How Angelina Jolie Ended Up Playing an Elephant: Inside the Casting of 'The One and Only Ivan'
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- Published on Saturday, 29 August 2020 21:08
- Written by ET online
Who would have guessed that one of the most emotional performances of the year would come from an elephant voiced by Angelina Jolie? And yet, you will no doubt find yourself getting a bit misty as a particularly poignant pachyderm named Stella delivers a monologue about the power of memory in Disney+'s latest offering, The One and Only Ivan.The movie is adapted from Katherine Applegate's Newbery Medal-winning children's book -- itself based on a true story of the real-life Ivan -- about a 400-pound gorilla living in captivity at a shopping mall and grappling with questions of where he comes from and where he truly belongs. It's there at the Big Top Mall that Ivan learns about the importance of friendship and the power of visualization, largely through Stella's speeches beautifully penned by screenwriter Mike White."I wasn't really looking to do a kid's movie," says White, who is better known for adult fare like Beatriz at Dinner and Enlightened, though he also scripted The Emoji Movie. "But someone sent me the book and it packed so much more of a punch than I was expecting. It was such a complex, melancholy and poetic book for something that was meant for kids."Unbeknownst to White, Jolie had a similar read on it. Her daughter, Shiloh, recommended The One and Only Ivan to her and, after reading it, Jolie began inquiring whether a film was in the works. She signed on both as a voice actor and a producer. "I tried to push it to stay as true to the book as possible," Jolie tells ET. "I think it's very, very special, especially with the environmental issues -- the destruction of these natural habitats and poaching -- and we have young people who are activists now and are aware of these issues." "Angelina really wanted to make sure that we were getting the pain of the characters -- that they are in a prison, in a sense -- and making sure that we are being honest emotionally about what that means," White says. "And I was glad to have her advocating for that." He chuckles, "At the same time, it's a heavy theme, and you realize you're making this for young kids. I remember when I was a kid watching Bambi's mother die and being inconsolable and not being able to move forward. So, you've got to remember that this is for kids."
The One and Only Ivan finds a dose of comedic relief and a plethora of tender moments in its ensemble of circus animals: There is, of course, the gorilla artiste Ivan (voiced by Sam Rockwell), and his best friend, Bob the dog (Danny DeVito), along with Snickers the poodle (Helen Mirren), Murphy the bunny (Ron Funches) and a baseball-playing chicken called Henrietta (the legendary Chaka Khan).The final role to fill was that of Frankie the perpetually anxious seal, who is voiced by White himself. "I have a feeling it was Thea just sitting there like, 'Who's good to be a neurotic obsessive?' Then looks across the desk at me like, 'Well, we got it right here.'" Considering White started working on the script some six years ago, there was no way for him to know who would eventually bring each animal to life. He credits the director, Thea Sharrock, with the seamless voice casting. "Of course, there's always a period once you get the actors to adjust for them and let them bring their own stuff to it," White says.Like, for instance, when Henrietta coos, "Ain't nobody love you better," a line clearly inspired by her voice actor. "We played around with some of the iconography with Chaka," White confirms. (With a laugh, he adds: "I feel weird calling her Chaka. Ms. Khan? I don't know.") Sharrock also had her actors record their dialogue in groups together to promote collaboration."Normally you're on your own with the director, but it made a huge difference," Mirren says of recording with DeVito and Rockwell. "All three of us were in the room together, and you can play off each other. You can improvise. You can laugh at each other -- because Sam and Danny were always making me laugh.""Yeah, it was great. I didn't know that, you know, so I didn't wear pants the first day," DeVito jokes.Jolie, meanwhile, recorded with young co-star Brooklynn Prince, who voices the Big Top Mall's newcomer, a baby elephant named Ruby. "I said, 'Hey, why don't we wear elephant onesies in ADR?'" Prince recalls. "And she was like, 'Sure.' So, I go home and I'm like, 'Mom, please buy me and Angie elephant onesies!' And my mom was like, 'I'm buying an elephant onesie for Angelina Jolie?!' And on the day, Angie shows up and she pulls out her elephant onesie and we rocked them the rest of the day." "How can you say no to that?" Jolie grins.
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source : ET online 
Angelina Jolie Reveals Why 'The One and Only Ivan' Has the 'Greatest Casting Ever' (Exclusive)
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- Published on Friday, 21 August 2020 19:47
- Written by ET online
If Angelina Jolie is raving about the cast, you know the movie is something special. In this featurette for Disney+'s upcoming The One and Only Ivan, debuting exclusively on ET, Jolie has the pleasure of introducing the people behind this story of a truly special gorilla."Ivan is played by the brilliant Sam Rockwell. Danny DeVito is playing Bob," Jolie gushes about her co-stars, who voice the titular gorilla and his four-legged friend, Bob, a dog, respectively. "There's so many people -- and also Chaka Khan! So, the greatest casting ever."Adapted from the novel of the same name (which is based on a true story), The One and Only Ivan centers on Ivan, who lives in captivity at a shopping mall owned by Bryan Cranston's Mack, as he grapples with questions of where he comes from and where he belongs. Khan lends her voice to a chicken called Henrietta, with Jolie as an elephant named Stella. The ensemble of voice actors also includes Helen Mirren, Brooklynn Prince, Ron Funches, Phillipa Soo and Mike White."It's a beautiful story. They're really a family trying to work together to get a second chance," Rockwell says, with Jolie sharing, "It's really nice to be a part of something that you feel has something really good to say."The One and Only Ivan is streaming Aug. 21 on Disney+.
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source : ET online
Why Does Angelina Jolie Want a New Judge in Her Divorce?
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- Published on Saturday, 22 August 2020 17:51
- Written by Vanity Fair
Follow-up question: How is this divorce still happening? In a little book called War and Peace—ever heard of it?—Leo Tolstoy wrote, “The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.” Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt must understand this better than anyone. They’ve been untangling their lives since their divorce began in 2016, a time that is both yesterday and a thousand years ago. They’ve been up, they’ve been down, there’s been war, there’s been peace, and still these warriors persist.Just this Monday, Jolie filed in Los Angeles Superior Court to have the private judge John W. Ouderkirk removed from the case. They’ve been working with him on their divorce for at least three years (Pitt and Jolie are both divorced and working on their divorce, since the judge declared them legally single in April 2019 while they continued to hash out the terms privately in court). Jolie’s filing argues that the Ouderkirk had “failed to disclose the cases that demonstrated the current, ongoing, repeat-customer relationship between the judge and [Pitt’s] counsel,” whose name is Anne C. Kiley. Kiley, the filing continues, “actively advocated for Judge Ouderkirk’s financial interests in moving—over the opposing party’s opposition—to have his appointment (and his ability to continue to receive fees) extended in a high profile case.” Without getting too in the weeds during this pre-law seminar, Jolie’s side maintains that, per California law, if one “might reasonably entertain a doubt” about a judge’s ability to remain impartial, he or she can be removed from the case at hand. Why now, three years in? Another mystery that even time may not reveal. They have a private judge and most of the proceedings are sealed, so there’s little information on even what could be left to resolve. A source close to Jolie, however, told Vanity Fair, “Angela’s team was kept in the dark about matters that should have been disclosed. Any attempt to suggest otherwise is only to distract from behavior that violates the rules of ethics for judges.”
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source : Vanity Fair 
Angelina Jolie decided to star in The One And Only Ivan after one of her kids brought her the book: 'This generation is aware of what is happening to our natural habitats'
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- Published on Tuesday, 18 August 2020 10:15
- Written by Daily mail
Together Jolie and Pitt have six children: Maddox, 19, Pax, 16, Zahara, 15, Shiloh, 14, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 12. She then added to Entertainment Tonight it was Shiloh who came forward with the book.'Well, Shiloh years ago told me that she had read a book that she loved and she wanted me to read it,' said the activist.Together Jolie and Pitt have six children: Maddox, 19, Pax, 16, Zahara, 15, Shiloh, 14, and twins Knox and Vivienne, 12. She then added to Entertainment Tonight it was Shiloh who came forward with the book.'Well, Shiloh years ago told me that she had read a book that she loved and she wanted me to read it,' said the activist.'I read it on my own and then we looked at some of it together and we talked about why she loved it. Then, I inquired if it was being made – as you do – into a film, and I found out that it was kind of in the works but kind of hadn't [been] figured out.'The Oscar-winning actress serves as a producer and voices elephant Stella in the Disney+ movie, which is based on the best-selling children's story of the same name. It centers on gorilla Ivan (voiced by Sam Rockwell), who performs at Mack's (Bryan Cranston) circus but dreams of a life beyond the cage. Also in the movie is child star Ariana Greenblatt who looks like a mini me version of the A list actress. The 12-year-old New York native child star plays Julia in the movie.Speaking to website Digital Spy, Angelina said: 'Disney, Mike (White) and everybody involved really (understood) it has its heart. 'It's not a light film, it deals with heavy issues, but it is charming, fun and full of life. But it's deceptive in the packaging.'
Director Thea Sharrock added that they didn't want the film to 'feel like a documentary' which influenced decision-making during the production, such as the size of the bars in Ivan's cage.She said: 'This is not just any studio, it's Disney, so we definitely knew there was a tone we had to get right.'There are some shots we chose very carefully when we came to edit it, that certain scenes there are no bars to be seen whatsoever, and in other moments, we've chosen very carefully when the presence of the bars are there so that they are a constant reminder.'It's not easy when your leading character is behind bars for 80 per cent of the movie and you have to hold at its heart that he creates a dream, he's given a gift by Stella to create a gift of a dream to get out.'This article appears after ex Pitt has fired back at Jolie via his legal team, after she filed a request to remove Judge John W. Ouderkirk from their almost four-year-long divorce battle earlier this week.Angelina filed papers on August 7 claiming that Ouderkirk - who married the former couple at their French estate Château Miraval in 2014 - failed to disclose other 'business relationships' he had with Pitt's lawyers, suggesting that he would be 'biased' in their divorce case. Pitt has slammed Jolie for attempting to delay their almost four-year divorce case, saying that it will be their children who are 'hurt most'; seen in 2015.However, Pitt, 56, has responded in papers filed on August 13, calling Jolie's filing a 'Hail Mary' - an American Football reference to deliberately delay a game - according to legal documents obtained by PEOPLE. In them, Pitt's legal team accuses the actress of making a 'transparently tactical gambit' to delay matters, adding that it will be their own children who are 'hurt most' by the hold up.
The papers describe Jolie's request as 'a thinly-veiled attempt by Jolie to delay the adjudication of long-pending custody issues in this case.' PageSix also adds that Pitt's team called Jolie's filing 'an abrupt cry of judicial bias [that] reeks of bad faith and desperation.'The former power couple split in 2016, effectively ending a 12-year relationship and two years of marriage.Jolie alleged in her filing that Ouderkirk 'failed to make timely mandatory disclosures of ongoing business and professional relationships between himself' and Pitt's legal team. She added in her request that she was 'never afforded the opportunity to even raise a concern or to object to the ever-increasing business relationships between Judge Ouderkirk and [Pitt's] counsel — relationships that were providing a steady stream of income to Judge Ouderkirk and the potential for future work.'Adding: 'These are precisely the type of repeat customer circumstances that create doubts about a privately-compensated private judge’s ability to remain impartial.' Yet, Pitt's team has responded saying Jolie had been made fully aware that Ouderkirk had accepted 'additional new engagements' involving the actor's team, and that she had 'never objected' to Ouderkirk's 'continued involvement' in the proceedings until now.
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source : Daily mail
Angelina Jolie eyes a move with her children to a posh suburb in London where she once lived with ex-husband Brad Pitt... as nearly four year divorce battle wages on
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- Published on Monday, 17 August 2020 10:43
- Written by Daily mail
Angelina Jolie allegedly still has her sights set on relocating to the UK with her six children that she shares with ex-husband Brad Pitt.The actress and humanitarian, 45, reportedly wants to start anew in Richmond, an affluent suburb in south-west London, where she once lived with Pitt, 56, while filming in England in 2011.Over the years, Jolie has been very open about her desire to live overseas with her kids but the former couple are still embroiled in their almost four-year-long divorce battle.'She believes [Richmond is] a perfect environment for the kids, from a cultural standpoint and educationally,' an insider told the Mirror. Before Jolie and Pitt's 12-year relationship ended in 2016, which included two years of marriage, they shuttled their family around the world to accommodate their A-list movie star work schedules and give their kids a diverse, global upbringing.'I enjoy being out of my element. I want the children to grow up in the world, not just learning about it but living it, having friends around the world,' she said. The Academy Award-winning actress has reportedly been looking into properties in the Richmond area and whether it would be workable once the COVID-19 lockdown is lifted. 'One scenario is that she could have the kids a few months at a time in the UK, then they'd be allowed back to see Brad for longer periods,' the source added.Just this past November, Jolie revealed that she would be living overseas with the kids if it were not for Pitt, who wants the children in Los Angeles, where he resides for the most part.'I would love to live abroad and will do so as soon as my children are 18. Right now I’m having to base where their father chooses to live,' said the Unbroken director said for the December issue of Harper's Bazaar magazine.
During their union they had three biological children together: Shiloh, 14, and twins Vivienne and Knox, 12, and three adopted children: Maddox, 19, who's been studying at a university in South Korea, Pax, 16, and Zahara, 15. The former couple are legally divorced but they are still dealing with some of the terms of the separation, which includes finances and custody of the children. Just this past week things got contentious once again when Jolie sought to remove the judge overseeing the case. In paperwork filed August 7, she claimed Judge John W. Ouderkirk - who married the former couple at their French estate Château Miraval in 2014 - failed to disclose other 'business relationships' he had with Pitt's lawyers, suggesting that he would be 'biased' in their divorce case.Pitt's legal team formally responded six days later and accused her move as a 'transparently tactical gambit' to delay matters, adding that it will be their own children who are 'hurt most' by the hold up, according to PEOPLE.
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source : Daily mail
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