Angelina Jolie: I’m Just a Mom First and Foremost

74 Nancy | 06/25/2007 at 8:11 am
Jennifer’s moves actually made money, a foreign concept to Jolie, I know. Derailed, Rumor Has it, Friends With Money, and of course The Break Up ALL made more than twice their budget. I know, facts hurt don’t they?

By the way, paramount’s pulling Jolie’s latest bomb from about half its theaters for next week. Not doin’ so hot I guess, eh?

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Can you please move on, we are going on 3 years. Post in JA thread how wonderful she is. Strike up a dialogue about her there, her next projects, her love interest whatever but can we please give this crap a break. They all have moved on. Don’t you want her removed from this triangle? Don’t you want people to talk about her based on her on merit instead of linking her to 2 people you don’t like and think treated her badly. The only way that is going to happen is if her fans stop linking her to them, stop hating on them, focus on her on her own thread.

Can the UK people from Female First answer me this? Why is it that people in the UK have such bad dental hygiene? You’re teeth are all messed up and crooked and your breath forgettaboutit

Wondering

Movie review: ‘A Mighty Heart’
By Michael Phillips
Tribune movie critic
E-mail story
Printer Friendly
rating (out of four)

this week’s movies

“Evan Almighty”
summer movies

We look ahead to the season’s top 21 flicks.
’spider-man 3′ pics!

See shots from the film.
year’s best movies

Read the Fast-Paised Top 10 of 2006.
Video: Pais’ Top 10
Plus: Year’s 10 worst
You do the review
Tell us what you think of “A Mighty Heart.”
Read more comments or post your own

Make a night of it
Find:
• Recommended dining
• Recommended bars

We know how “A Mighty Heart” ends. Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal’s South Asia bureau chief, died at the hands of his captors in early 2002, in Karachi, Pakistan. His wife, Mariane Pearl, survived him and later gave birth to their son, Adam.

We know this. Even so, when Angelina Jolie, who plays Mariane in director Michael Winterbottom’s lean and swift account, unleashes her anguish upon learning the news of Danny Pearl’s beheading, the impact is torrential, and Winterbottom’s documentary-style approach pays off. The film isn’t much interested in the usual biopic peaks and valleys, or in hyping the punishing limbo of Mariane’s life in the weeks after the kidnapping, and before confirmation of her husband’s death. But when Jolie cracks open this key moment, it’s really something.

Here’s how Pearl herself (writing with Sarah Crichton in her memoir “A Mighty Heart”) describes that cry of anguish: “I slam the door, and with all my might, I cry out. I have never screamed like this before. I can feel that I’m screaming, but the sound that rips up out of me is alien, as if everything is coming out of me. I sound like an animal caught in a bone-crushing trap.” Up until this moment, which is handled just right in the film, Jolie’s Mariane has been like a tuning fork, emitting a hum of worry and contained rage. When the news hits her, the resulting emotions are enormous but not indulgent. It feels real and messy.

“A Mighty Heart” is a worthy film on a great, tragic subject. Unlike Winterbottom’s recent film “The Road to Guantanamo,” which dazzled with its technique but left a lot of vagaries hanging in the dusty air, it’s a lucid narrative, revealing another side of terrorist-shadowed life on this planet after Sept. 11, 2001, and after the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq. Screenwriter John Orloff doesn’t go for “scope” or even much context; he’s content to put one foot in front of the other, following Ms. Pearl’s days and weeks after the kidnapping. Meetings with her husband’s Wall Street Journal colleagues, including editor John Bussey (Denis O’Hare), intertwine with Mariane’s wary relationship with Pakistan’s head of counter-terrorism (Irrfan Khan). Dispatches from an earnest if ineffective American diplomatic security agent (Will Patton) are balanced by Mariane’s friendship with the Pearls’ fellow journalist, Asra (Archie Panjabi).

The end is near throughout “A Mighty Heart.” Winterbottom, who is very good at hurtling chaos, has just enough taste to keep his subjects honest and their pain free of melodrama. If there’s a dimension missing from the film, it’s this: Winterbottom is so focused on keeping the narrative trackable and the audience inside Mariane’s plight, he simplifies here and there. The director does not quite achieve what Paul Greengrass did with “United 93,” which was a stunning amalgam of documentary fakery and dramatic intensity. The Pearl film’s concerns require a different, more intimate sense of suffering. Yet I wonder if a longer version of the film wouldn’t have allowed for more detours and blind alleys and truthful emotional ambiguities. The Pearls’ marriage (Dan Futterman plays Danny, largely in flashbacks) has a slightly idealized glow about it.

As it stands, then, “A Mighty Heart” leads inexorably to Jolie’s magnificent scream, which is more–deeper–than a mere Oscar-baiting moment. The film is most vivid and immediate when Jolie, her character’s patience and facade cracking, accesses a full tangle of impulses at once. She is a uniquely intense screen presence. We can only imagine what Mariane’s ordeal was like. Jolie and Winterbottom come closer than most could have in imagining it for us.

In such films as In This World and The Road to Guantanamo, director Michael Winterbottom has demonstrated an adept talent for tackling subjects straight from the headlines and amassing with clarity a wealth of facts and complex detail. This kind of track record makes him the ideal candidate to adapt Mariane Pearl’s harrowing account of the kidnap and murder of her husband Danny, a Wall Street Journal reporter, in Pakistan.

Daniel Pearl was following up a story about the would-be shoe bomber Richard Reid when he disappeared. Winterbottom follows the five frantic weeks that ensued as his wife and colleagues desperately tried to find clues as to his whereabouts and the identity of his abductors.

Much of the film rests on the shoulders of Angelina Jolie as Mariane, who was pregnant at the time. The actress rallies to the challenge, giving a performance that is nuanced, unsensational and deeply moving as she comes to grips with the appalling reality of her situation. The fact that Jolie and Pearl had a close off-screen rapport doubtless helped to invest her portrayal with a greater depth and sensibility. And Dan Futterman as her husband shows how he balanced the highest journalistic principles with being a loving and caring spouse, looking forward to fatherhood.

Winterbottom opts appropriately for an unsentimental approach, avoiding any tendency to histrionics or sensationalism. The only concession to softening the material is the inclusion of some footage of the Pearls’ marriage and their moments together in happier times. The commitment of producer Brad Pitt and Jolie to the story is also commendable, resulting result in a film that has heart and integrity, providing insight into a wrenching dilemma that no headline news reportage could ever achieve.

126 Cocaine | 06/25/2007 at 8:37 am
====== your post reflect Aniston and Paul Sculfor.

143 ANAND SONI | 06/25/2007 at 8:45 am
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Err…WAKE UP!!! It’s 8.50 am already!! LOL!!

121 Tojenfans! | 06/25/2007 at 8:35 am
No matter how you say Angie’s movie is not doing well, or aniston movies have done well in the past, the truth is Aniston does not have any movie projects at the moment, because there is no studio who will fund her projects! Its clear enough proof that she is not a bankable star on her own!!

Meanwhile, both angie and brad are doing a lot of projects; they have completed and will be filming several projects this year!!!

To all Aniston fans, just take it from the studios!!! You are wasting your time posting all negtive comments on Angelina, she is doing very well careerwise. In fact, she is the one who wants to stop working for a while just tos epnd time with ehr family. On the other hand, aniston is so hungry for projects and yet she doesnt have any yet ready fro filming! Now you know, why is only what she was before because of brad Pitt. without Brad, she is just another C-D list celebrity!!She also hangs out with C-d list celebs like Cox, Arquette or even Demi who is also another hasbeen.

It seems all Huvane wards are becoming hasbeens, Demi, Aniston, Paltrow (its a good thing she has a small part in the Tansformer, adn Brad gave her a part in Dirty Tricks) and soon Kirstin Dunst, after Spdierman, what will she do, her marie antoinette and the movie with Orlando tanked big time. She was lucky to be in spidey movies.
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ITAWU!!!!!!!!!

There is only one Aniston hen posting here. Let us all email Jared to delete her posts.

This Aniston hen must be posting at her idol’s thread. Aniston is very lonely out there. Her post needs company. Don’t fail Aniston. She is already loveless, child-less, family-less, jobless … please spare her of being post-less.

Truth in tragedy

‘Mighty Heart’ captures frailty of our world

Tom Long / Detroit News Film Critic

Angelina Jolie stars as Mariane Pearl, wife of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. See full image

‘A Mighty Heart’
GRADE: A-
Rated R for language
Running time: 100 minutes

There’s a shaky sense of danger to “A Mighty Heart,” an ever-present acknowledgment of the fragile state of things.

It’s reflected in everything from the abduction at the film’s center to life’s seeming incidentals — crying children, cars that won’t start, information that doesn’t add up. The movie is infused with jitteriness, a constant reminder that peace, contentment, safety all are illusion in the modern world.

It’s based on the true kidnapping and eventual execution of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was grabbed in 2002 while tracking down a source in Karachi, Pakistan. But Pearl (played by Dan Futterman) isn’t the real subject of the movie.

He’s a ghost, actually, since his eventual death by beheading is common knowledge, and he appears mostly in flashbacks. A victim of his own curiosity and confidence, the tragedy of Pearl’s death instead becomes incentive for director Michael Winterbottom’s devastating portrait of crushed hope, fruitless investigation and cultural dissonance.

The result is a film about a world in which Daniel Pearl could be kidnapped and killed, a world most Americans never have to confront, and the mean wake of effects that follow such a maddening, pointless act of terrorism

Angelina Jolie has the central role of Mariane Pearl, Daniel’s freelance reporter wife, who was far along in pregnancy when he was grabbed.

A French woman in Pakistan searching for her Jewish-American husband in the noisy chaos of a churning big city, she is surrounded by the irrefutable corruption and complexity of a foreign land, and turns every which way she can for help, only to find frustration as her husband’s fate becomes a political football.

She has the support of the American government, her husband’s powerful newspaper, his parents back in the states and all manner of local humanitarians, but they prove consistently useless when faced with the tangled web of religious and political factions stacked atop one another in the Muslim world. Strings of information lead off in fruitless directions, witnesses disappear then reappear, nothing ever seems solid.

Winterbottom wisely moves the action away from Mariane a good deal of the time, hitting the streets with hand-held cameras as the Pakistani cop simply known as Captain (the excellent Irffan Khan, the father in “The Namesake”) tears his city apart.

This guy does not care about anybody’s bill of rights, and he doesn’t seem to give a damn about anybody’s politics; he’s the classic driven cop out to do the right thing, just doing it in an environment that makes even the most out-of-control American city seem comparatively calm.

Winterbottom has a history of dealing with harsh international reality (the documentary “The Road to Guantanamo,” “Welcome to Sarajevo”), and he excels at capturing the minor sounds and moments that make up the tone of a time and place. Motorbikes buzz by Pearl’s residence, phones ring, accents overlap, indistinct faces drift in and out of focus while walking down a street: It all contributes to a feeling of pressing presence that is undeniable.

Jolie’s performance continuously drives home just how grim and real and tense the situation is, but she never falls back on easy sentiment. Mariane is almost painfully contained — she’s sure she can solve all this and keeps pressing forward even when she’s going nowhere — until she finds out she’s failed.

At this point, Angelina Jolie may be the most famous woman alive, and she’s certainly one of the most beautiful. But she still manages to lose herself within Pearl, delivering what’s sure to be one of the year’s best performances.

And indeed, “A Mighty Heart” should end up one of the year’s best dramas, an intricate, jolting look at life out of control and one woman’s fight to hold onto her dignity and love in the midst of unimaginable tragedy.

It’s not an easy story to watch. Imagine living it.

#148 from the last thread:

Thank you for posting this comment from Lolita. I have to agree, why do we need to defend AMH from it’s detractors? It is an excellent movie, so it is what it is. If people do not like to see it because of Angelina, so be it, their loss, not ours.

We also know that even if AMH tanks at the box office, only makes back its budget, still Angelina continues to be offered roles. So we could be like Afred E. Neuman and say, “WHAT? ME WORRY?” Angelina has her family (including the sexiest man alive), her humanitarian work, her career and her friends — why should we feel the need to defend her? So she has her detractors — so what? I think it is only the very vocal MiniVan majority that keeps on hating her. But at the end she will prevail. I remember my mother telling me how Ingrid Bergman was even banned from the US for her affair with a married director, and then later on HW made up for it by giving her a BSA Oscar for Murder on the Express, which is not really one of her best movies. Also how many times was Elizabeth Taylor reviled for her chaotic love life? And yet IB was revered so much when she died, and ET has all of HW’s respect today.

So we shouldn’t worry about our Angelina. This too shall pass! Maybe it takes a little longer nowadays because of the Internet and people who have no lives and keep posting their hatred, but still, it will pass. Doesn’t Paris H get out of jail soon?

Taraji Henson talks about her role in David Fincher’s new movie THE CURIOUS CASE OF BENJAMIN BUTTON

6/23/2007

The other day I attended the press junket for the new movie “Talk to Me” and while I was there I was able to get some info on David Fincher’s next project “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” If you haven’t heard of the film, it stars Brad Pitt, Cate Blanchett and Taraji Henson.

But even if these actors weren’t attached to the project, I would still be jumping through hoops to get any info as I think David Fincher is a ******* genius. I absolutely love “Fight Club,” “The Game,” “Zodiac” and “Seven” and think he’s one of the masters working in the industry. He could remake “Sleep” by Andy Warhol and I’d think he could make it work.

So if you love Fincher as much as I do you’ll dig what Taraji has to say as she has a pretty big part in “Benjamin Button” and talks about it. The only bad news… the film doesn’t arrive until next year. I’m crossing my fingers that we get some footage at Comic-Con as there’s a sci-fi edge to the film.

And as I said above, this interview was done while at the “Talk to Me” junket.

Question: Since you did this project have you done anything else or are you getting ready to start something?

Taraji Henson: I just wrapped a film called The Curious Case of Benjamin Button starring Cate Blanchett, Brad Pitt I’m sure you’ve heard about it. And I age from 26 to 71 and it’s an early 1900’s mixed with modern time as flashbacks and I play Brad Pitt’s mother because he’s born with this rare aging disease he’s left on my doorstep and I adopt him like any good southern woman would. Not really what I thought about when I would star opposite Brad Pitt to play his mother but ok.

That was in development for a long time so long have you been with the film.

You know I knew nothing about the film. It was CC Pounder…right? CCH Pounder was actually in the mix 12 years ago. I hadn’t even landed in L.A. yet, so that’s how long it’s been around, but timing is everything and I guess it was meant for me because the timing of everything how it went down Hustle and Flow is how I got that job, then Mayfield the casting director saw my performance in Hustle and Flow and the movie really hadn’t even been put all together by this point either. She picked up the phone and called David Fincher and said I found Queenie, which is my character’s name. She practically by-passed everybody else took me and sat me right in front of David Fincher and said this is Queenie and he said Ok.

I definitely would like to ask…did you have the typical Fincher set experience where he shot everything 70 times or was it a little quicker?

You know what he did. Once I got used to the rhythm. Every director has their own rhythm and once I got used to it, it was fun. I mean, I respect him on such a level because I don’t care if he does a thousand takes, you know at the end of the day it’s going to be amazing. You just trust it and go with it, you know.

And what was your experience working with someone who’s literally always in the headlights of the paparazzi, I mean, I’m talking obviously about Brad Pitt.

And Cate, but Brad more so than Cate. It’s really weird because he’s so normal and so regular and so like not affected by it. It hurt me in a way because I’d be talking to him and they’d be people over the bushes and you could tell it’s like he looks at me as if why do they even want a picture of me like for real? What is it all about? My heart just bled for him because he had to use decoy cars and I’m just whistling walking to the set…hey paparazzi how are you doing? Want a picture of me? They’re like get out of the way. So, it was really interesting to see the opposite side, you know. To see what’s really going on behind the pictures on every tabloid magazine, because they’re regular normal people, you know. Angelina came to the set and he’s like a big kid, “Taraji I want you to meet Angie” and she’s just coming over and she’s all excited, the baby’s all excited and she’s like regular people.

Were you well lit in this movie?

In which movie?

In the David Fincher movie?

Well lit?

He likes to be dark.

He’s very dark and he’s very upset that he’s made a beautiful film. He walks around I can’t believe I made a ******* beautiful movie.

How long ago did you wrap the film and have you seen any rough cut?

I haven’t seen anything because I don’t like to see it until it’s all done but I hear it’s incredible. I hear…it’s Fincher, what do you expect?

Exactly.

He still tried to make it dark. He had a smoke machine, he had…trust me it’s still dark where it can be. But it’s beautiful. Beautifully dark.

Is your character in the whole film or is it like in one section, I don’t really know much about this story.

She’s at the beginning she teaches Benjamin Buttons everything he needs to know and there’s a part where he goes off into the world to become a man and then he comes back and he comes back home to Momma. So there’s like one little segment that I’m not in but pretty much throughout the whole thing.

Did you have a scene with Cate?

Yeah, a couple of scenes with Cate, Brad and myself.

Is that nerve wracking acting with her?

No, I wasn’t nervous at all. They’re people that I admire but I wasn’t …if you allow yourself to get nervous then you’re not in the moment. So Taraji was gagged and in the closet somewhere.

It must be, as an actress, it must be great to play in the same scenes.

Oh, it’s just incredible and I love to drop those names. I’ve waited for you guys to say what’s next…well, I have this movie…this little film after coming off a film with Don Cheadle yeah.

Apart from the dropping of names what is it that you take, the confidence you get from working with these kinds of people—Fincher and Brad and Cate?

Well, I always saw myself as an A list actress. Who wants to be B list or C, I mean, if you do it and you’re passionate enough about it you want to be with the best because the best will certainly challenge you to be your best. So it’s no surprise, not to me. The industry may be surprised but I’m not.

How do you feel seeing yourself age?

You know what I just laughed because it’s going to happen. It’s going to happen you might as well embrace it. The people…you know I find the sexiest women especially because men don’t have to deal with it like women do especially in the business but I find the sexiest women are the older women who have embraced age, because they age gracefully. If you fight aging, your face looks like you’re fighting it. I don’t care how many times you nip, tuck, snip or do whatever you do, it’s going to fall, so you might as well let if fall naturally.

What did you hear about Fincher before you went to the project and what were you most surprised about when you were there?

I just heard that he was just this amazing director who liked to do a lot of takes. That didn’t bother me because with each take as an artist you try to find something new which is great in my opinion, you know. What was the 2nd question, what did I…

What did you find most interesting about him?

The most interesting? What was the most interesting? Just the shots. The way he set the camera up. He had like really, really interesting shots. But that’s Fincher, that wasn’t really surprising because that’s what he does.

I guess here’s a different question. What was the least amount of takes you had in any of your scenes?

All the takes where the senior citizens weren’t involved. My character runs an old folks home and a lot of the extras were senior citizens and you know they’re 80, 70 years old and they don’t move, they don’t get it and a lot of them were New Orleans locals so he would come up after the 60th take, “Taraji I swear it’s not you, it’s not you but I can’t” …I said I understand so it’s like working with animals and babies, there’s certain things you expect. You’re going to be there for 100 takes and you just go with it.

So there were never any shots that were like 10 takes or 20 takes?

Well, yeah. Once he saw how I worked which was such a huge compliment to me, you could hear the crew, “hey, Taraji’s here, the day goes faster when you’re here.” They would whisper that in my ear because I guess he really liked everything I was doing. Not to say I did 5 takes, but it certainly got to the point where we weren’t doing 50.

Thank you.

Thank you so much.

I’ll probably see you later this year for a certain Fincher movie.

You know that’s not out until ’08, they have a lot of work to do once it’s in the can, lots of CGI stuff.

http://www.collider.com/entertainment/interviews/article.asp?aid=4723&tcid=1

movie review by Linda Cook, Quad City Times (Davenport, IA) | June 24, 2007

Yes, Angelina Jolie is more than a tabloid headline. She also is a fine actress. She proves that here in “A Mighty Heart,” a dramatic recreation of the events before and during the kidnapping and death of journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.

Yes, Angelina Jolie is more than a tabloid headline. She also is a fine actress.
She proves that here in “A Mighty Heart,” a dramatic recreation of the events before and during the kidnapping and death of journalist Daniel Pearl in 2002.
The film is based on the memoir written by Mariane Pearl, Daniel’s widow, who was pregnant with their son Adam when her husband was kidnapped. Jolie portrays Mariane with the sensitivity and strength she displayed during her many interviews on television.
We first see the Pearls living in Pakistan, where Daniel (Dan Futterman, “The Birdcage”) is researching a story that involves terrorism. When he is on his way to an interview, he disappears. Mariane becomes concerned because he is late to dinner with friends, but her repeated calls receive no answer.
Eventually, Mariane begins to realize that Daniel isn’t just running late. Emails from an enigmatic group of captors lead to an international incident that ended in a tragedy which, thankfully, we do not see unfold on the screen.
Mostly, this is the story of Mariane, who remained publicly strong and determined that Daniel would be found. In the meantime, an investigative team tracks down every email, phone call and person who knew anyone linked to Daniel the night of his disappearance. The investigation is fascinating and saddening to watch, because most of the people in the audience will remember what happened Daniel Pearl.
All the way through, we see the no-nonsense Mariane thinking carefully and logically while she approaches acquaintances, friends and investigators to plead that her husband be brought home safely as soon as possible. In flashbacks, we see Mariane and Daniel when they begin their lives together and, through brief conversations during these scenes from the past, we learn how strongly they were bonded.
The scene in which Mariane learns about her husband’s fate is easily one of the most compelling on screen so far this year. If Jolie is nominated for an Academy Award, it will be because of this scene in which Mariane’s defenses are let down in a raw explosion of rage and grief.
This is the kind of movie audiences are used to seeing during the fall and winter explosion of “serious films” after the summer blockbuster season. It’s a film that’s likely to be remembered into the early 2008 film-nomination season and for years to come.

Running time: One hour and 48 minutes.
Rated: R for foul language and violence.
Stars: Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Archie Panjabi, Denis O’Hare, Aly Khan, Irfan Khan and Will Patton.
Director: Michael Winterbottom.
Screenwriter: John Orloff, based on the book by Mariane Pearl.