A statement issued by city’s authorities Wednesday said it made the decision in recognition of Jolie’s role in preserving the “truth about the war” in Bosnia, through her directorial debut “In the Land of Blood and Honey.”

The spokeswoman for the Sarajevo Canton, Lamija Bojadzic, said Wednesday it was not yet clear if Jolie will attend a May 3 ceremony in Sarajevo.

Source: Washington Post

“She is expected to focus on large scale crises resulting in mass displacement of people, to undertake advocacy and represent UNHCR and Guterres at the diplomatic level”

These types of prestigious roles are normally awarded to former diplomats and retired politicians, but Jolie has clearly demonstrated herself as an expert on difficult and complex refugee issues and a compassionate champion of their needs. Through her more than 40 field visits to countries around the world, she has become very familiar with the countries most in need and for long term lasting solutions for these situations.

It was over a decade ago that she took her first trip to Sierra Leone to witness first hand the sheer horror and endless atrocities that refugees there had experienced. Where a life works is daily survival. In her book “Notes from my Travels” she articulates the strength and grace of people of have experienced so much hardship. From Sierra Leone, to the Congo, to Cambodia, Jolie worked tirelessly to better understand the regions and the complexity of the issues that they face. And, even despite being left stranded to fend for herself (After a Hollywood studio canceled the plane they had promised would pick her up in the Congo) she has never forgotten or stopped working to help improve the conditions of those most vulnerable

A remarkable woman on a remarkable journey to help make the lives of those most in need just a little easier.

Source: Opposing Views

The couple – who confirmed their engagement last week after Angelina was spotted wearing a diamond ring – reportedly kept it secret for months because they wanted the press surrounding her directorial debut, ‘In the Land of Blood and Honey’ to die down first.

A source explained to Life & Style magazine: “Brad had the ring designed last year and made sure it was ready by Christmas because he wanted a romantic Christmas proposal – and he got it.

“They didn’t announce their engagement sooner because Angie focused so much on promoting ‘In the Land of Blood and Honey’. She was very busy with the movie and her Oscar campaign. She also worried that the engagement would take over press on her film and detract from that.

“There was some negative press on ‘Blood and Honey’ that bothered her a lot, and she didn’t feel the timing was right. So they waited.”

The pair – who met on the set of 2005 film ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ while Brad was still married to Jennifer Aniston – have children Maddox, 10, Pax, nine, Zahara, seven, Shiloh, five and three-year-old twins Knox and Vivienne – who are all said to be thrilled about the engagement.

Brad’s spokeswoman Cynthia Pett-Dante said of their marriage plans: “It is a promise for the future and their kids are very happy. There’s no date set at this time.”

Angelina was spotted wearing her engagement ring this week and jeweller Robert Procop – who has previously worked with the actress – revealed he designed it with her husband-to-be.

A spokesperson for Robert said: “”I can confirm that, yes, Robert Procop did indeed design an engagement ring for Angelina Jolie, designed in collaboration with Brad Pitt.”

Source: CTV

Before casting and filming was finalized, Jolie told MTV News’ Josh Horowitz she would love to play the titular sorceress. “It’s all new and being discussed, but I loved her when I was a little girl. She was my favorite.”

When we caught up with the actress a year later at the red carpet for “Kung Fu Panda 2,” she confirmed “there’s a great script.” The script was penned by Linda Woolverton, and Jolie admitted she had loved it for a very long time. Even though the movie tells Maleficent’s version of the story doesn’t mean Aurora will be portrayed as the bad guy.

“It’s not anti-princess,” Jolie told Entertainment Weekly about the film. “But it’s the first time they’re looking at this epic woman. … I hope in the end you see a woman who is capable of being many things, and just because she protects herself and is aggressive, it doesn’t mean she can’t have other [warmer] qualities.”

Jolie believes “Maleficent” will be a positive film for young girls to see because of its message of seeing a story from someone else’s point of view. But it isn’t just the script that fans can look forward to; Robert Stromberg — who has worked on “Avatar” and “Alice in Wonderland” in the past — will direct, which means audiences can prepare themselves for stunning visuals as well.

Source: MTV

“Yes, it’s confirmed,” Cynthia Pett-Dante, Pitt’s manager, told USA TODAY in a statement. “It is a promise for the future, and their kids are very happy. There’s no date set at this time.” And yes, she confirms that Pitt designed the ring.

Earlier, Beverly Hills jeweler Robert Procop confirmed to USA TODAY that he helped Pitt, 48, design a custom diamond engagement ring for Jolie, 36, with whom he has six children.

Hollywood’s platinum pair was spotted Wednesday night at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where Jolie donned a massive diamond ring on her left ring finger.

“Brad had a specific vision for this ring, which he realized over a yearlong collaboration with Robert. He wanted every aspect of it to be perfect, so Robert was able to locate a diamond of the finest quality and cut it to an exact custom size and shape to suit Angelina’s hand,” Procop said in a statement. “Brad was always heavily involved, overseeing every aspect of the creative design evolution. The side diamonds are specially cut to encircle her finger. Each diamond is of the highest gem quality.”

Procop was not just some random choice for Pitt: The jeweler has worked with Jolie as well, designing baubles, the Style of Jolie collection, to benefit the Education Partnership for Children in Conflict.

With the engagement, the Jolie-Pitt brood is getting its happily-ever-after wish: Mom and Dad are making their union legal, just like Shrek and Fiona.

Back in December, Jolie told Nightline that the kids had been asking why she and their dad weren’t official because, after all, “people get married in the movies.”

Jolie’s rationale for their relationship then? “You don’t have to be married to be committed to a partner or your family. We’ve explained to them that our commitment, when we decided to start a family, was the greatest commitment you could possibly have,” she said. “Once you have six children, you’re committed.”

The kids, it seems, have long played a role in the couple’s will-they-or-won’t-they game with the press. Earlier this year, Pitt told CBS News that they were “getting a lot of pressure from the kids.”

“It means something to them,” he said. “We will (get married) someday, we will. It’s a great idea. ‘Get mommy a ring.’ ‘Okay, I will, I will.’ ”

But Jolie later seemed to shoot down a potential proposal, telling People at the Screen Actors Guild Awards: “I think anything said tends to be blown out of proportion.”

No one knows what kind of party the Jolie-Pitts will throw, but in the Nightline interview the matriarch joked whether her kids’ fascination with a parental wedding was “just because they wanted to have a big cake.”

Last May, however, Pitt struck a more serious note when he told USA WEEKEND: “The kids ask about marriage. It’s meaning more and more to them. So it’s something we’ve got to look at.” (It was an about-face from his 2006 comment in Esquire that he and Jolie would “consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able.”)

In 2010, Jolie also sounded as though she and Pitt were taking their children’s altar inquiries to heart, telling ABC News that they would get hitched if the kids asked them to: “I think it would be hard to say no to the kids.”

So she said yes to their dad.

In recent years, both Jolie and Pitt have had sterling film careers.

Jolie received positive reviews for her first outing as a film director, In the Land of Blood and Honey (2011), a Romeo-and-Juliet story set in war-torn Bosnia, and is reported to be working on a script about another war-ravaged country, Afghanistan. She is a big hit with kids voicing the Tigress in the Kung Fu Panda movies, and she will play Evelyn Salt again in the sequel to her 2010 hit thriller, Salt. Plus, announced this week: Jolie will play Maleficent, the villain from Sleeping Beauty, in a film due out in 2014.

Pitt was nominated for Oscars (his fourth) for last year’s Moneyball, a complicated story about baseball and money that managed to be a feel-good film anyway thanks to Pitt’s performance as the lead actor and a co-producer. He, too, thrills the kiddies as a voice actor in the Happy Feet sequel, and is in post-production in four movies, including a 2013 film from mysteriously reclusive director Terrence Malick, called Voyage of Time and said to be about the birth and death of the universe. Another Pitt movie due in 2013 is Twelve Years a Slave, about a man kidnapped in New York in the 19th century and sold into slavery in the Deep South.

Jolie and Pitt are famous for their clan of six kids, some adopted some born to them, and hailing from lands in Africa, Asia and Europe. Jolie has said they are being brought up to take pride in their own and each other’s cultures, even placing little flags of their native countries above their beds.

Maddox Chivan: Adopted by Jolie and then-husband actor Billy Bob Thornton in 2002 from an orphanage in Cambodia. He will be 11 in August. Jolie applied to adopt a Cambodian child after visiting the country while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001). It wasn’t finalized until the following year when she was in Namibia, Africa, filming Beyond Borders (2003).

Zahara Marley: In 2005, Jolie adopted Zahara, at age six months, from an orphanage in Ethiopia. She was 7 in January. Wrongly assumed to be an AIDS orphan, Zahara later tested negative for the virus. At the time, Jolie and Pitt said they made the decision to adopt the baby together. Jolie later got her children’s surnames legally changed to Jolie-Pitt.

Shiloh Nouvel: The couple went to Namibia to avoid the press and give birth to their first child together in May 2006. For the first time, the couple sought to gain more control over the frenzied competition from celebrity media for pictures. They sold the first pictures of the baby girl directly to People and Hello for more than $7 million total, which they then donated to charities for African children. Shiloh, like all the kids, has been a target of the paparazzi especially because she likes to dress as a boy and her parents are relaxed about it.

Pax Thien: The couple adopted their second son, then 3, from an orphanage in Vietnam in March 2007. He will be 9 in November. Jolie adopted him as a single parent because the Vietnamese do not allow unmarried couples to adopt. Again, they sold pictures directly to People and Hello for millions. And Pitt’s adoption of Pax was finalized in the U.S. in 2008. Last year, during a family visit to Vietnam, Pax was able to meet his biological grandmother at the resort where they stayed.

Knox Leon and Vivienne Marcheline: The twins were born in July 2008 in a seaside hospital in Nice, France, near the luxury villa where the family had been living. They will be four in July. The first pictures were sold to People and Hello for a reported $14 million, making them probably the highest-priced celeb baby photos ever. The couple gave the proceeds to their charity, the Jolie-Pitt Foundation.

Source: USA Today

The film won the Producers Guild of America’s 2012 Stanley Kramer prize, which is given to films that successfully highlight “provocative social issues.” Jolie was also honored at the Cinema For Peace Gala in Berlin, Germany, and was given a special film accolade for her work.

Jolie said about the movie, “I wanted to make a film that would express, in an artistic way, my frustrations with the international community’s failure to intervene in conflicts in a timely and effective manner. I also wanted to explore and understand the Bosnian War, as well as broader issues such as women in conflict, sexual violence, accountability for war crimes and crimes against humanity, and the challenge of reconciliation.”

The movie’s cast included actual Bosnians and Serbs. Jolie hand-picked the stars and many of the actors, including Zana Marjanovic, Goran Kostic and Rade Serbedzija, witnessed first-hand the atrocities of the 1990s conflict growing up in the region.

Some of the profits from the soundtrack were donated to the SOS Children’s Villages program in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The charity helps youths in the region who are still suffering from the impact of the Balkans war in the 1990s.

Okay, okay, okay — forgive that shamelessly provocative intro. We’re just talking about preparations for Jolie’s new role as the devilish Maleficent in an upcoming Disney film. “Wait until you see the horns,” she laughs.

In a wide-ranging interview with EW, Jolie explains why a live-action film focusing on the villainous witch may be good for young viewers.
She also describes her fears (and tears) while bringing her Bosnian War movie In the Land of Blood and Honey, to the people who lived through that conflict. [The film debuts on DVD and Blu-ray tomorrow.]

And of course, she reacts to all the commotion surrounding her infamous leg pop at the Academy Awards.

“It’s interesting that you just really never know…” Jolie says.

This is her response to the response to her leggy pose at the Oscars, which became a viral phenomenon, inspiring various websites, a Twitter account, and countless imitators (both ironic and sincere).

But that quote might also apply to what she was doing just a week before the Oscars: taking Blood and Honey, the harrowing and heartbreaking war film she wrote and directed, to premiere in Sarajevo, a city that was under siege for four years during the 1992-1995 war.

Before she was sticking her leg out, Jolie was sticking her neck out.

That ethnic conflict claimed the lives of nearly 100,000 in the former Yugoslavia, and emotions are obviously still raw for survivors. Any first-time filmmaker would be nervous facing that audience, but Jolie was particularly on edge, especially since wild rumors about the story provoked controversy during filming.

“War is so complex, human nature is so complex. There’s no filmmaker who has ever figured it out perfectly,” she tells EW. “We just try to shed a light on one corner of something. And that, hopefully, makes you think of all the other corners you’re unable to see.”

Jolie shot every scene in In the Land of Blood and Honey in both English and BHS, (Bosanski, Hrvatski, Srpski, a.k.a. Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian) the official language of the former Yugoslavia. In theaters, she only released the subtitled version (picking up a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in the process). Tuesday’s DVD and Blu-ray discs will make the English version available for the first time.

Considering all the pressure she felt a week before, it was funny to Jolie when the whole world decided to talk about her gams.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Wow, so you caused quite a stir at the Oscars. That’s usually a pretty stuffy affair, but you definitely widened people’s eyes.
ANGELINA JOLIE: [Laughs] I don’t pay any attention to that stuff. I just heard something as simple as that and thought, well, I don’t know. I do what I feel like doing, but don’t actually consider the effect. I just try to, you know, be as I feel like being on a night like that.

Fashion websites say that pose is becoming a trend. Other actresses and models, like Jennifer Lawrence at The Hunger Games premiere, are wearing dresses with the high slit and posing with their legs out. So on behalf of guys everywhere, allow me to say, thank you very much.
[Laughs] That’s funny, very funny.

You’ve heard of Tebowing, right? Where people imitate Tim Tebow by getting down on one knee.
Uh-huh, I have.

There are whole websites that popped up where people were striking your pose. That must have caught you by surprise.
What’s funny is when you have no actual, conscious thought of anything [like that]. You just feel like, “Eh, I like this dress. I feel comfortable in this one.” It’s interesting that you just really never know…

You pulled it off much better than Jim Rash [pictured, the Best Adapted Screenplay winner, who struck her provocative pose onstage after she presented him the Oscar.] Did you find what he did funny?
Of course! [Laughs] No, I had a great night. It was a really fun night.

Just before the Oscars, you came home from the European premieres of In the Land of Blood and Honey. I imagine that must have been pretty emotional. It’s a heavy movie to live with for a couple of years, but you were finally showing it to the people who lived through the Bosnian War.
Yeah, it was more challenging because we knew we’d be going face to face with the region itself. We went to Berlin first, then Sarajevo, then Paris and also Croatia. This whole process has been very nerve-wracking because it’s my first film, and I’m not that confident, but I wanted to do this because I love the subject matter and I wanted to learn. I had these great two years where I learned so much about a region and history and worked with these actors from another part of the world.

Let’s start with how it was received in Paris and Berlin.
It was also difficult for them. They were right next door. So there’s a question of when [the U.S.] got involved, but they were right next door and didn’t get involved. There are a lot of feelings for everybody, deep-seated guilt in all of us. Nobody walks away feeling good about this time in history. [The film] is supposed to make us look back and question what went wrong.

During filming, you dealt with a lot of false rumors that this was a twisted romance about a rapist. First it was a Bosnian women’s group…
It was the Bosnians at first, but then it switched to the Serbian side later, though not all Serbian people. Both times when things got heated, neither side had seen the film.

And you lost your permits to film until you showed the script to the Bosnian cultural ministry to prove it wasn’t anything like that.
Leading up to it, there were lots of questions on all sides, and lots of speculation. That speculation was causing people to be threatening toward the movie. They didn’t know, and heard rumors, and of course they’re scared and they’re sensitive. The war is still very fresh. We all got caught in the moment of that [controversy], but fortunately it was more of a moment.

When you were finally showing the public at large what the movie was really about, I imagine you felt some relief in addition to nerves.
In Serbia and Croatia, I just walked in with arms open and said I had no ill intentions, so strike as you will. I love Bosnia so much, so emotionally for me, if this was going to be a place I might hurt in some way, or not be welcome in any way, it would have really broken my heart. That’s really hard when you care and have become close to so many people there.

Where did you show the film?
They wanted to screen it for over 6,000 people in what was the Olympic stadium [used in the 1984 Winter Games]. During the war it became a morgue, so to go back and walk out on stage in front of 6,000 people… You don’t know if they going to throw something at you, or God knows what. I was there with the cast, who are all from different sides of the conflict. But we had a beautiful, positive reaction, and then we all broke down and cried.

During the movie?
When we came out after. We didn’t know what we were going to walk out in front of, but it was very, very moving. Then we met with victims from the war after, and basically stayed up until three in the morning crying, with people telling different stories about their experiences. That’s the most beautiful thing that could come out of this, getting people talking again, even if it means sometimes getting people upset. You debate again.

You’ve said you’re writing a script about the war in Afghanistan next. How’s that coming along?
I have been writing something, because I’ve been there a few times — Afghanistan and Pakistan — in the last 11 years, and it’s a part of the world we’re all quite aware of now, but… I’m not sure. I’m going to actually see this weekend what people think of [the script]. But I like it and I’ve enjoyed doing the research.

What’s next for you as an actor? You were in talks to do a Luc Besson film?
I do hope to work with Luc one day, but we haven’t figured out what that is. The next thing I’m doing is Maleficent for Disney. I start it in June, and it’s a really great script. I’m having a lot of fun. I’ve already got my horns fitted. My kids are very happy.

In this version, Sleeping Beauty is the nemesis instead of the good guy?
It’s not anti-princess, but it’s the first time they’re looking at this epic woman.

Is it sympathetic to her, or is she a straight-up villain?
It’s both. I hope in the end you see a woman who is capable of being many things, and just because she protects herself and is aggressive, it doesn’t mean she can’t have other [warmer] qualities. You have to figure out the puzzle of what she is.

So there are some redeeming qualities to Maleficent the witch?
It sounds really crazy to say that there will be something that’s good for young girls in this, because it sounds like you’re saying they should be a villain. [Maleficent] is actually a great person. But she’s not perfect. She’s far from perfect.

There’s a tradition of taking a classic character who is a villain and telling the story from his or her perspective. John Gardner did it with the 1971 novel Grendel, and more recently we got the witch’s story in Gregory Maguire’s Wicked, and the musical it inspired. We like it when the bad guy is deeper than we thought.
In general, it’s a very good message to say, “Let’s look at something from the other side.” But then also, what our challenge will be — and the script writer [The Lion King and Alice in Wonderland’s Linda Woolverton] has already cracked it — is not to simplify it, not to just reverse the story but tell a bigger story that doesn’t point the finger [at Princess Aurora] either. It doesn’t flip it.

Since it’s a Disney film, will this version of Maleficent be close to the one we know from their 1959 animated film?
We’re still figuring out the look. We’re experimenting with different things. But the horns are the horns — you can’t deny them. You have to have horns.

Source: EWr

Gallery Links:
- Candids March 11 2012

Disney’s Maleficent, a live-action origins story starring Angelina Jolie as one of Disney’s most iconic villians, is eyeing a June start date in London.

Robert Stromberg will direct Maleficent from a script by Linda Woolverton and is already in the U.K. prepping the film. Malificent is a passion project for Jolie and will be her next acting role.
One possibility for the role of Aurora is Elle Fanning, who is in talks to join the cast. Fanning’s star status rose last year with Somewhere and J.J. Abrams sci-fi movie Super 8.

Jolie, who recently made her feature directorial debut with Bosnian war drama In the Land of Blood and Honey, has long been toying with the idea of playing the famous fairy-sorceress in the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale.

In December she told THR her children want her to make the movie and even call her “mom-elicent.” She’s also eager to make a live-action family film after her experience voicing the Kung Fu Panda franchise.

Jolie told THR that she was drawn to screenwriter Woolverton’s revisionist take on the fairy tale and the complex relationship between Maleficent and Sleeping Beauty.

Stromberg was the production designer on Avatar, Alice in Wonderland and Disney’s upcoming Oz the Great and Powerful.

Source: Hollywood Reporter