text:
An abortion film and an abortion of a film
VERA DRAKE (Mike Leigh, Britain, 2004, 9)
PALINDROMES (Todd Solondz, USA, 2004, 1)
The lead description at the Internet Movie Database for this film says "abortionist Vera Drake finds her beliefs and practices clash with the mores of 1950s England." That's wrong on two counts — Vera Drake is not an abortionist (I'll explain what I mean by that later) and she does not have "beliefs" on the subject. If those descriptions were true, VERA DRAKE might have been an unbearable piece of martyrdom, possibly as bad as PALINDROMES. Instead, it's one of the best films of the year.
Like most of Mike Leigh's films, VERA DRAKE is not heavy on plot points. It follows the kind-hearted titular character's life (played by Imelda Staunton) as a working-class wife and mother of two in dingy 1950 north London. Who happens to perform abortions on the side. When VERA DRAKE is creating the daily life of post-war Britain, it is never anything short of superb — one of the best evocations of working-class life I have ever seen. Every detail is right, and every detail feels right. After dinner, the men in the Drake family discuss their experiences in what was still just called "the war" when I was a boy in the mid-1970s. Nobody maintains an ostentatious silence, nobody gives a great speech, nobody sheds a tear, even when saying he lost his mother in the Blitz. In fact, the German air raids are as much the occasion for trying to place what attack that was and who felt what bomb, the way people in another era might try to remember a rainstorm or blackout. When son Sid (Daniel Mays) mentions losing a mate in Palestine, he says he was ambushed by "a bunch of Pakis" — which isn't correct of course, but is right artistically. Leigh brushes on the smallest details with the swiftness and confidence of a virtuoso — the pronunciation of CHOOZ-day; Vera's constant refrain "I'll make a cup of tea" or "I'll put on the kettle"; the way Vera mashes potatoes (it's some achievement to make me nostalgic for British "cuisine"); the son's manner with his measuring tape at his job as a tailor's fitter. We feel less like spectators and more like one of the family, we know these people and their world so well.
Scene after scene plays with perfect control. Even when Leigh gets schematic and manipulative with his plots — as he often does — every character is acted so perfectly and with such attention to the psychological truth of the moment that we forget the manipulations as we're watching. For example, when police (led by a detective played by the burly Peter Wight) come to arrest Vera, her family is having a double nuptial celebration — one couple is engaged and another plans to announce a pregnancy. In lesser hands, the ironies probably would have been a bit much. But even in its implausability, the coincidence underlines that Vera has broken up her family's happiness (that is *certainly* the point of the film's last shot). And then the scene plays out perfectly. There's a very lengthy, perfectly acted closeup of Staunton in which she realized her bungee cord has snapped. But can't let anyone know. In fact, what's so brilliant about the scene of the arrest of Vera is how as much time is devoted to appearances — going into rooms, asking who knows what, Vera answering police questions with "we're having a party today," Vera walking past her mystified family without a word.
Even Leigh's direction — usually tactfully functional; his films have always been actor showcases — gets better from film to film. The cinematography draws a clear contrast between the overcast grays, drab colors and cramped spaces of the working-class environs and the high-key bright lighting and open spaces of the upper-class environs that Vera cleans as a maid. But Leigh doesn't push the contrast too hard into either miserabilism and fruity decadence. The scene where Vera finally tells her husband Stan (played by Phil Davis) is made by the way Leigh creeps his camera in ever so slowly to intimate distance as the couple supercede the police in the frame's composition. And then it stops, as if discreetly standing by, when the unspeakable privileged secret is revealed. This tactfully intimate and no more.
In one important sense, this is the best-acted film Mike Leigh has ever made — which is saying something since the man is the best director of actors in the world. But the downside of the "actorly" performances he coaxes from his (always stellar) casts is that even in his best films, there's usually been one performance that's just a bit too *much* or off-key or one-note — Timothy Spall in LIFE IS SWEET; Claire Rushbrook in SECRETS & LIES; the mother in HIGH HOPES; the son in ALL OR NOTHING; Gilbert's father in TOPSY-TURVY. But here in VERA DRAKE, for the first time, that doesn't happen. Nobody overacts, and not from lack of opportunity. Lesley Manville is more restrained as a "toff" here than she was in a similar role in HIGH HOPES. As the daughter and her suitor, both of whom are a bit "slow" or "daft," Alex Kelly and Eddie Marsen are note-perfect in the sort of role that Leigh sometimes fumbles (the aforementioned Spall role). Their tentative proposal is touching without being cloying. And Marsan's delivery of the Christmas toast to Vera is probably the movie's high point.
VERA DRAKE is studded with small diamonds in its performances. I mentioned Peter Wight as the lead police detective, and for all the (just) praise heaped on Staunton, he may actually give the movie's best performance since it's probably the most difficult balancing act. He has to play a 100 percent professional whose job it is to bring down the movie's hero, and Wight does it without himself ever becoming an unsympathetic caricature. He conveys the discomfort of having to deal with a kindly old lady, without ever letting on as to whether he supports abortion law. He does so with his body language and voice (direct without being blunt), but without ever giving a speech about The Sanctity Of The Law, like say, Kevin Costner did as an enforcer of Prohibition in THE UNTOUCHABLES. Wight's performance and some of the things his character does simply embody what it means to love the sinner and hate the sin.
Another of the great pleasures of Leigh's films is that he'll use an actor for a two- or three-scene small role — here Manville, Allan Corduner and Ruth Sheen, e.g. — even though they have been brilliant as leads in his other films. Corduner's role, as a psychiatrist certifying an upper-class woman's eligibility for an abortion, is the kind of one-scene role that in lesser films is often either sloughed off or turned into a "character" for comic relief. But Corduner, in his voice and eyes, masters his character's delicate balance between asking leading questions and not seeming to ask leading questions. It's the way his face lights up without smiling when he gets the answer to his question "did he force himself on you?" This is the kind of detail that gives Leigh's films so much texture and depth.
The film is so strong, so rich and so complex that you just want to sneak into the editing room and remove its few missteps. Like many great depictors of working-class life, Leigh has to resist shots at social climbers. But in VERA DRAKE, he's hardly even trying in the character of Joyce, the wife of Stan's brother, Frank. The scene when she sorta forces herself on him because it's her time to conceive was too funny to really work, and then she tells Frank she's pregnant … (pause) … "can I get a fridge now." And when she's at the Christmas party, her body language screams "I don't want to be here" and she can't even put on a show of considering the Dairy Box chocolates being passed around. It's hard to credit materialism and snobbery this obvious — if there's one thing upper-class Britons know how to do, it's put on an appearance. And the film's principal weakness is in its third act — there's just too many noble closeups of Vera and some mournful music. It's not bad in itself — Staunton is superb even when the script gets one-dimensional here and paints her in a bit, simply because she's so successfully created a woman who cannot fathom the situation she's in. But there's just too much of it.
In an otherwise excellent review, James Bowman gets one significant thing about the VERA DRAKE wrong. He says "Everything about the film apart from the propaganda is done so well that the propaganda, when it comes, strikes a jarring note and sounds out of place." I think there is little pro-choice propaganda at all in the film — apart from the basic dramatic situation of taking place at a time when abortion is generally illegal and following a character who breaks that law (which you knew going in, so there's hardly a "when it comes"). Of course, we're cued to sympathize with Vera, but what is significant here are the absences and, as Bowman DOES point out, the ways that Leigh and his actors so convincingly create the world of their characters that it won't fit into propaganda categories.
I don't know how attuned Leigh is to the abortion debate in the United States, but the film ducks some of the easiest pro-abortion talking points and makes many of the pro-life movement's; (1) the abortion procedure Vera uses is basically injecting a soapy enema into the uterus in order to induce a miscarriage. But when asked by the police whether she ever used coat hangers or knitting needles, she blanches in horror at the thought; (2) nobody, including Vera herself, defends abortion in the abstract or utters a thought to the effect that abortion should be legal or displays any anachronistically-raised feminist consciousnesses (i.e., it is wrong to say Vera has any beliefs on the subject); (3) no legal consequences are ever threatened or even apparently contemplated for the mothers who abort, rebutting the most vicious boogie-man lie; (4) liberal film critics note (correctly as far as the point goes) that the film contrasts an upper-class woman's getting medical exams to have what was then called a "therapeutic abortion" with Vera as abortionist to the working class. Or as Roger Ebert put it, "if you can afford a plane ticket and the medical bill you will always be able to obtain a competent abortion," as if having to pay 50 times as much for a service is something good.
In fact, the only person to offer any abstract moral judgment is the son Sid, who says "it's wrong though," to his mother. She weakly says "I don't think so," and he angrily shoots back "of course it is. It's little babies." Sid is never rebutted, and his father eventually brings him back into the family fold by saying "she's your mother. She'd forgive you anything" — a point which is perfectly true and perfectly valid for a son, but not for a citizen. Blood is thicker than water, but nobody even today thinks democratic republics operate on the basis of blood ties. Further, the father tells Sid, "I know you think she's done bad things, but she'll be punished enough for that." That's not the most-ringing endorsement of an abortionist one will hear today, and it points to how Leigh's and his actors' integrity in presenting the era prevents VERA DRAKE from being the pro-abortion propaganda film it'll undoubtedly be unjustly loved and hated as. In fact, Sid's blow-up at his mother is one of the movie's only two or three moments of "authentic" feeling. In fact Sid explicitly plays to the contemporary choir by speaking in the name of today's great value — authenticity. "Are we supposed to sit around, pretending to play Happy Families like nothing happened," he asks.
Finally, the relationship of Vera's obvious sainthood and her abortions is complex. VERA DRAKE is helped in this sense by being set in another era, which emphasizes the distances from the particulars surrounding the abortion wars of today. Practically the first thing the film does is establish Vera's goodness — the first thing we see her do is attend to a sick neighbor, then invite a lonely man to dinner, saying "you can't be having bread and drippings every day." (She's also taking care of a sick, elderly mother.) And Vera's care for the elderly and sick distance her from today's abortion advocates, who also (virtually to a man) advocate euthanasia on the same "autonomous self" basis as they do abortion (in fact, I saw the trailer for the reputedly toxic THE SEA INSIDE before VERA DRAKE). While Vera is portrayed as a kind of saint in most of her life, she is not one *because* she's an abortionist or *in explicit spite of* that fact. The film refuses to set the two in opposition, choosing instead to see Vera as she sees herself — as someone whose whole being is wrapped into helping people, acting in service of others.
It would not be wholly wrong to also note there are guilty consciences here. None of Vera's patients are as calm as she is, and one, a West Indian woman, almost appears offended that the abortion is not more traumatic. It shouldn't be that easy, she seems to think. Plus, every reference to abortion is couched in euphemism, like the very objectless term "pro-choice" itself. Vera only tells her patients that "I'm here to help you" and when asked, her unrehearsedly rehearsed bedside manner tells them "it'll all go away." The word "baby," of course, is never used. Nor (and this is more surprising) does she use the perfectly-unloaded word "miscarriage" … the closest she comes is "start the bleeding," as if she's just correcting a menstrual problem. Even when arrested, she can't bring herself to tell her family. And when the police detective uses the word "abortion" for the first time in the film, Vera says, irrelevantly under the circumstances but as if preserving a point of honor for her: "that's not what I do. That's what you call it."
And that's to me, the key in answering how should a pro-life person should react to VERA DRAKE, beyond its (to me indisputable) excellence as a movie? One of the things often discussed in pro-life activism and even noted to people who pray Rosaries outside abortion clinics (as I've done) is to emphasize how abortion victimizes women, pointing to (among many other things and with exceptions like Barbara Ehrenreich duly noted) how many regret their abortions to at least some degree. VERA DRAKE does not say abortion is something to be proud of, and it ultimately defends the abortionist primarily in terms of family duty and the effect her jailing has on her family. The movie clearly wants you to feel sorry for Vera, but if God calls us to love the sinner, there is nothing scandalous or immoral about what this movies tries to (and largely does) achieve. As Bowman point out, as bad as hating the sin can be and which VERA DRAKE emphasizes, it's usually preferable to pretending that sin is not sin.
Fortunately for such complexities, this fall's other prestigious film-festival abortion movie with a pro-abortion director and star is worthy of all the loathing and hate we can muster. PALINDROMES, which has yet to be released, is a truly hateful film. Not primarily because it's pro-abortion, mind you. If it were merely propaganda, like what some will see VERA DRAKE as being, I'd still feel obliged at least to try to bracket that and judge its merits as a work of art, the same way I'd look at TRIUMPH OF THE WILL or BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN or BIRTH OF A NATION. But PALINDROMES's problems are even more basic than that — it truly is one of the most unrelievedly misanthropic experiences I have ever had and, like A HOLE IN MY HEART, it is unpleasant to share the theater with it.
PALINDROMES follows a young girl Aviva, played by several different actresses (to no discernable effect or reason), who mindlessly sleeps with a boy, becomes pregnant, is forced to abort by her parents, runs away for a Candide-like picaresque through a fantasy world of various sexual depravities. The largest part of the running time covers Aviva's experiences as she's taken in by Mama Sunshine, an evangelical Christian who has adopted a score of unwanted children.
PALINDROMES caricatures the pro-life Christian "family" — quite viciously, quite untruthfully and worst of all, totally uninsightfully. (I love how this film makes such fun of a large family of adopted children when one of the standard pro-abortion talking points has long been "how many unwanted kids have YOU raised." Damned if you do …) PALINDROMES would qualify as hate speech against Christians if the term "hate speech" were applied neutrally. Solondz plainly knows nothing about Christian culture — the family, which is coded as evangelical Protestant in a hundred ways from the decor and pictures to the theological terminology ("saved," e.g.), but also recites the standard Catholic "Grace Before Meals" prayer. Everyone talks in a practicedly-happy sing-songy patter that the Von Trapp kids would have found too sugary. And this ignorance cripples Solondz's ability to make even a good satirical point.
For example, after being taken in, Aviva is kicked out of Mama Sunshine's family because of her sexual past. I'm sure that makes good cluck-cluck material for cocktail party gabbles at the Manhattan hen coop — "nasty Christians, being judgmental" and all that sniffing. Except that it's 180 degrees from the truth or even anything believable. If anything, evangelical Protestants have a tendency to play UP their pre-conversion sins. Rather than ostracize someone over "a past," they eagerly detail it during Revival Week as testimony to Christ's power — "oh, was I ever a sinner until I was found by the Lord. Let me how tell you bad a sinner I was" … etc., etc. In fact, this kind of material can even be found in such gliterati-approved movies as NIGHT OF THE HUNTER and ELMER GANTRY. What would have been truthful would have been if Aviva had been embraced for her past sins; what could have been funny was if she made up stuff to go along with (or even trying to one-up) "testimonies" from others; what could have been darkly satirical was if, having found her testimonies inadequate, she went out to commit more-outlandish sins in order to have something worthwhile to testify to or to win approval. Right there, are two more good comedy ideas than are found in PALINDROMES. Instead we get self-righteous snigger-at-flyover-Xtians cheap shots like kids saying "pass the Freedom Toast" in that annoying sing-songy timed-to-the-laugh-beat rhythm, a family contemporary-Christian song that plays like the songs sung by the Brady Bunch, the adding of "born and unborn" to the Pledge of Allegiance, and a REALLY over-the-top prayer graphically detailing every manner of abortion procedure. Said by a kid of about 7.
The tone of mockery without laughs is continual. One of the actresses playing Aviva is a very large woman, 300 pounds at least. And Solondz often dresses her in the tight-clinging, skimpy outfits of a Friday Night Disco Slut that she's spilling out of and hanging over as if she doesn't know how to dress "fat." My complaint, I hasten to note, is not about sexiness or attractiveness per se, but about Solondz's exploitation of this woman's build and how his costume choices and the way he directs this woman are indistinguishable from an attempt to humiliate her (humiliate the actress that is, not the character she's playing). When a shirtless Chris Farley does a Chippendale dance-off audition next to a bare-chested Patrick Swayze, that's funny only because Farley camps it up and boogies as if he's the sexiest man alive, born to be a Chippendale dancer. But Solondz directs Aviva, no matter who's playing her, to play meek and depressed, the sort of person who always looks down and averts her eyes. And who speaks in a low monotone like a dog that's been whipped once too often. Every moment looking at this 300-pound woman playing Aviva in this key, and dressed this deliberately-disgust-inducing way … you feel sorry for **the actress,** stuck in this geek show, and just want to avert your eyes from the screen.
But what makes this movie absolutely irredeemable is that these portrayals (and, of course you know you will not see pro-life Christians in a Hollywood or Indiewood movie without some tie to the handful of people who have taken to murdering abortionists) are not worse than the way Ellen Barkin (Aviva's mother) is caricatured. I even felt sorry for pro-choice people when a character presented the case for an abortion. She tells her daughter, that if she has the baby "you'll have to go on Food Stamps." ("And buy big jars of mayonnaise at a Costco on Staten Island," I wanted to add.) But then I found out I didn't have to. Barkin goes on to tell her daughter that she aborted her sibling and tells her that if she hadn't done so, the family couldn't have afforded "the N'Sync tickets," "the Gap accounts" … "the Ben N Jerry's" (the Toronto audience was yukking it up by this point, and I practically snapped). And I don't know how to take the fact the audience also laughed at the "it's just a tumor" line. Even beyond the inherent mockworthy facts of the lines is the way, typical for him, that Solondz directs Barkin's delivery of her lines — delivered with a fake conviction so practiced that it can't be believed for a second, and with the actress pausing for every unintentional potential punch line her character serves up to give the audience a chance to laugh at her. And then, a perfectly timed two beats after a moment of reconciliation, we get the father beating on the door and yelling "open the god-damn door."
I can't even give PALINDROMES credit for portraying the risks of abortion — hemorrhaging and an emergency hysterectomy (even for a safe, legal surgical abortion to which rich people had access for 50 times the cost 50 years ago). Partly because it's softened by being shot in a soft white-frame and slow piano tinkles, with the focus so soft as to make the image incomprehensibly blurry like this was a Valentine's Day douche commercial. But also partly because it's not from any kind of pro-life conviction. Nor is it even from a pro-choice stances that feels self-conflicted, has room for tragedy or has intellectual integrity. It's simply one more ranty verse in a "the world is shit" litany. The film looked as ugly as it felt — with the color recessive and grainy — and it probably was not a help that the audience was yukking it up throughout. Nothing is more alienating than seeing a movie with a big crowd that thinks it's all SO funny when you don't.
I watched PALINDROMES sitting next to a friend whom I call on my links to the right a "godless pinko." Michael also hated the film (scroll down to 15 Sept.) and said as we left the theater, close as I can recall, "I felt insulted for you, Victor — that I was sitting next to a Christian who was being subjected to that film." When a pro-life sniper who has attacked an abortionist's home gets into a shootout with police, I saw Michael hit his head on the back of the (very comfortable stadium-theater) chair in frustration at the line "how many more times can I be born again." To make me angry over the portrayal of an abortion-pusher and to get Waz angry over the portrayal of a Christian family and a pro-life murderer. That's an achievement — I guess. What I will truly to my last breath hold against this film is that I thought Solondz's earlier films were at least good, and I even named HAPPINESS best film of the year back in 1998. I'm now afraid to go back and look at that earlier work. So not only was PALINDROMES bad in itself, but it may have robbed my memory of a masterpiece — and that's just unforgivable.
CELSIUS 41.11 (Kevin Knoblock, USA, 2004, 4)
THERESE (Leonardo Defillipis, USA, 2004, 2)
In THE BATTLE OF ALGIERS (playing in Washington this week), the French colonel in charge of the anti-terrorism unit is read a Jean-Paul Sartre quote denouncing French rule in Algeria. In response, he asks aloud: "why are all the Sartres on the other side?" When seeing movies made by conservatives and/or Christians, I often have that feeling myself. CELSIUS 41.11 and THERESE are both movies whose goals, electing George Bush and spreading Catholicism, I share. But Flannery O'Connor once said that Christian artists should be concerned more with saving their work than saving the world. That dictum applies to more than religion, and to critics as well as artists. So it'd be patronizing and special pleading for me, who often winces as liberal reviewers give easy passes to weak films with left-wing agendas, not to note the truth — neither of these films works well, even on persuasive/propaganda terms, because neither is good cinema.
Ironically, some of the main reasons I did not see Michael Moore's Movie That Shall Not Be Named are also among the reasons I don't think all that much of CELSIUS 41.11 (subtitle: "The Temperature at Which the Brain Begins to Die"). The word on Moore's MTSNBN was that the film was an entirely intellectual experience about the war, and that Moore was not doing his Befuddled Everyjournalist comedy act. I read this almost uniformly in the *favorable* reviews, and never read anything explicitly to the contrary. And I said in someone else's comment field recently that I would have seen MTSNBN if anyone whose opinion I respect had said (a) the film is as funny as ROGER & ME (a great film in my opinion and that of a few other GOPers of my acquaintance); or (b) the film has the formal chops of an Errol Morris or a Dziga-Vertov or a Leni Riefenstahl (sticking to documentarians).
Unfortunately, neither of those stipulations holds for CELSIUS 41.11 either. I happily gave my $9 simply as a statement — plus a conservative friend asked me to see CELSIUS with him. But cinematic excellence is the summum bonum on this site, and this film just does not measure up. There was not even an attempt at levity or humor, except a couple of jokes from the talking heads that dominate this film (one of whom, full disclosure, is my work colleague Bill Sammon). CELSIUS is a pure polemic — a 75-minute infomercial for Bush. It's structured around five myths — that Bush stole the Florida election, that there was no WMD threat from Iraq, that Bush is making the Islamofascists hate us, etc. — and proceeds to rebut each.
The best moments were the liberal demonstrators — the "I love New York more without the WTC" signs, saying they like dictators who have national health insurance, the Democrat lawmakers saying how Saddam Hussein and his WMDs were an awful threat, and other Moore-like "use their own words against them" moments. And it effectively showed that John Kerry is still living on September 10 — promising only to strike terrorists after they do and seeing this all as a legal problem. And it uses Kerry's testimony before the Senate in 1971 to hang him high.
But CELSIUS is not careful at times. As if in rebuttal to Moore's notorious scroll of US foreign policy actions in BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE (tendentiously set to Louis Armstrong's "Wonderful World"), the film provides a list of attacks on the United States and the liberal democracies of Christendom by Muslim terrorists since 1979 and Iran's unpunished invasion of the United States. The point is clearly made — anyone who thinks the Muslims (or The Perfidious French for that matter) hate us because of Bush is smoking crack. But the dates and places flash by so fast that we have no time to absorb them. And the fact I noticed one item — the crash of an Egypt Air flight — that gave me a start, wondering why it was there at all, that it made me not trust the scroll. It had become as glib as Moore's scroll since we have no time to absorb it.
If this had been a segment on "POV" (as if PBS would have it), CELSIUS would have quite effective, but it's basically a quick TV show. Showing it in a theater makes it look terrible and out-of-its-depth, like putting a promising high-school player in the NFL. The film seems to have been shot on broadcast-quality video, which is fine on TV, but is painful to look at when blown up in a theater screen (plus it creates framing problems). Also, the found footage of liberal insanities was amateur video to begin with, so you have the "second-generation copy" problem compounding the visual awfulness. In addition, much of the film is closeup of talking heads, which gets to be visually oppressive when kept up for as long as CELSIUS does it.
CELSIUS is an intellectually effective rebuttal to some of the liberals' favorite canards. But even apart from the limitations of its preaching to the choir premise the overscored closing montage had me in diabetic shock), it just doesn't belong in a movie theater.
With THERESE, we have a quite different problem. Clearly, the people involved tried to make an A-list movie. But their reach far exceeded their grasp. THERESE comes up so short in the basic cinematic ABCs that a rational world would consider the fact that THERESE is a biography of a great saint (based on her own memoir) a matter to hold against it — "St. Therese of Lisieux deserves better," basically. And as a movie, THERESE is simply terrible — badly shot, badly lit, badly scored, often badly acted, and often badly written.
At the most basic level — what you look at on the screen — THERESE has some of the worst cinematography I've ever seen. The frame often cuts characters off at the head (and I don't believe this was a framing issue at the theater, since the lead review at the IMDb noted the same problem. The film also looks seriously underlit, with the colors mostly washed-out and the images so grainy that it looked a cheap 16mm blowup from Fotomat. The two most important closeups in THERESE — her getting up from her long illness through Mary's intercession, and her last words "My God, I love You" — look like they were shot through a haze. There is also little focal depth to the film, so the film drowns in a sea of blurry mud. The shot of Mr. Martin taking Pauline to the Carmelites ends with a long shot of the family mansion — and you can't even see the family's faces.
The acting is declamatory and stagy (if sometimes effective in that style), with everyone speaking in complete, literary sentences. The casting is off, because when Therese is about 12 or 13, she is being played by an actress who looks to be in her early 20s. The score is excessive and syrupy, and with very little variation (the same sugar is poured over the funeral of Therese's mother, the one moment in Therese's early life that has to have some harrowing quality). There is very little drama and even that's fumbled away (the scene of Therese imploring the pope to join the Carmelites is twice telegraphed and flatly performed). The establishing shots of Rome are so obviously stock footage as to be almost parodic. And the direction is clumsy (Therese's last look at her father is cut away from too quickly). In short, nothing in THERESE works.
This will all seem like needless cavilling or obsession with cinematic form to some of my Catholic readers, who might have a special devotion to the Little Flower or been beneficiaries of her intercession. I would never denigrate such "real life" miracles or works. And I have no doubt that God can use a bad movie to work wonders in men's souls, but that's for Him to decide — and being God, He can use PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE for such purposes if He so chooses.
But until sainthood is imputed through the camera lens, all we lowly mortals can do is consider THERESE as a movie. I don't want to go too deeply into the tiresome issue of the subjectivity of taste, but I think THERESE is a clear-cut case. Anybody who says this movie is good is not responding to the movie itself, but to its real-life story events (in which case actually viewing the film is superfluous, as is making it, come to think).


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The Green Man Festival takes place in the Brecon Beacons, in what is allegedly the "best event site in country," and I've no reason to doubt that. Last weekend, (from 21st – 23rd August) the Glanusk Estate was transformed into a family-friendly, alt-folk, cider-soaked, bustling, colourful and astonishingly hip music festival. Oh and it featured lots of other stuff too – from literature and comedy to science experiments and workshops on yurt making.
The festival was unofficially opened on Friday by the druids of Stonehenge. It's always a good sign when you get druids at your festival I think, like getting lichen growing on your walls, or bees colonising your garden – it's just one of those signs that you are probably doing something, somewhat indefinable, right. The druids led a ceremony to bring good weather (and peace) to the Green Man festival. Almost immediately after the ceremony finished it started raining. For about an hour. But then the sun came out for the rest of the festival so perhaps there was just a slight delay in appealing to the collective powers of nature.
In all seriousness though, there really was a strange sense of peace pervading the festival – I've never seen so many people have such a good time, and be so refreshingly friendly and relaxed. There was none of the late-night-lairiness you get at lots of music festivals; instead there was a genuine air of fun and happy times in the air.
I'd wanted to go along to take a look at the environmental side of the Green Man – a festival that manages to position itself firmly in the trendy boutique festival niche whilst still retaining its strong ethical and environmental principles. The festival doesn't have any corporate sponsors and that's probably the most noticeable aspect on arriving at the event. All the stalls are independents, many with their own ethical criteria (lots of organic this, fair-trade that and lots of proclamations about local sourcing and happy livestock). All the food on sale came in compostable containers complete with wooden cutlery that could either be re-used or composted – and compost bins scattered throughout the site, as well as a full range of recycling bins for paper, cans and plastics.
There was also a dedicated space given over to environmental and "alternative" ideas – "Einstein's Garden" – where science and nature collided and people had the chance to learn more about various campaigning groups, try their hand at different crafts and learn more about alternative ways of living – from radical midwifery to aromatherapy – although a bit more could be done to highlight this area.
Before Green Man took place I caught up with Fiona Stewart, one of the organisers, to ask her a bit more about the background of the festival. This year the festival introduced a unique partnership with Mind, the mental health charity. Fiona explained, "We wanted to reach people Mind doesn't normally reach – mental health is an environmental issue (and vice versa) how people deal with the world and with each other – it's all part of the same thing. I'm very into making and supporting each other. Self empowerment is an important principle for me. If we are really to be Green Men, we have to think about it all."
This sense of interconnectedness pervaded the festival – helped by the fact that there were no sharp delineations between different stages in terms of the types of music being played. The whole event felt cohesive and welcoming – genuinely a place for like-minded souls to come together.
That being said, there were some tensions between ethical and environmental principles of the Green Man (which I do applaud) and the nature of putting on such an event. Temporary festivals are fundamentally challenging things to put on without being very carbon-intensive. There is nothing like standing in a muddy field the morning after a festival and looking round the detritus left by thousands of fans all getting bored and dropping their beer cans at the end of the night to really make you despair of our ability to look after the planet. Even with the prevalence of the recycling bins and the sterling work of the small army of festival litter-pickers, there was still a fair amount of rubbish by the end of the headline act each night.
I couldn't help thinking about Climate Camp at Kingsnorth last summer, where there was much less infrastructure in place, but also a much greater sense of personal responsibility to maintain the site as we found it. Of course, Climate Camp and the Green Man, or any music festival, are very different events – however it was interesting to be part of a 10,000 person crowd, most of whom would probably identify themselves as interested in green issues, yet who still abandoned a sense of personal responsibility for looking after their beautiful surroundings by the end of the weekend.
Saturday night was closed by Jarvis Cocker. "Look at this" he said, "We're all together. There's no adult supervision here, because we are the adults. And it's ok. No-one's fighting or getting hurt. So maybe that means that people are ok. That we're ok." As rallying cries go, it perhaps lacks definite punch – though it got a huge cheer from the crowd. But I think that Green Man is really onto something – it's a great festival, with a fantastic line-up and is staunchly independent, and it is taking important steps in trying not only to organise the festival on ethical lines but also to minimise the environmental impact of the festival, though there is more that could be done there. But overall you are left with a sense that people are ok – and that with enough motivation there's no need for world issues, mental health or caring about the planet to be heavy ponderous subjects. You can engage in a fun, creative way – and that ultimately people are ok if we give ourselves the chance to be.
Environment, Festival, Green Man, Jarvis Cocker, Mind
Similar Posts:
- Green Man Festival: The Festival Preview Series
- Love London Green Festival
- A Review of Mental by The Vacuum Cleaner
- Festival Preview: Bestival & Camp Bestival
- The Ethical Christmas Emporium

subset: commoncrawl


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Decision makers
- The Hon Mark Butler MPFederal Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Water
- The Hon Greg Hunt MPShadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage
- The Hon Kevin Rudd MPPrime Minister of Australia
- The Hon Ryan Smith MPVictorian Minister for the Environment and Climate Change
- The Hon Lisa NevilleVictorian Shadow Minister for Environment and Climate Change
Save Our Koalas! Relocate koalas from plantations and create protected areas across Australia
Koalas are an Australian icon and they are being ruthlessly killed and maimed by plantation loggers and others with no intervention from government at any level. View: http://www.abc.net.au/7.30/content/2013/s3808542.htm
- Minister for Health and Sport
Greg Hunt MP
- Federal Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Water
The Hon Mark Butler MP
- Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage
The Hon Greg Hunt MP
- Prime Minister of Australia
The Hon Kevin Rudd MP
- Victorian Minister for the Environment and Climate Change
The Hon Ryan Smith MP
- Victorian Shadow Minister for Environment and Climate Change
The Hon Lisa Neville
I am writing to you in reference to the 7.30 program highlighting the maiming and killing of koalas in the plantations around Australia, but particularly Victoria. Koalas are an icon of Australia and governments on both side have ostensibly ignored their destruction in favour of the almighty dollar.
I ask you to immediately list the koala under the EPBC Act and to ensure that legislation is enacted to protect this iconic species and its habitat.
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For the small percentage of Internet users who do use Explorer, it's important to ensure that a website can be viewed just as well in Explorer as it can in any other browser. Web designers who don't take Explorer into account cause their clients to miss out on a number of potential customers who won't be able to see the site well.
To ensure that a site is compatible with various versions of Explorer, there are downloadable virtual hard drive programs that assist in the testing. Because there are several versions of explorer still in use, there are a large number of files that must be used to ensure the highest level of compatibility. With each version's testing files, it is possible to see exactly how well a site will work for a user viewing it with each specific IE version.
Explorer was created during a time when website standards were different. There were no mobile versions of websites to be used on smart phones and tablet computers. Many large sites, including Google, Amazon, Facebook and YouTube, have removed their site's support for Explorer completely because of this incompatibility. Many sites that are being started today don't take the browser into consideration at all when the sites are created. However, there is still some support for the aging browser.
The official Microsoft website has versions of Internet Explorer available for free here
While most home users don't browse with IE6, there are many large organisations that do. The British government is just one such example. Some portions of the U.S. government also use the browser. There are also regions of the world that favor Explorer over other browsers. Burgeoning economic powerhouse China largely uses IE6 to browse the Web. More than one-third of its Web users and almost a quarter of South Korean users still use IE6. Intel and other IT companies often use IE6 because of the expense of changing their technological infrastructure. With five years between IE6 and IE7, IE6 had plenty of time become firmly ingrained in some sectors of business and technology.
The way Explorer use currently stands, with the vast majority of its use being an outdated version more than 10 years old, it may be phased out in the next few years. Its use around the world is falling dramatically each year as organizations and individuals upgrade to better, more modern browsers. However, IE testing is still performed by Web developers who want to ensure a consistent viewing experience no matter what browser a reader may have.]]>
As a business evolves over time, its website must also evolve. When you begin planning a website design for your business, you may go into the venture believing that once the site is in place, there's nothing else to be done. There are few businesses that never change their websites, and those that don't end up with sites that eventually look old fashioned and aren't in tune with what today's readers want from a site.
As new site features are available, the standard features that people look for when they go to a site will change. The basic design strategy of a business website also changes over time. If your site is dated, people may assume that your business is as well.
Keeping your site updated with new information keeps people coming back to your site. Even if the only updating that you do is to announce big company news when it happens, your site is being kept dynamic and changing when updates are made. Fewer people are interested in a static website, and search engines are thought to rank sites better when they are updated often. A CMS makes it possible for the site owner to make these little tweaks without having to hire a Web designer to make small changes once the site is in place.
When a site is created without a CMS, the site's formatting can be kept steady across each page of the website without taking more time and programming to make it so. This often lowers the cost for creating a website because it takes less time to create the site. It also means that every little formatting detail will be in sync across the site, giving the reader a consistent viewing experience.
These days, no matter what type of business you run, you will likely get more traffic to your website if you have a blog in place. Having a blog as a part of your website also makes your site more search engine friendly. If you want a blog on your site, having a CMS is a must. Even if you don't have a blog when the site gets started, having a CMS in place gives you the framework to implement a blog any time you decide to add one. Blogging gives your company a personal face, and it gives search engines an opportunity to see updated content that contains many of your designated keywords.]]>
In order to get the attention you want from your target audience on the Web, you should employ a web design company in Sydney that is familiar with the local area as well as the importance of expanding to international territories. Professional Sydney web designers can help you implement an impressive and effective website design that allows you to showcase what your business has to offer.
If you are new to the online world, especially where web design is concerned, you may not want to try your hand at designing your own website. There are many companies online that now offer self-service websites which are supposed to be easy to navigate and upload your information to for public consumption. However, these services tend to cost a high monthly fee and offer little support in helping you actually design your website.
Another drawback to the do-it-yourself web design business is that you generally can choose from a handful of template designs, limiting your creativity and requirements necessary to capture the attention of your target audience. Website entail a lot of detail and while you must take an active participation in the concepts and content of your website, it may be more cost-effective to leave the technical side to professional Sydney web design companies.
There are many clients involved with Sydney web design companies that like to set up a website but do not want to take an active participation in the creation of the site, leaving it all up to the pros. However, in order to build a website that is truly reflective of your business, your company mission and values, you must be an active participant in the planning process.
It can help to start out planning concepts and ideas on paper until you feel you have a good idea of what you want. Then spend time with the web designer you have selected to go over the vital aspects of your company and what your target audience needs to see on your website. With your knowledge of the company and the web designer's technical skills, you can develop a site that is truly user-friendly, professional in appearance, and most importantly a good representation of your company.
Web design in Sydney is a booming business but it can certainly help to find a designer that is not only experienced but also compatible with your ideas and personality. A good working relationship is in order so that you can develop a long-term situation and feel comfortable relying on the designer you have chosen for years to come. Before committing to one designer or company, make sure to check out your options for web design in Sydney before making a commitment. Your due diligence before the process can make all the difference when it comes time to create your website for the whole world to see.]]>
Every site that wants to get and keep customers must be attractive. If there is too much clutter on a site with too much vying for the eye at one time, customers may not stick around to sort it all out. Customers need to be able to see exactly what they want from the site, including where to search, what is being sold and how the site is navigated right away. When these elements are an essential part of the website design, the site is well organized and easy to use.
A site that is too simple may lose customers because it doesn't have all of the components that buyers are used to using on the big websites. When a customer is used to using an online shopping cart and using a preferred method of payment, that customer may not have the patience for a site that isn't organized with all of the needed features to give a comparable buying experience.
Other parts of ecommerce Web design that can help keep users is to create pages that load quickly. Think about how many times you've been frustrated with a site that didn't load quickly. Now imagine how many customers would give up when trying to load a site they've never bought from before. They have other websites to choose from, and those sites will give them an easier user experience.
Buyers can't touch virtual merchandise, so they want to know as much about it as they can before buying. You may not be able to simulate a brick-and-mortar buying experience, but with the right website design, you can come close. The organization of photos, descriptions and other elements that help buyers understand what they are buying is a vital part of the design. When this aspect doesn't look professional, buyers may balk.
When deciding on an ecommerce Web design, always think of the end users. In the end, the way that the site is designed is more about the customer than it is about the company's tastes or the ways that you could cut corners to create the site. When the site isn't designed to provide a good user experience, the site isn't a successful one. With so much competition online, that user experience is one of the most important aspects of your website. Your product catalog should be easy to access and enticing to buy, and it should be so well organized that customers won't miss a thing.]]>
Just because a small business web design costs a lot of money doesn't mean it will work effectively with your goals. A website and the content inside needs to be clear, concise, and capable of bringing people back for more. When you pay big bucks to have a website designed by someone who has no clue what your company is all about, you will likely end up with a high-priced piece of junk that will not serve you well.
If you are just starting out with a website concept, it is important to first consider the important criteria that should be incorporated into that design. Here are some tips for constructing a more effective web design for your small business:
Your website must convey four key pieces of information:
• Who You Are
• What You Do
• How to Contact You
• Why People Need Your Services/Products
In order for you to answer these questions, you must first sit and think about your company and how you wanted represented to people. Draft several outlines on paper rather than just slapping your basic marketing information on a website.
If you use a lot of technical jargon and complex lingo, you may end up alienating visitors that give up trying to guess what it is you are trying to say. Keep content user-friendly and valuable for your target audience.
Ultimately, if you can provide your visitors with information that is valuable, easy to understand, and informative, you can develop a reputation as the go-to site when people are seeking a solution. Provide helpful hints, current news, and information about offers your company has going. Don't let your content turn stale by setting up your small business website and then forgetting about it in a few weeks. Make it a portal of communication that keeps you connected with your customers.
Some small business web designs are so hard to navigate users get easily frustrated and leave the site never having made a purchase or inquiry. Run through the navigation set up considering how your visitors would think. Make sure links to other pages are relevant and user-friendly. Most importantly make sure all of the links work.
You should offer several locations and options for your customers or clients to reach you. Display your contact phone number on the home page as well as other pages throughout your website, especially when you employ a call to action – an enticement for your visitors to make a purchase – and have a contact page set up with your location, the areas you serve if applicable, an email contact, or an automated form where visitors can reach you.
Creating a small business web design can be a good learning experience but it is also a necessity for many businesses these days. A professional designer can help with the technical end of the design process and make relevant suggestions for improving on your ideas but ultimately the design, content, and though process behind your small business website design should be preplanned by the owner who knows their business best.]]>
In 1979, the first system was put into place to enable ecommerce in the U.K. This beginning ushered in a number of advancements in this area in the early 80s. Even when the average shopper didn't have a home computer and had never heard of an Internet, more and more companies were creating ways to accommodate their customers online.
In 1987, the first software was created specifically to allow people to sell items through online merchant accounts. This opened the door for businesses to start getting a bigger customer base through this new portal, and ecommerce began a quick ascent.
After the first Web browser was created in 1990, it was a quick leap to an online shopping system navigated by icons in 1992. As the world started to see that shopping online was really possible, more and more navigators were being developed, leading to more companies offering their products through ecommerce channels. By 1994, you could order a pizza online.
It may have been programmers and gamers who first got into the Internet, but by 1995, corporations and Web developers had their eyes on the average, everyday consumer. One of the biggest years in the history of ecommerce was 1995. That year, both U.S. and U.K. companies developed large and secure shopping services. In the U.K., customers could buy from Virgin, Tesco, Dixons Retail and other recognized companies without leaving their homes.
In the U.S., one of the largest, most iconic online retailers was born. Amazon.com started out as a media retailer, but it quickly branched out into every household device imaginable. This billion-dollar business was the first online company that many people bought from as they learned how convenient and reliable ecommerce was. That same year, eBay was developed, changing the way people looked at their own possessions and making just about anything available online.
As companies and individuals started hearing how much business was available online, more and more people started putting their money into flashy websites. Some sites were run with little thought of cost or how to make money. Raising capital for sites that were run by people who spent lavishly and didn't monetize their sites well became the norm. This led to the dot-com bust in 2000.
While the world of ecommerce seemed bleak for a while, it didn't take long for it to recover. Businesses learned how to spend less, monetize their sites for the maximum incomes and how to advertise to the right demographics instead of paying for blanket advertisements that brought in few customers. Amazon started showing a profit in 2003 and ecommerce incomes have gone up across the board ever since. With US$197 billion spent online in 2011, these numbers are expected to continue to rise each year as commerce leaves main street and goes online.
References: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_commerce]]>
A CMS is used to create comprehensive websites and to keep them well organised for both the web developer and the end user. With the Joomla CMS, we can create not just the images and the text but the video and music if it's desired. The content can be created with multiple organizational systems to keep it easy to edit and the proper information easy to find.
There are a lot of programming languages and content management systems out there, and each one has its distinct advantages. Many website developers choose to use Joomla because if its open-source status. Because open-source systems use peer collaboration and development to create the best possible end product, many developers rely on these systems to stay current with programming trends. When an open-source system is used, the site owner has access to the blueprints of the site for later use, making it easier to edit the site or to troubleshoot changes down the road.
The user-friendly aspect of Joomla is a big advantage for site owners. The organisation of the source material is easier to understand, and it results in a good user experience for those who use it.
Joomla is a strong content management system that can be used for just about anything needed on a website. It is a robust CMS that creates a strong architecture for a site. It is also highly flexible, allowing it to be customized to exactly the needs of both the site owner and for the end user.
Joomla allows for custom templates to be created for new websites or for existing Joomla templates to be used. This gives site owners everything they need to choose exactly the design they want and need. This also allows for a quick site update by choosing a new, pre-made template if desired. The old design can also be edited easily for an updated look and different usability. And when the site needs maintenance, it can be done by a designer familiar with Joomla instead of finding someone to study the system to figure out how it is run. The source is all available for free to developers as well as to the public.
With Joomla, a site can be put together quickly. Because it is designed to be so user friendly, Joomla can be used to quickly get a site designed and put into place. It also gives sites a professional look that every business needs to stay competitive.]]>
Drupal uses standard CMS features to allow for maintenance, RSS feeds, user registration, system administration functions and page layout among other functions. The code can be customized to be used as a blog, as a standard website, as a site for user-generated works and for Web forums. The system is called a content management framework because it has a modular design and an extensive array of plugins.
The addons that are used with Drupal are additions that are create for the community and distributed for free. These modules, nicknamed "contrib" modules, are available by the thousands. They can change the capabilities of a website, give it new features, change the way a site looks and alter the way it behaves.
As with any CMS, there are a number of benefits to using the Drupal CMS. The programming interface is a dual system that allows for a high level of sophisticated customization by Web developers as well as a basic interface that allows anyone, even without programming skills, to install a website and to run it efficiently. This makes it easy for non-programmers to keep a site running after it has been customized by a designer. As long as the user knows how to use a basic Web browser, that user can run a Drupal-designed website.
The module addons are another major benefit to using Drupal Web design. With more than 11,000 of these to choose from, a site owner or designer can find exactly what they are looking for without having to design their own addon. These modules allow for virtually any type of website to be created with this CMS. There are even modules that make search engine optimization quicker and easier, making the SEO process easier for the owner.
The addons also allow for fast updating of the website without disturbing the rest of the site's architecture. Adding a new feature requires adding a quick module instead of a complete rewrite of the site's coding. This allows owners to change things around as they choose and to take out items that they no longer need without a lengthy site maintenance period.
Like WordPress, Drupal has thousands of free themes available for users. These are quick and easy design templates that can be changed out at any time without creating any changes in the site's content. These themes can be further customized to create unique designs for your website that aren't in use by any other site.]]>
The popularity of WordPress Web design has grown steadily in the eight years that it's been around because it's so easy to use and to customize. It is now used on 22 percent of the websites being created today and is the most popular content management system that is currently in use.
WordPress Web design can be used in a number of ways to create a website. Its plug-in architecture makes it quickly customizable, but there is also a template system that makes design even faster. The many templates available for WordPress sites allow site owners and designers to choose from among thousands and thousands of custom templates.
WordPress themes are designs that can be used and switched as needed. These allow a web designer to switch the overall design of the site quickly and to keep the content on the site. The WordPress cPanel of the Dashboard can be used by the site owner or the Web designer creating the site to switch out the themes quickly and cleanly. This is often done to take advantage of new themes that are available or to update the look of a website. To change the theme to a more customized look, the coding in the theme can easily be edited to create the desired changes.
The open-source code of WordPress is an immediate advantage that attracts many web developers. Because they can see the full source code, developers can get inside it and make the changes they need to quickly and easily. There is also a lot of existing documentation about working with WordPress Web design, making any troubleshooting, changes in coding, plug-in additions and other changes easier to perform.
WordPress updates itself. Users don't have to stay on top of the changes or buy new software every time there is an updated version. WordPress is in continual development and releases regular updates to fix small problems and security issues quickly. When there is an updated version, you are notified and can get the this update with a simple click.
WordPress installation is known for its ease and user-friendly aspect. Installing it doesn't take a lot of time, allowing sites to get up and available to users in little time. Even installing WordPress and customizing it doesn't take long, allowing the site owner to have the site they need without losing out on customers that would have gone elsewhere without the site available to them.]]>
Choosing the right one for the site often comes down to what the site will be used for, how quickly it must be finished and other factors. Often, it comes down to simply the designer's preference and the experience he has with each system.
There are many open-source CMS options to choose from, but the most popular are Joomla, Drupal and, by a landslide, WordPress. Perhaps the biggest benefit to using open-source systems is that they are just that- open. They make their source coding available to anyone. This allows the community as a whole to test new ideas, change parts of the coding for their own benefit and to make recommendations about improvements. Often, open-source systems have the fastest updates because the communities are so vigilant about the code and any bugs it may contain.
These systems are easier to customized because the coding is always available. It can be changed in any number of ways to create just what you need from your website. This function has made it a favorite type of CMS for web developers because they can do so much with the coding and do it in less time than with a system that doesn't have this kind of open availability.
Open-source CMS are free. They are available to the public with no licensing costs whatsoever. For some developers, this is one of the best features of these systems. Because they are free, they allow anyone at any stage in their lives to create a website and to make themselves visible online with a customized site.
Among the proprietary CMS, there are several types. Some are stand-along systems, some are single-source systems that come from just one website or one host. Others are offered as part of a package that includes other products. Each of these comes with its own list of benefits, but there are some that are common to all of these proprietary CMS types.
When you use a proprietary system, you get support as a part of the deal. Unlike the free systems, you can call a support team when you have a problem and get personal help with your technical issue. For many site owners, you get what you pay for in terms of support when you use proprietary systems.
Some proprietary CMS are geared toward very specific uses, making it unnecessary to create a lot of changes to it to make it more customized. It will have some out-of-the-box features that would take time to create with an open-source CMS.]]>


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We need to undertake some essential maintenance to our systems, which is scheduled for Tuesday 4 April 2017, from 5:00am until approximately 7:00am.
There are likely to be disruptions to our websites during that time. We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.
We use cookies on all our websites to gather anonymous information about your visit that helps us to make improvements and increase performance. By continuing you are consenting to these cookies.
If you would like more information or would like to change your cookie preferences, please visit our cookies page.
Until now ifs University College SPS and CPAs have been delivered through the Institute of Financial Services - a part of the organisation dedicated to supporting professionalism in the sector.
As of September 2016 all SPS and CPAs are issued by The London Institute of Banking & Finance. This new arrangement is in keeping with one of the key findings from discussions with the sector which is the need for all activity to be offered through one, highly recognisable body. We believe this will be of benefit to our SPS and CPA holders, particularly those who have also undertaken their professional qualifications with us, and to their clients, for whom their advisor's professional credentials will be clearer.
To avoid any confusion for students or employers as a result of this transition, for a limited time, SPS and CPA certificates will carry a reference to link the new and old names.
We have informed the FCA of our new name to ensure that the name on SPS and CPA certificates is consistent with the list of Accredited Bodies in the FCA Handbook. Advisers holding an Institute of Financial Services SPS do not need to take any action.
Please speak to a member of our customer services team on: +44 (0) 1227 818609 or by emailing email@example.com.


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One of the country's most successful rock bands Indus Creed, gears to rock you off your seats as you prepare to enjoy some of their best songs only on MTV Unplugged Season 2. The Pune band has had a flourishing musical career performing along with names like Santana and at the MTV Asia awards.
As they feature on the fourth episode of MTV Unplugged Season 2 this Saturday, we caught up with Uday Benegal for an exclusive interview where he revealed his thoughts on music and much more.
Catch the complete episode of MTV Unplugged Season 2 this Saturday at 8 pm and the repeat at Sunday noon, only on MTV. To know more, log on to mtv.in.com/unplugged
Tags : #Mtv Unplugged #Uday Benegal


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eekisageekModel Female Portland, Oregon, US
My MM URL: http://www.modelmayhem.com/elizabethhsia
Mayhem # 2649807
About MeI am fairly new to modeling- got into it just for fun however looking to expand my portfolio! I am looking to do pinup, rockabilly, cosplay, fantasy, comic book character shoots as well as fashion forward shoots (really any shoots I would most likely be open to) I have multiple pinup outfits, and a classic woseley hornet that i like to shoot with. The best way to contact me is through model mayhem or Facebook.com/elizabeth.hsia
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AN AWARD-winning Malton architects is celebrating its 20th anniversary with an exhibition of previous projects.
Bramhall Blenkharn Architects was established in York in 1994, and has grown to be one of the leading practices in the region, winning over 60 national and international design awards and being responsible for over 1,000 projects across the North of England.
The practice was formed when Mark Bramhall joined Ric Blenkharn in partnership and the pair were later joined by Patrick Cuddy as director moving to Malton in 2000.
They now employ eight members of staff and this year has won four further awards for their work as well as being shortlisted for The Sunday Times House of the Year Award for a new home in Harrogate.
To mark the 20th anniversary Bramhall Blenkharn is holding an exhibition at the City Screen in York until June 29.
Director Ric Blenkharn, said: "\We have completed over 1,000 projects across the region, probably representing over £100M worth of construction work. Clearly this has made a major contribution to the local industry. and we have been delighted to work with numerous clients during that time and grateful for entrusting their projects to us.
"We have been delighted to win our recent awards, recognising the contribution of clients, contractors and suppliers in achieving these projects.
He added: "We would like to thank all those people who have supported us in various ways over the past 20 years, and look forward to a continuing relationship in the future."


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I have not worked on a campaign since 2004, but if I were working on President Barack Obama's campaign team, I would be crafting a television ad for Univision this morning that features this quote of Gov. Romney's from last night:
Now let me mention one other thing, and that is, self-deportation says let it -- let people make their own choice. What I was saying is, we're not going to round up 12 million people, undocumented, illegals, and take them out of the nation. Instead, let -- make -- people make their own choice. And if they -- if they find that -- that they can't get the benefits here that they want and they can't find the job they want, then they'll make a decision to go a place where -- where they have better opportunities.
The operative word is, of course, "illegals," which Mr. Romney uses as a proper noun. These are not people, they are "illegals." The funny, well, not funny in the sense of laugh a lot but funny in the sense in which Mr. Romney joked in the infamous 47% video that he would have a better shot at the presidency if he were Latino, the funny thing is that he does not even recognize how offensive he is being. After all, people speak like that at the club, don't they? Clueless and offensive in equal measure. And, the Romney campaign is wondering why they are losing Latino voters by overwhelming margins?
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Effective immediately, Mark previously headed up Connells office in Grantham where his success at managing that branch means he has been promoted to oversee all Connells branches in the Peterborough and Lincolnshire area.
"I am delighted to be taking up the role of Area Director for Connells in Stamford," says Mark. "We have a great opportunity to be the leading estate agent in the town and I fully intend to do everything possible to make this ambition a reality. Needless to say, we have no intention of closing the branch and fully anticipate we will be going from strength to strength in the near future."
Mark has big plans for Connells in Stamford including a renewed focus on the local new homes market and helping homeowners looking to move to successfully market their properties and take advantage of improvements in the housing market going forward.
"Although there are still tough times ahead for the housing market, we expect to see improvements as the economy picks up in 2011," Mark explains. "Connells Stamford will also be building upon the great relationships we have with local developers to offer a range of superb new homes to buyers which I am confident will be very successful.
Mark will shortly be recruiting a new team manager to the Stamford branch who will have prime responsibility for the branch. If you are interested in moving, would like advice on the local property market or to discuss mortgage options, please contact Connells Stamford on 01780 762951 or email: firstname.lastname@example.com
- ends -
Further information
For further information and photography, please contact the press office on 01525 215419 or email Julia Brook, Group PR Manager: email@example.com or Christine Webb, Group PR Executive: email@example.com
Notes to Editor
About the Connells Group:
Founded in 1936 and comprising of 464 branches nationwide, the industry-leading Connells Group is the second largest and most profitable UK estate agency network. Last year, the Group generated £54.2 million in pre-tax profits making it the most successful estate agency group in the UK.
In addition to operating under the Connells brand, the Group trades under other well-known local names including Allen & Harris, Bagshaws Residential, Barnard Marcus, Brown & Merry, Fox & Sons, Jones & Chapman, Manners & Harrison, Roger Platt, Shipways, Swetenhams, William H Brown, Sharman Quinney and Pattison Lane. As well as residential property sales and lettings, the Group has a comprehensive range of B2C and B2B services including new homes, mortgage services, conveyancing, EPCs, surveying, corporate lettings, asset management, land & planning, LPA receivers, auctions and relocations.
The Connells Group is consistently named Best Large Estate Agency at the Estate Agency of the Year awards, winning the top prize for four of the past six years. It is also highly acclaimed in the New Homes category, winning Gold five times in the last six years, and in the Financial Services category for which it currently holds the Gold prize. For more information, please visit www.connells.co.uk
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What Kind Of Home Does $500K Get You In LA?
"Nowadays, $500,000 is right around the median price of a home in the county â€" and buyers in that range know all too well that the middle of the road is not an easy place to be. In many neighborhoods, it buys only a starter home or condominium, and the competition for those properties is strong.
...Although it had been spruced up, the 82-year-old home was a bit worn, the bedrooms were small and the outside was painted an arresting shade of red approaching the color of pomegranate juice. The asking price for the 1,080-square-foot home was $485,000."


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What Is the Best Day to Make Airline Reservations?
It sometimes feels like a roll of the dice when it's time to buy airline tickets. Making a reservation can yield vastly different results depending on when you book your seats. If you've ever asked the person sitting next to you on a plane how much he had to pay for his ticket you probably heard a number that was a bit different from yours -- for better or worse. Before you make your next airline reservation, figure out the secret to saving a considerable amount of money.
Day of the Week
If your travel plans are flexible at all, you can save money by knowing which day of the week to travel. Airlines do not offer the same fares every day. Peak travel days are generally the highest-priced, while the slowest days are usually the cheapest. The website Fare Compare completed a study to determine which day of the week the average person could fly for less, and the answer was Wednesday. If you can travel by air on Wednesday, then you are likely to save money compared to the same flight on other days. Tuesday came in a close second, while Friday and Sunday were the most expensive days to fly. And if you can book the first flight out in the morning, you may save even more.
Making the Reservation
Supply and demand might somewhat control airfares on particular days of the week, but the day you make the reservation might make a difference, too. According to Fare Compare's website, logging on and purchasing airline tickets online at about 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on a Tuesday will get you access to the best possible deals while they last. Many airlines release these cheaper tickets at this time, but the deals are often pulled on Thursday or when the allotted tickets run out, whichever comes first.
More Than 21 Days
Purchasing your airline tickets at least 21 days before you fly will usually result in a lower fare regardless of which day you plan to fly. Depending on the airline, you may be able to get advanced purchase ticket prices just seven or 14 days before the flight, but anytime within the last week, unless it is a last-minute deal, will not be your best bet, and you may not get the plane at all.
Any Day Just After Midnight
If you need to purchase tickets sometime in the next 24 hours, you may not have the luxury of booking tickets on a certain day of the week, and your schedule may not allow for travel on any day you choose. When this happens, try to wait until late in the evening to buy your tickets. According to the Top Travel Tips website, many airlines who receive cancellations do not update their records until the end of the calendar day, at midnight, so waiting until just after midnight to try to purchase may result in more available seats and potentially better prices.
Photo Credits
- BananaStock/BananaStock/Getty Images


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Basic Information
Name: Sakamoto Tatsuma
Gender: Male
Age: 23
Clan: -
Looks: He has naturally wavy long brown hair and wears a dark red coat and sunglasses. With him at all times unless stated otherwise is his blade, Honjo Masamune, which he keeps sheathed at the hip.
Personality: Sakamoto holds a persistent eccentric, "too positive" attitude that often gets him into trouble with others, along with leading him to dismiss more important matters as "imagination" and laughing afterwards. His right hand woman, Mutsu, is often irritated by his personality and constantly tells him to go die somewhere. Sakamoto is also a pacifist and abhors the use of violence, preferring to intimidate a possible enemy through a show of his power that doesn't result in injury.
Village Info.
Village of Birth: Unnamed Island
Village of Alliance: Land of Iron
Rank//Chakra Info.
Ninja Rank: (When compared to a shinobi) Unofficial Sage
Specialty: Kenjutsu|Taijutsu
Your ninjutsu: Taijutsu |Kaito's Taijutsu |Kenjutsu |Iado |Medical Training in progress | Custom Jutsu
Background Info.
Sakamoto was born off the coast of the main continent on an island in the eastern seas. The island was small and secluded, and was ignored by other countries for a large portion of its history. As a sub-sequent result of their isolation, the people of the island were never introduced to chakra and the land was inhabited solely by samurai.
Sakamoto was born into a fairly wealthy family. His father was a well renowned swordsmith praised for his top of the line blades, along with being a well-respected and feared samurai. Sakamoto's mother was more into art, developing a curiosity and passion for it at a young age. She spent a majority of her free time painting and practicing the art of calligraphy.
Despite the fact that the island was secluded and living in a time of peace, Sakamoto's father felt it necessary for his son to learn the way of the sword. He began to tutor Sakamoto at a young age, though after only a brief training session, he discovered that his son had an obnoxious, eccentric personality. To teach him would take diligence and un-imaginable amount of patience, conditions he was more than willing to adhere to. The next few years, Sakamoto's father spent relentlessly training his son, helping him to gain heightened strength and agility along with increased stamina, all by having him perform seemingly normal household chores.
Though, teaching Sakamoto the sword would be a bit more of a task.
When it came to Kenjutsu, Sakamoto was unable to properly comprehend his father's passion, nor his lessons in Kendo. After years of training, he was only able to pick up the mere basics. He preferred improvisation, rather than the old country swordsmanship that his father would teach. Using the basics that he learned, Sakamoto began to form his own style of fighting rather than to adhere to his father's teachings. Sakamoto's father's patience was pushed to its limit-Though he cared for his son, there was something that shook him to the very depths of his soul, his father being a seasoned warrior. He couldn't shake the fear that his son was quite possibly a moron.
One day, Sakamoto skipped out on training all together to spend a day at the park and play with other kids his age, however he found it hard to make friend out of them. The other children would avoid him the moment they found out his skull was empty. At that age, children often go through the "cooties" phase where they avoid girls in fear of contracting some unknown contagion; In Sakamoto's case children would avoid him in fear of contracting stupidity.
Though his feelings were hurt, he laughed it off and spent the rest of the day alone. That night he laid down on top of his roof and stared into the void of space. He was marveled by the stars and the moon that lit up the night sky. He picked out constellations, spotted a pulsar, and made a wish on a shooting star; There was nothing boring about space, it was so close, yet so far away; So similar to the world he lived in, yet vastly different at the same time. It was at that moment that his heart started racing, and he fell in love.
As the years came and went, Sakamoto's mother had succumbed to a terminal sickness, while his relationship with his father slowly degenerated to the point that the two would hardly talk. On his fourteenth birthday, Sakamoto took it upon himself to leave the island to travel the world, something he'd wished for since the night he first fell in love-His mistress was waiting. He left with three days' worth of food, a blade forged by his father, money to support him, and the clothes on his back.
Out in the open world as a young teenager, Sakamoto would keep in touch with his father through the occasional letter home. He made his way from place to place, never staying in a single town for an extended period of time. He pretty much lived a nomadic existence at this point, or at least up until he caught wind of the existence of an independent nation in itself, The Land of Iron home to the samurai.
Several months passed before he made his way to the Land of Iron, home to the samurai in the main continent (despite being a no-brained-idiot, he knew how to survive on his own). Besides the difference in climate and overall terrain, it really wasn't too different from back home.
Briefly after coming to the land of iron, Sakamoto encountered a common street thug who recognized him immediately as someone who "wasn't from around there." The thug drew his blade and attempted to rob Sakamoto, a fourteen year old boy, of his belongings. When told to hand everything over, Sakamoto laughed, happy and giddy as ever.
Sakamoto: Hahahahahahaha, ahh imagination.
He brushed off the encounter as nothing more than "imagination," knocking the mans blade away from his body and walking off into the distance. Despite the persistence of the thug Sakamoto walked to occupied with deciding where he would head next to . During the whole fiasco, Sakamoto managed to attract the attention of the people around him, including one Yoshida Shouyou. Shouyou extended an offer to learn under him the way of the sword along with granting him a place to stay and food to fill his stomach after noticing that he was foreigner from his choice of clothing. Such an offer was indeed favorable to Tatsuma's conditions, he would have to be an idiot to refuse such an offer..(Well, you know what I mean, it was a great offer).There was something about this man that made Tatsuma want to follow him, he spoke in a soft understanding tone and all at once, Sakamoto found himself unable to refuse such an offer.
Under the tutelage of the man he would now refer to as sensei, Sakamoto managed to befriend three people in a dojo full of students who were also being taught by Yoshida sensei. They were three of his closest friends; Actually, they were his only three friends. The bond they built that day would continue to grow stronger each and every day. Their names were Keotsu, Gin, and Riku.
The training each of them was put through was indeed intense. The conditions were even harsher on the others with Sakamoto's incessant and un-canny sense of humor. Even still, as each day came to a close, the four friends managed to come together to watch the sun set on the horizon. These were the good times.
And then a Coup'd teat fell into place, and in the blink of an eye, the good times Sakamoto and his friends once enjoyed was gone.
A faction within the land had planned a rebellion to over throw the current shogun. Naturally, Tatsuma was unaware of the motive behind the sudden rebellion, but it was clear that the underground faction was tired of the Shogun's rulings. With many people backing them, the rebellion took the nation by storm. It was a bloodbath with innumerable losses on both sides. In the end the rebellion was successful in defeating the conservative forces and they overthrew the Shogun. As a form of insurance to guarantee their reign, the daughter of the Shogun, and Shouyo sensei were taken in as hostages; The two played a vital role for the conservative forces. After seeing four of his beloved students fall into enemy hands, Shouyo was the one who made a deal with the enemy. On the condition that they be released, he would willingly serve as a prisoner to them.
Sakamoto and the others were too weak at the time to mount an attack to save their sensei, and it was with a heavy heart that they swore to break him free of his bonds. It was then that Sakamoto, Keotsu, Gin, and Riku formed their own faction, Nos Venerabilem, which consisted of the four friends alone. In a strategical effort to become stronger, the group split into two; Gin and Keotsu travelled towards the west, while Sakamoto and Riku travelled towards the North.
With Riku being the older and more experienced out of the two, he decided to tutor Sakamoto during their travels. Riku put him through rigorous training meant to increase his agility so that he would be able to utilize a more counter offensive style of fighting. The fighting style allowed for Sakamoto to take advantage of an enemy's movements to effectively place the blade where an enemy was to move and strike a vital point with precision and speed. Riku also educated him on the placement of the pressure points across the body and how to utilize "dim mak." Sakamoto would afterwards go on to teach Riku of his fighting style by improvisation. It involved finding a rhythm in an enemy's movements and letting your own attacks flow without inhibition, following the same principle of the drunken fist.
Four years came and went and it was time for the awaited rendezvous of Nos Venerabilem.
Sakamoto and Riku made their way back to the land of iron where Gin and Keotsu waited. The four were able to enjoy a brief heartfelt reunion after four years, before developing their plan of action. The four unanimously decided that they would not strike from the shadows. The shogun had turned into a tyrant over the years, and oppressed the people of the nation, subjecting them to a dictatorship. They formulated a plan that involved marching up to the Shogun's castle and eliminating all guards that would come to apprehend them. After eliminating the Shogun's forces they would retreat before reinforcements could come. The retreat was not a result of cowardice; Rather it was so that they would be able to use their actions to rally the spirits of each citizen who had been oppressed by the Shogun and form up an army.
Everything went according to plan. An innumerable amount of guards were cut down effortlessly by the four friends, and they managed to retreat before reinforcements could close in. While they enjoyed their success, the Shogun was greatly displeased. He immediately recognized that they were no ordinary men.
Nos Venerabilem worked to rally the people to fight back against the Shogun. It was difficult at first; Most of the people were living in fear of the Shogun for the past few years and were reluctant to defy him-Though they would eventually come around. While Sakamoto and the others were working to incite the people, the Shogun was running a thorough background check on the four who publicly defied him earlier.
After a thorough investigation the Shogun discovered the identities of the vigilantes who were causing trouble in his nation. He decided to take action in an attempt to dwindle their spirits. The Shogun sent a single teenager to Sakamoto, Keotsu, Gin and Riku carrying with him a "gift" from the Shogun. The boy claimed that he didn't wish to fight, and was simply under strict orders. The group hesitantly accepted the gift, opening the bag it was in only to find the decapitated head of Shouyo sensei.
Rather than to dispirit and disband Nos Venerabilem and the rebel faction, this action on the Shogun's part served to ignite the flames of war. With their sensei now dead, it was the time for the students to take action-No longer could they remain quiet. Sakamoto found that he was unable to laugh this off as he did with so many other things; Not long afterwards, motivated by the death of their master, Tatsuma and the others charged the castle head on overcoming the great numbers with sheer willpower and strength.
They charged the castle with their own individual objectives. Keotsu and Gin would go on to defeat the Shogun, meanwhile Sakamoto and Riku would be the ones to free Izanami Kaito from her bonds. Because a bulk of the castles forces was concentrated on defending the Shogun, Sakamoto and Riku has a less than tasking job. They succeeding in freeing Izanami and the three made their way to where Keotsu and Gin would be in order to assist in any way possible, but when they arrived they found that this was unnecessary. Gin and Keotsu had defeated each and every guard, their clothes drenched in the blood of those who they cut down. Gin's signature silver hair was lined red with blood; It was then that he earned his nickname of "Shiroyasha."
In the end, it was Izanami who killed the Shogun, beheading the coward on the spot and taking her rightful place as Shogun of the land of iron. She would implement the changes that were desired by so many and return the country to its former glory. She would be a fine Shogun to the land of iron.
As their plans proved successful, and the battle came to a close the four friends slowly got a bit distant. Gin would go on to open his own business called "Odd Jobs Gin," Keotsu left the land of iron to travel abroad with his old friend, Mifune, who taught him his famous Infinite One Sword Style; Riku seemed to simply vanish as time came to pass-The war apparently took its toll on him psychologically.
At that moment, Sakamoto questioned what he would do next and suddenly remembered the shooting star he made a wish upon when he was a child. His wish was to leave his home on the island and travel the world as a nomad, but his wish had already come true-so he came up with a new ambition. He would travel the world as a merchant business man in an attempt to strengthen ties between the villages all throughout the world. It was his way of protecting the peace that the four managed to establish that day, and spread that good fortune to the rest of the world. Sakamoto looked forward with optimism; His mistress was still waiting for him.
Early in his travels, Sakamoto managed to meet and befriend a woman named Mutsu, whom he shared his ambitions with. Though he was indeed odd, Mutsu saw something in him that made her want to follow his lead. Perhaps it was the fact that all he did was talk and think about the future, speaking of never losing sight of one's duty. Sakamoto would then go on to form the Kaientai, a commercial outfit that would travel the ninja world in search of business opportunities with Mutsu as his right hand woman.
Through his travels, Sakamoto managed to meet many people and make a number of valuable friends, such as Mathias and Jinbe. Sakamoto and Mathais met in a cabaret club and managed to make each other's acquaintance while enjoying drinks and the hostess's. The bond that they would develop woas so strong that Mathias was inducted as a member of Nos Venerabilem. Whereas during the battle in the land of iron, Nos Venerabilem served as the name for the Gin, Keotsu, Sakamoto and Riku's small group, it now stood as a symbol that their bond of friendship, the bond each member of Nos Venerabilem established would transcend even the greatest of distances.
It was later on a business excursion to Iwagakure that Sakamoto met Jinbei. Although at first Jinbei was not too fond of Tatsuma's eccentricity, he grew to appreciate him after hearing briefly of his past and his ideals through Mutsu. Although Jinbei still refers to him as an idiot, Jinbei too was inducted into Nos Venerabilem as a valued friend.
Somewhere down the line Sakamoto managed to wander off into the deserts of sunagakure after some time in the land of rivers. Luckily before his death in the foreign desert he was found by someone who happened to be a member of the village, his name was Vision. Out of the kindness of his heart, Vision took him back to the village despite his un-canny personality. It was there that he met a man with a strange skin tone, one half of his body being black and the other white. Unable to resist the urge to laugh, Sakamoto soon after found himself waking up in a hospital. The other thing the doctor had to say was that he was "Lucky he wasn't eaten." Nevertheless, Sakamoto managed to patch things up with the Kazekage and develop a strong friendship with him and the other members of his village.
Despite developing such close ties in the village, Sunagkaure didn't have any cabaret clubs, which left him without reason to stay any longer.
Some of the other bonds he formed include Scary Yamato and Scorps of Konohagakure, Lord of Kaos and Migualon of Kirigakure, Hazama of Iwagakure, RokuNR of Kumogakure, Headmaster of Hogwarts: Nexus, and Toshiro a fodder who got in his way at some point.
Other Information
Through intense training with Riku, Sakamoto managed to develop excellent perceptive and deductive abilities along with frightening speed, which he makes great use of in battle. Despite almost always wearing his signature sunglasses, Sakamoto is known for having keen eyesight which only adds to his ability to follow he movements of his enemy's and find his rhythm. Through sensory deprived training he became adept to a certain degree in the use of Human Echolocation. With this skill he needs to rely less on his eyes as he is capable of picking up on movements with his ears along with some lingering smells and/or odors that might indicate the presence of an enemy (Not on the level of Inuzuka, but a bit beyond ordinary). He always carries with him a nasal freshener.
As a child Sakamoto was always reluctant to listen to instruction, and as a result he developed a style of fighting based on the basics that he managed to pick up. He would rely more on improvisation than anything else, and striking without inhibition. As he grew older and came under the tutelage of Shouyou and Riku he leaned more towards a Touch of Death (Dim Mak) and counter offensive style of fighting. Perceiving the motions and attacks of his enemy, Sakamoto would cleverly strike at one of the body's pressure points, while his enemy was busy worrying about his apparent idiocy. Following the principles of Dim Mak a single strike can be lethal using seemingly less force by targeting specific parts of the body with the aid of chakra.
Sakamoto carries with him his blade Honjo Masamune. The blade Honjo Masamune, is renowned for being one of the greatest creations of the famous master sword-smith of the Land of Iron, Masamune. Coveted by many, and handed down from Shogun to Shogun the blade was remarked as one of the greatest ever created. The blade is a katana of average length, and made of the purest chakra steel. The blade's hilt is also made of a rare, black wood wrapped in a pure green cloth. The tsuba is a square shape, without any pattern-reflecting simplicity in the design that brings a peace of mind; A true work of art. This masterpiece is currently in the possession of Sakamoto, who acquired it from Shouyou sensei prior to his death, who had obtained it during battle many years ago. He keeps it on his person at all times unless stated otherwise.
Along with his blade, Honjo Masamune, Sakamoto carries around other ninja tools, such as a set of specially made kunai knives and shuriken, made with pre-determined fracture points and laced with sulfur nitrate and explosive tags. On some more rare occasions, he may carry with him a Bokuto in the place of his sword.
Theme Song and Background Music
Won: -
Lost: -
Much thanks to Gin-San. My history piggybacks off of his to allow for our characters to interact with each other
~Approved~ I guess I will have to let the med training slide, even though this is a samurai bio, but no other ninjutsu.