Maggie's Apartment

Maggie in the filming of "Trust the Man" (2005)

"Maggie Gyllenhaal, her fiancé Peter Sarsgaard and their newborn daughter Ramona won't be kicked out of their apartment, according to the New York Post.

The actress, 28, faced eviction from her $5,000-a-month apartment in downtown Manhattan after two of the three owners of her building argued she didn't have a valid lease (her lease had been signed only by the third owner).

Gyllenhaal filed an affidavit reading, "I am residing in the subject premises pursuant to a lease duly executed by one of the owners of the subject premises."

Manhattan Civil Court Judge Marc Finkelstein agreed, noting that "she has paid and continues to pay all the rent under that lease."

The actress's attorney, Lorraine Nadel, tells the Post, "Maggie should never have been dragged into this. The owners of the building should have fought it out themselves and left her out of it."

Gyllenhaal moved into the apartment in 2005, and has the option to stay though the end of 2007 – though she and Sarsgaard reportedly are planning to buy a 3,600-sq.-ft. townhouse in Brooklyn, according to People magazine.

How shady of those building owners. Get out of there A.S.A.P., Maggie and Peter. I'm sure little Ramona would much rather grow up with a backyard to play in anyway."
Source Maternityandstyle.

Observing Sophia

Sean O'Hagan (Sunday October 08 2006) The Observer

"It's kind of uncomfortable having to do this stuff right now,' she says, referring to the fact that she is promoting her new film, Marie Antoinette, while heavily pregnant. 'It's hard to, um, sit right.'

If her vagueness and her sulkily beautiful Mediterranean face combine to make the 35-year-old Coppola seem like a slightly out-to-lunch teenager, I suspect this may be a way of keeping the world at bay. And keeping control. No other young female film director possesses her kind of clout in Hollywood, and this is not just to do with her dynastic name. Marie Antoinette is a lavish but flawed historical drama, a huge leap in scale for her, and an even bigger leap of faith by Sony studios who gave her $40 million and total artistic control.

Marie Antoinette is all atmosphere. Based loosely on Lady Antonia Fraser's revisionist biography of the Austrian-born queen, it was shot on location in Versailles with a stellar cast that includes Kirsten Dunst, Jason Schwartzman and Steve Coogan, as well as several hundred extravagantly dressed extras. It is a gorgeous-looking soufflé of a film whose perceived lack of a political subtext or even point of view has already caused an unholy row in France. 'It's kind of like a history of feelings,' Dunst said recently, 'rather than a history of facts.'

Perhaps for this very reason, it was booed by some sections of the audience at the Cannes' Film Festival earlier this year, and more recently dubbed 'a scandal' by Liberation's film critic, Agnes Poirier. 'History is merely decor and Versailles a boutique hotel for the jet set, past and present,' fumed Poirier, 'All we learn about Marie Antoinette is her love for Laduree macaroons and Manolo Blahnik shoes.' Sofia can't see what all the fuss was about.

'It's very French', she says, shrugging, when I bring up the catcalls at Cannes, 'Afterwards, I had a lot of French journalists saying, "I like your Marie Antoinette but I still hate the real Marie Antoinette". I guess she's still kind of a loaded subject there. All I can say is that I set out to challenge myself with each movie, and having to do a period film was a huge challenge. How to do it in a fresh way, and from the point of view of a strange girl in a strange world. If you attempt something new, it's always a risk.'

Was she surprised, though, by the vehemence of the reaction? 'Well, there was a standing ovation, too,' she says calmly, as if the continuing controversy is just water off a duck's back. 'I think the booing was not really that loud. It was picked upon and reported because, you know, it's a better story than a standing ovation.'

Lady Antonia Fraser, who has become friends with Coppola since the director purchased the rights to her myth-puncturing biography, can't see what all the fuss is about either. 'I love it,' she trills, 'It doesn't deviate from the story, but nor does it copy the book slavishly. It's Sofia's vision of Marie Antoinette. My vision was within the covers,hers is in the images on the screen. I enjoyed it enormously and so did Harold [Pinter].'

This is indeed the case. 'He liked the film. He wrote me a sweet letter,' says Coppola, smiling. ' That meant a lot. I mean, he's so honest. I don't think he'd write a letter if he didn't mean it. It's like, if it turns out that nobody else likes it, I can still say, "Well, at least Harold Pinter did".'

Given the times we live in, Marie Antoinette could well become a box-office hit, too. While not quite as shallow as Poirier paints it, nor as visionary as Lady Antonia insists, it is an oddly empty film. Having moved away from the cool contemporaneity of her previous mood piece, the lauded Lost in Translation, Coppola seems adrift in the ancien regime. The result is a historical drama for the Wallpaper* generation, all sumptuous interiors, dresses to die for, and an oh-so-ironic Eighties glam-pop soundtrack. As Bow Wow Wow's trash classic 'I Want Candy' blares out its blatant message of self-gratification over yet another baroque
party scene, you wonder what happened to Coppola's signature style, the hazy, impressionistic, understated languor of her two previous outings.

Her debut, The Virgin Suicides, was also an adaptation, in which Jeffrey Eugenides' contemporary gothic novel was given a terminally narcotic hue, even if the virgins of the title looked like they had been created by Coppola's fashion buddy Marc Jacobs.

It was followed by Lost in Translation, another meditation on dislocation, that became an unlikely mainstream hit, grossing $44m. It, too, was melancholy in tone and perfectly caught the singular loneliness and creeping enervation of hotel
rooms in strange cities. It made Scarlett Johansson a star and kick-started Bill Murray's ongoing late career as Hollywood's favourite ageing hipster, a title he inherited from the equally deadpan Harry Dean Stanton. Along the way, Coppola became an arbiter of a new kind of cinematic cool in which, as Vanity Fair recently put it, 'youthful naivety and impeccable taste reign supreme'.


There is a sense that all Coppola's films to date have in some way been autobiographical. Or, as as she puts it, 'they tend to be someone who's lost in the world, the girl who has to find her way'.

The young Sofia Coppola was that very girl, and the world she inhabited in her formative years, though gilded, could have suffocated a lesser talent. She was born Sofia Carmine Coppola on 14 May 1971, into a Hollywood dynasty where her father, Francis Ford Coppola, reigned supreme. Her mother is Eleanor Coppola, a documentary film-maker; her aunt, the veteran Hollywood actress Talia Shire; and her cousins the actors Nicolas Cage and Jason Schwartzman. The likes of Steven Spielberg, George Lucas and Marlon Brando were regular dinner party guests.

The family moved west in the Seventies from New York to California's Napa Valley, where her father now owns a famous vineyard. It produces a champagne called Sofia, which is described on the label as 'revolutionary, petulant, reactionary, ebullient, fragrant, cold, cool'. The real Sofia once described it simply as 'embarrassing'. Before he moved sideways into wine production, her father lived and breathed movies. 'Everyone in my family is in the film business,' she once said, 'and that's all we talked about... I had a 20-year tutorial on film in my own home.'
Her earliest childhood memories are of sitting on Andy Warhol's knee and helicopter rides over the Philippines jungle, where she lived for nearly two years while her father almost killed himself and bankrupted a major studio while making Apocalypse Now in the early 1970s. 'It was fun,' she smiles. 'I didn't really think of my father as a famous film director. He was just, you know, my dad.'

While her father famously sweated, shouted and swore his way through his epic films, his daughter is a Zen-calm presence on set, the still centre of the organised chaos that is a film shoot. 'I'm not a yeller,' she says, smiling. Her cousin, Schwartzman, whom she cast as Louis XVI in Marie Antoinette, said recently of the experience, 'I never saw her freak out once. She's totally calm, she's like this lighthouse.'

Given her father's long shadow, it took Coppola some time to find her creative footing in film. In her twenties, having graduated from the California Institute of Arts, she dabbled in fashion and photography, for Karl Lagerfeld and French Vogue respectively, blessed by her family's name and social connections, but unable to excel in either world. She studied painting, too, then briefly and disastrously tried acting, unwisely appearing as Al Pacino's daughter in The Godfather Part III, a bad performance in one of her father's most disappointing movies. The critical mauling she received meant that even the casually cruel world of fashion seemed preferable, and she returned to that milieu, creating her own label called Milk Fed which still exists as a lucrative Japanese franchise.

'I was kind of lost and unfocused,' she says now of that uncertain time. Then, in 1998, with her father's encouragement, she made Lick the Star, a short film set in a girls' high school. 'I just loved the way it looked,' she says, smiling, 'and it kind of helped me find my way. With the acting thing, everything was so public. I don't really think of it was a big mistake, it was more a way of finding out what I didn't want to do. I'm much more comfortable behind the camera.'

This is where she has remained ever since, and with considerable success. At 35, she has an Academy Award and three Golden Globes under her belt, all for Lost in Translation. The same film made her only the third woman, and the first American woman, ever to be nominated for an Oscar as Best Director.

Interestingly, that film was made during a period of personal turmoil, and the events that unfolded onscreen seem to have echoed the fracturing of her marriage to the hipper-than-thou director Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation). When I ask her about Jonze, she shifts in her seat and says, 'We're, um, not that in contact any more.'

For a time, Coppola was linked to Quentin Tarantino, who namechecked her in the credits to Kill Bill Vol. 2 in 2004. Right now, though, she is settled and expecting her first child next month with Thomas Mars, singer with the French electronic rock band Phoenix. Her hip credentials are impeccable. She has become something of a muse for her friend, the fashion designer Marc Jacobs, who once named a bag after her and employed her as the face of his eponymous perfume. She hangs out with Sonic Youth and makes videos for the White Stripes.

Sophia Coppola with Kim Gordon (Sonic Youth) & Selma Blair

Her style and quiet, almost childlike air have made Coppola an icon of contemporary cool for a generation who seem to have some difficulty growing up. Among her Zeitgeist-defining cinematic contemporaries are her friends Wes Anderson (Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic) and Zoe Cassavetes, daughter of director John, who is currently shooting her first feature film. According to Vanity Fair, 'they're not a Brat Pack; they're a Play Group' whose collective grooviness is supposedly predicated on 'sojourns in Paris, the best new bands, 1970s songs that no one has ever heard, the perfect shoe'. Film-making, then, as fashion, with Sofia as the queen of the catwalk.

Unsurprisingly, this kind of cultural reductiveness irks Coppola.
'Yeah, yeah,' she sighs wearily, when I mention the play group analogy. 'People have to find these scenes to fit you into, really. It makes it easier to write about you, I guess.' So the sense that there is a shared aesthetic - a kind of collective ironic cool - is wrong? 'Oh, I wouldn't say it's wrong,' she drawls, unfazed, 'I mean, you can look at things any way you want, slant them to suit your point of view. I guess it is an aesthetic more than a movement, but, you know, I do have my own aesthetic too, the people I look to and admire.' Could she elaborate? 'Well,
um, when I was growing up, it was Godard, Truffaut, the French New Wave. The style was so cool to me.' So, your own aesthetic is essentially about style rather than, say, story or drama? 'Um, I guess. I mean, I've always been drawn to individuals really, people with their own distinctive but identifiable style that no one else has. That's all I try to do, find my own distinctive way of doing things.'· Marie Antoinette opens on 20 October

Copyright Guardian Newspapers Limited extracted from
The Observer article courtesy of Penny Lane.

M.A. Trailer

Don't boo Kirsten!

"Of course the French are going to boo!" exclaims Kirsten Dunst, with much joie de vivre. [...] But these boos were actually more like BEEEWs — that is, boo with a French accent. So Dunst is right: It was mainly the French who were booing. (This reporter was there, and heard 'em.) And those applauding far outnumbered les hissy fitteurs. That part, however, got somewhat lost in all the follow-up to Cannes. Rather than ''the movie that got booed at Cannes,'' Marie Antoinette was more like ''the movie that got beeewed by a few cranky French guys sitting up in the balcony at Cannes.''

Which actually makes a lot more sense. Here, again, is Dunst: ''It takes a lot of cojones to make a movie with Americans in these roles as French royalty, and then show it in Cannes to the French. I didn't take it to heart. How would we feel about the French doing a movie about George Washington with French actors?'' [...]

''In the beginning, when I thought of doing a period film,'' says Coppola, ''part of the challenge was making a period film in my style, and not just fall into the formula. Period films are a genre, and I didn't want to make a movie in someone else's genre.'' Dunst signed right up. ''I knew Sofia wouldn't be doing a history lesson or anything like that,'' says Dunst, who also starred in Coppola's first feature film, The Virgin Suicides, back in 2000, adding, with a chuckle, ''I'm sure the BBC can do that. I knew from Sofia's other films that this would be from Sofia's perspective, how she related to Marie, and what she found appealing about her, and so on. It all felt very present-day to me. It didn't feel like we were making a movie about the past at all.'' [...]

For her part, Dunst — who'll next appear in Spider-Man 3 — thinks it's great if people are split in different directions by Marie. ''I think that's the sign of a pret-ty provocative film, you know?'' she says delightedly. ''Why should everyone be told what they should think about it? It's very open to interpretation.… Sofia lets things breathe. I like the fact that there wasn't a lot of dialogue, and not so much explaining things all the time. I like working like that. Now I'm reading scripts and I'm like, 'Oh, my God, they talk so much!''

''Sometimes I felt really isolated because it was such a lonely part to play,'' Dunst explains. ''I didn't really interact with that many people. A lot of times I was just by myself.… I couldn't really rely on other people to get it out of me. I was really thankful when Jason was on set, because then I could unload a little bit on him.'' Before a lot of scenes, she'd play Aphex Twin's wistful solo-piano ditty ''Avril 14th'' to put herself in the right reflective mood: ''That was my sad little lonely song that I'd listen to a lot.''

Since the movie is such an unconventional take, Dunst never got too caught up in researching Marie's life or trying to channel the spirit of a dead queen. ''This is the role where I think I was probably allowed to be the most myself,'' she says. ''This was my most satisfying [part]. And for me, when I watched the film for the first time, it was the most vulnerable I've ever been in a film before. I really showed myself in this movie the most.''

And now, here she is again. For this portfolio of Marie-inspired shots, White used the music and new look of Coppola's film as his blast-off point. ''Instead of the typical Marie Antoinette story,'' he says, ''we wondered what would happen if Marie was actually in the 1980s, and we gave her this little punk twist.''
Heads will rock and roll." from Source Entertainment Weekly, 9th October, by Gregory Kirschling.

Meat Packing District

Walking, biting his black wire and re-exhibiting Cardigan, this is our Jake in his Meat N.Y. District version, a meaty vision for Saturday 7th October. Pics by IHJ.

Jake and Warren

I got quite stirred emotionally after reading my colleague genius cinephile Arden's Warren Beatty meeting and I thought he could fit perfectly in an old-Hollywood-cinema Arden's Smolder Scale, I'll have to think in making my own current smolder scale, although only 10 rankings maybe isn't sufficient.




"If a woman says I made a pass at her, I didn't. If she says I didn't, I did." -Warren Beatty.

Jake's Autumn Poem

AUTUMNAL ASPIRATION

"Starlight dances across the ground as the autumn nights do fall;
A vision made more perfect by our muse, Jake Gyllenhaal.

His starlight shines from deep within through eyes of vivid blue;
Windows to an older soul, but a heart that’s young and true.

An acting man who plays a role, not real - just a veil created;
But many causes the man supports and he should be rightly celebrated.

To find such honour in one so young, it’s rare and that’s the truth;
I’m sad to say it’s something I was lacking in my youth.

So Jake you see that whilst it’s true, your body we desire;
It’s more than that my moral friend, to your persona we aspire. "

(published previously in Jake Watch Messageboard, courtesy of Afterthedarkness)

Hey, Tobey, sorry but this poem is dedicated to Jakey, although you look cute wrapped in brown leaves as Jake.

Zodiac Trailer

According to several sources the trailer of next Jake's movie "Zodiac" was anticipated along with the release of "The Departed" by Martin Scorsese, supposedly a remake of Chinese flick Internal Affairs (2002),but it seems it hasn't happened by all accounts, instead you can watch the trailer in this link: Zodiac Trailer, courtesy of Jacknastygirl whose sleuth work is non stop. Still exciting!!

Get Inside Jake's Pants

There is a new bid online for Jake, this time specifically for his wardrobe that he wore while performed in "Brokeback Mountain" as Jack Twist.

"If you ever wanted the shirt off Jake Gyllenhaal's back, you're in luck.

Jake's outfit from "Brokeback Mountain" will be up for grabs at a live auction on Saturday at the Human Rights Campaign's 10th Annual Dinner in Washington, D.C.

From October 13-20, the entire wardrobe from the Oscar-winning movie will be up for bid in an online auction on the e-commerce site www.seenon.com

Items like cowboy boots, jeans and hats worn by Jake, Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams will be available, with proceeds benefiting the Human Rights Campaign, which is the nation's largest gay rights organization."
Extracted from Source TMZ site.

When will they stop teasing us in this shamelessly bankrupting way, folks? If I could I'd choose Jake's belt and cowboy hat.

Moonlight Mile Interview

ELLEN POMPEO (Bertie)

"RM: You had actually met Jake Gyllenhaal prior to being cast opposite him. Can you talk about that meeting?

EP: I had. Very quickly on the street, [we] just sort of said hi to each other. It was an awkward sort of flirtatious moment.

RM: Were you flirting with him or was he flirting with you?

EP: I think we were both flirting with each other (laughing).

RM: What do you think your on-screen chemistry will be like, because of that flirtation?

EP: Fantastic, I think.

RM: What does this film have to say about loss?

EP: It has to say that there is life after loss. You can never replace the person, but you can laugh.

RM: Jake seems to have this "It" quality. What is it about him?

EP: He does and I said it 500 times before and I'll say it again, it can't be articulated. Watch the movie and you see it. Watch anything he does and you'll see it.

RM: People have compared him to Dustin Hoffman. Do you see that comparison - a younger version of Dustin Hoffman?

EP: I don't know in what way they are comparing him. Clearly Jake is extremely gifted so in that sense, you could say that both of them are very gifted.

RM: Is there anything you can tell us about Jake that we might not know?

EP: He's a great cook.

RM: Did he cook for you?

EP: Yes he did. Pasta, salad, chocolate chip cookies, anything. He's a great guy. He likes to have fun and he loves to live life."

extracted from an interview to Ellen Pompeo by Rebecca Murray, courtesy of Penny Lane.

SHERRYBABY VIDEO

Joe's Journey

"JOE'S JOURNEY"

"Lost and alone with these feelings of grief
Shrouded in doubts, no hope nor belief
Gone is the dawn of that welcoming smile
Begin now to travel your own Moonlight Mile

Loss is compounded by the conflict you feel
Turmoil of emotions; which are fake, which are real?
Everyone expects you to just keep on going
All of the while your secret not knowing.

Ghosts of a past age haunt waking sleep
Prey on the memories inside that you keep
Fear your intentions laid the path to her dying
Mindful recriminations of a heart not done crying

Now complicated by feelings anew
The sense of a love that is real, that is true
But what of your duty, the debt that you owe
Bound here in this time, no place you can go

Despite best intentions to maintain the veneer
Tell tale cracks of the white lies appear
Perhaps for the best now these secrets are known
To those that you care about, honesty shown.

Truth is your freedom despite self-derision
Lifting fog from your mind, restoring true vision
The road has been travelled, at the end you can smile
The bittersweet journey along your Moonlight Mile."

(by Afterthedarkness) published previously in Jake Watch Messageboard.

MY BIRTHDAY

And I'll need more than three wishes of the pink postcard when I blow out my candles, Jake Weird folks. These aren't exactly the strawberry chocolate cake or the balloons of my birthday party, but it will be similar, I'm lazy for taking photos with my camera, instead I've posted one arty frontal picture of me wearing red lingerie, this year I am going to receive another underclothing present.

Preparing to be uncle

Do you notice the sign of the background "KIDS"?
It's obviously a hint to the new status of our dear Jake, now officially the Sexiest Uncle Alive.

Happy Birthday to Ramona!

"Maggie Gyllenhaal and fiance Peter Sarsgaard are officially proud parents! Maggie gave birth to her first daughter late Tuesday, a source close to the Gyllenhaal family confirmed [...]

Maggie and Peter decided to name their daughter Ramona Sarsgaard. Ramona was born around 8PM at a NYC hospital.
This is the first child for Maggie, 28, and Peter, 35".

Sources: Cantara via Jake Watch Exclusive, Just Jared and AHN.

RAMONA is a Spanish name, aside the popular Beverley Cleary's comics heroine Ramona Quimby, and one of the most emblematic records of "Throwing Muses" band leaded by Kristin Hersh: The Real Ramona, a legendary album in the alternative music.

"Two Step, Behind the Rest,
One Fingertip too long
A Hole, A Hole in the Box they carry,
Pours Sugar in the Road
Pours Dimes in Diamond Jim,
Two Months to fill Him in A Hole..."

"TWO STEP" song by "Throwing Muses" for their "THE REAL RAMONA" (1991) album.

On a related note, I sent my baby-postcard a week ago to the tender The Sarsgaals "Great Expectations" project, I hope they liked it so much as I enjoyed doing it, I'm proud that my good wishes baby postcard is added to this welcoming book which will be delivered to Judy Sarsgaard, Peter's mother. Congratulations to the whole family Gyllenhaal & Sarsgaard and the little new Gyllenhaals member RAMONA from KENDRA and JAKE WEIRD.

This is really one of the best Birthday presents that I could have imagined of receiving today because yes, folks, in case you don't know TOMORROW it's my OWN BIRTHDAY, too!! Ramona and me will share almost technically many happy birthdays from now on.
And now newly grandfather Stephen Gyllenhaal also shares his birthday with me, I'm feelind kinda giddy realising I was born the same day, 4th October, than Stephen Gyllenhaal and hours after than Ramona. Just too much, folks!!

Take my hand

"With a little love, and some tenderness
We'll walk upon the water
We'll rise above this mess
With a little peace, and some harmony
We'll take the world together
We'll take em by the hand

cause I've got a hand for you
cause I wanna run with you

Yesterday, I saw you standing there
Your head was down, your eyes were red
No comb had touched your hair
I said get up, and let me see you smile
We'll take a walk together
Walk the road awhile, cause

cause Ive got a hand for you
I've got a hand for you
cause I wanna run with you
Wont you let me run with you? yeah

Hold my hand
Want you to hold my hand
Hold my hand
I'll take you to a place where you can be
Hold my hand
Anything you wanna be because
I wanna love you the best that, the best that I can

See I was wasted, and I was wasting time
till I thought about your problems, I thought about your crimes
Then I stood up, and then I screamed aloud
I don't wanna be part of your problems
Don't wanna be part of your crowd, no

cause I've got a hand for you
I've got a hand for you
cause I wanna run with you
Ah, won't you let me run with you?"
("Take my Hand" song by Hootie & the Blowfish)

Between two women

No wonder Jake is sticking his tongue out. Catty fight!

Dress your Jake!

Doesn't Jake look nice in this exclusive attire by The Gilded Moose fashion designers, try to do your dolled-up Jake.
EDIT: Here you can see how I've dressed Jake, Reese Witherspoon and Kirsten Dunst in Stardoll.