"Breaking Dawn" part 2 - Premiere videos

Kristen Stewart chats with Access’ Shaun Robinson about attending her final premiere for “The Twilight Saga.” How is this premiere different from the others? Plus, what was the best thing a fan said to her as she walked the red carpet? Access Hollywood interviewed the cast of Twilight’s “Breaking Dawn: Part 2” at the premiere last night and here you can find all of the interviews – including Robert, Kristen and Taylor and more – on a single player! Source: www.accesshollywood.com

Happy 103rd Anniversary, Robert Ryan!

Happy 103rd Anniversary, Robert Ryan!


A video dedicated to the talented and handsome actor Robert Ryan, noir icon, family man and civil activist.

Soundtrack: "You don't need to be more than yourself" by Elliott Murphy

Jake Gyllenhaal Holding Hands with Mystery Brunette in New York City

Jake Gyllenhaal holds hands with a mystery gal while taking a stroll on Friday (November 9) in New York City. UPDATE: Her name is Mahsa Jafarian, an Iranian graduate student enrolled in a master's degree programme at a college in New York, who met Jake on a train and they have been hanging out ever since. A source says, "He asked for her number and gave her a call a few days later to ask how she did on an exam she'd told him about... Mahsa thinks Jake is intelligent, well-rounded and a perfect gentleman - and she's completely smitten with him."

"Gyllenhaal has gone back to the theater. Since Sept. 20, he has been appearing in Nick Payne's off-Broadway play If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet, giving eight performances a week at the Laura Pels Theatre at 111 West 46th Street. Gyllenhaal plays -- with a flawless English accent -- the well-intentioned but immature uncle of an overweight teenage girl whose parents are too busy to realize the extent of her emotional troubles. The play begs the question of whether his arrival on the scene as sort of a truth-teller makes the situation better or worse. Tickets cost $100, but the show, which runs through Nov. 25, has played to packed crowds every night, something that has not escaped Gyllenhaa's notice. "I can't tell you what a privilege it is to be up on stage every night," he says, "to know that 450 people filled the seats of a theater every night to come see four people work on a stage." The old saying goes, "Once you've seen Paris it's hard to go back to the farm." For Gyllenhaal, End of Watch and If There Is I Haven't Found It Yet seem to be something like Paris. It's not like he was previously making a living as a hack, but his work on these two projects has been so challenging -- and ultimately gratifying -- that he doesn't want to waste precious time on others that are not. As he puts it, "I have no intention of doing work, here-on-out, that doesn't take that same type of devotion and that same type of care." Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

Jake Gyllenhaal talks on Election Day

Jake Gyllenhaal takes time on Election Day to talk liberally with Stephanie Miller. Gyllenhaal and Stephanie discuss the latest trend of actors speaking out politically. He says that he thinks "it's a strange time when actors act like politicians" and vice versa. Gyllenhaal speaks about the importance of taking the time to say how you feel as an American. He adds that he believes, "deeply in democracy."

Scan of Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña in Total Film UK, November 2012

Jake Gyllenhaal in Esquire (Singapore) magazine, November 2012

Poster of "An Enemy" (2013) directed by Denis Villeneuve


Emmy winner Jake Hamilton travels to the Toronto International Film Festival to talk with Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena about their new film, END OF WATCH


Jake Gyllenhaal talks about End of Watch and Brokeback Mountain

Scan of Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña in "End of Watch", Total Film UK, December 2012

Though the film was shot in just 22 days, Gyllenhaal and Michael Pena, who plays the other cop, elected to first spend five months training, learning, and riding around with real LAPD cops in order to get a real sense of what their lives, work, and relationships are like. (This came with some real drama: on their first ride-along they witnessed a murder, and Gyllenhaal says it wasn't the only one.) Gyllenhaal says that they didn't receive special treatment because they work in the movies; in fact, he jokes, "the cops that we worked with didn't give a shit about us [being famous]." He also chuckles that "there was a lot of joking about movies I've made [a reference to Brokeback] -- endless humor in a cop car." The main thing that attracted Gyllenhaal to End of Watch, he says, was "the dialogue between these guys in the car." For the film to work, Gyllenhaal and Pena's interpretations of those words -- and occasion improvisations -- had to be completely believable, and they are. "I haven't really ever talked about this," Gyllenhaal says, before revealing that their "massive fight" took place after a miscommunication during a tactical training exercise that involved live ammunition nearly caused an accident. Gyllenhaal confronted Pena, who insisted that, because he was wearing ear protection, he hadn't heard Gyllenhaal say to him that he was moving positions. Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

"The real driving forces of End of Watch are the characters. Taylor and Zavala are fully fleshed out creations, with Gyllenhaal and Peña inhabiting them with an almost uncanny naturalism that makes you feel almost as though the viewer is cruising with them in the patrol car, each back-and-forth between them feeling organic and genuinely funny. The charm of the film is that the two actors take characters that in the wrong hands could have been reduced to two-dimensional Bad Boys clones, and make us truly believe that these two are firm friends, whether that entails larking about in the precinct, getting ranted at by an angry superior or dashing into a burning building to play the hero. There is a possible criticism here, in that the repeated action heroics of the first two thirds feel a touch unwelcome compared to the sequences that just let the two actors go into full flow with their characters. These are not mere one-liner dispensers either, with a number of smaller, more soulful moments proving as touching as the macho banter is amusing – there is ample support here from their partners, played by Natalie Martinez and Anna Kendrick, who despite being given little screen time, both put in very engaging turns, providing a little context to the men’s day jobs. The two leads really do shine here, working off each other so perfectly that it is no exaggeration to say that we see not one, but two awards-worthy performances in End of Watch." Source: www.screengeek.co.uk

"Sunset Boulevard" in Blu-Ray, "The Song Is You" Book Review

Gloria Swanson And William Holden In 'Sunset Boulevard' (1950)

On November 9th, 2012, Paramount will be releasing a film on Blu-ray that showcases the studio in a variety of ways that no other film really did. While Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950) is widely recognized to be one of the most cynical looks at Hollywood ever committed to celluloid, it also managed to document the studio and film personalities in a way that no one had ever done before and no one has really done since.

Sunset Boulevard tells the story of Joe Gillis (William Holden), a down-and-out screenwriter in Hollywood who, through a series of mishaps, lands in the domicile of a famous silent film starlet, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), who has since faded into obscurity. Monetary temptations being too strong for the young Gillis, he is convinced to assist Desmond in rewriting the screenplay that will help her return to the silver screen and to the fans that she “deserted” all those years ago… to disastrous results for all parties involved. Wilder’s study of Hollywood in the ‘50s, acting and the industry all come together to show a powerful and complex story of how technology and personality intermix and sometimes end up like oil and water.

Gloria Swanson and director Billy Wilder between scenes of "Sunset Blvd." (1950)

The extras that are on the disc are as follows: Commentary by Ed Sikov, author of On Sunset Blvd: The Life and Times of Billy Wilder, Sunset Boulevard: The Beginning, Sunset Boulevard: A Look Back, The Noir Side of Sunset Boulevard, Sunset Boulevard Becomes a Classic,Two Sides of Ms. Swanson, Stories of Sunset Boulevard,Mad About the Boy: A Portrait of William Holden, Recording Sunset Boulevard, The City of Sunset Boulevard, Franz Waxman and the Music of Sunset Boulevard, Morgue Prologue Script Pages, Deleted Scene—“The Paramount-Don’t-Want-Me Blues” (HD) Hollywood Location Map, Behind the Gates: The Lot, Edith Head: The Paramount Years, Paramount in the ‘50s Galleries: Production, The Movie, Publicity, Theatrical Trailer (HD). Out of all of these features, the stand out pieces are the Edith Head documentary, the Sunset Boulevard Becomes a Classic, the Galleries, and the Morgue Prologue Script pages. Source: www.craveonline.com

-Theresa Schwegel: You wrote a male lead in "The Song Is You" and he isn't so likeable. I mean, most women would probably like him, but not for long. Would you ever sit down with a guy like that over a few gimlets? What do you find compelling about Gil Hopkins?

-Megan Abbott: Thinking about Gil Hopkins, I had two pictures in my head: William Holden in "Sunset Boulevard" and Tony Curtis in "Sweet Smell of Success". I kept photos of both of them by the computer. These charming, smooth-talking pretty boys hustling every angle and hating themselves for it. Men doing bad things who are too smart not to have self-contempt but not smart enough to figure out a way to rise above it. I just find it fascinating and I wanted to write a character like that. And you can bet I would sit down for gimlets with him, but I'd definitely stop at one. Source: www.mysteryreaders.org

"And he went to premieres with the glimmering girls of the moment, lunch at the Derby, to the track with John Huston and his rough-living crowd. When someone needed to pick up the big-shot buccaneer at the drunk tank and slip some green to the blue, he sent Mike or Freddy or reliable old Bix. They kicked needles down sewer grates, slipped suicide notes into pockets, gave screen tests to hustlers quid pro quo. Hop had it taken care of. He had it fixed. Mr. Blue Sky. All from his chrome and mahogany office, cool and magisterial and pumped full of his own surging blood." -"The Song Is You" (2007) by Megan Abbott

Edgar-winner Megan Abbott became a sort of soul mate in the neo-noir literature. Her tortuous and vibrant novels equal in ambience to James Ellroy's gritty and eerie "L.A. Confidential" and "The Black Dahlia" stories. Emulating the hardboiled lingo to a T, Abbott recounts in her second mystery novel the strange circumstances surrounding the former "Florentine Gardens" dancer, model, actress and B-girl Jean Spangler, who disappeared from Los Angeles in 1949 after having completed a bit part in the film "Young Man with a Horn" with Kirk Douglas. In the alternate scenario created by Abbott, Gil "Hop" Hopkins (the publicist who helps to obscure the details of the investigation, favoring the movie studios' pretense) has seen Jean and her best friend Iolene the last night in the Red Lily club in the company of creepy song-and-dance duo Marv Sutton and Gene Merrel, who have a terrible reputation around dames.

Contrasting to the more classicist approach of the 'Czar of Noir' Eddie Muller (author of "The Distance", one of my favorite crime novels, where his indefatigable San Francisco's sportswriter Billy Nichols tries to protect the Heavyweight boxer Hack Escalante), Abbott's style, although nailing the atmosphere and a feeling of true chronicle, is more on the emotional (not sentimental) side. She has written two more crime novels set in the past: "Queenpin" (the central character, gambling queen Gloria Denton is loosely inspired by Bugsy Siegel's lover Virginia Hill) and "Bury Me Deep" (set in 1930's, inspired by the true story of Winnie Ruth Judd, known as The Trunk Murderess). Both Muller and Abbott's have a potent poetic flair in their narratives, which frames the plot and historical addendums.

Frannie Adair (whose restrained attitude reminded me of Lora King in "Die A Little"), an Examiner's reporter who is interested in the Jean Spangler case, maintains a tense relationship with Hop based on professional rivalry that culminates in a romantic attraction, despite of her character seeming almost undersexed compared to the other women in Hop's life - as Midge, his ex-wife who had a platonic crush on Jean. Hopkings is a very accomplished finagler, turned into a successful PR in the lucrative Hollywood machine of 1950's. Whereas the detectives and dupes in the vintage noir films projected a stern aura of morality and machismo de rigueur, in "The Song Is You" and "Die A Little" (Abbott's previous novel), we find a sharp trastocation of the genre conventions, mainly throwing away the apparently solid male façades and showing us their filthy edges. Abbott's detailed representation of complex femme-fatales and their self-destructive pulsions, doesn't betray a subjacent analysis of the whole feminine idiosyncrasia and multiple weaknesses associated to the sex-symbols and starlets in that particular era. More than a confrontation between sexes, Abbott proves both fall prey of a feverish machinery prepared to dislocate their dreams and bury deep their souls.

While "Die A Little" constitutes a more orthodox effort to recreate the golden suburbia in the middle of the 20th century, "The Song Is You" is a more wide-ranging experience, outlining the glamour of old Hollywood and revealing the subterrestrial world of the drifters, hopefuls, wannabes and losers: the industry's underclass that threatens to get the lid off the Dream Factory's lieges. Combining echoes of Chandler's Little Sister, Abbott entwines real-life personalities such as the bombshell Barbara Payton (and her failed romances with Franchot Tone and Tom Neal), and aspiring actress Elizabeth Short (turned into the sad celebrity 'The Black Dahlia' due to her macabre murder): "Jean grinned broadly at her, a grin that split her face in two, eerie like a ventriloquist’s dummy, dark on a stage. She grinned broadly and in that grin she told Iolene, All the stories in the world and I wouldn’t pass this up — I’ve seen bad things enough to shake the word “bad” loose from its roots. I can go to the far end of nothing with the best of them. I can pull the pin and roll."

Hop embarks on a dark journey in the demimonde of Tinseltown, reluctantly fighting off his last vestiges of dignity when the demons being to pile up precipitately inside his dormant conscience. There are melancholic winks to Raymond Chandler, especially in the last chapters "Reno, 1946" and "Merry Lake" (which contains the most disturbing twist in the novel).

In the manner of epilogue, in "Four Years Later" Hopkins has established himself as one of the big shots in the film industry: "He spoke to the contract stars and the beauties who floated over from the other studios for a picture or two. They all came to him. Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, too, even Humphrey Bogart. And the women, Jeanne Crain, Doris Day, Jennifer Jones, Jane Wyman, Anne Baxter. They all came. And finer, less flinty fare in the up-and-comers: Janice Rule, Dorothy Malone, Jan Sterling, Carroll Baker. Every day. And, of course, the columnists — the rumor monkeys he worked like a carnival organ grinder. Walter still kicking around, Hedda, Louella, Sheilah, and all their lesser models — all dancing for him."

Chandler's femme fatale glowered at her destiny, she was more romantically evil and her sexuality more abstract; his hero Philip Marlowe was naïvely incorruptible and distant toward women. Abbott's femme fatales (if we can call them so) are imperfect, suffer deep fears and painful resentments. And there are not smooth knights or tough guys who can heal their despair, just abusive bosses, sometimes subspecies of a man, or grifters who stroll through desolate spots, only to find their own scams in the end looking them back in the mirror.

"There was something lost. He could look in the mirror a thousand times and he would never see it again. He’d snuffed it out. Had he known he’d never get it back… Had he known it would be gone forever… He opened the drawer to his bedside table and dug under the handkerchiefs, phone book, cigarettes, matchbooks. He pulled it out. It was thin as a cobweb now, this postcard. It had become delicate with time. Postcards, after all, aren’t meant to last. They’re less than a letter. They’re a fleeting thing. A whisper in the ear reminding you, “Merry Lake’s Waiting for You.”

Article first published as Book Review: The Song is You by Megan Abbott on Blogcritics.

James M. Cain and Raymond Chandler evoked in Megan Abbott's noir novels

Luchino Visconti’ first directorial effort “Ossessione” was made in 1942 and released in 1943. That we still have Visconti’s first feature film to watch today is an amazing story in itself. Filmed during World War II while Italy was still under the control of Mussolini’s deteriorating fascist government, Visconti read a copy of James M. Cain’s pulp classic novel, “The Postman Always Rings Twice” given to him by Jean Renoir.

"The Cocktail Waitress was found among his papers after a decade-long search and has never been published… until now. Following her husband's death in a suspicious car accident, beautiful young widow Joan Medford is forced to take a job serving drinks in a cocktail lounge to make ends meet and to have a chance of regaining custody of her young son. At the job she encounters two men who take an interest in her, a handsome young schemer who makes her blood race and a wealthy but unwell older man who rewards her for her attentions with a $50,000 tip and an unconventional offer of marriage... Can you have any doubt that things will end badly for one or both of them? No, that’s not a spoiler – it’s a simple statement of fact when you’re talking about a Cain femme fatale, the deadliest species there is." –Huffington Post

"The Cocktail Waitress is a not-to-be missed crime thriller for all Cain fans ... A rare, hardboiled blast from the past." –Shelf Awareness

"It’s easy to fall for a previously unpublished work by Cain, whose oeuvre includes The Postman Always Rings Twice (1934) and Double Indemnity (1943). Fortunately, The Cocktail Waitress—which the author sought to complete before perishing in 1977—serves up ample delights. We witness the unfolding drama through Joan’s eyes, while wondering what she’s withholding." –Kirkus Reviews

Excerpt from The Cocktail Waitress, by James M. Cain: "I guess it was 11:30 that night, when Tom came in with his friends, three other guys and two girls, the men all young and rugged and both the women beauties, and all of them half crocked when they got there. Liz had overflow business, and Bianca gave them to me, putting them in a booth, which made a pretty tight fit. It was so tight that Tom had to push one girl in just a little bit tighter before wedging in himself, on the left side of the booth as I faced it, which of course put him next to me, one leg jutting out into the aisle, when I stood in to serve. He grinned naughtily at me, in a way clearly meant to make my heart race, and it annoyed me that, being a rather handsome grin, it did, just a little. Then they all began ordering doubles-bourbon and ginger ale, I suppose the worst combination ever, not only to make them all drunker, but also to make them sicker." Source: boingboing.net

"Abbott has fashioned a noir thriller that may remind readers of James M. Cain's brooding melodramas. She need not fear the comparison. Her story, rendered in a captivatingly off-beat style, crackles with suspense, and her portrait of L.A. in the 1950s, a seductive mixture of sleaze and sophistication, rings all-too-sadly true." —Robert Wade, San Diego Union-Tribune

"For months, it seemed all she did was bake. She was learning by doing, with Betty Crocker perched on the counter, with Joy of Cooking, with our mother’s dog-eared collection of country cookbooks. She made a raspberry-coconut jelly roll for a brunch with the Leders and Conlans. A rum-and-cherry-cola marble cake for a cocktail party. Caramel-apple chiffon cupcakes soaked through with Dry Sack cream sherry for the Halloween party. On Bill’s birthday, she spent hours making cream-puff swans shaped from what she carefully pronounced as a “pâté à chou.” For a block party, almond icebox cake and cornflake macaroons. Chow mein-noodle haystacks and fried spaghetti cookies for a neighborhood association bake sale. For a dinner party, white chocolate grasshopper pie still foaming with melted marshmallows and doused with Hiram Walker. More dinner parties and still racier items, ambrosia brimming with Grand Marnier, a fruit-cocktail gelatin ring nearly a foot high and glistening. As the parties grew more elaborate, more frenetic, bourbon balls studded with pecans and Nesselrode pie with sweet Marsala and chestnuts. Strawberries Biltmore covered with vanilla custard sauce. Baked Alaska drizzled through with white rum. Peach Melba suffused with framboise." -"Die A Little" (2005) by Megan E. Abbott

Megan Abbott made an impressive debut last year with "Die a Little," a dreamy exploration of 1950s Americana that was nominated for every best first novel award in the field. Her follow-up, "The Song Is You" (2007), is even better. Abbott manages to camouflage her brainy academic credentials within a spellbinding retro-milieu. She was a good prose stylist out of the gate, but this book has a more enticing plot and stronger characters than her first. It nicely jumbles up true-life elements -- forgotten '40s murder victim Jean Spangler, slutty starlet Barbara Payton, a Martin-and-Lewis-style comedy act-- into a compelling murder mystery spearheaded by a well-soiled studio publicist named Gil "Hop" Hopkins. Abbott has a real flair for the era's lingo and style, which she renders with a breathless sensual elegance. -Eddie Muller Source: sfgate.com

With abundant style and a tight convincing story, Abbott provides a retro thrill-ride. Cain and Chandler are evoked in the rough-and-tumble period language... but Abbott has her own voice, avoiding the genre's macho conventions, to evoke the young women who live 'in a gasp of tension'. -Kirkus Reviews

"Breaking Dawn" part 2 - Access Hollywood interviews

Access Hollywood interviewed the cast of Twilight’s “Breaking Dawn: Part 2”: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner and director Bill Condon