Doc: Brangelina Won’t Burst for Weeks
Disclaimer: The press conference is in French sans subtitlesso you’ll have to take our word on the translation.
Angelina Jolie’s doctor just threw a bucket of cold water on the global Brangelina babywatch.
“Angelina’s pregnancy has gone very well so far, and she has absolutely no problems at all,” obstetrician Dr. Michel Sussmann told News, before delivering the blow.
“But she still has at least two or three weeks to go until she gives birth, and she’ll most certainly be staying in the hospital until after she gives birth.”
Maybe Dustin Hoffman’s previously believed red herring due date of Aug. 19 wasn’t so far-fetched after all.
“Lenval is one of the best maternity hospitals in the world, so if there were any problems she’ll get the best care possible,” Sussmann said. “But for now, both Angelina and the babies are doing extremely well. Everyone’s very happy.”
Sussmann spoke to News following a press conference at 5:30 p.m. local time, in which he gave an update on the state of the world’s most-watched pregnancy.
“Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have asked us to let you know that she’s very well,” Sussmann said, addressing her early admittance. “It isn’t an emergency, it’s completely planned. We’re not talking about a premature birth.”
Sussmann also added that the updates would be kept to an absolute minimum out of respect for the mother-to-be.
“She’s a pregnant woman, and she’s entitled to her privacy. She will stay in the hospital as long as it takes, then she will be allowed to go home. I have a very high respect for both her and her husband, and she’s a very good patient.”
The conference itself came just a few hours after some high-powered visitors arrived at the hospital, albeit with much less fanfare than the press conference provided.
A shades- and trilby-wearing Pitt, accompanied by daughters Zahara and Shiloh, were spotted earlier in the day entering the hospital’s maternity ward.
The hospital is bending the rules ever so slightly for the famous patientminors under the age of 15 are ordinarily not permitted during the hospital’s visiting hours.
Special times apparently call for special measures.
The family’s blacked-out Mercedes was waved through the side entrance of the hospital at 1:16 p.m. local time after passing through the amped-up security hired by the hospital following Jolie’s admittance.
The 33-year-old checked into Nice’s Lenval hospital earlier this week in advance of the twins’ birth. It was something Nadine Bauer, the hospital’s spokeswoman, told News was “standard procedure,” and “something she had planned with her doctor…for some time” as a way to rest up for the final days of her pregnancy.
Bauer also confirmed on Tuesday that Sussmann would hold a press conference in the wake of the twins’ arrival to formally announce the news, but because no due date has yet been given, anticipation was high going into today’s press conference.
It will, no doubt, continue to be.
Casting Couch: A Tale of Two Joshes
In this edition of Casting Couch, Lost’s Josh Holloway is hoping to find some big-screen success and Josh Hartnett is heading to the stage to channel his inner Tom Cruise.
The 37-year-old Holloway, who plays badass con man Sawyer on ABC’s hit series, is climbing aboard the Polish brothers’ Stay Cool, touted as a “knowing-your-age comedy.”
Per the Hollywood Reporter, Holloway joins an ensemble that includes Winona Ryder, Sean Astin, Chevy Chase, Hilary Duff, Jon Cryer and Mark Polish, who cowrote the screenplay with twin brother Michael, who will direct.
The plot revolves around a writer (Polish) who returns to his hometown and has an unexpected reunion with a former high school classmate (Ryder), who still harbors an unrequited love for him. At the same time, the author must fend off a young student (Duff) with the hots for him.
Holloway plays a former high school jock and ex-beau of Ryder’s character.
Hartnett, meanwhile, will top the marquee in a stage version of the 1988 Best Picture winner, Rain Man.
The 29-year-old Sin City star plays Cruise’s character, Charlie Babbit, on London’s West End. British thespian Adam Godley takes on the role of his autistic savant of a brother, Raymond Babbit, played to Academy Award perfection onscreen by Dustin Hoffman.
Playwright Dan Gordon, whose film credits include The Hurricane and Wyatt Earp, is adapting Rain Man for the boards. The scribe previously penned a theatrical take on Terms of Endearment, which toured the U.K. Rain Man bows at the Apollo Theatre on Aug. 28 and runs through Dec. 20.
In other casting news:
- Val Kilmer has joined the indie drama Silver Cord, based on a true story about a man who’s successfully revived after being declared clinically dead on multiple occasions. It starts lensing in September.
- Tom McCarthy, best known for directing the indie hits The Station Agent and The Visitor, has signed on to play the boyfriend of Amanda Peet’s character in Roland Emmerich’s latest end-of-the-world extravangaza, 2012. The would-be Hollywood blockbuster follows a group of people who must survive a series of natural disasters, and costars John Cusack, Thandie Newton, Danny Glover, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Oliver Platt. Shooting starts in August in Vancouver.
- Young Jeezy is set to make his feature acting debut in fellow hip-hopster Ice Cube’s upcoming comedy, Janky Promoters, playing a young emcee who gets involved with a pair of crooked concert promoters.
- William Hurt has been tapped to star in The Rivery Why, a coming-of-age drama adapted from the 1983 Sierra Club novel of the same name. The Oscar winner plays the father of Gus (Zach Gilford), a young man on a mission to catch an elusive rainbow trout. Amber Heard plays Gus’ girlfriend, a tomboy fly-fisher.
- Upright Citizens Brigade comic Jason Mantzoukas has landed a starring role in Off Duty, a pilot for NBC about cops who can’t leave their job at the station.
The Tale of Despereaux Movie Trailer
Universal has released a trailer for their pcoming computer animated film The Tale of Despereaux. I always find it fascinating when similar films are released close together: Armageddon and Deep Impact, Ants and A Bug’s Life, and now Ratatouille and The Tale of Despereaux - two computer animated films with European settings, about rodents who aren’t afraid of the human world which they are trained to be afraid of. And I’m not saying that Universal copied Pixar, or Pixar copied Universal. It’s just interesting that similar ideas are realized at the same time. The Tale of Despereaux is actually based on a book which was published in 2003, and the film was announced a year later. Pixar began developing Ratatouille in 2000. But it also doesn’t help that the teaser begins with a Chef in a kitchen.
Official Plot Synopsis: Once upon a time, in the faraway kingdom of Dor, there was magic in the air, laughter aplenty and gallons of mouthwatering soup. But an accident left the King broken-hearted, the Princess filled with longing and the townsfolk without their soup. Sunlight disappeared. The world became gray. All hope was lost in this land…until Despereaux Tilling (Matthew Broderick) was born.
A modern fairy tale, The Tale of Despereaux tells the story of four unlikely heroes: Despereaux , a brave mouse banished to the dungeon for speaking with a human; Roscuro (Dustin Hoffman), a good-hearted rat who loves light and soup, but is exiled to darkness; Pea (Emma Watson), a Princess in a gloomy castle who is prisoner to her father’s grief; and Mig (Tracey Ullman), a servant girl who longs to be a Princess, but is forced to serve the jailer.
Tiny and graced with oversized ears, Despereaux was born too big for his little world. Refusing to live his life cowering, he befriends a Princess named Pea and learns to read (rather than eat) books—reveling in stories of knights, dragons and fair maidens. Banished from Mouseworld for being more man than mouse, Despereaux is rescued by another outcast, Roscuro, who also wants to hear the tales. But when the Princess dismisses Roscuro’s friendship, he becomes the ultimate rat and plots revenge with fellow outsider Mig.
After Pea is kidnapped, Despereaux discovers he is the only one who can rescue her…and that even the tiniest mouse can find the courage of a knight in shining armor. In this tale of bravery, forgiveness and redemption, one small creature will teach a kingdom that it takes only a little light to show the truth: what you look like doesn’t equal what you are.
Watch the trailer in High Definition on Yahoo. The Tale of Despereaux is scheduled to hit theaters on December 19th 2008.
Sydney Pollack Dies; Actor and Actor’s Director
Sydney Pollack helped make a sex symbol of Robert Redford, an Oscar-caliber star of Jane Fonda and a woman of Dustin Hoffman.
Pollack, the quintessential actor’s director of Tootsie, The Way We Were and more, who seemed most comfortable in the company of Hollywood’s biggest stars, and vice versa, died tonight of cancer at his Los Angeles home.
The filmmaker, a two-time Oscar-winner, was 73.
“Sydney made the world a little better, movies a little better and even dinner a little better,” George Clooney said in a statement. “A tip of the hat to a class act. He’ll be missed terribly.”
Pollack recently worked with Clooney on Michael Clayton, which Pollack acted in and helped produce, and Leatherheads, which he executive produced.
Michael Clayton, a Best Picture contender at this past February’s Oscars, brought Pollack his sixth career nomination. He won his pair of statuettes for directing and producing the 1985 Best Picture winner, Out of Africa.
He also earned nominations for directing and producing Tootsie, the beloved cross-dressing 1982 comedy, and for directing the 1969 dance-marathon drama They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?.
A former acting teacher who became an in-demand character actor, Pollack had memorable on-screen turns in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut, Woody Allen’s Husbands and Wives and his own Tootsie, in which he played Hoffman’s exasperated acting agent.
Indicative of a career that seemed as vital as ever, Pollack can currently be seen in theaters as Patrick Dempsey’s father in the comedy Made of Honor.
Pollack, the producer, likewise was busy. He had a number of films in the offing, including The Reader, an upcoming Ralph Fiennes-Kate Winslet romantic drama, from the production company he founded with Anthony Minghella, the Oscar-winning writer-director who died suddenly in March.
With its central love story, The Reader seems a prototypical Pollack production. As the filmmaker told Online in 2000, “I have never done a film without a love story.”
And, he could have added, he never did a film without an A-list actor, either.
Hoffman, Tom Cruise (The Firm), Meryl Streep (Out of Africa), Paul Newman and Sally Field (Absence of Malice), and Nicole Kidman and Sean Penn (The Interpreter) all worked with Pollack, the director.
Harrison Ford made two movies with PollackRandom Hearts and Sabrina.
Robert Redford made sevenHavana, Out of Africa, The Electric Horseman, Three Days of the Condor, The Way We Were, Jeremiah Johnson and This Property Is Condemned.
A star on a Pollack film, especially a Pollack film of the 1970s and 1980s, could almost bet on two things: the film selling a lot of tickets, and the film netting a lot of Oscar nominations. Actors who earned Academy Award nominations in Pollack films include Hoffman, Newman, Streep, Barbra Streisand (The Way We Were) and Holly Hunter (The Firm).
While Pollack was known for deftly and successfully working with Hollywood giants, he also had a knack for discovering talent. Or, maybe it’s better put, he had a knack for recasting talent.
He spotted Greg Kinnear on E!’s Talk Soup, cast him as Ford’s younger brother in Sabrina and set the TV host onto an Oscar-nominated acting career.
He directed the post-Barbarella Jane Fonda, not then noted as a serious actress, to her first Oscar nomination in They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?.
And he directed Jessica Lange, also not yet then noted as a serious actress, to her first Oscar-winning performance as Hoffman’s insecure love interest in Tootsie.
Of all the stars he worked with, Pollack was most associated with Redford. This Property Is Condemned, released in 1966, was Pollack’s second feature as director, and one of Redford’s first as a leading man. The two went on to work together on one of the biggest box-office hits of the 1970s, the love-song-inspiring The Way We Were, to one of the more notorious busts of the 1990s, the bad-review-inspiring Havana.
“I’ll tell you something,” Pollack said of Havana to the New York Times. “If I had to do it again, I’d do it. I loved that character that Redford played.”
Pollack was biased. He saw in Redford “the quintessential American hero,” he told Online, and “the loner, the guy who wanted to make his own rules, the guy who learns to become a real human being through the love of a woman,” he expounded on to the Times.
A man who becomes a better man by becoming a woman was the premise of Tootsie, arguably Pollack’s greatest success as director, Oscar wins notwithstanding, and his only film to make the American Film Institute’s list honoring the 100 best U.S.-made movies.
Tootsie, in which difficult actor Michael Dorsey (Hoffman) becomes a soap star by pretending to be spunky actress Dorothy Michaels (also Hoffman), earned 10 Academy Award nominations, and reignited Pollack’s left-for-dead acting career.
According to the filmmaker, Hoffman suggestedno, demandedthat Pollack play Michael Dorsey’s agent, instead of Dabney Coleman, who’d been cast.
“Dustin was very fond of Dabney, but he felt he was a colleague and a peer,” Pollack told Online. “He said, ’If a peer says to me, ’You’re never going to work again,’ I’m not gonna put on a dress. If you say to me, ’You’re never gonna work again,’ then maybe I’ll put on a dress.”
Coleman ended up playing the movie’s boorish soap director; Pollack ended up on other directors’ call sheets.
He played the midlife-crisis-suffering husband in Allen’s Husbands and Wives. He played the tony Long Islander with a penchant for clothing-optional costume parties in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. He played Clooney’s law-firm boss in Tony Gilroy’s Michael Clayton.
Pollack also did a good amount of TV, including stops on The Sopranos, Frasier and Will & Grace, where he occasionally appeared as Eric McCormack’s prime-time father.
Born July 1, 1934, in Lafayette, Ind., Pollack once said of his childhood to the Times, “I think of it with great sadness. It was a real cultural desert.”
Pollack found a home in New York City, where acting class kept him busy as both student and teacher. Of his teaching career, Pollack said it only came about because he couldn’t find work as an actor.
The turning point came in 1959 when John Frankenheimer, a prolific director of the era’s live TV dramas who would later helm such films as the original Manchurian Candidate, hired Pollack as an acting coach. The gig led to TV directing gigs, which led to his first feature, The Slender Thread, a 1965 suicide hotline drama with, as would become Pollack’s way, two stars, Sidney Poitier and Anne Bancroft.
Pollack’s last dramatic film as director was the United Nations-set The Interpreter, which was released in 2005, the same year as his lone documentary as a filmmaker, Sketches of Frank Gehry, about the noted architect.
A prolific producer and executive producer, Pollack helped make high-profile Oscar fare (Minghella’s Cold Mountain and The Talented Mr. Ripley), smallish films (Sliding Doors, Searching for Bobby Fischer) and even a John Goodman vehicle (King Ralph).
In the end, Pollack was defined by big stars and big movies. He knew it. And embraced it.
“Not all those big movies are good for you. I suppose there’s a lot of bad onesI’m sure people would say I’ve made some of them,” Pollack once told National Public Radio. “But the good ones do move you.”