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NEW YORK (Reuters) - Gay cowboy drama "Brokeback Mountain" may have been considered a risky film to make, but director Ang Lee said his new movie, "Life of Pi," a 3D exploration of faith about a boy stranded on a boat with a Bengal tiger, is his riskiest yet.
The film, which was released in U.S. theaters this week, is adapted from Yann Martel's best-selling novel of the same name and was once considered impossible to make.
Oscar-winning Taiwanese director Lee, 58, took on the laborious task of using computer-generated imagery to bring the sensational plot to the big screen, taking a year and a half just to edit the film together.
The director talked to Reuters about the film's themes, technical barriers and casting an unknown actor in the lead.
Q. Why was "Life of Pi" considered unfilmable?
A. "Because you cannot make the tiger do everything you want to do, you have to use digital. A digital animal, up until two years ago, was not totally realistic yet, let alone in 3D, and then water is pretty difficult."
Q. Was this your most difficult filming experience yet?
A. "Oh yes. And it was also the longest...there was the technical difficulty and then it is a big movie. And it was across continents, I finally decided to shoot most of it in Taiwan, but we also had to go to India to shoot for two to three weeks. Because you can't fake Pondicherry, and Munnar. And then we have scenes in Canada."
Q. But Brokeback Mountain was a risky film too?
A. "No, that wasn't for me. At least when I made it, I thought it was strictly arthouse and few people would see it. And it's a lot cheaper (to make). So I didn't care...And then I got nervous, 'Oh they are going to lynch me, making a gay cowboy movie, that will go into a shopping mall.'"
Q. It was only after you made it you realized that?
A. "Yes, I was afraid. I was looking around when I walked, when I would go home, to see if anybody was following me. Once it hit the shopping mall I was nervous, actually. My brother is a distributor in Taiwan and I told him not to buy it. He hates me to this day, he is still babbling about it."
Q. Why choose unknown Suraj Sharma to play Pi?
A. "I wanted someone authentic, and no bad habits, that means you have to train them from the start. "
Q. Why did you replace Tobey Maguire and reshoot his scenes with the little-known Rafe Spall?
A. "It was a small part, and he is a big movie star. He is a good old friend of mine and he would do this for nothing, for me. But he is not doing anything (in the role), he is just sitting there listening most of the time. It becomes a little distracting I think."
Q. How does the film explore spirituality?
A. "To me, faith can be elusive, but .. As a Taoist would say, 'That's the apple's truth.' The source of all the material comes from nothingness, illusion is working more on things you can prove. That's the principle, the essence of life, it is actually an illusion, not immaterial. That's worth pursuing. So illusion is not nothing. In a way, that is the truth."
"Sometimes I feel (illusions) are more of life's essence, I can trust them more than real life that is full of deceit and covering up."
Q. Did exploring faith encourage you to make this?
"The book is fascinating, it talks about faith. But it didn't make me believe in God or anything...I didn't go to church or a temple after that. When I started making the movie, you do feel faith embody you and carry you through. But when I picked the subject, and chose to do the book, it was actually more storytelling in my mind. The value of storytelling. How people share a story. Because a story has structure, it has a beginning, middle and end. It seems to have meaning, where life has not."
Q. Do you practice any religion?
A. "No, my mother is a baptized Christian, so she made me go to church every Sunday, and I prayed four times a day until I was 14. And at lunchtime kids at school would giggle at my praying...I stopped praying. And two weeks later, nothing happened to me, so I didn't pick it up again."
"I am not particularly religious. But I think we do face the question of where God is, why we are created and where does life go, why we exist. That sort of thing. And it is very hard to talk about it these days, because it cannot be proven. It is hard to discuss it rationally."
Q. Do you consider yourself spiritual?
A. "I hate to think life is just facts and laws. And I am a filmmaker, I am a sensitive person, I like to think it is spiritual, so I like people to be more in that way. I think life without spirit is in the dark, it is absurd. Call it illusion or call it faith, whatever you call it, we have emotional attachment to the unknown. We yearn to find out. That is human nature. It can be, in a way, unrequited love, we don't know. I don't have a particular God I pray to, except sometimes a movie god." (laughs)
(Reporting by Christine Kearney, editing by Piya Sinha-Roy and Andrew Hay)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ang-lee-talks-risks-spirituality-life-pi-231848764.html
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ScienceDaily (Nov. 20, 2012) ? Results of a new study by researchers at Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health indicate that a developmental pattern of impulsiveness in young males is linked with gambling problems in late adolescence. Respondents considered to be in the high impulsivity track as early as first grade doubled the odds of meeting criteria for at-risk/problem gambling, and tripled the odds of meeting criteria for problem gambling. The study is the first to link a developmental pattern of impulsivity -- defined as a tendency to make rush decisions without carefully considering potential negative consequences -- and late-adolescent gambling.
Findings appear online in the journal Addiction.
The researchers studied 310 predominately African American (87%) and low socioeconomic (70%) males from first grade to late adolescence in an urban community in Baltimore, Maryland. Ratings of classroom behavior were based on a Teacher Report of Classroom Behavior Checklist and included items such as waits for turn, interrupts, and blurts out answers. Annual assessments were made from ages 11 through 15. Students fell into two distinct trajectories: 41% of the sample had a high impulse trajectory and 59% a lower impulse trajectory. While impulsivity tended to decline as the boys matured, those with high level of impulsivity in first grade were far more likely to remain among the 41% at adolescence.
Gambling behavior was assessed through interviews with students at ages 17, 19, and 20. Self- reported gambling behavior was assessed using the South Oaks Gambling Screen-Revised for Adolescents. The investigators found that boys in the high impulse trajectory group were twice as likely to meet the criteria for "at-risk" gambling behavior and three times the risk for the risk for problem gambling.
Over all, two-thirds of the boys in the study (67%) reported they engaged in some gambling, 20% met criteria for at-risk gambling, and 9% met the criteria as problem gamblers.
"Our findings reveal that there is a considerable link between youth impulsivity in the younger years and gambling issues as older teens," says Silvia Martins, MD, PhD, assistant professor of Epidemiology at Columbia's Mailman School of Public Health. "This has important implications and provides clear research support for targeting impulsivity to prevent youth problem gambling."
While other research has shown a connection between impulsiveness and gambling, those studies measured impulsivity at a single point-in-time and gambling either concurrently or at a later point-in-time, rather than linking gambling in the late teens to traits of impulsiveness as early as first grade. The earlier studies also based their findings on a predominantly white population sample. What further sets the current research apart is that it specifically considers socioeconomic status of urban minority youth, a population that is disproportionately more likely to exhibit both impulsivity and problem gambling. "We see this as a study strength, given the small amount of research there is on the impulsivity-gambling association among urban minority populations. However, generalizations to the larger population should be made with caution," warns Dr. Martins, principal investigator on the research.
"We also chose to base our study on males only because females tend to exhibit lower levels of impulsivity and show different patterns of development compared to males," observed Dr. Martins.
Noteworthy, too, is the fact that the Columbia researchers used teacher-reported assessments rather than participants' self-reported measures of impulsivity as was the case in earlier works. "Teacher ratings of youth impulsivity tend to be more consistent and reliable for predicting future psychiatric disorder diagnoses compared to adolescent self-reports," says Dr. Martins.
"From our findings we see that teaching impulse control early in elementary school may have a long term benefit in decreasing the likelihood of youth following an elevated trajectory of impulsivity."
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Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/IZuurP9Uu-g/121120132859.htm
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It appears that OpenFeint, one of the first multiplayer gaming platforms for iOS, will be shutting down next month. The service was acquired by Japanese internet media company Gree in 2011 for $104 million. And last week, Gree announced that it would be shutting it down.
Even worse, the firm has only given developers a month?s notice to migrate away from OpenFeint. As of December 14th, the service will go offline, and any game or application still using it will either need to be updated, or will suffer from severely crippled online components?
TouchArcade (via MacRumors) reports:
?Developers have until December 14th to migrate away from OpenFeint, at which point it?ll be offline forever. Even under normal circumstances this sort of deadline would be pretty crazy, but it?s especially insane?now?given the massive influx of developers working around the clock to get their apps and games submitted before the cutoff to have them approved and on the App Store before the iTunes holiday freeze.
Basically, to make this cutoff, developers are going to need to drop everything they?re doing, open up every old project that utilizes OpenFeint and re-code all of those API hooks to either use Game Center or whatever proprietary solution they come up with on their own. Assuming that doesn?t take too long, compiling, uploading, and crossing their respective fingers?might?result in no downtime for their users.?
OpenFeint first launched in early 2009, and at the height of its popularity, it had more than 180 million users (Xbox LIVE has about 70 million). It was integrated into more than 900 iOS games, including popular titles like Fruit Ninja, Jetpack Joyride and Tiny Wings.
Regardless of its now-certain fate, OpenFeint played an extremely important role in the iOS story. It was the first widely used, cross-title leaderboard on Apple?s mobile platform, and helped pave the way for the company?s own Game Center application.
Source: http://www.idownloadblog.com/2012/11/19/social-gaming-platform-openfeint-shutting-down/
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Source: http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20121118/NEWS01/311180079/1100/RSS08
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