SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #1338 (2), Friday, January 11, 2008
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TITLE: Medvedev Gets Baby Coverage
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev and Svetlana Osadchuk
PUBLISHER: Staff Writers
TEXT: MOSCOW — First Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, anointed by President Vladimir Putin in December as his favored successor, met with the family of the 100,000th child born in Moscow in 2007 in a visit that had all the trappings of a campaign event.
Political analysts said the visit, which was covered on all of the national news, was aimed at reinforcing the idea that social issues will be the top priority for the man almost sure to be the country’s next president.
The recipients of the visit were the parents of Alexei Grigoryev, one of 11 babies born in the early evening of Dec. 26, each of whom was designated the 100,000th child born in Moscow in 2007 and awarded a special medal by the City Hall.
Medvedev’s spokespeople would not comment on why the Grigoryevs, Svetlana and Dmitry, both graduates of Moscow State University, had been chosen for the visit.
Alexei, the couple’s third child, has two older sisters.
“This is a great event not only for your family, but also for the country,” television showed Medvedev saying as he held Alexei in the Grigoryev’s Moscow apartment.
Medvedev, a long-time confidant of the president, was named by Putin as his preferred successor last month, and then backed by the pro-Kremlin United Russia and A Just Russia parties. A survey of 1,600 Russians conducted by the Levada Center in December revealed that 79 percent of those polled would have voted for him if elections had been held on the next Sunday. The actual vote is set for March 2.
“The last time there was [a 100,000th baby born in Moscow in one year] was in 1989, which means it was in another century and another country,” said Medvedev, who oversees social projects in the Cabinet.
Part of the government’s policy to address what it regularly stresses as a “demographic crisis” has been to offer financial perks to larger families in an effort to boost the birth rate.
Medvedev said Wednesday that he hoped the Grigoryev family would inspire others, and asked Svetlana Grigoryeva if she felt any different after Alexei’s birth than after that of her first child. She said it was a much better this time, without elaborating.
“This is very pleasing to hear. Your opinion is very important to us,” Medvedev said, Interfax reported.
Dmitry Grigoryev, who works as a translator and tutor, complained that the couple and their children had to live with their parents, as they did not have an apartment. He said they had already spent eight years on city list to receive a place of their own.
Medvedev asked First Deputy Mayor Lyudmila Shvetsova, who accompanied him to meet the Grigoryevs, if there was any way the city could help the family. Shvetsova sheepishly replied that, with the birth of a third child, “there are legal reasons to expedite the process,” Interfax reported.
While covering Medvedev’s comments during the visit, the television reports did not carry a single remark by the Grigoryevs, giving the report the feel of a campaign announcement.
Medvedev has enjoyed a huge advantage in television coverage in recent weeks over the four other men who have announced their candidacy for the presidency — Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov, Liberal Democratic Party leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky, former Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and Democratic Party of Russia leader Andrei Bogdanov.
The latest example was the blanket television coverage of Medvedev being greeted by Patriarch Alexy II and then standing beside him during an Orthodox Christmas service in the Christ the Savior Cathedral on Monday. The spot beside the patriarch has been Putin’s regular place during the services in recent years.
Putin celebrated the holiday this year in Veliky Ustyug, the town 650 kilometers north of Moscow that claims to be the home of Ded Moroz — the Russian equivalent of Santa Claus.
“Medvedev is out to demonstrate to the people that social issues and spirituality will dominate his agenda as the future president,” said Alexei Mukhin, a political analyst with the Center for Political Information.
Social problems have proved to be an issue that touches a nerve with voters, explaining the focus of Medvedev’s campaign, analysts said.
Surveys by the Levada Center before and after the Dec. 2 State Duma elections revealed that people were more eager to vote for a party offering better social programs than offering messages concerned with national grandeur or civil rights, said Leonid Sedov, another analyst with the center.
Medvedev’s focus on social issues appeals to the expectations of many voters of a paternalistic state and a fatherly leader who provides and cares, said Yury Korgunyuk, a political analyst with the Indem think tank.
“Over the next few weeks we will see many television reports of this type, showing Medvedev patting heads and asking people how they are doing,” he said.
TITLE: Hawkish Rogozin To Go
To NATO
AUTHOR: By Steve Gutterman
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin on Thursday named a prominent nationalist politician as Russia’s ambassador to NATO at a time of severely strained ties between Moscow and the Western alliance.
The appointment of outspoken nationalist Dmitry Rogozin is the latest reflection of Putin’s assertive stance toward the West, which he accuses of meddling in Russia’s affairs and says must treat Moscow as an equal.
But while it may place a stronger spotlight on Russia’s wrangling with NATO, it did not appear to signal a shift in Russian policy toward its former Cold War foe.
Rogozin, a former member of parliament who headed a nationalist party, replaces General Konstantin Totsky.
Putin, who has courted support at home and around the globe by lashing out publicly at the West, “wanted to emphasize Russia’s negative attitude toward what NATO is doing,” said Fyodor Lukyanov, the editor of Russia in Global Affairs magazine. “But I don’t think it will have a significant effect on relations between Russia and NATO.”
Rogozin, whose appointment was long in the works, said earlier this month that Russia’s relations with NATO were “at their lowest point” following a series of disputes last year. He stressed opposition to U.S. plans to deploy missile defense facilities in former Warsaw Pact countries, Kosovo’s moves toward declaring independence from Russian ally Serbia, and further NATO expansion eastward.
Speaking on Ekho Moskvy radio, Rogozin said the job would be “an extremely important mission — to maintain normal, constructive relations with such a difficult partner.”
NATO has angered Moscow by expanding into former Warsaw Pact nations and the ex-Soviet Baltic republics — moves many Russians see as unfriendly and potentially threatening. Ties have been further frayed by the U.S. missile defense plans and a dispute over the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe treaty. Moscow suspended participation in the pact last month, demanding NATO members ratify an updated version its says addresses rules that are unfair to Russia.
Rogozin told Ekho Moskvy that while he does not consider NATO a hostile organization, Russians who do have good grounds for their position. He cited the alliance’s 1999 bombing campaign in Yugoslavia. Amid increasing concerns in recent years over a rise in hate-motivated attacks on minorities, Rogozin has championed the rights of ethnic Russians — both in Russia and abroad — and organized nationalist demonstrations.
In 2005, the political party he led at the time, Rodina (Homeland), was barred from Moscow legislative elections after running a campaign advertisement that was seen as racist.
With the Kremlin stepping up its public criticism of neo-Nazi groups, however, Rogozin has avoided direct association with extreme nationalists. He has also built up experience in foreign affairs, serving for a time as chairman of the parliamentary international affairs committee in the State Duma, the lower house of parliament, and as Putin’s envoy for talks with the European Union on issues relating to Russia’s Kaliningrad region.
Lukyanov stressed that Rogozin will implement policy, not set it, and will likely tone down his rhetoric as a diplomat. “I don’t think he will conduct himself as he would at a rally in Moscow,” he said.
Diplomats at NATO headquarters in Brussels have expressed wariness over Rogozin’s nationalist background, but point out he has foreign policy experience. Some say the appointment of a high-profile figure suggests something of an upgrade in relations.
“NATO is looking forward to working with him,” said alliance spokesman James Appathurai.
TITLE: Boxing Champ Valuyev Found Guilty
AUTHOR: By Irina Titova
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: St. Petersburg’s Kalininsky district civil court ruled Wednesday that Russia’s first professional heavyweight boxing champion Nikolai Valuyev damaged the health of a security guard at the Spartak sports complex and ordered the 7-foot, 1-inch-tall so-called “Beast from the East” to pay 130,000 rubles ($5,320) in compensation.
Valuyev must pay 100,000 rubles in “moral damages” to the guard, Yury Sergeyev, and 30,000 rubles in fines, Interfax reported.
The court rejected evidence from witnesses in Valuyev’s defense but recognised extenuating circumstances because Valuyev volunteered to cover Sergeyev’s medical expenses after the incident.
Representatives of both sides said they intended to appeal the decision.
Sergeyev’s side wants Valuyev jailed for 18 months and 1 million rubles ($40,900) in compensation. Valuyev’s side said they were dissatisfied that the court did not “thoroughly investigate all the important conditions of the case,” Sergei Solomonov, Valuyev’s representative, told Sport Segodnya newspaper.
The statute of limitations for criminal charges to be filed in the case runs out on Jan. 20, but the civil case can be continued, Solomonov said.
The January 2006 incident between Valuyev and Sergeyev occurred after Valuyev’s wife parked her car in the wrong place near the Spartak sports complex. The security guard made a remark to her and a in few minutes Valuyev arrived on the scene. In Sergeyev’s words the giant boxer began to beat him on his head and the 60-year-old man was subsequently hospitalized.
Valuyev said that he simply shook Sergeyev for insulting his wife. The guard fell to the ground and probably hit himself against something, Valuyev said.
Valuyev — who earned the nickname the “Beast from the East” when he became the tallest and heaviest heavyweight world boxing champion in history in 2005 — was not in court Wednesday because he in Berlin training for a fight with Belorussian heavyweight boxer Sergei Lyakhovich. They are due to meet to compete for the title of official challenger for the WBA title on Feb 16. The title currently belongs to Uzbek boxer Ruslan Chagayev.
Valuyev lost his title to Chagayev in 2007 but last year went on to film a role in a new Russian movie in which he stars as a talented boxer who loses his memory after a car accident.
The as-yet-unreleased movie, “Stone Head” (“Kamennaya Bashka”), was made by acclaimed director Fillip Yankovsky who said Valuyev showed himself to be a talented actor who managed to not only play a sportsman but to perform the drama of life as a big man, Moskovsky Komsomolets said.
Yankovsky said he could hardly believe Valuyev would beat a security guard because the boxer is a kind and decent man in everyday life.
TITLE: Ukrainian Lands Bond-Girl Role
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — In the secretive world of movie spy James Bond, the “Bond girl” for the new installment in the movie series had been top secret, but Bond’s backers said this week that Ukrainian bombshell Olga Kurylenko is the actress.
Columbia Pictures, the film studio behind the popular movies about the British secret agent, said Monday that Kurylenko, 28, has been cast in one of the most coveted roles in the movies — 007’s sidekick for the still untitled Bond flick.
The film, which is the 22nd in the series that dates back to 1962’s “Dr. No,” is due in theaters in November and stars Daniel Craig as the dashing British spy who regularly saves the world from a destructive evil villain.
Early reports said that actress Gemma Arterton would land the part as the new Bond girl, but even though Arterton has a role in the new film it is not as large as Kurylenko’s, said a source close to the film.
The Ukrainian actress joins a long list of leading ladies to be cast alongside the super spy including Ursula Andress in “Dr. No,” Halle Berry, Kim Basinger and most recently Eva Green in “Casino Royale,” which grossed nearly $600 million in worldwide ticket sales.
In the past, being a “Bond girl” has given actresses massive exposure and launched lucrative careers.
A former model, Kurylenko was most recently seen alongside Timothy Olyphant in last November’s “Hitman.”
British actor Craig made his first appearance as the secret agent in “Casino Royale” and returns for this newest movie directed by Marc Foster, better known for his widely acclaimed dramas like “Finding Neverland” and “The Kite Runner.”
Also returning from “Royale” are Judi Dench as Bond’s boss M, and Jeffery Wright as CIA agent Felix Leiter.
TITLE: Gas Blast Kills At Least Seven In Tatarstan Region
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — A natural gas blast ripped through an apartment building in Russia’s Tatarstan region early Wednesday, killing at least seven people, officials said.
Others were feared trapped beneath the rubble in freezing temperatures.
The explosion brought down an entire section of the three-story brick building in Tatarstan’s capital, Kazan. Russian television showed a jagged remnant of a wall and a pile of rubble with smoke or steam wafting into the frigid air.
Six bodies were found in the rubble, and a woman who was hospitalized later died, said Olga Trofimova, spokeswoman for the Emergency Situations Ministry in the Volga River area. She said two people remained hospitalized.
Officials said Thursday a handful of people could be trapped in the rubble.
The explosion, which sparked a fire, was apparently caused by a gas leak, said Viktor Beltsov, spokesman for the Emergency Situations Ministry in Moscow.
A distraught woman told First Channel television that a 7-year-old girl and her grandfather, apparently relatives, were missing.
“We found grandmother, she’s in the emergency room,” the woman said. “We don’t know where grandfather is, and we don’t know where (the girl) is. She’s nowhere to be found.”
Rescue efforts were complicated by the cold and fires beneath the rubble, an unidentified emergency worker said.
TITLE: Protestors Take to Streets Over Georgian Election
AUTHOR: By Misha Dzhindzhikhashvili
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: TBILISI, Georgia — Several hundred government opponents protested in the snow Wednesday to demand a presidential runoff vote as Georgia’s top electoral official said a nearly complete ballot count confirmed Mikhail Saakashvili’s re-election.
The pro-Western president called the election a year ahead of schedule in a bid to maintain his hold on power and stave off a mounting opposition challenge. He has faced accusations of authoritarian leanings since ordering a violent crackdown on opposition protesters in November.
Some 300-400 protesters gathered outside the headquarters of the main state television station in the capital, Tbilisi, demanding air time for opposition candidate Levan Gachechiladze and a runoff vote pitting him against Saakashvili.
“We won the election, but the results have been falsified,” Gachechiladze told the crowd. “We will not let them steal our votes.”
Central Election Commission chief Levan Tarkhnishvili said Saakashvili had avoided runoff by winning more than half the votes cast.
Saakashvili won 52.21 percent of the vote in a preliminary count from all but 30 of 3,512 polling precincts, Tarkhnishvili said. Gachechiladze was second with 25.26 percent.
The remaining 30 precincts accounted for less than one-tenth of 1 percent of votes and will not affect the outcome, Tarkhnishvili said. He also said a review of complaints, which must be carried out before the final results are announced 10 days after the vote, would not significantly change the outcome.
Saakashvili, a U.S.-educated lawyer, was first elected by a landslide in January 2004 after leading the Rose Revolution protests against fraud-marred parliamentary elections. The protests forced resignation of longtime President Eduard Shevardnadze.
Saakashvili, 41, has helped transform the former Soviet republic into a country with a growing economy and aspirations of joining the European Union and NATO, cultivating close ties with the U.S. and seeking to decrease Russia’s influence.
But his popularity has diminished amid accusations of authoritarianism.
He said late Tuesday that opposition representatives would be invited to join a planned commission in charge of ensuring his campaign promises were fulfilled, and suggested the opposition could gain representation in the Cabinet.
TITLE: Medvedev Gets Regional Backing
AUTHOR: By Nikolaus von Twickel
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — Dmitry Medvedev first tapped the Kremlin’s chief of staff to run his national presidential campaign. Now he is signing up governors to campaign for him in their regions.
St. Petersburg Governor Valentina Matviyenko, Moscow First Deputy Mayor Vladimir Resin and Samara Governor Vladimir Artyakov are among the regional leaders who have agreed to head Medvedev’s regional campaign headquarters, Vedomosti reported Wednesday, citing sources in the local administrations and United Russia.
Communist spokesman Pavel Shcherbakov criticized the development as a blatant abuse of Kremlin powers for electoral purposes. But he added that he was not surprised. “It would be hard to imagine anything else,” he said.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov refused to comment, saying he was not authorized to speak for Medvedev.
Zhanna Odintsova, a spokeswoman for Medvedev, also would not comment, saying she only spoke for Medvedev in his position as first deputy prime minister. She could not provide contact information for anyone on Medvedev’s team authorized to comment.
Medvedev is expected to easily win the March presidential election after President Vladimir Putin backed his candidacy last month. Medvedev is running with United Russia, and, in registering his candidacy with election authorities, Medvedev announced that Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Sobyanin would serve as his national campaign manager.
Matviyenko could boost turnout for Medvedev in St. Petersburg. She is among the country’s most powerful regional leaders and was tipped at one point as a possible successor for Putin.
Matviyenko’s spokeswoman Natalya Kutobayeva said Wednesday that she would only be able to comment on whether Matviyenko would work with Medvedev next week, after she returned from a vacation. Resin’s spokesman Igor Kanyovsky said he had no comment because the information was not yet official. Resin is the head of Moscow’s construction department, which oversees the city’s building boom.
Vedomosti said the other officials who would help direct Medvedev’s campaign include Ulyanovsk Deputy Governor Alexander Bolshakov, First Deputy Chelyabinsk Governor Andrei Kosilov and Valery Sukhikh, a senior aide to Perm Governor Oleg Chirkunov.
“Of course this is not normal and does not accrue to the spirit of the Constitution,” said Boris Dubin, a researcher with the Levada Center, an independent pollster. “But everything [in the election] will be like this because that is how the [Kremlin] has decided it will be. They do not want to take any risks.”
Putin effectively has the power to hire and fire governors.
Medvedev was expected to embark on the campaign trail Wednesday with a tour of the Murmansk region, but instead he met with a mother credited with giving birth to Moscow’s 100,000th baby in 2007. Odintsova, his spokeswoman, said Medvedev had “plenty of time” to start the campaign and go to Murmansk.
Medvedev is expected to focus on regions where United Russia won less than 58 percent of the vote in the State Duma elections last month.
TITLE: Man Kills 2 For Butchering His Dog
PUBLISHER: The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: MOSCOW — A 40-year-old man killed two friends with an ax in the Chita region after finding them preparing to cook his dog for a meal, prosecutors said Wednesday.
Alexander Yermilov found the friends dismembering his Great Dane, named Baikal, upon returning to his home in the village of Natsigun on the night of Dec. 14, the Chita.ru news agency reported Wednesday, citing the regional branch of the Prosecutor General’s Office. Yermilov picked up an ax from the floor and slashed the two, Irina Maryasova and Nikolai Sedunov, several times over their heads, killing them on the spot, prosecutors said. He then called the police and confessed.
Yermilov was arrested and charged with murder, a crime punishable with up to life in prison.
It was unclear why the friends had killed the dog or why they wanted to eat it.
TITLE: President Putin Honors Scientists
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: MOSCOW — President Vladimir Putin on Thursday granted “hero” awards to scientists backing Russia’s claim to a mountain range under the Arctic Ocean that is believed to contain huge oil and gas reserves.
The scientists planted a Russian flag under the North Pole ice in August as part of an Arctic expedition that heated up the controversy over an area that a U.S. study suggests may contain as much as 25 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas.
Russia is one of several countries that have laid claims to the area.
Putin signed a decree awarding three members of the expedition the title of Hero of the Russian Federation. They are Anatoly Salagevich, Yevgeny Chernyayev and lawmaker Artur Chilingarov. A fourth expedition member, lawmaker Vladimir Gruzdev, was granted the Order for Service to the Fatherland, the Kremlin said.
Russia’s Natural Resources Ministry has said preliminary results on soil core samples gathered by the expedition show that the 1,240-mile Lomonosov Ridge under the Arctic is part of Russia’s shelf. It said more geological tests would be conducted, as well.
After the Russian expedition, Canada vowed to increase its icebreaker fleet and build two new military facilities in the Arctic, while Denmark sent a team of scientists to seek evidence that the ridge was attached to its territory of Greenland. The U.S. government also sent an icebreaker for a research expedition.
The issue has become more urgent with growing evidence that global warming is shrinking polar ice — opening up resource development and new shipping lanes. The 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea gives the Arctic countries 10 years after they ratify the treaty to prove their claims.
TITLE: Rexam Given Green Light To Buy Firm
AUTHOR: By Catrina Stewart
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW — British packaging firm Rexam said Wednesday that anti-monopoly authorities had given it the go-ahead to buy Rostar, a unit of Oleg Deripaska’s Basic Element, in a deal that would give it a commanding position in the country’s beverage-can market.
Rexam said in a statement that an agreement to limit annual price increases to 15 percent over the next 10 years, barring “exceptional circumstances,” was key to gaining approval from the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service.
The company said it expected to complete the deal by the end of the first quarter.
Rexam announced the deal in July, saying it would pay $297 million for can maker Rostar, including debts, from En+ Group, an arm of Basic Element.
Controlling about 50 percent of the country’s aluminum can market, Rostar provides Rexam with an increased Russian presence at a time when it is looking to offset the effects of stagnating demand in markets like the United States.
But the deal foundered in September when the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service turned down the company’s application, arguing that the acquisition would give Rexam, already a major can producer in Russia, 96 percent of the country’s aluminum drinks-can market.
Analysts said the conditions imposed by the anti-monopoly service were unlikely to have any real impact on the company.
Sandy Morris, a London-based analyst at ABN Amro, said many of Rexam’s customers in Russia would be major companies like Coca-Cola, which the firm already supplies globally. It would be difficult, he said, for the company to hike prices significantly.
“Many companies would dream of raising their prices by 15 percent per annum,” Morris said. “It just doesn’t happen.”
TITLE: Siemens, Strabag Join Forces on Sochi
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Siemens AG and Strabag SE will jointly bid for Russian contracts to develop infrastructure for the Black Sea resort of Sochi, where the 2014 Winter Olympics will be held.
The companies will cooperate on “large scale projects” for the 22nd Winter Olympic games, Vienna-based Strabag said Thursday in an e-mailed statement. Siemens Chief Executive Officer Peter Loescher and Strabag CEO Hans-Peter Haselsteiner signed the agreement.
The move is “a logical consequence for our strategy in Russia,” Haselsteiner said. “We are convinced our joint know-how will give us an enormous competitive advantage during the bidding for projects in Sochi.”
The Russian corporation in charge of preparing Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics will manage more than $12 billion in public and private investment, including investment from billionaires Oleg Deripaska and Vladimir Potanin. Strabag sold a 30 percent stake of itself to Deripaska in April to help it expand in Russia.
Railway tracks, factories, airport extensions and power plants are among the projects that Siemens and Strabag will probably team up on, according to the statement. They will bid together for contracts to build the 2014 Olympic village, Sochi hotels and communication networks.
TITLE: New Year, New Law: Slot Machines To Go
AUTHOR: By Yekaterina Dranitsyna
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: More than 300 slot machine halls have stopped operating in St. Petersburg since Jan. 1, according to local officials, as regional legislation now prohibits the existence of such halls in the city. Casinos will be permitted to operate until June 30, 2009, City Hall’s Committee for Economic Development, Industrial Policy and Trade (CEDIPT) said Wednesday in a statement.
The new regional law restricting gambling was approved by City Hall on June 13 last year, and supplements the federal law on gambling. Casinos are allowed to keep operating in the city only on the condition that they meet the requirements of the federal law concerning the number of gaming tables, total area of the hall, personnel employed and the size of the authorized capital stock.
“The city government was forced to close gaming halls due to numerous complaints from St. Petersburg residents whose relatives are addicted to gambling and from people who live in the buildings where slot machine halls operated 24 hours a day,” said Alexei Sergeyev, chairman of the CEDIPT.
“Gaming halls were enterprises where a considerable portion of violations of the law took place. That was the reason for closing gaming halls in the first place,” Sergeyev said.
At the beginning of December last year, the St. Petersburg government initiated an investigation to ensure that the new legislation was being enforced. The regional branch of the Federal Tax Service is responsible for control over the gambling industry and for applying the new law in practice.
“Entrepreneurs who have not closed their gaming halls are breaking the law. The tax authorities will decide what sanctions to impose on them,” Sergeyev said.
According to data from the St. Petersburg branch of the Federal Tax Service, by the beginning of December last year 45 gaming enterprises in the city met all the requirements necessary for casinos to operate in 2008-2009.
In mid-2007, according to official statistics, about 600 gaming enterprises were operating in the city. With the introduction of the new law, the St. Petersburg budget is expected to lose about 2.5 billion rubles in local taxes.
Most of the casinos to have survived into this year are owned by the largest companies — Vulkan, Profit and Lenars. Other companies operate fewer than three casinos.
By Jan. 10, the tax authorities in cooperation with the local police task force had identified five illegally operating gaming halls, the CEDIPT reported. Two gaming halls were discovered in the Nevsky district, two in the Kirovsky district and one in the Admiralteisky district. The halls were owned by Cash and Global companies.
TITLE: Inflation Hit 11.9% Last Year
PUBLISHER: Bloomberg
TEXT: MOSCOW — Russia’s inflation rate rose in 2007 to the highest in four years as the government failed to quell a jump in food prices and wages and investment soared.
The rate for the year rose to 11.9 percent from 9 percent in 2006, the first time that the rate surpassed the previous year since 1998, the Moscow-based Federal Statistics Service said in an e-mailed statement Wednesday. Consumer prices rose 1.1 percent in December, compared with a 1.2 percent advance in November.
Russia, the world’s biggest energy exporter, has struggled to curb inflation as record oil sales boosted salaries and global food prices increased. The government cut dairy and vegetable oil import duties, sold grain from state reserves and added a grain export duty. Companies including Wimm-Bill-Dann and X5 Retail Group NV agreed in October to freeze prices on some milk, vegetable oil, egg and bread products until Jan. 31.
Food prices rose a monthly 1.6 percent, compared with 1.9 percent in November. Food price growth was led by fruit and vegetable prices, which slowed from November’s rate of 6.2 percent to 5.6 in December, according to the service.
President Vladimir Putin acknowledged in October that the government would be unable to meet its goal of bringing down the inflation rate to 8 percent last year, blaming price growth on lower agricultural subsidies in the European Union and increasing use of grain in biofuel production.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said in a December report that the Russian government’s “massive additional spending” before elections also helped push up inflation.
Legislators approved additional budget outlays this year as the nation prepared to hold parliamentary elections on Dec. 2 and a presidential vote in March 2008.
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Oil Production Up
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Russia increased its oil production by 2.3 percent last year compared to figures from 2006, and oil export increased by 3.7 percent, while gas production decreased by 0.5 percent, Interfax reported Wednesday.
In 2007, Russia produced 491,481 million tons of oil, and gas production amounted to 653,109 billion cubic meters. Russia exported 252,863 million tons of oil last year.
Foreign Work Permits
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — More than 1.8 million foreigners will get work permits in Russia this year, according to the quota announced by the Russian government, Interfax reported Wednesday.
The quota could be increased depending on the demand for additional workforce. The government has taken measures to limit the number of foreign employees in several industries, including retail.
Kraft to Open in March
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Kraft Foods, an American food company, expects to open its new plant in the Leningrad Oblast in March this year, Interfax reported Wednesday.
The plant in Gorelovo will produce 5,000 tons of instant coffee a year. Kraft Foods has invested $100 million into construction, which started in April 2006. The new plant is located in close proximity to company’s existing packaging plant.
Telecom Bonds Planned
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) – Northwest Telecom, a regional landline telephone operator, plans to issue bonds for three billion rubles in April this year, Interfax reported Thursday.
The bonds will be in circulation for five years. Twenty five percent of the nominal cost will be repaid after four years, a further 25 percent after four and a half years, and the remaining 50 percent after five years.
Universities Get a Break
ST. PETERSBURG (Bloomberg) — New legislation will make it easier for universities in Russia to attract charitable donations and receive tax breaks for their endowments, Vedomosti reported.
Two leading universities in St. Petersburg have already created such endowments, the Moscow-based newspaper said, citing school officials. The KIT Finance investment bank recently donated $1 million to the European University, which plans to increase the fund tenfold in 2008, Vedomosti said.
Under a new law, university endowments gain tax-exempt status starting this year, allowing them to finance a greater share of educational activities, the newspaper said.
Gas Cuts Due to Iran?
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Iran may have cut natural-gas exports to Turkey this month for failing to complete a $3 billion energy accord that the U.S. opposed, Vatan reported, citing former energy-markets regulator Yusuf Gunay.
The U.S. may have persuaded its North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally to drop plans, drawn up in July, to develop two Iranian gas fields and build pipelines to Europe, Vatan said, citing Gunay, who left his post in November. Turkey lost its chance to sell Iranian gas to Europe, Gunay said, according to the newspaper.
The U.S. wants countries to boycott Iran because of its nuclear program. Iran, which has the world’s second-largest reserves of gas, after Russia, said it halted supplies to Turkey on Monday because of increased demand at home and a drop in exports from Turkmenistan.
Record Gold Reserves
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Russia’s foreign currency and gold reserves, the world’s third largest, rose to a record at the end of December, the central bank said.
The value of the reserves rose by $7.8 billion to $474 billion in the week ended Dec. 28, after declining in the previous week, the Moscow-based central bank said in an e-mailed statement Wednesday.
Russia, the world’s biggest energy supplier, is entering its 10th-consecutive year of economic expansion. The nation’s reserves have risen from $12.3 billion in 1998.
Lenta CEO Dismissed
MOSCOW (Bloomberg) — Lenta Chairman and co-founder Oleg Zherebtsov defied his partner and fired Chief Executive Officer Sergei Yuschenko in an effort to strengthen control over Russia’s third-biggest grocery chain before a planned share sale.
Yuschenko said he learned of his termination from an e-mail Zherebtsov sent to the entire staff of St. Petersburg-based Lenta on Tuesday, after he was barred from entering his office. The board of directors will discuss the matter at a meeting Jan. 14, Yuschenko said by phone on Wednesday.
Yuschenko said last month that Zherebtsov, who owns 35 percent of Lenta, and co-founder August Meyer, who owns 36 percent, planned to replace the board of directors in January because of disagreements over how to finance growth. The company has said it may hold an initial public offering or sell a stake to a partner this year to fund new store openings.
TITLE: Catching up with the past
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: It was a cross between Billy Wilder’s “The Apartment” and “Bridget Jones’s Diary” with plenty of Soviet grayness thrown in. A drunken Moscow doctor woke up in an airport and took a taxi to an apartment identical to his own – the same proletarian street name, the same porch, the same doorlock, the same closets – but, as it took him 50 minutes of screen time to realize, the apartment was in Leningrad, and its owner was a willowy blonde with relationship issues.
Eldar Ryazanov’s 1975 television film “Irony of Fate” struck such a chord with viewers that it has been aired every New Year’s holiday since its premiere. Running more than three hours, the film stars a Polish actress whose husky accent had to be dubbed into Russian and is set almost entirely in a drab apartment with a limp New Year’s tree and a pullout bed. But somehow the chemistry between the leads and the quietly witty script — not to mention the songs performed by budding star Alla Pugachyova — leave viewers echoing the hero’s words that “I’ve got the feeling that during this night, we have lived a whole life.”
This year, Channel One director Konstanin Ernst and “Night Watch” director Timur Bekmambetov got together to do the unthinkable: make a sequel to “Irony of Fate,” which ended with the 30-something hero and heroine apparently set for wedded bliss. The new film, which came out Dec. 21 in an unprecedented number of copies, has prompted a squall of negative reviews from outraged critics.
“An attempt to revive a legend resulted in a wax-work museum,” Rossiiskaya Gazeta wrote of the film. “The second ‘Irony’ differs from the first one as much as the rotten dank weather outside differs from a frosty, fresh December with powdery snow,” Izvestia sniffed. Kommersant Weekend disagreed, however, writing that the film’s producers “found a way to combine the old and new without being irritating.”
The film, titled “Irony of Fate: Continuation,” has been released in 1,050 copies in Russia, the CIS and the Baltics, the director of distributors, 20th Century Fox CIS/Gemini, Michael Schlicht, said at a news conference before the premiere. In an innovative marketing tactic, viewers who booked tickets before Dec. 22 could enter a lottery to win an apartment in St. Petersburg or a car. As a result, more than 140,000 people had already bought tickets two days before the premiere, Schlicht said. What’s more, the film’s makers promise that it won’t be shown on television for two years.
In its first three weeks, the film has taken $23.8 million, Variety.com reported on Sunday (Jan. 6). The film was made on a budget of around $5 million, excluding postproduction and promotion costs, Ernst said at the news conference. The film has been given free coverage on news broadcasts on Channel One; it is also being advertised on televisions in marshrutka taxis and on street billboards.
In the new film, it turns out that the original hero and heroine, Zhenya and Nadya, didn’t live happily ever after. The heroine returned to her original boyfriend, the pompous bureaucrat Ippolit, and had a daughter, also called Nadya. Back in Moscow, Zhenya had a son, Konstantin, with another woman. The various parties live separate lives until Zhenya’s old banya buddies mischievously arrange for Konstantin to visit the St. Petersburg apartment where the original comedy of errors took place.
The new film is directed by Bekmambetov, who previously made “Night Watch,” a film that dazzled with its imaginative special effects and amused viewers with its blatant product placement. Despite its essentially one-room set, the film sequel includes some flights of fantasy – a champagne cork rattles through a chandelier in slow motion and foam rises vertically out of the bottle in a sequence around the New Year’s chimes, which also includes a clip of President Vladimir Putin reading his traditional midnight address – but it’s the product placement that outraged some viewers.
“It’s a walking advertisement,” commented Natalya Zaitseva, 30, after watching the film at a Moscow cinema on Sunday. “It’s just about earning money.”
In the old film, innocent of commercialism, the hero flew Aeroflot and Ippolit drove a shiny orange Lada – but then again, they didn’t have much choice in the matter. The heroine was thrilled by her gift from Ippolit, a tiny bottle of “real French” perfume, and he upbraided her for her spendthrift ways after she gave him an electric razor.
In the new film, the young Nadya powders her nose with a Faberlic compact and her workaholic boyfriend, Irakly, is a manager at cell phone operator Beeline – which sponsors the film – and drives a Toyota; another character slathers a salad with Calve mayonnaise, and Zhenya’s banya companions knock back Zolotaya Bochka beer.
However, Channel One head Ernst said the product placement didn’t interfere with the new storyline, which relies heavily on cell phone gags and plotlines concerning miscommunication. “We don’t live in identical prefab buildings anymore,” Ernst said, referring to the satirical core of Ryazanov’s film. “We realized that the metaphor of 2008 is mobile communications.”
Perhaps the most convincing character is Nadya’s boyfriend, Irakly, who constantly talks on his hands-free phone and stares at a dial telephone as if it’s something out of the ark. The hero Konstantin bombards him with nuisance calls, pretending to be a granny whose television reception is affected by a Beeline mast.
Ernst said the makers decided not to “bashfully” give Irakly’s employer a made-up name. In case anyone misses the references in the script, Beeline’s yellow-and-black striped logo appears on a tree ornament on the film’s poster, as well as on an air freshener in Irakly’s car, on his scarf and on a mug in Nadya’s kitchen.
“There wasn’t any product placement that changed the screenplay,” Ernst said. “Working with product placement is absolutely typical for the world of cinema. It’s not shameful.”_
The original film’s director and co-writer, Ryazanov, appears in the sequel in the same episodic role of an irate air passenger. He declined an offer to direct the sequel, Ernst said, but approved the screenplay before filming. He doesn’t own the rights to the original film, which belong to Mosfilm.
The first screening of the finished film was at Ryazanov’s Eldar club in south Moscow, but the 80-year-old director has since stayed quiet about his reaction. An Izvestia reporter wrote that she spoke to his wife, Emma, who said she and Ryazanov had decided not to comment publicly on the film.
“Irony of Fate: Continuation” (Ironiya Sudby: Prodolzheniye) is playing at theaters citywide.
TITLE: Chernov’s
choice
TEXT: Tsinik, or Cynic, the popular downtown hangout aimed at students and expats, has closed after its rental agreement was not renewed by a city government committee in charge of the building where the bar was located. The bar, which closed on Monday, had been under threat of closure throughout the last year, while its owner, Vladimir Postnichenko, the former drummer with local band NOM, repeatedly asked regulars to sign petitions to save the place.
Tsinik opened on Feb. 23, 2001, at 4 Goncharnaya Ulitsa, near Moskovsky Vokzal, and became an instant hit for its relaxed rules and indie spirit. Having built a reputation, however, Tsinik was forced to close in August 2002 and the building it used to occupy was later demolished to give way to a hotel (which has not yet been built).
Tsinik opened at its second – and so far last location – at 4 Pereulok Antonenko on Jan. 6, 2003. Although Postnichenko is considering moving Tsinik to another, third location, he did not disclose any details when contacted on Thursday.
“It’s too early to speak about it now, there is a lot of progress, but there are also several questions,” he said. So long, “legendary grenki” – at least for the time being.
In other nightlife news, Soho, an upscale club with live music that emerged in September and wants to be described as a “theater bar,” has closed for what it calls “restyling.” It will reopen on Jan. 25.
Meanwhile, alt-rock band PTVP will perform at the bunker club Griboyedov on Friday.
“We call it a ‘Black Concert,’ we’ll only perform ‘downers,’ – songs about bad things,” said singer Alexei Nikonov by phone on Thursday. Having released an album called “Freedom of Speech” last year, the band has recently recorded a follow-up, “Zerkalo” (Mirror).
Late last year, PTVP, which recently played at an anti-Kremlin concert with the 1980s protest legends Televizor at Orlandina, will launch the new album with a concert at Port on Feb. 2. Nikonov joined Televizor on stage to add vocals to the band’s 1980s song “Syt po Gorlo” (Fed up).
A week before the show, Televizor’s Mikhail Borzykin had opened a series of meetings with local artists at the offices of Yabloko, now endangered by city authorities who want to deprive the oppositional democratic party of its downtown premises.
According to the organizers, such meetings are necessary to discuss subjects not covered by the largely pro-regime local press.
Speaking of international visitors, British veteran dark electronica band Attrition will begin its first Russian tour with a concert at Revolution club on Friday. Formed in Coventry, England, in 1980, the band dedicated an album last year to Victorian serial killer Mary Ann Cotton.
— By Sergey Chernov
TITLE: Chinese fans
AUTHOR: By Kevin Ng
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: BEIJING – After endless controversy about its design during the long period of its construction, China’s Grand National Theater opened last September to little fanfare except for some reports in the international press. Located next to the Great Hall of the People, this imposing, eye-catching egg-shaped structure blends in quite harmoniously with the overall style of Tiananmen Square.
After several months of trial-run performances by various Chinese companies, the Grand National Theater finally played host to an overseas company. And no overseas company deserves more the honor of being the first to perform there than the Mariinsky Theater, the leading opera and ballet company in Russia. The Mariinsky troupe arrived in Beijing in the final week of 2007, bringing a grand climax to the “Year of Russia in China” cultural program organized between the two nations.
The Mariinsky Theater, bringing a total of 500 musicians, dancers, and singers, opened its two-week season at the Grand National Theater on Christmas Day (Dec. 25) with Borodin’s opera “Prince Igor” conducted by maestro Valery Gergiev. This was followed by “Swan Lake” on Dec. 31, led by the two young Mariinsky ballet stars Leonid Sarafanov and Alina Somova. The Mariinsky dancers had arrived in Beijing just the day before from Germany straight from another tour to Baden Baden, and celebrated this New Year outside Russia for a change.
On Jan. 3 the Mariinsky Theater presented its third program – George Balanchine’s mid-20th century classic “Jewels.” This masterpiece has been a staple of the company’s repertoire since its Mariinsky premiere in 1999, and has also been seen often on the company’s tours overseas including to Covent Garden and the New York Metropolitan Opera House.
“Jewels,” which is in the repertoire of most major ballet companies nowadays including the Royal Ballet which just premiered the ballet in London last November, is a full-length abstract ballet which never ceases to reveal new riches despite repeated viewings. It consists of three different ballets, which pay tribute to the three countries associated with Balanchine; France, the cradle of classical ballet (“Emeralds”); America, where Balanchine founded the New York City Ballet, (“Rubies”); and Russia, Balanchine’s birthplace (“Diamonds”).
“Emeralds” is the hardest of the three segments to bring off due to its romantic elusiveness. Yekaterina Osmolkina danced lyrically as the first ballerina. As the second ballerina, Anastasia Kolegova however lacked the unique allure of Veronika Part in the original cast. Maxim Zyuzin was superb as the first cavalier. Also outstanding was the promising corps de ballet dancer Andrei Yermakov, who was most elegant as the second cavalier.
“Rubies” wasn’t the same without Mariinsky star Diana Vishneva as its central ballerina; her radiance is unrivalled. Still Irina Golub in the second cast captured the Broadway showgirl glamour in the ballerina role with her bright charm and energy. Leonid Sarafanov was dazzling as the male soloist on the first night. And Yekaterina Kondaurova impressed with the power and large scale of her dancing.
The greatest performance was by Viktoria Tereshkina, who was sublime in the ballerina role in the closing “Diamonds” on the second night. Tereshkina has a pure classical style and an expressive upper body. She was most poetic and heart-melting in the pas de deux, one of the most exposed in the ballet repertory. Tereshkina is one of the most distinguished Mariinsky ballerinas today. Yevgeny Ivanchenko was her gallant cavalier, and danced heroically in his solo. The Mariinsky corps de ballet was magnificent in the closing polacca of this ballet, set to a symphony by Tchaikovsky, Balanchine’s own tribute to the Mariinsky tradition.
The Mariinsky season finally ended last Sunday (Jan. 6) with Petipa’s 19th century classic “Le Corsaire” (The Pirate). The Mariinsky version, by Pyotr Gusev and revised by the former ballet director Oleg Vinogradov, is so much more fun and alive than the Bolshoi’s new version by Alexei Ratmansky which is over-long and quite boring in the final act. Of course, the Mariinsky’s full-bodied dancing has always made this ballet an intoxicating experience, and it was no exception last weekend.
Sarafanov was brilliant as the slave Ali. Tereshkina, again, shone gloriously as Medora with the sheer beauty of her dancing. And what a pleasure to see the dashing Ilya Kuznestov as Conrad, dancing with such a breadth of spirit. Olesia Novikova was impeccable as the third odalisque.
All the Mariinsky performances at the Grand National Theater were sold out, boding well for future tours by other overseas companies, such as the Royal Ballet, during this summer’s Olympic Games Arts Festival. These sumptuous Mariinsky performances made for a happy New Year celebration indeed for the Mariinsky Theater as well as for the Beijing public.
TITLE: Little Italy
AUTHOR: By Ashley Cleek
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Il Ponte // 12 Kirochnaya Ulitsa. Tel: 336 5858 // ilponte@ilponte.ru // Open daily from 12 p.m. through 11 p.m. // All major credit cards excepted // Dinner for two and two glasses of wine: 3,270 rubles ($130)
Italian food is nothing new or novel to St. Petersburg. One could throw a stone and hit twelve restaurants serving some variation on pizza or pasta on Nevsky Prospekt alone. However, this does not seem to discourage new bistros from opening, which leads to the question: in such a saturated market, is there some unexplored angle?
Il Ponte, an upscale Italian restaurant located on Kirochnaya at the top of Mayakovskaya, opened two years ago and is still trying to answer this question. Illuminated letters, angled so as to be visible to people walking down Kirochnaya toward Liteiny Prospekt read “Il Ponte: Italian Restaurant,” but, other than that, there is little indication that a restaurant even exists a few steps up from the street.
The restaurant is small, composed of only two rooms, one a dining room with around ten tables and the other a backroom for larger parties and banquets. Guests are greeted by a sitting room that looks like the anteroom to a law office or courtroom. An oak bar lines the back wall, seamlessly connecting the front and back rooms. The pearl walls, marble floors and plush, albatross chairs lend an air of deliberate elegance to the atmosphere. The fireplace in the corner and the chandeliers that drip from the ceiling heightens this sense of grandeur. However, upon closer inspection, the decorations are discovered to be only frills: the chandeliers remain unlit, and the fireplace is stuffed with a spare pillow to prevent drafts.
While the menu of Il Ponte seems to be customary, there are a few surprises that stop one’s eyes from scanning too quickly. The selection of seafood is both wide and diverse, ranging from mollusks to mussels to a risotto with grilled eel. The duck, diverging from the traditional, was infused with red wine. Unlike many upscale restaurants in St. Petersburg, Il Ponte has a daily children’s menu of shashlik and pizza.
Unfortunately, on the day I visited their pizza oven was broken and at 9 o’ clock when I arrived, they were already out of gnocchi. The only other patrons sat in the corner by the window, taking in a leisurely dinner, leaving at the same time as I did, though they received their dessert as I received my appetizers. Both the soups and salads were served in hearty portions and crisp green pears fanned out from the mixed salad with Gorgonzola. While the menu advertises a chicken Caesar salad (350 rubles, $14.50), upon request, the kitchen was happy to change to bacon.
Run by two waitresses, one doubling as a bartender, the service at Il Ponte is impeccable. The presentation of the food and the attentiveness of the waitresses was noticeably good, and not just by Russian standards.
Il Ponte makes a valiant effort that is sometimes rewarded and sometimes misses the boat. The fettuccini with white mushrooms (330 rubles, $13.75), richly sprinkled with Parmesan and spiced with fresh black pepper, was both an extravagant and familiar dish. The Carbonara (310 rubles, $13) done by the book was creamy and flecked with bacon. However, the vegetable lasagna (380 rubles, $16), served in a small, ceramic dish, lacked the regular ingredients: ricotta, multiple layers of lasagna noodles, fresh basil, mozzarella, that give lasagna its classic taste (or any taste at all). The same can be said of the desserts, like the “Berry Basket with mascarpone cheese” (250 rubles, $11), which crowned with fresh huckleberries and blueberries and ornamented with a patchwork of raspberry syrup, tasted like flavored cream cheese.
In many ways, Il Ponte is still trying to find its niche within the complex hierarchy of Italian restaurants in St. Petersburg. Walking by on a Friday night, the dining room looked inviting and the waitress sat at the bar ready to meet any demands that the two diners might have.
TITLE: In the spotlight
AUTHOR: By Anna Malpas
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: In a new spirit of austerity and cutbacks, RusAl head Oleg Deripaska treated his colleagues and friends not to a Tanzanian goat apiece, but to the nearest thing for an oligarch: a New Year concert whose star, Rihanna, only charged $500,000. George Michael, who sang for Vladimir Potanin last year for a reported $3.3 million, wouldn’t even get out of a Ritz-Carlton featherbed for that. Still, she’ll learn. As Komsomolskaya Pravda put it, “she’s a young singer, so she charges practically nothing.”
The best coverage of the party was in Tvoi Den, which headlined its article “Deripaska Gave Abramovich a Black Woman for $500,000.” There’s a real craft to writing headlines like that, which pack so many offensive implications into so little space. Still, the article wasn’t so bad, even giving Rihanna the privilege of a name at the end of the second paragraph. The Abramovich reference is due to the fact that Roman turned up to the party, with his girlfriend Darya Zhukova. But tabloids differed on whether the designer-stubbled one tapped his toe to “Umbrella” or broke into a full-blooded boogie.
A blurry photograph in Tvoi Den shows Abramovich looking bored, and a reporter wrote that he “observed the young people having fun with his famous half-smile, quietly dancing on the spot.” However, Komsomolskaya Pravda said he “danced away all night to Rihanna’s catchy hits.” Which admittedly would have been difficult, given that her performance only lasted 40 minutes.
Rihanna insisted on the presidential suite at the Ritz-Carlton for her six-hour stay, Tvoi Den wrote. It comes with an “oversized dressing room” and a security room with an “autonomous energy supply system,” the hotel’s web site boasts. But there were no wardrobe malfunctions, debauched afterparties or late-night fallings out of nightclubs, so frankly she didn’t provide the paparazzi with value for money.
Sadly, Rihanna’s concert has been the most bling New Year’s party reported in the tabloids, which is painful to write of an event that also included a performance by local pop sensation Tokio. There were few celebrity shenanigans over New Year’s, given that all the beautiful people headed for warmer or snowier climes.
In Star Hit magazine, television host and celebrity editor Andrei Malakhov drew a handy map of the Russian elite’s vacation destinations. Courchevel is so January 2007. I don’t know whether the arrest of billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov earlier this year had an effect on bookings, but Malakhov writes that the French ski resort was to be forlorn ghost town during the holiday. Its only visitors were to be former Miss World Oksana Fyodorova and teenage designer Kira Plastinina, who probably sulked in her young executive suite.
Instead, the people who matter sipped gluhwein over the border in Switzerland’s St. Moritz. Among them were Abramovich, Zhukova, restaurateur Arkady Novikov, Dima Bilan’s producer Yana Rudkovskaya and film director Fyodor Bondarchuk. And Swiss hoteliers probably added zeroes to the price of fondue in anticipation.
Another destination that offered overpriced Sovietskoye Shampanskoye over New Year’s was Miami, where many Russian pop stars have second or third homes. We’re talking blond crooner Nikolai Baskov, permed superstar Valery Leontyev and the local version of Posh and Becks, popster Natasha Korolyova and her stripper husband Tarzan.
TITLE: After dark
AUTHOR: By A. O. Scott
PUBLISHER: The New York Times
TEXT: On a show like “The Wire,” policemen and criminals belong to competitive organizations locked in uneasy, permanent coexistence. In “We Own the Night,” James Gray’s operatic new film, the police and drug dealers are imagined as warring tribes in a fight to the death. The Russian gangsters on one side appear ready to take out the entire N.Y.P.D. (“We get them all!”) And some of the cops are just as eager to forgo the legal niceties and do some righteous killing of their own (“Wipe ’em out. No survivors.”).
In other words, “We Own the Night” is not a procedural, in which the narrative is threaded through details of the job and close observations of big-city life. It is, rather, a bloody, passionate melodrama, self-consciously Shakespearean — or Biblical, or Greek, take your pick of atavisms — in its intentions. At the center are two brothers: Joseph Grusinsky (Mark Wahlberg), a clean-cut, ambitious family man rising quickly through the ranks of the department, and Bobby Green (Joaquin Phoenix), who has forsaken the family surname and who manages a raucous nightclub in Brooklyn.
Cain and Abel; the ant and the grasshopper. Bobby and Joseph present, at least at first, wildly contrasting temperaments as well as divergent career choices. Joseph takes after their father, Burt (Robert Duvall), a high-ranking officer who can barely contain his disappointment and disgust when Bobby is in the room. But Bobby, while he may be as irresponsible as his father and brother think he is, also has a sweet, impulsive, hedonistic side. He shows it in an early scene of sexual bliss with his girlfriend, Amada (Eva Mendes), and in the way he bounces through his cavernous club and into the apartment of its owner, a grandfatherly Russian named Buzhayev. Bobby is loving, and also lovable.
But he is also, within the film’s fatalistic universe, a traitor, or at least a prodigal who must be brought back into the fold. Much as he may revel in the company of his surrogate family — the Buzhayev clan is warm and welcoming, and Bobby’s sidekick Jumbo (Danny Hoch) is a bubbly fountain of brotherly affection — the claims of blood are always stronger. And once Buzhayev’s gangster nephew Vadim (Alex Veadov) causes Joseph to be hurt, Bobby puts away his childish sense of fun and gets down to the grim business of settling scores.
As this happens, the life begins to leak out of “We Own the Night,” and especially out of Phoenix’s performance. In the actor’s case, this seems deliberate, as if he had chosen to interpret grief as a form of petrifaction. His elbows and shoulders stiffen, and he lumbers across the sets like a Frankenstein monster. Even his tongue seems paralyzed. Gray, meanwhile, strides manfully into a thicket of clichés and heavy grandiosity.
When it works, though — especially in those earlier scenes, when Bobby and Joseph are at each other’s throats (and Bobby and Amada are in each other’s pants), and in a brilliantly executed car chase later on — “We Own the Night” demonstrates a rough, lived-in authority and an unpretentious sense of craft. In his previous films, “Little Odessa” (another grim story involving the Russian mob) and “The Yards” (an unjustly neglected tale of political corruption), Gray evoked the urban crime dramas of earlier eras without being showy or self-conscious about it. And there is certainly nothing fancy or gimmicky about this movie.
But there is nothing especially interesting or new, either. “We Own the Night,” which takes its title from the slogan of the N.Y.P.D.’s street crime unit, is set in 1988, a wilder and more dangerous time in the city’s history (though perhaps not quite so wild and dangerous as Gray makes it seem). But in spite of a few historically apt musical selections and a digitally enhanced cameo appearance by former Mayor Ed Koch, this is less a period movie than an exercise in free-floating nostalgia.
It’s not nostalgia for any particular time or place, but rather for a mythical, tribal America where the obligations of clan trump individual desires. Authority in this world is patriarchal: Women are always being told to leave the room, mind the children or wait in the car. An index of Bobby’s betrayal is that he has adopted his mother’s maiden name, and his attempt to escape into a life of easy pleasure, social mobility and self-invention is doomed from the start. Where he ends up is where he always belonged.
This is a profoundly sentimental idea, one that flourishes in the collective fantasy life fed by television and the movies. The problem with “We Own the Night” is that it mistakes sentiment for profundity, and takes its ideas about character and fate more seriously than it takes its characters and their particular fates. “I feel light as a feather,” Bobby says in a crucial scene, at which point the movie starts to sink like a stone.
TITLE: Allardyce Parts Company With Newcastle
PUBLISHER: Combined Reports
TEXT: LONDON — Sam Allardyce became the latest example of Premier League impatience on Wednesday when he “parted company” with Newcastle United after half a season with the club.
Allardyce becomes the eighth Premier League manager to leave this season and Newcastle’s fourth in four years. Former Newcastle and England striker and now TV analyst Alan Shearer was immediately installed as favorite to replace him despite having no coaching experience, having long been touted as a future manager of the north-east club.
But with the BBC saying Shearer wanted to continue in his role as a pundit on its “Match of the Day” football program, attention turned to Portsmouth manager Harry Redknapp. He however has insisted he knows nothing of reports suggesting he was set to become the new manager of Newcastle United.
The former West Ham manager has a reputation for producing teams that play attractive, passing football of the type beloved by many Newcastle fans unhappy with Allardyce’s approach.
Redknapp has guided Portsmouth into eighth place in the Premier League, three positions above Newcastle, and in November saw his team win 4-1 at St James’.
But Redknapp told The News in Portsmouth he had not been approached by anyone at Newcastle.
“I really do not know anything about this. I have not spoken to anyone from Newcastle. There’s nothing in my being linked with the job. I had an offer not so long ago to take over at what I consider a massive club but I didn’t go. I am happy down on the south coast.”
In a statement on the Premier League club’s web site, Newcastle said the decision to part company with Allardyce had been reached by mutual agreement, but earlier in the day Allardyce spoke to the media about team matters and told Sky Sports that if he was leaving it was “news to me.”
“A new manager has not yet been appointed. We will make a further announcement on the managerial position when appropriate,” said club chairman Chris Mort.
Only last month Mort said reports Allardyce was set to be replaced were wrong. “All this makes me laugh and I find all this speculation tedious. There is a different name every week and there is just no truth in it.”
Allardyce said: “I am disappointed to be leaving Newcastle United but I wish the club all the best for the remainder of the season and for the future.”
He insisted Wednesday there was no point in being bitter.
“Once people make a decision, there is nothing you can do about it,” he told Sky Sports. “There is no point being bitter and twisted about it because that will only affect you.”
He added: “For me, it is the future now. I will take a break with my wife and go away, have a little bit of a re-charge of the batteries, come back and then move on with my football career.”
Assistant coach Nigel Pearson will take charge of the team for Saturday’s match at champions Manchester United — the shining example of continuity with Alex Ferguson into his 22nd year in charge despite winning nothing in his first four years at Old Trafford.
Allardyce leaves after only 24 games following his appointment on a three-year contract last year. The 53-year-old former center back leaves the club 11th in the standings and facing an FA Cup third round replay with second division Stoke City.
The former Bolton Wanderers boss was appointed by the club’s previous owners and though new owner Mike Ashley had spoken out publicly in support, he also referred to the man “we inherited” and locally there was always a feeling that the new regime might want to install their own man.
Allardyce, who was interviewed for the England manager’s job after the departure of Sven-Goran Eriksson but lost out to Steve McClaren, had repeatedly brushed off speculation that his future was in doubt, even after sections of the Newcastle crowd turned on him during recent poor performances.
Over the Christmas and New Year period Newcastle lost three of their four league games, scrambling a point from a draw with bottom club Derby County.
Speculation was rife that defeat by Stoke would be the end but a goalless away draw left the situation unchanged until Wednesday’s announcement.
The level of expectation at Newcastle, who have not won a major domestic honour for more than half a century, has proved the undoing of a host of big name managers in recent years.
Ossie Ardiles, Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish, Ruud Gullit, Bobby Robson, Graeme Souness and Glenn Roeder all arrived full of hope but only Keegan got close to satisfying demand with his exciting side of the mid-1990s, who went agonisingly close to a first league title since 1927.
Allardyce follows the earlier departures of Jose Mourinho (Chelsea), Sammy Lee — his successor at Bolton — Martin Jol (Tottenham Hotspur), Chris Hutchings (Wigan Athletic), Steve Bruce (Birmingham City) Billy Davies (Derby County) and Lawrie Sanchez (Fulham).
(Reuters, Agence France Press)
TITLE: Drugs Hearing Delayed
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: LOS ANGELES — The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced Wednesday it will delay next week’s scheduled Mitchell Report hearing featuring witnesses Roger Clemens and his former personal trainer, Brian McNamee, until Feb. 13.
The committee, after discussions with the Justice Department, opted to move the hearing on performance-enhancing drug use in Major League Baseball from next Wednesday until after the scheduled Feb. 8 federal sentencing of former New York Mets clubhouse attendant Kirk Radomski on felony steroid distribution charges.
Radomski is scheduled to appear as a witness before the House committee, along with Clemens’ former teammate, Andy Pettitte, and former major league second baseman Chuck Knoblauch. Radomski will be sentenced in San Francisco.
The witnesses also have been asked to provide depositions in advance of the hearing. That request, said one expert, makes it more “dicey” for someone to be untruthful in the process.
McNamee already has provided sworn statements to federal law enforcement investigators that he injected seven-time Cy Young Award winner Clemens with performance-enhancing drugs several times, and Clemens has countered by suing the trainer and claiming he has never taken steroids or human growth hormone.
“When you testify to Congress, you have to tell the truth, or you face contempt of Congress,” said University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias.
The committee’s Tuesday hearing with former Senator George Mitchell, baseball Commissioner Bud Selig and players union chief Donald Fehr will proceed as scheduled.
Radomski was a central figure in Mitchell’s report, released Dec. 13. The former Mets employee cooperated with Mitchell investigators, providing checks and information that helped identify alleged drug users and suppliers in the game.
One of Radomski’s customers was McNamee, the former Toronto Blue Jays and New York Yankees strength and conditioning coach who told Mitchell he injected Clemens with steroids and human growth hormone between 1998 and 2001, and injected Pettitte with HGH.
Clemens disputed McNamee’s claims in a “60 Minutes” interview and in a news conference this week. In the lawsuit against McNamee, the pitcher’s attorney claims McNamee was pressured by federal authorities to implicate Clemens.
McNamee, however, has said the statements he gave to Mitchell are accurate.
TITLE: Showdown in Sydney
AUTHOR: By Julian Linden
PUBLISHER: Reuters
TEXT: SYDNEY — World number one Justine Henin set up a dream final against second-ranked Svetlana Kuznetsova after beating Ana Ivanovic at the Sydney International on Thursday.
Henin booked her place in the final with a 6-2 2-6 6-4 win over the fourth-ranked Serb while St. Petersburg star Kuznetsova advanced after a tough 7-5 7-6 win over Czech Nicole Vaidisova.
Henin struggled with her serve in the humid conditions, conceding 11 double-faults and being broken three times but found her range when it mattered most to seal victory.
The Belgian’s meeting with Kuznetsova is a repetition of last year’s U.S. Open final and she said it was the perfect preparation for next week’s Australian Open.
“It’s important to get this kind of match so close to the open, that’s what I really need now,” Henin told a news conference.
“It’s a perfect preparation for me. The conditions were pretty tough. It’s not as hot as it is in Melbourne but still it was quite difficult on the court and pretty windy.”
Kuznetsova said she was approaching the match against Henin as though she had nothing to lose.
“She’s going to go in the favorite and that’s fine with me. I’m just going to go there and play my game,” the Russian said.
While the women’s final will feature the world’s top two ranked players, the men’s draw has suffered high-profile casualties.
The only seeded player to make it through to the quarter-finals was world number 14 Tomas Berdych of the Czech Republic but his campaign ended at the hands of Australian wildcard Chris Guccione.
The tall lefthander, ranked 125 in the world, followed up his win over Lleyton Hewitt the previous day by beating Berdych 4-6 7-6 6-4.
He will play Berdych’s compatriot Radek Stepanek in the semi-finals after Stepanek accounted for Argentina’s Agustin Calleri 6-2 6-4.
Stepanek spent the off-season training at altitude in Mexico and said he felt like a new man when he returned to sea level.
“I noticed at the zero level I was able to breathe for three other people,” he said. “It was like paradise. I was drunk from the air up there.”
TITLE: In Brief
TEXT: Ak Bars Wins in Riga
ST. PETERSBURG (SPT) — Ak Bars Kazan won the IIHF Continental Cup in Riga with 6-2 win over HK Riga 2000 in Riga on Sunday. Ak Bars, favored to win the tournament, met expectations by sweeping all the teams that reached the final round; edging Kazakhastan’s Kazzinc-Torpedo 2-1 and handily defeating AaB Aalborg of Denmark 4-1.
Ak Bars also picked up two individual awards: American netminder Robert Esche was named the tournament’s best goalkeeper, and Ilya Nikulin best defenseman.
The IIHF Continental Cup is a four-stage competition founded in 1997 after the International Ice Hockey Federation discontinued the European Cup.
Force India Unveiled
MUMBAI (Reuters) — Italian Giancarlo Fisichella was confirmed as Force India Formula One team’s second driver for the 2008 season on Thursday.
Fisichella, who drove for Renault last season, will team up with German driver Adrian Sutil, who was a rookie last year with the Spyker team that Indian billionaire Vijay Mallya bought into and renamed.
“He is somebody who has raced with the best in the business,” Mallya told a news conference after naming the drivers.