By Alex Dobuzinskis

LOS ANGELES |
Fri Mar 23, 2012 10:03am EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Stan Lee is barging into the pages of his own comic book as a character based on himself who rubs elbows with superheroes – call it a cameo for the reality TV age.

His new series “Stan Lee’s Mighty 7″, which hit stores this week, is inspired by reality television and throws into the mix real-life characters – like Lee himself, the creator of such Marvel Comics icons as Spider-Man and The X-Men.

Those creations have made the 89-year-old Lee a legend in the comic industry, but since leaving Marvel and starting his own company POW! Entertainment in 2001 his latest projects have met with more limited success. That does not phase Lee.

“Somehow I think the only thing that could tarnish my legacy would be … in fact I can’t think of anything that could tarnish it, because those things have already been done, and nobody can take them back,” Lee told Reuters in a phone interview.

“Everything I’m doing I’m trying to do in the same way, because when I did Spider-Man and Iron Man and all the others, I was trying to do something different,” he said. “There had never been a teenaged superhero like Spider-Man.”

The real-life, Los Angeles-based Lee describes his creative process in a note inside the pages of “Mighty 7.” He writes, “Reality TV is a big deal today, so why not do a reality comic book? (See why I get the big bucks?)”

“Mighty 7″ features superheroes with names such as Strongarm, Laser Lord, High Rise and others who have powers ranging from super strength to shrinking ability.

The superheroes are on a ship hurtling through space that lands on Earth in a desert just steps from the character representing Lee himself. In the following issues, Lee’s character will guide the superheroes.

Nobody should expect Lee’s character to display a superpower, other than his prolific ability to post to Twitter, to which his fans can attest. In fact, in the comic Lee is tweeting or texting a message to his fans when the spaceship hurtles behind him.

“It wouldn’t be a ‘reality’ comic book if I gave myself a super power, because I don’t have one,” Lee said.

“So it would just be fiction again. See this story is very true,” he joked. “Please say I say these things with a laugh or people will think I’m crazy!”

The comic series, which is written by television veterans Tony Blake and Paul Jackson, results from a partnership between POW!, Archie Comics and the company A Squared Elxsi.

Meanwhile, Lee said he is forging ahead with another POW! project called “Stan Lee’s World of Heroes” for which he and his team are creating online videos for YouTube.

“POW! has become the greatest toy I ever played with,” he said.

(Reporting By Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Jill Serjeant)

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NEW YORK |
Fri Mar 23, 2012 2:50am EDT

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Actor-director Mel Gibson is putting his sprawling hilltop compound in Costa Rica up for sale, with a $29.75 million asking price, .

The Oscar-winning “Braveheart” director, who has suffered a series of public embarrassments in recent years after a decades-long reign as a top box office star, is selling the 500-acre compound to downsize his real estate portfolio following his divorce.

Christie’s International Real Estate, the luxury real estate firm, was set to announce the offering on Friday.

Gibson’s Pacific coast compound, on Playa Barrigona on Costa Rica’s Nicoya Peninsula just south of the Nicaragua border, boasts three hilltop homes, the largest of which has seven bedrooms, with soaring ocean and jungle views.

Each villa on the former cattle ranch is outfitted with native Costa Rican woods and Italian and Spanish tiles and features multiple verandahs and a private pool.

“The property is expansive, meticulously maintained, and ultimately private,” said Rick Moeser, Christie’s real estate senior vice president for the Southeast, Caribbean, Central and South America.

“With its multiple homes and outbuildings, this is the ideal family retreat,” Moeser added of the pristine property that includes an expansive beach.

Gibson, 56, has seven children from his long marriage which ended in divorce in 2009 after his drunk driving arrest in Malibu. He also has one child with Russian pianist Oksana Grigorieva, with whom he had an acrimonious breakup.

The star and his large extended family had used the estate frequently before the troubles in his personal life. He reportedly retreated to the holiday home during his legal troubles with Grigorieva. Gibson was also photographed with her there in 2009, shortly before his wife filed for divorce.

Over the years the actor has owned lavish properties in Malibu, Australia, Montana, Connecticut, and even a private island in Fiji.

Since his legal troubles and a well-publicized anti-Semitic remarks made during his drunk driving arrest, Gibson’s acting roles have diminished. He had a starring role in the Jodie Foster film “The Beaver” last year, and his next project is “Get the Gringo,” which he also co-wrote and is due out later this year.

(Reporting by Chris Michaud; editing by Patricia Reaney)

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By Pascal Fletcher

Thu Mar 22, 2012 11:27am EDT

(Reuters) – Malian President Amadou Toumani Toure, whom renegade army officers said they toppled in an overnight coup, had gained the nickname of “Soldier of Democracy” in his West African state and was preparing to cede power after elections later this month.

But he is no stranger to coups or mutinies.

Toure, 63, a former paratrooper popularly known by his initials “ATT”, had himself seized power through arms in 1991, overthrowing military ruler Moussa Traore after the latter’s security forces killed more than 100 pro-democracy demonstrators.

But he quickly earned domestic and international acclaim by organizing polls the following year and a democratic handover to an elected civilian president in the Sahelian country, Africa’s third largest gold miner and a major regional cotton grower.

Swapping his paratrooper’s red beret and fatigues for flowing civilian robes and a Muslim bonnet, he returned to Mali’s presidency through the ballot box in 2002 and was re-elected for his second and final five-year term in 2007.

Already hailed as a respected African statesman and peacemaker following his 1992 democratic handover, he was called upon in 1997 to broker a reconciliation between mutinous and loyalist troops in the Central African Republic.

But these conciliatory skills appear to have failed him with the young soldiers of his own army who announced in a televised statement early on Thursday that they were “putting an end to the incompetent regime of Amadou Toumani Toure”.

Government and military sources said Toure had left the presidential palace before the mutineers entered it and a defense ministry source said he was in a safe place, but his whereabouts were unknown.

Disgruntled members of his army had for weeks complained to Toure’s government that they did not have adequate weapons to fight a northern rebellion by Tuareg-led rebels whose ranks were swelled by well-armed, combat-hardened veterans who had fought for slain Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.

Toure last month faced demonstrators in the streets of Bamako protesting against what they said was the government’s ineffective response to the advancing rebellion.

The president, true to his conciliatory spirit and nationalist vision, had appealed to Malians to avoid falling into ethnic strife, telling inhabitants of the south not to carry out reprisal attacks against Tuaregs living there.

He had also insisted that Mali would hold its presidential election as scheduled in April, despite the Tuareg rebellion in the north. “We are already used to holding elections during war, and during Tuareg rebellions,” he said.

His government had firmly rejected the rebels’ goal of outright independence for three northern regions.

BULWARK AGAINST RADICALS

Western governments long wanted Toure to act as a bulwark against the infiltration southwards of al Qaeda’s North African franchise, but he failed to stop militants finding refuge in the desert wastes and hills of Mali’s lawless remote north.

The Malian army has received counter-terrorism training from the U.S. armed forces. On Monday, West Africa’s top regional decision-making body ECOWAS urged member states to back Mali with military equipment to fight the northern Tuareg-led rebels.

Unlike several other long-ruling African leaders over the last decade who have defied pro-democracy critics to secure amendments to their national constitutions to extend their terms in office, Toure repeatedly said he would not do this.

With his country held up as an example of democratic transition in an unruly West African region with a history of coups and military mutinies, Toure knew how to woo western governments and aid organizations.

“My ambition is to write a new page in our country’s history … to make our country a model of good governance in a peaceful climate, a Mali able to give as much as it receives,” he said in a newspaper interview in 2002.

Apart from often acting as a mediator and peacekeeper on the troubled continent, he also worked on humanitarian projects with international figures like former U.S. President Jimmy Carter.

His best known campaign was to wipe out Guinea worm, a tropical parasite that causes debilitating infections.

During his rule, he also declared housing, roads, and modernizing the country’s agriculture as his priorities.

Although his dry, largely desert country remained heavily dependent on international aid, Toure said that aid was not enough and that Mali could not depend on donor cash for ever.

But he never forgot his military roots. He had received military training in the Soviet Union and France.

“Above all I am a soldier: I signed a contract to give my own life to the army, and therefore to Mali,” he said in 2002.

And in turbulent West Africa, a soldier’s fate can often mean being toppled by your own troops.

(Reporting By Pascal Fletcher; Editing by Mark John)

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Wed Mar 21, 2012 9:21pm EDT

(Reuters) – Actor Robert De Niro on Wednesday apologized for joking at a Democratic fundraiser with Michelle Obama about the possibility of having a “white first lady” at the White House after November’s presidential elections.

The Oscar-winning star of “The Godfather: Part II” and “Raging Bull” said he had intended no offense with the remark about the wives of Republican presidential contenders Newt Gingrich, Rick Santorum and Mitt Romney.

“My remarks, although spoken with satirical jest, were not meant to offend or embarrass anyone — especially the first lady,” De Niro said in a statement.

De Niro found himself in hot water after Monday’s fundraiser in New York when he introduced Michelle Obama as the main speaker.

“Callista Gingrich, Karen Santorum, Ann Romney. Now do you really think our country is ready for a white first lady?” De Niro said. “Too soon, right?”

Newt Gingrich called the remarks inexcusable and divisive. Michelle Obama’s office said the joke was “inappropriate.”

(Reporting By Jill Serjeant; Editing by Piya Sinha-Roy)

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By Zorianna Kit

LOS ANGELES |
Wed Mar 21, 2012 8:14am EDT

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – After last starring on television in the short-lived series “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip,” Amanda Peet (“The Whole Nine Yards,” “Syriana”) returns to television once again in the new comedy “Bent,” which premieres Wednesday night on NBC.

The 40-year-old actress plays a newly divorced, high-strung lawyer and single mom looking for a fresh start by renovating a new home. She hires a reckless, womanizing, recovering addicted gambler as her contractor, and finds herself attracted to his charming ways even though he is everything she cannot stand.

Peet, who is married to Hollywood screenwriter David Benioff, with whom she has two daughters, Frances, 5 and Molly, 2, sat down with Reuters to talk about her new show, being a mother and how married life has changed her.

Q: What made you return to television?

A: “I like the idea that she’s a single mom trying to keep it all together. I think most working moms have this sinking feeling that they’re failing, so I related to that. And I like the idea of an adult dating show that’s sexy and not just for gags – that kind of romantic suspense where you’re like, ‘Are they going to have sex or not?’ I love that she despises the fact that she’s attracted to (her womanizing contractor).”

Q: Is the show meant to be realistic or a fantasy?

A: “I’m not sure yet, actually. We definitely want to make people laugh. We have J.B. Smoove and Jeffrey Tambor so we want everyone to escape and laugh. But hopefully it’s more on the realistic side.”

Q: Later this year, you will star with Ben Affleck and Jessica Chastain in a new Terrence Malick movie. How do you figure in to the plot?

A: “I don’t know what I’m allowed to say, but I’m a love interest of Ben’s. We shot it in Ohio. I was breastfeeding at the time, so my memory of it is very, very foggy. I didn’t have the normal amount of brain cells.”

Q: Your husband is the executive producer of the HBO hit series ‘Game of Thrones’ which shoots in Europe. How do you guys make it work?

A: “Everyone packs up and goes. For the last three summers we lived over there. In season one I came back with the girls and did a play in New York. This past year I shot ‘Bent,’ so David commuted from Belfast to L.A. He’d make little videos for (daughter Frances) so at breakfast she’d see David on a glacier in Iceland and all the actors were in costume saying ‘Good morning Frankie!’”

Q: Would you and David ever work together?

A: “I really hope so! I’ve only been sleeping with him for seven years now! What am I gonna get out of this? (laughs)”

Q: Do you have rules about working or not working together?

A: “We don’t have rules about much of anything. We don’t have rules about how long we’re going to be apart or about working together. We tried to have a rule about getting off the computer at a certain time each night. It didn’t work.”

Q: How has motherhood changed you?

A: “I’m fatter, I’m saggier. And I’m still a jealous, ambitious person. (laughs) I think my perspective on things was changed more by being with David than having children, in terms of work. I used to do projects thinking it would be a launching pad to something, but when I met David, he was like, ‘Stop doing that, do it only if you want to do it.’”

Q: What do you consider your big break?

A: “‘The Whole Nine Yards,’ hands down. It was a great role – a contract killer who was obsessed with being an expert contract killer. The movie did really well and at the time, I didn’t realize how special and rare it was. So rare that it’s never happened again! (laughs) If that ever happened now, I would be drinking champagne and doing cartwheels. At the time, I just didn’t even know.”

Q: Innocence can be a good thing.

A: “Oh, I was very innocent and took the role very seriously. Matthew Perry and Bruce Willis would be going out and having fun in Montreal. I was like, ‘I need to figure out what my objective is in this scene tomorrow!’”

Q: Television is such a precarious and fickle business. Will you be disappointed if the show doesn’t get renewed?

A: “Yeah, but I’ve been doing this for a long time. I feel like I’ve been around the revolving door and spit out the other side and come back around again. I’m used to this feeling and I’m used to being in this position. I have my health, my children’s health and my husband’s health. The older I get, the more I feel if I have (those three things) then we’re doing really well.”

(Reporting By Zorianna Kit; Editing by Bob Tourtellotte)

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