked extremely hard. That ambition emerged from the mists of his childhood shortly after the Crosby concert in 1935, when Sinatra made his first serious effort to break into show business by trying out for the Major Bowes and his Original Amateur Hour, a nationally broadcast radio show. (“Round and round she goes” went Bowes’s signature saying, referring to the wheel of fortune, “and where she stops nobody knows.”) It’s not clear whether it was Bowes’ inspiration or Dolly’s machinations that led him to join another auditioning group, The Three Flashes, which was rechristened The Hoboken Four. Sinatra stayed on until the bullying of other group members led him to quit at the end of the year.

When Sinatra entered Columbia Recording Studios on March 27, 1951, his career had just about bottomed out. The label hadn’t dropped him yet, but the writing was on the wall. This was the period in his life when he was producing his most embarrassing work – a time when, in collaboration with Columbia executive Mitch Miller, he recorded novelty songs like “The Huckle Buck” and “Mamma Will Bark” that generated ridicule perhaps most vociferously from Sinatra himself. Confident yet melancholy, clearly patterned on the blues and yet bearing the stamp of his own inimitable style, “The Birth of the Blues” almost single‐handedly illustrates the difference between Sinatra’s commercial decline and artistic decline.

Sinatra was reputedly miserable. His wife Nancy was refusing to give him a divorce, and a notably unsympathetic Gardner, who had a weakness for Spanish bullfighters, was making it clear to Sinatra that she would not wait indefinitely to get married. Interestingly, the song scheduled for the evening’s session was one – the only one, in fact – for which Sinatra claimed a songwriting credit. It was called “I’m a Fool to Want You.”

"L'amour se mesure à ce que l'on accepte de lui sacrifier." -Ava Gardner (Mémoires)



To borrow a term of psychoanalysts, the tone of “I’m a Fool to Want You” was “overdetermined” before he ever sang a note. Arranger Alex Stordahl opened the song with dark, almost weeping strings, a mood augmented by haunting backup vocals. When Sinatra himself enters, the emotion escalates even as the arrangement recedes; the intensity he brings to the words takes the feeling beyond heartsickness into bona fide grief. The death in question is not that of a relationship, but rather the self‐respect of a man who hates himself for what he has become. Mere words can’t express this loathing: you have to hear it to believe it. Although a composer and lyricist also worked on the song (and probably were the primary writers), it seems unusually apropos for Sinatra to receive songwriting credit for “Fool”: his contribution to it is utterly unmistakable.

One of the more remarkable aspects of “Fool” is that it does not simply capture a powerful inner experience. It also charts a trajectory of emotion from resistance to capitulation. At first, the singer acknowledges that indulging in his longing is counterproductive. But by the bridge of the song, there’s a slippage between past and present, and it becomes increasingly clear that its lovelorn protagonist has not gotten over the relationship. “Pity me: I need you.” Never before and never again would Sinatra sing with the tremulous intensity that he sings these words – especially “need” – and the song ends with an assertion that his man simply can’t carry on without his lost love.

It has been customary in (mostly brief) discussions of “I’m a Fool to Want You” to emphasize the obvious autobiographical dimensions of the song – as indeed I’ve done here. But such an approach, however valid and useful, also has the effect of obscuring the nature of Sinatra’s achievement. The really striking thing about “Fool” is not that Sinatra was able to spontaneously express his pain in song (this underestimates the decades of applied passion and discipline that Sinatra brought to the studio that night). Nor is it that “Fool” is an especially intelligent or insightful piece of music (considered solely on the basis of lyrics or music in isolation, it would undoubtedly seem both melodramatic and trite).

Here’s what’s really great about the song – and, by extension, much of Sinatra’s best music: a kind of emotional honesty that closes a gap between people. The protagonist of “Fool” has no lesson or advice to offer; indeed, the unresolved ending is part of what makes it so harrowing. And yet for reasons that aren’t entirely clear, a powerfully rendered rendition of an inner life, even an anguished one, can bring comfort to those with whom it is shared: You are not alone. You are not alone in your feeling of deprivation, and perhaps more importantly, you are not alone in feeling foolish for wanting things you had no real right to expect, but could not help but want anyway.

In short, Sinatra’s performance in “I’m a Fool to Want You” is a profoundly creative act, one that falls more into the realm of character than personality. -"American History for Cynical Beginners, Chapter Six - Mr. Sinatra Gets Rejected" By Jim Cullen

Monday, July 18, 2011

Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena witness Los Angeles gang violence.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena got a front row seat to Los Angeles gang violence.












The actors, who were on riding along with police on patrol in South Los Angeles, were on the scene of a gang shooting late Wednesday. The actors are researching police work for their roles in the upcoming movie "End of Watch".

Sgt. Angela McGee says a gang member shot a rival, who is hospitalized with a grazing bullet wounds above his lip and on an arm. Two suspects walked away and there are no arrests.
McGee says the actors were on patrol with 77th Street Station officers. KTTV Fox 11 video shows the actors talking while officers investigate nearby.
Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena filming "End of Watch" on April 21st, 2011

"End of Watch" is a drama that focuses on the partnership of two police officers. Source: www.huffingtonpost.com


Actor Jake Gyllenhaal got a front row seat to Los Angeles gang violence during a ride-along with police last night. The Los Angeles Police Department confirmed the incident, in which a gang member shot a rival who was hospitalized after suffering bullet wounds above his lip and on the arm. No arrests were made. Gyllenhaal and fellow actor Michael Pena were researching for their roles in the upcoming movie 'End of Watch,' a drama that focuses on the partnership of two police officers. The two actors were seen talking at the scene in the aftermath of the shooting.

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Jake Gyllenhaal relaxing chilling out into the wild with Bear Grylls

Why did you choose to take him to Iceland? Were you looking for a location that might be easier for him to handle?

I thought Iceland would be good because there's lots to do. I was like, "The weather will be cool and it should be pretty mellow. We'll do a bit of climbing, and we'll just kind of jump into it." But he was thrown right in on the deep end. We did have some crazy conditions -- some of the worst weather I've seen for years. The wind was so strong that they literally had a jumbo jet blown sideways at the airport. And there we were, 5,000 feet up on a mountain trying to get our backsides out of there in one piece. Jake was saying, "Where's the relaxing chilling out in the wild?"
I couldn’t believe that Jake decided to crawl across that rope. He was attached to you via a smaller rope tied around his waist -- if he’d fallen, would that have saved him?
That wouldn't have held him. That wasn't a safety line -- that was a helping line for him to balance. And if he ran out of puff, I could have helped him across with that. But I was pretty confident that he'd be OK. We worked out afterwards that it was the equivalent of doing 180 pull-ups. He must have had to sign every kind of contract imaginable before coming on the show. I always have to have kind of a weird conversation with these people's insurance guys, where they ask me, "Can you guarantee us that these actors will be safe?" And I go, "Well, no. I can't." Then there's a long pause on the other end of the telephone. But you can't predict what's going to happen in the wild -- that's what makes the show edgy.

Do you have a lot of Hollywood types approaching you wanting to be on the show in an attempt to prove their toughness?

A few people have asked to be on it. It's nice for actors to do something where they're not covered by safety ropes and helmets. There's a thrill for them to be able to do stuff that is very real.
Overall, what did you think of Jake’s performance in the wild?

You've gotta admire somebody when they step out of their comfort zone and put their life in somebody else's hands. I was very clear with him and said, 'Come on your own and trust me.' He did incredible. What I like about the wild is when you're squeezed, you see what people are made of. Source: latimesblogs.latimes.com



Starting July 11, 2011, watch Man vs. Wild Mondays @ 9PM e/p on Discovery. | http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/man-vs-wild/#mkcpgn=ytdsc1 | In Iceland, a brave but voice-crackingly anxious Jake Gyllenhaal faces his fear when he uses a rope to traverse a VERY deep ravine ... in a snowstorm to boot.


Jake Gyllenhaal guest appearances in Man Vs Wild (Season 6: Episode 1) Man vs. Wild Discovery - Men vs Wild With Jake Gyllenhaal Actor Jake Gyllenhaal helps Bear demonstrate survival techniques in Iceland.