March 4th, 2010
Mar 4, 2010
Suited up, Dressed down
Jake Gyllenhaal Poses For A New Photoshoot

A new batch of photos from a Jake Gyllenhaal photoshoot have come to light and while it’s not entirely clear from whence these photos came and for what purpose (ie. promo pics? magazine shoot? etc.) one thing is very clear … Jake looks goooood in all of them:

MMM MMM MMM. Yes, Jakey poo does look mighty fine … and there is much more where this came from. Check out the rest of the pics, after the jump …

Plus, Marsters chimes in about 'Twilight' and the return of Spike?
First Look: James Marsters On ‘Caprica’

Great news for fans of James Marsters, the amazing actor who played the vampire Spike on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel … tomorrow night, he makes his debut on the SyFy series Caprica (which is a prequel series to the hugely successful series Battlestar Galactica). In addition to Marsters‘s return to TV, he is also talking to interviewers about another vampire project that has taken the world by storm, namely Twilight, and he talks a bit about the possibility of returning to the role of Spike. Here are a few screencaps from James Marsters‘s appearance on Caprica tomorrow night and some excerpts from his latest interview:

James Marsters, who played the bleached blond vampire Spike on Joss Whedon’s “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” and its spinoff “Angel,” approves of the new breed of vampires that have taken over pop culture, especially the ones in Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” novels. “I like them man. They got my niece to read,” Marsters says on a conference call to promote his guest starring role on “Caprica.” “She wasn’t reading a lot, but she hit ‘Twilight’ and just ate them up and read them five, 10 times. Now she’s on to other vampire romances. She reads like a novel a day now. So, go Stephenie Meyer.” And although he acknowledges that Meyer’s vamps follow the successful formula that Anne Rice used, making the vampires less monstrous and more “ancient creatures with heart,” he says that was the opposite of how “Buffy” creator Whedon approached the fantastical beings. “He really wanted the vampires to be ugly when they were vampires and very quickly dead,” reveals Marsters. “He was talked into the character of Angel by David Greenwalt, his writing partner. He fought it. I don’t think he was too excited about it but he allowed David [Boreanaz] to do it, and the character just took off to the clouds. I think that he always remembered that he was only going to allow one Angel-like character on the show and that all the other vampires were going to remain in some way hideous.” Hideous or not, Marsters is more than willing to don the fangs again. “When Joss came to me and asked me about [reprising the role of Spike] right as ‘Angel’ was coming down, I told him, ‘I’ll follow you to hell, I’ll follow you to heaven. Just give me a call. I’ll do one line for you. I’ll do 10. Sure I’ll do Spike for you. Of course I’ll do Spike for you.’” The only problem is that there’s an expiration date for a Spike return: Seven years, give or take. “You have seven years because I’m aging, and Spike’s not supposed to [as a vampire],” points out Marsters. “I don’t want to do some lame line like, oh he’s been drinking pig’s blood right now so he’s aging slowly or some stupid thing like that. It’s now been seven years. When I look in the mirror I gotta say if I’m well rested, I look OK with the proper lighting. I don’t know. As the years go, I get more and more nervous about that. Let’s just do a screen test and see if we can light this character and say, ‘Look, I haven’t aged.’ If we could hold that, that would be cool.” Since playing Spike, Marsters has played a series of mean, menacing guys, including his character Barnabus Greely, a diehard revolutionary on “Caprica,” but he doesn’t mind being typecast. “I mean if I was playing Urkel, then I’d have a problem being typecast,” he says. “But when you’re typecast as the cool guy or the tough guy, or the potent character or the jerk who mixes things up, I think if you’re going to get typecast, that’s the one you’d want. I went in to audition for this ‘Moonshot’ [moon landing TV movie]. I love the Apollo program, I’m a science geek and stuff, so I was just so excited and would have taken any three roles, but the director’s like, ‘Oh no, I saw you in “Buffy” and I need you for Buzz Aldrin because he’s the rock star.’ “I’ve always been really thankful I got to play a character that got to wear so much makeup and bleach his hair and got to have a cool English accent.”

Yeah, I love this man SFM! He is truly an amazing actor. I LOVED him as Spike on BtVS and Angel and really loved him as Captain John Hart on Torchwood (the ex-lover of John Barrowman‘s Captain Jack Harkness character). I have this strange thing about watching P.S. I Love You whenever it airs on cable … so it’s always nice to see him in that movie, too. I’ve not yet gotten into Caprica but if James Marsters becomes a main character, they’ll deffo get me as a new viewer. And speaking of — check out a preview clip of Marsters making his debut on Caprica in tomorrow night’s new ep along with a possibly spoilery description of the episode titled Know Thy Enemy

The 2-time Olympic Gold Medalist channels his inner Jimi Hendrix
Shaun White Does ‘Rolling Stone’ Magazine

Shaun White, the US Olympian who is lovingly known as The Flying Tomato, is featured on the cover and in the pages of the new issue of Rolling Stone magazine. As you may recall, White graced the RS cover 4 years ago after he won his first Olympic Gold Medal so it is only natural that RS would want to put him back on the cover this month after having won his second Gold Medal. Here is Shaun‘s Rolling Stone coverphoto along with excerpts from his interview:

Shaun White has revolutionized snowboarding, won the big gold in Vancouver and lit his snowboard aflame, Hendrix-style, on the cover of the new issue of Rolling Stone, joining an elite club of athletes to appear on our cover not once, but twice. And as the focused, business savvy White tells it, a lot of his recent success on the half-pipe and off can be attributed to a new addition to his life: “Getting into music has changed my personality and my way of doing things,” he reveals to RS writer Vanessa Grigoriadis. “I”m far more open now.” White, who began snowboarding at six and went pro at 13, has recently returned to one of his early loves — skateboarding — but he does more shredding on one of his three Les Pauls. Jimi Hendrix, Guns n’ Roses and Led Zeppelin are in regular rotation; “Whole Lotta Love” is his favorite-ever song. “I think guitar is the best thing in the world,” he says. “It’s the only thing where no matter what I do, I can’t do it all myself.” The 23-year-old White is a bit of a loner, though. He practices his sport solo on a $500,000 private half-pipe Red Bull built him in Colorado and is known to march to the beat of his own disciplined drummer. While fellow competitors gather to watch snowboard or skate videos in their spare time, he opts out (”I’d rather do it, not watch it,” he explains). Olympic teammate Louie Vito even tried to unnerve him a bit by blasting Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.” in the van while White was setting his mental stereo to rock & roll.

This new issue of Rolling Stone should be on newsstands now so all y’all snowboarding fans can rush out and get a copy. I have to say … I like Shaun White. The kid seems so down-to-Earth and there is no question of his talent. I think he does the US proud at the Winter Olympics. After the jump, check out 2 more photos from Shaun White‘s Rolling Stone photoshoot …

Smurfariffic?!
Neil Patrick Harris Gets Smurfed For ‘The Smurfs’ Movie

How I Met Your Mother star Neil Patrick Harris has signed on to appear in the upcoming film The Smurfs, the animated film mixed with live action that will bring the beloved 80′s cartoon to the big screen next year. Filming on The Smurfs begins in April and, very unfortunately, NPH will NOT be playing a Smurf in the film … which is such a shame because he really would make a cute-lookin’ Smurf:

Neil Patrick Harris will star in Sony’s big screen adaptation of The Smurfs, says Deadline Hollywood. He won’t be voicing one of the Smurfs though as the project is a mix of live-action and animation. Harris will play the lead live-action character. The site says that filming begins in April, when Harris will be on hiatus from CBS’ “How I Met Your Mother.” The Raja Gosnell-directed film is scheduled for a July 29, 2011 release. “The Smurfs” were created in 1958 by Belgian cartoonist Pierre Culliford, known throughout the world as Peyo. “The Smurfs,” originally called “Les Schtroumpfs” in French, were created for a Belgian series of comic books, first as minor characters. The villagers, known for their blue skin and small statures, spawned a line of statuettes, games, toys, theme parks and a hit TV series, which ran as part of NBC’s Saturday-morning lineup from 1981-90.

AHHHHH … I really wish NPH was playing a Smurf in this film. The mixture of animation and live action has me worried that it will turn out kinda terrible like the Alvin and the Chipmunk movies … or even worse — like the Garfield movie! Ugh!! I’m really not convinced that this Smurfs movie is going to turn out well and may, in fact, mar some of our beloved memories of the original 80′s cartoon. I do take comfort, tho, in the fact that if anyone can make this movie better … it’s Neil Patrick Harris. I guess we’ll have to wait and see … I’m still totally on the fence.

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