Angelina Jolie Shops Toys ‘R’ Us For Tots

They showed the Benjamin Button trailer at the Indiana Jones premeire yesturday. This is according to IMDB users.

tom cruise vs. brad
will smith vs. brad
johnny depp vs. brad
madonna vs. angelina
george clooney vs. brad
matt damon vs. brad
gwyneth paltrow vs. angelina
megan fox vs. angelina
vince vaughn vs. brad
paul sculfor vs. brad
john mayer vs. brad
jennifer vs. angelina

the trolls are obviously the ones making brad and angelina THE STANDARD. otherwise, why try to pit everyone against them?

# 394 Heather @ 05/22/2008 at 6:00 am
in the video that someone posted earlier from inside Changeling screeing.it seems Angelina wanted a kiss from brad so bdly.she kept looking at him and smile,like she was waiting for hug or kiss so badly.I wonder why brad didn’t give her any!!
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I thought she was thinking of hugging him just to stop him from embarrasing her. Brad was just so proud. I think a kiss there would have been a bit inappropriate because the whole room was clapping not just Brad. Melting into Brad’s arms would have been nice but I’m glad she didn’t shy away from her moment.

http://www.filmstew.com/showArticle.aspx?ContentID=17276
Oscar Watch
(Critical buzz building for AJ, Eastwood and Changeling)
An Actor’s Director
Nearly four decades after steering Play Misty for Me’s Jessica Walter to a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress, Clint Eastwood continues to demonstrate a knack for collaborative brilliance.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 at 3:55 PM
By J. Sperling Reich

Warner Bros. Photo
Moulded by a mighty director

Having guided Sean Penn to the 2003 Best Actor Oscar for Mystic River and Hilary Swank to 2004 Best Actress honors for Million Dollar Baby, Clint Eastwood appears to have an early beat on a trifecta of sorts with his newest drama Changeling. The buzz among a number of critics at this year’s Cannes Film Festival is that star Angelina Jolie stands a good chance of returning to the category for which she was nominated last year for A Mighty Heart.

“I read this script and I just couldn’t forget it,” the actress revealed during a press conference attended with Eastwood. “I think the character of Christine in Changeling is dealing with this certain period where women did not have the right to speak up the way Mariane Pearl did.”

“As a very modern and outspoken woman myself, I knew that was going to be a challenge,” she added. “It did feel very different to me, even though there are very similar themes [to A Mighty Heart] in it.”

Based on historical events, Changeling is set in the Los Angeles of 1928, where Christine Collins (Jolie) is raising her son Walter as a single mother. When Walter disappears, a frantic nationwide search is conducted by what turns out to be a crooked police department. Collins’ plight eventually turns into a harrowing tale involving political corruption, a ruthless serial killer and a headline-grabbing legal battle that riveted the city for years to come.

Eric Ryan/Getty Images Photo
Still making it look effortless

For Jolie, starring in the film turned out to be therapeutic. A few months before shooting on Changeling began, her mother died after a seven-year battle with ovarian cancer. The actress says she saw in Christine many of the same traits her mother had possessed.

“In many ways, my mother was very passive and very, very sweet,” Jolie explained. “But when it came to her children, she was a lion. So the film was a way to revisit with my mother and spend time with her, and in that way it was very healing for me.”

Changeling is the sixth film Eastwood has accompanied to Cannes as a director, his last being Mystic River. And though the nearly 78-year-old icon has at this point won everything that matters, he’s still happy to be in competition on the Riviera.

“It seems like if you are going to a festival that has a competition, you might as well be in the competition,” he shrugged. “Whether the film wins anything is totally out of your hands, but playing it out of competition is kind of playing it safe. It’s like saying ‘I’m above that.’”

“I’m not above it; I put it out there for what it is,” Eastwood continued. “It’s nice to be here with the audience and I hope they enjoy the film.”

Though Eastwood does not appear in Changeling (save for the credits), he insists it’s not because he didn’t want to. Rather, there simply wasn’t a role for him in this one. “I’m gradually, as you’ve probably noticed, working my way around to spending more time behind the camera than in front,” Eastwood deadpanned. “That’s something that is an inevitability.”

Much like the notion of an actor headlining a Clint Eastwood directorial effort going on to garner critical and industry accolades.

http://featuresblogs.chicagotribune.com/talking_pictures/2008/05/eastwoods-chang.html

Eastwood’s ‘Changeling’ has a friend at the top
CANNES, France—Around the world to a wide variety of cinephiles, the name “Clint Eastwood” symbolizes classical Hollywood craftsmanship as very few practice or preach it anymore. The man who played the Man With No Name evokes a more concrete image as well. Under a hot sun in the Old West, or seething his way through liberal-sinkhole San Francisco, glowering and squinting and itching to exact brutal justice on some deserving loser: That’s Clint. That’s the American way.

Since “Unforgiven,” though, across uneven films and good ones and, by most yardsticks, a great one or two, Eastwood the director has developed a notably tougher outlook on the human cost of all that mayhem. “Letters From Iwo Jima,” the more assured and lasting of his two Iwo Jima dramas, is the work of a seasoned sensibility.

Eastwood’s new film, which has Oscar bait written all over it, premiered this week at the Cannes Film Festival. It’s a 1920s true-crime drama called “Changeling.” Eastwood is one of four American directors competing with a grandly international slate for this year’s Palme d’Or, to be announced Sunday. The iconic director was here five years ago with “Mystic River,” which didn’t win.

“Changeling,” a thematically related story of child abduction, has a decent shot in this solid but not spectacular Cannes line-up. It’s leisurely but absorbing—grave pulp told with a familiarly ashen palette, reuniting Eastwood with his usual collaborators, including cinematographer Tom Stern and editor Joel Cox. It does not strike me as a major work, but it does continue Eastwood’s reputation for reliable craftsmanship.

The script by ex-journalist J. Michael Stracyznski relishes its two-dimensionally stark contrasts between good and evil. But the story it relays casts a wide net over 1920s Los Angeles corruption, and Angelina Jolie is fearsomely good in a role likely to bring her an Oscar nomination.

Pure rage

As Christine Collins, she tears into scenes of pure rage reminiscent of everything from “Frances” to “Mystic River.” The woman’s 9-year-old-son Walter disappears one day in 1928. Five months later the L.A.P.D. LAPD reunites Collins with her son, picked up outside De Kalb, Ill. But at the train platform in L.A., in front of a compliant gaggle of reporters, she realizes instantly the boy delivered to her care isn’t hers. The police don’t want to hear about it. They commit her to a psychiatric hospital, shut her up, paint her alternately as an unfeeling stoic or a typical stereotypical feminine hysteric.

It’s a long film, 141 minutes. The sickening doings of a serial killer (Jason Butler Harner), while based on a little-known case, keep “Changeling” firmly in the tradition of James Ellroy’s L.A., where no act of depravity can ever outdo the next one.

Jolie’s character is as much a mission as a woman. The director scored with a similarly archetype in “Million Dollar Baby,” and Jolie goes to town as Collins, supporting each emotional blowout and carefully modulated attack. She’s one of the few screen actors we have with the emotional resources and the technical facility to pull off the big stuff, the “I want my son! I WANT MY SON!!” moments we’ll likely see excerpted on Oscar night.

This mixture of kidnapping mystery, serial killer saga and courtroom drama also features strong supporting work from John Malkovich as a radio minister who takes up Collins’ cause; Denis O’Hare as a steely psychiatric doctor who, for a few bruising days, becomes Collins’ jailer; and Amy Ryan as Collins’ confidant and fellow victim of an unchecked police department.

Another kidnapping

The story’s child-endangerment theme relates to “A Perfect World” as well as “Mystic River”; in “Changeling,” the scenes depicting the ongoing, compliant media circus and behind-the-scenes masters of image-manipulation recall the more recent “Flags of Our Fathers.” Eastwood laments the evil that the worst of these characters do. He also realizes the storytelling allure of that evil.

Will Eastwood’s “Mystic River” colleague Sean Penn tip things Eastwood’s way come awards night Sunday? He can’t act alone, but Penn is the Cannes Film Festival jury president this year, and his remarks a week ago indicated an interest in his jury’s selection of a Palme d’Or winner “very aware of the times in which he or she lives.” In other words, substance over style. A social conscience put to the service of a compelling yarn. “Changeling” is anti-police corruption and anti-serial killing. It’s no more political than that. Yet it has the aura of gravity, and of effective Hollywood seriousness.

I surely don’t think the Palme will go to another American competition entry, James Gray’s “Two Lovers,” the latest from the director of “Little Odessa,” “The Yards” and “We Own the Night.” The French have a mysterious allegiance to this modestly talented filmmaker, and his newest film reworks Dostoevskiy’s “White Nights” as a 1950s-style Brighton Beach story of Leonard (Joaquin Phoenix), a sweet but emotionally troubled fellow straight out of Paddy Cheyefsky Chayefsky and “Marty,” but without the brute emotional force.

Heir apparent to the family dry-cleaning business, Leonard’s caught between a hard-partying shiksa (Gwyneth Paltrow) and the Jewish dish (Vinessacq Shaw) who finds his antics and indecision charming beyond measure. Well-acted balderdash, this film is just too slight for serious award consideration.

Evoking the images and archetypes of “On the Waterfront,” among others, “Two Lovers” glides along comfortably for an hour. And then you realize its relationships don’t feel like life or drama. They feel instead like bits of many different films, repurposed.

http://glickreport.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2008/05/19/a-long-overdue-trip/
Great interview that gives an update on MIR. Posted before but for those who might have missed it. Video at link

I also talked to Tom Darden, director of Brad Pitt’s initiative to rebuild New Orleans, the Make it Right Foundation, as well as a makeup artist LeDiedra Baldwin who left after Hurricane Katrina and returned last fall for the Fox television show K-Ville, which has since been cancelled. Pitt has pledged more than $5 million to rebuild the lower Ninth Ward. His goal is to build 150 homes at the outset. So far the foundation has broken ground on six homes which it hopes will be complete by the end of this summer. It’s one of the best and most highly publicized stories in the post-Katrina era because it’s about revitalizing the area that was hardest hit, and where the residents had the most to lose.

Thanks to simplybrad forum.

comments of fans who just saw the trailer

Quote:
The graphics are amazing, as the trailer is a mini short as we see each of the characters transformations in a very quick manner. The trailers emphasis is obviously on Brad, as we see him transform into a younger man.

The trailer ends with something like

A: “You are so young..”

B:”Only on the outside..”

All in all, in showed what we all expect from this movie.

Alot of romance, looked like some very sad and funny moments as well.

Quote:
Alot of quick shots during the course of the trailer. We start off with a clock moving. We see Brad go through some cycles as an old man, which are extremely well done in my opinion. We see Brad observing himself in the mirror as he ages backwards. In general, this is the astounding aspect of the trailer, and probably the entire movie.

He seems to really enjoy his motorcycle, as he takes off on his motorcycle a few good times in the trailer.

Towards the end of the trailer, we are introduced very breifly to Blanchett. A few scenes show them in love and about to make love. And I believe the final shot in the trailer was a very young Brad meeting an older Blanchett, cue the lines in the OP.

Just in general, this movie looks really good and I’ve been really looking out for it for the longest time. It looks beautiful from every angle, and epic on an emotional scale. Great vibes and its cool I’m one small sample pop who have been able to see this trailer!

Quote:
Just came back from Indiana Jones 4, the midnight show, and unexpectedly this played before the film.
The trailer for Benjamin Button was outstanding. I was absolutley blown away. I think this will be considered Fincher’s magnum opus, words can;t describe how beautiful the trailer was, let alone the whole film I’m sure. This can’t be released soon enough

http://www.makeitrightnola.org

Good morning all:
I have a faster and new home computer, so watch out Mr. Moderation I am coming for ya and I am finally in the 21st century.

Hens just can’t be satisfied with the fake PR Romance of the century(Whiny and Peeboy). They have to constantly whine, examine every picture and videos of the Jolie-Pitts. Mama Angie has gotten critical acclaim so the hens are back to doing what they do best, whine about BP and AJ relationship. Just be happy for whiny, hens. No need to concern yourself with BAMPZS. Worry about Madge and Guy, fishstick and missing rocker husband, and assorted celebrities and their angsts. Best wishes to AJ on a happy, peaceful and healthy delivery. Thanks for all the updates Just Jared. Peace to all.

i hope angie win aN Oscar nomination for this role.

http://clixncash.com/index.php?p=1&ref=nikomilinko

i’ll forget bout oscar.hate it like the last time.dont care anymore,as long as anjie is happy with her babies poppa,datz wat matters to me.fish,face,paste,faste…nah! i mean this one PEACE!!!

jess0 @ 05/22/2008 at 7:27 am

Agree.

The moment was Angie’s and Clint’s. Clint’s wife and Brad were showing the same appreciation for great performances and achievement as was everyone else. Angie, Clint, Brad, and Dina were all teary. Angie and Clint seemed overcome. Brad has such great pride in Angie, he really really loves her.

They looks so beautiful together, I’m glad Brad decided to leave the x for Angie. They are so into family & they are perfect for each other. Nice to see them shopping for their kids. Family first for both of them.