Lupita Lives To Fight Another Day

JA from MNPP here. If you don't count doing voice-acting the wolf-mother in the upcoming Jungle Book CG-stravaganza, we're blasphemously still waiting for Lupita Nyong'o to find her follow-up to her Oscar-winning role in 12 Years a Slave. But now we've got a whisper - she might be taking a role in Southpaw, the upcoming "Jake Gyllenhaal is a boxer (and then JA blacks out thinking about Jake Gyllenhaal as a boxer and misses the rest of what the movie's about)" movie written by Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter and directed by Antoine "Training Day" Fuqua.

She'd be playing a social worker keeping track of Jake's young daughter. Dunno how substantive the role is - are we talking Mariah Carey in Precious or Brie Larson in Short Term 12? Whatever the case let's once again say a humble yet firm prayer to the Hollywood Gods that they do right by Lupita. We're watching you!

Also in talks to join the film are Forest Whitaker as Jake's coach and Rachel McAdams as Jake's lady. And in case you missed the pictures of Jake getting into prime boxing shape for the movie click on over here - they're worth your time and effort, I guarantee it.

Review: "Enemy" Pits Gyllenhaal Against Gyllenhaal

This review originally appeared in my column at Towleroad

Have you ever read Jose Saramago's "Blindness"? That genius novel, about a sudden epidemic that renders the whole world blind, is hugely unsettling in content. It's also experimental in form. No character is named, the two protagonists are only referred to as "The Doctor" and "The Doctor's Wife", and punctuation is so scarce that there's nothing to guide you; you have to feel your own way through the blocks of words. The film version in 2008, which starred Mark Ruffalo and Julianne Moore, was too traditional in execution and couldn't capture the mad confusion and haunting power of the book. I haven't read Saramago's novel "The Double" upon which the new film Enemy is based but no one is playing it safe in the transfer this time. This is the kind of movie that feels like a true transfer of surreal text to visuals.

When I attended the Toronto Film Festival last fall, I didn't know what to make of Denis Villeneuve's hallucinatory thriller, which is as far removed from his other recent mainstream thriller (Prisoners, reviewed) as it could be. As far as I can tell the new movie is about a university teacher (Jake Gyllenhaal) who, while absentmindedly watching a video at home, sees a movie actor (Jake Gyllenhaal) who looks exactly like him. His initial shock gives way to curiousity and then to obsession. Things only get weirder from there... 

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