When it comes time to nominate the best actress performances of 2007, Angelina Jolie might be overlooked. Though the film is at times confusing as it rushes to release all the facts without much of an explanation, it's Jolie's take on the real-life widow of slain journalist Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman), Mariane Pearl, that ultimately lifts A Mighty Heart up above some of the other "based on a true story" flicks that have hit screens in the past year. Featured in practically every scene of the film, it's hard to take your eyes off Jolie -- and it's hard not to lose yourself in the character, the real-life woman, who spent weeks holed up in a house awaiting word on her kidnapped husband while doing what she could to track him down herself.

By now, we all know the story and the outcome: On January 23, 2002, Daniel Pearl, a journalist for the Wall Street Journal, was kidnapped in Kirachi, Pakistan while heading to what he thought was an interview with Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani at the Village restaurant in Kirachi. At some point he was intercepted by a militant group calling themselves The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty, and for the next month, a group of people (including Pearl's wife Mariane, his friend Asra, a Pakistani Captain, the FBI and others) use the house they were staying at as a make-shift headquarters as they attempt to hunt down the men responsible and find Danny before it's too late.

First we heard that Robert De Niro and Al Pacino would be teaming up (for the first time since Heat) on a crime thriller called Righteous Kill. And we were intrigued. Then came news that Carla Gugino was also on board. And then we got really excited. Now comes word that a few more names have joined the Jon Avnet film ... most of 'em pretty cool, too.

According to a press release over at ComingSoon.net, the Righteous cast will also include Brian Dennehy, John Leguizamo, Donnie Wahlberg, Dan Futterman, Trilby Glover (yowza), and professional skateboarder Rob Dyrdek. Written by Inside Man scribe Russell Gewirtz, Righteous Kill is about two veteran detectives who aim to track down a vigilante killer in New York City.

The press release indicates that Leguizamo and Dennehy will play cops; Futterman and Glover will be lawyers; and Dyrdek will be a punk kid who somehow figures into the story. Production on Righteous Kill gets underway this week in Connecticut and New York. Expect more reports soon.

Last week's Manhattan junket for A Mighty Heart was fairly routine -- not at all a paparazzi circus, despite the fact that that press had known days in advance that Angelina Jolie was making the Waldorf Astoria her home base while in town to do publicity for the film. For those who are interested, I was never asked to sign any kind of agreement or contract whatsoever, and none of the other journalists doing roundtable interviews were, either. I think that kind of thing was restricted to journalists doing one on one interviews. The only out-of-the-ordinary thing that happened during the entire day was that the studio publicists made a big show of setting up their own tape recorder to record our conversation with Jolie, for what purpose I have no idea. Anyway, here is a sampling of some of the questions and answers batted back and forth during the roundtables. Some of the questions are mine, some are from the rest of the table. Enjoy.

Angelina Jolie

Playing a character who is not only real but also very involved -- what pressure does that put on you as an actress?

Huge pressure. So much so that I didn't sleep the night before and I questioned myself through the entire process of making this film. I respected her before I met her, when I saw how she handled the situation, just as a viewer watching CNN, and when I met her I discovered what a lovely woman, what a gracious person she is, what a great mom she is, and she's the last person I'd want to disappoint in any way. It was a huge responsibility to not just try to be her in the film, but to be her during the most difficult time of her life and to try to interpret her pain or her love for her husband. She had faith in me, that I would be the right person to do it, and I think without that I would never have taken the role.

What was your first meeting with her like?

Our initial meeting was before the film. We just had a play date. [laughs] The film was very much a second thought in our relationship. She was somebody who I liked as a woman and still think ... we have different things that in common that we want to work on internationally and domestically, and our kids like each other. So that's the most important reason for our friendship -- we get the kids together. It's strange for that to have evolved and for me to sit with her one day and to realize that we were going to do this and I was going to play her. It was strange -- it was very strange. She was wonderful. There's no vanity, and just believed that if everybody understood the book and understood the intention and why she lived her life the way she did, and what she and Danny represented, that if we understood that, then we would do our best and try. And as long as everybody tried their best, that was all she could ask. So she was the nicest person to work with, but because she had faith in us, it also made us that much more nervous.

Oscar-nominated screenwriter Dan Futterman, who also acts and plays Daniel Pearl in the new film A Mighty Heart, was on hand for Friday's A Mighty Heart press junket in Manhattan, and talked about his upcoming projects. He said he's lined up Sarah Jessica Parker to star in and Lasse Hallstrom to direct his next film, Finn at the Blue Line. "I wrote a romantic comedy with my wife. It's called Finn at the Blue Line," Futterman said. "We have a really good actress, Sarah Jessica Parker. Lasse Hallstrom said he wants to direct it. We're gonna try to get people to actually write a check for it. Hopefully that will get going shortly." No plot description was given, but the project is also mentioned, along with Parker and Hallstrom's names, in the official press notes that were passed out at the junket.

Futterman also announced that he has been hired to adapt Jonathan Tropper's romantic comedy novel Everything Changes, which is about a guy whose long-lost father shows up and gets involved in his life again -- particularly his love life. As for Futterman's acting career, someone mentioned a story floating around that said he was going to be giving up acting. He clarified that, saying "I'm not feeling terribly ambitious about acting and going after things. I've been writing more and am a little more interested in doing that, but I mean, if something like this [A Mighty Heart] comes up, of course I would jump at the chance to act with and work with people like this in a project like this."

Last summer, Cinematical brought word of baby-lover Angelina Jolie's latest film -- A Mighty Heart. The film comes from Mariane Pearl's memoir about the abduction and eventual murder of her journalist husband Daniel by Pakistani militants in 2002. It was a tragic story with a particularly heinous ending -- the kidnappers made a short film, The Slaughter of the Spy-Journalist, the Jew Daniel Pearl, recording how they killed and then decapitated the journalist.

With the June 22 limited release date looming on the horizon, a trailer has been uploaded from The Today Show. It outlines all the particulars -- her husband being kidnapped, her fight and travels, while pregnant, to try and save him -- very trailer school 101. It isn't necessarily bad, but not as intriguing as the story itself either. But perhaps I'm just distracted by Jolie trying to portray herself as an Afro-Cuban woman with Dutch ancestry. Sure, she's a big star, but I can't help but wonder why they wouldn't find a star more ethnically suitable to the role, rather than trying to change another's ethnicity. Without the sound, it looks like a Cher biography. As for the other lead, Capote scribe Dan Futterman, he's just quick flash on the screen and faxed pictures. I might still check it out for his performance, but first I'll have to get used to the Jolie look.

• Capote - Truman Capote spent five years researching In Cold Blood - the book that would be his last - and sophomore director Bennett Miller's film is a telling and rather literate fly-on-the-wall dramatization of that time. The biggest appeal is Philip Seymour Hoffman's bravura Oscar-winning performance as the eccentric author, which he takes beyond mere affectation and into full-on obsession as Capote's research into the 1959 murders of a Kansas family consumes him in every way. It is nice to see professional seether Catherine Keener in another nice-gal role, here as Capote friend and soon-to-be To Kill A Mockingbird scribe (Nell) Harper Lee. Miller and writer Dan Futterman (adapting Gerald Clarke's book) do not quite commit to a direction for the story, and humanizing killer Perry Smith (a dependable Clifton Collins Jr.) is time unwisely spent, though Hoffman, who also produced, sees that we remember the film for other reasons.

When you're a kid and have dreams of some day gracing the stage at the Academy Awards, often you may make a few strange and unusual bets with your friends as to what you may say should you have the chance to speak to millions of people across the globe.

Best actor front runner, Philip Seymour Hoffman, made one such bet....and it could come back to bite him in the ass. When he was 16, Hoffman, along with friends Bennett Miller (director of Capote) and Dan Futterman (writer of Capote) got a tiny bit wasted one night. Hoffman explains, "We had this friend at the time, Steven, and we all made this drunken pact that if one of us ever won the Academy Award, that we would bark the whole acceptance speech. We were very serious. Literally, we were like, 'I'll do that. I will definitely commit to that."

Now that they're all grown up and their film, Capote, may play a big role at this year's Oscar ceremony, what have the men decided to do? Well, according to Hoffman, when they met back up with their friend Steven recently, he reminded the Oscar-nominated actor that the bet was still valid...and Hoffman isn't happy. ""The thing is you can't just bark, you have to bark until they pull you off (the stage). Let's hope I don't have to get up there." Oh, what I would give to see this go down.

The USC Scripter award, given to the year's best screenplay "adapted from a literary source," is seen as a good indicator of what of screenplay is likely to take the Oscar home in the adapted category (last year, for example, Million Dollar Baby won both). This year, however, nervous studios will have to wait just a little longer to find out who's in the lead: there was a tie. Dan Futterman's adaptation of Gerald Clarke's Truman Capote biography, and Stephen Gaghan's screenplay for Syriana - adapted from See No Evil, by Robert Baer - have the same number of votes; a winner will be determined in a runoff vote on Wednesday.

As the Guardian article linked below points out, whether it wins or not, this is more good news for Capote, which continues to gain ground on presumed Oscar front runner Brokeback Mountain. That said, of course, we'll know a whole lot more about who's really in the lead by this time tomorrow, after the Golden Globes have been handed out.