Life

RIO DE JANEIRO — A deadly 8.8-magnitude earthquake struck central Chile early Saturday, collapsing buildings, shattering major bridges and highways across a long strip of the country, and sending tsunami warnings along the entire Pacific basin.

The director of the National Emergency Agency, Carmen Fernández, said that 147 people died so far, according to local news reports. The death toll was expected to rise, particularly around Concepción, Chile’s second-largest metropolitan area, which is roughly 70 miles from the quake’s center.

There, cars were overturned, rubble fell into the cracked streets and a 15-story building collapsed, news agencies and the Chilean news media reported. In Santiago, the capital, which is about five hours to the north and about 200 miles from the epicenter, frightened residents felt the city shake for nearly 90 seconds. Car alarms pierced the air during the night and early morning hours.

But while there were long lines at supermarkets and gas stations, the capital city, according to residents there, was mostly calm by the late afternoon Saturday. That was a far different picture from the devastation that rocked Concepción, five hours away. More than two dozen significant aftershocks struck the country and President Michelle Bachelet declared a “state of catastrophe.” She said later in the day that officials were not yet able to determine the full extent of the damage.

Major seaports and airports, including the main airport in Santiago, were reported out of operation across the central region, Chilean officials said.

The Associated Press quoted Mrs. Bachelet as saying that a huge wave had swept into a populated area in Robinson Crusoe Island, 410 miles off the Chilean coast, but there were no immediate reports of major damage there. Those reports bore out early fears that a major tsunami was on its way across the Pacific, and the first hemispherewide tsunami warning since 1964 was issued all along the basin, according to monitors in Hawaii.

In Hawaii, officials evacuated some low-lying tourism areas and scheduled a statewide tsunami alert hours ahead of the tsunami swell’s expected arrival around 11:05 a.m.

President Obama spoke briefly outside the White House on Saturday afternoon, expressing concern for the country and saying the United States would offer aid in rescue and recovery efforts.

“Early indications are that hundreds of lives have been lost in Chile and the damage has been severe,” Mr. Obama said. He told Mrs. Bachelet that the United States was ready to help if needed. “We will be there for her should the Chilean people need assistance.”

State Department officials said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had been planning a trip to South America beginning on Monday, was also contacting Mrs. Bachelet, with whom she has long had warm personal relations.

Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, also offered his condolences, as well as longer-term aid should Chilean officials signal the need for it.

The earthquake struck at 3:34 a.m. in central Chile, centered roughly 200 miles southwest of Santiago at a depth of 22 miles, the United States Geological Survey reported.

Phone lines were down in Concepción as of 7:30 a.m., and communications out of the area remained spotty for hours after the earthquake. The quake was vastly more powerful than the magnitude 7.0 earthquake that caused widespread damage in Haiti on Jan. 12, killing at least 230,000, earthquake experts reported on CNN International.

The United States Geological Survey and witnesses reported more than two dozen significant aftershocks.

“We have had a huge earthquake,” Mrs. Bachelet said from an emergency response center in an appeal for Chileans to remain calm. “We’re doing everything we can with all the resources we have.”

Mrs. Bachelet said that the government had sent three emergency response teams to coastal areas. “Without a doubt, with a quake of this kind, of this size, of this magnitude, we can’t rule out that there are other deaths and probably injuries,” Mrs. Bachelet told reporters.

Sebastián Piñera, the conservative president-elect of Chile, tried to reassure Chileans that although the country had been battered by the earthquake, the political landscape was intact. He pledged his full support to the center-left government of Mrs. Bachelet, and he made clear that officials in charge of emergency response agencies would have his support well beyond March 11, the day he is scheduled to be inaugurated.

“This earthquake has dealt Chilean society a heavy blow,” he told reporters. “We must remain united so that we can help those who have lost loved one, and so all that has been destroyed can be rebuilt.”

Users of Facebook and Twitter reported that the quake was felt in many places across the continent, including Argentina and Brazil. The quake struck at the end of the Chilean summer vacation, with hundreds of thousands of people expected to be traveling back home this weekend.
Thousands of tourists and musicians were attending a renowned music festival in Vina del Mar, about 80 miles northwest of Santiago, when the quake razed 100-year-old buildings and sent people running into the street.

César Isella, 71, a popular singer from Argentina, won a top prize in the competition and had called his son, Fernando, in Buenos Aires an hour before the quake struck. His son said in an interview that it took him several hours to be able to reach his father, who was fine, but shaken. “My father described Vina del Mar as ‘total chaos.’ ”

While Chileans frantically tried to reach missing relatives and contend with their newly upturned lives, other nations along the Pacific Rim prepared for what might be coming.

The NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center issued a warning for Chile and Peru, and a less-urgent tsunami watch for Ecuador, Colombia, Panama, Costa Rica and Antarctica.

Evacuation alarms sounded at 6 a.m. Saturday in vulnerable coastal areas in Hawaii, as the region prepares for what federal officials say could be a dangerous, but most likely not catastrophic, tsunami to hit the islands in the aftermath of the earthquake.

Statewide television news was reporting that the southeast areas of all the islands would likely be the most affected, which include the heavy tourist zones of Waikiki, and Poipu on Kauai. News reports said that a corridor to the airport on Oahu was being established, and that visitors should go to at least the third floor of their hotels

Brian R. Shiro, a geophysicist at NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, said that computer models showed that the effect would be greatest in spots like Hilo Bay on Hawaii Island and Kahului Harbor in Maui.

In those areas, the tsunami waves could reach as high as 6 to 10 feet, Mr. Shiro said. Elsewhere in Hawaii, the waves are likely to be only about two to three feet.

“We are taking it very seriously,” Mr. Shiro said. “But this is not a big one.”

The most powerful earthquake ever recorded was also in Chile: a 9.5-magnitude quake struck in the spring of 1960 and set off a series of deadly tsunamis that killed people as far away as Hawaii and Japan.

But that earthquake in Chile, which killed nearly 2,000 people and left more than two million homeless at the time, prepared officials and residents in the region for future devastating effects. Shortly after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck in Valparaíso in 1985, the country established strict building codes, according to Andre Filiatrault, the director of the Multidisciplinary Center for Earthquake Engineering Research at the University at Buffalo.

“Chile is not a stranger to earthquakes,” he said Saturday in a telephone interview. He said the government code was called the Earthquake Resistant Design of Buildings, and Chilean engineers have been very active in world earthquake conferences.

“There is a lot of reinforced concrete in Chile, which is normal in Latin America,” Professor Filiatrault said. “The only issue in this, like any earthquakes, are the older buildings and residential construction that might not have been designed according to these codes.”




KAUAI, Hawaii — Evacuation alarms sounded in Hawaii’s vulnerable coastal areas at 6 a.m. local time Saturday, (11 a.m. Eastern) as the region prepared for what federal officials say could be a dangerous — but most likely not catastrophic — tsunami in the aftermath of the earthquake in Chile earlier in the day.
The message to residents and tourists in Hawaii was don’t panic, there’s time. The tsunami was originally expected to arrive in Hawaii at 11:20 a.m., or 4:20 p.m. Eastern time, but residents were told that it would hit Hilo Bay on Hawaii Island at 11:05 a.m.; on Honolulu at 11:37, and on Kauai at 11:42 as the initial waves moved up the island chain.

Speaking in Washington, President Obama said that he had met with his national security team, which was taking steps to ensure that Hawaii and the West Coast were on alert.

“I urge citizens to listen closely to the instructions of local officials, who will have the full support of the federal government as they prepare for a potential tsunami, and recover from any damage that may be caused,” he said of residents of Hawaii, Guam and other Pacific territories. “I also urge our citizens along the West Coast to be prepared as well, as there may be dangerous waves and currents throughout the day. Again, the most important thing that you can do is to carefully heed the instructions of your state and local officials.”

The decision to evacuate coastal areas and handing this evacuation is the responsibility of state and local officials in Hawaii, a Homeland Security official had said earlier.

Hawaii has not issued a statewide evacuation order, instead leaving that decision to individual counties.

As the sirens went off in Hawaii, local television news stations stressed that the alarms were a warning, not an evacuation notice. But residents and tourists were told to stay away from beaches and stock up with enough water and nonperishable food for five to seven days. The media also stressed a vertical evacuation — that is, waiting out the tsunami on at least the third floor of a building.

W. Craig Fugate, the FEMA administrator, said that his department and the Department of Homeland Security were “closely monitoring the situation, and officials are in close contact with the State of Hawaii and the U.S. territories in the Pacific Ocean that could be impacted by a potential tsunami.”

“FEMA stands ready to assist should a request for assistance be made,” he said in a statement, “and does have pre-deployed assets in Hawaii, including food, water, generators and other resources. We urge all individuals to follow the direction provided by local officials.”

Earlier in the day, Brian R. Shiro, geophysicist at NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Center in Ewa Beach, Hawaii, said that computer models show that the impact will be greatest in such spots as Hilo Bay, which closed its airport at 6 a.m. in anticipation, and Kahului Harbor in Maui.

In those areas, the tsunami waves could reach as high as six to 10 feet, Mr. Shiro said. Elsewhere in Hawaii, the waves will likely be only about two to three feet.

Officials warned that all coastal areas in Hawaii could be affected because the wave can reach around the islands as it passes the region.

“Urgent action should be taken to protect lives and property,” the Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said in a bulletin. “All shores are at risk no matter which direction they face.”

In a statement, the National Weather Service explained the dangers of the tsunami, saying that its crest “can last 5 to 15 minutes or more and extensively flood coastal areas. The danger can continue for many hours after the initial wave as subsequent waves arrive. Tsunami wave heights cannot be predicted and the first wave may not be the largest.”

“Tsunami waves efficiently wrap around islands,” the service noted. “All shores are at risk no matter which direction they face.”

In addition, it warned that debris picked up and carried by a tsunami “amplifies its destructive power.”

Already, some boat owners were moving their boats away from the coast, to avoid damage when the waves arrive. Beaches were and pre-determined evacuation zones in certain coastal areas were being cleared.

Tourists staying in modern, high-rise resort hotels will be safe, Mr. Shiro said, as long as they are above the third floor. Anyone in the coastal areas should listen to directions offered from local authorities. Buses were being readied to evacuate residents and vacationers. Tourist areas could be the most vulnerable because of their beach location in the usual best-weather spots on many of the islands.

“Get off the shore line,” John Cummings, Oahu Civil Defense spokesman, told Reuters. “We are closing all the beaches and telling people to drive out of the area.”

Buses will patrol beaches and take people to parks in a voluntary process expected to last five hours, Reuters reported, adding that more than an hour before sirens sounded, lines of cars snaked for blocks from gas stations in Honolulu.

Over all, the event should pass in Hawaii without widespread, catastrophic damage or major loss of life, Mr. Shiro predicted.

“We are taking it very seriously,” Mr. Shiro said. “But this is not a big one.”

But particularly in certain vulnerable harbor areas, he warned that area residents should take the warning seriously.

“In harbors, it could be quite dangerous,” he said.

A tsunami is essentially a wave. But it will look like a rise in sea level, or more like a flood, he said. But it takes place very quickly. An initial wave will come in and then follow up waves will arrive, most likely 20 or so minutes later, in a pattern that could continue for several hours.

“The waves are so big that to the observer it looks like a very big tide,” he said.

The last time there was a Pacific wide tsunami warning—as has now taken place—was in 1964, Mr. Shiro said.

There have been past regional warnings in Hawaii, such as in 1994, that passed with no tsunami impact at all. But tsunamis historically have caused major damage and loss of life in Hawaii, most recently in 1975, when two people were killed in one event, Mr. Shiro said.

“So far, the models and based on the information we have, in Hawaii, most shores will experience two to three feet, which is not that big,” he said. “But you should still avoid swimming or surfing.”

I intend to walk out of my hand, a sunset, or sit back and watch the sunset, the stars lighting up our skin, with intensity. I propose to look at my eyes, a touch, a theme, a rainy day, dreams, words, or stay silent, is the reality. Think if accepted, at heart, it would be ... honestly.

Love the verb expressed with passion. It offers, receives, comes, comes as light leakage, the heartbeat. The soul does dawn, stars, smiles, pride, courage, encouragement, more sensation. Necessity of fate when it is, that when you get skin conquest, consents to a miracle, life and hand illusion.

If I'm crying, If I'm scared, If I'm bleeding, if I'm drifting, if I'm dying, If you have fled in silence, if you leave me then I can not, if this disease is my voice, no one knows if combat her or if I am sinking in this truth.

Their laughter and tears, all my memories, the meaning of my life, be so private, in the shadows of the past, beauty, beast, every day a heaven or hell, the face I can not forget, the summer or fall that I long remember the pleasure machine and without words only with love always love.

When I found I was losing, getting in touch with your being, touching the spirit which influenced my walk, a prominent ritual of loving caresses that look as smooth and as glamorous as you know, act, in the sky your kisses fill me, the love your heart now let me see.

Your love a romantic inspiration, I go crazy but I mastered mix of mystery without explanation, roses and thorns that sometimes hurt, most delicious honey and pure temptation, the sweet kiss of passion, always on time with safety, do not try change in my life you're the cure and the disease.

If life permits me a moment beside you, draw you a scene in my dreams, an extraordinary day in your hands, stroking your face with a gentle motion, cheerful and quiet simplicity of your goodness, the same noise of a rock skimming your skin. Ironic and tragic, your lips are shudder, love after love, simple words with earthy language, I will stay until the last awakening.
Sleeping on your back and watch in silence, heaven in your eyes, thinking you find in your laughter my joys, beyond good and evil, the love you taught me to create. So dangerous and beautiful, inescapable and obsessive, stumbles and is raised against winds and tides constantly. Take me to the depths of your soul, body to body, flying through your kisses, the center of my heart for your warmth.

I know you love me, love the moody and crazy, began with simple friendship, waiting in silence to the destination, trying to sometimes nonsensical, this crazy heart, found the way to your complicity. Without barriers or borders, where about words, freely and slowly, without promise was opening steps, growing like wildfire, in an instant my life, I returned the desire of love and happiness in you.

I live in your hugs and feel the wind brushing my lips. As the rainbow in the sky let me draw hearts of eternal love. With these kisses quench my thirst dawn in this beautiful journey through my being. Determined to find the closest place where only you and I start again, the story that one day we gave him a finalist.


Beyond the power to find a reason: Guilty, kisses, caresses, arguments, the world's a graveyard of dreams. Insomnia, words, time, protocol, a premonition, an explanation. Absence, life, pain, tears, memories without eyes. footprint, find, forgetfulness, shut up, change, embraces in the soul, a sense of mystery.

The night of witness, a feeling of loneliness, between sobs and silence, a heart beats trying to raise penalties. The purest sound, the courage of love and life that begins to struggle. Moon shines is destiny, a legend, hope, courage, and every moment, the legacy of reality. When the angels come together to help, dreams, heroes, friends, embrace life with your soul in the unjust reality.


Natten till vittne, en känsla av ensamhet, mellan snyftningar och tystnad, slår ett hjärta försöka höja påföljder. Den renaste ljud, modet av kärlek och liv som börjar att kämpa. Månen skiner är öde, en legend, hopp, mod, och varje ögonblick, arvet från verkligheten. När änglarna samlas för att hjälpa, drömmar, hjältar, vänner, omfamna livet med din själ i den orättvisa verklighet.


Enthusiasm: To look ahead Happiness: To stay fresh problems: To stay strong Punishment: Hope For human knowing you: To keep fighting every day Failures: To keep you humble Success: To keep me longing: To live life Wealth: To meet your needs Faith: To banish depression Decision: To make every day better and love: because without love we are nothing

Strange sensations as usual, draw attention sinuous figures, the heart of Venus between night light and hide the story of a duel, Dawn focuses on a close-up on his dream, the final blow as the highest expression of love and the treason without remedy.


Your love rescued me from darkness to keep me smiling, I never thought to find real love in that look so perfect that I saved from loneliness, angel from heaven and blue star, just a dream to see your beautiful light, I feel captive near you learned to be happy in my heart the flame lit, finding the control beyond the sun, soft ocean and shy as I fall.


Life is short, work as his first day delayed forgive quickly kiss, love truly laugh uncontrollably and never stop smiling for the strangest reason whatsoever. Life can not be the party we expected but once we're here, we smile and give thanks ...


Saying that does not seek company, which I touched other bodies or kiss other lips without thinking, I lie. Foolishly believed in a love that did not exist, have challenged hugs naked in this cold desolate. I lied and pretended to want to fill my pain to awaken without being asleep, fragile hypocrisy of a false lie, hoping to achieve that feeling that you felt.


Today you do not have here. I know you're in another's arms and pretend to be happy, even though you say you love her, I forgot, I see in your eyes, be reflected as disconsolate soul, sadly disappointed, your sweet smile and no joy , yet not force the destination, leaving you to follow your path and you find that you are looking for, here in silence while I still love you.


Love immaculate flower offered, body given, kiss reconciler, enlarged heart, mouth of honey, expected silence, discouraged encouraging love your piss poor rich, suffering transformed, or your ills, passionate dusk, waiting in hope, face delivered soul dawn of sorrow lifted, your wounds, honey, will have been cured.


I seek and I can not find my eyes and banged in both mourn this heart still beats non-stop, you get away from me and only in these dreams, sighs that were and are no longer, you play to want to hurt my soul again more broken promises do not cease to be in these letters one days infamous far left post.


In this year goes and another begins, you think there will be things that made you laugh mourn and other, life happens and your there, so dark and so difficult is there, but this is so, we walk through the route we have created, full of adventures and trials, some broken. Put your mind blank and enjoy of what is coming a new day a new year, that you can ask if everything is there in that little red felt very strongly that beats strong within you, when you feel let down not believe that there someone somewhere is thinking of you when you do not forget to silence talk that this is life a world of comings and goings in which the highest bidder wins is delivered giving without expecting, from the depths of his heart, and never forget that smile smile soothes the soul and calm the most violent storms, if you lose there is someone save it in your deep memory as well as a large chest you have in goodness of your mind full of the most beautiful secrets, you'll see that the time will make you find another opportunity, that fall, mourn, smile, and suffering are the answers has to start this new year has felt, Surrender your all full of faith,


You are my existence, warm morning, my sea and my address. The perfect thief that stole my precious heart with words. Always beside me with kisses and smiles I love your being. Cures my past hurts and turn off my pain with caresses . Our souls safely navigate the heavy fire of love.


Love is more than an expression. Love tends to be passionate .. Love is deep, and without understanding mean. Love moves, and gives shudder illusion. Love is of two, gives and takes without elcome . Love is all you think or just your good reason. Love takes in and puts your heart. Love you awakens the soul and wrapped in other dimensions. Love is a feeling without any explanation.

Often they leave you dreaming. Deep thoughts that only you can stop. We play with our bodies without wanting to finish. Between my heart and yours a tie us together. splendor flame of love and freedom. Delivered to your arms for fear of being alone. Unbridled passion that we do not know where to end. Mistakenly, I do not even want to leave you love.

want to hug taken deep sea, where the stars light up our journey. Dream and kiss you ever wake up between rose petals and green meadows, where the angels play with our sorrows. Transforming this love in melody without strings, succumbing with you till you drop and this passion ever die without ever finishing.

As if all done for love, those sighs that are born of my heart, With eyes closed, remembering yesterday, I create notes, where you have desire, Subtle, quiet, transparent and my heart while he takes a thousand sighs, warm lips that give me a thousand kisses, hands caressing and mischievous eyes. Like moonlight on your skin so sweet I feel for you, gentle and always faithful

Open your heart and let your soul listen, feel the breeze, whisper in your ear, words of love that invites you to enjoy. Wrapped in your arms my love, I want to be part of your breath until the last breath. Cowardly or wise, this love I only want to kiss you, feel my warm look. As part of your shadow, light of passion, the wind carries my voice to an infinite place.


Love is to feel it inside, fill left without measure. Love is hope, strength, lust, passion, tears and life. Love is reaching the summit of the mountain without fear of falling. Love is the heart galloped be felt between looks. Love is the need to touch the sky with his hands. Love's embrace until the last kiss in the soul.


Sensation, pleasure, complicity, hidden on your loving me look beautiful, to the joy of awakening, mutual respect and sincerity. Your art is born of me, with madness and delirium, are my inspiration, a fleeting place in paradise with your arms and I age. All our kisses, sighs, touches our hearts together in a single soul lost in the silence of eternity.


Dawn of purple roses stirred in my heart, beating and handed over to this relationship, which taught us the art of love with passion and pain. On arms of flame that caress my feeling, I beg of lust and anguish with satisfaction. We have years together on this journey full of jealousy, joys, sorrows, and above all lots of love.


I mean right now through this letter and sincerely you deserve ... YOUR FRIENDSHIP Boom. I mean that if I cease to exist tomorrow, we observe in the sky, I will care and, above all, try not suffer. I mean, if you leave this world, God forbid, you remember, and always will. Know that I love you and that's very important to me because there are times you think you should not speak for ANY reason. I know I should tell you before how much I appreciate, but if for some reason we fail to see, you this note to let you know how much I love you. And if you do not quite tell me and I ceased to exist, never mind that the mere fact that our friendship was born, I know that I appreciate. Remember you never know when we will no longer exist, so you let me say this today:!

I'd give anything to be with you I'd give anything to see you again today in that apartment Where the sun shines hot and windy, I'd give anything to see you again,Would give anything to feel your body would give anything to have you near again And cherish your back while you go tending soft, delicate,Love with love I do not know if you live alone with my loneliness I miss you away Feeling the truth in love with love for me Looking for your heat and cold and darkness meeting would give anything to be with you.I'd give anything now to call would give anything to hear your voice on the phone To fix my life depressed fool would give anything to see you again love with love ...

Take my life, the absolute certainty that steals your air space without doubt, without streets or to overcome. Untie my exquisite fragrance, your heart a bustling seaport with lust and pleasure center. True intuition for love, for love is worth everything in life, dream, until our souls withstand without lack.


Only if I could be with you, you slept in my arms And look in the silence could only draw you a scene of my dreams Where you are always present
With you here just tell you what I feel is that I like your face, I love your hair dream of your voice when you say I love you I love to hug, getting lost in your scent
Being able to find heaven in your eyes I love your laugh, I like your face I like to think you're crazy for me I want you to feel me calm And when night comes, take care of the soul
Like waking up in the distance without your skin next to mine Love can send your photo kisses in the wind, look at the moon at the same time Count one more day with you here .... just do not know what I miss .

BABY ELEPHANT
The San Diego Zoo ushered in Valentine’s Day with a bundle of joy that’s not so little.

A male African elephant was born about 2 a.m. Sunday at the zoo’s Wild Animal Park.

He and his mother Ndlula are reportedly doing well. Visitors camping overnight at the zoo could hear the herd trumpeting in the early morning -- a common behavior when a calf is born, according to the Associated Press.

The elephant, which hasn’t been given a name yet, is the sixth calf born to a herd that was brought to the park in 2003 from Swaziland.

Officials have not released the calf’s weight, but newborn African elephants typically weigh between 200 and 250 pounds and stand about 3 feet tall.

You don’t have to go to the zoo to catch a glimpse of the dozen elephants at the park. Try spotting them on the zoo’s elephant cam.

BLAINE, Minn. — Betsy Sathers wears the glow of a new mother as she perches on the couch in her family room, smiling and chatting with visitors while still managing to keep an eye on the 2-year-old twins burbling and cavorting at her feet.

Sathers – whose husband was killed when a Minneapolis freeway bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River in 2007 – is realizing her dreams of being a mother with the adoption of Ross and Alyse from Haiti.

The twins, brought to Sathers' home just days after the earthquake in Haiti, suck from baby bottles and drag toys across the floor. On the wall hangs a framed wedding day photo of Sathers and her late husband, Scott.
"I wasn't sure if I would ever be a wife again, and I was really all right with that. But I knew that I wanted to be a mom and I thought about it and I prayed about it a long, long time," Sathers said.

Betsy and Scott Sathers had been married just 10 months when the Interstate 35W bridge fell apart in August 2007, killing 13 people and injuring 145.

The young couple had talked about starting a family. At the time of the collapse, Betsy Sathers had thought she might even be pregnant. She later found she was not, adding to her pain: "I was grieving the loss of my husband and the family we had hoped to have together."

Now the children she hoped to have are finally here.

"I don't think I rescued them," Sathers, 33, said of the twins. "I feel like if anything, they've rescued me."

Sathers started the paperwork to adopt from Haiti last January. On Aug. 17, she received the referral – boy-girl twins.
She made three trips to Haiti to visit her children, the last one over New Year's Day. The quake hit Jan. 12, killing at least 150,000 people. Sathers, back home in her northern Minneapolis suburb, didn't know if her children were alive or dead.

The answer came in a phone call from a stranger – Rob Kramer, chairman and co-founder of Global Water Trust, which works to bring clean water to developing nations, and CEO of PopRule, an Internet technology company. Kramer had flown to Haiti after the quake and was helping legally process children who already had been adopted when he got an e-mail from a friend of Sathers' who told him about the twins.

Kramer was in a car leaving an orphanage when he received the e-mail. He asked the driver to stop in the middle of traffic and went to the van behind him to talk to Lucy Armistead, the founder and head of Kentucky Adoption Services. Armistead had just been at the same orphanage, picking up children eligible to be adopted out of the country.

Kramer said he asked Armistead if she knew "the boy and girl twins, Schneider and Schneidine" – Ross and Alyse's Haitian names – and explained the story. Armistead figured the twins were back at the orphanage. Still, she and her co-worker looked around the van, which was carrying about nine children, and found the twins in the back seat.

"I said, `You've got to be kidding me,'" Kramer recalls. "I said, `Let's just dash to the (U.S.) Embassy.'"

Ross and Alyse had survived the quake along with the 45 or so other children at the orphanage. The building in the Port-au-Prince suburb of Carrefour, at the epicenter of the quake, was destroyed, and the children were sleeping in tents and under tarps on a concrete slab across the street.

By Jan. 22, Kramer was on a private jet to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., with the twins. Sathers and her mother rushed to get on a flight to pick up her children.

The twins arrived a little dehydrated and, at 22 pounds each, a bit underweight, Sathers said. But she said the children are gaining weight and taking to American food.

Sathers, a consultant who plans to take a year's leave to be home with the twins, said she hopes people will continue to support Haitians through prayer and donations or volunteer work for relief organizations.

"It's a happy ending for my family, but there's still so much devastation there. There's so many other kids that it's not a happy ending there."
CLINTON BUSH HAITI FUND..

Support Haiti Relief and Recovery Efforts
The survivors of the devastating earthquake in Haiti need our immediate help.

What we do right now determines how many lives we can save. Together, we can help communities get back on their feet.

Fill out the form to donate to the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund. One hundred percent of your donation will go toward relief and recovery efforts in Haiti. If you give before March 1, you can deduct the donation on your 2009 tax returns.


On the Net:

Hand In Hand International Adoptions: http://www.hihiadopt.org

Academy Awards:
Best Picture

In the back pages of the press notes for the Coen brothers' "A Serious Man," where filmmakers always tell you how environmentally sensitive they've been in the course of making the movie, we learn that "No Jews were harmed in the making of this motion picture." OK, it's always good to hear that no one was physically harmed. But when it comes to being subjected to often merciless satire, there are a lot of Jews in this vaguely autobiographical account of the travails of a downtrodden, 1960s-era Jewish physics professor who takes it on the chin.

Seriousman
After seeing the picture myself last night, I'm betting that we won't see many rabbis using the movie as a starting point for any Yom Kippur sermons. Focus Features, which is opening the movie Oct. 2 in New York, L.A. and Minneapolis (the Coens' hometown), doesn't want any reviews of the film up yet. So consider what I have to say as an appreciation, not a critique. I can certainly reveal this much: The rabbis in "A Serious Man" take their lumps from the Coens, who seem to have saved up all the sarcastic remarks and deadpan dismissals they came up with as kids in Hebrew school and worked them into this movie's comic portrayal of empty-headed rabbinical authority.

I'm no expert on Judaism, but as someone who's pretty familiar with Jewish filmmaking, I'd have to say that the Coens are in a category all of their own. Over the past half-century, we've seen all sorts of Jewish sensibilities grafted into our movies and TV shows, from the Borscht Belt mugging of Mel Brooks to the sleek one-liners of Neil Simon to the frat-boy raunch of Adam Sandler and the cranky self-involvement of Larry David. But the Coens are originals. "A Serious Man" offers the occasional whiff of Woody Allen (from his "Deconstructing Harry" era) and a definite kinship with Philip Roth (the movie has a bored, slit-eyed Jewish sexpot housewife who could be right out of "Portnoy's Complaint").

But the Coens are sui generis Semites. They practice the comedy of Jewish alienation. Having grown up in 1960s suburban Minneapolis, the offspring of two college professors (hence the whiff of autobiography in "Serious Man"), their attitude toward alienation is entirely different than if they'd come of age in Westchester or Woodland Hills. Although the film is ostensibly about a beleaguered professor whose life is falling apart (his wife is leaving him; his son owes money to a pot dealer; his daughter wants a nose job; his wonderfully weird, unemployable brother has set up camp on the living room couch), the character the Coens clearly identify with the most is the professor's 13-year-old son, who seems uncannily like a 13-year-old version of Joel Coen (who would have been roughly the same age in 1967, the year in which the movie is set).

Bored and stoned most of the time, the kid bugs his dad to fix the TV antenna so he can watch "F Troop" and passes the time in Hebrew class listening to the Jefferson Airplane on the earpiece of his transistor radio, which sets up one of great jokes of the movie, which I won't give away, except to say that it somehow involves Grace Slick and an ancient, wonderfully inscrutable bearded rabbi. In "A Serious Man," we learn -- and I suppose you could call this one of the fundamental tenets of alienation -- that if you desperately look to wise men, in this case your local rabbis, for answers to the big questions in life, you're bound to be disappointed. It's a lesson the Beatles discovered at nearly the same time as this movie occurs, when they went to India to study with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who ended up being such a disappointment that he was roundly mocked in the White Album's song, "Sexy Sadie."

According to the Coens, "A Serious Man" grew out of a story they wanted to tell about a bar mitzvah boy and a rabbi who was loosely based on a rabbi they knew as kids. As Ethan Coen described him: "This rabbi we knew was a sage, a Yoda. He said nothing, but he had a lot of charisma."

In other words, he was the Coen brothers' perfect idea of a spiritual leader.


An Education' director Lone Scherfig doesn't go by the book
PARK CITY, UTAH — To see Lone Scherfig's "An Education" is to wonder how a film could have such an unerring instinct for human nature with all its foibles and quirks. To meet the engaging, empathetic Danish director at the Sundance Film Festival, where "An Education" had its premiere Sunday, is to have all those questions answered.

Like its predecessors on Scherfig's resume, "Italian for Beginners" and "Waldo Wants to Kill Himself," "An Education" is a keenly observed film whose log line -- the relationship between Carey Mulligan's 16-year-old British schoolgirl and Peter Sarsgaard's older man in 1961 London -- gives no hint at all about the nuanced and unforeseen pleasures it presents.
Good as is, "An Education" was originally intended to be made by British director Beeban Kidron ("Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason"). When Kidron moved to another project, Scherfig got the call -- with costar Sarsgaard already cast -- because she shares both a sensibility and the same London agent with screenwriter Nick Hornby ("High Fidelity"), who adapted this from a memoir by British journalist Lynn Barber.

"Both Nick and I are quite shy, and we are about sharing the humor and the love for people who are like that with the audience," Scherfig says.

"We want to make people understand them and smile at moments seen in a loving way."

To bring this familiar-sounding story to life in a completely unfamiliar way, Scherfig utilized the aesthetic principles that have always guided her. "I avoid things that are too pretentious, too sugar sweet," she says. "Sentimentality never suits anything."

More than that, Scherfig thinks about the relationship between moviegoers and movies in an unusual way. Cinema, she says, is "an interpretive engine between the filmmaker and the audience. Audiences want to feel that the film sees them rather than the other way around. They want to feel understood by the film."

Scherfig also trusts her instincts. Costar Mulligan, who is exceptional as a young woman eager to "talk to people who know lots about lots," had auditioned and been put on tape by the previous regime but was not among the leading contenders before Scherfig viewed all the tapes and said, "How about this one?"

"She moved me," Scherfig says simply when asked to explain her choice for the role of Jenny. "It was more something I felt than something I saw. I liked her as a person, she had timing, humor, she was hard-working and strong enough to go through this process, and she looked like someone you would want to keep looking at."


AVATAR
EXCLUSIVE: PART 1 of the HERO COMPLEX interview

“Go ahead, fire away, I’m your guy.” That’s the first thing James Cameron said to me, and I had to smile – I certainly had plenty to ask him about. I had just sat down and watched about 35 minutes of footage from “Avatar” and, to put it bluntly, I was dazzled. I saw more footage than fans at Comic-Con International (I saw, for instance, a tense scene toward the end of the film as Sam Worthington’s character, Jake Sully, is made a prisoner on the alien world of Pandora) and even found out how the film ends (don’t worry, no spoilers here). But let's get to it -- this is Part 1 of the Hero Complex interview with Oscar-winner Cameron, the 54-year-old Canadian filmmaker whose 20th Century Fox sci-fi epic "Avatar" reaches theaters on Dec. 18.

GB: Jim, congratulations on the film, it’s very, very compelling. I'm excited to see it in its entirety and even more excited to talk to you about it.

JC: Well, thanks; I’m really glad you liked it. And that’s what we were hoping for. We’ve been working like crazy on this for a long time. And what we want is for people to like it, so that’s nice to hear.

GB: I have to say it was refreshing to see a big, special effects film that was not based on a bestselling novel, a comic book, toy, old television show. That’s rare these days, and it’s a treat to go in, sit down and have no idea where the plot and the characters were going to go.

JC: It’s simultaneously one of the great strengths and one of the potential weaknesses. We have no brand value. We have to create that brand value. “Avatar” means something to that group of fans that know this film is coming, but to the other 99% of the public it’s a nonsense word and we have to hope we can educate them. Well, I shouldn’t say a nonsense word – it doesn’t mean anything specific in terms of a brand association. And in fact there may be even a slight negative one because more people know about the Saturday morning cartoon, the anime, than about this particular film. We’ve got to create that [brand] from scratch. On the other hand, ultimately, it is probably the film’s greatest strength in the long run. We’ve had these big, money-making franchise films for a long time, “Star Trek” and “Star Wars,” you know, “Harry Potter,” and there’s a certain sort of comfort factor in that; you know what you’re going to get. But there’s no kind of shock of the new that’s possible with that. It’s been a while since something that took us on a journey, something that grabbed us by the lapels and dragged us out the door and took us on a journey of surprise.

GB: “The Matrix” immediately springs to mind…

JC: Yes, yes, that’s a very, very good example. That’s something where we had no real way of knowing what that film was going to be about and it really just took us on a great ride.

GB: And like “The Matrix,” this movie presents this immersive experience. The alien world and the technology you’re using to tell the story, it’s a big movie .

JC: The story is told very much from character. You go on Jake’s journey with him. It actually starts quite small. It starts close to him, in his apartment with him, and it just expands and expands in scope as it goes along.

GB: I smiled at the “You’re not in Kansas anymore" line when the main character reaches the alien world. There really is this “Wizard of Oz” sense of transportation when the story reaches the planet of Pandora.

JC: Yeah. It’s my favorite movie; I had to get it in there somewhere. The production designer was Rick Carter, who actually played that out. He thought how it was, in some ways, like Dorothy’s journey. I didn’t quite get as much of that [when I first wrote it]. You do things sometimes as a writer subconsciously, things you’re not even aware of. I’m always comfortable doing things instinctively because I see it as taping into this vein of archetype that works for a broader audience base. I don’t question what I’m doing if it feels right. There might be some other references there I might not be aware of.

GB: You wrote the first script for this film almost 15 years ago. While you were waiting for technology to reach the point where it could be made, I’m curious how much of that very earliest story remained intact.

JC: I had to rework to make it possible. My treatment was so expansive and novelistic that it needed to be necked down just to make it something that could be done on the screen. This film is done on an epic scale, but it's done within the parameters of a Hollywood movie. What I found is that instead a script I had written the outline of a novel, and it was just too much story, too much back story, too many secondary characters … but look, sometimes lightning just strikes; you have write everything down, get it done. Better to weed it out later and not miss an idea. It was essentially the longest script, in terms of the amount of time it took me to get a workable draft. The first time I tried, it ended up being more than 200 pages, so I had to go back and throw out big chunks, a lot of ideas went out. But I have to say the essence of all the big ideas stayed and I felt pretty good about that.

GB: The heritage of the project and the mystery of it, since it’s not an adaptation, have created this fairly intense interest among the fanboy sector. That was obvious with the interest leading up to Comic-Con International. Do you feel you have to win fans over now to create the sort of success you want for this movie?

JC: I think there are no real negatives because we aren’t going to get prejudged like “Watchmen” or even a Batman or Spider-Man movie because you don’t have all that history and that huge, brand-based mythology that you have to live up to. We aren’t going to piss anybody off because they don’t know what this thing is. Nobody read the novel, nobody read the graphic novel, we’re not going to be playing against expectation. They aren’t going to be viewing us as a disappointment or letdown before the movie even starts. This is a doorway and they don’t know what’s on the other side. We’re going to open it for them.

There are a lot of fans of this kind of science fiction and fantasy film, and I think it's pretty fertile soil for us. I don’t want to sound like, you know, ‘Pride goeth before the fall,” or too much hubris, but I think we get those fans to support this. I think our greater challenge is the wider public, which isn’t as predisposed to embrace the movie like those fantasy and sci-fi fans. We need to talk to that audience and make them believe that this is a must-see even if they aren’t sci-fi fans. And I’m not putting down Comic-Con fans. When I go down there I’m among my peeps. It’s a great place to unveil “Avatar.”

The making of 'Blind Side' a real-life drama
The saga behind the film is one of rejection, luck and coincidence. But writer-director John Lee Hancock overcame the hurdles.

After Julia Roberts turned down the starring role, executives at 20th Century Fox met with writer-director John Lee Hancock with a plan for "fixing" the script for his proposed movie "The Blind Side": Why not change the leading part from a pistol-packing Southern supermom to a man and redraft the film as a father-son story?

It didn't matter that the film was based on the life of Leigh Anne Tuohy, a white Memphis interior decorator who along with her family adopted a 350-pound, homeless African American teenager, Michael Oher, and helped him become an academic success and football phenomenon who today starts for the NFL's Baltimore Ravens. If Roberts didn't want to do the movie, they would only make it with a male lead.
Hancock relates this story, which Fox denies, and says it was the nadir of his long struggle to get the film made, but that he understood the studio's unease. "The Blind Side" was "a feathered fish" that didn't fit their marketing pigeonholes. "It's not really a sports movie, although it's got sports in it. It's also not a chick flick," though it was written for a female star. "My take on it was . . . there was something for everybody," Hancock said. "That's a suspicious thing for people to hear. They don't trust that."

Hancock, of course, turned out to be right, beyond even his wildest expectations. With a box office gross of $220 million and counting, it is a surprise hit, a potential Oscar contender and the envy of studio execs all over town. It has helped reignite Sandra Bullock's career and made Alcon, the tiny independent production and finance company that made the movie after the majors rejected it, look like the smartest kid in class.

The perceived box office weaknesses of "The Blind Side" turned out to be its strengths. The film is attracting a diverse audience, people who might live together but rarely attend the same movies: football fans, older women, infrequent filmgoers and that huge swath of the American public that attends church every Sunday.

Hancock, 52, thinks there is a lesson here for a film industry fixated on "event" movies and multi-film "franchises."

"To the studios, it's an anathema. It can't be a real movie unless it cost hundreds of millions of dollars and has to have all the effects, and 16-year-old boys need to want to see it to be successful. That simply isn't true."

Neill Blomkamp's 'District 9' wins over fanboys and Peter Jackson
The science fiction film is about aliens who get stranded in South Africa.

In the docu-style, sci-fi thriller "District 9," which arrives in theaters Aug. 14, hundreds of thousands of aliens become stranded in South Africa after their massive spaceship comes to a standstill above downtown Johannesburg.

Unable to fix the craft, this massive population of tentacle-waving, exoskeleton-sheathed aliens eventually outstays its welcome; they become reviled by humans for burdening the country's welfare system even though all they really want to do is go home. Corralled into District 9 -- a rubbish-strewn refugee camp that calls to mind Mumbai's septic squalor, captured to striking effect in "Slumdog Millionaire" -- they are segregated from the general populace by barbed wire. There, the film's sentient yet excitable aliens are denied such basic necessities as running water and are denigrated by native earthlings as "prawns" for their resemblance to Sasquatch-sized shellfish.
Given the film's real-life setting amid Soweto's teeming townships and its segregationist signage -- "For humans only! Non-humans banned!" read placards in the movie -- it's impossible not to correlate the aliens' predicament with recent South African history. And that's no accident. Call "District 9" the world's first autobiographical alien apartheid movie

Writer-director Neill Blomkamp grew up in Johannesburg during an era of white minority rule; later, memories of the apartheid government's social divisiveness and authoritarian control became "the most powerful influence" in shaping his creative vision.

"It all had a huge impact on me: the white government and the paramilitary police -- the oppressive, iron-fisted military environment," Blomkamp said over breakfast recently in a Santa Monica hotel. He appeared boyish, fresh-faced in jeans and a button-down shirt, his hair spiky with product, while exuding a preternatural sense of focus. "Blacks, for the most part, were kept separate from whites. And where there was overlap, there were very clearly delineated hierarchies of where people were allowed to go."

He continued: "Those ideas wound up in every pixel in 'District 9.' "

Arriving as one of the hottest properties at San Diego's recent Comic-Con, the movie wowed its fanboy premiere audience and set the TweetDeck alight with reports that "District 9" is the real deal: one of the most original sci-fi films to come along in years.

The Iraq war -- from the troops' point of view
A bomb disposal squad is at the heart of 'Hurt Locker,' which was inspired by its writer's experience, embedded with a similar unit.
Much has been made of the lack of success -- both at the box office and artistically -- of the topical movies that have come out since the American invasion of Iraq.

"The Hurt Locker," a full-tilt action picture directed by Kathryn Bigelow that also ruminates on the psychology of combat, is looking to buck that trend.

The people behind the film, which screens today at the Toronto International Film Festival, feel that their picture has some major differences.

"The most important distinction that was in our minds is that none of the movies that have come out so far, or were in development when we were in development, were combat movies," said writer Mark Boal. "They were all either political polemic, or they were home-front, domestic dramas. And we felt what distinguished us was nobody was really doing the in-the-trenches, soldier's-point-of-view kind of classic war film. To me, that's a big point of difference."

"The Hurt Locker," Boal said, is a soldiers' term for "a place of ultimate pain."

The film follows a three-man explosive ordnance disposal team as the trio finish their tour of duty in Baghdad, dismantling bombs in combat conditions day in, day out. Two of the soldiers (played by Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty) have worked together for some time, and they are immediately put off by what they see as the needlessly reckless and dangerous behavior of a new bomb technician (Jeremy Renner).
'This is the war'

Improvised explosive devices "are the centerpiece of the war. They are the key weapon of the insurgency," Boal said. "So, to me, the bomb squad is right at the heart of the war. To not make a movie about the bomb squad would be like making a movie about Vietnam that doesn't take place in the jungle. This is the war."

Bigelow and Boal first met when they collaborated on the short-lived television series "The Inside." When Boal told Bigelow -- best known for her sharp, smart action pictures such as "Point Break" and "Strange Days" -- that he was going to Iraq to be embedded as a journalist with a bomb disposal team, her initial response was simply to hope that he got home safe. When he returned and told her what he had seen, she thought of something else: a film.

"Mark had such incredible firsthand observations," Bigelow said. "The opportunity to make this movie as realistic as humanly possible became not only a challenge, but a personal directive.

Famous faces

Although the main trio of actors may look familiar to audiences even if they are not yet exactly stars -- Bigelow calls them "stars in the making" -- there are a few who pop up along the way who are definitely well-known, including Ralph Fiennes, David Morse, Evangeline Lilly and Guy Pearce.

As characters come and go, and the most recognizable faces don't always stay on-screen long, a sense of unease creeps across viewers' minds, a feeling that in this environment anything could happen.

"I wanted to early on create the ground rules for this film, to basically create as much tension as possible," Bigelow said of the casting choices. "You don't immediately have a response as to who will live and who will die. And I think there's an interesting tension that comes from that alone."

The film was shot over 44 days from July to September 2007. Working with "United 93" cinematographer Barry Ackroyd and four camera crews often shooting simultaneously, Bigelow ended up with more than 200 hours of footage. (The film's final running time is just over two hours.)


Kathryn Bigelow and the making of 'The Hurt Locker'
Kathryn Bigelow aims to make 'entertaining and substantive' movies. She's scored on both counts with 'The Hurt Locker.'

Hurt Locker" screenwriter Mark Boal remembers running around the Jordanian desert with director Kathryn Bigelow, watching her scale hills in 115-degree heat to set up shots for their modestly budgeted film. By the end of the day, when everyone else was exhausted, Bigelow would look like she was just beginning her morning, raring and ready to go shoot the next scene.

"She's got those Viking genes," Boal says. "I'm serious. They live forever, those people. It's the Viking genes and a whole lot of salmon."
Bigelow celebrated her 58th birthday last month but looks at least 20 years younger. She's clearly not someone you'd want to challenge to any kind of endurance test. Boal once joked that in her spare time, Bigelow liked to "make quilts and plant daffodils." When told of Boal's remarks, Bigelow laughs long and appreciatively and says, "That's a good one."

No, she doesn't belong to the Friday Night Knitting Club. Her movies aim to put you smack in the middle of intense experience, be it robbing banks ("Point Break"), cavorting with vampires ("Near Dark") or defusing bombs ( "The Hurt Locker"). Her 1995 virtual-reality film, "Strange Days," addressed this obsession head-on, with Ralph Fiennes jacking addicts into any experience they could imagine.

"It's definitely a style of filmmaking I respond to," Bigelow says over shots of espresso (what else?) in Beverly Hills. "It just seems to be a really engaging use of the medium. Cinema has the capacity to be so physiological. Prose can be reflective. I'm not sure cinema can be as reflective as that, but it can definitely propel you into an event and cause your heart to race." She pauses, laughing. "If that's the desired response."

You get the feeling that for Bigelow, it's the only response. Pinning her down on influences is tough, but eventually she'll cop to a love for the movies of Sam Peckinpah (She's hosting a screening of "The Wild Bunch" in January) and Don Siegel ("Dirty Harry"), whose work, she says, possesses a "muscularity that comes with formidable and surprising intelligence."

"Those movies sweep you away, and you're incapable of resisting," she enthuses. "They're entertaining and substantive. That's always what I'm trying to do too."

Black viewers are divided on film's 'Precious'-ness
Though it has been adored in some quarters, the film has its detractors. One critic has dubbed it 'a Klansman's fantasy.'
MY FAVORITE

'Precious': An article last Sunday about reaction to the movie "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" referred to the comments of a blogger named Tiffany on the website Racialicious.com.
Verdicts about high-pitched movies from black viewers and public figures are usually swift and decisive -- "Do the Right Thing," "The Color Purple," and the recent Robert Downey Jr. performance in "Tropic Thunder" come to mind. But that's not what happened this time out. That's partly because the embrace of "Precious" by the white film establishment has been a bit disorienting for black folk, even off-putting. But it's also because the tough stuff in "Precious," whether you like the movie or not, is striking chords of recognition for many black people that are making them not angry or enthusiastic, but uncertain. That's new territory.

The many issues raised in the course of this one story -- class tensions, self-image, racial progress, how Hollywood bears on all of the above -- have hit black viewers squarely in the gut, rendering the usual right-brain arguments about stereotypes inadequate. For black filmgoers, assessing black-themed films is generally a political process; "Precious" has made it emotional.

That discomfit was evident recently in a packed theater with a largely black audience in Marina Del Rey. The viewers were characteristically vocal at first -- gasping, clucking tongues, even tittering at the initial haplessness of Precious (Gabourey Sidibe) and the villainy of her mother, played by Mo'Nique. But as the film got more intimate, zeroing in on issues such as Precious' illiteracy, the repeated rapes by her drop-in father and her casual wish to be white with "good" hair, people fell silent; it was as if they were no longer viewers, but participants.
They applauded at the end, but filed out of the theater much more soberly than I've ever seen a black audience file out of any performance, especially one that had a clear impact. It's quite a contrast to reviews and commentary that ranged from supportive to effusive on black-oriented websites including The Loop21.com, Racial icious.com and thegrio.com. But even the praise has a bit of apology about it, as if to allow for the fact that blacks can -- or perhaps even should -- admire "Precious" without necessarily liking it.
Not everybody is buying into the nuance. The unrelenting inner-city misery that frames "Precious," including a foul-mouthed welfare mother and an absentee father, has raised plenty of alarms among blacks, notably film critic Armond White. In his review for the New York Press, the famously curmudgeonly White excoriated "Precious" for being an "orgy of prurience," "a Klansman's fantasy," racist propaganda cast from the infamous mold of "Birth of a Nation." For White, "Precious" is bad art because it is a bad representation, a reminder that for black people, art and politics are inseparable.

Yet one of the unusual things about "Precious" is that it doesn't try to separate those things, and so forces us to think beyond the negative/positive binary that often keeps discussions about movies like this airless and superficial.

Certainly other black people share White's condemnation. But that condemnation has dimensions: C. Jeffrey Wright, writing at UrbanFaith.com, a conservative Christian site, fretted less about the images in "Precious" than about the fact there are too few black films released to provide a diversity that would make the movie less controversial. That's a fact nobody on any side of the discussion would disagree with.

Nonetheless, Wright decries the movie for its lack of what he calls "achiever values." And here we get into the thorny issue of class. For black people that means not solely money and education, but a concern about how we are being represented in public. How blacks are represented in movies always galvanizes such concern, and "Precious" is no exception.

"We just don't want to see black pathology on screen," says T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting, a professor of critical race studies and hip-hop at Vanderbilt University. "There's clearly a segment of us that worries about what white people think."
That worry, she says, is usually about representations of the black poor, a group that's long been an anathema to whites -- and to some blacks as well. "Precious" exposes that unflattering divide. "Americans despise poor people, and they really despise poor black people," Sharpley-Whiting says. "Unfortunately, we [black people] buy into it."

Widespread debate

The good news is that the Internet encouragesa broader discussion of these complexities than black people have had in the past. At thefreshx press.com, a site geared to young African Americans, one blogger who had read White's review but hadn't seen the movie wrote that he was leery of incest being portrayed as a "black" thing, but he supported a filmmaker's right to tell his own story.
Another objected to White's comparing "Precious" to "Birth of a Nation," saying that missed the real critique the film was making about the troubled internal dynamics of black communities. "We've made a lot of strides, but what are we really doing to bring those who haven't been as fortunate as our college-educated selves out of the gutter?" she wrote. "This is a very real opportunity to bring a very real problem into the mainstream where it belongs."

At Racialicious.com, a blogger named Tiffany grumbled that she was "tired of the black aristocracy getting up in arms about anything that isn't 'The Cosby Show.' " Ironically, White himself bolsters that point: When he huffs in his review that " 'Precious' hyperbolizes the class misery of our nation's left-behinds . . . the Obama-era unreachables," he's at least acknowledging those unreachables and their plight.

But how can that plight be authentically represented? Is it ever possible for a black character -- dark, light, poor, privileged, whatever -- to vault above, or through, the stereotypes and emerge chiefly as a person and not a trope? Rarely. "Precious" breaks that ground, but it feels like alien terrain because blacks have been defined by extremes for so long. In an interview with Essence.com, director Lee Daniels says the harsh themes of "Precious" should be taken at face value. "Life is life," he said. "Life is what it is."

But grim subjects such as institutional poverty, illiteracy, child rape and incest are reasons enough to stay away from any movie, and many black folks say they will bypass "Precious" for that reason -- too much of that trouble in real life, they say.
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'Up' is Pixar at its most ambitious
The film began with an image of a grouchy man holding balloons. A story developed out of that -- slowly. More than four years later, it's ready.
SAN RAFAEL, CALIF. — The 100 or so Pixar Animation Studios employees had good reason to be giddy, and you could understand why they were more than a little nervous too. For more than four years, the animators, sound designers, editors and artists from every other Pixar department had plugged away on "Up" and on an early morning in April, they were finally about to see how their animated movie had turned out.
The movie itself -- Pixar's 10th animated film -- is narratively ambitious, a story about a 78-year-old widower's highly unusual road trip with a chubby young boy that, throughout its making, teetered on becoming sentimental and episodic. Although the movie is filled with comic bits, "Up" also features scenes of complex human emotion -- including the grief of a miscarriage -- that are rarely explored in family films. Parent studio Disney really needed the film to work commercially too: In earnings released last week, Disney's profit fell 46%, largely because of underperforming movies such as "Confessions of a Shopaholic" and "Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience."

To add one more level of pressure to the Pixar team, just a few days before that April screening at George Lucas' bucolic Skywalker Ranch, the Cannes Film Festival had selected "Up" to launch this week's prestigious festival, a first for an animated film.

If producer Jonas Rivera and writer-director Pete Docter, two of Pixar's earliest employees, were sweating bullets when they introduced "Up" to their Pixar colleagues, they didn't show it. "This is the first time that we've got everything together," Rivera said. Added Docter just before the house lights dimmed: "Thank you guys for making the movie."

Despite all the end-of-the-journey gratitude, "Up," which premieres in Cannes on Wednesday and arrives in theaters May 29, wasn't quite finished.

As soon as the screening ended, Docter, Rivera, composer Michael Giacchino, executive producer John Lasseter and a dozen members of Pixar's brain trust met over lunch in a Skywalker conference room to discuss what they had just seen. By the time the team finished dessert, they had decided "Up" needed a new piece of music, and the choice they made with Giacchino revealed much about the film's creative ambitions.

As "Up's" poster and trailer make clear, the film's central image is a house, tethered to thousands of balloons, soaring into the sky. When septuagenarian Carl Fredricksen's (Ed Asner) residence took flight at the Skywalker screening, Giacchino's score was big and dramatic, the kind of music that typically accompanies an action sequence.

UP IN THE AIR!!!
In Michael Tolkin’s script for the 1992 Hollywood satire “The Player,” studio executive Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) strangles a screenwriter he believes is trying to blackmail him.

It hasn’t gotten that gruesome in Hollywood. But for some involved in the script business these days, the movie’s arc may feel a little too familiar.

Screenwriters on some of the season’s biggest movies have seen acknowledgment for their work, if not choked off, then certainly minimized -- a group that includes, as fate would have it, Tolkin himself. So when the Golden Globes are handed out on Sunday, the names that viewers associate with the most lauded films may not quite include all the people who drove those movies forward.

That could be particularly true for three of the movies that lead nearly all others in Globes recognition — “Up in the Air,” “Nine” and “Avatar,” which have collectively amassed 15 nominations.

The issue cuts to the heart of contemporary Hollywood, where screenwriters are abundant but successes are rare, leaving a lot of people to scramble for a little bit of glory.

To those removed from the rituals of Hollywood, the fierce debate over credit can seem like arguing over who rides shotgun on a weekend road trip — arbitrary and, in the end, not very consequential. But for writers, credit can mean the difference between getting and not getting future gigs, higher paychecks and the acclaim and envy of peers. And credit issues can extend beyond how the Writers Guild of America arbitrates who did what on a script to shape the public (and media) consciousness about a writer's standing.

All of this comes against the backdrop of writer concerns that they are not given the same respect as their peers, particularly directors. “These things just seem to be messier lately. Everyone wants credit and nobody seems to be able to figure out the truth,” said an agent for several high-profile screenwriters who requested anonymity because the agent may yet work with some of the writers.

Many in Hollywood are reluctant to comment publicly on this issue while in the thick of an awards campaign, scared of chasing away votes. But sources familiar with back stories on these three scripts -- a broad group of agents, writers and producers -- privately offered insight into how these films came together and how work was truly divided up.

The genesis story that Jason Reitman tells is by now well-honed. He discovered Walter Kirn’s novel “Up in the Air” in the independent bookshop Book Soup and spent a long time whipping a script into shape before getting behind the camera. “When I started writing this screenplay,” Reitman told NPR, “we were in the midst of an economic boom, and by the time I was finished we were in one of the worst recessions on record.”

What he hasn’t been saying as much was that the script was actually already in development for several years, first as an independent project and then at Fox, before he became involved, and screenwriter Sheldon Turner wrote an entire draft before Reitman put pen to paper. Turner’s draft would be recognizable to anyone who’s seen the finished film; significant elements from it, sources who read it say, appear in the finished movie.

The invention of George Clooney’s whippersnapper partner played by Anna Kendrick, for instance, came from Turner (in Turner’s version it was a man; another writer who wasn’t Reitman later changed it to a woman). A key plot point about a laid-off worker committing suicide came from Turner. And while Reitman invented many memorable lines, sources noted Turner made his mark too: he was responsible for the trademark line from George Clooney’s character to laid-off workers about founding an empire. Turner and Reitman separately declined to comment.

This all could have been fairly typical; Hollywood films, after all, often are the result of people drafting off predecessors' work. Except when it came time to allot credit, Reitman maintained that the substantive work on the movie was his and that he shouldn’t share credit with Turner. The two went to arbitration in front of the Writers Guild, which ruled in favor of Turner and handed him a credit. Turner is also nominated for an adapted screenplay Golden Globe, where, if he wins, he will share the podium with Reitman.

Still, Turner has mostly stayed out of sight on the awards circuit, and it’s rare to hear Reitman, who has been ubiquitous on that circuit, mention him at all. [UPDATED 10:07 PM: Reitman and Turner just won the Critics Choice prize for best adapted screenplay. They both came to the stage but, in what could only be described as an awkward moment for Turner -- who trailed Reitman by about five seconds in coming to the podium -- only Reitman spoke, thanking several people but failing to acknowledge the credited writer standing next to him. Turner looked like he wanted to speak, but Reitman finished and began walking off the stage, the exit music began playing and Turner again trailed behind Reitman, not having said anything.]

The situation on “Nine” was thorny in a different way.

The screenwriting credits on the Italian-themed musical would have been tricky enough given that Anthony Minghella, who wrote a draft after Tolkin, died right after turning in his script (just before the 2007-2008 writers strike hit). But it comes with an even more complicated back story, featuring a man often at the center of awards-season drama: Harvey Weinstein.

Ming Tolkin was brought on several years ago by The Weinstein Co. and director Rob Marshall to adapt both the Italian classic “8 1/2” and the Broadway musical “Nine” that's based on it. He spent several months writing his draft, including a number of weeks just with Marshall and nearly two months with Marshall and composer-lyricist Maury Yeston. Minghella later came on for roughly six weeks of work writing a new draft.

It’s impossible to quantify the exact contribution of each, but people familiar with the scripts say Tolkin’s draft established plot and structure while Minghella concentrated on areas like dialogue and giving the movie an Italian flavor. The combination of Tolkin's drafts (he did two passes) and Minghella's version, which became the shooting script, would seem to have paved the way to a smooth ending.

But shortly after production last year, the relationship between Tolkin and Marshall went south, for what sources say were personal and creative reasons. The pair have not been on speaking terms since.

In the meantime, another drama was brewing: Weinstein and Tolkin were in a complex dialogue over credits. Weinstein wanted Minghella to get sole credit, leaving Tolkin out. (An early trailer of the film, in fact, featured only Minghella's name and not Tolkin's.)

Complicating matters was the fact that Weinstein and Minghella were close friends and collaborators (they worked together on movies such as "The English Patient" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley"). Also, to more cynical minds involved in the project, having Minghella as the single credit on the film would benefit the Weinstein Company film by providing a more poignant subplot for awards pundits, since the film could more easily be sold as Minghella's final work.

Tolkin pushed back at Weinstein's request, but rather than try to arbitrate right away (which would have meant, among other things, the specter of fighting a Writers Guild battle against a dead man), he went directly to the Minghella family. The two sides soon came to an agreement that they would go to the Writers Guild with a joint statement seeking credits that would not only include Tolkin but put him in first position (Hollywood shorthand for the writer whose work figures most into the film) followed by Minghella. The WGA read the statement and agreed.

But the Writers Guild wasn't the only battleground for "Nine." As the publicity rollout for the film began last month, members of Weinstein’s and Marshall’s camps quietly downplayed Tolkin’s involvement. Those working to promote the film, meanwhile, were keen to make Marshall available but, outside of one junket appearance, discouraged stories about Tolkin.

Tolkin, in a carefully worded statement to The Times, recounted his involvement and defended his credit. It read, in part, “I went to New York in July [2008] and spent seven weeks, almost daily, working with Rob Marshall. I came back to California, followed by Rob and Maury Yeston and worked with them for another eight weeks,” adding “I’m proud of the work I did.”

Weinstein could not be reached for comment, though a Weinstein Company rep did make available producer Marc Platt, who noted that "to be fair, these were unusual circumstances because of the deference everyone felt toward Anthony. But Michael did a fine job, and was entitled to get what he deserved."

Murkiness over credits also points up one of Hollywood’s most basic truisms: For every high-profile success, there is usually a lesser-known name at least partly responsible for it.

Kalog That’s especially applicable in the instance of Fox's “Avatar.” Most people believe — and, indeed, facts bear out — that James Cameron spent years developing the story.

But a writer protege of Cameron’s named Laeta Kalogridis — who is credited as a writer on the upcoming sci-fi film “Battle Angel” that Cameron will produce and possibly direct — was developing the story closely with Cameron and is believed to have contributed portions of the script.

One wouldn’t know that from the credits, however, where Kalogridis is listed simply as an executive producer — a minor credit even by producing standards, and certainly one that does not suggest writing involvement. A request for an interview with Kalogridis on the subject met with quick and efficient response from both a personal publicist and a Fox publicist, each declining to comment or make her available.

The issue is clearly a hot-button one for studios, which in many cases not only want to please an A-lister but also craft the most appealing narrative for media and awards-season consumption, and the Cameron story provides just that. When you’re trying to sell something, after all, it helps to have a marketable concept. Griffin Mill could tell you that.
Best Director:

Kathrym Brigelow-The Hort Locker
James Cameron-Avatar
Lee Daniels -Precious
Jason Reitman-Up in the Air
Quentin Tarantino-Inglourious Bastards