No longer in the picture

 Now that certain things are out of the picture

 

Some would like to think he's like this over it.

Yeah.... right ..... it's more likely this:

Happy Austin Friday indeed.

Perfectly Balanced

Austin tweeted this today :
 -willem dafoe   -  AUS10

Think it's something related to this?

It's one thing to post it which could be taxing enough for some, but then to put it upside down,  Austy it's enough to confused some poor girl to stop following you.

Creepy Crawly

We had a tease of Jake as Louis Bloom in Nightcrawler and today is the official trailer of the thriller.

This is definitely a different turn.



Definitely the anti-hero, Louis comes off as  off-beat, slightly sleazy, intense, opportunistic and frankly a little creepy.

It is a risk for an actor to take a role that the audience may not like.  But it can be the opportunity to show actor's talent of transformation.  Creating feelings and reaction from the audience, even that of dislike and rejection, shows that audience had completely bought into the actor's performance forgetting them as the performer, and only seeing the performance itself. That's when they strive for and what defines success for an actor.

 Jake is taking that chance  with Nightcrawler. Not a safe choice if you want to be a box office leading man, but bold choice as a performer.

Nightcrawler is definitely an intense ride among the dark side of LA.

Pirate or Princess?

Lately, what's a Tuesday without a look at a tweet from that Texas Tweeter?

The cynical pirate and the interstellar princess. - AUS10

So Austy does that make you the pirate or the princess?

Because you always talk about being a pirate.  But then Jake's always said he wanted to be Harrison Ford.

But everyone knows that you totally pull off the whole big buns thing.

Movie Makings

Early in his career, Jake was a real movie maker, lots of projects coming one after the other, multiple movies out in the same year, and then came a period of a self imposed slow down where one project a year was the norm, if that.  (Interestingly when Austin was steadily committed to television) Now it seems that he is in a place were he can go back to working with gusto and gusto it is.

It's not one or two movies to talk about today but three:

Past, Present, Future as it were.

Past:  Wrapping Nightcrawler last year, it was waiting to see what the ambitious project that turned Jake into the Thin Man was all about.  The comments from the trailer are singing praises for Jake's portrayal of the anxious, tense, desperate Louis Bloom looking for a job and who finds himself in the underworld of LA's crime journalism scene.  Many have noted that after Jake's performance in Prisoners that he is creating himself a place in playing complex characters.

 Indie Wire said, "It’s less than a minute teaser, but yes, the actor is gaunt and the footage is definitely intriguing. It gives us a quick taste of what to expect, but it's really only the first layer of unpeeling the onion, with lots more to be revealed."  Slated to open October 17th,  there is also talk that it may be included in the Toronto Film Festival.

Present:  Southpaw.   The need for extra seems never ending for Southpaw, but with so many fight scenes, that's a lot seats to fill.  Casting was also looking for a minister, which seems like they could just find an actor to play a minister, but maybe the realize that ministers do have a kind of ministerial look about them. :)

Not only is Southpaw trying to include as much of the population of Pittsburgh and the Allegheny Valley as possible, they are also giving back.  This time giving the gym equipment to groups to bring back gyms in the area.  Check it out here.

  “So the exchange is he is going to give me some of the equipment, and he donated a boxing ring and we are going to put up on the Centre Avenue at the old (YMCA) on the hill. There hasn't been a gym there in about 10 years, so I'm reopening the gym," said Jimmy Cvetic, executive director of the Western Pennsylvania Police Athletic League.

 Mike Tyson will be making an appearance, as well as some delegates from "Southpaw," who will be there for the ribbon-cutting ceremony when the gym opens.

 And  Future:  The project Divergent.  Naomi Watts is in negotiations to play opposite Jake in Demolition. Last month the news was Jake was considering the lead in Dallas Buyers Club director Jean-Marc Vallée’s next film, Demolition. According to the site The Wrap the word is that Naomi is working out a deal to co-star.

"Written by Bryan Sipe, the script focuses on a young investment banker (Jake) who falls into an emotional disconnect after his wife dies. Deciding to tear his life apart to discover what went wrong, he becomes obsessed with the idea of destruction but eventually ends up meeting and befriending a single mother (Naomi), who helps him to turn things around."

Watt's character is much more complicated than you assume – "she’s a pot-smoking customer service operative for a vending machine company whose device has eaten Gyllenhaal’s money, sending him into a rage. Despite her already dating her boss, she starts to fall for the anguished customer, especially when she learns the depths of his situation."


Jake and Naomi have several connections, not to mention the biggest one which is her husband Liev is the star of Ray Donovan.  And oh yeah, that mention that Toothy and Goose have something in common with Naomi and Liev right around this fall seven years ago. Hmmm....

Out Spotlight

Today's Out Spotlight was an American writer of fiction for children and young adults, best known for the lesbian novel Annie on My Mind. She received the 2003 Margaret Edwards Award from the American Library Association recognizing her lifetime contribution in writing for teens, citing Annie alone.

Today's Out Spotlight is Nancy Garden.

Antoinette Elisabeth Garden, who always went by Nancy, was born in Boston on May 15, 1938. Her family moved a few times during World War II, while her father worked for the Red Cross. When she was young, her parents read aloud to each other, and Garden wrote on her website that she “started writing for fun” when she was 8.

Her family settled in Providence, Rhode Island, and while at Lincoln School “she was interested in theater and was considered the best actress in her class,” said Sandy Scott, her life partner. The pair met in high school, but did not become a couple until they both were living in New York City in the 1960s. They married in 2004.

Garden graduated from Columbia University with a bachelor’s degree, and received a master’s from Columbia’s Teachers College. She worked as a teacher and in various theater pursuits until 1971, when her first two books were published. One of those, “What Happened in Marston,” was made into an ABC Afterschool Special.

She took an editing job in children's literature for a publisher based in Boston and moved in 1972 to Carlisle, Massachusetts, with Scott, who recalled that they encountered no difficulties getting a mortgage and buying a house together. “Both Nancy and I have been accepted in Carlisle,” she said.

Before long, she was able to write full time. Her many other books include “Endgame,” which grew out of the Columbine High School shootings in Littleton, Colo. “I decided to write a novel focused on bullying and the tragic consequences it can have on both bullier and bullied,” she wrote on her website. “ ‘Endgame’ is the result.”

In 2007’s “Hear Us Out” she collected her short stories and grouped them into sections for the decades from the 1950s to the 2000s, introducing each decade with an essay.

Garden has written over 35 books, including non-fiction, mystery and fantasy for children and young adults.

But she is best known for Annie on My Mind, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 1982. It was critically acclaimed but attracted controversy because of its lesbian characters, Annie and Liza, who fall in love. It was one of the first teen novels to feature lesbian characters in a positive light. "I wrote it to give solace to young gay people, to let them know they were not alone, that they could be happy and well adjusted and also to let heterosexual kids know that we gay people aren't monsters," she told Booklist in a 1996 interview.

In 1993, Annie on My Mind was banned by the Kansas City school system and burnt in demonstrations. It was returned to shelves only after a First Amendment lawsuit by students in 1995. It is #44 on the American Library Association list of 100 books most frequently challenged during the 1990s.

Her reviews of young adult titles have appeared in the Lambda Literary Foundation's Lambda Book Report.

Garden spoke of her career saying, "I feel very lucky to be able to do the things I love: writing books, talking with kids and adults about writing, and sometimes also teaching writing."

She received the Robert B. Downs Award for Intellectual Freedom in 2001 from the University of Illinois Graduate School of Library and Information Science.

The American Library Association's Margaret A. Edwards Award recognizes one writer and a particular body of work "for significant and lasting contribution to young adult literature." Garden won the annual award in 2003, when the panel cited Annie on My Mind alone and called her "the first author for young adults to create a lesbian love story with a positive ending ... Using a fluid, readable style, Garden opens a window through which readers can find courage to be true to themselves." Five years later Garden recalled that "I was and still am enormously grateful ... for YALSA’s recognition ... of the importance of YA books about LGBT youth."

Annie On My Mind was also awarded the Lee Lynch Classic Award by the Golden Crown Literary Society in 2014, cited as one of the most important classics in lesbian literature.

Garden and Scott divided their time living between their home in Carlisle Massachusetts and a home in Tremont, Maine, along with their golden retriever, Loki, and their cats.

Garden died of a heart attack on June 23, 2014, aged 76.

“She wrote the book all lesbians wanted to have as teenagers,” Victoria Brownworth said in a tribute posted on the Lambda Literary website. “She wrote the books kids of lesbian and gay parents needed to read. She was an icon and a treasure and every other overused cliche about writers who are larger than life — except of course in her case it was all true.”

Nick of Night(crawler)

It's a first look at Jake as  Lou Bloom a reporter in the underground competitive world of the LA after dark freelance crime journalism scene.

And the release of this first look is far from traditional.  The first video of  Jake as his “Nightcrawler” character surfaced on the Internet today somewhere you wouldn't expect:  Craigslist.  The Wrap.com asked  if  it's a bizarre choice for a kickoff or just clever viral marketing.

Lou seems a like a intense wound up kind of guy, and  the role gives Jake a chance to play against type.  We know from reporting that Jake cut his hand punching a mirror on set.  After watching the clip you could see how that might have happened.  You can see how the character might have been enticing challenge for Jake.

Check out this first clip entitled Hard Worker Seeking Employment



Nightcrawler opens October 17th in the US,  and it looks like Jake will have a full promoting the movie both at home and abroad, with Jake heading to Rome October 16, to premiere Nightcrawler there.  Check back with OMG for further promotion dates and events.