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Thursday, March 17, 2011

Corporate satire: Love & other drugs, Charlie Sheen, Wilco

Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal in "Love and Other Drugs" (2010)

"Love and Other Drugs" is a corporate satire, a romantic comedy, a weepy melodrama with Judd Apatow-influenced lewdness. Written by Zwick, Charles Randolph and Marshall Hershkowitz, it begins with college drop-out Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) charming the pants off every woman he meets. He’s smart and glib. Naturally, he bags a job selling anti-depressant drugs to doctors. He also bags artist Maggie Murdock (Hathaway).She’s at least as smart as him. She’s sharp and sarcastic. And she’s in no hurry to settle down in a relationship. Everything is terrific: his career – boosted by his company bringing Viagra on to the market – and their sex life". Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

Charlie Sheen’s Covert Operation spoof short intruding the CBS lot, leading a band of soldiers known as “Strike Team Five”.

"To Empire gatekeepers, Charlie Sheen seems dangerous and in need of help because he’s destroying (and confirming) illusions about the nature of celebrity. He’s always been a role model for a certain kind of male fantasy. (I don’t know any straight men who fantasize about Tom Cruise’s personal life). Sheen has always been a bad boy, which is part of his appeal—to men and women. There’s a manly mock-dignity about Sheen that both sexes like a lot. What Sheen has exemplified and has clarified is the moment in the culture when not giving a fuck about what the public thinks about you or your personal life is what matters most—and what makes the public love you even more (if not exactly CBS or the creator of the show that has made you so wealthy).
The midlife crisis is the moment in a man’s life when he realizes he can’t (or won’t) any longer maintain the pose that he thought was required of him. Tom Cruise had a similar meltdown at the same age in the summer of 2005, but his was more politely handled (and, of course, he was never known as an addict). Cruise had his breakdown while smiling. Cruise is still that altar boy from Syracuse who believes in the glamour of Empire earnestness, and this is ultimately his limitation as a movie star and as an actor.
Arrests. Accidental overdoses. Halfhearted stints in rehab. Martin Sheen’s teary-eyed press conference. The briefcase full of coke. The Mercedes towed out of the ravine. The misdemeanor third-degree assault on the third wife, who also went to rehab. Sheen chain smoking on TMZ. The priceless dialogue. (On CBS executives: “They lay down with their ugly wives in front of their ugly children and look at their loser lives.”) The September 11 conspiracy theories. Shooting Kelly Preston in the arm. Fucking porn stars Ginger Lynn and Heather Hunter and Bree Olson.
It’s thrilling watching someone call out the solemnity of the celebrity interview, and Sheen is loudly calling it out as the sham it is. He’s raw and lucid and intense: the most fascinating person wandering through the culture. We’re not used to these kinds of interviews. It’s coming off almost as performance art and we’ve never seen anything like it—because he’s not apologizing. It’s an irresistible spectacle.
Charlie Sheen kissing ex-wife Denise Richards at the 59th Golden Globe Awards, 20th January 2002

What do people want from Sheen? I’m not denying he has drug and alcohol problems—or even that he might struggle with mental illness. What fascinates us is the hedonism he enjoys and that remains the envy of every man—if only women weren’t around to keep them liars. Do we really want manners? Civility? Empire courtesy? Hell, no. We want reality, no matter how crazy. And this is what drives the Empire to distraction: Sheen doesn’t care what you think of him anymore, and he scoffs at the idea of PR". Source: www.thedailybeast.com

"I had written a story in my head that if I ever got famous, I would bring in a taste of old Hollywood", he says. "Everything was too conservative. I was still carrying the flag and leading the charge, but there was nobody else out there."
His rebellion, Sheen says, was driven by drugs and alcohol. "I didn't intend the reputation to get as out of hand as it did. Once it caught on, I thought, "OK, now I have got to fuel this fire. 'This is what I do and this is who I am' which is the complete opposite of who I am. I am a pretty shy pretty introverted, mellow guy." His high life came to a halt in May 1998, when he nearly died from a drug overdose".
Source: home.comcast.net

"Trust not your evil overlords, they will discard you and then abandon your precious family. Liars and fools all of them. Get out while you can, good sir.
Hiya Chuck-E-Cheeseball. Where ya hiding, silly clown? Behind your narcissism? Your greed, your hatred of yourself or women? Which personality are you cowering beneath for transparent cover? I see you, you little worm. I see you behind your plastic smile, your bitchy pout and your desperate need to be liked. Forget love, that ship sailed when you were born. Think of me often, loser, during your most quiet moments. Think of me as you pray to the silly God of AA.

Let’s do a scene, maggot. I speak first, DUH.

Me: Are you an assailant?
Fuck Borre: I’m a show runner
Me: You’re neither. You’re an ugly clown sent by corporate fools to collect your fill.

The scales of justice are in a state of radical disarray. Together, we must right this infantile wrong. One final note, Sheen’s Korner is now for sale as a sports bar. You know where to find me, so I bid you adieu. Stay tuned good soldiers, I’ll see you all very soon on the battlefield". Source: earsucker.com

"I won’t live in the middle anymore. That’s where you get slaughtered. That’s where you get embarrassed. From the prom queen" -Charlie Sheen

Jeff Tweedy performing with Wilco at The Grand in Wilmington (2008)

I Am Trying to Break Your Heart - A Film About Wilco (part 5), directed by Sam Jones in 2002

"Both Nonesuch and Reprise are owned by AOL Time Warner. In other words, the same suits who supposedly found Wilco's approach too artistic to tolerate when the band was working for one part of the company apparently found it commercially viable when the band was working for another part. In the movie, this comes across as simply an ironic twist of fate. But it's more than that. In fact, Nonesuch's move makes the whole "victim of multinational capitalism" narrative look rather suspect. After all, if Reprise's axing of Wilco was really the inevitable result of a corporate ethos that privileges commercial appeal over artistic integrity, then Nonesuch's decision makes no sense". Source: www.slate.com

ET Exclusive First Look 'Sucker Punch'


ET Exclusive First Look 'Sucker Punch starring Jena Malone, Abbie Cornish, Vannesa Hudgens,

Michelle Monaghan says Jake Gyllenhaal is funny and fabulous

"Jake Gyllenhaal may be of Swedish descent, but his inner chef is definitely French, his costar in Source Code tells PEOPLE.

Michelle Monaghan and Jake Gyllenhaal at the Source Code - SXSW Premiere on 11th March, 2011

"Jake's an incredible impersonator with great accents", Michelle Monaghan said at the film's world premiere at the South By Southwest Film Festival in Austin, Texas, this weekend. "We shot in Montreal, and [off-set] Jake played this sort of old, funny, French foodie chef – and talked a lot about food, because we ate a lot there."
"Jake's really, really funny," Monaghan, 34, says. "And I'd never seen that side of him in his films. To have the opportunity to spend time with him was so much fun. He's fabulous."
Of course, Gyllenhaal, 30, has a serious side, as well. Talking about his character, the actor shared his thoughts about what he would do if he were given the opportunity to cross over to another man's identity – and it has nothing to do with French cuisine.
"If I were to go into someone's body whose life I felt was cut too short," he said at the premiere, "there are a number of circumstances I can think of. In fact, it's kind of hard right now to be at a movie premiere at a festival when you think about what's going on in Japan. To be able to change things like that."
Gyllenhaal continued: "Or how great would it be to be able to go into Martin Luther King's body? And to be able to tell him: 'Don't do this. Don't go there.' That would be an amazing opportunity." Source: www.people.com

Kate Winslet and Evan Rachel Wood in "Mildred Pierce" HBO series

"Mildred Pierce" opens in noir fashion with Monte Beragon (Zachary Scott) being shot. He murmurs the name "Mildred" as he collapses and dies. The police are led to believe that the murderer is restaurant owner Mildred Pierce's (Joan Crawford) first husband, Bert Pierce, who under interrogation confesses to the crime. In flashback we see housewife Mildred unhappily married to unemployed Bert Pierce (Bruce Bennett). Beragon at the time was a real estate partner of Wally Fay (Jack Carson), and propositioned Mildred after learning that she and Bert were about to divorce. In the divorce, Mildred obtained custody of her two daughters: 16-year-old Veda (Blyth), a snobbish social climber and aspiring pianist, and 10-year-old Kay (Jo Anne Marlowe). Joan Crawford won an Academy Award for her portrayal of the titular heroine in "Mildred Pierce".
"Starting with the last gasp of the Victorian era, women bounced like pinballs through the suffrage movement, the liberated Jazz Age, the Depression, the era of WACs, WAVES, and factory work, and finally the '50s, when Rosie the Riveter exchanged her coveralls for Betty Crocker's apron. Chaperoning American women through these somersaults, Hollywood undertook a series of re-education campaigns disguised as entertainments. The "woman's picture" of the '30s and '40s established strong, eccentric actresses as role models for the female audience. Together, they constitute a dictionary definition of the elusive term "bitch-goddess". Playing nice, they're unremarkable; playing tough, they're stars. The documentaries and featurettes on The Bette Davis Collection and The Joan Crawford Collection repeat anecdotes about the stars' larger-than-life off-camera personalities.
George Cukor's The Women, with its all-female whirl of gossip, divorce, affairs, and catfights, sets the tone for both sets. Crawford plays a perfume salesgirl who dallies with Norma Shearer's husband, and the 1939 movie typecast Crawford for a time as a low-caste shop-hand with champagne dreams". Source: www.avclub.com

Vogue US March 2011: Evan Rachel Wood in “Pure Country” photoshoot

Mildred Pierce with Kate Winslet and Evan Rachel Wood in Todd Haynes's remake of the 1945 Joan Crawford classic, as a five-part mini-series on HBO, beginning on 27th March 2011

3. Kate Winslet Convinced Evan Rachel Wood To Get Naked For The Show
It's exactly what it sounds like. For the TL;DR crowd: Evan Rachel Wood was a tidge nervous, and Kate Winslet essentially sat her down and said "Listen, I've been naked on camera eight-million times. It's like a club."
4. Kate Winslet Is In Every Damn Scene
Kate Winslet, who looks pleasantly like a real woman who has lived and aged and eaten things that are meat, is in every friggin' scene. Considering that shooting schedules are generally twelve hour days every day, this is kind of like running a marathon, except the marathon lasts the amount of time it takes to shoot a five hour miniseries. In the words of costume designer Ann Roth, "She had sixty-six [costume] changes in this. That's more than a person can deal with."
5. The Lead Characters Are Both Women

Strong women! Strong, well-written women! Mildred and Veda are like two sides of a self-possessed coin. Mildred is a self-made woman with a weakness for the people she loves. Veda has little love for anyone, but her charisma has its own gravitational pull. Men are ancillary in this story, a big-budget HBO-stravaganza, and that is refreshing". Source: www.ology.com

Arrested Development (Make Me Smile) video


A musical video featuring some scenes from "Arrested Development" starring Michael Cera, Alia Shawkat, Justin Bateman, Portia De Rossi, Mae Whitman, etc.

Song "Make me smile" by Steve Hurley

io9 interviews Jake Gyllenhaal for Source Code


io9.com interviews Jake Gyllenhaal for Source Code

-"Did you study the science behind the film?
-Gyllenhaal: Particularly my job is more about, what would be the emotional effects of something like this? What would it be like if I found myself there. If I had a background in the army and in flying helicopters. If I was put in this situation, how would I respond? To me it was the human behavior aspect of it that I was fascinated with.
Duncan sent me lots of different videos. And one of them was pilots in pilot training school, when they do G-force training. And their responses to the first time they go into G-force, because they have a simulator that they go into. It's actually relatively funny, because a lot of them lose consciousness, and then come to and don't know what happened. That's what I was into. This is a similar experience. When he wakes up at first (and I don't know if this is in the final version of the movie) but we did say, the first time, "Did I A-lock?" which is a common response when you lose consciousness when you go into G-force. He comes to and he's like "whoa am I just tripping out am I hallucinating did my helicopter go down?" Nope, you're on a train sitting next to a woman saying she knows you and you have no idea who she is. And you're in somebody else's body". Source: io9.com

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Jake Gyllenhaal and Pee-wee Herman Video


Pee-wee Herman & Jake Gyllenhaal met up at SXSW to explain each others' new movies and Broadway projects!