Timur PANKOV
ALMATY, Sept 2
(THE GLOBE)
Cameron Diaz, the most promising blue-eyed blonde of 1994, confounded Hollywood. After scoring a career-launching babe role of a lifetime opposite rising superstar Jim Carrey in The Mask, the budding actress did� nothing. Or at least not as much as might have been expected. Her promising comic debut opposite the hyperactive, plexi-faced comedian awarded her the chance to immortalize an ass-kicking video-game character in the live-action celluloid version of Mortal Kombat, but a cruel twist of fate snatched the opportunity away: Diaz injured her wrist and had to back out of the martial-arts extravaganza. She bided her time, taking the occasional high-paying modeling job, and hand-picking juicy, if low-paying, independent-film roles.
Such impressive professional awareness may seem odd for someone so young and relatively inexperienced, but Diaz got an early jump on her career and has kept up the pace ever since. At the age of 16, she made the acquaintance of a photographer who wasn�t just another sleazeball at a Hollywood party, and within a week of their meeting she had succeeded in landing a contract with the Elite Modeling Agency. Soon after, the smooth-talking teen convinced her parents to let her spread her wings in Japan, accompanied only by a 15-year-old fellow model. �Believe me, you can get into a lot of trouble being 16 years old in a foreign country with no adult telling you when to come home,� Diaz recalls. She spent the next five years continent-hopping��Australia, Morocco, Paris, Mexico, here, there, everywhere��and eventually settled into a Hollywood apartment with video producer Carlos de La Torre; their relationship held strong for five years.
Though Diaz�s modeling career proved quite lucrative�she posed for such magazines as Mademoiselle and Seventeen, and appeared in ads for Calvin Klein, Levi�s, and Coca-Cola�she felt a void in her life. Her agent suggested she fill it by starting to make that painful and oft-tried transition from modeling to acting. Diaz went out on some auditions, finally getting a callback�her first of 12�for a small role in Carrey�s The Mask. �Anything the filmmakers wanted, I would do,� Diaz says. �But it got to the point where I said, �You know what? I�m not doing it anymore. I�m not gonna go practice with the choreographer so that he knows the steps he�s gonna teach the real girl who gets the job.�� But in the end, her perseverance paid off, and she walked away with the female lead after director Charles Russell went to bat for her with the producers at New Line. The Mask being her first acting experience, Diaz didn�t fully grasp the scope of what she was involved in: �About a month into the movie, I said, �This is kind of a big film, isn�t it?� And they all said, �Yes, Cameron. Yes it is.�� The dawning awareness of her responsibility to the film contributed to her getting her first ulcer.
The ulcer and her subsequent pre-production Mortal Kombat injury soured Diaz on big-studio films, so she patiently auditioned for a bevy of independent films. And a bevy of roles she won: Diaz ran off with her brother-in-law, played by Keanu Reeves, in Feeling Minnesota; she slept with brothers Edward Burns and Mike McGlone in She�s the One; and perhaps most difficult of all to believe, she played Harvey Keitel�s wife in Head Above Water. The National Association of Theater Owners acknowledged her string of indie triumphs by naming her the N.A.T.O./ShoWest Female Star of Tomorrow.
Diaz made a bold return to the commercial side of filmmaking for the summer romantic comedy My Best Friend�s Wedding, in which she shouldered the unenviable task of trying to out-cute Julia Roberts.
ALMATY, Sept 6
(THE GLOBE)
Difficult question: what is paintball?
There are hardly a lot of people who can answer this question. But it�s a pity�
We should admit that paintball is very interesting thing!
Paintball is when you are to put on a lot of different ammunition, to take a rifle, several cartridges and receive a task to shoot an enemy, preventing him from shooting you.
Everything is real, except cartridges. Cartridges are ordinary balls made of paint.
There is nothing especial in this game and in some time you may become an advanced amateur. (As everybody has watched films about Rembo and Terminator.)
Now let�s talk about the most terrible things� Alas, we lost the game�
We lost the fight, which was organised for representatives of the mass media by Paintball Sport Club �TOP GUN� on September 4 in the Central Culture and Rest Park at the polygon, in the Central Culture and Rest Park.
�We� means four persons from THE GLOBE, two from �Express K�, a representative of the Advertisement Agency �NIKA� and a nice girl from �Zerkalo� magazine.
�They� means CTC (Commercial Television Channel) and a boy from �Zerkalo�.
In the first fight we were defeated for several minutes, after which we decided to burst into CTC�s position. The only person who survived after this attack was killed in his back by representatives of CTC, as they rounded him with a classic turning manoeuvre.
But we did not give ourselves up, and in the next round we were more successful, but due to heavy losses (glasses of the photo-correspondent of �Express K� were broken, the author of this article was killed after the first couple of shots) the centre of our defence was damaged and CTC triumphed.
However, then the minute of our victory came. By the third round, due to objective reasons only 6 of us struggled against 8 enemies, and then we did our best. The attack initiated by our advertisement manager lead to the complete defeat of the most efficient troops of the enemy. Then CTC was defeated in the central front.
After that it was just a matter of strategy to capture the enemy�s base, which was to be defended by only women and children. As there were no children, women resisted for several seconds, and we won.
As you understand, we have a lot of impressions. Moreover, the pleasure does not cost much (US$ 5 for ammunition, and 20 tenge per cartridge). If you do not waste your cartridges, 10 to 15 pieces will be enough for a game.
It occurred so that we played the easiest variant, a team fight, though there are more sophisticated variants, which are more interesting.
Well, we frankly advise you to play, as you will enjoy.
By Alessandro RAIMONDI
LUGANO, Sept 4 (THE GLOBE)
A blow against poverty has been striken by the Swiss Bishops Conference these days at Einsiedeln. In the historic abbey of the small town, in fact, the Catholic Church of the Confederation has proposed in a most formal way to all creditor countries the cancellation of debts for those poor nations being strangled by the �evil spiral� denying them a proper economic take-off.
The request comes in junction with the Year 2000 Jubilee called for by the Roman Catholic Church. In the intention of the Conference, next year should be the one of the redemption for those countries whose national debt has reached such dimensions to make virtually impossible any relevant reimbursement.
This kind of Swiss solidarity is not being shown for the first time: Switzerland is indeed in the frontline in the fight against poverty worlwide. It�s enough to remind how in 1989 already 250,000 Helvetic citizens had filled a petition asking for zeroing the debt of the third world. Then 2 years later Switzerland has opened the way by feeding a compensation fund with half million SF, that has attracted other countries in the same direction.
This third attempt to help the needy ones follows the pope�s indications as reported in his �Incarnationis Mysterium�, the Jubilee calling bull. John Paul II remarked about impracticability of reimbursement from some countries, unable even to pay off yearly interests on their debts that, because of that, will be even bigger the following year.
�The view is such � commented Amedeo Grab, president of the Swiss Bishops Conference -�that for those countries there is no real hope of economic development. An unbearable situation that needs to be stopped: the Jubilee year gives rich countries such an opportunity. Let�s not waste it!�.
September 7, 1940 - The German air force, known as the Luftwaffe, begins its �blitz� bombing campaign of London during the Battle of Britain. Three-hundred people perish on the first day alone, but the concentrated bombing on the British capital allows the Royal Air Force to recover elsewhere. Eight days later, the RAF stages a dramatic counterattack against the Luftwaffe, turning the tide in the Battle of Britain.
Septermber 8, 1917 - Eugene Bullard, born in Columbus, Georgia, becomes the first African-American combat aviator when he flies a reconnaissance mission over the city of Metz, France. After emigrating to France from the United States, Bullard joined the French Army at the outbreak of World War I, receiving his flying certification a few months before his maiden mission. He is credited with one confirmed �kill,� a German Pfalz he shoots down over Verdun.
September 9, 1850 - California joins the United States as the thirty-first state, only two years after the population boom of the California Gold Rush. As part of the North-South Compromise of 1850, California is admitted as a free state.
September 9, 1976 - Chairman Mao Zedong, Chinese revolutionary and statesman, dies at the age of eighty-three. After leading a successful Communist revolution, Mao proclaimed the People�s Republic of China in 1949, with himself as both chairman of the Communist Party and president of the Republic. In 1965, he launched the controversial Cultural Revolution, an often brutal campaign to reform Chinese society.
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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