"As Jolie moved through the rooms of her gallery with a cup of tea, she paused to take in the unlikely scene. 'Sometimes I think, what are we doing?'..."

"A clutch of women had found their place beside her, urgently wanting to talk about art and activism. 'And then I think, no, this is everything.'"

From "Angelina Jolie Wants to Pick Up Where Warhol and Basquiat Left Off/The actress is building a community of artists, thinkers and doers of all kinds, in a storied building in downtown Manhattan" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see the art, the artists, and the artsy spaces).

Jolie listened intently to Neshat, the Iranian visual artist and filmmaker, a striking figure with kohled eyes. “Art doesn’t come from intuition,” Neshat said. “It has to come from the life you have led. It has to relate to the world.”

Meanwhile, Jolie's ex, Brad Pitt, is running into trouble with his real-estate-based humanitarianism: "Brad Pitt Suffers Major Setback In $20M Legal Battle Over Defective Homes For Hurricane Katrina Victims" (Yahoo).

The actor had built homes for these individuals in the wake of the natural disaster, but the homes reportedly developed dangerous mold, leading to the class action they filed.... Pitt had spent $12 million through his Make It Right Project to build these homes, which were designed to be ecologically sustainable....

Golden Globe nominations are out.

 See the list at People.com.

I don't care other than that "A Complete Unknown" is thought to be good. It's nominated as best drama motion picture and Timothée Chalamet is nominated as best male actor in a drama (in the role of Bob Dylan) and Edward Norton is nominated as best male actor in a supporting role in a drama (playing Pete Seeger). 

Tim will need to compete with the actor who plays Donald Trump in "The Apprentice," and Ed will need to compete with Jeremy Strong, who plays Roy Cohn in "The Apprentice." 

And I love seeing that Pamela Anderson is in the running for best "female actor" in a drama. She's got to compete with Angelina Jolie, Nicole Kidman, Tilda Swinton, Kate Winslet — all famously great at acting in big dramas. You've got to root for the underdog there, but then there's one more nominee, Fernanda Torres for something called "I’m Still Here." I don't know anything about that, so... whatever... Pam or Fernanda. But I will watch Angelina Jolie in "Maria," because it's already on Netflix, starting Wednesday. That probably suggests it's not that good, but it costs nothing in time/money to take a look.

"Jolie signed up to the film knowing she would actually have to learn how to sing opera...."

"'I was terribly nervous,” she said... 'I spent almost seven months training....' [Director Pablo Larraín knew the actress could capture Callas’s magnetic presence and relate to the pressures the singer felt around her fame, but he strenuously did not want this to be a lip-syncing job. He planned on shooting close-ups of Jolie as Callas and felt it would immediately feel inauthentic to the audience if his lead actress didn’t know the sensation of singing opera, even if the sounds used in the film aren’t entirely her own.... [Jolie] listened endlessly to tapes of Callas teaching others how to sing opera... What we hear in the film are tracks mixing Jolie and Callas. The moments of Callas in her prime are mostly Callas with a fragment of Jolie — and then at other, more raw points, particularly as her voice degrades, it’s more Jolie...."

From "Angelina Jolie soars into the Oscar race with Venice film ‘Maria’/Jolie, who’s been locked in a legal battle with ex Brad Pitt, called the role of legendary opera singer Maria Callas 'therapy I didn’t know I needed'" (WaPo).

A quote from Jolie: "I think when your life is full, when you’ve felt a certain level of despair, of pain, of love, at a certain point, there [are] only certain sounds that can match that feeling. And to me, the immensity of the feeling encapsulated within the sounds of opera, there’s nothing like it, … It is the only sound that would explain that pain."

"In many ways, they each offered the other a different kind of legitimacy and power. For him, it was the legitimacy of high-minded activism..."

"... the idea that he was deeper than his screen image, who chomped on food with gusto and had a light, almost breezy touch. For her... [t]he relationship reaffirmed that Jolie’s stardom was born of a private life made public. Pitt was a magnet for the ravenous press, and she gained a level of visibility she hadn’t quite inhabited before. But it also bolstered her as an artist, a reciprocal dynamic that would persist throughout their relationship.... The beginning of the end of Jolie and Pitt’s intertwined star personae became evident with a single pale leg jutting dramatically out of a black velvet Versace gown at the 2012 Academy Awards.... An endless ream of memes lambasting the actress for seeming forced in her sexiness followed, placing her leg on a variety of figures or doubling it on the other side to make her look like a couture crab. It was the first time she seemed like a punch line...."

From "What Was Brangelina? They were known for their image-making savvy. As their divorce reenters the press cycle, we’re reminded of who’s better at it" by Angelica Jade Bastién (The Vulture).

An endless ream of memes lambasting.... What think you of the torrid, florid writing?

Do these intertwined star personae deserve this prodigious, ridiculous writing?

***

Overheard at Meadhouse:

I need a rhyme for "prodigious"?

Ridiculous.

"This man was cupping my breast and swirling it all around, he was going to cut it off, along with the other one, in a few hours...."

"Cold in this man’s hand, they were beautiful. Historically, they were the most complimented parts of my body, aureoles dark as my grandmother’s face, a gift from her that I was supposed to empty into a baby’s mouth.... A few years after I had surgery, I was at the $20-for-an-entire-day spa in Los Angeles’s Koreatown and a woman who’d been eyeing me for the better part of an hour cornered me to ask if mine was the same surgery that Angelina Jolie had. The best I could do that moment was 'sure.'"

From "Editing My Body/'I’d just signed the form that said "paid: $6,043.00/male reconstructed chest"'" by Emerson Whitney (New York Magazine).

"Iran has arrested an Instagram celebrity famous for drastically altering her appearance through cosmetic surgery..."

"The social media star known as Sahar Tabar was detained on the orders of Tehran’s guidance court, which deals with 'cultural crimes and social and moral corruption'... She faces charges including blasphemy, inciting violence, gaining income through inappropriate means and encouraging youths to corruption," The Guardian reports, based on a report from the "semi-official" Tasnim news agency.

Here's the crazy-looking picture of her, which is said to resemble Angelina Jolie (in some zombie sort of incarnation).



Tabar does plastic surgery, and we're told "Cosmetic surgery is hugely popular in the Islamic republic," but there's also photoshopping involved. I'm not sure what part of all this is regarded as "blasphemy" by the Iranian authorities.

Tabar used Instagram, the only "major social media" available in Iran. It's accurate, I think, to say that this sort of thing entails "social and moral corruption." The problem is using criminal law to deal with it. The government's solution is worse than the problem. But it's amazing that a person was able to go this far in Iran without encountering a reaction from the government, and it's hard to understand, without living there, how much social media expression like this is a legitimate and admirable rebellion against repression. Without government repression, onlookers are free to simple express disgust at this sort of attack on one's own face.

ADDED: On the subject of plastic surgery in Iran, consider "Why Iran is a hub for sex-reassignment surgery/It is not because the regime is liberal" (The Economist):

"Oh, no! Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are getting divorced! They have 6 children together!"

I exclaim, reading this.

MEADE: "It was only a matter of time."

ME: "But they were parading like they were these..."

MEADE (interrupting): "Don't parade."

ADDED: Absurd sentence from the linked article: "Ange, 41, has been focusing on her humanitarian work while Brad, 52, focuses on launching a resort in Croatia."

AND: "There have been a constant string of arguments about their future and their children. They ended up completely disagreeing over how to raise the kids." What were the different ways that were so much more of a conflict than the way that is without 2 married parents?

"Regardless of the hormone replacements I’m taking, I am now in menopause," writes Angelina Jolie, who is 39...

... about her laparoscopic bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy.

Two years ago I wrote about my choice to have a preventive double mastectomy.... [This was] a less complex surgery than the mastectomy, but its effects are more severe. It puts a woman into forced menopause. So I was readying myself physically and emotionally, discussing options with doctors, researching alternative medicine....

I will not be able to have any more children.... But I feel at ease with whatever will come, not because I am strong but because this is a part of life. It is nothing to be feared.... [I]t is possible to take control and tackle head-on any health issue....

ADDED: I don't know how seriously Ms. Jolie took alternative medicine, but I think it's good that she mentioned it here the way she did. She researched it. That's all she said. That throws out a line to the many people who think, when they find themselves in similar circumstances, I want to try the "natural"/alternative approach. It's tempting to many people, including many intelligent people, notably Steve Jobs. I could name individuals in my family — people I know were intelligent and who had access to science-based medicine — who took the alternative route and missed the opportunity to address deadly medical problems at the right time. It is extremely valuable for a celebrity as big and well-loved as Ms. Jolie to call people back from that precipice with the gentle words "discussing options with doctors, researching alternative medicine" followed by the decision to have dramatically life-changing surgery. That's a memorable lesson with a stamp of celebrity authority that's really useful to the vast numbers of people who don't automatically realize that they ought to be rational and go with science.

"How come I know you don’t write anything you don’t want broadcast in an email? How come I know that? Who’s advising people?"

Said the actress Lisa Kudrow, commenting on the leaked emails of Sony executives (in which, for example, Leonardo DiCaprio was called "despicable").

"It doesn't matter how many times [an email] says 'This is confidential, meant for just between the sender and the recipient,'" [Kudrow] said. "Why don't we know that there are no rules? Everything is broadcast and published. That's the part I just don't understand."

That tough reality has made Kudrow extremely cautious of what she says.

"I mean, I have almost no opinions anymore," she joked.

Kudrow asks a good question — and she seems to imply that the answer is that these executives were embarrassingly ignorant and out of touch with modern life. But there could be other explanations. I thought of two:

1. Email is an efficient way to conduct business, but only when the speech is sharp and clear and cuts through all the crap. The successful executives are the ones who can communicate like this, and for them, at least until now, it has been worth the risk. Email couched in pleasantries and euphemisms would waste everyone's time and make you look insufficiently hard-assed. The risk of leakage was far outweighed by the potential to succeed, and those who weigh the risk otherwise don't get to these positions of power in the first place. It's fine for an actress to cultivate her niceness image, but she's got a entirely different kind of career. And having "almost no opinions" is a good low-risk strategy for her.

2. The Hollywood executives actually don't mind if these opinions leak out. They won't come forward now and own up to actually thinking Leonardo DiCaprio was "despicable" to withdraw from whatever commitment he made to play the role of Steve Jobs in another Steve Jobs biopic or that Angelina Jolie, who was bothering them somehow over another biopic of Cleopatra, is "a minimally talent spoiled brat." Pressuring/controlling/manipulating celebrities is what these executives need to do, and creating anxieties about whether they will get their projects funded or will get work in the future is part of how they play their game. Maybe the executives want Leo and Angie and the others to know that the executives expect better compliance.

I'm not saying I'm sure either or both of those things are true. I'm just playing with alternate scenarios and trying to open up the discussion.

"Angelina’s wedding gown a gross display of parenting run amok."

It was covered with embroidery based on drawings her kids had made — "a random assortment of motorbikes, Eiffel Towers, mouse-like creatures and other 'charming' artwork" with "'buttock fattock' inexplicably embroidered on the rear."

Oh, what difference does it make? Why is a woman with children wearing a traditional white wedding dress in the first place? If you're going to stage a wedding long after the birth/adoption of 6 children and wear the white dress, why not goof on its inappropriateness and comment comically on how you've messed with the old convention that somehow you still want in on anyway?

By they way, "amok" comes from the Malay "amoq," which means "engaging furiously in battle, attacking with desperate resolution, rushing in a state of frenzy to the commission of indiscriminate murder... Applied to any animal in a state of vicious rage." (OED, no link available.)

To "to run amok" is "to run viciously, mad, frenzied for blood" or, figurative, "wild or wildly, headlong or heedlessly."

Talking about taxes and slavery, Henry David Thoreau used the expression in "Walden" (1854):

"Each of the couple’s six children had a job in the nuptials. The bride was walked down the aisle by eldest sons Maddox and Pax..."

"... while daughters Zahara and Vivienne tossed flower petals. Shiloh and Knox served as ring bearers."

Nice. The kids were central, and it was the kids who wanted the wedding. Angelina Jolie had been explaining to them for years that "our commitment when we decided to start a family was the greatest commitment you could possibly have," but the movie stars' kids were "watching movies featuring weddings, including 'Shrek,' and had been asking a lot of questions."

Earlier this year, she joked that the kids would serve as wedding planners, and the nuptials would be Disney-themed or feature paintball.

“It means something to them,” [Brad] Pitt said of a wedding in 2012. “We will [get married] someday, we will. It’s a great idea. ‘Get mommy a ring.’ ‘OK, I will, I will.’ ”

“Most kids have a wish for their parents to be married, even or especially kids of celebrities,” says Lisa Brateman, a New York-based psychotherapist. “I think marriage offers a perception of emotional security.”

"Perception," says the psychotherapist. We adults know marriage doesn't make permanence, but the kids believe.

On the subject of the faith of children, Jesus said: "Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Therefore, whoever takes the lowly position of this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven."

It's official: "everyone... in the country who wants to be married is legally able."

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie — with 6 children and 10 years into their relationship and after saying they would not marry until "everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able" — have married.

Should they not have waited until the Supreme Court releases the virtually undoubtedly forthcoming decision declaring a right of same-sex couples to marry? Ah, we're close enough! And is the Supreme Court really a more authoritative expositor of American rights that Brad and Angelina?

It is emphatically the province and duty of pop culture icons to say what the law is.

Normally, we admire actors whose performance looks like real life. But if it's actually real...

... and we're being scammed into thinking it's acting, there's no performance that can impress us, only the illusion of performance.

Once you know it's real, you can't admire the acting. You could admire the nerve of the performers to go through the ordeal, but only if they chose to do it that way. Were they paid enough? Did they willingly submit to whatever surprises the filmmaker had in store for them? Did they know there were limits to what would be imposed on them? What power did they have to draw the line?

What if you knew that the actress in a rape scene had no idea what the scene would be and a willing actor was directed to rape her on the set? Assume that afterwards, she was convinced that it worked to produce what looks like a great acting performance, for which she might receive an Oscar, and she was persuaded to keep the director's methodology secret. But the truth slipped out somehow. Would you refuse to see the movie because of the way it was made? If others chose to see it, would you denounce them as moral cretins?

Related questions:

What did Alfred Hitchcock do to Tippi Hedren to produce the footage that became the movie "The Birds"?

Should an actor get drunk to play drunk?

Do we prefer to watch love scenes with actors who really love each other or actors who have to act like they love someone they hate?

Did Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie fall in love because they got so deeply into the roles they were playing in "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" and never found their way back to their previous personas?

If an actor stays in character for months — on set and off — is that acting or something like madness?

Are very young children playing movie roles undeserving of acting credit because their performances arise out of their childish inability to distinguish fantasy from reality?

What do they say to little child actors to make them cry and emote?  

Were animals harmed in the making of that movie?

With a "faulty" gene and an 87% risk of breast cancer, Angelina Jolie opts for a double mastectomy.

Explained and described in a NYT oped:

My own process began on Feb. 2 with a procedure known as a “nipple delay,” which rules out disease in the breast ducts behind the nipple and draws extra blood flow to the area. This causes some pain and a lot of bruising, but it increases the chance of saving the nipple.

Two weeks later I had the major surgery, where the breast tissue is removed and temporary fillers are put in place. The operation can take eight hours. You wake up with drain tubes and expanders in your breasts. It does feel like a scene out of a science-fiction film. But days after surgery you can be back to a normal life.

Nine weeks later, the final surgery is completed with the reconstruction of the breasts with an implant. There have been many advances in this procedure in the last few years, and the results can be beautiful.

This is a nicely written piece conveying the woman's courage and sensitivity. She has many children and her own mother died of cancer.

The piece is, however, marred by one sentence (and I would like to know the details of what lies behind this intrusion):

Somehow... the 4-year-old child of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie...

... looks like a miniature Meat Loaf.

"Angelina Jolie has reportedly expressed desire to direct, while 'American Psycho' author Bret Easton Ellis began lobbying to write the screenplay..."

"I’m putting myself out there to write the movie adaptation of 'Fifty Shades of Grey,'" Ellis tweeted. "Hope EL James doesn’t think I’m being a prankster. I really want to adapt her novels for the screen. Christian Grey is a writer's dream..."

Everyone's gone mad for sado-masochism and that grisaille billionaire.

Angelina's leg...

... is everywhere.

"They ate them like Doritos... I had to actually ban the cricket eating at a certain point because I was afraid they’d get sick from too many."

Says Angelina Jolie, who gave her children crickets to eat in Cambodia, because "I thought, I wanted them to understand culturally, I didn’t want them to be turned off by something that was their culture."

Golden Globes... are you watching?

I've set the DVR but I don't know if I'll look in.  I haven't seen any of the movies that are up for awards. (I've seen one or 2 of the TV things, but I've never cared about TV awards.)

I'm just not interested in sitting through movies these days. I find them boring and annoying. It's not the way I want to spend my time, and I don't believe the people of Hollywood have anything particularly interesting or useful to say to me. Yes, there is pure pleasure to be had... but in movies? Not so much.

Still, if you're watching, please feel free to hang out here. If something cool happens, I do have it recorded, and I'll go back and check it out.

ADDED: I'm not watching, but I did check out this slide show of the fashions. Angelina Jolie arrived as the Good Witch of Emerald City, Helena Bonham Carter came as an insane person, and most of the rest of them look like adults who, in the 1960s, looked like they belonged in the 50s.

" I would like to play Bond," said Angelina Jolie...

... when asked if she'd like to play a Bond girl.

In her new movie, Salt, she plays a character that was originally going to be played by Tom Cruise. Some changes to the script did need to be made: "For example, the male character had a child, and he knows he’ll be in danger much of the time. And we realized that, as a woman, if you knew your life was at risk, you’d never have a child." And:

The slender Angelina also had to modify the character's demeanor to convincingly play a tough, gun-slinging spy. "The physicality had to change too," she says. "I’m smaller than everybody, so how do I go up against a bunch of men without looking silly? How do I fight?"

She adds: "We made her meaner than a guy, and dirty. She uses the walls, the fact that she’s lighter and can throw herself around. It’s the Chihuahua up against the big dogs.”

The slender Angelina... she's a lot skinnier than she was when she played Lara Croft. Compare. I prefer the strong Lara Croft look, but I appreciate the attitude that Jolie seems to have even when she's too skinny.