Word: ago
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Sometimes bad breaks can bring great fortune. A few years ago, Peter Jackson, the Lord of the Rings movies, planned a big-screen version of the Halo video-game universe and tapped Neill Blomkamp to direct it. When that project collapsed after a few months, Jackson proposed that Blomkamp turn his science-fiction short Alive in Joburg into his first feature film. It would be set in Blomkamp's native South Africa, focus on the country's traumatic tradition of apartheid, have characters who speak in unfamiliar accents or unknown languages, boast no star power - the lead actor had never...
...prove there was something for moviegoers of both sexes this weekend - provided they love sci-fi - The Time Traveler's Wife lured nearly $20 million worth of ticket buyers to take third place. Shot nearly two years ago and financed by the now-defunct New Line Cinema, this moony love story connected with female audiences in an unusually crowded marketplace for femme films. Four of the top 10 films were romances, as couples could also choose the love-of-food bio-pic Julie & Julia, in fourth place; Katherine Heigl's The Ugly Truth, in eighth; and the she-loves...
Internet marketing doesn't always work - remember three years ago, when Snakes on a Plane was predicted to be a smash because of all the fanboy chat, then crashed on arrival? - but it can help spread the word for a film that has other elements, like thrills and ugly aliens. And when, like District 9, it's a damn fine movie...
...takes a certain steely piety to wear the hijood - its slick ninja-esque style might be too assertively Muslim for some - the relative ease of sweating or swimming in something other than heavy cotton is pretty unbeatable. In certain situations, even the burqini might prove indispensable. A decade ago, when I regularly frequented Wild Wadi, Dubai's vast water park, mothers in sopping-wet clothes gamely accompanied their children down spiraling slides and endless rivers. They must have been miserable to no end, but they put up with it rather than refuse their kids the thrill of water rides...
...Though the Indian and Nepalese governments banned diclofenac five years ago after its fatal effect on vultures was discovered in a 2004 study led by the Peregrine Fund, manufacturers like Pakistan's Star Labs and Brazil's Ouro Fino continue to push the drug in Africa, where vultures are likely to suffer the same fate as their Asian counterparts, says Chris Bowden of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. North America's turkey vultures don't seem as susceptible, however, reports a 2008 study in Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry. The continent's growing number of 25 million turkey...