Football Transfer : Tottenham closing in on Paulinho deal

  Corinthians have confirmed they are in advanced talks with Tottenham over the transfer of their midfielder Paulinho.

Brazil international Paulinho, who has made an impression in this summer's Confederations Cup, is believed to be closing in on a £17m move to White Hart Lane, with Corinthians director of football Edu confirming a deal is imminent.

"The situation is well underway," stated the former Arsenal midfielder when asked about a possible deal with Tottenham. "We have to agree on some details of the negotiation, so I can't say he will leave yet, but the negotiations are good."

Paulinho, who scored for Brazil in their 2-2 draw with England earlier this month, has also been linked with moves to Real Madrid and Roma in recent weeks, but the Premier League appears to be his likely destination as Spurs look to seal their first big signing.

The move would also be the first to be concluded by the club's new director of football Franco Baldini, who is working closely with boss Andre Villas-Boas in a revised player recruitment set-up at the north London club.

Source : www.espn.co.uk

"Monsters University" reviews: Do critics want to enroll?

School may soon be out for summer, but not for the creatures of "Monsters University," Disney/Pixar's new animated film now in theaters.
A whopping 12 years after the box office hit "Monsters, Inc.," comes the prequel, featuring the voices of Billy Crystal, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman, Helen Mirren, John Krasinski, Beth Behrs, Jennifer Tilly and Sean Hayes. The movie chronicles how two mismatched monsters Mike Wazowski and James P. Sullivan overcome their differences and become best friends.

"Monsters University" has a solid 77 percent rating on the movie review aggregator site Rotten Tomatoes.
The word "meh" perhaps best sums up many critics' takes on the film. Overall, critics enjoyed the movie, but very few were blown away -- some aren't rushing to campus to enroll in "Monsters University." Still, a few were quite pleased, including Newsday's Rafer Guzman, who noted, "'Monsters University' has an emotional quality that its whimsical predecessor lacked. It has a happy ending, of course, but this movie also feels -- in its monstery way -- very real."
See what some other movie critics had to say:
Peter Travers, Rolling Stone: "It's all infectious fun, despite the lack of originality. In the art of tickling funny bones, Crystal and Goodman earn straight A's."
"Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times: "'Monsters University' is so likable that it feels somewhat monstrous to criticize -- but nonetheless it isn't quite as funny as its predecessor, and some of the sequences toward the end feel a little flat... The Pixar bar, though, is awfully high, and not every film can be a 'Finding Nemo' or a 'Ratatouille.'"
Chris Nashawaty, Entertainment Weekly gave it an A-: "'Monsters University' is exactly the rebound Pixar needed after 2011's Cars 2 left some wondering if the studio had lost its magic. The delightful story of When Mike Met Sully puts those concerns to rest."
Todd McCarthy, The Hollywood Reporter: "It should be remedial school, not an institution of higher learning, for 'Monsters University,' an alarmingly lame effort from Pixar, the Oxbridge of animation studios. A prequel arriving 12 years after its progenitor, 'Monsters, Inc.,' this marks the third sub-par film in a row from Pixar, after 'Cars 2' and 'Brave,' suggesting that the brain trust in Emeryville has lost a bit of its edge."
Alonso Duralde, The Wrap: "Falling squarely between the studio's classics and its decidedly lesser work, Monsters University is a solidly average Pixar effort, one that brings laughs to the kegger, but you'll be hard-pressed to remember it at the reunion in 10 years."
Besty Sharkey, Los Angeles Times: "Whatever the reasons, 'Monsters University,' the prequel to the mild-mannered 'Monsters, Inc.,' is mostly memorable for being fine but forgettable. The 12-year span between the two suggests trepidation."
Claudia Puig, USA Today gave it 3 out of 4 stars: "'Monsters University' may not be as inventive as 'Inc.', but it's an amusing and amiable addition to Pixar's roster of animated coming-of-age stories."

source : http://www.cbsnews.com

Movies : World War Z Would Have Been Better if It Weren’t a Zombie Movie

For all of the delays, rewrites, and reshoots that plagued World War Z, it turned out to be a solid summer action flick. The irony, though, is the thing that might be its most festering infection is the plague itself.
World War Z would be better if it weren’t a zombie movie.
That’s not to say there shouldn’t be legions of infected undead swarming all over the place, because those things actually are pretty awesome. But when something markets itself as a “zombie movie,” it inevitably takes on certain baggage. Zombies — and the movies, TV shows, and comics about them — have a rich history and certain tropes that demand to be acknowledged. If they’re not, it’s hard to get past the cognitive dissonance created by a movie, no matter how enjoyable it might be, that isn’t what it’s billed as. It’s as if a scrawny, insecure Thor appeared in an Avengers flick. It might be an interesting story or character study, but that dude wouldn’t be a truly Asgardian superhero.
Similarly, if you’re a fan of gory zombie action and you’re going to this PG-13 flick looking for your bloody fix of gore, you might leave wanting.
Of course, changing up the zombie game is exactly what director Marc Forster (Monster’s Ball) and his fellow filmmakers set out to do. During a recent screening of World War Z in San Francisco, the movie’s star and producer Brad Pitt introduced the film by saying, “If you think you’re just about to see another zombie film, you’re in for a bit of a shock. … This thing is big, it’s like nothing you’ve seen before.”
He’s right.

(Spoiler alert: Minor plot points for World War Z in the text below.)
The movie, a fast-paced race by one man to stop a total zombie apocalypse, isn’t like a lot of zombie fare, which tends to focus on a small group of people fighting the undead in rural (or at least abandoned) surroundings.
Before we go any further, though, a quick primer: World War Z — loosely based on the book by Max (son of Mel) Brooks — is an enjoyable action movie in which former United Nations investigator Gerry Lane, played by Pitt, finds himself, his wife and two young daughters in the midst of a worldwide undead epidemic. The family escapes with help from Lane’s U.N. connections, but by calling in that favor he is asked to trace the source of the disease and stop it. He goes from South Korea, scene of one of the first reported cases, to Jerusalem, which has built a wall to keep the undead out, and ultimately to a World Health Organization facility.
His journey is a nail-biter. (We have the cuticles to prove it.) And in addition to being suspenseful, the flick drives home the personal and global reactions such an outbreak would bring. In a key moment, Lane believes he may have been infected and stands on the roof of a towering apartment building prepared to jump, knowing he’s better off dead than a threat to his family. That’s as real as it gets. Also telling are the geopolitical reactions and their ties to real-world politics. North Korea, for example, staves off an invasion of the undead by removing everyone’s teeth so they can’t bite. Such undertones make World War Z as intelligent as it is shocking.
That said, it could use a little more feeling and character development, but, hey, you can only tell so much story in a couple hours.
But considering the tweaking done to zombie lore, it could’ve just as easily been about another kind of outbreak and been just as poignant. And maybe it should have. As Annalee Newitz at io9 notes, “Maybe the problem with World War Z is that zombie movies require a certain amount of weirdness or subversiveness to succeed. Turning a zombie pandemic into a generic disaster movie robs the zombies of their dirty, nasty edginess and robs the disaster of its epic scope.”

Source : http://www.wired.com

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Kim Kardashian and Kanye Name Baby 'North West', Twitter Explodes

It was hardly the first time in history a celebrity couple have given their child an unusual name. (Brooklyn Beckham, anyone? How about Blue Ivy Carter?)
But when it emerged Thursday night that Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have named the bouncing baby girl that arrived Saturday — and her name is North West, according to both TMZ and US magazine — wags around the world just couldn't resist taking to Twitter.
Within an hour of the announcement, "North West" became a global trending topic on the service. Reactions ran the gamut from confusion:

Will Instagram video weed out Vine?

Facebook has unveiled its new video feature for Instagram, five months after Twitter launched a very similar video app called Vine. Can the rival services co-exist?
“They can,” according to analyst Greg Sterling, because Instagram video and Vine serve different audiences, he argued.

The new Instagram feature lets users record videos three to 15 seconds long and apply one of 13 new filters. They can also edit their videos by deleting clips as they record them. And on iOS, the app has a “Cinema” mode to reduce shakiness and produce more professional-looking video.
Vine is a more stripped-down service that records three- to six-second videos, with no filters, editing or image stabilization. Once a video is recorded, users can either save it, upload it or start from scratch.
Vine lets users easily share their videos on its dedicated social network, as well as on Twitter and Facebook; Instagram offers built-in sharing support for Instagram, Facebook and Twitter and also Tumblr and Foursquare.
“Vine is like fast food, while Instagram video is more like eating in a nicer restaurant,” said Ovum analyst Jan Dawson.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that, he said. “Sometimes you just need to grab a burger and get out the door,” he said. “For Vine, it’s like, ‘share and forget.’”
Others said Instagram and Vine don’t serve different audiences as much as they represent two different social networks and their efforts to retain and engage users.
“Vine isn’t necessarily Twitter, and Instagram isn’t necessarily Facebook, but that doesn’t mean these apps aren’t part of the bigger collective [sites],” said Brian Blau, an industry analyst with Gartner.
Social media networks realize that features around photography and video are things they need to have, Blau said.
“Part of what’s going on here is who these companies are and the reach they have, and I think that could really make a difference in terms of the popularity of these features,” he added.
“There’s a lot of room for both Vine and Instagram video, at least in the short term,” said Zachary Reiss-Davis, an analyst with Forrester Research.
“This might be a case where the site that creates the best content wins, and the major social platform providers are all of a sudden becoming content providers,” he said.
So will Instagram video, with all its bling, better enable the creation of that content than Vine?
Vine may be getting ready to offer some advanced features of its own. On Wednesday, Vine co-founder Dom Hoffman posted two Vine videos on his Twitter feed that seemed to hint at new tools around texting or messaging. One post was titled, “Tinkering”; the other, “Say something nice.”
On Tuesday, Vine posted a thank-you message and video to its users on its blog and Twitter stream.
“Thank you for sharing so many wonderful videos on Vine,” the developers said in a tweet. “You’re all awesome.”
“Over the next few weeks, we’ll be introducing some exciting new parts to Vine,” developers recently said in a blog post. “This is just the beginning.”

Offering more features to better compete with Instagram could be a motivating factor. “There is no doubt Twitter will move quickly to up the ante on Vine, and this could undercut Facebook’s efforts with video on Instagram,” said Ovum analyst Eden Zoller.
Instagram video “is going to create a leapfrogging competition between Twitter and Facebook to create a service that is not only easy to use, but also create videos that are high quality and enjoyable to consume,” said Forrester’s Reiss-Davis.
But the next step isn’t about focusing on video length or number of filters—it’s about offering an easy-to-use service that ordinary people who don’t live in the Silicon Valley bubble will want to adopt, Reiss-Davis said.
“It’s not competing on things like 12 filters or three filters,” he said. “It’s, is this going to be really easy to use?”
Instagram video was announced Thursday morning at Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, California.

Source : http://www.pcworld.com

Tahiti Loses, 10-0, And Keeps Celebrating In Brazil

There were no miracles for Tahiti at the Confederations Cup Thursday. After all, they were facing Spain, currently the No. 1 soccer team in the world. But even a stark 10-0 loss, a record result this late in a FIFA tournament, didn't dampen the enthusiasm the Tahitians have brought to Brazil.
The game was played in a stadium that held a crowd reported at 71,000 people — equal to a bit more than a quarter of the total population of Tahiti, which different estimates place at between 267,000 and 277,000.
The team from Tahiti, nearly all of them amateur players who live on the French territory's islands, made headlines earlier this week simply by scoring a single goal. That strike came against Nigeria, and it sparked a celebration in which its players lined up on the turf and pretended to row a boat together.
In that game, Tahiti lost to Nigeria handily, 6-1. But that lone goal fulfilled the mission of the Toa Aito, as the team is called (it translates to Great Warriors).

Tahitian striker Marama Vahirua, who plays in France for Nancy, is the only professional player on the squad, which also includes several promising young players. He recently said that scoring one goal in Brazil is the highest aspiration for his team.
"A goal for us, it will be a victory in the competition, no matter who scores," he said, according to . "I did not come here to have fun but to defend the colors of Tahiti and French football. If we can at least score a goal."
And when they achieved that goal, the team's celebration solidified its status as the darlings of this tournament, where fans chant for Tahiti and boo teams from Spain and Nigeria. Ranked No. 138 in the world, Tahiti is one of eight teams competing in Brazil, alongside such elite squads as Italy and the host country itself.

"Wow, we are in Brazil to play the best teams in the world," Tahiti coach Eddy Etaeta, according to , which also notes that the coach shook his head as he made the comment.
Tahiti punched its ticket to the Confederations Cup last year, with a surprising win at the continental played in the Solomon Islands — the first by a Pacific Islands nation in the competition's 39 years.
"We are honest," Etaeta said before the Nigeria game. "Tahiti has not come to win." He said the team would like to score a goal in a game, "or maybe get to halftime at 0-0."
Before Thursday's game, Tahiti's players walked up to their Spanish opponents holding gifts. They carefully placed necklaces made of shells around the Spaniards' necks, and then waited for the game to start.
In the game, Spanish stars Fernando Torres and David Villa together scored seven goals. But the Tahiti team showed resolve, possessing the ball 38 percent of the time. And after the game's first 30 minutes, Tahiti only trailed by 1-0. Afterwards, the Spanish players said they were impressed with how their opponents handled the game.

After the game was over, Tahiti's players led cheers to thank the crowd, then they lined up to shake hands with the Spanish players, and trade jerseys.
With only one more game left in group play — against Uruguay — it's unlikely Tahiti will win in Brazil. But the Tahitians are there. And they've scored.

Source : www.npr.org