When some reporters come face to face with A-list celebrities, their brains turn to mush.

Take this morning’s press conference at the Venice film festival. George Clooney and Brad Pitt were among the stars taking questions following the first screening of their latest movie “Burn After Reading”, directed by the Coen brothers.

Inevitably, the questions were personal as well as professional.

“I have a question, it’s very important,” said one male reporter from Brazil: “What do you think it’s (sic) better … to win an Oscar or to fall in love with a beautiful woman here in Venice?”

“Brad, don’t answer that,” Clooney said, trying to maintain a happy atmosphere despite the generally dire standard of questions.

Then came a female reporter from a Hong Kong TV channel: “I want to know how the twins are doing — are they looking more and more like you and Angie?” She was, of course, referring to Pitt’s newborn twins with Angelina Jolie.

Clooney again tried to come to the rescue: “The twins are fine.”

A British journalist enters the fray, asking Pitt: ”I’m just wondering whether you have plans for any more (children) and how many is enough?” and to Clooney: ”Any plans to settle down and have children yourself, if that’s not too personal a question?”

Clooney replied: “I am so surprised to hear that question. That is honestly the first time I’ve been asked that question. I am getting married and having children today. Brad?”

Pitt: ”And until then I’ll be sharing mine with him. I’ll have two more by next year.”

And finally, and it was really painful to watch, came a female reporter from Spain (and excuse the English):

“This is a question for Brad. Can I get closer? I am wearing like this because I want to sign up for your gym. What do I have to do to sign up for your gym like in the film, Brad? And if I sign up, would you be running after me? Both of you.”

Pitt: ”It’s a movie and I have no answer.”

Question: “If I sign up will you be running after me, George?”

Clooney: “I’m afraid, from the looks of it, we might be running from you.”

Hear, hear, George.

Comic actress Roseanne Barr makes fun of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt on her Web site blog, but its not your garden variety celebrity sniping. The so-called “Domestic Goddess” Barr tries to make political points, and in the process calls Jolie the “evil spawn” of her father Jon Voight and calls Brad Pitt “vacuous.”
    
Barr, who starred in the sitcom “Roseanne” from 1988-97, started off her blog post slamming actor Voight for his conservative politics. But the so-called “Domestic Goddess” soon veered off and turned her attention to Brangelina.
    
Barr said Pitt and Jolie make about $40 million a year starring in “violent psychopathic movies” and give away $3 million to “starving children trying to look as if they give a crap about humanity as they spit out more dunces that will consume more than their fair share and wreck the earth even more.”
    
In the blog, which Barr posted on Friday, the 55-year-old actress also mocked Jolie’s adoption of children from countries in the developing world, including daughter Zahara from Ethiopia.
    
“… do you know that the African daughter you hold in every picture had parents who suffered and died because of the Republican party’s worldwide economic assault on Africa over the last few decades since Reagan?” Barr wrote.
    
That statement puts her somewhat at odds with Sen. Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate she supports. At a widely viewed forum on Saturday, Obama praised President George W. Bush, a Republican, for his President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), an initiative to fight AIDS and other diseases in Africa and around the world. Bush signed a bill last month authorizing up to $48 billion to be spent under PEPFAR. 
     
A spokeswoman for Pitt could not immediately be reached for comment on Barr’s blog post.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis)

Banking on readers’ hungry appetite for all things Brangelina — and the general spike in interest in Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie generated by the birth of their twins (call it the Brangelina baby bounce) – People and Hello! magazines have shelled out big bucks for their baby pics. Some reports have $11 million and others go as high as $14 million.

Whatever the price, is it really worth it?

In a quick round of lunchtime interviews outside Reuters’ bureau in celebrity-savvy Los Angeles, many people said they cannot wait to see the pictures, while others yawned at the thought. Just about everyone had an opinion.
    
“Exploit those kids from the beginning, I think it’s awesome,” said attorney Michael Gonzales, 30. “Why not? This is America, squeeze a dollar out of anything.” 

Sarah Bates, 23, an auditor, had a far more blase attitude. She said celebrity magazines are only good to read while traveling, although she might look for photos of the twins on a supermarket shelf.  “I would just look to see, but I wouldn’t buy it,” she said. 

Douglas Lee, 40, an information technology professional, said his wife subscribes to People but he doesn’t read it. He took a supply-and-demand view to the money paid for the pictures.  “It’s silly that they get that value, because it’s by demand, because the public wants to see it,” Lee said. “The amount is driven by the public.”
    
Attorney Lauren Brock, 30, who was eating with attorney Gonzalez, said she would take millions of dollars for her baby’s picture — and she gave her view on why Brangelina can command so much interest.  ”They a live a global lifestyle in the public eye and do it looking so great,” Brock said.
    
“They’re a unique family,” she added. “They’re American but they live around the world, they adopt children from all around the world, they make a ton of movies and not for working very many hours. Then, they give away a lot of it.”

Gonzales piped-up: “And she’s hot,” he said, about Angelina.

Officials from several Los Angeles area communities will consider ways to crack down on paparazzi who hound Hollywood celebrities when they meet on Thursday, and measures they decide upon could serve as a springboard for similar actions in major cities around the world.

LA City Councilman Dennis Zine, who has called for stricter measures against photographers, told Reuters on Wednesday that all options are up for discussion — from taxing the paparazzi to creating special licenses for them.

“The paparazzi have really gone overboard in their quest to get a photograph,” Zine said.

Simmering anger against the paparazzi came to a head in Southern California last month when surfers in the celebrity-filled community of Malibu swarmed photographers who had gathered on a beach to get shots of “Fool’s Gold” actor Matthew McConaughey.  The two sides came to blows, and in the ensuing days police stepped up shoreside patrols to keep the peace.

Representatives from Malibu, Beverly Hills and West Hollywood are also expected at the L.A. City Hall meeting as officials seek a regional solution to the paparazzi problem.

But issues with the “paps” are not limited to only L.A. They chased Princess Diana in Paris, leading to her death. Just this past week, two paparazzi in camouflage gear fought with bodyguards for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie outside their estate in the south of France.

Some free speech advocates have said the paparazzi’s work is constitutionally protected — so long as their celebrity targets are in a public place. Los Angeles Police Chief Bill Bratton has also said that existing laws such as jaywalking and assault statutes are enough to curb the paparazzi’s excesses.

But should celebrities be given special laws to protect them? Maybe, in L.A.     
   

Brad Pitt’s lawyers on Thursday threatened legal action against anyone publishing recent photographs believed to have been taken by paparazzi of the actor and his newly enlarged family at their French estate. This raises the question: Should celebrities have the sole rights to photos of their children or even themselves because they have signed an exclusive deal to sell them to a media outlet?  

Unconfirmed reports have said Pitt and partner Angelina Jolie will be paid $11 million from selling exclusive rights to the first photographs of new twins Knox and Vivienne which they plan to give to charity – a deal similar to that struck after the birth of daughter Shiloh in 2006. But Pitt’s lawyers say some photos were taken of his family at their French estate using a powerful telephoto lens and sold to an unidentified buyer which was a “malicious violation” of the actor’s privacy rights under both French and California law. Various websites have already pulled the photos down.

Pitt and Jolie went to great lengths to shut the media out as they expanded their family, going to a hospital in Nice to give birth and surrounded by heavy security. Should the law be on their side to block photos taken by an unauthorised person and without their permission? 

If reports are to be believed, “Brangelina” will earn $11 million from selling exclusive rights to the first photographs of their new-born twins.

Chequebook journalism is nothing new, and many (though by no means all) people have a problem with the idea of selling images of an infant for a fat fee. But then there is charity-chequebook-journalism, which is more complicated. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, it is reported, plan to give the proceeds of the photo-shoot to charity, as they did with the money they earned from a similar deal in 2006 after the birth of daughter Shiloh.

That silences some critics of this kind of arrangement. Yet Darryn Lyons, head of Big Pictures who has made plenty of money from celebrity pictures both authorised and unauthorised, argues that, laudable though charitable donations are, such deals are used by celebrities to build their brand. And with it, however indirectly, their worth.

“I find it a little odd when certain celebrities cry ‘privacy’, then throw newborns in front of the camera,” he said, linking exclusive picture deals to the broader debate about how far celebrities should be protected from the prying eyes of paparazzi lenses.

It’s interesting to compare the media circus that has surrounded the Brangelina birth to the relatively understated arrival of Sunday Rose, daughter of Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban, just days before. Did Brangelina actually court publicity with their decision to have the twins in a hospital in Nice? Elaborate plans to shut out the media only added to the demand, it seemed. And again by way of comparison, Kidman and Urban are reported to be uneasy about selling image of their child. Who do you think is right?

Angelina Jolie’s new action assassin movie “Wanted” opens this weekend against the gentle-natured Disney-Pixar animation “Wall-E“ – two movies aimed at different audiences in a classic case of Hollywood studio “counterprogramming.” The different mix of movies is unlike last week when in an unusual move, two studios opened comedies against one another: “Get Smart” and “The Love Guru.”

“Get Smart” won the weekend box office sweepstakes with a roughly $40 million haul that beat expectations while “Love Guru,” disappointed with a paltry $14 million. In the case of “Wanted,” which is aimed at young adults, and “Wall-E,” a family film, both are expected to perform well and continue what has been a robust summer box office in the United States and Canada.

Box office watchers tell the Hollywood Reporter that “Wall-E” could blow past the $47 million opening weekend of the 2007 Disney-Pixar animation film “Ratatouille” and easily earn $50 million or more in domestic ticket sales. “Wanted” is seen hitting the mid-to-high $30 million range, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Part of the equation is simple math, G-rated “Wall-E” opens in more than 3,900 theaters, while R-rated “Wanted” is in just under 3,200 theaters.

Critics like both “Wall-E,” which is about a robot who cleans up Earth’s ravaged environment, and “Wanted,” which is based on a graphic novel series about a secret fraternity of assassins. “Like Charlie Chaplin’s best silents — a clear influence — ‘Wall-E’ is pure visual magic,” critic Rafer Guzman wrote in Newsday. “Before ‘Wanted’ reaches the end of its wild course, the violence that’s been nothing but oppressive becomes genuinely if perversely impressive …,” Joe Morgenstern wrote in the Wall Street Journal.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis)

First Angelina Jolie tried to cover up her pregnancy and then she tried to keep details of the birth of her twins private. But privacy is not a favored Hollywood concept, not for top stars like Angelina and her partner Brad Pitt.

Speculation began a few weeks back that Jolie had already had the babies prematurely but now photos have emerged, albeit rather blurry photos, claiming to show Jolie a few days ago still looking very heavily pregnant.

In Touch Weekly said its photographer managed to get this rare shot of Jolie taking a break from bed rest outisde Chateau Miraval, the home in the South of France where she is staying with Pitt and their kids. While her official due date is in August, In Touch said insiders claim she will deliver around July 15. Stay tuned.

Photos courtesy of In Touch Weekly.

Filming love scenes with Angelina Jolie would be a dream job for millions of men around the world — but her co-star in “Wanted” is not one of them. James McAvoy told In Touch Weekly that kissing Jolie was “not very nice”.

“I can tell you what it was like to kiss her on a film set: It was awkward, sweaty and not very nice,” said the Scottish actor. “There was angst involved in that, as always. I don’t think Brad Pitt felt threatened for one moment.”

Jolie and McAvoy both did find real love on the set –  Jolie with Brad Pitt when filming “Mr and Mrs Smith” and McAvoy met his wife Anne-Marie Duff when they played a couple on a BBC drama called “Shameless!”

In one of the more bizarre mixups at this year’s Cannes film festival, the makers of Clint Eastwood’s competition entry did not actually know what it should be called.

Years of planning, casting and shooting, and Clint and his team could not even agree on the title by the time the world’s press descended on Cannes to see it.

They could agree on one thing — the title in French, which is “L’Echange”. Originally the movie starring Angelina Jolie as a 1920s mother who loses her son was down as “Changeling” or “The Changeling”, depending on who you asked. OK, I can just about handle debate over a “the” or two.

But then the production notes arrive in our press boxes and the translation is “The Exchange”. The problem came up at the press conference this week, when Clint and Jolie both added to the confusion by failing to confirm it either way.

When told that “The Exchange” had been put down in writing, Clint would only reply: “It may be in writing, but is it the truth?” Watch this space.