Angelina Jolie is a Cannes Changeling

Angelina Jolie (in Dolce & Gabbana) attends the Changeling Photocall at Palais des Festivals during the 2008 Cannes Film Festival on Tuesday in Cannes, France.

Changeling is directed by Clint Eastwood and is about a mother living in Los Angeles in 1928 whose child disappears, but the boy returned to her is not her son.

Angie, 32, talked about being pregnant and traveling at the same time. “Because we have twins, we have to get to know a doctor wherever we’re based, just in case they come early,” she said.

Peep-toe pumps by Taryn Rose.

40+ more pics inside of Angie and Clint at the Changeling Photocall…

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Photos: Zibi/WENN, Pascal Le Segretain/Getty
Posted to: Angelina Jolie, Clint Eastwood, Pregnant Celebrities
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330 Comments

# 1

Angelina looks so big in the tummy and very beautiful.

# 2

she looks beautiful! no one bash her for wearing black…it is afterall, a more serious film. =)

p.s. im first on the page- something im happy about!

# 3

What a lovely surprise, Thanks jared. Angie is always gorgeous!

# 4

amazing!!!

# 6

she has to be due sooner than it says!!!

# 7

She loves her black, she loooks reeally good

http://www.flawedhollywood.com

# 8

Looking lovely as usual!!!!!

# 9
beedy eyed blue @ 05/20/2008 at 7:02 am

No way is due sooner then the papers say. She told the Today show she had a few months and that sounds right. She’s carrying twins. She’s not nearly as big as she’s going to get over the next month or so

truth hurst @ 05/20/2008 at 7:02 am

Angie is glowing, she is beautiful inside and out.

Ange is so beautifull
cant wait for the twins =]

STUNNING
thanks jared

She looks beautifulllllllllll

did you see how big j low got towards at the end…a few months is right

Pretty In Pink @ 05/20/2008 at 7:05 am

The Changeling (The Exchange) is getting rave reviews. I’m looking forward to watch it comes fall.

Angelina, may you be rewarded for all your good deeds . You and your family will always be in my prayers.

Godspeed.

Angelina Jolie acclaimed
The actress Angelina Jolie will Does an award for Best Actress for The Exchange, Clint Eatswood, presented in official competition this Tuesday? The appearance of the name of the actress U.S. generic final film was acclaimed at the meeting reserved for the press and there is no doubt that the jury chaired by Sean Penn will be sensitive to this portrait of a mother overwhelmed by the disappearance his son. Venue defend the film on the Croisette, with Brad Pitt as a bodyguard, Angelina Jolie, who expected a double happy event, is in any case the queen announced at the end of this festival.

Angelina is truly a woman of substance. May your tribe increase.

That is a really nice ring that Angelina is wearing. I wonder if that is a real diamond.

yeahhh @ 05/20/2008 at 6:58 am
she has to be due sooner than it says!!!
————————————————————–
Not necessarily, She’s bigger than usual not only because she’s carrying twins, but also because this is her second pregnancy. Women are usually bigger with their second pregnancy unlike their first!!!

I still think the babies will be born no later than late July.

This is so exciting!

Angelina Jolie you are the best and only one. :)

And now we are waiting for premiere night! Thank you Jared is still early in USA, right? ;)
Viva Cannes!!

konnitiwa @ 05/20/2008 at 7:11 am

Exchange Praise

Just spoke to a British journalist who’s just come out of Clint Eastwood’s The Exchange. “Absolutely first-rate,” he said. “It’s long” — 141 minutes — “but it’s very strong, very moving. There’s not a weak point in the entire film.” Like Mystic River before, which also dealt with a missing child and the violations that result, The Exchange is a genre piece — a kidnapping whodunit, set in 1928 — but, the journo said, Eastwood mines the material for a good deal of “complexity and emotional depth.”

Angelina Jolie, he emphasized, “is very, very good,” he said. Ditto John Malkovich as an activist minister who helps Jolie’s character, Christine Collins, uncover the truth of what’s really happened to her kidnapped son. J. Michael Straczynski’s script hammers the old-time LAPD for the corruption that was rife in that period, but “its much more of woman’s film,” the Brit emphasized. “And much more than what the plot suggests.”

Eastwood “is amazing,” he said. “He just keeps getting and better the older he gets. What is he…close to 80 now? I think he might pull of a Best Director win next weekend.”

hollywood-elsewhere.com

So natural & graceful make up.
Love her !

yeah she is beautiful, but she is also a *****. Brad was married when they first hooked up.

variety has an amazing review of the movie!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yellow Belle @ 05/20/2008 at 7:12 am

Beautiful. Here is hoping for an excellent Cannes reward.

Yeah she looks great, how is she doing it? I don t understand she so lucky, but poor people they are like in the zoo all the time

Angie looks so beautiful and nice to see CE and PG.

Thanks for the new thread Jared.

konnitiwa @ 05/20/2008 at 7:16 am

Emanuel Levy gave ‘ A ‘ to this film

(Excerpt )

The collaboration of Eastwood, who here relies again on his long-time crew of cinematographer Tom Stern and editor Joel Cox, screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski (who amazingly comes from journalism and TV), and actress Angelina Jolie, who gives a stronger dramatic performance in this picture than in “A Mighty Heart” last year, results in one of the bets pictures to be seen in Cannes Fest. Indeed, as of Day 7, “Changeling” impresses as one of the highlights of a rather lukewarm competition. Alongside Desplechin’s delirious French ensemble film “A Christmas Tale and the Turkish entry “Three Monkeys,” it’s one of the top contenders for the prestigious prize Palme d’Or.

Universal will bow the film in the late fall, the prime season for serious “meaty” movies and Oscar contenders. With strong critical support and the right handling and marketing, “The Changeling” has a good chance to receive multiple Oscar nominations in the most important categories: Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actress, and several Supporting Actors. (I realize this is only late May, but the same prediction was made in this column last year out of Cannes Fest for the Coen brothers’ “No Country for Old Men” and Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell”).

Top-notch performance … Variety

Congratulations Angie!

Wow, I hate her as a person (total media calculator) but I’m looking forward to this big time. Sounds like a great film. Clint Eastwood is a marvel.

# 21 tabitha @ 05/20/2008 at 7:09 am
I still think the babies will be born no later than late July.
———————————————————————–
You might be right, esp. if she’s due Aug 19, it’s a known fact women give birth 3 weeks to 1 month early when carrying twins.

BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

konnitiwa @ 05/20/2008 at 7:18 am

Variety review
By TODD MCCARTHY

A thematic companion piece to “Mystic River” but more complex and far-reaching, “Changeling” impressively continues Clint Eastwood’s great run of ambitious late-career pictures. Emotionally powerful and stylistically sure-handed, this true story-inspired drama begins small with the disappearance of a young boy, only to gradually fan out to become a comprehensive critique of the entire power structure of Los Angeles, circa 1928. Graced by a top-notch performance from Angelina Jolie, the Universal release looks poised to do some serious business upon tentatively scheduled opening late in the year.
Constructed around the infamous “Wineville Chicken Murders” in Riverside County, Calif., which achieved great notoriety at the time and, surprisingly, have never inspired a film before, the outstanding screenplay by J. Michael Straczynski (creator of TV’s “Babylon 5″) has deceptive simplicity and ambition to it, qualities the director honors by underplaying the melodrama and not signaling the story’s eventual dimensions at the outset. Characters and sociopolitical elements are introduced with almost breathtaking deliberation, as dramatic force and artistic substance steadily mount across the long-arc running time.

With a melancholy mood set by Eastwood’s typically spare guitar-and-piano score, the languid opening stretch stresses the ordinary nature of life for single mother Christine Collins (Jolie) and her 10-year-old son Walter (Gattlin Griffith), who share a modest house in a quiet neighborhood in Los Angeles. Christine has the photogenic job of telephone supervisor on roller-skates, overseeing dozens of female operators as they connect calls at a giant switchboard. Early sound films were loaded with scenes of smart-talking women handling phone lines; Eastwood takes advantage of the inspiration of skates to cover them in neat tracking shots.

One day when Christine is late getting home from work, Walter is gone. Nearly five months later, Christine is informed that her son has been found in Illinois. With all attendant hoopla for the benefit of the press and police, a reunion is arranged at the train station, but, as soon as the boy steps onto the platform, Christine knows this kid is not her son.

The police, fronted by Capt. J.J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan), insist otherwise, waving off definitive evidence relating to physical discrepancies. Even when Walter’s dentist, teacher and fellow students insist he’s not the right boy, the replacement himself remains maddeningly resolute, driving the otherwise level-headed Christine to distraction.

Or at least that’s the way it looks to the cops, who promptly throw her in the psycho ward for her alleged delusion. Fears that the story is now destined to veer off into “The Snake Pit” or, given Jolie’s presence, “Girl, Interrupted” looney-bin horrors prove largely unfounded, despite a couple of brief electroshock scenes. Rather, this is where the picture really spreads its wings, as ramifications of this tragic but unexceptional case seep through the police department, the legal system, the medical establishment and City Hall in entirely unexpected ways.

continued

Emanuel Levy gave ‘ A ‘ to this film
____________
link please

konnitiwa @ 05/20/2008 at 7:20 am

Initially, this is due to the tireless efforts of a crusading radio evangelist, the Rev. Gustav Briegleb (an intent, focused John Malkovich), one of whose missions is to expose what he sees as the complete corruption of the LAPD under Chief James E. Davis (Colm Feore). On Christine’s side from the beginning, the pastor persists in using her case to spotlight the department’s malfeasance, and the character is notable as one of the few screen depictions of a righteous Christian leader of this period (the era of Aimee Semple McPherson) to be cast in an entirely favorable light.

Irrevocably setting the judicial machinery in motion is a boy in his early teens (Eddie Alderson, extraordinary) who movingly tells police about some horrific murders of kidnapped boys he’s unwillingly participated in with an unhinged young man, Gordon Northcott (Jason Butler Harner), out in the desert. What happens next — to Capt. Jones, the police chief, the mayor and the murderers, among others — is all part of the public record and the less than salubrious history of Los Angeles politics.

The intercutting of two heavyweight proceedings, a murder trial and a landmark City Hall hearing, provide the story’s dramatic crescendo, although even greater tension stems from what comes thereafter. In the end, “Changeling” joins the likes of “Chinatown” and “L.A. Confidential” as a sorrowful critique of the city’s political culture.

A dozen filmmakers could have taken a dozen different approaches to the same material — sensationalistic, melodramatic, expose-minded, a kid’s or killer’s p.o.v., and so on. Perhaps the best way to describe Eastwood’s approach is that he’s extremely attentive — to the central elements of the story, to be sure (with its echoes of “A Perfect World”), but also to the fluidity between the private and the public, the arbitrariness of life and death, the distinct ways different people view the same thing, the destructive behavior of some adults toward children and the quality of life in California around the time he was born.

Despite the material’s dark themes, the Los Angeles setting helps make “Changeling” one of Eastwood’s most visually vivid films; cinematographer Tom Stern’s mobile camera has a graceful elegance, and several panoramic CGI vistas merge smoothly with location lensing to unemphatically evoke the dustier, less congested city of 80 years ago. Production designer James J. Murakami’s many sets impressively create a constant play of light and dark environments, and further period verisimilitude stems from Deborah Hopper’s costumes and the occasional presence of the extinct Red Car trolleys.

As she did in “A Mighty Heart,” Jolie plays a woman abruptly and agonizingly deprived of the person closest to her. But impressive as she may have been as the wife of Danny Pearl, her performance here hits home more directly due to the lack of affectation — no accent, frizzed hair or darkened complexion, and no attempt to consciously rein in emotion. There are inevitable one-note aspects to her Christine Collins, as she must exasperatedly repeat her positions to the authorities again and again. But Jolie makes it clear Christine maintains a grip on her sanity in the face of many assaults on its stability.

Pic offers a wealth of sterling supporting turns, from significant ones down to fleeting bit parts. The pressure felt by the police to toe the party line is deftly expressed in different ways by Donovan, Feore and Michael Kelly, the latter very fine as the cop who unearths the evidence at the murder site. Harner is startlingly unpredictable as the showboating but wimpy killer, while Geoff Pierson is commandingly charismatic as the eminent lawyer who calls the city big shots to account.

Postscript noting the fates of certain characters conveniently elides the sad and/or ironic destinies awaiting some of them.

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Thanks Jared for the pics.Once again she looks gorgeous!
I can’t wait for tonight’s red carpet!

Good luck on your new movies…… You & your family are truly blessed because you share to others your blessings.

i hope this movie will earn her another golden globe or oscar. :)

Reviews are great! I’m so excited! I can’t believe how long I will have to wait to see this movie. but the AJ picts are a brilliant consolation prize. LOL!

Next RC picts! Be warned Alia, I might start dancing. So excited!

she looks gorgeous! i love her outfit!
how do you guys now about the due date? i can´t imagine her getting bigger than she is now. she already is really realy big! but i heard that twins often come about a months early, which isn´t a problem.

You go Girl @ 05/20/2008 at 7:35 am

Lets just enjoy the reviews any awards that will come will come.

ahhh stunning!!! she’s so beautiful. The best thing to see in the morning!

konnitiwa @ 05/20/2008 at 7:38 am

Yep @ 05/20/2008 at 7:19 am Emanuel Levy gave ‘ A ‘ to this film
____________
link please
***********
I somehow could n’t put his address on Jared.
Here is all of his review.

Changeling, A
Cannes Film Fest 2008 (In Competition)–Clint Eastwood had done it again. Dramatically and artistically, his new period thriller, “The Changeling,” based on an actual case that helped bring down a corrupt police force and ushered a new era of greater legal equality, is right up there with his seminal, Oscar-winning features, “Mystic River” in 2003 and “Million Dollar Baby” in 2004

Though a historical piece set in the particular socio-cultural context–Los Angeles in March 1928–”The Changeling” is a dramatically gripping, supremely acted, technically accomplished picture that bears relevant contemporary meanings due to its central set of significant issues that continues to resonate in our lives today: the definition and structure of family as a social institution, the ineffectiveness and corruption of our main guardian institution, the police force. Add to it a strong female protagonist (splendidly played by Angelina Jolie), who begins as a misfit and weakling only to find strong reserves within herself and become a genuine heroine, and you also have a film about the nascent feminist movements of the late 1920s, with insights about the position of women (and other minorities) in society back then, with strong implications for today.

Clearly on a roll over the past decade, in which he has helmed “Mystic River,” “Million Dollar Baby,” and the back to back war films that are really companion pieces, “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters from Iwo Jima,” Eastwood is like a good old French wine, the more senior he gets in age and experience, the better, deeper, and more resonant is his work.

At 78, Eastwood is at the prime of his career. With the notable exception of John Huston, who had done some good films in his 70s and up to his death (”Wise Blood,” “Prizzi’s Honor,” “The Dead,” his very last picture), it’s hard to think of another major American director who has continues to evolve and sharpen his already commanding skills by applying them to a diversity of genres and stories.

The collaboration of Eastwood, who here relies again on his long-time crew of cinematographer Tom Stern and editor Joel Cox, screenwriter J. Michael Straczynski (who amazingly comes from journalism and TV), and actress Angelina Jolie, who gives a stronger dramatic performance in this picture than in “A Mighty Heart” last year, results in one of the bets pictures to be seen in Cannes Fest. Indeed, as of Day 7, “Changeling” impresses as one of the highlights of a rather lukewarm competition. Alongside Desplechin’s delirious French ensemble film “A Christmas Tale and the Turkish entry “Three Monkeys,” it’s one of the top contenders for the prestigious prize Palme d’Or.

Universal will bow the film in the late fall, the prime season for serious “meaty” movies and Oscar contenders. With strong critical support and the right handling and marketing, “The Changeling” has a good chance to receive multiple Oscar nominations in the most important categories: Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actress, and several Supporting Actors. (I realize this is only late May, but the same prediction was made in this column last year out of Cannes Fest for the Coen brothers’ “No Country for Old Men” and Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell”).

Before I begin my analysis, a word about the title and context of viewing Eastwood’s landmark movie. In French, the film is called “L’echange,” which translates into “The Exchange,” a better, more apt title than “The Changeling,” which brings connotations of the horror genre; the movie has its share of horrific moments but it certainly is not a horror flick.

continued

Phoebe @ 05/20/2008 at 7:31 am
There are so many dates floating around. I’d go with Jolie’s ‘a couple of months’ which = July
Hofman and Black were both joking around

Can’t wait to see this movie.

Bravo, bravo, love Angie’s hair, she should wear it like that more often. The style and the lightness of the hair makes her look even more beautiful. She looks like she is going to burst. Hope this story is not sad. But think it is a film of triumph in the end when the LAPD is expose. I am sure she will be nominated for some awards and hopefully this time an oscar.
Thanks Jared for pics!

Yeah Angelna Jolie is truly BLESS. and you know why? Despite all the hates and all the despicable comments that you haters thrown at her she turns her other cheek. She continues to do good to those less unfortunate people in the world and live her life happy and content with her family and the man she loves. The more you trolls/haters hate her the more she will be BLESS. Truly Angelina Jolie is a woman of SUBSTANCE!

She looks good! on her own. And nice to see her wearing pants and not-so-exposed for a change.

My My My I have been enjoying these past few threads. I love how she cjamged it up wardrobe wise. It was probably a little cool too. she looks like an executive rather than the actress! Lovely. Jared didn’t the movie’s title change? I read a few threads back that they changed the name. Is this true?

konnitiwa @ 05/20/2008 at 7:43 am

Universal will bow the film in the late fall, the prime season for serious “meaty” movies and Oscar contenders. With strong critical support and the right handling and marketing, “The Changeling” has a good chance to receive multiple Oscar nominations in the most important categories: Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actress, and several Supporting Actors. (I realize this is only late May, but the same prediction was made in this column last year out of Cannes Fest for the Coen brothers’ “No Country for Old Men” and Schnabel’s “The Diving Bell”).

Before I begin my analysis, a word about the title and context of viewing Eastwood’s landmark movie. In French, the film is called “L’echange,” which translates into “The Exchange,” a better, more apt title than “The Changeling,” which brings connotations of the horror genre; the movie has its share of horrific moments but it certainly is not a horror flick.

It just happened that I saw “The Changeling” early in the morning, right after a late night screening of James Gray’s “Two Lovers,” which is also in the main competition. Eastwood’s work would have shone in any context, but coming after yet another disappointing film from Gray, the contrast was all the more striking (Yes, I know, Gray is much younger, and has made only four films, but he shows few signs of improvement as writer or director).

The new saga begins on a sunny Saturday morning in a modest home in a working class suburb of Los Angeles, when single mother Christine Collins (Jolie) says goodbye to her nine-year old son Walter, sending him to school, before she leaves for her job as a telephone operator. Hours later, when Christine returns home, she faces the worst nightmare any parent can experience: the vanishing of her son.

Walter has disappeared without a trace. The initial search for him proves fruitless. Devastated, Christine refuses to accept the new reality but begins to realize that Walter will never be found. However, when a boy claiming to be Walter was discovered in DeKalb, Illinois, Christine and the others involved in the search wait with bated breath. Letters and photos were exchanged, and the authorities believed the missing person case had been solved. Collins scrapped together the money to bring the boy home, and LAPD organized a very public photo-op reunion with the found child and anxious mother. Hoping to put a stop to the scrutiny surrounding their inability to solve this case (and others) and desperate for uplift from human-interest success to counter the string of corruption scandals, members of the department hope the reunion would spell public redemption for LAPD’s top brass.

Dazed and bewildered by the turns of events and swirl of cops, reporters, and photographers, Christine is persuaded to take the boy home. Confused and disoriented, she agrees, and the case presumably closed. Or did it? The “only” problem is that the child who arrived home was not Walter. Nonetheless, despite her immediate and repeated declarations that the boy is not hers, Collins is rebuffed by Captain J. J. Jones, the officer in charge of the case. Christine is told-and that was recounted from the City Council hearing transcripts–to “try him for a couple of weeks.”

However, from the first moment of reencountering the boy, her emotions are conflicted, and in her inner heart, she begins to suspect that the boy is not her Walter.

While pressuring the authorities to keep looking for her real son, Christine learns some realities about the position of women in Prohibition-era Los Angeles, particularly single women of the lower classes. And in is in these chapters, that the real dramatic conflicts begin to unfold. Women are not supposed to challenge the system and its mainstream institutions. Like other femme (and minorities), Christine is subject to profiling and rigid stereotyping: She is slandered as unfit, deviant, and delusional. Needing support, Christine finds an ally in Reverend Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), a community activist who helps her to fight the city authorities in looking for her missing son.

Eastwood and his scenarist are excellent at showing both the workings (and corruption) of the police department and the political machine, forces that continue to question Christine’s sanity, and the mass public’s thirst for sensationalism on the one hand and eagerness for happy (fairy-tale like) endings to problems on the other.

Bridging the personal and the political domains, the filmmakers place the case against the broader context of Los Angeles in its formative era, during years of personal and public scandals, such as the kidnapping of evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson in 1926. Polanski’s seminal noir, “Chinatown,” about city corruption vis-à-vis real estate and water supply is set a few years later, in the early Depression.

Back in 1928, L.A. was in the grips of a despotic political infrastructure, led by Mayor George E. Cryer and enforced by Police Chief James E. “Two Guns” Davis (often photographed in a gunslinger pose with his weapons) and his sanctioned gun squad that terrorized the city at will. That despotic rule began to unravel with the Collins and other cases. After months of fruitless searching, the police had nothing to show, save an onslaught of negative publicity and mounting public pressure to find a solid lead in the kidnapping.

But what counts the most in “The Changeling” is the dramatic center: The gripping tale of a scandal and the emergence of a new type of heroine. Indeed, in her indefatigable search, and through dealing with various, insurmountable obstacles, Christine evolves into an unlikely, almost reluctant heroine, a spokesperson for the poor classes and downtrodden individuals who have been consistently and methodically abused, ignored, and swept aside by the police, political, and other authority machines.

In her one-woman’s quest, Chritsine joins a whole line of American working class heroines, such as Norma Rae (Sally Field), Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep), Erin Brockovich (Julia Roberts), and most recently Charlize Theron as a coal miner activist in “North Country.” Each of these women is an idiosyncratic individual in her own right, and I don’t want to suggest that they represent the same type, only to suggest the notion of misfit, disenfranchised women who embark on a journey of self-discovery through which they commit themselves to the welfare of a larger cause than their personal problems. In this respect, “The Changeling” could have easily be retiteld or subtitled, “Christine Collins.”

Thematically, “The Changeling” bears resemblance to Agniezska Holland’s French film, “Olivier, Olivier,” as well as Ben Affleck’s “Gone Baby Gone,” which also revolves around the missing of a young girl and the police role in the kidnapping. Linking those two pictures is the great Amy Ryan, who was nominated for an Oscar for playing the irresponsible mother in “Gone Baby Gone,” and in “The Changeling” plays Carol Dexter, a fellow innocent prisoner, who helps Christine during her lockdown in a mental ward.

Just in case you thought is a solely femme-driven saga, the accomplished ensemble includes half a dozen fully developed male characters, such as Captain J. J. Jones (Jeffrey Donovan), as the head of the LAPD Juvenile Investigation Unit assigned to find Walter, and Detective Lester Ybarra (Michael Kelly), who plays the crucial role of the officer, who is the first to suggest a link between Walter’s disappearance and another crime.

Other impressive roles include LAPD Police Chief James E. Davis (Colm Feore) the head of the corrupt department, and a serial killer, Gordon Northcott (Jason Butler Harner), who may or may not have clues to Walter’s vanishing.

Thanks for the new thread, Jared

Mama Angie is beautiful, all the pictures are just wonderful. Can’t wait to see what she wears tonight. :)

The mos beautiful woman in the world, no doubt about it!

Observation deck @ 05/20/2008 at 7:47 am

The rumor is that this film may actually win the prize for Best Film.

Angelina looks lovely.

Daniel (the fan) @ 05/20/2008 at 7:47 am

She’s looking better & better each day. As an actress she’s so versatile. That’s why I love her. Not to forget her philantrophic works.

Mr and Mrs Smith @ 05/20/2008 at 7:48 am

Congratulations Angie. :0

A review from Screendaily (again found it at awardsdailyforums.com)

Wrenching emotional drama from Clint Eastwood will ride a wave of critical acclaim and awards not least for Angelina Jolie in a career best performance, says Mike Goodridge

Clint Eastwood’s late-life renaissance continues at full steam with a typically understated and emotionally wrenching drama based on true events from Los Angeles in 1928. Beautifully produced and guided by Eastwood’s elegant, unostentatious hand, it also boasts a career-best performance by Angelina Jolie who has never been this compelling. Like Mystic River in 1993, it should go all the way from the Palais to the Academy Awards next March.

In box office terms, The Exchange, only recently retitled from Changeling, has some challenges, notably a long running time and a harrowing subject matter which will make parents everywhere think twice before seeing it. But like other Eastwood films before it - Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby - it will ride on a wave of critical acclaim and awards, and rack up hefty grosses domestically. Mystic River grossed $90m domestically and $66.5m in international, Million Dollar Baby did $100.4m and $120m respectively.

Eastwood wastes no time in setting the scene. Jolie plays a working class single mother called Christine Collins who takes the tram every morning, drops off her nine year-old son Walter off at his school and goes on to her job as a telephone operator.

One Saturday (March 10 to be precise), Christine is called in to work and leaves Walter at home. When she returns, he has disappeared. An exhaustive search follows for several months to no avail, but five months later, when she has all but given up hope, police captain JJ Jones (Donovan) arrives at her workplace to announce that the boy has been found in Ilinois.

However, when he reaches Union Station in Los Angeles in a mass of cops, reporters and photographers, Christine is shocked to see that the boy isn’t Walter. Afraid that he and the force will be embarrassed, Jones persuades her to take the child home, but, her worry for the real Walter reignited, she returns to the police the following day with irrefutable proof that the boy isn’t hers - he is not only three inches shorter than Walter but he is circumcised whereas Walter wasn’t.

As her despair for her son and her anger at the captain’s inaction intensifies, she is approached by a community activist (Malkovich) who has a weekly radio broadcast in which he rails against the city’s notoriously corrupt police force. He helps her mount a campaign to take on the system which is now questioning her sanity and fitness as a mother.

If the synopsis sounds like a woman-against-the-system story a la Erin Brockovich, the similarities end there. As played by Jolie, Collins is no vulgar broad with a push-up bra and shovelfuls of sass but a dignified, quiet woman whose fury is tempered by her maternal fears for her son’s safety.

Nor does the Collins story proceed in a conventionally inspiring way. As Jones has her committed to a sanatorium and she begins a period of menacing incarceration, Eastwood concurrently introduces another plotline in the desert outside Los Angeles where Detective Lester Ybarra (Kelly) is pursuing an illegal teen from Canada for deportation and stumbles across a horrifying crime spree.

Eastwood’s forte has always been as a storyteller with the most unobtrusive style. Yet he records the events in front of the camera with such a humanist eye that the resultant power of his material is immense. Indeed, for all the battle against injustice in this story, his compassion for a mother longing to have her son back is always his primary concern.

Jolie plays along with the general restraint, giving her most internal performance to date, while the supporting cast - notably Donovan, Kelly and Amy Ryan as a prostitute also wrongly incarcerated by the police - is uniformly fine.

Thanks Jess0!

Andrómeda @ 05/20/2008 at 7:53 am

Good morning everybody!!.
Beatiful!!. Thanks JJ

Bravo Angelina gorgeous as ever,love you beautiful lady.

Mediterranean @ 05/20/2008 at 7:55 am

After seeing the video of yesterday on TMZ, now it’s so clear why Brad and Angie keep Shiloh at home most of the time.

Please watch and pay attention Shiloh’s expression when they left the boutique. She was scared. God please protect this precious baby. Because there are many maniacs out there.

Brad & Angelina’s Star-Studded Dinner
By Nancy Wilson and Peter Mikelbank

The Jolie-Pitts left their brood at home Monday night for a leisurely dinner on the Cotes d’Azur with Clint Eastwood and Mick Jagger.

Brad Pitt, 44, and Angelina Jolie, 32, joined their celebrity pals and about eight other guests – including Rush Hour director Brett Ratner – for an evening of bouillabaisse, grilled langouste (warm-water lobster) and white wine.

The group arrived at Restaurant Tetou in Golfe-Juan – about three miles from Cannes – at around 8:30 p.m. Rolling Stone Mick Jagger, 64, was the first to leave, and the whole party broke up around midnight.

“Angelina and Brad are adorable,” a waitress tells PEOPLE. “They are so in love. The whole table was super nice.”

Film legend Eastwood, 77, directed Jolie in Changeling, which premieres at the Cannes Film Festival Tuesday. (Jolie and Pitt are expected to walk the red carpet.)

Earlier in the day, the couple – who are expecting twins – nipped out for some baby clothes shopping.

http://www.people.com/people/article/0,,20201307,00.html

Andrómeda @ 05/20/2008 at 7:56 am

This movie sounds amazing!!.Can´t wait to see it.
Wish the best for her, Brad and the children!!.

she looks stunningly beautiful

eastwood and anjie!wanna ask for more? nah!

The film’s title is The Exchange now, so Jared, you’ll have to stop with all the bad Changeling puns.

So happy it’s being well-received. Sounds like we’ll all have more awards red carpets in our futures. ;)

Observation deck @ 05/20/2008 at 8:03 am

Mediterranean @ 05/20/2008 at 7:55 am

No one has to watch anything. It;s just assumed that all children are scared by commotion. Frankly I don’t think the children should be seen. It’s not about them after all. Just dont fall into the trap of the trolls baiting you with question of why this or that child is not seen .Who cares? It’s a trick to get you to get into some inane argument like they really care. Just ignore and move on.

OMG!!! Angie looks stunning. So, so beautiful and radiant. Thank you so much Jared for the pics. And many thanks to those of who provided all the glowing reviews. Wow…the reviewers consider this her best role to date. Outstanding!!! Yayyyyyy! Can’t wait to see it.

nikomilinko @ 05/20/2008 at 8:07 am

I was waiting for this. Angie is beautiful.

http://www.incentria.com/index.php?ref=nikomilinko

Thanks Konnitiwa & Mr. & Mrs. Smith for the reviews. And thanks Belle for the People link. :)

thanks to the reviews!!!happy for anjie and eastwood!

Congratulations to Changeling, Clint, Angie and the rest of the crew.

Well-deserved praises from the critics.

Tomodachi @ 05/20/2008 at 8:14 am

Hoping for the best. Congratulations and Good luck Changeling.

Immaculate Heart @ 05/20/2008 at 8:14 am

Best wishes to Angie, Clint. I am keeping my fingers crossed for the best of the best to come for Changeling.

The Exchange? I don’t know if I like it. There are better names for this movie but it pretty much gives you the plot right there.

later…

#50:nyc So well said,Thank-You ! also thanks to Jared for new thread and also konnitiwa great comments and also to the other Jolie-Pitt Fans Posting,Good Morning,and Blessings to the Jolie-Pitt Fans,and Blessings to our Beautiful Family the Jolie-Pitts,Also ……….Praying That St.Michael Protector from all evil will keep Angelina and Brad and children out of Harms way.we ask this in Christ’s Name.Peace be with All of you to-day.

Mediterranean @ 05/20/2008 at 8:18 am

Observation deck,

If you don’t like to watch, then don’t watch it.

I am not falling into anything. I felt so sad when I saw the fear on Shiloh’s face and I am nothing else but just a fan. I just feel for her and her parents. I can only guess how her parents feel and think when they see the fear on their baby’s face.

Shiloh can’t and won’t have a “normal” life, unfortunately. Just because her parents are so famous.

Brad and Angie are loved, admired, respected by millions. But some of the fans (?) can cause fear to their precious baby.

This subject is like a knife which has two sharp sides.

me @ 05/20/2008 at 7:16 am Wow, I hate her as a person (total media calculator) but I’m looking forward to this big time. Sounds like a great film. Clint Eastwood is a marvel.
_____________________

I am even more impressed when haters say this. Because it’s a FACT, that idiots like Paltrow and Maniston, and almost everyone else in Hollywood, pay 15% of their income to hired hands to do THEIR ‘media calculating,’ Angelina keeps that $ for herself (or let’s say she keeps it, so she can give it away), becauses she’s smart enough, and brave enough to not need PR.

That said, bugger off hater!

I am so squeeing over these AMAZING reviews for Clint and Angie BOTH, it’s just wonderful!! :-D YEAHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Thanks for all the great reviews and news you guys!! bdj, someone is doing your job this morning! lol :-D

Mr and Mrs Smith @ 05/20/2008 at 7:48 am
A review from Screendaily (again found it at awardsdailyforums.com)

The Exchange, only recently retitled from Changeling
______________________________________________________

Great! The Exchange is a better title.

Please let this be a clean thread. No need to engage the trolls.

IGNORE the Trolls. No need to defend Angie, she is untouchable and is flying high. Thanks to all the fans .. Take a deep breath before you hit the “submit button”. You can answer and type your reply but think very hard. Is it worth the time and attention?

Just a thought from a fan who admires what Angie and Brad are doing to help those who are not as lucky as they are.

It is your choice. I am just suggesting what I normally do. I know it is hard not to respond. Trolls are here for one purpose only, to destroy Angie and Brad. THINK!!!!!! Let us enjoy what this day will bring us.

Looks like another little Shiloh and A Brad Pitt Jr is growing inside Angelina’s womb.

Croatian girl @ 05/20/2008 at 8:36 am

beautiful lady!!!! nice adn I like her natural make up…

In the News @ 05/20/2008 at 8:38 am

Eastwood drama gets Cannes applause

Changeling, Clint Eastwood’s latest film starring Angelina Jolie, got a warm round of applause at its press screening in Cannes where it is competing for the top prize.

The Changeling, to get its official premiere later in the day, tells the story of single mother Christine Collins (Jolie) in 1920s California whose nine-year-old son Walter goes missing.

Months later police turn up with a boy they say is Walter, whom Christine takes home, but she knows in her heart he is not Walter.

Helped by community activist Gustav Briegleb (John Malkovich), she battles against all the odds to prove it and in doing so brings down an entire police department.

Eastwood is back in Cannes vying for the Palme d’Or in spite of mixed acclaim here for his 2003 entry Mystic River.

http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=566401

http://www.screendaily.com/ScreenDailyArticle.aspx?intStoryID=38805
(Entire article at link)
Clint Eastwood’s late-life renaissance continues at full steam with a typically understated and emotionally wrenching drama based on true events from Los Angeles in 1928. Beautifully produced and guided by Eastwood’s elegant, unostentatious hand, it also boasts a career-best performance by Angelina Jolie who has never been this compelling. Like Mystic River in 2003, it should go all the way from the Palais to the Academy Awards next March.

AMAZING REVIEWS FOR THIS MOVIE!! WOW! ANOTHER OSCAR!!!