WEIRDLAND

Sunday, December 28, 2008

Into the wild (All apologies)

A musical video featuring some stills from "Into the wild" starring Emile Hirsch, directed by Sean Penn.
Songs "All apologies" and "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam" by Nirvana.
This video has got a temporary honor in youtube, it's the #85 - Most Viewed (Today) - Film & Animation - Spain (take a look in youtube while it lasts).

Michelle and Reichardt on "Wendy & Lucy"

Michelle Williams at the "Wendy and Lucy" premiere.

"Williams was already known for making her own choices — she worked with Wim Wenders on Land of Plenty, and she’s far from the only Hollywood actor who crosses the line between studio and independent films more or less at will. But it’s a rare bankable star who lends her name to a tiny project budgeted at $300,000 and shot over 18 days with a mostly volunteer crew by a director whose name, had Williams bothered to ask permission from her agents, would doubtless have inspired the response “Who?”

Wendy and Lucy, which opened last week, has already earned rapturous notices and shown up on several early 10 Best lists. Williams’ wattage has surely helped, but the poetically minimalist film, which sets the young woman’s plight against the polluted beauty of the Pacific Northwest landscape, is unnervingly timely in its evocation of an American Dream of self-improvement that quickly sours into a struggle for material and spiritual survival. The story, co-written by Reichardt and Jon Raymond from Raymond’s short story Train Choir, was inspired by tales of post–Hurricane Katrina displacement. But the direction it took was shaped by Reichardt’s encounter, while scouting for a location in Texas, with a middle-aged Mexican woman whose car had blown a tire and landed in a ditch. The woman was in her socks, her cell phone minutes had expired, she had $20 to her name, and the blown tire was her only spare. Reichardt drove her to the next exit, paid for the tow truck, came back with her and marveled as a policeman worried more about her safety than the woman’s. “I was really impressed with how unhysterical she was, and how she expected nothing from authority,” says Reichardt.

Michelle Williams was spotted reading a magazine during her stroll around Brooklyn on 9th December.

Barely recognizable in a lusterless brown pudding-basin haircut and a faded sweatshirt over cutoff jeans and flannel shirt, Williams plays Wendy Carroll, an Indiana native stranded in a decaying former mill town in Oregon when her ancient car breaks down and she loses her beloved dog. Her delicate features set in the determined mask of one who’s resolutely avoiding looking at the big picture of her life because she has to focus on the next fire she has to put out to stay afloat, Wendy pilfers food from a supermarket, fumes silently under inept fingerprinting by a policeman, scours the pound for her pet, sleeps rough in a park (where she is screamed at by a wild-eyed Larry Fessenden) and reluctantly accepts help from a kindly drugstore security guard. Wendy says little, but her lonely desperation shows in a flicker of the eyes and the tension gathering in her wiry body. “Michelle was the one actress I couldn’t totally picture in the role of Wendy”, says Reichardt. “To have someone with some mystery to them is very intriguing to me. I also didn’t know completely what a physical actress Michelle is, and when I saw how she uses her body, that was pretty exciting. She can be really, really still.” Williams’ performance is so inward it can’t even be called gestural, yet it’s a devastating portrait of a lonely woman trying to keep her already tenuous life from sliding off a cliff.

For all her early independence and her current success, Williams can come across tentative and self-questioning. “When you saw the completed film, what did you think?” Reichardt asks. “It went down the easiest of any film that I see myself in,” says Williams. She’s disarmingly frank about her own insecurities, denies being a big star, and there’s a touch of wistfulness in her insistence that “this is always the way I wanted to work, through friends, to build up a thing that doesn’t disappear after a year. You set up so many little lives in movies and you say you’ll keep in touch and you don’t. So I was really pleased when Todd said, ‘What about Kelly?’ There’s a connectedness and a stability or something.”

For now, though, she’s taking time off work to be a full-time single parent to her equally feisty daughter, a difficult but satisfying task. “And I have my coffee-shop parents and my single-mom parents,” she says gratefully. “That’s one of the best things about becoming a mom. There’s suddenly this uprising of women who say, ‘We’re here to help you!’ And Matilda’s in school so I have time during the day to do the things I need to do and get ready for dinner, so it’s not 24/7,” she says. “I’m not quite ready to give up working, but I don’t know how to do the good balance of it. That’s the challenge, to live in the chaos. I’m a Virgo, very ‘clean space, clean mind,’ so after she goes to bed every night I pick the house up. I do think that domestic work can actually be creative and relaxing, freeing your mind. I’ve given myself the grace period". Source: www.laweely.com

Saturday, December 27, 2008

Videoclips for Christmas

Brokeback Mountain Revisited video:

This video is dedicated to Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal for giving us performances that show love transcending social norms and roles. Despite the tragic sentiment of the original movie, I wanted to show a version where Ennis and Jack could have ended up growing old together regardless of "who" is "who" in the relationship. The beauty sometimes lies in the complexity of our relationships and the struggle to define ourselves.

I hope you all find your Romeo and/or Juliet in yourselves and the ones you love.

P.S. Heath...May you live forever in our hearts!! ...& I love you Jake!!

Music: "Love Story" by Taylor Swift

Emile Hirsch (You're the one that I want):
A musical video featuring images and stills of the talented and gorgeous actor Emile Hirsch.

Songs "Walk of life" by Dire Straits and "You're the one that I want" ("Grease" soundtrack).

Jena Malone & Lou Taylor Pucci (sexy scene) in "The Go-Getter" (2007), directed by Martin Hynes.

"Sparks" trailer by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, starring Carla Gugino, based on a story written by Elmore Leonard.

Monday, December 22, 2008

Reese won't get married soon

December 21 - Jake & Reese doing Christmas Shopping In Brentwood.

-WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR GREATEST CHALLENGE?

-Being a parent. I wanted a family, but before I had kids I'd never held a baby. I'd never even done any babysitting. So the first time I held Ava was the first time I'd ever held a baby in my life. There's the fear of not being a good mum. Now I just try not to look too far into the future. I try to take it day by day. It gets terrifying if you look at the big picture, so I try to keep it simple.

-WHAT HAS BEEN THE BIGGEST CHALLENGE IN YOUR CAREER?Professionally, it was playing June Carter in Walk The Line. It was terrifying, it scared me to death. First of all, I had never played a real person before. So there was a lot of responsibility to represent her correctly, and then the possibility of failure made me very insecure. And I had to sing. You should've heard me in the beginning - it was really bad and learning to play the autoharp was even harder. But in the end, of course, it was amazing. WHAT'S YOUR GREATEST EXTRAVAGANCE?

I'm responsible, I'm not extravagant. I'm not frivolous or carefree. I haven't been a young girl for a long time, because I started work so young and I had children young. Someone asked me: 'Do you have a chef?' And I said: 'Yes, her name is Reese.' I didn't grow up with money and I don't think I've changed. Money isn't terribly important to me, I give most of it away. I like nice dresses, though - for the red carpet. HOW DO YOU AND RYAN LOOK AFTER THE CHILDREN NOW?

I think the most important thing is the children, making sure they have stability. I think we just bear that in mind and that the most important thing is to be a grownup and not let feelings affect how you deal with your children.
WOULD YOU GET MARRIED AGAIN?

I don't know. I don't think about it much. At the moment, I am not far enough out of being married to think about doing it again.

WHAT'S YOUR GREATEST STRENGTH?
I think I have always been focused and a little tough. It takes a certain type of tenacious personality to deal with rejection and navigate this business. When I first came here, all I heard was: 'No, not right, not tall enough, not pretty enough, not smart enough.' But I didn't really care. I'm stubborn.

WHAT IS YOUR GREATEST FEAR?

Anything happening to the children. It's hard to protect your babies from the media. I have all the worries and fears of being a parent anyway, with the worry and guilt that come with that. But for me, the most difficult part is seeing my children being harassed.

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE FOR CHRISTMAS?

I have a farm and I'd like chickens, an Araucana chicken. That'd be great - it would lay blue eggs.
Source: www.dailymail.co.uk

Two different couples in Christmas

Reese and Jake doing Christmas shopping in Brentwood, on 21th December.
The getting-more-serious-by-the-minute couple consisting of former Stop-Loss co-stars Abbie Cornish and Ryan Phillippe will be spending Christmas and New Year's together in Abbie's homeland of Australia.

His two kids Ava and Deacon Phillippe will be spending the holidays with Ryan's ex-wife Reese Witherspoon and her boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal, splitting time between Los Angeles and Tennessee. We're guessing that since the kiddos spent Thanksgiving with Dad, Mom gets to have them for Christmas.

Cornish and Phillippe arrived in Sydney over the weekend on Ryan's first trip to Oz. According to Page Six, the couple will hop over to Cockatoo Island for a Lloyd Klein bash. From there, the couple will meet with Cornish's extended family in Lochinvar.

Holy crap, both of the couples appear to be perched on the edge of sealing the deal. I really, really hope they have dueling weddings on the same date. That's how you find out who your real friends are! Source: socialitelife.celebuzz.com

Saturday, December 20, 2008

Jake celebrating his b-day with Reese

"Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal share a romantic dinner to celebrate Jake’s 28th birthday on Friday (Demceber 19) at Italian restaruant Il Ristorante di Giorgio Baldi in Santa Monica, Calif.

The couple enjoyed wine, champagne and a special birthday dessert treat.

Jake will next be seen in Prince of Persia: Sands of Time, out in 2010. He’ll play Dastan, a young prince in sixth century Persia who must join forces with Tamina (Gemma Arterton), a feisty and exotic princess, to prevent a villainous nobleman from possessing the Sands of Time, a gift from the gods that can reverse time and allow its possessor to rule the world".
Source: Justjared.buzznet.com