2:05 p.m. Jake Gyllenhaal's on set in Los Angeles, shooting Zodiac and getting ready to film a seven-page scene with Mark Ruffalo. Gyllenhaal didn't watch the nominations but got a call from his agent with the news that he'd earned a best supporting actor nomination for playing a gay cowboy in Brokeback Mountain.

"My phone voicemail was filled with messages so she couldn't leave a message so she called me at my house," he says. Tonight, he'll "definitely be doing something" to celebrate, he says.

As for Brokeback's eight nominations, says Gyllenhaal, "the more attention that it gets and the more it's championed by audiences and critics, the more people are likely to see it." He chatted with castmates Heath Ledger and Michelle Williams this morning. "Heath and I talked and I got a, 'Congratulations, mate!'" he says. And Gyllenhaal, who was dating Kirsten Dunst, has no word on who'll be his Oscar date. "I don't know!" he laughs. —D.F.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: USATODAY.Com
-

Best motion picture of the year
“Brokeback Mountain” (Focus Features)
A River Road Entertainment Production
Diana Ossana and James Schamus, Producers
“Capote” (UA/Sony Pictures Classics)
An A-Line Pictures/Cooper’s Town/ Infinity Media Production
Caroline Baron, William Vince and Michael Ohoven, Producers
“Crash” (Lions Gate)
A Bob Yari/DEJ/Blackfriar’s Bridge/ Harris Company/ApolloProscreen GmbH & Co./Bull’s Eye Entertainment Production
Paul Haggis and Cathy Schulman, Producers
“Good Night, and Good Luck.” (Warner Independent Pictures)
A Good Night Good Luck LLC Production
Grant Heslov, Producer
“Munich” (Universal and DreamWorks)
A Universal Pictures/DreamWorks Pictures Production
Kathleen Kennedy, Steven Spielberg and Barry Mendel, Producers

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Philip Seymour Hoffman - CAPOTE
Terrence Howard - HUSTLE & FLOW
Heath Ledger - BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
Joaquin Phoenix - WALK THE LINE
David Strathairn - GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK.

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
George Clooney - SYRIANA
Matt Dillon - CRASH
Paul Giamatti - CINDERELLA MAN
Jake Gyllenhaal - BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN
William Hurt - A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Judi Dench - MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS
Felicity Huffman - TRANSAMERICA
Keira Knightley - PRIDE & PREJUDICE
Charlize Theron - NORTH COUNTRY
Reese Witherspoon - WALK THE LINE

PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Amy Adams - JUNEBUG
Catherine Keener - CAPOTE
Frances McDormand - NORTH COUNTRY
Rachel Weisz - THE CONSTANT GARDENER
Michelle Williams - BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN

Best animated feature film of the year
“Howl’s Moving Castle” (Buena Vista)
Hayao Miyazaki
“Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride” (Warner Bros.)
Tim Burton and Mike Johnson
“Wallace & Gromit in the Curse of the Were-Rabbit” (DreamWorks Animation SKG)
Nick Park and Steve Box

Achievement in art direction
“Good Night, and Good Luck.” (Warner Independent Pictures)
Art Direction: Jim Bissell
Set Decoration: Jan Pascale
“Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” (Warner Bros.)
Art Direction: Stuart Craig
Set Decoration: Stephenie McMillan
“King Kong” (Universal)
Art Direction: Grant Major
Set Decoration: Dan Hennah and Simon Bright
“Memoirs of a Geisha” (Sony Pictures Releasing)
Art Direction: John Myhre
Set Decoration: Gretchen Rau
“Pride & Prejudice” (Focus Features)
Art Direction: Sarah Greenwood
Set Decoration: Katie Spencer

Achievement in cinematography
“Batman Begins” (Warner Bros.)
Wally Pfister
“Brokeback Mountain” (Focus Features)
Rodrigo Prieto
“Good Night, and Good Luck.” (Warner Independent Pictures)
Robert Elswit
“Memoirs of a Geisha” (Sony Pictures Releasing)
Dion Beebe
“The New World” (New Line)
Emmanuel Lubezki

Achievement in costume design
“Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” (Warner Bros.)
Gabriella Pescucci
“Memoirs of a Geisha” (Sony Pictures Releasing)
Colleen Atwood
“Mrs. Henderson Presents” (The Weinstein Company)
Sandy Powell
“Pride & Prejudice” (Focus Features)
Jacqueline Durran
“Walk the Line” (20th Century Fox)
Arianne Phillips

Achievement in directing
“Brokeback Mountain” (Focus Features)
Ang Lee
“Capote” (UA/Sony Pictures Classics)
Bennett Miller
“Crash” (Lions Gate)
Paul Haggis
“Good Night, and Good Luck.” (Warner Independent Pictures)
George Clooney
“Munich” (Universal and DreamWorks)
Steven Spielberg

Best documentary feature
“Darwin’s Nightmare” (International Film Circuit)
A Mille et Une Production
Hubert Sauper
“Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room” (Magnolia Pictures)
An HDNet Films Production
Alex Gibney and Jason Kliot
“March of the Penguins” (Warner Independent Pictures)
A Bonne Pioche Production
Luc Jacquet and Yves Darondeau
“Murderball” (THINKFilm)
An Eat Films Production
Henry-Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro
“Street Fight”
A Marshall Curry Production
Marshall Curry

Best documentary short subject
“The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club”
A Dan Krauss Production
Dan Krauss
“God Sleeps in Rwanda”
An Acquaro/Sherman Production
Kimberlee Acquaro and Stacy Sherman
“The Mushroom Club”
A Farallon Films Production
Steven Okazaki
“A Note of Triumph: The Golden Age of Norman Corwin”
A NomaFilms Production
Corinne Marrinan and Eric Simonson

Achievement in film editing
“Cinderella Man” (Universal and Miramax)
Mike Hill and Dan Hanley
“The Constant Gardener” (Focus Features)
Claire Simpson
“Crash” (Lions Gate)
Hughes Winborne
“Munich” (Universal and DreamWorks)
Michael Kahn
“Walk the Line” (20th Century Fox)
Michael McCusker

Best foreign language film of the year
“Don’t Tell”
A Cattleya/Rai Cinema Production
Italy
“Joyeux Noël”
A Nord-Ouest Production
France
“Paradise Now”
An Augustus Film Production
Palestine
“Sophie Scholl - The Final Days”
A Goldkind Filmproduktion and Broth Film Production
Germany
“Tsotsi”
A Moviworld Production
South Africa

Achievement in makeup
“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”
(Buena Vista)
Howard Berger and Tami Lane
“Cinderella Man”
(Universal and Miramax)
David Leroy Anderson and Lance Anderson
“Star Wars: Episode III Revenge of the Sith”
(20th Century Fox)
Dave Elsey and Nikki Gooley

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original score)
“Brokeback Mountain” (Focus Features) Gustavo Santaolalla
“The Constant Gardener” (Focus Features) Alberto Iglesias
“Memoirs of a Geisha” (Sony Pictures Releasing) John Williams
“Munich” (Universal and DreamWorks) John Williams
“Pride & Prejudice” (Focus Features) Dario Marianelli

Achievement in music written for motion pictures (Original song)
“In the Deep” from “Crash” (Lions Gate)
Music by Kathleen “Bird” York and Michael Becker
Lyric by Kathleen “Bird” York
“It’s Hard Out Here for a Pimp” from“Hustle & Flow” (Paramount Classics, MTV Films and New Deal Entertainment)
Music and Lyric by Jordan Houston, Cedric Coleman and Paul Beauregard
“Travelin’ Thru” from “Transamerica” (The Weinstein Company and IFC Films)
Music and Lyric by Dolly Parton

Best animated short film
“Badgered”
A National Film and Television School Production
Sharon Colman
“The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation”
A John Canemaker Production
John Canemaker and Peggy Stern
“The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello” (Monster Distributes)
A 3D Films Production
Anthony Lucas
“9”
A Shane Acker Production
Shane Acker
“One Man Band”
A Pixar Animation Studios Production
Andrew Jimenez and Mark Andrews

Best live action short film
“Ausreisser (The Runaway)”
A Hamburg Media School, Filmwerkstatt Production
Ulrike Grote
“Cashback” (The British Film Institute)
A Left Turn Films Production
Sean Ellis and Lene Bausager
“The Last Farm”
A Zik Zak Filmworks Production
Rúnar Rúnarsson and Thor S. Sigurjónsson
“Our Time Is Up”
A Station B Production
Rob Pearlstein and Pia Clemente
“Six Shooter” (Sundance Film Channel)
A Missing in Action Films and Funny Farm Films Production
Martin McDonagh

Achievement in sound editing
“King Kong” (Universal) Mike Hopkins and Ethan Van der Ryn
“Memoirs of a Geisha” (Sony Pictures Releasing) Wylie Stateman
“War of the Worlds” (Paramount and DreamWorks) Richard King

Achievement in sound mixing
“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” (Buena Vista)
Terry Porter, Dean A. Zupancic and Tony Johnson
“King Kong” (Universal)
Christopher Boyes, Michael Semanick, Michael Hedges and Hammond Peek
“Memoirs of a Geisha” (Sony Pictures Releasing)
Kevin O’Connell, Greg P. Russell, Rick Kline and John Pritchett
“Walk the Line” (20th Century Fox)
Paul Massey, D.M. Hemphill and Peter F. Kurland
“War of the Worlds” (Paramount and DreamWorks)
Andy Nelson, Anna Behlmer and Ronald Judkins

Achievement in visual effects
“The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe” (Buena Vista)
Dean Wright, Bill Westenhofer, Jim Berney and Scott Farrar
“King Kong” (Universal)
Joe Letteri, Brian Van’t Hul, Christian Rivers and Richard Taylor
“War of the Worlds” (Paramount and DreamWorks)
Dennis Muren, Pablo Helman, Randy Dutra and Daniel Sudick

Adapted screenplay
“Brokeback Mountain” (Focus Features)
Screenplay by Larry McMurtry & Diana Ossana
“Capote” (UA/Sony Pictures Classics)
Screenplay by Dan Futterman
167B92 “The Constant Gardener” (Focus Features)
Screenplay by Jeffrey Caine
“A History of Violence” (New Line)
Screenplay by Josh Olson
“Munich” (Universal and DreamWorks)
Screenplay by Tony Kushner and Eric Roth

Original screenplay
“Crash” (Lions Gate)
Screenplay by Paul Haggis & Bobby Moresco
Story by Paul Haggis
“Good Night, and Good Luck.” (Warner Independent Pictures)
Screenplay by George Clooney & Grant Heslov
“Match Point” (DreamWorks)
Written by Woody Allen
“The Squid and the Whale” (Samuel Goldwyn Films and Sony Pictures Releasing)
Written by Noah Baumbach
“Syriana” (Warner Bros.)
Written by Stephen Gaghan

- posted by Ally 
- credits: OscarWatch.Com
-

"Bush Hesitates to Give Take on 'Brokeback' "

WASHINGTON -- President Bush has long cultivated the image of a macho rancher, frequently donning his boots and Wrangler jeans to clear brush on his sprawling Texas property. But he was decidedly noncommittal today — and even a bit nonplused — when asked for his reaction to the most talked-about ranching film in years: "Brokeback Mountain."

"I hadn't seen it," Bush told thousands of students and professors at Kansas State University, responding to a query from an audience member. "I'd be glad to talk about ranching, but I haven't seen the movie."

The movie, featuring the love story of two gay cowboys, this month won the Golden Globe award for best motion picture drama and top honors from the Producers Guild of America and is showing remarkable success —even in conservative, red-state towns and cities that helped reelect Bush.

But if Bush intends to see it, he showed no such desire today when the young man in the crowd raised the idea toward the end of a lengthy, unscripted and unexpected question-and-answer session.

"You're a rancher," the questioner said to Bush. "A lot of here in Kansas are ranchers. I was just wanting to get your opinion on 'Brokeback Mountain,' if you've seen it yet." The hall filled with nervous laughter as Bush smirked.

"You would love it," the questioner persisted. "You should check it out."

- posted by Ally 
- credits: LATimes.Com
-

Profile: JAKE GYLLENHAAL RIDES ALONG WITH BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN'S UNCONVENTIONAL LOVE STORY

Having won three Golden Globe awards thus far, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN continues it’s steam-locomotive push towards the 2006 Oscars. A major part of the magic of that film is the star-crossed lover chemistry onscreen between Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), two gay rough and tumble cowboys in Wyoming.

Gyllenhaal doesn’t focus on the "big" issues of having on-screen sex with a male co-star, instead he delves deeper into the real heart of the character’s problems. Gyllenhaal feels that his character, while not being able to be as isolated as Ledger’s, is just as alone in his sense of connecting to the world around him, and ultimately with his relationship to the man he loves. The film changed Gyllenhaal’s views on intimacy between couples and forced him to go to a place he had not been to before as an actor, and made him more accepting of the plight of the gay community for acceptance.

"I think it's about the struggles of two people dealing with intimacy, to me ultimately," says Gyllenhaal. "This thing that you see in movies all the time is 'Oh it's supposed to happen between these two people.' Particularly a guy and a girl; and you are supposed to get the girl, you are supposed to lose the girl, and you are supposed to get the girl again. If I learned anything I think it's just like working with [director] Ang Lee, there is a real benevolence in everything he does. I remember when I saw SENSE AND SENSIBILITY, my Mom always says that I walked out saying 'I feel so clean.' And I think you walk out of this film feeling kind of devastated in a lot of ways, but also feeling like a real sense of benevolence and I think the process of making the film produced that too. I mean yes he manipulated us. Yes in a way he very gently abused us, but I walked out of this experience going, there is a real kind of benevolence. If Heath and I could do it then it should be okay for the real people who are really doing this to do it."

The sex scenes were not a big issue to the young actor, who treated them just as if they were any other part of the movie. There of course, was good-natured joking on-set during those moments, which are some of the most intense in the movie, but to Gyllenhaal the lovemaking scenes were a dance choreographed by director Lee.

"We talked about it, we joked about it, and we would poke fun while we were doing it here," reveals Gyllenhaal. "It's one of those things where you kind of don't make it into the biggest deal. It would have put too much pressure on a scene if we were like 'What do we have to do? Oh my God, we have to do this!' To me the physical stuff was easy. It's choreography, it's a dance. That's how we did it. Just like in [Lee’s] CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON, the fight scenes were like love scenes. Everybody draws a metaphor for those scenes. They do have choreography to them, they are very aggressive. For us it was like we were doing a dance, we were choreographing a fight scene, there was a choreography and so for me it was just getting the steps right for the camera and it's amazing as an actor, how the things you are feeling translate and when you are not feeling it how that translates."

Gyllenhaal does admit however, that the sex scenes with co-star Anne Hathaway, who plays his wife in the film, were a bit easier for him to do.

"Oh, now it gets more complicated," says Gyllenhaal with a laugh. "It was easier for me to, I mean, yeah she is a very beautiful girl. That's all I can say. She's a very, very beautiful girl. She's very beautiful."

Gyllenhaal feels that while both his character and Ledger’s deal with being gay and closeted, Gyllenhaal had to deal with the fact that his character Jack Swift was far more open and less apologetic that Ledger’s character Ennis.

"I walked all those scenes with Anne thinking she knows," reveals Gyllenhaal. "I never was hiding anything from her as actor. I just thought ‘oh we both know, I'm going off to fishing she knows what I am going to do. How could she not?’ I think Heath's whole thing was hiding and hiding and hiding and hiding and hiding."

On the other hand Gyllenhaal also feels, that maybe because of the differences in the two characters, Ledger gets to portray someone who stays more faithful to the relationship than Gyllenhaal does.

"In some ways I think maybe Ennis' love is stronger because there is a faithfulness to that and I think you see it happen," he admits. "I think Jack eventually says ‘I'm going to have to go on with my life, I'm going to have to find somebody else and find intimacy with him.’ He does, at the end his Dad says he brought some other guy here and they were going to want to work on a farm."


In the end, Gyllenhaal chocks up his on-screen romantic chemistry with co-star Ledger to the simple bonds of trust and friendship that they formed while making the movie.

"For Heath and I, I think it's a friendship and a trust that as actors we were going to go someplace that we both were afraid of and we knew that we were," says Gyllenhaal. "We just trusted each other. I think in that trust was chemistry and there was a real connection in that. He was a great guy and we were just kind of friends from the beginning. We both admired what it took to play both the characters we were playing and we knew at a certain point we only had each other because we never knew how people were going to respond to the movie, so we kind of just joined up and said 'Fuck 'em, lets go for it.' And we did and I think you probably see that. I think that's a lot of the chemistry. At a certain point it's pretty mundane and pretty cold on a set no matter what you are doing or who you are doing it with but Ang did it in such a tasteful way that it's kind of hard to look at it. There are probably things that if he asked me to do I would have probably said no, but it was just done in my opinion a really respectful and very beautiful way."


- posted by Ally 
- credits: IfMagazine.Com
-

Capitalizing on increased exposure from the Golden Globe awards, Brokeback Mountain galloped into 1,196 venues, up 513 from last weekend, and saw business grow 28 percent to $7.4 million. The cowboy love story was No. 1 from Tuesday to Thursday, and it had its highest weekend rank yet at No. 5. With $41.7 million in the till, key Oscar nominations and further expansions could propel the picture past $100 million.

Another major Oscar contender, Walk the Line, crossed the $100 million mark on Saturday, its 65th day of release. Also enjoying Golden Globe coverage and a subsequent expansion, the Johnny Cash biographical drama spiked 73 percent over the weekend to $3.1 million at 1,125 theaters.

Together, Brokeback Mountain and Walk the Line had among the biggest post-Golden Globes jumps on record. Historically, the Globes effect is negligible, with business frequently dropping after best picture wins, and both movies' up-ticks were just as likely caused by increased advertising, expansions and the general scuttlebutt.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: BoxOfficeMojo.Com
-

"Brokeback Mountain," a movie about a tortured romance between two cowboys, took on Academy Award front-runner status Sunday night when it received the top honor at the 2006 Producers Guild of America Awards.

"Brokeback" producers Diana Ossana, who co-wrote the script, and James Schamus won the PGA's coveted Darryl F. Zanuck Producer of the Year Award - an accurate indicator of the best picture Oscar in 11 of the past 16 years.

"This has been a ridiculously great year for American movies," said Schamus, referring to the high number of independent films catching the public's attention and winning awards.

"We're all competing against each other, but sometimes it's worth stepping back and seeing that it hasn't been this way since the late '60s and early '70s," added Schamus, president of Focus Features, the studio that released "Brokeback."

Starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal and directed by Ang Lee, "Brokeback" had a production budget of just $14 million and has grossed $42.1 million to date. The film had already been named best picture by several critics groups and won the best picture-drama award at last week's Golden Globe Awards. On Sunday, it triumphed over the producers of "Capote," "Crash," "Good Night, and Good Luck," and "Walk the Line."

Other PGA winners included the producers of: "Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit" (animated film); "The Life and Death of Peter Sellers" (long-form television); "Lost" (episodic television drama); "Entourage" (episodic television comedy); "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" (variety television) and "60 Minutes" (nonfiction television).

Also honored by the PGA on Sunday were Clint Eastwood, who received the guild's Milestone Award; Roger Corman, who was given the David O.Selznick Achievement Award; and Norman Lear, recipient of the PGA's Achievement Award in television.

"I've been an independent producer all my life and it's very gratifying to be accepted into the establishment of the PGA," said Corman. "I'm delighted to be recognized by my peers."

Eastwood, who won virtually every major award last year for "Million Dollar Baby" except the PGA prize, was happy to be getting recognition from his colleagues.

"Some projects are tough and the last two I did nobody wanted to do," Eastwood said. "I helped get them done and that's probably the best thing I can do."

"Good Night, and Good Luck" producer Grant Heslov received the Stanley Kramer Award, which is given to movies with relevant social themes.

David Strathairn, who portrayed veteran newsman Edward R. Murrow in "Good Night," said: "The fact that it's being honored with this award is an indication of its importance and artistic achievement."

The PGA also awarded AOL Chairman and CEO Jon Miller with The Vanguard Award.

The PGA Awards, hosted by Queen Latifah, were held at the Universal Hilton with Felicity Huffman, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Patrick Dempsey, Sandra Oh, Stockard Channing and Alfre Woodard among the presenters.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: DailyNews.Com
-

Brokeback Mountain climbs to top of box office

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Advocate.Com
-

THE ORANGE BRITISH ACADEMY FILM AWARDS

2005 NOMINATIONS
(presented in 2006)

FILM
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - Diana Ossana/James Schamus
CAPOTE - Caroline Baron/William Vince/Michael Ohoven
THE CONSTANT GARDENER - Simon Channing Williams
CRASH - Credits TBC
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK - Grant Heslov

THE ALEXANDER KORDA AWARD for the Outstanding British Film of the Year
A COCK & BULL STORY - Andrew Eaton/Michael Winterbottom/Martin Hardy
THE CONSTANT GARDENER - Simon Channing Williams/Fernando Meirelles/Jeffrey Caine
FESTIVAL - Christopher Young/Annie Griffin
PRIDE & PREJUDICE - Tim Bevan/Eric Fellner/Paul Webster/Joe Wright/Deborah Moggach
WALLACE & GROMIT: THE CURSE OF THE WERE-RABBIT - Peter Lord/David Sproxton/Nick Park/
Steve Box/Mark Burton/Bob Baker

THE CARL FOREMAN AWARD for Special Achievement by a British Director, Writer or Producer in their First Feature Film
DAVID BELTON (Producer) - Shooting Dogs
PETER FUDAKOWSKI (Producer) - Tsotsi
ANNIE GRIFFIN (Director/Writer) - Festival
RICHARD HAWKINS (Director) - Everything
JOE WRIGHT (Director) - Pride & Prejudice

THE DAVID LEAN AWARD for Achievement in Direction
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - Ang Lee
CAPOTE - Bennett Miller
THE CONSTANT GARDENER - Fernando Meirelles
CRASH - Paul Haggis
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK - George Clooney

 ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
CINDERELLA MAN - Cliff Hollingsworth/Akiva Goldsman
CRASH - Paul Haggis/Bobby Moresco
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK - George Clooney/Grant Heslov
HOTEL RWANDA - Keir Pearson/Terry George
MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS - Martin Sherman

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - Larry McMurtry/Diana Ossana
CAPOTE - Dan Futterman
THE CONSTANT GARDENER - Jeffrey Caine
A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE - Josh Olson
PRIDE & PREJUDICE - Deborah Moggach

FILM NOT IN THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
DE BATTRE MON COEUR S'EST ARRÊTÉ (The Beat That My Heart Skipped) - Pascal Caucheteux/Jacques Audiard
LE GRAND VOYAGE - Humbert Balsan/Ismaël Ferroukhi
KUNG FU HUSTLE - Stephen Chow/Chui Po Chu/Jeff Lau
JOYEUX NOËL (Merry Christmas) - Christophe Rossignon/Christian Carion
TSOTSI - Peter Fudakowski/Gavin Hood

 ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
DAVID STRATHAIRN - Good Night, And Good Luck
HEATH LEDGER - Brokeback Mountain
JOAQUIN PHOENIX - Walk the Line
PHILIP SEYMOUR HOFFMAN - Capote
RALPH FIENNES - The Constant Gardener

 ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
CHARLIZE THERON - North Country
JUDI DENCH - Mrs. Henderson Presents
RACHEL WEISZ - The Constant Gardener
REESE WITHERSPOON - Walk the Line
ZIYI ZHANG - Memoirs of a Geisha

 ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
DON CHEADLE - Crash
GEORGE CLOONEY - Good Night, And Good Luck
GEORGE CLOONEY - Syriana
JAKE GYLLENHAAL - Brokeback Mountain
MATT DILLON - Crash

 ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
BRENDA BLETHYN - Pride & Prejudice
CATHERINE KEENER - Capote
FRANCES McDORMAND - North Country
MICHELLE WILLIAMS - Brokeback Mountain
THANDIE NEWTON - Crash

 THE ANTHONY ASQUITH AWARD for Achievement in Film Music
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - Gustavo Santaolalla
THE CONSTANT GARDENER - Alberto Iglesias
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA - John Williams
MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS - George Fenton
WALK THE LINE - T Bone Burnett

 CINEMATOGRAPHY
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - Rodrigo Prieto
THE CONSTANT GARDENER - César Charlone
CRASH - J Michael Muro
MARCH OF THE PENGUINS - Laurent Chalet/Jerôme Maison
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA - Dion Beebe

 EDITING
BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN - Geraldine Peroni/Dylan Tichenor
THE CONSTANT GARDENER - Claire Simpson
CRASH - Hughes Winborne
GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK - Stephen Mirrione
MARCH OF THE PENGUINS - Sabine Emiliani

 PRODUCTION DESIGN
BATMAN BEGINS - Nathan Crowley
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY - Alex McDowell
HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE - Stuart Craig
KING KONG - Grant Major
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA - John Myhre

COSTUME DESIGN
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY - Gabriella Pescucci
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE - Isis Mussenden
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA - Colleen Atwood
MRS. HENDERSON PRESENTS - Sandy Powell
PRIDE & PREJUDICE - Jacqueline Durran

SOUND
BATMAN BEGINS - David G Evans/Stefan Henrix/Peter Lindsay
THE CONSTANT GARDENER - Joakim Sundström/Stuart Wilson
CRASH - Richard Van Dyke/Sandy Gendler
KING KONG - Hammond Peek/Christopher Boyes/Mike Hopkins/ Ethan Van der Ryn
WALK THE LINE - Paul Massey/D M Hemphill/Peter F Kurland/Donald Sylvester

 ACHIEVEMENT IN SPECIAL VISUAL EFFECTS
BATMAN BEGINS - Janek Sirrs/Dan Glass/Chris Corbould
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY - Nick Davis/Jon Thum/Chas Jarrett/Joss Williams
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE - Dean Wright/Bill Westenhofer/Jim Berney/Scott Farrar
HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE - Jim Mitchell/John Richardson
KING KONG - Joe Letteri/Christian Rivers/Brian Van't Hul/Richard Taylor

MAKE UP & HAIR
CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY - Peter Owen/Ivana Primorac
THE CHRONICLES OF NARNIA: THE LION, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE - Howard Berger/Gregory Nicotero/Nikki Gooley
HARRY POTTER AND THE GOBLET OF FIRE - Nick Dudman/Amanda Knight/Eithne Fennell
MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA - Noriko Watanabe/Kate Biscoe/Lyndell Quiyou/Kelvin R Trahan
PRIDE & PREJUDICE - Fae Hammond

SHORT ANIMATION FILM
FALLEN ART - Jarek Sawko/Piotr Sikora/Tomek Baginski
FILM NOIR - Osbert Parker
KAMIYA'S CORRESPONDENCE - Sumito Sakakibara
THE MYSTERIOUS GEOGRAPHIC EXPLORATIONS OF JASPER MORELLO - Anthony Lucas/Julia Lucas/Mark Shirrefs
RABBIT - Run Wrake

SHORT FILM
ANTONIO'S BREAKFAST - Howard Stogdon/Amber Templemore-Finlayson/Daniel Mulloy
CALL REGISTER - Kit Hawkins/Adam Tudhope/Ed Roe
HEAVY METAL DRUMMER - Amanda Boyle/Luke Morris/Toby MacDonald
HEYDAR, AN AFGHAN IN TEHRAN - Homayoun Assadian/Babak Jalali
LUCKY - Bex Hopkins/Avie Luthra

19 January 2006

- posted by Ally 
- credits: BAFTA.Org
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- posted by Ally 
- credits: ContactMusic.Com
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JAKE GYLLENHAAL AND ANG LEE TO ACCEPT AWARD AT HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN NEW YORK GALA DINNER

Golden Globe Winners Brokeback Mountain, Transamerica Accelerate Understanding

WASHINGTON — On the heels of four Golden Globe awards, including best drama, Brokeback Mountain star Jake Gyllenhaal and director Ang Lee will both be honored with the Human Rights Campaign’s Equality Award at this year’s Greater New York Gala Dinner to take place on Feb. 11, 2006.

“These two films have ignited a firestorm of honesty that is sweeping the nation,” said HRC President Joe Solmonese. “At dinner tables across the country the conversation about gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equality is being informed with true portrayals of American life.”

This past summer, HRC honored Felicity Huffman at its San Francisco Gala Dinner for her work in fostering understanding of transgender Americans.

This year’s HRC Greater New York Gala Dinner will be held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel with the dinner and program beginning at 7:30 p.m. For tickets, visit www.boxofficetickets.com/hrc or call 1-800-494-TIXS (8497).

“We are honored to be awarding both Jake Gyllenhaal and Ang Lee with the Human Rights Campaign’s Equality Award,” said Solmonese. “Their work on this film has helped reshape the debate and changed the cultural fabric of our country.”

Also being awarded an Equality Award from HRC will be NBC’s “Law and Order: SVU” and HBO’s “Oz” actor Chris Meloni. Meloni has been a vocal supporter of the GLBT community by doing such important work as starring in public service announcements for NBC discussing discrimination and violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: HCR.Org
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Jake Gyllenhaal: 'Will Strip For Chicks'
By Jennifer Cox
Jan 17, 2006

Brokeback Mountain star Jake Gyllenhaal says he doesn't mind being dubbed as bi-sexual by fans of his new film. Now the hunky breakout actor also says he doesn't mind stripping to impress women.

The Online Sun gives this account:

Jake Gyllenhaal says the way to a woman's heart is to cook her a romantic dinner - or to do a striptease.

He told Bravo magazine: "If I meet somebody, I always show her my real face straight away.

"Fresh produce is the most important ingredient when you try to win a woman's heart.

"Only then does cooking for two become an intimate pleasure.

"I'd cook loads of pasta, tasty vegetables and lamb's lettuce with tomatoes."

However, he added: "If I could impress her with a striptease, I would."

- posted by Ally 
- credits: NationalLedger.Com
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The crop of young male actors taking over our screens

Girls think Jake Gyllenhaal is gorgeous, boys reckon he's cool - and the 25-year-old is the leader of a pack of film stars with both box-office clout and art-house cred. But do any of these guys have what it takes to become the next George Clooney, asks David Thomson. Or will they take a wrong turn and go the way of Ben Affleck?

Jake Gyllenhaal handles himself like a pro at every turn. He has all the best deprecating jokes about an overnight sensation such as himself. He is a cool dude, which is the kind of young man young men today appreciate. He wonders with a dry voice and a dreamy gaze whether he'll be around long enough for people to learn how to spell his name. And he has a cynical version of how the fickle waves of fashion wash over someone like Jake: "First, it's 'Who is Jake Gyllenhaal?' Then it's 'Get me Jake', then it's 'Get me someone like Jake Gyllenhaal,' and finally it's 'Jake Gillenhall? Who's he?'"

In truth, that quick tour of the ups and downs might make a pretty good movie one day. It's also the kind of story that Jake has known most of his life. You see, he didn't exactly blow in from Wyoming on the Greyhound bus, as dumb and naïve and wistful as some midnight cowboy in the big city. Truth to tell, Jake is the son of Stephen Gyllenhaal, a film director of taste and accomplishment, even if he has never quite found himself in the big time that has gathered around his son's slim shoulders, and of Naomi Foner, an experienced screenwriter.

Jake was born not in the shadow of Brokeback Mountain, but in a place called Los Angeles. He grew up amid show business talk, with dinner plates and screenplays-in-progress fighting for room on the table. Jake's sister, Maggie, is also an actress (she was very striking in Secretary), and Jake graduated from Hollywood-Westlake High School, which is one of the inside schools in town, before he dropped out of Columbia after two years. I'm sure his parents were distressed at that, but I'm also sure that it was a household where every inhabitant - including the dog - knew that you don't expect the postman to knock twice. If you're being offered, you jump. That's how Jake Gyllenhaal, just 25, gets to be opening in three films in one season - Proof; Jarhead; and Brokeback Mountain. Look, Paul Newman taught the kid to drive, and Newman is a "go-for-it" guy who knew that James Dean's dying was the greatest opening he was ever going to get.

Gyllenhaal has made over 15 films already and he was beginning to be noticed in Donnie Darko, Lovely & Amazing and The Day After Tomorrow, but his breakthrough film, clearly, is Brokeback Mountain, in which he and Australian actor Heath Ledger defied a good deal of career advice and took on the roles of lovelorn ranch hands in Wyoming in the Sixties, guys hardly accustomed to use the word "love", let alone follow any homosexual urgings, but who find themselves passionate tent-mates in Ang Lee's picture from the Annie Proulx story.

Brokeback Mountain is not a hit in the style of King Kong or The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but it is drawing steady, sympathetic audiences on the art-house circuit; it has been banned already at one theatre in Utah; and it is gathering awards and nominations by the armful. It will be there on Academy Awards night, and I'd guess that the new host Jon Stewart is already calculating just what jokes he can make about the movie without offending. Jake Gyllenhaal is finding himself mentioned in the same breath as Montgomery Clift, who played a famously tough cowboy in Red River (1947), and who was gay, or bisexual, despite the resolute straight styling of his part in that film. Everyone today is tender enough to insist that Jake and Heath are straight arrows - it's just that they're good enough as actors to evoke the gay sensibility.

Meanwhile, Brokeback Mountain is serving as a focus to the intriguing crop of very young male actors who are taking over our screens. In a way, I think, that's a trend that began with Leonardo DiCaprio in Titanic. Nine years ago, that epic went from being a dreaded failure to a blockbuster in a matter of weeks - and as business experts pondered why, they reached the conclusion that teenage girls were going back over and over again to see Leonardo.

Notice that that passion has hardly lasted: his following diminished drastically with Gangs of New York and The Aviator. Neither of those films was as romantic as Titanic. But Leo had clearly aged - and being a teenager doesn't last very long. Still, the industry knows demographics now if it knows nothing else, and the trend was plain in TV, in the burgeoning world of arty fashion magazines and in movies, that "girls" got off on ogling pictures of young guys in very much the same way, for decades, men had made an industry out of wanting to look at women. And every four or five years, you've got a whole new generation of teenagers.

Heath Ledger is, in fact, the leading figure of this generation, and according to most judges its outstanding actor. Born in Perth, Western Australia, and about 20 months older that Gyllenhaal, Ledger gives a very subtle, yet savagely repressed performance in Brokeback Mountain, to such an extent that he is likely to be nominated for best actor, while Gyllenhaal is placed as a supporting actor. But Ledger's distress in the Ang Lee picture makes a terrific contrast with his sexual aplomb as Casanova, the film in which he shows how well suited he would be to play Errol Flynn, if ever anyone had that idea. Ledger really arrived on American screens in 2000 as the son in Mel Gibson's The Patriot. But he has moved fast: A Knight's Tale; Monster's Ball; The Four Feathers; Ned Kelly; The Brothers Grimm.

There are others. Hayden Christensen, born in Canada in 1981, is best known for his dark and smouldering Anakin in the two final episodes for Star Wars - Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith - but he also played the disgraced American journalist Stephen Glass in Shattered Glass, and he has a string of new pictures in production. Michael Pitt is American, also born in 1981, and he had his breakthrough in the Bernardo Bertolucci film, The Dreamers, before doing Wonderland, Jailbait and Last Days. James Franco, aged 28, arrived as James Dean in a TV film; he's Tristan now in Tristan & Isolde and the lead in the Naval Academy drama Annapolis.

If you want an English candidate, there is Orlando Bloom, already 29, but very handsome, and a veteran of the three Lord of the Rings pictures, as well as Pirates of the Caribbean, one of the gang in Black Hawk Down, also in Ned Kelly, Paris in Troy and Balian in Kingdom of Heaven.

But as soon as one mentions Orlando Bloom, some problems arise in the absolute acceptance of this young gang. Troy and Kingdom of Heaven did no good to anyone's career - there are some films it's simply better to avoid. And though Bloom was there all along in Lord of the Rings, I think there's no doubt but that the trilogy did much more to boost the standing of Viggo Mortensen, who is all of 47! Indeed, Mortensen stands up for a quite different tradition: that of learning your craft gradually; improving over the years; and becoming a very good actor who can hold the screen with simplicity and confidence - as witness his work in A History of Violence.

Every one of the kids knows how tough it is to keep in place. They are all loners, without the support of studio contracts, and promoted largely by agencies that have a hundred other pretty boys on their books if one "star" goes out of fashion. This is the cruel condition that was once felt most forcibly by young actresses who were told to make an impact very young, be obliging and obedient and pray that their looks lasted until 30.

In other words, these young men are under terrible pressure to make the right choices - which means, be in the right films. The recent history of Hollywood is littered with movies that introduced a whole team of very young talent. Remember Francis Coppola's The Outsiders, from 1983, with this cast list - C Thomas Howell, Matt Dillon, Ralph Macchio, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, and Tom Cruise. It's not quite that everyone else has faded away, but 23 years ago I don't think Cruise would have been the automatic favourite to survive. That he did win out has something to do with his screen presence and his grin, but rather more with his instincts as a businessman and a career-maker.

Ben Affleck is still only 33. A few years ago, there were those who regarded him as an institution in the making. He and his pal Matt Damon had written Good Will Hunting, and Affleck was a heart-throb star - but one of his vehicles was the disastrous Pearl Harbor, and then came Gigli. Equally, Jude Law, still only 34, seemed poised to be a screen sensation after his Dickie Greenleaf in The Talented Mr Ripley. He was being offered a host of pictures, and he chose to do Cold Mountain, I Heart Huckabees, Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, the dreadful remake of Alfie, Closer (where he was the one callow person in the picture) and The Aviator (where he had just a cameo as Errol Flynn). He is young enough to make a comeback - he has All the King's Men finished, as well as Breaking and Entering - but his fortunes show how many other elements beyond an actor's control must fall in line if he is to do well.

Jake Gyllenhaal has shown a pleasing readiness to experiment: he did Kenneth Lonergan's This Is Our Youth on the London stage in 2002 (and won a prize for it). But he is shrewd enough in the ways of the business to know this: if early success inflates your pay level (from $1m a picture - a fabulous fortune for any young actor) to say $10m, or more, then you make yourself a liability, all the more vulnerable to the potential of some new kid, six months younger than you are, who is prepared to take the lead role in a new picture for so much less than your dignity will allow.

This does not mean that all the young men mentioned here are not desperate to act - to do good work. But they can easily lose control of their own careers if they trust too much to the agents and lawyers who "look after them". That's why every young star in this year has reason to look at George Clooney with immense respect.

As a matter of fact, Clooney will only be 45 this year. I know, he seems older sometimes, and in part that's because he winces a little at having been a pretty boy himself once in those years when he was a big attraction on ER and not much else. He had some very routine years, smirking his way through bad pictures, and flopping in anything more adventurous. But then something happened: moviegoers began to realise that they liked him, or trusted him. And then he branched out suddenly and made a very adventurous film, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind. It didn't do too well, but it was clear that Clooney knew how to direct.

Well, in 2005 he has had a better year than Heath Ledger - acting in and directing Good Night, and Good Luck, and acting in Syriana. Sure, he can say, with his grin, you have to make a few Ocean's 11 pictures to be able to do Good Night, and Good Luck. But that's how the real business has always worked. And George Clooney knows something that every kid is going to have to learn - that you might as well take full responsibility for what you make.

Because sooner or later, you're going to get the blame anyway. And Clooney knows this - he might have learnt it from his aunt, the singer Rosemary - that the longer you stay around the more the public thinks you're good company.

'Brokeback Mountain' is out now; 'Proof' is out on 10 February

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Independent.Co.Uk
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Jake Gyllenhaal
by Scott Tenorman, January 13th, 2006

Actor Jake Gyllenhaal wowed millions in the title role of his breakthrough film, Donnie Darko. He then starred in underwhelming action flick The Day After Tomorrow and indie offering The Good Girl. He has now hit the A-list with Brokeback Mountain, playing a gay cowboy, and Jarhead, which opens today, as a marine waiting for action in the Gulf.

Did your role in Jarhead make you question your mortality?
No. I've had people very close to me die recently and that's made me question my mortality. This didn't do that as much as it made me realise that no matter what I feel, it's OK. Feelings never killed anybody.
Sam Mendes directed the film. Does he shout on set?
He did once and we still joke with him about it. There were 1,000 extras and no one was listening to [actor] Chris Cooper. Sam just felt there needed to be a bit of respect, so he got up on stage and shouted: 'Shut the f*** up!'

There's speculation Jarhead and Brokeback Mountain will see you nominated for Oscars. How do you feel about that?
There's a lot of talk about things like that when you work with directors such as Ang Lee or Sam Mendes because they are expected to win Oscars. Frankly, you don't say no to either of them. You beg them, no matter what it is you're going to be doing in their films - whether it's wearing a Santa cap over your dick [in Jarhead] or making love to Heath Ledger [in Brokeback Mountain].

Did your co-stars give you grief about that Santa hat scene?
When you spend that much time in such close quarters with people, if someone's wearing a Santa hat on their dick, it's kind of like 'whatever'.

The film is based on a book by ex-marine Anthony Swofford. What's your favourite book?
JD Salinger's Franny And Zooey.

What about Salinger's The Catcher In The Rye? Your character in 2002's The Good Girl was obsessed with it.
I've read that many times. I went on a family vacation to Hawaii when I was 12 and my sister [actress Maggie Gyllenhaal] gave it to me for Christmas. I couldn't put it down. My production company is called Nine Stories Productions, a homage to Salinger's book of short stories.

When you spend lots of time with people, if they wear a Santa hat on their dick, it's like 'whatever'
Your mother Naomi Foner is a screenwriter. Did you meet big stars when you were a child?
Paul Newman taught me how to drive. When I was 15, my mum was writing a script with him and we went out to the racetrack. He threw me in the passenger seat and started driving. We're 100ft from a wall, going 60 miles an hour and he hits the brake and turns the wheel - and the car spins three times. Then he turns to me and goes: 'That was what you don't do.'

Your father Stephen is a director. Was there any possibility of you not following him in the family business?
Probably not. Acting was always a passion of mine but now I'm thinking there may be things that I'm just as interested in.

Like what?
Cooking is just as much of a passion. My best friend is a chef and all my closest friends are chefs. I think performing has always been a big thing for me and I think cooking is another type of performance.

Do you think you'll ever give up acting?
Maybe. My friend Peter [Sarsgaard, his Jarhead co-star and his sister's fiancé] taught me that whatever you are feeling is OK. If you are acting and you don't want to act, then fine. Peter said he's been treating his talent like it was a two-cent whore. He's having his way with it and not appreciating it. Whatever you are doing, if you lose an appreciation for it, it's time to rethink that.

Young women seem to like you. Are you a sex symbol?
[Laughs] I don't know what I am. I know I was kind of an It-guy for a long time.

You're also popular with gay people thanks to Brokeback Mountain. Are you comfortable with that?
I'm comfortable with whatever status I have. I've been called 'the thinking woman's sex symbol' but doesn't every woman think? A lot of young girls come up to me and they're so cute and sweet. Then I might be at a street fair and a guy with his butt cheeks hanging out of his trousers will tell me he likes my movie. It's a pretty interesting existence.

60 SECONDS EXTRA!: Do you and your sister compare notes?
All the time. I'd phone Maggie while we were making Jarhead and say: 'I'm feeling this way and I don't understand.' And she'd say: 'But that sounds perfect for the film.' She came to the set and said: 'I have some notes if you want to hear them.' I was like, 'YESSS!'

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Metro.Co.Uk
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‘I’ll do pretty much anything for a film’

By Eileen Condon

HIS name might not be the easiest to pronounce but you’d better get used to it as Jake Gyllenhaal looks set to be the one to watch in 2006.

Barely weeks into the New Year, he already has not one but two Oscar-tipped movies. And if anything will prove this young actor’s versatility it’s Jarhead and Brokeback Mountain, as the two films couldn’t be more different.

Jarhead, from Oscar-winning British director Sam Mendes, stars Jake as a rough and ready marine sent out to fight in the first Gulf War. In contrast, Brokeback Mountain, directed by Ang Lee, is the gentle, gay love story of two Montana cowboys (Jake and Australian actor Heath Ledger).

Both films have caused controversy – Jarhead for its brutally nihilistic portrayal of American marines and Brokeback for the intimate love scenes between the two male leads.

But far from being concerned, Jake is one actor who is delighted to be pushing back boundaries.

“When the story and the people involved are as good as they are, then I will do pretty much anything for a film,” he says with his endearingly lopsided grin. “If you don’t believe it you only have to look at the past few movies I’ve done and you will understand it.”

Even so, the actor admits he did have some trepidation when it came to getting intimate with Ledger.

“I wondered if he could do those scenes,” he says. “But we talked a lot, and when it came to doing them it felt like we were both, ’Are you ready? Yeah, let’s go’ and we went straight into the deep end. We knew we had to consummate this somehow because it’s not just a story about friendship. We knew we were going to have to commit,” he adds.

The chemistry obviously worked because the film has already won a clutch of Golden Globe nominations and there’s talk of a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Jake, who turned 25 just before Christmas.

It’s a pretty impressive start to 2006 for the star, who until now has been known for his intense and brooding roles in films such as Donnie Darko and Moonlight Mile.

Although he proved he was more than capable of big blockbuster fare in 2004’s explosive The Day After Tomorrow, it’s Jarhead that will really show moviegoers he’s got the brawn as well as the brains.

He says of his role as marine Anthony Swofford: “I’d read the book and came away really moved by it. It was purely emotional and without any of the clichés of other war stories.

Landing the role meant the star had to undergo a dramatic transformation, beefing up his naturally lean physique and shaving off his luxuriant mop of jet black hair.

“Yeah, I was at first a little terrified of myself without the hair,” he says, rubbing his hands through the newly restored locks. “But then I really got into it. It really empowers you. And I remember putting on my flak jacket for the first time and feeling all the energy in my body turning inward.

“I’m so used to not having to protect myself like that and it gave me a great insight into what these guys go through for real.”

Jake and his co-stars, who include Flightplan star Peter Sarsgaard and Oscar wining actor Jamie Foxx, were also put through their paces in a four-day boot camp at a real Air Force base.

“We were running drills and sleeping out in the field,” Jake grimaces. “They did the necessary beating up and then the rest of the movie was that too. I mean, the first day was me getting my head slapped 100,000 times and getting it slammed into a chalkboard, so that kind of gives you an idea of what was to come,” he adds with a laugh.

Suffering for his art has certainly paid off for the handsome actor. He’s now overtaken sister Maggie as the most famous member of the talented Gyllenhaal household – their father is director Stephen Gyllenhaal and mother is screenwriter Naomi Foner.

But while things go from strength to strength on the career front, Jake’s love life is looking less than rosy as he recently broke up with Spiderman actress Kirsten Dunst. The pair also split temporarily earlier in 2005, but this time it looks as if it’s over for good.

It’s doubtful the handsome star will be on his own for long. He’s now regarded as one of the biggest heart-throbs in Hollywood, as well as one of the most talented.

It’s hardly surprising then that he’s more than a little excited about what’s to come in 2006.

“Sam Mendes and Ang Lee have changed my life regardless of the result of any of these films,” he says with a big grin. “I’m so happy with the response that has happened with Brokeback and we’re just beginning to see how people are responding to Jarhead.

“But to me the processes of both movies have changed my life and that’s what I take away with me.

“Everything else is just fun.”

Vital statistics

Real name: Jacob Benjamin Gyllenhaal (Pronounced Jill-en-hall)

Birthdate: December 19, 1980

Significant other: Recently split from actress girlfriend Kirsten Dunst

Career high: Riding into surefire success with cowboy love story Brokeback Mountain, the recipient of seven Golden Globe nominations.

Career low: A brief spell as a lifeguard – he didn’t save a single life.

Famous for: His on-off relationship with Kirsten Dunst.

Words of wisdom: “The truth is that most films that make a lot of money no-one remembers, and I’m not interested in making films that no-one remembers.”

- posted by Ally 
- credits: NewsandStar.Co.Uk
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Jake Gyllenhaal, Charlize Theron Among Those Honored at the Festival

The lights may have been missing in action but the stars shined without their assistance. Accepting awards at the annual film festival were Felicity Huffman (Breakthrough Performance), Jake Gyllenhaal (Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actor), Michael London (Producer of the Year), Terrence Howard (Rising Star Award), Thomas Newman (Frederick Loewe Award for Film Composing), Charlize Theron (Desert Palm Achievement Award, Actress), David Cronenberg (Sonny Bono Visionary Award), and Shirley MacLaine (Lifetime Achievement Award).

Other celebrities on hand at the event included William H Macy, Virginia Madsen, Andrew Stanton, Carol Connors, Denise Brown, Ludacris, Paul Haggis, Fionnula Flanagan, Kevin Zegers, Kalani Queypo, Tippi Hedren, Gary Sinise, Sally Kellerman, Keanu Reeves, Kathy Bates, and Catherine Hardwicke.

Highlights from the Gala:

Jake Gyllenhaal’s buddy Peter Sarsgaard (who’s also dating Jake’s sister Maggie) introduced the talented young actor by saying Gyllenhaal really wanted to do a song and dance for the audience. Jake was greeted by laughter when he then came on stage singing “Night Fever.” Gyllenhaal also joked that he really wants to star in a musical but after doing a gay cowboy movie, he thinks that might leave audiences seriously questioning his sexuality. On a more serious note, Gyllenhaal confessed he wasn’t sure what to make of receiving the festival’s Achievement Award. "It's sort of a little bit absurd to me at this point that I would be honored. But I'm also proud of the work that I've done. So I think that, to me, it's about all the stuff I've done. I think it's good stuff."

- posted by Ally 
- credits: About.Com
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Jake's juggernaut
For this unstoppable actor, embracing a risky role is just part of job as artist
LAWRENCE TOPPMAN
Movie Critic

TORONTO - Play a cannibalistic serial killer or a prostitute who murders her clients, and what happens? Oscars, salary boosts and agents who have to take out another phone just to handle the demand for you.

Play a gay man, and you're "a risk. Yeah, we heard that. But if I'm doing a movie that's not a risk -- and I have -- I'm wasting my time. Everything an actor or artist or writer is doing should be courageous. So it's redundant to think of this as a risky choice, because that's the job of art."

Jake Gyllenhaal is sitting in an interview room at the Toronto International Film Festival last September, the morning after "Brokeback Mountain" has had its North American premiere.

There's no talk yet of Oscars or Golden Globes or magazine covers. But critics have already declared Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger "brave" for playing cowboys who fall in love in Wyoming in 1963 and maintain a 20-year affair, despite raising families.

"It doesn't take much courage to say `I'm going to be in an Ang Lee movie.' In a weird way, people saying it's brave to take this role kind of belittle Ang, one of the best directors of our times."

Gyllenhaal was just 1 year old when "Making Love" came out in 1982, shocking Middle America with the first mainstream depiction of male lovers. He was in grade school in 1993, when Will Smith was playing a gay character and Denzel Washington famously advised him, "Don't be kissin' no man!" (Smith didn't.)

Gyllenhaal is so New Hollywood that this history doesn't worry him. The Gyllenhaal Express won't be derailed: He's just done well-received work in "Proof" (as Gwyneth Paltrow's love interest) and "Jarhead" (as a Gulf War Marine), and he'll be seen next year in "Zodiac," as the man who tracked a San Francisco killer in the '60s and '70s.

He's made 12 movies in the last five years, from the cult favorite "Donnie Darko" to "The Day After Tomorrow," the hokey blockbuster about a new ice age. (He's said he took it to see if he could carry an action movie; it grossed $187 million domestically.)

Sitting opposite him in a hotel suite, you can see why directors won't leave Gyllenhaal alone. He's almost indecently handsome: broad-shouldered, six feet tall, square-jawed in the manner of a cowboy hero, with blue eyes that look gray if light hits them right and a shock of black hair that comes to a peak in the front.

He's often played the young guy older women find irresistible: Paltrow in "Proof," Jennifer Aniston in "The Good Girl," Ellen Pompeo in "Moonlight Mile," Catherine Keener in "Lovely & Amazing." His addicted fans call themselves "Gyllenhaalics," and he's an A-list leading man at 25. (He pronounces his name "JILL-en-hall," if you're wondering.)

His family groomed him for the position he occupies. Father Stephen Gyllenhaal has directed films and TV episodes since Jake was a boy. Mother Naomi Foner, Oscar-nominated for her "Running on Empty" script, recently wrote "Bee Season." Older sister Maggie Gyllenhaal, who has appeared opposite Jake three times, has a flourishing film career. (A difference between them: She collected a B.A. in English from Columbia University in 1999; he quit after two years to act.)

Maybe that's why he says "I have always felt confident. That's 80 percent of being an actor, and it's what I look at when I scrutinize male actors my age: that ambition and drive and confidence. The last 20 percent of it is experience in life. If you're hesitant as a performer, if you don't believe your own (emotional) choices, there's no reason to be acting, because it's such a powerless job."

Being confident doesn't always mean being sure. Gyllenhaal started "Brokeback" with no idea how to play a character so different from himself: a man whose homosexual impulses literally overpowered him, a guy who married and had a child and ended the film just short of 40.

"(Toward the end,) I had a mustache, my hair was grayer, I had a belly, all the external stuff. I was bending down to grab a rifle and leaning over reeeeeeeally slowly. And the 40-year-olds on the set were saying, `What the hell do you think we're like?' "

"(It happens) all the time that you're about to start a movie and you have no idea what you're doing. On `Brokeback,' I felt that way, but I embraced it. I just asked myself, `Where am I going now, in this scene? I won't worry about where I'm going next.' "

Unlike some contemporaries, Gyllenhaal does theater: He made his London stage debut in 2002 in Kenneth Lonergan's "This is Our Youth," winning the Evening Standard's Newcomer of the Year award. There he caught the eye of "Jarhead" director Sam Mendes, who told Premiere magazine, "He has a combination of soulfulness and man of action. ... His soul is accessible."

In an ideal world, says Gyllenhaal, he'd do one play for every three movies. "You get heavy and tired making movies constantly, and the stage works the mind in a more spontaneous way. I find it intimidating, but it really makes you feel more alive to push a story forward every night.

"Recently, though, stage projects I've been asked to do have not been as fascinating as movies I've been given. There have been a lot of revivals, musical revivals or ideas that have been done." (Yes, he can sing, too. He and "Brokeback" co-star Ledger auditioned for "Moulin Rouge," losing the lead to Ewan McGregor.)

One more thing distinguishes Gyllenhaal from much of his acting generation: political activism, instilled by left-leaning parents.

"Things are building up now," he says hopefully. "(My parents') generation responded after things built up: civil rights or the Vietnam War, when people they knew were dying. It's an unfortunate part of human nature, but it takes something like that to wake up a generation. We've been protected in such a way we feel safe.

"After (Hurricane) Katrina, you could see how much power celebrities have to help. Just the comfort someone might feel in New Orleans if one (of us) showed up -- even if it's not raising money, there's a feeling that there's somebody of a certain stature around. This is a job everybody should do, and I don't know why they don't."

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Charlotte.Com
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Jake Gyllenhaal saunters into the room, a long-in-the-limbs manchild garbed in navy blue. It’s immediately obvious that his groomed stubble is the only accessory removing him from your average high school student. The “Jarhead” muscles have apparently deflated, and his slender frame seems vastly more fitting and youthful. He’s trailed by Ang Lee, a gentle-looking Asian man in his 50s who dons an oversized sweatshirt and looks like the perfect person to share a hot chocolate and the Sunday Times crossword puzzle with.

Intermission was fortunate enough to catch them at a press junket for “Brokeback Mountain,” a film that showcases them both at the pinnacle of their abilities, at least so far. And yet, making the rounds for perhaps the most important and stereotype-shattering romance made in the last ten years hasn’t shaken their modesty even an inch. Gyllenhaal counters Lee’s airy and aloof self-deprecation with a surprising intensity, and their banter hits at a close bond.

Lee emphasizes that “Brokeback” was not made to support gay rights, or to enter into the national debate on the subject in any context. Gyllenhaal, on the other hand, clearly thinks the film sends a bold message — absolutely necessary for a country that might not necessarily be ready to receive it. The following interview explores these themes.

QUESTION: There has been a lot of talk about how this movie has been labeled “the gay cowboy movie.” How do you feel about that?

ANG LEE: Well, we invite all of those people to come see it. So far most of the people who have seen it left saying that it was just a love story.

JAKE GYLLENHAAL: We actually had one journalist first report on it as “the gay cowboy movie” and then apologize after he saw it... I have to say that if I would have been given the script a few years ago, or if it had been pitched that way to me, I wouldn’t have taken it.

AL: I don’t have a problem with it being called that really. What I do worry about is people think it would be a funny movie like “Blazing Saddles” or something.

Q: Why did you both decide to take on this project in the first place if you knew it would be so controversial?

AL: It was just a great piece of writing. That was what was so attractive to me.

JG: The story on its own carries real weight. It has power to it. I’m a city kid, so I’ve never ridden a horse, and it was going to be a new experience. I think in the end that worked out for me because my character Jack is in a lot of ways always pretending to be better at things than he is.

Q: How was it filming some of the more graphic sexual instances? How did you go about doing that?

AL: We found that the best thing to do was just roll the camera and see what happens. We couldn’t be shy.

JG: I’ve done love scenes with women I haven’t been attracted to, and women I probably should have been less attracted to, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch. Most of the love scenes come out of fighting between the two guys, and the fighting was something familiar. Plus, hey, we’re all human beings, we all have lips, you just get in there and do it.

Q: For Jake, you filmed “Brokeback” before “Jarhead,” how was it to switch between two very different roles?

JG: I actually have a friend who is a soldier right now in Iraq and when I told him I was going to be playing a marine the first thing he said was ‘Oh man, not the gay cowboy.’ But really, I like working in this gray area. In a lot of ways I considered this one role preparation for the other.

Q: Your co-star Heath Ledger will next be appearing as Casanova, the greatest lover of women of all time. Do you feel like you need to find a new role to validate your sexuality?

JG: I don’t need to play any role to affirm my sexuality. I don’t feel like I need to affirm anything to anyone. When someone offers you a job playing Casanova, you take it whether you’re gay or straight.

Q: Ang, what greater themes do you want to get across in this film, underneath the fact that it is a love story between two men?

AL: I really believe it is about free will versus social obligations. As the story unfolds we see what society does to the characters, and not only that but what the characters do to themselves because of how they think society will perceive them.

Q: Why is it that most of the love scenes in the movie start off violent with a lot of tension between you and Heath?

JG: I think we were both dealing with it being uncomfortable, and the fighting was just a more comfortable, easier place to go. That’s how Heath and I related to each other. But there were other, harder, more tender scenes too. I have ex-girlfriends coming up to me after they see it saying ‘Hey, that’s not how you treated me!’

Q: Do you think this is important that this film, with this message, come out at this point in time? If so, why?

AL: It’s a love story. Love stories are important to come out anytime. I’m always looking for new material. I didn’t do it because it was timely. People started trying to make this story into a move eight years ago and couldn’t figure out how to do it. I figured I couldn’t wait for the whole world to be ready for it before I made it. It was definitely not calculated.

JG: Annie actually wrote a note in the limited edition of the story she gave me saying that the name of my character Jack Twist actually refers to the strength a rodeo rider must have in his legs to hold on to a bull, and that it is symbolic of the strength you need to hold on to something you truly believe in that makes you feel alive. I think our generation feels like maybe, hopefully somewhere out there is a majority that has a different mentality toward this subject. Like I said, at age 16 I would have said no way to this movie. It gives me hope that we’re all growing.

Q: How was it to have Jake playing the clearly gayer cowboy?

AL: There is really no clear indication how gay Heath’s character is. Yes, you can say Jake’s character is more gay, but they are both family men as well. Ennis (Ledger) just hasn’t ever known any other lifestyle. It’s not like he would ever go off to San Francisco.

JG: I think my character is just more open and progressive. There’s a stereotype that if I’m the more gay character then I also have to be more feminine, and Heath has to be more of the John Wayne type. I think this doesn’t hold exactly true.

Q: Jake, how was it to work with Ang Lee for the first time?

JG: I’ve gotta say that at times it could be very confusing. He would say things all the time... like with Annie (Hathaway) and me, he would say ‘You go together like milk and water,’ and I’d think what the heck does that even mean? Milk and water don’t really go all that well together, but then again if you pour milk into water is could kinda spread out all pretty? Is that what he means? Who knows?

Q: Was it difficult to play such a large range of ages? What did you do to make it clear that you were getting older?

JG: It’s somewhat subjective how much time passes in the movie, but really we focused on making our voices deeper, slowing our mannerisms. There’s a point in the movie where I’m supposed to be about 40 carrying a saddle to the truck. The first time we ran it I was all ‘Errrgh’ and stooped over, and some of the 40-year-olds on the set were like ‘Hey, we’re 40, not 80.’

Q: What about Oscar buzz? Do you think this film will get some attention in that area?

AL: All I know is that Oscar buzz just means we have to work longer promoting things and giving interviews.

JG: When you work with Ang Lee, it’s inevitable.

Q: Ang, did you ever consider hiring actual gay actors to play the lead parts in this movie? Is there a reason you didn’t?

AL: I just have to go with the best actors possible for the roles I’m working with. I didn’t even ask the people I interviewed whether they were straight or gay. (Turns to Jake) I assume you’re straight? Yes?

JG: That’s a good supposition, Ang.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: StandfordDaily.Com
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Utah theater pulls "Brokeback Mountain"
SUMMARY: A suburban Salt Lake theater owned by the Utah Jazz's Larry Miller abruptly reneges on its plans to show the popular gay love story.

SALT LAKE CITY -- A movie theater owned by Utah Jazz owner Larry Miller abruptly changed its screening plans and decided not to show the film "Brokeback Mountain." The film, an R-rated Western gay romance story, was supposed to open Friday at the Megaplex at Jordan Commons in Sandy, a suburb of Salt Lake City. Instead, it was pulled from the schedule.

A message posted at the ticket window read, "There has been a change in booking and we will not be showing 'Brokeback Mountain.' We apologize for any inconvenience."

Cal Gunderson, manager of the Jordan Commons Megaplex, declined to comment.

The film, starring Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, is about two cowboys who discover feelings for one another. The two eventually marry women but rekindle their relationship over the years.

The movie's distributor, Focus Features, said that hours before opening, the theater management "reneged on their licensing agreement" and refused to open the film.

Gayle Ruzicka, president of the conservative Utah Eagle Forum, said not showing the film set an example for the people of Utah.

"I just think (pulling the show) tells the young people, especially, that maybe there is something wrong with this show," she said.

Mike Thompson, executive director of the gay rights advocacy group Equality Utah, called it disappointing.

"It's just a shame that such a beautiful and award-winning film with so much buzz about it is not being made available to a broad Utah audience because of personal bias," he said.

The film stars Australian Heath Ledger, but it was Philip Seymour Hoffman's entrancing portrayal of Truman Capote that captured the best actor honour today at the 11th annual Critics' Choice Awards.

George Clooney received the Freedom Award, a special tribute "for illuminating our shared values of freedom, tolerance and democracy" through Good Night, and Good Luck, his film about US television reporter Edward R Murrow and the McCarthy communist witchhunt era.

Oscar winner Julia Roberts, making her first public appearance since having twins, presented the award.

Reese Witherspoon was named best actress for her sassy performance as June Carter in the Johnny Cash biopic Walk the Line.

Michelle Williams of Brokeback Mountain tied for the award for best supporting actress with Amy Adams of Junebug.

Paul Giamatti, whose Sideways co-star Thomas Haden Church was named best supporting actor last year, took the honour this year for his role as a fight promoter in Cinderella Man.

Freddie Highmore won his second award for best young actor for his role in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Last year, it was for Finding Neverland.

The awards were presented by the Broadcast Film Critics Association at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

Another special award, for Distinguished Achievement in Performing Arts, went to the movie epic King Kong, for "revolutionary cinematic achievement in synthesising visual effects with an actor's performance to create the character."

Andy Serkis, whose movements and expressions were captured to animate the big ape, was among those on hand to accept.

The complete list of winners:
Picture: Brokeback Mountain.
Actor: Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote.
Actress: Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line.
Supporting Actor: Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man.
Supporting Actress: (tie) Amy Adams, Junebug, and Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain.
Acting Ensemble: Crash.
Director: Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain.
Writer: Paul Haggis and Bobby Moresco, Crash.
Animated Feature: Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.
Young Actor: Freddie Highmore, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
Young Actress: Dakota Fanning, War of the Worlds.
Comedy: The 40 Year-Old Virgin.
Family Film (live action): The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
Picture Made for Television: Into the West.
Foreign Language Film: Kung Fu Hustle.
Song: Hustle & Flow, written by Al Kapone and performed by Terrence Howard, from the film Hustle & Flow.
Soundtrack: Walk the Line.
Composer: John Williams for Memoirs of a Geisha.
Documentary Feature: March of the Penguins.
Special Awards:
Freedom: George Clooney.
Distinguished Achievement in Performing Arts: King Kong.

- AP/AAP

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Yahoo.Com
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Gyllenhaal's got the music in him

Things got pretty raucous at Saturday night's Palm Springs Film Festival Gala Awards when Peter Sarsgaard presented pal Jake Gyllenhaal with the Desert Palm Achievement-Actor award.

"First, I want to say some nice things about Jake," Sarsgaard said. “He's got great hair. An amazing head of hair. And the thing about "Jarhead" is that he shaved it all off! Also, Jake is a fantastic singer and I think its only a matter of time before you get to hear him sing. And I will dance,” said Sarsgaard, doing some suave Hustle steps. "So you gotta sing, Jake, if I dance. Let's get this party started!"

With that intro, Gyllenhaal, laughing so hard he could barely speak, came out on stage, stepped up to the mike and sang, in a falsetto voice, "Fever Night, Fever Night, Fe-vah! You know how to do it!”

“Wow! Okay, let’s get raucous!," said Gyllenhaal, when he finished. “Listen, I’ve already played a gay cowboy. If I do a musical number, people will really start to question me. So I’ll stay away from music for a while but don’t think that it's not beating deep, deep in my veins. Very deep.”

He explained that his love of story telling is what keeps him acting. "If the story moves me, I will do anything to be in it. I’ll play any part, even craft services. But I prefer theatrical work. But I would do that. No, no actually, I wouldn’t.”

Winding up his acceptance speech, Gyllenhaal spoke of how “films take me to places I never thought I would get to, and over walls that I never thought I could get over. When I think about that it's just.. I dunno… I forgot.”

As the audience roared, Gyllenhaal continued, “Let’s be real. I forgot. And I was almost there. It was really gonna be good.”

That’s okay, Jake. There’s still time to practice an Oscar speech. And maybe even a musical number.


- posted by Ally 
- credits: LaTimes.Com
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Official DVD Cover Artwork for Jarhead
Director Sam Mendes Movie Jarhead

Thanks to DVD Active, Universal has revealed the official cover artwork for Jarhead which stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx and Chris Cooper. The film will be released in both a single-disc special edition , and a two-disc collector's edition (with collectible photo book). The discs will be presented in a 2.35:1 Anamorphic Widescreen presentation, along with English, French and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround tracks. No news yet on any of the bonus materials. Stay tuned, for we will bring you further details as soon as they arrive. "Jarhead" will be available to own when it hits store shelves March 7, 2006.

Jarhead (the self-imposed moniker of the Marines) follows "Swoff" (Jake Gyllenhaal), a third-generation enlistee, from a sobering stint in boot camp to active duty, sporting a sniper's rifle and a hundred-pound ruck on his back through Middle East deserts with no cover from intolerable heat or from Iraqi soldiers, always potentially just over the next horizon.

Swoff and his fellow Marines sustain themselves with sardonic humanity and wicked comedy on blazing desert fields in a country they don't understand against an enemy they can't see for a cause they don't fully fathom.

Jamie Foxx portrays Sergeant Sykes, a Marine lifer who heads up Swofford's scout/sniper platoon, while Sarsgaard is Swoff's friend and mentor, Troy, a die-hard member of STA-their elite Marine Unit. An irreverent and true account of a war that was antiseptically packaged a decade ago, Jarhead is laced with dark wit, honest inquisition and episodes that are at once surreal and poignant, tragic and absurd
                                  

- posted by Ally 
- credits: MoviesOnline.Ca
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Gyllenhaal saw 'Brokeback Mountain' as an opportunity
Sandi Davis
Entertainment Writer

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- Director Ang Lee knew people would walk out of "Brokeback Mountain." But he made the movie anyway, creating a world in which two cowboys could love each other for 20 years. Review

He cast young actors Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger as the star- crossed cowboys who meet in the 1960s while herding sheep on Brokeback Mountain. One chilly night, they share a tent and something happens they can't begin to explain or understand. After both vow, "I'm not queer," they spend the next 20 years meeting for fishing and hunting trips in the mountains, each leaving a wife and children at home.

Gyllenhaal, seated in a Beverly Hills hotel room, was relaxed and smiling, comfortable with his movie role and his life.

He explained how he was able to kiss Ledger in the movie and make it seem real.

"You know, in some ways it's different because usually I'm doing the exfoliating," he said, referring to rubbing shaving stubble against a woman's face. "Not really literally, but figuratively, yeah, there have been scenes I've done in movies where I haven't been totally attracted to the woman that I was doing a scene with, which was similar to this experience."

The 25-year-old actor said the intimate scenes with Ledger were done in service to a story he thought was beautiful.

"I think the story is so much more than the consummating of the two guys physically. It had to be done to push the benevolence of the story. As soon as you see that first scene, people either say, 'Oh my God, I'm here,' or 'Oh my God, I'm out of here,'" he said. "A majority of people say, 'I'm here now.' And, we both knew the movie needed it.

"It's kind of like diving into the deep end. I know it sounds odd, but there are a lot of things I've done against my nature. I don't know if I'll ever do them again, but I learned a lot from them. And to me, not doing them would be really missing out. We have a very short time, and if you do it in a movie, it's like you learned something from it."

Lee described the scene between Jack Twist (Gyllenhaal) and Ennis Del Mar (Ledger).

"I remember one moment thinking the guys are very brave. In the tent scene, I see very clearly what happened, more so than the audience, because it was a dark scene. In lovemaking scenes, you see it as beautiful or awkward, but it's very hard to see something private," Lee said. "It's very real, not really passion, not confusion or acting; it's they're totally into it. I admire the actors; they're young and real."

Gyllenhaal was glad Lee was the director. He has admired the director since the movie "Sense and Sensibility," a movie he saw with his mother.

"With Lee directing, I knew this would be more than two cowboys having sex and watching that and having it be racy. It's beyond that," he said. "There's a real innocence in their relationship and a real innocence when they are together. Innocence in their personality that when they are 38, they still have that thing they had when they are young.

The actors played their older selves the first days of shooting. Most of the crew members were in their 40s, the age Gyllenhaal was supposed to be. In a scene, he groaned when he bent and picked up a saddle. The crew was horrified.

"They were saying, 'We're not 80! We're 40! ... We can pick up a saddle; it's not the worst thing in the world.'"

Thinking about all the reactions he's seen from the movie, Gyllenhaal said "Brokeback Mountain" takes a love story and puts it on its head.

"I have seen more straight people moved by the film than gay," he said. "And that is Ang's directing."

Gyllenhaal said there will be people who have a problem with the movie, but for the most part, once people see the movie, they'll walk out with a different opinion than when they walked in.

The actor was cast first by Lee, specifically because he doesn't particularly look like a cowboy, but also because the character was romantic and bright.

Asked about romantic things he does, Gyllenhaal said he likes improvisation in things romantic, and that he's never done anything deliberate.

"Anything romantic I've done is small. To me, being romantic and intimate is something I keep to myself," Gyllenhaal said.


- posted by Ally 
- credits: NewsOK.Com
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Jake Gyllenhaal: Mountains of talent

Jake Gyllenhaal is making waves with his latest role as a gay cowboy in 'Brokeback Mountain'. But he had to grow up to do justice to the part, he tells Phil Hoad

These days, it's a bad idea trying to tell Jake Gyllenhaal you've got him pegged. The 25-year-old shifts in his seat when I repeat his past comments, about his two new films, Brokeback Mountain and Jarhead, being "liberating" experiences. To the effect that, far from pegging him down, they avoided putting him into the "boxes" previous directors had shoehorned his curio screen persona into.

But no: "I have no agenda in myself for how I want to appear with other people," he explains in a suite at London's Dorchester Hotel. "My agenda is to tell stories that I care about and that move me. And those were two stories that moved me. I didn't go, 'Oh, if I do Brokeback Mountain, it's not gonna put me in a box.' I'm crying after I finished the script and I'm, like, 'I will do anything to do this movie.'"

Despite graduating through fabulously dishevelled indie hits such as the fiendish Donnie Darko, you get the impression that, now, Gyllenhaal is a man not easily knocked off his ramrod agenda. Eighteen months ago, when he was promoting climate-change blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, he declared, "This is the last teenage role I will ever play in my life." And was he ready to become a star? "I've been ready my whole life."

The start of 2006 sees Gyllenhaal as poster-boy for the New Gravity, the programme of serious films - Munich, Syriana et al - currently rinsing down SFX-daubed Hollywood. No longer a teen star, he's grown up. Jarhead sees him going to war, while he plays a graduate mathematician opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in the long-delayed drama Proof. And, first, he ages from 20 to 40 in Ang Lee's adaptation of E Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain. Gyllenhaal plays Jack Twist, a jobbing Wyoming cowboy who falls in love with his co-worker Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger), and the pair conduct a two-decade-long affair. When he was 16, he first talked to Gus Van Sant, then attached to direct, about the "gay cowboy script" doing the rounds. The actor says: "It wasn't really a delightful subject for me at the time. So I backed away from it."

Gyllenhaal evidently matured enough to take on the role. Brokeback Mountain runs with the quintessential Ang Lee theme - repressed sensibility - and, as Jack and Ennis pick up wives, children and regrets down the years, masterfully crafts both a classic love story, and a modern fable of permissiveness and tolerance. What it isn't is a gay-rights movie; it's universal enough to avoid categorisations. Which, naturally, pleased Gyllenhaal. "That, to me, is what this movie hopefully tries to destroy. Your idea of what love is and what sexuality is, can be whatever you want it to be," he says.

The kissing-Heath-Ledger question, then, feels a bit trite. (For posterity, it was "exfoliating" [Empire], it "hurt" (New York Times) and, says Ledger, was "just like kissing a person" [Entertainment Weekly].) Gyllenhaal also resents distortions in the American press that he first interpreted the characters as straight men who happen to fall in love with each other. This, he says, is an over-simplification. "I think the two of them had no real concept of what 'gay' was... I think Ennis did more than Jack does." He means the fact that Heath Ledger's taciturn farmhand, vitally, appreciates what their love means in the conservative Midwest.

Wouldn't Jack, had he been born 20 years later, be the more likely of the two to have decamped for the coasts to live the "gay lifestyle"? "Of the two characters, he's definitely the more 'gay'. I definitely think he's had more experiences than Ennis has. The most difficult thing for me when I was playing it was knowing that I was going to have to guide him and show him the ropes and be convincing in that."

Gyllenhaal - initially coltish and passionate, later broken and sour - pulls it off, though the film rests finally on Ledger's gruff gaze and mountainous silences. Jarhead, on the other hand, is most definitely all Gyllenhaal's. Another literary adaptation, this time of Anthony Swofford's Gulf War memoirs, it's less successful than Brokeback Mountain. Resting on a risky cinematic premise (we all know war is hell, but did you know it's boring too?) it demands an inventive script, which is conspicuously absent.

Lucky then, that the photography is acrid and apocalyptic, and as sardonic Marine recruit "Swoff", Gyllenhaal keeps this tone ringing loud and clear. Originally, director Sam Mendes thought of his lead actor in the fey indie-boy mould, until he saw him on stage in 2002's West End hit This Is Our Youth and was surprised by his physical clout. Mendes still doubted, though, that Gyllenhaal could display the necessary "ugly" emotions for the role and the audition was not convincing. "I did a really bad job. And then I got ugly. Then I got really upset," says Gyllenhaal. "I didn't punch him in the face or anything, but I would have if he hadn't given me the part." He's still unsure how he managed to convince Mendes. "Ultimately, it was just my passion for it - calling him up in the middle of the night and telling him that and letting him know."

Asked about his own opinion on recent US activity (and probably mindful of the flak his sister Maggie received for her comments about America's responsibility for 9/11), Gyllenhaal sounds like a geopolitical agnostic. "Just as a young person, all you have is questions. I don't really have a stance as of yet. But the questions were never answered. Because of that, slowly I have become more and more unhappy with the situation. Just like a parent, if a child asks you a question and you don't have an answer or you lie to them, it's not good parenting. And I feel the same about the President."

After his stint with Sergeant-Major Mendes though, he does praise the "extraordinary" work done by the armed forces in Iraq. Gyllenhaal has friends currently stationed there, but is from precisely the kind of background least likely to pack their kids off into the military. He's the son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal (Losing Isaiah, Homegrown) and screenwriter Naomi Foner (Running on Empty, Bee Season). He grew up in swanky Hancock Park, Los Angeles; his mum's best friend is Jamie Lee Curtis, and Paul Newman taught him how to drive.

Gyllenhaal has inherited the leftie proclivities - Future Forests and the American Civil Liberties Union are two societies he backs - but is striking out for himself. His performances in Jarhead and Brokeback Mountain are almost as off-kilter as his first ones, but now they're set at the centre of far more mainstream films. But his choice of roles suggests that he's still keen to avoid off-the-peg parts, as he did when he was starting out. "For me, growing up as a teenager was more like struggling with, y'know, identity in general, just who I was. I could very easily in the way I was feeling be talking to a big rabbit [as in Donnie Darko] and maybe I could be having an affair with an older woman [The Good Girl]. Those topics were more realistic."

His next film is Zodiac, about a San Francisco serial killer of the late Sixties. Gyllenhaal is playing Robert Graysmith, the ex-illustrator for the San Francisco Chronicle and the author who obsessively investigates the killings. Gyllenhaal's starting to get a little forensic himself; he's been recently videotaping Graysmith. What's he like? "Extraordinary. He's a bulldog and at the same time, full of an innocence I could never equate with a bulldog. He cares about doing the right thing in a world that seems so perverse, it seems impossible to do the right thing in." The actor's probably got a filing cabinet full of notes already. "I've noticed that playing a real person, you can interpret it how you wanna interpret it, but sometimes the personality is the key to making the story work."

Does his need to go the extra yard come from having to suffer a little to compensate for his bourgeois upbringing? "We all suffer. There's no need to do it any more than we need to. I don't know, I..." He brightens. "No! That idea's old now. Again. For a long time, I think I thought acting was suffering and I feel very differently right now."

'Brokeback Mountain' goes on general release on Friday; 'Jarhead' is released on January 13; 'Proof' is released on February 10

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Independent.Co.Uk
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Young actor's peak performance
Jake Gyllenhaal matures as he takes on a series of challenging roles, capping them with 'Brokeback Mountain
Roger Moore
Sentinel Movie Critic

TORONTO -- Jake Gyllenhaal agreed to co-star in Brokeback Mountain with Heath Ledger. He knew the movie was going to be controversial -- any movie about gay cowboys is sure to be that.

It would be directed by Ang Lee of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. So Brokeback, which opens in Central Florida on Friday, might be Oscar-bait. It already has collected several awards, starting with the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival in September.

But one thing neither Gyllenhaal nor Ledger knew was each other. They would be playing lovers, and nobody knew if they had chemistry.

"Total blind date," says Gyllenhaal, laughing. "Met on the first day of shooting. We didn't have any idea if we'd have any chemistry at all. That was Ang's call. I have no idea what he saw in us, together. He just has an instinct.

"And that's the way the story works too. Jack and Ennis [the cowboys they portray], they don't know each other, at first. They don't know what's happening, how it's happening. They can't talk about it because they don't really know what they're feeling."

Brokeback follows two young cowboys from their early days guarding a herd of sheep together on the mountain that gives the film its title, into a secretive, passionate love affair that lasts for years. But Gyllenhaal (pronounced JILL-en-hall), who plays Jack Twist, says that you have to believe in the pair as "a couple of friends, not just a couple" for the movie to work.

"The relationship in the movie is that they're attracted to one another, and they act on that and consummate their relationship," he says. "We were able to play that because, I think, we became friends. That comes across in the movie, and would, even if it were unconsummated. Our friendship imbues the movie with something that feels real.

"It's not just about love scenes."

But that's what has generated a lot of the talk about the film. One particularly passionate moment takes gay sex outdoors, into a tent and into territory mainstream movies tend to avoid. Shooting it was, says Gyllenhaal, "a lot like pro wrestling."

"It was totally broken down in the script, technically, everything. . . . Pages and pages of description in the story, what they did, what they were feeling. We had a huge blueprint for how it was supposed to play out.

"And then it came down to, 'OK, I'm putting my hand here, and you do that, and then turn around.' "

"We'll kiss there, and you'll throw me there, and then, 'Let's go for it.' "

Confidence grows

That attitude has turned the film into the crowning glory of Gyllenhaal's best year as an actor. Ledger got the Golden Globe nomination, and Lee and the entire cast have shared in the kudos. But Gyllenhaal, 25, is the one who spent most of last year coming into his own on the screen.

He had been a rising star, with adolescent turns in Donnie Darko, October Sky, The Good Girl and The Day After Tomorrow. But after dropping out of Columbia University to pursue acting, and hitting his mid-20s, he knew it was time to retire his boyish bag of tricks. He had three movies in a row -- Proof, Jarhead and Brokeback Mountain -- to change his style and allow himself to grow up.

"People should be astounded at the range of roles" Gyllenhaal pulled off last year, says his Proof director, John Madden. A grasping mathematics grad student (Proof); a sassy, disaffected Marine (Jarhead); and an emotionally needy bisexual cowboy -- Gyllenhaal's handling of those three roles shows "he really is coming into his own," Madden says.

Peter Sarsgaard, an actor who went through a similar "hot star to watch" buzz in 2004, saw his Jarhead co-star grow up on the set of that film.

"He's always been very talented, but it becomes less about acting, in a film like Jarhead, and more about self-knowledge," Sarsgaard says. "It's wild to watch him go through that and become someone who understands himself. It's a knockout performance."

Some of the boyishness is gone from his face. His off-duty beard and gray sports jacket offset the teen-friendly baggy jeans. Like his screen characters, he makes a lot of eye contact, seems thoughtful, considers his words, and has a modest demeanor that is charming and disarming. It's how he can talk about "deserving" to work with the best filmmakers and not come off as arrogant. He isn't.

"I decided about three years ago, when I started work on this slew of movies, that I wanted to work with really seasoned, experienced directors, and that I would hold out for that," Gyllenhaal says. "I believed I was worthy of it, and it just happened to happen at the time when I was growing out of this boyish thing.

"I made a conscious decision to change the way I act before doing Proof. There was going to be no representation in my acting. I wasn't going to try to make myself fit in suits anymore. I was going to try to make the suits fit me.

"I think that's a sign of starting to become a man."

Gyllenhaal would use his own life as a jumping-off point for a portrayal.

"If I'm having a bad day, or the people I'm acting with are acting like jerks, I'm gonna use that.

"For instance, Heath picked this way of playing Ennis, with his teeth kinda clenched, quiet. The natural thing for me to do, all the way through the film, even in our last scene together, was to have at least one take where I'd go, 'What? What'd you say?' That would get him riled up, but it was natural, in the moment, because I couldn't understand him, some of the time."

Scripts that fit

Like generations of movie stars before him, Gyllenhaal figured it wasn't just about transforming yourself into a character -- it's about making that character part of who you are. He's a child of the film industry. Mother Naomi Foner is an Oscar-nominated screenwriter, dad Stephen Gyllenhaal is a director, and sister Maggie is an actress. His godmother is mom's pal Jamie Lee Curtis. And Paul Newman gave him his first driving lesson. Gyllenhaal had a lot of people to give advice when he was ready to make that leap to the next level.

"The people that I respect all say it's all about tailoring. The men that I respect look good in suits that fit them. They're not afraid to ask the tailor to change them. Same with scripts. I want it to fit me."

But a gay cowboy? Sure, it's got Oscar heat, now. But before that, it must have seemed like a bit of a career risk. Gyllenhaal laughs.

"I may be naive, which is ironic, seeing as how I grew up in Los Angeles, around the business," he says, "but I've always thought of it as a movie people would want to see.

"I know people are going to be judgmental about it. I know that some people just won't agree with it. I was pretty judgmental myself, just reading the script.

"I was told about the script, four years, I think, before Ang Lee ever signed on as a director. 'A gay cowboy story? No way!'

"And then Ang came on, and I read the script, and it became a movie that there was just no way I'm not doing it.

"I know people will judge it. I just hope they'll see it first."

- posted by Ally 
- credits: OrlandoSentinel.Com
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Jake Gyllenhaal: Mountains of talent

Jake Gyllenhaal is making waves with his latest role as a gay cowboy in 'Brokeback Mountain'. But he had to grow up to do justice to the part, he tells Phil Hoad

These days, it's a bad idea trying to tell Jake Gyllenhaal you've got him pegged. The 25-year-old shifts in his seat when I repeat his past comments, about his two new films, Brokeback Mountain and Jarhead, being "liberating" experiences. To the effect that, far from pegging him down, they avoided putting him into the "boxes" previous directors had shoehorned his curio screen persona into.

But no: "I have no agenda in myself for how I want to appear with other people," he explains in a suite at London's Dorchester Hotel. "My agenda is to tell stories that I care about and that move me. And those were two stories that moved me. I didn't go, 'Oh, if I do Brokeback Mountain, it's not gonna put me in a box.' I'm crying after I finished the script and I'm, like, 'I will do anything to do this movie.'"

Despite graduating through fabulously dishevelled indie hits such as the fiendish Donnie Darko, you get the impression that, now, Gyllenhaal is a man not easily knocked off his ramrod agenda. Eighteen months ago, when he was promoting climate-change blockbuster The Day After Tomorrow, he declared, "This is the last teenage role I will ever play in my life." And was he ready to become a star? "I've been ready my whole life."

The start of 2006 sees Gyllenhaal as poster-boy for the New Gravity, the programme of serious films - Munich, Syriana et al - currently rinsing down SFX-daubed Hollywood. No longer a teen star, he's grown up. Jarhead sees him going to war, while he plays a graduate mathematician opposite Gwyneth Paltrow in the long-delayed drama Proof. And, first, he ages from 20 to 40 in Ang Lee's adaptation of E Annie Proulx's Brokeback Mountain. Gyllenhaal plays Jack Twist, a jobbing Wyoming cowboy who falls in love with his co-worker Ennis Del Mar (Heath Ledger), and the pair conduct a two-decade-long affair. When he was 16, he first talked to Gus Van Sant, then attached to direct, about the "gay cowboy script" doing the rounds. The actor says: "It wasn't really a delightful subject for me at the time. So I backed away from it."

Gyllenhaal evidently matured enough to take on the role. Brokeback Mountain runs with the quintessential Ang Lee theme - repressed sensibility - and, as Jack and Ennis pick up wives, children and regrets down the years, masterfully crafts both a classic love story, and a modern fable of permissiveness and tolerance. What it isn't is a gay-rights movie; it's universal enough to avoid categorisations. Which, naturally, pleased Gyllenhaal. "That, to me, is what this movie hopefully tries to destroy. Your idea of what love is and what sexuality is, can be whatever you want it to be," he says.

The kissing-Heath-Ledger question, then, feels a bit trite. (For posterity, it was "exfoliating" [Empire], it "hurt" (New York Times) and, says Ledger, was "just like kissing a person" [Entertainment Weekly].) Gyllenhaal also resents distortions in the American press that he first interpreted the characters as straight men who happen to fall in love with each other. This, he says, is an over-simplification. "I think the two of them had no real concept of what 'gay' was... I think Ennis did more than Jack does." He means the fact that Heath Ledger's taciturn farmhand, vitally, appreciates what their love means in the conservative Midwest.

Wouldn't Jack, had he been born 20 years later, be the more likely of the two to have decamped for the coasts to live the "gay lifestyle"? "Of the two characters, he's definitely the more 'gay'. I definitely think he's had more experiences than Ennis has. The most difficult thing for me when I was playing it was knowing that I was going to have to guide him and show him the ropes and be convincing in that."

Gyllenhaal - initially coltish and passionate, later broken and sour - pulls it off, though the film rests finally on Ledger's gruff gaze and mountainous silences. Jarhead, on the other hand, is most definitely all Gyllenhaal's. Another literary adaptation, this time of Anthony Swofford's Gulf War memoirs, it's less successful than Brokeback Mountain. Resting on a risky cinematic premise (we all know war is hell, but did you know it's boring too?) it demands an inventive script, which is conspicuously absent.

Lucky then, that the photography is acrid and apocalyptic, and as sardonic Marine recruit "Swoff", Gyllenhaal keeps this tone ringing loud and clear. Originally, director Sam Mendes thought of his lead actor in the fey indie-boy mould, until he saw him on stage in 2002's West End hit This Is Our Youth and was surprised by his physical clout. Mendes still doubted, though, that Gyllenhaal could display the necessary "ugly" emotions for the role and the audition was not convincing. "I did a really bad job. And then I got ugly. Then I got really upset," says Gyllenhaal. "I didn't punch him in the face or anything, but I would have if he hadn't given me the part." He's still unsure how he managed to convince Mendes. "Ultimately, it was just my passion for it - calling him up in the middle of the night and telling him that and letting him know."

Asked about his own opinion on recent US activity (and probably mindful of the flak his sister Maggie received for her comments about America's responsibility for 9/11), Gyllenhaal sounds like a geopolitical agnostic. "Just as a young person, all you have is questions. I don't really have a stance as of yet. But the questions were never answered. Because of that, slowly I have become more and more unhappy with the situation. Just like a parent, if a child asks you a question and you don't have an answer or you lie to them, it's not good parenting. And I feel the same about the President."

After his stint with Sergeant-Major Mendes though, he does praise the "extraordinary" work done by the armed forces in Iraq. Gyllenhaal has friends currently stationed there, but is from precisely the kind of background least likely to pack their kids off into the military. He's the son of director Stephen Gyllenhaal (Losing Isaiah, Homegrown) and screenwriter Naomi Foner (Running on Empty, Bee Season). He grew up in swanky Hancock Park, Los Angeles; his mum's best friend is Jamie Lee Curtis, and Paul Newman taught him how to drive.

Gyllenhaal has inherited the leftie proclivities - Future Forests and the American Civil Liberties Union are two societies he backs - but is striking out for himself. His performances in Jarhead and Brokeback Mountain are almost as off-kilter as his first ones, but now they're set at the centre of far more mainstream films. But his choice of roles suggests that he's still keen to avoid off-the-peg parts, as he did when he was starting out. "For me, growing up as a teenager was more like struggling with, y'know, identity in general, just who I was. I could very easily in the way I was feeling be talking to a big rabbit [as in Donnie Darko] and maybe I could be having an affair with an older woman [The Good Girl]. Those topics were more realistic."

His next film is Zodiac, about a San Francisco serial killer of the late Sixties. Gyllenhaal is playing Robert Graysmith, the ex-illustrator for the San Francisco Chronicle and the author who obsessively investigates the killings. Gyllenhaal's starting to get a little forensic himself; he's been recently videotaping Graysmith. What's he like? "Extraordinary. He's a bulldog and at the same time, full of an innocence I could never equate with a bulldog. He cares about doing the right thing in a world that seems so perverse, it seems impossible to do the right thing in." The actor's probably got a filing cabinet full of notes already. "I've noticed that playing a real person, you can interpret it how you wanna interpret it, but sometimes the personality is the key to making the story work."

Does his need to go the extra yard come from having to suffer a little to compensate for his bourgeois upbringing? "We all suffer. There's no need to do it any more than we need to. I don't know, I..." He brightens. "No! That idea's old now. Again. For a long time, I think I thought acting was suffering and I feel very differently right now."

'Brokeback Mountain' goes on general release on Friday; 'Jarhead' is released on January 13; 'Proof' is released on February 10

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Independent.Co.Uk
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Jake of All Trades
Seven reasons to celebrate the year of Jake Gyllenhaal.
December 27, 2005
By Jenelle Riley

There's always been something eerily calm about Jake Gyllenhaal, a placidness that has served him well in understated roles such as the title character in Donnie Darko or the grieving boyfriend in Moonlight Mile. How wonderful, then, to see the actor cut loose with three fiery performances in 2005. First he shared the screen with Anthony Hopkins and Gwyneth Paltrow in Proof, the adaptation of David Auburn's Pulitzer-winning play. But it is his back-to-back roles as jaded soldier Anthony Swofford in Jarhead and lovesick ranch hand Jack Twist in Brokeback Mountain that are earning the actor the best reviews of his career.

Before this spectacular trio, it would be easy to chalk his success up to genetic gifts: He deservedly earned heartthrob status as the younger man to the likes of Catherine Keener (in Lovely & Amazing) and Jennifer Aniston (in The Good Girl). But he's never been one to shy away from challenging material. Okay, there was that foray into popcorn entertainment with The Day After Tomorrow, but we all have to pay the bills. Still, little could have prepared audiences for his flawless, passionate performances this year. And while his work is uniformly excellent, there are several other reasons to praise Gyllenhaal. Among them:

He admits to having qualms about his Brokeback Mountain role.

Known by many as "the gay cowboy movie," Brokeback didn't initially interest Gyllenhaal. "The way people presented it, as I'm sure some people still present it now, is in sort of a joking manner," he notes. "And I didn't really want to have anything to do with that until I knew how it was going to be interpreted. I didn't really feel like it was interesting or new somehow." He read the script only after Ang Lee signed on to direct. "When Ang came on, I read it and immediately was blown away, thinking about the benevolence that Ang approaches his movies with," he says. "I knew the line we were going to walk. I thought at first maybe it was a story about two straight guys, and it's really a story about two guys who don't really know what they're getting into, and they meet each other out of loneliness and have this amazing connection. That's what I felt when I read it, and I knew Ang would bring that out, and I think that's what we succeeded in doing."

He ages gracefully.

As Gyllenhaal's Brokeback character ages over the course of three decades, the actor is asked to believably portray Jack from callow youth to middle age. It's a trap that can ensnare even the best actors, but he pulls it off admirably-even an unflattering 1980s mustache. When told this, he laughs. "I spent the entire second half of the movie trying to pull off that mustache, literally and figuratively," he quips.

He makes it look easy.

The Jarhead script required an enormous amount of Gyllenhaal, physically and mentally. For the emotionally charged scenes, he embraced the instability of the material, which veers from heavy drama to dark comedy. "There was a real presence every day where you would show up and whatever you were feeling would help the story," he explains. "There's not a real consistency that exists. So I could show up and just be present and flexible with what I was feeling. If I would come to set without getting any sleep the night before, I would bring it with me to the day. If I was fighting with an actor on the set, I would bring that to the scene. It was much more-I hate to use this word-organic in that way. I feel like 'organic' is the new actor word, so I'm loath to use it."

He even managed to find an upside to performing physically exhausting tasks in 110-degree heat while filming Jarhead. "It was hard, but I was in the mentality of enjoying it; that was part of the character," he reasons. "Whenever you're doing anything that's servicing the story, it doesn't feel as hard. It's like how everyone says, 'What was it like doing love scenes with Heath?' Yes, we were worried, and it was a little traumatic, but we really felt like we were servicing a story that was incredibly important. And because of that, it wasn't as hard. I feel the same way about the physical exhaustion on Jarhead. Yeah, I was tired, but you can see the power of the mind when you're excited about what you're doing; it takes over."

He's willing to be the aggressor.

Gyllenhaal says the most difficult part of playing Jack was being unfamiliar with the feelings of his character. "It's foreign to me to be in a love story with another man, being able to make that real and try to move myself into that," he notes. In addition, Jack is the one who pursues the relationship; Ledger's Ennis is more reticent. "To be the one encouraging it, not fighting it, saying, 'This can work, I believe in this'-I've never been in a situation like that," Gyllenhaal adds. "A lot of times, as an actor, you can go back and say, 'I can relate to this in my life.' And I can relate to being in relationships with women where I've said, 'This can work, this can work.' But there was an added aspect to this that was totally foreign territory to me."

Still, he completely committed to the role. In one scene, the characters are reunited after a four-year separation, and it was his suggestion that Jack be less passive. "It was written where Heath's character threw me against the wall," he explains. "I would say, 'I think my character throws him against the wall, also.' Heath was in total agreement. Even in the first love scene, both of us related to the physicality of fighting much more than we did to the physicality of making love. That was the bridge we used." Gyllenhaal bristles when others try to pigeonhole the relationship. He says, "I have a problem when people say, 'Oh, you seem to be more the woman in the relationship.' Or some say, 'Heath is more the woman, because you're the one chasing him.' But I don't know why you even need to say that about either of us."

He's aware of the risk of overexposure.

With three movies this fall and two due next year (including David Fincher's Zodiac), Gyllenhaal sounds a little embarrassed to be taking up so much marquee space at once.

"I didn't mean to be doing this many movies, and I didn't mean for them all to come out at the same time," he says, almost apologetically. "I'm actually very picky about the work that I choose, and I really feel strongly about it when I end up doing it." Still, it's not like he's saying yes to just anything; all three of his current films are acclaimed prestige projects. "When you have John Madden and Ang Lee and Sam Mendes and David Fincher ask you to be in their movies and the movies are good and the parts are amazing, you just can't say no," he reasons.

He couldn't care less about star billing.

Although the two share fairly equal screen time, Gyllenhaal is being touted in the supporting actor category for Brokeback Mountain, as opposed to Ledger, who is promoted in ads as the lead. Perhaps the supporting billing is to keep Gyllenhaal from competing against himself with Jarhead; regardless, the actor doesn't concern himself with such politics. "It is weird, when there's a movie about a yin and a yang, that you make one a little different sized," he admits. "But ultimately, I don't feel that way. Look, I feel like Peter Sarsgaard supported me in Jarhead, and I feel like I'm supporting Heath here. I don't how you're supposed to qualify or quantify it, but Heath really carries the story through. I do believe that he's leading the way... Either way, I'm just happy to be in the movie."

He takes advice from the best.

"The best piece of advice I feel like I got from another actor was [from] Chris Cooper when we were doing October Sky," notes Gyllenhaal. "He said to me, 'Just have no regrets.' And I think that probably gets you through the good times and the bad. When you have no regrets and you're feeling low, you can say, 'You know what? I've given it everything I've got.' I think about that every time I'm in any scene. I would love every director to come to me and say, 'You think you got it? You want to try anything else?' so I could finally have the final say before we move on. I love it when a director asks me if I'm good, because I've had a choice in it. There are no regrets. Again, I got this advice from Chris Cooper, and I think Chris Cooper is the kind of person who should be giving advice. So he's giving advice through me."

- posted by Ally 
- credits: BackStage.Com
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OSCAR PREDICTIONS: Acting Categories
Friday December 30 9:20 AM ET

In a tight battle, FilmStew looks back to see who will be nerve-wracked come March 5, 2006.

By Mark Umbach, FilmStew.com

It's that time of year again. It seems every time you open a magazine or a web site, someone new is making their Oscar predictions. And we here at the Stew are no different. So, without further ado, I will be making my predictions on who will be walking the Kodak Theatre red carpet with a nomination and who will be going on to take the statue.


Today we'll take a look at the acting categories making predictions on who will be up for Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress.

Back in September, when awards season just got underway, Joaquin Phoenix was the name with the most buzz for Walk the Line. And I'm going to give him one of the spots on the Stew's list. Now, however, two names - both newcomers to Oscar lists - have been dominating the awards pre-season. Brokeback Mountain's Heath Ledger has picked up honors from the New York Film Critics Circle and a Golden Globe nomination and will more than likely be earning his first Oscar nod. The other newcomer is Philip Seymour Hoffman - who did receive buzz but no nomination for his work in Flawless - will surly take a nomination for playing Truman Capote in Capote.

It's the last two spots in the Best Actor category that are up in the air. Several names jump off the page, including Terrence Howard for Hustle & Flow, Russell Crowe for Cinderella Man, Eric Bana for Munich, David Strathairn for Good Night, and Good Luck, Cillian Murphy for Breakfast on Pluto and Jeff Daniels for The Squid and the Whale. Crowe's film may have been released too long ago for Oscar voters to remember, and not enough of the members may have caught Murphy's performance in the very limited Pluto.

That leaves Howard, Strathairn and Daniels. Recently only scribe Noah Baumbach and star Laura Linney have been receiving mention for Squid, so I'm going to give the last two spots to Howard, who also had a strong performance in Crash, and Strathairn, who will be playing off the buzz for Good Night in other categories.

The Best Actress category is also turning out to be a close race between two frontrunners: Walk the Line's Reese Witherspoon, who steals the show, and Transamerica's Felicity Huffman, who's already been honored by the National Board of Review, the Satellite Awards and the Tribeca Film Festival. Plus, Huffman has the strength of Desperate Housewives (for which she won an Emmy this year) behind her. The aforementioned Linney could also pick up her third nod for her work in Squid and Whale.

It's the last two spots in this category that are also up in the air. It could be Keira Knightley's year to pick up her first nod for Pride & Prejudice, while support has also been building Maria Bello in A History of Violence. While Charlize Theron played down-and-out in both Monster, for which she won the award, and North Country, she'll likely be passed over this year. Another former winner, Judi Dench, could be back with Mrs. Henderson Presents, but in this category, I'm going to give favor to Knightley and Bello rounding out the category.

George Clooney, who has never been nominated before, could pull off the rare feat of being nominated in two different categories for two different movies. While he may pick up the nod for directing Good Night, and Good Luck, he may also take home a nomination for Best Supporting Actor in Syriana. Paul Giamatti, overlooked in the past, could well take his first nod, too, for his work as the pugilistic manager in Cinderella Man. Matt Dillon has also been tossed around in the awards pre-season for Crash, and I believe this could be his year to take Oscar nomination number one. This year William Hurt, a three-time nominee and one-time winner (Kiss of the Spider Woman), will likely be back for A History of Violence, while Jake Gyllenhaal could potentially round out the category for Brokeback.

Supporting Actress is also a tough category to predict. Michelle Williams has picked up support for her work in Brokeback, and Catherine Keener, a nominee in the category for Being John Malkovich, could well be back for Capote. Sentimental favorite Shirley MacLaine could score a seventh nod for her work in In Her Shoes. Although she was bypassed in her breakthrough year when both Lost in Translation and Girl With a Pearl Earring came out, Scarlett Johansson will be in this category for Match Point. I'm going to give the last spot to Frances McDormand, who herself has become an Oscar favorite, but this time she'll be up for her work in North Country.

So here are my final predictions for the acting categories:

Best Actor:
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Capote
Terrence Howard - Hustle & Flow
Heath Ledger - Brokeback Mountain
Joaquin Phoenix - Walk the Line
David Strathairn - Good Night, and Good Luck

Best Actress:
Maria Bello - A History of Violence
Felicity Huffman - Transamerica
Keira Knightley - Pride & Prejudice
Laura Linney - The Squid and the Whale
Reese Witherspoon - Walk the Line

Best Supporting Actor:
George Clooney - Syriana
Matt Dillon - Crash
Paul Giamatti - Cinderella Man
Jake Gyllenhaal - Brokeback Mountain
William Hurt - A History of Violence

Best Supporting Actress:
Scarlett Johansson - Match Point
Catherine Keener - Capote
Shirley MacLaine - In Her Shoes
Frances McDormand - North Country
Michelle Williams - Brokeback Mountain

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Yahoo! News
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“Brokeback” – A tale of an unlike love in an unkind time becomes an unlike film
Posted on : 2005-12-31 | Author : Bharat Rathode
News Category : Entertainment

A love story in the West is what "Brokeback Mountain" is, but what it is not is a repackaged run-off-the-mill guns or bounty hunting. The story that deals with two ranch hands had actor Heath Ledger, wonder whether he was so "crazy to walk away from it". Racking up seven Golden Globe nominations, it appears that the over 2 hour long film is “like a story that hadn't been told” in Ledger's words.

Ledger credited his playing a risky role to a story that "felt perfect and (had) a seemingly perfect director attached to it". Ang Lee is better known for films like "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" and "The Ice Storm" and is an Oscar-nominated director. But Ledger draws comfort from Lee's capability rather than just the perfect story. Besides Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal, the movie's cast includes costars Anne Hathaway, Michelle Williams, and Randy Quaid.

The film chronicles the complex relationship and bonding between a near-silent ranch hand in Wyoming (Ledger) and a rodeo cowboy (Jake Gyllenhaal). Tracing the story from the summer of '63 when the two of them meet after being paired for sheep herding, the film weaves a tale of their interwoven anguish and dreams. Jack Twist played by Jake Gyllenhaal is an epitome of optimism and bitter frustration Ennis del Mar played by Heath Ledger speaks anguish in his silence. But unlike any other love story it is about the two dreaming of a life together in a time when being gay is itself was a fault. Jack Twist is charismatic and yet vulnerable while Ennis is as straight as can be and yet hungering for something more.

Based on a short story written by Annie Proulx who was well over the hill when she wrote it, Ang Lee's adaptation has the duo splashing the screen with their emotions that the author herself was “blown away”. The 70-year-old Pulitzer-winning Proulx says, "Put yourself in my place, an elderly, white, straight female, trying to write about two 19-year-old gay kids in 1963”. She said to dream up what they could be thinking took her 16-hour days when she lived like a zombie. Proulx never thought her story about Ennis and Jack's love would get published, leave alone make it to the screen because of being risky.

With Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana having written the screenplay, the movie now leads the Golden Globes list with seven nominations, drawing acclaim while stirring up a controversy in the same breath. The controversy that could arise in any gay love story is the sexuality it portrays. Ledger opines that while most people may believe that his toughest parts in "Brokeback Mountain" were the scenes of intimacy with Gyllenhaal, they according to him were the least taxing. It was actually the stillness of Ennis' character and the type of body and vocal language he portrayed that took so much effort.

When asked whether "Brokeback Mountain" should be termed as a gay love story rather than a love story, Ledger said, "I wanted my particular character to represent love transcending…Whether you want to label him gay or not, it's just a human being, a soul in love with another”. Whether audiences in 2005 are any different from audiences in the 60s the period in which the story is staged is something that will be seen in the time to come. Given the number of positive reviews one would count that “Brokeback Mountain” will find its fans and probably create a benchmark for movies that depict gay sexuality without being seedy.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: EarthTimes.Org
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A beautiful, doomed dream
By Drew Limsky  |  December 30, 2005

ARTHUR MILLER'S ''Death of a Salesman" tells of an ordinary family man trying to stay one step ahead of the bill collector. When Willy Loman dies at the end of the play, his long-suffering wife notes that they've finally paid off the house. ''We're free . . . we're free," she sobs as the curtain comes down. It is a devastating ending, and when I observed the audience after the Broadway revival several years ago, few seemed more moved than the 50-ish men who looked too broken to rise from their seats and go home, as if their secret burdens and fears had finally been articulated.

I'm an urban gay man. I don't go camping or ride horses. ''Will & Grace" is a lot closer to my milieu than the pastures and peaks of Wyoming. Still, ''Brokeback Mountain" is my ''Death of a Salesman." Just as the male breadwinners who saw ''Death of a Salesman" didn't need to be in a situation as precarious as Willy's to be struck dumb by his tragedy, gay men don't need to be closeted cowboys to feel that our most essential struggles have finally found expression on the screen.

My identification with Jack Twist was so complete that his heartbreaking optimism and bitter frustration made me almost physically ill, like I couldn't breathe. So strong was the way I homed in on Jake Gyllenhaal's avid portrayal that the first time I saw the movie I barely registered the anguished brilliance of Heath Ledger as Ennis del Mar, or the reason why he's being compared to Brando, James Dean, and Sean Penn (that took a second viewing).

Much has been made about Ennis and Jack's morning-after denial:

Ennis: It's one-shot thing we got going here.

Jack: Nobody's business but ours.

Ennis: You know I ain't queer.

Jack: Me neither.

In the Annie Proulx story, this exchange seems realistically uninflected, with each character trying to outdo the other in manliness. And that's how Ledger plays it. But what Gyllenhaal does is let the tone of his voice go higher ever so slightly -- he gives the line readings a quality of boyish hurt that deftly conveys his sense of being erased. Later on, listen carefully to the unsaid monologue in Gyllenhaal's long pause before he nearly whispers the line: ''The truth is, sometimes I miss you so bad I can barely stand it."

With Jack Twist, the movie places homosexuality within the American Romantic tradition, a tradition of dreaming larger than practicality will abide. Jack flows from a line of doomed, beautiful dreamers that begins with Jay Gatsby, and Jack's ambition -- a life with Ennis -- is as impossible as Gatsby's pursuit of Daisy. Jack's embittered widow isn't far off the mark when she describes Brokeback Mountain as ''some pretend place where the bluebirds sing and there's a whiskey spring."

Gyllenhaal is transparent and charismatic in equal measure: Every emotion not only ''reads," but is elevated, magnified in the tradition of great screen everymen like Henry Fonda. In his final monologue, after all his dashed dreams have come spilling out, watch his dry-eyed resignation as Ennis drives away. In ''The Great Gatsby," we know that Gatsby is through when his lover Daisy makes it clear that she won't dream the same dreams as he does. Like Gatsby's death, Jack's end is pro forma; the spiritual death precedes the physical death.

The praise for Ledger has been so across-the-board, at the expense of Gyllenhaal's equally sensitive performance, that I wonder whether (mostly straight) critics simply are more interested in the character who is perceived as ''straighter."

In an Oprah Winfrey-like lapse, New York Times critic Manohla Dargis claims that every straight woman has had an Ennis in her life, while San Francisco Chronicle film critic Mick LaSalle thinks:''It's possible that if these fellows had never met, one or both would have gone through life straight."

One or both? Probably not the one -- Jack -- who sidles up to Mexican hustlers and rodeo clowns.

One senses straight folks twisting themselves into pretzels trying to make a patently gay story fit their sensibilities: That's what we usually have to do with heterosexual love stories. Their comments are certainly a tribute to the universality of the story, but without understanding the erotic element of romance -- not just in theory, but in practice -- the picture is incomplete. Therefore the experience of ''Brokeback" -- watching the genders on the screen match up to what's in my head -- was a revelation. Suddenly I knew what I'd been missing at the movies all my life.

Drew Limsky teaches English at Pace University and Hunter College. 

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Boston.Com
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The 10 best movie scenes of 2005
2. Love stinks
Heath Ledger can’t punch his way out in “Brokeback Mountain”

In typical Hollywood love stories, violence often turns to passion. Here, because the passion is forbidden and unnamed, it often turns to violence — both externally and internally. After their affair on Brokeback Mountain, Jack (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Ennis (Heath Ledger) bid farewell to each other. Life is already dragging them in different directions and they don’t resist the pull, although Jack looks forlorn as he drives away, watching in his rearview mirror as Ennis walks down the road and seemingly out of his life. And Ennis? He’s the quintessential cowboy: taciturn, emotionless. Until he ducks into an alleyway to... Vomit? Cry? Scream? All three? He punches a brick wall. This awful thing is inside him and he wants it out. Anyone who’s been torn away from their love can identify. It’s the most powerful, universal moment in the year’s most perfect movie.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: MSNBC.Com
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Lessons learned during 'Brokeback'
By LOUIS B. HOBSON -- Calgary Sun

Calgary teacher and musician Dan McDougall’s stint on Brokeback Mountain was a hair-raising experience.

In Ang Lee’s acclaimed western, McDougall plays the bartender who suggests Jake Gyllenhaal’s rodeo hopeful switch from riding bulls to roping calves.

McDougall shot his scene last August.

“When you get lines in a movie they pay you really well, but I’d have done it for free just for the experience,” says McDougall, who teaches biology at Bishop O’Byrne and fronts the local classic rock band The Livin’ Daylights.

In 2000, McDougall used his sabbatical to study Russian history at the U of C. He also took a drama class.

“At the end of the year, the prof suggested I get an agent because, being in my 40s, he felt I had age on my side.”

His audition for Brokeback was harrowing.

“They had sent me the wrong script so I didn’t have time to prepare. The part they wanted me to read for was tough guy bartender. I was certain I wouldn’t get it.”

Three weeks later McDougall received word the part was his.

The day he arrived on set, the costume and make-up people started shaking their heads.

“I wear my hair long for our band and they felt it was all wrong for the look. They wanted to cut most of it off.”

It was Lee who came to the rescue.

He overheard the discussion and suggested the make-up people braid McDougall’s hair and hide it under a wig.

“That worked until they decided to shoot scenes of Jake over my shoulder.

“Ang came up and asked if I’d let them cut my hair. Of course, I said yes. I told him being in his movie was more important than my hair. Besides, hair grows.”

A year later when Lee flew into Calgary for the special crew and cast screening of Brokeback, he singled McDougall out at the party.

“He thanked me for making such a sacrifice for his movie. That’s the kind of amazing guy Ang Lee is.”

McDougall was also impressed by Gyllenhaal: “He’s incredibly professional for someone so young. He can turn on his character the instant cameras role and he’s so convincing.

“The first time I delivered my line he barked back at me with such intensity that he frightened me. Ang came running over to explain I was supposed to be the toughest one in that scene.

“I just hadn’t expected such intensity from Jake.”

McDougall says once cameras stopped rolling Gyllenhaal could turn into a real prankster.

- posted by Ally 
- credits: Jam.Canoe.Ca
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