Though they haven’t even been born yet, the mayor of Nice, France is already bestowing quite a bit of praise on Brangelina’s upcoming double bundles of joy. He’s praised them quite a bit, and has announced that the children will be honorary citizens of Nice for the rest of their lives. They’ll also have the opportunity to apply for French citizenship when they turn 18.

They’ll always have Nice. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s soon-to-be-born twins will always be considered honorary citizens of Nice, regardless of whether they opt to obtain French citizenship, the mayor of Nice said Friday.

“That is for the citizens of Nice a very great honor and a great satisfaction,” mayor Christian Estrosi said. “We are very happy for this choice of Mrs. Angelina Jolie and Mr. Brad Pitt and I want to say to them that I wish a lot of joy to them and the babies, and great success for all of their lives.”

The mayor affectionately called the twins “two little Nicois.”

Being born in France is not enough to confer citizenship. But according to the French Foreign Ministry website, the twins will have the option of obtaining French citizenship when they turn 18 as long as France has been their primary residence for at least 5 years after age 11.

“All their lives they will be Nicois and all their life they will be able to come to Nice and we will receive them with great honor,” Estrosi said. He was waiting eagerly to extend his congratulations on behalf of all the city’s residents.

[From the Huffington Post]

That’s really sweet. Somehow the mayor sounds so into it, I imagine him giving his speech with little squeals of delight or something. Angelina is expected to give birth in the next couple of weeks, but no one can really narrow it down beyond that. With twins it’s very rare to go full term, but her doctor has said she has a ways to go.

Brad has been bringing their children to visit her – in batches, since there’s a lot of them. Between all of their traveling, it seems like the whole bunch of them would be better off getting some kind of all-encompassing citizenship. I realize that doesn’t exist, but – as with most things - I’m pretty sure everyone is willing to make an exception for the Brangelinas.

Here’s what I’m told is Brad Pitt looking through the window at Lenval hospital on July 2nd. Header of the couple at the Changeling premiere in Cannes on May 20th. Images thanks to WENN.

David Arquette looks cute, right? Good color, appropriate outfit and apparently he’s been on Courtney Cox’s Deal-A-No-Meal Plan. He’s also doing good by helping promote the USDA’s summer lunch program for kids:

David Arquette says when he looks at the faces of other kids, he sees his own daughter. He saw a bunch of kids yesterday at the Boys and Girls Club in the Los Angeles seaside community of Venice. He hung out with them and helped serve lunch to them. It was to publicize the USDA’s free summer lunch program for kids. Arquette says he’s involved because “there are hungry Americans” and lot of them “don’t know where their next meal is coming from.”

[AP via WSYX6.com]

I myself was a low income child growing up and was lucky enough to be a part of the Big Brothers of Greater Los Angeles program. Thank you Mr. Arquette for taking the time to raise awareness of such amazing programs and important issues AND looking super cute while doing it.

If you want to catch David on the big screen, he can be seen along with Catherine Keener, Amy Poehler and Elisabeth Shue in Hamlet 2! Join me at The Outfest Screening, or see it when it hits theaters August 22nd!

David Arquette is shown at the Venice Boys and Girls Club on 7/2/08, thanks to WENN photographer Kavi.

When Angelina’s doctor announced earlier that he was going to make an announcement, as xiaoecho phrased it, some were worried, some expectant (like Angelina) and others rolled their eyes. The news is anti-climatic is no doubt in response to the immense clamoring for information from the press. He said she’s still pregnant, gave vague information as to when she’s due, and said she’s fine and will be in the hospital for a while. Her health is absolutely normal, according to her doctor:

“Everything is normal,” the obstetrician said in French, as he also said in English, “She is very well, and she’s okay.”

“It is simply a visit of surveillance, no birth,” Sussmann said of his patient, who entered the hospital over the weekend. “Brad and Angie want everyone to know that everything is going well.”

Saying that Jolie’s “very, very nice,” the doctor added, “She will stay in the hospital until the birth. I will stay with her.”

What he was not specific about was the due date. “This is something you can’t program, you never know for sure,” he said.

[From People.com]

US Weekly adds the detail that Angelina’s obstetrician Dr. Sussman said “in the weeks to come” when asked when she was due exactly. Her Kung Fu Panda co-star Dustin Hoffman said in an interview at Cannes that she was due August 19, but it is thought that may be a ruse to buy the actress some much needed privacy after the birth. She has said that she “plans to disappear for a month or so” after she gives birth. She’s disappeared for the past month, so she just might be able to manage it if she stays holed up in that immense villa. We’ll have to see when they announce the birth, because she may be planning to try and keep it a secret for as long as possible. Who can blame her? Show the love, Badettes.

Thanks to WENN for these photos of the hospital where Angelina is staying in Nice. It must suck there. Header image of Brad at the hospital thanks to Splash News.

Brad outside the hospital earlier today
Angelina Jolie arrived by helicopter last night to Lenval hospital on the French Riviera. She is said to be staying in the best room in their maternity ward to await the birth of her twins, thought to be boy and girl fraternal twins. Earlier reports had Angelina at the hospital for a scheduled rest period before the birth, but her doctor has announced a press conference for later this afternoon and outlets are buzzing that the babies may have already arrived. Angelina’s partner Brad Pitt was seen leaving the hospital earlier today with one of their children, perhaps for a quick visit to the nearby town for supplies:

Angelina Jolie’s obstetrician, Dr. Michel Sussmann, who is watching over the 33-year-old actress at a French Riviera hospital where she is expected to give birth, called a news conference for later Wednesday afternoon.

Would he announce that her twins had been born? That remained a mystery; the hospital wouldn’t say.

Jolie’s partner, Brad Pitt, was seen leaving the seafront Lenval hospital Wednesday morning with one of their four young children.

The hospital announced Tuesday that Jolie had checked into its Santa Maria maternity clinic to be kept under doctors’ watch and rest before she gives birth.

A hospital spokeswoman said the births were “not for right away,” but spokeswoman Nadine Bauer said Jolie would almost certainly stay in the clinic until then.

Nice Matin, the local newspaper, reported that Jolie has the best room in the hospital, on the fifth floor, with an “unobstructed view” over the Bay of Angels. It said she arrived by helicopter, landing Sunday afternoon on the hospital’s roof. The newspaper said the actress reserved four rooms on the maternity ward, with a bodyguard keeping watch.

[From AP via Huffington Post]

We’ll have to wait and see what Angelina’s doctor says, but why else would he hold a press conference - to ask for privacy? Giving birth is one situation where I definitely wouldn’t be ashamed to take advantage of preferential treatment if I was rich and famous. You have enough stress to go through having to give birth or get major surgery if you’re having a c-section, every woman should be pampered and attended to while they’re in labor. It sound like things are all set up for Angelina at the hospital and maybe we’ll soon hear that her babies have arrived.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie on 2/2/08 before she announced her pregnancy. This was Brad’s brief “scruffy period”
Since we covered the pigs on their property yesterday we may as well cover this: Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have donated a million to Iraqi children affected by war. The money will be donated through their Jolie-Pitt foundation, which they funded with $8 million in 2006:

The Jolie-Pitt Foundation will provide $500,000 for school supplies and education programs for refugee children in Iraq and $500,000 for American children who either lost a parent deployed in Iraq or have a parent serving in that country.

The donations for American children will go to a tutoring initiative at the Armed Services YMCA Operation Hero Program…

“My visit [to Iraq] left me even more deeply convinced that we not only have a moral obligation to help displaced Iraqi families, but also a serious, long-term, national security interest in ending this crisis,” she wrote in an op-ed for the Washington Post.

Jolie, 33, and Pitt, 44, forked over $8 million for their foundation in 2006. That year, the foundation gave $1 million gifts to Doctors Without Borders (International Division) and the Global AIDS Alliance.

[From US Weekly]

Let me just anticipate some of the comments this is going to draw from people who seem to have ire for them no matter what they do: “They’re doing it for publicity,” “They didn’t need to issue a press release,” “They are trying to control the press about them,” “They want to seem like martyrs,” etc.

As I said in a post we just published about Ben Affleck visiting the Congo, at least he’s doing it. Angelina has mentioned that she doesn’t give a rats ass that people hate on her (obviously I’m paraphrasing) and that all the harsh feelings she elicits indicate that she’s doing something right and that she’s “standing strong for something I believe in.”

In a way, I know what people mean about how it seems there’s a story every couple of months about the charity these two do. At least they’re doing charity, though, and maybe it’s like their kids’ posed photos in the glossies: they’re damned if they do, damned if they don’t. It’s an important cause, and one that could use the attention. Ben Affleck practically says he’s willing to paint a target on his head if it gets people the help they need. Maybe Brad and Angelina feel the same way. They did duck so far out of the way that the paparazzi are taking photos of wild animals, though.

Last week we published an article that originated in Ted Casablanca’s E! Online column that claimed that Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had sold their home in the French quarter of New Orleans. It seemed like a plausible story considering that the famous family is now renting a huge estate in France and may want to cut expenses. A lot of you mentioned in the comments that Casablanca was not a reliable source and there was no confirmation from the Jolie-Pitts. It turns out you were right and the story was false. The Jolie-Pitts haven’t sold their home.

A representative for Hollywood power couple Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie denies the rumor that the pair has sold their French Quarter mansion.

“This rumor going around that they’ve sold or are selling their house in New Orleans is not true,” said Trevor Neilson of the Jolie-Pitt Foundation. “It’s just made up, as are a lot of things that are said about them.”

The city conveyance office also did not have any record that the couple had sold their New Orleans home, which they bought in January 2007 under the name Mondo Bongo Trust.

The rumor, fomented by celebrity gossip magazines like E! Online, was also dismissed late last week by several prominent real estate brokers who do business in the French Quarter.

[From Nola.com, thanks to commenter Jennifer and to Alison for e-mailing it]

I don’t usually read Casablanca’s column because it’s kind of a chore to figure out what he’s saying, but we’ll strive not to put much credence in the confusing things he says in the future.

Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie and their four children are holed up in a leased 880 acre estate on the French Rivera that boasts it’s own vineyard, chapel, olive groves, lake and moat. We haven’t seen a picture of them in several weeks and many of you undoubtedly find that a welcome change.

In Touch this week has quotes from Angelina that supposedly reveal that she’s having a touch time. She said in an interview that they don’t source or claim is exclusive, that:

“You always wonder how having a lot of children in a fairly short amount of time is going to affect your life together. You have less time together, you’re always busy, you’re often very tired in the evenings. So it’s something that you either learn to adapt to or you’re going to be in trouble as a couple.

“There are a lot of tough days when you’re exhausted, and you know you can’t collapse because you have so many responsibilities.

“I could spend hours just watching Brad enjoying his time with the kids. Except I’m usually busy changing clothes or getting the kids ready for bed myself.”

[From In Touch, print edition, June 30, 2008]

She probably did say this, because she’s given a lot of interviews lately and In Touch doesn’t credit the quotes to an insider. At least she’s being honest. It can’t be easy with four, soon to be six, kids. Angelina has revealed in earlier interviews that they do have help with the kids but that it’s not overnight.

Brad and Angelina are shown at the Kung Fu Panda premiere on 5/15/08, thanks to WENN.

USA Today has an interview with Angelina Jolie that she gave while in Cannes in advance of the release of her film Wanted with James McEvoy. She talks about a lot of the same topics she’s covered in other interviews promoting the film, particularly a recent very candid interview with MTV News. She discusses doing action movies vs. more emotional cerebral films, making time for all her children and balancing work and home life, and her ideas on justice as it relates to the character she plays in the film. She also talks about the new temporary tattoos that were added for the movie that fit with the ones she already had.

On the addition of new tattoos to complement her current ones

There was another part of herself that she was able to include in Fox — her many tattoos. “Instead of taking mine away, which we have to do in every film, we ended up leaving mine and adding more.” Those temporary additions are on full display in one scene, where Fox emerges from a steaming bath and walks by stunned onlookers — again, not caring what they see.

“We tried to focus (the fake tattoos) on themes that would be related to this sense of justice. I have ‘Strength of Will’ in one language, and we added it in four other languages on my arm.” “Know Your Rights” is printed in English on the back of her neck, and again in Latin as well. “From Churchill’s speech ‘We have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat,’ I had ‘Toil’ and ‘Tears’ here and here,” she says, pointing to the undersides of her upper arms.

[From USA Today]

On action roles vs. more emotional, dramatic roles

Wanted, Jolie says, is her break from more earnest performances as the wife of slain journalist Daniel Pearl in A Mighty Heart, an isolated housewife in the CIA drama The Good Shepherd and the mother of a missing boy in Changeling, which comes out Oct. 24 and could fuel Oscar talk.

She was happy to get back to an over-the-top action flick. As her manager, Geyer Kosinski, put it: “It’s what people want to see her doing. She said, ‘At some point, I have to get back to (sex) and killing.’ ”

Jolie says: “I’ve been so lucky in my career that I’ve been able to do a kind of Mr. & Mrs. Smith thing that’s really cool, and I’m made up to be as pretty as I can be. But I can also do a film like Changeling or A Mighty Heart, where it’s removed from that.

On balancing her work and home life and getting help from Brad

She declined to confirm her due date, but she has very clear ideas about what the days and months leading up to the birth will be like.

“We’ve made a point to, both of us, not be working,” she says. “So we’ll be home together with the kids,” Maddox, 6; Pax, 4; Zahara, 3; and Shiloh, who just turned 2.

“At the same time we’re expecting two, we have four, so my focus now is on the four we have. And these are some big times for them, big moments in their lives. So every day is just about making sure that their schooling is going right and their manners are intact and we’re disciplining properly and we’re spending enough time with them individually, so they seem special. That’s a lot of balance when you have a lot of children.”

As for how Pitt is handling it all, she says, “I’m very lucky — I’m with a man who makes me feel very sexy pregnant and loves children. In the last few months it’s hard for me to pick up the other kids, so he’s there to help lift them up to me and things like that. He’s an extremely hands-on dad with all the kids and really, really supportive. Any woman knows that when you’re pregnant, if you have a partner who is embracing it with you and excited with you, it makes all the difference. I’m very lucky to have him.”

Angelina said in this interview as well as her Entertainment Weekly interview that she cut a lot of lines for her character, an assassin who goes by the single name “Fox,” because she envisioned her as the strong silent type.

Apart from a report that Angelina had given birth which was discredited by several news outlets, there have been no new stories about Angelina in a couple of weeks. Brad went to a Radiohead concert with Ed Norton in Italy on Wednesday but Angelina has not been seen. There is speculation that Angelina has already given birth and that her camp tried to retract a hasty confirmation that her twins had been born, saying it was spread by someone posing as her assistant, in order to secure some much-needed privacy for the family. Other gossip outlets say she’s on bed rest until the twins are born. Paparazzi have stormed the small French town in which they’re staying on a 1,000 acre 35-bedroom leased estate, but so far no one has secured a photo of any members of the famous family.

Here are stills from Wanted, which is out in the US on June 27 and is getting very good advance reviews. Thanks to All Movie Photo for these pictures.

Update: This story is false, according to reps for the couple.

After owning their New Orleans home for a little over two years, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt have sold it, according to Ted Casablanca from E!. Who says it’s a bad time for real estate? The news is a little surprising, considering the homes Brad’s been helping build in the Lower 9th Ward with the Make It Right project - and his often mentioned love of the city. Last year he noted:

“I can’t describe why were allowed to live a more normal life (in New Orleans).”

The thing he misses the most, he said, is bicycling through the streets of New Orleans at night.

“Living in the French Quarter is a thrill for us,” he said. “We have some semblance of real family life. People have been very, very gracious with us. If we’re on the front deck, people go by and say, ‘Hi.’ Then they go on their way, very friendly.”

Pitt visited New Orleans in the early 1990s during the filming of “Interview with a Vampire” and took up semi-permanent residence early this year while filming “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.” He said that he has been impressed with the city’s never-say-die post-Katrina spirit, especially in the hardest hit areas.

“For me, first as a tourist, it’s the most unique city that we have in the States,” he said. “It has an energy like no other place. You guys shouldn’t change a thing. I’ve got to get me some of it. I absolutely love it there. We moved our family there. We’ve got a place there and we’re intermittently going back and forth. We’re in Prague now because of work. We’ll be back there soon.”

[From The Times-Picayune]

I guess not so much. Considering how much the entire Jolie-Pitt clan supposedly loved New Orleans – and Brad’s comment that it’s “the most unique city that we have in the States,” the sale of their home seems to be further evidence that the family will probably continue to live overseas for the near future.

The couple has been just as plagued by paparazzi in their French town of Correns, where they’re leasing a home. However it appears the locals have generally taken to the couple. According to Reuters, you get a free glass of pastis if you can get a ridiculous Brangelina story published. I guess they’re trying to keep the paparazzi on their toes. Or annoy the crap out of them.

Here are Brad Pitt and Bill Clinton breaking ground on the Make it Right project in New Orleans in March. Images thanks to Splash.

Update: This story is false, according to reps for the couple.

Some people have a weird way of measuring their success. While most of us would use money or happiness, Chris Martin uses karaoke.

He apparently said: “I’m really determined that there should be more Coldplay songs in karaoke bars. I’ve been into them and you open the lyrics book and there are a million Beatles songs. There’s dozens of ABBA, Culture Club and even Bucks Fizz, but Coldplay? There will be two or at most three.”

But Martin has a solution: “If we could just get eight in every bar worldwide I’d be happy. I would know we’ve made it. I think there are three karaoke possibilities on ‘Viva La Vida’. It surely has to be the ultimate measure of success.”

NME

Chris, if it makes you feel better I once had a car named after you. It was yellow. It was also a pile of crap. It was also back in the day when people didn’t know who you were, and your lovely wife Gwyneth Paltrow was going to marry Brad Pitt.

I had completely forgotten that she was once engaged to the man-half of Brangelina, and for the first time Chris has spoken about what it is like to be married to a woman who used to date Brad Pitt:

Despite it all, Martin can’t stop feeling like an underdog. “You’ve got to be hungry,” he says. “If your wife went out with Brad Pitt, you’d want to prove yourself, you know what I mean?”

Rolling Stone

I think if you really thought about the fact that your wife once bedded the sexiest man alive (back when he was in his prime), it could really bother you. You might wonder how you shape up next to that shirtless wonder.

Then you’d have to get one of the world’s biggest ego boosts – my wife could have married the sexiest man alive, but she chose me.

Angelina Jolie is hoping to have a natural delivery for the upcoming birth of her twins. According to an “insider” (gotta love those anonymous, chatty insiders) Angelina was planning on a natural birth with 2-year-old daughter Shiloh and was disappointed when she had to have a C-section instead. This time Angie’s really hoping to go the natural route – twice.

Amid swirling reports that Angelina Jolie is on bed-rest and close to giving birth — so close, that the French media jumped the gun and announced the actress had already delivered her twins last week — the heavily pregnant actress has begun telling friends that she hopes to give birth naturally to her twin girls.

“She prepared for a natural child birth for Shiloh and was very disappointed when her doctors told her she would have to undergo a Cesarean section,” a source close to Angelina tells OK!. “She is praying everything will go her way and she will be able to enjoy a natural birth.”

[From OK! Magazine]

According to OK! Brad and Angie are quasi-fanatical about the safety of their babies. Luckily they don’t sound like they’re J-Lo crazy, and aren’t requiring surgical masks and hand sanitizer dispensers be installed around their home. But they do have a plethora of security, along with a midwife and two private nurses. The source also says there’s no way Angelina will be able to go full term with the babies.

The most important thing to Angie, however is to protect her babies. The actress and her partner Brad Pitt are taking every pre-caution to ensure a safe delivery, reserving a private birthing room at Le Centre Hospitalier Princesse Grace in Monaco, and hiring a midwife and two French nurses who are currently staying with her at Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s compound in St.-Jean-Cap-Ferrat.

“Whether Angelina experiences natural childbirth or has a scheduled C-section, she will not go to full term with the twins,” the source says. “She’s been told to expect the babies early, and that was the reason she and Brad went early to France — so they would be ready for their babies whenever they decide to make their appearance.”

[From OK! Magazine]

It sounds like they’re putting in the expected amount of planning for massive celebrity babies. Twins seem to be all the rage right now. Julia Robert, Jennifer Lopez, and now Angelina. I bet she ordered them that way; gotta stay trendy.

Here’s Angelina at the “Kung Fu Panda” Photocall in Cannes on May 15th. Images thanks to PR Photos.