Selasa, 9 Julai 2013

The Star eCentral: Movie Reviews

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The Star eCentral: Movie Reviews


Stepping stone for filmmakers

Posted:

Tropfest, the South East Asian edition, will be held in Malaysia.

TROPFEST, the world's largest short film festival and competition, will now be a regular feature in Malaysia. This country, Penang in particular, has been chosen to host Tropfest for the South East Asia region.

Not only that, Tropfest will also be partnering with Malaysia Major Events, a division of the Malaysia Convention And Exhibition Bureau (MyCEB) under the Tourism And Culture Ministry.

According to Zulkefli Hj Sharif, CEO of MyCEB, the festival and competition is expected to draw 10,000 attendees, with 2,250 international tourists within that number.

"We looked at how Tropfest, as the largest short film festival in the world, could bring tourists into the country," said Tony Nagamiah, general manager of Malaysia Major Events. "From our point of view, we see that it could increase tourism revenues. Because it is not held anywhere else in South East Asia, it is exclusive to us, and it definitely has an appeal for international tourists. Secondly, it is about making Malaysia a hub for entertainment. And it is also opening up opportunities for local filmmakers."

Joe Sidek, managing director of Tropfest SEA, who is also the director of the George Town Festival in Penang, said the George Town Festival was instrumental in convincing the people behind Tropfest to hold the South East Asian edition here. Australian film director John Polson, founder of Tropfest, told Joe he had been following the George Town Festival.

Polson started out as an actor and had been in the Australian TV movie Dadah Is Death, in which he played one of two teenagers who were arrested for carrying drugs at the Penang airport in 1983. So, for Polson, even after so many years, Penang immediately caught his attention.

"My direction for the George Town Festival is, I want art and culture to be accessible," said Joe. "You do not have to be rich or cultured or belong to a social class. Even for films. Why should you be clever or rich to like films? My mission is about people. Tropfest has a similar mission. It's about being accessible. Films for everyone. You don't have to have studied filmmaking, you only have to brave it and try."

Polson started the Tropicana Film Festival (as it was originally called because it was held at the Tropicana Cafe in Sydney) 20 years ago as an informal screening for cast, crew and friends. But as time went on, the attendance grew and Tropfest became a major event, drawing hundreds of thousands from countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United States and New Zealand. Today, it is also often graced by the presence of major stars such as Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Naomi Watts and Russell Crowe.

Michael Laverty, international managing director of Tropfest, thinks the Malaysian film industry and its Australian counterpart are facing a similar situation.

"Particularly for Australia, we are not a very big population, so it's very difficult to make an Australian film and have big box-office figures," said Laverty. "What Tropfest can do is give filmmakers a stepping stone, so they can use it as an entrance. In fact, our 2012 winner, Alethea Jones, has got a feature project now in the US. Hence, if you do well at Tropfest, it's like a calling card."

He stressed that strong ideas are what the Tropfest judges look for in a short film. And of course, good acting.

"Now, with DSLR and new cameras that cost like, a thousand or three thousand dollars, production values are getting higher and higher," said Laverty. "But we've always said that it's not about the budget. We've had films that won Tropfest that were made for less than US$52 (RM165). It's crazy."

The competition is open to all residents of South East Asia. The best entry will be awarded US$10,000 (RM31,658) and the winner will go on a five-day film industry immersion trip to Los Angeles, California, sponsored by the Motion Picture Association Of America. Entry deadline is Oct 28, 2013. A fee of RM50 for each film entry is incurred, which will be waived for the first 20 submissions from each country. The festival will be held in Penang in January next year, and admission to the celebration of short films and music will be free. For further information, visit www.tropfest.com/sea.

Somebody save me (and us)

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Is an endless, insanely expensive parade of semi-fascist bores (read: superheroes) strangling the film industry? Do we need saving from the heroes?

TWENTY years ago, after appearing in two phenomenally successful, visually opulent and generally brilliant Batman movies, Michael Keaton decided he didn't want to make any more Caped Crusader films. So he walked away. It was a disastrous move that effectively ended Keaton's career as a leading man, the actor learning the hard way that the only unforgivable crime in Hollywood is to walk away from a phenomenally successful franchise.

The next two Batman films starred Val Kilmer and George Clooney. Batman Forever was not very good and Batman & Robin was terrible. And for the next few years, Batman dropped out of the global conversation.

This was good because it gave society a breather. The Dark Knight thing was played out: the excitement moviegoers felt when Tim Burton made the first Batman film had evaporated under the tutelage of Joel Schumacher. In retrospect, Keaton's catastrophic decision to walk away now seems heroic, because he was the last actor to go through a script, take a cold, hard look at the superhero genre and say: "Enough. These films are starting to suck."

Today's superhero films have not yet reached the point where they flat-out suck. But they are getting there. Iron Man 2 was a huge disappointment, The Avengers an aimless hodgepodge and The Dark Knight Rises a pretentious, incoherent mess. And now, we have yet another Superman movie, Man Of Steel.

Those of us who would like to see an end – or at least an extended pause – to the hegemony of superhero films would be very pleased if Robert Downey Jr, Christian Bale and their costumed brethren would make a similarly audacious artistic decision and walk away.

As Steven Soderbergh recently complained, these films are draining the life out of motion pictures, diverting virtually all of the industry's resources into insanely expensive "tentpole" films that supposedly prop up other projects. It is unlikely that any of these actors will make such a courageous decision as Keaton, though: they saw what happened to him, they saw how Sean Connery's career stalled when he quit 007. But it's still okay to dream, isn't it?

This thing is starting to get old. There are too many superhero films; their storylines are all beginning to run together. It is a genre dominated by the thoroughly unoriginal notion that you cannot trust the government. Even when you can trust the government, you cannot trust all of it. And even the branches you can trust aren't much help, because they are incompetent.

To save humanity, one must rely on a bootstrap operation headed by a dedicated go-getter and self-starter. At heart, all superheroes are Republicans.

In superhero movies, women are almost always accessories. This is true even if they themselves are superheroines. The men do the heavy lifting; the women serve an ornamental function. This is why we are all the way up to Iron Man 3 and Batman 7, but have not seen a Supergirl film since 1984, or a Wonder Woman film ever.

The 12-year-old boys for whom superhero movies are chiefly made are not interested in women. They may not even be interested in girls. They are certainly not interested in girls with superpowers.

Breeding neurosis

Superhero films increasingly rely on a structure where the hero thinks he is fighting one villain when he is actually fighting another. In The Dark Knight Rises, Batman thinks he is up against the crypto-fascist Bane, when he is actually locked in a deadly struggle with a mysterious fellow philanthropist played by Marion Cotillard. In Iron Man 3, the hero believes he is going toe-to-toe with a terrorist called the Mandarin, when the villain is actually a mad scientist who bears a striking resemblance to the dead but not forgotten US rock star Warren Zevon.

In Thor, the bodacious nordic deity spends most of the movie worrying about a race of tall, antisocial creatures called The Frost Giants of Jotunheim, and does quite a bit of jousting with the testy emissaries of the US Government, when the person he should really be worrying about is his brother, Loki.

In days gone by, a superhero only had to worry about the Joker or the Silver Surfer or Lex Luthor. Now, he has to worry about mysterious philanthropists. No wonder he's so neurotic.

In fact, the rise of superhero movies signals the triumph of the neurotic over the maverick. In the classic Hollywood movie, whether the hero is cop, cowboy, private eye, rebel or drifter, there comes a moment when this solitary, self-sufficient loner faces the bad guys all by himself. The bad guys are usually trying to destroy a ranch, a town, a portion of the high chaparral, or in some extreme cases, a flourishing ethnic group. They are rarely seeking to destroy an entire planet.

These villains have limited aspirations, and the man in the white hat has a limited arsenal of era-appropriate weaponry: a gun, a bow and arrow, a few grenades, maybe even a tank. He does not have any weapons of mass destruction to fall back on, nor any supernatural powers. He has to rely on brains, brawn and guts, nothing else. Sometimes, this is not enough: more often than we would like to think, he ends up like Spartacus or Braveheart.

In the classic superhero movie, the situation is quite different. Here, the bad guys are trying to destroy entire societies, cities or planets, and the good guy is rarely self-sufficient. Instead, somehow or other, he has come into possession of a preternaturally phantasmagoric suit of armour, complete with zany high-tech accoutrements; or a hammer that can call down lightning from the heavens; or extendable fingernails; or laser eyesight; or implausible (and non-steroid-related) abs; or the ability to change shape.

And these superpowers aren't just good news for all the societies, cities and planets that need saving: most superheroes are nerds or geeks or losers or screw-ups or pixies or marooned orphans from deep space who can't get their personal lives functioning properly – until they come into possession of some mystical power or magical weapon.

Nothing in their pitiful lives works out until they are bitten by a spider, or start sporting a remarkable piece of jewellery, or are handed a large, seemingly radioactive hammer by their father.

Waking up awesome

"Being a superhero is a way of working out your personal problems," my 26-year-old son told me when I asked him about the popularity of the genre among his age group and younger. "You're an ordinary person with no special skills – and suddenly, you wake up one day and you're awesome. So, if you're asking me if the superhero genre is going to fade away soon, the answer is no."

You wake up awesome. Not because you did something special like beat Hitler or cure polio. All you did was wake up. And suddenly, you were awesome. It is the dream of the fame-hungry TV talent contest generation.

If movies are a reflection of society's most cherished hopes and deepest fears, then superhero movies perfectly capture the planet's current mood of uncertainty and dread. Today's global economy is a disaster, unemployment is ravaging the economies of both the developed and the developing world, and the threat of terrorism stretches from Kabul to Moscow, from London to Boston.

Superman arrived during a particularly dark time in the world's history, the 1930s, so it is not surprising that the franchise is being rebooted now, with Man Of Steel directed by the prolific action hack Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen). There is no clearer indication that this is a dark time in the world's history than the fact that the director who made the slovenly, inept Watchmen is now getting to reboot Superman. Is nothing sacred? No.

Superhero movies are made for a society that has basically given up. The police can't protect us, the government can't protect us, there are no more charismatic loners to protect us and the euro is near-defunct. Clint Eastwood has left the building. So, let's turn things over to the vigilantes. Superheroes need not obey laws or social conventions; they go where they please and do what they want. They pose simple – usually violent – solutions to complex problems. Superheroes operate in a netherworld just this side of fascism.

Still, it would be a mistake to say that all superhero movies are the same. Christopher Nolan's Batman movies are dark. The Iron Man movies are funny. The Hulk movies are goofy. The X-Men movies are complicated. Captain America was camp, Thor a bit silly, The Avengers sillier still. The Spider-Man movies are closest to conventional movies, placing ordinary people in difficult situations. They also feature a romance that seems quite believable, unlike Iron Man.

Rebooting and rehashing

Although superheroes are archetypal, each succeeding generation of filmgoers demands a more up-to-date hero. And so, each generation gets its own reboot of the Batman/Spider-Man/Superman franchise. One day, there may even be a Daredevil reboot, though hopefully not soon.

The films reflect the values of the decade in which they appear. The Batman movies of the 1990s were camp and jokey; the Dark Knight movies, appearing a decade later, were not. The Superman movies of the 1970s were over the top, like the comic books they were based on – it was, after all, the era of Nixon, Ford and Carter, clowns to a man.

Iron Man, a more recent creation, is recognisable as a sneering, insincere slacker: nothing heartfelt ever passes through his lips; the very thought of saying something honest and authentic would mortify him. You cannot imagine Iron Man talking like Batman, Wolverine or even Thor. He is the superhero as wise guy. He is Ironyman.

One thing that is puzzling about modern-day superhero movies is that the skill set of the individual hero is often poorly defined. I am not sure what it would take to put Iron Man out of commission. I have not been able to figure out whether the Dark Knight can actually fly: he certainly seems light on his feet. And I have no idea what powers Thor possesses. I know that his hammer has miraculous potencies, but I am still not sure precisely how miraculous they are. I have no idea what it would take to kill Thor; nor for that matter does Loki. In films featuring Dracula, Tony Montana, Orcs or even Achilles, the parameters are more clearly drawn.

The most interesting thing about the popularity of superhero movies is that they are insanely expensive to make, yet they spring from a plebian, populist artform. Comic books, at least until recently, were cheap. They were beautifully drawn and exciting, but they were still basically cheap. That was the point.

Movies are not cheap, especially not in 3D. Comic book heroes, like football players, have lost all contact with their proletarian roots.

Some people will read all this and say: "You're over-intellectualising. You're reading too much into it."

This may be true. But these charges are always made by people who never over-intellectualise anything, who never read too much into things. They are made by people who want you to take the X-Men seriously, as legitimate fiction. And then, when you do, they say that you are over-intellectualising.

After all, they say, it's only a movie. That's exactly right. It's only a movie. But it's the same movie – over and over and over again. – Guardian News & Media

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

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The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio


The sport of saving

Posted:

Ready, set, go! Some extreme penny-pinchers are headed our way on TLC's Extreme Cheapskates.

THERE are various things people do for sports. Some climb mountains, some swim across oceans while some others dive into … dumpsters?

In TLC's latest half-hour reality series, Extreme Cheapskates, the lengths some people go to save money should be classified as a sport.

In the pilot, for instance, licensed accountant Kate Hashimoto gives viewers the 101 on the less-than-graceful art of dumpster diving.

Firstly, one must dress like a homeless person. She says it helps to put on a shabby, tattered tee to evoke sympathy should store managers chase her away.

Looking dumpster-ready, she heads to a curb by an upscale grocery store (who said beggars can't be choosers?) where leftover groceries are disposed. Pick only packed and sealed goods, she advises, and if it's gone beyond the expiry date, well, that's okay.

Lastly, know your rights. Should a store manager attempt to chase you away – despite your being all dumpster-glamorous – know that "once the trash hits the curb, it's public property".

Kate is just one of many who have discovered this cost-cutting sport. There's Ben who makes his own toothpaste, Jeff whose primary mode of transportation is his bicycle, and Greg who flushes his toilet once a week and makes extra income by participating in medical experiments.

Extreme Cheapskates is part-entertaining and part-heartbreaking to watch. Undoubtedly, the novelty of watching some of the wackiest, unthought-of cost-saving practices will have many glued to the tele.

But somewhere towards the second half of the show, it gets heart-wrenching as these individuals encounter situations that will "test" just how frugal they can get. 

Kate, for example, is having friends over for dinner. Will she serve them her dumpster finds? And on Episode Four, Vickie's 13-year-old daughter complains that she has nothing to wear but an Amish-looking dress. Will the frugal mother take her to the store?

Here's where the sport of extreme saving becomes questionable. Serving your friends dumpster food might save you some ka-ching but it also puts you at risk of losing that friendship. And is it worth saving a few bucks on clothes at the expense of your teenage daughter's self-esteem?

If anything, Extreme Cheapskates proves that it costs to be cheap.

Extreme Cheapskates premieres today at 10pm on TLC (Astro Ch 707).

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star Online: World Updates

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The Star Online: World Updates


Pilots in Asiana crash relied on automatic equipment for airspeed

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SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The pilots aboard the Asiana Airlines Boeing 777 that crashed in San Francisco relied on automatic equipment - an auto-throttle system - to maintain airspeed and did not realize the plane was flying too slowly until it was just 200 feet (60 meters) above the ground, the head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said on Tuesday.

In her third detailed briefing on Saturday's crash that killed two Chinese passengers and injured more than 180 other people, NTSB Chairwoman Deborah Hersman also said two flight attendants were ejected from the plane after its tail hit a seawall in front of the runway and was torn off. Both were found injured but alive on the side of the runway.

Hersman said many questions remained about the incident. The South Korean airline's flight crew members were not tested for drugs or alcohol after the crash, a requirement for pilots of U.S.-based carriers involved in accidents, she said.

The accounts given to investigators by the pilots, as relayed by Hersman, confirmed information from the plane's flight data recorder that showed the plane was traveling 25 percent below its target airspeed as it came in for landing.

While she has declined to speculate on the cause of the crash, much of the information released by the NTSB suggests pilot error as a main focus of the investigation.

The pilot in charge of landing the plane on Saturday was in training on the 777 and was roughly halfway through the process, while seated next to him was a co-pilot on his first flight as an instructor. Both were experienced pilots, although they had not flown together before, Hersman said.

"At about 500 feet, he realized that they were low," Hersman told reporters, referring to the instructor pilot's account of the failed last-second attempts to avoid Saturday's disaster. "Between 500 and 200 feet (150 and 60 meters), they had a lateral deviation and they were low. They were trying to correct at that point."

Referring to the instructor pilot, she said it was not until 200 feet that "he recognized the auto-throttles were not maintaining speed" and tried to abort the landing. Hersman had previously said that the plane had been at an altitude of 200 feet 16 seconds before crashing.

Three of the four pilots on board were in the cabin during the landing, although only two could see the runway, Hersman said, citing the interviews by investigators with the crew.

Hersman said an examination of the wreckage showed that the auto-throttle was "armed," but it was not clear if it had been properly engaged or had somehow failed before the plane slowed to a near-stall and hit the ground. "We need to understand a little better" how the auto-throttle is used, she said.

"They had set speed at 137 knots (158 mph), and he assumed that the auto-throttles were maintaining speed," Hersman said of the instructor pilot.

She noted that the pilots were responsible for maintaining airspeed.

"We have a flying pilot and two other pilots in the cockpit and they have a monitoring function," she said. "One of the critical things that needs to be monitored on an approach to landing is speed. So we need to understand what was going on in the cockpit and also what was going on with the aircraft."

'RAMPANT SPECULATION'

The world's largest pilots union rebuked the NTSB for its handling of the crash investigation, saying the agency had released too much information too quickly, which could lead to wrong conclusions and compromise safety.

Releasing data from the flight's black boxes without full investigative information for context "has fueled rampant speculation" about the cause of the crash, the Air Line Pilots Association International said in a statement.

Hersman rejected the criticism. "We work for the traveling public," she said. "We feel it is important to show our work."

Aviation consultant Hans Weber, the president of TECOP International, Inc., said the accident may revive a long-running debate over whether pilots' increasing reliance on automated flight systems has taken a toll on their "hand-flying" skills.

Maintaining proper airspeed and altitude is "the most basic responsibility of the pilot, like breathing in and out," Weber said. But it could be the case, he added, that "pilots are paying attention to the computer rather than paying attention to the fundamentals."

Hersman did not comment on whether anyone in addition to the two flight attendants was ejected from the plane, though the two teenage Chinese students who died were found outside the aircraft. One of them may have been run over by an emergency vehicle, San Francisco fire department officials have said, but the local coroner has not yet released autopsy results showing the cause of death.

Asiana Airlines Chief Executive Yoon Young-doo arrived in San Francisco on Tuesday to meet with U.S. investigators, Asiana staff and survivors of the crash.

Hersman also confirmed witness accounts that at least one emergency escape chute had deployed inside the aircraft, trapping a flight attendant. The pilot who was sitting in the cabin worked to free her, Hersman said.

"I saw a leg sticking out between the slide and the wall. It kept moving," passenger Eugene Rah said in an interview on Monday. He said he and a man he believed was a crew member struggled to free her, adding: "He was asking me if I had anything sharp, but these days nobody can be on board with anything sharp."

She was eventually freed and hospitalized with serious injuries, Rah said.

(Additional reporting by Kristina Cooke and Alwyn Scott; Writing by Jonathan Weber, Editing by Peter Henderson and Will Dunham)

Remains of kidnapped journalist believed found in Honduras

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TEGUCIGALPA (Reuters) - Honduran police said on Tuesday they believe a severed head and other body parts found in a region of the country ravaged by Mexican drug cartels belong to a popular television journalist kidnapped last month.

Honduran police chief Juan Bonilla said officers found the clothing Anibal Barrow was last seen wearing and a savings account booklet in his name near a partially buried and decomposing headless torso in the northern city of Villanueva.

The evidence suggested the body, which had also had its arms and legs removed, belonged to Barrow, Bonilla said.

Later on Tuesday, police said they had also found the victim's head, arms, legs and feet.

Four people have been arrested in connection with the killing, and police are looking for six other suspects, Bonilla said, adding that no motive for the murder has been established.

Lying about 100 miles (165 km) north of Tegucigalpa, Villanueva is next to San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second-largest city.

Violence linked to organized crime in Honduras has surged in recent years, partly due to the presence of Mexican drug gangs that use the country as a transit point for contraband.

Barrow, 58, a popular morning news anchor on Globo TV, one of Honduras' largest broadcasters, was abducted by armed men on June 24 in downtown San Pedro Sula.

His death would put the number of murdered Honduran journalists since 2010 at 28, according to the country's human rights commission. It would also be the first time a journalist had been decapitated and dismembered in Honduras.

"This horrendous crime intimidates all Honduran journalists. We strongly urge authorities to clarify ... whether or not the motive (for the crime) was his profession," said Juan Mairena, president of the country's journalist association.

Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world, according to the United Nations, with 87 killings per 100,000 in 2012, and San Pedro Sula is the world's most murderous city.

(Writing by David Alire Garcia; Editing by Xavier Briand and Mohammad Zargham)

Fugitive Snowden likely Venezuela bound, says U.S. journalist

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RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - Fugitive former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward Snowden will likely accept asylum in Venezuela to escape prosecution in the United States, said Glenn Greenwald, the U.S. journalist who first published the secret documents that Snowden leaked.

In an interview immediately after speaking to Snowden by online chat on Tuesday, Greenwald said that Venezuela - one of three Latin American countries that have offered Snowden asylum - is the one most likely to guarantee his safety, especially as the United States pressures other nations not to take him if he is able to leave his current limbo at a Russian airport.

Nicaragua and Bolivia have also said they would accept Snowden but Venezuela is better poised "to get him safely from Moscow to Latin America and to protect him once he's there," Greenwald said. "They're a bigger country, a stronger country and a richer country with more leverage in international affairs."

WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy group that has been advising Snowden on his legal options in the search for asylum, suggested earlier on Tuesday that new developments in Snowden's search could unfold on Wednesday.

Greenwald, though, said a resolution to the crisis is still unclear and could take "days or hours or weeks."

Greenwald, a blogger and columnist for the London-based Guardian newspaper, said he based his opinion on an "informed guess" after recent contacts with Snowden.

Those discussions, he said, also lead him to believe that the trove of documents that Snowden took from the U.S. National Security Agency, or NSA, remains safely out of the hands of any foreign governments.

Greenwald returned to his home in Rio de Janeiro after a June meeting with Snowden in Hong Kong, from where Greenwald published the first of many reports that rattled the U.S. intelligence community by disclosing the breadth and depth of alleged surveillance by the NSA on telephone and internet usage of U.S. citizens.

The reports also appear to shed light on efforts by U.S. intelligence to get similar data in Europe, Latin America and elsewhere.

At first, Greenwald lost contact with Snowden as the former contractor travelled from Hong Kong to Russia in search of a destination that would shield him from U.S. prosecutors. On Saturday, however, Snowden reached out to Greenwald via an encrypted internet chat service the two use to communicate.

SNOWDEN'S CHALLENGE

Since then, Greenwald said, Snowden has explained his options but given no clear sign of how soon he might travel. While Russia has denied him entry beyond the international area of a Moscow airport terminal, Snowden has had Internet access and been able to communicate with those seeking to help him.

"He's not in anyone's custody or detention and never has been," Greenwald said.

Snowden's challenge, he added, is "figuring out how to get to the country that has offered him asylum" despite the efforts of the United States, which Greenwald characterized as "the rogue, lawless empire that has proven itself willing to engage in rogue behaviour to prevent him physically from getting there."

Greenwald dismissed suggestions that Snowden's passage through China and Russia had given authorities in either country the opportunity to seize the intelligence in his possession.

"He gave no information of any kind to the Chinese government or the Russian government," Greenwald said.

Media reports have said Snowden is travelling with numerous laptop computers but Greenwald said the former contractor is not foolish enough to store information where it could be easily seized.

"There are all sorts of smarter and safer ways for someone who knows what they're doing - and he knows what he's doing - to store and carry large amounts of data."

Greenwald is facing pressure of his own as he filters through the more than 5,000 documents, a sliver of the entire trove, that Snowden gave him. In addition to a media onslaught and criticism by opponents of the leaks back in the United States, Greenwald said he may have already been targeted by intelligence forces.

While in Hong Kong, he said he told his long-time boyfriend, a Brazilian communications student, on an Internet call that he would send him some of the documents by email. Two days later, Greenwald said, his boyfriend's laptop went missing from their Rio home.

Greenwald said he has no evidence of a break-in, but that "obviously it's a possibility."

Now, Greenwald said, he is focused on digesting the rest of the documents and writing additional stories, a process he expects to last months. Future coverage, he said, would shed more light on how the NSA collects data and interacts with telecommunications, software companies and other intelligence agencies in the United States.

Without giving further details, Greenwald said the bulk of his energy would go toward figuring out how to corroborate and explain what is often highly technical and arcane subject matter in the documents. "You can really alienate people with the technological and legal complexity of the stories."

Despite Snowden's recent association with WikiLeaks, which in recent years upended intelligence circles with high-profile military leaks of its own, Greenwald said Snowden is unlikely to disclose the rest of his intelligence in the large, unprocessed quantities that WikiLeaks has used in the past.

"If he had wanted a WikiLeaks-style document dump he could have gone to them in the first instance," Greenwald said.

Greenwald said he has for years sought to scrutinize and draw attention to the scope of U.S. intelligence gathering.

"I have been trying to do everything possible to expose the excesses of the NSA and the dangers of extreme secrecy behind which the U.S. government operates," he said. "So to be essentially given thousands of top secret documents that prove all the things I have been saying ... and much more ... is very invigorating."

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star eCentral: Movie Buzz

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The Star eCentral: Movie Buzz


Stepping stone for filmmakers

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Tropfest, the South East Asian edition, will be held in Malaysia.

TROPFEST, the world's largest short film festival and competition, will now be a regular feature in Malaysia. This country, Penang in particular, has been chosen to host Tropfest for the South East Asia region.

Not only that, Tropfest will also be partnering with Malaysia Major Events, a division of the Malaysia Convention And Exhibition Bureau (MyCEB) under the Tourism And Culture Ministry.

According to Zulkefli Hj Sharif, CEO of MyCEB, the festival and competition is expected to draw 10,000 attendees, with 2,250 international tourists within that number.

"We looked at how Tropfest, as the largest short film festival in the world, could bring tourists into the country," said Tony Nagamiah, general manager of Malaysia Major Events. "From our point of view, we see that it could increase tourism revenues. Because it is not held anywhere else in South East Asia, it is exclusive to us, and it definitely has an appeal for international tourists. Secondly, it is about making Malaysia a hub for entertainment. And it is also opening up opportunities for local filmmakers."

Joe Sidek, managing director of Tropfest SEA, who is also the director of the George Town Festival in Penang, said the George Town Festival was instrumental in convincing the people behind Tropfest to hold the South East Asian edition here. Australian film director John Polson, founder of Tropfest, told Joe he had been following the George Town Festival.

Polson started out as an actor and had been in the Australian TV movie Dadah Is Death, in which he played one of two teenagers who were arrested for carrying drugs at the Penang airport in 1983. So, for Polson, even after so many years, Penang immediately caught his attention.

"My direction for the George Town Festival is, I want art and culture to be accessible," said Joe. "You do not have to be rich or cultured or belong to a social class. Even for films. Why should you be clever or rich to like films? My mission is about people. Tropfest has a similar mission. It's about being accessible. Films for everyone. You don't have to have studied filmmaking, you only have to brave it and try."

Polson started the Tropicana Film Festival (as it was originally called because it was held at the Tropicana Cafe in Sydney) 20 years ago as an informal screening for cast, crew and friends. But as time went on, the attendance grew and Tropfest became a major event, drawing hundreds of thousands from countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United States and New Zealand. Today, it is also often graced by the presence of major stars such as Nicole Kidman, Cate Blanchett, Naomi Watts and Russell Crowe.

Michael Laverty, international managing director of Tropfest, thinks the Malaysian film industry and its Australian counterpart are facing a similar situation.

"Particularly for Australia, we are not a very big population, so it's very difficult to make an Australian film and have big box-office figures," said Laverty. "What Tropfest can do is give filmmakers a stepping stone, so they can use it as an entrance. In fact, our 2012 winner, Alethea Jones, has got a feature project now in the US. Hence, if you do well at Tropfest, it's like a calling card."

He stressed that strong ideas are what the Tropfest judges look for in a short film. And of course, good acting.

"Now, with DSLR and new cameras that cost like, a thousand or three thousand dollars, production values are getting higher and higher," said Laverty. "But we've always said that it's not about the budget. We've had films that won Tropfest that were made for less than US$52 (RM165). It's crazy."

The competition is open to all residents of South East Asia. The best entry will be awarded US$10,000 (RM31,658) and the winner will go on a five-day film industry immersion trip to Los Angeles, California, sponsored by the Motion Picture Association Of America. Entry deadline is Oct 28, 2013. A fee of RM50 for each film entry is incurred, which will be waived for the first 20 submissions from each country. The festival will be held in Penang in January next year, and admission to the celebration of short films and music will be free. For further information, visit www.tropfest.com/sea.

Somebody save me (and us)

Posted:

Is an endless, insanely expensive parade of semi-fascist bores (read: superheroes) strangling the film industry? Do we need saving from the heroes?

TWENTY years ago, after appearing in two phenomenally successful, visually opulent and generally brilliant Batman movies, Michael Keaton decided he didn't want to make any more Caped Crusader films. So he walked away. It was a disastrous move that effectively ended Keaton's career as a leading man, the actor learning the hard way that the only unforgivable crime in Hollywood is to walk away from a phenomenally successful franchise.

The next two Batman films starred Val Kilmer and George Clooney. Batman Forever was not very good and Batman & Robin was terrible. And for the next few years, Batman dropped out of the global conversation.

This was good because it gave society a breather. The Dark Knight thing was played out: the excitement moviegoers felt when Tim Burton made the first Batman film had evaporated under the tutelage of Joel Schumacher. In retrospect, Keaton's catastrophic decision to walk away now seems heroic, because he was the last actor to go through a script, take a cold, hard look at the superhero genre and say: "Enough. These films are starting to suck."

Today's superhero films have not yet reached the point where they flat-out suck. But they are getting there. Iron Man 2 was a huge disappointment, The Avengers an aimless hodgepodge and The Dark Knight Rises a pretentious, incoherent mess. And now, we have yet another Superman movie, Man Of Steel.

Those of us who would like to see an end – or at least an extended pause – to the hegemony of superhero films would be very pleased if Robert Downey Jr, Christian Bale and their costumed brethren would make a similarly audacious artistic decision and walk away.

As Steven Soderbergh recently complained, these films are draining the life out of motion pictures, diverting virtually all of the industry's resources into insanely expensive "tentpole" films that supposedly prop up other projects. It is unlikely that any of these actors will make such a courageous decision as Keaton, though: they saw what happened to him, they saw how Sean Connery's career stalled when he quit 007. But it's still okay to dream, isn't it?

This thing is starting to get old. There are too many superhero films; their storylines are all beginning to run together. It is a genre dominated by the thoroughly unoriginal notion that you cannot trust the government. Even when you can trust the government, you cannot trust all of it. And even the branches you can trust aren't much help, because they are incompetent.

To save humanity, one must rely on a bootstrap operation headed by a dedicated go-getter and self-starter. At heart, all superheroes are Republicans.

In superhero movies, women are almost always accessories. This is true even if they themselves are superheroines. The men do the heavy lifting; the women serve an ornamental function. This is why we are all the way up to Iron Man 3 and Batman 7, but have not seen a Supergirl film since 1984, or a Wonder Woman film ever.

The 12-year-old boys for whom superhero movies are chiefly made are not interested in women. They may not even be interested in girls. They are certainly not interested in girls with superpowers.

Breeding neurosis

Superhero films increasingly rely on a structure where the hero thinks he is fighting one villain when he is actually fighting another. In The Dark Knight Rises, Batman thinks he is up against the crypto-fascist Bane, when he is actually locked in a deadly struggle with a mysterious fellow philanthropist played by Marion Cotillard. In Iron Man 3, the hero believes he is going toe-to-toe with a terrorist called the Mandarin, when the villain is actually a mad scientist who bears a striking resemblance to the dead but not forgotten US rock star Warren Zevon.

In Thor, the bodacious nordic deity spends most of the movie worrying about a race of tall, antisocial creatures called The Frost Giants of Jotunheim, and does quite a bit of jousting with the testy emissaries of the US Government, when the person he should really be worrying about is his brother, Loki.

In days gone by, a superhero only had to worry about the Joker or the Silver Surfer or Lex Luthor. Now, he has to worry about mysterious philanthropists. No wonder he's so neurotic.

In fact, the rise of superhero movies signals the triumph of the neurotic over the maverick. In the classic Hollywood movie, whether the hero is cop, cowboy, private eye, rebel or drifter, there comes a moment when this solitary, self-sufficient loner faces the bad guys all by himself. The bad guys are usually trying to destroy a ranch, a town, a portion of the high chaparral, or in some extreme cases, a flourishing ethnic group. They are rarely seeking to destroy an entire planet.

These villains have limited aspirations, and the man in the white hat has a limited arsenal of era-appropriate weaponry: a gun, a bow and arrow, a few grenades, maybe even a tank. He does not have any weapons of mass destruction to fall back on, nor any supernatural powers. He has to rely on brains, brawn and guts, nothing else. Sometimes, this is not enough: more often than we would like to think, he ends up like Spartacus or Braveheart.

In the classic superhero movie, the situation is quite different. Here, the bad guys are trying to destroy entire societies, cities or planets, and the good guy is rarely self-sufficient. Instead, somehow or other, he has come into possession of a preternaturally phantasmagoric suit of armour, complete with zany high-tech accoutrements; or a hammer that can call down lightning from the heavens; or extendable fingernails; or laser eyesight; or implausible (and non-steroid-related) abs; or the ability to change shape.

And these superpowers aren't just good news for all the societies, cities and planets that need saving: most superheroes are nerds or geeks or losers or screw-ups or pixies or marooned orphans from deep space who can't get their personal lives functioning properly – until they come into possession of some mystical power or magical weapon.

Nothing in their pitiful lives works out until they are bitten by a spider, or start sporting a remarkable piece of jewellery, or are handed a large, seemingly radioactive hammer by their father.

Waking up awesome

"Being a superhero is a way of working out your personal problems," my 26-year-old son told me when I asked him about the popularity of the genre among his age group and younger. "You're an ordinary person with no special skills – and suddenly, you wake up one day and you're awesome. So, if you're asking me if the superhero genre is going to fade away soon, the answer is no."

You wake up awesome. Not because you did something special like beat Hitler or cure polio. All you did was wake up. And suddenly, you were awesome. It is the dream of the fame-hungry TV talent contest generation.

If movies are a reflection of society's most cherished hopes and deepest fears, then superhero movies perfectly capture the planet's current mood of uncertainty and dread. Today's global economy is a disaster, unemployment is ravaging the economies of both the developed and the developing world, and the threat of terrorism stretches from Kabul to Moscow, from London to Boston.

Superman arrived during a particularly dark time in the world's history, the 1930s, so it is not surprising that the franchise is being rebooted now, with Man Of Steel directed by the prolific action hack Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen). There is no clearer indication that this is a dark time in the world's history than the fact that the director who made the slovenly, inept Watchmen is now getting to reboot Superman. Is nothing sacred? No.

Superhero movies are made for a society that has basically given up. The police can't protect us, the government can't protect us, there are no more charismatic loners to protect us and the euro is near-defunct. Clint Eastwood has left the building. So, let's turn things over to the vigilantes. Superheroes need not obey laws or social conventions; they go where they please and do what they want. They pose simple – usually violent – solutions to complex problems. Superheroes operate in a netherworld just this side of fascism.

Still, it would be a mistake to say that all superhero movies are the same. Christopher Nolan's Batman movies are dark. The Iron Man movies are funny. The Hulk movies are goofy. The X-Men movies are complicated. Captain America was camp, Thor a bit silly, The Avengers sillier still. The Spider-Man movies are closest to conventional movies, placing ordinary people in difficult situations. They also feature a romance that seems quite believable, unlike Iron Man.

Rebooting and rehashing

Although superheroes are archetypal, each succeeding generation of filmgoers demands a more up-to-date hero. And so, each generation gets its own reboot of the Batman/Spider-Man/Superman franchise. One day, there may even be a Daredevil reboot, though hopefully not soon.

The films reflect the values of the decade in which they appear. The Batman movies of the 1990s were camp and jokey; the Dark Knight movies, appearing a decade later, were not. The Superman movies of the 1970s were over the top, like the comic books they were based on – it was, after all, the era of Nixon, Ford and Carter, clowns to a man.

Iron Man, a more recent creation, is recognisable as a sneering, insincere slacker: nothing heartfelt ever passes through his lips; the very thought of saying something honest and authentic would mortify him. You cannot imagine Iron Man talking like Batman, Wolverine or even Thor. He is the superhero as wise guy. He is Ironyman.

One thing that is puzzling about modern-day superhero movies is that the skill set of the individual hero is often poorly defined. I am not sure what it would take to put Iron Man out of commission. I have not been able to figure out whether the Dark Knight can actually fly: he certainly seems light on his feet. And I have no idea what powers Thor possesses. I know that his hammer has miraculous potencies, but I am still not sure precisely how miraculous they are. I have no idea what it would take to kill Thor; nor for that matter does Loki. In films featuring Dracula, Tony Montana, Orcs or even Achilles, the parameters are more clearly drawn.

The most interesting thing about the popularity of superhero movies is that they are insanely expensive to make, yet they spring from a plebian, populist artform. Comic books, at least until recently, were cheap. They were beautifully drawn and exciting, but they were still basically cheap. That was the point.

Movies are not cheap, especially not in 3D. Comic book heroes, like football players, have lost all contact with their proletarian roots.

Some people will read all this and say: "You're over-intellectualising. You're reading too much into it."

This may be true. But these charges are always made by people who never over-intellectualise anything, who never read too much into things. They are made by people who want you to take the X-Men seriously, as legitimate fiction. And then, when you do, they say that you are over-intellectualising.

After all, they say, it's only a movie. That's exactly right. It's only a movie. But it's the same movie – over and over and over again. – Guardian News & Media

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

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NYSE Euronext To Take Over Scandal-Hit Libor

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LONDON: The U.S. owner of the New York Stock Exchange announced Tuesday it will take over the running of Libor, the benchmark interest rate at the centre of a global rigging scandal, in a move that Britain's financial regulator said would restore its integrity.

A central cog in the world financial system, Libor rates are used as a reference for some $550 trillion (369.92 trillion pounds) in contracts ranging from complex derivatives to everyday credit card bills. Trust in the London interbank offered rate (Libor) was shaken by revelations last year that traders had routinely manipulated it, prompting an overhaul of the system by which it is calculated.

NYSE Euronext will take over Libor from the British Bankers' Association (BBA) for a token 1 pound, according to a source who declined to be identified because the contract details are confidential. The BBA, a trade body, had since the 1980s administered the rate which reflects what banks say they are charged to borrow by other banks.

The focus for NYSE Euronext will be on restoring credibility and integrity to Libor and ensuring it remains one of the most important global rates, another source who declined to be named said, adding that since Libor underpinned the interest rate trading market it was vital to the exchange's own banking and brokerage customers.

London is not losing oversight of the benchmark that bears its name because the rate will continue to be regulated for the time being by Britain's Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Tuesday's decision to award the administration of Libor to NYSE Euronext from early 2014 was taken by an advisory committee appointed in October by the UK finance ministry to find a successor to the BBA.

Martin Wheatley, chief executive of the FCA, which started regulating Libor in April in response to public and political outrage at the scandal, called the appointment "an important step in enhancing the integrity of Libor."

He said NYSE Euronext should be able to make money from administering the benchmark. "Nobody came to this with anything other than a commercial proposition," Wheatley said. "The trend will be for benchmarks to be transparent and regulated. They (NYSE Euronext) will take the view that this is a growing industry and it's broader than just Libor."

With uncertainty about the future regulation of Libor, and given NYSE Euronext is being bought by U.S. peer IntercontinentalExchange (ICE) for $8.2 billion, not everyone was convinced the appointment was a good idea.

"We had a 'fox guarding the henhouse' issue here, and we should learn from that," said Bart Chilton, a member of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) regulator.

"I firmly believe that having a truly neutral third-party administrator would be the best alternative, and I'm not sure that an exchange is the proper choice," Chilton said.

STRONG GOVERNANCE

NYSE Euronext did not say how it would address such concerns, but one of the sources close to the situation said it would involve "a very strong governance and oversight regime." This would include an oversight committee and code of conduct "to ensure there is no repeat of what we've seen in the last few years," the source said.

"Exchanges and other firms are always looking for growth, and you can say that there is potential for pricing and trading any index, including Libor," said Tom Jordan, whose New York-based firm Jordan & Jordan advises securities firms about market data and compliance services.

British and U.S. regulators have so far fined three banks -Barclays Plc, UBS AG and RBS - a total of $2.6 billion and two men have been charged for manipulating Libor and similar benchmark rates. But more banks and individuals remain under investigation.

Thomson Reuters, parent of Reuters which has calculated Libor and distributed the rates on behalf of the BBA since 2005, had also expressed an interest in a role in running Libor, one of the sources said.

Asked about its potential interest in running Libor, Thomson Reuters issued a statement that said it "has worked closely with the BBA, FCA and HMT (UK finance ministry) throughout the process of reforming Libor and welcomes the appointment of the new administrator."

"We will continue to support the calculation and distribution of Libor during the transition period," the company said.

The FCA's Wheatley had first recommended changes to how the benchmark was set, governed and supervised in September.

But Libor remains in flux.

The U.S. CFTC wants it scrapped and replaced with a reference rate based on actual market transactions, while Wheatley argues that a rapid transition to a transaction-only rate is not possible.

Meanwhile, Brussels is also seeking to take on powers held by national regulators. According to an EU law to be proposed shortly, regulation of major benchmarks like Libor and oil indexes - also at the centre of rigging allegations - could be shifted from London to the Paris-based European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA).

In an effort to bridge the gap between British and U.S. views, the international securities regulators will later this month propose final principles on the governance of benchmarks, which will be reflected in the upcoming EU draft law.

According to a document seen by Reuters, it will recommend using market transactions but will allow for estimates when markets are illiquid. Trading dried up between banks at the height of the 2007-2008 credit crunch, making it difficult to calculate accurate interbank rates.- Reuters

Mah Sing CIMB’s top property pick, drawing interest abroad

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KUALA LUMPUR: CIMB has singled out the Mah Sing Group as its top property pick, rating it Outperform while maintaining a target price of RM3.48 (the stock opened at RM2.49 on Wednesday, July 10).

It said the group's strong earnings growth, new sales and landbanking efforts should provide re-rating catalysts, advising investors to continue to accumulate Mah Sing because "the group offers the best exposure to a pure Malaysian property play, backed by an excellent track record for execution and aggressive growth".

CIMB reported that it had taken Mah Sing's management on a "non-deal road show" to London, Edinburgh and Paris the week before to meet with investors keen to the latest in the Malaysian property market.

"There were no major surprises from the meetings as we have followed Mah Sing's progress closely. We believe investors were impressed with Mah Sing's strong performance over the years and its lofty ambitions which are tempered by carefully calculated moves," it said.

Explaining that the group started as a plastic injection moulding company that expanded into the property business, it said Mah Sing retained one aspect of its original manufacturing culture – a relatively asset-light and quick-turnaround business model.

Mah Sing, in its meetings with the prospective investors, said it was most optimistic about the Klang Valley in light of the major infrastructure projects like the MRT and high-speed rail which will improve accessibility.

It said it was a bit more cautious about the prospects for Iskandar Malaysia and was worried about a situation of potential oversupply several years down the road, especially when some high-end condos come onstream.

The group acquired four parcels of land this year, including two in Kuala Lumpur and Iskandar Malaysia, Johor for RM438.35 million, and is eyeing more landbank in the Klang Valley, with sizes ranging from 100-700 acres for township-oriented landbank.

"It is one of the few developers with exposure to all major property markets in Malaysia, i.e. the Klang Valley, Johor, Penang and Sabah. We share management's positive view on the Klang Valley in light of the Greater Kuala Lumpur Transformation Programme.

"We are more optimistic than Mah Sing on the longer-term potential of Iskandar Malaysia. We like Penang for its heritage status and the imminent completion of the second Penang Bridge, while Sabah can no longer be ignored as it has enjoyed some of the strongest residential price appreciation over the past 10 years. Mah Sing remains our top pick in the property sector," CIMB concluded.

AirAsia X makes debut at RM1.26

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KUALA LUMPUR: AirAsia X Bhd opened at RM1.26, a one sen premium over its institutional price of RM1.25, when it made its debut on the Main Market on Wednesday.

At 9.01am, it was trading at RM1.26 with 14.24 million shares done.

The FBM KLCI was up 1.66 points to 1,768.15. Turnover was 36.77 million shares valued at RM34.29mil. There were 100 gainers, 31 losers and 108 counters unchanged.

Its public retail offering of 150 million shares was oversubscribed by 3.83 times.

As the institutional price was fixed at RM1.25 per share on June 21, the final retail price was fixed at RM1.25 per share.

PublicInvest Research had a fair value of RM1.50 using discounted cash flows (DCF) valuation.

"At our fair value, AAX will be valued at 2014F EV/EBITDAR (enterprise value/earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortisation ratio) of 7.7 times and price-to-earnings (core net earnings) of 20.0 times.

"We believe the key attractions of AAX are its ability to tap into the AirAsia extensive route network in the Asia Pacific region and its exceptionally low cost base which would put it in a good position against increasing competition in the region," said Public Invest Research.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

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Kin: Murder may have been a last-ditch bid

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SIBU: The man who is suspected of killing almost his entire family probably did so to spare them from being harassed by debtors, said his close relatives and friends.

Last Friday, the yet-to-be-named suspect, who was described as a loving husband and good father, killed his wife and two children at their home at Pulau Li Hua in what is widely speculated to be a last-ditch attempt to flee from debtors.

"I believe he had planned to die with all family members because he felt there was no way out and he did not want the family to suffer after he was gone," a relative, who declined to be named, told The Star.

It was reported that the 43-year-old suspect, who was a contractor, had planned the suicide-cum-murder with his wife, Ling Yung Ming, 40, several days before the incident.

Police had recovered five handwritten letters in Chinese from the suspect's home on Sunday, but did not disclose their contents.

Ling was found dead on the floor of the master bedroom with the youngest child, Victor Tiang Soon Heng, two, while the body of their daughter, Christine Tiang Soon Ai, 14, was on the bed.

It was understood that the suspect had told police that before the murder, he had asked his wife and children to take sleeping pills.

Victor was said to have taken one, but his eldest son Vincent, 17, refused.

While his children and wife were sleeping, the suspect gassed them with cooking gas from two gas tanks recovered outside the bedroom.

Vincent, however, escaped by jumping down from the car porch roof, climbing over the fence and running across the street to seek help from a neighbour.

The post-mortem showed all three had suffocated and had injuries on their heads.

Local sources said the suspect lost a lot of money trading shares while another source also said he was a big-time gambler.

The victims were identified by the suspect's elder brother and one of Ling's brothers.

Their funeral is scheduled for Thursday.

Indisciplined athletes who have been taken to task

Posted:

PETALING JAYA: Breach of discipline by Malaysian athletes is fairly uncommon consi­dering that there have been several national associations that have taken such individuals to task for breaking the rules.

Among the first cases to receive national attention was in 1995 when the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) banned six national players, who were competing in the Merdeka Tournament, for sneaking out of the national training camp at the Wisma FAM past midnight to go to a disco.

The infamous "Disco Six" Azman Adnan, Sham­­surin Abdul Rahman, L. Suresh, Zami Mohd Noor, Assrof Hanafiah and Rizal Sukiman were banned for a period of between six months and a year for their lack of professionalism.

Next on the list was the sepak takraw trio of Firdaus Abdul Ghani, Aznan Raslan and Hanif Azman, who were sent home from the 2002 Asian Games in Busan, South Korea, after fai­ling a random dope test. They were slapped with a two-year ban by the Sepak Takraw Association of Malaysia.

In February 2010, the footballers were back in the news for partying the night away at a nightspot in Kuala Lumpur during the Asia Group Three World Cup qualifiers.

Kamarulzaman Hassan, Azmin Azram Abdul Aziz and Mohamed Khalid Jamlus, dubbed the "Hard Rock trio", were slapped with a two-month suspension and a RM5,000 fine by FAM's disciplinary committee. They were duly dropped from the national team because of the indiscipline.

The nation did not have to wait long for tabloid fodder. Just seven months later it was the hockey players' turn as 10 national junior players broke curfew to go to a dancing hall in Poland.

The 10, known as the "Disco Kids", were dished out a three-month ban by the Malaysia Hockey Federation disciplinary board for indiscipline.

In May this year, it was also brought to light that local badminton shuttlers indulged in late nights and gambling at the recently-concluded Sudirman Cup.

Related stories:

Sukma scandal: Khairy upset by report of coach consuming alcohol with players

Sukma scandal: Cops to complete rape probe by this week

Sukma scandal: Alleged rape victim a chaperone for team

Parliament: Price of fuel to determine TNB tariffs

Posted:

KUALA LUMPUR: Consumers will pay more for electricity if there is an increase in fuel costs once Tenaga Nasional Berhad (TNB) implements the Fuel Cost Past Through (FCPT) mechanism next year.

However, Deputy Energy, Green Technology and Water Minister Datuk Seri Mahdzir Khalid said any increase under the mechanism, which would see tariffs being determined by fuel costs, would be minimal and could even be staggered over an extended period of time.

The Energy Commission, he said, was also studying several proposals to minimise the effects of the mechanism on electricity tariff for households, including maintaining incentives for thrifty consumers.

"No decision has been made with regards to the effect of the FCPT on electricity tariff. The Commission is studying the matter to look at several ways on how to minimise the effect on domestic tariff," he told reporters at the Parliament lobby here yesterday.

Under the mechanism, additional fuel costs due to the increase in fuel prices will be reflected in a higher electricity tariff while similarly, any reduction or savings will be returned to consumers by lowering the tariff.

The mechanism, which had been proposed from as far back as 2005, had already been adopted by utility companies in many countries such as Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines and Japan.

The matter, added Mahdzir, would still have to go through several approval stages, including getting the Prime Minister's nod.

"Several incentives will be maintained to benefit specific groups of consumers such as those who use less than 200kW of power a month or whose monthly bill does not exceed RM20," he said.

Households which used less than 200kW of power a month would be charged 21.8sen per kW, an incentive in place since 1997, he pointed out, while those with monthly bills of RM20 or less would continue to enjoy free electricity.

Earlier, Mahdzir told Liang Teck Meng (BN-Simpang Renggam) that the move to introduce the FCPT was aimed at determining the electricity tariff in a more efficient manner for consumers.

"Under this mechanism, any change in the fuel costs will be channelled to the consumers based on the determination of the tariff set by the government," he said.

Liang had wanted to know when the FCPT mechanism would be implemented by TNB to reflect the actual cost of fuel.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

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Tell-tale signs that a movie could be a flop

Posted:

landed in theatres recently with a thud. Blowing up much of the Beltway, it costs US$150mil (RM450mil) but the film only eked out a US$25.7mil (RM77.1mil) opening despite boasting the triple threat of Channing Tatum, Jamie Foxx and

This week saw the debut of The Lone Ranger, which rode into theatres on a flurry of bad reviews and damaging reports about a bursting budget and production snafus. Of course, like World War Z, another film that was plauged by trouble on the set stories, The Lone Ranger could overcome the bad buzz to be a solid box officer earner. It's just that not every film is so lucky. 

Just ask Will and Jaden Smith's whose father-son adventure After Earth crash landed with audiences and critics; or poor Taylor Kitsch, who had the ignominious distinction of starring in not one, but two back-to-back bombs with Battleship and John Carter

Nearly every preview for would-be blockbusters these days promises moviegoers a non-stop thrill ride guaranteed to leave them flattened, floored and gasping at the sheer wonder of all that CGI and star power. Look closer, however, and there are certain tell-tale signs that a studio knows it may have a turkey on its hands. 

Every studio wants a movie to be a hit. Here are some signals that it won't be: 

Critics can't review the film until after it opens 

Sometimes a film is so unsalvageable that studios won't even let critics get their talons into it until after a film debuts. So if your local paper carries a notice that such and such a film can't be reviewed because there were no advance screenings, cancel the babysitter and call off plans to hit the multiplex. 

That kind of treatment is reserved for movies that are so bad, studios know the reviews will only add fuel to the bad-word-of-mouth fire. Think of the much-panned Movie 43, or the Ashton Kutcher-Katherine Heigl dud Killers (pic below), or the Daniel Craig horror film Dream House, which was frightening for all the wrong reasons. None of those films got reviewed until after opening day. Get the drift? 

The Killers

The ever-shifting release date 

When a studio plans to release a movie during blockbuster or awards season, only to change course and reschedule for, say, early spring or mid-fall, that usually signals big problems. 

It either means a movie isn't good enough to snag an Oscar or lacks what it takes to compete with the other popcorn movies. Either way, it's rarely an endorsement. 

Exceptions: The Great Gatsby which had many Hollywood watchers smelling a bomb when it was punted out of Oscar season and into this summer. Yes, critics hated it, but audiences embraced it to the tune of more than US$300mil (RM900mil) at the worldwide box office. 

A similar strategy reaped dividends for World War Z, which brought in the Lost team of Damon Lindelof and Drew Goddard after filming had wrapped to craft a new ending. The costly bet required a move from winter 2012 to the summer of 2013, but the filmmakers were rewarded with big box office takings worldwide and counting. Some things are worth the wait. 

It's green 

Green Hornet and Green Lantern both came out summer 2011, both cost a lot of money, and both bombed. Add to the list, 2010's Green Zone, a big-budget Iraq War action movie that discovered that – shock of shocks – audiences go to the movies to escape real world problems. 

Still don't see a pattern? Try 2003's Hulk and 2008's The Incredible Hulk

Green is great for the environment. At the box office, it's toxic. Exception: The Avengers, which did feature a big green monster but widely avoided the colour in its title. 

Eddie Murphy is in it 

Yeah, he was a comic genius – back in the time of Iran Contra and acid wash jeans. But too many dumb kiddie movies have made Eddie Murphy box office poison. 

With a resume stocked with flops like Meet Dave, A Thousand Words and, drum roll please, The Adventures Of Pluto Nash, it's a wonder the former-funnyman continues to get work. Shrek and Dreamgirls sure feel like a long time ago. 

Katherine Heigl is in it 

Poor Izzie. If only you'd never left Seattle Grace Hospital. That's because losing the medical scrubs has been nothing short of a disaster for the once-promising Heigl. 

Don't believe us? Why don't you rent Killers or One For The Money ... and don't worry, there won't be a wait on Netflix for either one. 

It's a "Big Budget Passion Project" 

Throwing a lot of money at a talented auteur or actor usually results in one of two outcomes: the studio doesn't trust its creative team enough and over-interferes, creating an unsalvageable mishmash of the filmmaker's unique vision and the studio's desperate desire to make it appeal to the widest possible audience (see: The Fountain), or a creative genius has too much clout and gets all the cash and freedom to do what they want (see: Cloud Atlas, Battlefield Earth and everything M. Night Shyamalan has done since 2006). 

Exception: Anything James Cameron touches. Just write the cheque Hollywood and leave him in peace. 

Poster or trailer proclaims "From the producer of..." 

Ask yourself: do you even know what a producer does? They might as well say from the craft services team behind Twilight or the grip who helped light The Phantom Menace. — Reuters

Meet the Jaeger meisters

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While they are no A-listers, Pacific Rim features some of the brighter stars in Hollywood, dedicated to their craft and all focused on making this movie a success.

RINKO KIKUCHI as Mako Mori, the new pilot out for revenge

"The armour that I wore as pilot in the Conn-pod (cockpit) was heavy. And then we had to wear a mechanical arm for the fight sequence. Guillermo (del Toro) made it really heavy so that the performance would look real. By the end of the shoot, I became a true Jaeger pilot."

GUILLERMO DEL TORO, the visionary director of Pacific Rim

"A good movie must have three things – plot, information and character. Now, to balance all three is difficult. The final screenplay for Pacific Rim was 135-pages long, which is 40 more minutes (from the final cut of the movie). So, when writing a script, you have to write in a way that there are modular things that you can move around. In my opinion, you write the movie in the editing room, really."

CHARLIE HUNNAM as Raleigh Becket, a down-and-out pilot out to prove himself ... again

"The process of acting in an environment that is virtual was a scary process initially. But when I got to work, I realised the interaction with human beings is most important. If you have got good actors showing up prepared, and ready to do the scenes, that's all you need as an actor. The green screen is of secondary importance."

RON PERLMAN as Hannibal Chau, the flamboyant dealer selling Kaiju body parts in the Hong Kong black market

"Things you long for as an actor are to be challenged and to be presented with different forms of humanity to explore. And every single time I have worked with (del Toro), he has asked for something new. He told me he wanted Hannibal to have a lot of flair, to be theatrical."

IDRIS ELBA as Stacker Pentecost, the commander overseeing the Jaeger Programme

"(My character) is a lifelong soldier and a natural-born leader. No matter how big the problem is, his attitude is, 'I'm going to find a way to fix this'. As a strategist and a soldier, his only job is to figure out how to survive and win."

CHARLIE DAY as Dr Newton Geiszler, the biologist who both studies monsters and is a Kaiju groupie

"I knew the studio wanted me to bring some comedy to this movie and my greatest fear was that they were going to fill the script with fart jokes. Guillermo (del Toro) is always pushing me to play it almost as straight as I could. The challenge was to never make it too funny that I looked out of place in this movie. But also, hopefully, not to be too straight that the audience is disappointed that they don't get to see me being funny."

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The bigger the better

The bigger the better

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Award-winning director Guillermo del Toro goes big, literally, with Pacific Rim.

SOME three years ago, things were looking bleak for Guillermo del Toro. The acclaimed Mexican director was enlisted to direct the prequels to The Lord Of The Rings; he spent two years designing the world of Middle-earth as he envisioned it for The Hobbit movies. Then, he pulled out, stating delays as the main reason for bowing out. (Rumour has it that Peter Jackson, who was producing the films, was meddling too much.)

Del Toro quickly moved on to another project he has been lobbying for years – At The Mountains Of Madness, adapted from the H.P. Lovecraft novella. Even with Tom Cruise and James Cameron onboard, as actor and producer respectively, the studio eventually dropped the project, with budget constraint cited as one of the reasons.

"Mountains is the hardest experience I had to deal with in the 20 years of my career," sighs del Toro. "When the movie collapsed, I was crushed."

But he didn't have much time to wallow in self-pity. The director moved on very quickly to the next project, Pacific Rim. Now, for a fanboy of Japanese anime and all things monsters and robots, this project was right up del Toro's alley.

"When I read the screenplay (for Pacific Rim), I said, let's do it!" the 48-year-old director tells Star2 in an interview in San Francisco.

So, when he got news that Mountains Of Madness had been dropped on a Friday (del Toro admitted to crying over the weekend), he started working on Pacific Rim the following Monday.

In Pacific Rim, the world is at the brink of destruction, no thanks to legions of Kaiju (Japanese for giant beast), which have risen from the sea and are hell-bent on destroying the world.

To battle these monstrous beasts, giant robots, called Jaegers, are built to go head-to-head with them. These Jaegers are controlled by two pilots who move in tandem with each other – physically and mentally. Their minds are in sync via a neural bridge called The Drift; so the more the pilots bond, the better the Jaeger works.

When the frequency of attacks by the Kaiju increase and Jaegers fall one by one at the hands of the nasty beasts, governments of the world lose faith in mankind's warrior robots.

One final push is needed to help save the world and it is down to a washed-up former pilot, Raleigh Becket (Charlie Hunnam), and a newbie, Mako Mori (Rinko Kikuchi), to pair up to stop the apocalypse.

The first order of the day for del Toro was designing the Jaegers and Kaiju. And boy, did he have fun with it!

"We designed the Jaegers and Kaiju in my house. I have something like eight drawing tables in my house, so I would lock the artist inside the room and let them work and meet at lunch time to bounce ideas back and forth. I'm obsessive compulsive and everything in the movie has to go through me," del Toro shares.

Hunnam, who has been to del Toro's house, can attest to the director's obsession with monsters. "First of all, let me tell you, his house is amazing; it's like something from The Addams Family, book cases would open up to rooms and he has monster figurines everywhere. So, when I was at his place to talk about this movie, the artists were there sketching and he showed me a sketch of a robot and said, 'You will be the pilot. You will be inside the head of this robot!' In 15 minutes, I said I was on board," remembers Hunnam.

Hunnam signed on to star in Pacific Rim without even reading the script. The prospect of working with del Toro was enough for the actor.

"There's a handful of directors, 10 maybe 15, who are truly on top of their game. In this generation of filmmakers, Guillermo is one of them and I think he is a true master of his craft. He just makes truly wonderful, brilliant, colourful movies that are rich and textured, and most importantly, he makes films with complete integrity," Hunnam, who stars in the TV series Sons Of Anarchy, says.

Screenwriter Travis Beacham echoes Hunnam's sentiment: "(Del Toro) loves monster movies, so we were playing in his sandbox. He came at the project with a genuine passion for the material, which I think was vital to the soul of the movie."

The love del Toro has for monsters was evident at both times Star2 met him during this junket. He doesn't only talk about Kaiju, he waxes lyrical about them.

"It was a project that encompassed every single thing on my wish list, visually, atmospherically and emotionally," del Toro says.

"In making this film, my craft, experience and rigour were those of a 48-year-old man, but my heart was that of an 11-year-old."

To achieve the stunning effects in Pacific Rim, del Toro turned to the wizards at Industrial Light & Magic (ILM). He gave them (Spanish artist) Goya's The Colossus artwork as visual reference and his keywords to ILM were: Theatrical and operatic. (If he saw an effect that didn't agree with him, del Toro would send it back to ILM, saying, "This is like a Saturday night with my wife; not that exciting.").

And del Toro got what he ordered. Every raindrop and crashing wave were meticulously created to del Toro's specifications. "It was important to me that water becomes the third character in the movie (after the Kaiju and Jaeger)."

And just because it is special effects-heavy, del Toro wasn't interested in making every shot "unique and cool".

He reasons: "I wasn't making a car commercial!" So, del Toro told the director of photography, Guillermo Navarro (who also worked on Pan's Labyrinth, earning him an Oscar for Best Cinematography), that for the fight sequences between the Kaijus and Jaegers, he wanted angles from a helicopter or a boat; to make it look as though it was live footage.

A lifelong fan of Ishiro Honda, the Japanese filmmaker who directed the original Godzilla movies, del Toro wanted to pay homage to him as well as all the monster movies he grew up watching and loving.

"I wanted to make a movie by a fan, not a fan movie. So, there are certain scenes, like the Kaiju destroying the cities while the people are running, that are a nod to monster movies I love. But, I also want to show the audience things they haven't seen before, and you will see a lot of that here. So, yes, I'm honouring the tradition (of retro monster movies), but a lot of it is my own take on this tradition," del Toro explains.

A renowned auteur, whose claim to international fame is the fantasy drama Pan's Labyrinth, del Toro has not put out a movie as a director in the last five years (instead, he produced hit movies such as Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss In Boots as well as the recent horror flick Mama).

Pacific Rim is his first foray into the "blockbuster" arena. Budget allocated for this movie was roughly US$200mil (RM640mil).

The price tag didn't scare him one bit. Going into this movie, the director didn't feel too stressed out at the thought of the size of the movie. "I don't make a movie hoping it will be nominated for the Oscars, or that I hope it will do well at the box-office.

"What I think of is myself; I gotta do what I like doing because you are giving it three years of your life. Is Pacific Rim worth giving three years of my life to? My answer is absolutely yes."

Pacific Rim opens in cinemas nationwide on July 11.

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Meet the Jaeger meisters

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