Jon Bon Jovi has confirmed that the power of money is greater than the power of good health! Jon who has been making a huge song and dance about his recent decision to quit smoking said that the biggest motivation he had was not that he would reduce the chances of suffering from a slow and painful death but that he would be able to save money on his health insurance premiums!
We’ve written loads about this at Ukmedix News because time and time again we’ve seen how the immediate financial incentive of quitting smoking motivates people far more than future statistical evidence of their health. Unfortunately most people quit smoking for health reasons at a point when it’s often too late.

Mr. Bon Jovi who didn’t start smoking until he was 32 years old, lit up his first cigarette when he was filming Moonlight and Valentino back in 1995. Only recently however he realized that his smoking habit was not just costing him a lot of money in actually buying the cigarettes but was costing him much more in indirect ways like his life insurance.

Jon said that his method of quitting smoking was to “throw them in the garbage” and just go cold turkey on the nicotine which works for many people. Jon is lucky that he has managed to quit like this because many other people find the abrupt stop to smoking just too painful and require counseling, smoking cessation medications or hypnotherapy.

A word of advice for Mr. Bon Jovi is that if he does start to smoke again and he ends up in a hospital bed with tubes coming out of his nose his high insurance premiums will become the least of his worries and he will kick himself for having been so stupid to light up in the first place.

From ukmedix.com, June 24, 2010

Liam Neeson wants the stars of The A-Team to wear nicotine patches instead of chain smoking cigars if there is a sequel. The actor plays John ‘Hannibal’ Smith in Joe Carnahan’s big screen adaptation of the hit 1980s TV show. The film is about a group of US Army Special Forces soldiers who become mercenaries after they escape from jail, where they were sent after they were convicted of a crime they didn’t commit. Liam’s character is famous for his love of cigars, which horrified the actor, who quit smoking in the 1990s. He tried to use rubber cigars at first, but was chain-smoking again by the second day of filming.

“I stopped smoking 16 years ago, it was a real issue for me,” Liam told Australia radio programme The Kyle and Jackie O Show. “Joe insisted I have cigars and because it was Canada, they don’t have a trade embargo with Cuba and the props guys got me these amazing Cuban cigars.

“I got them to make rubber ones, because I didn’t want to be puffing on a cigar, but Joe, who is a big cigar smoker said, ‘No, it looks so false!’ I said, “Joe, I’m an addict! I can’t smoke this stuff!’ Day 2 and I discovered cigars. It was dangerous!”

Liam has now managed to wean himself off tobacco for a second time, and has already decided he will never smoke for a film again. If there is a sequel to The A-Team, he is planning to suggest his character wears nicotine patches instead of smoking.

“If we do a sequel, I think I’ll have to insist on no cigars,” Liam said. “We’ll all have patches on instead.”

From stuff.co.nz, June 21, 2010

The reason there is no such thing as an “ex-Marine” is because they are the best of the best, toughest of the tough, etc. of the etc. Despite that, I became concerned about the United States Marine Corps officer who was quoted as saying that President Barack Obama “likes to smoke a couple cigarettes before he gets on the copter.” That account, from Marine Sgt. Bradley Kelle, was buried in a nice feature article about the 2004 Wauconda High School graduate a few weeks ago. Sgt. Kelle is the helicopter crew chief for “Marine One,” the name given to whatever chopper transports the president from the White House to Andrews Air Force Base; or as we saw last week, between O’Hare and Soldier Field for the Obama’s’ Memorial Day weekend trip.

I know just from his training that Sgt. Kelle could take out a squad of al-Qaida militia with one wave of his M-16A2 rifle. It would be reflexive for him to stop a solo aggressor by driving the heel of his hand straight into a nostril.

But Washington’s offensive measures may be less defensible.

Aggrieved political figures have been known to douse careers for seemingly minor comments or infractions.

Offering a public play by play of the commander-in-chief’s preflight cigarette routine might result in a reprimand, if not more.

Or so I thought.

After all, Mr. Obama’s smoking has been something of an “issue” from the day he declared for president.

One of his wife’s prerequisites for supporting his candidacy was that he quit smoking.

Although there were suggestions early in his administration that he’d actually kicked the habit, White House reporters knew better and that facade was quickly dismantled.

Obama has publicly claimed that he doesn’t smoke every day. “I get this question about once every month or so,” he said. “And, you know, I don’t know what to tell you, other than the fact that, like folks who go to (Alcoholics Anonymous), once you’ve gone down this path, then … it’s something you continually struggle with.”

Maybe he just smokes before flying, which would be somewhere between zero times a day to numerous times a day.

“He likes to smoke a couple cigarettes before he gets on the copter,” Kelle said in that feature that was published in a couple of Illinois newspapers early this month.

“He’s a little nervous about flight,” Kelle added.

Figuring it might be difficult to contact Sgt. Kelle through official Marine Corp methods, I decided to work the backchannels.

Knowing that a young, single, strong man with a great job would be socially astute, I searched, found him on Facebook and sent him a message.

I asked Kelle whether he had been reprimanded for the chopperside smoking quote.

“No, I haven’t received any type of flack from anyone about that; although it is always possible I will in the future, but I doubt it,” he replied.

Obviously Kelle is wise to the ways of Washington and knows that politicians sometimes wait for the right moment to strike.

“Honestly, I don’t think anyone at my command even knows about the article, and if those at the White House do, it obviously didn’t bother them too much!” Sgt. Kelle wrote.

I’m sure there is a bothered woman at the White House whose initials are M.O. but that is for the Obamas to handle.

The tabloids and paparazzi still have quite a bounty on any photo of Obama actually smoking. The one showing him smoking as a college student is the last known picture although there are many fakes on the Internet.

It is a good thing that Sgt. Kelle only provided the feature writer with a picture of him and his father in front of the president’s chopper and not a cell phone photo of Mr. Obama with a KOOL dangling from his lips.

That picture would have resulted in a much wider-read story and Sgt. Kelle would even have received a note from his commandant.

But it wouldn’t have offered congratulations.

It would have been headlined: TRANSFER ORDER.

And Okinawa can be very hot this time of year.

From dailyherald.com, June 17, 2010

LONDON (June 16) — At a 1945 lunch with the king of Saudi Arabia, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill was told that he couldn’t spark up a stogie in the pious monarch’s presence. The wartime leader protested, saying his own “rule of life prescribed as an absolutely sacred rite smoking cigars … before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them.” Sensibly, the Saudi ruler relented. Nowadays, though, some people aren’t so willing to indulge the ex-prime minister’s addiction. Like the unknown censor who airbrushed a cigar from an iconic photo of Churchill that adorns the entrance to London’s Britain at War Museum.

Taken at the opening of a new air base in 1948, the poster shows the wartime chief flashing his famous V for victory sign. But the Cuban roll that was originally clamped between Churchill’s lips has disappeared, leaving the prime minister with an unseemly open-mouthed gawp.
“Viewing the now disfigured image reveals just how unhinged the vociferous anti-smoking lobby has become,” David McAdam, the visitor who first noticed that the PM had posthumously kicked his taste for tobacco, told the Daily Mail. “So much for the notion that only communist tyrants airbrushed history.”

Museum manager John Welsh denied having anything to do with the edit. He said that he didn’t notice the missing cigar until McAdam approached his staff.

“We’ve got all sorts of images in the museum, some with cigars and some without,” Welsh told the paper. “We’ve even got wartime adverts for cigarettes in the lift down to the air raid shelter, so we wouldn’t have asked for there to be no cigar.” He refused to reveal who originally turned the photo into a poster for the museum, and presumably removed the cigar.

But Churchill isn’t the first famous smoker to have his nicotine fix retrospectively nixed. Here’s a pack of puffers whose acts of inhaling have also been consigned to the ashtray of history:

Paul McCartney
Peer closely at the original artwork of the Beatles’ “Abbey Road” LP and you might just notice that a barefoot Macca is clutching a cigarette in his right hand. That tiny smoke was too much for U.S. print giant Allposters, who in 2003 demanded that the butt be digitally removed. Beatles publisher Apple Records later protested, telling the BBC, “We have never agreed to anything like this.”

Bette Davis
In 2008, the U.S. Postal Service issued a stamp in honor of the sultry starlet, based on a still from 1950’s “All About Eve.” But the hand-painted portrait left out an important detail featured in the original image: a tobacco stick the actress had been elegantly holding in her hand.

And if there was anything Davis was known for in Hollywood — OK, apart from that — it was her incessant smoking. “I’ve been close to Bette Davis for 38 years,” quipped Henry Fonda at a 1979 roast of the actress, “and I have the cigarette burns to prove it.”

Jean-Paul Sartre
Once asked by a Newsweek journalist to list the important things in his life, the grumpy French philosopher replied, “I don’t know. Everything. Living. Smoking.” But a 2005 celebration of the existentialist’s life at Paris’ National Library couldn’t show the philosopher indulging in his favorite activity, in case it broke tough tobacco advertising laws.

As there are few photos of Sartre not smoking — he polished off two packs of cigarettes and two tobacco-stuffed pipes a day — the library was forced to edit out the philosopher’s Gauloise in a 1946 shot.

Clement Hurd
A portrait of the famed illustrator clutching a cigarette appeared in the back of the classic children’s book “Goodnight Moon” for some 20 years. But in 1995, Kate Jackson — then editor-in-chief of publisher HarperCollins — spotted the cancer causer and had it smudged out. “It is potentially a harmful message to very young kids,” Jackson told The New York Times, “and it doesn’t need to be there.”

That act of censorship outraged some long-standing “Goodnight” fans, who demanded the photo be restored to its smoky glory. Hurd’s son, though, said the illustrator — who died in 1988 — wouldn’t have been too bothered, as he’d kicked the habit in the 1950s and “really disliked smoking later in life.”

aolnews.com, June 17, 2010

Four Starke men and a juvenile were arrested on charges related the the theft of dozens of cartons of cigarettes and other tobacco products and then selling them at reduced rates, Starke police reported Thursday. The burglaries and thefts occurred at S&M Discount Beverages at 401 W. Brownlee St. between April 25 and June 9, Capt. Barry Warren stated in a press release. While investigating the burglaries, officers received information about cigarettes being sold at a discount cost of $3 to $4 a pack on the streets. The information also indicated that the cigarettes were primarily being sold to juveniles.

Officers were able to get the name of a person involved with cigarettes, and the address of 547 W. Madison St. from which the cigarette ring was operating, police said.

A large quantity of cigarette cartons were in plain view when officers knocked on the front door., police said. Police said they then backed off, maintained surveillance and got a search warrant.

During the search, police said they found 62 cartons of cigarettes, 16 individual packs of cigarettes, Black & Mild cigars and Copenhagen smokeless tobacco. Also recovered were items related to the burglaries, Warren said.

The total value of the stolen property and damage cost was estimated at $10,506, Warren said. The value of recovered cash and products is about $4,100, he added.

Arrested were: Riley Leonard Griffis, 18, of 547 W. Madison St.; Alexander Marco Palazzi, 19, of 2963 N.E. 187th St.; Kristopher Edward Cline, 20, of 207 W. Madison St.; and Joseph Michael Bowser, 22, of 830 N. Temple Ave., Apt. 7.

They were charged with burglary, felony criminal mischief, grand theft, dealing in stolen property and contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

A 15-year-old was charged with dealing in stolen property.

From gainesville.com, By Cindy Swirko, June 11, 2010

ALONG with buckets of money — more than $1.6 billion so far, worldwide — and a couple of Golden Globes, James Cameron’s “Avatar” has collected a smattering of controversy. Some of the hue and cry has involved matters of political allegory and theological implication, as pundits have divined that this globally popular blockbuster may represent a veiled ideological attack on America, capitalism, humanity, monotheism or all of the above.

But the fiercest attack on “Avatar” has focused on what may seem, compared to such lofty matters, like a minor detail. Of all the corny lines and ready-made catchphrases in Mr. Cameron’s script, perhaps none has turned out to be so provocative as one uttered by Grace Augustine, the scientist played by Sigourney Weaver: “Where’s my damn cigarette?”

In the view of anti-smoking activists, the correct answer should be: Nowhere, at least not in any real or imaginary world governed by a PG-13 rating. The logic of the Smoke-Free Movies campaign, which seeks an R rating for almost all instances of on-screen puffing, is straightforward enough. If the Motion Picture Association of America’s ratings board advises parents about sex, violence, language and drug use, why should it not also shield children from exposure to a lethal (if legal) product that hooks, sickens and kills hundreds of thousands of people a year? Since 2007 the M.P.A.A. has considered smoking when it makes its judgments, and one studio, Disney, has since then made all its family films smoke free.

Should that be true of all movies likely to be seen by children? Does it matter that Grace’s smoking, according to Mr. Cameron, is meant to emphasize the less attractive aspects of her temperament, including that she “doesn’t care about the human body”? And if that mitigation seems like a bit of a stretch (in the future, how likely is it that scientific laboratories on distant moons will allow what their earthbound counterparts forbid today?), what about some of the other recent instances tarred, as it were, by the opprobrium of Smoke-Free Movies? The principal smoker in the animated “Fantastic Mr. Fox” is a villain, and if the hero in “Sherlock Holmes” takes a draw or two on a pipe, well, he is Sherlock Holmes.

In the movie-smoking debate, even clear positions — that children must be protected from images that might influence their behavior, or that filmmakers should be immune from censorship and interference — tend quickly to be fogged with questions of context and nuance. That is because underneath the public discussion about smoking (or gun violence, or sexual promiscuity, or whatever social problem has seized the momentary spotlight) is another, much more confused discourse: about movies and about the ways they mirror and occlude reality.

The power of movies is undeniable, but also elusive. Even the children whose fragile psyches grown-ups fret about know that what movies depict is not real, and yet even the most sophisticated or jaded viewers habitually peruse the screen in search of designs for living. The screen is, among other things, a domain of glamour, in which ordinary actions are given a luster, a charisma, far beyond what they possess in the everyday world.

Social scientists doggedly pursue evidence of correlations between on- and off-screen behavior, while some commentators insist that no such connections could possibly exist. The rest of us know perfectly well that we don’t play with anvils and dynamite just because we see Wile E. Coyote do it, though perhaps those Looney Tunes are cautionary tales. But we also can acknowledge that our actions, our fantasies and the pictures we consume are not all that far apart. And it is for precisely this reason — in recognition of the unique and dazzling impact of an art form that is also a mass medium compounded of big pictures and good-looking people — that movies have always attracted the attention of censors. In the United States regulation has been voluntary, a way for private enterprise to forestall the interference of the government. Elsewhere the state weighs in, either with outright prohibitions on certain content or with restrictions on who can see what.

Hollywood’s self-imposed system has tried both approaches. From the mid-1930s to the mid-’60s the Production Code kept a tight rein on what all audiences could see, and promised that “no picture shall be produced that will lower the moral standards of those who see it.” It is easy enough, in retrospect, to laugh at the starchy Victorianism of that language. But at the same time the idea that movies might ennoble their audiences and even improve us as we watch them, affirms a faith in cinema that is almost Utopian.

The code may have withered, but the ideal of movies as a universal and fundamentally benign form of entertainment has hardly gone away, and is indeed what informs many of the efforts to broaden and strengthen the ratings system. That system, devised in 1968 by Jack Valenti, president of the M.P.A.A. for almost 40 years afterward, has undergone some tweaks over the years, replacing X with NC-17 and adding the PG-13 between PG and R. Such changes, and attempts to refine the criteria for any particular rating, represent an earnest attempt to keep abreast of public sensitivities even as they also suggest the quixotic nature of the enterprise. What committee could possibly take account of the often confused and contradictory mores and prejudices of a country of 300 million-plus people? And the M.P.A.A. has become an easy scapegoat for that very confusion. Critics of the association, including many filmmakers interviewed by Kirby Dick in his 2006 documentary, “This Film is Not Yet Rated,” accuse the ratings board of being more tolerant of violence than of sex, less tolerant of homosexuality than heterosexuality, and perversely fixated on shot lengths, camera angles and other technical matters that barely register with ordinary viewers.

Mr. Dick’s film, a critique of the ratings system in the name of artistic freedom, dwells on the commercially fraught boundary between the R and NC-17 ratings, which caused problems for the directors of films like “The Cooler,” “Boys Don’t Cry” and “A Dirty Shame.” But for the public — at least for children and their parents — the more embattled frontier is the one between PG-13 and R.

In actual ticket-buying practice, the difference between them is that a young-looking adolescent must be accompanied either by a full-fledged adult or by an older-looking adolescent. Otherwise it may take a practiced eye and ear to realize that a popular Anglo-Saxon expletive is acceptable in a PG-13 movie as long as it is only heard once and does not refer to a sexual act. Thus “Billy Elliott,” as wholesome and uplifting a film as you could hope for — its story about a kid who dreams of being a dancer is likely to inspire other kids with similar dreams — has an R rating because its proletarian English characters talk more or less as they would in the real world.

It is easy to scoff at that rating only if you have never received angry letters from parents or grandparents appalled by profanity. But of course the rules about specific rules allow a lot of leeway, and no one would claim that by taking your children only to PG-13 comedies, say, you would spare them sustained exposure to coarse sexual humor. Nor would a PG-13-only diet prevent them from seeing violent deaths and grisly images, including the genocidal warfare in “Avatar” itself.

On the other hand, a trip to see “It’s Complicated,” the midlife romantic-triangle comedy starring Meryl Streep, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin, will expose viewers to no violence, no nudity (apart from a brief glimpse of Mr. Baldwin’s buttocks) and very little naughty language. That film’s R rating came about because of a sequence in which Ms. Streep and Mr. Martin smoke a joint and suffer no adverse consequences beyond some potentially embarrassing giddiness.

The argument for the rating board’s decision, I suppose, would be that children might conclude that smoking marijuana is an acceptable, risk-free behavior. But what the ratings system, with its quantitative, literal-minded view of movie images, seems unable to imagine is that exposure to the pot in “It’s Complicated” might have the opposite effect. If your grandparents are doing it, how cool can it really be?

And what the supporters of the Smoke-Free Movies position may underestimate is the extent to which a taboo creates temptation. The audience most susceptible to the glamour of the R rating is also the demographic most at risk of starting to smoke. Exiling cigarettes to the ostensibly forbidden but easily accessible land of the R might have the unintended effect of making them seem more alluringly grown up.

More likely, bringing tobacco further into ratings decisions will create new opportunities for ambiguity and confusion, since it seems unlikely that smoking will be any different from any other vice, dubious practice or habit of speech. Smoke-Free Movies has claimed that the R for tobacco is not only right but also inevitable, and such questions, and the quarrels that follow from them, are also inevitable. As are further attempts to expand the purview of the M.P.A.A., to include other products and behaviors. What about guns? What about trans fats? What about beer and Styrofoam and high-fructose corn syrup?

In 2154, when “Avatar” takes place, it is possible that tobacco use will no longer exist. But if movies are still around, there will still be arguments about what they should be showing, and to whom. Such arguments are built into the medium and our complicated bond with it. We want movies to acknowledge what is real, but also to improve on reality, to give us a vision of a perfect world in which everything is permissible — a world that’s sexy, dangerous, scary and smoky and safe for children too.

By A. O. SCOTT, Nytimes
Published: January 22, 2010

In “Avatar,” scientist Sigourney Weaver climbs out of a suspended-animation pod and demands a cigarette – which has enflamed an anti-tobacco faction led by Stan Glantz of the UC San Francisco School of Medicine.

Their problem is the film is rated PG-13, and kids are buying tickets by the millions.

Glantz and others are using “Avatar” to renew their call for movies with smoking to get an automatic “R.”

Now, you might be thinking, “These health fascists: What are they trying to do to our pop culture?” Movies and vices, especially tobacco, have a stellar history.

Bogie and Bacall in “To Have and Have Not”: That’s foreplay!

Bette Davis and Paul Henreid in “Now, Voyager”: Smooth!

A kneejerk “R” for cigarettes would be a threat to artistic freedom, a restraint on capitalism. It would be Puritanism! Censorship!

Right? Well, no. I think it’s a good idea.

Now, let’s be clear from the get-go. There should be one culture for all ages, and one for grown-ups. In an R-rated movie, I don’t care if people do things too vile to say on TV. I don’t care if they eat cigarettes. With kids, it’s a different ballgame.

We know from a Dartmouth Medical School study that there’s a strong association between adolescent smoking and watching smoking in movies.

Tobacco companies have always understood that influence. There was a time when they even made deals to put their products onscreen. It wasn’t disclosed publicly, of course . . . it comes out in court when files get subpoenaed.

In the ’80s, we learned Phillip Morris paid the makers of “Superman 2″ thousands to put its name behind the Man of Steel. Superman is Marlboro Man! Artistic freedom!

In the ’90s, companies agreed to stop paying, but there’s no way of keeping tabs.

Libertarians make the slippery-slope argument: Next you’ll ban alcohol! Car chases!

Well, no. No one’s banning anything, just saying, “Kids shouldn’t be able to see it so easily.”

The MPAA already restricts the language in PG-13 movies and there’s no wiggle room: You can shoot someone, but can’t use a naughty word for having sex with them. Frankly, I’d rather my kids hear bad words than see their favorite actors bleep their bleeping lungs with bleeping cigarettes.

There should be some wiggle room. No retroactive editing: Bogie keeps his smokes. Films about real figures like Edward R. Murrow might be special cases, although I wish there were a title saying Murrow died of cancer. So did Bogie at 57. So did the actor who played that beloved archetype, the Marlboro Man.

There’s no word on Joe Camel, but I heard off the record he’s very sick.

A Joe Camel biopic that ends in the ICU? PG-13.

January 24, 2010

BRAVEHEART star Mel Gibson has given up smoking so he will be around to watch his new baby daughter grow up.
The 54-year old actor and director was already a dad of seven kids he had with first wife Robyn, ranging in age from oldest daughter Hannah, who is 29 and married, to 10-year-old Thomas.

His Russian musician girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, 39, gave birth to baby Lucia in October last year.

She already had a son with former boyfriend ex-Bond star Timothy Dalton.

Now Gibson, who has had some high-profile, well-documented problems with drink in the last few years, is determined to be around when Lucia grows up.

He said: “I want to play tennis with this kid, that’s it. I just want to run around and breathe, you know?

“I don’t want to be in an iron lung somewhere.

“It’s a blessing. My God, a new little life is always like, it’s just astounding to me. There’s nothing more gob-smacking or mysterious, it’s just like you look and you go oh my God, and she’s an angel, she’s innocent, she looks right through you.”

Fatherhood in his 50s is bound to be very different experience for the actor than it was the first time around but Gibson is hoping his experience will make him a better daddy to Lucia.

Mel said: “It is different because I’m different but the thing that isn’t different is that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to get over the fact that there is a little life there in front of me staring at you with complete innocence and a total angelic blamelessness.

“It’s phenomenal. It kills me. So we’ll work with that and see if I can do it better this time. You should get better with practice.”

By the time Lucia is 20, Mel will be 73. It was this realisation that helped him make the decision to quit the cigarettes he had enjoyed so much for 45 years.

As he did interviews to publicise his latest film – an update of classic 80s BBC drama Edge Of Darkness – he revealed he has been smoke-free for nine days.

He said: “It was torture. The first three days, I was like an axe murderer. Day four, I’d come at you with a bat. Day five, I was dangerous with a lawn mower. It is a hellish habit to break.”

Smoking has not been Mel’s only vice. He was famously arrested for drink driving in 2006.

The storm was made worse when he made anti-Semitic remarks to the arresting police officers.

He ranted at the Jewish policeman: “Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world. Are you a Jew?”

Gibson has apologised three times for his outburst but it seems he will suffer the consequences of his actions for a while yet.

He has now been teetotal for three and a half years and when asked about that night, Gibson, fumes: ” I was loaded. I was drunk. Alright?

“Israel walked into Lebanon that day. And it was like, it came out and the guy reported it to the police officer and he ran to the newspaper – and it just turned into this whole big thing.

“Ok, I get sober and I’m like, ‘Oh f***, what did I say? I’m sorry’.

“I apologised profusely – not once but three times.

“So, what’s the problem? It’s four years ago. Do I need to apologise again? Do I? For you? Do I need to apologise again?

“Because I will if you require it. And I always take the opportunity to say: That was a bunch of s**t; that was bulls**t. “And if I scared anyone, or if I offended anyone, I’m sorry.

“It’s the truth. I don’t want to be the monster.”

He may not be a monster but he is certainly still the butt of jokes. Most recently, he was the target of Golden Globes host Ricky Gervais during Sunday night’s ceremony.

The comic, holding a glass of beer, told the audience of Hollywood A-listers: “I like a drink as much as the next man… unless the next man is Mel Gibson.”

He then introduced Gibson, who jokingly slurred his words before handing out the best director gong to James Cameron.

Perhaps acting again, in his first film role since The Singing Detective in 2003, will win back fans who flocked to see his films in the 80s and 90s in films such as the Lethal Weapon and Mad Max franchises.

And, of course, 1995’s Braveheart, for which he won best picture and best director Oscars.

Since 2000, Gibson has remained behind the camera, directing raw and controversial films like The Passion Of The Christ and Apocalypto.

But now he’s back in front of the camera in the Hollywood remake of the 1985 BBC nuclear thriller Edge Of Darkness.

He stars as Craven, the role played by the late Bob Peck in the original, a widower cop who witnesses the murder of his daughter and embarks on a mission to discover her killer.

Gibson admits that the good looks that made him a pin-up in the 80s are now gone. He laughs: “I look like, ‘Eww!’ – all drawn-out and leathered out and I have aged.

“It’s just a natural part of the holy human condition. What am I going to do? Surgery or something? That just looks weird. Besides, that must hurt.”

Mel, who was born in New York but raised in Australia after his family emigrated in 1968, claimed he hasn’t missed acting, describing directing as “a big one. It’s a ball.”

But he added: “Acting is more lucrative. It’s easier and it’s my first love. I took some time away. I felt that I was stale and I came back and I feel like some kind of maturation happened where the choices I make now are quite different from the choices I would have made eight years ago.

“It’s good to get back on the bike and go for it again and it wasn’t necessarily the material that brought me back, it was just time to come back. And it was just the best thing that was there. It was a good vehicle, a good story.”

After Edge of Darkness, which also stars Ray Winstone, we’ll se Gibson in comedy The Beaver and Mexican prison thriller How I Spent My Summer Vacation.

Being back on the big screen may bring Mel renewed fan interest but he refuses to have bodyguards – though he does admits to keeping a gun near his bed.

“In this day and age, you’ve got to be tooled up. If they walk in on you, I’m not going to let them whip me. If your number’s up, its up, you know?

“I’ve had the weird stuff and its like, ‘OK, so what, I’m not dead yet’.

“If I’m lying in bed and somebody comes into my room, I’ll either wake up or I won’t. And I’ll either hit them with my big stick that I’ve got or my gun that I’ve got.”

So now the star of Lethal Weapon has his own lethal weapon? He admits: “It is a bad way to live. But that’s what you’ve gotta do.”

Edge Of Darkness is released on Friday, January 29

IT SEEMS strange to note that the blockbuster movie Avatar, which won two Golden Globe awards last Sunday night and is still on an unabated box-office record run, should be making some enthusiasts depressed and giving others headaches.

Apparently, to America’s legions of feisty conservatives, its tale of money-grabbing Americans who exploit native people – albeit on another planet – is another example of leftwing Hollywood elitism.

Yet, some progressives blast the movie as racist. It also riles the anti-smoking lobby, and if that wasn’t enough, some critics charge that the story was stolen from Russian sci-fi novels.

Despite – or perhaps because of – that heap of controversy, Avatar is within striking distance of becoming the highest-grossing film of all time.

As it continues to reign supreme above the worldwide box office, it is the first movie ever to have a realistic chance of beating the US$1.8 billion (RM6 billion) earned by Titanic, director James Cameron’s previous film in 1997.

Like Avatar, Titanic was also blasted for its bloated budget, wooden dialogue and predictable plot. But it never amassed the broad range of ideological critics that have attacked Cameron’s latest sci-fi blockbuster.

The most recent broadside launched at Avatar came from America’s powerful anti-smoking lobby. Their ire was directed at the character played by Sigourney Weaver, who in the film is still puffing away on her cigarettes some 150 years in the future.

The group, called Smoke Free Movies, took out full page ads in trade papers Variety and The Hollywood Reporter to protest the on-screen smoking.

It argued that for every US$100 million (RM334.3 million) the movie earns at the box office, it will “deliver an estimated 40 million tobacco impressions to theatre audiences”. The organisation estimated that this represented some US$50 million (RM167.1 million) worth of free advertising for the tobacco industry.

Avatar director Cameron said he agreed that role models for young people should not smoke in films, but that “movies should reflect reality”.

But there was no easy answer to complaints from some viewers that the new 3-D viewing system gave them splitting headaches.

According to Dr Michael Rosenberg, an ophthalmology professor at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, the innovative system exacerbates minor eye problems.

“That translates into greater mental effort, making it easier to get a headache,” he said in an online post.

But dull pain in the brain is not the only health risk being posed by the hit movie.

Diehard fans, now widely known as Avatards, are filling online forums with their complaints about how the film is making them depressed as they realise their own lives can never hope to match the primitive beauty found on the Pandoran planet.

One popular forum about how to deal with the post-Avatar blues has already registered more than 1,000 threads.

Other people are leaving the movie feeling angry. Hollywood has long been regarded as a fifth column by US conservatives, but the tale of US Marines out to ruthlessly exploit the noble savages of Pandora has raised a new level of ire.

“This is the only time I ever sat in a theatre where people were cheering the forest and the blue people, attacking ex-Marines,” said conservative activist Tom Roeser. “That’s the Hollywood view of us. We are the exploiters. We are pre-emptive attackers.”

Meanwhile, some on the left wing are incensed at the movie, charging that its storyline of a white ex-Marine riding to the rescue of a primitive people is inherently racist.

New York Times columnist David Brooks, called it a “racial fantasy par excellence”, arguing that the movie “rests on the assumption that non-whites need the White Messiah to lead their crusades”.

“It also creates a sort of two-edged cultural imperialism,” he said. “Natives can either have their history shaped by cruel imperialists or benevolent ones, but either way, they are going to be supporting actors in our journey to self-admiration.”

R&B superstar Rihanna seems to have developed a knack for courting controversy and her latest racy cover art for her single has run into trouble for glamorising smoking.

The 21-year-old singer posed naked for the cover of ‘Rude Boy’, wearing nothing but a top hat and boots with a lit cigarette in her mouth, reported Sun online.

The ‘Umbrella’ hitmaker provoked a strong reaction by posing with a cigarette, having previously said that she sees herself as a role model for young girls.

The image has become a hot topic of discussion in Internet forums.

“Just plain stupid move. Cigarettes cause so many people to die from lung cancer, and yet she poses with one, trying to look rebellious to 16 year olds,” wrote a member of the forum ‘Celeblove’.

No stranger to controversy, Rihanna had faced accusations of glamorising violence for getting a tattoo of a gun last year.
The singer who had suffered assault at the hands of her ex-boyfriend Chris Brown last year made the controversial decision to have a handgun tattooed on her body.

The singer, who has often been seen wearing a miniature gun pendant necklace, had the weapon etched across her ribcage.

Looks like Lindsay, 23, better add stopping smoking to her list of new year’s resolutions
Lindsay Tweeted a picture of herself chilling out on a yacht in St Barts with a cigarette dangling from her left hand.

The Long Island native looks great in the photograph but the cigarette makes her look like trailer trash.

Lindsay, who says she was hanging out with little sis Ali, Usher, Beyonce and Jay Z (who she calls H.O.V?), tweeted from the swanky island on New Year’s Eve.

“Wishing everyone a blessed new year in 2010! Everyone get ready for more (but positive-LOHAN MAYHEM!!!!!!!!). Thanks for all of your support!”

Lindsay spelled out her hopes for the future saying: “2010 is about moving forward, not backwards. Leaving the bad (people, habbits, (sic) and negative energy behind) time to make changes-right!?!? ”
Let’s hope she remembers to add smoking to her list of resolutions!

Lindsay’s 2009 of course was marked by very public spats with her father Michael, an even more public break-up with girlfriend Samantha Ronson and her underwhelming debut fashion line with Ungaro.

Some of those who oppose smoking in movies have just seen the future, and they are not happy about it.
James Cameron, the director, says the smoking scientist played by Sigourney Weaver, center, is not meant to be a role model.

Having caught up with James Cameron’s 3-D science fiction thriller, “Avatar,” over the holidays, Stanton A. Glantz, director of the Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education at the University of California, San Francisco, said his Smoke Free Movies initiative would soon come out swinging with an informational campaign aimed at what he saw as the movie’s pro-smoking message.

“This is like someone just put a bunch of plutonium in the water supply,” Mr. Glantz said in a telephone interview last week. He was referring to scenes in which an environmental scientist played by Sigourney Weaver drags lovingly on a cigarette as she works to save the moon Pandora sometime in the 22nd century.

Scenesmoking.org, which monitors tobacco mentions in films, gave the PG-13 rated “Avatar” a rating of its own: A “black lung.” Still, Mr. Cameron’s movie, distributed by 20th Century Fox, is not the only holiday picture to earn that distinction, which indicates unacceptable depictions of tobacco.

“Sherlock Holmes” and “The Blind Side,” which were distributed by Warner Brothers; “Nine,” from the Weinstein Company; “Did You Hear About the Morgans?” from Sony Pictures; and “The Fantastic Mr. Fox,” also from Fox, were similarly rated with a “black lung” for tobacco use, even though they carried a rating of PG-13 or PG from the film industry’s Classification and Rating Administration.

In a statement sent by e-mail over the weekend, Mr. Cameron said he had never intended Ms. Weaver’s character, Grace Augustine, to be “an aspirational role model” for teenagers.

“She’s rude, she swears, she drinks, she smokes,” wrote Mr. Cameron. “Also, from a character perspective, we were showing that Grace doesn’t care about her human body, only her avatar body, which again is a negative comment about people in our real world living too much in their avatars, meaning online and in video games.”

Speaking as an artist, Mr. Cameron said: “I don’t believe in the dogmatic idea that no one in a movie should smoke. Movies should reflect reality. If it’s O.K. for people to lie, cheat, steal and kill in PG-13 movies, why impose an inconsistent morality when it comes to smoking? I do agree that young role-model characters should not smoke in movies, especially in a way which suggests that it makes them cooler or more accepted by their peers.”

Smoking, Mr. Cameron concluded, “is a filthy habit which I don’t support, and neither, I believe, does ‘Avatar.’ ”

For the record, apart from the 3-D tobacco use, Mr. Glantz said he found “Avatar” to be “a great movie.”

By MICHAEL CIEPLY
January 3, 2010