SOURCE: The St. Petersburg Times
DATE: Issue #735 (1), Friday, January 11, 2002
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TITLE: Railways Minister Sets Out His Plan
AUTHOR: By Valeria Korchagina
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Heeding the government's wishes, new Railways Minister Gen nady Fadeyev on Thursday distanced himself from his disgraced predecessor's ambitious $5.25 billion investment program for 2002, agreeing to slash it by 40 percent.
The new program - unveiled Thursday at a government meeting on railway reform - falls in line with earlier recommendations from the Economic Development and Trade Ministry, which suggested dropping some of the more expensive projects, Interfax reported.
The new investment program is expected to be formally approved by the government at a session Jan. 24.
The original plan - drawn up by former Railways Minister Nikolai Ak syo nenko - was criticized by the cabinet last month as unrealistic.
Aksyonenko's plan, among other things, envisioned the construction of a multibillion-dollar bridge from the Far East mainland to the island of Sakhalin. As of Thursday, the Sakhalin link, along with a number of other high-cost projects, was scratched from the ministry's 2002 budget.
President Vladimir Putin fired Ak syo nenko last week. In October, the former minister was charged with abuse of office, accused of misappropriating 70 million rubles ($2.33 million) in ministry funds. An investigation into the case is ongoing.
Fadeyev said that even after scrapping the previous program's more far-fetched ideas, there are still projects for which funding has yet to be found - and the ministry does not plan to borrow any money. The investment program is to be financed entirely from the ministry's own coffers.
Fadeyev, who officially took office Tuesday, has so far shown indications he is serious about turning the giant ministry around. The day he began work, Fadeyev held a meeting with all of the ministry's divisions, ordering a list of corrections to Aksyonenko's policies in an effort to restructure ministry debt and cut down on spending.
On Thursday, the government commission also approved three draft laws that, if passed by the State Duma, would allow the ministry's reform plan to be implemented, Fadeyev said.
The reform plan includes privatization of some parts of the ministry's assets.
The draft laws dealing with privatization are incomplete. "Only one question remains: Who is to control the infrastructure?" Interfax quoted Fadeyev as saying.
The issue is complicated by the fact that Russia's railways are closely involved in the country's defense system, and any key control decisions should be agreed upon with the military.
Fadeyev said he hoped the draft laws would reach the Duma in autumn.
Fadeyev also said that a new hike approved by the Federal Energy Commission this week for passenger and cargo tariffs - 30 percent and 14 percent, respectively - is unlikely to be the last rate increase for 2002.
The hikes are inevitable steps taken to sustain the ministry's economic viability, Fadeyev said.
On Tuesday, Fadeyev not only told Railway Ministry officials to draw up measures to restructure the ministry's debts to regional and federal budgets, but also to slap tougher controls over its investment programs and to make sure that railroads were not overstaffed.
Aksyonenko was accused by the cabinet of dragging his feet on making good on the railroad's hundreds of millions of dollars in debt and of putting together an unrealistic 2002 investment plan. Aksyonenko was also accused of keeping many more employees than needed on the railroad's payroll. The ministry employs about 1.5 million people.
Dubbed a country within a country, the Railways Ministry runs a $10 billion-a-year operation that controls 159,000 kilometers of track. Those tracks carry 80 percent of all the country's cargo.
In addition to running the railroad system, the ministry mines and refines raw materials like coal and metals, operates a number of hotels, schools and hospitals and owns publishing houses, entertainment centers, stadiums and soccer and hockey teams.
Fadeyev, 64, began his career in 1965 as a worker in the Eastern Siberian Railroad. He slowly climbed his way to the top and was in 1992 appointed the first post-Soviet Railways Minister. He held the post until the summer of 1996, when he was ousted following President Boris Yeltsin's re-election.
In 1999, Fadeyev re-emerged as the head of the Moscow Railroad.
Russian media reported that it was Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov who recommended that Fadeyev return to the ministry's helm.
Experts were cheered by Putin's decision to sack Aksyonenko but said the move was far less radical than the shake-up at natural-gas monopoly Gaz prom over the summer. The president replaced Gazprom veteran Rem Vyak hi rev with an unknown outsider, Putin loyalist Alexei Miller, as chief executive.
In the case of the Railways Ministry, both Fadeyev and Aksyonenko are not only long-serving veterans but also, according to some media reports, brothers-in-law.
Ministry officials refused to confirm the reports Tuesday, but one representative said on condition of anonymity that "they are relatives of some sort."
"Unlike the approach taken toward Gazprom, it appears that Putin chose to just give the signal that if no order is brought from the inside, then heads will start rolling big time," said Yury Korgunyuk, a political analyst with the Indem think tank.
Korgunyuk said the appointment of Miller initially raised hopes of quick changes, but it soon became clear that reforms would only take place when tougher controls were implemented.
"The decision to appoint Fadeyev is a move similar to the replacement of Primorskoye Governor [Yevgeny] Nazdratenko [last year]," Korgunyuk said. "He was replaced by his own deputy [Sergei] Darkin, and it was Darkin who got the signal that the old practices are no longer acceptable."
Speculation about Aksyonenko's ouster had been swirling for months before the sacking, and some observers had linked the firing to his being part of Yeltsin's powerful inner circle. That circle has apparently slowly fallen out of the Kremlin's favor over the past two years.
In addition to the debt, investment and staffing issues, Fadeyev ordered a 15-percent hike in wages for railroad employees. The move follows a mandatory hike in salaries for federal employees that kicked in at the start of the year.
TITLE: Embassy Warns on Gay Murders
AUTHOR: By Nabi Abdullaev and Megan Twohey
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - The General Prosecutor's Office said Thursday that there was no connection among the murders of four foreigners killed between September 1999 and June 2001, apparently after picking up someone from a gay club in Moscow.
Similarities about the four murders, combined with the murders of four Russian gay men during the same period, led the U.S. Embassy to suspect the cases may be connected and to issue a warning to Americans in Moscow. One of the victims was an American. The others were citizens of Britain, Australia and Germany.
"These murders are not related to one another," Svetlana Baskakova, a prosecutor from the General Prosecutor's Office, said by telephone.
Thus any fears of a serial killer were unfounded, she said. "These were ordinary murders," Baskakova said.
The embassy had urged the prosecutor's office to take another look at the murders, but said it had been told the investigations into the deaths of the American and the German had been dropped.
Baskakova, however, said the cases were only suspended. "Investigators never stopped looking for their murderers, or for the murderers of the two other foreigners," she said.
The American victim, Steve Malcom, was teaching English in Moscow when he was killed in August 2000. According to a report by Ecumenical News International, a Geneva-based news agency, he was an Episcopal priest and had served in several U.S. parishes before he took an extended sabbatical in 1998 to live and teach in Russia.
The U.S. Embassy issued a warning Jan. 3 urging Americans to "exercise caution." U.S. Consul General James Warlick said Wednesday he has asked the Foreign Ministry to step in. In addition, the embassy sent a cable to the U.S. State Department on Dec. 1 that expresses even more urgency.
"Comparing notes with consular officials from other foreign missions, we believe we may have uncovered a disturbing pattern of murders of foreign gay men in Moscow," said the cable, which was first obtained by The Washington Blade, a gay publication in Washington, and then by The St. Petersburg Times.
"Even if these murders are not connected, we believe that they suggest a sufficient level of danger for gay [American ciytizens] traveling to and residing in Russia," it said.
At least one of the victims had been at the Chameleon club the night he was killed, and another was known to frequent the club, the cable said. Three of the four foreigners were found in their apartments, stabbed multiple times and robbed, it said.
Some members of the gay community in Moscow are convinced the murders are connected and that the Ka zarma club, which is housed inside the Chameleon club on Presnensky Val, is the link.
The first of the four foreigners to be killed was British citizen Christopher Reese, in September 1999. Reese, 34, who worked as a television producer for the Russian STS channel, was found stabbed to death in his apartment on Tverskaya Ulitsa.
Malcom was the next to be found dead, on Aug. 27, 2000, also of multiple stab wounds.
In February 2001, Australian citizen Thomas Nagy-Bachman was found stabbed to death in his apartment, the U.S. embassy cable said. He was working in Moscow as an independent petrochemical consultant and had previously worked for Alfa Bank.
The fourth foreign victim was German. On June 23, 2001, "Heinrich-Helmut Kurth was beaten to death so brutally as to render his face unrecognizable, after leaving the Chameleon club," the cable said. "Reese was also known to frequent this club."
Kurth, 40, who worked as a chef at the Sheraton Palace Hotel, was found in the street and taken to a hospital, where he died of massive head wounds. Police at the time said he was killed in an apparent robbery.
A spokesperson for the British Embassy refused to comment on any specific case, saying only that "any murder of a British national is taken most seriously."
A spokesperson for the German Embassy said, "We are trying to widen our database of murder cases of foreign homosexuals before making a conclusion... . If, after a lengthy investigation, the Russian authorities declare that there is not a connection, we will accept their conclusion."
While once a gay club, Chameleon is now considered straight. But inside Chameleon is the gay club Kazarma. According to the listings in Afisha, Mos cow's leading Russian-language entertainment magazine, Kazarma is considered the top gay hangout in the city, with naked young male students from Moscow circus schools dancing on stage and in private cabins.
It also has a reputation for being down-right menacing.
"To the best of my knowledge, all the murders were connected to Kazarma," said Nikita Ivanov, international editor of the Russia gay and lesbian web site, Gay.ru, which has posted a warning against going to the club.
"It's not your regular kind of gay club," he said Wednesday. "It is an inherently dangerous place. The kind of people who congregate there are like hustlers, male prostitutes from the provinces and the bad neighborhoods of Moscow."
Gay.ru has received no reports of violence at other gay clubs, he said, but has received more than a dozen reports about robberies in front of or in the immediate area around Chameleon, and about murders connected to it. Tamara Zhikhareva, Chameleon's financial manager, recalled one case two years ago when a regular foreign customer had been killed in his apartment and police had questioned the club's personnel. She said she could not remember the name of the customer and refused to say whether the victim had picked up his partner in the club.
Zhikhareva said Chameleon has become quieter since it shifted away from catering to a gay clientele a year ago.
TITLE: Wife Named To Take Over Potekhin's Post
AUTHOR: By Vladimir Kovalyev
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Governor Vladimir Yakovlev appointed local journalist Irina Potekhina acting vice governor in charge of the City Hall Media Committee on Dec. 29. Potekhina, whose appointment must be confirmed by the Legislative Assembly, replaces her husband, former acting Vice Governor Alexander Potekhin, who resigned last month under a cloud of suspicion after the North western District Prosecutor's Office opened a criminal investigation against him.
Potekhin has denied any wrongdoing and maintains that his resignation is not connected to the criminal investigation. No charges have yet been filed.
"[Potekhina] is a well-known journalist in the city, and there's nothing to be surprised about just because [she and Potekhin] have similar last names," said the governor's spokes person, Alexander Afanasiev, in an interview Thursday.
Prior to the new appointment, Po tek hina headed the local bureau of the national daily Komsomolskaya Prav da. She was also executive director of the Baltic Media Association, which is generally considered to support the governor.
Potekhina said on Thursday that the appointment came as a surprise to her.
"I've never dreamed of such a career. I'm a businessperson and I enjoyed what I was doing. But it will be interesting for me to try this position, since I know the media business from the inside and would like to find out if it is really impossible to do some things that officials have told me are impossible," Potekhina said. "I mean things that will develop the local media market. It will be hard, of course, because I've only dealt with a newspaper before and now there are books, other publications and also the advertising market that I must look into."
On Nov. 21, the prosecutor's office initiated a criminal case against Po tek hin and his former deputy, Dmitry So lon nikov. Officials said that they expected to file charges against the pair for violating a federal law forbidding public officials from engaging in private commercial activity.
An official at the prosecutor's office said Thursday that "charges will be announced soon," perhaps before the end of February.
Afanasiev said that the administration had offered the vice governor position to several local journalists before Potekhina accepted, but he declined to name any names. However, local media reports identified Alla Manilova, editor of the daily Nevskoye Vremya; Galina Leontieva, editor of the weekly Tainy So vet nik; and Oleg Kuzin, editor of the City Hall daily Sankt-Peterburg skiye Vedomosti.
"I was offered [the position], but I refused because I don't want to work in the administration," Le ontieva told The St. Petersburg Ti mes on Thursday.
A source within City Hall, who requested ano nymity, said that the decision to appoint Potekhin's wife was made as an act of revenge by Yakovlev against "those who wanted to drown Potekhin."
"The governor has shown who rules here," the source said. "He's got a sense of humor."
TITLE: Sibur Activity Probe Focuses on Gazprom
AUTHOR: By Anna Raff
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Prosecutor General Vla di mir Ustinov said Thursday his office intends to interrogate more Gaz prom executives, widening an investigation into the sale of the gas monopoly's assets by the management of rogue subsidiary Sibur.
"We have plans to interrogate a group of former and current Gazprom managers," Ustinov said.
Gazprom first deputy CEO Vyacheslav Sheremet, who is also chairperson of Sibur's board, Sibur CEO Yakov Go l dovsky and Vice President Yevgeny Ko zhit were detained for questioning Wed nes day. As of Thursday evening, they were still being held by Moscow's criminal police, a prosecutor's office spokes person said. Prosecutors have three days from the time of detention to either charge or release the three businesspeople.
Ustinov said that should his office choose to indict, "The [evidence] should be weighty enough so that even the court does not have reason to annul our conclusions."
Prosecutors on Monday opened a criminal case based on incriminating documents sent to them by Gazprom's security service. A search of Sibur's offices followed Tuesday.
While the investigation centers on the sale of 2.6 billion rubles ($86 million) of assets - identified as a Surgut natural-gas refining plant sold to the oil major Surgutneftegaz in late December - a bigger story is unraveling, one of dazzling corporate complexity and a slew of missing assets. This complexity is rivaled, perhaps, only by Gazprom, which ironically gave Sibur management tacit approval for the Surgut sale in the first place.
When President Vladimir Putin anointed St. Petersburg ally Alexei Miller as Gazprom chief last year, he made it clear that he wanted to stop the hemorrhaging of assets at the gas monopoly - 38 percent of which is owned by the state. Sibur has long been seen as the final outpost for the cronies of former CEO Rem Vyakhirev, and analysts regarded the petrochemical giant as a backdoor through which management could funnel Gazprom's stakes in valuable enterprises.
"Sibur was organized along the lines of all the other vertically integrated oil companies," said one executive at a top oil company. "At first, it was an entirely normal company. Then came new owners, new money, a new structure. The circumstances surrounding the company became very shadowy."
After years of contemplation, Gaz prom agreed to buy into Sibur in 2000, which spurred a massive reorganization of assets and brought career Gaz prom shchiki into management positions and the board of directors.
Officials at Surgutneftegaz say that negotiations for the sale of the Surgut refinery were completed late last month, although it remains unclear whether the 2.6 billion rubles have been paid.
Although Sibur and Gazprom officials made public statements hinting otherwise, Sibur, in fact, doesn't own a single share in Sibur-Tyumen, the company that - on paper - owns the Surgut gas-refining plant.
In fact, according to the latest figures, the Sibur holding company, of which Gazprom owns 51 percent, owns zero percent of Sibur-Tyumen and zero percent of Sibur-Khimprom, said Sibur spokesperson Irina Gan.
"This scandal has nothing to do with the Surgut plant," a tired-sounding Anatoly Lukashov, a Sibur vice president who joined the company in 1996, said in a telephone interview.
"We built this company because we wanted Russia to show that it could make something," Lukashov said. "Then, who gets hauled in? Not the thieves who smuggle diamonds out of this country. Someone who cobbled together a production chain from the garbage dump gets hauled in."
But it remains unclear what Gaz prom will end up with even if prosecutors scare management into piecing Sibur back together.
"At most, Sibur is worth $800 million to $1 billion, and that includes the assets with unclear ownership," Dashevsky said. "With a debt of just as much, this company's equity is worthless."
TITLE: Five Brokerages Dominate Booming Bourse
AUTHOR: By Victoria Lavrentieva
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: MOSCOW - Russia's booming stock market may be trading at levels not seen in nearly four years, but just a handful of players are getting all the action.
Figures released by the Russian Trading System on Wednesday show that $4.45 billion worth of shares traded hands on the key dollar-denominated market in 2001, with just five brokerages handling 92 percent of all transactions.
Total volume for the year was the third-highest total in the dollar-denominated stock market's brief six-year existence, as was its 98.5-percent growth rate, which the RTS now calculates as the difference between the first and last trading days of the year (Jan. 3 and Dec. 29). Previously, the RTS used the last trading days of consecutive years to calculate its official growth rate.
Despite being the world's best-performing bourse last year, the RTS grew at just half the rate it did in 1999, when the index was up a record 193.57 percent.
And the $4.45 billion total for last year is just three-quarters of the previous year's volume of $5.8 billion, although the RTS actually contracted 20 percent in 2000, despite record economic growth of 8.3 percent versus roughly 5 percent in 2001.
The average daily trading volume on the RTS in 2001 was $17.73 million, versus $23.26 million in 2000.
The market's most liquid stock was Unified Energy Systems, which accounted for nearly a third of all transactions with $1.4 billion of shares traded.
Top oil producer LUKoil was the second most-actively traded stock, with some $725 million worth of shares changing hands, followed by rival Yukos with $579 million, Surgutneftegaz (ordinary), Norilsk Nickel, Tatneft, Mosenergo, Surgutneftegaz (preferred), Rostelecom and Sibneft.
Of these companies, only Yukos was not in the top 10 for 2000.
Troika Dialog led the small pack of five brokerages that dominated trade. The investment house brokered $1.3 billion worth of deals last year, down from last year's $1.8 billion but still taking top honors for the second year in a row.
Renaissance Capital and United Financial Group moved up to No. 2 and No. 3, handling $863 million and $667 million, respectively. They replaced NIKoil ($649 million) and Aton ($499 million), which moved down to fourth and sixth place. Brunswick UBS Warburg was the newcomer to the top five, moving $637 million through its books.
TITLE: arts square: a strange salad
AUTHOR: by Gulyara Sadykh-zade
PUBLISHER: Special to The St. Petersburg Times
TEXT: Yury Temirkanov's Arts Square Music Festival got its start three years ago, created especially to suit the conductor's ambitions and allow him to flex his authority as St. Petersburg's musical leader and as artistic director of the Philharmonic Orchestra. The festival was also intended to liven up the city's flaccid winter concert season, which at that time featured precious little that was worthy of the New Year's and Christmas holiday period.
This year's festival was headlined by names such as violinist Gidon Kremer, Norwegian pianist Leif Ove Andsnes, conductor Gennady Rozh dest vensky, baritone Sergei Leiferkus, ballerina Ana sta sia Volochkova and, of course, Temir kanov himself with the Philharmonic.
A closer look at the concert programs revealed that they contained no particular surprises or innovations. Everything was the traditional selection of Romantic symphonic hits such as Brahms' Fourth Symphony and Rakhmaninov's Third Piano Concerto and pieces by Schubert, Mendelssohn and Tchaikovsky. True, 18-year-old German violinist Julia Fischer gave a convincing interpretation of the rarely heard Dvorak 1879 Violin Concerto on Jan. 4.
Festival organizers freely admitted that when they were organizing the program, they focused exclusively on satisfying the requests of the guest conductors and soloists, each of whom was able to select their own program. The result was something of a strange musical salad, the strangeness of which was intensified by the fact that organizers declared this an "arts" festival and tossed into the mix a Russian Museum exhibition, an evening of ballet and a beau-monde ball hosted by, again, Temirkanov.
The festival's biggest crowd this year came out for a concert by the Terem Quartet on Dec. 28. The quartet is celebrating its fifteenth anniversary and has developed a special "Jubillennium" program for the occasion. Uncharacteristically, the lively players appeared on stage in a surprisingly serious, even academic style. There wasn't a hint of their trademark re-workings of Soviet songs; only fluid and highly witty fantasies on themes by Bach, arias by Heitor Vila-Lobos and other things in this vein. Terem also had a surprise in store: They invited Japanese musician, composer and singer Joji Hirota onto the stage. Hirota turned out to be not only a subtle percussionist, but also an amazing performer of Japanese songs. The sound of his voice seemed to have originated in the very depths of his heart and its vibrations had the uncanny ability to evoke a feeling of penetrating nostalgia. Somehow, in the midst of the extended interplay of melodies and the natural aspirations, a surprising affinity was revealed to the structure and harmony of Russian folk singing. Such unfathomable continuities among cultures can only be guessed at, groped for and dredged up from the collective unconscious, and this is exactly what the Terem Quartet and Hirota managed to do this night.
Temirkanov himself appeared twice during the festival. At the opening concert on Dec. 27, he led the Philharmonic in a capable rendition of Brahms' Fourth. On Dec. 30, the heart of the program was Elgar's Engima Variations, a fairly tiresome composition, but one that features an abundance of sophisticated symphonic moments.
After a full program of German, Russian and English Romanticism, Rozh destvensky's choice of Ives' Second Symphony for the concluding concert seemed only fitting. This is, after all, the piece with which Ives sums up the entire development of symphonic music through the nineteenth century. It features numerous allusions and direct citations from Brahms and Dvorak, in interplay with the bold rhythms of New World music.
These latter citations foreshadowed the finale, the ever-popular "Stars and Stripes Forever" by John Phillip Sousa. Rozh destvensky ran away with this piece, as one might have expected, playing it loudly and brashly, drawing out all the charm of its unbridled joyfulness.
The crowd raved and the maestro, satisfied with the effect he'd created, beamed. The only question that kept nagging at the end was why such an academic and conservative St. Petersburg festival would be symbolically wrapped up with this unofficial American national anthem? It would have been only fitting to open the festival in this case with Reingold Glier's "Hymn to a Great City," St. Petersburg's anthem.
TITLE: reflections within a glass house
AUTHOR: by Kevin Thomas
PUBLISHER: The Los Angeles Times
TEXT: "Thirteen Ghosts," which was released last fall for Halloween, begins in a Chicago auto junkyard in the dead of night, where F. Murray Abraham's sinister Cyrus Kriticos and his zany yet distraught young psychic, Rafkin (Matthew Lillard) are doing a little spirit-chasing while the elegant Kalina (Embeth Davidtz) apparently means to free any spirits they manage to trap.
If this sounds a bit vague, it is, but not to worry, for it is meant to be a suitably bravura prologue to all the thrills and chills to come in this sleek, gory remake of the 1960 William Castle original. Although not for the faint of heart, it's a potent - and very tricky - treat. At the conclusion of this razzle-dazzle sequence, which ends badly for Kriticos, the setting switches to a cramped apartment, home of Kriticos' nephew Arthur (Tony Shalhoub). The middle-aged math teacher is struggling to hold himself and his family together in the aftermath of a terrible fire that destroyed their home and cost the life of his beloved wife, the mother of his teenage daughter, Kathy (Shannon Elizabeth) and obstreperous younger son, Bobby (Alec Roberts).
Their helper and Bobby's babysitter, Maggie (Rah Digga), isn't a triumph of efficiency but has plenty of spunk, a quality the Kriticos family sorely lacks.
Naturally, the news that Arthur's Uncle Cyrus, whom he barely knows, has died and named Arthur his heir is cheering news, especially since Cyrus, described in the press as an "adventurer," was a man of wealth beyond Arthur's imagining, with an estate in a remote, wooded area some distance from the city. The Kriticoses should, of course, instantly put it on the market, grab the money and run.
No wonder they are fascinated with this unique structure, a kind of giant clockwork encased in glass and with sliding glass panels, all of which are inscribed with writing in Latin throughout. It is a triumph of mechanical and architectural design, its rooms elegantly appointed. The vast maze-like structure is fascinating, but scarcely inviting. Entering it is like stepping inside a machine - an infernal device as it turns out. Even if anyone in the group had recognized that the elaborate design of the floor in the structure's immense circular central reception hall is the Black Zodiac, a satanic inverse of the familiar astrological table, it would have been too late.
Written by Neal Marshall Stevens and Richard D'Ovidio from a story by Robb White and directed by Steve Beck for maximum tension, "Thirteen Ghosts" is in essence a classic haunted house story, given some terrifically ingenious and grisly twists, in which a decent family man, already afflicted with tragedy and loss, finds within himself the courage and selflessness to save his family from evil. Rafkin re-emerges, determined to try to help, and so does Kalina, offering counsel. But finally Arthur has primarily to rely upon himself, with a crucial assist from Maggie, a fearless and funny African American woman who wonders aloud about how she ever managed to get stuck in such a predicament with all these white folks.
What the film's title signifies won't be revealed here. It's enough to say that it's a superior horror picture, with co-producer Joel Silver's idea of a glass house a vivid contrast to the usual spooky Charles Addams Victorian mansion, an inspiration that takes the tale to a new level of complexity and implication with all that glass constantly reflecting upon itself, intensifying the family's confrontation with self and one another as well as the house's evil supernatural captives. Production designer Sean Hargreaves and his associates, including virtuoso cinematographer Gale Tattersall, have created one of the screen's most dazzling settings of the year - an enclosed world, actually - and the film's special-effects team makes it come alive as the most intricate and sinister of mechanisms.
Composer John Frizzell's score keeps the mood suitably ominous, along with some decidedly unsettling sound effects. Abraham plays Cyrus with appropriate relish, while Shalhoub reveals the extraordinary hiding behind the perfectly ordinary facade of Arthur. Lillard's antic sense of humor and rapper Rah Digga's sass in her feature debut are especially welcome. Elizabeth and Roberts are completely believable young people, and Davidtz is suitably intense. JR Bourne is Cyrus' unctuous lawyer, who comes to a particularly imaginative, horrendous fate.
In the light of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, "Thirteen Ghosts" has some sequences that may disturb some people, but these are more than balanced by the dark humor and escapist horror, as well as the unassuming heroism of Arthur.
See listings for details.
TITLE: chernov's choice
AUTHOR: by Sergey Chernov
TEXT: Boris Grebenshchikov has a Christmas present for you at Akvarium's official Web site at www.aquarium.ru. It is a free, 4Mb MP3 file containing the ironic reggae song called "Rastamany Iz Glubinki" ("Rastas From the Provinces"), which the band recorded in December. Akvarium kicks off a five-date U.S. tour at New York's Irvin Plaza on Jan. 18. Support will come from Nastya. Check out www.blissrecords.com for details and keep an eye out for a big local show to coincide with the release of Akvarium's new album in February.
Tequilajazzz will play what singer and bassist Zhenya Fyodorov describes as "an ordinary concert in support of youth clubs" at Faculty on Friday. The band is currently in the studio recording its new album - which will be released instead of an album the band recorded last year but discarded, saying it sounded "too mainstream." The next show in this series will take place at Moloko on Feb. 8.
La Minor, which entertained us a bit with their CD debut "Blatnyak" during the holidays, will appear the same night at Red Club, while Moloko will host The Vermicelli Orchestra, the art-rock band that seems to be enjoying its heyday right now.
Some minor changes in the Club Guide came with the new year. The bunker club Front has lost its telephone number again and, as it seems, for good this time. However, it launched a Web site at www.front.vov.ru.
Meanwhile, Poligon's impressive Web site has been shut down by its provider "for a violation of the agreement's conditions," which is almost all that one can read now at www.polygon.cool.ru.
Fish Fabrique has resumed its practice of screening videos that you won't see anywhere else. Next Sunday we will see "Five Bottles of Vodka," the latest macabre product by Moscow art-video director Svetlana Baskova.
The exhibition "The Secret Life of Musicians" is over, but some art by the late rock idol Viktor Tsoy of Kino is still on display at Timur Novikov's Museum of the New Academy of Fine Arts at Pushkinskaya 10. Despite its long name, the museum is small - an 18-square-meter room which now holds some of Tsoy's sculptures, drawings and paintings. It's open between 3 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Saturdays.
On the jazz scene, the city's oldest and premier mainstream venue, the Jazz Philharmonic Hall, will celebrate its 13th anniversary with a two-night festival on Saturday and Sunday. Called the Piter-Lada New-Year's Jazz Festival, it will feature seven acts, including tenor saxophonist Igor Butman and guitarist Alexei Kuznetsov, both of Moscow.
JFC Jazz Club and Cappella will continue the Jazz Season at the Cappella series of concerts with Moscow French-horn player Arkady Shilkloper and his Wood Trio on Thursday, Jan. 17. The Wood Trio, which will be playing the city for the first time, also includes Lev Slepner on marimba and Igor Ivanushkin on double bass. Shilkloper will also appear in a trio with St. Petersburg's pianist Andrei Kondakov and double bassist Vladimir Volkov at JFC Jazz Club on Jan. 18.
- by Sergey Chernov
TITLE: hot georgian food served cold
AUTHOR: by Robert Coalson
PUBLISHER: Staff Writer
TEXT: Good food alone does not a good restaurant make. This is the lesson to be had at the elegant Bagrationi, where the splendors of Georgian cuisine are served up in combination with the finest traditions of Soviet restaurant hospitality.
That having been said, it is a bit hard to describe exactly where Bagrationi falls down. It's design, with a subtle martial theme, gracefully vaulted ceilings and soothingly blue walls that only began to seem cold in retrospect, is certainly faultless. As soon as we stepped in off the street, we noticed the juicy shashlyk crackling on the open grill in the middle of the dining room and were immediately in the mood for eating.
But from there, our mood went straight downhill. First came the credit-card fiasco. Our waiter insisted that Bagrationi doesn't accept credit cards (which struck us as strange for a place that has a bottle of wine on its list for 39,000 rubles or $1,300). Only after we started to leave did he disappear and come back saying that they "have a credit-card machine upstairs." We decided to stay, but sensibly paid in cash.
The next annoyance came when we noticed the differences between the menu they give Russians and the one they hand foreigners. Russians, for instance, are offered the option of half-portions of almost everything on the menu, enabling them to sample a wide range of titbits without breaking the bank. Foreigners are not so fortunate. Closer inspection revealed that some dishes from the Russian menu don't appear on the English and that the organization of the English menu is decidedly inferior. For instance, the famous Georgian cheesy bread khachapuri is to be found at the end of the English menu under the amusing heading of "Pastries." Only those who know that it must be there somewhere will find it.
The last thing I would mention that really irks me is the mandatory 10-percent service charge that Bagrationi tacks on. Don't get me wrong - it is not a matter of money. In this case, I would have left a larger tip had the choice been left to me since the service was certainly flawless, if coldly impersonal. The fact that the restaurant does nothing to draw patrons' attention to this surcharge is also irritating, to say the least.
All of this was the ambience surrounding what was in fact a quite delicious meal. Bagrationi does all the Georgian classics in generously portioned, brightly seasoned renditions that leave little to be desired. We sampled a range of basics - taking advantage of the half-portion option - including green lobio for 150 rubles ($5), satsivi (cold chicken in walnut sauce) for 240 rubles ($8) and sturgeon in bazhe for 330 rubles ($11). We also tried the fried suluguni cheese for 150 rubles ($5). All were delightful, although by no means the best Georgian food in town.
Our main courses were also very much in the mainstream. The place seemed so proud of its grill-in-the-dining-room concept that we felt it would be an injustice not to try one of the shashlyks. We went for pork on the waiter's recommendation (195 rubles or $6.50 for a half portion, plus 50 rubles for tkemali sauce). Tender, juicy, delicious. We also sampled two vegetarian dishes - the abzhabsandali (vegetable ragout featuring eggplant, green beans, red peppers, potatoes and more) for 190 rubles ($6.33) and the "fried forest mushrooms," which the waiter thoughtfully warned us were actually just champignon mushrooms, for 170 rubles ($5.67). They were both also good, although the abzhabsandali was a bit greasy.
In a nutshell, the food is definitely Georgian, but the restaurant as a whole is far from the sometimes suffocating warmth of traditional Georgian hospitality. As the dishes were stiffly brought one after another in solemn succession, we felt more as if we were conducting a military inspection than enjoying a hearty meal. All the buttons were spit and polish, but the experience itself was tarnished.
Bagrationi, 5/19 Liteiny Prospect, 272-7448. Open daily from 12 p.m. to 12 a.m. Dinner for two, 2,215 rubles ($73.83). Menu in English (see review) and Russian. Credit cards accepted (see review).
TITLE: 7 Marines Die in U.S. Tanker Plane Crash
AUTHOR: By Munir Ahmad
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - American and Pakistani recovery teams converged Thursday on a mountainside where a U.S. military tanker plane that may have been carrying nearly a full load of fuel crashed and exploded into flames, killing all seven marines on board.
The wreckage lay five kilometers from the Pakistan military's Shamsi air base, a forward operations point being used by U.S. military forces in the war in neighboring Afghanistan. The area was sealed off by the Pakistani military, and residents of the area saw helicopters flying overhead Thursday. The area is in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, which is a remote area of rugged mountains and vast deserts.
In Kandahar, Afghanistan, where the marines have established a base, spokesperson First Lieutenant John Jarvis said the plane was on its final approach to the Shamsi airfield. It had been on the first of what normally would be four refueling stops per mission, so it likely had an almost full cargo of fuel.
A military team was heading from the marine base at Kandahar to Shamsi to investigate, Jarvis said, echoing statements from the Pentagon that there had been no indication of hostile fire. He had no information on any weather factors, either.
"We're going to do everything we can to find out what caused the accident," Jarvis said. "Recovery is going to be tough. It's very tight terrain - mountainside, not vehicle accessible. It's going to be tough going up to the point the accident occurred."
The seven deaths were the worst U.S. casualty toll from the war in Afghanistan and included the first American woman killed, Sergeant Jeannette L. Winters, 25, of Du Page, Illinois.
The KC-130 Hercules had taken off from Jacobabad, Pakistan. The marines normally use the KC-130 for the in-flight refueling of helicopters as well as for troop and cargo delivery, evacuation missions and special operations support. It typically carries a six-person crew of two pilots, a navigator, flight engineer, mechanic and loadmaster.
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U.S. warplanes Thursday struck at an al-Qaeda guerrilla complex in eastern Afghanistan, as extra U.S. ground troops were moved into the area, a Pakistan-based Afghan news agency reported.
The private Afghan Islamic Press (AIP) said the attacks were focused on Zhawar, 30 kilometers southwest of Khost, while several helicopters ferried in about 50 U.S. ground troops to eastern Khost, taking the total number of U.S. personnel in the area to about 150.
"American jets began bombing the area overnight and continued into Thursday morning. There was no information about casualties," said AIP, quoting unnamed sources.
Zhawar, where members of al-Qaeda were believed to have tried to regroup after weeks of military defeats, is less than 10 kilometers from the Pakistani border.
TITLE: Rams Best Bet for Super Bowl
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - As the NFL playoffs begin, most indicators suggest this is the year of the Ram. Kurt Warner and Marshall Faulk seem unstoppable, and the defense that allowed 471 points in 2000 gave up 198 fewer this season.
It could produce the team's second Super Bowl appearance in three years.
Two years ago, Tampa Bay almost beat the Rams in St. Louis, losing 11-6 in the NFC title game, and the Rams went on to win the Super Bowl. The Bucs beat the Rams in Tampa Bay last season, and on Nov. 26, they won again in St. Louis, 24-17.
But the problem for the Bucs will be getting by Philadelphia in the first round.
The game will be played Saturday in Philadelphia and the temperature probably will be below 5 degrees celsius. The Bucs have never won in those conditions.
NFC. The Rams (14-2) are clear favorites, but Chicago, which went from 5-11 last season to 13-3, is seeded second and has some things going for it, too.
The Bears gained confidence as the season went on, winning their final four games by an average of 18 points after going through the first three-quarters of the season winning by narrow margins.
But Chicago has a problem: Green Bay, which inflicted two of its three losses. Depending on what happens in the first round, the Packers could go to Soldier Field for the second round.
Philadelphia (11-5) also matches up against the Bears - its defense forces turnovers and might cause trouble for quarterback Jim Miller.
San Francisco (12-4) plays Sunday at Green Bay (12-4), which never has lost a playoff game at Lambeau. The 49ers have a reputation for offense, but also earned shutouts in three of their last six games.
AFC. Pittsburgh (13-3) isn't the overwhelming favorite the Rams are in the NFC. It led the league in defense and Kordell Stewart returned to the form he hadn't show in three straight seasons. But there remain doubts, including the health of running back Jerome Bettis, who missed the last five regular-season games with a groin injury.
New England (11-5) is seeded second and is 11-3 since Tom Brady took over at quarterback.
Oakland (10-6) has lost three straight and four of six, and seems stagnant on offense.
Miami (11-5) has an interesting history: it has won its opening playoff game the last three seasons, then lost the second by a combined score of 127-10.
The most dangerous team could be Baltimore, the defending Super Bowl champion, which had to beat Minnesota on Monday night just to get into the playoffs.
TITLE: Legendary Leather Man Elected to Hall of Fame
AUTHOR: By Ben Walker
PUBLISHER: The Associated Press
TEXT: NEW YORK - Ozzie Smith had it all the way.
The Wizard of Oz, who made a career out of turning difficult plays into dazzling ones, was easily elected to the Hall of Fame on Tuesday in his first year of eligibility.
Smith, regarded as the finest-fielding shortstop ever, was the lone player picked. Gary Carter fell just short of election.
"My defense made such an impact, it made people take notice," Smith said.
An acrobatic, 13-time Gold Glove winner while with the St. Louis Cardinals and San Diego Padres, Smith was chosen on 91.7 percent of the ballots.
"To be the only one going in I think speaks to the impact I had at my position," he said.
Smith took a sip of champagne at his home in St. Louis, Missouri, after getting the good news. He did not celebrate with one of his customary backflips, "but I probably could do one today."
Smith became the 37th player picked on his first try. He is the 22nd shortstop overall in the Hall.
"The guys who get into the Hall of Fame are the guys who hit the ball out of the ballpark," he said. "I think my going in is going to reinforce the defensive aspect of the game."
Smith was selected on 433 of 472 ballots. To be elected, players had to be listed on at least 75 percent of the ballots of 10-year members of the Baseball Writers' Association of America.
Carter got 343 votes (72.7 percent) and fell 11 shy of election. The former catcher's totals have dramatically improved over the years, going from 34 percent in 1999 to nearly 49.7 percent in 2000 to 65 percent last year.
"When the anticipation is so high and it's being talked about so much, there's a letdown," Carter said. "Being this close, you want it to happen."
"I'm at the threshold. I'm waiting for them to open the door," he said. "I'm just excited for next year."
Jim Rice (55 percent) was third in the voting, followed by Bruce Sutter (50 percent), first-time candidate Andre Dawson (45 percent) and Goose Gossage (43 percent).
Smith, 47, was a 15-time All-Star. He will become the 254th person enshrined in the Hall during ceremonies at Cooperstown, New York on July 28.