Rendition's Oscar caliber

"Best Supporting Actor Oscar Curse aside, my picks are generally accurate. And after seeing Rendition, I need to tell all fellow Oscar Pool Enthusiasts to put your money on Rendition. This is one of the best movies I have ever seen.
Rendition tells the story of a family in crisis. When Isabella’s husband boards a flight home from a conference but never arrives, she must summon every ounce of courage she has to discover what’s happened to him.

Best Actress: Reese Witherspoon
Reese Witherspoon (Walk the Line) plays Isabella. I am a fan of Witherspoon’s; I think she’s absolutely delightful no matter the part. She has a smile that lit up the entire theatre and outstrips her contemporary’s talent level by a mile. As Isabella, Witherspoon manages to be tough as nails and utterly adorable all at once. While struggling to find out what’s become of her husband, she shows a gripping sense of desperation.
Witherspoon’s character’s journey from fear to frustration to anguish is perfectly done and impossible to look away from.

As Isabella, Witherspoon manages to maintain a crumbling façade to strength, barely managing to cover her mounting panic over her husband. There are beautiful moments of Isabella, lost in her own thoughts in her performance. Witherspoon does a spectacular job of capturing the weariness of a person fighting for one she loves.
The power of her character’s passion is astonishing. Witherspoon’s portrait of an ordinary woman in extraordinary circumstances is remarkable.

Best Actor: Jake Gyllenhaal
Jake Gyllenhaal (Brokeback Mountain) plays Douglas Freeman. Gyllenhaal is the master of body language, able to communicate volumes without saying a word. (There are moments where, simply by pacing down a hall, he brings out a character who is wound tighter than a spring. His haunted eyes are mesmerizing. His outer shell of machismo exquisitely covers a man desperately unsure of himself. Gyllenhaal executes some enchanting attempts at uncomfortable humour, lightening some of the movie’s darker moments.

As Douglas, Gyllenhaal perfectly underplays reactions to extreme circumstances, making the moments where he explodes all the more compelling. His moments of guilt and emotional pain are absolutely heartbreaking. As Douglas, Gyllenhaal is cool, calm, and commanding. He blew me away.

[...] It’s intelligent, well written and complex without being convoluted. The subplots are fascinating, the minor characters captivating. The leads performances are Oscar calibre. Rendition is intense, the finale thrilling. It is a literal nail biter of a film and not to be missed. It’s easily one of the best films of the year".
Source: www.trurodaily.com

Lucky Reese

A video of a young Jake

WATCH THIS VIDEO, with a younger dark-haired Jake: Source: Video.accesshollywood.com

Daily Mail Interview

-What is your greatest regret?

-I'm too young for regrets. But there was a situation a few years ago which could have become a regret. I was offered a great role by the legendary film-maker Bernardo Bertolucci which required me to do nudity.

In the end I turned down. I came to the conclusion that I didn't really feel comfortable doing the things that were asked of the character at that point in my life.

It was the hardest decision I've ever made as an actor, to say, I don't want to work with one of the best film-makers on earth. I thought I'd regret it later, but it was the best decision I made because I was honest with myself.

-What were your dreams as a child?

-I remember being in college knowing I didn't want to go anymore. I wanted to try and become an actor. There is a something in me, with a risk of sounding cliché, that I just had to do it. I knew from an early age that acting was my path.

[...]-What turns you on?

-I would really love to direct one day. I think there are certain actors who love the character and the performance and that's all they want to be a part of.

I love being involved in the story and I love being involved in how the story moves. It's like, so hot! It's almost sexual. When it works right, it's such a turn on.

-Is there anything you are trying to quit but can't?

-Thinking so much! No, really. I would like to quit thinking. I tend to over-analyze things and decisions, although I end up going with my gut feeling. I was once told by a director to take a year off from thinking. That made me really laugh - and really think.

[...] I think as an actor you have to be open to your emotions - that's how you tap into other characters. Besides, by being so open I've come to terms with how screwed I am!

[...] I pride myself on making interesting films, as opposed to the type that just draws a huge audience of teenagers, so I think they are pretty smart fans. They always have questions for me, something that hasn't been answered by the movie. They'll scream: 'What's the ending of Donnie Darco? I don't understand it!' That is so nice.

[...]-What do you find attractive in a woman?

-Well, probably just an innate quality of being comfortable. That is sort of the biggest thing. Beauty is not always bad. For me, I think it's the comfortable factor.

How does she feel about herself? Is she happy? That is so powerful and sexy to me". Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

New coupling

Honestly, dear Weirdos, I didn't think this day would come, and now seeing Jake and Reese together it's a satisfactory and a little bizarre sensation at the same time.

An alternative view on Darko

"My personal interpretation of Donnie Darko is not related to the philosophy of time travel or any of the other type of science-fiction schemes that are usually associated with the film.

Donnie is a young man who thinks constantly about girls and experiments frequently with sexual compulsions. About that matter, his parents (especially his mother, Rose) are naïve at best. Her mother is afraid and prefers Donnie attend therapy rather than confront him about his sexual growth. She pays another woman (Dr. Thurman) instead. The therapist is friendly and Donnie reveals to her some of his fantasies. It's possible that Donnie is feeling some incestuous impulses towards his sister, since he hasn't had real experience with girls.

If we flash back to the beginning of the movie, we descend upon the Carpathian Ridge, a crescent-shaped cliff that extrudes from the dense Virginia evergreens above a deep rock canyon where a cliff marks the end of a dirt road that winds down from above. There Donnie got used to sleeping at the edge of the cliff. The close-up shows us a bike collapsed next to him, Donnie shivering, curled up in the fetal position, maybe a sign of weakness and a clue to Donnie's search for a meaning.

In the director's cut, Elizabeth asks him about Gretchen while carving a pumpkin and is curious at the Halloween party when Donnie goes upstairs with Gretchen. This may suggest Elizabeth possesses some type of control over Donnie's sexuality in the same way the mother of the family does. Donnie endures all this family control only in his subconscious, but he isn't capable of admitting it. In the first dinner scene he gets rebellious, throwing disdainful comments to his sisters and insulting his mother afterwards. His search for sexual realization is giddy, leading him to a textbook conflicted teenager scenario which creates an alternate world - in his mind - where Donnie becomes an accidental saviour while fighting against a giant bunny monster whom he calls Frank.

The bunny is the real Elizabeth's boyfriend, becoming Donnie's competitor and sexual rival. However, the external form is devoid of human attachments, only a grotesque suit, masking Donnie's guilt. All his virtual TV fantasies and fights against matriarchal repression are reflected by the artificial evil bunny, who causes him constant dreadful visions. Frank is, by this logic, a mirror of Donnie's psyche. This also would explain his rushed demeanor when he asks Gretchen to go out with him, because his desire is owerwhelmingly intense.

Evidently Gretchen is the perfect girl for Donnie, because she comes from a dysfunctional home and hides herself from a violent male father figure. She is an angel in Donnie's eyes due to her romantic behavior but more definitively because of her sexual freedom, which separates her from the other school girls Donnie has met. Gretchen stops Donnie's advances in one scene, showing him that their future sexual relationship must also have an emotional component. She's wiser in this aspect.

In a chat with his friends Donnie uses an example of Smurfettes as asexual beings who scare him because of their lack of sexuality. In another scene from the director's cut we can infer Donnie's bitterness from this dialogue exchange between him and the teacher Ms. Pomeroy:

Karen Pomeroy: Is the death of one species less tragic than another?

Donnie: Of course. A rabbit is not like us. It has no history books... it has no knowledge of sorrow or regret. I like bunnies and all. They're cute... and they're horny. And if you're cute and horny... then you're probably happy that you don't know who you are... or why you're even alive. But the only thing I've known rabbits to do is have sex as many times as possible before they die.

So to sum up: the female figure is Gretchen and the male figure is Donnie. Donnie's lecture to his friends about Smurfettes reveals to us how important sex is for Donnie; for him life hasn't any real meaning without it. When Donnie and Gretchen establish their intimate bonds, they are happy and isolated from society, so society is now looking for a way to punish them. Donnie’s hysteria makes him run away with Gretchen, but the tragedy will appear when Frank - the evil reflection of American matriarchy and its inherent obscenity (sexual repression) - ends up killing her. Donnie prefers awaking dead to suffering a surrender to the dominant point of view of the society".
Published previously on 21th October in Blogcritics.org

Reese's Rendition

"Rendition" director Gavin Hood, whose South African drama "Tsotsi" won the 2005 foreign-language Oscar, said Witherspoon's casting served as a Trojan horse to draw people into the movie.

"I don't need this movie to play to the choir," he said. "I need this movie to play to the people who are deeply skeptical to what I'm doing, so that they can be engaged in the debate. Well, who better to help take that out there to that world than the all-American girl?
"Reese is a woman of integrity. She is not a flighty, fluffy person. She's an intelligent woman who's done great work, who is also an all-American girl. This is the reality. It can happen to Reese. And it could. The girl next door who happens to marry a nice Egyptian guy who was at NYU."

Co-star Peter Sarsgaard, playing an old friend of Witherspoon's character now working for a U.S. senator, said the actress subtly captures a woman coping with a nightmare scenario without giving in to one-note anguish.

"She was playing a grieving woman in every scene in the movie. It's an incredibly difficult thing to do, just because it's hard to act like you're in grief or be in grief. It's hard to create variety within that," Sarsgaard said.

[...] Starting acting lessons as a child in Tennessee, Witherspoon broke into movies with the 1991 teen drama "The Man in the Moon." She later turned heads with 1996's "Freeway," a Red Riding Hood black comedy in which she plays an illiterate youth who goes toe-to-toe with a real-life big bad wolf (Kiefer Sutherland).

[...] In next year's comedy "Four Christmases," Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn play a couple rushing to squeeze in holiday visits to each of their divorced parents all in one day.
Source: www.showbuzz.cbsnews.com
Thanks to Maria for sending me the first and second pictures.