Brown rules out Beijing boycott April 5, 2008

Gordon Brown has said he will not boycott the Beijing Olympics because the Dalai Lama opposes such action.

The prime minister said the only way for the Chinese and Tibetans to resolve their tensions was through dialogue.

Mr Brown has also resisted calls not to welcome the Olympic torch in Downing Street when it arrives in London.

It comes as four pro-Tibet activists are arrested for abseiling off Westminster Bridge and unveiling a protest banner.

Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg had increased the pressure on Mr Brown by telling him not to attend the Games in August or this weekend’s torch relay.

Mr Brown’s comments come as France’s human rights minister has denied setting conditions for President Nicolas Sarkozy’s attendance at the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony.

Rama Yade said Le Monde newspaper had misquoted her as listing “conditions” for Mr Sarkozy’s presence at the event.

Eighty athletes, entertainers and dignitaries will carry the torch on a 31-mile long journey through London’s streets on Sunday as part of its journey to the Beijing 2008 games.

Tenerife ‘Maddie sighting’ April 5, 2008

DETECTIVES are probing a “sighting” of Madeleine McCann in Tenerife.

Tourist Margaret Jones believes she saw the missing four-year-old at the Spanish island’s airport.

She contacted Metodo 3 — the detectives hired by the McCanns — after returning home to Cardiff.

The media worker, in her 60s, said: “I was sitting opposite a shop. I spotted a little girl with curly red hair with a man, who was about 5ft 10in.

“When the little girl looked up, my heart skipped a beat. I took one look and thought, ‘My God, it’s Maddie’.

“They walked off and I had to get my plane.”

Mrs Jones said she reported the incident to Crimestoppers on March 7, and emailed Leicestershire Police.

Maddie from Rothley, Leics, vanished on holiday in Portugal 11 months ago.

Don’t forget about Maddie. Download our Maddie poster

Funny Tongue April 5, 2008

Street urchin to Bond girl April 5, 2008

SULTRY Bond babe OLGA KURYLENKO was raised in the poverty and oppression of the Soviet Union.

She grew up in a cramped four-room flat shared by six adults and several children.

Her mother Marina, a teacher, divorced Olga’s father Konstantin soon after her birth. Olga didn’t see him until she was 13.

Back then, no one would have dreamed that the street urchin from the Ukrainian seaside town of Berdyansk would one day be a gorgeous screen siren starring in a decadent Western blockbuster.

 

Humble beginnings …
Olga as a child

 

In fact, her family would have had no concept of what a Bond girl was.

The Communist government banned Western films — and Olga’s family were too poor to go to the pictures anyway.

Yet Olga believes her tough upbringing — she is pictured aged two — fed her appetite for the success that led to playing sexy Camille in 007’s next outing, Quantum Of Solace.

Olga, 28, says: “Maybe the fact I had to fight and struggle in the Ukraine is how I succeeded.

“You can’t sit around. I still have that survival instinct. It’s great now to support my family, my mum, and to help out.”

Olga at first believed she had blown her chance to be a Bond girl after director MARC FORSTER seemed unimpressed at the audition.

She said: “When Marc looked at me he was so blank. I told my agent, ‘Forget about it’. I was so sad.”

Then Olga received the best Christmas gift possible — a call saying that Forster had picked her for the key role.

She said: “It was Christmas Eve I found out I got the part. I was sat with my friends, it couldn’t have been a better present.”

Olga’s first step towards fame came when she was 13.

She was on holiday in Moscow with her mother Marina Alyabusheva when she was spotted by a model scout getting off a metro train.

Mrs Alyabusheva, 50, said: “I was very surprised and kept asking this woman whether she had some hidden agenda. I was amazed a complete stranger could scout for models like this. She told us that Olga was too young but that she would contact us again in the future.”

By 17 Olga was ready to leave for Paris to start her career.

 

She learned French in just six months and was soon on the cover of top style magazines such as Elle and Vogue, and became the face of Lejaby lingerie.

At 20 she married French photographer CEDRIC VAN MOL, who was nine years her senior.

Her mother said: “They had been friends before but it was a marriage without love.”

Rough

They were divorced after two years, but Olga qualified for a French passport, allowing her to travel freely in the West without visas. Then her acting career began to take off, which led to roles in The Serpent in 2006 and Hitman last year.

When I first met her a couple of months ago, the beauty was boasting how she was going to “kick ass”.

And she suggested she enjoyed the rough stuff by saying: “I like my bruises. When I get one it’s like ‘Yeah, I have got a bruise, pretty cool’.”

So it sounded like she was more than ready for a spot of 007 action.

But that was back in the relative security of Pinewood Studios — and before Olga had shot a single scene for DANIEL CRAIG’s next outing as 007.

 

Now, on location in dusty, sweaty, unforgiving Chile, Olga has realised that making a James Bond movie is no picnic.

In fact, the very honest and down-to-earth star admits that she has been scared of doing every stunt asked of her.

We meet just an hour after Olga bravely made a 12ft leap from a roof to a balcony.

It was a scene that the slender actress initially didn’t want to complete.

She smiled and asked: “Did you see me doing the stunt? I am very impressed with myself because there was no way I could do it before.

“Yesterday, I came to the top, looked down and said to the stunt guys, ‘No, guys, there is no way I am doing it — I am very scared of heights.’

“And they just slowly, slowly, very patiently got me to do it.”

Her character Camille is a feisty, street-fighting kind of girl who, like Bond, wants revenge on mysterious businessman Dominic Greene.

She explains: “The action we were filming today is happening more towards the end of the movie. Camille is about to get to her goal, which she is trying to get to throughout the whole movie. She is about to get her revenge. After that jump over the balcony she is pretty close. It’s going to be a big fight.

“There was another scene where my back was to the balustrade and it moved and I felt I couldn’t do it. The stunts in this film are crazy. They are really tough.

“Certain things are really scary and it always starts with me saying ‘No’…and I end up doing it. I really overcame my fears.”

The most terrifying scene so far was in Panama, where Camille has a fight on a speedboat.

Olga said: “I am still under the emotion of the scariest stunt.

Bruises

“We were in Panama and we did this boat chase in the sea.

“The boat went so fast and when you hit the waves it really jumps up and when you land it is really hard.

“And we were not sitting safely, we were fighting.

“The stunt guys fell into the sea a few times.

 

Sultry … Olga in new film

 

“So I had to really hold on. I got bruises. It was for real.”

But the worst is yet to come — jumping out of a plane.

Olga tells me: “I learned sky-diving in London. They have this big tunnel where they simulate the air. During a month I was training I was squeezed like a lemon by the air after a few minutes. I said, ‘I am not doing this’. I couldn’t even lift my arms up.

“But after a month I was spending a whole day in there.”

She seems a sweet-natured girl who is genuinely surprising herself.

“Before I started I trained for a month in Pinewood,” she says.

“I did stunts, gun-firing and I had to learn how to put a gun back together. My record was eight seconds. I beat my teacher and he got really upset!”

 

Olga reveals: “First she is trying to figure this guy out. She doesn’t trust that easily. But Bond and Camille do warm up to each other.”

Off the set Olga, who is single, got on well with 007 star Daniel Craig from the start.

She said: “Daniel is my favourite Bond. He suits the part perfectly and he is a great actor.”

And despite all the bruises and scary stunts, Olga is happy to play her iconic role.

She concluded: “If you don’t do what you want in life, you become sad.”

 

 

Quantom Of Solace will open in the UK on October 31.

Khuda Kay Liye thaws India-Pakistan screen chill April 5, 2008

The Pakistani film Khuda Kay Liye, which delves into the rift between radical and liberal Muslims, hits the screens here this week, the first to have a commercial release in India in more than four decades.

The movie, starring Naseeruddin Shah in a key role, has been made by Shoaib Mansoor. Mumbai-based Percept Picture Company has got the rights of the film and is releasing it with 300 prints on April 4.

“We are the first to get the rights of a Pakistani film and it’s a big high for us. We are releasing it with 300 prints, including the digital ones,” Nadish Bhatia, general manager of the marketing division of the Percept Picture Company told IANS on phone from Mumbai.

“Everybody is saying ‘Khamosh Pani’ was the first Pakistani film to hit the Indian theatres. It was a French co-production. But ‘Khuda Kay Liye’ is a Pakistani film and the first one to hit Indian screens in 43 years,” Bhatia added.

The movie, which faced opposition from the extremists and Pakistani clerics, was a huge hit in Pakistan.

“The film has made a record in the country. Those who hadn’t been to a hall in 35 years made an effort to watch the film,” said Mansoor, who was in town to promote his movie.

“We released it with only 10 prints. Pakistan is a small market,  but we still made Rs.70 million in Pakistani currency. It is surprising that a film which discusses religion and doesn’t have any humour, songs, dance or romance has done so well commercially. It means that it has touched the hearts of people,” he added.

Mansoor, who has also produced the movie, made it at a budget of 60 million Pakistani rupees.

“The film has made an impact in Pakistan and abroad and I am confident that it will make an impact here too.”

“Khuda Kay Liye” was the first Pakistani film to be included in the official line-up of the International Film Festival of India (IFFI) and it struck an instant chord with audiences when showcased there last year.

The film stars Pakistani superstar Shaan, who impresses as the harried protagonist Mansoor, and Rasheed Naz as the Maulana who brainwashes boys. The film also features Pakistan’s top model Iman Ali, who plays Maryam, a woman trapped between modernism and conservatism.

Naseeruddin Shah essays a powerful cameo of an Islamic scholar who embodies the voice of reason.

With the lifting of the ban for exchange of films between the two countries, the Pakistan government has allowed it on a condition that films will be strictly “exchanged”. For each Hindi title released in Pakistan, an Urdu film will have to be exhibited in India. Indian movies were banned in Pakistan in 1968 and the Pakistan film industry had to bear huge losses. There were more than 1,000 theatres throughout Pakistan those days, but now it is reduced to just 200.

 

Compared to India, which churns out about 1,000 films every year, Pakistan’s film industry produces just about 40 movies, a fifth of what it churned out during its heyday in the 1970s.

“This action will not only benefit Indian producers but Pakistani filmmakers as well. Now that the films will have legal screenings, Indian producers will get a new market. Its a double whammy for  the film industry in Pakistan,” Mansoor said.

“Pakistan will get a big Indian market and when Indian films will come there, the business of cinema will flourish. Secondly, release of Indian films will translate in competition for Pakistani filmmakers. In a competition, the underdog benefits. This will help good filmmakers come out and bad filmmakers will automatically vanish,” Mansoor said.