Not to be outdone by noted diplomat and excellent-jacket-haver Dennis Rodman, Steven Seagal is apparently getting into the “Hey look, that guy who played basketball and/or made action movies 15 years ago is meeting with an important foreign leader because this is how the world works now, I guess” game. Pictured above, please find the star of Under Siege, Kimono Nights, Dragon Squad, and Kill Switch (one of those is fake, btw) with Russian president Vladimir Putin. Why is the star of Attack Force, Pistol Whipped, Revenge, Inc., and Death Patrol (two are fake this time) with Russian president Vladimir Putin, you ask?

Putin attended the opening of a new Russian martial arts school and, naturally, invited the 60-year-old star — who is a 7th-degree black belt in Aikido — along for companionship. [TMZ]

Well, goddammit. That’s actually kind of a legit reason. I was hoping it was something like “Steven Seagal Vows to Investigate Meteor Landing and Bring Those Responsible to Justice” or “Putin to Seagal: ‘Teach My Army How to Judo Chop.’” This … this publicity appearance … it simply will not do. If we’re sending C-and D-list celebrities to meet with foreign dignitaries, I demand more shenanigans. These people are our greatest natural resource at this point. We shouldn’t be wasting them like this.

In conclusion, here is Vladimir Putin riding a horse with no shirt on. Putin doesn’t have a shirt on, I mean, not the horse. Although the horse isn’t wearing a shirt either, technically. Something to think about, I guess.

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Django Unchained opened in 54 international locations over the weekend, earning the most in Germany, followed by France. It outdid Inglourious Basterds‘ opening by 30 percent, “despite snowy conditions throughout most of Europe this weekend,” according to Variety. It did well everywhere, but in Russia, Django played second fiddle to an unlikely competitor: Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters. …Yeah, I don’t know either, dude.

“Django” lost to Paramount’s early bow of “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters,” grossing $7.3 million, 98% from 3D.

Man, Russians are f*cking weird. Or at least, they must really be impressed with 3D over there. Or maybe they just wanted to lord it over us that they finally got something before we did, in a place where dudes in mullets still go to clubs to rock out to Duran Duran songs.

I haven’t seen Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters yet (it opens Friday and my press screening is Thursday night, which should tell you something), but it’s generally a bad sign when your movie is called “Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters” and the first line of the trailer is “my name is Gretel and this is my brother Hansel.” As if there’s someone sitting on their couch going “Wait, Hansel and Gretel Witch Hunters is about Hansel and Gretel?! WELL THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING!”

I see no one learned from John Carter or Jack Reacher marketing. If there’s one thing Hollywood’s good at, it’s not learning lessons.

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You may remember, Gerard Depardieu has been publicly feuding with the French government over their recently-introduced 75 percent tax on millionaires. As the P Diddy of France, with much to lose from the many millions stored in mucousy pouches in his great torso, Depardieu protested the tax by moving across the border to Belgium, whereupon the French government retaliated by threatening to revoke his passport. Smelling a publicity opportunity, Russia’s shirtless action-man president Vladimir Putin publicly offered Gerard Depardieu a passport from Russia, where Gerard Depardieu had been filming a movie about Rasputin. Depardieu accepted, leading to the incredible picture you see above and the magnificent news lede below:

MOSCOW — The day after receiving his new Russian passport from President Vladimir Putin, French actor Gerard Depardieu flew Sunday to the provincial town of Saransk, where he was greeted as a local hero and offered an apartment for free.

As you can see, the man fits right in.

Putin granted his request last week and then welcomed the actor late Saturday to his residence [Putin's residence, that is. -Ed] in Sochi, the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics. Russian television showed the two men embracing and then chatting over supper, discussing a soon-to-be-released film in which Depardieu plays Russian monk Grigory Rasputin.

Depardieu flew Sunday to Saransk, a town about 300 miles east of Moscow, where he was met at a snow-covered airport by the governor and a group of women in traditional costume singing folk songs. He flashed his new passport to the crowd before setting out on a tour of the town.

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Every movie has to be adapted a bit when you translate it for a new audience in a foreign country, and The Iron Lady is no different. The Meryl Streep-Best-Actress-Oscar-winning film recently spawned a pirated version in Russia, in which Thatcher is portrayed as a Hitler-admiring leader who wants to destroy the working class and is voiced by a man. Eh, sounds about right. I consider the people who forced me to see it worse than Mengele.

Speaking to a crowd of supporters, Margaret Thatcher, as played by Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady, explains what she would do as prime minister: “Crush the working class, crush the scum, the yobs.”

FYI, I believe that’s ‘yob’ as in British for young thug, not Mexican for job.

The pirated Russian translation of the film, voiced over in a monotone by one man, depicts Thatcher as a bloodthirsty, Hitler-admiring leader, whose fondest desire is to destroy the working class. While some of her critics might say this is an accurate representation of her plans, even her fiercest enemy would concede the Russian version takes it too far.
The translation, no matter how over the top, has fooled at least one film critic on the Russian newspaper Kommersant, who quoted parts of the pirated version in a generally positive review.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. “I loved the part where she finally stood up to the Learned Elders of Zion.”

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The other day Vince and I were making S’mores and chatting about life, when he pointed out that 2011 was the 20th anniversary of the end of the Cold War, that era in world history when everyone lived in pants-crapping fear that the U.S. and Russia were going to destroy us all. More importantly than global genocide and the threat of a nuclear holocaust, the Cold War had an undeniable impact on the movie industry, most notably in creating one of the easiest and most overused plot devices of the last 50 years.

Obviously, the Cold War gave us classics like Dr. Strangelove, The Manchurian Candidate, and the entire James Bond franchise. It also gave us The Hunt for Red October and Tom Clancy’s career, as well as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and wherever else Shia LeBeouf and his grandfather Harrison Ford take us. It gave us The Manhattan Project, The Good Shepherd, Thirteen Days, Top Gun, Good Night, and Good Luck, and even Salt, which was a modern reminder of just how hilariously off-the-wall – and flat out terrible – some Cold War films were.

In fact, those are the films that I want to celebrate – the movies that both embraced the terrifying nightmare of global war and laughed in the face of four decades of silent terror. Because without them, we’d probably all be living in mountain bunkers or adapting to our tentacles.

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