Can Angelina Jolie get people to see one of her movies if she isn’t actually in it? Jolie’s feature film debut as a director, In the Land of Blood and Honey, will reveal whether the world’s most famous movie star has as much command over the screen behind the camera as she does in front of it. But despite the fact that Jolie doesn’t appear in the film, it’s very much her vision. She came up with the story and wrote the script, and the subject, the Bosnian war that devastated the Balkans in the ’90s, is something of an extension of her efforts as a U.N. goodwill ambassador, for which she has participated in dozens of humanitarian missions in such ragged places as Afghanistan and Namibia to advocate on behalf of refugees.

In the Land of Blood and Honey unflinchingly depicts all the brutality and horrors of the years of armed conflict, ethnic cleansing, mass rape, and a population under endless siege. Framed within that chaos is the story of Danijel (Goran Kostic) and Ajla (Zana Marjanovic), who had a relationship before the war and now find themselves on opposite sides of the conflict. The cast of unknowns, including Kostic and Marjanovic, many of whom experienced the war as young people, may not add Hollywood star power to the project, but they lend the film something perhaps of greater value: authenticity. Jolie felt a responsibility to get their story right, and wants the film, regardless of its critical reception, to serve as a conversation restarter about Bosnia, and, implicitly, to get people to think of that war against the relative successes and failures of other, more recent American interventions abroad.

Taking on a hot-button political topic has not been without its risks, even for someone with Jolie’s connections. Permission to shoot in Sarajevo in fall 2010 was briefly denied after the Bosnian group Women Victims of War claimed that the plot depicted a Bosnian female prisoner falling in love with the man who tortured her-a situation deemed unthinkable and distressing to survivors. After Bosnian officials read the script, the crew was allowed to shoot in the country’s capital, though most of the action was filmed in Hungary, where Jolie, 36, has spent much of the past year. She was in Budapest, where partner Brad Pitt was filming his zombie flick World War Z, when she spoke with Clint Eastwood, a filmmaker who is no stranger to the cinema of violence and tragedy. He directed Jolie in Changeling (2008), and the two hope to collaborate again someday. Read the rest of this entry…

It looks like Angelina Jolie might need to brush up on her copyright knowledge.

The actress is being sued by a Croatian journalist who claims the 36-year-old stole the storyline behind her upcoming movie and screenwriting debut, “In the Land of Blood and Honey.”

In documents filed in federal court and obtained by RadarOnline.com, journalist and author James J. Braddock is accusing the Oscar winner of swiping the film’s plot from an article he wrote in 2007.

The movie, written and directed by Jolie, tells the fictionalized love story between a Serbian soldier and a Muslim woman who become separated by the 1992 Bosnian War.

It’s a story that sounds all too familiar to Braddock, who is asking for a jury trial to award him damages.

“The Subject Work’s main female character is subject to continuous abuse and rape by soldiers and officers in the camp,” the lawsuit states. “In addition to being raped continuously by soldiers and officers, she is forced to become a servant at the camp headquarters, a duty assumed by very few of the captives.”

“The Motion Picture’s main female character is also subject to continuous rape by soldiers and officers in the camp and subsequently becomes a servant at camp headquarters,” the lawsuit continues.

The journalist also named GK Films, the Los Angeles-based production company that financed the film, in the suit.

Jolie’s film opens in theaters December 23

Source: NY Daily News

The globe-trotting actress discusses her new mission as the writer-director of a tragic love story set in the former Yugoslavia

Entertainment Weekly: In the Land of Blood and Honey marks your first time writing and directing. What daunted you most about the project?
Angelina Jolie: When you’re an actor, you do think about the overall [picture], but you focus on one perspective. You are one character. So when you write something, it’s like you’re an actor playing all different parts. So you have to keep pushing your personality and write from different angles. You have to be the antagonist—and then you switch. I’ve always said other people’s words in my life. I had never written anything. So to sit down and put words on paper was terrifying, because it’s so personal. I found that much more difficult. Read the rest of this entry…

There are plenty of powerful women working in Hollywood today and innumerable great beauties. But there is, arguably, only one actress whose glamour can bear comparison with the screen idols of 1950s Hollywood: Angelina Jolie.

Johnny Depp, her co-star in her most recent film, The Tourist, called her and Brad Pitt ‘the Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton of our era’, a not entirely outlandish description. Read the rest of this entry…

With an Oscar, Brad Pitt as a beau and a face as recognizable as any on the planet, Angelina Jolie doesn’t fluster easily.

Stick her in a recording studio with her kids, though, and she’s a jangle of nerves.

“They know when Mommy’s funny and when Mommy’s not funny,” she says over tea at Hollywood’s Roosevelt Hotel.

Jolie, who stars opposite Jack Black in Kung Fu Panda 2 (in theaters May 26), says her six children — Maddox, 9, Pax, 7, Zahara, 6, Shiloh, 4, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 2 — were fixtures on the set and became “part agents, part managers.” Read the rest of this entry…

Friendships that start with a ride-share aboard a giant shark are bound to go somewhere.

Angelina Jolie and Jack Black first bonded seven years ago as they rode the 14-foot inflatable fish with Will Smith along the Mediterranean beach at the Cannes Film Festival, a stunt to promote their animated comedy “Shark Tale.”

They had met before but “only said hi in passing. That float on the shark was the beginning of a blossoming friendship,” Jolie says. “They say you learn more about somebody in an hour of play than in a year of conversation, so I think that happened.” Read the rest of this entry…

Thanks to my friend Kim I have added caps and video from Angelina interviews on Larry King Live.

Screencaps:

Gallery Links:
- Talk Shows Larry King Live > December 8, 2010

Angelina Jolie hopes to clear a path for dangerous women.

She grew up idolizing tough-guy movie stars, and is regarded in Hollywood as the industry’s top bankable action actress, but few women are given similar roles, and she hopes more will follow.

When she was coming of age, she says she was oblivious to any limitations.

“I had a really great mom who never let me know that,” Jolie said in a recent interview with USA WEEKEND Magazine. “I grew up thinking girls could do everything. I do see the beautiful differences between men and women as well. I think it’s nice for the boys to be boys and girls to be girls. It’s not that you’re trying to cross genres to be like the other sex, you just want to be completely what yours is, which is many, many things.”

Part of that, says the actress, is being tough. “I feel very lucky that I just happen to be around at a time when women are doing that sort of thing,” she says.

Her latest film, The Tourist, opening Dec. 10, features a role that is much more proper and refined – a mysterious European socialite who lures a hapless Johnny Depp into the path of deadly gangsters and international police.

“When I was little it was Han Solo and Indiana Jones — that’s what I wanted to be. I wanted to be all the boy things,” Jolie says. “I still want to be those things, too! But before my career’s over, I want to find those few where I can say to the girls, I also did the girl [roles], too.”

Last summer, she starred in the spy thriller Salt – a part originally written for a man – which is one thing that appealed to her. “It was written for a guy, but it still was not a comic book,” she says. Too often, she feels, women can only be strong in fantasy stories. And while Salt was over-the-top action, it was grounded in reality.

Elise, the elegant character she plays in The Tourist, is less likely to be jumping from moving cars during an escape scene on a freeway. But Jolie says she enjoyed the challenge of suppressing her harder edges in favor of a softer character.

But even in Elise’s delicacy, Jolie says there is strength.

“I don’t like the type of woman onscreen that overtly tries to get everyone’s attention,” Jolie says. “There’s another type of woman who holds her head up high, and doesn’t hide. I think she gets up in the morning and dresses for herself. And then if someone notices, that’s lovely. But she wants to feel good.”

Jolie says that makes Elise “more attractive than somebody who is trying.”

“You are who you are,” she says. “You’re not pretending to be a different type of woman.”

Source: The Daily News Online

Angelina Jolie has revealed that she and her family will embark on an overseas “adventure” this Christmas.

The actress told US Weekly that she, partner Brad Pitt and their six children will spend the holidays in an undisclosed location where they will open the presents that she has finally completed buying.

“I’ve got it all boxed and ready to go. I went through it today. I’m trying to get every stocking right and all the wrapping paper,” she explained.

“We’re going to travel with the kids and go to a random part of the world. We’re going to travel and have an adventure because that’s what we love to do.”

Source: Digital Spy

Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie may be living tourist destinations.
Whenever they appear in public, a crowd gathers — a big one — which is news to no one, except perhaps director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, who found himself trying to film a scene with them at a Venice train station before an audience of hundreds, maybe thousands, of spectators. Read the rest of this entry…