I N T E R N A T I O N A L
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I N T E R N A T I O N A L
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Thursday, April 23, 2015
Jake Gyllenhaal, Sienna Miller, Sophie Marceau on Cannes jury
Joel Ryan/Invision/AP
Scarlett Johansson waves to fans upon arrival at the premiere of the film ‘The Avengers Age of Ultron’ in London, Tuesday, 21 April, 2015.
‘The Avengers’ set for blockbuster return
PARIS - Filmstars Jake Gyllenhaal, Sienna Miller and Sophie Marceau, as well as cult director Guillermo del Toro are among the members of this year’s Cannes film festival jury, organisers announced Tuesday. Other members of the jury for the May festival, which is being presided over by the Coen brothers, are Canadian director Xavier Dolan, Spanish actress Rossy de Palma and Malian singer-songwriter Rokia Traore. The jury will choose the winners in a range of acting and film-making categories, including the top prize, the Palme D’Or, presented at the closing ceremony on May 24. Dolan is by far the youngest member of the jury at just 26. His debut film “I Killed My Mother” appeared at Cannes when he was only 20, and his second feature “Mommy” won the third-place Jury Prize last year. The paparazzi will be particularly excited by the presence of Miller, who spent years being hounded by tabloids before finally getting a chance to prove her acting skills in recent hits “Foxcatcher” and “American Sniper”. The jury will be picking from a crop of entries that include American film “The Sea of Trees” starring Matthew McConaughey and Naomi Watts.
Also in the running is “Sicario” starring Emily Blunt, Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro, about a CIA operation to bring down a Mexican cartel. That entry may pose a quandary for Gyllenhaal, who is close to “Sicario” director Denis Villeneuve after appearing in his last two features. Cate Blanchett heads up another entrant, “Carol”, a lesbian love story set in New York, while Rachel Weisz will be in two movies: the Italian-directed “Youth” also featuring Michael Caine and Jane Fonda, and Greece’s “The Lobster” with Colin Farrel. Other movies chosen included several Asian picks -- “The Assassin” from Taiwan, “Umimachi Diary” from Japan, “Mountains May Depart” from China, and an Australian version of “Macbeth” starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard. Also on the jury is Rossy de Palma, an acting muse for Spanish directing legend Pedro Almodovar, while French actress Marceau has mixed popular favourites with arthouse classics, and is probably best-known outside France for her roles in Mel Gibson’s “Braveheart” and the James Bond film “The World Is Not Enough”. The Cannes Film Festival will run from May 13 to 24. (afp)
LOS ANGELES - Three years after saving the Earth -- and breaking a few box office records -- “The Avengers” are back with a power-packed punch this week with their latest blockbuster adventure. Iron Man, Captain America, Thor, Black Widow, Hulk and Hawkeye take on a new baddie who wants to wipe out Humanity, in “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” out from Tuesday in much of the world. Returning director Joss Whedon pits the superhero gang against their own shortcomings as they take on their ultimate enemy -- but also plays with the chemistry that developed between them in their first run-out. The original 2012 “The Avengers” became the third-highest grossing movie in cinema history, taking over $1.5 billion at the box office, only beaten by “Avatar” (2009) and “Titanic” (1997). The pressure on Whedon was therefore enormous -- but the 50-year-old said he drew the most inspiration from amidst the first film’s very success, and from the interplay between the main characters. He looked for “what little moments are there between these characters that I haven’t gotten to do yet, what conversations they haven’t had yet,
what haven’t I shown?” Whedon told reporters in Los Angeles. Relationships are indeed richer between Iron Man/Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.), Captain America (Chris Evans), Thor (Chris Hemsworth), Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson), Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner). There is also more humor to temper filmgoers’ pure adrenalin rush. The main thing was “to make sure that everybody had their moment, that it’s all connected to the movie, to the main thing,” said the filmmaker, who spent hundreds of hours editing the movie. The result is two hours of turbo-driven action, superhero fist-fights and technology at the service of a story full of surprises, which US critics have already hailed as a huge hit. Industry journal Variety called it a “supersized spandex soap opera that’s heavy on catastrophic action but surprisingly light on its feet, and rich in the human-scale emotion that can cut even a raging Hulk down to size.” (afp)
Jake Gyllenhaal
Andy Kropa/Invision/AP, File
WEATHER FORECAST 23 - 32 Dps
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Thursday, April 23, 2015
Back? I was never away, says Barca’s Iniesta
Hong Kong faces resistance with Beijing-backed election plan Page 6
Taliban announce their spring offensive in Afghanistan
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Honeymoon over for Indonesian leader as U-turns erode authority
DENPASAR - When Indonesian President Joko Widodo wanted to push this year’s budget through the opposition-dominated parliament, he left it to his advisers to hash out a deal with lawmakers. Among the sweeteners his aides offered parliament members was to roughly double their allowance for down payments on new cars to $15,000. The plan backfired. Amid public fury over the concession in a country where graft is pervasive, the aides scrambled to reverse it, one of several policy flip-flops that have eroded support for Widodo since he took office six months ago. His meteoric rise from furniture businessman to president of the world’s third-largest democracy, and the first to come from outside the political or military establishment, was widely seen as a watershed moment for Indonesia. Here was a leader, his supporters said, who would root out corruption, promote people based on merit rather than connections and create an environment where the stalling economy could reignite and investment flourish. But in interviews with Reuters, government officials and palace insiders portrayed the president as sometimes out of his depth and struggling to get around entrenched vested interests. Mis-steps like the car allowance decree have hurt Widodo’s reputation and cost him time. His strained relationship with the powerful head of his political party, former president Megawati Sukarnoputri, further complicates his job. “The ‘realpolitik’ situation is taking energy away from the real work; the economic programme, the roads and ports that need to be built,” Eko Sulistyo, a member of the presidential office, told Reuters. “(His) concentration and focus can be fragmented and broken because of the politics (around him),” he added. “That affects the ministers’ and government’s performance.” But Sulistyo, like others interviewed, believes Widodo can run the government successfully and still enjoys the support of Indonesians. One of the president’s main prob-
lems is structural. He does not have a parliamentary majority allowing him to push through all the reforms he would like to. Despite that, he has delivered on some of his promises that investors say are key to setting Indonesia on the path to sustainable economic growth, including slashing fuel subsidies and revamping the budget to boost infrastructure spending. “It’s only been six months, and to significantly improve the state of the country, it will take time,” said a minister and presidential adviser who asked to remain
anonymous. “I believe we’re on the right path. There is a lot of interference from different angles ... Because of that, people don’t see the good things that are happening.” There have been setbacks, however. Widodo conceded that he had not read the decree on car allowances before signing it, drawing widespread scorn on social media and in newspapers, which drew up lists of other U-turns. They included
reversing a visa waiver for citizens of 30 countries, dropping a ban on government bodies using hotels for meetings and backtracking on a requirement for foreigners working in the country to pass Indonesian language tests. Police Trouble
Widodo has also been weakened in the eyes of his people by the domineering Megawati, leader of Widodo’s Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) and his political patron. At a recent party congress on the island of Bali, the president sat hunched in a front-row seat while Megawati harangued members to follow party directions,
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saying that this included the president himself. Widodo left the three-day convention after only a few hours and without having delivered a prepared speech of his own. Relations between the two were strained earlier this year over who should be made national police chief, party insiders said. Widodo waited for weeks before bowing to pressure and ditching candidate Budi Gunawan, who is close to Megawati, after he had been implicated in a bribery scandal. Gunawan maintained his innocence, and the case against him was eventually dropped by the anti-graft agency, but not before a public outcry over Widodo’s wavering. “These days they (Widodo and Megawati) talk less frequently. There is definitely a problem with communication between PDI-P and Jokowi,” said PDI-P official Andreas Pareira, using Widodo’s popular local nickname. Megawati declined to comment for this article. For some foreign investors, Widodo’s floundering threatens to dampen sentiment at a time when the economy is growing at its slowest pace in five years and needs a kickstart from investment in infrastructure and manufacturing. “Six months in we’re still facing a big question mark about whether Jokowi is really in the driver’s seat,” said Jakob Sorensen, head of the European Business Chamber of Commerce in Jakarta. In a rare speech in English, Widodo told a business forum this week: “Please come and invest in Indonesia. Because where we see challenges, I see opportunity. And if you have any problem, call me.” (rtr) News can also be heard in “Bali Image” at Global Radio FM 96.5 from 9.30 until 10.00 am. Listen to Global Radio FM at http:// globalfmbali.listen2myradio.com or live video streaming at http://radioglobalfmbali.com and http:// ustream.tv/channel/global-fm-bali.