Is there nothing meaningful the world's most powerful nation cando [about the genocide in Darfur]?"
--NAT HENTOFF syndicated columnist
More people seem outraged at what Mel Gibson said . . . Drunkdriving is more serious than drunk talking."
--DONALD FIGURA
West Elsdon
"Howling III" is writer-director Philippe Mora's second shot ata wolf-man movie. ("The Howling" in 1980 was an unrelated filmdirected by Joe Dante and co-written by John Sayles.) Instead ofcreating a lame horror picture like his "Howling II" (1984), Morastitches together a four-limbed mongrel: a touch of pseudoscience, abit of grit in Australia's Outback, some humor and, lastly, specialeffects.
The effects include the weirdest scene since the critter poppedout of John Hurt's chest in "Alien." I'll save you the curious theagony of sitting through "Howling III": It shows the birth of amarsupial werewolf infant (a cross between the Snuggles bear and adachshund Slinky) to werewolf Jerboa (Imogen Annesley.) The littlenipper is the spawn of a standard man and its mother, with a bellypouch and dental problems.
This $2 million stew wants to be all things bright and beautiful.It's not.
The movie begins with some unexplained killings in modern-daySiberia, which piques the interest of anthropologist Dr. HarryBeckmeyer (Barry Otto). Beckmeyer, who inherited his deadgrandfather's film of aborigines dancing around what appears to be acaptured werewolf, suspects werewolves are real. Meanwhile, Jerboaescapes from an Australian settlement of Mad Max-type werewolves (ledby Thylos, played by Max Fairchild with bald-headed menace) andarrives in Sydney. She falls for a young filmmaker who sets her upin a comic horror film. (What irony!) The weregirl, who just wantsnormal things - love, fame and a good costume for the cast party -flips out from flashing lights and turns wolf. After an accident,she winds up strapped in a hospital bed for "observation," whichmeans plenty of prodding by human bureaucrats. Some werewolvesdisguised as nuns shred hospital security and recapture her.
As if this weren't improbable enough, a Russian ballerinaemigrates to Sydney at the telepathic urging of Thylos. In one ofthe few good scenes, the petite dancer, Olga (Dasha Blahova), winsthe heart of Beckmeyer during a rehearsal, then changes into a beastand puts the bite on her dance partner. She, too, is hospitalized,along with Thylos, who is nabbed in a military roundup. After seeingthe wolves' awful facial contortions, officials decide to kill themrather than probe fur ther. But lovestruck Beckmeyer frees Olga and Thylos and escapeswith them to the Outback to rekindle a lupine colony with Jerboa.
The biggest problem with "Howling III" is tone. Like the thesilly "Teen Wolf Too," it tries to find the good side of being awerewolf. Gore is minimal, and at times the movie portrays attacksfrom the wolf's point of view. But "Howling III" constructs tediousexplanations about werewolf origins and throws in plenty ofscientific buzz words and machinery. There is a sentimentalized,save-the-werewolf pitch, too. Why do werewolves kill innocent folks?Because, the audience learns, the half-human species is fightingsystematic extermination begun by Queen Victoria.
Mora skips over 15 years in a matter of minutes. Jerboa movesto California as an actress. Beckmeyer, with the sedate Olga,becomes a hero. All live happily until photographers turn Jerboa'swolf side loose. Will there be another "Howling"? Please, no,Mora.
En medio de todo el desbarajuste de nuestra patria, el exilio ha logrado algo positivo: que los cubanos nos conozcamos mejor, que cada cual sepa hoy mejor que nunca qui�n es qui�n, qui�n el enemigo y qui�n el verdadero amigo.
El destierro ha hecho con todas sus equivocaciones que se conozca la verdad y sin especulaciones caprichosas d�nde estaban los cubanos decentes y d�nde estaban los miserables. El ha logrado que se sepa claramente quienes eran los hombres y quienes los "ratones", quienes los tr�nsfugas aprovechados y quienes los sinceros, desprendidos y verdaderamente honestos.
Hemos visto como se le ha rendido pleites�a al tirano Castro por pol�ticos y por hombres de …
Marian Hossa, ultimately, made the wrong choice but claims he has no regrets.
The Slovakian right wing turned down a lucrative, long-term contract from Pittsburgh last year to sign a one-year deal with the Detroit Red Wings, thinking they had a better chance of hoisting the Stanley Cup.
Hossa didn't score in the finals and wasn't a factor in Game 7 on Friday, leaving him to watch his former Pittsburgh teammates claim the Cup with a 2-1 victory.
"That's life," he said. "You just have to move on. It's a great life experience.
"It's a tough pill to swallow."
With the money saved by Hossa's departure, the …
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Thousands of Lebanese on Tuesday lined roads and cheered troops triumphant after crushing al-Qaida-inspired Islamic militants in a three-month-long battle that became the country's worst internal fighting since the 1975-90 civil war.
But military leaders warned that the war on terror is not yet over and asked the international community to help arm the country's military.
The army started withdrawing units Tuesday from the area of the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr el-Bared, close to the port city of Tripoli in northern Lebanon, two days after crushing Fatah Islam fighters in a final battle that left more than 40 militants dead.
Army jeeps, …
BLACKBOOKSGALORE.COM
Finding literature sites for black children can be trying, but here's one rose in the desert that all parents building a library for their children should visit. Blackbooksgalore.com is a site created by three black mothers frustrated with the lack of accessible books for their children. You'll find picture …
Byline: STEPHANIE EARLS - STAFF WRITER
The heart.
It is the body's most vital muscle.
It is a perfect, four-chambered pump, sending blood pulsing, pulsing, pulsing through the lungs, where it is infused with oxygen, then pumping it out to the organs and tissues of the body.
A body can survive without a kidney or a colon or a lung. But not without a heart. If our heartbeat stops, so do we, organ by organ. After one minute, we pass out. Then we seize. For every minute without a heartbeat, our chances of survival drop by 10 percent. At 10 minutes, brain death.
Electrical impulses within the heart control how often it beats. The number of times it beats each minute depends on age, activity level and health.
The heart of an 11-year-old girl beats between 60 and 105 times a minute.
Though the heartbeat feels like a single thump when you press your fingertips to your wrist, it sounds like a spongy lub-dub through a doctor's stethoscope, as electrical impulses open and shut the upper and lower valves.
After the dub, while the heart recharges, is a fraction of a second of silence. At the tail end of that silence, as the heart scrambles to prepare for the next lub, is a fleeting moment of disorder.
Fifteen milliseconds of it, to be exact.
It's a splinter of a splinter of time, so brief it's hard to fathom. It is three beats of a hummingbird's wings. It is the snap of a camera shutter. It is faster than the blink of an eye.
But in that fifteen milliseconds, the heart is at its most vulnerable. A relatively minor blow to the chest, at just that moment, at just the right spot, can confuse an otherwise healthy heart's rhythm and instantly cause cardiac arrest.
The condition, called commotio cordis, is so rare, almost always fatal, that most doctors, even trauma specialists like Albany Medical Center's John Burton, only read about it in textbooks. Each year, commotio cordis kills between 10 and 20 people, almost all children engaged in youth sports like softball.
The factors leading up to it must be so precise, so phenomenally unlucky, that the odds border on impossible. The chances of being revived, unless a defibrillator is within reach, are nearly nonexistent.
But at a crowded horseback riding competition in Rexford on April 29, the practically impossible happened. Then it happened again.
On that day, Dr. John Burton, a little girl named Delana Ringer and her mom, Suzanne, learned that the time between heartbeats …
