Day: May 24, 2010

Hollywood Round-up, 5/24

"I agree, Admiral - blockade the Straights of Hormuz."

By Jason Apuzzo.  • Paris Hilton signs on as celebrity ambassador for the USO, vows to visit troops overseas. Good news!  Taliban responds by unfriending her on Facebook.

• Even in 2010, enlightened-progressive Hollywood still casting white people as ethnic minorities, says LA Times.  Jake Gyllenhaal as a ‘Prince of Persia’?  Sure!  While we’re at it it, let’s cast Joe Biden as Flava Flav.

• Miss USA explains recent photos – and her stance on illegal immigration – on Fox News.  Fox News still waiting to grill her on the GATT tax and Elena Kagan.

• Crave Online posts 5 ways to improve the next season of V.  My advice?  Set the show in the 80’s and bring back Marc Singer.

• Ken Loach pops off about the Iraq War at Cannes.  I thought he was dead.

• Shrek overdose now official as sequel disappoints at box office.  Plus: Dreamworks stock drops as a result. Dreamworks begs Christopher Nolan to reboot franchise.

• Robert Rodriguez’s pseudo-controversial Machete looking for Texas tax incentives.  Doesn’t Rodriguez know?  It’s still cheaper to shoot in Mexico, and the beer’s better.

Juliette Binoche at Cannes.

• Christian mega-churches are the new training ground for American Idol singers.  I also read somewhere that Christian mega-churches are the new training ground for NFL defensive backs.  Is there a connection?

• Michael Caine speaks out about promoting the UK’s Conservative Party.  They should get him to a Tea Party rally dressed as Harry Palmer.

• AND IN MORE SERIOUS NEWS … Cannes Film Festival announces its prize winners (see here and here) under cloud of ongoing Jafar Panahi jailing.  Juliette Binoche accepts her best actress prize holding “Jafar Panahi” sign.  Panahi reportedly may be granted parole by Iranian government.  The noted filmmaker has reportedly begun a hunger strike.  Read this 2006 interview with Panahi, in which he declares that his films are not political. Sign the petition to Free Jafar Panahi.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …

ALSO: Special thanks to ‘John Boot’ and Pajamas Media for their article today on the re-launch of Libertas. Welcome to Pajamas Media readers.

UPDATE: Special thanks to Lars Larson today for having LFM’s Govindini Murty on his national show to talk about LFM.  Welcome to all of Lars’ listeners.

Faith & Activism in New Orleans: A Village Called Versailles

Republican Congressman Joseph Cao (right) along with protester.

By Joe Bendel. Most armchair political analysts were stunned when Joseph Cao, a Vietnamese-American Republican, defeated scandal-plagued Democrat William “Big Freeze” Jefferson to represent nearly the entire city of New Orleans in Congress. Alas, party registration will likely represent a challenge for Rep. Cao’s re-election.  However, he will have an important base of support in the Crescent City’s Vietnamese community, whose strength and resiliency has emerged as a major post-Katrina political development.

Documenting the unexpected rise of the New Orleans East neighborhood that challenged an out-of-touch municipal government and ultimately elected the nation’s first Vietnamese-American congressional representative, S. Leo Chiang’s A Village Called Versailles (see the trailer here) airs this coming Tueday (check your local listings) as part of the current season of Independent Lens on most PBS outlets.

Many of the older Vietnamese residents of the Versailles neighborhood (named after a large housing complex in Eastern New Orleans) had already endured two painful dislocations. Mostly from two predominantly Catholic towns in the North, they had first fled the North Vietnamese Communists to the South, only to come to America as refugees following the fall of Saigon. Indeed, the Katrina evacuation brought back many painful memories.

However, this time they returned – reclaiming their homes and neighborhood – in large measure thanks to the unifying role played by Father Vien Nguyen and the Catholic Church. Unfortunately, their rebuilding efforts were nearly sabotaged when then “Mayor” Ray Nagin used dubious emergency powers to dump an environmentally questionable landfill in their midst. Continue reading Faith & Activism in New Orleans: A Village Called Versailles

Why Fire Megan?

A woman scorned.

By Jason Apuzzo.  I’m a little confused by this whole Megan Fox thing.

As many of you may know, Transformers star/sexpot Megan Fox was essentially fired from the next Transformers film by director Michael Bay this past week (see here) – although some reports now indicate that the comely Ms. Fox may actually have walked away from the project on her own pair of highly photogenic legs.

The reason behind the firing supposedly has to do with how difficult Ms. Fox is to work with, how she can’t get along with the crew, that she’s late, generally bitchy to borderline psychotic, that she tattoos herself (making things difficult for the makeup people), she doesn’t show up to crew parties, she’s annoyed by Middle America, she once blew off the Crown Prince of Jordan … and that she once referred to Michael Bay as Hitler.

Except for the Hitler thing, I’m not sure which of these qualities hasn’t been assigned to Angelina Jolie – but I digress.

Now here’s the thing.  Transformers is Michael Bay’s franchise.  He can do whatever he damn well pleases with it.  But my question is this: when did the behavior of Hollywood stars suddenly matter, to the degree that it cost them roles and careers?  When was the memo sent out on this, because some of us didn’t get it.  Why is it that all of a sudden it matters how stars behave?  For those of us who’ve been watching Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn and George Clooney lurch from one bizarre, histrionic episode to another over the years, this is really something new.

Let me put this another way.  Why was it OK for years in Hollywood to call Bush Hitler, but not Michael Bay? Why is it suddenly so important that a Hollywood star watch what she says, and how she acts around others?

Sin on high heels.

Or is it just that you can’t offend the wrong people.

I personally couldn’t care less about the future – or past – of the Transformers series.  I’m not really interested in ‘autocons’ or ‘decepticons’ or ‘paleocons’ or whatever pseudo-mythology Michael Bay and Hasbro are currently peddling.  The only reason I would ever watch these films would be to watch Megan Fox, actually.

And that’s where I think Bay is making a big mistake here.  I’m sure Bay’s people have a million Victoria’s Secret models on speed-dial that they can call on for the next film; or they can go with the chick from Prince of Persia, as some are reporting.  Whatever.

Ms. Fox is different, frankly.  She has the sort of wicked, carnal appeal – and brazen arrogance – that make her highly appealing to men, and very compelling in front of a camera.  I’m not really talking about acting here, obviously – I’m talking about something ineffable that we usually term ‘star power.’  She’s got it.  And you don’t throw that away lightly.  Industrial Light and Magic, as talented as they are, have no software that can replace that – regardless of what they have planned for the next Transformers.

From everything I’ve seen, Ms. Fox appears brassy, difficult, cocky, probably a little bit crazy … and you know what?  Men love that.  They absolutely eat it up.  And they have since the beginning of time.

What the hell happened to Hollywood that they no longer understand that?

Review: The Infidel

Omid Djalili as "The Infidel."

By Jason Apuzzo. A few weeks ago I was approached by a persistent if strangely insensate census worker who wanted to know what ethnic category I fell into.  Presented with a palate of government-approved options, I found myself falling into what is no doubt the least sexy category of all – that of a generic ‘white’ person, even though my heritage (as far back as I’m aware) represents a vast and colorful mosaic of southern, central and eastern Europe.

To be frank, I felt a little disappointed.  I’d assumed that since the last census in which I’d participated 10 years ago, things would’ve improved a bit.  I thought there would’ve been some kind of category for gringos like me, so that the exercise of participating in the census would somehow be less tedious.  Imagine, I thought, how exciting it would be to be, say, part Thai and part Alaskan – you’d have several boxes to fill out.  That would be exciting.

Omid Djalili’s absolutely hilarious new film The Infidel (see the trailer here) presents a different kind of anxiety from the one I faced: that of the man whose ethnic identity literally makes him a marked man.  The Infidel (which recently showed at The Tribeca Film Festival and in theaters, and is available for download below) stars the antic, Rabelasian actor-comedian Djalili as a British Muslim named Mahmud who learns by accident that he was actually born Jewish.  The revelation of his Judaism, striking as it is to him, would not be so much of an issue if it weren’t for the fact that his daughter is about to marry the stepson of a radical imam from Pakistan who preaches jihad against the infidel … and that’s really when the hijinks begin.

Some wholesome friends of the Imam.

The Infidel is essentially a fish-out-of-water comedy in which a guy who believes himself to be a modern, liberal Muslim is faced with the reality of having to suddenly (and covertly) integrate into the Jewish world … while trying to retain his street-cred as a Muslim.  Does this sound rife with comic possibilities?  It is – and Infidel screenwriter David Baddiel and director Josh Appignanesi exploit every one of them.

Mahmud’s guide on his journey back to Judaism – Mahmud’s real name is ‘Solly Shimshillewitz’ – is a Jewish cabbie named Lenny, played with droll, understated humor by veteran TV star Richard Schiff (The West Wing). Lenny does his best to give Mahmud a crash-course in Judaism, a course which includes such ‘essential’ Jewish activities as: learning how to dance like Topol, how to say Oy vey! with the proper shoulder-shrug … and telling a Barbra Streisand joke at a bar-mitzvah.  Watching Mahmud, the pseudo-devout Muslim, struggle trying to perform these ‘basic tasks’ provides some of the biggest laughs of the film.  My favorite moment in Mahmud’s training is when Lenny sits him down to listen to a sad dirge by Mendelssohn.  Lenny says of the music: “Doesn’t it make you want to put all your possessions in a wooden cart and slowly, sadly pull them away from your burning village?”

Ethnic humor of the kind that fueled My Big Fat Greek Wedding some years ago is basically what fuels The Infidel – but one senses that the stakes in this film are much, much higher than in Nia Vardalos’ delightful comedy.  The inability of certain radicalized sectors of Islamic society to reconcile themselves to the modern world is largely what’s causing so many problems nowadays … and it’s precisely the intransigence of imam’s like the one depicted in The Infidel (played with silky menace by Yigal Naor) that is destroying relations between the Islamic east and democratic west right now. Continue reading Review: The Infidel