What Hollywood thinks of Jake Gyllenhaal

Stock History: "From then on, Gyllenhaal seemed to be picking his next projects by thumbing through old Oscar yearbooks: Jarhead with Sam Mendes, Rendition with Gavin Hood, Brothers with Jim Sheridan, and Zodiac with David Fincher. To so carefully return to these prestige picks (even if they didn’t all work) after a blockbuster seemed like the move of a man confident he had ticked CGI and stunts off his life-experience list and was done with it.
And yet, after building his résumé and his profile (his relationship with Reese Witherspoon regularly landed him on the covers of tabloids), he beefed up to play the ab-tastic hero in Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. A Jerry Bruckheimer production based on a video game, the movie cost around $200 million and grossed $90 million domestically (it took in $244 overseas, so was not an abject failure).
Market Value: Gyllenhaal has the physique and charm of a leading man and the résumé of a serious actor. And were he happy to stay in that niche, he would be an unqualified success. However, the fact that he has shown interest in a big-budget, action-hero career to balance out his serious films means we need to look at his potential in that arena, where he’s not just a big actor who doesn’t have a franchise, he’s a big actor who has a failed franchise. The fact that the audience didn’t show up for Prince leaves Gyllenhaal as one of the highest-profile box-office unknowns working today: a very famous actor who can and does anchor mainstream prestige pictures more frequently than just about anybody, but who can’t guarantee any return except critical acclaim.Should Love and Other Drugs hit, it will prove Gyllenhaal can appeal to mass audiences in the right project. But the female-friendly Love won’t make him an action hero, which is, unfairly or otherwise, still the brass ring of bankability. (There’s also the gross-friendly guy-humor niche, but other than with Bubble Boy, Gyllenhaal has never shown much of an interest in comedy until Love and Other Drugs.) For the action-hero route, Gyllenhaal’s hopes rest with Source Code, his action movie about a soldier zapped into another man’s body to solve a train bombing. But with its Inception-esque plot and director (Duncan Jones, following up Moon), Source Code seems to be more of a thinking man’s thriller than a straight popcorn movie. What Hollywood Thinks: Hollywood thinks Gyllenhaal has acting chops, but they’re not sure he’s meant for blockbusters. Says an agent, “He’s a good actor. He transformed his body lifting weights, but I don’t think guys buy him as an ‘action hero.’ I mean, he’s extremely well-represented: [CAA] moved heaven and earth to get him into Prince of Persia, but it still didn’t work.
And what is that right franchise? “I’d put him in smaller films and let him be a star there,” says the agent. “He’s poised to have Phil Hoffman or Sam Rockwell’s career: good indie work over a long, long time. Or Sean Penn’s career. Sean is somebody who’s never quite done the big, commercial movie. He gets offered the big action movies all the time, but he always turns them down.” The manager uses the B-word: “He hasn’t found a franchise like that Bourne series. He’s bounced around, worked with interesting filmmakers, taken risks as a young actor that a lot of people wouldn’t. He seems to have gotten a little lost.”
Scans of Jake Gyllenhaal in Total Film (UK) magazine

The Analysis: Does Gyllenhaal really even need a Bourne (or an Iron Man, or a Batman)? There are plenty of movies — many of the best ones — that could use a big name to confer respectability and secure publicity for a film, but that no one expects to be a smash. In fact, this is the very description of almost all of Gyllenhaal’s movies up until Prince of Persia. What changed with that film is that Jake Gyllenhaal movies are now being marketed as Jake Gyllenhaal movies, a fact you can see in the publicity for both Love and Other Drugs and Source Code.
Scans of Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway in "Your New York" magazine

Bottom Line: We don’t see him as the next Bruce Willis, and hope that Prince of Persia cured his blockbuster urge. But if Gyllenhaal is insistent on dabbling in big-budget entertainment, he could grow into a Clooney-esque figure with dashing heroic roles; until then, his taste on the other end of the mass-entertainment spectrum has held him in good stead, and will continue to do so". Source: orvillelloyddouglas.wordpress.com

"Jake understands some people may perceive him as a big Hollywood star, he doesn’t like to focus on whether he’s cast in a lead or a supporting role.
“I don’t see myself like that at all”, he told Total Film magazine when asked how he feels about his leading male status.

“That’s very result-orientated. I’ve been like that at different times in my career, but at this point I’m not. I think people look at me a little bit like that, but I don’t.”
“I’ve been the lead in a lot of different movies but it’s never been about that. It’s funny. I was at some event for Prince of Persia and Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage were there. And there I was standing with them thinking ‘What the hell am I doing here?” he laughed". Source: www.musicrooms.net

"He tells Britain's Total Film magazine, "Viagra has a huge booklet on what it is, the side effects and all the chemical components. I would memorize these things. And we would improv them and then I would sell to the doctors when I had learnt from them."

But the cheeky star refuses to confess whether he's tried Viagra, joking, "There are some things I have to keep for myself!" Source: www.torontosun.com

Humphrey Bogart (One of these days)

A video featuring some scenes starred by Humphrey Bogart and his female co-stars. In "The Petrified Forest", Bette Davis and Leslie Howard, in "Marked Woman", Bette Davis and Mayo Methot; in "San Quentin", "It all came true" and "They drive by night" with Ann Sheridan, in "High Sierra", Ida Lupino, in "Casablanca", Ingrid Bergman, in "Dead Reckoning", Lizabeth Scott, in "In a lonely place", Gloria Grahame, in "Sabrina", Audrey Hepburn, in "Were' not angels", Joan Bennet, "The Great O'Malley, "Knock on any door", etc.

Songs "One of these days" by The Velvet Underground, "My two timin' woman" by Hank Snow and "It's too late" by Buddy Holly.

Jake Gyllenhaal and Taylor Swift: Thanksgiving in Brooklyn

Taylor Swift promoting Speak Now in Japan (2010)


Footage of Taylor Swift in the studios and from her Speak Now promotion tour which took place in Los Angeles and NYC.

"Taylor Swift and her rumored new boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal have been celebrating Thanksgiving together in Brooklyn, New York.

Taylor Swift hits the red carpet at the 2010 American Music Awards held at the Nokia Theatre L.A. Live on Sunday (November 21) in Los Angeles.

Sources exclusively tell JustJared.com that Jake, 29, and Taylor, 20, stopped by the Gorilla Coffee shop in Park Slope on Thursday (November 25).
“They asked one of the coffee shop employees for help picking out beans,” a spywitness tells Just Jared. “They both seemed super nice and wound up ordering lattes.”

Jake’s older sister Maggie Gyllenhaal lives in the area, so it seems like it’s only big family affair! Source: justjared.buzznet.com

Taylor Swift in Allure magazine (December 2010)

"In Brooklyn, alongside new boyfriend Jake Gyllenhaal. Around 10:30 a.m., the pair popped into Park Slope's Gorilla Coffee for specialty maple lattes, made with pure Vermont syrup.
"They were really sweet, really really sweet," says a source at the shop, adding that the duo also tipped well.
"They get treated like normal people around here," says the source, noting that Gyllenhaal, 29, deals with the occasional star-struck customer politely. Source: www.people.com

The femme fatale: the ultimate misogynistic fantasy (Lizabeth Scott, Amber Dawn, etc.)

"Most women are unhappy, they just pretend they aren't".
-Gloria Grahame as Vicki Buckley in "Human Desire" (1954)

"Traditional horror has often portrayed female characters in direct relation to their sexual role according to men, such as the lascivious victim or innocent heroine; even vampy, powerful female villains, such as the classic noir “spider women”, use their sexual prowess to seduce and overwhelm married men.
Subversive, witty, sexy—and scary—Fist of the Spider Woman poses two questions: “What do queer women fear the most?” and “What do queer women desire the most?” Amber Dawn is a writer, performance artist, and radical sex/gender activist who co-edited With a Rough Tongue: Femmes Write Porn". Source: www.arsenalpulp.com

Kristen Stewart as Mallory, in "Welcome to the Rileys" (2010)

"These characters are reflections of the estimated 20,000 or so girls who are sexually exploited in North America. My novel gives these girls power." Source: thetyee.ca

Nora Zehetner played femme fatale Laura in "Brick" (2005)

Lizabeth Scott was called "Cinderella with a husky voice" by Humphrey Bogart in "Dead Reckoning" (1947)

The femme fatale of the film noir movies of the 1940s and 1950s is representative of several related personality disorders characterized by histrionics, self-absorption, psychopathy, and unpredictability. The 1940s were an era of "women’s pictures".
In a scene reminiscent of his final confrontation with Mary Astor in "The Maltese Falcon" (1941), Bogart tells 'Dusty' Chandler (Lizabeth Scott) that he plans on turning her over to the authorities.
Lizabeth Scott with Mary Astor and John Hodiak in Desert Fury (1947)

For the first time Hollywood assembled an array of films depicting the lives, challenges, and emotions of women. Audiences were almost entirely composed of women prior to 1945. The majority of box office stars were female. World War II induced an unparalleled collective response from women, resulting in new perspectives and rising ambitions. The femme fatale thus represents the ultimate misogynistic fantasy. These women are to be feared while simultaneously scapegoated for society’s problems. She controls her own sexuality, setting her apart from the patriarchal system. There’s no greater kick in this town than when a woman finally wraps her delicate fingers around the trigger of a .38 Linga and blasts away every bit of genetic encoding and cultural repression in a roaring fusillade of little lead forget-menots." Source: www.albany.edu

According to Diana McClellan's book on Sappho Hollywood, "The Girls", Lizabeth Scott was shunned late in the studio era for her sexual orientation. It was seen as an obscenity for Scott to be associated with lesbians as well as lesbian night clubs in L.A.

Amanda Seyfried as Valerie/Red Riding Hood in "Red Riding Hood" (2011), directed by Catherine Hardwicke
"Returning to the Dark, Little seeks the “angel” who saved her from an earlier scrape. A hallucinatory fall through blackness ends with a calming vision of light: “Heaven had a burgundy-red lampshade made of velvet nap paper. Heaven had dust on the bulb. Heaven was a honeyed-pine side table … a shamrock ashtray.” Little's sense of a revived and treasured memory is dashed by the image of a wrinkled woman on the bed, “the tread of sadness on her like her whole life had been a boot fight.” The scene distills all we've come to know and foresee about Little's station in the world". Does she escape her station? True to Little's experience, Dawn refuses to break the fantasy. If there is any redemption here, it's the saving gift of imagination". Source: www.theglobeandmail.com

"Dare to meet Little, the indescribably innocent, indescribably obscene protagonist of the decade’s most indescribably juicy novel. Part pulp noir, part porn, part metaphysical carnival-of-the-mind, Amber Dawn is to our generation what Lewis Carroll and Philip K. Dick were to theirs. Sub Rosa is a cult classic in the making".
—Elizabeth Bachinsky, Governor General’s Award Nominee for Home of Sudden Service (2006)

"The lost girls of Amber Dawn's debut novel are much closer to us than Neverland ... Little leads us into the liminal, between recurring dreams and eroding nightmares, just past that alley, two blocks from where you live. Familiar and astonishing, darkly intoxicating, Sub Rosa is a Goblin Market for the 21st century". —Hiromi Goto, author of Chorus of Mushrooms (1994 )

Bannon's books, like most pulp fiction novels, were not reviewed by newspapers or magazines when they were originally published between 1957 and 1962. However, since their release they have been the subject of analyses that offer differing opinions of Bannon's books as a reflection of the moral standards of the decade, a subtle defiance of those morals, or a combination of both. Andrea Loewenstein notes Bannon's use of cliché, suggesting that it reflected Bannon's own belief in the culturally repressive ideas of the 1950s.
-"Sad Stories: A Reflection on the Fiction of Ann Bannon". Conversely, writer Jeff Weinstein remarks that Bannon's "potboilers" are an expression of freedom because they address issues mainstream fiction did not in the 1950s. -Jeff Weinstein ("In Praise of Pulp: Bannon's Lusty Lesbians")
With a sharp pen, fierce intellect and ferocious take on sex, sex work and sexuality, Amber Dawn's first novel Sub Rosa is a page-turner. Some books take on humanity, others merely relay a story. Dawn's Sub Rosa does both and is explosive. With a brashness akin to Michelle Tea, Dawn explores sexuality, sensuality and subtlety. In moments protagonist Little lingers with innocent fragility, while in others she's overthrown by a sinister force that threatens to overwhelm her. Part pornography, part pulp fiction, Sub Rosa could be a darker, perhaps more twisted, compliment to Ann Bannon's famous lesbian chronicles. It's a modern-day musing on the roots of desire. —The Coast (Halifax, NS)

Joseph Gordon-Levitt will be back with 'Regularity' video

Joseph Gordon-Levitt in GQ Men of the Year issue December 2010


Joseph Gordon-Levitt's older brother, who went by the handle Burning Dan, died Oct. 4 at age 36. Now Joe is back at his non-Hollywood day job, hitRECord.org, thanking fans for the support and working on getting back to normal.
"To level with you, I still can't really handle the workload that I usually do, but I wanna start getting back to some projects," JGL says in a new installment of his formerly weekly 'Regularity' video series. "Been a while since I did a 'Regularity' video -- my life has been irregular. Thanks everybody for all the love and support of Burning Dan. It's meant a lot to me. I'll be back to do another 'Regularity' video," Joe says in the clip. "I'm gonna get back to full regularity at some point; I just don't want to make a commitment I can't live up to right now." Source: www.popeater.com