Timur PANKOV
ALMATY, Sept 14 (THE GLOBE)
Over the course of his long and distinguished acting career, Tommy Lee Jones has tried his hand at playing just about every character in the book. In 1982, he won an Emmy for his chilling, yet sympathetic, portrayal of convicted killer Gary Gilmore in the made-for-television movie The Executioner�s Song, and the next year he played a dashing pirate captain with a soft spot for the wife of a preacher in the high-seas-adventure flick Nate and Hayes. After wowing the critics with a convincing turn as tyrannical, misanthropic baseball great Ty Cobb in the 1994 biopic Cobb, he next found work as double-dealing D.A. Harvey �Two-Face� Dent in the enormously successful Batman sequel, Batman Forever (1995). Despite his remarkable dramatic range, it took Jones more than twenty years of steady work in film, television, and theater to finally break into the limelight. It was his role as U.S. Marshal Sam Gerard in the 1993 big-screen remake of the classic television series The Fugitive that finally propelled Jones to the top of the A-list. He pulled out all the stops for his freewheeling, ass-kicking characterization of the no-nonsense Gerard, and he succeeded not only in looming large over co-star Harrison Ford, but he took home an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Hollywood producers and directors have been knocking down his door ever since.
An eighth-generation Texan, Jones was the only child of an oil-worker father and a policewoman mother. By his own account, Jones endured a �physically horrifying� childhood at the hands of his abusive father; emotionally, it couldn�t have been all that easy to witness his parents divorce, get remarried, and eventually divorce again. Reared in a state famous for its consuming passion for football, Jones sought refuge from his troubled home life on the gridiron from the time he was a scrawny, ninety-eight-pound seventh grader. When his father accepted a job on a Libyan oil rig three years later, Jones was so determined to remain in the States that he secured for himself a football scholarship to St. Mark�s, an elite prep school in Dallas.
Jones moved to New York to commence a career as an actor, and won his first role in a Broadway production just ten days after arriving in the city. For the next several years, he had no trouble finding work in theater and on television. Looking for a fresh start, the disgruntled thespian moved his base of operations from New York to Los Angeles in 1975. The move provided just the career jump-start he needed, as he soon landed a prominent role in the pilot episode of Charlie�s Angels, as well as his first starring role in a feature film, Jackson County Jail, in which he portrayed an escaped convict on the run from federal marshals.
Though many of his performances over the next two decades won critical acclaim, Jones toiled in relative obscurity. His most notable achievements came when he portrayed famous (and infamous) Americans: he played eccentric Hollywood billionaire Howard Hughes in The Amazing Howard Hughes (1977); singer Loretta Lynn�s manager-husband Mooney in The Coal Miner�s Daughter (1980); and homosexual Dallas businessman and suspected Kennedy assassination co-conspirator Clay Shaw in JFK (1991). His eerie, moody interpretation of Shaw earned him an Oscar nomination, and he became even more visible the following year when he appeared as a mad bomber in the Steven Segal blockbuster Under Siege, his second film for director Andrew Davis. Jones finally made his mark in his next collaboration with Davis, 1993�s The Fugitive. He had major roles in no fewer than five films the next year, three of which were bona fide blockbusters�Blown Away, The Client, and Natural Born Killers. In 1995, he took advantage of his newfound celebrity to co-script, direct, and star in a movie for cable superstation TNT called The Good Old Boys, which was both set and filmed in western Texas.
Twice married and twice divorced, Jones relaxes between films on a 4,000 acre ranch in the very same dusty West Texas town where he was born, San Saba. He remains a good friend of his former roommate, Vice President Al Gore, for whom Jones campaigned both in 1992 and 1996. He has two children from his marriage to actress Kim Cloughley. After successfully saving the city of Los Angeles in 1997�s natural-disaster thriller Volcano, Jones tackled the task of saving the whole darned planet in the summer mega-blockbuster Men in Black. Perhaps still smarting from being overshadowed by fellow super-villain Jim Carrey in Batman Forever, Jones was initially reluctant to pair up with another red-hot young star for Men in Black, but he has since reported that co-star Will Smith is �one of the nicest and funniest kids in America.� Jones next reprised his Oscar-winning role of Sam Gerard for the Harrison Ford-less Fugitive sequel, U.S. Marshals.
Hilary Skeels
Sept 14, London (THE GLOBE)
M15, Britain�s intelligence agency, is at the centre of a round of accusations and denials this week as Whitehall reels over relvelations that Melita Norwood, 87, had been an �important� spy for the KGB since 1945, known to M15 since 1992.
Norwood was given security clearance at �British Non-Ferrous Metals Association�, where she worked as a secretary, in 1945. This was revoked 6 years later but despite suspicions, it was not untill Vasili Mitrokihn defected 7 years ago that M15 became aware of the full situation. Norwood had given the KGB details of Britains atomic bomb, but even after all these revelations, no action was taken to prosecute her. M15 did not consult any government ministers over this decision.
Furthermore, in 1996, foreign secretary Sir Malcolm Rifkand authorised release of the Mitrokihn documents, apparantly unaware of the enclosed evidence of Mrs Norwoods spying. The documents were used by
Cristopher Andrew, a Cambridge University Don, to write a book, which is attracting huge amounts of attention to this matter. Norwood herself seems almost certain to avoid prosecution. She says �I would do the same again.�
It is the furore that remains in parliament that will take time to calm - Jack Straw, Home Secretary has already promised tighter controls on MI5, and will attempt to make them truly accountable to teh politicians who in the end will have to defend their actions.
September 17, 1908 - During an airplane demonstration at Fort Myer in Arlington Heights, Virginia, a propeller blade comes loose on a plane piloted by Orville Wright, plunging the aircraft 150 feet to the ground. Lieutenant Thomas Selfridge of the U.S. Signal Corps, a passenger on the plane, dies of a skull fracture, while Orville suffers multiple hip and leg fractures. Selfridge is the first fatality in an airplane accident.
September 17, 1930 - Construction of Hoover Dam, originally called Boulder Dam, begins at Black Canyon, near Las Vegas, Nevada. Built during the Depression, thousands of men and their families came to Black Canyon to tame the mighty Colorado River, working under dangerous conditions in a harsh environment. Completed in less than five years, the largest dam of its era is a world-renowned engineering feat, and an endlessly renewable source of power for the growing Southwest.
September 17, 1976 - NASA publicly unveils the space shuttle Enterprise, the first reusable manned spacecraft, during a ceremony in Palmdale, California. In the following year, the Enterprise enjoys the distinction of the first free atmospheric flight by a space shuttle when it is lifted to a height of 25,000 feet by a Boeing 747 airplane, and then released, gliding back to Edwards Air Force Base on its own accord. But it is the space shuttle Columbia, launched from Cape Canaveral in 1981, that holds the distinction of being the first space shuttle to actually travel into space.
September 18, 1984 - Air Force Colonel Joe Kittinger completes the first solo transatlantic balloon flight, landing in Montenotte, Italy, after traveling a distance of 3,543 miles. Kittinger�s 100,000-cubic-foot helium balloon, named the Rosie O�Grady, took off from Caribou, Maine, eighty-six hours earlier.
September 19, 1957 - The United States sets off the world�s first underground nuclear test in a mountain tunnel near Las Vegas, Nevada.
September 20, 1974 - Gail A. Cobb, a member of the Metropolitan Police Force of Washington, D.C., becomes the first female police officer to be killed in the line of duty. Cobb is murdered by a robbery suspect in an underground garage in downtown Washington.
From September 14 to October 14.
The Kosteyev State National Museum. The exhibition of private picture-galleries: �Gallery parade � �99�
The Kosteyev State National Museum. Exhibition of S. Kalmykov, I. Itkind, and V. Eifert�s works, and Rudolf Nuriev�s painting.
From 10.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m. Closed on Mondays.
All Over the Globe is published by IPA House.
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