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Music Video: Eddie Vedder, "Guaranteed" From Into the Wild

BuzzSugar — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 12:33:25 -0800

Eddie Vedder's haunting and soulful tunes are laced throughout Sean Penn's drama Into the Wild, bringing a dimension and beauty to Christopher McCandless' journey in ways that dialogue or silent images probably could not have achieved alone. A video recently surfaced for one of Vedder's songs for the film, "Guaranteed," and to watch it is to be launched right back to the emotional experience of watching this poignant movie.

The video mainly consists of Vedder and his guitar, lit up on an otherwise darkened stage while still pictures from the movie float around him. The song alone is lovely, but paired with the images it's quite moving. To see the video and hear Eddie Vedder's "Guaranteed," read more.

Buzz Gift Guide: Brotherly Love

BuzzSugar — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 05:30:00 -0800

Today's holiday gift guide features gift ideas for the boys in your family with whom you had to share a bathroom growing up.

The complete series of Arrested Development on DVD will most likely delight your brother while also providing you guys with something to laugh at together if you find that the holiday togetherness is getting to be a bit much.

I really like the Bourne movies, but the guys I know seem to like them even more. Come December 11, you can give your brother the gift of three movies' worth of Jason Bourne eluding the authorities.

If your brother loves both music and video games, consider getting him Rock Band Special Edition for his PlayStation or XBox360. The game comes with a guitar, microphone, and drums so he and his friends can play along with Metallica, Bon Jovi, and more. This would be especially good for a guy who's living in a college dorm or has enough roommates to form an impromptu band in the living room.

Before it was a movie directed by Sean Penn, Into the Wild was a bestselling book by Jon Krakauer about the free-spirited Christopher McCandless and his dangerous journey into the Alaskan wilderness. Your brother may also be interested in another of Krakauer's well-received books, Into Thin Air.

If your brother is too young to have watched The Goonies in its glory days, it's your responsibility to educate the young lad on all things Truffle Shuffle.

Interview: Emile Hirsch on Into the Wild

BuzzSugar — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 07:30:00 -0700

For the most part, any faults I found with Into the Wild, Sean Penn's upcoming film adaptation of Jon Krakauer's bestselling book, didn't have to do with Emile Hirsch's performance in the lead role, which I found to be rather arresting.

It was a difficult role and - as I learned straight from Hirsch himself - it was often very physically demanding. Yet for Hirsch, with Penn's guidance (er, "kick in the ass," as Hirsch puts it), it was all a part of getting the job done.

Young Emile is not one to ramble on (or even sit upright while you're talking to him, really), but I did manage to squeeze some information out of him regarding the making of the film, his connection to the story, and what's up next for his career.

Had you read Jon Krakauer's book before you heard about the film project?
I’d seen the "20/20" episode [on it] when I was 8 years old, and it really had a big impact on me. It’s pretty haunting, especially as a kid to see a story like that… a young man, ten years older than you, or more, twelve, thirteen years older than you. It’s like, "Oh my God," you know? And then Sean called me out of the blue after he’d seen a film of mine called Lords of Dogtown and he told me to read the book. And I read it that night, of course, and loved it and stayed up all night reading it in one of those kickass reading experiences that don’t come around too too often for ya. Then from there, I remembered the "20/20" episode about a third of the way into the book I went, "You know, I know this, I’ve seen this."

So, Sean Penn had you in mind the whole time?
Yeah, so he says, you know? I mean, when he called me, he had just-just-just gotten the rights to the book. So I just lucked out that he just happened to see Lords of Dogtown.

What is he like as a director?
He’s great. He’s really a man of immense creativity and intelligence, but also a really fierce courage and will that are really powerful.

For more of the interview, read more

This is a pretty heavy film, obviously. What was your emotional experience working on the film?
You know, it was joy, sadness, happiness, I mean we really covered so many different bases of where Chris was. We wanted it to feel like a real journey of someone’s soul. I mean, you know, when I jump off the cliff into the Colorado River, and I land and come up smiling, I mean, that’s pretty much - that’s the real joy right there! I was pretty excited after I jumped off that, I mean that was probably the highest thing I’ve ever jumped off in my whole life. I remember jumping off that and halfway through the air thinking "I can’t believe they got me to do this. This is so high."

So you did the paddling in the rapids and all that stuff yourself, right?
Yeah.

That seemed really dangerous! Was it scary? Or was it cool and exhilarating?
You know, it was pretty exhilarating - terrifyingly exhilarating. I mean, you get there and it looks so big. It’s like, "Oh my God I have to do this, there’s like millions of dollars here on the line, you know, Sean Penn… I have to." You just gotta psych yourself up and man up and charge that f*cker. And so I did.

When you were reading the book did you identify with Chris McCandless?
I did. You know, there was so much wanderlust in Chris McCandless and it just, you know when you see that kind of wanderlust, just like when people first read On the Road it just kind of sparks their own wanderlust that they have. I mean, I wouldn’t be surprised if so many people after they go see this movie will just want to go on some adventures, and get out there. You know? Don’t you think?

Defintely. It’s really attractive. The movie makes those adventures look really appealing.
And it really is appealing. I mean, it’s really great experiences, if you do it the right way.

Yeah, I wouldn’t want to be out in the middle of nowhere, necessarily…
Alone, with no axe and no map?

But definitely the traveling around, and the freewheeling lifestyle... from the movie it looks very attractive.
And that was really the lifestyle that we had when we shot it, and it was, it was a totally fun adventure. We had so many experiences that we were able to all kind of share together.

What’s next for you after this?
I just finished shooting Speed Racer in Berlin, actually. So I went right from the mountains into the green screen room.

That’s going to be a cool film, it seems.
Oh yeah, I think it should be pretty kooky. Pretty groovy. Very psychadelic. Very psychadelic.

Really?
Yeah. It’s nothing like The Matrix at all. [The Wachowski brothers] totally reinvented their visual style, it’s really crazy.

Huh. Did you watch the "Speed Racer" cartoon as a kid?
Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Cool. Go Speed Racer.
Go!

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Movie Preview: Sean Penn's Into the Wild

BuzzSugar — Tue, 21 Aug 2007 07:30:00 -0700

Oh, Sean Penn. I loved him in Mystic River so very much - that was a great career move. And now he's gone and directed an adaptation of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild and it's scheduled to open September 21. It's a good pick, really. A nice, bestselling pick. But this trailer promises little more than ooey-gooey dude-soul-search cheesiness. It stars Emile Hirsch as Christopher McCandless, an ambitious young man who graduates college, gives all his money away and hitchhikes to Alaska. Along the way he finds some friends and... he finds himself.

The trailer features some comforting familiar faces, like Catherine Keener, Marcia Gay Harden and Vince Vaughn. But the overall tone of this is so overly sentimental, if there were a Lifetime Television for Men, this would be a made-for-TV movie on that channel. You might see what I mean when you watch the preview, so read more

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