London, Jan 24 (IANS) English actress Sienna Miller is hinting she’s ready to start a family with her former fiance actor Jude Law, after reportedly rekindling her romance with him.

The couple split in 2006, after a British newspaper exposed Law’s affair with his children’s nanny but the two reunited late last year while starring on the New York stage, and enjoyed a festive vacation in Barbados together.

Though neither have confirmed a reconciliation, Miller admits she’s thinking about starting a family, reports imdb.com.

‘(I’ll) probably be a mum, I’d love to have kids,’ she said.

Melbourne, Jan 2 (ANI): Elin Nordegren has left hubby Tiger Woods behind in the US to take a secret trip to the snowy French Alps, it has emerged.

The Sun reported that the Swedish stunner gave the golfing star the cold shoulder.

According to reports, Elin is seeking refuge in a 6,000dollar-a-night chalet.

Elin, 29, is holed up in the chalet near the posh French resort of Chamonix. She’s there with her twin sister Josephin and five trusted pals, reports The Daily Telegraph.

A family friend told The Sun: “Elin wanted to take her family and close friends away from the minefield Tiger has created by his behavior.

“She has been absolutely torn to pieces by what he has done to her. But she still sees a future with Tiger because of the beautiful children they have.

“She told him she needed a lengthy time apart to reflect on how they might possibly salvage the marriage.”

Meanwhile, it has been reported that the sex scandal could see the golfer’s antics being made into a film.

Hollywood producers are keen to tell the story in a made-for-TV movie. Jerry Maguire star, Oscar-winning Cuba Gooding Jr, 41, is said to be one of those being lined-up to play the golfer. (ANI)

London, Dec 29 (IANS) With no family, friends and alleged high-class madames around, it’s going to be a lonely birthday for troubled celebrity golfter Tiger Woods who turns 34 Wednesday.

Woods is said to be still on his yacht Privacy avoiding the daily allegations spewing from waitresses and porn stars, reports news.co.au.

Woods’ life took a downturn when he crashed his car outside his house in the early hours of Nov 27 amid allegations of a massive fight between him and his wife Elin Nordegren, who apparently used a golf club to break the window on his car.

After the accident, the golfer has been tainted by allegations of serial infidelities with as many as 14 women around the US, including various waitresses, nightclub hostesses and porn stars, claiming they had affairs with him.

His wife is apparently living separately with their children, while the golfer, who has taken an indefinite break from golf, has gone into seclusion.

More humiliation for Woods came as his image was removed from Florida publicity shots for the Arnold Palmer Invitational, which he has won six times. Swiss watchmaker Tag Heuer announced it was dropping him from its US ad campaigns.

Also, management consultancy firm Accenture announced that it would discontinue its sponsorship agreement with the scandal-tainted golfer. Gillette has also axed a 12 million pounds (about $19.4 million) marketing deal with him.

Pepsi bosses have also held talks about their 60 million-pound five-year contract with Woods since ditching the Gatorade Tiger Focus drink, and US phone giant AT&T is “evaluating” its link with the star.

Business experts in the US have estimated the loss to shareholders from Woods’ marital infidelity at about $13.65 billion, comparing returns for Woods’ sponsors to those of the total stock market and of each sponsor’s closest competitor.

London, Dec 29 (IANS) The Tiger Woods infidelity story may be turned into a TV movie and Oscar-winning actor Cuba Gooding Jr. is reportedly lined up to play the troubled celebrity golfer, according to reports.

Gooding Jr, 41, is reportedly being eyed for the high-profile role by several Hollywood producers, who are vying to be the first to make a film about the sensational revelations in the New Year, reports dailyexpress.co.uk.

As soon as the Woods story made headlines, the battle has been on to dramatise the scandal for the screen.

“It makes a great movie because people love the drama of seeing someone really successful fall from the top and then scramble to pick up the pieces of their life. It proves that even the world’s greatest athlete is human just like the rest of us but the movie needs to be made before the public loses interest in Tiger so the race is now on,” a leading Hollywood producer told dailyexpress.co.uk on condition of anonymity.

Woods, 34, shocked everyone when reports about his alleged affairs with 14 women came out following his accident Nov 27 where he crashed his car into a fire hydrant and a tree outside his Florida mansion. It was also reported that he had been attacked by his Swedish wife, 31-year-old former model Elin Nordegren, prior to the crash.

Woods, who released a statement admitting “infidelity” earlier this month, could face an expensive divorce which could see his wife of five years walk away with more than 169 million pounds — almost half his empire.

After various women came forward with accusations about Woods, who last year earned an estimated 69 million pounds from winnings and endorsements, he now faces a probe by US taxman over reports of cash payments to his mistresses.

He could also be investigated over his alleged links to high-class call girls and money paid for sex.

In a recent statement Woods said he was taking “an indefinite break from professional golf”.

The trade buzz is that papa Rakesh Roshan is busy giving finishing touches to the script of Krrish 2.

While no one on board will give an official comment it is said that Bollywood superstar Hrithik Roshan will have a double role in the film, with Dr Jekyl/Mr Hyde traits. It is also hinted that since SFX are such a craze with the teens, the baddie in this very popular sequel will be part-robot-part-human and technicians from abroad will fly down specially to work with Roshan Senior, who has an envious box office track record. And who will romance Hrithik in this caper?

Allegedly Deepika Padukone or Katrina Kaif will play the lead, but of course since everything is premature, and official sources keep dismissing the whole premise as a figment of the media’s imagination. However, the fact is that the father-son combo of Roshans usually create a flutter even if they sneeze.

Bikram Saluja’s latest work, ‘An Actor’s Inspiration’, feels like an Indianised version of Francis Ford Coppola’s ‘The Godfather’ and Martin Scorsese’s ‘Raging Bulls’, only that it is a for-private-circulation-only coffee table book and not a movie.

It is like watching a movie in the photographic format with the narrative threading the whole work together.

“I wanted to do something independently,” says Saluja. “When I started out with the book, the work coming my way wasn’t interesting enough and I didn’t want to do just anything for the sake of being in circulation,” he says candidly.

So rather than waiting for the right stuff to come, Saluja drew inspiration from his favourite movies to create his own destiny. “Making a full fledged film at that time seemed like an enormous task. But I needed to find for myself the right artistic expression, to learn and to expand my horizons.”

“I was fortunate enough to have worked with some great photographers during my modeling days, and when I pitched the idea of doing a photographic book to two of my close friends who are also photographers, they were game for it and we decided to collaborate.”

A look at the book and his passion for what he was doing is hard to miss. The elaborate sets, the fine photography and the immaculately put together book took 4 years to create.

“Finding the right concept and to be able to do justice to what I had started out to do was a daunting task. It needed to be though provoking, challenging and of course it had to be related to cinema,” says Saluja.

And this book could well be the ‘break’ Saluja needs. When asked if this could be is stepping stone to movie making, Saluja is quick to reply. “Absolutely! This has definitely set a base. I was working not just in the capacity of an actor but in each and every department right from conceptualizing and interpreting to working with actors, to locations, post production,” he says.

“It was pretty much like putting a film together the only difference being that we were shooting through a still camera and not a movie camera.”

The foreword for the film has been written by none other than Amitabh Bachchan. “As an actor, everyone dreams of sharing screen space with him. With Amitabhji writing the foreword for my book, I feel that I have been able to share space with him in some small way. It’s like his seal of approval,” quips Saluja.

Saluja says he looks forward to acting. “For the past two years, I have been totally into this book, so it’s been much like a sabbatical. I’ve lived like a hermit living in obscurity for the past two years with only one thing on my mind. But yes, if I get roles that I like then I am more than happy to get back into my actor’s shoes. If not, then I have plans to write my own script and direct.”

And if his movies would be anything like his book, it will surely be something to watch out for!

Source: Meghna Lal/ India Syndicate

That isn’t all. She has just been declared as the sexiest Asian actress by a leading Asian website from London.

But the girl remains grounded, so much so that she refuses to budge from her abode in a bustling part of Mumbai. “I know I’ve been reading about relocating my home. I admit I’ve looked at a few properties. But nothing seriously. Though it’s a little noisy on my street I’m too attached to the place I stay in. I’m also too lazy to make a move. Yes I’ll need a bigger place when my sister Isabelle joins me. But right now she’s studying acting in the US. There’s still time,” yawns Bollywood’s hottest and sexiest girl.

So is she planning to move home? “Not at all. I’ve always wanted a home by the sea. But I love my current home too much. So no plans of moving”

No plans of signing any new films yet either. “It’s very sweet of directors to mention my name in forthcoming projects. I feel privileged. But I haven’t said yes to anything new. At the moment I’ve cut my workload by half because of my ill health.”

As for being designated one of Asia’s sexiest women by Eastern Eye Katrina laughs, “Me? Hot and sexy? Nah. People should see me at home. I’m painfully unglamorous. Just another working girl making a living.”

Source: Bollywood Hungama

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An international team of researchers said Monday it had mapped the DNA of a domestic pig, work they say could help lead to better breeding techniques as well as improve vaccines against diseases such as swine flu.

They plan to look for genes useful in pork production and immunity in pigs, which are similar in size to humans. And, like humans, they catch influenza very easily.

“Understanding the swine genome will lead to health advancements in the swine population and accelerate the development of vaccinations for pigs,” said Roger Beachy, Director of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture.

“This new insight into the genetic makeup of the swine population can help reduce disease and enable medical advancements in both pigs and humans,” Beachy said in a statement.

“The pig is a unique animal that is important for food and that is used as an animal model for human disease,” added Larry Schook of the University of Illinois in Champaign, who helped direct the project.

“And because the native wild animals are still in existence, it is a really exciting animal to look at to learn about the genomic effects of domestication.”

The pandemic H1N1 swine flu virus originated in pigs and evidence suggests it can be passed from humans to pigs and back again. Pigs are also susceptible to many other strains of influenza.

SYDNEY (Reuters Life!) – Bad moods can actually be good for you, with an Australian study finding that being sad make people less gullible, improves their ability to judge others and also boosts memory.

The study, authored by psychology professor Joseph Forgas at the University of New South Wales, showed that people in a negative mood were more critical of, and paid more attention to, their surroundings than happier people, who were more likely to believe anything they were told.

“Whereas positive mood seems to promote creativity, flexibility, cooperation, and reliance on mental shortcuts, negative moods trigger more attentive, careful thinking paying greater attention to the external world,” Forgas wrote.

“Our research suggests that sadness … promotes information processing strategies best suited to dealing with more demanding situations.”

For the study, Forgas and his team conducted several experiments that started with inducing happy or sad moods in their subjects through watching films and recalling positive or negative events.

In one of the experiments, happy and sad participants were asked to judge the truth of urban myths and rumors and found that people in a negative mood were less likely to believe these statements.

People in a bad mood were also less likely to make snap decisions based on racial or religious prejudices, and they were less likely to make mistakes when asked to recall an event that they witnessed.

The study also found that sad people were better at stating their case through written arguments, which Forgas said showed that a “mildly negative mood may actually promote a more concrete, accommodative and ultimately more successful communication style.”

“Positive mood is not universally desirable: people in negative mood are less prone to judgmental errors, are more resistant to eyewitness distortions and are better at producing high-quality, effective persuasive messages,” Forgas wrote.

The study was published in the November/December edition of the Australasian Science journal.

By Steven Zeitchik

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) – Awards season might have an originality issue.

Since it was introduced 70 years ago, the Academy Awards’ original screenplay category has been a breeding ground for fresh new voices, launching careers and solidifying the legacy of writers as diverse as Orson Welles, Billy Wilder and Paddy Chayefsky.

But this year the category looks as thin as a supermodel on a crash diet.

The Coen brothers’ “A Serious Man,” Quentin Tarantino’s “Inglourious Basterds” and Bob Peterson’s and Tom McCarthy’s “Up” are likely near-locks for noms. That leaves two slots, one of which could go to Scott Neustadter and Michael Weber for their quirky breakup story “(500) Days of Summer.”

Beyond that, the voters are going to have to look farther afield. Almost certainly vying for attention are the duo behind the “Star Trek” update, writers Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman, who also count cinematic tour de force “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” among their 2009 credits, though the Academy could qualify it as adapted. (The writers branch will meet in the coming weeks to make rule determinations.)

The field has changed pretty dramatically during the past several decades. The last time Tarantino was nominated (in 1994), he went up against Woody Allen, Richard Curtis and Peter Jackson; this go-round he could end up pitted against “The Hangover” scribe Scott Moore (most recent credit: “Ghosts of Girlfriends Past”), who’s also jockeying for a spot.

If this were just a down year, that would be one thing. But the lack of established writers is catching the eye of many in the development community as something more permanent.

“I think you can look at the state of the category as a direct result of studios’ reliance on known brands and the death of the spec market,” says one agent.

Original screenplays used to comprise the bulk of what Hollywood did. But ever since the studios became obsessed with remakes and sequels, there’s been a depletion of new plot ideas that might have populated the category.

About the only fresh material these days comes from purely personal stories such as “A Serious Man” and “(500) Days” — movies that come together only through an alignment of the planets and despite a highly unreceptive climate.

When execs at Sony passed on “(500) Days” — joining nearly every other studio in doing so — they asked Neustadter if he and Weber could pen “The Pink Panther 2″ instead.

“I was like, really? Have you read our script?” Neustadter recalls (though the pair did end up doing a draft for the “Panther” sequel).

All this would be troubling enough if the Oscars existed independently of the realpolitik of Hollywood. But the current lack of original screenplays might reinforce the negative trend: Studios don’t produce many, the Academy doesn’t have many to choose from, and then the category loses stature, further disincentivizing studios from greenlighting those types of movies.

Because the category is relatively free of the politics of the acting categories and depends upon a more defined group of voters for its first-round selection than does best picture, original screenplay has an uncanny way of reflecting the movie zeitgeist.

When socially realistic, auteur-driven pictures such as “Chinatown” and “Network” were being cultivated by the studios in the 1970s, they won original screenplay Oscars. When such indie pics as “The Crying Game” and “Fargo” were taking the film world by storm in the 1990s, they won the prizes, signaling and fueling the renaissance of offbeat fare.

This year could see the same. If movies such as “Star Trek” and “Hangover” are in the mix, the current vogue for big-budget remakes and low-budget broad comedies will be reflected. The Welleses and Wilders of today just might be Kurtzman and Orci.