"Robert Downey Jr., with wife Susan by his side, celebrated turning 44 Saturday night at Beverly Hills's Thompson Hotel, in their second level BondSt Beverly Hills Lounge.
The party of 75 guests included pals Sting and wife Trudie Styler, Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor, Jon Favreau and Sam Rockwell.
"Gwyneth and Jake talked for a while about an upcoming project," says a guest. And during the night, "Jake and Reese looked very in love. They were being super affectionate, holding hands as they sipped on glasses of wine. They laughed a lot!"
As for another hot A-list couple nibbling on BondSt sushi platters of spicy tuna, sesame crusted shrimp, and sun-dried tomato avocado rolls, says the source, "Gwyneth and Chris arrived and left together. And they looked very happy." At the end of the evening, guests toasted with hot sake, while Downey Jr. sipped espresso. And, to cap off the festivities, guests satisfied their sweet tooth with BondSt's individual chocolate meltdown cake. "He was very touched," the source says of being serenaded with "Happy Birthday." Source: www.people.com
Jake Gyllenhaal Rendition And the trickiest thing about Jake Gyllenhaal's work as a newly promoted CIA analyst in Rendition is that he's playing exactly that: not just an American but the American, our collective national stand-in onscreen. The movie, in which the CIA whisks Reese Witherspoon's Egyptian-born husband off to some unspecified North African country after intercepting a call to his cell phone from a known terrorist, means to explore the ethical justifiability of detainment and torture. But Gyllenhaal's character is no Jack Bauer improvising electroshock devices from desk lamps and ordering the suspect to start talking, now! He's permitted only to observe the interrogations and pose the occasional question, as a courtesy -- which means that Gyllenhaal spends much of Rendition standing in the corner of a dark room, watching as some poor soul gets beaten, doused, and fried. It's a near-silent performance, apart from some minor heroics near the end, and most actors would likely have felt the need to signal their disapproval to the audience via exaggerated winces. Gyllenhaal refrains, allowing us to project our own turbulent, conflicted emotions onto his placid expression. Knowing when to do nothing is one of the least appreciated of an actor's skills; here's one who's learned it early.
Emile Hirsch Into the WildThe beauty of Emile Hirsch's performance in Into the Wild, Sean Penn's generally sympathetic account of Christopher McCandless's ultimately fatal two-year journey across America, is that he manages to reconcile these apparently contradictory viewpoints. Sure, he stands near majestic vistas with arms outstretched and face turned to the sky while Penn swoops the camera around him, and his puppyish enthusiasm is infectious. But every so often -- sometimes in startling glances directly at the camera -- Hirsch hints at the way that McCandless's self-righteous passion could spill over into mania. Most impressive of all are his handful of scenes with Catherine Keener's surrogate mother, in which Hirsch subtly conveys this young man's obstinate refusal to acknowledge the family he's cruelly abandoned in the name of self-reliance. He creates a vivid, unforgettable character you at once admire and pity.
Robert Downey Jr. Zodiac "I am not Avery" read the lapel buttons sported by nearly every San Francisco Chronicle staff member. They were responding, only partly in jest, to a threatening postcard sent by the Zodiac killer to ace Chronicle reporter Paul Avery -- but as Robert Downey Jr. plays him, who would want to be this guy? Zodiac is less a portrait of a serial killer than an exacting obituary of the madman's other victims -- not the young lovers he shot and stabbed but the professional and amateur sleuths whose obsession with the case took a life-draining toll. Downey makes Paul Avery the movie's most poignant casualty. The actor has always excelled at sarcastic and motormouthed; what's new is seeing that live wire ever so gradually short-circuit, so that it's barely even flickering the last time we see Avery, now a cynical lush living on a houseboat and filing copy by rote for The Sacramento Bee. It's one of the most persuasive portraits of burnout ever committed to the screen and doubly amazing coming from an actor who, for all his real-life troubles, has never seemed anything less than fully engaged with the world. Source: www.esquire.com
"Kelly weaves into the life and experiences of the emotionally troubled Donnie Darko (Jake Gyllenhaal) beautiful themes of adolescence and adulthood, destruction and creation, dying and living, fear and love, and sacrifice. Professor of philosophy Heather Ross called the film “a work of art about a complex, sad … bizarro circumstance.” She talked about the Christ-like sacrificial figure of Donnie Darko, the emptiness that “has an evil quality about it” and the “awesomeness” of Darko’s English teacher, Karen Pomeroy. Evidently philosophers are allowed to make up words, presumably in an effort to overcome the boundary that language imposes on thought". Source: www.pointweekly.com "Weisman’s film of Edie’s last years Ciao Manhattan, memorably filmed in the bottom of an empty swimming pool. Edie’s appeal lies in the simple fact that being a muse is the road to ruin, a doctorate in destruction of self worthy of Artaud. In a CD included in Edie: Girl on Fire, she matter-of-factly steps outside her myth, deconstructing and destroying it.Those who associate Edie with giggly girlishness will be amazed at her patrician voice, full of Brahminesque authority. In a Christ-like manner, Edie conveys the sense that the ultimate form of selfishness is to give your persona to others to the point of self-destruction.So we will give Edie, as eternal muse, the coda, "I’d like to turn the whole world on just for a moment. Just for a moment." The life ends and the moment goes on". Source: www.artnet.com
Reese narrated: “But then I actually had to stand in front of a microphone and sing. It was really a rude awakening to me how incredibly terrible I was without any training. So it took seven months to train my voice and it made me completely appreciate how hard these singers work. In that sense, I had a good idea of how my voice sounds and how I can change my voice". As for the solidarity of women in Hollywood, Reese stressed: “It’s important that we all support each other. The better one woman does, the better all women do. The better Sarah Jessica Parker’s movie opens, the better it is for Julia and I and all the girls coming up. It’s important that women make those choices for themselves that are good, strong ones".
”Speaking of making good choices, she revealed to us what she will be portraying in director James Brooks’ comedy that’s tentatively titled “How Do You Know?”: “I’m playing a softball player. Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson and Bill Murray are in it". ”Reese, who turned 33 a couple of days after our talk, said she is wiser in a different way. She said, “I told somebody the other day, ‘I’m old enough now to know that I don’t know anything.’ I just feel like I know absolutely nothing. But now I understand that I know nothing. I used to think I knew everything.” Source: showbizandstyle.inquirer.net Reese Witherspoon's Prince of Persia verdict - Britney Spears new video, If You Seek Amy - Zac Efron in new movie talks...
"New Moon", the second film in the Twilight series (due Nov. 20). Her Bella and vampire love Edward split, and the teenage werewolf Jacob draws her affection into a supernatural love triangle.
"He becomes like her best friend," Stewart says of the werewolf. "It's really [expletive] sad. Edward probably isn't a very good idea for her. He's not the guy she should actually be with, because it's not very convenient. And then there's this guy who comes in and oooohh. Ummmmm."
Her favourite part of New Moon is the beginning. "Everything is fine. Edward is there. They're chilling. They're together. Everyone's happy. But there's this eerie feeling like he's gonna go. Has anyone broken up with you, and you know that it's coming? It's weeks before and you're like, 'I'm a nutcase, but I swear to God something is wrong.' And then, however many weeks go by, and it happens. It's horrible. It's the worst."
New Moon is expected to be another major moneymaker. Another upside to Twilight's success is a higher profile for Stewart's art-house films such as Adventureland. She also has The Yellow Handkerchief, playing a stranger who helps an ex-con hitchhiker (William Hurt) reunite with his wife, and Welcome to the Rileys, as a street kid/prostitute who falls into the care of surrogate parents (James Gandolfini, Melissa Leo) whose own child has died. Neither has a release date yet. Source: www.theprovince.com
"James is soon handing out lame prizes (a stuffed banana with googly eyes?) and mopping up children's barf at a game booth. His fellow reluctant carnies include Joel (Martin Starr), a pipe- smoking, Gogol-reading misfit, and Em (Kristen Stewart), the slinkster-cool tough girl of every indie boy's dreams. Em offers James rides home from work, Lou Reed and Big Star blasting from the car stereo, and confides in him about her miserable family. But she's secretly involved with Mike Connell (Ryan Reynolds), Adventureland's mechanic and chief Lothario, who's both much older and a married man. Frustrated by Em's reluctance to go beyond friendship, James takes up with the park slut, Lisa P. (Margarita Levieva), only to discover that beneath her hoop-earringed, gum-snapping exterior lurks a Catholic prude.
All this sounds like a retread of raunchy, deliberately outrageous teen sex comedies—American Pie, say, or Mottola's last film, Superbad. Instead, Adventureland harks back to the introspective teen rom-coms of the 1980s, with Jesse Eisenberg in the John Cusack role. The gangly Eisenberg, with his soulful gaze and unruly mop of curls, is adorable enough to spread on toast, as anyone who saw him in The Squid and the Whale can attest. And the amount of screen time devoted to James' emotional, as opposed to hormonal, fluctuations makes Adventureland as likely to appeal to girls as boys. Kristen Stewart, who gets more ethereally lovely with each screen appearance, plays a darker and richer variant of the disaffected schoolgirl she played in "Twilight". Source: www.slate.com
Richard Kelly and Jake Gyllenhaal at "Donnie Darko Director's Cut": Hollywood Premiere, on 15th July, 2004, Hollywood. "Director Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) updated his official MySpace page with a few bits of information about his upcoming "The Box" film, as a way to clarify some things.
* WB is releasing the film on October 30th, 2009. The release date has been shuffling around a bit, but this is common with studios, and everyone feels like this is the best date for the film.
* The film is completely finished. Principal photography was completed in March 2008, and it was officially delivered to WB right before Christmas 2008. A March 2009 release was briefly considered, but a Fall 2009 release was always a better fit.
* We shot in Massachusetts and Virginia. The film takes place predominantly in Virginia, 1976.
* The running time is 1 hour 55 minutes long including end credits.
* The film was digitally photographed using the Panavision Genesis camera. In my audio commentary on Tony Scott's Domino, I mentioned that I would never shoot a 1970s period piece using a digital camera. My position on this changed when I saw David Fincher's extraordinary Zodiac. It can be done.
* There is more than 300 visual effects shots, which required eight months of post-production. The digital work-flow of the Genesis was essential to completing these visual effects properly.
* Win Butler, Regine Chassagne (of Arcade Fire) and Owen Pallett (Final Fantasy, frequent collaborator with Arcade Fire) recorded more than 80 minutes of score for the film.* The official website for the film is www.thebox-movie.com - it will unveil sometime this summer.
Robert Downey Jr. in The Soloist.Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man.Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow.Robert Downey Jr. in Chaplin.Robert Downey Jr. and Catherine Keener in The Soloist.Robert with Jake at The Americans For The Arts' National Arts Awards, on 16th October, 2006, New York City.
"Robert Downey Jr., with wife Susan by his side, celebrated turning 44 Saturday night at Beverly Hills's Thompson Hotel, in their second level BondSt Beverly Hills Lounge.
Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, Reese Witherspoon and Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor, Jon Favreau and Sam Rockwell.
At the end of the evening, guests toasted with hot sake, while Downey Jr. sipped espresso. And, to cap off the festivities, guests satisfied their sweet tooth with BondSt's individual chocolate meltdown cake. "He was very touched," the source says of being serenaded with "Happy Birthday."
