Daniel Pearl Tagged Articles at Cinematical

Even with a big star like Angelina Jolie, A Mighty Heart is not performing too well at the box office (less than $8 million in two weeks). For most releases, such disappointment would signal the end of a theatrical run. However, instead of pulling the film completely and hoping for better business on video, Paramount Vantage is attempting to jumpstart its battery. This weekend the studio is removing A Mighty Heart from many of its screens, dropping its theater count from 1,350 down to 651. Basically the film has been taken out of markets it isn't doing so well in; now maybe the buzz will grow in stronger areas and later the film can go back to a wider release. Even in the limited release, though, the film is bound to face strong competition from other well-received indies like Sicko, Once and La Vie en rose. Still, Paramount Vantage is going to really push this one in hopes that it will eventually find its audience. Paramount is also pushing for a heavy awards campaign for A Mighty Heart, and so it probably wants the slow buildup and long run kind of success that Crash achieved two years ago. The studio is still planning for the film's DVD to come out in time for Oscar voters.

I still haven't seen A Mighty Heart, but I had planned on going last night. Unfortunately, my local theater didn't have a showtime between 5:15pm and 10:30pm because it shares a screen with La Vie en rose (it seems Transformers is hogging most of the screens, even in NYC). So, instead I finally saw Knocked Up. Because I'm such a tardy moviegoer, I have to appreciate strategies where a movie is allowed long-term play. I still need to see Sicko and La Vie en rose and Once and many others that will hopefully be around for awhile. If only more distributors could recognize people like me who don't contribute to opening weekend grosses and would let other well reviewed movies stick around a little longer.

A Mighty Heart takes an enormous gamble, and sinks or swims by it -- it tries to engage us in a meticulous police procedural, the outcome of which is already known to anyone watching the film. The film begins its action about an hour or so after Wall Street Journal South Asia bureau chief Daniel Pearl leaves his pregnant wife Mariane alone in their Karachi apartment to go to a meeting with a shady figure known as Sheik Gilani, who he suspects may have information on the 'shoe bomber' Richard Reid or may himself be a key terrorist figure. Like Daniel, Mariane is a journalist, and the two of them follow a strict procedure of regular call-ins when the other is off on a dangerous assignment. When Daniel misses one of these check-ins, Mariane springs into action, first reporting him missing to Pakistani authorities and later, to American agencies and the Wall Street Journal. Various players begin to flood into the apartment and the story, each of them taking somber mood cues from the tightly-wound, no-nonsense Mariane.

As Mariane, Angelina Jolie totes around a giant belly and a big pile of hair and sinks into the role of a traffic coordinator, constantly gauging the progress of the ad-hoc investigation into Daniel's disappearance and shuffling the other characters in and out of the main action. Early on, she creates a tree diagram on a blackboard to get a sense of where Daniel was going when he was abducted and who might have knowledge of his whereabouts. Pictures of 'persons of interest' are slapped up and yanked down. The movie demands your full attention as it unspools reams of information: names, places, events, and questions that must be answered if the crime will be foiled. I'm sure this is a true reflection of those sleepless weeks as Mariane Pearl remembered them in her book, but the sheer tonnage of investigative info A Mighty Heart presents us ends up crowding out Mariane and Daniel as people: their habits, their convictions, their unusual way of life. I know as little about those things now as I did before seeing the film.

Everyone's favorite entertainment journalist, Roger Friedman, is calling Angelina Jolie a hypocrite after she reportedly censored journalists while promoting her new film, A Mighty Heart. The Michael Winterbottom pic is about Mariane Pearl, widow of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, and it deals with freedom of the press, so the idea that Jolie made reporters sign a censoring agreement before interviewing her is certainly problematic. At the premiere of A Mighty Heart Wednesday night, Jolie's lawyer presented journalists with a contract stating certain subjects that could not be discussed with the actress, including questions about her personal life. Of course, this makes sense, because otherwise some writers would attempt to stray from the topic of the film in question -- which would take away from the promotion of the film, as well as from the purpose of the press' purpose at the event.

Still, the contract does seem unnecessary and contradictory to the film's apparent message. If Jolie wanted to reject a question or topic, she could certainly just refuse to comment or leave. Most of the junkets and red carpets I've been to, this has either been addressed or accepted as a given anyway. Instead, according to Friedman, the mode of dealing with gossippy reporters made a lot of people angry, enough to cancel coverage, as USA Today and the Associated Press supposedly did. Eventually Jolie ended up refusing all print interviews because of the outrage. Friedman also claims that Jolie instructed publicists to ban Fox News (for which Friedman works) from the red carpet and any other premiere access. In the end, though, some higher ups at Paramount allowed Fox's coverage. Friedman goes on to criticize Jolie's history of press manipulation and also quotes a disappointed editorial director from Reporters Without Borders, an organization that was supposed to be supported by the film's premiere.

[via Fark.com, which has a good discussion of the article going in its comments section]

The beautiful and talented Angelina Jolie, lately more well-known perhaps for her real-life child adoptions splashed across the tabloids than for her acting roles, has nevertheless found time to squeeze in some acting work here and there. After a supporting appearance in last year's excellent The Good Shepherd, Jolie is next set to grace the silver screen in A Mighty Heart, a docudrama based on the life of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who was assassinated in 2002. In the film, based on the book A Mighty Heart: The Brave Life and Death of My Husband Danny Pearl by Mariane Pearl, Jolie plays Mariane, who launches an investigation of her own to find out the truth behind what happened.

Over the months we haven't heard much about this film except that it was, in fact, being made. But now, thanks to Joblo, we can bring you a poster for the film and some stills featuring Jolie, co-stars Dan Futterman as Daniel Pearl and Wil Patton as, one can assume, some sort of government type either helping or hindering Jolie's quest in the film. Daniel Pearl's death was a great tragedy and if this story is to be adapted for the big screen, it deserves a sensitive and well-done cinematic treatment. With the casting of Jolie, Patton and Futterman and under the direction of Michael Winterbottom, I feel this story is in good hands. A Mighty Heart premieres at the Cannes Film Festival in May followed by a platform release on June 22.

I wouldn't imagine that Michael Winterbottom (In This World; The Road to Guantanamo) is always good about getting the necessary permits and legal permissions when he's filming in foreign lands. Considering his practice of using small crews that can get in and out of locations easily, he probably works on too much of a whim. But for his next film, A Mighty Heart, which stars Angelina Jolie as the widow of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, and is being produced by Brad Pitt's production company, Winterbottom is probably going to have to follow more of Hollywood's practices with on-location shoots.

But this weekend, four security guards who were cast to play police officers in Heart, were arrested in Karachi, Pakistan, for unauthorized impersonation. Ali Mohammad, Amin, Mohammad Akram and Zahid Hussain were taken into custody by the Saddar Town police after the four men were spotted in police uniform, acting like police in front of the Sindh High Court. According to the report, the filmmakers had not gotten permission to shoot there or to have the "actors" portraying police officers.

From what I've heard, this film shouldn't be shooting yet. Considering there's no mention in the report of Winterbottom being on the scene, I am hoping that more details surface. Has the director in fact begun already? Was this a second-unit crew picking up some pre-production shots without proper documentation? And what will Brad Pitt's role be in the case? Or is this perhaps not related to Winterbottom's film at all? There is another Daniel Pearl movie, you know.

It's been a wild couple of days for Angelina Jolie, as the new mom has signed on to play two drastically different roles. The first, of course, is as a martial arts master named Tigress in the animated film Kung Fu Panda starring opposite Jack Black. However, Variety reports Jolie is also now attached to play Mariane Pearl, wife of slain journalist Daniel Pearl, in A Mighty Heart.

The film, which is an adaptation of Pearl's memoir, will recall the events surrounding the kidnapping and eventual murder of her husband by Pakistani militants. While the book was originally set up at Warner Brothers through Brad Pitt's Plan B, the project has since moved over to Paramount after Plan B relocated there. Stepping behind the camera with his first film for a U.S. studio will be Michael Winterbottom, who is somewhat familiar with the Middle East after previously shooting two films there (The Road to Guantanamo and In this World). Jolie and Winterbottom? Nah, this one won't have a ton of political undertones. Eager to get the ball rolling immediately, production on A Mighty Heart will begin within the next five weeks off a script written by Laurence Coriat and Winterbottom.

Yep, there are two on the way -- apparently the breaking of the 9/11 movie seal has given the green light to everyone who wants to make a movie about a terrorism-related, sensitive subject. (Hooray for Hollywood, right? Woo freaking hoo.) The first Pearl film, about which there are precious few details, is based on his widow's recently-published book, A Mighty Heart; that one seems to be in the early planning stages. Things are moving ahead, however, on Pearl film #2, a thriller "inspired by" French journalist/egomaniac Bernard-Henri Levy's Who Killed Daniel Pearl?, a book that tries to prove Levy's belief that Pearl was killed because he "may have uncovered complicity between the Pakistani secret service and Al Qaeda."

The Levy-based film will be heavily fictionalized, at least partially to avoid conflict with the other Pearl project. For example, in a move so typical of Hollywood that it's hardly worth mentioning, on-screen Levy will be transformed into an American celebrity broadcaster named Henry Bernard (I'm thinking he's basically Anderson Cooper). But of course. The film will, however, be shot on location rather than on a lot (or in Toronto), and scouts are currently looking for sites in Morocco, Dubai, and Tunisa.

The latter film will be directed by Kip Williams, with Josh Lucas (who actually looks sort of like the reporter) as the Pearl character; shooting is expected to begin this fall.