A TORRID gay sex movie from China and a blistering denunciation of film and music censorship in Iran brought world politics centre-stage at the Cannes film festival on Thursday.

Both movies were shot in secret and brought to Cannes without official home country approval and both directors wasted no words in slamming their countries' respective censors.

"I hope to be the last Chinese director ever to be banned," China's award-winning Lou Ye told AFP in an interview.

And Iran's Bahman Gohbadi, whose No One Knows About Persian Cats received a triumphant welcome Thursday, said he might not go back home after the festival because even if he is not offically banned he is not allowed to shoot.

"If I go back how can I make a movie? I'm sure they won't give me permission to film," he told AFP ahead of the evening screening, at which the director and his young Iranian cast were warmly applauded.

With controversy no stranger to Cannes, both movies screened on the first high-profile day of the race to scoop the festival's Palme d'Or award.

"Cannes," said festival director Thierry Fremaux, "aims to unveil world cinema as well as unveil what is happening across the world around us."

Lou is among some of the world's 20 hottest directors competing for the top prize from the globe's leading movie showcase, to be awarded May 24.

His Spring Fever is a two-hour tale of passion and seduction in twosomes and threesomes with lengthy graphic scenes of gay sex shot in just two months in Nanjing city with a hand-held camera, defying a ban on film-making.

"We were psychologically prepared to be stopped during the filming, but that never happened, and today here we are with the film and the cast, which after all is a good thing," he said.

The 44-year-old director is halfway through a five-year ban on film-making imposed by censors in 2006 after bringing his previous movie Summer Palace - another steamy love tale set around the taboo subject of the 1989 pro-democracy Tiananmen protests - to Cannes in 2006 without official approval.

Ghobadi's No One Knows About Persian Cats was selected by festival organisers as the opening film of its parallel section spotlighting fresh talent, Un Certain Regard.

Filming without permission in Tehran, he was arrested twice and had to lie about the film, saying he was shooting a documentary on drugs.

The film-maker's girlfriend is the just-released US journalist Roxana Saberi, who has screenwriting and production credits on the film but did not travel to Cannes out of concern for her family in Iran, according to Ghobadi.

His movie is a no-holds-barred denunciation of screen and music censorship in Iran shot in secret in just 17 days with a largely non-professional cast on a shoestring. It was warmly received by critics at a preview screening.

Shot in dingy cellars, rooftop sheds and even in a country cow-barn, it unveils the existence of a vibrant Tehran underground music scene ranging from indie rock to Persian rap to heavy metal - with rare images of daily urban life in the backdrop.

Ghobadi, director of auteur award-winners such as Turtles Can Fly and A Time for Drunken Horses, said he had lived in fear of police during the shooting of the film.

"If I go back now they know how I did this, they will follow me."

Adding to the strong political undertone of Day Two at Cannes was a searing documentary about the Rwanda genocide shot over a decade in a lush hillside corner of the country.

My Neighbour My Killer, screened out of competition 15 years after the 1994 slaughter of 800,000 people, looks at whether victims and perpetrators of a mass atrocity can ever learn to live together again.

The 12-day film showcase lifted off Wednesday with a gala opening ceremony that saw goofy 3D spectacles foisted on tuxedo-clad celebrities as Hollywood's Disney-Pixar studios premiered cartoon comedy Up.

From Brokeback Mountain Oscar-winning director Ang Lee, to veteran New Wave icon Alain Resnais, at a ripe 86 back behind a camera, the world's grandest film-makers are competing to take home the coveted gong here.

Among them are US director Quentin Tarantino, Spain's Pedro Almodovar, Palestinian Elia Suleiman, Park Chan-Wook of South Korea and Denmark's Lars Von Trier.

Competition is expected to be specially stiff this year with contenders including four previous Palme winners - Tarantino, Von Trier, Jane Campion, and Ken Loach.

Daily Telegraph, 30 January 2009

SWIMMING hero Ian Thorpe has rubbished continuing speculation about his sexual orientation by insisting: I am not gay.

The five-time Olympic gold medallist was responding after being snapped playing in the surf with swimmer pal and long-time housemate Daniel Mendes in Brazil last week.

The pair had jetted over in late December to celebrate Christmas with the Mendes family after first celebrating with Thorpe's family in Australia.

It was the second time Thorpe has accompanied Mendes home to

Brazil in the past year.

But today he stormed: "Over the last few days there have been a series of press articles published speculating about my friendship with Daniel Mendes.

"I am still friends with many of the people I competed and trained with during my swimming career. Daniel is one such good friend whom I have known for many years.

"I have only commented on this issue at this time because I draw a line when innuendo implicates people like my family and my friends.

"I find this kind of inaccurate speculation tiresome and I am annoyed by the hurt it has caused those closest to me."

He added: "In the past, on several separate occasions, I have answered questions about my sexuality openly and honestly with the media."

He then referred to an interview for Good Weekend Magazine shortly after his retirement in March 2007.

In that story he said: "I don't have a problem being a gay icon, it's not a big deal to me. But I think the gay speculation, along with when I was accused of taking drugs in 2000, was an attempt to pull me down from the top.

"Some people think it's an insult to say, 'Oh, I think he's gay', but I don't take it that way. I'm not gay. I'm lucky that within myself I don't care enough to get worried or upset over it."

In the interview he also told how he hoped to marry and have as many as four children. He spoke of wishing for an independent woman as his partner - admitting someone similar to Angelina Jolie would be ideal.

And today he said: "My situation in this regard has not changed.

"I look forward to myself and those around me receiving the respect and privacy afforded others."

Daily Telegraph, January 28, 2009

IAN Thorpe's mystery male friend has been unmasked - he is Brazilian swimmer Daniel Mendes. Mendes and Thorpe were photographed sunning themselves and playing in the surf at Fernando de Noronha in Brazil last week.

The pictures were distributed worldwide but the identity of the man with Thorpe remained a mystery until they turned up in Australia.

Sydney Confidential can reveal that Mendes has been living with Thorpe for the past three years as his housemate. According to Thorpe's manager David Flaskas, the men were introduced through Thorpe's former coach Tracey Menzies while Thorpe was training for the 2008 Olympics. They became training buddies before their friendship developed.

The photos of the men were taken at the end of a month-long vacation in Brazil. The pair flew over in late December to celebrate Christmas with the Mendes family after first celebrating with Thorpe's family in Australia.

"It was a Mendes family holiday with many, many people," Flaskas said yesterday. "They went diving, surfing. They just relaxed at the beach before Ian had to return to Australia and resume his university studies."

On Monday, Thorpe flew home to Sydney to prepare for the start of the university year. He is studying psychology and linguistics at Macquarie University. It is the second time Thorpe has accompanied the more slightly built Mendes home to Brazil in the past year.

The Mendes family, which also includes Daniel's two brothers, are no strangers to Thorpe's Port Hacking home either. The entire family were his guests for New Year's 2006.

Also a student, Mendes is this year expected to conclude his own tertiary studies at Wollongong University where he is studying business. His forthcoming graduation raises the question: Will he remain in Australia or return to Brazil where his father is a prominent businessman? Or he may pursue opportunities in the US, where Thorpe has a home.

Yahoo7 News, January 24, 2009, 7:01 am

Pope Benedict XVI joined US President Barack Obama and Queen Elizabeth II on Friday by launching his own YouTube channel, the latest Vatican effort to reach out to the digital generation.

The Vatican said it was launching the channel to broaden Benedict's audience while also giving the Holy See better control over the papal image online.

In his inaugural foray, Benedict welcomed viewers to this "great family that knows no borders" and said he hoped they would "feel involved in this great dialogue of truth."

The site, www.youtube.com/vaticanit, was launched the same day the pontiff praised as a "gift to humanity" the benefits of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace in forging friendships and understanding.

But Benedict also warned that virtual socialising had its risks, saying "obsessive" online networking could isolate people from real social interaction and broaden the digital divide by further marginalising people.

And in his message for the World Day of Communications, he urged producers of new media to ensure that the content respected human dignity and the "goodness and intimacy of human sexuality."

The 81-year-old pope has been extremely wary of new media and their effect on society, warning about what he has called the tendency of entertainment media, in particular, to trivialise sex and promote violence.

But Monsignor Claudio Maria Celli, who heads the Vatican's social communications office, said the pope fully approved of the Vatican YouTube channel, saying Benedict was "a man of dialogue" who wanted to engage with people wherever they were.

"It's true that not all of humanity is found on YouTube, but millions of people meet on YouTube," Celli told reporters.

Benedict is joining the White House, which launched its own YouTube channel after Obama's inauguration day, as well as Queen Elizabeth II, who went online with her royal YouTube channel in December 2007.

Celli likened the Vatican channel to the pontiff's pilgrimages around the world, in which he meets with millions of the faithful. The internet and YouTube, Celli said, allowed for a more intimate interaction during which the user "enters in a personal dialogue with the pope."

Celli said the Vatican was launching the channel in part to have some control over the pontiff's image, which he said already was being used on sites respectful of the papacy and not.

"It's undeniable that certain images are already circulating," Celli said. While there is little the Vatican can do legally to shut down blasphemous or pornographic sites that use the papal or other Church images, he said it can at least control the content of what it puts up on its own channel.

The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, said the Vatican hoped that YouTube owner Google, Inc., would help the Holy See determine where Vatican images are being used so that it can better protect its own images.

He said no money exchanged hands to launch the channel and that the Vatican wouldn't earn anything with publicity. "We didn't pay a cent to Google," he said, adding that the channel was the Vatican's "offer" to the world.

The Vatican plans to update the YouTube site daily with the most important papal news items that are produced by the Vatican's television station, CTV. The messages are available in Italian, German, English and Spanish.

Google's managing director for media solutions, Henrique de Castro, said Google was working out details to ensure the site was available in China, where authorities occasionally block foreign news sites. The Vatican and China have no diplomatic relations, and Church authorities have accused Beijing in the past of blocking the faithful's access to the pontiff's messages.

Celli said the YouTube channel was the next logical step after the Vatican entered the digital age on Christmas Day in 1995, launching its web site, www.vatican.va, with Pope John Paul II's traditional Urbi et Orbi message.

The site has been expanded over the years and now includes virtual tours of the Vatican Museums, audio feeds from Vatican Radio, as well as the Vatican's daily news bulletin and key Church documents.

AAP

ABC Online, 25 January 2009

At least 40 people have drowned in a river boat accident in Vietnam after a crowded vessel sank while taking people to a market, a senior provincial official said.

The wooden boat sank amid strong currents and cold winds 20 metres from shore on the Gianh River in central Quang Binh province when passengers scrambled to get off before it reached the pier, the official said.

"More than 80 people were on the boat,"

Provincial Communist Party chief Luong Ngoc Binh said the boat was licensed to carry 20 people, but more than 80 people were on board.

"We have recovered 40 bodies and we will continue to search until we have found the last body," he said.

"About 36 people have been rescued."

At least two or three people remained missing and were feared dead hours after the accident on the river south of Vinh city, he said.

"We have mobilised soldiers, fishermen, anyone who has experience on the river, to join the rescue effort," Mr Binh said.

"The survivors are now back at home or in local clinics."

The tragedy happened on the eve of the Tet lunar New Year, the biggest annual festival in Vietnam, when extended families reunite for traditional feasts and to pray for good luck in the year ahead.

"The passengers didn't obey the law, and they rushed to shop for Tet, to buy new clothes and goods," Mr Binh said.

"That's the reason the accident happened.

"The waves on the river were big, the wind was strong and it was cold, so it was very difficult for people to survive.

"We have used dozens of fishing nets to recover bodies and find the missing, but we are afraid that the two or three people who are still missing are dead already."

Mr Binh said the captain was detained because the boat had been overloaded with passengers.

Online news site VnExpress identified the detained captain and owner of the boat as 44-year-old Nguyen Xuan Quy.

Mr Binh said there were some life buoys on the boat, but the accident happened so quickly that the buoys were not of any use.

- AFP

AAP via Yahoo.com.au; 19 January 2009

An Australian writer who says he's endured "unspeakable suffering" in a Thai prison has been jailed for three years after pleading guilty to criminal charges of insulting the country's royal family.

But the family of Harry Nicolaides and his Australian lawyer hope a direct appeal for a pardon from the royal family may get the Melbourne-born author home.

Nicolaides, 41, appeared in court on Monday wearing a dark orange prison jumpsuit with his hands cuffed and his feet shackled.

He has been in custody since his arrest at a Thai airport as he was about to board a plane for Melbourne in August last year.

"He has written a book that slandered the king, the crown prince and Thailand and the monarchy," the judge told the court.

"He was found guilty under criminal law article 112 and the court has sentenced him to six years, but due to his confession, which is beneficial to the case, the sentence is reduced to three years."

Leaving the court, Nicolaides told reporters: "I wish my family the best."

Nicolaides' brother, Forde, said even though his brother's sentence had been halved because of the guilty plea, the family was still upset at the outcome.

"We're devastated. You might be able to hear my mother crying in the background. It's quite devastating for us," he told AAP at home in Melbourne .

"The whole case has been a massive emotional ordeal that has consumed our entire family. It's beyond belief."

Entering court, Nicolaides said he had endured "unspeakable suffering" during his pre-trial detention but did not elaborate.

Nicolaides' Australian-based lawyer Mark Dean, SC, said he was "very pleased" with the verdict, the minimum sentence for the offence.

"This demonstrates the court's view of the seriousness of the offence and the personal circumstances faced by Harry," he told AAP.

He said Nicolaides would not appeal the verdict but would apply directly to the Thai royal family for a pardon.

Mr Dean said he hoped the royal family would take into account the sentence, which he said indicated the offence was at the "very low end of seriousness".

Nicolaides was arrested under Thailand's severe lese majeste laws, mandating a jail term of three to 15 years for defaming, insulting or threatening the royal family, over his 2005 novel Verisimilitude.

His family said only 50 copies of the book were published and less than 10 sold.

Nicolaides, a Melbourne resident who lived in the constitutional monarchy from 2003 to 2005 where he taught at the Mae Fah Luang University, has described his novel as a commentary on political and social life of contemporary Thailand.

His offence is believed to have come from three sentences in the novel in which the narrator refers to rumours concerning a crown prince's love life.

The 81-year-old King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world's longest-serving monarch, is revered in Thailand and credited with being a unifying force during times of crisis, though he has no major official role in politics.

Speaking before the sentencing, Foreign Minister Stephen Smith said Nicolaides had received Australian consular assistance but Australia must respect the Thai judicial process.

"The point is this - it is an offence under Thai law and Australia respects Thai laws and we respect the fact that one of our citizens is going through a legal and judicial process," he said.

Forde said he was worried about his brother's health and the mental trauma he had suffered.

"His health isn't that crash hot. He has had continuous flu-like symptoms since he has been incarcerated. He has lost a lot of weight. He can't eat the prison food," Forde said.

SMH Online, 17 January, 2009

British pop star Boy George was jailed for 15 months for imprisoning a Norwegian male escort after a nude photoshoot, in what the judge called a "premeditated, callous and humiliating" assault.

The 47-year-old former Culture Club frontman was found guilty last month of handcuffing 29-year-old Audun Carlsen and beating him with a metal chain when he tried to escape the musician's London apartment.

The singer and disc jockey, who stood trial under his real name George O'Dowd, admitted to police to handcuffing Carlsen to his bed on April 28, 2007, as he investigated the Norwegian's alleged tampering with his computer.

But he denied assaulting Carlsen, or hitting him with a metal chain, suggesting to officers that the bruises suffered by the escort could have been there due to the fact that he was HIV positive.

O'Dowd was also ordered to pay £5,000 ($10,979.36) costs.

"Whilst I accept that Mr Carlsen's physical injuries were not serious or permanent, in my view there can be no doubt that your premeditated callous and humiliating handcuffing and detention of Mr Carlsen shocked, degraded and traumatised him," judge David Radford said as he sentenced O'Dowd.

"He was deprived of his liberty and human dignity without warning or proper explanation to him of its purpose, length or purported justification."

O'Dowd and Carlsen met on the gay website Gaydar, and Carlsen first went to O'Dowd's apartment in January 2007, when they posed naked for the photoshoot and took cocaine.

Carlsen said the singer performed a sex act on him for "five seconds before I said no," and the pair later left on good terms, with O'Dowd paying Carlsen £300 ($658), of the £400 ($878) that they had agreed.

The Norwegian claimed during the trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court in London that O'Dowd proceeded to then send him a string of emails accusing him of hacking into his computer.

Despite that, Carlsen returned to O'Dowd's flat in April 2007 and said that when he arrived, he was handcuffed to a wall hook, called a "whore," punched repeatedly and beaten with a metal chain when he tried to flee.

Explaining why the attack happened, Carlsen told the court: "I think he couldn't handle the refusal - me not having sex with him."

Using the handcuffs to unscrew the wall hook, Carlsen then escaped the apartment onto the street wearing just his underwear, a T-shirt and running shoes.

Defence lawyers arguing on behalf of O'Dowd, who did not give evidence to the court, said that the dispute was regarding claims that Carlsen had stolen photographs from O'Dowd's computer.

They argued that Carlsen's suggestion that the attack occurred because of his refusal to have sex with the artist was "entire fantasy or a lie".

O'Dowd has had brushes with the law in the past - in August 2006, he carried out a week of court-ordered community service in New York City for filing a false police report over a non-existent burglary.

As well as the community service, he agreed to undergo drug rehabilitation.

His lawyer Steven Barker said on Friday that O'Dowd was "on the road to recovery, I sincerely hope this sentence does not knock him back."

Boy George briefly embarked on a solo singing career after leaving Culture Club in 1987, before beginning a successful career as a DJ and launching fashion line B-Rude.

AFP

SMH Online, January 10, 2009

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2009/01/10/1231004347122.html

Eartha Kitt, sultry singer and dancer, dies
SMH Online, 26 December 2008
Eartha Kitt, a sultry singer, dancer and actress who rose from South Carolina cotton fields to become an international symbol of elegance and sensuality, has died, a family spokesman says.

Andrew Freedman said Kitt, 81, who was recently treated at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, died on Thursday of colon cancer.

Kitt, a self-proclaimed "sex kitten" famous for her catlike purr, was one of America's most versatile performers, winning two Emmys and nabbing a third nomination. She also was nominated for several Tonys and two Grammys.

Her career spanned six decades, from her start as a dancer with the famed Katherine Dunham troupe to cabarets and acting and singing on stage, in movies and on television. She persevered through an unhappy childhood as a mixed-race daughter of the southern United States and made headlines in the 1960s for denouncing the Vietnam War during a visit to the White House.

Watch Eartha Kitt camp it up: Where is my man?

Through the years, Kitt remained a picture of vitality and attracted fans less than half her age even as she neared 80.

When her book Rejuvenate, a guide to staying physically fit, was published in 2001, Kitt was featured on the cover in a long, curve-hugging black dress with a figure that some 20-year-old women would envy. Kitt also wrote three autobiographies.

Once dubbed the "most exciting woman in the world" by Orson Welles, she spent much of her life single, though brief romances with the rich and famous peppered her younger years.

After becoming a hit singing Monotonous in the Broadway revue New Faces of 1952, Kitt appeared in Mrs Patterson in 1954-55. Some references say she earned a Tony nomination for Mrs Patterson, but only winners were publicly announced at that time. She also made appearances in Shinbone Alley and The Owl and the Pussycat.

Her first album, RCA Victor Presents Eartha Kitt, came out in 1954, featuring such songs as I Want to Be Evil, C'est Si Bon and the saucy gold digger's theme song Santa Baby, which is revived on radio each Christmas.

The next year, the record company released follow-up album That Bad Eartha, which featured Let's Do It, Smoke Gets in Your Eyes and My Heart Belongs to Daddy.

In 1996, she was nominated for a Grammy in the category of traditional pop vocal performance for her album Back in Business. She also had been nominated in the children's recording category for the 1969 record Folk Tales of the Tribes of Africa.

Kitt also acted in movies, playing the lead female role opposite Nat King Cole in St Louis Blues in 1958 and more recently appearing in Boomerang and Harriet the Spy in the 1990s.

On television, she was the sexy Catwoman on the popular Batman series in 1967-68, replacing Julie Newmar who originated the role. A guest appearance on an episode of I Spy brought Kitt an Emmy nomination in 1966.

"Generally the whole entertainment business now is bland," she said in a 1996 Associated Press interview. "It depends so much on gadgetry and flash now. You don't have to have talent to be in the business today.

"I think we had to have something to offer, if you wanted to be recognised as worth paying for."