Hermann Baumann
Hermann Baumann (musician) FAQs: Facts, Rumors, Birthdate, Net Worth, Sexual Orientation and much more!
Who is Hermann Baumann? Biography, gossip, facts?
Hermann Baumann is a virtuoso horn player teacher and composer. After starting his musical career as a singer and jazz drummer he switched to horn at the age of 17. He studied with Fritz Huth and then played principal horn in various orchestras for 12 years including the Dortmunder Philharmoniker and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra. His career as a soloist started in 1964 when he won first prize in the prestigious ARD International Music Competition in Munich.
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Yes, as far as we know, Hermann Baumann is still alive. We don't have any current information about Hermann Baumann's health. However, being younger than 50, we hope that everything is ok.
Where was Hermann Baumann born?
Hermann Baumann was born in Germany, Hamburg.
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Hermann Baumann does know how to play Horn (instrument).
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Home Letters 'Forced vote'
'Forced vote'
The Monday, Jan. 24 City Council meeting marked the offi cial day that the city council majority proved that they hold contempt for the public and the democratic process. Under the helm of the new mayor Dr. Daniel Lee and instigated by Councilmember Alex Fisch, the council majority forced a yes vote on the Housing Element (upzoning all of R1 neighborhoods) — without deliberation or allowing Councilmember Göran Eriksson or Vice Mayor Albert Vera to speak. This was because Mayor Lee had to catch a late fl ight for a justifi able personal matter. Instead of postponing the meeting (as Lee offered and Vera agreed to), Fisch used a legal maneuver to force the vote. While the maneuver may be deemed legal, it went against the public's right to hear what all the council members had to say. Moreover, it was a breach of community trust, and a metaphorical middle fi nger to the process and the people the council is supposed to represent. All of this during a meeting with uneven audio, virtual speakers unable to access the microphone, a Webex system failure/crash/reboot, and a self-imposed time crunch. It is worth noting that there were over 200 written public comments and 60 registered speakers and that this topic was deemed so important that the city sent out an email at 4:15 Monday (less than three hours before the 7 pm meeting) to inform and remind people to show up and tell their friends. In the fi nal moments before Lee's departure, Eriksson made a motion to remove the controversial residential upzoning from the Housing Element and stated that he would adopt the rest. Vera seconded him, asking to drop the negative environmental impact fi nding also. That's when the Council majority, using Fisch's maneuver, decided that public comment and public debate were inconvenient and voted to approve a legally fl awed Housing Element. All of this political drama will prove useless. The Febr.11, 2022 deadline to approve and submit housing elements only applies to those found to be in legal compliance with state law. Mr. Fisch openly questioned the suitability of the Housing Element and said he doubted the state would accept it, even as he pushed to impose the vote. He must have known that Lee and McMorrin would adopt the fl awed document without hearing what Eriksson and Vera had to say about viable alternatives. Moreover, the state has 60 days to review and decide if the Housing Element follows the law. The city will not meet the February 11, 2022 deadline no matter how many theatrics are used. Mr. Fisch on Twitter claimed to be "saving the city" but he is merely disenfranchising the public. Perhaps this does not matter to him. Only he knows. After all, Mr. Fisch did declare himself and elected leaders "rulers" and "supreme authorities over land use" (Los Angeles Times, 01/18/22). The Housing Element has been a community hot-button issue since it was revealed to the public's view in Spring, 2021. Mr. Fisch along with organized activists (within and outside Culver City) have been pushing to blanket upzone (called incremental infill) all of Culver City's R1 neighborhoods beyond the state requirements. In contrast, a large contingent of residents, including over 1750 who signed a petition, do not want this change. The city's own staff and hired consultants have repeatedly admitted that incremental infill will not produce the affordable housing that nearly everyone seems to agree is needed. It will just create more market-rate housing. And based on land values, costs of financing, construction, demolition, and other factors, this new housing is very likely to be rentals – owned and rented out not by people, but by investors. Instead of giving more people an opportunity to own homes, it will pull up the ladder and create a permanent renter class. If the City were to remove the residential upzoning and tweak the commercial and multi-use zoning, Culver City would have a clean housing element with zoning that can be accomplished without changing the land use rights of over 5,600 households. Upzoning residential lots will not lead to affordable units, growth of generational wealth, or encourage equity. Upzoning will result in market-rate luxury housing. We call on our City Council to realize that the workable path forward lies in largerscale projects where affordability would actually be realistic. Equity, affordability, and economic gaps should be met, but the Housing Element as written will not take us anywhere near that goal.
—Culver City Neighbors United CulverCityNeighborsUnited.org
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Need a Zoning Map
'Atrocious mess'


Significant IRA statement still leaves questions: Alliance
Alliance Party Leader, David Ford, has given a cautious welcome to the latest IRA statement, and urged that the Governments reflect on the true implications of the new commitments rather than rushing to embrace them. The Alliance Party Executive will be meeting this evening to the review the contents of the statement.
David Ford said:
"While this statement is clearly a significant move in the right direction, it is important to look behind the hype, and analyse its true meaning.
"The IRA has now clearly renounced its illegal and illegitimate armed struggle against the British state. This is obviously to be welcomed.
"For some time, it has been understood that the IRA's terrorist campaign against the state has in practice been over. However, this has not applied to continued involvement in a wide range of paramilitary and criminal activities.
"A statement in which the IRA declares an end to its 'armed campaign' does not address a number of issues.
"There is still no clear acceptance of the legitimacy of both the northern and southern states with respect to policing and criminal justice matters. There is no renunciation of their self-proclaimed right to indulge in 'community policing' and dispensing paramilitary beatings.
"It is not for the IRA to retain the right to define which activities do or do not threaten the peace process. Any illegal activity, especially where linked to a potential partner in government, will undermine democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
"Alliance recently published ten benchmarks for assessing the quality of any new commitments from the IRA. None of these are unreasonable expectations, but are rather the hallmarks of a normal society. It is far from clear that all these concerns have been addressed in today's statement.
"It is important that the Governments and parties now test the new commitments against a series of agreed standards. In this respect, the IMC will have a key role to play in verifying that there is in fact an end to the full range of paramilitary and criminal activities.
"It is now important that there is a period of reflection. If any meaningful progress is to take place within the political process, it must be on a firm foundation of integrity and honesty."
Alliance Party benchmark for assessing paramilitary statement (published 31/5/2005):
1. The IRA must declare an end to all involvement in any paramilitary and criminal activity, and through exclusively lawful means ensure that their
activists desist immediately.
2. Where individual Republicans are involved in paramilitary or criminal activity, others must pass on any information to the lawful authorities and urge others to do likewise. The IRA must accept that obstruction of justice is a crime.
3. The Republican movement must accept the full legitimacy of both the northern and southern states with respect to policing and criminal justice, including definitions of what constitutes a crime.
4. All IRA 'front' organisations and organised crime networks must be dismantled.
5. The IRA 'Army Council' must end all recruitment, training and intelligence gathering, and stand down all its rank and file members. Once
this is carried out and weapons are decommissioned, the organisation, including all command structures, must disband.
6. The Republican movement must renounce the right to engage in 'community policing' or to engage in what is termed 'internal housekeeping'. There must be an end to all paramilitary beating and shootings.
7. The practice of 'exiling', both inside and outside Northern Ireland, must come to an end. Crucially, assurances must be given to those 'exiled' that they can return to Northern Ireland in safety and these assurances must be carried through.
8. All illegally held weapons and explosives must be decommissioned under the aegis of the Decommissioning Commission.
9. Republicans must co-operate fully with the Commission for the Disappeared, and both police services in recovering the remains of 'the
Disappeared'.
10. Republicans must give a commitment not to export their terrorist techniques and expertise to other organisations internationally, either through direct training or other consultancy services, in line with the Terrorism Act (2000).


Resources for the world
> At present almost all the metals and industrial minerals utilized to manufacture consumer goods and machinery are extracted from onshore resources. In an effort to become independent of imports and safeguard themselves from future supply shortages, some countries are contemplating mining such resources from the ocean. But underwater mining is still too expensive and there is uncertainty about its environmental impact.
Extra Info Rare earth metals
Ore, mica, sand and gravel
The manufacture of many high-tech applications and modern mass-produced electronic products such as photovoltaic installations, hybrid cars and smartphones requires abundant mineral resources. These resources include mineral ores from which metals such as copper, nickel, indium and gold are extracted, as well as nonmetallic industrial minerals such as fluorite, graphite and mica. Mica is utilized among other things as an insulator in tiny components for the microelectronics industry, and graphite is required for electrodes. Fluorite is used in the production of hydrofluoric acid to cauterize steel and photovoltaic components. Sand, gravel and stone for the building industry are also considered to be mineral resources.
Nearly all the mineral resources used today are derived from onshore deposits. Depending on the deposit concerned, these are extracted from underground mines or open-cast mines using enormous excavators and wheel loaders. Sand and gravel are the exception, as these have for some time now been exploited not only onshore but also from shallow marine areas.
For several decades we have also been aware of the presence of major occurrences on the sea floor which consist of many millions of tonnes of valuable metals. These have so far remained unutilized because onshore production has been capable of satisfying demand. In addition, deep ocean mining is still uneconomic because of the expense involved in harvesting the ores using ships and underwater robots. Unlike traditional onshore mining, the extraction technology has not yet been developed.
Fear of supply shortages
Experts assume that, despite steadily increasing demand, the onshore deposits will in most cases continue to satisfy our growing appetite for metals and minerals. They do predict future shortages of some resources, however. For instance, those resources which are available or mined in only small amounts – such as antimony, germanium and rhenium – could become scarce, partially as a result of the growing needs of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China). To compare, about 20 million tonnes of refined copper were produced worldwide in 2012, but only 128 tonnes of germanium.
2.1 > Mineral ores for metal production are extracted from huge open-cast mines such as the Dexing copper mine near the eastern Chinese city of Shangrao. The excavators are working their way deep into the earth.
Germanium is used for the radio technology in smartphones, in semi-conductor technology and in thin-film solar cells. There are concerns, particularly among the leading industrialized nations, that the supply of such significant industrial resources could become more precarious in coming decades. The following are some of the factors on which supply depends:
Rising demand due to new developments: Some innovation researchers predict that the need for certain metals will increase significantly in the years to come as a result of new technological developments. Rare earth metals, for example, are elements which could be required in rapidly increasing quantities in future for the construction of engines for electric cars and generators in wind turbines.
Rising demand and competition as a result of economic growth in the BRIC countries and emerging markets, as well as strong growth in the global population.
Limited availability: Many resources are by-products of the extraction of other metals. For instance, both germanium and indium – which is vital for the manufacture of LCD displays – are by-products of lead and zinc mining. They occur in only small quantities in the lead and zinc deposits. In order to extract more germanium and indium, lead and zinc production would have to increase substantially. This would be uneconomic, however, because the demand for lead and zinc is not high.
State monopolies: Many important industrial resources are found in only a few countries or are currently produced by only a few. These nations have an effective monopoly. For instance, China accounts for 97 per cent of the worldwide production of rare earth metals. Currently it is also the most important producer of other resources. Importing nations are concerned that China, or other nations, could restrict the availability of these resources by imposing high tariffs or other economic measures. The situation is aggravated by the fact that modern high-tech industries require resources of extra high quality or high purity. In many cases these, too, occur in only a few regions of the world.
Oligopolies as a result of industry concentration: In some cases resources are mined by only a handful of companies. Competition for some resources has intensified even more in recent years due to major resource companies having bought out smaller ones.
Political situation: Supplies from politically fragile states are also fraught with problems. One example is the Democratic Republic of the Congo which generates 40 per cent of worldwide cobalt production, but which has been destabilized by many years of civil war.
The availability of a resource to a country or company does not depend alone on the size of worldwide deposits, therefore, but on a combination of factors which determines the price. Of course, the price is also affected by the situation on the resource markets. For instance as demand for a resource grows, so does its price. In other cases resources may increase in price as a result of speculation alone, because markets overreact. One example here was the huge price hike of copper and other resources after 2006 when China snapped up major quantities of resources. At that time there could be no question of scarcity, however.
2.2 > Many metals today are mined in only a few countries, with China leading. The data originate from a comprehensive analysis of resources carried out in 2010, since when the situation has not changed significantly. No reliable figures are available for gallium or tellurium.
Extra Info How much metal does the ore contain?
Measuring uncertainty
Experts are trying to assess the certainty of future resource supplies. They take state and corporate monopolies into account on the one hand, and the political situation in the prospective mining areas on the other, to produce a "weighted country risk". This weighted country risk is ascertained on the basis of 6 criteria (indicators) against which the governance and prevailing political situation of individual states are measured. These indicators have been defined by the World Bank as follows:
Voice and accountability: measures perceptions of the extent to which a country's citizens are able to participate in selecting their government, as well as freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and a free media;
Political stability and absence of violence: measures perceptions of the likelihood of a government being destabilized by violence, political violence or terrorism;
Government effectiveness: measures the quality of public services, the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures;
Regulatory quality: measures perceptions of the ability of the government to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations that permit and promote private sector development;
Rule of law: measures perceptions of confidence in and adherence to the rules of society, and in particular the quality of contract enforcement and property rights. It also measures the quality of the police and the courts, as well as the likelihood of crime and violence;
Control of corruption: measures perceptions of the extent to which public power is exercised for private gain, including both petty and grand forms of corruption, as well as the influence of elites and private interests.
Numeric values are assigned to the 6 indicators, and these are totalled to reveal country risk values between +1.5 and –1.5. Values above 0.5 indicate a low risk, between –0.5 and +0.5 a moderate risk, and those below –0.5 are considered critical.
Economists are using the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index (HHI), a measure of market concentration, as they attempt to assess the extent to which resource supply is influenced by state or corporate monopolies. This mathematically determined index considers the number of companies competing in the market and their market shares, from which they can calculate the degree of concentration of that market. In terms of figures, the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index ranges between the highest value 1 where there is only one market participant (indicating a monopoly), and the lowest value 0, which is achieved when (theoretically) an infinite number of participants have the same market share. For practical reasons the values are multiplied by 10,000 to effectively remove the decimal point.
Accordingly, a resource market with an HHI below 1500 is considered "unconcentrated". Above 2500 it is seen as "highly concentrated" or monopolized, and values in between indicate that a market is "moderately concentrated".
If the resources are assessed according to both the weighted country risk and the HHI at the same time, they can be classified into 3 different risk groups: low risk, moderate risk and high risk resources. Copper is considered a low risk resource. It has a low country risk value and at the same time low corporate and country concentration ratios. This is because copper is produced in politically stable countries, by a range of different companies.
2.3 > The security of individual resource supply is ascertained by looking at the reliability of exporting nations (weighted country risk) and the monopolization of individual resource markets. This diagram considers state monopolies in particular (country concentration). Resources which are considered safe (low risk) are highlighted in green, those at moderate risk in yellow, while those with an insecure supply situation (high risk) are highlighted in red.
Rare earth elements and the metalloid antimony are considered extremely high risk resources. Deposits with a high content of antimony are found mainly in China, which supplies about 84 per cent of global production. The Herfindahl-Hirschman Index value is correspondingly high. Antimony is used for touchscreens and micro-electronic components; it is also very much in demand as a flame retardant for fire-resistant clothing and plastics.
How long will resources last?
Calculating the supply risk can naturally provide only a snapshot of the current situation. It does not tell us just how long we can expect the resources to be available in future.
Geoscientists are trying to answer this question by gauging the reserves and resources of the various substances. Essentially we know where certain ores can be anticipated, because resources usually occur in characteristic geological formations, the worldwide distribution of which is relatively well known. Platinum for example occurs mainly in the Bushveld Complex of South Africa in a layered igneous intrusion. This is a layer of rock caused by magmatic activity which has penetrated the adjacent rock strata. Platinum in such intrusions is also found in some other regions of the world. However, the platinum content of the ores is in many cases so minimal that extraction is not profitable.
Ground surveys, geological and geophysical analyses and test drilling must be undertaken before it is possible to ascertain whether metals occurring in a geological formation are concentrated enough to be considered a deposit.
2.4 > Mineral resource deposits are classified in different categories, depending on how well-known or sampled they are. Whether the resources can be extracted is another factor considered.
No such testing has as yet been carried out in many regions of the world because the exploration of new deposits in unknown terrains is extremely expensive and complicated. For this reason interest has mainly been focused on areas in the vicinity of known occurrences. Major tracts of Australia, Canada, South America and West Africa remain largely unexplored. Assessing worldwide occurrences is therefore a very unreliable undertaking. Occurrences are classed into different categories, depending on the extent to which an area of land has been sampled or developed:
RESERVES: Reserves are occurrences of resources which have already been proven and their extraction is economically feasible using current technology.
RESOURCES: An occurrence is described as a resource when its metal content and volume have not yet been proven by sampling, or when its extraction and processing are economically unfeasible. One example is nickel laterite ore, a special type of nickel ore found in the residual soils of tropical and sub-tropical areas. Until the 1950s there was no economically-feasible industrial process to separate the nickel from the ore. The occurrences, although well-known, could not be utilized. The laterites were therefore ranked as resources. Once an appropriate metallurgical process was developed, they became an exploitable reserve. Today about 50 per cent of the nickel produced worldwide comes from such lateritic deposits.
2.5 > Bauxite is extracted mainly in open-cast mines. A specialized machine like this one removes 800 tonnes per hour. Bauxite is primarily used to manufacture aluminium.
Unlike natural gas and oil, metal reserves and resources are further sub-classified according to the extent to which they have been sampled. The economic feasibility of their extraction is also taken into account. In view of the major areas of land worldwide which have not yet been properly sampled, geoscientists assume that many as-yet-undiscovered deposits exist and that these will theoretically be capable of meeting the growing need for mineral resources in the future. But it is debatable whether major underground or open-cast mines will be developed onshore, because of their drastic intervention in landscapes.
Many stretches of land have been completely transformed over past decades as a result of mining. People have lost their homes and important ecosystems have been destroyed. Copper mining was responsible for the enormous craters in the ground in South America. In Brazil large tracts of rainforest were destroyed by the open-cast mining of bauxite, another residual soil from which aluminium is extracted. Any expansion of onshore mining is therefore viewed with a great deal of scepticism.
Recycling rather than discarding?
An alternative to intensified ore mining could in future be the recycling of valuable resources. Just as aluminium and steel are already being melted down and reprocessed on a grand scale, other resources too could be recovered from waste and electronic scrap.
However, electronic waste is processed by only a few companies worldwide, which mainly recover copper, silver, gold and platinum.
From a process engineering point of view it would also be feasible, for instance, to recycle indium tin oxide film from smartphone screens. As yet, however, no industrial facility has yet been designed for routine processing.
Not only are discarded smartphones and computers of interest for recycling: waste also accumulates during production. Yet because processes for treating the waste and extracting the substances are lacking, the electronics industry can return only a portion of its waste into the production process. A process for gallium from LEDs would be highly desirable, for example.
Collection systems for end-of-life products and production waste are also lacking. Recycling is further complicated by the fact that a product may contain only tiny amounts of certain metals, making it scarcely worthwhile to reprocess. Experts are trying to create new methods to improve the identification and separation of the various processed substances.
Microchips and other microelectronic components in which a range of different substances are effectively fused together present a particular challenge. Because most electronic scrap cannot be recycled, many industrialized nations export it into developing and newly industrializing countries as waste. In some cases it is still being transported illegally overseas. Companies involved in such activity claim to recycle the scrap and are paid accordingly. But instead of recycling it in a technically complex manner, they save money by exporting it. For this reason specialists are discussing the following measures and suggestions for the future recycling of metals:
The development of new systems to recover industrial production waste;
The introduction of recycling bins for private households;
The priority development of recycling processes for metals at a high risk of shortages (country risk, country concentration);
The creation of economic incentives to spur a functioning recycling market which specializes in resources from consumer goods, end-of-life vehicles and electronic scrap.
Could sea-floor mining be the answer?
To make future resource supplies more secure, sea-floor mining could offer many states and companies a potential alternative, for both economic and geopolitical reasons. It would avoid the land-use conflicts which underground and surface mining bring in their wake, and could also help many nations without resource reserves to become a little less dependent on the exporting nations.
In principle there are two scenarios where sea-floor mining is concerned: mining within the territorial waters of a nation, and mining in the deep sea which is considered a common heritage of mankind and a resource to be shared among all nations.
Nation states are responsible for regulating the mining activity in their own sovereign territory. In the case of the deep sea, however, the central authority is the International Seabed Authority (ISA), which grants licences for specific areas. The ISA is based in Kingston, Jamaica. In particular the ISA ensures that the future profits gained from deep-sea mining activities are shared equitably. The objective is to prevent a situation occurring whereby only rich nations have access to promising resources.
The International Seabed Authority has already assigned numerous licensed areas to several states for exploration purposes; as yet they may only explore – not exploit. To date no actual mining has been carried out anywhere because the final set of rules governing the activity is still being debated. The ISA plans to establish the legal conditions for such seabed mining by 2016.
2.6 > A worker in a recycling factory in San José, Costa Rica, sorts tin cans from which aluminium is recovered.
2.7 > Electronic components such as chips with electronic circuits contain very small amounts of various metals. Recycling is extremely difficult as the metals are virtually fused together.
As far as sea-floor mining is concerned, interest is focused on 3 main types of resource deposit which contain different valuable metals:
MANGANESE NODULES: Manganese nodules
Further information on this topic is available here:
WOR 3 - Metal-rich clumps
are lumps of minerals ranging in size between that of a potato and a head of lettuce. They cover enormous areas of the seabed of the Pacific and Indian Oceans. They are composed mainly of the chemical elements manganese, iron, copper, nickel and cobalt along with other substances such as molybdenum, zinc and lithium. Manganese nodules are mostly found at depths below 3500 metres.
COBALT CRUSTS: Cobalt crusts
WOR 3 - Metal-rich crusts
are incrustations of minerals which form on the sides of submarine mountain ranges and seamounts. They develop as a result of the accumulation of minerals dissolved in the water and contain mainly manganese, iron, cobalt, nickel, platinum and rare earth elements. Cobalt crusts are found in the western Pacific at depths of 1000 to 3000 metres.
MASSIVE SULPHIDES: Massive sulphides
Massive sulphides
WOR 3 - Massive sulphides in smoky depths
accumulate mainly at the openings of hot vents on the ocean floor. In these regions cold seawater penetrates through cracks in the sea floor at depths of up to several kilometres. The water near magma chambers then heats up to temperatures exceeding 400 degrees Celsius. As it does so, metalliferous minerals are released from the rock. Upon warming the solution rises rapidly and is extruded back into the sea. As soon as this solution mixes with the cold seawater, the minerals form a precipitate which accumulates around the hydrothermal vents in the form of massive ore deposits. Massive sulphides are found in many places on the sea floor which are or used to be volcanic. Depending on the region, they contain widely different amounts of copper, zinc, lead, gold and silver, as well as numerous important trace metals such as indium, germanium, tellurium or selenium.
Extra Info Sand, gravel and phosphate from the sea
If and when marine resources are mined depends mainly upon how resource prices actually develop worldwide. It is impossible to predict whether, as is the case with oil, world market prices will continue to rise. New onshore mining projects could lead to price reductions for certain resources, for example. In the past we have often seen that when mining of a major new onshore deposit begins, there is a surplus of the resource concerned. Cost savings also contribute to falling prices. There are many reasons behind such savings such as new mining technologies, automation or improved metallurgic processes. On the other hand, prices rise as the demand for a resource increases. This could in future prove to be the case with resources which are highly sought after due to technological and social developments. One example here is the metal neodymium which is increasingly used in the construction of electric motors and wind turbine generators. Experts are in fact concerned that supplies of this metal could run short in the coming years. If the prices of metals that are also found offshore increase in the coming years as a result of such short- ages, sea-floor mining could become economic. However, at this stage nobody can foresee whether such a situation will occur.
An exception could possibly be the massive sulphides found in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea, which have been found to contain substantial amounts of gold and silver. Their retrieval has been planned for several years now, but for economic and contractual reasons production has been postponed repeatedly.


Jim's New Release Movie..
Jim's New Release Movie Reviews – 24 February
T2 TRAINSPOTTING **** (118 minutes) R
The gang from the 1996 neo-classic drug dramedy Trainspotting reassemble for an energetic, reflective, moving and superbly made sequel that updates the lives of the main characters 20 years on to see who has changed, who has tried to change and who hasn't.
Not only do we get the return of hot-headed Begbie (Robert Carlyle), naive smack-addict Spud (Ewen Bremner), failed family man Sick Boy (Johnny Lee Miller) and the guilt-ridden Renton (Ewan McGregor), we also have the original's screenwriter John Hodge and director Danny Boyle on board.
And, as if to provide added assurance that this is quality, uncut product, the author of the original Trainspotting novel and its sequel Porno, Irvine Welsh, serves as one of the producers and has a cameo in the film. He was none-too-kind about the original for being too soft, so his endorsement ensures that the follow-up will get as ugly as it needs to.
After suffering a heart attack while at a trendy gym, Renton is driven by conscience to re-establish contact with Sick Boy, who now runs a dilapidated pub, and Spud, whose drug habit is now so bad he sees little reason for living.
Begbie is off all of their radars, but they are not off his as he slips out of prison a little early while doing a 25-year stretch. Initially keen to get back into petty crime with the aid of his reluctant son (a lovely, understated performance by Scot Greenan), Begbie becomes obsessed with revenge after encountering Renton by chance at a nightclub.
Turns out that he never forgave Renton for running off with the 16,000 pounds from the drug deal that ended the first film. Neither, it seems, did Sick Boy, though his thirst for payback softens as Renton helps him in his endeavour to renovate the pub. And while Spud did get his share, he too blames Renton for ruining his life, who he says should have known he was just going to blow it on more smack.
Even though it is set 20 years on from the first film, T2 is not designed to stand alone but to please the legions of fans of the original Trainspotting. On that score it is an immensely satisfying film and a great example of how good sequels work.
Initially, echoes and images from the first film pepper the story, then become stronger as the story progresses, as if the past is reaching out at the characters and challenging them to acknowledge the importance of change. The superbly deployed device also makes the point that actions have consequences and that some regrets in life are unavoidable.
Though the overall style is necessarily more subdued to match the film's more reflective mindset, Boyle still directs with great energy when careless thrills are called for. One very funny heist sequence is so well executed he makes us complicit in its success.
The performances throughout are replicated with astonishing detail and, in the case of Begbie and Spud, they're so good you can barely understand what they're saying.
Most sequels do assume a familiarity with the first film (obviously) and T2 is designed so that the more intimate you are with Trainspotting – and some fans can cite it like scripture – the more it will resonate. A perfect example is the single scene appearance of Diane (Kelly Macdonald), which hits like a thunderclap.
On that score, the Trainspotting team have managed to come up with one of the best examples of how good sequels work.
But does it work as a stand alone? To be honest, not really. But that doesn't matter for a film intended to pay off on speculation about characters that has been brewing for 20 years.
THE FAMILY *** (98 minutes) M
Absorbing investigative documentary about the Melbourne-based cult run by Anne Hamilton Byrne that brainwashed children in preparation for the Apocalypse. Based on the book by director Rosie Jones and journalist Chris Johnston, the film blends ghostly archival footage of the Lake Eildon compound with interviews from former members, current members and Lex de Man, the cop who dug into the case. This is a story crying out to be turned into feature.
FIST FIGHT *1/2 (91 minutes) MA
Fairly wet American comedy set in a struggling high school where one tough-as-nails teacher (Ice Cube) vows to beat up a wimpy colleague (Charlie Day from Horrible Bosses, It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia) for getting him fired. The film features a lot of that specifically American semi-improvised style of comedic acting where the actors act as though they've either forgotten what they're about to day, or have suddenly remembered it. Tracy Morgan (30 Rock) also stars. You'll be better off waiting till this one hits the stream.
HELLO LADIES ***1/2 MA
It won't surprise fans of The Office or Extras that co-creators Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant share very similar senses of humour, especially when it comes to their stumblebum relationships with women.
What might surprise people, though, is that in 2013 Merchant produced a very funny TV series called Hello Ladies. Made for HBO it only ran one season, with a movie length finale to tie it all up. It's an underrated gem of a show.
Merchant plays Stuart Pritchard, a love-lorn British web designer living in Los Angeles. His business is running smoothly enough to afford him a fairly plush house with a pool and a guest house, in which lives Jessica (Christine Woods), an attractive but struggling actress who can't seem to get any career traction.
Though he lives a life of parties and nightclubbing, Stuart is a walking embarrassment when it comes to women. As with Gervais, his self-confidence evaporates in their presence as he tries putting on an act that he thinks will impress them.
The only time he is himself is when he is with Jessica. Romantic tension slowly builds across the eight episodes as Stuart strikes out with models, actresses and even an encounter with Nicole Kidman. He also confronts the phoniness he has to buy into if he is to make it with the cool set. This usually means abandoning his friends Wade (Nate Torrence), who is recovering from a separation, and Kives (Kevin Weisman), a wise-talker in a wheelchair.
All of Stuart's suffering is self-inflicted as we witness, time and time again, what happens when somebody tries too hard. Jessica, too has her issues. Struggling with middle-age, she is sleeping with her agent who enjoys the sex but refuses to commit to her.
Co-written and co-created with Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg, Merchant directed most of the episodes with a neat fix on the type of grounded humour that can quickly turn into drama.
It's a sad sack sitcom well worth catching, especially if you are fans of Merchant's work with Gervais.
* Available on: iTunes; Google Play; Playstation; Foxtel Play


Perry Turell
Perry H. Turell, 70, of Florham Park died Jan. 24, 2012. Born in the Bronx, he formerly lived in Short Hills.
Mr. Turell was an accountant with Aviary Capital Enterprises, Teaneck.
He was a graduate of New York University.
He was a coach of the Manhattan Youth Little League and a former member of Temple B'nai Jeshurun, Short Hills.
He is survived by his wife, Joanne; his daughter, Lauren Kramer; his son, Glenn; and four grandchildren.
Services were held Jan. 27 with arrangements by Bernheim-Apter-Kreitzman Suburban Funeral Chapel, Livingston.


Home/News/Press Releases/OUTDOOR MOVIE NIGHTS IN THE SQUARE
OUTDOOR MOVIE NIGHTS IN THE SQUARE
Starting at Spirit Square in early July
June 22, 2016 / Press Releases
Blumenthal Performing Arts will begin hosting free outdoor movie nights in July at Spirit Square. The Square, at the corner of College and 7th Street, has a brand new look and will be transformed into the perfect movie event space multiple times throughout the summer.
"We're excited about the new event space that has been created outside the steps of Spirit Square on College Street," said Tom Gabbard, President of Blumenthal Performing Arts. "This will be a fun place to enjoy a warm summer night with friends and family. We are starting with films but will be hosting a variety of others activities there."
Activities begin in the Square at 7:45 p.m. with movies beginning at dusk (approximately 8:45 p.m.). Guests are asked to bring their own lawn chairs. Free popcorn, along with other food and beverages will be available for purchase. Dates and film titles below.
Hip Hop Movie Weekend
Friday, July 8: Beat Street (PG)*
At the forefront of early hip-hop culture, DJ Kenny Kirkland (Guy Davis), his B-boy brother, Lee (Robert Taylor), and graffiti artist Ramon (John Chardiet) all have hopes of showcasing their talents outside the confines of South Bronx, N.Y. When Tracy Carlson (Rae Dawn Chong), a composer and choreographer, runs into Kirkland and Lee at one of Manhattan's hottest nightclubs, she offers Lee an opportunity to perform on TV. However, the crew has a long way to go before achieving their dreams.
Saturday, July 9: Step Up (PG-13)*
Tyler Gage (Channing Tatum) has been in and out of trouble for most of his life and after finding himself before the judge again, he is sentenced to 200 hours of community service mopping floors at the Maryland School of the Arts. He quickly catches the eye of Nora (Jenna Dewan), a gifted ballet student, who is trying to use hip-hop moves with her classical routines. After some initial hesitation, Nora convinces Tyler to help her with her dance routines and the sparks fly.
*The pre-show activities on July 8 and 9 will feature a Lip Sync Battle hosted by With These Handz DJ Academy.
Movie Musical Weekend
Friday, July 15: Singin' in the Rain (unrated)
Singin' in the Rain is one of the most-loved and celebrated films of all time! Starring Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor and Debbie Reynolds, Singin' in the Rain tells the story of movie actors struggling to make the transition from silent films to "talkies" in 1927. This light-hearted, highly acclaimed and highly entertaining musical is number one on American Film Insitute's Greatest Movie Musicals.
Saturday, July 16: Royal Wedding (unrated)
American sibling song-and-dance team Tom (Fred Astaire) and Ellen Bowen (Jane Powell) are in London in 1947, when all of England is in a tizzy over the impending nuptials of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip. Ellen falls head over heels for the dashing Lord John Brindale (Peter Lawford), and Tom becomes equally smitten with the elegant Anne Ashmond (Sarah Churchill). The film features one of Fred Astaire's most legendary dance performances, dancing across the ceiling of a hotel room.


State surpasses 1,000 coronavirus deaths in less than a month
New York state's death toll from the coronavirus outbreak climbed Sunday above 1,000, less than a month after the first known infection in the state.
Most of those deaths have come in just the past few days.
New York City reported in the evening that its toll had risen to 776. The total number of statewide deaths isn't expected to be released until Monday, but with at least 250 additional deaths recorded outside the city as of Sunday morning, the state's total fatalities was at least 1,026.
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The virus and the disease it causes, COVID-19, has torn through New York with frightening speed.
The first known infection in the state was discovered March 1 in a health care worker who recently returned from Iran. Two days later, the state got its second case, a lawyer from the suburb of New Rochelle.
By March 10, Gov. Andrew Cuomo had declared a "containment area" in New Rochelle that shuttered area schools and houses of worship. That same day, the metropolitan area saw its first fatality: a man who worked at a harness track in Yonkers and lived in New Jersey.
By March 12, the state had banned all gatherings of more than 500 people, darkening Broadway theaters and sports arenas. A day later, the first New York resident died, an 82-year-old woman with emphysema.
New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio closed New York City's schools March 15.
More severe restrictions came March 20, when Cuomo ordered all nonessential workers to stay home, barred gatherings of any size and instructed anyone out in public to stay at least 6 feet from other people. At the time, only 35 New Yorkers had been killed by the virus.
That was only nine days ago.
It took Spain 18 days to go from its first death to its 1,000th, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. Italy took 21 days. New York state took 16 days.
Here are the latest coronavirus developments in New York:
'UNPRECEDENTED' SURGE IN 911 CALLS
New Yorkers are hearing a constant wail of sirens as weary ambulance crews respond to a record volume of 911 calls.
The city's ambulances are responding to about 6,000 calls a day — more than 50% more than average. Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said Sunday that the last five days have been the busiest stretch in the history of the city's EMS operation.
"This is unprecedented," de Blasio said. "We have never seen our EMS system get this many calls — ever."
Nigro said the surge is delaying responses to lower-level calls. De Blasio said the city is planning to shift personnel onto EMS crews to help keep up with demand.
MAYOR: DAYS BEFORE SUPPLIES RUN OUT
De Blasio said he has asked the federal government to deliver 400 more ventilators to city hospitals by Wednesday and warned that without reinforcements the city will run out of masks, gowns and other hospital supplies in a week.
With the expected peak of cases in the city still two to three weeks away, de Blasio said he has asked the U.S. military to aid in sending needs new waves of doctors, nurses and other medical personnel to the city.
Cuomo said Sunday that more than 76,000 health professionals, including many who've recently retired from the field, have volunteered to help in the coronavirus fight.
The USNS Comfort, a Navy hospital ship with 1,000 beds, 12 operating rooms and a full medical staff, is scheduled to arrive in the city on Monday. It will be used to treat non-coronavirus patients to free up space in city hospitals..
A 68-bed field hospital is being built in Manhattan's Central Park. Samaritan's Purse, a charity run by Christian evangelical preacher Franklin Graham, built a similar temporary facility in Italy to help deal with the crisis there. He said the New York City version could be up and running Tuesday.
POOR NEIGHBORHOODS HIT HARD
Coronavirus is overwhelming some of New York City's poorest neighborhoods, according to new data released by the city.
Queens accounts for 32% of the city's more than 30,000 confirmed cases as of Saturday — more than any other borough.
Neighborhoods such as Jackson Heights, Elmhurst and Corona, which are generally poor, densely packed and have large non-English speaking populations, have been among the hardest hit, according to a city map showing percent ranges of people testing positive for the disease. In those areas, between 69% and 86% of the tests done have come back positive.
A hospital in Elmhurst has been overrun with coronavirus cases.
Statistics on coronavirus cases do not reflect everyone who may have the virus, because many people have been told to manage their illness at home and are not getting tested.
EARLY PATIENT GOES HOME
The number of patients being discharged at the state's hospitals after they've been treated for coronavirus has increased daily to a high of 845 on Saturday, Cuomo said. In all, more than 3,500 people have been discharged.
They include a lawyer from the New York City suburbs connected to one of the earliest U.S. coronavirus clusters. Lawrence Garbuz's family and neighbor were infected, as well as members of his synagogue.
"The 'patient zero' — what we call patient zero in Westchester, New Rochelle — who was very sick for a very long time, he has actually gone home," Cuomo said Sunday. "He's out of the hospital."
As of Sunday, more than 8,500 people remain hospitalized across the state because of the disease, including more than 2,000 in intensive care.
Those totals are continuing to spike, but Cuomo said they're not multiplying nearly as quickly as they were last week. From March 16-19, the number of hospitalizations in the state doubled every two days. Now it's taking about six days for the number to double.
STATE PUSHES FOR MORE FEDERAL MONEY
Cuomo spoke with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Sunday after lambasting the federal government for giving the state a fraction of needed funding as it faces a potential revenue shortfall of up to $15 billion due to the economic damaged caused by the virus.
"They committed to right the wrong in the next federal bill that passes, and the governor is committed to working with them to make that a reality," Cuomo senior adviser Richard Azzoparadi told The Associated Press.
Schumer called the conversation "long and productive."
TRAVEL ADVISORY CONCERNS
On Saturday, after saying he was weighing the idea of a mandatory quarantine for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, President Donald Trump tweeted that instead he'd issue advisory urging people in those states to avoid any nonessential travel for two weeks.
De Blasio said he worried about the advisory's impact on families with members in New York and other places who were looking to reunite.
"We've got to respect, in the middle of a crisis, families have a right to be together," de Blasio said.
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS:
— With schools and many day care centers closed, states, local governments and philanthropists are scrambling to provide child care for parents who are needed on the front lines of the virus fight.
— College students were sent home because of the coronavirus are taking advantage of their last days on campus to forge a few more memories.
— James Dolan, the owner of the New York Knicks and Rangers, has tested positive for COVID-19.
City reschedules 23,000 vaccine appointments due to shortage
City might run out of Covid vaccines by the weekend, de Blasio says
Sponsored Content: Telehealth: Evolving a Short-term Response to Long-term Capabilities


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Heart Shaped Gingerbread Cookies Jigsaw Puzzle Game
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About: Gingerbread is typically flavored with ginger, cloves, nutmeg or cinnamon and sweetened with honey, sugar or molasses. Gingerbread is claimed to have been brought to Europe in 992 CE by the Armenian monk Gregory of Nicopolis. The first documented trade of gingerbread biscuits dates to the 17th century, where they were sold in monasteries, pharmacies, and town square farmers' markets. Gingerbread came to the Americas with settlers from Europe. Molasses, which was less expensive than sugar, soon became a common ingredient and produced a softer cake. Gingerbread Cookies are generally served around Christmas.
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Fresh Produce Basket
In today's new puzzle we feature a basket full of fresh, handpicked apples, pears, grapes, tomatoes, cucumbers and walnuts. Pick your difficulty level, click start and put the delicious fruits and veggies back together piece by piece and complete this fun new challenge. Have fun!
Freshly Baked Tarts
If you didn't know,a tart is a baked dish consisting of a filling over a pastry base with an open top not covered with pastry. There are many types of tarts, with popular varieties including Treacle tart, tarte tatin, meringue tart and Bakewell tart. Another popular tart flavor is jam tarts, which may be different colors depending on the flavor of the jam used to fill them.
Let's start the week with a healthy green apple. Click start, solve today's puzzle game and put the green apple covered in water drops back together and get your spot on our leader boards.
"Chicken Feed" was the original name of the candy with production starting in the 1880s. It is most often found in the United States and Canada, popular primarily around Halloween. . The three colors of the candy – a broad yellow end, a tapered orange center, and a pointed white tip – mimic the appearance of kernels of corn, hence the name - candy corn. In today's fun and challenging puzzle we feature lots and lots of colorful candy corn, click start and give it a try!
Time for a fresh banana. One of the most popular fruits worldwide, bananas contain essential nutrients. A 100-gram reference serving supplies 89 Calories, 31% of the US recommended Daily Value (DV) of vitamin B6, and moderate amounts of vitamin C, manganese and dietary fiber. Although bananas are commonly thought to contain exceptional potassium content, their actual potassium content is not high per typical food serving, having only 8% of the US recommended Daily Value for potassium.
African Horned Cucumbers
Also called horned melon, kiwano, jelly melon, hedged gourd, melano these kind of fruits native to Africa have a yellow-orange skin and lime green, jelly-like flesh .The fruit's taste has been compared to a combination of cucumber and zucchini or a combination of banana, cucumber and lemon. The fruit can be used in cooking, but when eaten raw.
Tri-Colored Fusilli Pasta
In today's new puzzle we're going out for some pasta. Fusilli are long, thick, corkscrew shaped pasta. The word fusilli presumably comes from fuso, as traditionally it is "spun" by pressing and rolling a small rod over the thin strips of pasta to wind them around it in a corkscrew shape.
Carrots, Bananas, Oranges And Lemons
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The Gingerbread House
If you like gingerbread you'll love putting this online jigsaw puzzle back together. Solve the puzzle and see the gingerbread house.
Red, Orange And Yellow Peppers
Peppers are commonly broken down into three groupings: bell peppers, sweet peppers, and hot peppers. Ideal growing conditions for peppers include a sunny position with warm, loamy soil, that is moist but not waterlogged. Peppers are highly nutritious. They have more Vitamin C than an orange, and a typical bell pepper contains more than 100% of the daily recommended value for Vitamin C. They also have relatively high amounts of Vitamin B6.
Chicken eggs are widely used in many types of dishes, both sweet and savory, including many baked goods. Some of the most common preparation methods include scrambled, fried, hard-boiled, soft-boiled, omelettes and pickled. Chicken eggs, the most commonly eaten eggs, provide 155 calories (kcal) of food energy and 12.6 g of protein in a 100 gram serving. Eggs (boiled) supply several vitamins and minerals as significant amounts of the Daily Value (DV), including vitamin A (19% DV), riboflavin (42% DV), pantothenic acid (28% DV), vitamin B12 (46% DV), choline (60% DV), phosphorus (25% DV), zinc (11% DV) and vitamin D (15% DV).
A new food themed jigsaw puzzle featuring a delicious piece of roast beef on lettuce, with some tomatoes and a lemon.
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Teenager with Autism Inspired by Running
Good News, Profiles, Sports
ADN 7 years ago No Comments
New York – Mike Brannigan 17, has autism and is obsessed with running and is one of the top ten high school runners in the country, he can run a mile in four minutes and seven seconds flat. He runs every day of the week covering a distance of over sixty miles.
NBC News state that whenever he runs he's able to hyper-focus on speed.
"I love to work hard and have fun. And just beat my personal best and keep improving to that next level,"
Brannigan has been contacted by more than two hundred colleges including the University of Colorado, the University of Oregon, Duke, Georgetown, Syracuse, Wisconsin, UNC, Virginia and Stanford.
During his early years doctors believed that he would need a special school and a group home. He is now a senior at Northport public High School on New York's Long Island.
His mother, Edie Brannigan said:
"It has allowed him to focus — in such a way that his academics soared after he started running. It was something in his brain was able to calm down and focus on the academics."
Mrs Brannigan went on to explain that they'll need to find a school that will support her son academically.
Mike Brannigan is determined to become a professional athlete. with one day hoping to reach the Olympics.
"Wearing my USA jersey, and representing my country… and the whole nation… a whole America watching me."
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Kedah seeks Unesco Biosphere Reserve status for Sungai Merbok Mangrove Forest
19 Oct 2015 / 19:07 H.
Kedah Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mukhriz Mahathir (C) takes a tour along the Merbok River from Semeling Jetty to Tanjung Dawai on Oct 19, 2015. BERNAMA
A view of the mangrove forest near Sungai Petani taken on Oct 19, 2015. BERNAMA
SUNGAI PETANI: Kedah plans to gazette the 3,000ha Sungai Merbok Mangrove Forest as a Unesco world biosphere reserve, Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mukhriz Mahathir said today.
He said the state government would submit the application to Unesco in January 2016 after Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) researchers have completed a study.
"We want to control development in the area to strike a balance between development and environmental sustainability.
"This does not mean we are jeopardising the livelihood of the local people. Instead, we are seeking ways to use the natural environment while generating a reasonable income for the people through caged fish breeding, for example," he told a news conference.
Mukhriz said this mangrove forest was unique in the sense that it contained 42 of the 60 species of the world's mangrove, and also the "Eye of the Crocodile" species that was found only in four mangrove areas in the world.
Today, Mukhriz and Tanjung Dawai state assemblyman Datuk Tajul Urus Mat Zain took a boat ride on Sungai Merbok from the Semeling jetty to Tanjung Dawai and stopped over at Teluk Kedangsar.
Earlier, the mentri besar chaired a meeting on Unesco biosphere reserve at the Sungai Petani Municipal Council office, which was also attended by USM researchers and officers of the Department of Forestry.
Mukhriz said that to preserve the mangrove national treasure, the state government would restrict mangrove felling and request relevant quarters to reduce the speed of boats in the mangrove swamps to prevent erosion.
Meanwhile, USM Centre for Global Archaeological Research director Prof Datuk Dr Mokhtar Saidin said a dossier of research data had to be sent to Unesco for evaluation before the biosphere reserve status could be obtained.
The declaration of Unesco biosphere status for the mangrove forest would bring to Kedah biosphere tourists from around the world and provide for more sustainable development of the mangrove forest, he said.
"We are optimistic of securing that status," he said.
Tasik Chini in Pahang and the Crocker Range in Sabah enjoy Unesco biosphere reserve status, accorded in 2009 and 2014, respectively. — Bernama
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← Minority Opinion: The Magnificent Ambersons, Part 6
Wings, Again →
Jim Lane's Cinedrome Posted on April 23, 2012 by Jim Lane September 10, 2017
recently spent two consecutive Saturdays in a sort of time machine, living the silent movie experience of 1927 — what seemed back then to be its culmination, but was in fact a final blaze of glory before the whole structure collapsed under the onslaught of talking pictures. The first Saturday (on March 31) was a once-in-a-lifetime experience I never expect to repeat, but the second (on April 7) was one I can recreate for myself any time I want — and so can you.
First, on March 31, there was this:
Seeing Abel Gance's Napoleon as it was meant to be seen — with a live symphonic accompaniment and its climactic three-panel "Polyvision" seqence, including this Tricolor tryptych — truly is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. I've been lucky; I've seen it three times. The first time was Bastille Day (July 14) 1981, when just about everybody who was anybody in Hollywood — plus a hefty contingent of nobodies like me — crammed the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles to see Gance's masterpiece and to hear Francis Ford Coppola's father Carmine conduct his own score. That engagement was such a thundering triumph that Napoleon and Coppola pere returned to the Shrine for nine days in December and January '82, and I saw it again.
But this third time topped them both, and it came my way courtesy of the San Francisco Silent Film Festival. The movie I saw at Oakland's Paramount Theatre was an hour and 45 minutes longer than the one I saw at the Shrine in 1981 and '82. Some of the extra time was additional footage, some the result of a proper running speed of 20 frames per second (the Shrine speed had been 24 fps).
The great Kevin Brownlow — on top of everything else he's done — has made the restoration of Gance's picture a lifelong project, ever since he first bought two 9.5mm reels as a teenager in the 1950s. His efforts have been tireless and positively superhuman. In his 1983 book on the subject he lists no fewer than 19 different versions of Napoleon, beginning with its April 1927 premiere at the Paris Opera (4 hours 5 minutes) and Gance's so-called "definitive version" (9 hours 20 minutes) shown twice only the following month — through various re-edits and reissues, right down to Brownlow's own 1983 reconstruction for the Cinematheque Francaise (5 hours 13 minutes). But Brownlow didn't stop there; additional footage has continued to surface from time to time in the nearly 30 years since his book. The version screened in Oakland was assembled by Brownlow and Patrick Stanbury in 2000 for the British Film Institute and has never been shown outside Europe; these four screenings were the first in the U.S., and no others are contemplated. With the expense and time involved in hiring and rehearsing a live orchestra (to say nothing of, in the SFSFF's case, bringing composer Carl Davis over to conduct the score in person), plus the technical demands of three synchronized projectors, Napoleon is insanely expensive to present. The San Francisco Festival's efforts in this regard were heroic to the point of foolhardiness: it cost more than their entire budget for a normal year, and even if they sold every one of the Paramount's 3,100 seats (at $40-150 a pop), they would only break even. (They sold out, sure enough, at the screening I saw; I can't speak for the other three. I stuffed some extra cash in the Festival's donation jar in the lobby, saying, "It's a noble thing you people are doing, and I know you're taking a bath on it." The attendant smiled and shrugged: "It's the mission of the festival.")
Well, God bless 'em for it.
Gance regarded Napoleon as a tragic hero, and he planned a biography in six installments that would take his protagonist from his early revolutionary fervor and triumph through growing tyranny and megalomania to final downfall. But the best-laid plans, you know: Gance blew his budget for all six pictures on the first one, and the rest were never made. Probably just as well in the long run; it makes it possible for the one he did make to end on an exultant note, with the conquest — oops! "revolutionary liberation" — of Italy. But it matters little whether or not you accept Gance's historical analysis (personally, I don't; I think Bonaparte was pretty much a Megalomaniac in Waiting from the word go, biding his time while the thugs and jackals of the Reign of Terror lopped each other's heads off); Napoleon is still a sensual and emotional feast that makes the word "movie" sound too puny to contain it. Seeing it the way we saw it in Oakland was a rare privilege, and I'm telling you right now: If you ever hear of this picture coming to anyplace within a thousand miles of you, do not let this golden opportunity slip by, and do not imagine that it will ever come again. Hop a plane, book a hotel, rent a car, do whatever it takes.
I'll close this half of the post with a YouTube clip of the Napoleon trailer prepared for the SFSFF. Be sure to take it full-screen; it'll give you (just barely) an inkling.
Moving from the sublime to the merely first-rate, I come to my second time-machine excursion to 1927, on April 7:
My sister-in-law mentioned a while back that she was embarking on a project to see all the Oscar-winners for best picture that she hadn't managed to catch up with over the years. First on her list, naturally enough, was Wings — the first (and until this year the only) silent movie to win the Oscar for best picture.
(Strictly speaking, that's not exactly true. There was no actual "best picture" category that first year; what Wings won was "best production". There was also "artistic quality of production", which went to F.W. Murnau's Sunrise. So in a sense you could say that that year — for the only time — there were really two best pictures. Frankly, I think this production/artistic-quality-of-production dichotomy might be worth bringing back.)
Anyhow, back to my sister-in-law's see-all-the-best-pictures project. It so happened that I had just gotten the new Blu-ray restoration of Wings and had been looking for an excuse to host a screening of it. I urged her not to settle for Wings from Netflix. I learned last year at the Kansas Silent Film Festival that to see Wings on home video is one thing, but to see it projected on a large screen is to understand at last why it won the Oscar (something it has in common with both Lawrence of Arabia and Oliver!). I suggested she wait until I could screen it for her and my brother, she agreed, and the date we settled on was April 7.
I would venture to guess that in the transfer to home video, no silent picture has ever been as lovingly and carefully treated as Wings; Paramount Home Video can be as proud of the transfer as they are of the picture itself, for both are justified.
Leonard Maltin's Movie Guide gives Wings two-and-a-half stars, saying: "One of the most famous silent films is, alas, not one of the best, despite rose-colored memories." I say it's Leonard who needs a memory check; Wings is a whopping piece of entertainment, and it set the template for Oscar-winning best pictures, with only rare (and usually regrettable) exceptions, from that day to this: well-crafted crowd-pleasers rather than groundbreaking works of art.
While it's no work of art, Wings is certainly a crowd-pleaser, and extraordinarily well-crafted. The craftstmanship is evident even in straight black-and-white silent prints like the one I saw in Topeka last year, but on Paramount's Blu-ray it shines like a beacon. The source material was a dupe negative in the Paramount vault that had nevertheless suffered significant deterioration in 85 years and required a frame-by-frame digital repair. The result is…well, in the supplement documentary, Tom Burton of Technicolor Corp. says, "It'll never be like Day One in 1927 seeing this release, but it cleaned up a great deal." Indeed it did; Wings looks like it was shot last week, an impression enhanced by the surprisingly frequent use of telephoto and even zoom lenses.
Almost as important as that dupe negative, Paramount also had the original documentation for how the picture was to be tinted — both stock-tinting (amber, violet, sepia etc.) and the Handschiegel process (shown here), which added color to highlight flames, machine-gunfire and explosions; the documents specified exactly the shades to be used and the frames where every tint was to begin and end.
Paramount also had access to a single copy in the Library of Congress (perhaps the only copy in existence) of J.S. Zamecnik's original score (well, substantially original — it incorporates numerous popular tunes of the World War I era, and the music for the flying scenes was cribbed from Felix Mendelssohn's incidental score for A Midsummer Night's Dream). Zamecnik was a usually anonymous studio musician who did yeoman work assembling Wings's music, particularly his main theme, which serves as a wistful love theme, a stirring march, or a soaring anthem, according to the needs of individual scenes.
Oscar-winner Ben Burtt recreated Wings's sound effects. No, that's not a misprint, and on the Blu-ray the sound effects aren't an anachronism. Wings was state-of-the-art in 1927 (although the art was changing faster than anybody realized at the time), and it originally played with a soundtrack for sound effects — explosions, machine guns, auto and airplane engines, things like that (music was nonstop and performed live, and of course there was no spoken dialogue). The original track still existed as a guide to when there should be sound and what would remain silent, and Burtt and his associate Dustin Cawood worked with the earliest sound libraries from the 1930s to keep the sounds as authentic as possible. (Even so, the Blu-ray's 7.1 surround audio allowed Burtt to indulge in effects the sound technicians of 1927 could only dream of — planes roar up behind you and pass overhead before swooping into view on the screen.)
Wings is famous, even among people who've never seen it, for its scenes of aerial combat, and rightly so — they're still breathtaking after 85 years and countless fighter-pilot movies, from Hell's Angels to Top Gun. Wings invented the genre, only 24 years after Kitty Hawk, using aircraft that were little more than motorized kites. No process photography, certainly no CGI in those days; there was nothing for it but to strap the camera to a plane and get up there and fly around. (And remember, of all the people who saw Wings on its first run, probably not one in a thousand had ever been up in a plane; if these scenes are amazing now, how must they have looked in 1927?)
But even on the ground, Wings has some of the most spectacular battle scenes ever filmed, climaxing in director William Wellman's recreation of the battle of St. Mihiel, the first major American offensive of the war (and one in which the U.S. Army Air Service played a significant role). With 19 cameras posted in trenches, in shell holes, and on towers all over the five-acre location, it's a sight to see — in fact, I've seen some of this footage (uncredited) in a number of documentaries about World War I, and you probably have too.
Last but absolutely not least, Wings has this young lady. Let me say this as plainly as I can: There was never a more charming and delightful movie star than Clara Bow. Plenty who were as delightful, certainly, but none more so. Ever. (If you don't know Clara's work, Mantrap [1926] and It ['27] are good places to start.) She was the hottest star in Hollywood in 1927 (in every sense of the word), so naturally she's top-billed in Wings, but it's really a supporting role, almost a cameo; she plays the adoring, neglected girl next door who follows Buddy Rogers to France as a member of the Women's Motor Corps. When Buddy's leave in Paris is cancelled but he's too drunk to respond, Clara goes to fetch him, only to find he's too drunk even to recognize her, and she must dress as the flapper her fans have come to expect, all to lure him away from a French demimondaine with designs on him. (This scene also has Wellman's most amazing non-combat shot, as the camera glides across table after table at the Folies Bergere, each with its own little drama going on: an angry woman tossing her drink in her lover's face, a matron slipping cash to her gigolo, an adulterous couple nervously looking over their shoulders, even a pair of lovestruck lesbians!)
In Silent Stars Jeanine Basinger describes Wings as "an epic war movie enclosing a small Clara Bow movie", and that sums it up neatly. The structure of the story is Hollywood showmanship at its best; without interrupting the war story or making Bow look like a cornball play for the box-office, Paramount created a picture that absolutely everyone who went to movies would want to see.
They still would, and Leonard Maltin really needs to take another look. The review in his book dates back at least as far as the 1980 edition; I'll bet it was based on watching a VHS tape on a 19-inch TV (Leonard himself may not even have written it). As Ben Burtt says, "I can't imagine that audiences today would not get excited by seeing Wings." But as I told my sister-in-law, you have to see it as large as possible; the screen in my home theater is 70 inches wide, and that's really the bare minimum you need to appreciate it fully.
My screening that night certainly made my point. As the music swelled to its crescendo, the final end title faded out, and I brought up the lights, I said: "And that's why it won the Oscar for best picture." "No kidding!" somebody said.
For my brother, whose only experience of a silent movie had been an 8mm Blackhawk print of Laurel and Hardy's Two Tars 46 years ago, Wings was a revelation. He told me, "You know, Jim, I thought this was just going to be a sort of archaeology lesson. I didn't expect it to be…you know…a really good movie." And the next day at an Easter backyard barbecue, I heard my sister-in-law telling her adult children about it. She too had half-expected to be impatient and a little bored with a silent movie, but she had an interesting take on it now: "After the first few minutes," she said, "it simply never occurs to you that they're not speaking."
I have no doubt that I've seen Abel Gance's Napoleon for the last time, and I'm completely fine with that; as I said, I'm lucky to have seen it as many times as I have. But Wings, thanks to Paramount Home Video, a 70-inch screen and an Epson Powerlite 6100 projector, is at my beck and call anytime, almost exactly as the audience saw it at New York's Criterion Theatre on August 12, 1927.*
And as the saying goes, that ain't chopped liver.
*Almost: The battle scenes were originally shown in widescreen "Magnascope" — a surprising link with Napoleon — but none of that footage has survived.
Silent Weekends — 8 Comments
Kevin Deany on April 25, 2012 at 9:18 pm said:
Jim: I'm very envious that you got to experience the recent "Napoleon" showing in Oakland. I saw it in Chicago in its first incarnation with Carmine Coppolla conducting his score. The score was serviceable enough, but the experience remains one of the great movie-going experiences of my life. Really quite overwhelming in so many ways.
Kevin Brownlow's recent Oscar win may be the most deserving Oscar of all time.
The "Wings" section on your post was great. I have a friend who has a home theater and his brother has the new "Wings" BluRay. We'll do some arm twisting to see if we can see "Wings" in the best possible way. I do have the VHS copy of "Wings" and even then it's still a remarkable film.
Jim Lane on April 26, 2012 at 12:45 am said:
Kevin, "serviceable enough" may sound like damning with faint praise, but I think you've hit it regarding Carmine Coppola's score — though of course I take my hat off to anyone who can compose a wall-to-wall four-hour score (to say nothing of conducting it). Carl Davis's score, on the other hand, is masterful.