Singapore’s Media Development Authority, which represents the institution that regulates and censors media and arts in this country, has scored an unexpected hit on Google’s popular video sharing web site YouTube with a rap video about the city-state’s media ambitions.
The YouTube posting has received until now more than 11,000 hits, as well as string of snide postings and comments.
The government body wants to promote the growth of the media industry from this county, to promote “core values” and to also safeguard consumer interests, according to its web site. Through this rap video Singapore’s government body hopes to showcase its potential to be a “vibrant media city”.
However, this comes somehow in contradiction with the country’s regular censorship of films and theatre, or with the many defamation lawsuits its government has launched against foreign media, and critics have emphasized on this.
In the rap video, middle-aged executives could be seen moving and shaking to a rap tune, mouthing lines from a corporate brochure.

The beautiful Malaysian actress Michelle Yeoh, who is one of Asia’a biggest movie stars, has recently received France’s highest civilian honor at a glittering function from the Malaysian capital.
Michelle Yeoh, who is best known for the Western audiences for her roles from “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Tomorrow Never Dies”, where she was the Bond girl, has received the medal of a Knight of the Legion of honor form the Ambassador Alain du Boispean.
Before pinning the important medal of the beautiful actress, the Ambassador has said that through her many stays and connections to France, Michelle Yeoh has contributed to the strengthening of the ties and mutual friendship between the two countries, France and Malaysia.
“I guess that deep down, I am a small-town girl from Ipoh who has been living a magical dream.” - Michelle Yeoh has said, although he has been dressed in an ivory Cavalli gown encrusted with crystals.
The famous Asian actress was born into an ethnic Chinese lawyer’s family from the northern Malaysian town of Ipoh in 1962. She studied dance and martial arts before winning a beauty pageant in 1983 hat led to a commercial alongside the action star Jackie Chan and further to a film career.
France’s Legion of honor, which was established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1802, has five distinct ranks and it is conferred for outstanding achievements in either the civil or military life.

Is there any relation between comedy movies and the current violence and terror from Myanmar? Apparently, these things are quite contrary one to another, but thanks to Jim Carrey a connection could be made after all.
The popular comedy actor has urged on Friday the United Nations’ Security Council to eventually do something for Myanmar and this hot region’s people. The funny actor has been very serious this time and he has asked the U.N.’s Security Council to ban all the international shipments to Myanmar for pressuring the country to end its violent, brutal suppression of the pro-democracy protesters and the detention of the opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi.
“This is a government that uses its weapons not in self defense, but against its own citizens.” – has said the actor and comedian during a news conference across the street from the United Nations.
“The time has come for the United Nations Security Council to start acting less like a group of corporations and more like united nations.” – the actor has also added, urging China and Russia — Security Council members that have been resistant to sanctions — as well as India to back the ban.
Starting with the last week, the monks from Myanmar have started to led protests of up to 100,000 people in Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, and also elsewhere. But the marches have been halted by the security forces, who have also raided the monasteries, imposed curfews and have as well killed 10 people, by the official count, obviously.
In this context, Jim Carrey’s speech has been a precursor to a day of other marches and protests planned by the United States’ Campaign for Burma.
The actor has also made an appeal to Than Shwe, the head of the latest junta in 45 unbroken years of military rule of the former Burma: “There is nothing to defend if you have lost the faith of your people. It is already over.”
Jim Carrey is best known for his comic roles from popular movies such as “Dumb and Dumber” and “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective.”

Another movie about the Iraq war!
Will it be great, good, or just another movie, out of many others, about this war that has made the Americans to really question on their President’s ability to judge the country’s real problems?
However, the adaptation of “Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad” was on the list and it needs to be realized. That is why a director has had to be chosen for this project; “Con Air” director Simon West will be the one who will shoot the adaptation of “Thunder Run: The Armored Strike to Capture Baghdad”, the latest move from a long string of Iraq War documentaries and features.
The new chronicle-like movie of the pivotal April 2003 battled is based on a book written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning Los Angeles Times correspondent David Zucchino, who will also write the movie’s screenplay.
David Zucchino has been originally embedded with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division, but he has found himself switched by mistake to the 2nd Brigade of the 3rd Infantry Division, as it entered Baghdad in what the military calls a “thunder run”.
“When I first read Zucchino’s book, I realized immediately it was one of the great accounts of modern warfare: heroic, exciting, tragic and ultimately political.” – has said West, who also directed “Lara Croft: Tomb Raider” and executive-produced “Black Hawk Down.”

“The Kite Runner”, director Marc Forster’s highly straightforward and effective adaptation of author Khaled Hosseini’s international best selling novel with the same name, has already become a controversial movie, because of a rape scene that involves one of its young actors.
Because of this scandal, the theatrical release of the movie has been already delayed six weeks. Furthermore, the three young actors that star in the movie are already being protected by the studio against a possible violent backlash. However, despite the controversy that the movie has already created, it represents also a faithful rendition of the best selling book that should as well garner critical and award recognition, and the attention of the discerning audiences.
The story within the movie will be told in three distinct sections. The first one will be set in 1978, in Afghanistan, and concerns the fateful friendship of two boys: Amir, played by Zekeria Ebrahimi, who lives with his sophisticated widower father, and Hassan, played by Ahmad Khan Mahmidzada, who is the son of Amir’s father’s faithful servant. Because the both boys share a common interest in American action moves and flying kites, the share also a special bond.
But Hassan will anger some bullies from the neighborhood and he will get eventually raped by one of them. His friend Amir will be too frightened at the moment to do something and he will keep silent afterward. But the issue will haunt him throughout the years and even after he and his father will have relocated to California in the aftermath of the Soviet invasion.
Ten years later, the film shows Amir as an adult and as an aspiring writer, played by Khalid Abdalla. He will also meet the daughter of another Afghan expatriate and he will eventually fall in love with her and marry her after the traditional old-fashioned courtship.
Then, in the last section, which is set in 2000, Amir will be shown as an already famous author, happy despite his father’s death and the couple’s incapacity to have children. But it will be this moment that he will be called by an old family friend who will tell him that Hassan had died and that his son, played by Ali Dinesh, has been abandoned to an orphanage.
So Amir, who still feels guilty because of not doing anything when they were children and Hassan was raped, will now travel to the now dangerous city of Kabul for rescuing and bring to America the young boy, who will also bear an unexpected connection to him. Now it will be Amir’s turn to encounter the violent horrors of the Taliban regime from Kabul.
So, we have here a quite highly sensitive movie about friendship, life and death. Marc Forster directed young Hassan’s raping scene in a discrete but effective manner, but it is still not this thing that really counts in the movie. On the other hand, the scene itself is just a part of a movie; people are experiencing similar terrifying events in reality and the media have already got used to it and are not able to really do something!
In the end, “The Kite Runner” is a movie that must be seen!

The popular actor and director Robert Redford has been reportedly attached to direct “Against All Enemies”.
The movie project will represent an adaptation of a best-selling memoir written by Richard A. Clarke in which the author remembers and tells about the Bush administration’s handling of the al-Qaeda threat before and also after the 11th of September 2001 terrorist attacks.
Richard A. Clarke, who represents a former United States terrorism czar, has offered the ultimate insider’s account into the American nation’s security apparatus. The story features also the ultimate players such as President Bush, the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, or the former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, as well as Clarke himself.
Richard A. Clarke’s best-selling book was published back in March 2004 by Free Press and it quickly hit the No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list. It has represented quite important fuel for the more and more intense criticism over the Bush administration’s security failures and its decision to start a war against Iraq.
The movie that Robert Redford is to direct will be financed by Capitol Films, which has picked it up from Columbia. The Oscar-winning “Crash” director Paul Haggis has been initially slated to shoot the film, but when he has opted instead for the Iraq war-themed feature “In the Valley of Elah”, which has just opened in theatres, Robert Redford has been attached to the project.
Robert Redford is currently putting the finishing touches on his latest political project, titled “Lions for Lambs”, in which he will star alongside other important movie stars such as Meryl Streep and Tom Cruise.

A movie about an incident that involved also the current president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, has been broadcasted on Tuesday and about 3.4 million of people have watched it thanks to the France 2 television. And because in this television documentary the current president of France, Nicolas Sarkozy, is obviously portrayed as a hero, the movie has already fuelled the debate about the president’s domination over the print media and television.
Still, the television documentary is somehow realistic, as it follows the event that happened about 14 years ago. The event was represented by a hostage crisis and the current president of France, who was at the time only a mayor, helped the authorities in negotiating with the troubled man.
The film is called “H.B. Human Bomb” and seems to really focus on Nicolas Sarkozy’s helping end the hostage crisis that involved seven children from a nursery from Paris’ suburb of Neuilly. In May 1993, a masked man that called himself “Human Bomb”, entered the nursery and held the class and their teacher hostage for several hours. The man’s real name was Eric Schmitt and he threatened to detonate his sticks of dynamite that were strapped to his body unless he would received a ransom of 100 million French francs, which meant about 15 million Euros or $21.19 million. The entire incident was broadcasted also by the televisions and many people were really glued to their TV sets by it.
And now, the television documentary brings again the event in the French people’s minds. It mixes scenes that are played by actors with news archives and also with the witness accounts. It also portrays Sarkozy as adopting a bluff tone while seeking to secure the children’s release. “Two children for two bags of dough.” – says actor Frederic Quiring, who plays Nicolas Sarkozy to the actor playing the “Human Bomb”. Quiring is also imitating the current president’s gestures that are emblematic for him even now, after 14 years. He is tilting his head and moving his hands abruptly.
“It’s hard not to smile when watching Nicolas Sarkozy, then mayor of Neuilly and budget minister, haggling like a carpet salesman with Eric Schmitt, the hostage-taker.” – has written the “Le Parisien” newspaper.
The television documentary has been directed by Patrick Poubel and it recounts how the “Human Bomb” released several children into Nicolas Sarkozy’s arms, before the police to shoot him dead after almost two days of drama.
“I observed Nicolas Sarkozy a lot.” – has told for the “Le Point” newspaper Quiring, that actor that is playing Sarkozy, adding that “It wasn’t too hard to find material because at the time of the filming, in February/March, he just started the presidential campaign and was everywhere in the media.”
And it is just this constant presence on the nation’s television screens and newspapers that seems to bother some people in France. The opposition Socialists have already complained about Nicolas Sarkozy’s domination of the airwaves to the CSA broadcasting watchdog, asking it to look at the amount of air time he enjoys.
Furthermore another group, which is calling itself Democracy in Television, appears to be so fed up with what it sees as a growing presidential personality cult that it has urged media to respect a “Sarkozy Free Day” on the 30th of November. In the same way, even the ministers seems to be constantly overshadowed by the energetic president, as his omnipresence seems to be cause already rifts within the government.
However, despite this criticism, Nicolas Sarkozy still retains high poll ratings and people seem to love him. So, the new movie will be probably a new reason for them to remember why they’ve chosen him as their president.

“A Jihad for Love” is one of the movies set in the Middle East that is already drawing the attention at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The movie is in fact a documentary about Islam and homosexuality – two words that seem to never be capable of getting along one with another.
But the creators of “A Jihad for Love” have been brave enough to touch through their cinematographic project this taboo subject and the movie has already created a buzz at the international film festival from Canada.
The documentary has been created during six years of work and it has followed gay and lesbian Muslim people that have been battling racial profiling and harassment after the terrorist attacks from the 11th of September in the United States, and then the ones from London and Madrid.
So, amazingly enough the movie appears to be telling rather the story about how the (gay) Muslims have been harassed as a result of the terrorist attacks and of the wrong impression about Muslims that the whole world has started to have after these attacks, than an expected story about how the Islamic religion and culture fights against homosexuality and harasses the gay people. So the movie’s subject is quite strange, but none of the less interesting.
“A Jihad for Love” has been directed by the Indian filmmaker Parvez Sharma; he has followed the gay Muslims in no less than 12 countries (such as India, Iran, Pakistan, Turkey, Egypt, France, South Africa and others). Nine languages are also spoken during the documentary, for which the Indian filmmaker has been always filming in secret, for escaping the local authorities’ attention.
However, Parvez Sharma’s documentary will face stiff competition in the Toronto International Film Festival, as there at least three important other movies that focus on the events from the Middle East: Paul Haggis’ “In the Valley of Elah”, Nick Broomfield’s “Battle for Haditha” and Brian DePalma’s “Redacted”. But, the only thing that could bring Parvez Sharma the victory is the oddity of his documentary’s subject, which is anyway more interesting than the common movies about the Middle East wars and their already known common results and effects.
“Hollywood and the mainstream film industry are jumping on the Muslim bandwagon and making films around Islam because of the U.S. involvement in Iraq. But I feel that a lot of films that are made about Muslims are mediated through Western eyes.” – has said Parvez Sharma, whose documentary aims at shifting the discourse about Islam by “empowering a community that has been silenced, allowing them to tell the story about Islam.”

Although homosexuality is not officially banned under Indonesia’s law, the Q! Film Festival has faced violent opposition in its early years and not only. However, the Indonesian gay film festival is to enter its six year now, despite the protests of the members of a hardline Islamic group that are trying to stop the gay movies’ screenings from theaters.
So, on Friday a colorful flamboyant crowd has opened the week-long Q! Film Festival. The people that are members of the audience have dressed in colorful clothes, wigs, fish-net stockings and other such clothing elements. The festival has opened in Jakarta, although homosexuality is still a taboo subject in the country where 85% of the 220 million people are Muslim.
However, after the fall of President Suharto from 1998 a way for greater freedom of speech has been paved and this fact has eventually allowed topics such as homosexuality to be more openly explored in arts.
“The festival has provided some sort of impetus for the gay rights movement in Indonesia, and has enabled many issues to surface.” – has said John Badalu, the organizer of the Q! Film Festival.
In 2007 the Indonesian cinema has celebrated also four years since the creation of the first Indonesian film with a gay theme. This movie was “Arisan”, which was made in 2003 and was a film telling the story of a woman trapped in a troubled marriage that is attracted to a young gay executive.
However, since 2003 many other movies on the gay theme have been made and the Q! Film Festival has become one of the greatest gay film festivals from Asia. It features about 80 movies from different countries including Germany, the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. The movies deal also with different topics related to homosexuality such as sexual abuse or HIV/AIDS.
“People have not shied from showing homosexuality in Indonesian cinema. […] It has been well-received so far. Many straight movies have also touched on the delicate issue of homosexuality, without many realizing it.” – has also said John Badalu, the organizer of the Q! Film Festival.

The Universal Pictures studio has eventually won the film rights to the movie “Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10”.
This book is a nonfiction best-seller written by the Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, who tells the true story of how he led a small team in the northern part of Afghanistan for capturing or killing an al-Qaida leader housed in a Taliba stronghold. But the problem that appeared was that fact that the SEALs had to choose on whether to kill three innocent people. When the team was on mission they encountered two adults and a teenage boy who might have alerted the Taliban if the SEALs had let them go and not had killed them.
After debating along, Marcus Luttrell eventually decided to spare the men’s lives and to free them. But only one hour later, his team was attacked by the Taliban. At the end of the fight Luttrell was the only one who survived the attack and had also to spend four days hiding out in the mountains. He was taken by an Afghan tribe that cared for him and also risked a lot for protecting him when the Taliban arrived on their doorsteps.
The book has quickly become a best-seller, but the buildup for the project was slow. The book has been however published only in June, after Marcus Luttrell has left the military for good.
So, although the book has been selling very well, the studios haven’t been too willing to make a movie about its subject, invoking either the fact the subject is to tough, or the fact that there are already too many movie about the Middle East-set wars and their heroes and victims.
However, Universal Pictures has eventually had the courage to gain the film rights for this movie and Peter Berg will be the writer and the director of the new movie. Peter Berg has also directed the same studio’s upcoming other Middle East thriller titled “The Kingdom”.
“Lone Survivor: The Eyewitness Account of Operation Redwing and the Lost Heroes of SEAL Team 10”, however, hasn’t come too cheap, as the sources have said that Universal Pictures has had to pay $2 million in advance for acquiring the rights.
Marcus Luttrell’s most important wish related to the movie is that this one to have to respect his fallen comrades.