Angelina Lovers

( Six more big pics! )

They always look like royalty :)

Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt Meet Obama At The White House
-HuffPo

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama might be powerful and well-known, but the White House got some Hollywood star power Wednesday: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie stopped by for a chat with the chief executive.

The actors were spotted in the Oval Office by photographers waiting outside for the president to take off for a trip to Chicago.

The White House confirmed Pitt and Jolie were in town to screen Jolie's movie about Bosnian war crimes at the Holocaust museum. They dropped by so the president could talk with Jolie about her work on preventing mass atrocities and combating sexual violence against women.

Pitt was seen sporting a cane, which he's been using following a skiing injury.

It's not the first time Obama's met with one of the pair. In 2009 the president met with Pitt to discuss his working rebuilding New Orleans' Ninth Ward after Hurricane Katrina.

Jolie also met with CIA Director David Petraeus at the agency's headquarters. Jolie wanted Petraeus' perspective on cultural trends in Afghanistan for her work with Afghan refugees, an official close to the former U.S. commander in Afghanistan said, speaking anonymously to discuss the private meeting. They had a similar meeting in Baghdad in 2008.

___

AP Intelligence Writer Kimberly Dozier contributed to this report.

Disney Sets Robert Stromberg To Helm ‘Maleficent’
-Deadline.com

EXCLUSIVE: Disney has tapped Robert Stromberg to make his feature directorial debut on Maleficent, the Linda Woolverton-scripted revisionist take on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale that is being constructed as a star vehicle for Angelina Jolie to play the villainess. While Stromberg is new to the director’s chair, he is no stranger to dealing with big-ticket spectacle films. He has been production designer on Avatar and Alice In Wonderland, and Disney’s upcoming Oz The Great And Powerful. He also worked on visual effects for such films as 2012, Pirates Of The Caribbean: At World’s End and Master And Commander. Joe Roth is producing.

This gives Disney feature heads Sean Bailey and Rich Ross another tentpole feature to complement the Marvel product, with A-list talent. Maleficent stacks up alongside Oz The Great And Powerful, and the Johnny Depp-starrer The Lone Ranger. Stromberg’s repped by UTA.

Airs Thursday, Dec. 22 (tonight!)

Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Yuh Nelson: Newest Members of a Very Small Club
Hollywood's biggest actress-turned-director talks shop with the highest-grossing female director of all time: "I don't think about the gender thing very much."

It's been months since Angelina Jolie and Jennifer Yuh Nelson -- who directed Jolie in Kung Fu Panda 2 -- have seen each other. The last time they were together was for the May 22 Los Angeles premiere of the celebrated toon, which became the highest-grossing film ever directed by a woman, earning $663 million worldwide. Now, meeting up at a small Hollywood studio just after Thanksgiving, they share even more in common: Like Nelson, Jolie is now a first-time director herself and in the final stages of preparing for the Dec. 23 limited release of her Bosnian war film In the Land of Blood and Honey. She can't wait to compare notes with Nelson on the mundane details that evaded her as an actress. "Isn't it exciting when the first poster comes out?" Jolie says to Nelson before conceding that as an actress, she could always blame the director, but not this time. Although neither would label herself an activist for female causes per se, the duo are mystified as to why there aren't more women directors -- only 13.4 percent of the DGA's director members are female. To boot, Kung Fu Panda 2 is only the second animated studio pic solely directed by a woman, after The Tigger Movie. "Isn't that crazy? Animated films are so family-oriented, you'd think that there would be women," Jolie, 36, says. Like so many other female directors with less-commercial films -- Kathryn Bigelow, Jane Campion, Lisa Cholodenko -- Jolie was forced to go the indie route, since no studio wanted to back a bleak war movie with local actors set against a love story between a Muslim and a Serb. Jolie herself put up a large chunk of the $15 million budget, while Graham King's GK Films put up the rest. Jolie considers Nelson, 39, a mentor, and was so comfortable on the set of Kung Fu Panda 2 that she often brought one or more of her six kids to the studio. Both women are among a cadre of female directors gearing up for this year's awards season -- Vera Farmiga, Phyllida Lloyd and Dee Rees among them -- and the prospect is daunting. In the Land of Blood and Honey is angling for a Golden Globe nomination for best foreign language film (Jolie shot the film in both English and Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian; in the U.S., it will be released in BCS at her request), while Jeffrey Katzenberg's DreamWorks Animation is pushing hard for Kung Fu Panda 2 across multiple Oscar and Globe categories. THR senior film writer Pamela McClintock sat down with them both.

( Two more pictures and an interview )

(I have no idea how the coding got so screwed up, sorry! It's fixed, now)

Angelina Jolie responds to lawsuit over her new film
-L.A. Times Blog

Several days after Angelina Jolie was sued by an author claiming she illegally took his idea for her film about the Balkan war, Jolie responded Tuesday that she's never even read the man's book.

The author, a Croatian journalist named James Braddock, filed suit in an Illinois court this week alleging that he met three times with Eden Sarkic, Jolie's producer on her directorial debut, "In The Land of Blood & Honey," beginning in 2007. Braddock, who named Jolie in the suit along with several other defendants, is seeking an emergency injunction against the film's release. It is scheduled to arrive in U.S. theaters Dec. 23.

In an interview with 24 Frames on Tuesday, however, Jolie played down the lawsuit.

"It's par for the course. It happens on almost every film," she said, in a larger interview about the movie at a New York hotel.

Jolie's film, which she also has writing credit on, centers on a romance between a Bosnian Muslim woman and a Serbian army officer who form a relationship before war breaks out in the Balkans in 1991. They are divided once the war begins, with the latter eventually put in the unusual position of guarding his paramour at a brutal internment camp.

In his filing, Braddock said he corresponded by phone and via email with Sarkic and alleged that he contributed such elements as "plot and character development, and the story’s cultural significance and historical accuracy." He also said the idea of lovers divided by the war is similar to a plot line in his 2007 book, "A Soul Shattering."

Jolie acknowledged she drew inspiration from many sources, including books by journalists Peter Maas and Tom Gielten.

"There are many books and documentaries that I did pull from. It's a combination of many people's stories," she said. "But that particular book I've never seen."
It's not the first time that the movie has kicked up some trouble. As filming began in fall 2010, Jolie faced a backlash from a Balkan women's group over the movie's cross-ethnic romance and was at one point even in danger of not being granted a permit to film in Bosnia. The permit was granted after the script was shown not to contain the controversial element--namely a romance that blossomed after a rape-- the group claimed.

Jolie said she understood where protesters were coming from but also felt hurt by their objections.

"I felt sympathy for people for whom these issues are so sensitive," she said. "But when you're coming at something because you care so much about an area, especially women in that area, as I was, and you know the themes of the film are violence against women, then to be accused of the opposite hurts. You feel a little sickened by it."

--Steven Zeitchik, reporting from New York

Photo: Angelina Jolie poses with Bill and Jane Pitt, the parents of her partner, Brad Pitt, at the New York Premiere of "In The Land Of Blood and Honey," a film she wrote and directed. Credit: Dave Allocca /Associated Press

A war she didn't fully understand has inspired Angelina Jolie to get behind the camera for a love story set in Bosnia.

-Janine di Giovanni, Newsweek

As I sat in a restaurant in down-town Budapest it felt as if I was with another reporter or aid worker I had met over the years rather than an international movie star. Angelina Jolie had just returned from the Libyan city of Misrata, which sustained one of the bloodiest battles of the civil war. It has since become a symbol of the suffering of the people there. But despite the journey, and what she had seen in the devastated city, she was not rattled. She could flip from talking about her experiences as a first-time director to discussing systematic rape in Bosnia, her trips to Darfur, or the flood of refugees in the Horn of Africa.

“When I go somewhere, I am always willing to learn about it. I get briefings, I read books, I talk to people,” she said. “But mainly I try to go somewhere to bring awareness, to come home and pick up the phone and call someone and try to get something done.”

She took this focus and directness, this earnest approach to her new film, In the Land of Blood and Honey, which opens in the U.S. this month. She told me that when it came to the technicalities of making a film, “I wasn’t afraid to ask the DP [director of photography]. And I listened to my cast, most of whom lived through the war. I listened to their stories and tried to incorporate it into the work.” Against the backdrop of the war, she has created a moving and surprising love story of a Serbian soldier and the Bosnian woman he reencounters ambiguously during the war. It is difficult not to admire Jolie, particularly after watching her film.

At 3 a.m., after we talked mainly about the horrors of the Bosnian war—which erupted in the wake of the dismemberment of Yugoslavia in 1991, pitted the nascent countries Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia against each other along complicated ethnic and religious lines, and left an estimated 100,000 people dead—her bodyguard popped his head in. He reminded us gently that it was late. We had been talking and drinking for eight hours; still, she insisted on walking me back to my hotel so I arrived safely. “I want to make sure you’re all right,” she said.

( Read more... )

Jane Goodall Teams Up with Angelina Jolie in New Film
-People.com

Famed chimpanzee researcher Jane Goodall will soon be appearing onscreen with one of her most famous friends: Angelina Jolie.

Jane's Journey, a cinematic biography about Goodall, 77, chronicles her worldwide travels, personal footage from her childhood, and her charity work with Jolie.

"I was delighted when she told me she would be excited to be a part of the film," Goodall tells PEOPLE of Jolie, who meets with Goodall in the film inside her home to work on a sustainability project. "Sometimes, caught up in the moment, people promise to give their support but don't, or can't come through. That was not true with Angelina."

On Sept. 27, Jane's Journey will make its national debut in select theaters, along with a special live appearance by Goodall herself, in which she'll answers viewer questions.

Angelina Jolie Quashes Rumors of a Secret Wedding and Admits to Fears About Writing and Directing Her First Feature Film
-Vanity Fair

Despite recent reports, Angelina Jolie assures Vanity Fair contributing editor Rich Cohen that there is “no secret wedding” in the works for her and Pitt. “I’m not pregnant. I’m not adopting at the moment,” the star tells Cohen.

“Brad thinks I’m going to be a nightmare,” Jolie jokes, telling how directing her new movie, In the Land of Blood and Honey, has changed the way she will approach her acting career. “I had such a good experience he thinks I’m going to be impatient with directors, which I already am. I get impatient with people working on a film that have their head in their hands like it’s the most complicated thing in the world.”

“I’ve never felt more exposed. My whole career, I’ve hidden behind other people’s words,” Jolie tells Cohen of her screenwriting and feature directorial debut. “Now it’s me talking. You feel ridiculous when you get something wrong.”

“I had the flu,” Jolie says of how she came to write the script. “I had to be quarantined from the children for two days. I was in the attic of a house in France. I was isolated, pacing. I don’t watch TV and I wasn’t reading anything. So I started writing. I went from the beginning to the end. I didn’t know any other way.” She says she then let Brad take the script to read on a trip: “He called and said, ‘You know, honey, it’s not that bad.’”

Jolie admits she did not initially intend to direct the film. “It was something I didn’t trust out of my hands,” she explains. “So by default I ended up putting myself in as director.” Of her decision to use all unknown actors from the region, she says, “It couldn’t be anybody else. It’s their story. It was important that they were willing to do it. If none of them were willing, I wouldn’t have made it.”

Jolie does elaborate on Brad’s supportive role throughout the project. “He’d come in and say what he liked or what he didn’t understand. Like any woman, I would listen to most of it and fight a few things. He’s been so supportive. But it’s hard to separate the person that loves you from the critic, so I don’t think he’s a fair judge.” But she goes on to say that “people will judge for themselves. I think if you make a good movie people walk away arguing.”

Before shooting, Jolie says, she sent the script to “reporters and writers, people of Serbian and Bosnian nationality who’d been through the war. I was gauging the accuracy…. If they said no, I wouldn’t have done it.”

PHOTOGRAPH BY MERT ALAS AND MARCUS PIGGOTT.

The October issue of Vanity Fair will be on newsstands in New York and L.A. on September 1, and nationally and on the iPad September 6.

Angelina Jolie visits Croatia

ZAGREB — US actress Angelina Jolie visited the Croatian island Brijuni Friday to attend a production of Shakespeare's King Lear, local media reported.
Jolie arrived in a private plane with two of her children, the Jutarnji List daily reported in its online edition.
Before seeing the play, she met with Croatian President Ivo Josipovic and his wife Tanja, national television said.
The Hollywood star was invited to Croatia by fellow actor and friend Rade Serbedzija, who has starred in films such as 'Mission: Impossible II,' 'Batman Begins,' 'X-men: First Class' and 'Harry Potter and Deadly Hallows: Part 1.'
Jolie will spend the night in the presidential residence on Brijuni, will on Saturday meet with Josipovic to discuss the problem of landmines in Croatia. Several landmines dating from the 1991-1995 war in this former Yugoslav republic remain.
The actress made her directorial debut last year. The film recounted a love story of a Muslim woman and a Serb man against the background of Bosnia's 1992-1995 inter-ethnic war.
Copyright © 2011 AFP. All rights reserved.

In other news, there's some rumors going around that Angelina has started something called Jolie Project in regards to music, but so far the only "evidence" is a twitter account that's verified. I don't know what it's verified as, since it doesn't actually say it's Angelina, and the picture of it only has her mouth showing with a green bar along the side.

I can find absolutely no proof that this has anything to do with her; no news sites, no website from the twitter itself, no reputable blogs, etc. I'm 95% sure it's just another twit trying impersonating a celebrity (which makes no sense; why do people do this?). I'll keep you guys up to date if I find anything else about it.

Previously, US Magazine reported than Angelina took over a twitter with her name and that she might use it for charity purposes, but that twitter remains locked, untouched and unverified.

I personally don't see Angelina being the type to ever use twitter, since she keeps so busy with work and family and actually seems to shy away from living her life in any sort of spotlight.