As a mother, Angelina Jolie knows what’s important for a child – a gormless name and a forced appreciation of her films, mainly.

Well, OK, not all of her films. Not yet, anyway – although we do hear that Angelina Jolie plans to use her love scene with Antonio Banderas from Original Sin as a sexually-confusing substitute for her childrens’ birds and bees talk – just Kung Fu Panda.

To promote the DVD release of Kung Fu Panda, Angelina Jolie has once again decided to mine the limitless marketing resource that is her children, telling anyone who’ll listen that they just love the movie. Luckily for Angelina Jolie, she didn’t try this trick with A Mighty Heart – apparently Pax Thien found it ‘ponderous’, with Shiloh Nouvel dubbing it ‘transparent award-bait at best’.

It must be brilliant being one of Angelina Jolie’s children. You’re rich, you see the world, your name is one of the top-scoring words on Boggle and, since you’re almost certainly not biologically related to her, it’s impossible to rule out the chance of Angelina Jolie going a bit Woody Allen once you hit puberty. Who could ask for more?

And being surrounded by children is equally beneficial to Angelina Jolie, because now she doesn’t even have to think when it comes to promoting a movie. Look at Changeling – if Angelina Jolie couldn’t give her kids knives or breastfeed them from the front of a magazine or blame them for her inevitable marriage to Brad Pitt, what would her promotion of Changeling consist of? A brief speech at an awards show. Rubbish.

And it’s not just Changeling that’s feeling the benefit of Angelina Jolie endlessly blabbing about her children. Angelina’s decided to adaptation of this tactic to push the DVD release of Kung Fu Panda as well.

Tragically, it’s working. When we heard that Kung Fu Panda was being released on DVD, we thought “Pah, we’re not going to pay any attention to this – it seems like another generic animal-based animated movie starring a bunch of moviestars cynically trying to appeal to the young.” But then Angelina Jolie told this to People:

“I think it’s a great film, and it’s brought a lot of joy to children – and to my children, absolutely. My kids love it. They’re very very proud, they’ve got mom [Tigress] dolls.”

And that changed everything. “What’s that?” we thought. “Kung Fu Panda is bright and colourful enough to distract some toddlers from crying and crapping themselves for up to an hour at a time? Why it must be a MASTERPIECE!” After all, if Kung Fu Panda is good enough for the flick knife-wielding adopted Cambodian infant son of two jet-set millionaires, it’s bound to be good enough for us. Right?

Maybe we’re being too harsh here. Maybe Angelina Jolie was just recounting a personal anecdote because she’s a proud mother and we shouldn’t read anything more into it than that. Besides, as dull as it is, listening to Angelina Jolie prattle on witlessly about her kids for the millionth time this year is nowhere near as irritating as the alternative method for promoting Kung Fu Panda – a repeat of this soul-destroying abomination…

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A hot and not list. How gay!

Folded:

• Kung Fu Panda (this is what the kids want: animals and violence!)
• The Sopranos pinball machine (‘woke up this morning, had a stupid idea’)
• Quizmania is coming back to the UK (hello 2006)
• Marks and Spencer ‘Woodspice’ aftershave (smell manly like your dad)
• Piers Morgan (don’t watch any of his TV, and he’s a right fat big head, yet his celeb-bashing weekly column is wicked fun)

Creased:

• The Mechanik starring Dolph Lundgren out now on DVD (the ‘k’ is ‘cos he’s foreign)
• Fake tan (for Christ sakes just go on holiday)
• Quizmania is coming back as an internet only programme (what?! Screw that)
• Lynx Boost (smell spicy like Pot Noodle)
• Gok’s Fashion Fix (or Gok’s programme about how great Gok is)

In Korea the panda is a symbol of hope, able-bodiedness and freedom. They often grace the minds of children as they drift to sleep, and inspire all others to live, to love, and to perhaps one day become a zookeeper for the sake of proximity to them or something.

Keep in mind none of this applies if the specific panda is still a communist. If it’s a communist panda the people generally consider it an idiot.

But perhaps this panda-love is the reason Kung Fu Panda just shattered Korean box office records. We think the previous record holder was their version of Lonesome Dove, which was similar to the better known 1989 mini-series except their dove actually had quite a few close friends.

Chances are right now that Jack Black is sizing up his suitcase set and considering a move to Korea – we hear that country has even offered him an apartment. It’s above a butcher, and is quite peaceful except on Monday afternoons when the chickens have to die.

His movie Kung Fu Panda just broke records as ‘the fastest moving animated movie in Korean box office history,’ 908,368 people apparently payed several shiny, polished stones to see it in it’s second weekend alone. This lifted it’s total gross to a nice $15.4 million. Sure it made a boat-load elsewhere too, but this is Korea we’re talking about!

Variety has a few more details:

“The pic passed 2 million ticket sales landmark Saturday, its tenth day of release. That is some four days quicker than “Shrek 2,” which in 2004 went on to garner 3.3 million admissions.

“Another green monster also showed impressive performances at No.2 in the Korean chart. “Incredible Hulk” opened on 529 screens and grossed $2.8 million from 455,588 admissions during the weekend. Helmer M. Night Shyamalan’s mystery “The Happening” also debuted at No.3 with a $1.2 million cume from 200,576 admissions during the weekend.”

We’d imagine with tremendous success like this sequel discussions are underway. Might we suggest the incorporation of a Korean water-buffalo as a possible sidekick, a North Korean water-buffalo as a possible nemesis, and perhaps John Belushi as a dead guy that really likes the blues.

We’ve got the script half-written.

Read more on Variety’s Website.

Since Angelina Jolie and Nicole Kidman are getting ready to shoot babies out of their nethers, appetite for celebrity babies has never been higher.

Unless you’re Jack Black, of course. If you’re Jack Black then nobody really gives much of a hoot about how many children you’ve got. For instance, it’s all over the news at the moment that Jack Black and his wife Tanya have had their second baby.

How do they know? Were hordes of paparazzi camped outside the maternity wards of every hospital in LA? Had midwives been secretly bribed by celebrity magazines to reveal confidential secrets? No. Jack Black had to tell them that they had the baby ‘about a week ago’ during a premiere. Still, the lack of interest in his baby shouldn’t detract from the photo deal he’s just signed – £3.50 for a half-page spread near the back of What Horsebox magazine.

The world isn’t as equal as people make out. Yes, women get to vote now and they’re often at least interviewed for jobs they have no hope of getting so that companies can fill their positive discrimination quota, but when it comes to celebrity babies, the gender divide is wider than ever.

If you’re a female film star – even a crap one like Jessica Alba – and you get pregnant, then the press goes berserk for you, following you around and goading you into discussing your milk-engorged breasts and buying the image rights of the unborn baby for millions of dollars.

It’s even worse for someone like Angelina Jolie who has a megastar for a boyfriend, because then you can’t even go five seconds without every poorly-researched, lazily sarcastic British entertainment blog in the world falsely reporting the birth of your children. It must be a nightmare. There should be laws against us. It. There should be laws against it.

And then there’s Jack Black. Jack Black had a baby recently. Not that you’d know it, though – public interest in Jack Black’s new baby is so low that he had to casually break the news that he became a father for the second time ‘about a week ago’ on the red carpet at the premiere for Kung-Fu Panda. What’s the name of Jack Black’s baby? Don’t know. What’s the gender of Jack Black’s baby? Don’t know. How hungry is Jack Black’s baby? Good question, let’s find out, according to People:

“I have a new one,” Black, 38, told reporters Saturday at the junket for his animated movie, Kung Fu Panda, in Beverly Hills. “It’s eating every three hours. When talking with Kung Fu Panda producer Melissa Cobb about his dad duties, Black said, “Hours in the night, oh I have been,” adding to reporters, “You just got to make all the time precious with the babies when you’re working … You get an hour in the morning, and an hour at night, and you really make the most of that time.”

If any of this is sounding familiar, it’s because it is. Last time Jack Black became a father it a) happened around the time that Angelina Jolie had a baby, b) was announced at the premiere for one of his movies and c) was never officially named in public. And now it’s happening again.

Which is all well and good, except that all that happened during Nacho Libre, so the odds of Kung Fu Panda being much good have right out the bloody window now, haven’t they.