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Nailbiter set in space, with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney Posted: 20 Jul 2013 07:39 PM PDT July 21, 2013 Among the monster movies and fantasy films showcased at pop culture convention Comic-Con, the space thriller "Gravity" stood out from the field yesterday with its different setting and two-person cast, as Mexican director Alfonso Cuaron took a leap into space with Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Cuaron, 51, teamed up with son Jonas Cuaron, 30, for this movie about two astronauts played by Bullock and Clooney who become trapped in a space station after debris rips through their vessel. "The whole film becomes a metaphor for something very grounded on earth, so you don't need to be an astronaut to identify with that. The big villain in the film is space debris, and that space debris becomes a metaphor for adversities," Cuaron told Reuters. In a "Gravity" clip shown exclusively to the Comic-Con audience in San Diego, Clooney and Bullock are seen on a space walk with Earth in the background. Suddenly, they lose contact with ground control and are forced to try to take cover from high-velocity space debris. The Warner Bros. film opens in U.S. theatres on Oct. 4. Movie studios use Comic-Con, an annual comics convention, to tease tidbits of upcoming fantasy, monster and science-fiction films and create buzz among a base of hard-core fans. More than 125,000 visitors are expected this year. Cuaron said he and his son were inspired by the Kessler syndrome, which predicts that a chain reaction of space junk hitting each other would produce so much orbiting debris that space flight would become too risky. Jonas co-wrote the script with his father, who built a career outside Mexico with films like "Children of Men" and "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban." "I think if anybody sees my other films and then sees 'Gravity,' it's a big leap," said Alfonso Cuaron, who said Jonas convinced him to rely less on dialogue and more on emotion and action. – Reuters, July 21, 2013.

Simpsons to meet Family Guy Posted: 20 Jul 2013 07:29 PM PDT July 21, 2013 For the Fall 2014 season, Fox is planning a crossover episode between its two hit animated series, reports Tvline.com. The two American families will meet one another in the Simpsons' hometown of Springfield, although the episode will air on "Family Guy." Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie will get to know Peter, Lois, Megan, Chris and Stewie, and while the two ladies will strike up a friendship, their husbands will launch into a heated argument over which is the superior beer: Duff or Pawtucket. The Griffins came to Fox in 1999, a decade after the Simpsons. There are a lot of similarities between Seth MacFarlane's show and that of Matt Groening. Caricatures of the average American family, both shows portray quirky and simple-minded dads, with reasonable housewives providing the "straight man" element. Both families also have three kids and a pet. On Sept 29, "The Simpsons" will enter its 25th season, setting a new US record for a prime-time series. The same date will mark the premiere of the 12th season of "Family Guy." – AFP/Relaxnews, July 21, 2013.

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Getting strident over Nazi-themed cafe in Bandung Posted: 20 Jul 2013 06:03 PM PDT July 21, 2013 From a painting hung high on a blood-red wall, Adolf Hitler peers down on young students eating schnitzel and slurping German beer in Indonesia's Nazi-themed cafe. The SoldatenKaffee ("The Soldiers' Cafe") opened its doors in the western Javanese city of Bandung in 2011, named after the popular hangout for soldiers in Germany and occupied Paris during World War II. Eerier than the gas mask canisters and battle flags bearing swastikas is the more than two years' silence that has followed the cafe's grand launch. When the cafe opened no one voiced offence at the waiters and guests dressed as Nazi soldiers -- the Holocaust is weak on the radar in Indonesia, home to the world's biggest Muslim population, where the Jewish community numbers a mere 20 people. But a recent report about SoldatenKaffee in the English-language Jakarta Globe newspaper triggered angry responses online and prompted Bandung deputy mayor Ayi Vivananda to summon the owner for a meeting. "We need to ask him first in detail what his real intentions are. But what is clear is that Bandung city will not allow anyone here inciting racial hatred," he said on Thursday. The cafe's creator and owner, Henry Mulyana, said he did not intend to bring back memories of the Holocaust but was not surprised to be branded a "bad guy". "I don't idolise Hitler, I simply adore the soldiers' paraphernalia," Mulyana, a Christian who likes playing with air rifles, told AFP at the cafe. His collection is on display for diners and includes a water canteen, bayonet, goggles and a lantern, most of them bought online. "The ones with swastikas on them are worth more," he said. The restaurant had only ever received positive press before the recent exposure in English-language media and receives a regular stream of customers. "We're living in Indonesia and Indonesians weren't tortured in the Holocaust, so we don't really care," said mining company employee Arya Setya, eating a plate of spaghetti at the cafe with his girlfriend. But now that news of the cafe's existence has reached a wider audience, it has sparked outrage among Jewish communities in other parts of the world. "The Simon Wiesenthal Center is reaching out to senior Indonesian diplomats to express on behalf of our 400,000 members and victims of the Nazi Holocaust our outrage and disgust," Rabbi Abraham Cooper, from the Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights group, told AFP by email. "We expect that all appropriate measures will be taken to close down this business celebrating a genocidal ideology that at its core denigrates people of colour and all non-Aryans," he wrote. Under Indonesian law, anyone who deliberately shows hatred towards others based on race or ethnicity can be jailed for up to five years. But such vilification usually goes unchecked, with hardline Muslim groups carrying out violent attacks on religious minorities with near impunity in recent years. Mulyana said that his cafe has also attracted Western guests, including Germans, with one photographed on its Facebook page wearing a red swastika T-shirt along with several Indonesians in the same clothes. He revealed he plans to set up an even bigger cafe on the resort island of Bali, which attracts throngs of foreign tourists each year. "I'll certainly display Hitler's image, as well as Winston Churchill's, and paraphernalia from American and Japanese soldiers from World War II," he said. His cafe could not contrast more deeply with attitudes in Europe, where several countries have criminalised the promotion of Nazi ideology and the denial of the Holocaust. While Mulyana does not deny the Holocaust happened, he said making the tragedy taboo was hypocritical. "If we want to speak up about humanity, why don't they stop wars in this world now, like in Afghanistan? War always claims so many lives," he said. However, when contacted by AFP on Saturday Mulyana said he had decided to close down the cafe temporarily, refusing to give further details. Indonesia, where 90 percent of the population of 240 million identify themselves as Muslim, does not recognise Judaism among its six official religions. The country has no diplomatic relations with Israel and vocally advocates for the state of Palestine, although it has quietly engaged in economic and military ties. Today just one synagogue exists in the country, in the city of Manado. A century-old synagogue in the city of Surabaya was shut down by extremists protesting against the 2008-9 war in Gaza. Other Indonesians in Manado are believed to have Jewish roots, some hiding their heritage for safety fears. A lack of sensitivity towards the Holocaust has also been shown in other parts of Asia. Thailand's prestigious Chulalongkorn University was forced to apologise on Monday after its students created a mural depicting Hitler among comic book superheroes during graduation celebrations. And in 2006, an Indian restaurateur outraged the country's small Jewish community by opening "Hitler's Cross". He was forced to change the name days later. Historian Asvi Warman Adam from the Indonesian Institute of Sciences blames Indonesia's education system and schools for a lack of awareness about the Holocaust and world wars. "We don't hear a lot of criticism against the Nazis and fascism in Indonesia," Adam said. "Hitler's book 'Mein Kampf' is banned in many countries, but it's freely distributed here. It's translated into Indonesian and is quite often sold out," he said. He said the school curriculum was focused on national history and trying to legitimise Indonesia's 32-year Suharto dictatorship, which saw the slaughter of at least 500,000 communists, Chinese and alleged sympathisers. Islamic hardliners, who are the most vocal when it comes to blasphemy against Islam, are unlikely to make any noise about the cafe, Adam said. "But if a Jewish-themed cafe opened, they would most likely stage a protest," he said. – AFP, July 21, 2013. - AFP

Persian polo thrives in Iran Posted: 19 Jul 2013 08:41 PM PDT July 20, 2013 It is probably the last thing you would expect to come across in the capital of the Islamic republic of Iran: a polo club, more commonly associated with the aristocracy. Nestling in the foothills of the Alborz mountains on the southeastern edge of heavily polluted Tehran, the Qasr-e Firouze Chowgan Club is surrounded by greenery and shielded from view by a military camp. Qasr-e Firouze is Farsi for the Turquoise Palace and chowgan means polo - a game the Iranians say originated in Persia more than two millennia ago. To back the claim, they point to drawings dating from the time of Darius I (522-486 BC) in which a horseman is depicted holding a long mallet in one hand. Today, more than three decades after the Islamic revolution toppled the shah, polo is still played in Iran. On one sunny and clear day, ambassadors, wealthy amateurs and officials rubbed shoulders in a crowd of around 500 people who watched four teams play in a charity tournament to raise funds for a diabetes association. "We organise matches and tournaments almost every week," the deputy head of the national Iranian Polo Federation, Mohammad Ali Bigham, told AFP. The polo enthusiast and player boasted that his federation has 150 accredited members, both men and women -- despite the strict Islamic dress code imposed on the women. Tradition says that the game was exported from ancient Persia first to Constantinople or modern-day Istanbul, before later drifting east to the plains of Afghanistan and then to Tibet where chowgan became known as "pulu". And the rest is history. Chowgan-pulu spread to India where it was adopted by the Raj and the British drew up a new set of rules for the game they simply called polo. Abbas the Great For Iranians, the historic central city of Isfahan is the cradle of modern-day polo. During the 16th century, the Safavid shah Abbas the Great, famed for the architectural marvels built in Isfahan, ordered the construction of a huge polo field in Naqsh-e Jahan Square in the city centre so he could watch players from a terrace in his palace. Over the centuries polo in Iran was a game reserved for the military elite, royal court officials and the aristocracy. After the 1979 Islamic revolution that toppled the shah, the game was banned. But it was rehabilitated in the 1990s, and a national polo federation soon saw the light of day. The rebirth of polo in Iran was largely due to a countrywide growth in a sense of "Iranian identity" along with the support it received from supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who encourages all sports deemed to have Iranian roots. "In the Islamic republic, it is better not to say that polo is the sport of the nobility. The authorities encourage the game because it was born in Iran," said one polo enthusiast, who asked not to be identified. A large poster of Khamenei towers over the field at the polo club, bearing a clear message that urges Iranians to engage in "sports that are homegrown such as polo which is Iranian". But third-generation polo player Amir Ali Zolfaghari, 39, says "the game is not yet accessible to everyone". "Like for horseback riding, you need money to buy and maintain a horse, and to purchase the equipment," said Zolfaghari, whose father and grandfather also played polo. But he notes that the federation has been very active. "The federation is doing everything it can to attract young people. It provides horses and equipment for beginners," Zolfaghari said. "We have managed to set up four or five clubs in order to improve the standing of the national team, and I hope that in four or five years we will reach a good level," and attract more players, he said. – AFP, July 20, 2013.

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Karpal masuk hospital, rayuan kes liwat Anwar dijangka ditangguh Posted: 21 Jul 2013 02:17 AM PDT OLEH RITA JONG July 21, 2013 Latest Update: July 21, 2013 05:31 pm Rayuan kerajaan terhadap keputusan kes pertuduhan liwat membabitkan Ketua Pembangkang, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim yang dijadual berlangsung esok, mungkin ditangguh berikutan ketua peguam bela, Karpal Singh (gambar) dimasukkan ke hospital. "Kita akan buat permohonan penangguhan kerana Karpal tidak sihat. Beliau kini ada di hospital dan dijangka berada di mahkamah, dua tiga hari lagi. "Bagaimanapun, kita belum tahu bila tarikhnya," kata Ramkarpal kepada The Malaysian Insider, hari ini. Kerajaan membuat rayuan terhadap keputusan mahkamah yang membebaslkan Anwar dari pertuduhan liwat dan dijadual didengar di Mahkamah Rayuan Putrajaya esok. Pada 9 Januari lalu, Mahkamah Tinggi Kuala Lumpur membebaskan Anwar dari pertuduhan liwat terhadap Mohd Saiful Bukhari Azlan di Kodomunium Desa Damansara antara jam 3.10 dan 4.30 petang pada 26 Jun 2008. - 21 Julai, 2013.

Razali belum putuskan untuk bertanding Posted: 21 Jul 2013 02:09 AM PDT July 21, 2013 Naib Ketua Pergerakan Pemuda Umno, Datuk Razali Ibrahim belum membuat keputusan sama ada bertanding mana-mana jawatan pada pemilihan Umno pada perhimpunan agung parti itu, Oktober ini. Walaupun pindaan perlembagaan Umno membenarkan semua ahli bertanding secara demokrasi dalam parti, beliau berkata, mereka yang bertanding harus memiliki kemampuan dan idea kepada pengukuhan parti. Katanya, atas faktor umur beliau tidak boleh bertanding jawatan dalam pergerakan Pemuda Umno tetapi menyatakan sokongan kepada Khairy Jamaluddin untuk bertanding mengekalkan jawatan itu. Ahli Parlimen Muar berkata demikian kepada pemberita selepas melancarkan program Rakan Muda Bubur Lambuk anjuran Jabatan Belia dan Sukan Daerah Muar di Masjid Jamek Sultan Ibrahim di Muar, hari ini. Mengenai keputusan Pergerakan Pemuda Umno Johor dalam mesyuarat khasnya Jumaat lalalu supaya semua jawatan dalam pergerakan itu dipertanding pada pemilihan Umno, Razali menyokong pendirian itu. "Yang penting, pemilihan kali ini bukan sahaja dapat mengukuhkan parti malah mampu mengembalikan keyakinan orang Melayu khasnya dan rakyat amnya terhadap Umno," katanya. - Bernama, 21 Julai, 2013.

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