"Brothers" Test Screening

"Ok, I went into work and found out that Yesterday Thurs. thay had a test screening of Nats new film BROTHERS. I got a call from work from coworkers cause they know Im a die hard Nat fan and said hey they have a privite early test screening of Nats New film Brothers.

I was fraking out cause it's was shown at the cinema thats 5 min. away from my house and directly across the street from my work at fedexkinkos. It's a station casino. I live in vegas.

I am at work now and came in and the guys who had the test screening came in and had ALL of the test cards from peoples reaction to the film I had to make 2 copies. On top said BROTHERS and on it was How was the film?, How was Nat's performance, ect.

I went through all of them ( Hey i want to know) Alot said Nats performance was excellent. same goes for Toby and Jake".

Source: natalieportman.com/forum

Three Wanderers Video

A musical video featuring some images of three gorgeous actors: Jake Gyllenhaal, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michael Cera. Song "The Wanderer" by Dion & The Belmonts.

Pirates and Arabian nights

“Prince of Persia” isn’t just going to be like “Pirates” in terms of scope and tone, the newest Disney/Bruckheimer tag-team is actually going to “do for Arabian Nights movies what ‘Pirates’ did for pirate movies,” screenwriter and series creator Jordon Mechner told MTV News. Slated for 2010, the film will star Jake Gyllenhaal as the iconic video game character character. [...]

“There’ll certainly be a lot of stunts, a lot of special effects. I mean it’s Jerry Bruckheimer!” Mechner insisted. “They’re shooting in the deserts of Morocco. The scope of this is going to be massive. It’s really spectacular.”“Well the movie’s packed with action, so there’ll be swords and horses and all the things that wouldn’t be ‘Prince of Persia’ without. But because it’s a movie, it’s about the characters and character relationships. There’s no fighting for fighting’s sake. In a game, you have a lot of fighting because you’re doing it and it’s fun,” he said. “But in a movie, fighting’s a part of the story but it’s not a movie about swordfighting.”
Source: moviesblog.mtv.com

"Brothers" is bumped

"Jim Sheridan's Brothers, which I've been very much looking forward to, being a fan of Jim and Susanne Bier's original 2004 film, is being bumped into '09 -- possibly a late summer release, or possibly one in the fall. MGM had planned it to open it on 12.4.08, but now they'll be taking it to next May's Cannes Film Festival. Draw whatever conclusions you want, but the implication is that it's not a quality issue as much as a concern that it might suffer against the heavy year-end competition.

This despite test-screening responses that seemed (emphasis on the "s" word) to indicate possible Oscar contention. Particular praise has gone to the performances of costars Jake Gyllenhaal, Tobey Maguire and Natalie Portman.

The MGM team wasn't in the building from 9:15 to 10:45 am (even the receptionists didn't answer) so I called Brothers producer Mike DeLuca, who confirmed the news. The decision to hold was basically due to the "crazy full fall for serious movies" this year, he says. "We love Brothers and want to blitz in Cannes, but it's just too crowded this year for a wide fall release and an Oscar campaign." A key factor in the decision, he says, is that costar Jake Gyllenhaal is unavailable for year-end p.r. due to filming on Prince of Persia and "we can't promote this movie without Jake. So Cannes makes most sense. I'm super proud of the movie and a major unveiling on the Cote d'Azur with all cast present is too good to pass up."

MGM source said that a mid to late summer release could conceivably happen due to next summer looking relatively weak,

As noted three or four times before on HE, Brothers is a remake of Susanne Bier's 2004 Danish-language original about a younger "bad" brother (Gyllenhaal in Sheridan's version) stepping into the familial shoes of his older "good" brother (Maguire) after the latter disappears during an enemy skirmish in Afghanistan.

Natalie Portman plays the wife-mother whose loyalties shift, or at least adapt to new realities. Sam Shepard plays the gruff and disapproving pater familias, the father of Gyllenhaal and Maguire. David Benioff (The Kite Runner, The 25th Hour) adapted the screenplay". Source: hollywood-elsewhere.com

"A further complication had developed when Warner Brothers acquired Mr. Fincher’s “Zodiac” project, leading to a showdown between Warner and Paramount over conflicting claims to the director’s attention. They solved the problem by agreeing to share rights on each, with Warner getting international rights (and sharing costs) on “Button.”

So far the people who made the movie, at least, think it was worth the bother. Mr. Roth, who has an obvious stake in the matter, said he was choosing to believe the audience would follow". Source: www.nytimes.com

Read this interesting article about the road to the Oscars.

Unconventional sex-symbols

-"Young women seem to like you. Are you a sex symbol?
-Jake Gyllenhaal: [Laughs] I don't know what I am. I know I was kind of an It-guy for a long time". Source: www.metro.co.uk
"Hollywood heartthrob Jake Gyllenhaal says he doesn't understand why he's become a bit of a sex symbol. 'I don't think of myself as good-looking,' he admits. 'Not at all. When I was a kid I had these huge glasses. 'I once went to a fancy dress as a Crest toothpaste tube with these huge glasses stuck on".
Source: www.nowmagazine.co.uk

"But against all odds, Michael Cera is a teenage heartthrob, en route to the pantheon with Ricky Nelson, Leonardo DiCaprio and David Cassidy. He became a fixture in teen magazines after his first leading role in "Superbad" and is now the poster boy for producer-director Judd Apatow's dork renaissance. Cera himself has no better idea than puzzled grown-ups as to why he's any teen's idea of a hottie. "A sex symbol?" he asked quizzically at a Canadian press conference earlier this month. "Like, I symbolize sex?"But the difference with "Nick and Norah" is how the film finally capitalizes on its star's unlikely sex appeal. For the first time in his career, Cera's role seems to invite the attention. Sex scenes in his earlier films were either disguised ("Juno") or filled with laugh-out-loud jokes ("Superbad"). In "Nick and Norah," the romantic encounters are almost uncomfortably real. He doesn't fumble; it clearly isn't his first time. In a post-coital embrace, Cera's limpid eyes gaze down at his partner: "You're beautiful", he says, quieting Norah's insecurities.

Cera is not the first guy to win admirers with sensitive, "beta" schmaltz. John Cusack, emo man before "emo" was a term of art, is clearly an inspiration. While Cera simpers, reliant on his bushy, raised brows to convey a range of repressed emotions, Cusack fired off zingy mini-monologues. "I don't want to sell anything bought or processed, buy anything sold or processed, process anything sold, bought or processed, or repair anything sold, bought or processed", Cusack mused in the film, a famous sum-uppance of vague teenage principles.

It's Cera's bashful purity and sense of humor that make him appealing—". Source: www.newsweek.com
"On 'Arrested Development', Cera copped a nicest-kid-in-the-world demeanor, playing a lovably gawky teen who's impossible not to like.

Cera has perfected the persona in film roles, turning self-effacing decency into a surprisingly appealing trait in a business that often looks for glib wisecracking in its stars.

"He's just got a goodness inside him that you can see", co-star Dennings said. "I'm sure there are tons of people with goodness inside them, but you can't see it. With him, you can taste it. When you look at him, you just know that he's a good person".
"Nick and Norah" director Peter Sollett met with Cera before "Superbad" and "Juno" came out, and he had not seen "Arrested Development."

But he took an immediate liking to Cera, saying the actor's demure on-screen presence is much like his real-life persona".Nice as Cera is, Dennings said she would love to see him play a bad guy. Would Cera ever try it?

"Maybe someday. It depends on the script and the director, to be honest", Cera said. "There are no parts that I can think of right now where I go, 'Oh, I'll never play that'. It just depends on what it is and if it feels right." Source: www.huffingtonpost.com
TeenHollywood: Did you and Michael have fun on set? He seems like a super-huggable, cute dork. Is he or is he totally different?

Kat: He's really a good guy and really nice and smart. He's not a dork at all. I wouldn't say he is. I think he's just a decent human being. If a decent human being is a dork then I want only to be friends with dorks! Source: www.teenhollywood.com

Peter Sarsgaard in The Seagull

Jake with Peter Sarsgaard at the 17th Annual Palm Springs Film Festival, 2006.

"The 37-year-old actor is known for playing hard, uncomfortable roles with a weird sort of laconic intensity since making his debut in 1995 as a Sean Penn murder victim in "Dead Man Walking."

He graduated to being a killer in "Boys Don't Cry," a rich guy with a fetish for a prostitute in "The Center of the World," a stoned gravedigger in "Garden State," Liam Neeson's lover in "Kinsey" and a disturbed sharpshooter in "Jarhead."

"I think sometimes I've been told that I play a villain sympathetically. I don't think that's actually what I'm doing," he says. "I'm just trying to get at the undercurrent of something."

Sarsgaard these days is plumbing those undercurrents on stage, making his Broadway debut in an adaptation of Anton Chekhov's "The Seagull" alongside Kristin Scott Thomas, Mackenzie Crook and Carey Mulligan. He's a newcomer to the production, which began last year at London's Royal Court Theatre.

He's got a typical Sarsgaard role — Trigorin, a tortured writer who drives a rival to suicide and a young lover to ruin. He's grown a lush beard for the part and radiates both charisma and sleaze.

On the stoop, Sarsgaard is still buzzing about his debut deployment of an English accent the night before. He had previously been using his natural American voice, which made him the odd man out in the show.

The main reason was that it wasn't his turn to act. He and Gyllenhaal like to alternate the times they work, and she was off filming "Crazy Heart" with Jeff Bridges in New Mexico. That yearning for realness has landed Sarsgaard respect and a quirky career. The fact that he traded Manhattan a few years ago for a modest home in a tree-lined, family neighborhood in Brooklyn's Park Slope is another stab at keeping it real.

He's passionately political and does public service announcements to encourage young people to vote. It doesn't take long to identify his own blue-state leanings: On this day he wears an American Civil Liberties Union baseball cap with the slogan "Freedom Can't Protect Itself."

Sarsgaard, who says his favorite performances are in movies that no one saw, seems to relish the fact that he's mostly only recognized in certain demographics. As the coffee bar incident shows, he's usually left unmolested."The type of thing that I love is walking down the street and when someone comes up to me and says, 'I saw one of your movies the other night and it affected me', he says".

Seagull - theplay
Source: omg.yahoo.com

Top 10 Hottest Young actors

Top 50 Hottest Young Actors - THE TOP 10 :
#10 SHIA LABEOUF.
Top 50 status: Ranked #11 on the previous list."Best acting performance: His definitive portrayal as the young Dito Montiel in A Guide to Recognizing your Saints.

Why he made the top 50: I'm not that impressed with LaBeouf's acting talents, but I am with his ability to play the Hollywood game. While he admits, he's not your usual 'Hollywood idol type of guy', he certainly has proven time and again that given a good enough role where he can sink his teeth and involve himself in some serious character study, he can show some amazing results.

The biggest factor that puts him into the Top 10 is his ability to draw crowds into the movie houses. A lot of young audience certainly look at Shia as one of their favorite young stars, but not necessarily their favorite young actor.
#9 EMILE HIRSCH.
Top 50 status: Ranked #4 on the previous list.Best acting performances: Hirsch certainly made a good number of breakthrough performances, but I have to say his role in Sean Penn's Into The Wild is his best so far- as adventurer Chris McCandless. Also worth mentioning is his role in Imaginary Heroes as the younger son of Jeff Daniels and Sigourney Weaver, the emotionally traumatized Tim Travis.

Why he made the top 50: Together with Joe Levitt and Jake Gyllenhaal, he is the only Hollywood-based young actor who can compete with the current onslaught of young actors from across the Atlantic, most notably the current crop of talented British actors led by the likes of Jim Sturgess, Robert Pattinson and Ben Whishaw, to name a few.
#6 JAKE GYLLENHAAL.
Top 50 status: Ranked #9 on the previous list.
Best acting performances: His Oscar nominated role in Brokeback Mountain is certainly his best role so far. As Jack Twist, he brought so much credibility into the character, it completely complements the emotional pain and anguish of Ennis del Mar, played by the late Heath Ledger. Coming in second is the cult hit, Donnie Darko where he played the title character. Also worth mentioning is David Fincher's Zodiac where Jake plays Robert Graysmith, who happens to be the author where the movie was based.

Why he made the top 50: He is probably the most identified among the young actors as a 'celebrity'. But while he is part of the celebrity circle where paparazzi like to hunt and intrude upon, Jake has certainly made the best of it. His sense of humour while guesting in some of America's biggest talk shows certainly made him a household name, but while some of these household names are being dismissed as having no talent, Jake is that rare exception. I certainly look forward to his next movie, Brothers, with Tobey Maguire and Natalie Portman, definitely a great showcase of young talents!
#3 JOSEPH GORDON-LEVITT.
Top 50 status: Ranked #5 on the previous list.
Best acting performances: After a hustling gig that turned violent, we see Neil (Gordon-Levitt) silently licking his wounds as he stared at his bruises and cuts, silently he cries – he must have realized he’s all alone and that there’s no one to help him or even listen to him… Such was the performance of Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Greg Arakki’s Mysterious Skin, that almost all critics agreed- Levitt is the young actor to watch! Of course, Levitt is no ‘one-movie wonder’, as Brick from director Rian Johnson proves.

Why he made the top 50: He's a better actor than Jake Gyllenhaal or Emile Hirsch for that matter. He can play a credible and exciting romantic lead better than Ryan Philippe or James Marsden for that matter.

While he reminds me of Heath Ledger, and there is certainly some striking resemblance, Gordon-Levitt is someone who has proven himself as an actor's actor. There is one particular movie that I would love to watch Joe Levitt, and I just think this will be one of his finest ever- The Frog King".
Source: themovie-fanatic.com

Well, a pair of notes I'd like to add related to these list posts:

1.- My favourite role by Jake is "Donnie Darko", that performance just stuck deep inside my heart, although Jack Twist in "Brokeback Mountain" is definitively his adult acting wide break-through role (and really wonderful).

2.- Regarding opinions about who's an better actor than another, I think it's extremely difficult to compare and discern. For example, Joseph Gordon-Levitt is impressive in almost everything, he chooses very dark and brooding characters to play, whereas other roles wouldn't be so suiting for him. On the other hand, I don't find Shia Labeouf particularly gifted, his tendency to star in blockbusters seems an elongation of his Disney roots and his real-life person seems off-putting. I think Shia is cute but not endearing. Emile Hirsch is more than competent, was especially brilliant in "Into the wild" and he's physically gorgeous. My personal favourites (young actors) are Jake, Joseph, Ryan Gosling, Emile Hirsch and Michael Cera. Also liking a lot Ben Foster, James McAvoy, Anton Yelchin, Robert Pattinson, Patrick Fugit, Andrew Garfield, Michael Welch, and many more.