Angelina Jolie’s ‘Maleficent’ Conquers the World With a Single Photo

June 20, 2012

By Tom Blunt

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Angelina Jolie in 'Maleficent'/Image © 2012 Disney

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Everyone’s drooling over the first glimpse of Angelina Jolie as the “Sleeping Beauty” foe Maleficent. If you hold your ear up to the internet and listen closely, you can hear the sound of eleven million Facebook cover photos being updated in unison.

“Saturday Night Live” and “MADtv” are fine, but if it’s movie parodies you’re after, “The Carol Burnett Show” (1967-1978) is where the goods are. A huge twenty-two-disc DVD collection is coming out next month — here’s a preview. Obviously featured is the famous “Gone With the Wind” spoof (crummy YouTube links: part I, part II) which holds up beautifully — but it’s certainly interesting to see how much hardier attention spans were back in the golden days of sketch comedy.

A second trailer’s been released for the new P.T. Anderson film “The Master,”  inspired by the life of Scientology guru/Battleship Earth author L. Ron Hubbard (remember the movie? Its IMDB rating is holding steady at 2.4 out of a possible 10). Not that you’d ever discern any of that from either of the trailers — but even so, expect this one to face waves of backlash and counter-backlash before it even reaches theaters.

Ever wonder what it would’ve been like to be close friends with someone like Gertrude Stein or Philip Roth? The Paris Review imagines drunken texts from famous authors. They’re really on to something here: as much as I adore Tennessee Williams, I sure wouldn’t trust him to make good decisions with a Blackberry.

Tags: Angelina Jolie, Battleship Earth, Carol Burnett, Gertrude Stein, Gone With the Wind, L. Ron Hubbard, Maleficent, P.T. Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, Philip Roth, Scientology, Sleeping Beauty, Tennessee Williams, texting, The Carol Burnett Show, The Master