FSB Proposes International Security Efforts Ahead of 2018 FIFA World Cup Read more: http://sputniknews.com/russia/20150730/1025229897.html#ixzz3hRtO70Ix

Russia has proposed to resume the activities of a joint international working group on security, which has prevented a number of terrorist attacks during the Sochi Winter Olympics, to ensure security at the upcoming 2018 FIFA World Cup, the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB) said Thursday.

YAROSLAVL (Sputnik) — Addressing the participants of the 14th conference of the heads of security services, Alexander Bortnikov stressed that Russia, with assistance of partners from many foreign countries, especially France, Germany, Austria, the United States and Georgia, successfully prevented a series of terrorist attacks prior and during the Sochi Winter Olympic Games.

"Taking into account the upcoming 2018 FIFA World Cup hosted by Russia, the Russian delegation put forward a proposal at the conference to resume the activities of a joint international working group, which had operated to ensure security at the Sochi Olympics.

Russia will host the 2018 FIFA World Cup from June 14 to July 15. The tournament will take place in 11 Russian cities, including Yekaterinburg, Kaliningrad, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, Samara, Saransk, and Volgograd.
Speaking at last week's preliminary draws, Russian President Vladimir Putin assured football fans and participants of guaranteed security and maximum comfort for the period of the games.

Blaming Pakistan for Gurdaspur attack 'unfortunate', says FO

Pakistan rejected on Thursday India’s accusation of its involvement in the Gurdaspur attack which left seven people dead.
“It is unfortunate that India is pointing fingers even before the investigation is complete,” Foreign Office spokesperson Qazi Khalilullah said, during his weekly press briefing in Islamabad.
“Pakistan has condemned the Gurdaspur attack,” he added.
Reiterating Pakistan’s stance against terrorism, the FO spokesperson said, “Pakistan being a victim of terrorism itself is against all forms of terrorism.”
Earlier today, India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh told parliament that the gunmen who stormed a police station and killed seven people in India’s Punjab came from Pakistan.
In a statement shorn of the nationalist rhetoric the ruling party is known for, Singh warned of a forceful response to any attempt to undermine India’s territorial integrity or security but did not specify any response to Monday’s attack.

Gunmen dressed in military fatigues killed at least 10 people, including three civilians, in India’s Punjab state on Monday before being shot dead in a 12-hour-long gunfight with security forces in a small-town police station near the border with Pakistan.
In what was the first such attack in the state in more than a decade, the assailants shot dead a roadside vendor and tried to hijack a bus before storming the police station, witnesses said.
Earlier, contradicting speculation that the attack may have been carried out by Sikh separatists, the Indian Punjab police chief claimed on Tuesday that the three gunmen were Muslim but as yet unidentified.

Pakistan had earlier issued a statement strongly condemning the assault and extending condolences to the government and people of India, pushing back against insinuations that the assailants had crossed from Pakistani territory.
“We condemn in the strongest terms the terrorist incident in Gurdaspur, India, in which a number of precious lives have been lost. There are reports of others having suffered injuries. Our thoughts are with the bereaved families,” said a statement issued here Pakistan’s Foreign Office.

China is trying to save its market with failed policies

If financial history repeats itself, it won't be good for China.

China's stock market is in a meltdown. The main Shanghai Index has fallen about 30% since it's peak on June 12. The Chinese government is freaking out, and it's responding like a frightened momma bear, unleashing numerous efforts to stop the plunge.

But the two big interventions have been the Chinese government actually buying up stocks and halting any more IPOs.
In theory, these moves sound great: buying stocks should keep prices from falling further. And preventing new companies from doing IPOs is supposed to keep investors focused on buying stocks already in the market.
Unfortunately, these policies have been tried before and they haven't worked out well in the United States and the United Kingdom.


The 1929 fail: On October 24, 1929 -- sometimes called "Black Thursday" -- the U.S. market was tumbling sharply. Bankers were worried and some of the top ones got together and decided to pool a lot of money and start buying stocks in an effort to stem the panic.
The wealthy bankers sent Richard Whitney, then the acting head of the New York Stock Exchange, out onto the exchange floor as their front man.
"[Whitney] started issuing orders, and the markets did stabilize," says Richard Sylla, a professor of financial and market history at New York University's Stern School of Business.
But it didn't last long. The following Monday and Tuesday the market tanked, sparking a terrible bear market period that lasted for years.
We've seen something similar in China. Monday Chinese stocks slid 8.5%, the worst drop since 2007. Overall, Chinese stocks are still down sharply in July -- about 15% -- despite all the government efforts to buy stocks.
"Attempts to stabilize the market don't really work," says Sylla.


'Plunge Protection Team': A more direct U.S. government response to stock market crashes was the Working Group on Financial Markets that President Ronald Reagan put together in 1988 in response to the 1987 market plunge.
It became known as the "Plunge Protection Team." The idea was to get some of the top economic minds in government together to figure out how to prevent future crises and if it would be possible to intervene.
There's debate about whether the team ever did any direct buying of stocks, especially during the 2008 financial crisis, but Sylla says one of the things they did promote was so-called "circuit breakers" where stocks would stop trading if they fell too much.
The circuit breakers are in place on some assets in the U.S. and appear to be in place in China now as well. It gives a short cool off period for traders. But it's "of limited effectiveness," argues Sylla, "because what's going to happen overnight that would change people's attitudes?"
It's notable that since the Plunge Protection Team was put in place, the U.S. has suffered the Dot-com bubble and 2008 Financial Crisis.
"[China's] learning somewhat from our mistakes and others, but they'll make some of their own," says Jeff Hirsch, head of Stock Trader's Almanac.
The U.S. Federal Reserve has arguably been the most effective. Policymakers around the world credit the Fed for pumping massive amounts of liquidity back into the markets after the 2008 crisis and sparking a bull market that began in March 2009 and is still going today. China's Central Bank has slashed interest rates, although it has yet to go as far as the Fed's famous quantitative easing measures.


Halting IPOs can backfire: As for IPOs, a widespread shutdown of the IPO market like what China has done occurred in Britain way back in the South Sea Bubble in the 1700s.
The plan was for the South Sea Company to take over some of Britain's national debt. The higher the company's share price was, the cheaper it would be for the company to take over some of the debt. So both the company and the government were motivated to push shares up.
A bubble ensued and many other companies wanted to issue shares to take advantage of soaring prices. So the South Sea Company got British Parliament to do an IPO ban in the hopes that people would keep buying the company's shares instead of all the new entrants in the market.
"It didn't work then. It backfired. It was meant to keep the bubble going, but actually deflated the bubble" as people got scared, says Sylla.


The big problem: Part of the problem is that when there's a big intervention like what the bankers tried to do in 1929 or what China's government is doing now, it's akin to several fire engines showing up with their lights and sirens blaring. It looks bad to outsiders (or, in this case, to investors). After checking out what's going on, they typically want to get away.
"Statements by high officials are practically always misleading when they are designed to bolster a falling market," said Gerald Loeb, a prominent Wall Street trader in the early 20th Century and author of "The Battle For Investment Survival," a bestseller during the Great Depression.
Of course, China has to do something. The stock market plunge is a political crisis more so than an economic one for China, coming at a time when leader Xi Jinping is trying to craft a new five-year plan for the country.
You can't blame them for trying to intervene. If policymakers really knew how to turn markets around, more countries would try it.

William ‘Refrigerator’ Perry auctioning off Super Bowl ring

William “Refrigerator” Perry, one of the most iconic players from the Super Bowl-shuffling Chicago Bears’ dominant 1985 team that went on to win Super Bowl XX, announced this week that he will be auctioning off the very ring he received for winning said championship.
Perry, only a rookie on the 15-1, modern-era “Monsters of the Midway" Bears squad, was part of the team that secured Super Bowl glory by decimating the New England Patriots by a score of 46-10.
Heritage Auctions will oversee the auction at this week’s National Sports Collectors’ Convention in Dallas, Tex., reports Shutdown Corner. Bidding, also available online, will start at $16,000, but estimates indicate the one-of-a-kind ring could garner upwards of $1 million should the competition to procure it heat up.
The description of the ring in the listing on the auction house’s site reads in part:

Here’s the proof, the largest NFL Championship ring ever produced, estimated at a size twenty-five, though no measuring tool large enough to confirm this figure exists. While it is widely known in the hobby that the ring was rather widely reproduced due to its crowd-pleasing absurdity, we can confirm definitively that this is the one and only original presented to Perry for his part in “shuffling” to Super Bowl XX victory along with Walter Payton, Jim McMahon and Mike Singletary.

Perry has suffered numerous health and financial-related issues following his retirement, including being diagnosed with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a chronic inflammation disorder of the peripheral nerves.
The listing also notes that the ring “will be accompanied by a letter of provenance from Perry himself, and a photograph of Perry holding both that letter and the ring itself.”
Perry, a defensive lineman, rose to superstardom thanks to how he frequently was inserted into the backfield in goal-line situations, scoring three touchdowns (two rushing, one receiving) during the 1985 regular season, turning him into a larger-than-life, charismatic football player who continues to be one of the most beloved personalities from the 1980s-era NFL … and deservedly so.

Tiger Woods gets hot after bad start, shoots 68 at Quicken Loans

iger Woods took a conservative 3-wood off the first hole Thursday in the Quicken Loans National when many players were hitting driver. No matter — he still pull-hooked it into the gallery, hit his second shot into a greenside bunker and lipped out a 5-footer for par before slamming his putter against his bag.

On the third hole, he missed the green well left and had to get up-and-down for bogey. A three-putt on No. 4 left him 3 over.
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It was his final bogey of the day.
Woods got a fortunate deflection off a marshal left of the green on the par-5 fifth. He apologized, handed out an autographed glove and made his first birdie. Then he ran off five birdies in six holes around the turn for a 3-under 68. That left him five shots behind leaders Retief Goosen and Ryo Ishikawa at Robert Trent Jones Golf Club.
Woods said it was the first time since the Masters in April that he's turned a bad round into a good one.
"That's what scoring is all about," Woods said. "I made a lot of key putts today. I ran them by the hole but I made all the comebacks, and overall I felt like I hit the ball well enough to turn it around. It was nice to actually turn it around."
Woods is the host of the Quicken Loans National, which he won in 2009 and 2012 at Congressional in Maryland. The last of his 79 PGA Tour victories was nearly two years ago, and he has plummeted to 266th in the world.
Woods got up-and-down from a greenside bunker for birdie on the par-5 eighth. He made a 9-footer on 10 and a 7-footer on 11. He hit his approach to tap-in range on 12, the most difficult hole on the course, and ended the run with a 12-footer on 13. He two-putted for par on the final five holes.
The 68 was only his sixth round under 70 this year. He has had three scores of 80 or higher and has missed three cuts and withdrawn once in eight events.
In soft conditions with little wind, Woods' 68 was only good for a tie for 27th. Players were allowed to lift, clean and place their golf balls on the rain-softened fairways, and 81 of them managed to break par.
"We got the fresh greens tomorrow," said Woods, who played in the afternoon after a 95-minute rain delay. "Hopefully, go out there and post a low one."
RTJ is welcoming a regular PGA Tour event for the first time after hosting four Presidents Cups, most recently in 2005, and experience seemed to help. Goosen, who played in two of those events, had a bogey-free 63. Presidents Cup veterans Ernie Els and Justin Leonard were one shot back, along with Kevin Chappell.
Goosen, a 46-year-old two-time major champion, is finally feeling healthy after major back surgery in 2012. Always stoic on the course, he still has plenty of passion for the game, which he showed by qualifying for both the U.S. Open and the British Open.
"I'm lucky to be out here. Three, four years ago my career looked like it was at an end," said Goosen, whose last victory was in 2009. "I'm just glad I'm still out there and playing. Yeah, I just wish I was 10 years younger again."
Ishikawa, who started on the back nine, ran off six birdies in a row starting on the 14th hole. Then he made a hole-in-one on the 180-yard fourth, spinning an 8-iron 15 feet back into the cup for his first competitive ace in the United States.
At that point he was 8 under with five holes to go. He parred the last five.
"It took about two holes to make myself calm," he said. "No. 5 was a par 5, like a birdie hole, but it was kind of difficult for me to make a par right there."
Defending champion Justin Rose, the highest-ranked player in the field, was three shots back. So was Ollie Schneiderjans, making his second professional start.
Rickie Fowler also made an ace, kicking a 7-iron off the fringe and into the cup on the 184-yard ninth, his final hole of the day. He was four shots back after a 67 that could have been much better.
Fowler said his putter went cold after his victory at the Scottish Open, and on Thursday he missed four birdie putts from inside 15 feet in a five-hole stretch. Three of his four birdies were from inside 4 feet. Honoring a club golf tradition, he bought beer for the media to toast his hole-in-one.
"I hit a great shot. Get a little bit of a good kick. Hey, we'll take it," Fowler said. "Looking forward to getting back out tomorrow and see if we can get some putts to go."

Twins closer's wife pens essay about Twitter hate he's enduring

Minnesota Twins closer Glen Perkins couldn’t have started off his season any better, going 28-for-28 in save opportunities heading into the All-Star break. Since being named to the AL All-Star roster, the quality of Perkins’ performances have dropped off dramatically, as the pitcher has blown two saves and found himself on the hook for two losses in his past five appearances.
It’s hardly surprising, then, that Perkins, despite his tremendous run of success both this season and stellar pitching in previous seasons, has recently been subjected to an overabundance of hate on Twitter.
Perkins’ wife, Alisha, penned an essay she published on her personal site entitled, “We all fall down,” in which she defends her husband but also applies a wider lens to the issue taking on the troubles of cyberbullying.

Listen, I get that you want to hold Glen to a higher standard because he gets paid a lot and you are used to him being darn near perfect but that does not give you the right to cyber bully him and our family when things don’t go according to plan.

Do you think he doesn’t feel bad already?

Do you think he wanted to fail?

You are delusional if you think he doesn’t feel worst than anyone when he doesn’t succeed.

 It is easy to hide behind a screen and spew venom at people you will never meet and who are doing things you could only dream of but it does not make it ok. The “cyber bullying” fad in America needs to stop; it is destructive, offensive, unnecessary, and just pain cowardly. Let’s have a little grace for one another and for ourselves.

Oftentimes, spouses of professional athletes only seem to invite trouble by speaking out publicly in defense of their partners. Since Alisha Perkins attempted to use her husband’s situation as a teaching moment likely will earn her far less condemnation than, say, the wife of Eric Decker, who last season engaged in a war of words with her husband’s social media critics that forced the New York Jets wideout to defend her for defending him on more than one occasion.

Taliban leader Omar’s tale reflects clashing agendas

In early 2011, then-CIA Director Leon Panetta confronted the president of Pakistan with a disturbing piece of intelligence. The spy agency had learned that ­Mohammad Omar, the Taliban leader who had become one of the world’s most wanted fugitives after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, was being treated at a hospital in southern Pakistan.
The American spy chief even identified the facility — the Aga Khan University Hospital in Karachi — and said the CIA had “some raw intelligence on this” that would soon be shared with its Pakistani counterpart, according to diplomatic files that summarize the exchange.
U.S. intelligence officials now think that Omar probably died two years later, in 2013, and Afghan officials said this week that he succumbed while being treated for a serious illness in a Karachi hospital, just as those earlier intelligence reports had indicated.
The belated disclosure this week of Omar’s death has added to the legend of the ghostlike Taliban chief, a figure so elusive that it appears to have taken U.S. spy agencies two years to determine that one of their top targets after 9/11 was no longer alive.
But the emerging details of Omar’s death may also help explain the extent to which his ability to remain both influential and invisible was a reflection of the competing and often hidden agendas in the counterterrorism partnership between the United States and Pakistan.
Current and former U.S. ­officials said that despite intermittent intelligence on Omar’s whereabouts, there was never a concerted push to find him that remotely approached the scale of the manhunt for al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
At the same time, the one-eyed Taliban leader’s apparent ability to get medical treatment in the port city of Karachi has bolstered long-standing suspicions that Omar was being sheltered by Pakistan.
Milt Bearden, a former CIA operative in Pakistan and Afghanistan, said that “it is beyond puzzling” that Omar’s death could go unconfirmed for so long, especially given the intelligence and surveillance capabilities of the United States.
But “it’s another case of why intelligence collection in that part of the world is so difficult,” Bearden said. “The truth is layered, and there are multiple agendas, none of which we ever really understand.”
U.S. intelligence agencies have not yet corroborated claims by Afghan authorities that Omar died in a Karachi hospital, but they noted that Pakistan’s ­Inter-Services Intelligence agency had ties to the Taliban dating back to the 1980s, when the ISI served as a conduit for U.S. arms and money to Islamist militants fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan.
A Pakistani official described claims that Omar died in Pakistan or that the government was even aware of his presence in the country as “unfounded speculation.”
“There is no certainty about the date or place of his death,” said Nadeem Hotiana, a spokesman for the Pakistan Embassy in Washington. Hotiana noted that a statement released by the Taliban on Thursday confirming Omar’s death “categorically mentions that Mullah Omar never left Afghanistan.”
U.S. officials attributed the belated determination that Omar had died to a range of factors, including the extremely reclusive nature of a figure for whom there is only one widely circulated photograph. The officials also noted the frequency with which rumors of his demise had been previously proved wrong.
Omar was said to be afflicted with illnesses ranging from kidney failure to meningitis. U.S. officials said intelligence analysts began to suspect Omar had died a year or more ago but reached that conclusion only more recently, based on new information as well as a gradual accumulation of evidence.
The CIA declined to comment on Omar’s death or the exchange between Panetta and then-Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari described in diplomatic documents obtained by The Washington Post.
Their meeting in January 2011 came when Zardari was in the United States to attend a memorial service for U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke.
Former U.S. and Pakistani officials said Panetta’s disclosure was designed in part to prod Pakistan to detain Omar but also to serve notice that the CIA was aware of the Taliban leader’s presumably sanctioned presence in Pakistan.
Other U.S. officials also made clear in other meetings their belief that Pakistan was protecting Omar and other elements of the Taliban. In Islamabad in 2011, Vice President Biden warned then-Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani that relations with Afghanistan wouldn’t improve until Pakistan answered difficult questions including “what do we say about Mullah Omar,” according to a separate diplomatic document.
In 2010, during a briefing with Pakistani officials on a White House strategy review for the region, Lt. Gen. Douglas Lute said that “while Pakistan has done a lot to deny safe havens to terrorists . . . senior leadership of the Quetta Shura including Mullah Omar resides between Karachi and Quetta,” according to a third diplomatic document.
Current and former U.S. officials said they knew of no effort by the CIA to mount an operation to apprehend Omar even after learning he may have been in declining health in a Karachi hospital.
The agency also had other pressing priorities at the time. Among them was seeking to confirm the location of bin Laden at a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, that was the site of a raid by U.S. Navy SEALs four months later.
The pace of the CIA’s drone campaign in Pakistan was a growing source of friction with Pakistan. And just two weeks after the Panetta-Zardari meeting, CIA contractor Raymond Davis was taken into custody after killing two Pakistani men in a shootout on a bustling street in Lahore.
Even before those events, officials said, the CIA’s hunt for Taliban figures never matched the intensity of its pursuit of ­al-Qaeda.
“We were overwhelmingly focused on al-Qaeda, and there were many fewer instances where we had what we thought was halfway-reliable information on the whereabouts of senior members of the Taliban,” said Robert Grenier, the former CIA station chief in Pakistan and former head of its Counterterrorism Center.
There was also a clear limit to the cooperation from the ISI.
“Pretty quickly you could see a pattern,” Grenier said. “Where the ISI was very effective working with us in tracking down ­al-Qaeda, anytime we had a lead on a senior member of the Taliban, the Pakistanis weren’t successful in following up.”
Pakistan also repeatedly rebuffed requests by the CIA to send drones over Quetta, the city where Taliban leaders were based after fleeing Afghanistan in 2001. When a senior Taliban figure was detained in 2010, it was only by accident. U.S. officials said Pakistan didn’t know Abdul Ghani Baradar was present at a Karachi compound when he was arrested, and he was released in 2013.
A former Pakistani official said parts of the government may have sought to keep Omar’s death secret out of fear that Taliban factions would splinter without him and damage Islamabad’s ability to influence peace talks with Afghanistan.
The former official said there was even internal deception. The former official said the ISI told Pakistani leaders in March this year “that Mullah Omar is seriously ill and his condition is deteriorating.”

Mission impenetrable: are Hollywood blockbusters losing the plot?

Forty-five minutes into the seventh Fast & Furious movie, Vin Diesel drives towards a huge precipice. The audience have only the faintest idea why he’s there. Ditto why they have paraglided their cars into Azerbaijan. Is it Azerbaijan? It’s probably to rescue someone … who was it again? Something to do with a surveillance gizmo means they need to find their nemesis Jason Statham, except Statham seems to find them whenever he wants, being the one about to push Diesel off the cliff, not the random mercenaries they’re nicking the device from. Only Kurt Russell – who’s watching everything from his covert-ops unit and chatting about craft ale – seems to understand what the hell is going on.
What was once a series content to celebrate simple boy-racer pleasures, the seventh Fast & Furious fell prey to a recent tentpole-film affliction: ridiculously over-complicated plotting. Iron Man 3 and Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation writer Drew Pearce draws an analogy for this blockbuster bloat, responsible for routinely pushing run times over the two-hour mark: “Much as I love a prog-rock album, if it’s a pop song I like it to be short and sweet, and I think it has more impact that way. And summer blockbusters are very proggy right now.”

 

This byzantine plot sprawl has been in full effect this year. Avengers: Age of Ultron lost many round about the point the villain heads off to a South African shipyard in search of something called Wakandan vibranium. Promoting the film, writer-director Joss Whedon acknowledged that keeping all the narrative plates spinning for his six-man superhero team, plus all the side players, had left him “a little bit broken”. Terminator Genisys director Alan Taylor, faced with the collective “eh?” over his recent convoluted overhaul of the Schwarzenegger classic, made a spirited attempt in interviews to break down the film’s supposed seven interweaving timelines. But if his film had worked, he wouldn’t have needed to.

Pacific Rim screenwriter Travis Beacham says he first noticed this “pet peeve” with the advent of the Marvel films: “It’s a very literal complexity, it’s not an emotional complexity. It’s very point A to point B, we have to get the talisman to stop Dr Whatever from raising an army. Very pragmatic stuff that doesn’t leave a lot of room for character.” He compares Jurassic World to the original Jurassic Park: “In the first film, there’s only a handful of major sequences: the T-rex attack in the rain, the velociraptors in the kitchen. But because there are so few, you can really spend some time with them, and let them unfold. The latest one is this wall-to-wall sequence of events, and there’s not a lot of suspense.”
What happened to the industry in the intervening 20 years? In the rush to give restless, spoilt-for-choice modern viewers value for money, the studios are making their blockbusters in an ever more feverish climate. The past decade has seen, in the struggle for prime spots on the movie-going calendar, the rise of release dates locked in years in advance. In order to hit those targets, production schedules have little room for deviation; finished scripts often lag behind the key special-effects sequences, which are devised early so mockups around which actors can be directed are ready when shooting starts. Screenwriters, says Pearce, are often left to link the showpieces as best as they can.

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“Because of that, you get these kind of labyrinthine machinations to desperately weave in character motivation, geography and the practical aspects of getting from one scene to another.”
“People are so in the white-hot crucible of terror of making the movie,” he continues, “It’s very difficult for them to take a step back and look at the story at a macro level.” This often results in a storyline that’s hectoring but lacking in any emotional through-line; the kind of rickety plot-slalom that in the case of the interminable Transformers films, batters the viewer into a state of “weird, robot-based PTSD”.
Then there’s the added burden of clumsy exposition needed to make the thing work, often introduced at the behest of the studio executives.
“It is an industry that at its higher levels is motivated by fear,” says Beacham, “And often before there’s a reason to be afraid ... In my experience, very few people walk out of a movie. You have them for two hours, and you’re free to explain or not explain whatever you see fit.”

Another major culprit in contorting and convoluting blockbuster plots is the need to service the overarching franchises that now rule the business. Not only is squeezing the likes of the voluminous Marvel and DC mythology into two-hour chunks a serious logistical challenge, but the reverence for branded IP (intellectual property) over original pitches has shifted the balance of power in the scripting process further from those most equipped to lead it.
“You have a lot of non-creative, business types leading the charge,” says Beacham, “because they’re the ones who control the IP. They have ownership of the thing everyone wants, and everyone’s coming to them to try to get that job. It ends up taking a lot of the creative leverage out of the hands of creative people.”
The current decree for the jobbing screenwriter is fitting franchise movies into the universes of inter-connected movies springing up left, right and centre. The old 80s and 90s “high-concept” simplicity that helpfully corralled the limits of an isolated story (“The bus blows up if it drops below 50mph”) has been shoved to the sidelines. Sequels and spin-offs have been proliferating for 15 years now, but what Marvel has set in motion – its superheroes making soapy cameos in each other’s works, The Avengers functioning as hub films for the whole circus – is a new level of integration. Warner Bros and DC are following suit with Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens will float out Disney’s own Death Star of IP into this arena.

 

This thicket of story sprouting out of these universes can be “harmful to your movie’s point of view,” says Pearce, “when those stories overwhelm the central one, or take up so much real estate in the running time that your story is choked out by the weeds”. He and director/co-writer Shane Black were watching rough cuts of the first Avengers as they were writing Iron Man 3 and were determined to make any linkages meaningful. “We took a step back and said: OK, if Tony Stark were a real character, the events [in which he passes through a wormhole into an alien dimension] at the end of the Avengers are enormous and beyond the ken of a normal person. And we realised that by exploring a kind of PTSD about events, we could make his existential crisis richer.”

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This is the ideal scenario, in which storytellers strive for enriching complexity. But such attempts can pull against the limits of the blockbuster form. Jonathan and Christopher Nolan’s screenplay for The Dark Knight is a model of discipline in its attempt to infuse a pulp format with heavyweight contemporary concerns and real-world nuance. The third film, though, struggles for the same exhilarating concision, particularly in its deployment of Bane and Catwoman as some sort of confused analogy for the Occupy movements. “It’s pulling so many ideas along,” says Pearce, “Don’t get me wrong, aspiration is a big part of it, but sometimes it is detrimental to the efficiency and entertainment of the final piece of art.”
Still, at least the Nolans play by the rules, unlike whoever greenlighted Hollywood’s most insidious recent innovation: the alternate timeline. The rebooted Star Trek franchise – which takes place in an alternative reality to the original Shatner iteration, triggered by a Romulan vessel travelling back in time and killing Captain Kirk’s father – has handled the idea relatively gracefully. But, in the wrong hands, as in Terminator Genisys, it becomes a carte blanche for Hollywood to over-embroider stories already told succinctly, or erase them at will, usually when there’s a commercial incentive. The more it happens, the more Hollywood saps its own sense of dramatic finality. One trend Beacham has noticed is that it is rare for any character to die, just in case they are needed in future; Gemma Arterton’s character, Io, was destined for the chop in the first-pass draft he did of Clash of the Titans, but in the final version Zeus handily resurrects her. And even if they do irreversibly shuffle off, like Darth Vader, there’s always the prequel.

Terminator Genisys … there’s always the prequel. Photograph: Allstar/Paramount Pictures

But Hollywood’s growing problem with story density may just be the natural progression of most art forms towards baroqueness – and perhaps a purge is just round the corner. Star Wars: The Force Awakens screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, a veteran classicist practitioner, recently criticised the bloated brigade and promised he and director JJ Abrams would bring in the new film, like the old ones, close to two hours: “When it’s over you’ll say, ‘I wish there’s more.’ Or, ‘Wait, is it over?’ Because how rarely you get that feeling nowadays.” Pearce praises the recent Mad Max, also a franchise film, for its spare arc; the simple forth-and-back boomerang of Tom Hardy and Charlize Theron’s desert trek opening up plenty of room for “weirdness and tonal zigzags”.
Beacham, whose Pacific Rim had a refreshing idiosyncrasy, is even more optimistic. “A lot of my friends are very cynical about this trend in blockbusters: it’s the new normal. But it’s a bubble, a temporary trend. Increasingly they’re not going to be able to compete with the ones that don’t conform to the easy way, with the ones that do it right.” Good triumphs over evil; now that’s easy enough to follow.

Relativity Bankruptcy: The Fallout for Its Movies

Relativity, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today, may be shedding films. But with an auction now pending, lenders have a vested interest in seeing the company remain in the film business. And to do that, a restructured Relativity will need to keep some product in the pipeline.
With the company’s future very much in flux, Relatively remains committed to the release of at least two films, Masterminds and Kidnap, and hopes to start production on a third, The Crow, this fall, according to one insider.
Masterminds, the heist comedy starring Zach Galifianakis and Owen Wilson, is currently slated for release on Oct. 9, while the Halle Berry-starrer Kidnap, which was originally to have hit theaters in October, was recently postponed to February 26, 2016.
"The rest of the slate is up in the air," the insider says, adding, however, that the company is still "identifying properties they will want to produce."

James Woods Sues Twitter User for $10 Million Over "Cocaine Addict" Accusation

The actor filed a defamation lawsuit against an individual who replied to Woods' tweets about Barack Obama and Caitlyn Jenner.

Incivility on social media seems to be a regular occurrence, and celebrities usually shrug it off (or don't even read the comments from people who are tweeting at them), but James Woods is making a $10 million case about it.
On Wednesday, the actor went to the Los Angeles Superior Court and sued the anonymous individual who is tweeting as "Abe List" for defamation over a derogatory tweet that suggested Woods was a "cocaine addict" — a message that Woods complains was sent to "thousands of AL's followers and hundreds of thousands of Mr. Woods' followers."
Woods is taking a stand. "AL's reckless and malicious behavior, through the worldwide reach of the internet, has now jeopardized Woods' good name and reputation on an international scale," states the complaint. "AL, and anyone else using social media to propagate lies and do harm, should take note. They are not impervious to the law."

‘Mrs Sharma’ gone missing on Kapil’s show

Sumona Chakrawarti alias Manju and Mrs Sharma has apparently quit the famous comedy show, Comedy Night With Kapil, Indian media reported on Friday.

Rumours started circulating that ‘Mrs Sharma’ reportedly left the CNWK just like ‘Gutthi’ played by Sunil Grover who walked out of the show over some internal dispute.owever, Sumona alias Mrs Sharma vanished from the stage for last two weeks which grabbed attentions many of her fans.

However, few reports claimed that Sumona was not like ‘Gutthi’ as she was travelling abroad to shooting a film in London following her vacation stays in Amsterdam and Paris. She reportedly came back and resumed shoot for the Kapil’s show.

Earlier, some reportedly ‘ego and financial issues’ between Kapil Sharma and Sunil Grover disturbed the flow of the comedy show which later settled by the duo.

PolicyBazaar gets lighter with Kapil Sharma and the ‘thullu’

nsurance website PolicyBazaar.com has rolled out an ad film for its new brand campaign. The campaign features recently announced brand ambassador and comedian Kapil Sharma. The film conceptualised by Lowe Lintas + Partners went on air on 22 July.

 

The first film from the campaign beings with Bhondulal- ji renewing his car insurance. Sharma comes up from behind and questions him if the transaction was actually complete. Sharma asks him if he compared prices, looked at the extent of his coverage and looked to see if he actually saved something. To each of the questions, Bhodu lal replies in the negative and each time Sharma shows him his trademark ‘Baba ji ka thullu’ (a slang and mannerism made popular by the comedian and Bollywood, on the lines of 'left twiddling one's thumb').

10 Facts About Ajay Devgn Unknown To The World

1. Ajay Devgn did not make his debut in Phool Aur Kaante. Long before that he played the child version of Mithun Chakraborty’s character in Bapu’s Pyari Behna. Ajay was billed as ‘Master Chotu’.
2. Has won the National award for Best Actor twice for Zakham and The Legend OfBhagat Singh. May pull off a hat trick with his new film Drishyam. 
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4.  
5. Best performance to date was  in Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s Hum…Dil De Chuke Sanamwhere he played Aishwarya Rai Bachchan’s husband .The two hardly interacted during the shooting. Later they did an awful David Dhawan film Hum Kissise Kam Nahin together andRituparnoGhosh’s Raincoat. and hit it off . Ajay was the first personAbhishekBachchan told about his marriage plans outside immediate family.

   

   Multiple Avatars For Our Heroes Never Work, Will Ajay Devgn Break The Jinx?

   1. Ajay Devgn was the first choice to play Bhansali’s Bajirao in Bajirao Mastani. They couldn’t agree on the star’s remuneration.
   2. Does not enjoy “serious” films. Likes light-hearted comedies. The kind of cinema for which he collaborates with his buddyRohitShetty.

      

      Ajay-Devgan

   3. Devgn shares a lot with his buddy RohitShetty. Both are sons of well-known action directors. Ajay and Rohit attended the same birthday parties as kids.
   4. Has directed only one film You Me Aur Hum .It starred his wifeKajol . The film bombed leaving Devgn’s finances in the red. 
   5. Devgn’s other home production  Raju Chacha which Ajay’s brother  Anil Devgndirected, was a huge flop.
   6. Devgn worships his parents, touches their feet every morning before leaving home.
   7. In Drishyam  Ajay Devgn plays a role already played to huge critical acclaim byMohanlal in Malayalam and Kamal Haasan in Tamil. Devgn  hopes to crack the Hindi version in his own way without comparisons.Will he  be as good as the two other stalwarts?
   8.  

    

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Govinda’s daughter Tina Ahuja Walks Out Of Kapil Sharma’s Show

There was high drama on the sets of Kapil Sharma’s popular show when Govinda and his daughter, Tina Ahuja, who makes her debut this week in Smeep Kang’s Second Hand Husband, walked out minutes before they were to go on air.

The reason given in two words was…Geeta Basra.
It was a little shocking to see the team of  Smeep Kang’s film Second-Hand Husband on  Kapil Sharma’s Comedy Nights With Kapil this week without the film’s debutante heroine Tina Ahuja who is our own Govinda’s daughter.
While the film’s leading man Punjabi superstar Gippy Grewal was present with the film’s second lead Geeta Basra, Tina, we are told, chose to stay away from camera range.
Says a source from Kapil’s show, “Govindaji had come  for our show with his daughter Tina. But minutes before the camera was to roll they left. We were all in a state of a shock.Kapil who has huge respect for Govindaji, wasn’t even aware the two had left.He kept asking, ‘Hua kya?’
Director Smeep Kang says, “Tina didn’t appear on Kapil’s show  because Tina was told at the last moment that Geeta Basra would be a part of the show. When Tina got to know of this she had her reservations and did not participate.”
However sources close to Govinda have another story to tell.
Says the source close to Govinda, “Tina was supposed to go on the show with her father Govinda. Suddenly she was told  that there was change of plan .She decided to stay away from Kapil’s show because in her mind and heart she had decided it was going to be a comedy evening with her father.

KAPIL SHARMA TAKES A BREAK FROM COMEDY NIGHTS

The latest update on the Kapil-Sharma-leaving-Comedy-Nights-With-Kapil controversy says the popular comedian left the show because he was denied a hike in remuneration. There is no confirmation on this rumour but the chances of the reason for his exit being ego-clashes is more than the monetary issues.
Kapil Sharma announced to the world that he shot his last episode with Salman Khan and is unsure as to when he will be returning to the show. The reason given was because he had suffered a back injury and he needed time off to recover. It was also said that he needed the time off to be ready for the US tour. But the latest update on the issue say a different story all together.

"Kapil demanded a hike in his fees, which the channel did not agree to. He wanted rake in the popularity he had garnered over the years and convert it monetarily but the channel did not adhere to his demands and hence the actor decided to stay away from hosting the show," a report from BollywoodLife.com said.
A recent report even said that Kapil will return to Comedy Nights.. soon after he finished his US tour. While there are many rumours surrounding Kapil Sharma and Comedy Nights With Kapil, only time will tell what the actual reason for Kapil's absence from the show is.

COMMENTS POSTES BY KAPIL FANS:

Kyu piche pade ho uske...he's a great guy
fake news kyu banate ho??
he already took 21 days rest n den went 4 d tour
read his twitter and watch his press conference u idiots

evn harbhajan singh did not lykd d episode which wz hostd by arshad warsi....arshad warsi iz a gud comedian bt kapil iz much bttr than him.....no1 cn replace kapil sir.

y iz media interferrng in dis....evrybody knwz dat kapil izn't keepn wll n he iz doing all these thingz 4 hiz fanz......he already tweetd dat iz not wll n took rst 4 21 dayz......bt still y ppl don't understand.......luv u kapil sir....n datz true widout u there iz no comedy in cnwk.....i think no1 lykd d episode.....no1 cn take ur place......get wll soon n take sm more rst.............w8n 4 dis episode nw......4rm dubai.......

Visit twitter account of kapil sharma there you can find kapil's tweet where he says " had bed rest for 21 days now feeling much better" and he had his Commitments due to which he had to visit for live shows and he will return to comedy nights after his shows. 

The show has had a successful run for almost two years now – and the audience can’t do without his comic antics every weekend

Recently we heard that Kapil Sharma co-producer of Comedy Nights with Kapil injured his back and the doctors diagnosed him with slip disc.He was advised three week bed rest and not to move around much until he gets better.
Of course three weeks rest would mean that the comedian will not be able to host Comedy Nights with Kapil. The channel immediately roped in Arshad Warsi to replace Kapil, for the time being. Now we thought Kapil was busy lying in bed and getting pampered by his near and dear ones, but it turns out the actor is not even in the country.
Kapil and his entire team are in Hamilton doing a live show for his fans. We wonder how the actor managed to fly to the foreign country with such a major injury. So we decided to dig a little into the matter. A source informs that Kapil demanded a hike in his fees, which the channel did not agree to. He wanted rake in the popularity he had garnered over the years and convert it monetarily but the channel did not adhere to his demands and hence the actor decided to stay away from hosting the show. We tried getting in touch with Kapil Sharma and Preeti Simoes to find confirm the rumour, but both their phones were apparently switched off.
The channel roped in Arshad Warsi and Sajid Khan to host the show for now, let’s hope Kapil comes back on board soon, ‘coz without him there’s just no comedy on Comedy Nights with Kapil, right?





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ALL ABOUT SUNNY DEOL, sunny deol upcoming film GHAYAL ONCE AGAIN, sunny deol Bhaiya ji Superhit

Sunny Deol’s “Bhaiya ji...Superhitt” has wrapped up its Mumbai schedule and the cast and crew will soon be heading to Benares in August for a 30-day schedule to complete the last leg of the family entertainer.

And never mind the numerology, with Deol’s back-to-back bad turns — since 2000, his only films on the plus side have been “The Hero,” his own production “Indian,”  the blockbuster “Gadar-Ek Prem Katha” and the Deol home production’s “Apne” and “Yamla Pagla Deewana” — a good performance is expected.Produced by Chirag Dhariwal and presented by Metro Movies, the film has been written and directed by Neeraj Pathak and is an action-comedy, with Deol in a double role.

The fun film also stars Preity Zinta, Arshad Warsi, Shreyas Talpade, Ashutosh Rana, Sanjay Mishra, Manoj Joshi and Mukul Dev.Deol’s “I Love NY” has not even got a decent release or promotion — the film did not even have a press screening — while “Mohalla Assi” with its controversial content is still stagnating, and “Ghayal Once Again,” which he is directing, is also expected this year, but is, sadly, not really eagerly awaited.Here’s hoping that bhaiya gets a super hit.

Sunny Deol starrer ‘Bhaiya ji… Superhitt’ has wrapped up its Mumbai schedule and the cast and crew will soon be heading to Benaras in August on a 30-day shoot schedule to complete the last leg of the family entertainer. Sunny Deol starrer ‘Bhaiya ji… Superhitt’ has wrapped up its Mumbai schedule and the cast and crew will soon be heading to Benaras in August on a 30-day shoot schedule to complete the last leg of the family entertainer. Produced by Chirag Dhariwal and presented by Metro Movies, ‘Bhaiya ji… Superhitt’ has been written and directed by Neeraj Pathak. The film is said to be a roller-coaster ride of emotions as Sunny takes to the screen in two different avatars as he plays a double role.

No good action films being made today: Sunny Deol

Sunny Deol is shooting the sequel to Ghayal with Dan Bradley. 

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His last release, Singh Saab The Great (2013), didn’t do well at the box office. But Sunny Deol has better hopes from the project he is currently working on — the sequel to his 1990 hit, Ghayal. “The sequel is being made after 25 years. Sometimes, it feels a bit odd, as a lot of time has passed since the original released. But the good thing is that it’s still fresh in our minds,” says the actor, who is also producing and directing the new instalment.


Action was an integral part of Ghayal, but 25 years have seen a sea change in the way action sequences are shown in films today. However, Sunny says that he is not bothered about that. “My film is beyond current action films. No good action films are being made today. I have already done the kind of action sequences that actors do in today’s films. The most important thing is to have a good story,” says the 58-year-old.

The sequel will also see a cameo by Meenakshi Sheshadri, who was also part of the original. Since the actress has not been doing films for the past several years, was it difficult to convince her to face the camera again? “We didn’t really have to convince her.  Once you are an actor, you always remain one. Sunil Saini, the co-producer of the film, spoke to her and she agreed. Meeting her will be like a reunion, as we haven’t met in the longest time,” says Sunny.
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The third-generation Deol, Karan, has been rumored off and on to be making his screen debut. But his father, Sunny Deol, has recently revealed that his debut script has been locked now. Sunny, who did not see eye-to-eye with many directors on “Ghayal Once Again” and so had to return to directing 16 years after “Dillagi,” has decided to direct his son as well.

Adam Sandler: 5 Reasons He’s No Longer a Movie Star

Is it game over for Adam Sandler? His new comedy, “Pixels,” opened to a mediocre $24 million over the weekend, a disappointing result for the $88 million project. Sandler’s latest box office lemon comes on the heels of “The Cobbler” (Sandler’s lowest grossing title ever that opened to just $24,000 from 20 theaters in March), 2014’s “Blended” (the Drew Barrymore reteaming that mustered $46 million), “That’s My Boy” (a pairing with Andy Samberg that eked out $37 million) and “Jack and Jill” (the cross-dressing comedy that landed some of the worst reviews of his career). His only recent hits have been the 2013 sequel to “Grown Ups” (which netted $133 million) and “Hotel Transylvania,” an animated film that didn’t require him to be onscreen.
Here’s how Sandler’s box office career went from $4 billion in ticket sales to ice cold.
1. He aged out of his material
Sandler, 48, spent the ’90s playing the eternal teenage boy in his breakout-from-“SNL” vehicle “Billy Madison,” as well as box office hits “The Waterboy,” “Big Daddy,” “Mr. Deeds” and “Click.” But as his audience grew up, Sandler stayed the same—despite the title of “Grown Ups,” he rarely successfully played one in a movie. When he tried more mature roles, like in the Jason Reitman indie “Men, Women & Children” or Judd Apatow’s “Funny People,” he veered so far away from his brand, that his fans didn’t know what to make of it. This isn’t entirely Sandler’s fault. A slapstick comedian’s career is shorter than dramatic actor’s—just ask Jim Carrey. And Sandler had a longer run than arguably anybody in the juvenile comedy business: since 1998, 14 of his films have cracked $100 million at the U.S. box office.