LAPD CHEIF CHARLIE BECK AND IMMIGRATION RULES IN LOS ANGELES

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck: L.A. won't be guided by Arizona immigration rules
April 30, 2010 | 6:32 am
With as many as 100,000 people expected to convene downtown Saturday to rally in support of immigrant rights, Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck went out of his way to make clear that his officers are guided by a different set of rules than the controversial state law recently passed in neighboring Arizona.

“Because of the ongoing issues in Arizona, I wanted to make something perfectly clear,” Beck said. “Special Order 40 is the mandate of this department. …That is how I will police this city as long as I am the chief of police.”

Beck was referring to the agency’s long-standing policy that prohibits officers from initiating contact with someone solely to determine whether he or she is in the country legally. It has drawn the periodic ire of critics who argue for a tougher stance against undocumented immigrants.

Beck and other chiefs before him, however, have said the policy is an important tool, as it encourages illegal immigrants who witness crimes to assist police without fear of being deported.

Arizona’s tough new legislation makes it a state crime to be in Arizona illegally and requires police to check suspects for immigration paperwork.


The legislation also bars people from soliciting work or hiring day laborers off the street.

Anger over the law has inflamed passions on both sides of the immigration debate and caused LAPD officials to increase their predictions for the number of people expected to turnout for the annual demonstration.
MARK SHAPIRO RESPONSE POSTED IN LOS ANGELES TIMES
NO wonder California is in a mess..Now you got the police, who are supposed to uphold laws, ignore federal law. I guess he worries about his career than what he was hired for. Why dont the police ignore other laws like speeding, marijuana, theft, murder, etc. All the Arizona law is , is federal law, which means the police have to HAVE A REASON for stopping someone and only if the person turns out to be here illegally, then the police HAVE A FEDERAL RIGHT TO UPHOLD THE LAW. Last time I checked, there is a procedure in place for a person wanting to be in this country but it appears that procedure doesnt mean anything and the law APPLIES TO ANYONE HERE ILLEGALLY, NOT JUST SOMEONE FROM MEXICO. The united states, during world war two, turned back Jewish Refugees from Germany on a ship because they were considered illegal immigrants. The ship then went to cuba who turned them down and then had to go back go Germany, where all were sent to a concentration camp, to their death.The ones who will be protesting on cinco de mayo will be those who are breaking the law, simple as that, and who want all the benefits without paying into it. Go to Mexico and you will see you have no rights and even cannot own land.
Posted by: MARK SHAPIRO | April 30, 2010 at 07:08 AM

WIZARD OF OZ WILL BE 3-D

Disney's 'Wizard of Oz' prequel would be in 3-D
April 21, 2010 | 3:23 pm
More info is emerging on "The Great Powerful," the Wizard of Oz prequel that's being developed at Disney.

Sam Mendes, who sits atop the short list of director candidates, is set to fly in from London in the next few weeks to meet with studio chief Rich Ross and other Disney executives. As we wrote yesterday, Mendes has time on his hands now that James Bond 23 is on the skids (and is undoubtedly looking for a big commercial film anyway, as directors coming off underperformers are wont to do).

The director will offer his take to studio executives, and while Mendes' movies have generally skewed darker, this take on Oz, about the Wizard before he became thus, is a complex character. And Tim Burton also skewed dark before he hooked up with Disney and "Great Powerful" producer Joe Roth on "Alice in Wonderland," and that didn't seem to ding the film one bit. (Mendes also apparently has an academic background in Lewis Carroll and other things children's-fantasy.)

Robert Downey Jr., as we mentioned yesterday, is one of the actors being considered, but a number of dominoes would yet have to fall for that to happen, including, perhaps most trickily, some navigation of his already-packed schedule.

The project is aiming to shoot in 3-D, with the idea that plenty of Oz set-pieces could benefit from the z-axis treatment, just as they did in "Alice." As for timing, Mitchell Kapner's script is considered to be in pretty good shape, and Disney is said to really like the idea, so if everything snaps into place we could see the Wizard back on the big screen by as early as 2012. In the race to get a new Oz project going, Disney could wind up king of

LOS ANGELES TIMES ARTICLE ON NEW WIZARD OF OZ WITH ROBERT DOWNEY JR.

Robert Downey Jr. as the Wizard of Oz?
April 20, 2010 | 8:11 pm
Several weeks ago we wrote that Joe Roth was meeting with newly anointed Disney production president Sean Bailey on a "Wizard of Oz" prequel about the wizard before he came to Oz.

Now we're hearing that those meetings went well, so well that the project is on a fast track of sorts. According to word in the development community, Robert Downey Jr. is talking to producers about starring as the wizard (hard not to lick your lips at that one).

Meanwhile, two directors are said to be considered top candidates to get behind the camera: "American Beauty" director Sam Mendes (who may have some time on his hands now that "Bond 23" is in trouble) and "Hairspray" and "Bedtime Stories" director Adam Shankman, who most recently pulled the strings from behind the curtain at the Oscars.

(Downey's and Mendes' potential involvement, incidentally, were also mentioned earlier today in a tweet from Production Weekly.)

As we'd initially written, "The Whole Nine Yards" writer Mitchell Kapner wrote the script for the project, based on parts of a number of L. Frank Baum books. (It was called "Brick" back when it was first presented to Disney, but is now being talked about around town as "The Great Powerful.") The wizard, who in the Baum books was a charlatan in Kansas before arriving in Oz, is a more dark and complex character in the Roth/Kapner version than the desperate and doddering wizard of the MGM musical (played by Frank Morgan) would suggest, which in turn makes it seem like it would be perfect for Downey (and few others).

The two directors being considered, meanwhile, would seem to mark two directions for the picture, given the more subdued and even bleaker tones that have infused Mendes' work and the lighter, more whimsical one that has marked Shankman's.

Disney is said to like the premise enough (and with Roth's "Alice in Wonderland" doing so fantastically well, why not?) that if it all comes together, they could shoot the movie as early as next spring, when Downey has a spot in his production schedule. From down-and-out to playing Tony Stark and, possibly, the Wizard of Oz -- it's like he's on his own yellow brick road.

--Steven Zeitchik

LAKE TITICACA

Located between Bolivia and Peru, Lake Titicaca is one of the most fascinating lakes in the world. It is situated at a very high altitude, at over 3800 meters above sea level, and a tour at Titicaca is definitely an unforgettable experience for any visitor. When visiting Lake Titicaca, the town of Puno is the best place to stay, on the Peruvian side of the lake. The town of Puno is an interesting place to visit as it is the capital of folklore of Peru. It also has a beautiful old cathedral, and it is close to many attractions of Peru like the Macchu Picchu or the town of Cusco.

Lake Titicaca is a sacred place for the Inca civilization, as the Incan mythology says that the first Inca king, Manco Capac, was born here. According to the Incan mythology, this is the place where the world was created from, when the god Viracocha came out of the lake and created the sun, the stars and the first people. You will have many places to discover on the shore of Lake Titicaca, as well as on the many islands that exist on the lake.

On the Bolivian side of the lake you will find the fascinating town of Challapampa , home of the famous labyrinth (Chinkana). Also on the Bolivian side, you can find the biggest island of the lake, Isla del Sol ( Island of the Sun). While there are no roads on the island, making it not tourism friendly, the over 180 ruins from the Incan period are making it worth to visit.

DILDO ISLAND

Dildo Island is an island in the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is the largest of three islands located at the entrance to Dildo Arm in the bottom of Trinity Bay, off the coast of the neighboring town of Dildo.

An archaeological excavation in 1995 discovered Dorset artifacts dated to between AD 150 and AD 750. It is believed that these people camped on Dildo Island for the purpose of seal hunting. From 1996 to 1999, archaeologist Silve Leblanc uncovered two Dorset houses and over 5500 artifacts from the same period.

In 2001 excavations were begun on a recently-discovered Indian site that radiocarbon dated to between AD 720 and AD 960. Evidence of a camp was found with the remnants of a wigwam and hearth. Almost all of the tools were made from purple and blue rhyolites that came from a source in Bonavista Bay roughly 145 km (90 miles) to the north.

John Guy's journal of 1612 suggested evidence of a Beothuk Indian camp on Dildo Island. An English fort was established in the early 1700s to defend the south side of Trinity Bay from the French during Queen Anne's War

ROBERT DOWNEY JR. AS THE WIZARD IN OZ PREQUEL?

.Robert Downey Jr. as the Wizard in an 'Oz' prequel?
by Mike Bruno
Categories: Casting, Movies, News, This Could Be Interesting...
It could happen, according to the LA Times, which reported last night that Disney has put a Wizard of Oz prequel on “a fast track of sorts” with Robert Downey Jr. in talks to star as the wizard, and Sam Mendes (who just got his plate cleared now that Bond 23 is on hold indefinitely) and Adam Shankman (Hairspray) on the short list to direct. (Production Weekly also reported Mendes and Downey on its Twitter feed, and Perez Hilton reported on Friday that Downey and Johnny Depp are in the running for the starring role.) The project, scripted by Whole Nine Yards writer Mitchell Kapner based on L. Frank Baum’s Oz books, tells the pre-Emerald City story of the Great and Powerful Oz, back when he was a charlatan in Kansas working in a traveling circus. The Times describes the wizard as ”a more dark and complex character in the Roth/Kapner version than the desperate and doddering wizard of the MGM musical (played by Frank Morgan) would suggest.” The Times also points out that the role seems perfect for Downey — and I must concur.

Like the musical Wicked did for the Witch of the West, a movie prequel telling the Wizard’s backstory actually sounds pretty cool. How did a man from Kansas become a giant floating head in a back room of a magical city run by little people? He claimed to be a “a very good man…just a very bad wizard,” but from what we saw of him, we also know he was kind of a huckster, smoke and mirrors personified. So who is the man behind the man behind the curtain? The more I think of it, the more I want to see Downey fill in the many blanks surrounding this mysterious, iconic character (who, by the way, scared the hell out of me as a kid).

Who else thinks this could be good? And of the two directors reportedly in the running, which do you prefer: Mendes or Shankman?

WIZARD OF OZ OLDEST MUNCHKIN DIES AT 94

Hollywood said goodbye on Saturday to Meinhardt Raabe, one of the original Munchkins in the "Wizard of Oz."

Flowers were placed on the Hollywood Walk of Fame star for the Munchkins, according to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce. Raabe, 94, was considered the oldest living Munchkin and died Friday in Florida.

Raabe was on hand with other cast members in 2007 when the Munchkin star was finally dedicated on the Walk of Fame.

Many considered the honor long overdue. In the movie, Raabe portrayed the coroner. At the unveiling, he delighted the crowd by reciting his memorable lines: "As coroner I must aver, I thoroughly examined her, And she's not only merely dead, She's really most sincerely dead."



In 2007, only seven Munchkins were still alive -- most in their 80s and 90s. They were the last of the 124 diminutive inhabitants of fictional Munchkinland who appeared with Judy Garland in the 1939 movie. They were mostly midgets, with a few children thrown in.