Hollywood, His new release Broken Embraces, an intense tale of passion and tragedy, is no exception.

Actress Penelope Cruz returns as the Spaniard’s leading lady after her gritty performance in 2006 film Volver, which gained her an Academy Award nomination.

In a complicated narrative of entwined relationships, she plays Lena, who becomes an actress worshipped by director Mateo Blanco.

The 35-year-old possesses the screen in almost every frame she appears in, and has a magnetism that is hard to resist.

‘Utter genius’

Almodovar admits the pair have cultivated a special relationship, which looks likely to colour his film-making for some time yet.

“She brings to me a great sense of security because of her blind faith in me. She trusts me so much,” says Almodovar, mostly through an interpreter but occasionally breaking into English.

“She sees me as an utter genius which is not the way I see myself at all. It’s embarrassing when I listen to her!

“It gives you a lot of strength having an actress who you know will do absolutely anything you ask her to do,” he explains.

Since Cruz’s first appearance in an Almodovar movie 12 years ago, Cruz has become an international star and Hollywood presence.

But Almodovar regards her latest role as a kind of homecoming, with his films best suited to bringing out her strengths as an actress.

“I give her the characters she couldn’t find in the US. They are very complex, risky, challenging - and she loves a challenge,” says the film-maker.

“Life for Penelope has changed enormously and she’s been extremely successful, but I don’t think that’s changed her approach to her roles and the way she works in any way.

“Certainly with me, she works in the same way she always did,” adds the 59-year-old, who emphatically confirms he will work with her again.

The screen star, meanwhile, has always spoken of her mentor with great warmth and respect, recently saying that he is “part of my life and career”.

Pregnant nuns

Almodovar, also credited with writing Broken Embraces, calls it “the most complex movie I’ve ever made”, adding that he had to draw on the experience of his 16 previous pictures.

The film is partly about the making of a movie and is his “natural” homage to cinema with nods to Hitchcock and to his own works, including Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown.

Some critics have said it lacks the spicy punch of his past films, with topics ranging from pregnant nuns and transvestites to homosexual awakenings.

But Almodovar, who avoids watching his films after their release, says he “doesn’t think about other people’s opinions” and has mellowed in his approach.

“I never set out to be shocking. That’s what Lars Von Trier does, that’s what Madonna does. Scandal is in the eye of the beholder.

“I’ve been making movies for 30 years and probably the way I feel now is less shocking - that’s only natural,” he explains.

The film-maker adds that we are living in times of “huge scandal”, but does not feel cinema is generating controversy anymore.

While times may be shifting, there are other constants about Almodovar’s cinematic approach, including performers who make regular appearances in his films.

Alongside his beautiful leading ladies are a supporting cast of striking character actresses, which he puts down to being surrounded by women when he was growing up.

“And it’s purely practical, when you’ve worked with someone before and understand them. It’s nice to feel like a family,” he says.

Almodovar commands the respect of Hollywood and Cannes alike but says he has one regret about his good fortune.

He has to live in a “comfortable, pricey” area of Madrid, but would really rather live in a more ordinary, vibrant neighbourhood of the city - all in the name of fuelling his life’s work.

By Michael Osborn, reporter BBC News

California, Phillip and Nancy Garrido denied 29 charges including kidnap, rape and false imprisonment when they appeared briefly in court in El Dorado County.

Ms Dugard was bundled into a car in the county in 1991 on her way to school.

Police are also searching the Garrido home in Antioch for clues to several prostitute murders in the 1990s.

Several bodies in the unsolved murders were dumped near an industrial park where Mr Garrido worked.

‘Like a marriage’

Ms Dugard and two children she bore in captivity in Antioch, 200 miles (320km) away from where she was abducted, were freed this week.

They are staying at a motel near San Francisco after being reunited with Ms Dugard’s mother, Terri Probyn.

Ms Probyn told her ex-husband, Carl Probyn, that Ms Dugard appeared young but healthy.

She added that her daughter felt “really guilty for bonding with this guy”, Mr Probyn told CBS news.

Mr Probyn, who saw his step-daughter being snatched from a bus stop in 1991, said: “Jaycee has strong feelings with this guy. She really feels it’s almost like a marriage.”

Police apology

Phillip Garrido, 58, a convicted rapist and kidnapper, is suspected of fathering Ms Dugard’s children while he kept her in his backyard.

He and his wife Nancy, 54, are accused of abducting her in the town of South Lake Tahoe, in the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

She was forced into a car as Mr Probyn tried in vain to give chase on a bicycle.

Police have admitted that they missed an opportunity to uncover what was happening at Mr Garrido’s home in November 2006, when a neighbour alerted them to suspicious behaviour there.

“The caller said Garrido was psychotic and had a sexual addiction,” Sheriff Warren Rupf told reporters.

But the investigating police officer only spoke to Mr Garrido and did not enter his property to carry out a search.

“I’m first in line to offer organisational criticism and to offer my apologies to the victims and accept responsibility for having missed an earlier opportunity,” said Sheriff Rupf.

‘A disgusting thing’

Fred Kollar, undersheriff in El Dorado County, described finding a makeshift compound in the backyard consisting of sheds, tents and outbuildings.

The true identity of the backyard’s inhabitants only emerged after Mr Garrido was called in along with his “family” for a parole office hearing on Wednesday.

Suspicions had been aroused when Mr Garrido, who has a printing business, was seen acting suspiciously towards the children as he tried to enter the University of California, Berkeley, campus to hand out religious literature.

Diane Doty, a neighbour, has said she often heard children playing in the backyard.

“I asked my husband, ‘Why is he [Garrido] living in tents?’” she said on Thursday.

“And he said, ‘Maybe that is how they like to live.’”

The alleged abductor has himself told a US TV channel that his story was “heart-warming”.

“It’s a disgusting thing that took place with me at the beginning, but I turned my life completely around,” Mr Garrido told KCRA television from El Dorado County jail.

Court records show that Mr Garrido was convicted of kidnapping and raping a 25-year-old woman in South Lake Tahoe in 1976.

A judge El Dorado County Superior Court in Placerville on Friday ordered them held without bail and a further court hearing has been scheduled for 14 September.

Mr Garrido appeared calm and unresponsive during the brief court appearance. Mrs Garrido, seated a short distance away from her husband, sobbed and put her head in her hands several times.

Both were dressed in red prison uniforms with their hands shackled to their waists.

Source : BBC

LOS ANGELES, California — The first search of Michael Jackson’s bedroom a day after his death found marijuana, skin-bleaching and hair-growing ointments, anti-insomnia pills and empty bottles of several anti-anxiety drugs, according to court documents unsealed Thursday.

A substance initially suspected to be tar heroin proved not to be a narcotic, according to a source with knowledge of the investigation.

An affidavit, written by Los Angeles Detective Orlando Martinez, was used to outline probable cause for a warrant to search Jackson’s Holmby Hills, California, home on June 26. Martinez filed his report on what was found in the search five days later.

While the documents may provide some insight into Jackson’s life, they appeared to contain nothing that would lend new insight into his death.

Another sworn statement written by Martinez several weeks later — and made public earlier this week — provided a more extensive list of drugs found by investigators at Jackson’s bedside.

That document also revealed that toxicology tests led the Los Angeles County coroner to a preliminary conclusion that Jackson died of an overdose of propofol, a powerful sedative he had been given to help him sleep.

The latest release refers to suspicions by some members of Jackson’s family in the hours after his June 25 death that heroin might have been involved.

“During the course of the investigation, family members of the decedent notified [coroner investigator] Chief [Ed] Winter that they located a quantity of tar heroin in a bag in the decedent’s bedroom located on the second floor of the residence,” Martinez wrote.

He used this statement to justify a search of Jackson’s home because “there may be additional medications and/or narcotics at the location as well as the necessity to confiscate these items for the safety of the minor children.”

A source with knowledge of the probe told CNN Thursday that a test later showed that a brown, sticky substance found in the search was not heroin. The source asked not to be named because the source was not authorized to speak about it publicly.

In addition to listing two Baggies of marijuana, the detective’s report of what was found in Jackson’s home listed three vials of Latanoprost Plus Solution liquid. An online search found medical journal references to this glaucoma medication also used to stimulate hair growth.

Jackson suffered permanent hair loss when his scalp caught fire while taping a Pepsi commercial in 1984. He was known to wear wigs in public after the mishap.

Also listed on the detective’s report was Benoquin ointment, a medication used to lighten skin pigmentation in people with vitiligo, a skin condition.

Jackson’s dermatologist, Dr. Arnold Klein, said on CNN’s “Larry King Live” last month that he had treated Jackson for the condition, which causes irregular patches of white skin. “His was bad because he began to get a totally speckled look over his body,” Klein said.

The coroner announced two weeks ago that the report on Jackson’s death was completed, but that police asked for it to be withheld until completion of the criminal probe.

Source : CNN

POLAND, A unique collection of some of the world’s top classical musicians will gather in Krakow, Poland, on September 1 for a special performance under the baton of Russian maestro Valery Gergiev to mark the 70th anniversary of the outbreak of World War II.

Bringing together 95 musicians from 35 countries and 75 orchestras, the World Orchestra for Peace was founded in 1995 by legendary conductor Sir Georg Solti, a Jewish-Hungarian émigré who fled his homeland in 1939 as Europe plunged into conflict, to mark the 50th anniversary of the United Nations.

Led by Gergiev, currently Principal Conductor with the London Symphony Orchestra, since Solti’s death in 1997, Tuesday’s concert marks the ensemble’s first performance since last year’s “Concert for Peace” in Jerusalem.

In a note for the program for Tuesday’s concert, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and a former honorary patron of the orchestra, writes that the group represents “a practical demonstration of humanity’s potential for harmony, tolerance and cooperation.”

“Listening to the beautiful music performed by this Orchestra helps us to connect with our fellow human beings across different languages, cultures and traditions,” says Annan. “The existence of this orchestra reminds us that peace in our world is possible.”

Following Tuesday’s performance — which features the premiere of a specially commissioned piece by Polish composer and Krakow native Krzysztof Pendereki entitled “Prelude to Peace,” as well as Gustav Mahler’s perennially popular Fifth Symphony — the orchestra flies straight to Stockholm to play a festival marking 200 years of peace between Sweden and Finland.

WOP Director Charles Kaye told CNN that it was the unique diversity and internationalism of the musicians which made the group so special.

“We’ve got a young Brazilian violinist called Pablo de Leon who is sitting alongside someone such as Elena Baskina from Novosibirsk in Siberia. And theb you have someone like Nabih Bulos who plays with Daniel Barenboim’s West-Eastern Divan Orchestra but originally comes from Amman in Jordan.

“They really can’t speak to each other but they can share the experience of playing together. Music can often do what the spoken word can’t.”

With virtually every musician a concert master in their own right, including superstars of the classical world such as violinist Rainer Kuechel of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra and clarinetist Larry Combs of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Kaye said the WOP was also “notches above in terms of sheer quality” any other similar ensemble.

“We’ve handpicked the number one players from 70 different orchestras and we are very, very careful,” said Kaye. “Nobody can apply to join this orchestra. It is invitation only. This really is an all-star band.”

But with barely 72 hours to rehearse — Kaye received the first copy of Pendereki’s score only on Thursday — the director said it was Gergiev’s abilities to bring the best out of the musicians which brought the orchestra to life.

“In our business Maestro Gergiev is acknowledged as one of the great orchestra trainers,” said Kaye. “He can really in 72 hours take 95 brilliant solo musicians and make them into a unity. One of his great skills as a conductor is that he knows how to build an orchestra.”

In a city which has finally regained its status as one of eastern Europe’s leading cultural capitals after the devastation of World War II and decades largely isolated from the West behind the Iron Curtain, Kaye said the orchestra’s message of peace through music was especially resonant.

“You can feel the spirit of this ensemble. The camaraderie, the friendship and the fact that this message unites everybody,” he said.

“We are playing because we’ve got something to say and music can bring that over. When you play a beautiful piece of music with the emotion and the passion that Gergiev and 95 of the best musicians in the world bring to it, people say they can feel there is something at work here. It sounds daft but music has that power.”

Source : CNN