Isnin, 17 Mac 2014

The Star Online: Metro: Sunday Metro

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The Star Online: Metro: Sunday Metro


More Sunday visitors as more domestic helpers get rest days

Posted: 17 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

POPULAR hang-outs for maids have become more crowded over the past year, as more domestic helpers get days off.

Maids and business owners told The Straits Times that Lucky Plaza and City Plaza are seeing more Sunday visitors in recent months, as are other open spaces.

"Last time, only the front of City Plaza was crowded; now, all the sides are too," said Kuswati, an Indonesian maid. She meets friends at the shopping mall on Sundays.

She has lived in Singapore since 2008 but started getting weekly rest days only after her contract was renewed this month.

A rule mandating one day off every week or payment in lieu kicked in a year ago and applies to all new and renewed maid contracts.

Maricel Cabauatan, 31, said that the queues to remit money at Lucky Plaza have also become longer since the start of this year – from two or three hours, to four.

"It's very difficult to walk around," added the Filipino maid. "If you stay there for the whole day, you will feel very tired."

As the crowds grow, other places like parks and beaches – where people can gather without spending money – are catching the overflow.

The Botanic Gardens' director Nigel Taylor said he noticed this trend picking up in the last two years.

"It's been happening on such a scale that the picnicking has overflowed onto the paths and occupies public buildings to the scale of excluding other people."

To cope, the Botanic Gardens encourages maids to have picnics on the lawns.

But the higher footfall is not translating into higher returns for some businesses.

At City Plaza, shipping service Valutaayu-Yan Cargo said that although there are more maids, they are also younger and do not have as many items to send home.

"Costlier rent and stiffer competition have eaten into sales," said Dhayalyn Koh, manager of convenience shop Negrosanon Trading, which has been at Lucky Plaza for 14 years.

Internet cafe owner Tang Kok Eng puts it down to the tightening of labour laws that has made it harder for workers to get work passes renewed.

"The levies are higher now. People also can get Internet on their phones so maybe they don't need to come here," he said.

Some maids, like Holymar Loremia, 40, choose to avoid the crowds altogether.

The Filipina was at Gardens by the Bay on a recent Sunday having lunch with a friend.

"We prefer to come here because it's less crowded and more peaceful," she said. — The Straits Times / Asia News Network

Australia to lead southern search for plane, says Abbott

Posted: 17 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

SYDNEY: Australia will take responsibility for the "southern vector" of the search for Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, with 25 countries now involved in a huge operation to locate the plane, Prime Minister Tony Abbott said.

Abbott, who earlier yesterday told journalists he had no information that the flight may have come close to Australia, said he was responding to a request from Malaysian Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak.

"He asked that Australia take responsibility for the search on the southern vector, which the Malaysian authorities now think was one possible flight path for this ill-fated aircraft," Abbott told parliament.

"I agreed that we would do so.

"I offered the Malaysian prime minister additional maritime surveillance resources which he gratefully accepted."

Abbott said the defence chiefs of Australia and Malaysia were discussing how to implement the arrangement.

"Australia will do its duty in this matter. It will do our duty to ensure that our search and rescue responsibilities are maintained and upheld," he said.

"And we will do our duty to the families of the 230 people on that aircraft who are still absolutely devastated by their absence and who are still profoundly, saddened by this as yet unfathomed mystery."

Australia has two Orion surveillance aircraft assisting with the search for the plane, which was en route to Beijing when it disappeared. Abbott said one of those had now been redeployed to the Indian Ocean. — AFP

India denies Malaysian jet '9/11-style' attack theory

Posted: 17 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

NEW DELHI: India has rejected suggestions that it could have been the intended target of a 9/11-style attack by the missing Malaysia Airlines jet.

As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh promised maximum assistance in the massive hunt for Flight 370, India's foreign minister said it was vital that the mystery over its fate was cleared up.

But asked by the CNN-IBN network about suggestions that the plane was hijacked with the aim of flying it into an Indian city, Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid replied yesterday: "I don't think we have gone that far."

The speculation was fuelled by former US deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott who tweeted that the "direction, fuel load & range now lead some to suspect hijackers planned a 9/11-type attack on an Indian city".

His comments over the weekend have been widely picked up by the Indian media and Salman said people needed answers to allay their fears.

"We hope to come to some conclusion that is both credible and reassuring," he said.

The Times of India said security sources had "rubbished" the idea that the plane could have got anywhere close to an urban centre and insisted it would have been detected by a naval base on the Andaman islands, more than 1,000km off the Indian mainland.

"There is no way our military radars would have missed the airliner as it flew over Andaman Sea, as there is high traffic around that time," one military intelligence source told the paper.

The US-led Nato mission in Afghanistan, meanwhile, said it was not looking for the missing plane there, and Islamabad's Civil Aviation Authority said the flight never appeared on Pakistani radar.

Indian ships and planes scoured the seas off the sprawling Andamans archipelago last week but they suspended their search on Sunday as they awaited fresh instructions from Malaysian authorities.

"Operations are suspended as of now, everything is grounded," Indian Navy spokesman D.K. Sharma said yesterday.

"Malaysian authorities will now decide and tell us where to go. They have asked us to be on standby for now. We are awaiting further instructions."

Manmohan's office said that his Malaysian counterpart Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak, in a phone call late Sunday, had requested "technical assistance from Indian authorities in corroborating the possible paths that the missing Malaysian airliner might have taken".

Manmohan "assured all possible assistance from concerned Indian authorities", the office said.

Meanwhile, in Beijing, relatives of the Chinese passengers voiced their fury yesterday as Premier Li Keqiang backed their demand for more information. Li in a phone call asked Najib to provide more details about the missing flight "in a timely, accurate and comprehensive manner", state news agency Xinhua reported. — AFP

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star Online: World Updates

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Insight - Planning could hold key to disappearance of Flight MH370

Posted: 17 Mar 2014 09:00 PM PDT

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) - Whoever reached across the dimly lit cockpit of a Malaysia Airlines jet and clicked off a transponder to make Flight MH370 vanish from controllers' radars flew the plane into a navigational and technical black hole.

By choosing that exact place and time to vanish into radar darkness with 238 others on board, the person - presumed to be a pilot or a passenger with advanced knowledge - appears to have acted only after meticulous planning, according to aviation experts.

Understanding the sequence that led to the unprecedented plane hunt widening across two vast tracts of territory north and south of the Equator is key to grasping the motives of what Malaysian authorities suspect was hijacking or sabotage.

By signing off from Malaysian airspace at 1.19 a.m. on March 8 (1719 GMT March 7) with a casual "all right, good night," rather than the crisp radio drill advocated in pilot training, a person now believed to be the co-pilot gave no hint of anything unusual.

Two minutes later, at 1.21 a.m. local time, the transponder - a device identifying jets to ground controllers - was turned off in a move that experts say could reveal a careful sequence.

"Every action taken by the person who was piloting the aircraft appears to be a deliberate one. It is almost like a pilot's checklist," said one senior captain from an Asian carrier with experience of jets, including the Boeing 777.

The radio call does not prove it was the co-pilot who turned off the transponder. Pilots say the usual practice is that the pilot not in control of the plane talks on the radio.

Police have searched the premises of both the captain and co-pilot and are checking the backgrounds of all passengers.

But whoever turned the transponder to "off," did so at a vulnerable point between two airspace sectors when Malaysian and Vietnamese controllers could easily assume the airplane was each others' responsibility.

"The predictable effect was to delay the raising of the alarm by either party," David Learmount, operations and safety editor at Flight International, wrote in an industry blog.

That mirrors delays in noticing something was wrong when an Air France jet disappeared over the Atlantic in 2009 with 228 people on board, a gap blamed on confusion between controllers.

Yet whereas the Rio-Paris disaster was later traced to pilot error, the suspected kidnapping of MH370's passengers and crew was carried out with either skill or bizarre coincidences.

Whether or not pilots knew it, the jet was just then in a technically obscure sweet spot, according to a top radar expert.

Air traffic controllers use secondary radar which works by talking to the transponder. Some air traffic control systems also blend in some primary radar, which uses a simple echo.

But primary radar signals fade faster than secondary ones, meaning even a residual blip would have vanished for controllers and even military radar may have found it difficult to identify the 777 from other ghostly blips, said radar expert Hans Weber.

"Turning off the transponder indicates this person was highly trained," said Weber, of consultancy TECOP International.

NOT IN THE MANUAL

The overnight flight to Beijing from Kuala Lumpur is packed year-round with business people, Chinese tourists and students, attracted in part by code-sharing deals, regular travellers say.

The lockdown of MH370 may have begun as early as 40 minutes into the flight at a point when meals are being hurriedly served in time to get trays cleared and lights dimmed for the night.

"It was a red-eye flight. Most people - the passengers and the crew - just want to rest," a Malaysia Airlines stewardess said. "Unless there was a reason to panic, if someone had taken control of the aircraft, they would not have noticed anything."

At some point between 1.07 a.m. and 1.37 a.m., investigators believe someone switched off another system called ACARS designed to transmit maintenance data back to the ground.

The explanation of the timing has shifted after Malaysian officials initially said it was turned off before the pilot last spoke at 1:19 a.m. But it could have been done later as well, although before 1:37 a.m., when the system was to make another transmission, which it did not.

By itself, switching off ACARS was unusual but would not necessarily have raised alarms at the airline and the passengers would not have known something was amiss, said some of the six pilots contacted by Reuters, none of whom agreed to be named.

"Occasionally, there are gaps in the communications systems and the guys in ground operations may not think much of it initially. It would be a while before they try to find out what was wrong," said one captain with an Asian carrier.

Cutting the datalink would not have been easy. Instructions are not in the Flight Crew Operating Manual, one pilot said.

Circuit-breakers used to disable the system are in a bay reached through a hatch in the floor next to the lefthand front exit, close to a galley used to prepare meals.

Most pilots said it would be impossible to turn off ACARS from inside the cockpit, although two people did not rule it out.

HIDING IN FULL VIEW?

After the transponder was turned off, the northeast-bound jet took a northwestern route from the sea off Kota Bahru in eastern Malaysia to Penang Island. It was last detected on military radar around 200 miles northwest of Penang.

Even that act of going off course may not have caused alarm at first if it was handled gradually, pilots said.

"Nobody pays attention to these things unless they are aware of the direction that the aircraft was heading in," said one first officer who has flown with Malaysia Airlines.

The airline said it had reconstructed the event in a simulator to try to figure out how the jet vanished and kept flying for what may have been more than seven hours.

Pilots say whoever was then in control may have kept the radio on in silent mode to hear what was going on around him, but would have avoided restarting the transponder at all costs.

"That would immediately make the aircraft visible ... like a bright light. Your registration, height, altitude and speed would all become visible," said an airline captain.

After casting off its identity, the aircraft set investigators a puzzle that has yet to be solved. It veered either northwards or southwards, within an hour's flying time of arcs stretching from the Caspian to the southern Indian Ocean.

The best way to avoid the attention of military radars would have been to fly at a fixed altitude, on a recognised flight path and at cruising speed without changing course, pilots say.

Malaysian officials dismissed as speculation reports that the jet may have flown at low altitude to avoid detection.

But pilots said the best chance of feeling its way through the well-defended northern route would have been to hide in full view of military radar inside commercial lanes - raising awkward questions over security in several parts of the Asia-Pacific.

"The military radar controllers would have seen him moving on a fixed line, figured that it was a commercial aircraft at a high altitude, and not really a danger especially if he was on a recognised flight path," said one pilot.

"Some countries would ask you to identify yourself, but you are flying through the night and that is the time when the least attention is being paid to unidentified aircraft. As long as the aircraft is not flying towards a military target or point, they may not bother with you."

Although investigators refused on Monday to be drawn into theories, few in the industry believe a 250-tonne passenger jet could run amok without expert skills or preparation.

"Whoever did this must have had lots of aircraft knowledge, would have deliberately planned this, had nerves of steel to be confident enough to get through primary radar without being detected and been confident enough to control an aircraft full of people," a veteran airline captain told Reuters.

(Additional reporting by Edgar Su, Andrea Shalal, Mark Hosenball and Anshuman Daga, Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

Venezuela unrest toll rises as soldier is shot in head

Posted: 17 Mar 2014 08:46 PM PDT

CARACAS (Reuters) - A Venezuela National Guard captain died on Monday after being shot in the head during a demonstration, the military said, the 29th fatality in six weeks of clashes between protesters and security forces.

General Padrino Lopez, head of the armed forces' strategic operational command, said the captain was shot late on Sunday at a street barricade set up by demonstrators in the central city of Maracay, in Aragua state.

"He was another victim of terrorist violence," Lopez said on Twitter, calling for an end to the confrontations. "Our armed forces don't repress peaceful protests, they protect them."

Since early February, students and hardline opposition leaders have been calling supporters onto the streets to protest against President Nicolas Maduro and his socialist government.

The demonstrators are demanding political change and an end to high inflation, shortages of basic foods and one of the worst rates of violent crime in the world.

The protests, however, show no signs of toppling Maduro, a 51-year-old former bus driver who narrowly won an election in April 2013 to replace his late friend and mentor, Hugo Chavez.

Tareck El Aissami, governor of Aragua state and a member of the ruling Socialist Party, said authorities arrested a "Chinese mercenary" near where the National Guard captain was killed.

Aissami said an "arsenal" was found in the man's home, and showed video of hundreds of rounds of different calibers.

He gave the man's Venezuelan identity card number, but did not elaborate further. The government has often talked of alleged assassination plans, but rarely provides many details.

In the western border state of Tachira, which has been hardest hit by the violence, residents rebuilt some barricades overnight on streets that the authorities had cleared.

In Puerto Ordaz, in the south of the country, Reuters witnesses said riot police clashed with hundreds of students. At least two government-owned vehicles were burnt by protesters.

COURT ORDERS BARRICADES DOWN

On Monday, the Supreme Court ordered the opposition mayors of four municipalities to remove street barricades set up by demonstrators. It issued a similar order against two opposition-run municipalities in eastern Caracas last week.

It also summoned the opposition mayor of a municipality in central Carabobo state to explain his "presumed failure" to comply with another order to remove barriers from roads.

The opposition Popular Will party said it was planning a march in Caracas on Tuesday to mark a month since its hardline leader, Leopoldo Lopez, handed himself in to face charges of fomenting unrest after helping kick off the demonstrations.

The protesters are far fewer than those who took to the streets a decade ago to oust Chavez, albeit briefly. Opposition leaders are deeply divided over the current confrontations.

During the daytime, thousands of opposition supporters have marched peacefully. Then a masked hard core has been emerging in the evenings, especially in wealthier eastern Caracas, to fight running battles with riot police and the National Guard.

Supporters of both political camps, and several members of the security forces, have been killed. Hundreds of people have been injured, and more than 1,500 have been arrested.

About 100 people remain behind bars, including 21 security officials accused of crimes ranging from brutality to homicide.

Air Canada said on Monday it was suspending flights to Caracas until further notice because of the unrest, saying it could not ensure the safety of its operation.

In the capital on Sunday, troops cleared demonstrators from Plaza Altamira, a square in the wealthy east of the capital that became the wreckage-strewn site of daily violent clashes.

National Guard soldiers posted around the plaza said they had seized home-made shields, materials for Molotov cocktails, and medicines used by the protesters to counteract tear gas.

Late on Monday, hundreds of protesters demonstrated peacefully in the square - in sharp contrast to previous nights' confrontations - singing and waving flags as police looked on.

Cenaida Pavon, a 40-year-old secretary walking through the square, said she supported the demonstrators' right to protest peacefully but not the destruction of property.

"They hate what President Chavez left behind," she said, adding that the nearby school her 8-year-old son went to had been closed since the start of the demonstrations.

"That's terrorism, not protest," Pavon said.

(Additional reporting by Eyanir Chinea in Caracas, Javier Faria in San Cristobal, and German Dam in Puerto Ordaz; Editing by James Dalgleish and Eric Walsh)

China says no evidence of hijack, terror attack by Chinese passengers

Posted: 17 Mar 2014 08:45 PM PDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - There is no evidence of Chinese passengers being involved in a hijack or terror attack on a missing Malaysia Airlines flight that vanished on its way from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing earlier this month, state media on Tuesday cited China's ambassador to Malaysia as saying.

(Reporting by Li Hui and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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The Star eCentral: Movie Buzz

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The Star eCentral: Movie Buzz


Clash of the titans

Posted: 17 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

Marvel and DC are set on a cinematic crash course, with both houses intent on releasing blockbuster comic hero movies on the same day in May 2016.

Marvel already had the May 6 date staked out for an unnamed entry in its ongoing filmhouse franchise when Warner Bros announced its own Superman vs. Batman flick would move from July 2015 onto Marvel's May day.

Zack Snyder is to direct, with Ben Affleck cast as Batman and Henry Cavill returning as Supes.

Affleck has already appeared in the lead role of Daredevil (2003) and as 1950s Superman actor George Reeves in Hollywoodland (2006).

Now, The Hollywood Reporter claims to have unveiled the Marvel film's secret identity – none other than a third Captain America film, whose second part releases end of this month.

Previously, Captain America: The First Avenger banked US$370mil (RM1.2bil) following its 2011 release, on a budget of US$140mil (RM459mil), while this year's Captain America: The Winter Soldier has a budget of US$170mil (RM557mil). – AFP Relaxnews

Sony to remake 'My Best Friend's Wedding' in Chinese

Posted: 13 Mar 2014 07:50 PM PDT

The studio plans to film one of Julia Roberts' best-loved movies in Mandarin and market it in China. Hen hao!

Sony's Columbia Pictures announced recently its plans to remake My Best Friend's Wedding – in Mandarin.

The studio has partnered with several Chinese filmmakers and production companies to make three Chinese-language movies, with one being a re-telling of the hit Julia Roberts romantic comedy.

Six of the 10 highest-grossing movies released in China over the past five years have been in the country's native tongue, encouraging many in Hollywood to contemplate changing their approach to the world's second largest film market.

Village Roadshow, producer of The Great Gatsby and The Lego Movie, has a sister company dedicated to Chinese-language productions, while Disney just announced a new partnership with a Chinese company to make English-language films.

"Columbia Pictures is reemphasising our long established commitment to Chinese local language production," Doug Belgrad, president of Columbia Pictures, said in statement. "We are delighted to be collaborating with such world class filmmakers as Chen Kaige and Jiang Wen, as well as partnering with esteemed Chinese production companies like New Classics Media, as we ramp up our activity in China."

Sony's first of three films entering production is The Monk, a martial arts movie with Cao Huayi. Acclaimed filmmaker Chen Kaige will direct from a script based on a best-selling novel by Xu Haofeng, a director and writer who worked on Wong Kar-Wai's The Grandmaster. The film stars Wang Baoqiang, the star of Lost In Thailand, one of the highest-grossing movies in Chinese history.

The Monk is China's second recent production in mainland China, following Jiang Wen's Gone With The Bullets. The film is set to open next summer.

New Classics Media will distribute The Monk for Columbia in China, and will work with the studio on the My Best Friend's Wedding remake when it enters production in 2014. Columbia's third film, Summer Has Tears with Ruyi Media, will start shooting later this year.

Few Chinese language movies make money in the United States, but Sony produced Couching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the highest-grossing foreign language movie in US history. — Reuters

Actress Shailene Woodley thinks the 'Twilight' love story sucks

Posted: 13 Mar 2014 07:55 PM PDT

The 22-year-old actress stars in the upcoming young adult film, Divergent.

What sets young adult novel adaptation Divergent apart from box office juggernaut Twilight? According to Shailene Woodley – healthy relationships.

"Twilight, I'm sorry, is about a very unhealthy, toxic relationship. She falls in love with this guy and the second he leaves her, her life is over and she's going to kill herself," Woodley told Teen Vogue for the April issue's cover story.

"What message are we sending to young people? That is not going to help this world evolve." The 22-year-old actress takes the lead in the movie from Lionsgate (the same studio that released Twilight) as Tris Prior, a teenager who learns she does not fit into any of the five virtue-based factions that the futuristic, society dreamed up by author Veronica Roth, is divided into.

Since she is a "divergent," her life is in danger and she must fight alongside a fellow divergent named Four to get to the bottom of the conspiracy hatched by the leader of another faction.

Kirsten Stewart and Robert Pattinson in one of the Twilight films. 

The expected blockbuster is "so metaphorical to today's society", Woodley told the Daily Beast, and she hopes it will start a conversation between audiences about our own issues.

"One of the most beautiful quotes in the book is when Tris says, 'Back in the day, my mum had a choice between eating naturally-irrigated food and genetically-engineered foods. Now, there is no choice. That's all we have'," Woodley said.

"I thought that was so powerful because we're getting to a point where all agriculture is going to depend on seeds that were created in a lab-which is so counterintuitive to the way Mother Nature meant it to be. There's the issue of a tyrant taking over and genocide-someone going in, choosing a particular class of people, and murdering them by brainwashing other people. And there's the issue of spying on other people and this whole drone situation going on now."

Audiences who haven't read the book will discover the many metaphors – like how or why the city of Chicago would be divided into five factions in the future – next week in Malaysia. — Reuters

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star eCentral: Movie Reviews

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The Star eCentral: Movie Reviews


Clash of the titans

Posted: 17 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

Marvel and DC are set on a cinematic crash course, with both houses intent on releasing blockbuster comic hero movies on the same day in May 2016.

Marvel already had the May 6 date staked out for an unnamed entry in its ongoing filmhouse franchise when Warner Bros announced its own Superman vs. Batman flick would move from July 2015 onto Marvel's May day.

Zack Snyder is to direct, with Ben Affleck cast as Batman and Henry Cavill returning as Supes.

Affleck has already appeared in the lead role of Daredevil (2003) and as 1950s Superman actor George Reeves in Hollywoodland (2006).

Now, The Hollywood Reporter claims to have unveiled the Marvel film's secret identity – none other than a third Captain America film, whose second part releases end of this month.

Previously, Captain America: The First Avenger banked US$370mil (RM1.2bil) following its 2011 release, on a budget of US$140mil (RM459mil), while this year's Captain America: The Winter Soldier has a budget of US$170mil (RM557mil). – AFP Relaxnews

Sony to remake 'My Best Friend's Wedding' in Chinese

Posted: 13 Mar 2014 07:50 PM PDT

The studio plans to film one of Julia Roberts' best-loved movies in Mandarin and market it in China. Hen hao!

Sony's Columbia Pictures announced recently its plans to remake My Best Friend's Wedding – in Mandarin.

The studio has partnered with several Chinese filmmakers and production companies to make three Chinese-language movies, with one being a re-telling of the hit Julia Roberts romantic comedy.

Six of the 10 highest-grossing movies released in China over the past five years have been in the country's native tongue, encouraging many in Hollywood to contemplate changing their approach to the world's second largest film market.

Village Roadshow, producer of The Great Gatsby and The Lego Movie, has a sister company dedicated to Chinese-language productions, while Disney just announced a new partnership with a Chinese company to make English-language films.

"Columbia Pictures is reemphasising our long established commitment to Chinese local language production," Doug Belgrad, president of Columbia Pictures, said in statement. "We are delighted to be collaborating with such world class filmmakers as Chen Kaige and Jiang Wen, as well as partnering with esteemed Chinese production companies like New Classics Media, as we ramp up our activity in China."

Sony's first of three films entering production is The Monk, a martial arts movie with Cao Huayi. Acclaimed filmmaker Chen Kaige will direct from a script based on a best-selling novel by Xu Haofeng, a director and writer who worked on Wong Kar-Wai's The Grandmaster. The film stars Wang Baoqiang, the star of Lost In Thailand, one of the highest-grossing movies in Chinese history.

The Monk is China's second recent production in mainland China, following Jiang Wen's Gone With The Bullets. The film is set to open next summer.

New Classics Media will distribute The Monk for Columbia in China, and will work with the studio on the My Best Friend's Wedding remake when it enters production in 2014. Columbia's third film, Summer Has Tears with Ruyi Media, will start shooting later this year.

Few Chinese language movies make money in the United States, but Sony produced Couching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the highest-grossing foreign language movie in US history. — Reuters

Actress Shailene Woodley thinks the 'Twilight' love story sucks

Posted: 13 Mar 2014 07:55 PM PDT

The 22-year-old actress stars in the upcoming young adult film, Divergent.

What sets young adult novel adaptation Divergent apart from box office juggernaut Twilight? According to Shailene Woodley – healthy relationships.

"Twilight, I'm sorry, is about a very unhealthy, toxic relationship. She falls in love with this guy and the second he leaves her, her life is over and she's going to kill herself," Woodley told Teen Vogue for the April issue's cover story.

"What message are we sending to young people? That is not going to help this world evolve." The 22-year-old actress takes the lead in the movie from Lionsgate (the same studio that released Twilight) as Tris Prior, a teenager who learns she does not fit into any of the five virtue-based factions that the futuristic, society dreamed up by author Veronica Roth, is divided into.

Since she is a "divergent," her life is in danger and she must fight alongside a fellow divergent named Four to get to the bottom of the conspiracy hatched by the leader of another faction.

Kirsten Stewart and Robert Pattinson in one of the Twilight films. 

The expected blockbuster is "so metaphorical to today's society", Woodley told the Daily Beast, and she hopes it will start a conversation between audiences about our own issues.

"One of the most beautiful quotes in the book is when Tris says, 'Back in the day, my mum had a choice between eating naturally-irrigated food and genetically-engineered foods. Now, there is no choice. That's all we have'," Woodley said.

"I thought that was so powerful because we're getting to a point where all agriculture is going to depend on seeds that were created in a lab-which is so counterintuitive to the way Mother Nature meant it to be. There's the issue of a tyrant taking over and genocide-someone going in, choosing a particular class of people, and murdering them by brainwashing other people. And there's the issue of spying on other people and this whole drone situation going on now."

Audiences who haven't read the book will discover the many metaphors – like how or why the city of Chicago would be divided into five factions in the future – next week in Malaysia. — Reuters

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

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The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio


Fake talk show boosts numbers for HealthCare

Posted: 17 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

New registrations for health coverage show comedy works.

ZACH Galifianakis' Between Two Ferns interview style can be pretty intimidating, but President Barack Obama says Galifianakis was the nervous one during their Funny or Die showdown that went online earlier this week.

"Zach actually was pretty nervous," Obama told Ryan Seacrest in a radio interview on March 14. "It was funny to watch because this whole Between Two Ferns' schtick – which I wasn't familiar with before my staff told me that we had been pitched to do this – his whole character is to go after the guest, and I think he was looking around and seeing all these Secret Service guys with guns and thinking, 'I wonder what happens here if I cross the line?' But we had a great time."

The appearance on the fake talk show was aimed at encouraging more young people to sign up for health coverage through HealthCare.gov by the end of the month. According to the US Department of Health and Human Services, the plan worked, and the website saw a 40% boost in traffic after the video went live on March 11.

Between Two Ferns has had a number of high-profile celebrity guests over the years, but never a Commander-in-Chief. His 15-year-old daughter, Malia, however, has seen every episode.

"When I was at the dinner table with the girls and I said, 'Well today I did something with Zach, it's called Two Ferns, I think,' Malia was so excited," Obama continued.

"She had seen all the previous episodes, so I figured it was going to reach our target audience, which is a lot of young people, and it turns out we've had close to 15 million hits. And the amazing thing is afterwards people actually did link to healthcare.gov and actually signed up for health insurance, so it ended up working, but I think I have to keep my day job." – Reuters

K-drama's top superhero alien is the perfect boyfriend

Posted: 12 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

My Love From The Star has swept most of East Asia off its feet with a romantic 17th-century superhuman hero.

Landing in South Korea after a trip to her native China, rapper Meng Jia of K-pop group Miss A shared an observation on Twitter: "Almost all Chinese women want an alien boyfriend."

To be more precise, the man they and others in East Asia want is from Planet K-drama: Do Min-joon, the ageless professor from outer space played by Kim Soo-hyun in the South Korean television phenomenon My Love From The Star

He is a guy who has superhuman powers but is more perfect than Superman because he has his priorities right. He wants to protect only one person – the woman in his life, played by Gianna Jun.

My Love From The Star, a romantic fantasy created by writer Park Ji-eun (My Husband Got A Family, 2012), has been trending in East Asia after its debut in December last year.

In China, the show has more than one billion views on video websites such as iQiyi.com and PPS, and Kim Soo-hyun is one of the top searches on Baidu, the country's equivalent of Google, say reports on news website NetEase. Books read or referenced by Kim's character in the drama – including a 17th-century Korean fantasy novel, The Cloud Dream Of The Nine, and a 2006 American children's book, The Miraculous Journey Of Edward Tulane – are out of stock in China, add the reports. 

The show is also said to have popularised fried chicken, the comfort food of Jun's character, and revitalised the country's H7N9-hit poultry trade.

In South Korea, the show took over from The Inheritors, the SBS teen romance featuring K-drama royalty Lee Min Ho and Park Shin Hye, and raced past it in the ratings. Whereas The Inheritors took 11 episodes to reach 20% of viewers nationwide, My Love From The Star took only four episodes.

A song Kim sang for the show, In Front Of Your House, flew to the top of the country's music charts two hours after it was released, says entertainment website allkpop. Which is all in a day's work for the hottest star from South Korea now. – The Straits Times, Singapore/Asia News Network

> My Love From The Star airs every Wednesday and Thursday at 8.55pm on ONE HD (Astro Ch 393).

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EPF: 744,139 members invested RM29.48bil in unit trust funds

Posted: 17 Mar 2014 01:21 AM PDT

KUALA LUMPUR: A total of 744,139 members of the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) had invested RM29.48bil in approved Fund Management Institutions (FMI) and unit trust funds as at end-2013.

EPF deputy CEO (Investment) Mohamad Nasir Ab Latif said on Monday the EPF Members Investment Scheme (EPF-MIS) was an opportunity for members to grow their retirement savings.

However, before deciding to participate in the scheme, he advised members to study the prospectus of the chosen fund thoroughly, because of the underlying risks.

"Members also need to understand the objective of the scheme and seek advice from qualified advisers or financial planners," he said.

The EPF had in June 2013 introduced a revised guideline to enhance its supervision on every appointed unit trust funds under the FMI to safeguard members' retirement savings. 

Mohamad Nasir pointed out this was to ensure funds were of high quality and possessed a consistent returns track record.

"We stress that although the EPF approves the funds to be offered under the EPF-MIS, this does not constitute as a recommendation nor assurance on their performance.

"Members always have the option of maintaining their retirement savings with the EPF, which has been able to provide stable returns every year such as the 6.35% dividend announced for 2013," he said.

The EPF also announced the revised list of FMI and unit trust funds for 2014/2015 for the EPF-MIS. The revised list will take effect on April 1, 2014 until March 31, 2015.

Mohamad Nasir said for the period of 2014/2015, there were 224 unit trust funds from 24 FMIs qualified to be offered under the EPF-MIS, compared with 210 from 25 FMIs as at Dec 31, 2013.

Under the EPF-MIS, members can transfer, on a quarterly basis, not more than20% of the total savings from Account 1 in excess of their respective basic savings.

The revised basic savings quantum, which took effect on Jan 1, 2014, refers to an amount of savings set according to age to ensure members have at least RM196,800 upon reaching the age of 55.

KLCI lower in early trade but losses seen temporary

Posted: 17 Mar 2014 06:15 PM PDT

KUALA LUMPUR: The FBM KLCI opened lower in early Tuesday trade on mild selling of key stocks but the broader market was firmer with advancing stocks beating decliners three to one as analysts expect market sentiment to firm up.

At 9.01am, the KLCI was down 1.04 points to 1,814.12. Turnover was 31.12 million shares valued at RM11.29mil. There were 125 gainers, 44 losers and 103 counters unchanged.

Hwang DBS Vickers Research said the firmer overnight close on Wall Street would enable the KLCI to extend its gains.  The key US equity indices closed between 0.8% and 1.1% higher as better economic data outweighed rising geopolitical tension in Ukraine.

"Technically speaking, the KLCI which rose 10 points yesterday, could climb slightly higher towards the immediate resistance threshold of 1,825 ahead," said the research house.

PPB Group fell 30 sen to RM16.20 with 100 shares done and Kulim six sen to RM3.34. Petronas Gas lost six sen to RM22.94 and Petronas Chemicals three sen to RM6.60.

Gamuda shed some of Monday's gains to dip four sen to RM4.50 but analysts expect the infrastructure company to be the front runner for Line 2 of the Klang Valley Mass Rapid Transit project.

IHH Healthcare, SP Setia and Top Glove fell three sen each to RM3.76, RM2.93 and RM5.60 respectively.

Among the gainers were United Plantations rose 40 sen to RM25.55, MPI 19 sen higher at RM4.39 while Takaful gained 10 sen to RM10.60.

CCM Duopharma gained eight sen to RM2.95 and CBIP seven sen to RM4.36.

Asian shares up slightly, yen slips as Crimea tensions ease

Posted: 17 Mar 2014 05:36 PM PDT

TOKYO: Asian shares inched forward and the yen slipped in early trade on Tuesday after Crimea's vote to join Russia passed relatively peacefully, but investors remained wary ahead of this week's US Federal Reserve policy review.

MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan added about 0.2 percent in early trading, while Australian shares rose 0.6 percent.

On Wall Street on Monday, US stocks turned in a solid performance, with the S&P 500 rising about 1 percent.

The United States and the European Union imposed sanctions, including asset freezes and travel bans, on a small group of officials from Russia and Ukraine after the weekend referendum.

Risk appetite improved as the threat of immediate military conflict receded for now, and market participants turned their attention back to the U.S. economic outlook and the conclusion of the Fed's two-day meeting on Wednesday.

"The Federal Open Market Committee meeting will prove the main event for investors focused on central bank monetary policies," strategists at UBS said in a note to clients.

"But geo-political risk also suggests that longer-term dollar bulls should not shift their underlying views on future greenback strength," they added.

The Fed is expected to continue to stick to reducing its monthly asset purchases by an additional $10 billion, and could also alter its forward guidance in its statement.

Fed policymakers could adopt less specific language to describe conditions under which it might tighten policy, instead of the bank's current threshold of a 6.5 percent unemployment rate for considering a rate rise. The rate now stands at 6.7 percent, though Fed officials are still signalling that rates need to stay low for some time to support the economy.

The dollar was up about 0.1 percent on the day at 101.85 yen , while the euro also added about 0.1 percent to 141.82 yen.

The euro was steady $1.3926, within sight of a 2-1/2-year high around $1.3967 touched on Thursday.

The single currency's resilience came despite data on Monday showing a dip in euro zone inflation, the latest indicator to back the view that the European Central Bank needs to take further monetary steps to support growth.

The improvement in risk sentiment took a toll on gold , which hit a six-month high on Monday before plunging more than 1 percent. It was last at $1,366.19 per ounce, well shy of the previous session's peak of $1,391.76. - Reuters

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Park plans sun bear release

Posted: 16 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

KOTA KINABALU: Five endangered Malayan sun bears that were seized and handed over to the Sabah Wildlife Department now have a chance to return to the wild.

The five were recently transferred to the Bornean Sun Bear Conservation Centre in Sandakan from the Lok Kawi Wildlife Park, near here, where they were initially sheltered.

They were either seized by wild life rangers between June last year and March 1 or handed over to the department by the public.

Officer-in-charge of the park and veterinarian Dr Rosa Sipangkui said that the four male and one female bears were tranquillised on March 10 and given a full medical examination to make sure they were healthy before they were put in cages for an eight-hour journey to their new jungle home at the conservation centre.

"One day they may be rehabilitated and released into a protected forest reserve," she said.

The conservation centre's chief executive officer, Wong Siew Te, said his team took three hours to unload the bears when they arrived there and to settle the animals into a bear house.

"We are monitoring their progress and will keep the public updated on how they are doing.

"The bears are not among those that were for public viewing at the wildlife park," he said, adding that two more bears were expected to arrive at the conservation centre.

"With that, the bear population at the centre will increase to 34," he added.

Wong reminded the public that it was an offence to keep protected species and should they have any such animal in captivity they should surrender it to the department.

"Sun bears are protected by law, and cannot be kept as pets," he said, adding that they were forest dependent and played important roles in the forest ecosystem as seed dispersers, forest engineers, forest doctors and forest farmers.

"They keep our forests healthy, for the benefit of humans and all life-forms."

Missing MH370: MAS will continue to host families in Beijing

Posted: 16 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

BEIJING: Malaysia Airlines (MAS) will continue to host the families of those on board MH370 here for the being and has not set up a time frame for their stay.

"They are most welcome to continue staying here should they wish to. We will inform them on the next arrangement," Firefly CEO Ignatius Ong, who heads the command centre at Lido Hotel, said.

MAS and Department of Civil Aviation have been keeping the families updated on the latest news of the search and rescue mission in three briefings a day – at 9am, 2pm and 6pm.

But MAS has informed the families on Saturday afternoon, after Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak's press conference, that they would not be able to furnish much details as the investigation had pointed to possible criminal elements involved.

"Our briefing from now on will only touch on care-giving and other related arrangement," Ong said.

MAS will also assist anyone wishing to return home by arranging transportation. The option to fly to Kuala Lumpur is also still open.

"They have to inform us early if they want to do so because we need to look at room availability," Ong said.

"However, we have explained to them that there is not much point in going to Kuala Lumpur as the information that they will receive there will still be the same.

"In fact, some of the next-of-kin there (in Kuala Lumpur) are wanting to come home," he said.

The Go Team members, made up of MAS employees and Tzu Chi volunteers, arrived on Saturday and immediately started helping the families.

"They are there for the families," Ong said.

Some of the non-Chinese caregivers are also able to speak Mandarin while others communicate with the families via translators.

Wearing blue vests, the Go Team members were seen rushing in and out of the hotel ballroom to take care of the families' needs.

"I am proud of them. Sometimes they have to bear the brunt of the angry families," added Ong.

Ipoh's smoke-free gurdwara gets WHO recognition

Posted: 16 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

IPOH: Gurdwara Sahib Greentown has been awarded the Blue Ribbon of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in recognition of it being a smoke-free religious premises.

It is the first gurdwara (Sikh place of worship) in the country to be accorded the honour.

"Almost all religions believe smoking and smoke emitting from cigarettes are hazardous," Malay­sian Health Promotion Board (MySihat) chief executive Datuk Dr Yahya Baba said during the presentation of the emblem yesterday.

Present were Deputy Health Minister Datuk Seri Dr Hilmi Yahaya and state health director Datuk Dr Nordiyanah Hassan.

"Religious premises play an essential role in conveying this message to their devotees and to encourage smokers to kick this dangerous habit," said Dr Yahya.

"At least, smokers could be considerate of non-smokers and choose not to light up in their presence," he added.

The gurdwara joins three other places of worship in the programme – the Sultan Idris Shah II State Mosque, the Taiping Catholic Church, run by the National Society of St Vincent de Paul and the Sri Vellai Vinayagar temple in Teluk Intan.

"We are working to get Buddhist temples to be involved in this programme, too," said Dr Yahya, adding that they would start in Teluk Intan.

The Blue Ribbon emblem is a recognition by the WHO for indivi­duals and organisations advocating smoke-free environments.

The programme here is jointly organised by MySihat and the state health department to protect the public, especially non-smokers, from cancerous cigarette smoke.

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Sony to remake 'My Best Friend's Wedding' in Chinese

Posted: 13 Mar 2014 07:50 PM PDT

The studio plans to film one of Julia Roberts' best-loved movies in Mandarin and market it in China. Hen hao!

Sony's Columbia Pictures announced recently its plans to remake My Best Friend's Wedding – in Mandarin.

The studio has partnered with several Chinese filmmakers and production companies to make three Chinese-language movies, with one being a re-telling of the hit Julia Roberts romantic comedy.

Six of the 10 highest-grossing movies released in China over the past five years have been in the country's native tongue, encouraging many in Hollywood to contemplate changing their approach to the world's second largest film market.

Village Roadshow, producer of The Great Gatsby and The Lego Movie, has a sister company dedicated to Chinese-language productions, while Disney just announced a new partnership with a Chinese company to make English-language films.

"Columbia Pictures is reemphasising our long established commitment to Chinese local language production," Doug Belgrad, president of Columbia Pictures, said in statement. "We are delighted to be collaborating with such world class filmmakers as Chen Kaige and Jiang Wen, as well as partnering with esteemed Chinese production companies like New Classics Media, as we ramp up our activity in China."

Sony's first of three films entering production is The Monk, a martial arts movie with Cao Huayi. Acclaimed filmmaker Chen Kaige will direct from a script based on a best-selling novel by Xu Haofeng, a director and writer who worked on Wong Kar-Wai's The Grandmaster. The film stars Wang Baoqiang, the star of Lost In Thailand, one of the highest-grossing movies in Chinese history.

The Monk is China's second recent production in mainland China, following Jiang Wen's Gone With The Bullets. The film is set to open next summer.

New Classics Media will distribute The Monk for Columbia in China, and will work with the studio on the My Best Friend's Wedding remake when it enters production in 2014. Columbia's third film, Summer Has Tears with Ruyi Media, will start shooting later this year.

Few Chinese language movies make money in the United States, but Sony produced Couching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, the highest-grossing foreign language movie in US history. — Reuters

Actress Shailene Woodley thinks the 'Twilight' love story sucks

Posted: 13 Mar 2014 07:55 PM PDT

The 22-year-old actress stars in the upcoming young adult film, Divergent.

What sets young adult novel adaptation Divergent apart from box office juggernaut Twilight? According to Shailene Woodley – healthy relationships.

"Twilight, I'm sorry, is about a very unhealthy, toxic relationship. She falls in love with this guy and the second he leaves her, her life is over and she's going to kill herself," Woodley told Teen Vogue for the April issue's cover story.

"What message are we sending to young people? That is not going to help this world evolve." The 22-year-old actress takes the lead in the movie from Lionsgate (the same studio that released Twilight) as Tris Prior, a teenager who learns she does not fit into any of the five virtue-based factions that the futuristic, society dreamed up by author Veronica Roth, is divided into.

Since she is a "divergent," her life is in danger and she must fight alongside a fellow divergent named Four to get to the bottom of the conspiracy hatched by the leader of another faction.

Kirsten Stewart and Robert Pattinson in one of the Twilight films. 

The expected blockbuster is "so metaphorical to today's society", Woodley told the Daily Beast, and she hopes it will start a conversation between audiences about our own issues.

"One of the most beautiful quotes in the book is when Tris says, 'Back in the day, my mum had a choice between eating naturally-irrigated food and genetically-engineered foods. Now, there is no choice. That's all we have'," Woodley said.

"I thought that was so powerful because we're getting to a point where all agriculture is going to depend on seeds that were created in a lab-which is so counterintuitive to the way Mother Nature meant it to be. There's the issue of a tyrant taking over and genocide-someone going in, choosing a particular class of people, and murdering them by brainwashing other people. And there's the issue of spying on other people and this whole drone situation going on now."

Audiences who haven't read the book will discover the many metaphors – like how or why the city of Chicago would be divided into five factions in the future – next week in Malaysia. — Reuters

Rooney Mara to play Tiger Lily in Peter Pan origin story

Posted: 13 Mar 2014 09:15 PM PDT

The actress will join Garrett Hedlund and Hugh Jackman in the cast of Pan.

Rooney Mara has landed the role of Tiger Lily, the princess in a native tribe in Neverland, Variety reports.

Producers chose the 28-year-old actress, who got her big break in The Social Network, over contenders Adele Exarchopoulos (Blue Is the Warmest Color) and Lupita Nyong'o (12 Years A Slave). The actress will share the screen with a pre-adolescent Peter Pan in the Warner Bros feature, which will be directed by Joe Wright (Anna Karenina).

Producers previously announced that Garrett Hedlund will portray a younger version of the character who will later become Captain Hook, and that Hugh Jackman will play the antagonist, the pirate Blackbeard.

Pan will narrate how the young orphaned Peter takes control of Neverland. The film is slated for US release on July 17, 2015. — AFP Relaxnews

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Season To Taste (Or How To Eat Your Husband)

Posted: 15 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

NATALIE Young's second novel features what at first seems to be an ordinary, unassuming protagonist: Lizzie Prain is a 53-year-old housewife who lives with her husband of 30 years, Jacob, out in the sticks in Surrey, England. She likes cooking and has a small home business making cakes.

The first hint of something strange comes in how Lizzie avoids her neighbours, leading a reclusive life even though she longs for company. You see, underneath her quiet demeanour, Lizzie silently rages at Jacob. And the way she deals with that rage is to hit the Jacob in the back of his head with a spade while he is obliviously tending the garden one fine day.

Young does not make it clear why Lizzie is angry with Jacob. Could it be his affair and his drug use with Joanne in London? Or his habit of going to a gentlemen's club to have sleazy fun with young girls? Perhaps his blatant use of money on cheap sexual thrills when they are facing financial constraints? Lizzie herself does not know, and Young does not explain. Like messy real life, Lizzie's anger is a combination of things that leads to one act of violence resulting in Jacob's demise in the book's very first chapter.

From then on, the novel becomes a mix of poignancy, hopefulness, and the macabre, with a couple of recipes thrown in for good measure. Why recipes? Well, with Jacob's corpse lying in the garden and Lizzie's determination not to go to prison for her deed, she decides to ... eat her husband, as the book's title intimates. And Young does not squirm away from describing how Lizzie dismembers Jacob's body and stores the parts (in labelled garbage bags) in the deep freezer.

Though not entirely graphic, Young's descriptions have Lizzie treating Jacob's body parts as though they are everyday ingredients used in cooking: "The heart was larger than she'd expected, slightly bigger than her fist. It was like holding a root ball. She removed the tendons, tubes and tougher flaps of skin around the edge. These she would give to the dog." Ordinary, to the point of being mundane, this is just Lizzie preparing a meal.

Not that Young doesn't know how to make her audience squirm, effectively wielding moments of warped gothic humour. For instance, when the time comes for Lizzie to devour Jacob's arms, Young has her clean Jacob's nails first, then shave the hair off before marinating them and popping them into the microwave....

Those with strong stomachs may find some poignancy in Lizzie's act of eating her husband. This could be her way of remaining close to Jacob before nature calls and parts of Jacob gets flushed away, wiped from Lizzie's memory and from existence.

While the bulk of the novel is narrated in the third person, the story also delves into Lizzie's head, with her thoughts given as a list of things she must do in order to live her life free from the burdens of her husband, the judgement of society and the punishment of the law.

There is also a third voice in the novel: Tom, a 20something neighbour who Lizzie had babysat when he and his siblings were younger. Through Tom, an element of hope is introduced, with the younger man longing to be with a woman in her 50s. It is also through Tom that readers get to see Lizzie toying with the idea of being with someone who may actually love her, as opposed to Jacob, who did not show much affection.

This relationship – be it romantic on Tom's part, lustful/lonely on her part, or just platonic on both their parts – has Lizzie behaving in an uncertain and slightly imbalanced manner. In fact, Tom's narration paints Lizzie as someone who can be downright rash. Yet, Lizzie's list illustrates a strong woman determined to follow through on her actions (eating her husband). And then there is Young's third person narrative that shows a woman at odds with herself, and with her surroundings.

So which Lizzie is the "real" one? I feel that the inconsistencies is Young's way of presenting Lizzie as being unsure of herself and what she actually wants.

Flawed, emotionally unattractive and obviously psychologically unsound, Lizzie Prain is a not very likeable person, and readers would be hard pressed to feel sorry for her. By keeping her flawed, Young has created a more humane – and arguably more realistic – character in Lizzie. Her backstory with Jacob also paints him as an unlikable character, which made it extremely hard for this reviewer to feel bad for what happens to him.

The flaw in this novel, I feel, is the interaction between Lizzie and Tom: it is not made clear why Tom develops feelings for Lizzie. Though, to be fair, Lizzie is awkward in all communications with other people, including Joanna, the third person in her marriage.

I could see shades of Roald Dahl's macabre short story for adults, Lamb To The Slaughter (1953), in Young's novel, but overall, Season To Taste is a tale on its own, with its own take on the aftermath of the end of a marriage, and a wife's last rites to show her husband her love and devotion by cooking and eating him.

That said, this may not be the novel for everyone – particularly those who are faint of heart and have squeamish stomachs.

Season To Taste has been touted as The Book of 2014 by various publishing industry sources. Though books that are hyped before release usually do not meet expectations, Season To Taste has delivered what is expected of it: a tale worth devouring.

The People In The Trees

Posted: 10 Mar 2014 09:00 AM PDT

Power and its abuses are at the heart of Hanya Yanagihara's beautifully written debut.

ANY analysis of human behaviour is, among other things, an assertion of power over those whose behaviour is being analysed. Perhaps for that reason, the field of anthropology has seen its fair share of scandal, from the case of Napoleon Chagnon – who was accused of spreading disease among the Amazonian tribe he was studying – to Daniel Carleton Gajdusek, the inspiration behind Hanya Yanagihara's debut novel The People In The Trees.

Power and its abuses are at the heart of this richly imagined novel, both in form and subject matter.

The framing device brings up questions of authorial control, of editing and excision: the novel purports to offer the memoirs of a Nobel prizewinning convicted paedophile, Dr Norton Perina, as edited and annotated by his acolyte Ronald Kubodera.

In 1950, Perina – very loosely based on Nobel prizewinner Gajdusek – joins an anthropological expedition bound for the imaginary Micronesian island nation U'ivu.

There, he discovers a lost tribe of "dreamers" – exceptionally long-lived and acutely senile individuals.

Later, he discovers that the secret to the dreamers' longevity is the flesh of a turtle called the opa'ivu'eke, which is ingested upon an U'ivuan's 60th birthday. Perina smuggles an opa'ivu'eke sample back to America, publishes his findings, and achieves instant renown.

That's only the first part of the story, of course. The remainder of Perina's memoirs detail the cost of physical but not mental immortality, the destruction of the Edenic island that gave him his fame, and his long fall from grace.

In structure and subject, The People In The Trees pays tribute to Vladimir Nabokov's two masterpieces:Pale Fire and Lolita. But where Nabokov's megalomaniacal Charles Kinbote constantly threatens to overwhelm John Shade's manuscript, Kudobera is a more reverent custodian of Perina's work.

Perina's voice – wry, superior, unthinkingly cruel – is one of the key triumphs of the book.

Another triumph is the astonishingly thorough invention of Yanagihara's Micronesian country.

The specificity of the world she creates – flora and fauna all described in the necessarily precise language of a scientist – allows for the fantastical revelation of the opa'ivu'eke's extraordinary properties. And while sexual abuse is a key strand of her story, it is the rape of this physical place – culturally, ecologically, linguistically – that gives Perina's conscience pause.

The novel contains a critique of Western imperialism, even as it acknowledges the familiarity of that narrative.

Most effectively, Kubodera's footnotes show the institutions of knowledge as tools of imperial power.

The peer-reviewed articles, book publications and laboratory studies populating the footnotes are as much responsible for shaping the destiny of U'ivu as the pharmaceutical companies that eventually descend on the islands in search of profit.

Yanagihara makes multiple literary references in her work, but the underpinning one is the Garden of Eden, the story of paradise, temptation and innocence lost.

On one level, Yanagihara is telling a story about the corruption of knowledge and, more specifically, language.

Perina relates the acquisition of English by the island's natives: "How you?' asked Uva, smiling proudly, and this – his newly acquired English, and his pride in it – made my skin prickle ... the enormity of the island's changes loomed large and clear in my mind."

In prison Perina has recourse to nothing except language, in all its invention and complicity.

If his narrative doesn't reach Humbert Humbert's heights of fancy and self-loathing, or Kinbote's baroque mania, Perina's story remains both striking and highly satisfying. Yanagihara's ambitious debut is one to be lauded. – Guardian News & Media

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