Johansson’s directorial debut kept from public eyes

Schadenfreude is an easy response to this story, assuming that Ms Johansson’s directorial debut was indeed rejected for being ‘unwatchable’. She’s a very easy person to target – very easy dartboard fodder. Still, the reality is that not everything an actor/writer/director etc does is up to the same standard, issues of subjectivity aside. One just has to look at Horne and Corden to see that, although at least in this case there was a filter – albeit not for the DVD release of New York, I Love You. (Bit of a kick in the teeth for a New York native, though.)

ELECTION 08: Pop star compares candidate to genocidal Nazi madman

An example of why musicians should think twice before commenting on politics, especially when they try to be ‘controversial’. Madonna’s comparison between McCain and Hitler is not the same as McCain conflating Obama with Paris Hilton (whose energy policy still sounds sensible), and says far more about the pop singer than it does about the Republican hopeful. What’s more, how can she compare Obama to Gandhi when the former is anything but a pacifist?

Such mindless comparisons also do few favours to Obama’s increasingly theoretical non-negative, ‘new politics’ campaign, one in which his more biting attacks can be safely subcontracted to VP nominee Joe Biden. Obama’s unlicensed celebrity friends could be as dangerous as Pastor Wright in their surrogate attacks…

So, what next? Scarlett Johansson painting herself red and claiming it is the blood spilt by warmongering Republicans? Robert De Niro creating a spoof of Goodfellas on Youtube that casts McCain as Joe Pesci? Watch this space.

Reaching for the stars – or just some cold, hard cash

The devil-may-care, swashbuckling spirit of showbiz superman John Barrowman knows no bounds, as this story illustrates – one of a flood of similar nuggets dispatched through the media to promote his new biography. When Barrowman reaches for a note, one suspects he hits it, whatever the cost. The show must go on, etc. Singing, dancing, acting, he’s what they call a ‘triple threat’. Does Scarlett Johansson fit this bill, too?

The actress is poised to release an album comprised of Tom Waits covers, and has a voice that has been described thus: ‘low, shaky and about two notes in it’. Not to mention sounding more male than female. Johansson is an intriguing character – what can be derived of her feels like a woman pulled in two different directions, the relative youth of 23 forcefully balanced by the fastrack maturity that comes from working in Hollywood.

One can also use money to reach for status – businessman Mark Roberts bought up around 60 titles of the landed gentry, apparently in an effort to extract money from the poor saps who now find themselves living on it. Would this eventually have involved dispatching bailiffs to collect his share of the year’s wheat crop, or taking a family’s first-born to add to his growing clan? One can imagine the ‘lord of the manor’ feasting on boar, kicking back and demanding entertainment from the village fool. Terrible would be his drunken wrath was his desire for humour not sated. Since his wheeze of buying the titles relating to grass verges then charging people to access their properties hit a legal bump in 2005, when such flagrant (but rather ingenious) money-making schemes were scuppered by the law. On a certain level, it’s hard not to admire the sheer front of someone who can do that, or the sheer absurdity of it occurring. But it’s also rather easy to put yourself in the place of the poor villagers receiving his feudal demands for cash. Not exactly pleasant.

On another note, how about Ken Dodd for a sir? Sign here if you agree. We would say, what if there was a TV programme in which people could compete for a title? But then, it has already happened – packed with ‘famous’ competitors, it was called The Baron, and Mike Reid was rumoured to have won it and so the baronship of a small Scottish town. Unfortunately he died, and it was never shown.