Posterized: Jake Gyllenhaal

Jake on the set of Everest (2015)With Enemy, Dennis Villeneuve's trippy new thriller starring Jake Gyllenhaal and Jake Gyllenhaal opening this weekend,  it's time to look back on this actor we've loved ever since he stared in a mirror and saw a demonic rabbit staring back at him. Jake's been picky in his career making less features than other stars who've been in the business for nearly a quarter century. (Since his parents are both in the industry, he started young.) Jake recently turned 33 --  the Jesus year (!) which we'll pretend explains the hair --  and he's already built an enviable filmography having starred in at least one bonafide classic (Brokeback Mountain) and two others that might also stand the test of time (Donnie Darko, Zodiac).

So the question is now, what kind of a second act is his career going to have now that he's in Hollywood's preferred age range for male movie stars (thirtysomething through the fortysomethings is when most of the iconic roles happen)? His last three pictures have all been very good and very different (End of Watch, Prisoners, Enemy) which is probably a good sign. 

Enemy is his 24th feature. How many have you seen? Let's take a trip back in time...

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Jamie Bell & Jamie Bell

2 new Jamie Bell films this year. 28 spankings for Jamie Bell. 462 days until Jamie Bell turns into a giant orange rock monster.

"Carol" Now Filming

First pics of Cate Blanchett filming Carol based on Patricia Highsmith's "The Price of Salt" (which is sometimes called "Carol" or vice versa). I know everyone thinks I'm this huge Cate Blanchett nerd now that I fell so hard for her in Blue Jasmine but truth: I'm in this for director Todd Haynes. Thank the gods he's returning to the cinema. It's been a long time.

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His last feature film was 7 long years ago, the experimental Bob Dylan picture I'm Not There... which was something of a comedown from his successful mainstream (though not really) breakthrough with Far From Heaven (by far his biggest hit). I'm Not There netted Cate Blanchett an Oscar nomination and her second Golden Globe. Will Carol do the same? The film co-stars Sarah Paulson and Rooney Mara.

This will be Cate Blanchett's second sapphic-lust drama after Notes on a Scandal.

HERE I AM!"

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Yes, No, Maybe So: "Get On Up"

You is kind. You is smart. You is important."

I love The Help (2011). I don't care who knows it. So I'm immediately curious about Get On Up, Tate Taylor's follow up which reunites Minny & Aibileen though they both take a back seat since this time it's the story of rock legend James Brown (Chadwick Boseman). This trailer also starts with an affirmative.

You special. And your momma's a no account fool. But you ain't gonna be. One day everybody gonna know your name"

JAMES BROWN [*makes applause sound*]

Okay so that's not as universal an affirmation but... wait. oh. That makes Viola Davis the 'no account fool'? Do over! Not sure I'm okay with this. Time for a Yes No Maybe So™ 

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Women's History Month: On the master animator Lotte Reiniger

Tim here, contributing to our ongoing celebration of Women’s History Month with a look at one of the truly pioneering artists in the history of animation. And Lotte Reiniger isn’t important simply because she was a woman in a medium that has done such a good job over the years at remaining a boys club. The work she did, silhouette animation based on the shadow puppet theater of East Asia, remains as unique in the 2010s as when she created it over 40-year career beginning in Germany in the 20s, and she created, largely by herself, the first entirely animated feature that still exists (at least two Argentinean films from the 1910s are now lost), eleven years before Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Puts a little bit of added context to that company’s half-proud attempt to declare themselves progressive because, in 2013, they finally hired a female co-director for one of their projects with Frozen.

That film was The Adventures of Prince Achmed, which remains one of the easiest of Reiniger’s projects to see, thanks to a full restoration in the late 1990s. It’s a basic riff on themes from the Arabian Nights – a wicked magician, a brave prince with a flying horse, a couple of helpless women to be rescued – almost hopelessly square and hokey in its embrace of every fantasy adventure cliché you could dream up. But then, the point was never really about the story. The point was things like this:

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