Panda-monium at the Cannes Film Festival: Jack Black, Angelina Jolie and Dustin Hoffman in Kung Fu Panda

By WcP.MovieCritic - Posted on 15 May 2008

Original Source: CNN

(quote)

CANNES, France (AP) -- Fur might be a politically incorrect fashion statement on the red carpet at the world's most-prestigious film festival. Not when you're the star of a movie called "Kung Fu Panda," though. DreamWorks Animation, whose past Cannes entries include the first two "Shrek" flicks and "Over the Hedge," put its adorable martial-arts hero alongside the festival's highbrow cinema entries Thursday with the premiere of the action comedy whose voice cast includes Jack Black, Angelina Jolie and Dustin Hoffman.

While Black hammed it up with some kung fu poses, he wisecracked that the incessant camera flashes could go a long way to solving the energy crunch. "If you harnessed all that electricity, it would probably be enough to take a small unmanned ship to the moon and back," Black said. "It's got to be 1.21 gigawatts of light flashes. It's just going to be sick. Do we really need that many pictures? Where are all those photos going?"

Black provides the voice of Po, a panda in ancient China who idolizes his country's martial-arts heroes but is too slow and clumsy to emulate their moves, stuck instead toiling in his family's noodle shop. A twist of fate lands Po under the tutelage of a revered kung fu master (Hoffman), who must train the klutzy panda to battle an evil snow leopard (Ian McShane) intent on marauding and vengeance. Po's allies include a tiger (Jolie), a viper (Lucy Liu) and a monkey (Jackie Chan), whose graceful martial-arts skills put the lumbering panda to shame.

"I do think that Po the panda is going to give Shrek a run for his money, because I think that Po in a very different way is without question the most lovable character we've ever created," Katzenberg said. "Shrek's an anti-hero hero. Po is an unlikely hero. He is more in tune with what we are ourselves. He actually has to find the hero within, and I think we all have a hero within us. "So it's just very relatable to find this kind of average guy who's working in his dad's noodle restaurant suddenly have an ambitious fantasy to be something great, only to learn that being the best version of yourself is greatness."

(unquote)

Black also let slip that his co-star, Jolie, and her partner Brad Pitt are expecting twins, who would be the fifth and sixth children for the couple, joining siblings Maddox, Pax, Zahara, and Shiloh. Jolie confirmed the news, mentioning she may decide to give birth to the twins in France.

Images courtesy of AFP and EPA/GUILLAUME HORCAJUELO

Kung Fu Panda - panda Po admires martial-arts heroes

Dustin Hoffman, Angelina Jolie and Jack Black at the Cannes Film Festival

Jack Black hams it up for the camera

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt expecting twins to join the family

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