Arts / Culture

Despite a 1998 multi-state tobacco settlement banning tobacco companies from marketing directed toward children and banning payments to place tobacco products in films, tobacco use in the most popular youth-oriented movies has increased by 50 percent, according to a new report. "Tobacco at the Movies" highlights the health risks to children, who are susceptible to the subtle message sent by famous actors and actresses using tobacco on the big screen.

During the 1950s and 60s, FBI agents kept a file on Mad Magazine, worrying that its wisecracks about J. Edgar Hoover and spoofs about the John Birch Society and draft dodgers might be communist propaganda. Thanks to the Freedom of Information-Privacy Acts, the FBI-MAD files are now available online, accompanied by an interview with Mad editor Al Feldstein.

"I have been an accomplice to the murders of untold numbers of human beings," writes Joe Eszterhas, the author of movie megahits such as Flashdance and Basic Instinct. "I am admitting this only because I have made a deal with God. Spare me, I said, and I will try to stop others from committing the same crimes I did." His crime? Making smoking look "cool and glamorous ... an integral part of many of my screenplays." Eszterhas says his moral awakening came after he was diagnosed with throat cancer, "the result of a lifetime of smoking. I am alive but maimed.

"Hollywood is churning out one war flic after another," notes Bill Berkovitz. "VH-1 recently premiered 'Military Diaries,' a first person POV series on life in the military; Country-Western stars are popularizing 'kick ass' patriotic songs; Iran/Contragate figure, Oliver North, is hosting 'War Stories' on the Fox News Channel. Welcome to America's escalating militarization -- designed by the Bush administration, in cahoots with defense contractors, and aided and abetted by America's culture mavens." Now the U.S.