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serenajolie.jpg

Angelina Jolie Wants to Drink Your Milkshake

By Miscellaneous | | March 1, 2010 |

By Miscellaneous | | March 1, 2010 |


According to The Hollywood Reporter, Angelina Jolie is in talks to star in a movie titled Serena, which unfortunately will not have the actress once again controversially playing against race for a tennis biopic. Instead, she’d apparently be the female version of Daniel Plainview in a period piece potentially directed by Darren Aronofsky.

The comparison to There Will Be Blood comes directly from the trade, obviously because the plot of Serena involves a tycoon, some kind of drama about an illegitimate son and ruthless murder. But instead of an oil empire, it’s a timber empire — prompting me to find out the difference between timber and lumber: timber is the wood before it’s cut; lumber is after it’s cut. So, Jolie will I guess be some kind of nutty timberjack who likes to axe up trees and maybe little boys.

If there’s any question as to Jolie’s ability to be the female Daniel Plainview, let me direct your attention to Clint Eastwood’s recent period drama Changeling, in which she acts batshit insane because her boy is missing and the LAPD is trying to convince her otherwise (spoiler alert: aliens surprisingly didn’t steal the kid in this one). Now, picture her in the same role, a year later (as Serena is set in 1929), with a big bushy mustache.

Hopefully in Serena the actress will get to repeatedly shout something akin to “I want my son!” and “I’ve abandoned my boy!” Given the film’s plot, though, I’m guessing it’ll be more like “I want to kill my husband’s son that he had with another woman and I’m mad because I can’t have a boy myself.” But shorter, I guess.

Here’s what other blogs are saying about Serena:

  • Vince Mancini at FilmDrunk:
    I call it “There Will be Wood” because it sounds kind of like There Will be Blood with timber. Plus the whole Angelia Jolie-boner thing. I thought it worked.
  • Josh Wigler at MTV Movies Blog:
    Clearly, this is a very dark idea. THR even compares “Serena” to Paul Thomas Anderson’s “There Will Be Blood.” In my mind, Jolie isn’t exactly an equal with Daniel Day-Lewis — very few people are, really — but she’s still one of the great actresses currently working in the filmmaking business, so seeing her in this tormented tormentor role is something I’m totally up for, especially at the very capably twisted hands of Aronofsky.
  • Elisabeth Rappe at Cinematical:
    I can see a lot of financiers being squeamish about the topic. There Will Be Blood certainly ran into similar trouble, but what happens when you try to make a film about a paranoid, ambitious, female tycoon? Won’t it be fun to find out?
  • Renn Brown at CHUD.com:
    Already being called Aronofsky’s There Will Be Blood, the story sees a 1929 couple heading off to rough it in the woods. Things eventually get crazy […] Sounds more like Aronofsky’s Antichrist to me.
  • Neil Miller at Film School Rejects:
    First Lars von Trier, now Darren Aronofsky. Interesting directors making interesting movies about the evil nature of women. Yes, that’s right: women are evil. I don’t believe it, but I suppose someone out there does. The Hollywood Reporter is talking about a new project for Aronofsky today that sounds like nothing more than an exploration of such a belief, a movie about a woman who becomes unhinged and absolutely wrecks the worlds of her husband and his illegitimate child. What’s not evil about that.
  • Jamie Williams at iesb.net:
    The film (an adaptation of a 2008 novel) involves a woman setting out to kill the illegitimate son of her husband after discovering she can’t physically have a child of her own. Ah, so we’re looking at another Changeling. Wait, that’s terrible.

  • Simon Dang at The Playlist:
    The Jolie character sounds like a wicked Lady McBeth-type character in a “McCabe & Mrs.Miller,” “Cold Mountain” or “Jeremiah Johnson”-like inhospitable setting.
  • Josh Duboff at Vulture:
    Serena pushes her husband along an increasingly corrupt path, and — after she learns she can’t bear a child for George — she sets out to kill the son he fathered illegitimately … with Jennifer Aniston. Just kidding, everyone knows Jennifer Aniston is lonely and barren!
  • Joey Ernand at Latino Review:
    Remember that movie “Ravenous”? I think that’s what it was called. Guy Pearce was in it. It was set in olden times in the mountains and it was about soldiers turning to cannibalism? Yeah. They have absolutely nothing to do with each other, but that’s the first thing I thought of when I read the description to “Serena.”
  • Mark at I Watch Stuff:
    I’m confused. So when she learns she can’t have a kid, she tries to murder her husband’s illegitimate son? That completely conflicts the both romantic and hilarious can’t-have-a-child solution presented to me in Jennifer Lopez’s The Back-Up Plan.