Always willing to help the less fortunate, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have donated a $100,000 gift to SOS Children’s Villages for Christmas this year.

The “Babel” stud and his “Changeling” lady have been supporters of SOS charity- which has 500 “villages” in 132 countries – for several years.

In a statement, Angelina tells, “We have seen firsthand the remarkable job SOS does to raise orphaned and abandoned children and keep families together.”

Brad continued, “The poor outcomes for foster children indicate that we must do a much better job at supporting them.”

Their donation goes to the charity’s USA facilities which are located in Florida and Illinois.

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“Sherlock Holmes” is clearly the movie everyone’s talking about. Some Doyle purists have objected to the obviously high-octane approach used in the current film, arguing that Holmes is a cerebral character who solves problems with his mind. He isn’t the “hard-boiled dick” type that emerged with the popularity of pulp magazines like “Black Mask,” giving rise to characters like Sam Spade and probably epitomized by Mickey Spillane’s Mike Hammer. Yet Doyle’s Holmes was no slouch in hand-to-combat, and Doyle mentions Holmes as having backgrounds in boxing and Japanese martial arts (“The Sign of the Four,” “The Adventure of the Empty House”).

Amazingly, the rumors that Brad Pitt is in “Sherlock Holmes,” opening Christmas day, are still circulating. It seems like rumors have been swirling for ages that Pitt is glimpsed in the shadows of the Guy Ritchie re-imagining of Arthur Conan Doyle’s classic, Victorian detective stories, supposedly laying the groundwork for him to co-star in the sequel as the villainous Professor Moriarty.

On September 24th, a spokesperson for Warner Brothers specifically told me that Brad Pitt does not appear in “Sherlock Holmes,” and was not attached to a sequel at that time. The role of Professor Moriarty, if the character does indeed appear in a sequel, has yet to be cast. Producer Daniel Lim recently told Collider the same thing.

Moriarty was created by Doyle but isn’t all that major a character in the original stories. He was dreamed up by Doyle as a foil who could kill off Holmes when the author got tired of the character and wanted to concentrate on what he considered to be his more important literary endeavors. Doyle and Moriarty failed, as it turned out. Doyle hadn’t even written half his Holmes output when he wrote “The Final Problem,” which was meant at the time to be Holmes’ swan song.

Hollywood made Moriarty a prominent recurring villain in the long series of movies starring Basil Rathbone as the best known Holmes, and Nigel Bruce, who chiseled the concept of an elderly, bumbling Watson in stone. George Zucco, Lionel Atwill and Henry Daniell all played Moriarty in that series.

Interestingly, Boris Karloff, one of the greatest movie villains of all time and who was under contract to Universal during part of the period they were producing the Holmes movies, never played the part. He did appear with Rathbone in the movie “The Tower of London.”

Whether or not Pitt will play Moriarty is an open question. He doesn’t seem natural casting. He isn’t English and although now a legitimately middle-aged man, he looks younger. Hugo Weaving would seem a better choice. Or maybe someone think of digitally resurrecting Karloff and give him the shot at the role he never played but should have.

The villain in the current film is Mark Strong, who was in “RocknRolla” for director Guy Ritchie last year, and has been in no fewer than four films in 2009 alone: “Endgame,” “The Young Victoria,” “The Odds” and “Sherlock Holmes.” He has four films in post-production, including Ridley Scott’s uber-budget “Robin Hood,” is filming “The Guard” and is attached to Pixar’s live-action “John Carter of Mars,” which is scheduled to begin filming next year.

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The nominations for the 2010 Screen Actors Guild Awards have just been announced and Brad is up for an award for his role in Inglorious Basterds. Check it out:

ENSEMBLE CAST:
An Education
The Hurt Locker
Inglourious Basterds
Nine
Precious

Even though Brad wasn’t nominated himself, which is a shame as he did an amazing job in Inglorious Basterds, his movie Inglorious Basterds did get nominated a couple of times. Check it out:

BEST MOTION PICTURE, DRAMA
• Avatar
• The Hurt Locker
• Inglourious Basterds
• Precious
• Up in the Air

50 Cent would love to be Brad Pitt for a day, if only so he could romance Brad’s girlfriend Angelina Jolie. He said: “I’d be Brad Pitt. Go sleep with Angelina and come back.”

Meanwhile, 50 has admitted his alcohol tolerance is so low, he gets drunk after two drinks. The rapper told Complex magazine: “For me… two cups is over the limit. After one beer, you’re drunk, technically.”

The 34-year-old star also claimed he is prone to mood swings which affect the people around him. When asked who he most annoying person he knew was, 50 replied: “It might be me. I’m a moody person.”

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Brad Pitt and Robert Downey Jr. going head-to-head onscreen. That’s a tantalizing cinematic throwdown, which explains why even the possibility of such a face-off — in a sequel to a film that has not even opened yet — has been churning through the rumor mill. If Downey’s “Sherlock Holmes” becomes a box-office hit following its Christmas Day opening, could we eventually see the actor’s Holmes joined in a sequel by Brad Pitt as the wily detective’s nemesis James Moriarty?

That’s been the gossip for months. In August there were rumors that Pitt was on the “Holmes” set, and The Hollywood Reporter dished in September that the A-lister was in discussions to take on the role. And now we know — spoiler alert! — that Moriarty does in fact pop up in “Holmes,” albeit swathed in shadows and with a voice not recognizably Pitt’s. So when MTV News had a chance to chat with director Guy Ritchie and his cast, we had to get to the bottom of the mystery.

Had Ritchie talked with Pitt about playing Moriarty? “I can’t tell you that,” the director said, glancing a bit nervously at his publicist. “Maybe Moriarty will surface again …. I’m not allowed to say anything.”

Why be so tight-lipped about something that is not even a possibility? His answers will only fuel the Pitt-as-Moriarty fire. “I’m a big fan of Brad and I’d love to work with Brad,” said Ritchie, who directed Pitt in 2000’s “Snatch.” “Everything he’s done, I’m a big fan of.”

When we put the Pitt questions to Downey, the actor declined to answer or speculate. “We’re not the casting directors and [Moriarty's] kept purposely out of the narrative in the story and, should we be fortunate enough to go forward again, then we’ll probably make casting announcements and that stuff.”

“Holmes” star Mark Strong was a little more forthcoming in our interview, saying he never saw Pitt on set, but that Pitt and Ritchie have a strong creative bond. “I never met [Pitt], but I know that Guy and he are friends, obviously, because they’ve worked together and I know they’d love to get someone of his caliber to play a character of the depth and weight of Moriarty. I know they’ve probably talked about it.”

Rachel McAdams’ character, Irene Adler, actually interacts with the mysterious Moriarty in the film. Did the actress perform alongside Pitt?

“No Brad Pitt sightings,” McAdams said with a laugh, adding sometimes she wasn’t even on camera with another actor. “I was just talking to a dark void.”

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Despite the dire predictions, Brangelina, aka Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie have managed to stay together now for five years.

In order to celebrate their anniversary, Pitt and Jolie reserved a suite at the Chateau Marmont Hotel in Hollywood, according to a report in Life & Style.

Pitt and Jolie were able to keep the November 28 celebration quiet because they kept the staff at the hotel in the dark.

“They checked in around 4 p.m. and were ushered straight to their poolside bungalow,” said a hotel insider. “They were holding hands when they arrived, and Angie was really excited. She was like a kid — she kept asking Brad what he was up to, and he just smiled knowingly. They looked like they were on a date – they had no security with them, and they were incredibly relaxed.”

The couple, who has never married, met in 2004 while they were filming Mr. and Mrs. Smith.

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