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Universal Pictures
Elena (Salma Hayek) and O (Blake Lively) in Oliver Stone's 'Savages.'
By Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter
To anyone who has missed the?Oliver Stone?of?"Natural Born Killers"?and?"U Turn"?while wading through the more recent and conventional likes of?"World Trade Center"?and?"Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," "Savages"?represents at least a partial resurrection of the director's more hallucinatory, violent, sexual and, in a word, savage side. This intense and unavoidably gory adaptation of?Don Winslow's wild best-seller about the incursion of Mexican drug cartel mayhem into the United States has been made in a jagged, darkly trippy style that well expresses the story's tense uncertainties. But the pronounced superiority of the veteran supporting players to the young actors playing the central romantic threesome throws the balance off and leaves a high-caliber-sized hole in the middle of a film that should nonetheless play well to blood-and-guts-inclined men internationally.
Winslow's 2010 novel -- the prequel to which,?"The Kings of Cool," has just been published -- is so vivid and propulsive that you can practically see a movie in your head while reading it. For all its insane violence and dizzying plot turns, the story spins on a fanciful but believable love triangle among Laguna Beach's two most successful independent pot growers/dealers and their hedonistic free spirit of a girlfriend.
More from THR: Photos --?Blake Lively, Taylor Kitsch walk the red carpet at 'Savages' L.A. premiere
With all the pressure the guys endure when a Mexican crime family puts the squeeze on them, the center, represented by the love story, has got to hold; it should beguile, entice, turn you on and feel special, as in?"Design for Living"?or?"Jules and Jim." Unfortunately, the trio, impersonated by?Taylor Kitsch, Aaron Johnson?and?Blake Lively, seem rather junior league, the Triple-A team, where All-Stars are required. They're not bad, just not good enough when they have to tangle with the unbridled likes of?John Travolta,?Benicio Del Toro?and?Salma Hayek?as assorted cohorts and adversaries.
Lively's easygoing SoCal beach girl, commonly known as O (as in Ophelia, her birth name, and orgasm, a propensity for which she is well known), narrates the tale with noticeably less energy than the film itself possesses and an omniscience that makes no sense if you think about it. Within the first 15 minutes, she gets it on with both Chon (Kitsch), a hotheaded and hard-bodied former Navy SEAL, and sensitive save-the-world do-gooder Ben (Johnson), who's the best botanist ever to turn his talents to designer weed. Living in an enviable oceanside crib, they make and distribute superdope for discerning patrons able to pay for it and live the great life as a result.
More from THR: Photos -- Oliver Stone: Happy, sane and at the top of his game
But while U.S. law enforcement has been persuaded to look the other way, such success attracts the notice of Elena (Hayek), a cartel queen whose losing battle with rival El Azul in Mexico has her looking for opportunities north of the border. Out of the blue, Chon and Ben receive an offer they're not at liberty to refuse -- to put their operation under Elena's blood-soaked umbrella. And, just in case they're thinking of cashing in and checking out, which they are, Elena's American-based goon Lado (Del Toro) kidnaps O and assures them the worst will happen to her if they make one false move.
The script by?Shane Salerno, novelist Winslow and Stone illustrates how, once infected with the cutthroat, when-in-doubt-kill-'em plague embodied in the drug lords' m.o., it's impossible to shake it; once you've crossed to the dark side, you can't go back. The gangsters impose the rules of the game, and it's instant?"Lord of the Flies": Everyone descends to the most brutal, elemental survival of the fittest level of human behavior, with no quarter given.
More from THR: Video -- Blake Lively smolders in a Zuhair Murad strapless gown at 'Savages' L.A. premiere
To save O from execution -- held in a cage, she's viewable from time to time on a computer feed -- Chon and Ben are forced into a covert game of one-upmanship with their criminal bosses while still appearing to play by their rules. Through the auspices of their surfer/stoner financial whiz Spin (Emile Hirsch?in a brief, amusing turn), they move their money around and, to raise the rest of the cash they need to bail out O, come up with an ingenious scheme they can't get away with for long: robbing their bosses' bagmen.
This ploy stirs intense internal suspicion within Elena's organization, which is further disrupted by documents the boys procure from frantic DEA official Denis (Travolta), who's compromised up to his disappearing hairline and often is forced to improvise to save his skin. Stone and his collaborators depart from the novel significantly in the film's third act and smartly so, partly by expanding the Dennis role and especially by developing a propriety interest in the imperious Elena on behalf of the powerless O, creating some charged scenes and added emotional overlay (O's flighty mother, a character in the book, was played by?Uma Thurman, but the entire role was cut). The action-packed, Middle East war-style climax also has been gleefully toyed with to provocative effect.
But the story's progression moves one's interest and sympathies away from Chon and Ben, whose personalities are defined at the outset and never acquire further weight or psychological dimension. Although, as big-time drug dealers, they are technically criminals from the beginning, they certainly aren't meant to be perceived that way by Winslow or Stone; Chon's anti-social, shoot-first/ask-questions-later impulses are seen to stem entirely from his combat experiences in Afghanistan, while Ben is a latter-day hippie whose well-meaning urge to save the world marks him as ?the soft one? in the eyes of Lado, always on the lookout for an opponent's weak spot.
As Chon's all-action personality is readily apparent on the surface, Kitsch comes off reasonably well in his characterization of a battle-hardened vet who would seem to harbor a death wish. Forced to make a drastic transition from idealistic greenhouse genius to brutal, if unwilling, killer, Ben is by far the more conflicted and complex role, but his inner torment takes a back seat to the sweep of plot and action; he ends up being not very interesting, something for which Johnson is unable to compensate. In a role that, if one could pick any actress from the history of cinema, would have been played?most ideally?by?Tuesday Weld, Lively doesn't really live up to her name, coming off more slack than slacker. Crucially, a chemistry among the three leads never takes hold to seduce the audience into investing deeply in the privileged moments of the trio's inevitably short-lived romantic high.
More from THR:?Video -- 'Savages' star Blake Lively describes 'awkward' sex scene with Taylor Kitsch
As if receiving charges of electric current at regular intervals, Travolta is manic and most amusing as the government agent forced into ethical and practical contortions to stay afloat; Del Toro entertainingly showboats while demonstrating dozens of ways to convey diabolical menace; and Hayek synthesizes ultimate elegance, motherly concern and complete ruthlessness as the Lady Macbeth of the Mexican drug world.
Stylistically, Stone summons up many of the visual and aural tropes of his creatively assaultive works of 15 or so years ago, to mostly strong effect; there's solarization and blood-soaked saturation, alternation from color to black-and-white and film to computer/video images, altered state-suggestive editing, warping of time and anything else he can think of -- all appropriate to the occasion. The re-creations of cartel charnel house torture are gruesome and pushed to the limit of mainstream acceptability.
The film is technically sharp, and the highly varied score -- a mix of original and source music -- is marked by the exceptionally dramatic use of the opening of Brahms' Symphony No. 1 in two key scenes.
More in Entertainment:
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The 2022 bond will be only the fourth 10-year transaction Spain has offered at a primary auction since January. The Treasury will also sell bonds due in 2015 and 2016, similar in maturity to many others it has auctioned this year.
Euro zone leaders agreed last weekend to allow the bloc's EFSF and ESM bailout funds to buy bonds in secondary markets and direct recapitalise ailing banks, although details are lacking and Finnish opposition has dampened initial positive reactions.
Spain secured aid of up to 100 billion euros ($125.10 billion) for its battered banking sector last month, but concerns persist that the euro zone's fourth-biggest economy will eventually need a full sovereign bailout.
The premium investors demand to hold Spanish over German debt has nevertheless fallen back from euro-era records since last week , though its borrowing costs remain high.
"There is the feeling that as long as the EFSF and ESM is able to bail out banks, and there has been some good progress on breaking the feedback loop between sovereigns and banks, so it's just a case of implementation," Credit Agricole interest rate strategist Peter Chatwell said.
A near-1-trillion-euro blast of cheap credit from the European Central Bank in December and February to liquidity-starved banks prompted lenders to stock up on relatively high yielding government bonds.
Spanish banks raised their holdings of domestic sovereign debt to from 16.9 percent of the total in circulation in December to 29.2 percent in March.
The Spanish Treasury took advantage of the relatively lower yields at the start of the year and completed a good proportion of its 2012 gross bond issuance target in the first few months.
Madrid has already raised more than 61 percent of its 2012 gross issuance target and plans 12 more bond auctions this year from which it must raise 33.3 billion euros, or an average of just under 2.8 billion euros per auction.
On Thursday, the Treasury hopes to raise between 2 billion and 3 billion euros.
"They have to issue 3 billion, otherwise they'll get a rather negative reaction," said strategist at 4Cast Jo Tomkins, though she noted that the pressure on yields was still high as a lasting solution to the crisis remains elusive.
"Spain still can't issue anything beyond 10 years, so the same problem exists ... The Finnish opposition has just played up to broader implementation risks and the fact that political union is not really happening."
The 2015 bond was last sold on June 21 at an average yield was 5.457 percent but was yielding almost 60 basis points less than that in the secondary market on Wednesday, an indication of what Spain is likely to pay at auction.
The 2016 bond was almost unchanged from its last sale on June 7, when it yielded 5.353 percent, while the 10-year paper was trading at 6.4 percent in the secondary market on Wednesday, more than when it was last sold on June 7 at 6.044 percent.
Demand at the auction should be reinforced by almost 40 billion euros of German coupon and redemption payments this week, and by redemptions of around 20 billion euros of Spanish debt at the end of the month.
The auction may also see some support from expectations the ECB will cut interest rates from a record low 1 percent to boost the euro zone economy at its monthly meeting later on Thursday. ($1 = 0.7994 euros)
Source: http://economictimes.feedsportal.com/fy/8av2Fvy0bUPSn2gr/story01.htm
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By Cheryll Simpson, NBC News Producer
Wahdat Afghan / Reuters
An Afghan schoolgirl receives treatment at a hospital after allegedly being poisoned in Takhar province May 23, 2012.
KABUL ? Over 100 girls from Afghanistan?s northern Jawzjan province in Afghanistan were hospitalized Monday after allegedly being poisoned.? The girls, ages 8 to 22, fell ill while attending class at Meser Abad High School, local officials told NBC News.
More than 300 schoolgirls in the province have allegedly experienced poisoning in the last two weeks.
Local officials blamed the Taliban for the schoolgirls? poisoning, however, the Taliban have rejected the accusation.
Some speculate that the illnesses could be blamed on mass hysteria linked to fears of a Taliban takeover once the U.S. and international forces withdraw from the country in 2014.
Both the Afghan government and NATO forces have done blood tests on the students after the poisonings, but have found no traces of poison. ??
Experts have said that the poisoning scare has all the ?earmarks? of mass hysteria. Robert Bartholomew, an expert on mass hysteria, told the AFP that the scare is typical of social panic in other war zones like Kosovo in the past.
?"The tell-tale signs of psychogenic illness in these Afghan outbreaks include the preponderance of schoolgirls; the conspicuous absence of a toxic agent; transient, benign symptoms; rapid onset and recovery; plausible rumors; the presence of a strange odor; and anxiety generated from a wartime backdrop.? ?
NBC spoke with Heather Barr, an Afghanistan Researcher for Human Rights Watch, based in Kabul, about the incidents and why the education of girls is such a potent symbol of change since the fall of the Taliban. ?
Read a Q & A with Barr below:
Why is girls? education still the subject of the alleged poisoning attacks?
Schoolgirls, their teachers and their schools are a soft target for insurgent groups seeking to terrorize communities and demonstrate the government's inability to protect communities. The Taliban has issued recent statements talking about their commitment to education, but these statements conspicuously do not mention girls' education ? and threats and attacks continue.
Why is poison a main method of disruption?
These [alleged] poisonings are very perplexing, primarily because we have yet to see clear scientific evidence of the presence of poison, in spite of testing by [NATO?s] International Security Assistance Force and international organizations.?
Some experts have suggested that these incidents may have a psychological explanation rather than a chemical one. If that is true, it speaks volumes about the trauma and fear school children experience simply going to school every day, due to threats and attacks against schools.
It would also beg many worrying questions about the arrests that have been made in Takhar and the confessions from some of those arrested. [She was referring to the alleged poisoning of students in Afghanistan?s Northeastern Takhar Province]
Whether or not there is poison involved, these incidents are having a devastating effect on girls' education.
Do these attacks against schools have the desired outcome?? Does it disrupt education for girls? Are families frightened or defiant?
I'm afraid that the attacks do have the desired outcome. Many schoolgirls and their families are defiant in the face of threats and attacks, but at the same time half of all girls are not in school, and security is unquestionably the cause of some of these girls being denied education.
What is the Afghan government doing about the attacks?
The government should make public, and share with international experts, any scientific evidence they have regarding the use of poison in these cases. By doing so can they lay to rest questions about whether poison is really involved and gain assistance in prevent future incidents.
Is this situation likely to continue?
Tragically the poisoning incidents seem to be rapidly gaining momentum at the moment. It is urgent that the government respond effectively and find a way to prevent these incidents. And the first steps have to be understanding what poisons ? if any ? are involved.
More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:
Follow World News on msnbc.com on Twitter and Facebook
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[ [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 2]], 'http://yhoo.it/KeQd0p', '[Slideshow: See photos taken on the way down]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['Connery is an experienced stuntman', 7]], ' http://yhoo.it/KpUoHO', '[Slideshow: Death-defying daredevils]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['know that we have confidence in', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/LqYjAX ', '[Related: The Secret Service guide to Cartagena]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['We picked up this other dog and', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JUSxvi', '[Related: 8 common dog fears, how to calm them]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 5]], 'http://bit.ly/JnoJYN', '[Related: Did WH share raid details with filmmakers?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['accused of running a fake hepatitis B', 3]], 'http://bit.ly/KoKiqJ', '[Factbox: AQAP, al-Qaeda in Yemen]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have my contacts on or glasses', 3]], 'http://abcn.ws/KTE5AZ', '[Related: Should the murder charge be dropped?]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 5]], 'http://yhoo.it/JD7nlD', '[Related: Bristol Palin reality show debuts June 19]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['have made this nation great as Sarah Palin', 1]], 'http://bit.ly/JRPFRO', '[Related: McCain adviser who vetted Palin weighs in on VP race]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['A JetBlue flight from New York to Las Vegas', 3]], 'http://yhoo.it/GV9zpj', '[Related: View photos of the JetBlue plane in Amarillo]', ' ', '630', ' ', ' ', ], [ [['the 28-year-old neighborhood watchman who shot and killed', 15]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/white-house-stays-out-of-teen-s-killing-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120411/martinzimmermen.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['He was in shock and still strapped to his seat', 6]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/navy-jet-crashes-in-virginia-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/cv/ip/ap/default/120406/jet_ap.jpg', '630', ' ', 'AP', ], [ [['xxxxxxxxxxxx', 11]], 'http://news.yahoo.com/photos/russian-grannies-win-bid-to-sing-at-eurovision-1331223625-slideshow/', 'Click image to see more photos', 'http://l.yimg.com/a/p/us/news/editorial/1/56/156d92f2760dcd3e75bcd649a8b85fcf.jpeg', '500', ' ', 'AP', ] ]
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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rare-spanish-codex-found-garage-handyman-arrested-162929182.html
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MEXICO CITY ? The party that ruled Mexico with an iron grip for most of the last century has sailed back into power, promising a government that will be modern, responsible and open to criticism.
Though Institutional Revolutionary Party candidate Enrique Pena Nieto's margin of victory was clear in the preliminary count from Sunday's election, it was not the mandate the party had anticipated from pre-election polls that had at times shown the youthful, 45-year-old with support of more than half of Mexico's voters.
Instead, he won 38 percent support, about 7 points more than his nearest rival, according to a representative count of the ballots, and he went to work immediately to win over the two-thirds who didn't vote for him, many of whom rejected his claim that he represented a reformed and repentant party.
"We're a new generation. There is no return to the past," he said in his victory speech. "It's time to move on from the country we are to the Mexico we deserve and that we can be ... where every Mexican writes his own success story."
But his top challenger, leftist candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, refused to concede, saying he would await a full count and legal review. He won roughly 31 percent of the vote, according to the preliminary count which has a margin of error of 1 percentage point. Lopez Obrador in 2006 paralyzed Mexico City streets with hundreds of thousands of supporters when he narrowly lost to President Felipe Calderon.
This time, only about 700 gathered at his campaign rally and he canceled plans to proceed to the Zocalo, the main square he filled as recently as Wednesday.
"We have information that indicates something different from what they're saying officially," he said. "We're not going to act in an irresponsible manner."
The PRI for 71 years ruled as a single party known for coercion and corruption, but also for building Mexico's institutions and social services. It was often accused of stealing elections, most infamously the 1988 presidential vote. But PRI governments were also known for keeping a lid on organized crime, whose battles with government and each other under Calderon have taken more than 50,000 lives and traumatized the country.
Repeating a popular belief of many Pena Nieto supporters, Martha Trejo, 37, of Tampico said, "He'll stabilize the cartels. He'll negotiate so they don't hurt innocents."
Pena Nieto in his victory speech vowed he won't make pacts with organized crime, but rather will focus on curbing violence.
Many predict he will build on Calderon's economic and security strategies but, working with a more friendly congress, may have more success. The main test of a new PRI will be how it handles corruption.
"We know there is some local corruption in the PRI with organized crime," said Andrew Selee of the Washington-based Mexico Institute. "The question is, `Will they ignore it or go after it aggressively?'"
The vote Sunday went smoothly with the usual protests at polling places that ran out of ballots and a few arrests for small cases of alleged bribery or tampering of ballots. Josefina Vazquez Mota of the ruling National Party, Mexico's first woman candidate for a major party, conceded almost immediately after the polls closed and exit surveys showed her trailing in third place. The preliminary count gave her roughly 26 percent.
Her party, the PAN, unseated the PRI after 71 years in 2000 with the victory of Vicente Fox, who won more than 40 percent of vote, and again with Calderon in 2006, who won by a half percentage point over Lopez Obrador.
"I think this will be a major setback," businessman Leonardo Solis, 37, said of the PRI victory. "I don't think they've changed much, but we'll see soon enough."
Results from the polling stations trickled in all night and will continue. The official results will be announced next weekend.
At the PRI headquarters in Mexico City, a party atmosphere broke out with supporters in red dancing to norteno music. The vote count same in slowly and it was too early to say if the PRI would retake at least one of the two houses of Congress and some of the governorships nationwide.
Pena Nieto, who is married to a soap opera star, also has been dogged by allegations that he overspent his $330 million campaign funding limit and has received favorable coverage from Mexico television giant Televisa.
University students launched a series of anti-Pena Nieto marches in the final weeks of the campaign, arguing that his party hasn't changed since its days in power.
Pena Nieto praised their protests Sunday as a positive sign of the democracy and said he, too, wants to see Mexico change.
"You have given our party a second chance," he said. "We will honor that with results."
___
Associated Press writers Adriana Gomez Licon, Michael Weissenstein, Olga Rodriguez, Carlos Rodriguez and Galia Garcia-Palafox contributed to this report from Mexico City.
Earlier on HuffPost:
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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/02/mexico-elections-institut_n_1642109.html
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It can be hard for parents to decipher whether or not mobile apps are collecting and selling sensitive information about their kids, such as location and purchasing habits. But some are working to make the muddy world of? app privacy policies a little more clear and help parents worry about kid apps less.
In this October 2011 file photo, Frankie Thevenot plays with an iPad in his bedroom at his home in Metairie, La. Privacy policies for kid apps can be confusing, and provider don;t have to say whether their products track kids' locations or buying habits.
Gerald Herbert/AP/File
EnlargePrivacy is an iffy thing in the mobile world ? for children as well as adults.
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Say, before leaving for summer vacation, you download applications to a smart phone or iPad to keep the kids occupied on the five-hour drive to the beach. Do you know what information that app gathers or whether it allows your child to make purchases? Do you know if it allows a company to track your child's geographic location?
For most parents, the answer is no. The disclosures are hard to decipher. Safeguards are few. The issue is beginning to get some attention at the state and federal levels and among private groups. Still, it's hard to make an informed choice.
"At the heart of the issue is a complete lack of transparency about the extent that apps, for a variety of reasons often not made clear, gather sensitive material," says John Simpson, director of Consumer Watchdog's Privacy Project in Los Angeles. "There's a complete lack of explanation about everything that's going on in the apps world. It's a Wild, Wild West."
The Federal Trade Commission is pushing the industry to reform. In a report issued in February, the FTC examined more than 400 randomly selected children's apps at Apple's iTunes App Store and Android's Market. Prior to downloading an app, researchers found that disclosures about data-gathering practices, targeted advertising, social media links, and third-party data sharing were virtually nonexistent.
"There just weren't any disclosures about any of these issues," says Manas Mohapatra, a senior attorney in the mobile technology unit of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection. The FTC enforces the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). "Parents would not be able to know what an app's practices were prior to download."
Consider, for example, an app's ability to pinpoint a user's location. In urban areas, a device's geographic position can be measured to within 50 to 200 feet, Ashkan Soltani, an independent privacy researcher and consultant, testified in a Senate hearing last year. While the mobile industry contends data is gathered anonymously, Mr. Soltani explained how geolocation data can be cross-referenced with a device's serial number or even name and credit-card information from the app store to paint a pretty clear picture of the end user.
Mobile devices are almost always on, so it's easy to track users and their habits. Even if data isn't given to a third party, collection is vulnerable to a security breach.
Mobile app companies point out that the technology is changing so fast it's hard to keep up. "We are constantly working on new industry best practices," says Morgan Reed, executive director of the Washington-based Association for Competitive Technology, which represents more than 5,000 software devel-opers. No one is trying to deceive the end user, he adds. "We all want to be in a position where our users are happy with us, like us, and want to buy more of our applications and services."
Some reform efforts are under way. In February, California's attorney general secured an agreement with Amazon, Apple, Google, Hewlett-Packard, Microsoft, and Research in Motion to improve privacy protections. The challenge is to make the disclosures comprehensible enough to be effective.
"Privacy policies are tedious to read and often seem written by lawyers who are paid to obfuscate," says Mr. Simpson. "Reading a privacy policy on a mobile device, that's very difficult to do."
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