First off: last week I totally forgot to post that Wallace & Gromit will be back with a one-off Christmas special (YAY!) called “A Matter of Loaf and Death”. Watch the clip *here*… Aren’t you excited? I know I am 
This week Lauren Lee Smith (”the soup chef”), Eva La Rue (CSI: Miami) and Cote De Pablo (NCIS) got glamorous for a couture shoot for a spring issue of CBS Watch! magazine. The women represent three of the most successful dramas on CBS. Have a behind the scenes peek *here*.
More CSI news. Laurence Fishburne (Dr Raymond Langston) heard rumours about his addition to CSI: Crime Scene Investigation before he’d even been contacted about joining the show. He dismissed the rumours until he was actually asked to consider the role. “I like the tone of the show,” Fishburne told CBS. “It’s really kind of dark, but it’s also got a lot of humor in it too. So the balance of those two things made me think, ‘Oh yeah, this is something I’d be willing to do, and I’d probably wind up having a really good time doing it.’” The actor explained, “I thought it was a natural for me and that I was a good fit for it, so I said yes.” Fishburne’s first appearance will be in the December 11 episode, “19 Down”.
“The character I play, Dr Raymond Langston, is a guy who was a pathologist who worked in a hospital,” Fishburne shared. “One of his colleagues turned out to be an angel of death.” The character was very close to someone who was committing terrible crimes, but he didn’t see what was right in front of him. “So it upset him and he consequently wrote a book about it, and I think it has left him feeling like there’s stuff he doesn’t know, that he needs to know,” Fishburne said.
That need for knowledge leads Raymond to the Las Vegas crime lab, where he becomes a forensic scientist. Fishburne will be replacing William Petersen (Gil Grissom) as the show’s leading man, but Raymond won’t be replacing Grissom as the team’s leader. “He plays a different character entirely and will be approaching the whole thing from a completely different level,” Petersen said. Fishburne explained, “When we meet him, he will enter as a CSI one, so he’s the low man on the totem pole, but he has all this pathological experience, which is kind of an interesting thing to play.”
“He’s a pretty no-nonsense guy,” Fishburne said of his character. “Being an academic and having a lot of practical knowledge with bodies once they’ve been removed from a crime scene is one thing. Actually encountering a body the first time at a crime scene, that’s a different experience, and I’m sure that will have an effect on this character.”
The addition of Fishburne is “gonna be great for everybody,” Petersen said. “I think it’s great for the show that it has a new major character to write for.” The choice of actor to portray the newest team member is also a positive thing according to CSI’s current leading man. “I think Laurence will love it here. He’s a wonderful guy,” Petersen explained. “I’ve always loved him as an actor, and the opportunity to have him be here on the show is as good as it could be.” Fishburne’s mission on CSI will be to “integrate myself into the show and figure out what my place is and find out what my niche is,” the actor explained. “What things can I bring that will make the show interesting?”
The original interviews are from the CBS channel on YouTube and can be found in two videos, here and here.
Indonesian energy company Lapindo said Thursday it had reached a compensation settlement with thousands of victims of a mud volcano which erupted from one of its gas wells.
The company, part of the business empire of billionaire Welfare Minister Aburizal Bakrie, said it would pay 30 million rupiah (2,250 dollars) a month to each displaced family until all outstanding compensation is settled.
The volcano has swamped 12 villages in east Java with stinking grey sludge since it burst from a Lapindo well two years ago, killing 13 people and displacing about 36,000 people.
Lapindo said 8,000 families were eligible for the payments, which would begin this month and will reportedly range from 100-150 million rupiah per family.
The deal was clinched late Wednesday after President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, facing an election battle for a second term next year, reportedly lost patience with the company’s failure to compensate the displaced families.
“All the victims who choose the cash and carry scheme, including those who were not represented by the negotiating group, are eligible to receive monthly settlements,” company spokeswoman Yuniwati Teryana said. “But the victims still need to show us the legal certificates of the property they lost in order to receive the cash.”
The company was supposed to pay the compensation in a lump-sum by December but the global financial crisis and debt troubles within the Bakrie family business empire slowed down the process, officials said.
“Because the global financial crisis has affected Lapindo, the company will settle the … compensation through monthly payments,” Public Works Minister Djoko Kirmanto told reporters late Wednesday.
Lapindo projected in November that it would disburse less than eight trillion rupiah (680 million dollars) for compensation and mud mitigation efforts. Independent estimates of the cleanup alone top four billion dollars. It blames an earthquake for the disaster but international researchers have found that the company’s exploratory drilling triggered the massive mud geyser.
Some displaced families expressed fears the settlement would only apply to a group of less than 2,000 victims represented by the negotiating team.
“I’m not sure whether my group, which represents about 1,200 victims over four villages, will be a part of the new settlement plan,” displaced villager Suwito said.
On the one hand I’m glad a settlement is finally reached, but on the other hand I don’t have much faith in the system (and those in power), so I won’t be surprised if most of the displaced families end up without compensation after all (the incident wiped out an entire village, and then some).
Gay rights groups in Canada are pressuring Ottawa to sign a United Nations “declaration” whose main theme calls on world governments to end discrimination against homosexuals.
The issue came into high relief Tuesday as gay rights activists and newspaper editorials in Europe condemned The Vatican for its decision to oppose the proposed document.
France, which will table the measure in the UN General Assembly before the end of the month, said the measure’s goal is to highlight persecution of homosexuals in many countries around the world.
“The idea . . . is to make decriminalization possible,” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Eric Chevallier said. But noting only about 50 countries in the 192-member General Assembly have so far offered to support the measure, Archbishop Celestino Migliore said the Vatican believes it would “add new categories of those protected from discrimination.”
He also said it could lead to reverse discrimination against heterosexual marriage.
“States which do not recognize same-sex unions as ‘matrimony’ will be pilloried and made an object of pressure,” he said.
Human rights groups say homosexuality is still punishable by law in more than 85 countries, many of them in the Islamic world. Death remains the ultimate penalty in many, including in Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen.
But the declaration also contains references that could conflict with Canada’s anti-discrimination laws. It says human rights should be respected, regardless of both “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”
Current human rights protections in Canada don’t specifically ban discrimination based on gender identity, according to human rights activists. The term refers to people who are physically of one sex, but may sense internally they are of another. It is distinguished from “sexual orientation,” which generally refers to whether a person is heterosexual or homosexual.
While the declaration will not be legally binding on countries that sign, many activists see UN backing for causes as an important step to advancing them.
“Right now, Canada has no human rights protections based on gender identity . . . in the federal human rights,” Kim Vance said from her Halifax base as co-director of ARC International, which promotes gay rights around the world.
She said Ottawa’s decision not to have taken a “leadership” role by joining France in trying to convince other countries to sign up “reflected the conservative nature of the current government.”
“I believe Canada will sign it, because they will look pretty bad if they didn’t support a non-binding document that basically said (countries) can’t kill people because they are gay.”
Canadian officials said the government was still considering a French invitation to sign up. While the 27-nation EU and several mainly developed countries have indicated their support, the United States is not expected to sign, observers said.
Helen Kennedy, executive director of the activist group Egale Canada, said there was “nothing in the declaration that Canada should be afraid of.”
But conservative family-values activists in Canada said Ottawa should reject the measure on principle.
“The UN shouldn’t be unilaterally attempting to change the laws of a sovereign country,” said Dave Quist, executive director of the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada.
“Nobody would support imprisonment or execution of people in foreign countries - that’s just simply off the scales - but any laws that Canadians change should be debated by Canadians.”
France says the declaration, not yet officially released publicly, builds on earlier international declarations.
“We condemn the human rights violations based on sexual orientation or gender identity wherever they occur, in particular, the use of the death penalty on this ground, extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions, the practice of torture and other cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment or punishment, arbitrary arrest or detention and deprivation of economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to health,” says a section of a draft obtained by Canwest News Service.
I needed an excuse to post a pic of (an almost) suited lady (Allison Janney), so here goes:
I never watched “The West Wing.” Sure I caught parts of it here or there, but I don’t think I ever sat down and watched an episode start to finish. It’s not that I thought the show was bad, it’s just that when it comes to politics I find the real thing provides all the drama I can handle. So, as a result, much of the unparalleled badassery that was C.J. Cregg was largely lost on me.
An imposing figure at “5 feet 12 inches,” as she once told the New York Times, Allison’s impressive array of roles have taken her from comedies (“Juno”) to dramas (“The Hours”) and Broadway (“9 to 5”). Heck, she even got to kiss Meryl Streep in The Hours. All that and she delivered what has to be one of my most-repeated movie quotes of all time as Peach in “Finding Nemo.” “Find a happy place! Find a happy place! Find a happy place!” What I like about Allison is that she always comes across as infinitely capable. Yet with that aura of utter competence comes a delightfully goofy streak – not to mention a competitive streak. Smart, funny, willing to cheat – now I really like that
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