Luc Besson was never really very far from the director’s chair, but it has felt that way for some time, because it has been a while since he made a movie with the massive American mainstream recognizance of The Professional or The Fifth Element. Besson’s longest absence from the director’s chair was from ’99 to ’05, but in the past decade he has really become as well known for writing and producing mid-budget action films like The Transporter and Taken as he is for his own directorial efforts.
Things might be swinging back to the old days. The Lady, the film in which Besson directed Michelle Yeoh as Burmese activist Aung San Suu Kyi, is getting a lot of attention as it moves from festivals to a regular engagement near you. And now Besson has Angelina Jolie in talks to star in a ‘dramatic thriller’ that Besson wrote and will direct next year. Read More »
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In the Land of Blood and Honey is the directorial debut of Angelina Jolie, who also wrote the script about a pair of lovers, a Muslim and a Serb, whose relationship forms during the Bosnian War.
The poster has just been released, and it is an eye-catching image that bucks the trend of using headshots and/or overly composed, dry imagery to sell the war-torn romance. This was probably the only approach to take in order to sell the film in the US, given that the leads, Zana Marjanovi? and Goran Kostic, aren’t recognizable faces here. Bonus for us that we get a pretty good poster out of the deal. Check it out in full below. Read More »
Posted on Thursday, November 17th, 2011 by Angie Han
Angelina Jolie‘s last live-action acting job was the disappointing The Tourist, but the actress-filmmaker is now poised to star in a new project that sounds much more intriguing. Titled Gertrude Bell, the biopic centers around the woman who’s been described as “the female Lawrence of Arabia” for her role in helping to establish the modern states of Jordan and Iraq in the early 20th century. Ridley Scott‘s Scott Free Productions is developing the picture, announced in March, with Scott himself still eyeing the director’s chair. More details after the jump.
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Posted on Friday, October 21st, 2011 by Angie Han
Actors are forever jumping behind the camera to try their hands at directing, with extremely mixed results. Sometimes it’s Ben Affleck making a career comeback as the acclaimed helmer of Gone Baby Gone and The Town; other times it’s Dermot Mulroney attaining that elusive 0% on Rotten Tomatoes with Love Wedding Marriage.
If the new trailer for Angelina Jolie‘s In the Land of Blood and Honey is any indication, it seems she happily falls into the former category. The Bosnian war drama follows two lovers on opposite sides of the conflict — a Christian Serb played by Goran Kostic and a Bosniak woman played by Zana Marjanovic — who find their relationship doomed by the civil war. Watch the trailer after the jump.
Update: A full-quality trailer has been released via Yahoo and is embedded below.
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Posted on Tuesday, August 16th, 2011 by Angie Han
I’ve always had this fascination with seeing current rich and famous figures in their humble beginnings, and the success of tabloid columns and webpages devoted to that very topic suggest I’m not the only one. When some A-list faces are as familiar to us as those of our actual loved ones, seeing long-ago photos or videos of them is amusing in the same way that seeing pictures of your friends as little kids is amusing. “Before They Were Famous: 25 Actors in 3 Minutes” collects some especially amusing snippets of today’s biggest stars, including Angelina Jolie, Ryan Gosling, Jack Nicholson, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt, in some of their earliest acting gigs. Watch the video after the jump.
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This is something that will likely go down as a bit of ‘what if?’ trivia. Despite the fact that scheduling and other factors caused the death of Guillermo del Toro‘s Disney Double Dare You deal, it looks like he’s still interested in working for the Mouse. Or, more to the point, it sounds like the fact of not being able to make The Hobbit has left the writer/director with the desire to film a dragon, and doing so through Disney might be one way to scratch that particular itch. Read More »
When David O. Russell stepped away from Sony’s tentpole Uncharted, it looked like The Silver Linings Playbook, based on Matthew Quick‘s novel, would be his next film. (The project had already been rumored as a possibility to be made before Uncharted.) Mark Wahlberg is set to star as “a delusional former high school history teacher who’s just been released into the custody of his mom. Believing that he’s only been away for a few months instead of the four years he just spent in a mental institution, the teacher sets about wooing back his ex-wife.”
Now, there is a report that Angelina Jolie is meeting with David O. Russell this week about the film, and so there is speculation that she’ll take the ex-wife role, once pegged as a possible gig for Anne Hathaway. This seems like a slight chance, as this isn’t the sort of material that Angelina Jolie has been doing in the past few years. She seems far more drawn to projects where she is really the driving force. But with the Oscar heat that came off The Fighter, David O. Russell is probably a much more attractive director now than he was before, and that lure can’t be totally discounted. [JustJared]
After the break, a possible Rushmore reunion is brewing, as Olivia Williams could end up in the Bill Murray film Hyde Park on Hudson. Read More »
Briefly: You know you want a Salt sequel. Wait, you don’t? Shh, don’t tell Sony. The studio has Kurt Wimmer writing the sequel right now, and the idea is that if the script passes muster, Angelina Jolie will sign on to reprise her role as Russian spy and CIA agent on the run Evelyn Salt who (spoiler!) ended the first movie intending to hunt down other sleeper agents.
When Salt was released last year, writer Kurt Wimmer said he had an idea for a sequel, and most involved parties expressed interest in signing on. Director Phillip Noyce will not take part, however, as he said that the alternate blu-ray cuts pretty much represented his last word on the character. We don’t know yet what the story for the sequel would be, but this could easily be a Bourne-style franchise for Sony, with Angelina Jolie dashing in disguise through a few movies beating the hell out of deep-cover Russian agents. Presumably, she could be accepted back into the CIA and hunt down other spies for them, as well. [Deadline]
