A few weeks ago I mentioned that while I used to really like Natalie Portman, every single thing she’s been doing or saying lately has been grating on my nerves. From her interviews, to her defense of Roman Polanski, to her “eating a steak is equivalent to rape” vegan/vegetarian stance, I’m totally over her. All of this to say, I don’t really care for this dress that Natalie wore to the premiere of Brothers. I give Natalie credit for not being afraid of bold, interesting colors, but this dress looks cheap, doesn’t it? It looks like budget Delia’s. I can’t find the designer, but my guess is Marchesa. Totally budget. But I do love her shoes. The shoes are killing me.

Anyway, Natalie’s promotion for Brothers has been very limited. I couldn’t even find any recent interviews she’s done to promote her role as a would-be war widow (her husband is played by Tobey McGuire) who has a relationship with her husband’s brother, played by Jake Gyllenhaal. This is the only thing – from a press conference in which she’s not talking about Brothers, she’s talking about why she took a role in Kenneth Branagh’s Thor.

Ever since Natalie Portman signed on to play Dr. Don Blake’s love interest Jane Foster in Kenneth Branagh’s upcoming Thor, the actress hasn’t done a ton of interviews, so we haven’t had much of a chance to learn about her take on the character.

At the press conference for Jim Sheridan’s Brothers, a terrific drama in which Portman is quite astounding as a young mother whose husband is a soldier who has gone missing and presumed dead in Afghanistan, we tried our best to broach the subject, trying to find out why she decided to do it, having already starred in one comic book movie (V For Vendetta) as well as starring in one of the biggest sci-fi franchises of all time (Do we even have to name it?). We also were hoping to find out what sort of research or comics she might have read for the role, and whether it might be a big part, considering that much of the movie will probably take place in Asgard.

Unfortunately, the press conference environment is not the best place to get into this sort of thing–and we felt quite guilty even asking about it–but she did tell us at least why she did want to be in the movie:

“I just thought it sounded like a weird idea because Kenneth Branagh’s directing it, so I was just like, ‘Kenneth Branagh doing ‘Thor’ is super-weird. I’ve gotta do it’,” she told us, before a journalist interrupted her answering our question because he didn’t even know who Jane Foster was (The heathen!). Sadly, she never got to the rest of our question, but hopefully, we’ll get another chance to talk to her before the movie comes out.

[From Superhero Hype]

I have no idea why Tobey, Natalie and Jake aren’t promoting this movie more, because it actually looks like a really solid (albeit depressing) drama. Perhaps there’s no money to promote it. But it does look interesting. The trailer does seem to give away too much of the story, so beware of possible spoilers. Here’s the trailer: