JOLIE ATTACKS TV HOST OVER MAGAZINE COVER

ANGELINA JOLIE went on the attack during a taped interview with US TV breakfast show host ANN CURRY yesterday (06JUN05), when the TODAY presenter quizzed the actress about her romance with BRAD PITT.

The movie star, who has since slapped a ban on reporters asking about the alleged love affair, was upset to see Curry had brought a copy of US WEEKLY magazine, featuring her Kenyan beach stroll with Pitt and her son MADDOX, to the interview.

Curry waved the showbiz magazine in front of Jolie and sympathetically offered, "This is insane," which angered the actress.

Jolie continued by insisting her Kenyan break meant much more to her than a cover shot for a magazine: "That day needs to forever be a day that I made a sandcastle with my son."

But when Curry offered her famous interviewee a chance to clear up the romance rumours once and for all, Jolie declined, adding, "You and I both know I could make a thousand statements right now and it doesn't matter.

"They'll (media) say what they wanna say and it's OK. My life will go on, and I need to focus on my life."

The interview will air in America this morning (07JUN05).

Brad and Angelina's Old-Fashioned Romance

EVEN the title is evocative: "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" calls to mind a classic Hollywood star vehicle of the past, perhaps even the identically named 1941 movie directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In that picture, two stars of the era, Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard, played a "squabbling Punch and Judy," according to The New York Times's review. Today's Mr. and Mrs. Smith, played by Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie - as everyone within range of a billboard or bus stop must know by now - are still squabbling. But now they are hired killers, working for rival companies, who set out to assassinate each other.

Almost in spite of itself, the new movie remains a romantic comedy in the tradition that Hitchcock, Howard Hawks and Frank Capra perfected more than half a century ago. Those giant figures of Mr. Pitt and Ms. Jolie in the omnipresent marketing campaign descend from the glamour treatment lavished on major stars in the heyday of Gable and Lombard. 
 
While movie stars now command far heftier salaries than those legendary performers ever dreamed of - and still have a lock on the nation's magazine covers - it's actually rare to find a movie today that is motored by sheer star power. As films grew more expensive, studios got nervous about entrusting them to mere mortals. Instead, they began to shelter even the biggest stars with special effects, comic-book trappings or familiar franchises. In the latest version of "War of the Worlds," Tom Cruise has to do little more than look terrified or ferociously determined as he battles alien invaders; the main attractions are the flying saucers and the spectacular conflagrations. In the new adaptation of the television series "Bewitched," Nicole Kidman and Will Ferrell are depending on viewers' affection for beloved sitcom characters; the concept is the star, and the actors are really just along for a ride on the broomstick.

Mr. Pitt and Ms. Jolie, of course, will be surrounded by expensive special effects and ferocious gun battles when 20th Century Fox introduces "Mr. and Mrs. Smith" on Friday. But the pair will still have to banter, flirt, display their star wattage - and put their outsize celebrity personas on the line. In that sense this new movie is a lot more demanding than their other recent outings. Mr. Pitt was basically a piece of swinging weaponry in "Troy," and he melted into the wisecracking ensembles of "Ocean's Eleven" and "Ocean's Twelve," while Ms. Jolie struck poses as Lara Croft and spouted an indecipherable accent in her supporting role in the stillborn "Alexander."

In their new movie, the two actors will have to face the music. They're both front and center in a battle-of-the-sexes comedy that depends on movie star magnetism. The question audiences will answer is whether these two highly publicized stars have the sizzle to keep a vital romantic movie tradition alive. And an even more important question hangs in the balance: Does Hollywood still have the know-how to refresh one of its tastiest formulas?

When "It Happened One Night" swept the Oscars in 1934, it established a new kind of romantic comedy, one that depended on a battle of wits between two strong-willed lovers. In that movie, Claudette Colbert played a runaway heiress, and Clark Gable was a cynical newspaper reporter who didn't let on that he knew her real identity. In other words, their relationship was marked by suspicion and deception as well as an undercurrent of desire, and that mixture of attraction and repulsion is what some of the best romantic movies possess. Howard Hawks played many variations on this formula in films like "Twentieth Century" (with John Barrymore as a theatrical impresario and Carole Lombard as the temperamental actress he discovered) and "His Girl Friday" (with Cary Grant and Rosalind Russell as formerly married journalists wrangling in the newsroom).

Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn struck sparks (both on screen and off) in the first movie they made together, "Woman of the Year," and they continued to spar in many of their later romantic comedies, most notably in "Adam's Rib," when they played married lawyers who found themselves on opposite sides of a criminal trial. In some of the most memorable scenes in that movie, their verbal jousts give way to physical jabs, as when he slaps her behind while giving her a rubdown and later when she kicks him viciously in the shins.

In "Pillow Talk" (1959) and again in "Lover Come Back" (1961), Doris Day and Rock Hudson also played professional rivals who engaged in lies, dirty tricks and sadistic humiliations before their inevitable final clinch. A higher level of danger entered the picture in Hitchcock's 1959 caper, "North by Northwest," when Cary Grant exchanged teasing innuendoes with the sultry Eva Marie Saint, who happened to be in cahoots with the spies plotting to kill him.

Stanley Donen's "Charade" (1963) worked its own stylish variations on the Hitchcockian formula. Grant and Audrey Hepburn slipped into a mating dance flecked with menace; she was unsure until the very end of the movie if he was a lover or a murderer in search of the fortune left by her late husband. The movie was criticized at the time for daring to mix lighthearted romantic comedy with macabre violence, an explosive combo that is driven to its illogical conclusion in "Mr. and Mrs. Smith."

It seems likely that Simon Kinberg, the writer of "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," and Doug Liman, the director, had some of these earlier movies - or more recent iterations, like John Huston's "Prizzi's Honor" and Danny De Vito's "War of the Roses" - firmly in mind while they were creating their black comedy. But this new picture highlights the dramatic changes in the cinematic landscape over the last half-century. What could once be expressed entirely in witty repartee and suggestive physical byplay (like Colbert extending her leg to flag down a ride in "It Happened One Night"), or later in the brutal verbiage of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," now requires the kinetic energy of punches, kicks, shooting and stabbing.

Movies have grown darker over the decades, but they've also grown more insecure. Filmmakers and studio executives no longer trust such niceties as dialogue, characterization, style or even movie star charisma to involve viewers in lovers' conflicts. Instead, today's filmmakers feel the need to pump up the volume and ramp up the firepower to make sure they hold the interest of impatient audiences.

Yet Mr. Pitt and Ms. Jolie, though backed by a deafening array of explosions, can't escape their challenge in this one. There is virtually no supporting cast; the only other actor with a significant role, Vince Vaughn, doesn't even get a screen credit. So the two stars, if they succeed in igniting the box office, may not exactly revive the genre of scintillating romantic comedy. But they will have kept it from dying out altogether.
By STEPHEN FARBER  in The New York Times Published: June 5, 2005

The "Mr & Mrs Smith" actress has not spoken to her dad since he publicly begged her to seek help for "serious mental problems". Jolie said the strange relationship doesn't upset her.

"It doesn't make me feel sad at all. We always had a difficult relationship. We're not similar people and we're not friends."

"He is no more to me than a man who walks down the street. I'm an adoptive parent and so blood ties aren't what counts."

 Angelina Jolie without an underwear!

Angelina Jolie was left red-faced when she performed a stunt on the set of her upcoming movie MR + MRS SMITH - because she was wearing no underwear.

The brunette beauty, who stars in the action film alongside BRAD PITT, is seen jumping out of a window wearing a dominatrix outfit in one scene, and the first time Jolie filmed it she only realised she was bare underneath when it was too late.

She says, "I was a little unsure about something the first time I went down and my coat flew up. And I thought, 'I have no pants on! I have no pants on and there's just a crowd of people on the floor!'

"Everything was rubber so you don't feel like you're covered. Everything just doesn't feel right."

Teens get serious

Teen America loves the drama.

Fox prime time soap "The O.C." racked up seven Teen Choice Awards nominations, the most among TV shows, while buzz-heavy action flick "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" picked up five--including "Choice Date Movie"--even though it hasn't opened yet.

Other multiple nominees include Ashton Kutcher, Eva Longoria, "One Tree Hill's" Chad Michael Murray, "Hitch" and "Star Wars: Episode III--Revenge of the Sith," zap2it.com reports.

Adam Brody and Rachel Bilson helped put "O.C." on top by scoring nods in the "Choice Hottie" categories. "Smith" star Angelina Jolie scored there as well.

Speaking of Jolie, she and co-star Brad Pitt dropped into New York this week to give (separate) interviews to feed the "Smith" hype. Pitt's publicist said his interviewers were asked not to inquire about his personal life. No fair!

Published in Chicago Tribune.

Don't ask, don't tell - Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt!

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie were in New York yesterday - trying feebly to avoid being labeled a couple. He took a hotel room at Columbus Circle. She checked in a couple of blocks east. Both of them are here to promote "Mr. and Mrs. Smith," the movie on which they fell in love.
But they were in no mood to take questions on that subject. Or to be interviewed together.
Pitt was questioned by ABC's Diane Sawyer (who traveled with him to poverty-plagued Africa) for "Prime Time Live" and "Good Morning America." NBC's Ann Curry sat down with Jolie for "Dateline" and "Today."
Pitt's PR woman Cindi Guagenti confirmed both journalists were asked not to inquire about the stars' personal lives - and that they agreed.
"If someone agrees not to ask personal questions, I would hope they not break the agreement," Guagenti told us. She declined to say whether Sawyer, for one, obliged.
At least she got to talk to Pitt. No interviews were offered to print media. Sources at 20th Century Fox execs say Guagenti and Jolie's handler, Geyer Kosinski, made that call. Guagenti said she proposed an L.A. press conference, "but the studio decided against it."
Meanwhile, Guagenti scoffed at a Life & Style magazine claim that sometime in the past six weeks, Pitt and Jolie were spotted "holding hands and kissing" at a pub in the sleepy English village of Fulmer. "It's made up," she said.
And what is she saying today about whether they are a couple?
"I don't have a comment today, yesterday or tomorrow," she says. "We're just not talking about it."

Hollywood beauty Angelina Jolie has topped the list of the world's 100 most beautiful women.

Supermodel Christy Turlington came second followed by Queen Rania of Jordan and film director Sophia Coppola. Indian beauty Aishwarya Rai also figured in the top 25.

As Harpers & Queen list Angelina Jolie as the No1 most beautiful woman in the world, the Times asks: “What is beauty?”

Well, clearly it’s a leggy brunette with a dingy-lipped pout that turns a large percentage of men into quivering wrecks.

“But the truth is that beauty is a deeply tangled problem — and debating its definition can raise some pretty ugly arguments,” the paper drones.

Beauty has been debated for centuries and the ‘ideal’ of what it is to be beautiful has shifted as people grow vainer and society becomes increasingly self-obsessed.

As Brad Pitt once pointed out, “I'm one of those people you hate because of genetics. It is the truth”.

That’s why, despite Jolie’s denial that she and Pitt aren’t dating, you have to admit they’d make a ‘beautiful couple’.

“There is no one ideal. Images range from the cheetah-limbed litheness of Christie Turlington to the wrinkling dignity of Charlotte Rampling, from the polished oriental smoothness of Ziyi Zhang to the dark voluptuous curves of Nigella Lawson, and at the top of the Harpers & Queen list, the actress Angelina Jolie.”

Apparently, what they actually share isn’t great genes and lots of money to keep them in tip-top shape, but “success”.

“They are touting that most lucrative of commodities: unsatisfied desire. They are selling an impossible perfection that, even if we could reach it, would slip away with the onset of the next style.”

Tut, jealously is such an ugly trait.

Aishwarya Rai is ranked #9 in the list

Exclusive Interview with "Mr and Mrs Smith" Producer, Akiva Goldsman

On Casting Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt as Husband and Wife in "Mr and Mrs Smith:" Producer Akiva Goldsman admits he had absolutely no idea if Jolie and Pitt would generate sparks onscreen. “No, we didn’t. The movie originally was Brad and Nicole Kidman. Then ‘Stepford Wives’ promised to shoot well into the next century and so Nicole jumped ship. And so we cast Angie pretty quickly thereafter. But I don’t think they’d met until our first sort of sit down and look at the scenes together. It was a dice roll,” said Goldsman.
Taking the Chance the Two Sexy Stars Would Create Some Heat: “Like so many things in moviemaking, it doesn’t seem perilous at the time. You’re sort of proceeding as wisely as you can in a sort of poppy field of unknowns. So all those moves now of course seem intensely hazardous but didn’t then.”

On Angelina Jolie Replacing Nicole Kidman: Goldsman said getting Angelina Jolie to take on the project wasn’t exactly a hard sell. “Look, here’s where we were at that moment. We had Doug Liman, who was at that point 3 for 3. In my opinion he’s now 4 for 4. And his movies are undeniably both commercial and interesting. So we had Doug Liman. We had this really good script and we had Brad Pitt in the lead. Suffice it to say there was no shortage of women who were available for the part,” recalled Goldsman.

Akiva Goldsman on how the Rumors of an Offscreen Romance Between Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt Might Affect “Mr and Mrs Smith” at the Box Office: “I think it’s irrelevant. I think it’s not fun for the human beings involved but I don’t think it has anything to do with the movie. Movies are movies. People like them or don’t like them. I think it’s based entirely on what the experience of seeing the movie is. And everything else is just deckchairs on the Titanic or the Queen Elizabeth. None of it matters.”

Akiva Goldsman’s Role as a Producer: The Academy Award-winning screenwriter (“A Beautiful Mind”) says that whether he’s on a movie as the screenwriter or as a producer doesn’t make much of a difference as far as his day-to-day commitment to the project. He’s on the set each and every day. Goldsman loves that part of the process, even though at times it’s been a bit of a struggle.

“I’ve been really lucky because as a writer I’ve been on set almost every day of every film I’ve written, which is how I ended up becoming a producer. I discovered that I found the process congenial and I was not useless at it. So it was sort of interesting that I evolved to producer, or stepped to producer, when a lot of my friends stepped to director. And I like it. I really enjoy it. I mean, this got a little complicated because respective pushes of two movies had ‘Cinderella Man’ and ‘Mr and Mrs Smith’ shooting at the same time. So I was commuting almost at some points every three days between Los Angeles and Toronto, which is not an experience I’d like to replicate. But I really enjoy being on set. I love movie sets,” explained Goldsman, adding that traveling between the two films did take its toll. “I wouldn’t do it again and it was not for the whole movie. It was basically a month of overlap where it was grim. There was a lot of napping on couches.”

The “Mr and Mrs Smith” Pitch from Then College Student Simon Kinberg:
“He’s a lovely kid. We have a little company here at Warner Bros – Weed Road – and Simon was in grad school and he came and pitched this idea. We loved it and we took it to every studio and they all passed. Nobody cared at all. And we got Summit Entertainment to pay for one draft of the script and then we sent the script out and everybody passed. The collective skyrocketing intelligence that is our studio system… And finally Regency, which is a company that has its output deal at Fox, bought it. And then we were suddenly a Doug Liman/Nicole Kidman/Brad Pitt movie. We all looked like geniuses. But only seconds before, literally, no one could have been less interested.”

Seeing Something in “Mr and Mrs Smith” the Studios Didn’t: “Well, at first they were saying that it’s ‘execution dependent’, which is just like saying we should have food for dinner. I mean, literally it’s a non-sentence which means that they don’t want to buy something speculatively. Then when they had the script, I think what they were scared of was that it was really, really, really - as you said and you’ve seen – it’s tonally very delicate. We’re walking this tightrope. We’re trying this tightrope of comedy and melodrama, which in the wrong hands could have been bad. So they weren’t exactly crazy nor were they exactly inspired.”

Akiva Goldsman on What Drew Him to “Mr and Mrs Smith:” “It was the metaphor. Simon [Kinberg] was really clear about this idea that in a relationship, sometimes conflict and the need to clear out the trappings is that which allows people to see each other. That was such a fantastically true idea. All of us who are married in all the meetings, we’d sit around and just nod, you know? And God knows who hasn’t wanted to kill their spouse dead, dead, dead. And so the metaphor abides. It’s such a strong, smart place to start a movie, an idea for a movie.”

Why Doug Liman was Perfect to Direct “Mr and Mrs Smith: Akiva Goldsman said it was Liman’s work on “The Bourne Identity” that sold him on the idea Liman was the right man to direct “Mr and Mrs Smith.” “Absolutely, because Doug’s filmmaking popped up in scale on ‘Bourne.’ I mean, the other movies are fantastic but they’re smaller.

And ‘Bourne’ has that kind of action grabber weaved in.”
Akiva Goldsman on the Possibility of a Sequel to “Mr and Mrs Smith:” I’m pretty sure Akiva Goldsman has made up his mind about a “Mr and Mrs Smith” sequel. Before I’d finished the question, Goldsman answered with, “No. No, no, no. Oh no. No and then no. And also no. And then no. We just want to get it out there and see if people like it.”

On Writing vs. Producing vs. Directing: Though he’s one of the most respected writers in Hollywood, Goldsman refrains from tweaking the work of others if he’s not hired onto a project as a screenwriter. Simon Kinberg was the writer on “Mr and Mrs Smith” and Goldsman told me he didn’t do any work on the script himself. “I try to keep the jobs separate. I don’t usually write what I produce. I have, but generally... Look, as a writer I certainly wouldn’t want my producer rewriting me.”

While Goldsman has a good point, writers don’t normally have the opportunity to work with a producer who has earned a best adapted screenplay Oscar. As a screenwriter, if Goldsman were given the opportunity to have a producer/writer of his caliber help tweak a script, would he allow it? “I still wouldn’t want him to be rewriting me. I want to be rewriting myself. I want to be making my writing better. We only work because we write. We only get better because we keep doing it. You know, despite the fact that Hollywood seems to think that writers are pretty expendable, I don’t. I’ve been really lucky in my set participation and I really believe the writer is an important part of the filmmaking process. In the case of ‘Mr and Mrs Smith,’ Simon was on set every day. And sometimes when there were other writers, which there were, Simon was there working with them. And that was important to me because words need their own department, just like everything else on a movie.”

Akiva Goldsman on the Process of Adapting a Script: “It probably takes me three or four months of writing. Hard to say how much rubber band pulling back there is before that. I almost never jump into something when I get it. I almost always find a reason that I can’t start for a while. I think what’s happening is my brain is sort of revving up. But once I sit down, it’s three or four months. Three months probably, and it’s pretty constant. It’s long writing days.”

Goldsman on Writing with Specific Actors in Mind: “No, not usually. I mean it varies. I wasn’t on ‘Da Vinci Code.’ I wasn’t on ‘A Beautiful Mind.’ Russell brought ‘Cinderella Man’ to Ron [Howard] and I so I knew he was [in it]. But I still tried to write Jim Braddock, not Russell Crowe.”

Tweaking Scripts Based on Actors Who are Cast: “In Russell’s case no because Russell can do anything. You know what I mean? There’s not the beat when you’re writing for Russell where you go, ‘Oh, that’s going to be a stretch.’ I haven’t found a thing he can’t do.”

Developing a Shorthand with Director Ron Howard: Akiva Goldsman and Ron Howard found success together on “A Beautiful Mind” and have since teamed up on “Cinderella Man” starring Russell Crowe and Renee Zellweger, and “The Da Vinci Code,” which is currently in production. “It makes it so much fun. Oh God yes. I love it. It’s my favorite job. Of all my jobs, it’s my favorite job,” enthused Goldsman.

What exactly does Ron Howard do that allows Goldsman to derive so much pleasure from working on Howard’s films? “I don’t know. He’s just kind of amazing. He is so confident and so collaborative. He’s really gifted and I just enjoy working with him so much. He’s such a good, decent, smart, talented human. He has no right to be considering the fact that he basically grew up on television. He should be a whack job and he’s so not. He’s so lovely. Really my favorite job,” said Goldsman.

Akiva Goldsman on Why America Forgot About Jim Braddock, the Heavyweight Champion Who Inspired “Cinderella Man:” “Oh boy I don’t know. You ever have a trauma and sometimes you can’t remember things around it? The Depression was a trauma. It was cultural psychological wound as well as a practical and economic one. You know, I think people tend to put pain behind them. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of great stories didn’t get lost in that.”

The Obvious Comparisons to “Seabiscuit:” “Look. I like to think ‘Cinderella Man’ is ‘Cinderella Man.’ But the one thing you learn quickly is you can never do anything about what other people say.”

Akiva Goldsman on Adapting Dan Brown’s Popular Novel, “The Da Vinci Code:” “We’re trying to be [true] to the book.

We hope to give you the experience of reading the book. That’s our outcome goal. You know, we want you to think you just saw the book. That’s what we’re trying to do.”
Will the Movie Be as Dialogue-Driven as the Book?: “I’m so not telling! [Laughing] I’m so not giving away my smoke and mirrors of how we’re doing it.”

Will There be Major Changes to the Story: “No.”

Sex scenes between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie so realistic 

"Mr. & Mrs. Smith" Director Doug Liman fears the sex scenes between Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in new movie are so realistic, fans of Pitt's estranged wife Jennifer Aniston will boycott the film. Pitt and Jolie have repeatedly denied reports they started an affair on the movie's set, causing the Brad Pitt's high-profile split from Aniston in January reports imdb.com. According to Liman, "producer Dave Matalon said, 'I don't want to lose that audience of people who are huge Jennifer Aniston fans, who are going to hate Angelina Jolie because the sex scene's too sexy. People will see the sex scene and say, 'Oh that's how Angie did it'. It'll be like , 'She used her wiles to seduce him'."

May 31, 2005 By Editor thebosh.com
 

Jolie back in Kenya

FOR the second time in two months, Hollywood actress Angelina Jolie has traveled to Kenya, visiting a United Nations-backed poverty-eradication project in the east African country.

When she last visited in April she was allegedly on a romantic getaway with Hollywood hottie Brad Pitt.
This time it was down to work, with Jolie accompanied by Jeffey Sachs, special advisor to the United Nations secretary general on the eradication of global poverty.

Advertisement:
Officials told AFP Jolie and her adopted son Maddox visited a cash-strapped Sauri village in western Kenya near Lake Victoria, which is beset by poverty, hunger, AIDS and malaria.

Sauri village is part of Sachs's Millennium Villages Project, aimed at promoting aid to poor villages by offering medical care, access to markets and providing electricity through rechargeable lanterns.

Jolie has been accompanied by a television crew throughout her time in Kenya.

May 31, 2005  From: Agence France-Presse