SDEROT, Israel -- As Barack Obama's plane took off from Ben Gurion Airport for Germany early Thursday, Israelis were opening up the morning newspaper to a center spread's worth of photos and quotes tailored to the local political palette.

In Jerusalem strolling arm and arm with Shimon Peres at his presidential villa. In a yarmulke next to the Western Wall. In southern Israel, looking up in awe at a smiling 10-year-old leg amputee from a Qassam rocket.

Just a few weeks ago, many Israelis fretted about prospect of a Barack Obama presidency because he was a foreign policy unknown with Muslim lineage.  read more »

Insurrectionists in the Screen Actors Guild! It seems a group of Hollywood actors are uniting against the guild leadership in an attempt to pry the reins from the current leadership.

Calling themselves Unite for Strength, they've launched a campaign and nominated 31 candidates to head up the governing board that is making contract negotiations with major Hollywood studios, according to Reuters.

The emergence of a serious challenge to SAG's ruling coalition, a Hollywood-based group of moderates known as Membership First, likely means that the 3 1/2-week-old standoff between the union and studios will drag on for at least two more months.

Candidates running on the Unite for Strength slate include two stars from TV's "Grey's Anatomy" spinoff "Private Practice" -- Kate Walsh and Amy Brenneman -- as well as Doug Savant from "Desperate Housewives" and "Chicago Hope" veteran Adam Arkin.  read more »

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From the Obama campaign's flickr page.

(So much for the "tightly wrapped message?")

UPDATE: As seen in this other picture, she's also wearing a Hillary Clinton T-shirt with two Hillary Clinton buttons pinned to it.

Occupational Hazards
By Jonathan Segura
Simon & Schuster, 256 pages, $14

The 11-page first chapter of Occupational Hazards, a wildly foul-mouthed, mostly derivative, modestly suspenseful and ultimately likable debut novel by Jonathan Segura (an editor at Publishers Weekly), includes the words "fuck," "fucking," "fuckers," "fucked," "goddamned," "hell," "shit," "suck," "fart," "pisser," "prick," "blowjob," "jerk off" and "sumbitch."

But coarsest of all is our pill-addled, flake-shouldered, chain-smoking, un-smiling boozehound hero and narrator, whose name happens to be Cockburn, though that’s not pronounced like it looks.

Cockburn speaks in icy little sentences. He writes half-heartedly—no, eighth-heartedly—for the Omaha Weekly News-Telegraph, headquartered in a yellowing basement. The sign on the office door is written in marker.  read more »

Are musical movies the new It thing to franchise? Hairspray might kick off the trend (along with High School Musical) now that John Waters has signed on to write a treatment for a sequel to the 2007 movie version of the Broadway hit.

"I never thought of musicals as franchises, but it certainly worked with High School Musical, and the idea of working with that cast again, and creating new material and music, is a dream come true," director-choreographer Adam Shankman told Daily Variety. "John (Waters) has such an original and extraordinary voice; we all can’t wait to see what he has come up with.  read more »

Cue that creepy theme song. Leonardo DiCaprio's production company and Warner Bros. are quietly seeking treatments and script ideas based on the show for feature development.

In the 1983 Twilight Zone, Warners made a four-segment film, with each segment based on an original episode in the series. Each mini-movie was made by a different director -- Joe Dante, John Landis, George Miller and Steven Spielberg. Mr. DiCaprio and his cohorts don't plan on making another episodic movie, but rather hope to build one continuing story line based on one or more episodes, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

The companies plan on making big bucks off the rerun watchers:

Warners owns rights to the Rod Serling-penned episodes, which account for the bulk of its 1959-64 run.  read more »

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The AP reported this morning that Simon & Schuster is suing rappers Foxy Brown and Lil' Kim, both of whom were under contract with the publishing house for books that were due several years ago. The deals were done separately: Foxy Brown got $75,000 in 2005 for what was supposed to be a memoir, and Lil' Kim got $40,000 in 2003 for what was supposed to be a novel.

According to Simon & Schuster's corporate spokesman Adam Rothberg, the lawsuits were not filed simultaneously for any particular reason.

"They're just two cancel-and-collects that happened at the same time," he said, adding that in both cases, Simon & Schuster had just "exhausted all other avenues on recouping the money on a manuscript that wasn't delivered.  read more »

It's more or less an open secret, but we've learned that the Top Chef cast has definitely been living for about two weeks now in a terraced duplex penthouse in Williamsburg overlooking McCarren Park.

So far, the chefs have pretty much kept to themselves, said an extremely well-placed source, leaving around 8 or 9 in the mornings for a soundstage in Greenpoint and coming straight back in the evenings.

“They’re not allowed to talk to anyone, really, or even do their own thing,” the source said. They’re trying to keep things under control before the paparazzi start camping out.”

Luckily, it sounds like they have the typical luxe reality show digs, complete with a private roof deck and a sweeping view of the city skyline, to occupy them when they are not shopping, cooking or shooting.  read more »

Pedro Espada, the head of the nonprofit Soundview HealthCare Network, is sending campaign-like mailings (“From the Desk of Pedro Espada, Jr.”) from the organization's office offering things like "free mammography mobile screenings" and "free fruits and vegetables."

These mailings were handed over by a reader who lives in the Bronx. Three of the mailings were sent out in May and June and a fourth had no date stamped on the envelope.

By advertising the group’s legitimate work, Espada, who served in the State Senate representing the neighboring district, can reap the political benefit of raising his profile and being in contact with the public in a favorable way.  read more »

On Wednesday night, CNN premiered its new documentary Black in America: The Black Woman and Family in which correspondent Soledad O'Brien takes a look at "the varied experiences of black women and families and investigates the disturbing statistics of single parenthood, racial disparities between students and the devastating toll of H.I.V./AIDS."

On its first night, the doc put up big numbers for the cable news channel. According to a release from CNN, over 2.1 million viewers tuned in, including 966,000 in the 25-54 demographic.

More from the release:

According to Nielsen Media Research data, CNN’s two-hour premiere of Black in America: The Black Woman & Family was a resounding success, topping Fox News and MSNBC during the 9-11pm time period.  read more »

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