jeffrey donovan Tagged Articles at Cinematical

More folks have joined Angelina Jolie in Clint Eastwood's The Changeling, and pics of a 1920s Jolie have arrived online. (You can begin your happy dance ... now.) The Hollywood Reporter tells us that Jeffrey Donovan, Colm Feore and John Malkovich will join Jolie in this drama based on a real-life tale for Universal and Imagine. In the flick, Jolie plays a woman whose son goes missing in 1920s Los Angeles. When the wrong child is returned to her, she naturally freaks on law enforcement who then throw the gal into an insane asylum for disagreeing with them. And you think Britney Spears has it rough! Eventually, the kid admits to fraud, and the woman goes after the cops, the mayor and the city seeking changes in the insanity legislation. I'm sorry, but shouldn't a mother know who her child is? Weird.

Donovan will play the police captain, with Feore as the chief of police and Makovich as a reverend. Additionally, the first pics of Jolie on set in 1920s garb have arrived online, courtesy of Just Jared (who have roughly 15 shots of the gal). I'd say she looks pretty damn authentic (love the red lipstick), but that's me. The role seems like a perfect fit for Jolie, who won a best supporting actress Oscar for her role as a girl in a mental hospital in 1999's Girl, Interrupted. So we know she can play nutty. It also looks like they're prepping this one for a late Oscar run (it has Clint Eastwood's name on it -- why the heck not?), as it's currently set to be released on November 7, 2008.

Frankly it doesn't matter a double-dribble whether or not the new film Believe in Me is based on a true story; the formula is exactly the same either way. A radical new coach descends upon a repressed, conservative small town, reluctantly takes on a ragtag team of losers, and whips them into shape just in time to win the state championship, all the while dealing with personal issues and maybe a stock bad guy, a sourpuss who for whatever reason can't wait to see the team lose.

Believe in Me is not much different from Miracle, Glory Road, Coach Carter, Gridiron Gang, We Are Marshall (and probably the new Pride, which I haven't seen yet) and other recent inspirational sports dramas. In fact, I'd suggest that the gruff-but-caring coach is for the current decade what drill instructors were for the 1980s. These movies take their inspiration seriously, and present their true, formulaic stories with a kind of impenetrable bombast and without much wiggle room; the packaging suggests that, if you criticize this movie, you're really criticizing the real heroes behind the story. What Believe in Me does differently is that it keeps a low profile.