Jumaat, 16 Mei 2014

The Star Online: World Updates

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The Star Online: World Updates


Third poll gives Zuluaga edge over Santos in Colombia presidential race

Posted: 16 May 2014 08:30 PM PDT

CARTAGENA (Reuters) - Colombia's right-wing presidential candidate Oscar Ivan Zuluaga is edging ahead of President Juan Manuel Santos in three voter polls after a survey published on Friday also showed Santos's recently comfortable lead has evaporated nine days before elections.

But the poll was conducted before Friday's announcement that the government had reached a deal with Marxist FARC guerrillas on ending the illegal drug trade. That key advance in peace talks that Santos started with the rebels in 2012 could prop up his support from those eager to see a peace deal.

The FARC and their smaller counterpart, the ELN, also announced a week-long ceasefire on Friday for the elections. Though in talks with the government in Cuba, the FARC are still in combat with government forces at home in Colombia.

Pollster Ipsos Napoleon Franco said Zuluaga, a former finance minister who is sceptical of the peace talks and would impose tougher conditions to continue them, would receive 29.5 percent of first round votes versus 28.5 for Santos. The Ipsos poll was published on the website of broadcaster RCN.

It said both candidates would receive 32 percent of the vote in a run-off ballot in mid-June, which now looks inevitable with both candidates far from the 50 percent needed to secure victory in the first round of the election on May 25.

Two other surveys on Thursday, by pollsters Gallup and by Cifras y Conceptos, also put Zuluaga slightly ahead, but the narrow leads in each, within the surveys' margin of error, technically mean they are tying in the polls.

Santos and Zuluaga differ little on economic issues, both favour investor-friendly policies, so the choice for many voters is likely to come down to their stances on the peace negotiations with Marxist FARC rebels.

While many Colombians have never known peace in their lifetimes and back the talks, some are fearful of the rebels gaining a foothold in politics through a peace deal and that its members will face little or no punishment for years of murder and abduction. The conflict has killed more than 200,000 people.

None of the other candidates in the race would be a direct threat to either Santos or Zuluaga in the first round, with former Bogota mayor Enrique Penalosa in third-place. He was ahead of Zuluaga in one April poll, but has slipped to 9.4 percent.

The number who would make a blank or protest vote, choosing no candidate, was 12.8 percent in Ipsos' survey, much higher than the 5.9 percent in a Gallup poll on Thursday.

The Ipsos poll of 1,799 people was carried out from May 13 to 15 and has a 2.3 percent margin of error. Santos had gained 5.5 percent more support than Ipsos' April poll while Zuluaga's previous 15 percent support had almost doubled.

(Editing by Matt Driskill)

U.S. judge halts force-feeding of Guantanamo prisoner

Posted: 16 May 2014 07:25 PM PDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Friday temporarily blocked the military from force-feeding a Syrian prisoner on hunger striker at the Guantanamo Bay prison camp.

It was the first time a judge ordered a halt to force-feeding of a prisoner in Guantanamo, where last year during a hunger strike, as many as 46 of 166 inmates were force-fed at least some of their meals. Several sued.

U.S. District Court Judge Gladys Kessler ordered the U.S. government to stop force-feeding Abu Wa'el Dhiab until a hearing on May 21. She also ordered the military to stop extracting him from his cell if he refuses to go to feedings.

The judge said the government also must preserve all videotape evidence of forcible cell extractions and force-feeding until the hearing next Wednesday.

Human rights advocates and many doctors call force-feeding a violation of personal liberty and medical ethics. The procedure, designed to keep hunger strikers alive, involves feeding them liquid meals via tubes inserted into their noses and down into their stomachs.

"While the Department follows the law and only applies enteral feeding in order to preserve life, we will, of course, comply with the judge's order here," Defense Department spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Todd Breasseale said in reaction to the ruling.

Last July, Kessler, based in Washington D.C., denied Dhiab's request to halt the force-feeding, saying she would be overstepping her authority if she issued an injunction and adding that only President Barack Obama had the power to intervene.

But in February, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled that Guantanamo prisoners have the right to sue over force-feeding and that judges have the authority to consider petitions challenging aspects of how the U.S. military treats them.

Dhiab's attorney's hailed the decision as a turning point.

"This is a major crack in Guantanamo's years-long effort to oppress prisoners and to exercise total control over information about the prison," one of Dhiab's attorneys, Cori Crider said.

"I am glad Judge Kessler has taken this seriously, and we look forward to our full day in court to expose the appalling way Dhiab and others have been treated," Crider added.

(Reporting by Sandra Maler; Additional reporting by Phil Stewart in Washington and David Ingram in New York; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

Colombia a step closer to peace with pact to fight drugs

Posted: 16 May 2014 07:15 PM PDT

HAVANA/BOGOTA (Reuters) - Colombia's FARC rebels reached a landmark agreement with the government toward eliminating the illegal drug trade and called a week-long ceasefire on Friday, giving a political boost to President Juan Manuel Santos in his re-election bid.

The unilateral ceasefire includes the first round of presidential elections on May 25. It was announced after Santos, once a clear favourite, began to falter in public opinion polls.

The centre-bit president's lead has evaporated with the rise of right-wing rival Oscar Ivan Zuluaga, now tipped to win in two recent surveys if, as expected, the voting goes to a second-round runoff on June 15.

While Santos has staked his political future on the talks, Zuluaga has threatened to end them if he wins.

Friday's agreement puts the two sides one step closer to ending Latin America's longest-running guerrilla war. Rebel and government negotiators meeting in Havana are seeking to end a conflict that has killed more than 200,000 people since 1964.

They agreed to cooperate on eradicating illicit drug cultivation through crop substitution, a departure from the forced destruction of coca fields, often by spraying herbicide and with the help of billions of dollars in U.S. anti-drug aid.

They also reached a deal on the prevention of drug use and a solution to the production and sale of narcotics.

The FARC, which has turned to coca growing to finance its operations, agreed to help convince farmers to plant other crops. The FARC opposes the chemical destruction of coca, and the government promised to spray fields only as a last resort.

Chief government negotiator Humberto de la Calle called the deal a "landmark" and celebrated what he called a "dream," the possibility that the entire country would "work toward the same goal, in this case, a country without illegal crops and without drug trafficking."

Negotiators have now reached accord on three of the five phases of the talks. Agricultural reform and the rebels' participation in politics were agreed last year, while reparations for war victims and the mechanics of ending the conflict remain the outstanding issues.

In its unilateral ceasefire, the FARC announced it would stop all attacks from the start of May 20 to the end of May 28. The National Liberation Army (ELN), another leftist guerrilla group, also said it would call a ceasefire during the period.

Elections have historically been marred by rebel attacks as the guerrillas sought to intimidate voters.

Santos has sought to sell the idea that without his re-election, peace talks could collapse and Colombia would remain at war indefinitely.

"This is the furthest we have ever come on the path to ending our war," Santos said in a televised speech. "Can you imagine a Colombia without coca? This is within reach of our hands if we implement these agreements."

Zuluaga, an ally of influential former President Alvaro Uribe, has condemned the negotiations and promised to suspend them until the rebels call a definitive ceasefire and accept jail time.

Uribe rose to popularity by taking a hard line against the guerrillas.

(Additional reporting by Luis Jaime Acosta in Bogota, Peter Murphy in Cartagena and Nelson Acosta in Havana; Writing by Daniel Trotta; Editing by W Simon, Bernadette Baum, Andrew Hay, Paul Simao, Jan Paschal and Ken Wills)

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star eCentral: Movie Buzz

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On his 60th birthday, Godzilla becomes painful reminder of Fukushima

Posted: 16 May 2014 05:02 AM PDT

Home wrecker: Godzilla, seen above in his original incarnation in the 1954 film directed by Ishiro Honda that launched his 60-year-long career. The latest Godzilla movie, a Hollywood production directed by Gareth Edwards, features an incarnation of the nuclear-birthed monster (below) that some Japanese have called 'fat'. 

In the wake of the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years, when a tsunami tore through the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and touched off meltdowns that spewed radiation over a wide swathe of countryside, Godzilla and his traditional anti-nuclear subtext may simply be too touchy a subject for any Japanese film maker to handle.

"Godzilla gains his strength from nuclear power and he spews radiation everywhere," said Toshio Takahashi, a literature professor at Tokyo's Waseda University. "If Godzilla appeared (in Japan) now, he'd ultimately force people to ask themselves hard questions about Fukushima."

The nuclear disaster at the plant 220km northeast of Tokyo is a sensitive subject in Japan. Directors making mass-market films about Fukushima tiptoe into the debate or set their movies in an unspecified future. Sponsors are skittish and overall film revenues falling, with viewers shying away from anything too political.

Things were different when Godzilla first crashed ashore in 1954, a symbol of both atomic weapons – less than a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and frustrations with the United States, which had just held a hydrogen bomb test at Bikini atoll that irradiated a boat full of Japanese fishermen.

The high-powered reboot of Godzilla, directed by Gareth Edwards and out in US theatres from May 16 from Warner Bros Pictures and Legendary Pictures, features international stars including French actress Juliette Binoche and Japanese actor Ken Watanabe.

It gives a nod to Fukushima with a tsunami – set off by monsters – hitting Hawaii, and a no-go zone in Japan after a nuclear accident years before. But much of the story, and most of the destruction, takes place in the US, far from Godzilla's birthplace.

Godzilla too radioactive

Japan's March 11, 2011, natural and nuclear disaster killed nearly 20,000 people and forced some 160,000 people to evacuate, with tens of thousands unable to return. The plant still battles radioactive water and decommissioning is expected to take decades and cost billions of dollars.

"You can basically think of Godzilla equaling radiation. It's something that can't be solved by human strength or power, and it attacks," said film critic Yuichi Maeda. "The reactors currently can't be made normal by humans if there's an accident. It's the same with Godzilla."

Sixty years ago, the black-and-white version of the towering, dinosaur-like creature – his Japanese name 'Gojira' combines the Japanese words for gorilla ('gorira') and whale ('kujira') – packed viewers into theatres. "That year was also when Japan was starting to debate the peaceful use of nuclear energy," said Takahashi. "So the movie expressed fears about nuclear power as well as weapons (made from it)."

The nuclear theme was a constant through the Cold War, although Godzilla, who remained a man in a rubber suit stomping through model cities – a touch that humanised him to many – gradually lost his edge and took on a more cuddly tone.

His radioactive connections were blurred in the last few films before film company Toho ended the series, Takahashi noted, perhaps because of a series of accidents at Japanese nuclear facilities around then, including a 1999 criticality accident set off by workers mixing compounds that killed two.

A US version of Godzilla in 1998 was widely panned. Meanwhile, early reviews of the new film are mixed, with many in Japan saying the monster looks 'fat'. It opens in Japan in late July, timed to hit school summer holidays.

A Toho spokesman said the company abandoned the franchise in 2004 on its 50th anniversary because the timing was right, and that no decision has been made about future revivals in Japan "The current movie has a message that is a warning from nature about things mankind has done," he said. "We have to see how people respond, including those who experienced Fukushima."

Takahashi says that Godzilla's longevity shows there is something far deeper at work than the usual monster movie. "Godzilla shows us that we must return to our dark past and then accept it," he said. "His purpose is to make us question ourselves. So I think we need to still walk with him a little more, especially after Fukushima." – Reuters

Cannes opens with bad reviews of Nicole Kidman's 'Grace Of Monaco'

Posted: 15 May 2014 02:20 AM PDT

Monaco's royal family says film bears no resemblance to reality.

The world's biggest film festival opened in Cannes on Wednesday with a blast of controversy as critics mercilessly savaged the opening movie about Hollywood-darling-turned-princess Grace of Monaco.

Nicole Kidman (who stars in the movie Grace Of Monaco), Sofia Coppola, Willem Dafoe, Audrey Tautou and jury head Jane Campion were among the film world luminaries who walked up the 24 steps of the festival hall in the French Riviera resort, under the cool gaze of the late Italian heartthrob Marcello Mastroianni whose giant portrait adorned the facade.

Ryan Gosling, David Cronenberg and Sophia Loren are also set to make an appearance later in the 67th Cannes Film Festival, where directorial big guns will go head-to-head in a year of comebacks, swansongs and star debuts.

But for filmmakers behind the opening movie, the festivities were bittersweet as the Monaco princely family furiously disavowed a film they say bears no resemblance to reality and critics who got a sneak preview made no secret of their contempt.

"The cringe-factor is ionospherically high," The Guardian film maestro Peter Bradshaw wrote. "A fleet of ambulances may have to be stationed outside the Palais to take tuxed audiences to hospital afterwards to have their toes uncurled under general anaesthetic."

'Just smile for everyone, dear.' Nicole Kidman (right) and Spanish actress Paz Vega, who plays Maria Callas in Grace Of Monaco, at Cannes. — EPA/Guillaume Horcajuelo 

On the red carpet, Kidman sparkled in a blue, jewelled strapless dress, smiling for the cameras next to downcast-looking French director Olivier Dahan.

In the film, the Australian-born actress portrays an unhappy Grace who sleeps in a separate bedroom to Prince Rainier, even contemplating divorce before rising to the challenge of being a princess and helping her lost husband solve a 1962 political crisis with France.

Grace's children Prince Albert II and his sisters Caroline and Stephanie have publicly rejected a film they say "has been misappropriated for purely commercial purposes".

"This film should never have existed," Stephanie of Monaco told local daily Nice Matin.

Describing the controversy as "awkward" in a press conference earlier on Wednesday, Kidman sought to reassure the family that the film bore no "malice" towards them or towards Grace and Prince Rainier, played by a chain-smoking Tim Roth.

"It's fictionalised, it's not a biopic," she said, echoing what Dahan has previously said.

Kidman and Tim Roth in 'Grace Of Monaco'.

The French director had been locked in a long-standing tussle with US distributor Harvey Weinstein over the final version of the film.

Weinstein had reportedly considered dropping the rights to the film altogether, but Dahan said Wednesday an agreement had been reached under which the movie mogul will distribute the French director's version in the United States.

"There is no dispute anymore, everything has been resolved. We're working together, and I'm happy about it," Dahan told reporters.

According to entertainment industry magazine Variety, Weinstein will acquire the rights for considerably less money than he had originally planned to pay.

The opening ceremony in the festival hall's biggest movie theatre saw the man behind the spellbinding soundtrack to Campion's 1993 Palme d'Or winner The Piano – Michael Nyman – take to the piano to welcome the jury president on stage.

Master of ceremonies Lambert Wilson, a prolific French actor, also had a cheeky dance with Kidman to much applause.

Chiara Mastroianni and Gravity director Alfonso Cuaron then formally opened the May 14-25 extravaganza, during which 18 films will compete for the top Palme d'Or prize.

Jane Fonda looking gorgeous on the red carpet.

The festival will see Canadian heartthrob Gosling present his directorial debut Lost River, and films by 25-year-old whizz kid Xavier Dolan, veteran director Jean-Luc Godard and Men In Black actor Tommy Lee Jones will also compete.

And while two of the films running for the Palme d'Or are by women – Japan's Naomi Kawase (Still The Water) and Italy's Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders) – Campion bemoaned the industry's "inherent sexism".

"It does feel very undemocratic and women do notice. Time and time again we don't get our share of representation," she said, adding that men seemed to "eat all the cake".

On the sidelines of the competitions, muscle men Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford and Arnold Schwarzenegger will take a trip to the resort on board a tank to promote their film The Expendables 3.

Abel Ferrara's racy Welcome To New York in which Gerard Depardieu plays a character much like the disgraced former head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn will also get a private industry preview during the festival.

And to round off this year's festivities, US Cannes-lover Quentin Tarantino will showcase A Fistful Of Dollars at the closing ceremony, in a glitzy celebration of the 50th anniversary of spaghetti westerns. — AFP Relaxnews

New trailer alert: 'Transformers Age Of Extinction'

Posted: 15 May 2014 01:15 AM PDT

The latest trailer for the upcoming summer flick has just been released.

Check out the official "payoff" trailer from Michael Bay's Transformers: Age Of Extinction starring Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Nicola Peltz, Kelsey Grammer and Li Bingbing. The movie is set to open in the final week of June.

We're not exactly sure what a "payoff" trailer means but we do like what we see in the clip. Watch for yourself and tell us what you think.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio

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The Star Online: Entertainment: TV & Radio


'Game Of Thrones', Super Mario Bros style

Posted: 15 May 2014 01:40 AM PDT

One fan decided to make a mash-up video of sorts, featuring HBO's popular TV series and the much-loved videogame.

Actor/director and YouTube user NicksplosionFX must have had a lot of time on his hands when he created this cool video featuring HBO's wildly popular Game Of Thrones series ... if it were set in the world of Super Mario Bros.

The video basically shows a map of where Mario the plumber needs to go in order to save the princess, who is (we assume) sitting pretty in the enemy's castle. The pixelated map is presented in the style of the Game Of Thrones' opening credits and uses the TV show's theme song – which has been transformed into a super cool 8-bit version.

Okay, so perhaps the track is only "super cool" if it is accompanied by the video so ... just watch it. You can also watch a comparison video (below) that shows the original Game Of Thrones opening credits and NicksplosionFX's "remake".

Trailer alert: NBC presents previews of new TV shows

Posted: 15 May 2014 12:25 AM PDT

Get a glimpse of these six brand new programmes that will premiere in the next few months in the US.

NBC has recetly released the trailers for six new series slated to launch during the 2014-2015 season, including State Of Affairs with Katherine Heigl.

The former Grey's Anatomy star is preparing to return to the airwaves for the first time since leaving ABC in 2010. In State Of Affairs, which premieres Nov 17, the actress plays Charleston Tucker, a White House advisor whose official job title is merely a cover for her mission as a CIA agent.

The political drama will follow the character as she travels around the globe to resolve various crises and threats facing the United States. And on top of living up to her significant political responsibilities, Agent Tucker has to cope with her complicated personal life.

TV fans can also catch a first look at Constantine (of the DC Comics superhero), The Mysteries Of Laura (a detective series starring Debra Messing) and Bad Judge (starring Kate Walsh and produced by Will Ferrell). There are also the comedies A To Z, starring How I Met Your Mother's "mother" Cristin Milioti and Mad Men's Ben Feldman, and Marry Me, which stars Casey Wilson (Happy Endings). — AFP Relaxnews

Say hello to these animated folks, the Lego Mixels

Posted: 13 May 2014 07:45 PM PDT

You can also stand a chance to win a full set of these new toys.

Once upon a time in Mixel land, three tribes – the Infernites, Cragsters and Electroids – lived in harmony. Each with their own strengths and abilities – the Infernites breathe fire, and the Cragsters (made of stone) can crush their enemy, while the Electroids emit electricity – the Mixels must fight off the baddies called (ahem) the Nixels, who threaten to invade their land and break the tribes apart.

Also, the Mixels can – literally – join forces to defeat the Nixels. They can mix (when two Mixels combine) and max (when three Mixels combine) to become bigger and more effective in unleashing their powers.

 Unfortunately, a "murp" can also happen ... that's when a wrong combination is formed and their powers go out of control.

Sounds like fun? Join the Mixels on their adventure to outwit the evil Nixels and defend their land in the short form animated series, Mixels. Created by John Fang (Generator Rex and Ben 10) and Dave Smith (The Powerpuff Girls), the one to two-minute segment is a partnership between construction toy maker Lego and children entertainment channel Cartoon Network.

If Mixels is up your alley, then you will be happy to know that the merchandise is already on sale. However, before you head out to the stores to get them, you may want to check out this contest.

In partnership with Cartoon Network and Lego, Star2 will be giving away a set of the Mixels Series 1 collectables to three lucky readers. All you need to do is:

1. Identify all the characters and tribes featured in the video snippets featured in this story (Hot Lava Shower and Pothole).

2. Creatively complete the following sentence: 'If I could create a new tribe on Mixel land, I would ... (in 50 words or fewer)'

All entries should be collated and submitted by May 30 (Friday) to helene.gomez@text100.com.my. Head on over to www.mixels.asia for more information.

Don't forget to tune into Mixels, beginning May 26 at 5.25pm, on Cartoon Network (Astro Ch 616).

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star eCentral: Movie Reviews

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On his 60th birthday, Godzilla becomes painful reminder of Fukushima

Posted: 16 May 2014 05:02 AM PDT

Home wrecker: Godzilla, seen above in his original incarnation in the 1954 film directed by Ishiro Honda that launched his 60-year-long career. The latest Godzilla movie, a Hollywood production directed by Gareth Edwards, features an incarnation of the nuclear-birthed monster (below) that some Japanese have called 'fat'. 

In the wake of the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years, when a tsunami tore through the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and touched off meltdowns that spewed radiation over a wide swathe of countryside, Godzilla and his traditional anti-nuclear subtext may simply be too touchy a subject for any Japanese film maker to handle.

"Godzilla gains his strength from nuclear power and he spews radiation everywhere," said Toshio Takahashi, a literature professor at Tokyo's Waseda University. "If Godzilla appeared (in Japan) now, he'd ultimately force people to ask themselves hard questions about Fukushima."

The nuclear disaster at the plant 220km northeast of Tokyo is a sensitive subject in Japan. Directors making mass-market films about Fukushima tiptoe into the debate or set their movies in an unspecified future. Sponsors are skittish and overall film revenues falling, with viewers shying away from anything too political.

Things were different when Godzilla first crashed ashore in 1954, a symbol of both atomic weapons – less than a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and frustrations with the United States, which had just held a hydrogen bomb test at Bikini atoll that irradiated a boat full of Japanese fishermen.

The high-powered reboot of Godzilla, directed by Gareth Edwards and out in US theatres from May 16 from Warner Bros Pictures and Legendary Pictures, features international stars including French actress Juliette Binoche and Japanese actor Ken Watanabe.

It gives a nod to Fukushima with a tsunami – set off by monsters – hitting Hawaii, and a no-go zone in Japan after a nuclear accident years before. But much of the story, and most of the destruction, takes place in the US, far from Godzilla's birthplace.

Godzilla too radioactive

Japan's March 11, 2011, natural and nuclear disaster killed nearly 20,000 people and forced some 160,000 people to evacuate, with tens of thousands unable to return. The plant still battles radioactive water and decommissioning is expected to take decades and cost billions of dollars.

"You can basically think of Godzilla equaling radiation. It's something that can't be solved by human strength or power, and it attacks," said film critic Yuichi Maeda. "The reactors currently can't be made normal by humans if there's an accident. It's the same with Godzilla."

Sixty years ago, the black-and-white version of the towering, dinosaur-like creature – his Japanese name 'Gojira' combines the Japanese words for gorilla ('gorira') and whale ('kujira') – packed viewers into theatres. "That year was also when Japan was starting to debate the peaceful use of nuclear energy," said Takahashi. "So the movie expressed fears about nuclear power as well as weapons (made from it)."

The nuclear theme was a constant through the Cold War, although Godzilla, who remained a man in a rubber suit stomping through model cities – a touch that humanised him to many – gradually lost his edge and took on a more cuddly tone.

His radioactive connections were blurred in the last few films before film company Toho ended the series, Takahashi noted, perhaps because of a series of accidents at Japanese nuclear facilities around then, including a 1999 criticality accident set off by workers mixing compounds that killed two.

A US version of Godzilla in 1998 was widely panned. Meanwhile, early reviews of the new film are mixed, with many in Japan saying the monster looks 'fat'. It opens in Japan in late July, timed to hit school summer holidays.

A Toho spokesman said the company abandoned the franchise in 2004 on its 50th anniversary because the timing was right, and that no decision has been made about future revivals in Japan "The current movie has a message that is a warning from nature about things mankind has done," he said. "We have to see how people respond, including those who experienced Fukushima."

Takahashi says that Godzilla's longevity shows there is something far deeper at work than the usual monster movie. "Godzilla shows us that we must return to our dark past and then accept it," he said. "His purpose is to make us question ourselves. So I think we need to still walk with him a little more, especially after Fukushima." – Reuters

Cannes opens with bad reviews of Nicole Kidman's 'Grace Of Monaco'

Posted: 15 May 2014 02:20 AM PDT

Monaco's royal family says film bears no resemblance to reality.

The world's biggest film festival opened in Cannes on Wednesday with a blast of controversy as critics mercilessly savaged the opening movie about Hollywood-darling-turned-princess Grace of Monaco.

Nicole Kidman (who stars in the movie Grace Of Monaco), Sofia Coppola, Willem Dafoe, Audrey Tautou and jury head Jane Campion were among the film world luminaries who walked up the 24 steps of the festival hall in the French Riviera resort, under the cool gaze of the late Italian heartthrob Marcello Mastroianni whose giant portrait adorned the facade.

Ryan Gosling, David Cronenberg and Sophia Loren are also set to make an appearance later in the 67th Cannes Film Festival, where directorial big guns will go head-to-head in a year of comebacks, swansongs and star debuts.

But for filmmakers behind the opening movie, the festivities were bittersweet as the Monaco princely family furiously disavowed a film they say bears no resemblance to reality and critics who got a sneak preview made no secret of their contempt.

"The cringe-factor is ionospherically high," The Guardian film maestro Peter Bradshaw wrote. "A fleet of ambulances may have to be stationed outside the Palais to take tuxed audiences to hospital afterwards to have their toes uncurled under general anaesthetic."

'Just smile for everyone, dear.' Nicole Kidman (right) and Spanish actress Paz Vega, who plays Maria Callas in Grace Of Monaco, at Cannes. — EPA/Guillaume Horcajuelo 

On the red carpet, Kidman sparkled in a blue, jewelled strapless dress, smiling for the cameras next to downcast-looking French director Olivier Dahan.

In the film, the Australian-born actress portrays an unhappy Grace who sleeps in a separate bedroom to Prince Rainier, even contemplating divorce before rising to the challenge of being a princess and helping her lost husband solve a 1962 political crisis with France.

Grace's children Prince Albert II and his sisters Caroline and Stephanie have publicly rejected a film they say "has been misappropriated for purely commercial purposes".

"This film should never have existed," Stephanie of Monaco told local daily Nice Matin.

Describing the controversy as "awkward" in a press conference earlier on Wednesday, Kidman sought to reassure the family that the film bore no "malice" towards them or towards Grace and Prince Rainier, played by a chain-smoking Tim Roth.

"It's fictionalised, it's not a biopic," she said, echoing what Dahan has previously said.

Kidman and Tim Roth in 'Grace Of Monaco'.

The French director had been locked in a long-standing tussle with US distributor Harvey Weinstein over the final version of the film.

Weinstein had reportedly considered dropping the rights to the film altogether, but Dahan said Wednesday an agreement had been reached under which the movie mogul will distribute the French director's version in the United States.

"There is no dispute anymore, everything has been resolved. We're working together, and I'm happy about it," Dahan told reporters.

According to entertainment industry magazine Variety, Weinstein will acquire the rights for considerably less money than he had originally planned to pay.

The opening ceremony in the festival hall's biggest movie theatre saw the man behind the spellbinding soundtrack to Campion's 1993 Palme d'Or winner The Piano – Michael Nyman – take to the piano to welcome the jury president on stage.

Master of ceremonies Lambert Wilson, a prolific French actor, also had a cheeky dance with Kidman to much applause.

Chiara Mastroianni and Gravity director Alfonso Cuaron then formally opened the May 14-25 extravaganza, during which 18 films will compete for the top Palme d'Or prize.

Jane Fonda looking gorgeous on the red carpet.

The festival will see Canadian heartthrob Gosling present his directorial debut Lost River, and films by 25-year-old whizz kid Xavier Dolan, veteran director Jean-Luc Godard and Men In Black actor Tommy Lee Jones will also compete.

And while two of the films running for the Palme d'Or are by women – Japan's Naomi Kawase (Still The Water) and Italy's Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders) – Campion bemoaned the industry's "inherent sexism".

"It does feel very undemocratic and women do notice. Time and time again we don't get our share of representation," she said, adding that men seemed to "eat all the cake".

On the sidelines of the competitions, muscle men Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford and Arnold Schwarzenegger will take a trip to the resort on board a tank to promote their film The Expendables 3.

Abel Ferrara's racy Welcome To New York in which Gerard Depardieu plays a character much like the disgraced former head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn will also get a private industry preview during the festival.

And to round off this year's festivities, US Cannes-lover Quentin Tarantino will showcase A Fistful Of Dollars at the closing ceremony, in a glitzy celebration of the 50th anniversary of spaghetti westerns. — AFP Relaxnews

New trailer alert: 'Transformers Age Of Extinction'

Posted: 15 May 2014 01:15 AM PDT

The latest trailer for the upcoming summer flick has just been released.

Check out the official "payoff" trailer from Michael Bay's Transformers: Age Of Extinction starring Mark Wahlberg, Stanley Tucci, Nicola Peltz, Kelsey Grammer and Li Bingbing. The movie is set to open in the final week of June.

We're not exactly sure what a "payoff" trailer means but we do like what we see in the clip. Watch for yourself and tell us what you think.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

The Star Online: Business

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At big-ticket dinners, a blunt Bernanke sounds theme of low rates

Posted: 16 May 2014 07:36 PM PDT

NEW YORK/BOSTON: In a series of quarter-million-dollar dinners with wealthy private investors, Ben Bernanke has been clearer than he ever was as chairman of the Federal Reserve on his expectations that easy-money policies and below-normal interest rates are here for a long time to come, according to some of those in attendance.

Bernanke, who retired from the U.S. central bank in January, has predicted the Fed will only very slowly move to raise rates, and probably do so later than many forecast because the labor market still has a lot more room to recover from the financial crisis and recession.

The accounts of the discussions come from attendees as well as those who heard second-hand what was said at the dinners, where hedge fund managers and others willing to foot the roughly $250,000 bill for each event asked the former Fed chairman questions in a free-flowing round-table fashion over recent weeks.

Bernanke has no constraints on expressing his views in public or private, providing he does not talk about confidential Fed matters. He declined to comment on any of his remarks at the private events.

The demand for Bernanke's time shows that many of Wall Street's highest-profile brokers and investors see him as holding rare insight on how the Fed will react in the months and years ahead - and are prepared to pay big bucks to get private access to those views.

At least one guest left a New York restaurant with the impression Bernanke, 60, does not expect the federal funds rate, the Fed's main benchmark interest rate, to rise back to its long-term average of around 4 percent in Bernanke's lifetime, one source who had spoken to the guest said.

Under his direction, the Fed took the fed funds rate, its key policy lever, to near zero in late 2008 as the financial crisis raged. The central bank has held it there ever since in a bid to stimulate a stronger rebound in the world's largest economy.

Another dinner guest was moved when Bernanke said the Fed aims to hit its 2 percent inflation target at all times, and that it is not necessarily a ceiling.

"Shocking when he said this," the guest scribbled in his notes. "Is that really true?" he scribbled at another point, according to the notes reviewed by Reuters.

The sources requested anonymity because the dinners were private and they were not authorized to discuss the material publicly.

The Washington Speakers Bureau, which organizes the events and advertises the former chairman's availability on its website, did not return calls.

AFTER THE FED

Since leaving the Fed at the end of January after serving eight years as chairman, Bernanke has taken a position as a distinguished fellow at the Brookings Institution, a think tank in Washington.

He kept a low profile for the first month after his departure, delivering his first public remarks to a banking conference in Abu Dhabi on March 4 and earning a $250,000 speaker's fee. His annual paycheck from the Fed was $199,700 last year - an amount that he would have already exceeded many times over from the fees he has earned in the past couple of months.

By contrast, his predecessor at the Fed, Alan Greenspan, waited only a week after his departure before addressing a private dinner hosted by Lehman Brothers, the investment bank whose collapse in 2008 sent the financial crisis into high gear.

That also brought in a reported $250,000, while a private telechat with investors in Japan that same day in 2006 was worth about half of that, each drawing criticism for giving high-paying investors a leg up on others who didn't have access to Greenspan.

Bernanke's private dinners began near the end of March, roughly two months after his retirement.

"It's not atypical for what other former Washington big shots do," said Jan Baran, a partner and head of the election law and government ethics group at law firm Wiley Rein LLP.

"He's being paid ... for sharing his wisdom and predictions, and presumably not to exert his influence on the Fed," he added. This will go on "until he's proven to not be all that clairvoyant."

TIES WITH YELLEN

The baseline fee for a private get together is $250,000, and more if Bernanke needs to travel from his home in Washington, though the price has dropped some as he has done more events, the sources said. The size of that decline could not be immediately learned.

He is known to be close with his successor, Janet Yellen, adding to perceptions that he should know what the thinking is at the Fed months after his departure. It is a particularly sensitive time as Yellen works to reverse the biggest monetary stimulus experiment ever - and investors who understand how the Fed is going to proceed have an advantage over those who don't.

Hedge fund attendees have included Paul Tudor Jones of Tudor Investment Corp and David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital. Others have included Michael Novogratz of Fortress Investment Group, and Larry Robbins of Glenview Capital, as previously reported in other media. All declined to comment to Reuters.

David Tepper, the hedge fund manager who earned $3.5 billion in 2013 to rank as the industry's best paid investor, said at an industry conference this week that he attended the first private dinner and peppered Bernanke with questions. But Tepper said he didn't make the best use of the information, a lapse he now regrets. "I screwed up that trade," he said.

At the same conference, Novogratz from Fortress said many hedge funds that bet on big interest rate and currency movements missed a hint from Bernanke at the dinner and failed to buy long duration Treasuries.

Bernanke's last major act as Fed chairman was to announce, in December, plans for the winding down of the central bank's huge stimulus, a bond-buying program called "quantitative easing," which should end by this fall.

That was greeted by a sell-off in the bond market, where expectations for future interest rate levels are particularly important, because many investors believed the Fed would move on to raising interest rates in fairly short order. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury note ended the year just above 3 percent, the highest since the summer of 2011.

To the surprise of many, however, bonds have rallied back hard this year, driving the 10-year yield down by half a percentage point. The shift comes as more and more investors come to embrace a view Bernanke has been sharing with his dinner guests: There is just too much slack remaining in the economy to support a rise in interest rates.

Still, not every guest believes they came away from a Bernanke dinner with an exclusive insight.

"People can try all they want to feel that they got him to say something extra to them, but he never does," said one person who attended one of the dinners.

"WE" THE FED

Financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase & Co <JPM.N> and institutional brokerage BTIG, have hosted at least four Bernanke dinners for their clients since March, the sources said. Venues included Manhattan's Eleven Madison Park and Le Bernardin, where the four-course prix fixe menu is $135 a plate. More are expected, the sources said.

JPMorgan and BTIG declined to comment.

The investors have asked Bernanke about everything from how the Fed will shrink its $4.3 trillion balance sheet to why exactly it didn't start to cut bond purchases last September, when expectations were high.

By most accounts, Bernanke has been candid and sometimes feisty, defending his eight-year record of steering the U.S. economy through the deepest recession in decades. Often using the pronoun "we" to describe the Fed, he has been careful not to contradict Yellen's public comments, in which she too has stressed that the labor market is far from fully healed.

In its first policy statement under Yellen, in March, the central bank said the federal funds rate may need to stay below average even after it reaches its goals for employment and inflation.

In one dinner-table exchange with investors, Bernanke argued that fiscal tightening, constrained financial markets and lower U.S. productivity all point to lower real rates than would be considered normal for a long time to come.

Based on trading in the massive Eurodollar futures market, investors have in recent months tempered expectations of rate rises in the years ahead; as it stands, they don't expect the fed funds rate to return to 4 percent until 2022. As recently as last September, futures markets signaled they thought this would happen by the end of 2018.

At the dinners, Bernanke has also argued the Fed would want to delay raising rates if the tighter financial conditions created could threaten to harm the economy. He has also stressed that financial stability concerns would more formally be considered in policy-making, according to the sources.

For hedge fund managers who have big bets riding on when exactly the Fed will raise rates, dining with Bernanke is part ego and part professional necessity.

The average U.S. hedge fund has returned only 0.9 percent in the first four months of the year after two consecutive months of losses in March and April, leaving many top managers on edge.- Reuters

Don&#39;t leave US small-cap stocks for dead

Posted: 16 May 2014 07:22 PM PDT

NEW YORK: There are many reasons for the sharp underperformance of small- cap stocks in the past six weeks, but the recent correction may be winding down, which means investors worried about a broader selloff might be able to breathe more easily.

The Russell 2000 briefly dipped into correction territory - down 10 percent from its March peak - two days after the Dow Jones industrial average and the S&P 500 closed at record highs.

That divergence is uncommon. It has caused some to fear that a strong selloff in large-cap stocks will follow, painting an all-around dire picture for equities. Some investors don't see it that way, though. They believe that improved economic growth and rising merger-and-acquisition activity should halt the decline in smaller-cap names.

"Growth in small-cap business is still intact, and they will continue to do well," said Gary Bradshaw, portfolio manager at Hodges Capital Management in Dallas.

"Large-caps are flush with cash, and we think there's going to be a lot of acquisitions out of small-caps."

The slide in small-cap companies' stocks might be more related to valuation than any bigger signal on the economy or a sudden aversion to equities. The small caps had an outstanding run in 2013 that made them look vulnerable, and this past earnings period made that all too clear.

At the end of 2013, the difference between the forward price-to-earnings ratio on the Russell 2000 and the S&P 500 was near its highest going back to at least 1978, according to data from Citi. The Russell's forward P/E ratio was 24 then and the S&P 500's was 15.7.

Now the Russell's forward P/E ratio is 21.5 and the S&P 500's is 15.3. That's still a substantial difference.

Looking at earnings, large caps have performed better. Just 25 percent of S&P 500 components have missed expectations for per-share earnings in the first quarter.

By comparison, a Thomson Reuters index of nearly 2,000 companies in the small- and mid-cap space showed 44 percent have missed earnings forecasts so far, according to StarMine data.

"The most pronounced divergence I am seeing this year relates to quality and consistency of earnings," said Brad Lipsig, senior portfolio manager at UBS Financial Services, speaking of small- and large-cap stocks.

Fear has been part of the equation as well. Investors have shied away from hyper-growth companies since February as biotechnology and Internet stocks slumped. That drove flows away from the iShares Russell 2000 exchange-traded fund <IWM.P>, which in turn pressured the underlying stocks.

But the tide may be changing. Weekly inflows into the IWM ETF in the week ended Wednesday were the highest in dollar terms in four years, according to Lipper data.

"If this does stabilize, we could see a turn, with small caps holding up better," Steven DeSanctis, small-cap strategist at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, told clients in a Friday note.- Reuters

Apple, Google settle smartphone patent litigation

Posted: 16 May 2014 07:18 PM PDT

SAN FRANCISCO: Apple Inc and Google Inc's Motorola Mobility unit have agreed to settle all patent litigation between them over smartphones, ending one of the highest-profile lawsuits in technology.

In a joint statement on Friday, the companies said the settlement does not include a cross license to their respective patents.

"Apple and Google have also agreed to work together in some areas of patent reform," the statement said.

Apple and companies that make phones using Google's Android software have filed dozens of such lawsuits against one another around the world to protect their technology. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs called Android a "stolen product."

Google and Apple informed a federal appeals court in Washington that their cases against each other should be dismissed, according to filings on Friday. However, the deal does not apply to Apple's litigation against Samsung Electronics Co Ltd.

Apple has battled Google and what once were the largest adopters of its Android mobile software, partly to try to curb the rapid expansion of the free, rival operating system.

But it has been unable to slow Android's ascendancy, which is now installed on an estimated 80 percent of new phones sold every year. Motorola, the U.S. company that pioneered the mobile phone, no longer ranks among the biggest smartphone makers.

Both Motorola and HTC Corp have been eclipsed by Chinese Android adopters such as Lenovo Group Ltd - which is buying Motorola - and Huawei and Xiaomi.

The most high-profile case between Apple and Motorola began in 2010. Motorola accused Apple of infringing several patents, including one essential to how cellphones operate on a 3G network, while Apple said Motorola violated its patents to certain smartphone features.

The cases were consolidated in a Chicago federal court. However, Judge Richard Posner dismissed it in 2012 shortly before trial, saying neither company had sufficient evidence to prove its case. Last month, the appeals court gave the iPhone manufacturer another chance to win a sales ban against Motorola.

Apple's biggest victory against Android came against Samsung, where U.S. juries have awarded Apple more than $1 billion in damages. Those verdicts are on appeal, and despite years of court challenges to Android, Apple has not been able to win a crippling sales injunction.

Google acquired Motorola Mobility in 2012 for $12.5 billion, and this year announced it was selling Motorola Mobility's handset business to Lenovo, while keeping the vast majority of the patents.

The case at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit is Apple Inc vs. Motorola Mobility, case number 2012-1528, -1549.- Reuters

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

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On his 60th birthday, Godzilla becomes painful reminder of Fukushima

Posted: 16 May 2014 05:02 AM PDT

Home wrecker: Godzilla, seen above in his original incarnation in the 1954 film directed by Ishiro Honda that launched his 60-year-long career. The latest Godzilla movie, a Hollywood production directed by Gareth Edwards, features an incarnation of the nuclear-birthed monster (below) that some Japanese have called 'fat'. 

In the wake of the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years, when a tsunami tore through the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and touched off meltdowns that spewed radiation over a wide swathe of countryside, Godzilla and his traditional anti-nuclear subtext may simply be too touchy a subject for any Japanese film maker to handle.

"Godzilla gains his strength from nuclear power and he spews radiation everywhere," said Toshio Takahashi, a literature professor at Tokyo's Waseda University. "If Godzilla appeared (in Japan) now, he'd ultimately force people to ask themselves hard questions about Fukushima."

The nuclear disaster at the plant 220km northeast of Tokyo is a sensitive subject in Japan. Directors making mass-market films about Fukushima tiptoe into the debate or set their movies in an unspecified future. Sponsors are skittish and overall film revenues falling, with viewers shying away from anything too political.

Things were different when Godzilla first crashed ashore in 1954, a symbol of both atomic weapons – less than a decade after Hiroshima and Nagasaki – and frustrations with the United States, which had just held a hydrogen bomb test at Bikini atoll that irradiated a boat full of Japanese fishermen.

The high-powered reboot of Godzilla, directed by Gareth Edwards and out in US theatres from May 16 from Warner Bros Pictures and Legendary Pictures, features international stars including French actress Juliette Binoche and Japanese actor Ken Watanabe.

It gives a nod to Fukushima with a tsunami – set off by monsters – hitting Hawaii, and a no-go zone in Japan after a nuclear accident years before. But much of the story, and most of the destruction, takes place in the US, far from Godzilla's birthplace.

Godzilla too radioactive

Japan's March 11, 2011, natural and nuclear disaster killed nearly 20,000 people and forced some 160,000 people to evacuate, with tens of thousands unable to return. The plant still battles radioactive water and decommissioning is expected to take decades and cost billions of dollars.

"You can basically think of Godzilla equaling radiation. It's something that can't be solved by human strength or power, and it attacks," said film critic Yuichi Maeda. "The reactors currently can't be made normal by humans if there's an accident. It's the same with Godzilla."

Sixty years ago, the black-and-white version of the towering, dinosaur-like creature – his Japanese name 'Gojira' combines the Japanese words for gorilla ('gorira') and whale ('kujira') – packed viewers into theatres. "That year was also when Japan was starting to debate the peaceful use of nuclear energy," said Takahashi. "So the movie expressed fears about nuclear power as well as weapons (made from it)."

The nuclear theme was a constant through the Cold War, although Godzilla, who remained a man in a rubber suit stomping through model cities – a touch that humanised him to many – gradually lost his edge and took on a more cuddly tone.

His radioactive connections were blurred in the last few films before film company Toho ended the series, Takahashi noted, perhaps because of a series of accidents at Japanese nuclear facilities around then, including a 1999 criticality accident set off by workers mixing compounds that killed two.

A US version of Godzilla in 1998 was widely panned. Meanwhile, early reviews of the new film are mixed, with many in Japan saying the monster looks 'fat'. It opens in Japan in late July, timed to hit school summer holidays.

A Toho spokesman said the company abandoned the franchise in 2004 on its 50th anniversary because the timing was right, and that no decision has been made about future revivals in Japan "The current movie has a message that is a warning from nature about things mankind has done," he said. "We have to see how people respond, including those who experienced Fukushima."

Takahashi says that Godzilla's longevity shows there is something far deeper at work than the usual monster movie. "Godzilla shows us that we must return to our dark past and then accept it," he said. "His purpose is to make us question ourselves. So I think we need to still walk with him a little more, especially after Fukushima." – Reuters

Cannes opens with bad reviews of Nicole Kidman&#39;s &#39;Grace Of Monaco&#39;

Posted: 15 May 2014 02:20 AM PDT

Monaco's royal family says film bears no resemblance to reality.

The world's biggest film festival opened in Cannes on Wednesday with a blast of controversy as critics mercilessly savaged the opening movie about Hollywood-darling-turned-princess Grace of Monaco.

Nicole Kidman (who stars in the movie Grace Of Monaco), Sofia Coppola, Willem Dafoe, Audrey Tautou and jury head Jane Campion were among the film world luminaries who walked up the 24 steps of the festival hall in the French Riviera resort, under the cool gaze of the late Italian heartthrob Marcello Mastroianni whose giant portrait adorned the facade.

Ryan Gosling, David Cronenberg and Sophia Loren are also set to make an appearance later in the 67th Cannes Film Festival, where directorial big guns will go head-to-head in a year of comebacks, swansongs and star debuts.

But for filmmakers behind the opening movie, the festivities were bittersweet as the Monaco princely family furiously disavowed a film they say bears no resemblance to reality and critics who got a sneak preview made no secret of their contempt.

"The cringe-factor is ionospherically high," The Guardian film maestro Peter Bradshaw wrote. "A fleet of ambulances may have to be stationed outside the Palais to take tuxed audiences to hospital afterwards to have their toes uncurled under general anaesthetic."

'Just smile for everyone, dear.' Nicole Kidman (right) and Spanish actress Paz Vega, who plays Maria Callas in Grace Of Monaco, at Cannes. — EPA/Guillaume Horcajuelo 

On the red carpet, Kidman sparkled in a blue, jewelled strapless dress, smiling for the cameras next to downcast-looking French director Olivier Dahan.

In the film, the Australian-born actress portrays an unhappy Grace who sleeps in a separate bedroom to Prince Rainier, even contemplating divorce before rising to the challenge of being a princess and helping her lost husband solve a 1962 political crisis with France.

Grace's children Prince Albert II and his sisters Caroline and Stephanie have publicly rejected a film they say "has been misappropriated for purely commercial purposes".

"This film should never have existed," Stephanie of Monaco told local daily Nice Matin.

Describing the controversy as "awkward" in a press conference earlier on Wednesday, Kidman sought to reassure the family that the film bore no "malice" towards them or towards Grace and Prince Rainier, played by a chain-smoking Tim Roth.

"It's fictionalised, it's not a biopic," she said, echoing what Dahan has previously said.

Kidman and Tim Roth in 'Grace Of Monaco'.

The French director had been locked in a long-standing tussle with US distributor Harvey Weinstein over the final version of the film.

Weinstein had reportedly considered dropping the rights to the film altogether, but Dahan said Wednesday an agreement had been reached under which the movie mogul will distribute the French director's version in the United States.

"There is no dispute anymore, everything has been resolved. We're working together, and I'm happy about it," Dahan told reporters.

According to entertainment industry magazine Variety, Weinstein will acquire the rights for considerably less money than he had originally planned to pay.

The opening ceremony in the festival hall's biggest movie theatre saw the man behind the spellbinding soundtrack to Campion's 1993 Palme d'Or winner The Piano – Michael Nyman – take to the piano to welcome the jury president on stage.

Master of ceremonies Lambert Wilson, a prolific French actor, also had a cheeky dance with Kidman to much applause.

Chiara Mastroianni and Gravity director Alfonso Cuaron then formally opened the May 14-25 extravaganza, during which 18 films will compete for the top Palme d'Or prize.

Jane Fonda looking gorgeous on the red carpet.

The festival will see Canadian heartthrob Gosling present his directorial debut Lost River, and films by 25-year-old whizz kid Xavier Dolan, veteran director Jean-Luc Godard and Men In Black actor Tommy Lee Jones will also compete.

And while two of the films running for the Palme d'Or are by women – Japan's Naomi Kawase (Still The Water) and Italy's Alice Rohrwacher (The Wonders) – Campion bemoaned the industry's "inherent sexism".

"It does feel very undemocratic and women do notice. Time and time again we don't get our share of representation," she said, adding that men seemed to "eat all the cake".

On the sidelines of the competitions, muscle men Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford and Arnold Schwarzenegger will take a trip to the resort on board a tank to promote their film The Expendables 3.

Abel Ferrara's racy Welcome To New York in which Gerard Depardieu plays a character much like the disgraced former head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Kahn will also get a private industry preview during the festival.

And to round off this year's festivities, US Cannes-lover Quentin Tarantino will showcase A Fistful Of Dollars at the closing ceremony, in a glitzy celebration of the 50th anniversary of spaghetti westerns. — AFP Relaxnews

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my

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Proham acknowledges Najib&#39;s commitment on human rights issues

Posted: 16 May 2014 08:42 AM PDT


PETALING JAYA: Proham on Friday acknowledged Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak's statement on his commitment to human rights issues but asked for clarification of his usage of certain terms.

Proham (the association for the promotion of human rights in Malaysia) said in a statement that it acknowledged "this clear commitment by the Prime Minister and Government of Malaysia to human rights, respect for others faiths and adherence to the UDHR."

However, it said the confusing terms such as "extreme human rights" and "human rights-ism" (which the prime minister reportedly used in a speech in Kuantan) were still not clarified.

Proham issued the statement in response to Najib's earlier comments where he said:

"The Malaysian government is committed to the principles and values of human rights.

"Ours is a majority-Muslim nation. But our faith respects other faiths, and our commitment can be consistent with our constitution and our values.

"As Malaysians, we believe in human rights, and subscribe to the philosophy, concepts and norms of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights."

Proham called on the PM's office to issue Najib's statement through Bernama and be made available through the PM's website.

"One way forward is for the Prime Minister to host a gathering of human rights organisations who have played and is playing a major role in the promotion and protection of human rights for a dialogue on how to foster a culture of human rights consistent with UDHR as well as understanding the local history and context of Malaysia.

"In addition Proham calls on the Federal Government to chart out a National Human Rights Action Plan which is long overdue, as well as ratify the core human rights conventions such as ICERD as discussed in the UPR process," the statement said.

Angry residents force Kidex public briefing to be called off

Posted: 16 May 2014 08:23 AM PDT

PETALING JAYA: A public briefing on the controversial Kinrara-Damansara Expressway (Kidex) quickly turned sour minutes after it got started at the Petaling Jaya City Council's (MBPJ) Civic Hall Friday night.

Besides chanting "Down with Kidex", the residents who would be affected by the highway unfurled and pinned banners to the wall, protesting against the proposed highway.

At one point, Section 14/1-15 Residents Association chairman Selva Sugumaran confronted MBPJ Engineering director Ismail Shafie, who was seated with Kidex Sdn Bhd CEO Datuk Mohd Nor Idrus and Kidex consultants.

MBPJ enforcement officers and plainclothes policemen moved in to separate and eventually escort both men out of the hall.

The uproar began when Say No To Kidex (SNTK) pro tem committee member K.W. Mak stood up to point out that the briefing could not be considered a proper "townhall meeting".

Despite attempts to mediate the situation by SNTK pro tem chairman Dr Mohan Mahadevan and Kidex engineering consultant Datuk Kuna Sittampalam, the meeting had to be aborted by 9.20pm, barely an hour after it started.

Kidex Sdn Bhd's chief executive officer Datuk Mohd Nor Idrus said the company would work again with MBPJ to ensure a proper briefing session with residents.

"I am just trying to comply with directives from the state government to conduct a townhall meeting, as well as public display of information," said Mohd Nor.

The proposed Kidex expressway is a 14.9km route starting from the New Klang Valley Expressway Damansara Toll, ending at Kinrara in Puchong and traverses through various parts of Petaling Jaya.

Najib pays tribute to his alma mater on SJI&#39;s 110th anniversary

Posted: 16 May 2014 08:00 AM PDT

PETALING JAYA: Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak paid tribute to St John's Institution on its 110th anniversary Friday, saying he still cherished the values and principles imparted to him while he was a student at the school.

In a special message recorded at his office, the prime minister expressed

his thoughts on the special camaraderie outside classroom amongst friends which he felt was the best memories of his days at St John's.

"That sense of being together and plus a strong ethos and spirit of St John's I still remember till today," he said.

"St John's as a school and as an institution in fact has contributed substantially in producing quality people with leadership skills and right values to take this country forward," he said.

Najib also wished that St John's Institution would continue to play a prominent role in the area of education landscape in Malaysia.

The Prime Minister also received a courtesy visit from the St John's Alumni Association (SJAA) led by its president Datuk Zulkifli Ishak.

The SJAA presented Najib with the Eagle One Award in honour and recognition of the Prime Minister's contributions and achievements through the years in conjunction with the school's anniversary celebrations.

St John's Institution through its Johannians Leadership Foundation received a sponsorship of RM200,000 from Proton Holdings Bhd for the upkeep and maintenance of its school field for the next four years.

In conjunction with Teachers Day, the SJAA through Najib took the opportunity to recognise the contributions and legacy of two of St John's teachers, Master Vincent and Master David Fernandez.

Both the teachers have played significant roles in sports education for St John's and have since produce national sportsmen representing Malaysia.

For their dedication and undying passion, Najib signed a declaration to name the St John's school field as The Fernandez Field in honor of both the teachers.

St John's Institution Kuala Lumpur will be hosting a Gala Dinner on Saturday at The Royale Chulan Hotel to mark anniversary.

Kredit: www.thestar.com.my
 

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