"Be my angel" (Mazzy Star)

Michael Cera ("Be my angel")

Peter Sarsgaard in "The Seagull"

"Peter Sarsgaard, who steps into Chekhov’s The Seagull this fall as Trigorin, the amoral writer who drives one character to ruin and another to suicide, is talking about his visit to a communal retreat in California not too long ago. He was doing research for “something I’ve been writing for a long time”—something “like a screenplay.” He came across a mission statement for the group’s school that instructed teachers, when breaking up a fight, to ask the victim a question they’d normally put to a bully: “Why you?”

It’s a question, implying that victims share responsibility, that Sarsgaard would like to ask Chekhov’s characters. “Nina, why you?” he asks, referring to the young ingénue corrupted by Trigorin, in a warm but slightly sinister Waspy drawl reminiscent of John Malkovich. “Does everything just happen to you, or do you make things happen in your life?” Trigorin, Sarsgaard insists, is “doing exactly what he wants. Some people pursue things they think they’re interested in, and they’re actually not. They’re living in a dream world.”
In a way, Sarsgaard, 37, is an exemplar of anti-ambitionism. He lives pretty quietly, in Brooklyn, with (as everyone knows) Maggie Gyllenhaal and their nearly 2-year-old daughter. He’s never tried to carry a blockbuster, saying “in order to be the lead in a $100 million movie, you have to want to be.” He concedes that The Dark Knight, in which his wife co-starred, is an exception: “You see Heath Ledger’s performance and you go, well, there’s somebody who shows that it’s possible to be an enormously amazing actor in the middle of a franchise.” Yes, but … “I see that movie and I see a man who is happy acting—it looks like he’s tap-dancing. The part does not destroy the actor, ever, if they’re good. That had absolutely nothing to do with what happened to him.”

Sarsgaard, meanwhile, likes playing his characters off to the side: the gung-ho sniper in Jarhead, the canny editor in Shattered Glass, the gravedigger in Garden State, the charismatic foil in the forthcoming Mysteries of Pittsburgh. He got the part of Trigorin, his first on Broadway, after co-starring in a Nick Hornby movie with Carey Mulligan, who is playing the victimized Nina. Mulligan had asked him to recommend possible Trigorins, which he did—whereupon director Ian Rickson tossed out Sarsgaard’s list and hired the list-maker, who is quick to add that he had not pulled a Cheney and suggested his own name. Rickson says he aimed to cast a younger and more energetic actor than is customary. “The virility of Trigorin, and his attachment to nature, his sexuality, his vibrancy, I feel is a really important thing,” he says. “Young actors who are very masculine and have that soulfulness are very hard to find.”


It’s a good thing Rickson is open to new interpretations, because while Trigorin comes off on the page as alternately oblivious, self-absorbed, and manipulative, Sarsgaard sees him much the way he sees himself: flexible, open, disdainful of convention. “I guess I have a tendency to take on a lot of orphans,” he says. “I feel like I’m protecting people—protecting maybe parts of myself that I think are valid, and that people could judge.”
Source: nymag.com

Too upset to talk

"Jake Gyllenhaal, who had reportedly been worried about best friend Heath Ledger’s bouts with depression, is so upset about Ledger’s death that he is unable to talk to the media.
Jake, who is the godfather of Heath’s two year old daughter Matilda, is currently in New Mexico filimg Brothers with actor Tobey Maguire".
Source: www.popcrunch.com

Songs lists

My iTunes Song List, Open it in iTunes!

Well, these aren't my favourite songs (not all of them) but they are the last ones I've been listening to in iTunes. I think maybe one of the reasons I'm interested in watching the upcoming film "Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist" is that tells the story of my music-imbued adolescence, I read the book by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan a few times and it's a giddy experience which, from the distance we have as more adult netizens it turns into a time-travel pill we want to swallow again (with straight-edge drinks). I bet almost every girl/woman from Weirdland played her game with a sensitive musician in their teens. I know I did.
I dated a local musician who played the guitar in a band -one of his favourite bands were The Ramones- and he was blonde, too, like Michael Cera. If sometimes I come off slightly obsessed with characters like Juno, Norah, etc. is because I had similar experiences and I was this self-assured, self-destructive,
partially naïve teenager. Who dated a sensitive dorky blonde guitarist in an indie band. And who made mistakes that were abandoned inside an infinite mixtapes dumpster in Alternia.

Nick & Norah's make-out

17. NICK

"I have never, ever felt such desire. She takes off the belt, lets it drop to the floor. Then she unbuttons the top button of my jeans—only the top button. And I reach over to her jeans and unbutton the top button—only the top button. And I ask it again—“Are you okay?” And this time she says yes. She says she’s more than okay. We kiss like it’s a form of clasping. It’s not like it was in the club, when it was like she was proving something. We have nothing to prove now, nothing except that we’re not afraid. That we’re not going to think too much, or stop too much, or go too much. Her hand traces down the zipper line and I say, “Slow.” Because this is not a rush. This is not something insignificant. This is real. This is happening. And this is ours".
18. NORAH

"When did my life get so good? Was it when I agreed with a kiss to be Nick’s five-minute girlfriend, or when I realized frigid was a choice rather than a truth? This ice room is so very cold. Nick is so very hot. His heat—my heat—our heat—almost makes me forget I am still wet from the downpour, seeking refuge in the darkened ice room of a fucking Marriott with the Pepsi sign lit up, and I am without a doubt really into Nick because I am a Coke drinker, I mean I can take the Pepsi Challenge and fucking smell the difference without bothering to distinguish the two tastes in my mouth. Mmmmmm, tastes. His lips taste so good, his moist skin tastes so good, everything about him is just delicious".

Copyright © 2005 by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan.

"Candy" reviews and video

"For all its depiction of a descent into drug addiction, "Candy'' is filled with surprisingly sweet moments and goes down more easily than seems possible given the subject matter.

As in "Leaving Las Vegas,'' there's a love story to divert you.
Dan begins a passionate romance with a painter, Candy (Abbie Cornish, an Australian actress touted as the next Nicole Kidman as much for her talent as her luscious looks). They're kids at heart, a point emphasized in an exhilarating opening scene of the two whirling around and around on an amusement park ride. They look as if they never want to stop.Heath and Cornish bring eye-popping realism to their sex scenes.Eager to help with the family finances, Dan considers becoming a male hooker but decides he would be "hopeless with the gay stuff" -- a line that whether intentionally or not will get a laugh out of anyone who saw "Brokeback Mountain".

Ledger is mesmerizing in a scene where Dan pulls off a white-collar crime by going to a bank with a stolen ID and charming a cashier into giving him more than $2,000. Hyped up, he keeps repeating to himself, "I'm rolling,'' like a mantra". Source: www.sfgate.com
"Cornish, Kidman-esque in her elusive, look-but-don't-touch allure, may have the title role here, but Ledger, long-haired and so soft-looking you'd think he was shot slightly out of focus, is the movie's real eye candy. Armfield's colorful sets keep things on the implausibly cheery side of surreal until the requisite withdrawal scene, which uses nothing more than a room-sized mattress and a pathetically old TV set as props, the quivering junkies left to their own devices. Any drug movie's effectiveness can be measured by the strength of its detox, and Candy doesn't sweeten the cold turkey. Still, it's a downward spiral from there in more ways than one. Never mind the neo-psychedelic-pop soundtrack and occasional double-vision cinematography: Dope just can't account for the film's fried brain cells".
Source: www.villagevoice.com

"CANDY" FINAL SCENE: