With a little Sonny Crockett, right?

I know some of you aren’t feeling it. Me, I’d be so much more into it... but for that gold chain around his right wrist. If not for that gold chain, I’m buying. It’s probably the white belt. I am predisposed to liking a white belt on a man; I think it reminds me of golf.

So here’s Brad Pitt at the Killing Them Softly photo call today in Cannes just before the press conference where they waited some over two hours to get a spot. I was at the screening which ended about 50 minutes before the presser, guaranteeing there was no way I’d get in. With the highly anticipated films in Cannes, sometimes you have to choose. So I ended up walking out of the Palais while he was heading in to tell a room full of journalists that Angelina Jolie isn’t here. That she’s about to start a new movie and couldn’t make it. A few people told me afterwards that it was like the entire place deflated. Because it’s now assumed that there will be no Brange on the carpet tonight, that he will walk alone instead. Others are calling, calling, calling, sourcing sourcing sourcing to see if she actually will show up as a “surprise”. You see how these two keep playing us? They are always, always playing us.

And it’s not just because we’re all gossips. For many of the photographers and the shooters, that shot of them together, on the red steps, is, like, a month of rent. It’s the shot that could make many covers all around the world. It’s the shot that feeds people. The only other couple that sells like Brange is Royal - William and Catherine. Otherwise, while there may be interest in other lovers here and there, they don’t make cash money for their pictures they way the Brange and the Cambridges do. Those two couples fuel their industries. So you can imagine how much they’re hoping the Jolie arrives tonight.

But if she doesn’t...

Well it’s either because they’ve called off the wedding!

Or...

She’s pregnant!

Brad made quite clear today during the presser that the wedding will happen but that it won’t happen this summer as has been rumoured.

As for Killing Them Softly, his is indeed a nuanced, very skilled performance, the latest in a series of strong performances over the last few years, paced deliberately as he approaches 50 to prove his point: I am a proper actor.

For some reason, after the screening I kept thinking about Johnny Depp. And that past conventional wisdom has been to say that if we were to compare the two of them, that Johnny is the real artist where Brad just an artistic lightweight. Looking at their recent resumés though, Johnny’s has more bullsh-t on it than Brad’s, and Depp certainly seems to work more (often) for the Disney paycheque than Pitt. But why does Johnny get more respect? Is it because analysis of Pitt’s career is too often filtered through the prism of his personal life?

I quite like the roles he’s been choosing. I quite admire that he instinctively steps back so that others can be great in their roles around him, a talent that he doesn’t get enough credit for. You’ll see it best in Killing Them Softly in his scenes with James Gandolfini like he’s sitting across from his own Jeffrey Goines in Twelve Monkeys and just ...encouraging the crazy to happen without interference. And being really, really funny about it. There are moments of very dark humour in this film, conveyed mostly via subversively written dialogue that Pitt captures with impressive comedic timing although I’m not sure about whatever accent he was trying that kept going in and out. Sometimes he spoke like himself. Other times he was a heavy New Yawker. As for all the hyperventilating about him getting another nomination, well it certainly gives Harvey something to work with, if that’s what he chooses.