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Ghaziabad, May 28 — Till Friday Monu Singh (19) was just an undertrial in a murder case at Dasna District Prison. But overnight he became the teenager who scored a whopping 80.4 per cent in his Class X exam despite being in jail.
Pawan Singh (20), another inmate facing trial in a dowry-death case, got 65 per cent marks.
Kolkata, May 18 (ANI): The Calcutta High Court on Tuesday directed the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to start fresh investigation into computer graphics teacher Rizwanur Rahman”s murder case.
The court has affirmed that the investigation is inadequate and asked the agency to start a fresh investigation in the case.
The court has also asked the CBI to submit its report within four months.
Earlier, the Supreme Court had granted bail to Kolkata industrialist Ashok Todi and his brother Pradip Todi in connection with the case.
The apex court told the Todis to surrender their passports and not to move out of Kolkata without the prior permission of the CBI. They have also been prevented from communicating or influencing witnesses.
Ashok Todi and his two relatives-Pradip Todi and Anil Saraogi, Rizwanur”s family friend Pappu and three Police Officers- Former Deputy Commissioner Ajoy Kumar, ACP Sukanti Chakraborty, Sub-Inspector Krishnendu Das, have been accused of abetment to suicide, criminal intimidation and conspiracy by the CBI in connection with the death of Rizwan.
Rizwanur”s body was found on the railway tracks between Biddhanagar Road and Dum Dum Junction on September 21 last year, almost a month after his marriage to Priyanka, Todi”s daughter.
Though police is convinced that it was a case of suicide, Rizwanur”s family members are not convinced and have moved the higher courts for a CBI inquiry. (ANI)
Koderma (Jharkhand)/ New Delhi, May 16 (ANI): A local court in Jharkhand”s Koderma District has denied bail to Sudha Pathak, the mother of Delhi based journalist Nirupama Pathak, arrested on suspicion of killing her daughter.
Twenty-three-year-old Nirupama was found dead at her home in Koderma District in mysterious circumstances on April 29.
Sudha was detained on May 3 for her suspected role in the death of her daughter.
“The bail has been rejected as this matter is very sensational. It”s a matter of Section 302, and the girl has been killed under a conspiracy. Accepting the prosecution”s plea and doctors have also said that it”s a murder case, said Rizwan, police counsel.
“On this basis taking a decision in favour of the prosecution the request for bail has been denied,” he added.
Meanwhile, dozens held a silent march in New Delhi in memory of Nirupama Pathak.
“This march is just to show that a week before we had demanded that as the local police is hushing up the murder case of Nirupama Pathak, the case should be given to the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), but no action has been taken yet,” said Pushpendra Kulshreshtha, General Secretary of Delhi Press Club.
“I want to announce that from today onwards members of various intellectual communities, writers, people from theatre, NGOs, they will be part of a signature campaign and this protest will not come to an end unless and until the murderers of Nirupama are caught,” he added.
The Jharkhand police have also filed a case of rape and abetment to suicide against Nirupama Pathak”s boyfriend Priyabhanshu Ranjan.
On May 9, Ranjan”s parents claimed to have mobile proof that could nail the complicity of Nirupama”s parents in what they say is murder.
In a startling claim, Ranjan”s father said he had Nirupama”s last SMS in which she said that she had been locked inside a bathroom and was not being allowed to go out.
He also said that a similar message had come from his son, who was in Delhi.
The revelation came after Koderma Police served notices to three doctors who had performed a post mortem on Nirupama.
The court directed the police to file a First Information Report (FIR) against Ranjan, following charges levelled by Nirupama”s arrested mother Sudha Pathak.
However, the post-mortem report revealed that Pathak died due to asphyxia as a result of smothering and that she was 10-12 weeks pregnant. (ANI)
Moscow, May 13 (IANS/RIA Novosti) After 90 years of the killing of Russia’s last tsar during the Bolshevik revolution, a Moscow city court has ordered the opening of a criminal case into the murder.
Tsar Nicholas II, his wife, their four daughters and a son, and several servants, were shot dead by the Bolsheviks in a basement in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg in the early hours of July 17, 1918.
In 2008, Russia’s Supreme Court ordered the exoneration of Tsar Nicholas II and his family members following a request by Grand Duchess Maria Romanov.
However, the Basmanny district court said there were no criminal offences committed against the royal family, as they were shot on behalf of the state. The case was closed on the grounds that those who had committed the premeditated murders of the royal family were dead.
The new case will assess evidence and arguments presented by the grand duchess and the Prosecutor General’s Office, which was not done previously, lawyer German Lukyanov said. ‘The Grand Duchess hopes that justice will prevail’.
The Romanovs were canonised in 2000, and are buried in St. Petersburg’s Peter and Paul Cathedral.
Ghaziabad, May 12 (ANI): A Special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Wednesday awarded death sentence to Surender Koli, who was found guilty of murdering seven-year-old Aarti in Noida”s Nithari village.
Earlier on May 5, the court had fixed May 12 as the next date for hearing to decide upon the quantum of judgement.
Special Additional District and Session Judge A K Singh had on May 4 convicted 38-year-old Koli for Aarti”s murder.
Aarti was the last of 19 victims in the Nithari killings. She disappeared about two months before the case was busted.
In a previous order on the Nithari killings, the special CBI court had on February 12 awarded the death sentence to Moninder Singh Pandher and Surender Koli for their roles in the Rampa Haldar murder case.
Just like in Haldar murder case, the CBI has given a clean chit to Pandher primarily on the basis of his cell phone records, while holding only Koli guilty of the crime.
Aarti had reportedly returned home from school on the afternoon of October 25, 2006 after which she went out to buy herself some toffees.
However, she never came back. A report about Aarti going missing was then taken down at the Sector 20 police station in Noida.
On December 29, 2006, Aarti”s remains were found buried behind Pandher”s home in Nithari.
Both Pandher and Koli are accused of killing and disposing off the bodies of 19 children and a young woman between 2005 and 2006.
The investigation of the case was handed over to the CBI on January 11, 2007. The CBI has filed charge sheets in 16 cases. (ANI)
Faislabad, May 10 (ANI): Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) General Secretary Jehangir Badar has challenged former President General Pervez Musharraf to face the probe being conducted into former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination if he wants to comeback in country’s politics, saying the party is not scared by his ‘one last bullet in pistol.’
Interacting with media persons here, Badar backed the UN commission’s report over Bhutto’s murder, saying Musharraf was directly responsible for her assassination.
“We are not going to be scared no matter how many bullets does Musharraf have in his pistol,” he said while referring to Musharraf’s remark that he has one final bullet in his pistol which he will use for his defence in the murder case.
It is pertinent to mention here that Musharraf had outrightly rejected the UN commission’s report, saying it contained no new information.
The UN enquiry commission”s report had blamed the then Musharraf government of ”deliberately” failing to probe the 27 December 2007 suicide attack on Bhutto, saying the tragedy could have been averted if adequate security arrangements would have been made.
“The Musharraf government failed to provide foolproof security to Ms. Bhutto which ultimately allowed a lethal assault on her. The security breach left wide-open room for an attack to happen,” the report said in its opening
remarks. (ANI)
Islamabad, May 6 (ANI): Dissatisfied over the work of the special three-man fact finding committee, which was constituted to probe the hosing down of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination site, President Asif Ali Zardari has reportedly expanded the timeframe within which the committee has to complete its investigations.
Although the committee’s report has not been made public, sources privy to the issue said that the committee has given a clean chit to former Military Intelligence (MI) chief Major General Nadeem Ijaz, which has purportedly irked Zardari.
It may be noted that Ijaz was held responsible for ordering his subordinates to wash off the crime scene at Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh, where Bhutto was killed in a gun and bomb attack on December 27, 2007.
Sources said that Zardari has also expressed dissatisfaction over the ‘limited’ task given to the three-member committee instead of being asked to conduct a comprehensive investigation to expose the planners, abettors, financiers, facilitators and killers, and all those who were a part of the conspiracy to kill Bhutto, The Dawn reports.
According to some political analysts, one of the primary reasons of Zardari’s annoyance over the findings of the committee was that all fingers would be pointed towards himself if lower rank officials continue to get clean chits in Bhutto’s murder case. (ANI)
Islamabad, May 5 (ANI): Confusion prevails over whether the fact finding committee formed by the Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to probe former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination has submitted its report or not.
While Cabinet Secretary Rauf Chaudhry, who is heading the three-men committee, said the report has been submitted to Gilani, a statement issued by the Presidency said the committee is likely to question some more important personalities before finally submitting its report.
Earlier, some quarters of the media said the fact-finding committee has given a clean chit to former Military Intelligence (MI) chief Major General Nadeem Ijaz over hosing down the incident site where Bhutto was assassinated.
Observers said that the reported acquittal of Ijaz and other subordinates has irked Zardari and other senior Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leaders, and they are deliberately trying to delay the probe report.
The committee has been given an extension to submit its report, which many believe is a move to find scapegoats in the case.
Insiders said Zardari was critical about the findings of the committee, which eventually led to a change in its mandate. It has now been directed to complete its findings in the light of UN Commission’s report.
According to some political analysts, one of the primary reasons of Zardari’s annoyance over the findings of the committee was that all fingers would be pointed towards himself if lower rank officials continue to get clean chits in Bhutto’s murder case.
“Now when most of the suspects mentioned in the UN report have been interrogated by the fact finding committee and most of them had been cleared, the blame of assassination of Benazir Bhutto at the end of the day would directly come on the President,” The Nation quoted an observer, as saying.
“ Naturally, he should be the most worried person if the committee fails in finding some scapegoats,” he said.
It is pertinent to mention here that fact finding committee did not fix criminal responsibility on any of the senior police officials, including former city police officer (CPO) of Rawalpindi, Saud Aziz, who was held directly responsible for washing off the crime scene by the UN commission’s report.
The committee’s report contradicted the UN commission’s findings, saying that on the basis of given statements and evidences, the committee has reached the conclusion that the police washed the crime scene outside Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi without any pressure or any order from higher authorities. (ANI)
Ghaziabad, May 5 (ANI): A Special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Wednesday fixed May 12 as the next date for announcing the quantum of sentence on Surender Koli, who was found guilty of murdering seven-year-old Aarti in Noida”s Nithari village.
“The court has fixed 12th May as the next date for hearing to decide upon the quantum of judgement,” said Aarti”s lawyer, Sanjay Tyagi.
Earlier on Tuesday, Special Additional District and Session Judge A K Singh had convicted 38-year-old Koli for Aarti”s murder.
Aarti was the last of 19 victims in the Nithari killings. She disappeared about two months before the case was busted.
In a previous order on the Nithari killings, the special CBI court had on February 12 awarded the death sentence to Moninder Singh Pandher and Surender Koli for their roles in the Rampa Haldar murder case.
Just like in Halder murder case, the CBI has given a clean chit to Pandher primarily on the basis of his cell phone records, while holding only Koli guilty of the crime.
Unlike Rampa”s father, Aarti”s parents Durga and Neelam Prasad have never challenged the CBI”s contention that Koli alone was the culprit.
Aarti had reportedly returned home from school on the afternoon of October 25, 2006 after which she went out to buy herself some toffees.
However, she never came back. A report about Aarti going missing was then taken down at the Sector 20 police station in Noida.
On December 29, 2006, Aarti”s remains were found buried behind Pandher”s home in Nithari.
Both Pandher and Koli are accused of killing and disposing off the bodies of 19 children and a young woman between 2005 and 2006.
The investigation of the case was handed over to the CBI on January 11, 2007. The CBI has filed chargesheets in 16 cases. (ANI)
New Delhi, May 5 (ANI): The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that brain mapping, narco-analysis or lie detector tests is unconstitutional because it is an unwarranted intrusion on the individual”s rights.
A bench headed by Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan said: ” “We are of the considered opinion that no individual can be forced and subjected to such techniques involuntarily.”
The apex court said these tests are violative of Article 23, which protects a person from being forced to give evidence against himself.
The apex court also said that certain safeguards must be there for consented narco test.
These intrusive tests violate a suspect”s ”right to privacy” that forms part of right to life and liberty, a fundamental right guaranteed under Article 21, they contend.
Investigative agencies have been defending the use of these tests saying it is necessary to deal with organised crime and terrorism and to crack complicated cases.
This move can come as a setback to several high profile cases, like the Arushi murder case, Ruchika Girhotra case etc. (ANI)
Ghaziabad, May 4 (ANI): A special Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) court on Tuesday found Surender Koli guilty of the murder of seven-year-old Aarti, one of the 19 women and children from Noida”s Nithari village whose body parts were found in a drain.
Aarti was the last known victim in the Nithari killings, having disappeared just about two months before the case was busted.
In the previous judgment in the Nithari killings, the special CBI court on February 12 awarded the death sentence to Moninder Singh Pandher and Surinder Koli for their respective roles in the Rampa Haldar murder case.
Just like in Halder murder case, the CBI has given a clean chit to Pandher primarily on the basis of his cellphone records, while holding only Koli guilty of the crime.
Unlike Rampa”s father, Aarti”s parents Durga and Neelam Prasad have never challenged CBI”s contention that Koli alone was the culprit.
Aarti had reportedly returned home from school on the afternoon of October 25, 2006 after which she went out to buy herself some toffees.
However, she never came back. A report about Aarti going missing was then taken down at the Sector 20 police station in Noida.
On December 29, 2006, Aarti”s remains were found buried behind Pandher”s home in Nithari.
Both Pandher and Koli are accused of killing and disposing off the bodies of 19 children and a young woman between 2005 and 2006.
The investigation of the case was handed over to the CBI on January 11, 2007. The CBI has filed chargesheets in 16 cases. (ANI)
New Delhi, May 3 (ANI): The Supreme Court on Monday quashed the bail granted to former MP and Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Rajesh Ranjan alias Pappu Yadav in connection with the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) MLA Ajit Sarkar murder case
A bench of Justices Markandey Katju and A K Patnaik pronounced the verdict and said the High Court”s decision amounted to contempt of the apex court, which had clearly restrained any court in the country from granting bail to Yadav.
“It is a matter of regret that despite clear order passed by this court in 2007 that no bail should be granted by any court, the High Court has gone ahead and granted bail,” the bench observed while allowing an appeal filed by the CBI seeking cancellation of the bail.
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) had on March 26 approached the apex court challenging the order of the Patna High Court that had granted bail to Yadav.
The Patna High Court had earlier on February 18, 2009 granted bail to the 43-year-old RJD leader undergoing life imprisonment in the murder case.
The Supreme Court said that it is general rule that when the apex court rejects the bail, the High Courts or the subordinate courts cannot in any manner grant bail to the accused or the convicts.
Similarly, when the High Court rejects a bail, the Sessions courts or the magistrates do not have any power to grant bail, it said.
But in the present case, the bench regretted that the High Court granted bail to Yadav despite an injunction by the apex court.
Additional Solicitor General Haren Raval complained that the High Court granted bail to the RJD leader without passing any reasoned order after initially rejecting his two bail applications.
A special CBI court in Patna had earlier on February 14, 2008, awarded life imprisonment to Pappu Yadav.
The court also awarded life imprisonment to Rajan Tiwari and Anil Yadav in connection with the case.
Sarkar, who had a feud with Yadav over issues related to farm labourers, was shot dead in Bihar”s Purnea District on June 14, 1998. (ANI)
Islamabad, Apr.21 (ANI): Amidst the rising demand for former President General Pervez Musharraf’s prosecution following the UN enquiry commission’s report over former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar has said that the ‘autocratic’ ruler may quizzed in the case.
Babar said the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has asked Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani to direct concerned authorities to take immediate step in this regard.
“The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has already asked Prime Minister Syed Yousaf Raza Gilani to take action against all those involved including Musharraf,” The Daily Times quoted Babar, as saying.
Holding Musharraf responsible for the fatal attack on Bhutto on December 27, 2007, Babar said the former President is avoiding action as he has been living abroad since the tragic incident took place.
He said the government has taken stern action against all those officials indicted in the UN commission’s probe report.
“Eight officials have been relieved of their duties while the service contract of a retired brigadier has been terminated,” Babar said. (ANI)
Islamabad, Apr.20 (ANI): Following the UN commission’s enquiry report over former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, the Pakistan government is contemplating action against some of former President General Pervez Musharraf’s close relatives, who have been indicted in the report.
According to sources, the Presidency is in consultations with various authorities to initiate action against Major General Nadeem Ijaz and Major General (retired) Nusrat Naeem.
Both officials are close relatives of Musharraf’s spouse, The Daily Times reports.
Sources said that there is a possibility that Ijaz, who is currently posted as the Gujranwala log area commander, would be asked to take retirement.
It may be noted that he was the Military Intelligence (MI) chief when Bhutto was assassinated.
The UN fact finding commission had blamed Ijaz of directing officials to wash-off the blood stains at the incident site at Rawalpindi’s Liaquat Bagh, where Bhutto was killed in a gun and bomb attack on December 27, 2007.
The report also indicts the then Rawalpindi City Police Officer (CPO), Saud Aziz, for acting on orders of Ijaz.
Aziz has especially been blamed for washing of the crime scene and hindering the autopsy. (ANI)
New Delhi, Apr 19 (ANI): Sabrina Lall, the sister of murdered model Jessica Lall, on Monday expressed satisfaction and happiness over the Supreme Court upholding Delhi High Court’s verdict in convicting all accused.
Lall was shot dead by Manu Sharma on April 29, 1999, at the Tamarind Court Cafe restaurant, which was owned by socialite Bina Ramani in South Delhi.
Interacting with media after the Supreme Court order, Sabrina said: “After 11 years…I am glad that the final door has been closed on this case. It has given us a lot of relief and satisfaction that the Supreme Court has upheld the verdict of the high court. I am happy.”
An apex court bench consisting Justices P. Sathasivam and Swatanter Kumar upheld the Delhi High Court judgment on Monday.
On December 18, 2006, reversing the order of acquittal recorded by the trial court, the Delhi High Court had convicted Sharma and awarded him a life sentence.
The High Court also declared two other accused in the case — Vikas Yadav and Amarjeet Singh Gill — guilty for destruction of evidence.
They have also challenged their conviction and four-year jail sentence.
Sharma is the son of senior Haryana Congress leader Vinod Sharma while Yadav is the son of Uttar Pradesh politician D.P. Yadav.
Sharma who is serving a life sentence in Tihar jail challenged his conviction and life sentence given by the Delhi High Court.
Sabrina described the apex court”s decision as a triumph for a common family.
“When the accused were acquitted by the lower court, that was a time that I had lost hope…In these cases where high profile and powerful people are involved, the important message is that it is not an impossible fight. If society works together and we continue to fight and don”t lose hope, it is not impossible to get the conviction…There is justice in the world and it”s possible not only for me, but for all those families fighting for it,” Sabrina said.
“In this case, middle-class people came out together in peaceful support. They created a movement for justice for Jessica. There are people I don”t even recognise who came out in open support,” she added.
Sabrina also demanded that witnesses be permitted who had turned hostile.
“Punishment to hostile witness should work as a deterrent in society. They will keep lying unless somebody is held accountable for the same,” she said. (ANI)
New Delhi, Apr 19 (ANI): Sabrina Lall, the sister of murdered model Jessica Lall, on Monday expressed satisfaction and happiness over the Supreme Court upholding Delhi High Court’s verdict in convicting all accused.
Lall was shot dead by Manu Sharma on April 29, 1999, at the Tamarind Court Cafe restaurant, which was owned by socialite Bina Ramani in South Delhi.
Interacting with media after the Supreme Court order, Sabrina said: “After 11 years…I am glad that the final door has been closed on this case. It has given us a lot of relief and satisfaction that the Supreme Court has upheld the verdict of the high court. I am happy.”
An apex court bench consisting Justices P. Sathasivam and Swatanter Kumar upheld the Delhi High Court judgment on Monday.
On December 18, 2006, reversing the order of acquittal recorded by the trial court, the Delhi High Court had convicted Sharma and awarded him a life sentence.
The High Court also declared two other accused in the case — Vikas Yadav and Amarjeet Singh Gill — guilty for destruction of evidence.
They have also challenged their conviction and four-year jail sentence.
Sharma is the son of senior Haryana Congress leader Vinod Sharma while Yadav is the son of Uttar Pradesh politician D.P. Yadav.
Sharma who is serving a life sentence in Tihar jail challenged his conviction and life sentence given by the Delhi High Court.
Sabrina described the apex court”s decision as a triumph for a common family.
“When the accused were acquitted by the lower court, that was a time that I had lost hope…In these cases where high profile and powerful people are involved, the important message is that it is not an impossible fight. If society works together and we continue to fight and don”t lose hope, it is not impossible to get the conviction…There is justice in the world and it”s possible not only for me, but for all those families fighting for it,” Sabrina said.
“In this case, middle-class people came out together in peaceful support. They created a movement for justice for Jessica. There are people I don”t even recognise who came out in open support,” she added.
Sabrina also demanded that witnesses be permitted who had turned hostile.
“Punishment to hostile witness should work as a deterrent in society. They will keep lying unless somebody is held accountable for the same,” she said. (ANI)
Islamabad, Apr.17 (ANI): Following the UN enquiry commission’s report over former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination, which held the then Musharraf regime responsible for the killing, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) has once again raised the demand for the former general’s trial.
PML-N spokesperson Parvaiz Rashid said the UN report has made it apparent that Musharraf was directly involved in Bhutto’s assassination, and now the government must not waste any time to start the former President’s trial.
“The nation wants to know the facts and reasons as to why the government is still not ready to start the murder case proceedings,” The News quoted Rashid, as saying.
He also questioned the government’s move to spend billions of rupees on the probe without any substantial action against those who masterminded the deadly attack on Bhutto on December 27, 2007.
The UN enquiry commission’s report has blamed the then Musharraf government of ‘deliberately’ failing to probe the December 2007 gun and bomb attack, saying the tragedy could have been averted had adequate security arrangements been in place.
“The Musharraf government failed to provide foolproof security to Ms. Bhutto which ultimately allowed a lethal assault on her. The security breach left wide-open room for an attack to happen,” the report said in its opening remarks. (ANI)
LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Wonderful as it is to win the Oscar for best foreign-language film, don’t expect it to make your phone ring off the hook.
Film
“If you win every other award in the world from every major festival, it’s not as visible as the Oscar,” observes Argentine writer-director Juan Jose Campanella, whose thriller “The Secret in Their Eyes” won the top prize last month.
But he added, “I don’t know if it makes a huge impact on my career. What the Oscar does is make a lot of producers and directors want to see the movie. Then if they like it, something might happen.”
“Eyes,” opening Friday in New York and Los Angeles via Sony Pictures Classics, got on the awards track last fall after playing at festivals like Toronto and Spain’s San Sebastian.
Its screenplay by Campanella and Eduardo Sacheri is adapted from Sacheri’s book about a retired criminal court investigator writing a novel about a rape-murder case he handled 25 years earlier.
Campanella read Sacheri’s novel after it was published in early 2005. They met during a radio interview where Campanella was talking about a TV series he’d produced and Sacheri was discussing another book. Afterwards over coffee they decided to adapt “Eyes” and worked on its script from early ’06 until pre-production began in August ’08.
“First we had conversations about the broad changes I wanted to make from the novel to the adaptation.”
What they did was structure the first 15 minutes of the movie, working together in the same room.
“Then we would divide the scenes and each of us would work on his own and we would exchange them via e-mail and make comments.”
When they felt they had a good first draft of those scenes, they’d get together again and outline the next 15 or 20 minutes.
Their first draft took about five months, Campanella explained, “Not because we’re very slow writers, but because we had to work on our day jobs in the meantime.”
They showed that draft to a few readers Campanella trusts and two months later they were rewriting.
“I usually do like 15 drafts of a script. The process was shortened because we were starting from a novel so we knew where we were going. It was not a completely blank page.”
One thing Campanella didn’t have to worry about was getting his film financed.
“The good thing about Argentina and the fact that my two previous movies have been very successful is that I had the financing. While we were writing the script we knew it was going to get made.”
However, he points out with a smile, it also had its downside: “The movies are so cheap that you don’t make a living out of it. It’s really for pleasure. But we knew we could get the $2 million or $2.5 million that we needed to make the movie.”
Campanella cast the film with some of Argentina’s best-known actors. Guillermo Francella, who plays the investigator’s alcoholic sidekick, is a popular comic in Argentina. “His comedies are usually very broad. His persona as a comedian is completely different. Audiences looking at this movie couldn’t believe his transformation.”
But Campanella’s not taking credit for turning Francella into a dramatic actor: “I wish I could brag about that. He’s a trained actor. He was in theater doing Shakespearean plays in his early 20s and then one day he got a TV job in an Argentine sitcom and was such a hit that it took him in that direction.”
Ricardo Darin, who plays the investigator, started out as “a telenovela heartthrob. About 15 years ago when he was in his mid-30s he started doing theater.”
Campanella hired Darin for a film at the time, which helped change his career: “After that other directors called him to do more dramatic parts and now he’s like the Laurence Olivier of Argentina.”
Because “Eyes” takes place over three decades Darin and other actors appear younger in some scenes and older in others.
“We shot the past first for five weeks,” Campanella said. They then took a three-day weekend to work on hair and makeup before shooting two weeks of present-day scenes.
“We had to re-color Ricardo’s hair. He’s one of these lucky guys — I’m bald — who has very strong resilient hair and we had to put so much bleach on him that they were almost burning his scalp.”
Darin’s character has a beard in the ’70s scenes, which the actor grew during the month before shooting.
“There’s nothing worse than a fake beard. Even here in America, the only way to make a very good fake beard is when you put it in almost hair by hair. It’s something you can do for one day, but you cannot do it every day.”
The Supreme Court has been told sentencing submissions for two men convicted of murdering South Australian woman Glenys Heyward may not be heard until September.
Matthew Heyward, 22, and Jeremy Minter, 28, were found guilty of helping plot Ms Heyward’s murder in 2007, stemming from a multi-million-dollar family property fight.
Lawyers for both men have now told a hearing in Adelaide they want to obtain psychological appraisals before making submissions on non-parole terms for the men.
But defence lawyer Grant Algie said it was unlikely Heyward’s report would be ready before he took overseas leave for three months.
A tentative hearing date was set for June.
The judge said any appeals would not delay sentencing.
Ms Heyward’s former partner Neil Heyward, who was accused of masterminding the murder plot, killed himself while in custody.
Islamabad, Apr.1 (ANI): Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari’s sudden move to ask the UN to delay its enquiry report over former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s assassination has raised several questions, but sources have revealed that Zardari had asked the UN officials to enquire how some of the international personalities were so sure about the threat to Benazir’s life upon her return.
According to the sources, Zardari has named former US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief Muqran bin Abdul Aziz and the intelligence chief of the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as those who had warned about Benazir’s murder in advance.
They said that Zardari has asked the UN inquiry commission to meet these four persons before submitting its final report on the December 2007 gun and bomb attack, which killed Benazir.
Sources said Zardari believes that information to be shared by these four personalities might help the inquiry commission to identify the real killers.
When enquired about the issue, presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar admitted that Islamabad had asked the three friendly countries to share their information regarding the murder case with the UN.
Babar, however, denied naming the three ‘friendly’ countries.
“We want comments of three friendly foreign governments which had warned Benazir Bhutto of plots to assassinate her around time of her return included in the UN report. One foreign country government has shared its perspective with the UN commission. We hope the other two governments will also share their perspective,” The News quoted Babar, as saying. (ANI)
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