Cinema should highlight humane approach, says President Patil

New Delhi, Mar 19 (ANI): President Pratibha Patil on Friday said that cinema should be used as a medium to give expression to the importance of a humane approach in life.

Addressing the 56th National Film Award ceremony here, President Patil said: "Cinema needs to be continuously nurtured, as a part of our efforts to not only excel in making films, but also to use it as a medium to tell our stories, as well as give expression to the importance of a humane approach in life."

Patil said that cinema has an immense influence on thinking and on life styles particularly of young generation.

"There is much positive energy that can be generated by using films, for conveying the message of good values to society and also eradicating harmful social evils," she added.

Underling the deep impact making capacity of the cinema, President Patil asked the filmmakers to exhibit a great care in the manner in which creativity finds expression.

"There is a new generation of viewers and a growing middle class, more able to and more capable of spending on entertainment. This is leading to an increasing demand for better cinematography and overall quality of films," she said.

"Other media of entertainment such as television and the internet are also factors that are influencing the film industry, its approach and its outreach. Balancing and catering to all these, is the challenge before the industry, as well as its creative individuals," President Patil added.

She further said that Indian heritage and culture is a great source of knowledge, which can be drawn upon to develop storylines that can appeal to our younger audiences, by making them more appealing and presenting them in the contemporary context.

Recalling the impact of Indian films through out the world President Patil said several genres and styles of film making used in Indian cinema makes it a vast ocean, with a variety that is enviable.

"Now, it is a two-way interaction. Our diverse and growing film sector is being noticed and indeed, wooed around the world. Our film industry is beginning to influence the foreign film industry, both financially and creatively," she said.

"Our film industry can play a part in bringing a progressive and fast developing India, anchored in thousands of years of a rich civilization, to the minds of viewers," President Patil added. (ANI)

A lifestyle resort hospital for diabetes opened in Coimbatore

Coimbatore, Mar 19(ANI): Coimbatore Diabetes Foundation has opened a Diabetes Village, a lifestyle resort hospital at Marudamalai near Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu.

While hospitals normally dealt with acute care and management of complications, preventive care would be focus of the Diabetes Village.

The centre functions as a lifestyle resort hospital, enriching the quality of life of the affected.

It offers diabetes treatment, diabetes master health check-up and management of all diabetic complications. It also has an obesity clinic a state-of-the-art clinical laboratory and also focused on hypertension, cholesterol and heart diseases.

"The diabetes village mainly aims at the objective of providing necessary lifestyle changes. So far, patients were spending more on doctors and received very short consultation. So here, patients live with the medical team," said Dr. Sekar, Chief Diabetologist of Diabetes village.

"You (patients) can walk with the doctors, play with them and may be dine with the doctors. So basically the idea of changing your diet and making you physically active is our objective," he added.

The centre would provide other facilities, including tracks for walking and jogging, swimming pool, tennis court, villas for treatment and rehabilitation, spas, meditation and yoga hall, music therapy and library.

These facilities attract patients from all across the country.

"We can jog, swim in the pool. Here, we have all facilities of relaxation. I feel this is an ideal place for diabetic patients," said Raja Mohan, a diabetic patient from Uttar Pradesh. (ANI)

INDIAN ISSUE....

Monkey killing triggers protests

Greater Noida, March 19 (IANS) A monkey was allegedly shot dead in the NTPC township area of Greater Noida, triggering protests by animal lovers and Hindu groups.

The incident occurred Wednesday.

According to police, a monkey was allegedly shot dead by NTPC employee Ashraf Ali outside his home in the B-block area of the township under Jarcha police station.

Hindu organizations and animal welfare activists swiftly reached the area and protested against the act.

On the complaint of Vishwa Hindu Parishad district president Pradeep Kumar, a case was registered against Ashraf Ali under section 429 IPC and Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act.

Animal rights activist Ashima Sharma said, 'The post mortem of the animal shows a clear bullet mark injury on the head, which proves the monkey was shot by the NTPC employee. But the police are reluctant to arrest him.'

Station Officer Jarcha, Babu Ram Verma said 'The residents informed us that they had found a monkey lying dead near the house of this NTPC employee. They then wrapped it in a red piece of cloth and buried in the nearby fields. On Friday, when we asked the women and some other residents in the immediate vicinity of the house, they told us that there was a fierce fight among a few langoors and monkeys due to which it fell down from the multi-storied house.'

'We exhumed the body of the monkey and got a post mortem conducted by a veterinary doctor' the official said.

'The case will be dealt as per the law,' he said.

Tollywood calls off proposed bandh

The proposed ‘shut down’ by the Telugu film industry on Friday has been called off following an assurance by the government that measures would be taken to deal firmly with piracy. Producer Y Ravichand who had been on an indefinite fast for the last four days demanding a firm assurance from the government on the matter also called off the fast on Thursday evening.

Cinematography minister J Geeta Reddy gave an assurance to film industry representatives that in one and a half months, an ordinance would be introduced against the video piracy. She said all video libraries would also be regulated and they would not be allowed to function without licence in the next three months.

She would also examine the provisions adopted by Tamil Nadu and Karnataka to hand out maximum punishment to those engaged in piracy. Film industry representatives including Allu Aravind, M Muralimohan, D Suresh Babu, Shekar Kammula, Teja and M Shyam Prasad Reddy met Geeta Reddy and also chief minister K Rosaiah seeking their intervention in tackling piracy.

Producer Shyam Prasad Reddy told the media that the film industry was satisifed with the assurance given by the government.

Later in the evening, at the Andhra Pradesh Film Chamber of Commerce at Filmnagar, producer Ravichand who gave up his indefinite fast thanked the film industry for standing by him in pressing for a solution to the problem of piracy.

Movie Artistes Association (MAA) president Muralimohan said the film industry would react as one to problems the industry faced irrespective of the political affiliations of some individuals.

The Telugu film industry decided to observe complete bandh on Friday, including cancellation of shootings and even screening of movies in theatres to bring pressure on the state government to come up with solutions to tackle the piracy menace.

Namib Desert. Namibia. Oldest deserts in the world

The desert occupies an area of around 80 900 km² (31 200 square miles), stretching about 1000 miles (1,600 km) along the Atlantic Ocean coast of Namibia. Its east-west width varies from 30 to 100 miles (50-160 km). The Namib Desert also reaches into southwest Angola. It is one of the 500 distinct physiographic provinces of the South African Platform physiographic division.

Having endured arid or semi-arid conditions for at least 55 million years, it is considered to be the oldest desert in the world. The Namib's aridity is caused by the descent of dry air of the Hadley Cell, cooled by the cold Benguela current along the coast. It has less than 10 mm (0.4 inches) of rain annually and is almost completely barren.

A number of unusual species of plants and animals are found only in this desert. One of these is Welwitschia mirabilis, one of the most unusual species. Welwitschia is a shrub-like plant, but grows just two long strap-shaped leaves continuously throughout its lifetime. These leaves may be several meters long, gnarled and twisted from the desert winds. The taproot of the plant develops into a flat, concave disc in age. Welwitschia is notable for its survival in the extremely arid conditions in the Namib, sometimes deriving moisture from the coastal sea fogs.

Although the desert is largely unpopulated and inaccessible, there are year-round settlements at Sesriem, close to the famous Sossusvlei and a huge group of sand dunes, which at more than 300 meters high are among the tallest sand dunes in the world. The complexity and regularity of dune patterns in its dune sea have attracted the attention of geologists for decades. They still remain poorly understood.

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After seeing the two pics you can clearly identify who works n who doesn't,,,,, !!!

Forward to all girls who can take a joke and all guys who like a laugh.

The Girls Who Kicked in Rock’s Door

THE most striking thing about “The Runaways,” a new film about the trailblazing bad-girl rock band from the 1970s that spawned Joan Jett, is how authentic it feels. The clubs are properly scuzzy. The dialogue is properly raunchy. The actors can properly sing. The hair is fried and feathered, the skin spotty from weeks of running on little but potato chips and estrogen. From the adrenaline rush of performing to the monotony of rehearsal, it’s a vivid snapshot of life on the road for ambitious teenagers who are constantly told that rock ’n’ roll “is the sport of men.” (And that’s their own manager talking.)

Richard Perry/The New York Times

Floria Sigismondi, who directed “The Runaways,” has also made music videos, including one for David Bowie. Cherie Currie and Joan Jett, of the real-life Runaways, were also huge Bowie fans.

One reason may be that the movie is partly based on “Neon Angel: A Memoir of a Runaway” (Harper Collins), a newly revamped autobiography by the group’s lead singer Cherie Currie, whose chillingly quick self-destruction is relived through Dakota Fanning. Another may be that Ms. Currie and Ms. Jett (played by Kristen Stewart) put the actors through hard-rock boot camp for several weeks before filming. And Floria Sigismondi, the writer and director, has “been around music all my life,” as she said in an interview in a hotel room in Midtown. Along with making videos for artists like David Bowie (Ms. Currie’s musical hero) and the White Stripes, she’s worked in clubs and gone on tour with her husband’s band, the Living Things. “I wanted it all to look real. I wanted bed head. I wanted freckles and pimples,” she said of the film, her first feature. The words she kept repeating on the set were “raw” and “gritty.”
The rock lifestyle has been notoriously difficult to get right on film. The mainstream fantasy — sex, drugs, hard-core partying — usually trumps the more tedious reality of musicians striving for success but often becoming trapped by it. The result has been films that end up either bloated and cartoonish (see the American Indian shaman following Jim Morrison around “The Doors”), sweetly sanitized (see the intercourse-avoiding groupies of “Almost Famous”) or as road-to-ruin predictable as “Behind the Music.” But since 2002, when the hyperactive “24 Hour Party People” captured the dance-oriented music scene in ’70s and ’80s Manchester, England, there has been a trickle of rock biopics that get the milieu and the music just right, like “Control,” the story of Joy Division, and “What We Do Is Secret,” the story of the Germs.
“The Runaways” is the rare movie to address the female rock experience. Until now the touchstone has been the fictional 1982 cult film “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Fabulous Stains,” a look at three skunk-haired female punks who make proclamations like “Every girl should be given an electric guitar on her 16th birthday.”
“It’s very hard to make a film about popular musicians, or music as the subject in any context,” said Jack White of the White Stripes in an e-mail message. “You could trust Floria to find the right angle because she has no need to oversell the subject.”
Ms. Sigismondi, 44, earned her first big buzz as a video director in 1997 after strapping Marilyn Manson into stilts and gruesome dental gear for the “Beautiful People” clip. She looks like a rock star herself, dressed in slim-fitting black pants and a black sweater, her long, slightly-goth hair fanning over a furry caveman vest. Simultaneously cool and effervescent, she is easy to imagine directing arty musicians like Bjork, Sigur Ros and Interpol as well as pop divas like Christina Aguilera, which she did.
Born in Italy to opera singers, Ms. Sigismondi moved to Canada with her family when she was 2. She grew up doing her homework in opera houses, surrounded by people in costume, she said, and dreamed of becoming a painter. After art college she embarked on a career as a fashion and art photographer; her work has been widely exhibited and collected in two books. In the early 1990s a production company suggested she make the leap into directing music videos. “Instead of coming up with one image, I had to come up with 100 images,” she said. “But I loved it right away. Now I was able to be more conceptual.”
The biggest legend she has ever worked with is Mr. Bowie. The video for his 1997 song “Little Wonder” is a quick-cut barrage of eyeballs, eye patches and aliens. “Floria is a real force of nature, never short of ideas, and meticulous in the way she brings them into play,” Mr. Bowie said in an e-mail message. “She’s also a little bit crazy, in a dark way, which in a working situation is just fine with me.”
While shooting a video for the Living Things in Prague in 2004, she met her future husband, Lillian Berlin, the lead singer and guitarist of the alternative rock band. They married in a park in Toronto and exchanged their vows on a cross made of red rose petals. Their daughter is named Tosca, after the opera.
Based in Los Angeles, Ms. Sigismondi came to the project, made for less than $10 million, after her manager introduced her to two of the producers, Art and John Linson. (Art produced films like “Fast Times at Ridgemont High” and “Fight Club”; John, his son, produced “Lords of Dogtown,” about ’70s skaters.)
“When we met Floria she was undeniable, even though she hadn’t directed a film before,” Art said in a telephone interview. “If you’ve met her and you’ve seen her work, you see that she’s got a spectacular eye, she’s got great style and she’s got the heart of a girl.” Both producers thought a female director was crucial. “We felt from the beginning that this is really a tale of two young girls” — Cherie and Joan — “getting in way over their heads in a world they knew very little about, a man’s world, and there’s a price to pay for that,” he said. “We thought: It’s got to come from the heart of another woman.”
Though “The Runaways” follows the general trajectory of the band, Ms. Sigismondi also considers the movie more of a coming-of-age story than a definitive biopic, focusing on the relationship among Cherie, Joan and Kim Fowley, the band’s insult-spewing male manager (Michael Shannon). In the film Cherie struggles with her twin sister, a sick alcoholic father, addiction and instant notoriety. Above all, Ms. Sigismondi said, she is a young girl trying to define herself in a high-pressure world of excess, with little adult guidance. “It’s a cautionary tale on Cherie’s side and an inspirational tale on Joan’s side,” she said. (After the Runaways broke up in 1979, Ms. Jett had a monster No. 1 hit with a 1982 cover of “I Love Rock ’n Roll.”)