All these new movie posters for Inglourious Basterds and the new trailers are driving me a little crazy because all they’re doing is feeding my desire to see the movie - which would be great except for the fact that it’s still over a month away from opening day! The new poster shows Brad Pitt standing on top of a bunch of Nazis who have, erm, “expired”. Check it out here!

(It should be noted that “Brad Pitt standing on top of a bunch of Nazis” is not the sort of sentence one ever expects to actually write, but there you have it.)

I love the way he’s standing there, so proud of his work and the tag line saying “A basterd’s work is never done”!

Enjoy!

(Thank you to all of you for wishing me a happy birthday yesterday. I think 35 is going to be a fabulous year!)

One of my favorite Brad Pitt movies is one that is sadly underrated. People often forget about Seven Years in Tibet which, while kind of epically long, was a very good story. I loved the scenery in it almost as much as I loved seeing Brad in it.

This YouTube user set scenes from the movie to the film’s theme song, and it’s quite beautifully done.

If you’ve never actually seen the movie before (and you really should!), here’s the official trailer.

I have to admit, it always distracts me a bit to hear someone speaking with a foreign accent that is not their own, but once the movie gets going, the story kind of pushes the accent aside and I didn’t notice it as much. Still, Brad Pitt speaking with a German accent is quite funny at first!

The movie is almost two and a half hours long, but oh it’s so worth it. It’s incredibly worth it. I can’t believe it’s been 12 years since I saw it in the theater (I feel old now), but I remember being excited to go see it since I was in the process of learning about Tibet and the Dalai Lama.

Perhaps I’ll give this one a watch again this weekend!

With Inglourious Basterds hitting big screens on August 21st, yet another sneak peek is available. They’ve released the international trailer for Inglourious Basterds and some of it is pretty darn funny.

There are parts that we’ve already seen, but I particularly loved the opening of the trailer, as well as the “Bingo!” at the very end. “You just say “Bingo”.” Ha!

I am so very eager to see this movie!

(source)

The L.A. Times has a fairly informative article up discussing what went wrong with the Moneyball script. It also essentially states that as of now - which should be the second week of production based on the original schedule - Moneyball still sits in limbo, waiting to see if another studio will pick it up.

The movie, based on the bestselling book by Michael Lewis, wasn’t just in pre-production. It was literally five days away from filming when Soderbergh turned in a new version of the script that Pascal and her Sony team found unacceptable. The decision was so abrupt that the film’s producer, Michael DeLuca, got the call about it while on his honeymoon in Paris. As a courtesy to the talent, Pascal gave them an opportunity to try and set the film up elsewhere, but no other studio has shown any interest. So the movie remains at Sony, but will it ever get made? Will Pitt stick with the project? And what exactly went wrong?

What went wrong indeed?

The article basically sums up what we had already surmised so far, that Soderbergh handed in a last-minute revised script that Pascal considered to be far too different from the original story she had agreed to, and that it wouldn’t work for her.

Pascal herself said that she had been very excited to work with Soderbergh, that she had wanted to work with him for a very long time, but that “[...] the draft he turned in wasn’t at all what we’d signed up for. He wanted to make a dramatic reenactment of events with real people playing themselves. I’d still work with Steven in a minute, but in terms of this project, he wanted to do the film in a different way than we did.”

I’m not a studio insider, I’ve never written or directed a script, so I don’t know how it works but I’m a little confused as to how they could have come to an agreement, an arrangement, only to have the director essentially re-write the entire storyline and present it mere days before shooting. I would have thought that all the pre-production arrangements would have laid everything very solidly in “stone” so to speak.

The biggest problem, it seems according to the article, is that Soderbergh wanted the movie to be 100% authentic. Authenticity sounds like a good idea when you’re dealing with a true story but he didn’t want to have any one thing but the absolute truth. The issue with that is that it limits the movie; they couldn’t have shown any scenes, say, with Brad Pitt as Billy Beane at home to give us an idea of his life. Soderbergh wanted everything to be absolute historical fact which makes for a good documentary for those who are hardcore baseball fans but a fairly dull $58 million film.

Reading the article helped me to understand the stand-still right now. What do you think of these details?

Image: Newscom

(Thanks Ligaya!)

News is still quiet on the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie front right now. There’s nothing official out as to where things lie with Moneyball. As of now the film is pretty much dead in the water unless another studio picks it up. While it’s a terrible shame for the crew members who were really relying on the income from working on the film, the fact that we haven’t seen Brad or Angelina out and about means that they’re getting a chance to hang out and enjoy life with their family right now.

In light of that, here’s another Friday Flashback for you, a great fan-made video with clips from Mr. & Mrs. Smith.

Every time I see anything from that movie I get the urge to throw my DVD in and watch it. I have no major plans for this Friday evening so I think I just might go ahead and watch Mr. & Mrs. Smith!

Happy Friday!

It’s been awhile since we’ve done a Friday Flashback video at PittWatch but since Brad Pitt just accepted an award at the Spike’s Guys Choice Awards for Fight Club being inducted into the hall of fame, I thought it would be appropriate to remember the movie courtesy of a couple of clips.

This video is a one-minute mash-up tribute, to the point and excellent, it covers the eight rules of Fight Club.

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June has only just started but it’s already kicking off to be a busy month. Angelina Jolie is wrapping up the final week of filming for Salt. That’s good for her because she must be getting tired with the physical level of this acting job, but man I’m going to miss seeing her in that black wig and trench coat!

It’s going to feel like forever before we finally get to see the final product up on the big screen!

Meanwhile, the family will likely be packing up their belongings from their current temporary home in the Oyster Bay area and getting ready to move back to Los Angeles as soon as possible - according to the L.A. Times, Brad Pitt is scheduled to start filming Moneyball on June 11th.

The article goes into a lot of detail about how the movie came to be, and how they ended up being lucky enough to get Brad in the lead role:

A year or so ago, Pitt took an interest in the project, which of course put it on a front burner at the studio. Pitt was a natural for the part. As DeLuca put it: “If you try to think of a movie star who could embody someone like Beane — a former athlete who’s an incredibly physical specimen with movie good looks — you pretty much get to Brad Pitt right away.”

I have to confess that other than hockey and Superbowl football, I’m not a huge sports fan, but of course my interest perks right up when Brad Pitt becomes attached to a movie. I don’t know a lot about baseball so it was good to read the article to get a better grasp of what the movie is exactly about.

I wonder how long it will take for Brad to film his part. I know that Angelina has been filming for quite awhile now, but that’s probably due to it being such a stunt-heavy action flick. It didn’t seem like it took very long for Brad to film Inglourious Basterds, so maybe with a bit of luck the Jolie-Pitt family will get a chance to take some rest and relaxation time together - France or New Orleans perhaps?

In the meantime, maybe we’ll see some Brad and Angelina outings while they’re in Los Angeles!

Images: Newscom

Angelina Jolie is such a trooper. Despite getting hurt on Friday while filming a scene for Salt, despite being taken to the hospital (and for some reason I can honestly imagine her protesting and insisting she just needed a Tylenol and five minutes to rest!), and despite sustaining a mild injury, it was reported that Angie was back on set that same day.

There’s no rest for the weary either, because Angelina Jolie was also filming this weekend. These photos were taken while she filmed today (Sunday, May 31st), and you can’t even tell she was hurt at all. I guess the cut she got on her forehead was shallow enough that they were able to easily cover it - either that or they worked it in to the story - if Evelyn Salt is on the run, she could very well have a cut on her head!

More photos of Angelina Jolie back on set for Salt below the cut!

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All work and no play is no fun for anyone, so during a break in the filming of Salt today, everyone celebrated a crew member’s birthday by busting out a nice chocolate cake.

Angelina Jolie was spotted eating her cake with her handcuffs still dangling from one wrist. I guess she was planning to get right back into character again - either that or someone lost the key!

Working on your birthday kind of sucks sometimes, but it wouldn’t be so bad if you got chocolate cake and got to eat it with Angelina right?

More photos of Angelina Jolie eating birthday cake on set below the cut!

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Fresh from her quick visit to the Cannes Film Festival with Brad Pitt, on Saturday Angelina Jolie was back to work on the set of Salt, filming a scene with her black wig and trench coat.

Some of the scenes were set up for a police chase so it sounds like it was another exciting day on set!

I don’t know how she does it. Just thinking about flying from New York to the Netherlands to France and back to New York again exhausts me, and that’s not even factoring in the time differences and subsequent jet lag. I wonder how much coffee Angelina drinks on an average day!

More photos of Angelina Jolie filming below the cut!

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