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If Sunday’s MTV Movie Awards are anything to go by, it doesn’t take much to baffle Robert Downey Jr. PHOTO: EPA

Movie actress Sharon Stone will not be invited to next week's Shanghai Film Festival, state media said on Wednesday, as the row over her "bad karma" comments about last month's earthquake shows no sign of going away.

Media reports had said the film festival would ban Stone from attending its events on a permanent basis, but an official from the organizing committee said merely that "she is not among the list of guests to be invited," the China Daily said.

The 50-year-old star of Basic Instinct attended last year's festival as the image ambassador for the French cosmetic giant Christian Dior, which has since pulled advertisements featuring Stone from stores across China.

In Stone's initial remarks made on the red carpet at the Cannes film festival, she called the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism - whom China reviles as a traitor - a "good friend."

After mentioning the Tibet unrest she said: "And then all this earthquake and all this stuff happened, and I thought, is that karma - when you're not nice that the bad things happen to you?"

After her “karma“ gaffe at Cannes, Sharon Stone is finding out the hard way that the Chinese know how to bear a grudge. PHOTO : AP

Chinese bloggers, who were particularly active in criticizing the West over its attitude towards Tibet, exploded in anger over Stone's comments. More than 69,000 people died in the May 12 earthquake.

Stone later apologized.

A Paris court fined former film star Brigitte Bardot US$23,400 on Tuesday for inciting racial hatred by insulting Muslims, her fifth conviction on similar charges in 11 years.

Bardot, now an animal rights campaigner, has repeatedly taken aim at the feast of Eid al-Adha during which Muslims ritually slaughter a sheep. She has also criticized other traditions and denounced immigration from Muslim countries.

Her latest conviction was over a 2006 tract on the Eid al-Adha issue in which she described the Muslim community in France as "this population that is destroying us, destroying our country by imposing its acts."

Prosecutors had recommended a two-month jail sentence in addition to a fine, but the court did not follow the advice. The 73-year-old Bardot, who says she is not fit to travel, was not present when the ruling was handed down.

In addition to the fine, Bardot will have to pay symbolic damages to several anti-racism organizations.

Bardot's lawyer, Francois-Xavier Kelidjian, said she was unlikely to appeal because she was tired of trials.

"She gets the impression that they are trying to silence her but she will not be silenced in her defense of the cause of animals," he said.

The blonde Bardot, a sex symbol of the 1950s and 1960s, was the star of influential films And God Created Woman by Roger Vadim in 1956 and Contempt by Jean-Luc Godard in 1963.

The young Beatles said they were fans and French songwriter Serge Gainsbourg, a former lover, wrote a hit song about her.

But since her retirement from the screen, she has become an increasingly controversial figure whose animal rights campaign has been overshadowed by verbal attacks on gays, immigrants and the unemployed.

There was smoke - but no mention of fire - at the MTV Movie Awards on Sunday night.

Presenters Seth Rogan and James Franco, stars of the upcoming stoner comedy Pineapple Express, pretended to smoke marijuana - were they really pretending? - before presenting the new category of best summer movie so far. But there was no mention of a disastrous fire that ripped through the adjacent Universal Studios lot earlier in the day.

"Kids, don't really smoke fake weed like this," Rogan told the crowd at the Gibson Amphitheater, with a degree of sarcasm to suggest that the only fake thing was the idea that it was fake.

As they pulled out the "contraband," the cameras pulled away to a wide angle, staying that way until Rogan and Franco had lit up their "fake fatty joint" and left the stage. The awkward moment made some in the audience laugh, but left Robert Downey Jr - who accepted the award on behalf of Iron Man - with a puzzled look.

Smoke from the Universal Studios fire, which broke out early Sunday and damaged several sets, was still visible from backstage.

The MTV Movie Awards format allowed viewers to vote online for categories such as best kiss and best villain. Presenters were threatened to keep their speeches short by a man resembling Javier Bardem's character from No Country for Old Men - complete with the bob hairdo and pneumatic cattle gun.

Best female performance winner Ellen Paige from Juno escaped unscathed, but best fight winners Sean Faris and Cam Gigandet were ushered off stage by the menacing lookalike.

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