A poster for The Artist Oscar nominee's new film has been removed following fears that Academy voters would disapprove
Posters advertising Jean Dujardin's new comedy, Les Infidèles (The Players), have been replaced after it was suggested that the controversial adverts could adversely affect The Artist star's Oscar chances.
The pictures, which show Dujardin's character holding the spread-eagled legs of an anonymous woman under a caption saying "I'm going into another meeting", were removed from Parisian billboards after the French advertising regulator, the ARPP received a number of complaints about sexism. "The posters have been taken down, and the distributor excused himself – it's over. It's finished," The Artist's producer, Thomas Langmann, told The Hollywood Reporter. He said the near-silent film's makers had "no opinion" on whether the Les Infidèles campaign would damage The Artist's chances.
Dujardin, who won best actor (comedy or musical) at the Golden Globes, is still the favourite to take the home the best actor prize in LA later this month, but the French media had speculated that the use of Dujardin's image in this way would be seen as offensive by Academy voters. A comment piece in Le Parisien warned that America "doesn't joke about this kind of saucy picture", while L'Express compared the Oscar race to a political campaign in which "everyone is ready to exploit the slightest weakness of their adversary".
Les Infidèles consists of a series of vignettes exploring the mindset of an adulterous man. Dujardin's co-star, Gilles Lelouche, has defended the film, telling Premiere magazine that it was the opposite of misogyny.
Dujardin became a star in France thanks to the satirical TV sketch show, Un Gars, Une Fille, which made a point of mocking the often boorish behaviour of Dujardin's character, Jean "Loulou".
Actor set to reprise role as Rick Deckard in Ridley Scott's forthcoming follow-up to his 1982 sci-fi classic, reports say
Harrison Ford is lining up to make a surprise return to the role of Rick Deckard in Ridley Scott's Blade Runner sequel, Twitchfilm reports. Ford is apparently in early talks to return as the replicant nemesis in Scott's forthcoming followup to his 1982 sci-fi classic. If the prediction turns out to be true, it would be even more of a shock than the news in March last year that the veteran British film-maker was to shoot a new Blade Runner film. Scott had dismissed rumours of another Blade Runner film for nearly three decades, and his producer Andrew Kosove denied suggestions Ford might be involved in the new film as recently as last August.
"Twitch has learned that Harrison Ford has entered into early talks to join the new Blade Runner," reports the US site. "While this is still very early stages and it is quite possible that things won't work out the obvious implication is that what we are looking at is not a reboot but a direct sequel to the original."
Based on the 1968 Philip K Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Blade Runner was not a hit at the time but has gathered plaudits over the years. Set in an overpopulated future Los Angeles that never sees the sunlight, Scott's movie is about a "blade runner", played by Ford, who is tasked with hunting down a gang of replicants (android outlaws) who have escaped to Earth from an off-world colony. The film-maker left the audience to decide whether Deckard himself is a replicant.
Negative criticism of the film was largely reversed with the arrival in 1992 of Scott's director's cut, which excised the original's voiceover and a pegged-on "happy ending". Dick never wrote a sequel to the book, so Scott will probably be aiming to produce an original story. Three follow-up novels by Dick's friend, KW Jeter, were written between 1995 and 2000 to try to resolve some of the differences between Blade Runner and its source novel, but they were poorly received.
Prior to working on Blade Runner 2, which may or may not be his next film, Scott will make his long-awaited return to science fiction with Prometheus, a film "set in the same universe" as Alien, his cult 1979 slasher in space. The film, which stars Charlize Theron, Michael Fassbender, Noomi Rapace, Guy Pearce and Idris Elba, opens in the UK on 1 June.
The animal rights group instructs supporters to boycott the film after the star told reporters the cast ate wolf meat to get into character
Liam Neeson has come under fire from animal rights group Peta after claiming he ate wolf meat to prepare for his role in the action thriller The Grey. The organisation is calling for a boycott of the film based on Neeson's comments during a press conference and separate claims that director Joe Carnahan ordered wolf carcasses to be used during the making of the movie. The Grey sees the Ballymena-born actor as the leader of a group of oil workers being hunted down by a pack of wolves after surviving a plane crash in Alaska.
Neeson recently told reporters he had tucked in alongside other cast members after Carnahan asked for wolf stew to be prepared on set to help them get into character. "It was very gamey," said the Oscar-nominated actor. "But I'm Irish, so I'm used to odd stews. I can take it. Just throw a lot of carrots and onions in there and I'll call it dinner." Unlike some colleagues who were apparently sick, Neeson said that he had been back for seconds.
"Neeson's stance on kindness to animals is sorely out of step with the rest of the world," said Peta in a statement, insisting that wolves were in fact shy beasts unlikely to target humans rather than the predatory creatures seen in The Grey. The statement added: "Don't just shy away. Run away from The Grey."
Peta also criticised Carnahan for allegedly ordering wolf carcasses from a trapper for use in the film. "Many animals caught in traps chew off their own limbs in order to escape," said spokeswoman Jane Dollinger. "These animals go on to die of gangrene or other secondary infections, sometimes leaving nursing puppies abandoned to fend for themselves."
It is not clear whether any wolves were really killed during the making of The Grey, or whether Neeson and Carnahan are guilty only of making glib comments to that effect. Neither has yet made any public comment on Peta's statement. Another unlikely recent story linked to comments made by the Irish actor suggested he was about to convert to Islam.
Director Abel Ferrara confirms that Depardieu will star opposite Isabelle Adjani in his film about political sex scandals, inspired by the French politician
Ferrara, the iconoclastic director of Bad Lieutenant and King of New York, told Le Monde his movie would be shot in New York, Washington and in France: "In all spots of power in fact: it's a film about rich and powerful people." Depardieu has been tipped to take the lead since December last year, when news of the project first broke. Ferrara also confirmed that Isabelle Adjani will play his wife.
Ferrara's producer, Vincent Maraval of Paris-based Wild Bunch, last year denied reports that the project was close to entering production after earlier appearing to suggest the opposite. "Vincent doesn't want to talk about the project, that's normal, he's the producer," Ferrara told Le Monde. "But I'm the director! No one can stop me from talking about my movie."
Ferrara's latest film is 4:44 Last Day on Earth, which chronicles the events of the final 24 hours before a global apocalypse and stars Willem Dafoe. It played in competition at the 68th Venice International Film festival in September.
Harry Potter star describes Nick Clegg 'whipping boy' of Tories and says he will vote Labour
Daniel Radcliffe has announced that he is no longer a supporter of the Liberal Democrats after emerging as one of the party's most high-profile celebrity backers ahead of the last British general election, and will probably vote instead for Labour under its "genuinely leftwing" leader, Ed Miliband.
In what is turning into a hemorrhaging of support for the Lib Dems among a list of celebrity backers it unveiled in the run-up to last year's vote, the star of the Harry Potter franchise described party leader Nick Clegg as a "whipping boy" for the Conservatives. He also hit out at the "homophobia" of some of the US Republican presidential candidates.
Radcliffe made the comments in an interview that will be published on Monday in the latest issue of Attitude magazine, the same forum he used in 2009 to announce that he would "almost certainly" be using his first ever vote in a general election to vote Lib Dem.
Asked if he is happy with the Lib Dems's place in the coalition, he said: "No, of course not. Nick Clegg asked to meet me after that Attitude interview and we talked about issues such as gay rights and faith schools.
"I was initially supportive. For me it was good that the Lib Dems would be fighting our corner. But he has become a whipping boy and it seems to me that he has been totally used by the Tories - anything they don't want badly reflected on them they reflect on to him."
The actor, who is estimated to have a £30m fortune, cited "so many concessions" by the Lib Dems' on education and taxes. He added: "I think, if you make a lot more money than most people - like I do - you should pay more tax and subsidise people who work just as hard as you, but don't earn as much."
Radcliffe, whose current film, The Woman in Black, was estimated to have made $21m at the US box office during its weekend opening, said he "will probably be going to Labour".
He said: "From what I've seen of Ed Miliband, I really like him and he speaks for what I believe in. I think he's genuine, genuinely leftwing, and will act as such if he gets in."
The actor — who is straight — also used the interview to call for gay marriage, relationship education in schools that would cover both gay and straight relationships, and attacked some of the US Republican presidential candidates.
Radcliffe said that he wished more educational establishments, especially in the US, were not in thrall to religion, stating: "I'm not religious, I'm an atheist, and a militant atheist when religion starts impacting on legislation. We need sex education in schools.
He went on to say that he has been "disgusted, amazed, stunned" by candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination, such as Rick Santorum or Michele Bachmann, who have been openly hostile to gay rights.
Asked if he wished that Barack Obama would publicly back gay marriage, he replied: "Yes, I do, but can he really? Of course he's in favour of it, but he has to be careful about saying so. I'd rather have someone like him in the White House than the alternative."
Titanic director James Cameron pays tribute to his deep-sea brothers who had accomplished 'extraordinary things'
The American cinematographer Mike deGruy and Australian television writer-producer Andrew Wight have been killed in a helicopter crash in eastern Australia.
Police said two people – a pilot and a passenger – died on Saturday when their aircraft crashed soon after takeoff near Nowra, 97 miles south of Sydney, but did not immediately release the victims' identities. ABC News reported that Wight had been piloting the helicopter.
The pair's employers, National Geographic and the Titanic director, James Cameron, confirmed the victims' identities, adding that "the deep-sea community had lost two of its finest" with the deaths of the underwater documentary specialists.
David Bennett, president of Australia's South Coast Recreational Flying Club, said the men had set off to film a documentary when they crashed.
DeGruy, 60, of Santa Barbara, California, had won multiple Emmy and Bafta awards for cinematography. Wight, 52, from Melbourne, was the writer-producer of the 3D film Sanctum, which took $100m (£63m) at the box office and was Australian cinema's biggest hit of 2010.
DeGruy spent 30 years producing and directing documentaries about the ocean. An accomplished diver and submarine pilot who spent many hours filming deep beneath the sea, he was the director of undersea photography for Cameron's Last Mysteries of the Titanic, National Geographic and Cameron said in a statement.
"Mike and Andrew were like family to me," the director added. "They were my deep-sea brothers and both were true explorers who did extraordinary things and went places no human being has been."
• This article was amended on 6 February 2012. The original said that Nowra is 97 miles north of Sydney. This has been corrected.
As international tensions rise, critics close to the regime dismiss praise for A Separation
It has picked up award after award, including a Golden Globe last month for the best foreign language film and the Golden Bear at last year's Berlin film festival. And it has delighted ordinary Iranians grateful for some glory at a time when international tensions are rising and the country's regime is ever more isolated.
But not everyone in Tehran is happy that Asghar Farhadi's hugely successful work, A Separation, is now a racing certainty to win an Oscar for the best foreign film at this month's Academy Awards.
The backlash was apparent on state-run television recently when Masoud Ferasati, an Iranian writer whose views are close to those of the Islamic regime, said: "The image of our society that A Separation depicts is the dirty picture westerners are wishing for." Ferasati added that political motivations were behind the many awards for Iranian films in the past two decades, and said an Oscar for A Separation should not be welcomed by Iranians.
"On one hand they [the US] impose sanctions against us, and on the other they give awards to our film, to send us a positive signal. I think this [the film's success] is an illusion. This is not a good film."
Ferasati's remarks have been publicly echoed by other influential supporters of the regime, which is currently enduring western sanctions as a result of its nuclear programme. Fars, a semi-official news agency, has even attacked Farhadi for shaking hands with women at award ceremonies.
Senior government officials appear unable to decide whether to associate themselves with the success of Iranian cinema or clamp down on its practitioners. Despite widespread censorship and systematic harassment of independent film-makers in recent years, Iranian cinema has had numerous international hits in recent years, not least with Abbas Kiarostami, the director who won a Palme d'Or at Cannes for Taste of Cherry.
A Separation, Farhadi's fifth major film, follows the story of two Iranian families – one secular and middle-class, the other religious and working-class – whose fates become intertwined. A powerful portrait of social tensions in modern Iran, the film managed to obtain government backing, although permission for its production was briefly removed when Farhadi voiced support for Jafar Panahi, the Iranian film-maker imprisoned in 2010 after allegedly plotting to undermine the regime. After its nationwide release, A Separation attracted huge audiences for an independent film and even won government-sponsored awards.
In comparison to his colleagues, the criticism of Farhadi is relatively mild, partly because of the subtlety of his work. Speaking to the Observer, Parviz Jahed, an Iranian film critic and the editor of the recently released Iran edition of the Directory of World Cinema, said: "Farhadi's approach to politics is not direct but implicit and that's why A Separation, as a subtle film, with ambiguity… leaves space for various interpretations. Farhadi is a democrat in the way he treats the film's plot and characters and avoids judging anyone. That's why his critics among the regime accuse him of being passive."
But no one could say film-makers in Iran have it easy. Panahi's colleague Mohammad Rasoulof was also sentenced to six years in jail. Last year Iranian actress Marzieh Vafamehr was sentenced to a year in jail and 90 lashes (later reduced) for appearing with her head uncovered in an Australian film critical of the regime, while popular actress Pegah Ahangarani has faced jail for her activism. The regime also recently closed the country's independent film institute, Iran's House of Cinema.
But despite suspicion of the motives of foreign festival juries, the sheer popularity of A Separation meant the authorities had little choice but to put Farhadi's film forward for the Oscars.
Last month an Iranian opposition television based in London, Manoto TV, broadcast the Golden Globes live to the many Iranians who watch it through illegal satellite dishes back home. Farhadi later said: "When I was coming up on stage, I was thinking what I should say? Should I say something about my mother, my father, my kind wife, my daughters..." wondered Farhadi on the stage. "But now, I just prefer to say something about my people. They are a truly peace-loving people."
Rudolph Valentino biopic and Charlie Chaplin musical are among new projects in the pipeline
The surprise success of the silent film The Artist, tipped to make a clean sweep at the Academy awards, has inspired a series of stage and screen projects celebrating the early years of Hollywood.
This wave of nostalgia has prompted not only more silent movies, but plays and films paying homage to the stars of the time. One of the biggest projects is a musical based on the life of Charlie Chaplin, which will open on Broadway this year. It was first staged in California and had mixed reviews, but is being reworked and recast for New York. The script, by Thomas Meehan, who wrote the hit stage productions Hairspray and The Producers, delves into Chaplin's controversial private life while tracing his journey from modest beginnings in London to the heights of Hollywood.
The producers of a film based on the silent era's smouldering romantic lead Rudolph Valentino, star of The Sheik and The Eagle, also hope their movie will make it to the screen soon. Silent Life, an American film made by and starring Vlad Kozlov, a first-time director who has been successfully treated for a speech disorder so debilitating he could barely talk for almost 20 years, is being prepared for release after four years in production. Co-starring Isabella Rossellini as Valentino's wife, it centres on the Italian actor's untimely death at 31 after he slipped into a coma while being treated for peritonitis. Unaware of his fate, he understands his life through a dreamlike silent sequence in which he has fame and glory but the dearest things in his life have been taken from him.
Tim Gray, editor-in-chief of Variety, said it hardly came as a surprise that these silent-era-inspired stage and screen projects were now emerging. "When a surprise success story like The Artist comes along, you are always going to get imitators – it's natural. Having said that, I do think The Artist is a one-off. The reason The Artist is a hit is not because it's silent, it's because it's so clever and unusual. I'd be stunned if a large number of silent films popped up."
He argues that while The Artist has spawned nostalgia for the period, if these projects are successful it will be because they tell a more personal story. "Perhaps the biggest trend in film-making now is biographies. People always want to make them and audiences always want to see them. Over the last few years we've seen people competing to make stories based on famous people's lives – there were two Truman Capote movies in competition and three Janis Joplin films that never got made over the last few years.
"Right now, there's a film being shot about a 1970s porn star nobody really knew anything about, Linda Lovelace. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of film-makers now have an interest in making a Chaplin biopic."
To date, there has only been one film based on Chaplin's life, the 1992 drama Chaplin, directed by Richard Attenborough and starring Robert Downey Jr. It received great acclaim, with Downey picking up a Bafta award and an Oscar nomination for best actor, but critics deemed Chaplin's life too vast to be immortalised in film. Enjoying a career as an actor, producer, director and composer that spanned more than 75 years, Chaplin lived until the age of 88 and had a colourful personal life that saw him dating actresses as young as 15, embarking on several marriages and affairs and producing 12 children.
Other stars from the era whose lives could be retold in film include Greta Garbo, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. But Gray argues that the moment will be fleeting.
"I don't think you're ever going to see a complete resurgence in silent movies," he says. "The Artist's greatest influence on Hollywood is in liberating film-makers to try something completely original, to push the envelope at a time when the investment is largely in 'safe bets' like comic book franchises and sequels."
The actor Ben Gazzara, known for his brooding tough-guy presence in dozens of films, television shows and stage productions over his long career, died of pancreatic cancer on Friday at a Manhattan hospital, his lawyer said. He was 81.
The New York-born performer died at Bellevue hospital centre with members of his family at his side, according to his attorney, Jay Julien.
Born Biagio Anthony Gazzara to Italian immigrant parents, he began his career in live theatre, most notably with the role of Brick in the original Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, directed by Elia Kazan. The role was played by Paul Newman in the 1958 film version.
A three-time Tony award nominee for his stage work, Gazzara made his film debut as a sociopathic military academy cadet in the 1957 drama The Strange One, followed by his breakout role as an accused killer in Otto Preminger's 1959 hit courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder.
The actor, best known for playing emotionally complex men and villains, went on to work with numerous high-profile Hollywood directors, including John Cassavetes, with whom he collaborated on several films, including the 1976 gangster drama The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.
His credits also included a role as porn-film producer Jackie Treehorn in the Coen Brothers' 1998 cult comedy classic The Big Lebowski and a supporting role in the 1999 remake of the art heist drama The Thomas Crown Affair starring Pierce Brosnan and Rene Russo.
On television Gazzara starred from 1965 to 1968 on the NBC prime-time drama Run for Your Life. He played wealthy, successful lawyer Paul Bryan, who quits his practice after learning he has a terminal illness and embarks on a globetrotting quest for adventure before he dies.
The role earned him two Emmy nominations as best actor in a lead dramatic role. He picked up a third Emmy nomination for his 1985 role in the made-for-TV movie An Early Frost, and won an Emmy for his supporting work in the 2002 HBO television film Hysterical Blindness.
He earned Tony nominations for his appearances in three Broadway productions of the 1970s, a revival of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and his dual roles in a double bill of the plays Hughie and Duet.
Gazzara was married three times, with his first two ending in divorce. He is survived by his third wife, Elke, and daughter, Elizabeth.
Working Title still expected to deliver third instalment in series despite concerns over the script
The third instalment in the Bridget Jones series, Bridget Jones's Baby, has run into script problems resulting in a delay to the start of production, according to reports.
Hugh Grant, due to reprise his role as lothario Daniel Cleaver, has apparently criticised Helen Fielding and David Nicholls' script, resulting in producers placing the project on hiatus.
One source even goes so far as to claim the project is "basically dead". However, a statement released this morning by Working Title says it is "still working on the script hence the delay to the start of production, but the film is going ahead as planned".
The film's original director Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) left the project last year owing to creative differences, with Full Monty director Peter Cattaneo taking over. The third instalment in the series concerns a fortysomething Bridget planning to have a baby.
Whether the delay will result in scheduling issues for the in-demand Colin Firth is unclear, but he is expected to star alongside Renée Zellweger and Grant.
The sale will begin with the three most significant works going under the hammer: Autoportrait by Edgar Degas, expected to fetch £350,000 to £450,000; Pissarro's Pommiers d'Eragny (£900,000 to £1.2m); and Van Gogh's Vue de l'Asile de la Chapelle de Saint-Rémy, whose estimate is £5m to £7m.
"It's the part of her life that nobody knew," said Giovanna Bertazzoni, head of impressionist and modern art at Christie's. "She had as an extraordinary a way of collecting pictures as much as she did jewellery. Take the Degas: one would think she'd go for a race course or ballet scene, but she bought a very pensive early portrait painted. It's a very refined and academic choice – she was a proper collector, not just a buyer."
An appreciation of art ran in Taylor's family: her father, Francis, and great-uncle Howard Young were dealers. Born in London, Francis moved to Hollywood during the second world war and set set up his own gallery in the Beverley Hills Hotel, where it attracted film star clients including Hedda Hopper and Greta Garbo.
Francis Taylor exclusively represented the Welsh painter Augustus John in America, a relationship that had developed when the Taylor family moved into John's former house in Hampstead, where Elizabeth was born in 1932. The Christie's sale includes 21 works by John, including Portrait of Poppet in Black Hat, which Elizabeth inherited from her father and, says Bertazzoni, "cherished all her life".
Unlike jewellery, which she continued to buy up to her death last March, Taylor's art collecting phase ran from the late 50s to the early 70s. Though her taste for impressionist artists was the fashionable choice of the era, Bertazzoni says it was nevertheless distinctive.
"In the 60s and 70s one needed to have a beautiful Van Gogh – it was paramount in a collection. She chose one which is beautiful and very jolly, but it's a got an intense tragic element. It's a view of the asylum where Van Gogh confined himself before killing himself six months later. It's the first time he was allowed out in the fields after six months in a cell, so he's drunk with joy and colour and happiness. There is also an element of tragic humanity which she empathised with."
Taylor's father bought the Van Gogh on her behalf at an auction in 1963, paying £92,000. Her taste for art was also indulged by her third husband, the film producer Mike Todd. His son claimed in 1968 that the producer once visited Taylor in hospital, bringing with him a Monet, a Franz Hals and a Van Gogh to decorate the walls of her ward. He accidentally punched a hole in the Van Gogh with a pencil, but Young was able to mend it.
Taylor continued collecting art during her marriages to Richard Burton, once joking that their home in Bel Air was "such a cozy, sweet place with bits and pieces around—bits and pieces of Renoir—and, you know, things that make it homey."
The pair also kept a bust of Churchill by Jacob Epstein on their yacht, The Kalizma.
"She lived with these paintings – they were in her living room," said Bertazzoni. "Everything was very homogenous – the house was furnished in the same style."
Bertazzoni said she expected bidders from all over the world for Taylor's art collection, especially Russian oligarchs: "we see most of them auctions in London in February."
But Bertazzoni added that she hoped the paintings wouldn't disappear from public view. "I'm always hopeful we'll be able to continue seeing [the work] in a museum. There are some fanatstic museums that are being created in the Middle East at the moment, in Abu Dhabi, so they might be competing as well and we'll all go to see them in the Middle East at some point."
Other famous art collectors
Yves Saint Laurent
The late fashion designer's art collection was amassed over 50 years and auctioned in 2009. Described as "the art sale of the century", the 733 lots raised £307m, including work by Matisse, Picasso and Mondrian.
Almost 25 years after he played the Vicomte de Valmont in Stephen Frears's film, Malkovich directs a French-language version of Christopher Hampton's play in Paris
In 1988, John Malkovich donned a periwig to play the predatory Vicomte de Valmont in Stephen Frears's film Dangerous Liaisons. Almost 25 years later, the actor has stepped into the director's shoes with a French language version of the original play in Paris.
Malkovich's production of Christopher Hampton's Les Liaisons Dangereuses – itself an adaptation of a novel by Choderlos de Laclos – retains traces of period costume, but gives the play several modern twists, with the characters' letter-writing replaced by texts and tweets. "We're doing a kind of mix between the 18th century and now," Malkovich told Agence France-Presse.
Rehearsals began in November, before the production opened at the Théàtre de l'Atelier in the Latin Quarter of the French capital in January, where it is booking until 30 June. Malkovich auditioned over 300 student actors for the production, seeking a cast as young as the characters, who are all in their late teens to mid-20s. Yannik Landrein plays Valmont.
Malkovich was 34 when he played Valmont, starring opposite Glenn Close and Michelle Pfeiffer in Frears's film , which won three Academy Awards. He recently told French reporters that he hadn't watched the film for more than 20 years.
Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which was first produced in Stratford by the RSC in 1985 before transferring to the West End and Broadway, is Malkovich's third directorial outing in France. In 2008, he was awarded a Molière award for his production of Zach Helm's Good Canary, having previously transferred his Steppenwolf production of Terry Johnson's Hysteria to Paris in 2002.
Malkovich told reporters that he had wanted to direct Hampton's play since he first read it in the 1980s.
Speaking to the Rich Stevens Radio Show on Ft Lauderdale, Florida station 850 WFTL, Gingrich admitted there might be one or two minor problems – "he's thinner, he's better looking, he's younger" – but that would be no artistic obstacle. "If you're going to go for it, you gotta relax and let your imagination soar."
In fact, Gingrich, 68, is two decades older than the 48-year-old Pitt, and the two appear to have almost nothing in common. Pennsylvania-born Gingrich has been a career politician since running for Congress in 1974 as a Republican; Pitt, born in Oklahoma but raised in Missouri, has regularly topped world's sexiest man polls and is a noted Hollywood liberal.
He told the Guardian: "You've got these awards and there's going to be one winner and four losers, but the four losers made great films. A subtle point of Moneyball is that we're a string of successes and failures. Odds are I won't have another year like this one for a while."
The film, which shows Margaret Thatcher during the Falklands war, goes down badly on its release in Buenos Aires
Meryl Streep may have been nominated for an Oscar for her portrayal of Margaret Thatcher in The Iron Lady, but Argentinian critics panned the film on its premiere in Buenos Aires on Thursday.
The film opened in Argentinian theatres amid anger over the Falkland Islands. In the film, Thatcher is shown ordering the sinking of the Argentinian warship Belgrano, which killed 323 sailors and remains controversial because the ship was considered to be outside the war zone.
She also dismisses the entreaties of the US ambassador to settle the dispute peacefully, suggesting that as a woman she had to "go to war every day" to maintain her hold on power.
Reducing the war to a question of feminism was "absurd, to say the least," the daily Clarin wrote in Thursday's review.
Others praised Streep's acting, but panned the script as mediocre. "A character so controversial for her own citizens, the citizens of the world and especially for Argentinians, Thatcher deserves a better movie," huffed La Nación.
Buenos Aires and London have escalated a war of words ahead of the 30th anniversary of Argentina's ill-fated invasion of the islands on 2 April 1982. More than 900 soldiers and sailors were killed in the conflict.
Britain has sent its most advanced warship, the HMS Dauntless, to the islands. Argentina's vice-president, Amado Boudou, said on Thursday that Britain had falsely accused his country of threatening another invasion in order to distract Britons from their economic worries.
Academy to switch to electronic ballots in 2013 – but move from paper voting does not eliminate prospect of foul play
Computer security experts have warned that the 2013 Oscars ballot may be vulnerable to a variety of cyber attacks that could falsify the outcome but remain undetected, if the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences follows through on its decision to switch to internet voting for its members.
The Academy announced last week that it would be ditching its current vote-by-mail system and allowing its members to fill out electronic ballots from their home or office computers to make their choices for best picture and the other big Hollywood prizes, starting in 2013.
It announced a partnership with Everyone Counts, a California-based company which has developed software for internet elections from Australia to Florida, and which boasted it would incorporate "multiple layers of security" and "military-grade encryption techniques" to maintain its reputation for scrupulous honesty in respecting its members' voting preferences.
The ballot change will be a culture shock for an Academy voting community that tends to be older and more conservative: indeed, concerns are already surfacing as to whether all of the Academy voters even have email addresses.
But Everyone Counts' security claims have been met with deep scepticism by a computer scientist community which has grappled for years with the problem of making online elections fully verifiable while maintaining ballot secrecy – in other words, being rigorous about auditing the voting process, but still making sure nobody knows who voted for what. So far, nobody has demonstrated that such a thing is possible.
"Everybody would like there to be secure internet voting, but some very smart people have looked at the problem and can't figure out how to do it," said David Dill, a professor of computer science at Stanford University and founder of the election transparency group Verified Voting. "The problem arises as soon as you decouple the voter from the recorded vote. If someone casts a ballot for best actor A and the vote is recorded for best actor B, the voter has no way of knowing the ballot has been altered, and the auditor won't be able to see it either."
Dill and many other leading computer scientists have listed multiple potential vulnerabilities to internet systems making vote-tampering possible, including denial-of-service attacks, malware, and penetration of the server's security wall. He reacted with particular alarm to the notion that the Academy's more than 5,000 voters would cast their ballots from their own computers.
"The hardest problem is when you have malicious software on the machine where the vote is cast," he said. "If that's the user's home PC, that's a huge problem, because lots of people have undetected viruses on their machine. A lot of people are under the control of hackers in eastern Europe, or wherever, and don't even know it."
Three years ago – in the wake of a decision by the Democratic party to let overseas voters participate in its presidential primary via internet – Dill issued a formal statement outlining the problems with internet voting, and persuaded 30 of America's top computer scientists to sign it.
Separately, a group of largely European computer and election experts signed a very similar statement known as the Dagstuhl Accord, which welcomed further research on internet voting but concluded that "no solution … has yet been proposed that provides safeguards adequate against various known threats".
Peter Ryan, a British professor of Applied Security at the University of Luxembourg who helped convene the Dagstuhl meeting in western Germany and has tried for years to design a safe computer voting system, said he was unimpressed by what he had seen of the Everyone Counts software. "It looks like what they are offering is little more than some fancy crypto on certain links," he said. "This of course achieves very little … I'm sure that someone with some expertise and motivation could break it."
Such deep – and relatively well publicised – reservations by the world's computer experts seemed to come as a surprise to the Academy itself. "I'm not personally aware of that particular dialogue," the Academy's chief operating officer, Ric Robertson, said when told of the near-total unanimity of computer experts.
Robertson said he and his colleagues had relied principally on the expertise of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, the accountancy firm which for many years has taken responsibility for Oscars ballot management and security. During an 18-month search for the right partner on computer voting, both the Academy and PwC had also sought "outside help", Robertson added. He would not elaborate.
The Academy is certainly not the first organisation to find internet voting appealing, nor is it taking the lead on the issue. Several US states have now adopted i-voting schemes to help military personnel and other US citizens stationed overseas get their votes in on time – for example, in this week's Republican primary in Florida.
Everyone Counts, and companies like it, have built their reputation by exuding greater professional competence and openness than the computer companies which introduced electronic touchscreen voting terminals to the US public in the wake of the highly contested 2000 presidential election. Many of those companies were later excoriated for producing lousy software under secretive conditions and failing to provide any meaningful auditing mechanism.
Lori Steele, the chief executive of Everyone Counts, argued passionately that the systems her company uses have, by contrast, passed muster with some of the toughest security clients in the world, including government defence and intelligence agencies. "This software is being used for the most mission-critical things in the world," she said. "To pretend it's not good enough for voting does a disservice to the voters … Not using the technology disenfranchises voters and hurts their human rights."
When pushed, however, Steele did not take issue with the computer scientists about the special problems relating to the secret ballot. Rather, she made the argument that no system is perfect and that computers are inherently more reliable than paper ballots. "Paper is more easily forged and hacked than any computer system," she said.
Many computer experts say that is wishful thinking. In 2004, the US Department of Defense canceled a pilot internet voting programme for overseas members of the military because of concerns about security. In 2006, the Netherlands abandoned plans to adopt internet voting in its elections because of problems that arose during testing.
In the UK, the local council in Swindon, Wiltshire, hired Everyone Counts in 2007 to conduct one of a series of pilot elections involving internet voting, among other new methods. According to a report conducted for the Electoral Commission, a deliberate attempt by security experts to penetrate the system on the eve of the vote exposed a number of serious flaws. Some were fixed at the last minute, causing a long delay in voting on election day, while others were deemed too risky to try to address in a hurry.
More serious problems still were exposed when overseas voters were invited to vote by internet in a local election in Washington, DC, in October 2010. A team led by Alex Halderman, a computer scientist at the University of Michigan, took control of the server software (not developed by Everyone Counts) and was able to change votes and find out who had voted for whom. The team even observed other hackers from Iran and China interfering with the election and took steps to thwart them.
Everyone Counts boasts on its website that it is willing to share its computer code with independent auditors and reviewers, but in practice that has proved difficult to achieve. David Dill of Verified Voting obtained a version of the code about 18 months ago but was so deterred by the legal limitations on what he could say that he never published his findings. Steele said separately that he was not authorised to discuss them with anybody except her company.
"Not letting me talk about it is not going to prove much to anybody else," Dill said. "The goal of complete openness ought to be to prove the security of their system, and to do that they need to do more than they have done … Without giving away any trade secrets, I think I can say that I was not persuaded it was secure at the level we need."
The Oscars might not hold the same significance as, say, a presidential primary or a governor's race, but the Academy still prides itself on a long tradition of absolute ballot security. Ric Robertson said his intention in introducing internet voting was certainly not to change that tradition. "The prime directive from our leadership was, we can't afford to have the vote leaked or the tabulation compromised in any way," he said.
The Academy, PwC and Everyone Counts intend to spend much of the next year conducting tests to try to fulfil that directive. Steele said the Oscars voting would remain entirely secret, but Robertson indicated that PwC might, in a pinch, reserve the right to check who voted for whom. (He then backtracked, saying he deferred to Steele's superior knowledge.)
Dill said his concern about the arrangement went well beyond the integrity of the Academy Awards themselves. Rather, he worried about the publicity implications of an awards ceremony broadcast to tens of millions of people across America and around the world.
"I don't want this to set a precedent and give a PR push to internet voting generally," he said. "I don't want the message to be: they used it for the Academy Awards, so it's OK to use it to vote for the president."
