Jolie Rides the Rails

One of the meatiest female roles in American literature that hasn't yet made it to the big screen would have to be Dagny Taggart, the railroad executive who keeps the trains going even as society crumbles around her in Ayn Rand's objectivist fantasia Atlas Shrugged.

But now it looks like Dagny's ready for her close-up, courtesy of Angelina Jolie.

She's working with director Vadim Perelman (House of Sand and Fog) to make the long-awaited film version of Atlas, and it looks like they'll manage to pull it off before threatened guild strikes shut down Hollywood sometime next summer.

Given Jolie's rather vocal lefty politics, it will be interesting to see how Rand's right-wing fans respond to the film when it shrugs its way to screens in 2008.

Side note: Angelina Jolie not only plays lesbian and bisexual roles, she is open about the fact that she is bisexual and has had relationships with both men and women. She was in a relationship with Jenny Shimizu, her co-star in Foxfire in 1996.