san francisco files lawsuits against gang members

the city that mistakenly believes it is the most tolerant in north america, engages in an intolerant act. if you are a minority and you’re hanging outside and talking to people on your street, the police could conclude you’re a gang member, and then boy have you got a lot of problems. whatever happened to civil liberties. or is this a case of what philip k. dick wrote and steven spielberg so elegantly bought to the screen coming true?

the pope wants to sms you

if you live in vienna or salzburg or other parts of the country that used to claim arnold schwarzenegger as its own, you can sign-up to receive daily text messages from paparazzi.

bono and robin williams separated at birth

bono is starting to look more and more like robin williams everyday.

celebs earn millions from zines for photos of kids

is it ever a good idea to sell photos of your kids or so-called ‘great’ moments in your life for cash to the paparazzi and then later complain about the paparazzi? here’s a list of celebrities who have sold out to the highest bidder. according to this list, angelina jolie and brad pitt (our fave topic today) have made at least $7M hawking their lives to the press. larry birkhead made $2M selling a photo of himself and anne-nicole smith’s kid to the british rag OK.

brangelina want to quit acting move to berlin to raise their kids in the worst schools in europe

well, tom cruise is in the city filming his nazi film with director bryan singer at the helm and christina ricci and the wachowski brothers are somewhere in potsdam filmming speedracer. now it looks like brad pitt and angelina jolie are on their way to the city, but permantely. according to a uk rag, brad pitt sees his future in architecture, not acting. the newspaper also claims that angelina wants to leave acting too. and why move to berlin? well, the newspaper quotes angelina as saying ‘it’s close to france.’ well, i guess these citizens of the world know a little bit about geography. but it’s also close to poland, the czech republic, denmark, the netherlands, belgium –shall i continue?

what pitt doesn’t realise is that germany is completely controlled by guilds and unions. it’s a bit like opus dei, but without the cat-o-nine tails. if he wants to be an architect in douchland, he will have to have an architectural degree. otherwise, at the moment, since he doesn’t even have a university education, in germany, he’s barely qualified to be an interior designer.

the article also mentions that they want their children to attend school in germany. but do the jolie-pitts realize that germany has some of the worst schools in europe and berlin has some of the worst schools in the country. german students are ranked 21st in reading skills and 20th in math in a study of 31 EU countries. perhaps they’ll stick them in the private john f. kennedy school. as all the courses are taught in english. but if they go the way of the public school system, they’ll be fighting a discriminary system which is set-up in a way so that immigrant children are set-up to lose.

lindsay lohan career killer

lindsay lohan’s new stripper movie took in barely more than $1 on friday night. here’s a great little trailer chronicling li-lo’s life and chaotic summer.

angelina jolie resurrects can’t let go of a mighty heart

well, it seems like this is true. the trailer for beowulf, a book i totally hated when i was forced to read it in junior high school, features a narration by a woman, whom i assume is angelina jolie, with an afro-cuban accent.

what’s happened to michael ballack

ballack was signed to chelsea in 2006 for somewhere between 120,000 and 130,000 pounds per week. he was immediately derided by the british press as a cheap wad for saying that’s it’s better to rent in london as opposed to buying a house. he only scored but 4 goals in his first 26 games.

ballack recently lost his so-called ‘untouchable’ status when jose murinho, the coach of chelsea declared he wouldn’t give places to anyone just because a person is a face or a name. last april, murinho threatened to terminate ballack’s contract because murinho and chelsea’s club doctors claim they were not notified prior to ballack’s surgery in germany for what ballack says was a potentially career threatening injury, which the chelsea doctors supposedly dismissed as a minor injury. he missed the premiership because of the operation.

last january, football legend franz beckenbauer critized ballack for moving to chelsea. he said, ballack would’ve been better off at manchester united and that presently the game just passes him by. bernd schuster, the new coach at real madrid says he would love to have ballack on his team.

you can read the diary of michael ballack on football365.com.

fat is contagious

according to an article on www.bbc.co.uk, obesity just might be contagious. our size could just be effected by the company and the society we keep. this could explain why samoans tend to be robust people. and why adults in small town and suburban america tend to be a whole lot fatter than people who live in manhattan. perhaps this could explain the city versus rural disconnect in the u.s.

the lives of others actor dies of stomach cancer

ulrich muehe, who played the role of a stasi officer in the film ‘the lives of other’ that picked up an oscar earlier this year for best foreign film has died of cancer.

sarkozy shakes france up, in a good way

he sent his wife, cecilia, to libya to do what no foreign minister, president, or prime minister has been able to do in the last seven years. and that’s to talk gadaffi, the man whose name is spelt in many different ways, into releasing the six bulgarian doctors (accused of giving local children AIDS) from prison and a looming death sentence. nicolas sarkozy is now ‘in hot water’ in france and in the eu. perhaps sarkozy is only interested in results. and it seems that’s what he and his wife have achieved. the doctors were released earlier this week.

yet another 2pac album

afeni shakur didn’t know that suge knight (who i’ve always called surge knight) has been sitting on another tupac album. so i guess she’s going to sue him. but the real question is. how many more albums is she sitting on from the most prolific dead musician we’ve encountered since mozart. of course i’m kidding. as i don’t believe many of mozart’s compositions were still being released 10 years after his death. details can be found at http://music.guardian.co.uk . 

katrina 2007, now it’s the uk’s turn

remember when the whole world descended on new orleans to criticize the u.s. regarding global warming and the ineptitude of W. the bbc seemingly took a bit of glee in reporting on the disaster 24-7. and now it’s the uk’s turn. and where is CNN? watching the upteenth democratic presidential debates.

i fell a bit sorry for gordon brown. his first month in office has been nothing less than tumultuous. he’s having to pick up all the trash that tony blair left behind.

velveta cheese fudge and coke salad

i’m not so sure about ron paul, a republican doctor running for the presidency. but i would sure like to have a look at his wife’s cookbook.

nicholson past his sale date, russians have specific jeans for vodka

both kurt russell and jack nicholson are definitely past their sale dates. perhaps it’s time to toss them out?

perhaps one reason putin was able to drink sarkozy under-the-table during the g-8 summit is because russians have special genes that allow them to drink vodka.

english version harry potter big sales in germany

as most people in europe (minus the french) have a reasonable grasp of english, almost 200,000 copies of harry potter and the deathly hollows were pre-ordered in germany, the european unions’ most populous country. people aren’t interested in waiting until octorber for the germany language version. harry potter and the half-blood prince, the 6th book in the series, was the first english language book to make it onto the bestseller list in germany.

mobile phones just another luxury item

there was a time when people in the u.s. just wanted a mobile phone that worked and could be used for emergencies. they would hide it in the glove compartment of their automobile, avoid giving the number out to their friends, and immediately forget their own phone number. that was the 90s.

unlike in europe and asia, the cost of having a mobile phone in the u.s. is still incredibly expensive. the u.s. is perhaps the only country in which a consumer pays for incoming and outgoing calls. although phone companies give-a-way around 1000 free minutes a month, once the phone bill comes in, it is beyond possible to separate the credits from the debits.

prior to 2001, only around 40% of americans owned mobile phones. three years ago, that number was 53%. now the number is 73%. while in the uk, a country with a population of 60 million, the saturation rate is 102%. germany, which has a population of 82 million, has a saturation rate of 96%. japan, with a population of 127 million, has a saturation rate of 74%.

in the 1990s in the united states, mobile phones were primarily used by business people and the affluent. at the end of the 90s, with the introduction of a digital system to replace the analogue system which was curiously american, the price of cell phone service (as its known in the u.s.) began to drop.

the relationship americans have with their phones is different than the rest of the western world and parts of asia. basically, americans still own mobile phones for utility reasons. the pager market was huge in the states, but essentially died on the vine everywhere else. in the 1990s and early naughties every kid had a motorola pager so their parents could send them the following message ‘come home now’ or ‘call me.’ and their friends took advantage of the same opportunity. then in the naughties, 2 way pagers were introduced. people could send 1,000 email messages per month for $9.95. no wonder pagers hung around far longer than they should’ve in the states.

while americans were sending pagers messages from their land phones and pay phones, europeans were sending text messages. the finnish company, nokia experimented with sending the first text message between 2 mobile phones in 1993. europeans were immediately hooked.

text messaging just started taking off with teens and tweens in 2004 in the u.s. but it is still a bit slow on the uptake. while attending an international conference, you will see americans on their blackberries and treos. i recently attended an international music convention in france. i sent an american an sms, two days later i saw him on the street and he said ‘i got your text message.’ why don’t americans ‘get’ text messaging? this was explored in an article on business 2.0, which is part of cnnmoney.com.

electronic music stuck in 1996

remember when you were in your 20s, fresh out of college, working your recession area, low-paying job and you had to decide whether or not to spend your hard earned cash from the second job you had working at a retail store on mixmag, the face, or select? generally you chose the one that had a CD attached to it. it was the time when if you didn’t live in europe, all you could do was fantasize about attending the love parade, visiting the chemical brothers’ residency, spending time at ministry of sound, and hearing the new freezone compilation.

well now, mixmag, the face, and select are defunct. ministry of sound exists, but only as a label. the love parade is technical over, although the organizers try to resurrect it every few years. and although the chemical brothers are still around, one of them has an extreme case of male pattern baldness.

over the weekend, i went to a trendy club to see a friend spin and i was extremely disappointed to find that DJ music is stuck in 1996. there are actually djs who still exclusively play techno. the whole electronic music thing is stuck in the mid-90s. but at least back then, the crowds were far more entertaining.

i kinda miss the lollipops, whistles, and glow sticks as well as the baggy pants and multi-coloured trainers. hmm if you were never a raver, maybe you should visit urban dictionary for more details.

u.s. news papers in free-fall

live free or die harder or make them free or die harder is what someone should be telling publishing companies in the u.s. apparently, readership is decline. old article. but still relevant information. and advertisers have been deserting u.s. papers for years, but now apparently, the rate has dramatically accelerated.

where are newspaper readers going? well, in the 1990s, i used to read the l.a. times religiously, despite the fact that i thought the paper sucked. there was exactly one column of international news. and the international news that made the paper was about the mid east or about ireland. i always found that a bit curious. i never read anything about europe in the l.a. times (as far as i can remember) until the u.n. debate on iraq and the paper ran an editorial about the cheese eatting surrender monkeys.

getting back to the question, where are readers going? they’re going online. they’re reading international publications and they’re reading blogs. and people are using babel fish to translate the stuff the languages they don’t understand. and that is a good thing. i have read that over 50% or registered users for UK newspapers are americans.

live free or die harder, timothy olyphant

a few years ago, i had heard that the sequel to die hard 4 would be die harder. live free or die hard, which brings back a smirking bruce willis to the series that was his first movie star-turning role, ist nicht schlecht.

i hesitate to admit having seen all the previous 3 films on opening weekend. this time around, i held off for a couple of weeks. although i’ve been on the internet almost as long as i’ve been alive, i really vehemently dislike cyber films. can you say ‘the net?’ up until live free or die harder (and i’m actually kind of serious), the only watchable cyber anything filmed entertainment was a hacker episode from the X-Files. the washington post gave the film a great review. and i’ll admit that this did contribute to my breaking down and seeing the film in the theatre as opposed to doing the rental/watch it on my beamer thing.

at first, i didn’t recognize timothy olyphant. we recovering ravers all know him from the film ‘go.’ i immediately recognized kevin ‘jay and silent bob’ smith as warlock. both castings should be considered inspired castings. i’d forgotten about olyphant since 1999. he looks quite different without his lamb chop side burns. we like timothy olyphant here and hope that we get to see him regularly.

madonna’s sinewy arms

maybe she shouldn’t work out so much madonna’s arms aren’t looking so great. madonna should rent ‘the devil wears prada’ and talk to meryl about aging gracefully.

princes only want fat women

at least in nigeria thin is out. if prince harry lived in nigeria he wouldn’t be dating his beloved chelsea, nor would prince william be entertaining kate middleton. no, the both would probably be more smitten with rosanne barr.

thomas kretschmann science fiction

perhaps transformers will be the biggest science fiction film of 2008. perhaps. i don’t really consider harry potter science fiction, it’s more a child-fantasy film like the chronicles of narnia. although i quite like the later, i’m a bit burnt out on the former.

i’ve been getting a lot of hits on this blog regarding thomas kretschmann, the actor who got stiffed by tom cruise and bryan singer and united artists on the part of count von stauffenberg in the film valkyrie, which apparently is now to be calle ‘rubicon’ in the states. not sure about the new title. sounds a bit like ‘rubic’s cube.’ but of course, no one has asked my opinion. no matter. i thought i would post a clip from the european film immortal a science fiction film that was released around 2002 which stars kretschmann, the new face of hugo boss. well, not so new, i think this happened at the end of 2006. unfortunately, as he is german, although he’s been living in the u.s. long enough to be considered a yank, he’s been forced to play in an endless stream of world war 2 movies. he had the misfortune of being cast in ‘king kong.’ which lost out at the box office to the aforementioned ‘chronicles of narnia’ in 2005.

i quite like immortal. the effects are solid but not overly played as in michael bay’s ‘transformers’ or verhoeven’s ’starship troopers.’ it’s worth picking up at your local video store. we watched it at home on our beamer and with the exception of one or two scenes, i quite enjoyed the film.

burn your bikini at 38, toss the mini at 28

although, according to this article men can get away with wearing a hoodie until 38 and jeans until 60, women have a whole lot more than men to toss out in their 30s and 40s. but fortunately can keep their hair fairly long until about 52.

lesson from emmy it’s ok to call your child a fat cow

because alec baldwin, who left a voicemail message for his little girl, calling her a rude pig, hasn’t seen his career suffer. he just got a ‘get out of jail’ card from his peers by being nominated for an emmy. but always remember don’t call your castmate a faggot. which is a sort of cigarette in the uk. but aside from that, even if you mean it in the same way as asshole or fucker or not, you might be pressured into doing a bunch of public service announcements, lose your job, and your castmate just might receive more money and an emmy nomination.

harry potter spoiler hermione dies

have i ruined your day? were you hoping it was harry? i certainly was as i’m tired of looking at daniel radcliff (with or without the horse). but in all actuality, i don’t even know that hermione dies. i read it on the internet a bit like how you’re reading about it here. hopefully the guys from bloomsbury and scholastic won’t send me an email demanding i remove this damn bit of information. i cannot authenticate whether she dies or not.

but let us speculate for a moment. what if the character who we can’t at the moment separate from the actress (and new face of chanel) emma watson, dies. wouldn’t that be a bummer. she’s the only cool thing about the series. why couldn’t it be ron. although he’s quite good for comic relief, he’s a bit useless, isn’t he?

paris hilton at chelsea charity party

paris, the fashion-forward heiress with a police record, headed to the chelsea party in l.a. the team is in town training. and they’re set to play a friendly with david beckham’s new team, the l.a. galaxy. perhaps she met up with andriy schevenchenko the multi-million pound plus player (by that i mean money) whose had a difficult time finding the net during his year with chelsea.

stockings get tossed in closet next to corset

apparently more and more women have zero interest in wearing stockings and becoming more of a niche product.

prince shapes the future of music

the give-a-way in the uk newspaper, the daily mail may have, according to the newspaper, netted prince 300,000 pounds (over 600K in u.s. dollars). according to the article, the man presently known as prince, considers the whole promotion direct marketing and a way to promote his 21 upcoming concerts in london. 15 of the 21 dates have already sold out. if all the other gigs do too, then prince stands to make 15M pounds (over $30M)

tom cruise impersonates clive owens

well, not really. but he kinda looks like him here. but in this photo tom cruise, the most famous member of the scientology cult, downs a german outift circa 1942 and trys to look forboding.

anti-aging pill, just what the stones need

not that mick has  requested this. or as far as i know he hasn’t. but a seemingly legitimate pharmaceutical company wants to create a pill to help slow down the aging process.

victoria beckham’s legs

first the daily mail obsessed over the flabby bits it photographed of liz hurley’s wobby ass. then came the article about kate moss and her knobby knees. now they’ve added victoria beckham to the mix.

mariane pearl files lawsuit, tries to salvage a mighty heart

i suspect there’s probably a statue of limitations on this. and of course she is due a lot considering what happened to her poor husband. but the timing is a bit suspect considering the film about her life is flopping (or shall i say, has flopped) at the box office.

pay as you talk voice recognition for your mobile

first we had fingerprints, now according to the economist a firm called VoicePay is hoping that their VoiceVault software sort out what your voice print is and then you can pay for whatever. do we really need this?

isaiah washington gets second shot, grey’s anatomy falls off the trolley

this fall, isaiah washington gets to say we can rebuild her, we have the technology when he joins the cast of the bionic woman.

although i’ve never actually seen more than 5 minutes of grey’s ‘it’s so seattle’ anatomy, i suspect ratings will suffer now that there’s no juicy story about the cast or crew flying around the internet. and people will discover that patrick dempsey is as mcdreamie as ronald mcdonald.

beckham missing chelsea due to injury?

well hopefully he’s not subconsciously trying to avoid playing his country mates. the l.a. galaxy just might be playing chelsea san their star player on july 21.

david duchovny needs money, agrees to x-files movie

the x-files, like the simpsons, is what i most remember about the 1990s. it was a show that gave the world a female scientist in the gise of scully, and fox mulder, a man who liked to follow his instincts. read more about the forthcoming film.

i’ve changed my mind about victoria beckham

i think i am changing my mind about victoria beckham. she’s a real girl’s girl and perhaps that’s what’s needed at the moment. it’s a bit of comic relief from dour women such as angelina jolie and jennifer aniston.. sometimes i catch myself singing that spice girl hit ‘tell me what ya want what ya really really want.’ or at least i think that’s the spice girls.

prince gets it right

prince has decided to cut out record labels. he has licenced his CD to the sunday edition of the uk paper, the mail to distribute for free. yesterday, they distributed 2M copies. prince is scheduled to play 21 dates in london later this year. his recent 8 day stand in l.a. was a big ‘ole hit. music for the masses.

tomkat denied access to hugo boss party in berlin

tom cruise and his wife katie holmes aren’t having a lot of luck in berlin. berlin’s fashion week opened on friday and the couple had hoped to attend the hugo boss opening party. but as they were a bit on the late side and the party was at capacity, they weren’t let in.

berlin is quite famous for turning celebrities away. britney spears got the cold shoulder at a popular club a few years back.

please no more christian bale interviews

although we love christian bale and were hugely impressed by both ‘american psycho’ way back when and more recently, ‘batman begins’, i ask all journalists please don’t do another christian bale celebrity interview. nobody remembers empire of the sun. we don’t need our image of the dark night destroyed.

unfortunately, the l.a. weekly , apparently written by a metrosexual, has not heard our pleas. do we really need to know that he uses the word ‘crap’ instead of ’shit’? the new issue features 6 webpages of a christian bale interview. that’s about 5K words. i didn’t know l.a. weekly printed celebrity interviews. oh well.

celebrity interviews are generally boring. just ask ryan seacrest. he’s far more entertaining than any of the stars he’s interviewed. and he definitely knows it.

speaking of the new batman, i love how the dark night franchise has been resurrected. it’s as if the joel schumacher film, fatgirl and robin never happened.

yet another beckham story

well, as we feed the publicity machine, let’s list yet another reason why the game north americans call soccer won’t make any greater inroads now in north america than it did in the 1970s when pele and franz beckenbauer descended upon the u.s. yes, david beckham is on the cover of sports illustrated. and the guardian notes he’s the first british person to gain this distinction since 1991. the article explains why even one great player (not necessarily beckham, but anyone) won’t revolutionise the game in america.

if you read the full article, you’ll see that it mentions that beckham’s salary is not 120M pounds ($250M) over five years. in the article, giorgio chinaglia, who played for the cosmos back in the 1970s is quoted as saying ‘It’s $5.9M for playing and he has deals on the side for somany shirts and other things because soccer in the u.s. at the moment, as far as television is concerned, has no ratings and it’s very difficult to sell merchandise.’

now i’m not sure why this particular person has been quoted and how he knows what beckham’s really making. but there it is for deconstruction. but it is a well known fact that the game the u.s. insists on calling soccer hasn’t got any ratings. chinaglia goes on to say ‘good stars only come here when their careers are over.’

that si.com has a ‘whose roman abramovitch’ article tells you how out of the loop the u.s. is with the game everyone else in the world calls football. on the home page of the soccer section of sports illustrated online, there’s a photo of abramovich with the headline ‘whose roman abramovitch’ this takes you to an article about chelsea. the russian billionaire, who has a yacht in every ocean, has spent hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars to create his own dream team, chelsea.

the sports illustrated article mentions that ‘few journalists have written about the origins of abramovich’s wealth. nor has much of the sports press, or the soccer authorities, spent time even pondering the effect the spending power has had on english soccer….’ you can read the full quote “>here under the section entitled ‘obsession.’ this information is wrong. there was a lot of dicussion about this when abramovitch bought chelsea. and every time he spends hundreds of millions of pounds on players like germany’s michael ballackor the ukraine’s andiy shevchenko, it creates an uproar among the european media. a lot has been written about abramovitch. the telegraph article is entitled ‘chelsea, a souless brand that loves to be loathed.’ this article was published late last year.

pele claims football has grown in america

pele claims, what people in north america call soccer, has grown since he played with the new york cosmos back in the 1970s. does anyone really believe this?

david beckham and posh spice, match made in p.r. heaven

the english language version of der spiegel talks about david and victoria beckham as being a marketers’ wet dream. not because they’re such a lovely couple, which arguably, they’re not, but because well they’ve been cross-promoting the life out of their marriage since posh spices manager simon fuller (aka, mr. american idol) introduced the 2.

now, since david beckhams got the (supposedly) $250M deal with the l.a. galaxy *football* team (that’s soccer in north american speak), victoria was able to get her reality show special. and so on and so on. well see what happens. an article in the daily telegraph implies that l.a. might just have got a somewhat inferior product.

potter girl new face of chanel?

according to the daily mail emma watson just might be the new face of chanel. the 17 year old potter girl was recently voted as the top role model for girls far ahead of a former chanel girl, the 34 year old kate moss.

why david beckham can’t changed north america’s mind about soccer

all boys and girls in north america (that’s the u.s., canada, and mexico, in case you’ve forgotten) grow up playing football (soccer). but when boys reach the age of 15, parents in the u.s. and canada push them to play one of the big 4 north american sports 1.) baseball 2.) football 3.) hockey or 4.) basketball. that’s why the u.s. has a suckie football team and why no one seems to be able to remember whether or not canada has ever qualified for a world cup. and possibly why it hasn’t been invited to the copa america 2007.

after 15, boys start playing one of the big 4 north american sports. but girls keep playing. that’s one reason why the u.s. has a really good woman’s football (soccer) team. david beckham and the owners of the l.a. galaxy are fighting a down hill battle.

the u.s. soccer federation (or whatever it’s called this year) has been trying to jump start the sport in the u.s. by getting all the soccer mom’s interested. in the states, the game is played by fairly well-off kids in leafy suburbia. while in places like brazil or the uk or mexico, the game is played on the street or where ever anyone can find a small patch of grass.

mexico has a respectable team. they held their own against argentina in the round of 16 for the last world cup. the team held argentina to a draw that went into double overtime.

david beckham and posh can’t change the u.s. because nobody there wants to change. and beckham, while he had considerable talent, he was never as good as his publicist (s) has (have) made him out to be. he has good handlers who know how to market him as a product. but i watched him during the last european championship and he missed the free kick that sealed the win for portugal. and he performed mediocrely during the last world cup.

we’ll see if this W cover of posh spice and becks will change anyone’s mind.

julie delpy talks about her new film 2 days in paris

2 days in paris, julie delpy’s directorial debut was released in may in germany and comes out in france today. you can watch video footage of julie delpy at a press conference during the berlinale here and here. the film will start a limited run in the u.s. in august.

jane pratt talks about what happened to baby jane

in an adage article, jane pratt, the founder of jane, discusses what she thinks went wrong with jane. the article notes, that perhaps a few loyal readers weren’t interested in cover stories on mainstream celebrities like jessica simpson.

sprint cuts 1200 high maintenance customers

if you call the sprint customer service line too much, you just might have to find another mobile phone service provider in the u.s.. get the details .

where have all the trendsetting magazines gone?

now that jane has closed, is there any left of center (not from a political perspective) magazine left with good distribution? perhaps alternative press is still chugging along. and maximumrocknroll will always be an institution for straight edged people and punks. some people have a penchance for nylon, but the magazine is incredibly bland. dazed & confused, out of the uk was interesting about 7 years ago, now it’s a bit tired. the whole cool brittania thing ended far before tony blair (who was instrumental in launching that marketing campaign) left office.

mel gibson donates money to costa rica

mel gibson recently met with costa rican leaders to discuss how best to channel funds into the country to help the indigenous populaton. gibson, filmed his hit movie apocalypto in costa rica. and unlike michael winterbottom, brad pitt, and angelina jolie in their film a mighty heart, gibson focused on the details of the story and made sure that he cast people in his film who reflected the culture of the subject matter.

focuses on brazil

do you love brazilelectro? do you like to samba? can you speak a bit of portugese? is ronaldhino your favourite football player?

in light of what recently happened in peru (the government shut down a restaurant for not letting in black peruvians), it’s great that the bbc news channel is focusing on race in a south american country. brazil has the biggest population of people of african descent outside of africa, yet the black population in brazil is treated the worst. according to the bbc. the channel’s series is making an impact locally.

condé nast closes jane magazine

as of this morning, condé nast has closed jane magazine. more details can be found on the new york times, women’s wear daily, and the new york sun. it’s the end of the hipster era.

prada for sale?

there is speculaton that the italian fashion house might be on the block.

bbc research shows americans not myopic

the bbc is intent on launching bbcworld, its 24 hour news channel, in the united states. according to their research 47% of americans describe the u.s. media’s coverage of international news as mediocre. they’ve enlisted an extensive advertising campaign, starting with the l.a. area and have set up a website where you can demand bbc from your local cable operator. the news channel prides itself as being an objective, international news service.

mobile phones just another luxury item

there was a time when people in the u.s. just wanted a mobile phone that worked and could be used for emergencies. they would hide it in the glove compartment of their automobile, avoid giving the number out to their friends, and after the purchase, immediately forget their own phone number. that was the 90s.

unlike in europe and asia, the cost of having a mobile phone in the u.s. is still incredibly expensive. the u.s. is perhaps the only country in which a consumer pays for incoming and outgoing calls. although phone companies give-a-way around 1000 free minutes a month, once the phone bill comes in, it is beyond possible to separate the credits from the debits.

prior to 2001, only around 40% of americans owned mobile phones. three years ago, that number was 53%. now the number is 73%. while in the uk, a country with a population of 60 million, the saturation rate is 102%. germany, which has a population of 82 million, has a saturation rate of 96%. japan, with a population of 127 million, has a saturation rate of 74%.

in the 1990s in the united states, mobile phones were primarily used by business people and the affluent. at the end of the 90s, with the introduction of a digital system to replace the analogue system which was curiously american, the price of cell phone service (as its known in the u.s.) began to drop.

the relationship americans have with their phones is different than the rest of the western world and parts of asia. basically, americans still own mobile phones for utility reasons. the pager market was huge in the states, but essentially died on the vine everywhere else. in the 1990s and early naughties every kid had a motorola pager so their parents could send them the following message ‘come home now’ or ‘call me.’ and their friends took advantage of the same opportunity. then in the naughties, 2 way pagers were introduced. people could send 1,000 email messages per month for $9.95. no wonder pagers hung around far longer than they should’ve in the states.

while americans were sending pagers messages from their land phones and pay phones, europeans were sending text messages. the finnish company, nokia experimented with sending the first text message between 2 mobile phones in 1993. europeans were immediately hooked.

text messaging just started taking off with teens and tweens in 2004 in the u.s. but it is still a bit slow on the uptake. while attending an international conference, you will see americans on their blackberries and treos. i recently attended an international music convention in france. i sent an american an sms, two days later i saw him on the street and he said ‘i got your text message.’ why don’t americans ‘get’ text messaging? this was explored in an article on business 2.0, which is part of cnnmoney.com. the article fails to mention that europeans have been sms-ing each other for over 10 years. its the best and most cost effective way to communicate. especially during a conference.

although the iPhone won’t change how americans view sms (we can thank american idol for this). it has changed how americans relate to mobile phones. as of the final week in june, the general population has begun to view mobile phones as luxury items. –as an extension of their personality and as a fashion accessory. and that puts the u.s. on closer footing with japan. but america is still 2 years behind. in tokyo, you can buy virtually anything with your mobile phone by waving it like harry potter waves his magic wand.

the simpsons and springfield missouri

why should the simpson’s choose springfield missouri as opposed to springfield massachusetts for the site of the world premiere of the simpson’s movie? well for one thing, its quite obvious that homer and crew don’t live on the east coast. have you ever seen a cobblestone street on the television show? demographically speaking, its all wrong. well sort of. if we are talking about west springfield, it’s completely wrong. on the one hand, according to the 2000 census, the city is certainly small enough. springfield mass has 27,899 families. but when it comes to money, i think we’ve got the wrong town. according to wikipedia, the median income of the city is $40,000 and for households its $50,000.

although springfield, mo, with a population of 151,580, is probably too large. with a median income of $29,000 and a median family income of $38,000, and a short list of celebrities hailing from the town such as brad pitt and bob barker, it seems more like a place homer and madge might live.

u.s. publishers move center right

over the past 4 years, conservative publishers have slowly bought a number of american newspapers. 1.) wall street journal 2.) the new times group bought out most of the independent weeklies across the u.s. 2.) according to the entry on wikipedia the new owner of the tribune corporation, which includes the chicago tribune and the los angeles times, donates money to both the republican party and the democratic party, but gives more to the former and less to the later.

perhaps the people consider themselves moderates, i don’t know. but there was a feeling that in terms of the u.s., that the press was solidly on the left, loyal to the democratic party, and stuck in the 60s, during the last 2 presidential elections. in 2004 there were numerous opinion pieces, which ran in major city newspapers (also known as papers with a monopoly position), about how ralph nader shouldn’t run for president and how a vote for ralph nader or a third party candidate was a wasted vote.

rupert murdoch closes dow jones deal

it was reported that dow jones, which includes the financial newspaper the wall street journal, was bought today by the australian with an american, british, and chinese passport for reportedly 5B deniro. apparently, the man, with three ex-wives, acquired the company for $60 a share. UPDATE (july 12) murdoch frustrated by bancroft family. apparently the deal is not closed.

deconstructing vanity fair germany part 1

well, i just picked up the new issue of vanity fair deutschland. das neu zeitschrift fuer deutschland. and i would like to of course, pick the whole thing apart. on a one hour train ride on DB, while the powers that be weren’t on strike. i pulled out germany’s weekly publication, vanity fair as well as a pen and a notepad. then i counted. what was i counting? ad pages. and unless my fingers were too fast. i counted exactly 8 ads. dolce and gabanna, cerruti, something with jens lehmann and oliver kahn in it, a double-paged spread from american express, a mobile phone operator, Duismann (a german book store). there were the obligatory advertisements from condé nast, which owns vanity fair. but i did not count the ads for AD(architectual digest), Glamour, or GQ in my final total. like i said, maybe i missed a page or two. but i’m pretty sure there are less than 10 ads in the current 162 page issue.

lindsay lohan is on the cover. but somehow the photo doesn’t look like an exclusive photo. but i can’t confirm this. paris hilton gets 4 pictures in the magazine, one double page photo for an article called ‘Sun for the Stars,’ then a smaller version of the same photo in the table-of-contents, and yet another one with in the story. she was on the cover 2 weeks ago.

tom cruise appears twice in the magazine. he’s in the ‘Sun for the Stars’ piece. there’s a double-paged spread of him and the spawn of l.r. hubbard frolicking somewhere. then there’s yet another article about prince william. last week’s cover was of princess diana and included a small photo of prince william and kate middleton.

there’s an article about tom cruise and the count von stauffenberg movie. the article includes a photo of bryan singer and tom cruise in berlin, a smaller photo of the count, and a picture of tom cruise and nicole kidman with sky du mont, one of germany’s most respected actors. the article seems to be all about promoting the film as being good for germany’s image. tom’s publicist must of put pressure on the editors because tom cruise is widely despised in germany because of his strange obsession with scientology. the article includes a quote from florian henckel von donnersmarck, who won an oscar earlier this year. the quote was pulled from an editorial the film director wrote for Frankfurter Allgemeinen Zeitung. and basically says that having tom cruise play the role of von stauffenberg would be good for germany’s image. uwe wolff, who wrote the article writes ‘mit Valkyrie, werden rund 40 Millionen Euro in den Filmstandort Deutschland investiert, 500 Jobs geschaffen, auch für deutsche Schauspieler wie Daniel Bruehl und Armin Mueller-Stahl.’ translation. ‘with the film valkyrie, 40M will be invested where the filming takes place, 500 jobs will be created, also jobs for german actors like daniel bruehl and armin mueller-stahl.’ but tom hasn’t mentioned whether or not he’ll be erecting a scientology tent at the babelsberg studio set. we can only hope he doesn’t try to convert daniel bruehl.

o.k., so i was discussing how the magazine seems to be misreading germany. no one in germany likes to discuss there being an elite in the country. anyone with the word ‘von’ in their name is hissed at. der spiegel details this in its article. the article says the ‘…the problem is the magazine’s point of view.’ while popular celeb magazines take the piss out of celebrities, vanity fair, der spiegel notes, ‘…often prefers to shut itself out from its readers by associating itself with the world’s rich and powerful.’

how else are they out of touch? on one of their in/out pages, someone from their photo staff has found the dowdiest photo of julie delpy (above is a more accurate photo of delpy, which i took of her earlier this year) and slapped her image with the word OUT because she made a derogatory comment about quentin tarantino. the comment was made in a comical way. it’s about how poorly tarantino treats women in his films. yet, delpy’s directorial debut, 2 Days in Paris,(which stars herself and daniel bruehl), is doing quite well in germany. her little film has been in the top 10 for about 3 months. and all of the reviews have been infinitely positive.

for some inexplicable reason, the majority of the images in the magazine are of english speaking celebrities. the same is true for russian vogue btw. for vanity fair deutschland, the aging kate moss and the aging george clooney are seemingly favorites. they’re both in the new issue as is the basketball player tony parker (nobody cares about basketball in europe). the guest editor, rainer schmidt of the magazine talks about ‘the hollywood elite’ in his editorial without even a hint of irony. the magazine also bills itself as a new magazine for germany’s new elite, again without any hint of irony.

aside from the first issue with til schweiger dressed in a cowboy outfit rubbing his hose, i can’t think of another issue that’s had an actor from the german speaking countries on the cover. this brings me to another point, which i will, in a simone de beauvoir way mention now, but only get around to discussing later. basically, i want to tell the editors, it is perfectly okay to put danny bruehl or franka potente on the cover or michael ballack. they could even put roger federer on the cover. these people are all well known in german speaking countries. if the editors want a more european perspective. then put topical political stories on the cover. zapatero could be interesting. if the article runs for more than 2 pages. or what about the twin leaders from poland?

but perhaps the magazine’s fascination with american culture is a way for condé nast to try to minimize anti-americanism and anti-britishism by filling the magazine with the cultural elite of both countries so that everyone in germany will decide that they want to marry prince william, go partying with prince harry, and have a laugh with george clooney and leonardo dicaprio. without a bit of irony.

vanity fair german includes a mix of fashion, celebrity, and politics. just like vanity fair in the u.s. and the version in italy. ( i saw the italian version the last time i was in italy, it was about 10 pages. but perhaps it has improved.) but in the german speaking market (except for perhaps switzerland), this is not the same audience. people either want their hard political stories that go on and on in great detail for about 10 pages or they want a celebrity magazine and pictures of glamourous politicians from france are okay. note, i said france, not german. there are no glamourous politicians in deutschland. although it might be okay to put ursula von der leyen on the cover, despite her name having ‘von’ in the middle. she’s the 3rd most popular politician in germany, according to stern and she’s telegenic. but no. vanity fair just continuously runs photos of klaus wowereit. whose national popularity is quite low considering his city is 6 billion euros in debt. that’s almost 1 trillion dollars.

the political stories should run a minimum of 8 pages and include lots of charts because i’m convinced focus’s biggest readership comes from the people who have to camp out at their doctor’s office for two hours waiting to take advantage of their socialized medical system.

ross perot big sucking sound, microsoft goes to canada

think back to the presidential election of 1992. remember this little whiney guy from texas, no i don’t be george bush, or number 43 as he’s sometimes called. i mean ross perot. the thorn in the republicans’ side for most of the 1990s. he shaved off a good 6% of the first bush’s votes and took about 26% from bob dole, thereby allowing bill clinton to be president for 8 years.

back then, ross was one of the view politicians who was against NAFTA, the north american free trade treat. he thought that it would enable american companies to make a mad dash to mexico in search of cheap labor and cheap land. what he didn’t envision was that the sucking sound would come from canada.

not only have most famous american t.v. shows been shot in canada since the nineties (think The X-Files) so are most commercials. now microsoft wants to open an office in canada because it wants to move around the u.s. immigration quota system. microsoft is opening a development office in Vancouver. Vancouver, British Columbia is about 2 hours away from seattle and it takes anothe 45 minutes to get t redmond from there.

attending a live earth concert is almost as bad as owning a SUV

is the live earth concert worthwhile? do you really believe that the organizers, who will be burning loads of fossil fuel will really set off these carbon emissions by planting a bunch of trees? can you imagine, al gore in the middle of missouri planting around 10,000 pine trees? that’s but a rough estimate as to what would be needed to set off the carbon emissions caused by hundreds of stars flying around the world to plug in their mikes and guitars.

florian henckel von donnersmarck sides with cruise?

well, yesterday, he wrote a long op-ed piece in a german paper arguing why it’s okay for tom cruise to play a one-armed, one-eyed german solider in bryan singer’s world war 2 film, valkyrie. von donnersmarck essentially believes that germany has an image problem. well, like, yah. and that tom cruise playing the one positive character in the darkest periods of the country’s history is a good thing. somehow i don’t think superstar tom cruise could rehabilitate germany’s image. but while he’s filming in berlin, i hope he finds a nice spot for his <a href=”http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/02/features/cruise.php”>scientology tent</a> and his e-machine.

eu commission video shows lily white western europe

the new eu commission channel on youtube, called EUTubehas attracted a considerable amount of attention to it this week. the new video, which the polish government believes is one long homo-erotic video, culls the majority of its foootage from, the country homer simpson describes as being filled with cheese eatting surrender monkeys. the video is billed as promoting europe, yet the 44 second video clip which has been viewed over 1M times, fails to include one non-white face in its mix. there are a considerable number of people from former european colonies like ghana and senegal or rather on the other side of the mediterranean, living in france, germany and throughout europe, but you will barely find these faces in european film.

there is also a dearth of films from eastern europe. the majority of the material is from spain and france. and all of the films seem to have been made over the last 10 years. there’s pehaps one clip from a german film. and i’d like to know where are all the eastern european socialists movies? or would the eu just like to imagine that czech and polish culture began the day the country joined the european union. perhaps someone a bit older should’ve developed the piece. and what about all those italian spaghetti westerns.

dennis hopper rides from st. petersburg to moscow

dennis hopper, everyone’s favourite republican, will be greeting attendees at london’s serpentine gallery for their annual summer party. next month, he’s to participate in a p.r. event for a exhibition of american art at the pushkin museum in moscow. there, he’ll meet up with jeremy irons and laurence fishburne who plan to ride their motorcycles from st. petersburg to moscow. i wonder if they plan on camping out?

music industry still blames customers for woes

yes, cd sales are falling. old news. and allmp3 is gone –although its only moved to a new web address. digital sales can never compete with the kind of sales CDs did at their height. at 99 cents a track, it can never happen. global CD sales slumped in 2006. the international federation of the phonograhic industry says, according to the bbc that sales in 2006 were 1.7M compared with 1.9M in 2005. apparently, although digital sales seem to be doubling every year, they’re just not compensating for the free-fall of CD sales.

in 2006, in the u.s., cd sales dropped 20% and hip-hop started to implode. 288M tracks were downloaded in the first quarter of this year. but what does that add up to at 99 cents a pop?

it’s curious to me that this conversation is still being had considering the conversation about digital distribution started in 1997. and nobody reacted.

but the industry should quit blaming the consumer. and the RIAA should quit suing record fans. amogst teens and college-age students, the music industry is known (globally) as the evil empire. arguably more sinister and corrupt than robert mugabe. it will take about 20 years to reverse this public relations fiasco. someone should’ve put the brakes on the other hillary 4 years ago.

yet the music industry is still pointing its finger at apple, steven jobs, and iTunes. while jobs certainly ain’t no angel. he didn’t start the ball rolling. he merely took advantage of the cluelessness of music industry folk at universal. but now we’ve come full-circle and universal music group wants to revise iTunes deal. it’s a bit like telling walmart or asada or saturn, we won’t sell you our music, take that! can one not sell music to the 3rd largest retailer in north america with a 70% market share worldwide? it’s like banning the television network fox from covering the premiere of your movie.

baby momma angelina jolie vs. brad pitt’s mom

sometimes we forget that superstars like brad pitt have family. according to life & style weekly, angelina has threatened not to let jane pitt see her granddaughter. what did jane do? sounds like a question from my first kindergarten class. jane is still on good terms with jennifer aniston and visits her from time-to-time. although angelina may think of herself as jennifer’s replacement. jen aniston was the only woman in brad’s endless sea of girlfriends (which suposedly includes gwyneth, juliette, thandie) who got a ring and wedding to go with the relationships. you say, it’s 2007 and marriage is just a piece of paper. but remember that when your boyfriend kicks the bucket, his mother pockets his life insurance payment, and his father places a ‘for sale’ sign on the lawn of your boyfriend’s house.

is prince william going bald?

i’d hate to start a rumour. but actually, i really don’t need to. there’s plenty of proof on the internet.

scooter libby spared the slammer, meets up with paris hilton at taco hell

well, not really. but paris hilton gets a mention because, well the privileged few tend to get off. i bet scooter is mighty glad that he’s a FOG (friend of george). bush seems to be quite loyal to his friends. some people derisively call this cronyism, but umm. isn’t that how business and politics work? has anyone in the history of the u.s. received an ambassadorship because he or she was the right one for the job. it’s all about connections. and it’s not just important in the u.s., it’s important worldwide.

unfortunately, such unwritten rules created huge road blocks for people who happened to grow up in a lower-middle-class neighborhood. or happened to attend the wrong university. but in trying to re-write the rules –as john mccain did with the mccain-feingold campaign finance reform bill, one might just stand the risk of burying oneself. after the 2000 elections, mccain was hopping mad that bush beat him because W raised around 100M. and hence, the finance reform bill. fast forward 7 years and mccain is having a mighty struggle trying to persuade his own party that he should be the next president. backbenchers point to the bill, which he foolishly attached his name to, as the republican party’s biggest problem.

prada mobile, phone of the year?

like the iPhone, it too has a touch screenpad. if understated design is the hallmark of prada, this mobile phone falls in line perfectly. the black and silver mobile phone was recently introduced in europe. although apple is seemingly clueless to the phenomenon of first launching a phone in japan, then europe, and lastly, the u.s., prada has pretty much fallen in line with convention.

in terms of mobile technology, the rule of thumb is that japan is 2 years ahead of europe and europe is 2 years ahead of the u.s. although the iPhone is considered a new revolutionary toy in the u.s. it is infact, NBD (no big deal) to japanese and euro-trash teens. that there’s no handfree dialing and the phone labors slowly while online, the iPhone will, like the razor in the u.s. essentially be for the u.s. market. and that’s okay for apple, considering the u.s. has 300M people.

perhaps the powers that be at apple thought that since the iPod took off first in the u.s. and the enthusiasm of the early adopters in america infected the rest of the world, a similar occurrance might happen with the iPhone. that remains to be seen, considering the phone doesn’t hit europe until fall 07 and japan until 2008.

recently, i had a chance to play around with the prada mobile, which launched in europe in march. it’s slim, compact, and oh so flash. while the retail price of the phone is 600 euros, it is possible (in some european countries) to sign a two year contract and get the phone for between 52 euros and 260 euros, depending on what type of contract one opts for. the phone includes a document viewer (word, powerpoint, excel, pdf, or txt), as well as a video player, camera, a music player (mp3, wma, real, acc, acc+), a radio, and so forth. it was developed in conjuction with LG. for more information (in English) you can click here.

since it’s a triband, americans while travelling overseas, do have the option of picking one up and switching out their cards.

moscow’s 24 hour hair salons

apparently there are a lot of similarities between americans and russians. both love big cars, like to speak in superlatives, and love 24-hour shopping. while consumption and shopping are national pass times in both cultures, the impetuouss to shop in russia might have more to do with most of the general population having lost their life savings twice in the 1990s. 24 hour shopping in moscow is all the rage according to the bbc. you can have a manicure or a haircut at 1am.

hand-me-downs for the jolie-pitt kids

are angelina jolie and brad pitt going overboard on saving the planet? according to the blog justjared, the jolie-pitt clan wear hand-me-downs. or is it just that maddox got a bit unlucky ‘cuz his parents are so busy and don’t have time to send his nanny shopping? click here and here. according to forbes, brad pitt made 35M deniro last year. so i guess he needs a bit of a raise.

business people should watch more movies, read less books

in italy, business managers are being told that they can learn loads watching steven spielberg films such as the terminal as well as films such as volver. the italian consultants who’ve expressed an interest in the widely panned the terminal, believe that the film teaches you how to overcome adversity. the organizaion think john wayne films can inspire leadership.

iTunes or iPhone, Which is Doing the Music Industry in?

over the past few years, north american record labels have been hoping and praying that ringtones and digital tracks via iTunes would replace declining CD sales. but as we can all see, it hasn’t. what has happened is that the music industry has inadvertently helped to revive the fortunes of apple whose share price in 1998 fell to $1. in 2003, the music industry crawled up steven jobs’s ass (so to speak), offering a-list artists and their hit songs on a platter, when 2 years prior, they refused to do a similar deal with napster.

the difference between napster and jobs? well, jobs is a billionaire with a brilliant house and a way with words oh yeah, and a marketing genius. napster was technology created by a 19 year old. and for some reason, the music industry was more frightened by a middle-class teen than a middle-aged billionaire. go figure.

fastforward 4 years to, well, now. and now that apple is the 3rd biggest music retailer behind walmart and best buy, the record labels are again calling foul. how many times do we have to hear that steven jobs pulled the wool over the industry’s eyes. that he ‘used’ the industry to market the iPod. and that the industry should get a cut of this revenue. doesn’t anyone know anything about patents? the music industry (aside from the pennies deal they made with walkmans and cd/dvd burners) isn’t entitled to anything. the industry has its intellectual property and nobody has to put their tunes on iTunes.

while 4 years ago, it was tough to sell artists on letting their music be sold digitally via iTunes, now it’ll be even harder to explain to artists like u2 or mariah carey or justin timberlake why their songs can’t be sold on iTunes.

has the music industry created a monster? yes and no. i don’t think anyone should blame apple for what’s happened to the music industry. i wrote an article on digital distribution back in 1997 around the time mp3s and CD burners hit the market. this article pre-dated napster by 2 years. the article is still on wired and has been sited in numerous academic papers.

downloading is not a bad thing. the problem with the music industry and with regular retail stores, at least in the u.s. is you can walk into a store and look at a cd. you can touch the album, read the packaging, but you can’t listen to everything in the store. that was always a huge problem. in the past, mom n’ pop stores had an edge over chains like walmart, due to customer service. when i was in college, my best friend and i used to go by our favorite record shop once-a-week (sometimes more) and pick up new stuff. the music buyer at the shop used to pick up special titles especially for us and was constantly introducing us to new music. you can’t get this kind of service on iTunes.

the problem is systemic. yes, the labels crawled up apple’s ass, and forgot about the towers and the arons and the rhinos of the world. –all of which have closed over the past 2 1/2 years. and the music industry didn’t rethink (and still hasn’t rethought) how to reorient itself. why not let shops download tracks from a central server and sell them for 99cents just like iTunes. they can opt to let users burn them to disc in the shop or to load them onto their portable player.

what i’m driving at is, i still think customer service and interracting with people still means something. i used to love going into arons every saturday, chatting with the sales clerks, and looking around to see who was in the shop. one time i saw henry rollins, another time i saw keanu reeves. you still get this with amoeba, but amoeba is so big. i kinda crave the intimacy of arons. but we can’t cry over closed record shops. the world has moved on.

tom cruise steals role from german actor, thomas kretschmann

according to the new issue of Gala, the magazine that’s still kicking vanity fair’s butt in the german speaking ocuntries (you know, switzerland and so forth), Der Amerikaner schnappte ihm die Rolle weg. or rather, the american snachted the role from thomas kretschmann. details can be found on bunte. i quite like kretschmann. he currently has 7 or 8 films in various stages of production. his foray into sci-fi with Immortal is a personal favorite of mine. i saw him last fall whizzing out of a gas station along crescent heights and down the sunset strip looking a bit wild-eyed. perhaps he was late for an audition.

angelina jolie falls off pedestal, caught by brad pitt

well, can she be caught? apparently not. at least not in america, where angelina’s Q score is nearly as bad as tom cruise’s. but at least she hasn’t bad mouthed psychotherapy and been accused of keeping her partner prisoner by Us Weekly. no. but according to the guardian america doesn’t have a love affair with angelina.

a mighty heart opened 2 weeks ago in north america on over 1300 screens and brought in a measley $3.9M. just over $800 per screen. friday’s box office total is $475K with a $352 per screen total.

asra nomani, the wall street journal journalist who, with mariane pearl, was the last person to see daniel pearl alive recently picked the film apart in an opinion piece that ran last sunday in the washington post.

gawker, the online media rag, went a step further and published what it claims to be nomani’s email to the producer (s) of the film detailing why she couldn’t be bothered to attend the premiere. you can read the gawker article here. asra believes the original intention of the book and daniel pearl have been relugated to the background as this film is really all about celebrity. she regrets having been schmoozed by brad pitt and jennifer aniston and the whole hollywood thing.

the mighty backlash that has ensued can be (possibly) attributed to, as the guardian notes “…the inevitable consequence of how Jolie and Brad Pitt have skilfully exploited the intense media interest in their lives….”

the l.a. times calls the movie A Mighty Box Office Disappointment and quotes brad gray from boxofficemojo as saying angelina jolie’s only hits have been action fare.