Movie Stars, Stay Home
CNN reports, in a video piece, that Annette Bening finds a lot to like in Iran. I guess that's because she wasn't jailed for buying a bottle of wine like an American journalist working in Iraq -- an offense that doesn't normally bring imprisonment, various news sources say.

Note Bening wearing a headcover to avoid being attacked by Muslims, which I'm guessing she'd call "having respect" for their values.

I just loved the comment that Bening and the group, on their little Iran tour, "see reality, not propaganda." I mean, could it get more laughable? Bening, if you're that gullible, and that ignorant about what's actually going on in the world, please avoid talking to the press about anything other than Warren and your makeup artist on a movie.

More on the jailed North Dakota-born journalist here in the LA Times, from a story by Borzou Daragahi, reporting from Paris, a city that has yet to be totally overtaken by Muslim fanatics, about Roxana Saberi, who has already spent a month in Iran's Evin prison:

Poised and articulate, Roxana Saberi took to the airwaves like a natural, delivering a pitch-perfect television report about developments in Iran for the British Broadcasting Corp. in the summer of 2006.

The folks in London were impressed. "She could film, edit, upload video," recalls her boss, Frances Harrison, who was then the BBC's Tehran bureau chief and now lives in London. "She could do radio. She could do television. She could do online."

Those skills made Saberi a rarity: an American journalist based in Iran, covering the country where her father was born and that she loved to explore.

But three years ago, with the Iranian American journalist's star rising, Iranian authorities revoked her press credentials. And when she continued to work and live in Iran, they arrested her in late January, locking her up in Tehran's notorious Evin prison.

The case has perplexed friends and colleagues in Tehran. No charges have been filed, though officials have described her reporting as illegal. On Friday, an Iranian prosecutor said she would be freed within days.

But the detention of the ambitious 31-year-old has stunned and unsettled the journalists who knew Saberi in Tehran. They describe her as a cautious and serious journalist who tried to forge a normal life in the Islamic Republic.

...Saberi's father and her mother, Akiko, began to grow worried early last month when their daughter's daily e-mails and phone calls suddenly stopped. When a phone call finally came, Saberi's voice was strained. She'd been arrested, she told her father, after purchasing a bottle of wine.

She'd be let go in a few days, his daughter said. "Her voice was not normal," he said. "It was tense. She spoke hurriedly and hastily."

Alcohol is illegal in the Islamic Republic, but its possession usually incurs no harsher penalty than a fine. After weeks went by without news from Roxana, Reza Saberi decided to go public last weekend.