I never got around to seeing In the Land of Blood and Honey, Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut from 2011, which she also wrote. But I heard good things from people who saw it, and now I have even more reason to see her next one, because the Coen Brothers are writing it.

Ethan and Joel Coen are teaming up with Angelina Jolie to tell the story of World War II hero Lou Zamperini.
Universal picked up the rights to Unbroken, by Lauren Hillebrand, in January 2011, initially for Francis Lawrence to direct. Jolie boarded as director in December. She has spent weeks searching for top-flight writers to tackle the project, with sources saying the director was extremely choosy.

Well it’s not like she has to rush, that’s the advantage of having enough money to last you six lifetimes. At least she has good taste.

Zamperini was a Los Angeles high school track star who raced in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. In 1943, his Air Force plane crashed in the Pacific. He survived without food and water for 47 days, enduring shark attacks, aerial attacks and hunger before washing ashore on a Japanese island behind enemy lines, where he was held as a prisoner of war for two years and tortured by his captors. [THR]

Here’s a little more from the Amazon description:

Ahead of Zamperini lay thousands of miles of open ocean, leaping sharks, a foundering raft, thirst and starvation, enemy aircraft, and, beyond, a trial even greater.  Driven to the limits of endurance, Zamperini would answer desperation with ingenuity; suffering with hope, resolve, and humor; brutality with rebellion.  His fate, whether triumph or tragedy, would be suspended on the fraying wire of his will.
In her long-awaited new book, Laura Hillenbrand writes with the same rich and vivid narrative voice she displayed in Seabiscuit.  Telling an unforgettable story of a man’s journey into extremity, Unbroken is a testament to the resilience of the human mind, body, and spirit.

They say you write what you know, and so far, Angelina has taken on a love story set during the Serb-Croat war, and now a survival drama about a shipwrecked WWII POW. You might be wondering, what experience could she possibly bring to this story? Well, Zamperini was a runner, and if you’ve seen Salt, you know that Angelina Jolie is basically the Usain Bolt of emaciated Oscar actresses.

I’m excited to see her direct the running scenes. “That’s it! Now pump your arms faster than your legs, and really try to loll your head loosely from side to side like your neck is made of rubber!”

No one’s set to star as of yet, but I’m thinking… Tom Cruise?

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If I’ve learned anything in all of these years on this crazy spinning rock, it’s that the Internet is a place of many, many, many, many (a million times more) different tastes, and rather than try to understand them all, I should just accept most of them. That’s why when I fell into a Deviant ART wormhole the other day and ended up browsing through something called “morphs” before taking a strange turn into Fat Hollywood, I just said, “F*ck it” and rolled with it. Pun sort of intended.

I don’t really know how to describe this strange exercise in photoshop other than by pointing at the banner pic of an obese Megan Fox and saying, “That.” Basically, from what I can tell, there are a lot of people out there who appreciate the true beauty of some of Hollywood’s most famous and talented actresses, but they’d prefer them to have a little more meat on their bones.

To each his own is what I say, because life is short and we should enjoy whatever makes us happiest. At least that’s a new philosophy I’m trying to embrace these days. So I gathered some of the morphs and FAToshops (trademark pending) of my favorite gorgeous actresses so that we could all see their beauty from a new, well-rounded perspective.

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Because every famous actress has to play an evil queen at least once in her career (thems the rules!) here’s Angelina Jolie as Maleficent, in Disney’s Maleficent, which is set to open March 14th, 2014. Yes, 2014. While I would guess they released it now to capitalize on the Snow White & the Huntsman momentum, the official word is that Disney released it to commemorate the beginning of principle photography, which started June 13th.

The film marks the directorial debut for Robert Stromberg, an Academy Award winning production designer (Avatar, Alice in Wonderland).
Elle Fanning stars as Aurora and Sharlto Copley is Stefan, the half-human and half-fairy bastard son of the human king. Juno Temple, Imelda Staunton and Lesley Manville play the three pixie fairies. [THR]

If you’re anything like me, you probably have a hard time keeping your Maleficents straight from your Snow Whites and your Sleeping Beauties, but here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

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Feed your cat, ladies.

I don’t even know where to start with this, but here we go. Erika Leonard, AKA E.L. James AKA Snowqueen Icedragon, is one of the smartest people on the planet. With what writing and storytelling experience that she had, she created an empire by piggybacking on Stephanie Meyer’s success by writing erotic fan fiction for lonely women on Twilight message boards, using the names Edward Cullen and Bella Swan in her story, Master of the Universe.

Then a funny thing happened – she realized that Twilight fans will buy anything and she turned her ripped off stories into the original book, 50 Shades of Grey. Now a best-selling excuse for guys to go play golf, Grey is, of course, being adapted into a film, because women already paid $20 for a book so why wouldn’t they spend $12 to see Christian Grey beat Anastasia Steele with a whip? Let’s start the rumor mill, shall we?

A fun rumor went around Hollywood this past weekend: Angelina Jolie, people were saying, had been approached to direct the movie version of the steamy romance novel Fifty Shades of Grey.

… sources said there may have been an informal conversation but that nothing was real, and reps for the actress-turned-filmmaker say there haven’t been any talks with studio Focus Features (Focus also denied the rumor). (Via THR)

Tell you what – if Angelina Jolie agrees to direct 50 Shades of Grey, I will not only read the entire 3-book series, but I will also start my own erotic fan fiction website called “Fitty Shades of C-Tates”. And as excited as that may make some of you – *stares at Jacktion!* – ain’t gonna happen.

But Focus could hire a sock puppet to direct this thing and it won’t matter because 50 Shades is the hottest thing on the planet. How hot? It has made the sex toy and hardware industries blow the f*ck up.

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Bro Dawg wants to know: "Would you say that about Tom Petty?"

According to Variety, Billy Bob Thornton – writer, director, actor, musician, famously agreeable interview subject – is writing and directing a new film, which reportedly takes as part of its inspiration Thornton’s real-life, still-hard-to-believe-it-was-real-life relationship with Angelina Jolie. PRO TIP: If you’re planning to interview Billy Bob any time soon, definitely ask him about it. And don’t be deterred if he’s evasive at first, just keep probing. Just make the whole thing about his past relationship with someone more famous, he’ll love it!

Billy Bob Thornton is co-writing and directing “And Then We Drove,” a road movie the filmmaker describes as “ethereal.”

INTERVIEWER: So, “ethereal.” That’s great, Mr. Bob Thornton, really great. But… what exactly do you mean by that?

THORNTON: (*glares at interviewer, tells confusing story about crawdad fishing, storms out of studio*)

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