It's beginning to seem like everything Angelina Jolie does turns to magic – except Sky Captain And World Of Tomorrow, obviously, she's not a sodding wizard; but just look at what happened when Angelina Jolie got on a train.
For most of us train journeys are long, often-delayed slogs where you basically pay too much money to sit on chewing gum-covered seats and watch middle-aged men slowly dribble down the lapels of their suits in their sleep, but when Angelina Jolie got on a train in Mumbai recently all hell broke loose to such an extent that we're beginning to question whether Indian commuters have ever even seen a blacked-up actress pretend to be a journalist's widow while a small army of bodyguards try and block her from everyone's view before.
Ever since Angelina Jolie squatted down in her Namibian mudhut and squeezed out baby Shiloh Nouvel, her every move has been reported upon and photographed by the world's media, and this has never been clearer than Angelina Jolie's trip to India to film A Mighty Heart, the movie based on the book by the widow of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl. What should have been a quiet trip away from the Hollywood rat-race to quietly make a timely, socially-conscious movie has turned into a feeding frenzy not seen since, er… since Namibia cooked up all that meat.
Angelina's off-screen presence in India has attracted all kinds of attention. First, one of her bodyguards choked a photographer – which was sort of weird behaviour for the set of a movie about the freedom of the press – and then Angelina Jolie's car knocked a boy off his bike. Angelina Jolie being Angelina Jolie, however, made everything right again with a quick burst of high-profile window shopping of potential adoptees.
As far as the film of A Mighty Heart goes, though, the only real excitement has come with the news that Angelina Jolie had blacked up for her role as Mariane Pearl in the manner of Al Jolson or Rangi Ram from It Ain't Half Hot Mum. But now Angelina Jolie has done the unthinkable and topped it by – hold onto your hats, people – getting on a train to shoot a scene. MSNBC reports:
On Monday, Jolie, wearing a pale blue T-shirt and khaki trousers, stood in a line to purchase a train ticket. Then Jolie and [co-star Dan] Futterman, wearing jeans and a white shirt, boarded a train. They were escorted by bodyguards who held back young students yelling Jolie’s name. Curious onlookers collected outside the train station to catch a glimpse of the actress.
We're sure it'll make for a deeply moving scene. Mariane and Daniel Pearl, unknowingly spending one of her final moments with each other, sit on a train and discusses their happy future together oblivious to the crowds of unusually excitable Indian teenagers leaping around the carriage screaming "ANGELINA! ANGELINA!" at the top of their lungs and the boys on scooters riding alongside the train banging the windows and taking photographs every two seconds for the duration of the conversation. If that doesn't win Angelina Jolie an Oscar, we just don't know what will.
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