Charlize Central

It didn’t take quite as long to cull through the film caps as I thought it would, so they are now available in the gallery a little sooner than expected. Enjoy!

I finally had a chance to watch and cap ‘In the Valley of Elah’ over the past few days and have added screencaps of Charlize in the 2 documentaries on the disc, “After Iraq” and “Coming Home.” I apologize for the grainy/blurry quality of the documentary caps, but that’s the quality on the DVD, so unfortunately there wasn’t much I could do about it. The film screencaps are great quality though and they will be added within the next few days once I finish weeding through them.

Susan Sarandon and Charlize Theron are two talented actresses. Theron is a gorgeous woman who has come a long way since “2 Days in the Valley” to prove herself a capable and talented actress. It is hard work for a woman to succeed in Hollywood to the degree she has and she brings this struggle to her role as Detective Emily Sanders, a woman who is ridiculed by her fellow police officers who believe that she earned her detectives badge solely by sleeping with police chief Buchwald (Josh Brolin). Theron brings intelligence to her performance and holds her own rather nicely against Jones, an actor who routinely delivers a powerful performance. Sarandon has a lesser role as Hank Deerfield´s wife Joan, but her performance as a heartbroken and frustrated housewife is nothing short of brilliant.

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‘In the Valley of Elah’ will be released on DVD in the US on February 18, 2008 and is now available for pre-order through Amazon.com for $19.99. Click here to pre-order your copy today!

Actress Charlize Theron would rather you forget that she is statuesque and beautiful and instead focus on her passion … acting. That passion earned the talented beauty an Academy Award for her performance as serial killer Aileen Wuornos in 2003’s MONSTER. Theron was almost unrecognizable, gaining 30 pounds, wearing unflattering clothes, a bad haircut and little makeup for the part.

In fact, in many of her films she is physically toned down for authenticity purposes. I mean, c’mon, have you seen the real Wuornos? They are hardly two peas in a pod. And because of her God given good looks Theron had to fight to get that part. But fighting is something Theron has no problem doing. If she believes in the material she will do whatever it takes to be a part of it, even if that means taking a smaller part in a film.

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That Paul Haggis (call him London, Ontario’s favourite son) is a veritable Oscar machine. He crested the horizon for a Best Picture win for Million Dollar Baby, then one for Crash, which he wrote/directed, then a screenwriting nom for Letters From Iwo Jima, and now his latest, In the Valley of Elah, should be good for bagging a coupla big ones. Consider a scene early in the film, in which Tommy Lee Jones, a bereaved father, tells a runty kid, whose single mom is Charlize Theron, the story of David and Goliath. The Bible says the fight supposedly takes place in the valley of Elah. You can almost hear that Best Pic trophy factory working overtime.

Don’t mistake this seasonal cynicism for a dislike of this film, by the way, because it is fantastic. You’ve probably already heard about Tommy Lee Jones’s performance. He plays a dad whose son, just after returning home from a tour in Iraq, goes AWOL, so he drives downstate to the army base looking for him. Theron, the beat cop, gets the drab brown and the middle part of her hair just right. Each minor character, from Susan Sarandon’s bereaved mom to Jason Patric’s army cop, is a perfectly measured ingredient in what is bound to be a rousing success on the awards circuit.

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Paul Haggis, the co-writer and director of the volatile Crash, essays the toll of the Iraq war in In the Valley of Elah.

That premise suggests horrific combat scenes and explosive emotions among a range of characters, all caught with the intense close-ups and jerky editing rhythms that propelled Crash.

Yet Haggis’ new film, which is set almost entirely stateside, is slow, somber and discreetly framed. It takes its cue from its central character, a retired Army sergeant who served in the military police and for whom ironclad control is first nature.

Tommy Lee Jones pours his underspoken authority into the painful role of Hank Deerfield, an unapologetic patriot who will interrupt an important errand to see that an incorrectly displayed American flag is flown properly.

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Charlize Theron plays another put upon working woman in In the Valley of Elah. The only female detective in a police precinct, her character, Det. Sanders, faces sexism and resistance from her colleagues and superiors. She colors her hair dark and wears long sleeves and pants to cover her fabulous curves, but it’s not about how she looks.

“Paul [Haggis] and I talked a little bit when we started to talk about Sanders. I said to Paul, ‘People make such a big deal about it. The irony of it is when it comes to finding a character for me, it’s just about the facts.’ You look at this woman, so it’s not about how can we make me look different? I think the great thing about being an actor, it’s not about that. It’s about how do we get access to the truth. To me, that’s always the biggest question whether it’s where is the scene going or how do I physically look or how are we going to facilitate Paul in telling this story correctly.â€�

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Photos of Charlize and Stuart at the ‘In the Valley of Elah’ premiere are now available in the gallery. Enjoy!

MoviesOnline sat down with Academy Award winner Charlize Theron (”North Country,â€� “Monsterâ€�) at the Los Angeles press day for her new film “In the Valley of Elah,â€� directed by acclaimed filmmaker Paul Haggis (”Crashâ€�). Inspired by true events, the suspense drama tells the story of a war veteran and father’s (Tommy Lee Jones) search for his missing son, a soldier who is reported AWOL after recently returning from Iraq. Susan Sarandon plays his wife Joan and Charlize Theron plays Emily Sanders, the police detective who helps in the investigation.
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