Brangelina in the Big Apple

143 Mr and Mrs Smith | 06/13/2007 at 5:18 pm
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I’m not sure about that.If you remember after the premiere o AMH in Cannes,we got that!

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h203/gomapyr/107.jpg

bdj says thanks for that info

Brad Pitt discusses his role as producer for ‘A Mighty Heart’

BY JAN STUART
jan.stuart@newsday.com

June 13, 2007, 12:07 PM EDT

When “A Mighty Heart” opens on June 22nd, it will mark Brad Pitt’s sixth credit as a producer on a feature-length film. Based on Mariane Pearl’s account of the brutal Pakistan murder of her husband, Wall Street Journal reporter/bureau chief Daniel Pearl, the much-anticipated drama stars Pitt’s wife Anjelina Jolie and Dan Futterman as the two married journalists.

Pitt, the 43-year-old star of this week’s number one grosser, “Ocean’s Thirteen,” has already racked up a fairly impressive producer’s score card, with the Oscar-winning “The Departed” and Sundance Grand Jury prize-winning doc “God Grew Tired of Us” under his belt. Pitt also had a hand in “Running with Scissors,” which overcame dim notices to notch an Oscar nomination for Annette Bening, and Mike White’s quirky indie dramedy, “Year of the Dog,” which opened in April to generally favorable reviews.

“What I appreciate the most is getting to be part of a project that normally we wouldn’t be right for,” said Pitt before a gathering of press at last month’s Cannes Film Festival, where the Michael Winterbottom film premiered to acclaim. “I was very taken with Mariane’s story the moment it first appeared on CNN. Through the producting conduit, get to take part in these kind of films, see them to the end, find the right people, make sure things stay on the rails. It’s a really interesting side to filmmaking itself. You don’t have to be in front of the camera.”

Pitt was emphatic in his choice of Winterbottom to helm the film. The eclectic British director is perhaps best known for “Welcome to Sarajevo,” “24 Hour Party People” and “Tristram Shandy: A **** and Bull Story.” But it was “The Road to Guantanamo,” his dramatization of a trio of British Muslims who were held in Guantanamo Bay prison for two years and then released without charged, that sealed the deal for “A Mighty Heart.”

“We felt he was the best storyteller for ‘A Mighty Heart.’ He’s a citizen of the world, he’s focused on these issues. It was really going to achieve some kind of love story: it’s done in flashbacks. To achieve that its got to be successfully created in whiffs and smells and instances.

“The moments that he did that in ‘Guantanamo’ that really spoke to me was when he focused on the boys in their normal habitas, their normal lives at a pizza parlor. We were able to understand who they were at home, without ever having to play it out or make any kind of grand punctuation.

“Another thing I appreciate about Michael’s films is, he follows a life. He doesn’t create the life, or set the life. It’s a really raw approach to filmmaking that really applied itself to the journalistic nature of this film.”

In addition to “A Mighty Heart,” the actor-slash-mogul has at least eight other producing projects currently in various stages of genesis, including “Dirty Tricks,” a Nixon administration drama that features Jim Broadbent as President Nixon, Sharon Stone as Pat Nixon, Meryl Streep as Martha Mitchell and Pitt as White House Counsel John Dean.

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-etpitt0613,0,4658840.story?coll=ny-entertainment-headlines

Actorvists’ make people care

By: Helena Andrews
Jun 12, 2007 06:40 PM EST

After a two-minute debate, it’s decided — Angie is the reason.

That’s Angie as in Angelina Jolie, the superstar supermom who saves the world in between wiping runny noses, for those outside of the celebrity activist circle, like me.

Ryan Gosling, the Academy Award nominee/newly minted advocate for Africa, and John Prendergast, senior adviser to the International Crisis Group in Washington and the guy who takes celebrities to Africa, met through Jolie.

“You had just gone to Chad,” Prendergast says about why he and Gosling got together on the issues. “No,” he corrects himself, “it was because of Angelina.”

Gosling’s sister, Mandi, who took the train down from New York, explains that he was motivated after they saw the movie “Hotel Rwanda” in 2004. At a Los Angeles premiere, Mandi remembers, Ryan was moved by a speech Jolie gave and wanted to get involved.

“Yeah,” Gosling says after a dramatic pause, “what she said.”

Prendergast and Gosling want to end the genocide in northern Uganda, a country in East Africa that has been ravaged by war for nearly a generation.

Gosling is offering his name and making a movie with and about child soldiers, while Prendergast — on leave from ICG to build the anti-genocide peace project “Enough” — does the otherwise heavy lifting.

Over the course of three days last week, the two lobbied Congress, visited the State Department, ate Acholi food and squeezed in some hoops.

On this night in early June, they’re speaking at the Center for American Progress to a group of students, then doing some press, speaking to more students and attending a pizza party. (Remember pizza parties?)

All the girls are obviously gaga over Gosling, whose turn in “The Notebook” made him a heartthrob and whose suffering in “Half Nelson” made him a thespian. Still, Prendergast (who looks like that one guy from another movie) gets plenty of attention on his own — even if it’s in the international crisis community.

Richard Gere! Prendergast totally favors Gere circa “Runaway Bride” but with longer hair and nose. It could be the law of attraction that gets the celebs involved, but it is most likely Prendergast’s 20-year commitment to the continent that he says is at the bottom of the totem pole.

“I don’t really seek it,” says Prendergast, who was head of African affairs in the Clinton White House. “Up until three years ago, I was a total freak policy wonk.”

It’s the one-names that bring the necessary camera bulbs and cash to issues not seen on CNN every day — unlike Paris’ jailhouse blues.

Gosling, Jolie, Cheadle and Clooney are making people care, says Prendergast, adding that most Americans want to help (by writing checks) when they find out something bad is happening in the world.

Case in point: according to a recent article in The Washington Post, after Jolie spent two hours with Anderson Cooper in 2006, donations to the U.N. spiked by “more than half a million dollars.”

The movement needs “people of note in the game” and not just wonks “yammering away about the details of the peace process,” says Prendergast, who called Bono “freaking messianic” after heaping more praise on the movie star sitting across from him.

Gosling furrows his brows. “It’s embarrassing. It’s not true.”

“Everything I’ve said is bullshit,” laughs Prendergast.

“It’s easy to come in and do the glamorous thing,” says Gosling. “He gets knee-deep in policy and red tape. John’s life is sooo boring, and that’s why he’s my hero,” he adds in all seriousness.

Actorvism has been a tricky issue ever since Jane Fonda climbed on top of an anti-aircraft gun in Vietnam.

Key qualities: Gorgeous, informed

George Clooney recently told Entertainment Weekly, “You have to be incredibly well-informed. So if you’re going to go out and talk about poverty or AIDS in African or Darfur, you better know your ****. And you better know it better than any of the jackasses that are going to try to somehow make what you’re trying to do (look) bad.”

But Prendergast doesn’t deal with wishy-washies. “I don’t get the fakes,” he says about the types of celebrities he’s willing to work with. “Only the sincere celebrities apply.”

Prendergast took Jolie to Uganda in 2005 and wrote the book “Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond” with actor Don Cheadle, who starred in “Hotel Rwanda.” Celebrities, it seems, have been flocking to him like flies to honey.

“Did you just call celebrities flies?” asks Gosling.

As the two head upstairs for a roundtable with a group of students all probably voted “Most Likely to Save the World” in high school, Gosling holds the glass doors for everyone with his elbow.

While we wait for the elevator upstairs, Prendergast leans in and whispers, “It’s not that boring.”

source: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0607/4459.html

Can u believe that the enquirer supposedly has a tell all from a brangelina nanny? I thought they signed confidentiality contracts?

154 Mr and Mrs Smith | 06/13/2007 at 5:31 pm

I just want to watch that scene where Angie screams when she’s told about Daniel’s death so bad because so many people have talked about it and how powerful it was.
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I can’t wait to see that scene too.The comments about that scene,remind me of those about Brad’s phone scene in Babel,where he’s crying while talking to his son.I remember I had heard so much about his performance in this scene and when I finally saw it I was so moved that tears came in my eyes.

160 Mr and Mrs Smith | 06/13/2007 at 5:41 pm

I love when he’s looking at her.
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And I love when she’s looking at him.

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h203/gomapyr/CANNES-Oceans13Premiere-20070524_14.jpg

Mr and Mrs Smith. I really should say this more often. Thank you so much for all you bring to the JP threads. I love the articles, and can’t seem to get enough of pictures of our favorite couple. Keep ‘em coming…I’ll keep reading and clicking.

ooopss… meant to say “Ace Tomato did not WRITE that.”

163 Meli | 06/13/2007 at 5:48 pm

And I love when she’s looking at him.
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And I love them in black and white.

http://i14.tinypic.com/5xg2cz9.jpg

Has any1 here seen AMH?? What did you think of the death confirmation scene? What were other significant scenes in which Angelina shined?

169 Mr and Mrs Smith | 06/13/2007 at 5:56 pm

And I love them in black and white.
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I love them in black and white too.I also like them when they are “close”

http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h203/gomapyr/gg60.jpg

thanks to meli too