At this week’s Maleficent premiere in Hollywood, Brad Pitt got attacked by an idiotic prankster. Sadly, according to a number of Maleficent reviews, this may have been the most entertaining thing to happen related to the film. How could a film that features Angelina Jolie as the real-life version of this famous Disney villain go wrong? We’ll let a number of the country’s most prominent movie critics explain… Maleficent Sneak Peek While this is Jolie’s show, obviously – and she’s terrifically arch – the surprising dearth of other compelling characters doesn’t offer much distraction when things get off track. – Tom Russo Blockbuster effects can’t mask bland storytelling. – Tom Clift Just about the least interesting take on Sleeping Beauty imaginable. A live action pantomime, robbed of the ultimate pantomime villain. – Joe Cunningham Almost certainly wouldn’t have been made were it not for Angelina Jolie, whose extraordinarily striking presence recalls the Old Hollywood potency of Garbo. If only the film around Jolie were worthy of her. – Peter Canavese Disney’s desire to drain as much profit out of their properties as possible arrives in the form of Maleficent, and boy does the struggle show. – Bill Gibron It becomes abundantly clear that Disney never thought beyond the “let’s make a Maleficent movie” stage because they fail to give the character a clear motivation. – Travis Hopson In the blood-red lipstick and midnight-black gown and cowl of her Sleeping Beauty antecedent, Jolie’s Maleficent is magnificent. – Steven Rea
Shane Carruth has traversed back from the future to deliver us the first teaser trailer to his upcoming film Upstream Color . The writer/director/star of 2004’s Primer (and, eerily, NOTHING ELSE!!!!) is bringing his secretive new project to Sundance next month. (Between this and Zal Batmanglij’s The East , the Sundance team should seriously consider rechristening the 2013 Fest as “Paranoid Futurists Hit The Slopes!”) After a few days of sending out cryptic twitpics from the @UpstreamColor account (close-ups of text on a page, which some sleuthed were actually taken from the works of Henry David Thoreau) today we finally got a link to a short teaser on Apple. Before this, all we knew about the film was that “a man and a woman are drawn together, entangled in the life cycle of an ageless organism.” After watching the teaser, we don’t know much more. The opening shot includes: A jug of independently spinning ice water, a copy of Thoreau’s Walden (thematic constant!) and a man calmly explaining that his head is made from the same material as the sun. Why not? Some creepy rumbles follow, then the sound of rising strings, then a dude wearing headphones, a shot of a pig, followed by a whole lot of God-knows-what including a man angrily landscaping. Personally, I was taken by the shot of colored vapor emerging from – I dunno, cells? Grapes? It reminded me of the “Bring home the motherlode, Barry!” sequence of Panos Cosmatos’ remarkable head film Beyond The Black Rainbow. Hey, upstream COLOR and BLACK RAINBOW? Could this be some sort of cross-universe dealie? (No, it can’t. Unless you are on the right drugs when you see it, in which case, it’s all one big film, man.) RELATED ARTICLES: Sundance 2013 Images: ‘Fruitvale,’ Shane Carruth’s ‘Upstream Color,’ Rooney Mara & Casey Affleck In ‘Ain’t Them Bodies Saints’ Sundance 2013: Where Stephenie Meyer, Harry Potter & Pussy Riot Worlds Will Collid e [via Apple ] Follow Jordan Hoffman on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
Angelina Jolie says she’s thinking about giving up acting to be a stay-at-home mom, but hasn’t she been semi-retired for a while now? Jolie, who can generate headlines simply by pursing her pillow lips a certain way, started the Internet buzzing when she told Britain’s Channel 4 News (via the Huffington Post ): “I think I’m going to have to give up the acting as the kids hit the teenage years…too much to manage at home.” Jolie also told the British broadcast concern that if her acting career “went away tomorrow I would be very happy to be home with the children.” But after looking at her work schedule as of late, I can’t help but think that she’s already begun saying her goodbyes. Her last films were released in 2011 and, technically speaking, she didn’t appear in either of them: She wrote and directed In The Land of Blood and Honey , and she was the voice of Tigress in Kung Fu Panda 2 . In other words, she was last seen onscreen in the flesh in 2010. Yes, she’s currently shooting Maleficent (and her four-year-old daughter Vivienne Jolie-Pitt reportedly has a minor role in it), but that doesn’t hit screens until 2014. She’s also rumored to be talking Tigress again in Kung Fu Panda 3 , but that isn’t expected out until 2016. According to IMDb , she’s also working on a project with La Femme Nikita filmmaker Luc Besson slated for 2013, and that Cleopatra and, sadly, Salt 2 may be in the works, but those projects are more tentative. If Jolie does follow through on her intent to retire when her kids hit their teens, she doesn’t have a lot of time for smoldering close-ups. The eldest of her six kids, Maddox is 11, and if you’ve read any Bret Easton Ellis , you know that the kids of Hollywood royalty grow up faster than their civilian counterparts. The good news is that, with her marriage to Brad Pitt in the works , Jolie won’t have to worry about fading from the public’s short-term memory if she does retire from the screen for a while. She’s one of those rare actresses whose life makes a more interesting tale than some of the movie choices she’s made. Unless she follows in the footsteps of Brigitte Bardot, the camera will always love her. [ Channel 4 , Huffington Post ] Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
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