kimblr.com

If the weather carries on as it has been, the organisers of the French Open might like to consider adapting cricket’s Duckworth/Lewis method. This is a system whereby matches interrupted by rain can be decided over a shortened distance. The great thing about it is that no one really understands it and so is in no position to argue with it.
Tennis has done it before, of course, when it introduced the tie-breaker to stop matches going on interminably. This, in contrast to Duckworth/Lewis, is quite a straightforward system.
Before the rain arrived today - making it four days out of five that the weather has intervened - the first real upsets of the competition took place with the defeats of Amelie Mauresmo, two times a grand-slam winner, and the men’s sixth and seventh seeds, David Nalbandian and James Blake. And what was really surprising was that all three lost to no-hopers.
Even Mauresmo, who has a reputation for being someone who could choke on pureed banana, could not possibly lose to the Spanish qualifier Carla Suarez Navarro. But this is what she did, going out 6-3, 6-4.
In fairness to Mauresmo, who in 2006 won the Australian and Wimbledon titles, this is her first tournament since last month’s Fed Cup tie in Japan. Since then she has been held back by an abdominal injury and today she clearly had trouble with her serve as she lost her second-round match in 72 minutes.
Suarez Navarro, 19, who was playing in her first grand-slam event, was the first to hold serve in the fifth game and broke her opponent again to lead 5-2 before sealing the opening set in 34 minutes. Mauresmo, who has never made it past the quarter-finals in Paris, dropped serve again in the fourth game of the second set and despite managing three games in a row, was broken again in the ninth.

blogs.guardian.co.uk

Last night was for us. The cultists. The obsessives. The crazies who have committed to this long, strange trip and gotten lost in it. Like the candy bar Hurley generously shared with Ben while Locke was chatting with the spectral squatters inside Jacob’s shack (a nod to the Neo-Oracle-cookie scene in The Matrix?), ''Cabin Fever'' was an episode packed with a chunky abundance of brain-fattening cryptonuggets to nourish our fevered theory making and message-board blustering. Comic-book references. Biblical allusions. Mythological connections. Double meanings to scores of lines. I loved Hurley’s ”theory” that he, Ben, and Locke were chosen for this vision quest because they were the craziest ones on the Island. This in an episode whose ’50s-set flashbacks evoked, fittingly, AMC’s Mad Men and whose thematic concern with fate mirrors that of No Country for Old Men, a narrative about three men dangling on sanity’s thread, though at different points. Amid the clues, red herrings, and tomfoolery, I saw in the episode a fiendishly clever love letter to those of us who’ve become so locked up inside Lost that they’ve been somewhat deliriously messed up by it. That’s really why they called it ”Cabin Fever.” Just my theory, but who knows? Maybe I’m just seeing things again.
”Can history then be said to have an architecture? The notion is most glorious and most horrible.” — From Hell
Should John Locke be lucky enough to see the year 2008, he would be 50. That would make him as old as the central figure in the aforementioned text, one Sir William Gull, a 19th-century English physician. Some interesting overlaps between these characters. In From Hell, Gull is a middle-aged man uncertain of his purpose, but he is convinced he is special and senses that the architecture of his life is building to a point. Or, in the sweet, hiccupy phrasing of Buddy Holly that was quoted by Lost last night, ”Every day it gets a little closer/Rolling faster than a roller coaster/A love like yours will surely come my way.” At 50, though, Gull suddenly finds his calling in the form of a mystical mission to defend his country — an island, don’t you know — from an insidious conspiracy. You know, just like Locke. Gull is also, probably, totally crackers; he’s Alan Moore’s speculative pick for being Jack the Ripper. And while Locke is not yet a mass-murdering maniac, I have the strangest feeling, based on what we saw last night, that the architecture of his life is building exactly to that horrifying point.

ew.com

brAZIL’S Fernando Meirelles and US director James Gray have been added to the list of talent to compete for the top prize at this year’s Cannes film festival, organisers said today.
The coveted Palme d’Or, which crowns the May 14-25 event, will be handed out by Robert de Niro.
Niro will be stepping up the Cannes red carpet among a bevy of celebs as the star of Barry Levinson’s film What Just Happened in which he plays the role of a fading Hollywood producer.
That film will close the world’s paramount film festival, to be opened by Blindness, a drama by Meirelles - best-known for his Oscar-nominated City of God or more recent The Constant Gardener - about a city whose residents are struck by a mysterious loss of sight.
Also a last-minute entrant to the competition for the Palme is Gray’s Two Lovers, starring Joaquin Phoenix as a New Yorker torn between Gwyneth Paltrow and Vinessa Shaw, a first sentimental drama by the maker of mafia crime chronicles such as Little Odessa and We Own The Night.
A third French film - Between The Walls (Entre Les Murs) by Laurent Cantet - has also been selected, bringing the total number of films running for the honour to 22.
Other top contenders in the race are veteran directors Clint Eastwood, Steven Soderbergh and Wim Wenders.
Much awaited also are the movies selected to be screened out of competition and getting their world release, including the latest from top-name directors Woody Allen and Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg will be bringing the year’s most-awaited movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull - the fourth installment in the box office-busting series starring Harrison Ford as the archaeologist adventurer who had his first outing way back in 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark.

news.com.au

Beef: Cultural rivalries and confrontations.
The Industry: The morning trade news roundup.
Kudos: Awards news, buzz, and predictions.
Overnights: Recaps of TV shows.
Right-Click: The hottest new MP3s.
Tube Junkie: Nuggets from the online video archives.

nymag.com

Thursday night saw the final pre-strike “Lost” episode, but after a short break, the producers are promising five more “super-charged” shows to wrap up the season.
The thrilling sci-fi drama will return to CTV after a four-week break in a new time-slot, 10 p.m. ET, on April 24th.
On a previous edition of the official “Lost” podcast, producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse commented on how they had to change their original plan for 16 episodes before the writers’ strike. Tonight’s episode is the eighth episode of the season.
“We’re basically going to take our plan for eight episodes, and we’re going to try and compress it into five more episodes,” says Cuse.
Optimistic about how the new shows are going to turn out plot-wise, Lindeloff promises, “It’s going to be a super-charged five hours of show.”
On April 24th “Grey’s Anatomy” will also return with its first new episodes following the strike.
Last week’s episode, “Ji Yeon,” was originally planned to be the first “mini-finale” before the break, but instead “Lost” left us with a few more answers — and a couple of deaths. Rousseau and Karl were shot by an unknown party, leaving Alex — Ben’s “daughter” — alone in the woods and very, very scared.
“Meet Kevin Johnson” mostly followed Michael Dawson’s flashback, explaining where he’s been since leaving the island by boat in season two.
It also explained how he came to work as Ben’s spy on the mysterious freighter.
Harold Perrineau, who plays Michael, has recently said that he’s slated to appear on “Lost” at least until the end of this season.
Before he left on the island, Michael helped Ben (known at the time as Henry Gale) escape from the Hatch, where he was held captive by Jack and Locke.
In the process of freeing Ben, Michael killed Ana-Lucia and Libby, before shooting himself in the arm. Under suspicion, he was brought along with Jack, Kate, Hurley and Sawyer as they left on a mission to the other side of the island, where they were ambushed by a group of “Others.”

ctv.ca

Between 1584 and 1590, the Elizabethan gentleman and artist John White made five voyages to the New World from England under Sir Walter Raleigh’s aegis. During one journey, in 1585, he traveled through present-day North Carolina and painted the flora, fauna, and Native Americans. His series of watercolors would give Europeans their first images of the New World and would shape their understanding of the visual landscape for the next 200 years.
These watercolors, owned by the British Museum, were exhibited in London last spring for the first time since the 1960s. Now, the Yale Center for British Art has mounted them in a more didactic, but no less accessible, exhibit titled “A New World: England’s First View of America.”
The priority in Raleigh’s expeditions was to claim and colonize the New World in the name of the queen, making it Protestant realm. White’s expedition landed at Roanoke Island, in the Outer Banks of what is now North Carolina.
An aim in White’s pictures is marketing or promotion, to make what was then called Virginia an appealing place in which to settle or invest. The settlers in the 1585 expedition, chiefly military personnel, at first got along well enough with the Algonquins by trading beads for food. There came a predictable time, however, when every Algonquin man, woman, and child probably had all the beads they could wish for, and tired of supplying the settlers with food. This was the beginning of the end for the eventual “lost colony of Roanoke.” Sir Francis Drake, who had been exploring to the south, stopped by in 1586, and offered the colonists a lift home, which they gladly took. (There are wonderful maps and manuscripts from Drake’s stopover on display.)
White, who was the governor of the settlement, left for England to bring back ships, people, and provisions for the troubled 1587 colony. But because of the warring Spanish Armada, the British could spare no ships at all, and it was not until 1590 that he returned to the lost colony of Roanoke, with few signs of the settlers to be found. White’s many paintings of New World flora and fauna divide into two categories: interesting or exotic, and edible or valuable. And they made an impression in England.

nysun.com

Take a deep breath:
A castaway is dead. We learn the identity of another of the Oceanic Six. We learn who owns the boat. And we meet Ben's spy on the boat.
Has there ever been an episode that answered so many questions yet advanced the plot so little? Not that I'm complaining — Ji Yeon continued the near-perfect season four. It was a masterful episode, and I doubt there was a dry eye among viewers at the end.
Frank is pacing around the boat, and in the halls we meet Regina (Zoe Bell, from Death Proof) who seems a tad disturbed; she's reading a book upside down without seeming to notice. Methinks she's followed Desmond back to the past. It turns out she's guarding Sayid and Desmond, who have been locked in the sick bay since their trip to the radio room. Sayid is surprised when Frank tells them he wasn't the one who opened the door to let them out. So then who was? Later on a note to Sayid and Desmond is slipped through the door: "Don't trust the captain." Sayid tells Desmond about Ben's spy on the boat.
On the beach, Jin and Sun are discussing baby names. Jin is convinced it will be a girl, Sun thinks it will be a boy. Jin likes the name Ji Yeon, but Sun doesn't want to jinx the pregnancy; remember, if she doesn't get off the island she'll die.
Flash forward to Sun in front of a mirror, putting on makeup. She feels something is wrong; she sits on the bed, and calls the hospital. We see she is very pregnant and she is going into labour. Meanwhile, Jin is rushing to get to the hospital on time. He stops off a the toy to buy a stuffed panda.

network.nationalpost.com

I’ve got “It’s a Small World” running through my head.
My friend called me last week to tell me about this very strange phone call she had gotten at work.
The person asked if she was so-and-so and if her maiden name was so-and-so. Then he asked if she went to such-and-such high school, which is actually no longer a school since it merged with another local school the year after she graduated.
At this point she was getting really nervous, asking who it was that was calling her and wondering what exactly he wanted of her.
He gave her his name and said he’d talked to her sister-in-law and sister to track her down. She was getting even more nervous.
Turns out he found her high school class ring about 5 years ago with his metal detector. He put it away, thinking nothing of it until his kids found it recently and asked whose it was. Then his search began, bringing us to his phone call to my bewildered friend.
Her ring was lost at least 15 years ago on a local school’s football field. Getting it back after all these years was the equivalent of winning the lottery.
Even more amazing than that is the fact that they actually know of each other. Their kids go to school together and they live about a mile apart.

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