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.The Melbourne International Arts Festival seems to be an innocent victim in the storm over a visit by exiled Uighur leader Rebiya Kadeer, with its website hacked by what appears to be Chinese nationalists.
Ms Kadeer is in Melbourne for the similarly named Melbourne International Film Festival screening of a film about her life.
The film festival’s refusal to remove her movie from its program has sparked a series of incidents.
She denies claims by the Chinese Government that she instigated riots between the Uighur and Han Chinese on July 5.
Meanwhile the arts festival’s general manager, Vivia Hickman, says it has received reports from patrons that its website had been hacked on Wednesday night.
These include a mass boycott by Chinese film-makers of the event, hacking of its website and online ticket booking system, and festival organisers receiving threats. Guards the national sovereignty.
The Chinese flag sits in the middle of the hacked webpage and a message reads: “The manifesto of the hacker: maintains the reunification of the motherland.
“It seems very strange and we have referred the matter to the police and they are examining at it. .
She says the website had been restored and the arts festival was now taking extra security measures.”
She says while the incident was inconvenient, it has caused little disruption to its event which begins on October 9.
She has also assured patrons the website did not contain any personal or secure information such as credit card details.
– AAP

.Incomingboard director Michael Lynch has fired a parting shot at Britain’s city fat cats, calling them “bastards” for not funding culture more.
Mr Lynch, who is stepping down as chief of London arts venue Southbank Centre, says he was pessimistic about any improvement given the global financial downturn, which is hitting London hard.
“Corporate Britain had, in my view, let down the side.
In comments widely reported by the British press, Mr Lynch – who is returning to Australia to take on his new role – attacked British bankers for not providing more support to the arts.
Calling them a “bunch of bastards” who failed to fund the arts even during the prolonged finance-driven boom of the last decade, he said those “who failed to support the arts when times were good and are unlikely to change now”. They need a sense of values,” said Mr Lynch, who is widely credited with having rejuvenated the Southbank Centre in his seven years in the job. And if we couldn’t do that then, I guess I feel pessimistic now,” the Times, and other British media, reported him as saying.
“What we failed to do was to get corporate Britain and a lot of individuals who made hundreds of millions behind us.
Mr Lynch praised the British Government’s support, saying they had “got behind us in a big way”, but lamented that not a single banker from Goldman Sachs had given “anything meaningful”. .
Mr Lynch has also served as the Sydney Opera House and Australia Council chief executive.
The straight-talking Lynch is widely praised for his time at the helm of the Southbank, located across the Thames from Westminster, notably overseeing a multi-million pound renovation of the Royal Festival Hall.
Julianne Schultz has also been appointed to theboard alongside Mr Lynch in a new process implemented by the Federal Government.

.The New South Wales Government is considering a $1 billion plan to restore the Sydney Opera House.
A spokeswoman for Premier Nathan Rees says he has given in-principle support to idea.
Mr Rees told the Daily Telegraph the project is now before his budget committee.
But she says it is a long-term plan and any restoration will need both state and federal funding.
“There are limitless calls for funding from every portfolio and the arts is no exception.
“I think funding for the arts generally in the past few years hasn’t been as high a priority as I believe it should have been for a city of international stature,” he said…”
The Commonwealth has also agreed to look at the project after being approached by the State Government to fund half the cost.Opera House funding has been speculated on for some years now – we are in a budget process and it is under active consideration. .
The seven-year project, which centres on a massive engineering project to lower the floor of the Opera Theatre by 18 metres, will not change the building’s external appearance.
– ABC/AAP

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.A 20-year-old Brazilian model who lost her hands and feet to an infection has died in hospital of medical complications, according to a family statement on her website.
“It’s with great sadness that we inform you of the death of Mari, today [Saturday] at 2:30am [local time],” her family wrote on the site of Mariana Bridi da Costa.
They said she died of a generalised infection and abdominal bleeding.
Doctors at the Dorio Silva Hospital in Serra, in the south-eastern state of Espirito Santo, earlier this month amputated Bridi’s hands and feet because of irreparable tissue damage caused by a urinary infection.
National news websites, including G1, O Globo and Estadao, quoted authorities confirming the information.
Bridi was an up-and-coming model before the tragedy struck.
She was diagnosed with the Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacterium, which can prove fatal.
She twice made it into the national finals for the Miss World contest, and last year travelled to China to participate in the Miss Bikini International pageant.
“It is important to stress that, in Mari’s 20 years of life, she lived intensely and was very happy,” the family said in their statement.
Her family and media on Friday had launched an appeal for blood donors to help Bridi, who had the rare O negative blood type.
–

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O Globo said Bridi was to buried late Saturday

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Composer Andrew Lloyd Webber says the long-awaited sequel to Phantom of the Opera should be ready at the end of 2009, with a possible simultaneous opening on three continents, the Associated Press reported.
Lloyd Webber told The Times of London that he hopes the new musical, to be called Phantom: Love Never Dies, will open in New York, London and possibly Shanghai or another Asian city. The sequel will be set about 10 years after the original, which has been seen by approximately 80 million theatergoers in 124 cities worldwide.
The locale of the celebrated musical will be switched from the Paris Opera to New York’s Coney Island. .
And who will play the Phantom? Lloyd Webber is keeping that secret for now.

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Hugo Award-winning SF author Elizabeth Bear told us that her latest novel, All the Windwracked Stars, is something she’s been working on since time immemorial–or what feels like it, anyway.
“Basically, it’s the conjunction of a lot of different things: my love for post-apocalyptic science fantasy and my desire to do something slightly different with it are probably the most deep-seated motives, however,” Bear said in an interview. “I also wanted to build a world where the cultural foundation was a bit different than our own–something a little divorced from Romano-Christian ideals and emotional logic. .”
In the novel, in the last city on a dying world, the last Valkyrie encounters the ancient enemy she blames for the destruction of her society . and then “wackiness ensues,” Bear said.. “The book’s main protagonist is Muire, a historian and sculptor who happens to be 2300 years old, and a supernatural being,” she said. “Actually, the book was easy to write, although it took me many, many drafts to get it right,” she said.
Bear said that a ton of research went into the book, but added that she hopes it’s not immediately apparent. I like this place and these people and their story. “But writing it was an awful lot of fun, as I was very engaged with the characters and the world the entire time. “The bit I think is amazingly cool, and which soaked up most of the research, was integrating traditional Norse magic and religion into a technological society and trying to make them seem as if they had grown up together, inseparable,” Bear said.”
The book is science fantasy, so the science deals mostly with well-established tropes. “The setting is also very fun. “The setting is also very fun. She’s also writing for the ongoing collaborative Web fiction project , which is gearing up for season two.”
Other recent projects of Bear’s include the recent novels Ink and Steel and Hell and Earth, which she describes as Elizabethan fantasies featuring poets, spies, devils and faerie queens. –John Joseph Adams

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Olivia Wilde and Beau Garrett are the first to sign on for the sequel to Tron, called either TR2N or Tron 2.0, depending on which Hollywood trade paper is doing the reporting.
Sean Bailey is producing along with Steven Lisberger, who co-wrote and directed the original film, and Jeff Silver.
The sequel to the 1982 Disney movie is being directed by Joseph Kosinski, a commercial director.
The new movie is acting as a “next chapter,” according to The Hollywood Reporter.
The original centered on a programmer who is thrust into a computer and forced to fight in games he helped create. Garrett will play a siren in the virtual world. Plot details are being guarded closely, but Wilde will play a worker in the virtual world who tries to help fight Master Control Program, the villainous intelligence protocol that was the nemesis in the original film.
Tron 2.
The male lead has not been cast, but the studio and filmmakers are screen-testing actors as it brings on other leads and supporting players. Kosinski shot reels to test technology and showcase his vision for the film the footage screened at Comic-Con in July and was one of the most buzzed-about films coming out of the geekfest.0 is eyeing a spring shoot and is shaping up as one of the studio’s most anticipated projects in years.
Jeff Bridges is expected to reprise his role from the original movie.

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us spoke one on one with Scott Derrickson, director of The Day the Earth Stood Still, mainly to ask him: What were you thinking? A remake of Robert Wise’s 1951 SF classic? Keanu Reeves as Klaatu??
What he had to say persuaded us to reconsider the project, which opens today.
In it, Reeves plays an alien who arrives on Earth, takes human form and carries a warning to humanity. But before he can deliver it, he is captured and subjected to interrogation. Klaatu, Helen and her son, Jacob (Jaden Smith), find themselves on the run. Upon his escape, he forges a bond with a sympathetic astrophysicist, Helen Benson (Jennifer Connelly). 12. (There are some spoilers ahead!) The Day the Earth Stood Still opens in conventional theaters and IMAX theaters on Dec.
Keanu actually brings a lot of subtlety to his portrayal of an alien who finds himself in a human body and isn’t quite sure how it works. You know, when he turns to Kathy Bates and has that dialogue with her, his eyes are, like, really black, and that’s not an effect or anything: That’s the actor, just in this weird space.
Derrickson: It’s subtle and yet very effective.. . And Kathy Bates came up to me between takes when we were shooting that scene, she said, “Hey, he’s really freaking me out..” She was, like, generally kind of disturbed! And I thought, “My God, if you can throw Kathy Bates off in an acting scene, that’s something.” She was, like, generally kind of disturbed! And I thought, “My God, if you can throw Kathy Bates off in an acting scene, that’s something. Yet you know there is something going on.

The other thing is that he’s playing emotions, just not human emotions, and they don’t express themselves in the way that you would read a human emotion..
Derrickson: . The only other actor I’ve been able to compare him to in his ability to do that is Harrison Ford, and I think that they’re both actors that never got enough credit, never got any nominations [Ford's actually been nominated for an Oscar], and what they do is something that very few actors can do, to make you feel that, to feel there’s something going on on the surface which is very interesting and complex, and I’m tracking it and I’m feeling it and I understand it, but to articulate it would almost be impossible… .
You got a question about this film’s ending.. At first it bothered me, and then I realized what Keanu said about a big stick: that it’s one thing to force the human race to change, it’s another to decide that you have faith after this experience that the human race will evolve in the right way on its own. At first it bothered me, and then I realized what Keanu said about a big stick: that it’s one thing to force the human race to change, it’s another to decide that you have faith after this experience that the human race will evolve in the right way on its own. Is that kind of what you had in mind?
Derrickson: One hundred percent. … Klaatu’s journey is a journey of discovering what he ultimately believes we are capable of doing. And it starts with Mr. Wu [James Hong], you know, which is my favorite scene in the movie. That was the reason I did the movie, aside from the script. … . [That humans] do have a capacity, especially when under duress, to make radical and significant changes. That, coupled with his own love that he developed for what humanity was, I think that he was examining at it then and deciding, “I can’t just sacrifice them or the planet. I’m going to take a shot at keeping both.” And that’s kind of the decision that I think he makes at the end. That’s certainly the story that I was trying to tell.
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Jennifer Connelly is Dr. Helen Benson and Keanu Reeves is Klaatu in The Day the Earth Stood Still. (Doane Gregory for Fox)
So in that sense he doesn’t need to necessarily tell anybody. He just needs to step back.
Derrickson: Yeah, he basically just needed to stop this process that he had started and see what happens. And I think that it’s very likely that he would monitor it and see what’s going on, but he definitely is going to step back and let us do our thing. And, I think, I like the idea, like I said, the Jesus analogy is the only one I can use, because it is the one that I thought through with the ending: that, you know, when Jesus died, people didn’t know his message, and it was only a handful of people, but it became the thing that went and changed Western civilization. And I liked the idea that he is this messianic kind of figure that makes the sacrifice, and that when he’s done, what he did and why he did it … would spread and that [it] would be the roots of change itself. That’s my prediction at the ending. And … the other thing that’s interesting, to me, is that there’s nothing in the movie that gives any indication for how long the power is going to be off. Is it off forever? Is it off for the day that the Earth stands still? … Are we going to figure out how to get it back on? I don’t know. And I liked leaving that open, because that’s the stuff that’s fun to talk about.
I was talking with a friend, saying that this film is really the prequel to The Road.
Derrickson: [Laughs] That’s great. …
Your remake is careful to include things that come from the original movie. Are there specific things that you wanted to make sure were in there?
Derrickson: I definitely wanted to keep the math equation with Barnhardt [John Cleese]. It was always one of my favorite parts of the movie. … The character of Barnhardt being this great mind and that he comes in and he has this equation that he deals with. …
The spaceship and the spacesuit that Klaatu comes out in and Gort: It’s not just a matter of having those things in the movie, but … the fact that those three things so didn’t belong to the normal world of that movie, [but] that they so belonged to the world of each other. Like they all had a relationship to each other that felt [right] they all fit together, they all belonged to each other. And that was something I tried to preserve, too: that the ship, in this case this giant sphere, and the spacesuit and then Gort had some kind of an interesting biomechanical kind of relationship to each other that’s alien … [but] that they do fit to each other. …
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Keanu Reeves stars as Klaatu, an alien whose arrival on our planet triggers a global upheaval in The Day the Earth Stood Still. (WETA)
I think that the number-one thing on the overall picture–it’s not a specific, it’s more a sensibility–when I saw the film for the first time, what I was most affected by the story just being a great story, this alien observing human nature. But I … am still really impressed and struck by the uniqueness of that film’s balance between spectacle and big entertainment value and big spaceships and big robots and thrills and scare–and these kind of quiet, intimate moments. And the big, giant sci-fi scale combined with quiet, human, serious, real character material. And … there aren’t a lot of science fiction films that have done that, and I think that that overall sensibility was the thing that I most wanted to take from the original to this story as well, because it’s not usual, it’s not typical.
I also noticed you threw a theremin in there, too.
Derrickson: There’s actually theremin all over that score. … When people think of the theremin, of course, they think of that weird, unworldly sound from the Bernard Herrmann score. I told … Tyler Bates, our composer, that I would love him to work a theremin in if he could. And he got the best theremin player in the world, and a lot of what you hear is theremin. I mean, a lot of the main instrumentation, she can do amazing things, this girl who played. And things that sound like sound effects, a lot of the stuff that you hear in the surgery sequence [was the theremin]. … He ended up using it a lot more than I was even expecting, and I’m really happy about that, because it is a really interesting instrument, and watching her play it was amazing. –