Former President Bill Clinton and actor Brad Pitt broke ground for the Make it Right project in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans. The Make it Right Project is building 150 green homes for New Orleans residents affected by Hurricane Katrina, and Pitt states that it’s “not about a handout, but a hand up.”

Pitt has contributed $5 million dollars to the project along with real estate developer and film producer Steven Bing. Bill Clinton was there to represent the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, which has contributed $1 million. Former President George H.W. Bush was not able to attend the ceremony.

600 students from around the world were also on hand to volunteer and help clean up. They were there are part of the first meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative University. The meeting was held at Tulane University and hopes to gather student and university staff to help address the world’s problems.

Brad Pitt looked dashing in his trademark newsboy cap and a white dress shirt with jeans while President Clinton wore a red sleeveless polo and brown pants. Pitt vowed to stop wearing that hat for New Year’s but doesn’t seem to have been able to get rid of it. He was said to be selling the hat to benefit the charity, but currently the only hat available on the MakeItRightNola website is a baseball cap. You can’t blame Pitt for trying to hide that crew cut he got for his most recent part.

Story details from PRNewswire. Thanks to Splash News for these pictures from Sunday.

Do you sit around worrying about how much each celebrity might be worth, if you were to translate their entertainment value into dollars? Me either, but now that the idea’s come into my head, I think I’ll start. I’m going to value Britney Spears at $1.92. Paris Hilton could probably fetch $3.49. Lindsay Lohan is somewhere in the $.99 bin. And Scarlett Johansson runs you $40,000. Sounds about right. I have yet to see Scarlett’s lady bits splayed across my computer screen. I’m pretty sure that drops anyone’s value by about 83%. Yes I’m pulling these figures out of thin air, and really, really enjoying it. I am worth a modest, yet accessible $5,679. Thank you for wondering. Scarlett auctioned off a “date” with herself on eBay, all to benefit Oxfam. She’s been working with the aid organization for three years, since the Asian Tsunami.

Scarlett Johansson went up on the auction block and was “sold” for $40,100. A meet-and-greet with the actress was up for grabs on eBay as part of a fundraiser for the Oxfam America charity and ended last night. The prize includes two tickets to the July premiere of her next movie, He’s Just Not That Into You, chauffeured car service to the premiere, hair and makeup for one by Privé and a meet-and-greet with Scarlett at the premiere. The deep-pocketed winner? “Bossnour” from England, who may have to shell out a few more bucks for airfare to get across the pond.

[From In Touch]

Not to be a jerk, but if I went on a date and it involved a meet-and-greet, I’d be a little pissed. I’m assuming the meet-and-greet will involve a little time to chat? One would hope? If she’s just walking down a line of people, shaking hands and signing autographs, I think this “Bossnour” gets to ask for $10,000 back or something. The funny part is that it involves hair and makeup for the winner… who one would assume (but we don’t know for sure) is a man, and probably not in need of such services. As much as guys love eyeliner and all… I’m guessing that wasn’t the big draw.

Here’s Scarlett Johansson at the Royal London Premiere of “The Other Boleyn Girl” on February 19th. Images thanks to PR Photos.

Drew Barrymore was on Oprah last night, and donated a cool $1 million to the United Nations World Food Program. Due to rising food and commodity prices, which we’ve all felt the impact of at the local supermarket, the organization needs an extra $500 million dollars to help feed the world’s poor.

The 33-year-old American actress will give the money to the World Food Program, a UN body that delivers millions of tonnes of food aid to more than 70 million people in about 80 countries, she said on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

“I’m able to make this incredible donation - this has changed my life,” said Barrymore, who serves as a WFP ambassador against hunger. “But I encourage everyone to give.”

Later, she said the $US1 million was “by far” the largest donation she has ever made.

“But nothing has ever felt so good,” she said.

Sydney Morning Herald

Despite the enormous novelty check, this isn’t a publicity stunt for Drew. In 2006 she traveled to Nairobi and wrote an article for Marie Claire magazine, as well as filmed a documentary, about the living conditions and how schooling is helping with the AIDS crisis. You can read her article here.

Drew’s co-star Scarlett Johansson is also doing her bit for charity, selling herself on eBay. You can bid for two tickets to her latest film, He’s Just Not That Into You, and to meet Scarlett. The bidding was at $11,700 last time I checked, and all the proceeds go to Oxfam. The film stars Drew Barrymore as well as Scarlett, and Scarlett has launched a YouTube appeal to raise more interest in the auction.

Note by Celebitchy: Here’s Scarlett’s appeal. She seems kind of antsy at first.

Angelina Jolie elicits strong feelings in a lot of people. The comments on any post that even mentions her name can get out of hand. Some of the worst sniping over Angelina came with the recent story that she was in Iraq in her role as goodwill ambassador for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. I try to stay impartial and neutral on these Angelina posts, but it doesn’t matter what I say because someone always goes crazy with hatred for the woman no matter what she does. If she wears a loose dress she’s fueling pregnancy rumors; if she wears a tight dress she’s showing off her bump and trying to upstage her husband’s ex.

I was personally bothered by some of the comments on the post about her trip to Iraq. Millions of people have lost their homes, have lost family members, and are living in terrible conditions as a result of the war. She’s trying to bring attention to that, and no, that doesn’t mean that I think she’s an f’ing saint, it just means that I care about that cause and think it deserves attention.

Angelina wrote an op ed piece to that was published in The Washington Post today. She spoke about her trip to Iraq and the need for greater resources and more attention to the plight of refugees, many of whom have fled to nearby Syria and Jordan. Some people were criticizing her trip to Iraq, saying that she can’t make any difference anyway and just wants the publicity. In her letter, she outlined what the UNHCR wants to achieve, and with her level of fame you can bet that the Presidential candidates and Congresspeople are going to read it.

The tone is understated and sticks to the facts. She could have added a moving story about the plight of people she met, but she just gave details and statistics. With the money that it costs to run the war for just one day, countless people can be helped:

We still don’t know exactly how many Iraqis have fled their homes, where they’ve all gone, or how they’re managing to survive. Here is what we do know: More than 2 million people are refugees inside their own country — without homes, jobs and, to a terrible degree, without medicine, food or clean water. Ethnic cleansing and other acts of unspeakable violence have driven them into a vast and very dangerous no-man’s land. Many of the survivors huddle in mosques, in abandoned buildings with no electricity, in tents or in one-room huts made of straw and mud. Fifty-eight percent of these internally displaced people are younger than 12 years old…

What we cannot afford, in my view, is to squander the progress that has been made. In fact, we should step up our financial and material assistance. UNHCR has appealed for $261 million this year to provide for refugees and internally displaced persons. That is not a small amount of money — but it is less than the U.S. spends each day to fight the war in Iraq. I would like to call on each of the presidential candidates and congressional leaders to announce a comprehensive refugee plan with a specific timeline and budget as part of their Iraq strategy.

[From The Washington Post]

Celebrities are not automatically experts on the world’s problems, but if they care enough to educate themselves and to use their fame to bring attention to important causes, more power to them. Now bring on the flame war.

There was a photo in this week’s OK! Magazine of Gwyneth Paltrow out with Apple, 3, and Moses, 22 months, on Feburary 9th in NY. It was captioned “Gwyneth Paltrow, 35, visits the Kabbalah Centre in NYC with her children.”

It was the second time that Paltrow had been seen at the Kabbalah Centre this month. She was photographed sneaking out a week earlier on February 1.

Is Paltrow about to get bilked by Hollywood’s second favorite cult? It’s possible. She might have just been visiting her good buddy Maddona there. The “Raising Malawai” star-studded fundraiser for Madonna’s charity was held on February 6, and Madonna would have been in town around that time. Paltrow didn’t wear a red string bracelet to the event, but since she went to the cult headquarters twice it makes it seem like something is up.

Back in 2004 there was a story that Paltrow had pissed off Madonna by rejecting Kabbalah, but maybe the bossy pop star gradually wore her down with promises of stress-free days and a newfound purpose in life. Paltrow seems susceptible to that type of spiritual hokum.

Paltrow has a new public service announcement out for UNICEF. She provides the voice over for a clip emphasizing the need for medication in the third world to prevent the mother to baby transmission of AIDS.

She is shown outside Madonna’s Raising Malawai fundraiser on February 6, thanks to PRPhotos.

Celine Dion is an interesting lady. Her professional life is all about glamour, grand gestures and lots of fanfare. She just finished a four-year, multi-million-dollar stint performing in Las Vegas, where she had a specially-built performance hall just for her show. Before that, she had one of the most lavish celebrity weddings to date, to longtime manager Rene Angelil, in which the couple transformed a Las Vegas casino into an Arabian mosque and dressed like Arab royalty.

But in the face of all that excess, Celine recently kicked off her world tour in South Africa, meeting with Nelson Mandela and bringing her seven-year-old son, Rene-Charles, on a tour of some of the poorest areas of the region.

Celine, her husband Rene and their seven-year-old son Rene-Charles share the special moments of their trip - including a meeting with former South African president Nelson Mandela.

“I take my son around the world so that he can understand the privileges he has,” she says.

[From Hello! Canada]

It must have been quite a culture shock for Rene-Charles, who has spent most of his life growing up in Las Vegas, surrounded by luxury. Even if you’re not a platinum-selling recording artist, I still think parents can teach their kids that there are other people in the world who have it a lot worse than they do. As much as I think Celine’s music is crap, and her visit with Mandela was mostly a photo opp, I have to give her credit for this. Of course, we’ll all have to wait another 10 years to see how Rene-Charles turns out.

Celine Dion is shown with her son (yes, that’s her son with the long hair) and husband at at her final performance at Ceasers Palace after five years there on 12/15/07, thanks to PRPhotos.

Angelina Jolie was in Iraq today as part of her work as a UN goodwill ambassador. Her job is to bring attention to important causes, and today she was speaking about the plight of internally displaced Iraqi refugees. Angelina noted that there are more than 2 million refugees who are slowly starting to trickle back to their homes and communities during the lull in violence.

“There’s lots of goodwill and lots of discussion, but there seems to be just a lot of talk at the moment,” Jolie said in excerpts of an interview aired on CNN.

“What happens in Iraq and how Iraq settles in the years to come is going to affect the entire Middle East,” she added. “And a big part of what it’s going to affect, how it settles, is how these people are returned and settled into their homes and their community and brought back together and whether they can live together and what their communities look like.”

[From the Huffington Post]

Angelina also noted that of the 2 million internally displaced people, 58 percent of them are children under the age of twelve. She noted to CNN’s Arwa Damon, “it’s a very high number of people in a very, very vulnerable situation and a lot of young kids.” Children are obviously one of Jolie’s biggest passions. Angelina also met with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, Iraq General David Patraeus, and several top Iraqi migration officials. She spent time in the Green Zone and ate lunch with American troops.

When asked why she felt it was important to risk her life by coming to Iraq, Jolie responded:

It was an easy choice to make. I’ve I felt I had to come here because it is very difficult to get answers about the internally displaced people. It’s as I said even U.N.H.C.R. who I traditionally work with — they are not able to be inside at the moment and so I was very frustrated and just getting a bunch of ideas and papers but not knowing what’s really going on, so today I’m able to talk to all different people from our government and their government and really get some answers as to what is holding up the processes to really really assist these people properly.

[From CNN]

Keep in mind that was a transcript from an interview, which is why Angelina’s response isn’t quite so perfectly phrased like you read in People or Us Weekly. I’m always impressed with the long-term devotion Angelina has brought to her UN work. She didn’t just do a trip or two to get some press - she’s been traveling to some dangerous locations for several years now. Brad Pitt is rarely mentioned in her UN-related interviews, so I’ve always wondered if he comes along. I would guess that might be too much of a security risk - just protecting one incredibly famous person has got to take a lot of work. Kudos for Angelina for showing consistent commitment to a cause.

Picture Note by JayBird: Brad and Angelina are shown at the Santa Barbara Film Festival over the weekend, thanks to Splash.

Update: Here’s the video, thanks to The Huffington Post for the heads up:

Update by Celebitchy: Here’s “Armagideon Time” by The Clash, one of my favorite songs of all time. You can hear the CD quality version on last.fm, or read the lyrics. How people can bash a woman for trying to bring attention to the plight of refugees displaced by war is beyond me.

George Clooney has a new interview with London’s Telegraph in which he indirectly bemoans the lack of high quality films coming out of Hollywood today. He says that in the past there was a strong focus on quality films with compelling plots, and that Hollywood was at its best between 1964 and 1976 when he said there were “ten films a year that were masterpieces.” While he doesn’t directly say it, Clooney clearly implies that they just don’t make ‘em like that anymore. The Telegraph calls it a “thinly disguised attack,” so don’t go saying I’m putting words in his mouth:

In a thinly-disguised attack on the modern-day values of Hollywood, the 46-year-old makes clear his belief that computer-generated imagery and visual pyrotechnics are no substitute for a good story.

Clooney places the glory years of cinema firmly between 1964 and 1976 when he says studios produced almost a masterpiece a month and directors like Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Alan J. Pakula and Sidney Lumet pushed new boundaries.

“It’s 12 years and you could find ten films a year that are masterpieces,” the actor told the Radio Times. “They don’t make those films anymore. You couldn’t come near making those films.”

Clooney’s conviction is such that a few years ago he gave each of his friends a gift of 100 DVDs from his favourite 12-year golden period.

They included Cold War classics like Fail-Safe, The Spy Who Came in From the Cold and Dr Strangelove as well as Bound for Glory, a biographical film about the folk singer Woody Guthrie.

He also loves Network, Lumet’s satire about a television network’s struggle for ratings and Scorsese’s Taxi Driver with its standout performance by Robert De Niro.

[From The Telegraph]

Clooney also lauds the 1960s and 70s as a golden era in which celebrities were “leading the charge in the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movement and the Vietnam War movement,” and says that it then “got to this place where it probably wasn’t a good idea.” As for the upcoming election, Clooney says that he supports democratic candidate Barack Obama and would do fundraisers for him, but that it’s up to the candidate how involved Clooney gets in the campaign.

Commentor Walt O’Brien on the Telegraph article notes that great films might have longevity, but they aren’t big money-makers at the box office, and that the studios were nearly broke after they created all those masterpieces:

Erm, people tend to forget that all the major studios, while rendering superb product to an ungrateful public, were going completely broke by the end of the 1970’s. Some already had, starting with MGM in 1969 or so. Paramount uses the “Star Wars” theme as its trademark because that potboiling, low-budget canful of wasted plastic, replete with drug-propelled cast, improbable script, idiotic premises, and impossible events (how can you hear cannon and Death Stars going off and exploding in the complete vacuum which is space, please?) saved the studio from shutting its doors altogether.

People don’t BUY masterpieces, they buy trash. They don’t want insight into their lives or a higher vision of metaphysical wonderfulness, they don’t want to be editifed, they want to laugh until they pee themselves or have a good weep, and above all, look up the female lead’s skirt.

Cinema’s trash. It’s instantaneous media. A script is 100 pages, max 120, and about 2,500 words of dialogue at the most. It’s supposed to be.

[Comment found on Telegraph.co.uk]

Clooney has a valid point that the current films suck compared to what used to come out of Hollywood, but if he’s so concerned about it he should put his money where his mouth is instead of investing in risky casino ventures that never get off the ground. He may be doing just that - he co-produced, helped write and starred in the comedy Leatherheads, which is out on April 4. We’ll see if Clooney surpassed the generally low standards for modern films, and if it makes money at the box office. It’s got to be a challenge to create a decent, smart film that also draws crowds and it looks like Clooney made a comedy for that reason.

While Clooney can be mildly chastised for complaining about an industry that made him rich, at least he’s working to change it. He tried to set up a “Mediation Panel” to help resolve the strike amicably between the writers and studios.

Clooney has been keeping himself busy with more pressing issues, and spent two weeks last month touring war-torn nations in Africa with the UN at his own expense. When he tried to speak in a UN meeting about it, some countries’ representatives objected and he ended up giving a statement to reporters gathered outside. He said that the nation of Chad is worse than when he visited it two years ago, that Sudan is not much better and that “the world is watching, and that at this point we cannot afford to fail.”

So if anyone wants to talk some well-deserved crap about the never-ending sequels that Hollywood churns out, it seems like Clooney is more than credible. We found this story on Fark.com, though, where the title read “Star of ‘Ocean’s 11 through 19′ says modern films are rubbish.”

Image below of Clooney at the UN from News.com.au. Header image is of Clooney at the Critics’ Choice Awards, thanks to PRPhotos.

I have to admit that when I first heard about Hayden Panettiere and her whole saving whales from Japanese fisherman thing, I wasn’t really all that impressed. Hayden and a group called Save the Whales used a surfboard to paddle into a cove in southwestern Japan near Taiji where dolphins were being corralled to be slaughtered and eaten. The group was blocked by a fishing boat and had to turn back. Unusual publicity stunt, right? Especially after those pictures of her crying were plastered all over the news. But hearing Panettiere talk about it over time, it because pretty clear to me that she not only cared about saving whales, but was incredibly passionate about it. As a result of her activities, a warrant was issued for her arrest in Japan. Hayden hasn’t backed down, and this past weekend joined a protest in Washington DC to stop whale hunting.

The 18-year-old Heroes star, speaking without notes, told the crowd, “Not only are these animals being cruelly slaughtered, the meat is contaminated by huge levels of mercury,” reports The Washington Post’s Reliable Source column, which likened the Heroes star to a latter-day Jane Fonda – though less politically controversial. Continued Panettiere at the rally: “And we’re not taking a stand because Japan is one of our biggest allies in the war on terror, but Australia is an ally and they’ve told Japan what they think, and good on them!”

As for her confronting Japanese fisherman last fall, to protest the killing of dolphins – the incident let to a warrant for her arrest – Panettiere told the crowd at the rally: “I was wearing a wetsuit and shoes. I was like if I’m going to jail I ain’t going to jail in a bikini.” Panettiere, spokesperson for the Save the Whales Again! Campaign, added: “At one point this baby [dolphin] popped its head up and looked at me. To know what was going to happen and to know that I couldn’t stop it is just such a helpless feeling.

[From People]

Today Hayden Panettiere and Save the Whales will take their campaign to the Norwegian, Japanese, and Icelandic embassies. Hayden also created a charity, Panettiere’s Closet, where she sells her clothing and accessories Heroes. The money is donated to the Whaleman Foundation. I’ve been waiting for Hayden Panettiere to turn into Lindsay Lohan. It just seemed like an inevitability, and she has a stage mom who’s supposedly worse than Dina Lohan. As soon as Panettiere turned 18 she was out and about with much older Heroes costar Milo Ventimiglia. I figured it was a matter of weeks before she was in rehab. But instead she and Milo seem to have a pretty stable, sane relationships, and she’s risked her life to help save helpless animals. It seems like she’s proving you can be an actress, have fun and be popular with the tabloids, but still be a decent person who cares about things bigger than photo ops. Good for her.

Picture note by Jaybird: Hayden Panettiere arrives at the ‘Save the Whales Again’ rally in Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., and signs autographs on her way to make a speech on Sunday. Images thanks to Splash Photos.

What do you do when you’re the host of a late-night faux news show and you’ve got no writers? Well you could sit on your ass, you could mumble at random, or you could do something great with your time and support a charitable cause. But what if your show is all mockery? How do you do something that’s actually good, while poking fun at the same time? Well if you’re Stephen Colbert, and you happen to have broken your wrist a few months back, you do everything you can to “raise wrist injury awareness” – and donate the money to the Yellow Ribbon Fund, which supports injured U.S. soldiers . How do you raise the money? By selling red WristStrong bracelets of course.

“The only thing worse than the pain has been the agony,” the bespectacled funnyman said. “Hollywood has been glamorizing wrist violence for years…and I am fighting back with the most powerful tool known to man—the silicone bracelet! It is go time. Just to put it on requires a wrist—that’s one level of awareness,” Colbert continued. “Every time you look down, it will remind you that you have a wrist. And if you ever forget what the area connecting the hands to the arm is called, you can just look down and it says ‘wrist,’ right there on the bracelet.”

On Wednesday, he encouraged fans to purchase more bracelets and send them to New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, who may or may not have been sporting a boot on his foot when he was photographed leaving girlfriend Gisele Bündchen’s Manhattan apartment this week. “Now, I know that he injured his ankle, but I have said many times, the ankle is just the wrist of the foot,” Colbert said.

[From E! News]

Colbert raised $17,000 just from auctioning off his wrist cast. Awesome… and kind of gross. He got New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, Brian Williams, Tim Russert, Bill O’Reilly, Tony Snow, Katie Couric, and Nancy Pelosi to sign the cast before the auction by asking them to “board the “WristStrong” express.” Between all his fundraising efforts, Colbert was able to hand over a check for $171,525 to the Yellow Ribbon Fund. The charity helps injured U.S. service members who are recovering at the National Naval Medical Center and Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and provides housing and transportation for them and their families. They also provide job mentoring and internships, and give tickets to sporting and cultural events.