Shah Rukh Khan: Wedding vows

We hear the shooting of his film Billoo Barber is complete but on the last day of shoot, the actor landed on the sets at 2 pm for a 9 am shift.

That is if a production team member is to be believed. And the reason for his late coming is that the Khan had to fulfil social obligations. He apparently had to make an appearance at a police commissioner’s beti’s wedding! But then Shah Rukh is the baap on the sets of this one, na! After all he’s producing the picture, too! So if time is money, Shah Rukh is paying for it all anyway!

Stages Movie Review,Stages(2007),Stages-Story Line

The phrase “divorced couple” sounds like an oxymoron, but there’s really no other way to describe Roos (Elsie de Brauw) and Martin (Marcel Musters), the Dutch ex-spouses whose table talk dominates “Stages,” an oblique, intermittently intriguing film by Mijke de Jong. For these two the line between love and hate is not so much thin as crooked and blurry. Their habitual affection for each other is obvious, but also frequently indistinguishable from mutual contempt.

Ms. de Jong’s method is not to delve into their history or overheat the domestic drama, but rather to hover as they fight, commiserate, flirt and complain. “Stages” is structured as a series of conversations in public places — between Roos and Martin, and also between each of them and various colleagues and friends — interspersed with scenes of their teenage son, Isaac (Stijn Koomen), in solitude.

Isaac is behaving in disturbing ways. He breaks into strangers’ apartments, stealing time and space rather than property, and his prized possession is a fearsome samurai sword. When Roos, with whom he lives, comes home, Isaac retreats into his iPod.

For Roos and Martin, Isaac is a shared concern and a source of contention and competition, an excuse for each to blame and berate the other. For the audience he is an enigma, not least because we wonder what traits of temperament he has inherited from his parents. Martin, a slovenly, chain-smoking writer whose bluff amiability frequently slides toward boorishness, thinks Roos should just let Isaac be free. It’s clear that he regarded their marriage as a constraint on his own freedom, and it’s also possible to see Roos, through his eyes, as a passive-aggressive worrier.

Still, she is much more likable than her ex-husband, though “Stages” is studiously even-handed, even clinical in its observations. The camera floats behind heads and in front of faces, as Ms. de Jong rejects the usual grammar of shot and countershot, making you feel as if you’re eavesdropping on intimate, meandering conversations.

Some of which you may not want to hear. Gleaning intimate details from the public discourse of strangers can be fascinating, but not always edifying. “Stages” feels less like an invasion of privacy than like an oversharing introduction to people you might not want to know in the first place. That an American art-house audience is likely to recognize Martin and Roos — earnest, self-satisfied intellectuals who spend a lot of time in restaurants — does not necessarily make them appealing. Or even all that interesting, however incisive Ms. de Jong’s exploration of their shared discontent may be.

STAGES

Directed by Mijke de Jong; written by Jolein Laarman and Ms. de Jong; director of photography, Ton Peters; edited by Dorith Vinken; produced by Joost de Vries and Leontine Petit; released by Lemming Film. At Film Forum, 209 West Houston Street, west of Avenue of the Americas, Greenwich Village. In Dutch, with English subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 20 minutes. This film is not rated.

WITH: Elsie de Brauw (Roos), Marcel Musters (Martin), Stijn Koomen (Isaac) and Jeroen Willems (Joris).
Correction: November 07, 2008

A film review on Wednesday about “Stages,” a Dutch movie about a divorced couple, referred incorrectly to the director, who was also a co-writer of the film. The error also appeared in a listing of credits. The director, Mijke de Jong, is a woman.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)-Review,Zack and Miri Make a Porno (2008)-Story Line

Defying a trend toward baffling abstraction in movie titles — “Synecdoche, New York”? “Quantum of Solace”? “The Secret Life of Bees”? — Kevin Smith has given his new opus a name that tells you exactly what it’s about. Literal-mindedness has always been among Mr. Smith’s calling cards. His first film, about clerks, was called “Clerks.” And so it will hardly be shocking that “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” is about two people, named Zack (Seth Rogen) and Miri (Elizabeth Banks), who make what my copy editors would prefer that I call a pornographic movie.

And really, in spite of an avalanche of verbal filth (and a smaller quantum of the visual variety), “Zack and Miri” is not very shocking at all. Mr. Smith has been tinkering with the dirty-mind/soft-heart combination for quite some time, forming a link of sorts between the humanist sexual anarchy of John Waters and the smutty Victorianism of Judd Apatow. He and his characters revel in dialogue that riffs on body parts and bodily fluids, but Mr. Smith’s stories are bathed — metaphorically! — in syrup and schmaltz.

So “Zack and Miri Make a Porno,” in spite of its sometimes tiresome, sometimes amusing lewdness, follows a gee-whiz romantic-comedy formula that would not be out of place on the Disney Channel. Two best friends who have always been in love with each other discover that … they have always been in love with each other. Granted, this revelation occurs while they are having sex in front of a camera, but it is so sweet and predictable that these potentially tawdry circumstances hardly matter.

Mr. Smith tries, with mixed results, both to rub our faces in the tawdriness and to erase it altogether. The movie wants to insist that pornography is a jolly, innocuous pursuit, but also to take refuge in a sincere, romantic traditionalism that is antithetical to the cynical, often playful sexual ethos of pornography. Mr. Smith is intent on making a love story, which is almost by definition the opposite of the kind of movie Zack and Miri set out to produce.

They are roommates, living in a run-down Pittsburgh apartment and in that treacherous stretch between the end of adolescence and the onset of maturity. Approaching their 10th high school reunion, Zack and Miri are broke, miserable and alienated. This has always been Mr. Smith’s comfort zone. He is a poet of failure, and Mr. Rogen is unmatched at playing reasonably nice, reasonably smart guys with minimal ambitions that they may nonetheless fail to realize.

Zack works in a Starbucks-like coffee shop alongside Delaney, a harried husband played by Craig Robinson (“The Office,” a show-stopping monologue in “Knocked Up”), who is fast becoming the most dependable comic counterpuncher in the business and who needs some bigger roles or a sitcom of his own right away. When Zack and Miri hatch their plan to climb out of debt by making a skin flick, Delaney becomes their producer.

A cast and crew materializes, including the real-life former porn star Traci Lords and the Kevin Smith stalwarts Jason Mewes and Jeff Anderson, who signs on as director of photography.

The best moments come early, before “Zack and Miri Make a Porno” decides to wear its heart on its sleeve and keep everything else in its pants. Justin Long and Brandon Routh — Superman! — do some droll camping at the reunion, and Mr. Mewes uses his deadpan immunity to embarrassment to good effect.

Like Rosario Dawson in “Clerks 2,” Ms. Banks (who plays Laura Bush in Oliver Stone’s “W.”) is forced to be funny on a pedestal. She has to be the nice girl with the naughty mouth, just uninhibited enough to play along with Zack’s schemes but not so daring as to tarnish his idealized image of her.

The gauzy sweetness that envelops the end of the movie is not unwelcome, but not very convincing either. The “porno” remains unfinished, and so does “Zack and Miri,” having — like most pornography, interestingly enough — thrown away an imaginative premise to get down to predictable, mechanical business. It’s as if Mr. Smith were a plumber who knocked at your door and then, against all reasonable expectations, insisted on fixing the sink.

“Zack and Miri Make a Porno” is rated R (Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian). It has some nudity and sexual situations, but mostly just talk.

ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORNO

Written, directed and edited by Kevin Smith; director of photography, Dave Klein; production designer, Robert Holtzman; produced by Scott Mosier; released by the Weinstein Company. Running time: 1 hour 41 minutes.

WITH: Seth Rogen (Zack), Elizabeth Banks (Miri Linky), Traci Lords (Bubbles), Jason Mewes (Lester), Ricky Mabe (Barry), Craig Robinson (Delaney), Katie Morgan (Stacey), Justin Long (Brandon), Brandon Routh (Bobby Long) and Jeff Anderson (Deacon).

Quantum of Solace-Review,Quantum of Solace-Story Line,Bond 2008

A reviewer may come to a new James Bond movie — “Quantum of Solace,” directed by Marc Forster and opening Friday, is the 22nd official installment of the series in 46 years — with a nifty theory or an elaborate sociocultural hermeneutic agenda, but the most important thing to have on hand is a checklist. It’s all well and good to reflect upon the ways 007, the Harry Potter of British intelligence, has evolved over time through changes in casting, geopolitics, sexual mores and styles of dress.

But the first order of business must always be to run through the basic specs of this classic entertainment machine’s latest model and see how it measures up.

So before we proceed to any consideration of the deeper meanings of “Quantum of Solace” (or for that matter the plain meaning of its enigmatic title), we need to assess the action, the villain, the gadgets, the babes and the other standard features.

The opening song, performed by Jack White and Alicia Keys (an intriguing duo on paper if nowhere else), is an abysmal cacophony of incompatible musical idioms, and the title sequence over which those idioms do squalling battle is similarly disharmonious: conceptually clever and visually grating. The first chase, picking up exactly where the 2006 “Casino Royale” left off, is speedy and thrilling, but the other action set-pieces are a decidedly mixed bag, with a few crisp footraces, some semi-coherent punch-outs and a dreadful boat pileup that brings back painful memories of the invisible car Pierce Brosnan tooled around in a few movies ago.

Picturesque locales? Bolivia, Haiti, Austria and Italy are featured or impersonated, to perfectly nice touristic effect. Gizmos? A bit disappointing, to tell the truth. Technological advances in the real world may not quite have outpaced those in the Bond universe, but so many movies these days show off their global video surveillance set-ups and advanced smart-phone applications that it’s hard for this one to distinguish itself.

What about the villain? One of the best in a while, I’d say, thanks to a lizardy turn from the great French actor Mathieu Amalric, who plays Dominic Greene, a ruthless economic predator disguised as an ecological do-gooder. The supporting cast is studded with equally excellent performers, including Jeffrey Wright and Giancarlo Giannini, both reprising their roles in “Casino Royale.”

And the women? There are two, as usual — not counting Judi Dench, returning as the brisk and impatient M — one (Gemma Arterton) a doomed casual plaything, the other a more serious dramatic foil and potential romantic interest. That one, called Camille, is played by Olga Kurylenko, whose specialty seems to be appearing in action pictures as the pouty, sexy sidekick of a brooding, vengeful hero. Not only Daniel Craig’s Bond, but also Mark Wahlberg’s Max Payne and Timothy Olyphant’s Hitman.

James Bond is a much livelier character than either of those mopey video-game ciphers, but he shares with them the astonishing ability to resist, indeed to ignore, Ms. Kurylenko’s physical charms.

This is not out of any professional scruple. The plot of “Quantum of Solace” is largely propelled by Bond’s angry flouting of the discipline imposed by his job, and anyway when did James Bond ever let work get in the way of sex? No, what gets in the way is emotion. 007’s grief and rage, the source of his connection to Camille, are forces more powerful than either duty or libido.

Mr. Brosnan was the first actor to allow a glimmer of complicated emotion to peek through Bond’s cool, rakish facade, and since Mr. Craig took over the franchise two years ago the character has shown a temperament at once rougher and more soulful than in previous incarnations. The violence in his first outing, “Casino Royale,” was notably intense, and while “Quantum of Solace” is not quite as brutal, the mood is if anything even more grim and downcast.

The death in “Casino” of Bond’s lover Vesper Lynd (Eva Green), along with the possibility that she had betrayed him before dying, provides an obvious psychological explanation for his somber demeanor in “Quantum.” But while the exploration of Bond’s psychology makes him, arguably at least, a deeper, subtler character — and there is certainly impressive depth and subtlety in Mr. Craig’s wounded, whispery menace — it also makes him harder to distinguish from every other grieving, seething avenger at the multiplex.

Which is to say just about every one. And here, I suppose, the deeper questions bubble up. Is revenge the only possible motive for large-scale movie heroism these days? Does every hero, whether Batman or Jason Bourne, need to be so sad?

I know grief has always been part of the Dark Knight’s baggage, but the same can hardly be said of James Bond, Her Majesty’s suave, cynical cold war paladin. His wit was part of his — of our — arsenal, and he countered the totalitarian humorlessness of his foes with a wink and a bon mot.

Are these weapons now off limits for the good guys? Or can moviegoers justify their vicarious enjoyment of on-screen mayhem — and luxury hotels, high-end cocktails and fast cars — only if there are some pseudoserious bad feelings attached? The Sean Connery James Bond movies of the 1960s were smooth, cosmopolitan comedies, which in the Roger Moore era sometimes ascended to the level of farce. With Mr. Craig, James Bond reveals himself to be — sigh — a tragic figure.

“Quantum of Solace,” a phrase never uttered in the course of this film (though it has something to do with Greene’s diabolical scheme, itself never fully explained), means something like a measure of comfort. Perhaps that describes what Bond is looking for, or maybe it is what this kind of entertainment tries to provide a fretful audience. If so, I prefer mine with a dash of mischief.

“Quantum of Solace” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). Its scenes of violence and sex are carefully edited to avoid showing too much gore or skin.

QUANTUM OF SOLACE

Directed by Marc Forster; written by Neal Purvis, Robert Wade and Paul Haggis, based on characters created by Ian Fleming; director of photography, Roberto Schaefer; edited by Matt Chessé and Richard Pearson; music by David Arnold; production designer, Dennis Gassner; produced by Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes.

WITH: Daniel Craig (James Bond), Olga Kurylenko (Camille), Mathieu Amalric (Dominic Greene), Judi Dench (M), Giancarlo Giannini (Mathis), Gemma Arterton (Agent Fields), Jeffrey Wright (Felix Leiter), Jesper Christensen (Mr. White), Anatole Taubman (Elvis), Rory Kinnear (Tanner) and Joaquín Cosio (General Medrano).

High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008),High School Musical 3-Review

How lovely the American high school experience might be if it offered even a smidgen of the euphoria that spirals “High School Musical 3: Senior Year,” into a candy-colored never-never land that Peter Pan might envy.

In making the leap from Disney Channel to the big screen, the third chapter of the phenomenally popular franchise crystallizes a moment in movie-musical history that is probably as evanescent as it is triumphant. If you recall all that hyperbolic talk in the ’80s about music videos spurring a full-scale revival of the movie musical — a revival that fizzled after “Footloose” and “Flashdance” — here it is (without frantic MTV-style editing). Or was. “High School Musical 4” has already been announced. But whether the franchise can continue after the major characters graduate is open to question. Quirky new characters are introduced. But are they stars?

Much of the success of the “High School Musicals” owes to the shrewd mixing and matching of proven formulas, augmented by the charisma of Zac Efron and Vanessa Hudgens as the dewy-eyed puppy lovers Troy Bolton and Gabriella Montez. Mr. Efron’s athletic grace is Astaire-like in its casual authority. Ms. Hudgens’s blissful smiles melt the screen.

The taken-for-granted ethnic diversity of the students at East High in Albuquerque, the franchise’s unlikely setting, comes from “Fame.” So does the craving for show business glory expressed in “I Want It All,” belted by the movie’s resident not-so-nasty mean girl, Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale), a teenager so ambitious she would steal the scene off your back.

Most of the 10 songs in “High School Musical 3” belong to a boy-band tradition that runs from New Kids on the Block through the Backstreet Boys to the Jonas Brothers. The best of the score’s several songwriters are the team of Matthew Gerrard and Robbie Nevil, whose auto junkyard anthem, “The Boys Are Back,” echoes Thin Lizzy’s 1976 hit “The Boys Are Back in Town” filtered through Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” and is frenziedly performed by a male chorus executing post-break-dance acrobatics on the hoods of rusted cars. The genre, which might be described as sugarcoated bubblegum hip-hop, may be disposable, but it is extremely catchy and rhythmically elastic.

The all-purpose choreography by the director Kenny Ortega and his collaborators mixes up Rockettes-like kick lines, angular writhing in the style of “Cats,” break dancing and accelerated ballroom moves. (Mr. Efron does an impeccably suave waltz.) In one number, Mr. Ortega even quotes his own choreography from Madonna’s “Material Girl” video. My favorite dance number is the triumphal title song, performed on a playing field where the lines of dancers ripple like a human roller coaster.

All very sweet, you say. But what does it all mean?

To which I would reply: Does it have to mean anything beyond the pleasure of entering a dream of high school harmony?

So what if these wholesome singing-and-dancing characters include no teenagers you or I will ever meet? If you dropped the term “friends with benefits” to any of these absurdly idealized youth who appear to have descended from the same planet that produced “The Brady Bunch,” you may rest assured they wouldn’t know what you were talking about. The only things on their minds besides basketball and musical comedy are choosing a prom date and a college to attend. There are wistful moments, but no sulky ones. The one lingering kiss is delicate.

The movie’s cleverest notion is its portrayal of sports and musical comedy as interchangeable. In the sensational opening number, “Now or Never,” East High’s Wildcats trounce their rivals to hip-hop beats and semi-rapped chants shouted by the cheerleaders and players alike.

Whether to choose sports or musical comedy, that is the burning question facing Troy, who has been planning to accompany his best friend, Chad Danforth (Corbin Bleu), to “U. of A.,” as it is called, and play basketball. But when the school’s fluty-voiced drama teacher, Ms. Darbus (Alyson Reed), announces to Troy’s shock that he is one of four students being considered for a scholarship to Juilliard, he is thrown into a quandary. As he ponders his future, the movie slips in an argument for musical theater as a more-than-O.K. activity for all-American guys; after all, it is another sport.

The other small conflicts in Peter Barsocchini’s story (the weakest of his three “High School Musical” plots) are hardly worth mentioning. But in a movie determined to keep reality at a safe distance, would you want it any other way? As its wholesome perpetual-motion machines leap, tumble and whipsaw through the halls and playgrounds of East High, you want to leave the world behind and be one of them now and forever.

HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL 3: SENIOR YEAR

Opens on Friday nationwide.

Directed by Kenny Ortega; written by Peter Barsocchini; director of photography, Daniel Aranyo; edited by Don Brochu; music by David Lawrence; choreography by Mr. Ortega, Charles Klapow and Bonnie Story; production designer, Mark Hofeling; produced by Bill Borden and Barry Rosenbush; released by Walt Disney Pictures. Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes. This film is rated G.

WITH: Zac Efron (Troy Bolton), Vanessa Hudgens (Gabriella Montez), Ashley Tisdale (Sharpay Evans), Lucas Grabeel (Ryan Evans), Corbin Bleu (Chad Danforth) , Monique Coleman (Taylor McKessie) and Alyson Reed (Ms. Darbus).

Germany Drops Attempt to Ban Scientology

(POTSDAM, Germany) — Germany is dropping its pursuit of a ban on Scientology after finding insufficient evidence of illegal activity, security officials said Friday.

Domestic intelligence services will continue to monitor the group, officials said. (Read ‘Germany’s Battle Against Scientology.)

The German branch of the Los Angeles-based Church of Scientology has been under observation by domestic intelligence services for more than a decade. Top security officials asked state governments in December to begin gathering information on whether they had sufficient grounds to seek a ban.

The Church of Scientology welcomed the ministers’ decision to stop seeking a ban as the “only one possible.”

“There never was a legal basis to open such proceedings,” said Sabine Weber, a spokeswoman for Scientology in Germany.

Scientology further called on officials to end the observation, and what it called “the discrimination and the harassment that go along with it.” Germany has said it considers Scientology to be in conflict with the principles of the nation’s constitution, calling it less a church than a business that uses coercion to take advantage of vulnerable people.

A report on extremism last charged that Scientology “seeks to limit or rescind basic and human rights, such as the right to develop one’s personality and the right to be treated equally.”

“This organization pursues goals — through its writings, its concept and its disrespect for minorities — that we cannot tolerate and that we consider in violation of the constitution. But they put very little of this into practice,” Erhart Koerting, Berlin’s top security official, told reporters. “The appraisal of the government at the moment is that (Scientology) is a lousy organization, but it is not an organization that we have to take a hammer to.”

Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble and his counterparts from Germany’s 16 states agreed Friday that there was not enough proof to justify opening proceedings for such a ban but domestic intelligence services will continue to monitor Scientology’s activities. “Before we open preliminary proceedings (leading to a ban), we need concrete evidence of unconstitutional activity,” August Hanning, a Schaeuble deputy, said. “The security agencies are predominantly of the opinion that there is not sufficient evidence of this.”

The Church of Scientology has long battled to end the surveillance, saying it is an abuse of freedom of religion, and the U.S. State Department regularly criticizes Germany for the practice in its annual Human Rights Report.

Scientology was founded in 1954 by the late science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard. It first set up in Germany in 1970 and officials estimate it counts some 5,000 to 6,000 members here.

According to the 2007 annual report of the German agency that tracks extremism, Scientology “seeks to reduce or deny basic constitutional and human rights, such as the right to human dignity, the right to self-fulfillment and the right to equal treatment.”

Tendulkar back as India series win in Bangalore

Bangalore: Riding high on their new found confidence, India are all set to wrap up the seven-match one-day series against a struggling England in Bangalore itself when the two teams clash in the fourth match at the Chinnaswamy Stadium here.

The Indian side has gained more teeth in both batting and bowling with the inclusion of batting maestro Sachin Tendulkar and all-rounder Irfan Pathan. However, the team management will find it difficult to choose the playing eleven with all the youngsters putting up decent performances.

Though the playing eleven of both the teams will be picked on match day, the Indians are likely to include both Tendulkar and Pathan in place of Rohit Sharma and RP Singh, who was left out of the squad.

As far as Kevin Pietersen and company are concerned they will have an additional headache of coping with Tendulkar apart from in-form batsmen like Yuvraj Singh and skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni and openers Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir.

Harbhajan Singh, who joined the 200-wicket club in ODIs at Kanpur – and seamers Zaheer Khan and Ishant Sharma are in wicket-taking form backed up by part-timers Yuvraj and Sehwag threatening to run down the rival batting with crucial spells. And England’s misery seems to be mounting despite unseasonal rains, which lashed the city on Saturday, threatening to disrupt the match.

The Indians in all probability will prefer opening the batting with the set pair of Gambhir and Sehwag even though the likelihood of Tendulkar opening cannot be ruled out completely. Suresh Raina will be an automatic choice for the one-down position while Tendulkar (if he does not open), Yuvraj Singh and Dhoni to follow.

The two Pathan brothers – Yusuf and Irfan – will fill up the lower order slots followed by the three specialist bowlers as Dhoni has made it very clear that his first priority would be to win the series before thinking of experimenting with the bench strength.

The youthful Indian side seems to match any team in the world, with the seniors setting a fine example. India’s fielding has caught the imagination and the strong batting line-up backed up by penetrative bowling certainly makes the hosts hot favourites, weather permitting.

The tourists are struggling in every department barring a couple of individual performances. Captain Kevin Pietersen would be looking forward to a solid start from openers Ian Bell and Ravi Bopara with their third option Alastair Cook forced to warm the bench. Bell, Bopara and Owais Shah have got starts but have not really gone on to get big scores.

Another option the England skipper would be eyeing is to promote the free-stroking Owais Shah, who batted confidently in Kanpur, up the order as seniors Paul Collingwood, Andrew Flintoff, wicketkeeper-batsman Matt Prior and himself have struggled for runs so far.

Their bowling too has not been up to the mark especially with Ryan Sidebottom still not at his peak and young Stuart Broad bowling well but not finding the desired support from the fielders.

Unfortunately for the tourists their two spinners – Samit Patel and Graeme Swann – have not made any impression on the Indian batsmen so far and only an exceptional performance from either of them can turn their team’s fortune.

The teams:

India (from): MS Dhoni (captain), Virender Sehwag (vice-captain), Sachin Tendulkar, Gautam Gambhir, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Yuvraj Singh, Yusuf Pathan, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer Khan, Virat Kohli, Munaf Patel, Ishant Sharma and Irfan Pathan.

England (from): Kevin Pietersen (captain), JamesAnderson, Ian Bell, Ravi Bopara, Stuart Broad, Paul Collingwood, Alastair Cook, Andrew Flintoff, Steve Harmison, Samit Patel, Matt Prior, Owais Shah, Ryan Sidebottom, Graeme Swann, Luke Wright and Tim Ambrose.

Umpires: Russel Tiffin and Suresh Shastri. Third umpire: Amish Saheba.

Match Referee: Roshan Mahanama.

Dhoni denies rift with selectors,M.S.Dhoni Bangalore

Bangalore: Indian skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni on Saturday denied rift with selectors on dropping of Rudra Pratap Singh and preferring all-rounder Irfan Pathan for the remaining part of the on-going One-Day series against England.

“I don’t know who is spreading this kind of rumors. Whoever is leaking confidential matters to the press is not doing any good for the well being of cricket. I don’t want to deny or admit what transpires during the meeting because it is supposed to be confidential. If someone has leaked confidential matters to the press it is just not done. I want to know who the source was. As far as I am concerned there was no rift with the selectors on any issue,” Dhoni told reporters on the eve of the fourth One-Day match at the Chinnaswamy Stadium.

“It is unfortunate that such rumors are being spread when the team is doing so well and we are on the threshold of achieving yet another series victory. I should admit this kind of distractions are not good for the game in general and for the team in particular. The selection matters should always remain inside the four walls and moreover it is the selectors job to pick the best possible team,” he added.

It is understood that one of the selectors leaked about Dhoni’s threat to quit as captain of the Indian team if Irfan Pathan was preferred ahead of R P Singh during the selection meeting in Kanpur after the hosts beat England by 16 runs on Duckworth-Lewis Method.

However, Dhoni, who first denied the rift vehemently but later on softened his stance and wanted to know who was leaking out confidential matters to the press wanted to know the name of the person responsible when a scribe tried to grill him on this matter.

“if you (scribe) got the news over phone from someone, why don’t you name that person. By naming that person, you will be doing a great service to the team as what transpires in a meeting is not supposed to be leaked by anyone,” he thundered.

“Thankfully, our team is very united and both R P and Irfan understand that the best 16 boys get to play for the country. Luckily I don’t have to explain to RP or Irfan about anything as they trust me fully. In fact the whole team trusts each other and I should say that it has been a very short but fruitful journey as a player and captain so far. Though this unwanted event (rumors of rift) has turned out to be an eventful journey as well,” he added.

Obama Tilts to Center, Inviting a Clash of Ideas

WASHINGTON — President-elect Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination with the enthusiastic support of the left wing of his party, fueled by his vehement opposition to the decision to invade Iraq and by one of the most liberal voting records in the Senate.

Now, his reported selections for two of the major positions in his cabinet — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and Timothy F. Geithner as secretary of the Treasury — suggest that Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party, surrounding himself with pragmatists rather than ideologues.

The choices are as revealing of the new president as they are of his appointees — and suggest that, from its first days, an Obama White House will brim with big personalities and far more spirited debate than occurred among the largely like-minded advisers who populated President Bush’s first term.

But the names racing through the ether in Washington about the choices to follow also suggest that Mr. Obama continues to place a premium on deep experience. He is widely reported to be considering asking Mr. Bush’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, to stay on for a year; and he is thinking about Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander and Marine Corps commandant, for national security adviser, and placing Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary whom Mr. Obama considered putting back in his old post, inside the White House as a senior economic adviser.

“This is the violin model: Hold power with the left hand, and play the music with your right,” David J. Rothkopf, a former Clinton official who wrote a history of the National Security Council, said on Friday, as news of Mrs. Clinton’s and Mr. Geithner’s appointments leaked. “It’s teaching us something about Obama: while he wants to bring new ideas to the game, he is working from the center space of American foreign policy.”

The reason, several of Mr. Obama’s transition team members say, is that they believe that the new administration will have no time for a learning curve. With the country facing a deep recession or worse, global market turmoil, chaos in Pakistan and a worsening war in Afghanistan, “there’s going to be no time for experimentation,” a member of the Obama foreign policy team said.

That explains Mr. Obama’s first selection: Rahm Emanuel, another centrist Democrat and former member of the Clinton White House, as his chief of staff.

In some ways, the choices made so far are reminiscent of the way the last senator to be elected president, John F. Kennedy, chose a cabinet. As president-elect, Kennedy soon picked three top officials significantly more conservative than he was: Dean Rusk as secretary of state, Robert S. McNamara as secretary of defense and C. Douglas Dillon, a Republican, as secretary of the Treasury. They helped him navigate the Cuban missile crisis, but also got him bogged down in Vietnam.

Of all the choices Mr. Obama has made so far, it is the selection of Mrs. Clinton that appears the biggest gamble, in part because she has never had to engage in the give-and-take of high-stakes diplomacy, and in part because no one really knows how she will mesh with the Obama White House.

In her discussion with the president-elect, several members of his transition team said, Mrs. Clinton expressed no doubt that she could be a loyal member of the Obama team — though she was reportedly deeply conflicted about giving up her Senate seat and the independent power base it afforded her.

During the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton went out of their way to point out their foreign policy differences, with Mrs. Clinton portraying herself as a hawkish Democrat and defending her decision to vote in favor of the 2002 resolution that Mr. Bush later considered an authorization to use military force against Saddam Hussein. (Later, she said she fully expected Mr. Bush to use diplomacy first — and was shocked that he did not.)

Now the question is less one of ideological differences than whether a Clinton State Department could become something like Colin L. Powell’s: an alternative, though weak, power center that made little secret of its differences with the White House.

“Anyone who tells you they really know how this is going to work out,” one senior transition official said Thursday, “is telling less than the truth.”

If Mrs. Clinton is taken from the “Team of Rivals” model, Mr. Geithner, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, is from the Team of Neutrals.

“He’s no liberal,” said a former colleague at the Treasury Department, where he managed the American response to the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s.

At the time Mr. Geithner developed a reputation as the ultimate pragmatist, putting together a package of more than $100 billion in aid to halt the financial contagion. That turned out to be a training session for his role, a decade later, in the bailouts of Bear Stearns, A.I.G. and the injection of nearly $350 billion in Congressionally authorized money, whose exact use has become something of a political football.

Mr. Geithner grew up in Asia — in Tokyo, New Delhi and Bangkok — and keeps his ego well in check. He asks a lot of questions, but does not have Mr. Summers’s overwhelming — some say overbearing — personality.

“He clicked with Obama,” one outside adviser said. “If you think about it, their sort of cool, distant styles are alike.”

Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy, Guns N’ Roses’ Are Back

How long have we been waiting for Guns N’ Roses’ Chinese Democracy? After a decade passed without sight or sound of the thing, music fans started cracking the obvious joke: the Chinese will have democracy before record stores get Chinese Democracy. That joke is itself now an antique — record stores! — but we finally have an answer. On Nov. 23, Guns N’ Roses will release its fifth album of original material, 17 years after its last. Put another way, Miley Cyrus will soon get to hear the first new Guns N’ Roses record of her lifetime. (Listen to Chinese Democracy)

So what’s the band been doing? Breaking up mostly. The current lineup has just one original member, Axl Rose. The rest, including guitar savant Slash, departed years ago, presumably too intrigued by the Internet and other human advances to stay locked up in a recording studio with their famously controlling singer. Rose, once as blond and lithe as a stalk of wheat, has suffered the pudgification of middle age and burned through a reported $14 million in production costs, making Chinese Democracy the most expensive record in history. But given the cruelty with which pop culture devours its celebrity eccentrics, he’s had a pretty easy ride. A surprising number of people actually want to hear this record, and for that, you can credit curiosity — What does $14 million sound like? — and the power of rock stardom. In his prime, Rose may have been an angry, misogynistic homophobe — the proto-Eminem — but he was also a riveting physical and vocal presence. And real rock stars remain scarce enough that they tend to get the benefit of even extreme doubt.

What’s clear within the first moments of Chinese Democracy is that Rose still has his snarl. His voice always was a power tool with endless precision settings, and on “Better” he opens by speak-singing in a tender falsetto before the guitars kick in and he sandblasts away at the melody. What Rose has to say — “A twist of fate, the change of heart kills my infatuation” etc. — is a bland list of romantic gripes that fail to diminish the song’s impact one bit because it’s how Rose sings that matters. Repeating the word better in the bridge, he spits the b’s and drags his vocal cords across the r’s until, out of meaninglessness, his meaning is unmistakable. Whether the anger is authentic is impossible to know, but it certainly is compelling.

Throughout, Rose sounds as strong as ever and maybe even more flexible. On the “November Rain”-ish ballad “Street of Dreams,” he emotes with a previously unheard Elton John — like pop softness, and “There Was a Time” has him scampering flawlessly up the vocal ladder from low growls to meticulous high notes. Most of the tracks clock in at about five minutes, with solid melodies and abundant pace and instrument changes. Choirs show up sometimes, as do a mellotron and a Spanish guitar. It’s almost enough to keep things interesting. Almost.

Noting that Chinese Democracy is a tad overproduced is like pointing out that The Dark Knight is a little gloomy. It doesn’t require a lot of critical expertise. But nearly every arrangement has been manipulated and fussed with until the music feels encased in Lucite. Appetite for Destruction, Guns N’ Roses’ 1987 debut, had a brutish confidence — it sounded like five sharpened instruments and lots of open space. That Guns N’ Roses was a band; this incarnation is a whole zip code. On some tracks, Rose has five guitarists soloing and jamming to fill every cranny, but the result isn’t chaos so much as needlepoint. “Madagascar” has a string section, horns, samples of the “I have a dream” speech and dialogue from Cool Hand Luke, but everything is so dully controlled that it might as well have been programmed on a synthesizer.

That means the burden of surprise rests solely on Rose’s voice. Perhaps that’s how he wanted it, but even his quaver isn’t good enough to carry a 71-min. album that was 17 years in the making. “If I thought that I was crazy/ Well I guess I’d have more fun,” Rose sings in “The Catcher in the Rye,” and he may be on to something. Chinese Democracy is as obsessive as you’d expect, but it’s not nearly crazy enough.