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Recently Released In Theaters Reviews
2008 FALL MOVIE PREVIEW Bangkok Dangerous Mister Foe Everybody Wants to be Italian Babylon A.D. College Disaster Movie Traitor Hamlet 2 The House Bunny The Longshots Death Race The Rocker Tropic Thunder Mirrors Recently Added Spotlights Nicolas Cage Anna Faris Katharine McPhee Emma Stone James Franco Seth Rogen Rosie Perez Danny McBride Matthew Goode Will Ferrell John C. Reilly Heath Ledger Christian Bale Aaron Eckhart Maggie Gyllenhaal |
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 Heath Ledger
Interview By: J.P. Mangalindan
*Click Here For Another Interview with Heath Ledger Ask Heath Ledger what's more thrilling — starring in the year's most talked-about film or being a father — and the 26-year-old actor will plead no contest. "I wouldn't say it's as scary as the last five roles I've done, but fatherhood's definitely more exciting and more beautiful," he says on this brisk Sunday morning. "It's definitely my greatest achievement." Ledger's still glowing about Matilda, his daughter with actress Michelle Williams, whom he welcomed into the world two weeks ago; while his girlfriend recovers, he finds one of his most important contributions to the family unit are menial tasks: washing the dishes, doing the laundry, ironing. "What else am I going to do?" he chuckles. "We're so bloody helpless in the birthing process, you come out realizing how stupid and weak men are. I might as well not be in there! We're that useless." He admits admiration, not just for his live-in girlfriend, but for females in general. "The primal strength that women have just exceeds anything that's within men." In Brokeback Mountain, the strength of two men is tested. Set amid the picturesque rural regions of Wyoming during the 1960s, the award-winning New Yorker short story by Annie Proulx chronicles the summer spent by Ennis Del Mar (Ledger) and Jack Twist (Jake Gyllenhaal), two young men trying to find their way through life who end up finding each other. One drunken night, Ennis and Jack realize their sexual tension. Shirts unbutton, belts unbuckle, sparks fly. It's the beginning of a complicated relationship that spans decades, marriages, even children and resonates with a profound melancholy that's liable to make even the most macho sheep wrangler shed a tear. Mainstream gay films are nothing new — Philadelphia even earned Tom Hanks his first Oscar — but Brokeback is the first of its kind to saddle two decidedly masculine stars with a love story as the focus. When Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana’s script landed in his lap, Ledger remembers being struck by the courage and conflict in these characters during a more conservative era. "It was probably the most beautiful script I'd ever read," he says. "It felt like a story that had never been onscreen, which is rare to come across, with these incredibly complex characters. I would have been crazy to walk away from it." For two heterosexual men, the idea of intimate homosexual scenes might seem daunting (Gyllenhaal has admitted that kissing Ledger was an “exfoliating” experience). “It was certainly rough,” Ledger admits. “At the end of the day, after the first take, all the mystery flew out the window. It was, ‘Ok, shit, whatever”. Neither of us really cared anymore and it became about what the next shot was. We didn't have to make Freudian jokes about it and giggle.” Before Ang Lee signed onto the project to direct, actors wouldn’t touch the script with a ... |
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