Customer Reviews

Brangelina: The Untold Story of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

I would like to state for the record that I am not a fanatical Hollywood star chaser. I don't read gossip magazines or watch "Entertainment Tonight" or their clones. So when some reviewers say the information in this book has already been in the gossip magazines over the last few years... that doesn't apply to me and probably doesn't apply to a large portion of the potential audience for this book. I am simply an average guy who like everybody else enjoys movies. Why did I buy this book? Because I figured that it probably condensed what was in hundreds if not thousands of the aforementioned gossip magazines. So instead of buying and reading thousands of magazines I could "hopefully" save time and read one book.

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt are obviously household names... but the big question that potential readers should have... is... is this an honest and fully documented book? Before I give my opinion on that all important question... let me first state that there are tons of titillating information regarding not only Brad and Angelina... but also Billy Bob Thornton... Angelina's brother James Haven (incestual partner??)... Father Jon Voight... and of course Jennifer Aniston... though much less than you would expect on Brad's ex-wife. There is also much less than a potential reader would expect about Brad. Three-quarters of the book is pure Angelina... with tidbits thrown in from all directions... ranging from the fact that at thirteen-years-old her life goal was to be a *FUNERAL DIRECTOR... before she was sixteen she had a live-in boyfriend in her Mother's house... which not only included sex... but included her fetish of cutting herself and her partner with all types of knives... admitted heavy drug use: "I HAVE DONE JUST ABOUT EVERY DRUG POSSIBLE, SHE REVEALED. COCAINE, ECSTASY, LSD, AND, MY FAVORITE, HEROIN." "SHE EVEN CONFIDED, ON ANOTHER OCCASION, THAT HEROIN MEANT A LOT TO HER."... and her lesbian experiences.

The problem with the author is that some claims are attributed to a named individual... but many others are claims not verified with an actual person. The author also goes off on tangents so far away from Brad and Angelina that at times you think he's on a "trip" of his own. While discussing the famous sister/brother "incestual?" kiss at the 2000 Academy Awards... he winds up going under cover into the world of incestual relations and dissects the legal as well as the inherent medical problems. He even discusses incest cases from all over the world. You find yourself asking yourself... what happened to the Brangelina story I was reading? The same thing happens when he starts discussing homosexuality in more depth than is necessary... including going to homosexual poker games... and then winds up quoting sources that alleged "THAT SOME OF HOLLYWOOD'S MOST FAMOUS ACTORS HAD COME UNDER THE SWAY OF THE (SCIENTOLOGY) CHURCH BECAUSE THEY WERE AFRAID THEIR SECRETS WOULD BE REVEALED. THE MOST SHOCKING PASSAGE CONCERNED JOHN TRAVOLTA." ... again the author seems to drift away from the main story.

Throughout the book through a combination of named quotes and innuendo the reader is told Pitt is a pothead... and you'd better think twice before thinking highly of "BRANGELINA'S" worldwide charity work... let alone the above/below board legitimacy of some of their child adoptions.

So, where may you ask... do I come up with my review title that emphasizes "HYPOCRISY"? After two-hundred-fifty-seven pages of named... and just as many... unnamed sources... the author has the audacity to state:

"MY CHALLENGES NOW, AS I SAW IT, WAS TO SEPARATE FACT FROM FICTION. I WANTED TO DISCERN WHAT MIGHT ACTUALLY BE GOING ON WITH THE COUPLE, ESPECIALLY THE STATE OF THEIR RELATIONSHIP, WITHOUT BEING TAKEN IN BY THE NEVER-ENDING STREAM OF FALSE STORIES, INNUENDO AND GOSSIP. I DIDN'T WANT TO FALL INTO THE SAME TRAP THAT OTHERS HAD FALLEN INTO."

Huh??? Excuse me... isn't that what you just did for most of the prior two-hundred-fifty-plus-pages?

To be honest, I am totally appalled by this book's lax journalistic standards. I see that one reviewer insisted we should review the book and not the author, but I think when a person chooses to write a biography then the author's credentials should be scrutinized. Mr. Halperin from a quick Internet search operates a blog that is even worse when it comes to fact checking than this book. I can truly say it is an absolutely spurious blog--he makes sweeping statements like "Angie House Hunting in Portugal" and then throws in the proverbial a "close friend said..." and ends the spiel with "story developing" and then never gets back to the story.

So it was with interest that I started this book. First like many other reviewers I did note that the book focused heavily on Angelina Jolie with very few pages focused on Brad Pitt or the children. So calling the book Brangelina, the Untold Story of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie is really a misnomer.

Secondly, the book was filled with extraneous information that Mr. Halperin used as background so you would understand where he was coming from. There was almost a complete chapter devoted to Hollywood and gays in order to shed light on Jolie and Jenny Shimizu's relationship, but in reality it really had nothing to do with Jolie. There was a long blurb about incest in order to provide background on Jolie's Oscar kiss with her brother.

Thirdly, Halperin like with his blog has a hit and run approach in the book. He proclaims proudly that he went undercover by entering the mental hospital that Jolie checked herself into in 2000. Unfortunately, Halperin presents absolutely no indisputable facts that indicate she was ever there. He also states that her high school counselor said she was "inclined towards anti-social psychopathy." Again there are no facts involved, just statements by Halperin. I googled both events from multiple angles with multiple words and nothing came up that would indicate that a legitimate source confirms either story. Jolie mentions it in a Larry King interview and says UCLA. She later denied it and said she was joking. Are these two stories true? They may be or they may not be, but I don't know even after reading the book.

Halperin writes a biography yet there are no foot notes, no index. Nothing to allow the reader to double check his facts. He states he had 900 sources. It would be interesting to see who and what those sources are. If you take out his side trips on being gay in Hollywood, on incest and several other little asides from the 271 page biography--you are left with a fairly thin volume indeed. Much of the book is quotes directly from the mouth of Jolie. Other parts of the book are a rehash of tabloid and entertainment magazines. One does have to question exactly why not one of those 900 sources could provide fresh facts and information. There is no inside information presented that hasn't been rehashed in blogs, tabs and other media.

At the end of the book Halperin writes "My challenge now, as I saw it, was to separate fact from fiction. I wanted to discern what might actually be going on with the couple, especially the state of their relationship, without being taken in by the never-ending stream of false stories, innuendo and gossip. I didn't want to fall into the same trap that others had fallen into." How ironic of him to state this as his blog is full of gosiip, false stories, innundo and gossip. With 900 sources or resources, why is Halperin having such a hard time telling the truth from rumor, false hoods from reality?

The book does not trash Jolie, Pitt or Aniston, but unlike a good biography or expose neither does it give you additional insight into what makes these folks A Listers, Superstars, or human. For instance, Halperin states that Jolie has three great passions--her films, her children, and her charity work. The book provides no depth as to what motivates her to act, what motivates her to raise her children (they are barely mentioned in the book), or what motivates her to give of herself to one of the poorest populations on earth--the refugees. It is possible to write a good biography based on other sources and provide documentation and insight into the person being written about--even Hollywood types. Nicole Kidman (Vintage) by David Thomson is one such book as is the recent John Lennon: The Life by Philip Norman. Both books name sources and index the material. With Halperin's book very few sources are named, statements are made that should be backed up with solid fact, and there is no index. You are unable to, without a great deal of trouble, check his "facts."

Does Jolie manipulate the media and change stories to fit her goals? Most likely. But there is still a person behind the image and unfortunately Halperin fails to deliver an understanding of who and why Angelina is who she is. And Brad Pitt? Forget it. He is hardly mentioned in any relevant way in the book.

This book should really be retitled: Angelina Jolie: Rise to Stardom, or whatever. I bought it, thinking that it was an "undercover" story into the story of Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, and Angelina Jolie and the affair, the divorce, and the cheating, and how things happened...I expected to hear things that were never reported in People Magazine or any of those celebrity gossip magazines. But instead the book spent 5 pages talking about Brad Pitt's youth, the other 190 pages talking about Angelina Jolie since she was 7 years old, and only the last 70 pages talked about what the book was supposed to talk about "Brangelina". Ian Halperin NEVER even talked about Jolie and Pitt and how they got together until after page 190.

so if you want to learn about Jolie's childhood and her rise to stardom, read this book ,if you want to hear the "undercover" story of what happened between the Jolie-Pitt-Aniston affair, find another book.

If I could give it 0 stars I would but I give it one star for the nice cover.I had to actually force myself to read it hoping it would get better.It's so boring. maybe the author will have better luck next time.

The reviews I read about this book being mostly about Angelina are spot on, as well as the fact that the author really strays from the subject of the book over and over again. The description of this book lies when it says, "find out the truth behind Angelina's French kiss with her brother..." I don't recall any conclusions. He literally states, "And, although we'll probably never know for sure..." Everything is still speculation. I didn't feel there was much solid evidence from any source that could paint an accurate picture. I also expected to hear more evidence to back up his public claim that Brad and Angie would break up, but I came to find out that prediction came from someone else, and he isn't too sure about it. All in all, it was a quick mildly entertaining read, but was mostly akin to reading tabloids that are already out there. Granted I learned some new things, but had I paid better attention to the tabloids maybe I'd have know them already too.

Ian Halperin should have called this book "Angelina Jolie... And Oh Yeah That Guy She's With."

It's quite a bit closer to the truth than the more provocative title "Brangelina: The Untold Story of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie," which doesn't really bother to study the so-famous-you're-sick-of-seeing-them-already celebrity supercouple. Instead it's a fluff piece cobbled together from a thousand interviews and news clippings -- and Halperin is clearly more interested in the Jolie half than the Pitt.

As he explains, Jolie came from a far more normal environment than she often admits, as the daughter of actor Jon Voight -- but became a wild child in her teens, experimenting with drugs, sex, cutting and knife collecting. And she didn't lose her wild streak for awhile, marrying the British actor Jonny Lee Miller but immediately running into problems, particularly when she discovered that she liked women as well as men. Also: brother snogging.

Meanwhile, Brad Pitt was a golden boy of all kinds in his all-American household, who rocketed to fame and pretty much cemented himself in place there. And after Jolie took an interest in adopting orphans and humanitarian work, he and she fell in love (around the time his marriage to a sitcom star was falling apart) and got together -- prompting more adoptions and a few biobabies. Stay tuned for further developments.

You'd be hard-pressed to find any actual new information about Angelina Jolie or Brad Pitt from this book -- Halperin cobbles together virtually the entire thing out of interviews (sometimes cut and pasted right into the book), news reports, rumors, innuendo, and other fluffy celebrity biographies (Rhona Mercer). The same applies to the photographs -- almost all are red-carpet or tabloid pictures, and they don't even bother to show all of the couple's children.

And it's heavily slanted towards Angelina, to the point where describing it as a story of Brad Pitt seems like false advertising -- the guy gets one measly chapter in the whole first half of the book. It feels like Halperin was writing a Jolie biography, only to realize it wasn't long enough, so he dashed off some chapters on Pitt. In fact, "Brangelina" only enters the picture a few pages before the book's end -- and even then, he basically falls into the same misogynistic approach as many tabloid "journalists," portraying it as a black widow capturing a clueless pret.

And the entire book is heavily padded, apparently because Halperin couldn't find enough interesting info on his subjects -- so we get chapter-long meditations on sibling incest, pages of self-mutilation study (as well as lists of celebrity cutters), and a whole bizarre chapter where Halperin listens to a bunch of gay buddies chatter about which celebrities are secretly gay (with all juicy material carefully removed).

"Brangelina: The Untold Story of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie" doesn't live up to its name in any way -- it barely touches on Pitt, and there's little between its covers that is "untold." It's a biography so fluffy that it practically floats away.

If you expect to read about Brangelina, turn to the last 20 pages of this book. That's all that is devoted to them as Brangelina. The rest is about Angelina Jolie and about Brad Pitt, but not as a couple. Included in the mix is, in additon to their family members, Madonna, Bill Gates, Ralph Nader and some other people who made it into the book, although I have no idea why. I wish that, instead of buying the book, I had just Googled them both. There is nothing new, shocking or even very interesting here.

I'll keep it short and sweet. If you read the regular tabloids, you will know everything in this book. I bought it based on the author's numerous "interviews" --- believe me, there is absolutely nothing new here. I was extremely disappointed and I think he should refund my money. All the above reviews of this book are completely accurate.

I've read the reviews here, and I agree that many of the sources for the information in this book are shaky, at best. I won't purchase suspicious books such as "High on Arrival" -- the author waited for her father to die to slander him. Books like Brangelina are what I call "fun books" -- a gathering of gossip and speculation on the gossip. I like Hollywood stories but have decided I like substantiated ones best. This one is is a "hope it comes true" tale.

got the book from the library...sorry amazon.

i don't really follow the gossips columns/rag magazines. that said, i did NOT learn a thing reading this book. all the author did was do a google search, combine all the info together and throw it into a book. what a waste of time.