Jolie Good Works, UA Rises Again, and More!
December 2006 News
More Good Works: From Angelina Jolie. This actor has been tireless in helping out those less fortunate than herself, a truly admirable trait that should be practiced by more of us in this life, myself included. This time around she toured a refugee camp in New Dehli, India, meeting the Afghan people surviving there. These people were forced to flee their homeland when the Taliban came into power in the '90s and began to butcher anyone not Muslim. Typical of the idiocy done in the name of religion, regardless of the stripe. Hopefully Ms. Jolie will continue her good works between films. She was in India shooting a flick about the murdered journalist Daniel Pearl.
And near the end of November she made a brief visit to Cambodia to have a discussion about the forest conservation project she had funded previously.
Mission Impossible?: What's old is new again. Tom Cruise and his business partner, Paula Wagner, have bought up an old "non" studio, United Artists. Ms. Wagner will act as CEO and Mr. Cruise will be the studio boss, choosing all movies and creative deals. UA was created back in the early 1900s by three actors (Chaplin, Pickford, Fairbanks) and one producer/director (D.W. Griffith). In recent years the independent distribution company turned out truly small indie pictures, the Michael Moore rants the biggest of the bunch. It's a good move for Mr. Cruise, as his status of leading man is shaky at the moment. Now he can green-light any contracts he wish!
The Big Hobbit is Now No Hobbit: Apparently New Line Cinema feels that the brand can sell itself, as they have decided not to hire Peter Jackson to direct The Hobbit, the sequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The move comes as Mr. Jackson and his Wingnut Films is in the process of a lawsuit against New Line Cinema for underpayments on The Fellowship of the Ring and the DVD sales. The trilogy has grossed around $3 billion worldwide to date.
And Lastly, That Old Time Religion: This is in reference to a deeply disturbing indie film named Jesus Camp. It follows a group of children as they are indoctrinated into evangelical Christian beliefs, a perversion I find deeply repellant, but right now I want to focus on one pastor involved: Rev. Haggard. I find it particularly amusing to report the situation of his pious preaching against homosexuality on one hand and his "off pulpit" activities on the other. I bring this into focus because religious folk (to be fair, not all) claim that morals come "from God" and are held to a "higher" standard. I don't necessarily agree with this, but I also like to take every opportunity to puncture hypocrisy whenever I can do so.
