When Joss Whedon first dropped Angelina Jolie's name while talking up his doomed Wonder Woman project, folks assumed he'd envisioned her in the lead role. Speaking with Rookie Magazine, he clarified: His Diana Prince, Amazon goddess, was merely Angelina-esque in her globe-trotting humanitarian leanings. And in a way, the superheroine would have been saved by love. Whedon explains after the jump.
more »
AFI Fest's "secret" screening of Steven Soderbergh's Haywire wasn't so much a showcase for the AFI darling as it was a coming out party for MMA bruiser-cum-action heroine Gina Carano, whom Soderbergh glimpsed fighting one night on TV and subsequently built a star-studded spy thriller pic around. But it's hard to say if first-time actor Carano will branch out in a film career beyond the often lo-fi action experiment. Is she a hybrid of Angelina Jolie and Steven Seagal, as Soderbergh suggested Sunday night? Or is there more of a Cynthia Rothrock quality to Carano's steely gaze and powerhouse physicality?
more »
Speaking with the U.K.'s Telegraph, Angelina Jolie addressed the inevitable comparisons between her future performance as Egyptian pharaoh Cleopatra and Elizabeth Taylor's iconic 1963 turn. "My performance will never be as lovely as Elizabeth's," she demurred, explaining that her David Fincher-directed version will be a more realistic biopic. For example, this Cleopatra won't be a seducer. So what can you look forward to from Jolie's Queen of the Nile?
more »
The Pitt-Jolie brood made their way to the South of France this week with matching his-and-hers festival offerings, starting with Angelina's animated sequel Kung Fu Panda 2. (Brad's much-anticipated Tree of Life debuts Monday; follow Movieline's complete Cannes coverage here.) Among the hot topics of inquiry international press had for Angie: Her kids, the state of animation, and that mysterious tattoo she recently added to her collection. Are there more additions to the clan in the works?
more »
It's a good week to be an animation fan, what with Rango garnering rave reviews and a new trailer for the Shrek spin-off Puss in Boots hitting the web. (Unless, like me, you caught the Puss in Boots teaser in theaters at midnight in front of the aptly-named Beastly. Not a smart life choice, in retrospect.) But what mystical, family-friendly, Eastern-influenced laughs await us in the new trailer for Kung Fu Panda 2?
more »
Somewhere midway through Phillip Noyce's exhilarating, over-the-top yet strangely modest action-thriller Salt, Angelina Jolie, as on-the-run CIA agent Evelyn Salt, ducks into a ladies' room to dress a nasty-looking flesh wound -- with a maxi-pad. It's an elegant and ingenious solution to a sticky problem. But then, Salt is a do-it-yourselfer, a resourceful spy who has been trained by the best. She can fashion last-minute weapons from common household items (fire-extinguisher flamethrower, anyone?) and leap off overpasses onto moving semi-trucks with the grace of a lemur (a creature that, with her wide-open, smoky-rimmed eyes, she somewhat resembles). Salt could surely, as an old perfume commercial -- borrowing straight from Peggy Lee -- used to say, bring home the bacon and fry it up in the pan. But who'd want to watch that?
more »
