Celebs

The star of Godfather III star has apparently been enlisted to play the Georgian President in an upcoming film depiction of the August war:

Television pictures showed Garcia holding court in a suit, red tie and a lapel pin bearing the red-and-white Georgian flag in Saakashvili's office in the presidential palace. [See above.]

The plot revolves around an American reporter who gets caught in the crossfire as war engulfs the country, testing his impartiality as a journalist. Papuna Davitaia, a parliament deputy from Saakashvili's ruling United National Movement, is one of the producers on the project.

"Our main concern was to show war as a bad thing," executive producer Michael Flannigan told Georgian television. "We had an opportunity to make a really anti-war film."

Garcia's actually not a bad choice for Saakashvili, though it's pretty doubtful that a film backed by Saakashvili himself and helmed by  the director of "Deep Blue Sea" and "Cliffhanger" is going to accurately capture complexity and moral ambiguity of the August war.

On the other hand, all will be forgiven if they can get Daniel Craig to play Putin. 

IRAKLI GEDENIDZE/AFP/Getty Images

Dubai's VIPs swarmed its new metro system for the grand opening, taking advantage of the unique date. To steal a line from Blake, it's good to be a Sheikh in Dubai:

When a giant clock reached 09:09:09 on 9/9/09, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid, Ruler of Dubai and Vice President of the UAE, swiped a personalised plastic card at a ticket barrier and took his place as the first passenger on a network that will, when finished, have cost an estimated Dh28 billion (US$7.6bn).

The first two trains were filled by VIPs but eventually, lucky members of the general public were allowed to take part in the festivities. 

A little later, a third train left the Nakheel Harbour and Tower station with 400 members of the public, the winners of “golden tickets”, picked from about 10,000 people who entered an online competition.
One of them, MV Martin, said: “I can’t believe I am going to be part of history.”

With all the layoffs in Dubai and abandoned luxury cars everywhere, the Metro could provide a cheaper transport option. Or maybe abandoned cars are still available for bargain prices? 

KARIM SAHIB/AFP/Getty Images

Maybe it was bound to happen. The Save Darfur Coalition says its mission is "inspiring action, raising awareness and speaking truth to power on behalf of the people of Darfur."

You'll be relieved to find out that this $12.00 thong is not an official product of the Coalition, but the sales description promises that it can be used to do all of these things:

"Toss these message panties onstage at your favorite rock star or share a surprise message with someone special ... later."  

Admittedly, this description is the same for the thong regardless of which logo is chosen. But I'm still cringing.

The dealer, CafePress, gurantees that "100% of the profits will be dontated directly to the Save Darfur Coalition (www.savedarfur.org)." And the deal goes beyond just thongs. Save Darfur pet bowls and beer steins are among the other items on offer. 

Judging by some early reactions, raising funds or awareness like this might not exactly help mend divisions among Darfur activists or get policymakers to take them seriously.

In fact, even though they didn't make it, I'll be surprised if the Save Darfur Coalition doesn't distance themselves, given that they are featured as the recipient. On the other hand, if the Save Darfur Coalition's "millions of everyday citizens" all sent a thong to the White House, someone would have to pay attention. 

If you missed it, last night's Colbert Report taped from Baghdad was absolutely phenomenal television, culminating in President Obama making an appearance by satellite to order Gen. Ray Odierno to shave Colbert's head:

Kudos to Colbert for putting on a great show for the troops and the viewers back home. But given that the show is paired with Colbert stint as "guest editor," of a Newsweek special issue on Iraq, it's fair to ask what exactly the point of this project is. Colbert quipped last night that, "I thought the war was over, because I haven't seen any stories about it in a month," and the show and the magazine seemed to be designed to bring media focus back to a war that Americans haven't been paying much attention to lately.

Newsweek editor Jon Meacham's ultra-meta-editor's note puts it this way:

Some readers and critics will inevitably object, saying that this is a publicity stunt. To them I solemnly say: you are half-right. Of course I am seeking publicity for the magazine. I would argue with the term "stunt," though, but only because of the popular assumption that a stunt is something silly. (The dictionary definition is a feat of daring, but we do not live in the dictionary.) Colbert's involvement is an exercise not in silliness but in satire, and the two are very different things. His role means more attention for NEWSWEEK, yes, and to me that is a good thing. It also brings more readers to a serious subject—and that heightened interest is a good thing, too.

Believe me, as editor of this blog I'm sympathetic to the desire to use celebrity buzz to attract eyeballs (trade secret: the top two Google searches leading readers to Passport right now are "sex photo" and "Susan Boyle") and we've even attempted to harness the power of the Colbert bump ourselves, but I'm skeptical of the idea that "heightened interest" is a good thing in and of itself. 

First of all, I suspect that Colbert's involvement with the issue is going to get quite a bit more attention than the stories within. Second, Iraq is going to be back increasingly back in the news anyway as the planned withdrawal date draws closer, so is there really something to be gained by "drawing attention" to it right now?

Possibly, but it depends what you do with that attention. Colbert (the real person or the character) isn't really saying much new about the war, leaving that to the guests on his show and the "serious" writers in the magazine. Since his TV guests this week are mostly military and Fareed Zakaria's Newsweek cover story about victory in Iraq is the kind of goalpost moving that Colbert has relished mocking for years, it's hard to say that he's making any sort of critique. And it's hard to call this week's shows satire given the free publicity he's giving the president and General Odierno to publicize U.S. achievements in Iraq.

Again, there's nothing wrong with Colbert making great television or Newsweek selling magazines, and I can only imagine how frustrating it must be for troops in Iraq to see the dwindling media coverage of their efforts, but I'm not quite sure that attention on its own, particularly with Colbert himself hogging the spotlight, is really going to do much for them.  

Susan Boyle has charmed millions of viewers on YouTube, and now her fame has captured the hearts of Russian nationalists:

A Russian far-right party posted an open letter to British talent show singer Susan Boyle late on Tuesday, heaping praise on the 48-year-old Scot and wishing her well after she was admitted to a clinic for exhaustion.

"Susan! You have already gained popularity and many admirers and fans," leader of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDPR), Vladimir Zhirinovsky, said in an open letter on the party's website www.ldpr.ru.

Andrei Lugovoy, Britain's main suspect in the London murder of Kremlin critic Alexander Litvinenko, holds a seat in parliament for the ultra-nationalist party which has called on countries belonging to the former Soviet Union to rejoin.

As reality fans know, Boyle did not even finish first on the show, and subsequent reports suggested she is not taking the loss lightly. Zhirinovsky, though, was eager to console her.

LDPR leader Zhirinovsky compared her near-win to that of his own.

"The people also love our party, but, just like you, we do not always get the deserved result at elections," he said.

LDPR came third in the Russian presidential elections in March 2008, behind the Communist party and the winning United Russia party, which saw Dmitry Medvedev replace Vladimir Putin as president.

No doubt Simon Cowell appreciates the comparison, given the reputation for fair elections his shows currently enjoy.

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

This is one weird commercial:

Yes, that's noted humanitarian and alleged former rock star Bob Geldof (along with physicist Stephen Hawking, feminist scholar Germaine Greer, and businessman Alan Sugar) trying to sell Britons on National Savings & Investments.  NS&I is a state-owned savings bank serves as a lender to the British government. It describes itself as a way to "raise cost effective financing for the government and to reduce the cost of government borrowing to the tax payer."

So after more than two decades of raising money for famine relief and pushing for debt cancellation in Africa, Geldof is now raising money for the exchequer to cover its debts. Not sure if that says more about Geldof or about the current state of the British economy, but either way, like I said, weird commercial.

If the media hype was not enough for you, this is definitely a sign that Somali pirates have gotten a little bit too sexy:

Samuel L. Jackson and his Uppity Films have joined forces with Andras Hamori's H20 Motion Pictures to secure life rights of Andrew Mwangura, a negotiator between pirates and the owners of vessels hijacked off the coast of Africa.

Mwangura, the pro-bono negotiator who often brokers the release of hostaged ships' crews, was as shocked as you are:

Mwangura told the Guardian that he had been taken aback by Hamori's interest. "He said he wanted to make a story about my life. I was very surprised. He had been trying to reach me for two months but did not have the right phone number."

But sorry movie producers, there's a caveat:

Asked how he would react if the film-makers felt the need to "Hollywoodise" the story, [Mwangura] said: "I always stand for the truth. I don't want Pirates of the Caribbean. I am a living man, and you can't say lies about a living man ... I am what I am am – someone who does things for forgotten people and the community."

Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Here's what the action star said at a forum whose attendees included Wen Jiabao:

"I'm not sure if it is good to have freedom or not," he said. "I'm really confused now. If you are too free, you are like the way Hong Kong is now. It's very chaotic. Taiwan is also chaotic."

He added: "I'm gradually beginning to feel that we Chinese need to be controlled. If we are not being controlled, we'll just do what we want."

Via Evgeny, I see that the comments have provoked an angry online backlash in Taiwan and Hong Kong as well as the blogosphere on the mainland. There are calls for a boycott of the "racist" Chan's films.

At Post Global, John Pomfret sees a class dynamic at play:

Chan is just saying what a lot of other rich Chinese feel. In the 20 years since Tiananmen, Chinese society has changed enormously. One of the most astounding ways has been in the return of a class society and in the disdain with which China's rich view China's poor. When Chan was saying Chinese need to be "controlled," to be sure, he was speaking about the poor. He didn't have to say it, But that's what the audience at Boao heard and that's why they cheered him on. Anyone who has conversations of depth with members of China's elite has heard this argument before.

Granted I don't know much about the context, but it seems to me like it's at least possible that Chan is being sarcastic. The comments were in response to a question about censorship. Chan's new film Shinjuku was recently banned in mainland China because of violence. It seems strange to me that Chan would so vociferously praise a set of policies that resulted in him losing quite a bit of revenue. Whatever his class prejudices or political beliefs, I'm sure that Chan believes that poor Chinese should at least be free to spend their hard-earned yuan on his products. He should also know better than to insult his many fans in Taiwan and Hong Kong.

Chan's not in a position to criticize a decision by the Chinese government, but the over-the-top comments seem like they could be a subtle dig at the Chinese authorities for being so uptight about his movie. Then again, I could be giving the guy too much credit. 

Victor Fraile/Getty Images