Latin America
has in Caracas, Venezuela one of the largest active social groups
of expats (expatriates) in South America. Called the Rincon
Gang or Rinconeers, they publish a regular newsletter, the Rincon
Reminder, which updates their Caracas community web site, www.Expat-Village.com
The Rincon Reminder updates are also issued to ex-Caracas Rinconeers
now living and working in over 25 countries..
The Expat-Village web-site has all the latest Venezuelan news in English.
We publish news stories of interest to expatriates, including world news, sport,
entertainment and business. We have features on travel in Venezuela, Latin
America and the Caribbean, quick food recipes, and Venezuela security alerts.
Caracas social activities are listed in ‘What’s on in Caracas’, and we’ll keep
you amused with the 'Joke of the Day' page.
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Entertainment News
Matt Damon is Bourne again
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Jaw clenched, brow knotted, Matt Damon hurtles through The Bourne Ultimatum like
a missile. He's a man on a mission, our Matt, and so too is his character, Jason
Bourne, the near-mystically enhanced super-spy who, after losing his memory and
all sense of self, has come to realize that he has also lost part of his soul.
For Bourne, who rises and rises again in this fantastically kinetic, propulsive
film, resurrection is the name of the game, just as it is for franchises.
Their sights set far beyond the usual genre coordinates, the three Bourne
movies drill into your psyche as well as into your body. They're unusually smart
works of industrial entertainment, with action choreography that's as well
considered as the direction. Doug Liman held the reins on the first movie, with
Paul Greengrass taking over for the second and third installments. And while the
two men take different approaches to similar material (the more formally bold
Greengrass shatters movie space like glass), each embraces an ethos that's at
odds with the no pain, no gain, no brain mind-set that characterizes too many
such flicks. Namely remorse: In these movies, you don't just feel Bourne's hurt,
you feel the hurt of everyone he kills.
The Bourne Ultimatum picks up where The Bourne Supremacy left off, with this
former black-bag specialist for the CIA grimly, inexorably moving toward final
resolution. After a brush with happiness with the German woman (Franka Potente)
he met in the first movie (The Bourne Identity) and soon lost in the second, he
has landed in London. Stripped of his identity, his country and love, Bourne is
now very much a man alone, existentially and otherwise. Damon makes him haunted,
brooding and dark. The light seems to have gone out in his eyes, and the skin
stretches so tightly across his cantilevered cheekbones that you can see the
outline of his skull, its macabre silhouette. He looks like death in more ways
than one.
Death becomes the Bourne series, which, in contrast to most big-studio action
movies, insists that we pay attention and respect to all the flying,
back-flipping and failing bodies. There's no shortage of pop pleasure here, but
the fun of these films never comes from watching men die. It's easy to make
people watch - just blow up a car, slit someone's throat. The hard part is
making them watch while also....... Click
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Expat Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in
Caracas, Venezuela.
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Heather Mills American backlash
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Heather Mills' debut on US TV contest Dancing With The Stars provoked an abusive online backlash.
Viewers flooded broadcaster ABC`s website with messages about Sir Paul McCartney`s estranged wife.
Many focused angrily on her divorce battle with the former Beatle, saying she should never have been picked for the show.
Mills and partner Jonathan Roberts scored 18 out of 30 for her
fox-trot last night - and in the end it was her upper body movement
that drew criticism.
Six other couples were ahead of them in the rankings but they...
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Expat Village is edited and published by
Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
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Rock legends sue over online concert streams
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A Reuter’s news story at www.reuters.com
Some of rock 'n' roll's biggest names
have teamed up to sue the owner of a Web site that specializes in
streaming rare concert recordings.
Wolfgang's Vault offers thousands of recordings of rare audio and video
music performances collected over 30 years by Bill Graham, a famous
concert promoter who died in 1991.
On Monday, major rock names including Grateful Dead Productions, Carlos
Santana and members of Led Zeppelin and The Doors, sued the current
owner, claiming it was illegally offering recordings to stimulate sales
of other products.
Wolfgang's Vault representatives were not immediately available for comment.
The site also sells T-shirts, pictures and memorabilia such as vintage concert posters and tickets.
The recordings were made at concert performances by a wide array of artists from Bob Marley to Bob...................
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Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
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Happy Feet beats Bond movie again
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A BBC story at http://news.bbc.co.uk
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| Happy Feet features voices such as Elijah Wood and Nicole Kidman |
Animated comedy Happy Feet has held off Casino Royale at the North American box office for the second weekend in a row.
Its dancing penguins stayed at number one, taking $37.9m (£19.6m), compared to $31m (£16m) for the Bond thriller.
Happy Feet has now earned $100m (£52m) in a fortnight, a period which includes the annual US Thanksgiving holiday.
But there was some good news for Casino Royale, which was now on course
to become the highest-grossing Bond film, distributor Columbia Pictures
said.
The movie, starring Daniel Craig, has generated............
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Expat Village is edited and published by
Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
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Borat's Face Punched in NY by Joke Victim
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An article from http://www.playfuls.com
Sacha Baron Cohen was beaten up while
trying to impersonate reporter Borat in real life. While in New York,
he tried to pull a joke on a passer-by and was punched repeatedly
before being rescued by a friend. The reported incident took place
after Laurie and Cohen appeared on the US TV show Saturday Night Live
late last month.
In character up as the fictional Kazakh journalist Borat that he
created, Cohen approached a man in the street and said: "I like your
clothings. Are nice! Please may I buying? I want have sex with it."
The man didn't taste the joke, as probably he hasn't seen the Borat
movie, and punched Borat's face in. The comedian quickly switched from
his alter-ego back to Cohen and screamed for help. Cohen's friend,
actor Hugh Laurie, came to the rescue. The 47-year-old 'House' star
pushed the man away while Cohen got back onto his feet.
The actor friends had been headed for a late dinner in the city when Laurie suggested they pop into a Manhattan bar.
"Sacha couldn’t resist playing the fool as Borat, but picked on the
wrong person," a friend of the comedian told the British tabloid The
Sun. "I guess this guy thought he was being attacked by someone
unstable and lashed out. Sacha is very lucky he didn’t get a much worse
beating." He probably would have received a much worse beating if the
"Black Adder" actor wasn't with him.
Cohen did not receive any visible wounds, but was said to be seriously
shaken up, and Laurie reportedly told friends he was afraid the 'Ali G'
star would be beaten up badly. The comic has since been warned by
studio bosses to refrain from appearing as Borat on the streets, but
the comedian has continued to promote the film in character.
This is not the first time Americans have failed to get the Borat joke.
Two US students who appeared in the Borat movie are suing Cohen, after.............
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Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
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Borat's 'victims' fail to see the funny side
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A Times Online story at http://www.timesonline.co.uk
He’s fêted by the critics. He’s adored
by the media commentators. And now, after a merciless $26 million
(£13.6 million) haul from last weekend’s US box office, Borat Sagdiyev
has demonstrated that even the great unwashed American public, formerly
known as his satirical target, is somehow on the side of this fictional
faux naif Kazakh reporter (aka Sacha Baron Cohen).
And yet there’s one group of increasingly vocal people who remain
unimpressed by the puerile antics of Baron Cohen — and that’s the
real-life “victims” of the Borat movie’s many humiliating pranks.
People such as Linda Stein, a New York artist and veteran feminist, and
one of the first Americans to be ridiculed by Borat on his
transcontinental journey (he is supposedly travelling across America to
meet Pamela Anderson). Or Pat Haggerty, a public-speaking coach from
Washington who earnestly attempts to “teach” Borat the art of humour.
Or Cindy Streit, an over-fastidious etiquette consultant from
Birmingham, Alabama, or the Tennessee-based rodeo veteran and avowed
right-winger Bobby Rowe, or the solicitous Maryland car salesman Jim
Sell, and so on.
These people are ultimately the backbone of Baron Cohen’s movie,
Borat!: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation
of Kazakhstan, and normally they would have remained hidden from public
view. But thanks to the film’s conspicuous commercial triumph they have
suddenly materialised in the media ether. And their testimonies,
crucially, have already begun to remove the sheen from the Borat
success story.
The victims unanimously describe the same set-up. An approach is made from a fake production company claiming to..................
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Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
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Genesis reborn with European tour
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A Reuters story at www.reuters.com
LONDON (Reuters) - English rockers
Genesis announced a 2007 tour of Europe on Tuesday, joining a
lengthening list of ageing acts seeking to revive their careers on the
road.
Current members Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks are in
good company, with the Rolling Stones, Duran Duran and Queen among the
bands shrugging off the advancing years by hitting the road.
Record executives say touring can be very lucrative, with older bands
tending to be able to charge more for tickets because of the higher
average age of their audiences.
The "Turn It On Again" tour will take Genesis to large stadiums in
Scandanavia, Central and Continental Europe and Britain. It kicks off at...........
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Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
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'Borat' vanquishes rivals in box office stunner
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Expat
Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
A Reuters story by Dean Goodman at www.reuters.com
LOS ANGELES - As the intrepid Kazakhstan journalist Borat Sagdiyev might say, "Borat" make glorious entrance at Hollywood office of movies.
Indeed, "Borat" -- the acclaimed comedy tracing the Jew-fearing title
character's road trip across the United States -- stunned observers by
opening at No. 1 on Sunday with ticket sales of $26.4 million, more
than double the most optimistic forecasts.
The Twentieth Century Fox release was expected to open somewhere in the
top-five, certainly well behind presumed new champ, "The Santa Clause
3: The Escape Clause," which had to be content with a No. 2 opening on
ticket sales of $20 million.
Fox released the R-rated "Borat" in just 837 theaters across the United
States and Canada, down from initial plans of 2,500 theaters, because
polling indicated that huge enthusiasm among critics and the MySpace
crowd had not spread to mainstream moviegoers.
In the end, it appeared that naked wrestling, toilet jokes and
anti-semitic satire hold universal appeal. "Borat" also earned more
than $17 million overseas after opening in 17 countries, and was No. 1
in at least Britain and Germany, according to preliminary Fox data.
"It's broad, slapstick humor but with a real intelligence hidden below
the surface," said Bruce Snyder, Fox's president of domestic theatrical
distribution.
English comedian Sacha Baron Cohen stars in the title role as a TV reporter making a documentary about the United States for his...........
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Expat Village is
edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
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Scorsese to direct documentary on the Stones
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A Guardian story by Mark Brown, arts correspondent at http://sport.guardian.co.uk
He is one of the world's most revered
film directors, and they are probably the world's biggest band. Martin
Scorsese is now going to give the same treatment to the Rolling Stones
that he has given to Bob Dylan, and a host of acclaimed Hollywood
movies before that.
This week Scorsese began filming the band for a documentary movie due
out in cinemas next year, and the director has surrounded himself with
some of the industry's best names in cinematography, documentary
film-making and camerawork.
The Stones are on the New York leg of their Bigger Bang world tour, and
were filmed at one their smallest venues, the art deco Beacon Theatre,
by Scorsese last night and on Sunday night. Footage from the concerts
is expected form the main part of the film, along with
behind-the-scenes moments, interviews and historical footage of the
band.
How the finished product will turn out, probably only Scorsese, 64,
really knows. Nobody connected to the project will yet talk about it
publicly.
On Sunday night though, it was impossible to hide the fact that it was
happening. Some fans complained that they could not see properly
because of the array of cameras and booms around the theatre, which
seats only 2,800 people - a tiny amount for a Stones gig.
Appropriately, it was quite a night to choose. Sunday was Bill
Clinton's 60th birthday and the Stones show was essentially a
celebration for him, although as Keith Richards told the ex-president:
"Once you have as many birthdays, you don't pay attention to them."
And it was quite a show, from the opening number of Start Me Up to the
closing Jumping Jack Flash and Satisfaction. On stage with the Stones
were.......
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Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
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Cruise, Wagner take over United Artists
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In a surprising move announced Thursday morning, United Artists will be
reborn under the leadership of Paula Wagner, Tom Cruise and MGM.
Cruise and Wagner, who recently ended their longtime production deal at
Paramount Pictures , have taken a financial stake in the studio
originally founded by movie greats Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin,
Mary Pickford and D.W. Griffith 85 years ago.
The two will set the company's production slate with Wagner serving as
CEO and Cruise starring and producing films for UA as well as film
projects for other studios.
The studio plans to have a production slate of approximately four films
each year, with MGM handling worldwide marketing and distribution. The
films will be fully financed by MGM and its partners, including private
equity firms which include...............
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Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
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Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan.
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A Daily Telegraph article by Christopher Howse at
www.telegraph.co.uk
 |
| Figure of fun: Sacha Baron Cohen in character as Kazakh reporter Borat |
Borat
kissed the man from the BBC on both cheeks and denounced, as "lies from
Uzbekistan", the advertisements in newspapers claiming that women in
Kazakhstan had equal rights.
After the in-character interview in the West End of London, the news
presenter back in the studio laughed. She just couldn't help it, she
said.
Sacha Baron Cohen is getting good publicity for his film
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation
of Kazakhstan. It's nothing to do with Kazakhstan, we know. Village
scenes were filmed in Romania, and Borat speaks not bits of Kazakh but
Hebrew, punctuated by a Slavonic-sounding "Jagshemash!"
Just one
problem (apart from the film being too long) – isn't Borat, the movie,
anti-Semitic? It can't be, some reply: Baron Cohen is Jewish himself.
But I don't mean that he is anti-Semitic, rather that the effect of the
film will be to increase anti-Semitism.
When Borat says that
Kazakhstan has changed, because "homosexuals no longer have to wear
blue hats," we laugh, but not at homosexuals.
When he was in
America for advance publicity for the film, in character, he remarked,
"I would like to meet the fearless anti-Jew warrior, Melvin Gibson."
That's a joke against poor Mel, of course. But how much postmodernist
irony can we consume before we begin to swallow straight the lines that
say the opposite of what is meant?
It is surprising how far some
Jewish people are going not to be offended by the film. After a
screening at the Haifa Film Festival, people got up and cheered.
"To
me, as a Jewish person, what he did was subversive," says Naomi
Alderman, the prize-wining novelist, "because while he was saying all
these things about Jews, he was talking in Hebrew. It felt like he was
turning to every Jewish person watching and going wink, wink, 'It's all
right, I don't really mean any of this'."
No, of course he
doesn't. But the words remain, and so does the character who says them.
It is instructive to compare Borat Sagdiyev with Ali G, the character
that made Sacha Baron Cohen famous.
It only seems yesterday that...............
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Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
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The Beatle and the Bedpan
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D.P. Sorensen writes satire for City Weekly at
http://www.slweekly.com
By now, everyone is familiar with the
sensational accusations Heather Mills, the one-legged estranged wife of
Sir Paul McCartney, has lodged against the former Beatle.
According to
court documents, Sir Paul drank like a fish, smoked a lot of dope,
threw wine at her, flung her into her wheelchair and took her for a
wild ride, slashed her arm with a broken wine glass, told her not to
breast feed because he had a proprietary interest in their pristine
succulence and raged when dinner wasn’t on the table.
So what’s the big deal? This sounds like run-of-the-mill stuff for
celebrity divorce shenanigans. There is one shocking detail, however,
that is probably unique in the annals of divorce complaints. Ms. Mills,
an acknowledged amputee, claims Sir Paul denied her the use of a bedpan
during the night, instead forcing her crawl to the toilet.
Sir Paul’s lawyers will no doubt make short work of Mills’ claim,
pointing out that it was the former model’s own decision to crawl,
given that she was perfectly capable of hopping to the toilet.
As silly as it sounds—calling to mind, for instance, the Beyond the
Fringe skit where a one-legged “artiste” is rejected for a movie
because the audience is not yet ready for the sight of a one-legged
Tarzan “swinging through the jungly tendrils”—the bedpan allegation
nevertheless has the ring of truth. The other accusations, as noted
earlier, are boilerplate divorce stuff. But how can you make up the
crawling to the toilet story?
But I still have some doubts about the veracity of Mills’ bedpan
allegation. Sir Paul went into the marriage fully aware that in the leg
department, Mills was, as Peter Cook tells Dudley Moore in the Tarzan
skit, “deficient to the tune of one.” Many men in Sir Paul’s
position—music legend, cultural icon, billionaire—would have set a
minimum requirement of two legs when auditioning for a wife.
So Sir Paul was obviously not in thrall to the superficial beauty
standards of our looks-obsessed society. Just on the face of it, Sir
Paul looked past her missing limb to her warm heart. Given his lack of
squeamishness about missing body parts, it’s hard to imagine that he
would be at all squeamish about........
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Village is edited and published by Iain Williams in Caracas, Venezuela.
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