Jolie Delivers Again in Action Flicks as CIA Agent-Turned-Manchurian Assassin
Let’s face it, from Tomb Raider (2001) to Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005) to Wanted (2008), Angelina Jolie has always 
delivered in her high-octane action adventures, and Salt is no exception. This espionage thriller about a Russian mole strategically planted in the U.S. couldn’t be more timely, given the recent arrest of Anna Chapman, the flamboyant NYC realtor deported after confessing to being a Soviet spy.
Art imitates life in this political potboiler revolving around the exploits of Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie), an orphan programmed to kill by the KGB during her childhood. After the Cold War, she emigrated from Moscow to America where she successfully infiltrated the CIA without arousing any suspicions.
At the point of departure, we learn courtesy of flashback that Evelyn is so tough that she never cracked while being water-boarded and beaten by interrogators who disbelieved her claims that she was in North Korea on business. She was subsequently freed only after her fiancé, Michael (August Diehl), pressured the CIA into making a prisoner exchange.
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Halle Berry
Halle Berry is headed toward the animated town of Springfield, USA.
The Oscar winner is set to make a guest-appearance on “The Simpsons” when it returns for its 22nd season in September, the show’s executive producer Al Jean revealed to Entertainment Weekly.
Berry will appear as herself in an episode where Homer and Bart win an Academy Award of their own.
Other upcoming Simpsons guest stars include Paul Rudd, “Flight Of The Conchords” duo Jermaine Clement and Bret McKenzie, “Mad Men” star Jon Hamm and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Michael Ealy
Michael Ealy has reportedly signed on to join Julianna Margulies in CBS’ “The Good Wife.”
Ealy will play Derrick Bond, the head of the D.C. firm that’s merging with Will and Diane’s struggling practice.
According to Entertainment Weekly’s Michael Ausiello, Derrick’s character is described as a “casual, soft-spoken attorney whose egalitarian beliefs seem at odds with Will and Diane’s self-serving practices. However, under his pleasant and unassuming exterior, he has a steel-trap mind and can outmaneuver his most cunning adversaries and/or associates. Deeply impressed with Alicia’s quiet competence, he becomes her newest mentor.”
Ealy will star in at least 10 episodes of “The Good Wife’s” upcoming second season.
Mediocre Multi-Layered Mindbender Not Nolan’s Best
I can count on one hand the number of directors who’ve had four of their films land on my annual Top Ten List. In the case of Christopher Nolan, there’s Memento (2000), Insomnia (2002), Batman Begins (2005) as well as The Dark Night (2008), which was my #1 pick a couple years ago. So, naturally, I eagerly-anticipated the release of his latest offering, a multi-layered sci-fi thriller about mind control starring Leonardo Di Caprio.
Unfortunately, Inception fails to measure up to this critic’s high expectations, although it is an amusing enough diversion to remain recommended. That being said, the film’s flaws are considerable, starting with its unwarranted length of 148 minutes. For, with the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, it’s easy to see how about an hour’s worth of its premise-establishing celluloid is actually inconsequential filler that should have hit the cutting room floor.
The second problem is the amount of mental gymnastics necessary to follow a hopelessly-convoluted plot desperate to be way too clever for its own good. Sorry, I happen to resent it when a summer blockbuster feels more like an SAT test than relaxing escapist entertainment.
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The Presumption of Guilt:
The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
and Race, Class and Crime in America
by Charles Ogletree
Palgrave Macmillan
Hardcover, $25.00
256 pages
ISBN: 978-0-230-10326-9
“This book is about more than the arrest of one man. It is abut how we need to examine our criminal justice system to ensure that fairness, not power, is the currency of our system. When we move from a presumption of innocence to a presumption of guilt, we diminish our sense of 
community and undermine our democratic ideals.
I examine the race and class dimensions of the Gates arrest by looking at how other successful, prosperous and noteworthy African-American men have grappled with a wide range of encounters not only with the police but with countless everyday citizens and have found themselves being judged by the color of their skin rather than the content of their character… Ultimately, if we are to move forward as a nation, we must… develop a justice system that is truly committed to the presumption of innocence.”
– Excerpted from the Introduction (pg. 13)
When Dr. Henry Louis Gates was arrested for breaking into his own home last summer, black and white America’s diametrically-opposed response to the alleged misunderstanding was reminiscent of the two groups’ similarly contradictory reactions to the Rodney King beating, the Amadou Diallo shooting and the OJ verdict. But what made the Gates case more intriguing was the fact that here was a revered Harvard Professor who relies on a cane being carted off in handcuffs like a common criminal, and even after the cops knew full well that they had made a mistake.
Everybody remembers how President Obama then invited both Gates and the arresting officer to the White House to bury the hatchet over drinks in a Rose Garden photo-op subsequently dubbed Beer-Gate, but the nagging question left unanswered was whether what had transpired back in Cambridge was really an isolated incident unlikely to reoccur or merely a reflection of a longstanding, racist police pattern of profiling African-American males all across the country.
Shedding considerable light on the issue is Harvard law professor Charles Ogletree in The Presumption of Guilt: The Arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Granted, as Dr. Gates’ attorney of record, Ogletree definitely had a horse in the race, so one might question his impartiality when he makes mincemeat here of Sgt. Crowley’s rationale for jailing his client.
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