Is multi-medal-winning Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps the next action movie star? Or will he merely become a reality TV staple with the occasional cameo appearance in sports-related films? A recent Hollywood Reporter article weighed Phelps’ future celebrity options, and in response Entertainment Weekly asked its readers if Phelps could possibly be the next Brad Pitt (the magazine also looked at a couple Olympian-turned-actors in a recent slide show). However, while one comment recommended the swimmer for the role of Captain America (wouldn’t Namor or Aquaman make more sense?), it otherwise appears moviegoers are skeptical about Phelps’ chances in Hollywood.

Here at Spout, of course, we’re looking more forward to the Nastia Liukin-Shawn Johnson reform school flick (also discussed on this week’s podcast), but we certainly have room to anticipate the terrible low-budget action pics that Phelps is inevitably going to star in. It’s highly unlikely that he’d gain the stature of Pitt or the greatest athlete-turned-action hero, Arnold Schwarzenegger. So the question is, instead: does Phelps have what it takes to break through onto the list of worst athlete-turned-action heroes of all time? And will his worst fight scene look anything as bad as the following ten examples?

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Last Friday, I suggested that the prologue to Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia be featured ahead of Olympics coverage. But I’ve changed my mind after seeing this montage created by L.A.’s Cinefamily (the gang behind the recently revitalized Silent Movie Theater) & Pimpedelic Wonderland for a 4th of July event last month. It clearly says everything there is to say about America, and it would certainly pump us up adequately for patriotically rooting for the U.S. teams. Plus, unlike like Olympia, it’s not made by Nazis; like Olympia, though, it has nudity!

The only thing possibly more appropriately American than this video is Entertainment Weekly’s new interviews with Barack Obama and John McCain about their pop culture preferences, a feature that finally allows us to make up our minds based on things more fun than “important issues”. I don’t know about you, but I’d never vote for anybody who honestly thinks We Were Soldiers is the best Vietnam movie of all time. Thanks, EW, for keeping me from making a terrible mistake on Election Day.

TIME has a story about Steven Spielberg’s departure from his post as creative consultant to the Beijing Summer Olympics, and most interestingly, how China will need to scramble to save face in the wake of it.

Landing Spielberg in the first place was a coup, considering that China’s main goal with the games is to sell the idea “that China has returned to its rightful place as a world player whose opinion matters.” That’s not necessarily a fiction––Spielberg, after all, dropped out of his commitment in frustration over China’s “opinion” on their trading partner Sudan and Darfur––but the idea that China is ready to play on the world stage without facing the blowback of various human rights issues and international political, trade and manufacturing controversies certainly seems like a fantasy worthy of Hollywood. Can they pull off this globalist fairy tale without the guiding vision of the man who brought us Hook?

It’s a situtation that’s going to require serious damage control. As a spokesman for Human Rights Watch puts it in the article, “They are trying to have a perfect Games and present a picture of unmitigated success to the world. And here is something that is not a success.” Part of the problem is that protest groups, emboldended by the Speilberg exit, have started lobbying other Hollywood types associated with the Games (Ang Lee is another creative advisor), as well as the event’s corporate sponsors. China can probably survive the loss of their hired Hollywood cred, but if Coca-Cola drops out, their dreams of joining the big boys on the global-pop cultural stage will be dashed for good.