Here’s some news from the raging sands of the Gulf. Muscleman Arnold Schwarzenegger has donated state-of-the-art weightlifting equipment for the coalition forces with the message that they will no longer have to lift buckets full of sand to keep fit.

A number of leading Hollywood stars led by funny man Steve Martin are planning a trip to different Gulf countries where coalition forces are stationed but without the bevy of girls who were to accompany them earlier. They’ve been asked to leave them behind as many Arabic nations don’t look kindly upon ‘entertainment’ girls.

As soon as the request was intimated to the organisers, they almost cancelled the tour but have now agreed to go at the behest of top American defence authorities. When he heard of the bizarre decision, Steve Martin retorted, "I don’t know how I’m, going to do this without the girls. I hate to think I’ll be the only pretty face in this gathering!"

Sylvester Stallone has not just declined to go to the Gulf but has gone a step ahead and transformed into an anti-war campaigner. "Nothing justifies risking so many lives," he maintained in a TV interview.

The screen muscleman has warned the government that that the war with Iraq could cost thousands of American lives.

Asked how Rambo had turned into a pacifist, he shot back, "Rambo is a fantasy...it’s performance. I don’t go home with bandana around my head and a M-60 on my back. That has always been my problem. After September 11, when I met a few Marines going to Afghanistan, they shook hands with me and said they wished they could handle the terrorists the way I do. I told them, Rambo is not me. He’s fantasy."

Stallone says he’s had enough of screen violence, the audiences can now expect gentler roles from him. And in keeping with his new bespectacled image, he is joining forces with the Greenpeace organisation to go to war against "nature’s criminals". And believe it or not, after his current crop of movies is over, he won’t even be carrying a weapon over his shoulder on the screen!

Even as she got a standing ovation at the Oscars night for her rare appearance, Olivia de Havilland could hardly fight her tears. Little could she have imagined in 1940 when she received the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for Gone With The Wind that she would be gracing the podium 63 years later as the only surviving star of the film.

She says she found the experience very overpowering. "The realisation that I was the only member of the cast still alive hit me hard and I cried," confesses the 86-year-old stunner of her times.

But despite her refusal to attend any more special shows of Gone With The Wind, Olivia’s fondness for the epic has not diminished and she is regarded as a living legend in America. "It is a film which will always live," she says, "because it had heart and because it got that special attention Hollywood in its heyday could give. We knew we were making history."

History indeed. Till today film critics are debating what made Gone With The Wind the stupendous success it was.

Voluptuous Natasha Mirac, who once ruled the ramps of Paris in a manner befitting a countess, is now igniting the celluloid world with the same smouldering passion. In her latest film Heat’s On she plays the role of a Cuban refugee torn between her husband [Ashley Dweltz] and her lover [Vincent D’Onofrio].

The love scenes are so hot that Mirac and D’Onofrio are rumoured to be continuing them off-screen as well. The actress has made a fortune by baring her body beautiful in movies like White Mischief and A Man In Love. And is best known for her sizzling role of a lawyer who seduces Harrison Ford in Presumed Innocence, the nineties film which propelled her to international fame.

"I don’t see on-screen exposure as something scary," she says, "I don’t find it obscene." Obviously not. If she did she wouldn’t be acting in a film like Heat’s On which has scandalised even European sensibilities.

— Newsmen Features