Fan Fare

Britney Spears celebrates threesomes in new single

Mommy, what’s a threesome? 

If Britney Spears still has any ‘tween fans left, their parents are about to face yet another uncomfortable question pertaining to the pop idol.

The former Disney Channel starlet has just released a new single, “3,” which may be more appropriate for the Playboy Mansion than the Mouse House.

“Three is a charm, Two is not the same, I don’t see the harm, So are you game?” she playfully asks at one point. You can listen to the song here.

The slick ditty should get the kids out on the dance floors, but there’s even something in there for old folkies, since Spears tosses in a head-scratching reference to “Peter, Paul and Mary.” The song was produced and co-written by Swedish hitmaker Max Martin (“… Baby One More Time”), so it’s possible the 27-year-old singer might consider them three random names.

Equally unwittingly, she now follows in the footsteps of Jane’s Addiction frontman Perry Farrell, whose ménage à trois with his girlfriend and a teenage heiress inspired the alternative rock band’s 1990 song “Three Days.”

“3″ comes from “Britney Spears: The Singles Collection,” which comes out on Nov. 24, almost five years after her last hits package. (She released just two albums in the interim.)

from FaithWorld:

Would Polanski get a pass if he were a paedophile priest?

It's hard to watch France's political and cultural elite rush to support filmmaker Roman Polanski against extradition to the United States on a decades-old sex charge and not wonder exactly how they interpret the national motto "liberté, égalité, fraternité." It's tempting to ask whether they're defending the liberty to break the law and skip town, respecting the equality of all before the law and championing a brotherhood of artists who can do no wrong.

Here in Paris, Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner declared the arrest was "a bit sinister ... frankly, (arresting) a man of such talent recognised around the world, recognised in the country where he was arrested -- that's not very nice." He and his Polish counterpart have written to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the issue. Culture Minister Frédéric Mitterrand said "just as there is a generous America that we like, there's also an America that scares us, and that's the America that has just shown us its face." Directors, actors and intellectuals have been signing a petition demanding Polanski's immediate release.

Almost all the focus is on the argument that Polanski is a brilliant director, the charge of unlawful sex with a 13-year old dates back to 1977 and the victim herself says she wants the whole issue to be forgotten.  Almost completely ignored is the fact that he fled the U.S. to escape sentencing, which added a crime to the original crime. There is such a widespread assumption that all artists and intellectuals would automatically support Polanski that Paris papers today -- both the left-of-centre Libération and the conservative Le Figaro -- wrote with an air of surprise that Hollywood was not storming the barricades to back him.

The French Greens leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit made headlines by bucking the trend and saying he was "ill at ease" with the rush to absolve Polanski of raping a minor and the culture minister should have been more cautious in his comments.

Across the Atlantic, by contrast, Hollywood's hometown paper, the Los Angeles Times, reviewed the objections by Polanski's supporters and concluded: "Plausible or preposterous, these arguments are eclipsed by a simple fact: Polanski fled the country ... the Justice Department and L.A.'s district attorney are right to seek extradition."

And almost nobody in the media here in France asks the tough questions that Fr. Tom Reese, S.J. (photo at right) did in his Washington Post blog post entitled "Father Polanski would go to jail": "Polanski's defenders ... argue that he should not be punished. They say that the girl was willing and sexually experienced and she has forgiven him (after receiving a settlement). They even cite his tragic childhood and life as an excuse. And besides, it is ancient history. Such arguments from paedophile priests would be laughed out of court and lambasted by everyone, and rightly so...

"The Catholic Church has rightly been put under a microscope when 4 percent of its priests were involved in abuse, but what about the film industry? The world has truly changed. Entertainment is the new religion with sex, violence and money the new Trinity. The directors and stars are worshipped and quickly forgiven for any infraction as long as the PR agent is as skilled as a saintly confessor. Entertainment, not religion, is the new opiate of the people and we don't want our supply disturbed.

No more nudity for Kate Winslet?

Kate Winslet, who is nominated for an Oscar for best actress in ”The Reader,”  has been happy to take her clothes off for the sake of her art. 

But those days may be over.

“I think I won’t do it again: a) I can’t keep getting away with it, and b) I don’t want to become ‘that actress who always gets her kit off,’” Winslet told Time magazine, in a profile that ran on its website on Thursday.

The comment comes the same day the Los Angeles Times ran an article looking at Winslet and fellow Oscar nominee Marisa Tomei, who plays a stripper in “The Wrestler” and who has also not been shy about shedding her clothes.

The LA Times wrote that, “Winslet would appear to have no equal among A-list actresses in her fearlessness about displaying her body.”

“Stretching from her career-making role in “Titanic” to “Iris” to 2006′s steamy “Little Children” — for each of which she received an Oscar nomination — Winslet has bared at least some skin in service to the film’s story,” the article said.

Playing Samantha got me through my 40s, says Kim Cattrall

   “Sex and the City’s” Samantha Jones is a sexually confident public relations executive who can get almost any man she wants — and playing her helped Kim Cattrall survive her 40′s.     At age 41 Cattrall took on the role of Jones, who during the six seasons of the U.S. cable television series had countless nude sex scenes.     “She helped me get through my 40′s,” she said ahead of the worldwide release of the “Sex and the City” film this week, four years after the TV series ended.     “Actresses especially, they always accuse Hollywood of ageism, but I found that I was doing that to myself because I was really questioning at the age of 41 if I could indeed play a woman who was that sexual,” Cattrall said.    “Could I still make the vamp real? I’m not kidding you, this was a true concern of mine,” she said of the role for which she won a Golden Globe.     And with Jones finally owning up to, and celebrating, turning 50 in the Hollywood version of “Sex and the City,” 51-year-old Cattrall said “it really gives me a lot of hope for the next decade.”

The Naked Chef says ban sex until men get cooking

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has a bit of advice for women whose partners refuse to do any cooking — abstain from sex until he gets into the kitchen.

“Men are driven by sex,” Oliver was reported as saying at the annual Hay-on-Wye book festival in Wales. ”So the best way for women to get their men into the kitchen would be to stop having sex with them until they start to cook,” he told the Sunday Times of London.

Oliver, who is best known for television programmes such as “The Naked Chef” and “Jamie’s School Dinners,” said he was appalled at how few British men have even lifted a pan, let alone cooked. But he said once men got over the first hurdle, there was “a pride on their faces” when they learnt to cook a few dishes.