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Journalism of Courage
Striptease: Director reveals all to inspire actors
NEW YORK: Peter Cattaneo used a revealing technique to gain the trust of actors in The full monty.
8220;I took my clothes off,8221; said the director of the hit movie about a motley crew who turn to stripping. 8220;Not all of them, of course. I didn8217;t want to make them ill. But it helps build camaraderie once you8217;ve seen each other8217;s buns.8221;
The move belies the truth: That Cattaneo, now nominated for an Oscar, didn8217;t always trust himself.
8220;I was very nervous,8221; the 34-year-old director says in the March issue of Entertainment magazine. 8220;I had to deal with dancing, crowd sequences, and kids, and for much of the time I thought I was making complete rubbish.8221;
Monkey myth
BANGKOK: Apes have a way of disappointing their human cousins. Not too long ago the scientific community was abuzz with the revelation that chimpanzees were capable of murder. Now, a group of Thailand-based researchers have evidence that indicates gibbons, long deemedthe perfect couples of the ape world, are in fact not strictly monogamous.
Foreign scientists have been studying gibbon behaviour in Thailand since 1940, but research has also been carried out in Malaysia and Indonesia. For decades gibbon experts have asserted that one of the long-limbed apes8217; most distinctive characteristics was monogamy, with pairs mating for life.
But a group of researchers who have been studying three separate gibbon families at Khao Yai National Park, Thailand8217;s largest wildlife reserve, 250 km north-east of Bangkok, have amassed new evidence that gibbons, in fact, are open to an occasional fling.
Seductive skills
HAMBURG: Only one German woman in 10 is satisfied with her skills in bed. Yet their men are pretty pleased with themselves: Amongst them, the figure is one in four. This was the finding of a survey of around 3,300 women and men commissioned by the German women8217;s magazine Petra.
Thirty-one per cent of the men and 27 per cent of the women thought theirperformance was about average. Sixty-one per cent of the women, but only 44 per cent of the men, admitted that they still lacked experience and self-confidence in sex.
One woman in two 53 per cent is pleased when her partner has more experience in bed than she has. Amongst the men, however, only 32 per cent felt this way.
Titanic sinks8217;
LOS ANGELES: Talk up Titanic all you want but Scarlett and Rhett still rule when it comes to box office dollars.
The nation8217;s top film for the past three months has earned 427 million in North America, just 34 million short of the record set by Star Wars.
But counting admissions and adjusting for inflation, Gone with the wind would have collected 1.29 billion through tickets at current prices, according to calculations made on Monday by Variety, a Hollywood trade newspaper. That would put Titanic in 23rd place behind the 1939 Academy award-winning epic tale of Scarlett o8217;Hara and Rhett Butler. Other inflation-adjusted leaders are 19378217;s Snow White andthe seven dwarfs 1.03 billion, 19778217;s Star Wars 812 million, 19828217;s ET The extra-terrestrial 725.4 million and 19618217;s 101 Dalmatians 656.6 million.
