Deepa Mehta to shoot Midnight's Children in Sri Lanka

Oscar nominated director Deepa Mehta and multi-award-winning author Salman Rushdie's screen adaptation of his extraordinary multi award-winning international bestselling novel Midnight's Children will commence shooting in Sri Lanka in January 2011.

Shabana Azmi, Irrfan Khan, Soha Ali Khan, Nandita Das, Chandan Roy Sanyal and Seema Biswas will star in the English language film.
The film is being shot in Sri Lanka because Mehta has sworn off India following her nightmare experience shooting Water at Varanasi locations. Water was subsequently shot in Sri Lanka. But Midnight's Children could yet run into problems because in the late 1990s the BBC was planning to film a five-part mini-series of the novel with Rahul Bose in the lead, but due to pressure from the Muslim community in Sri Lanka, the filming permit was revoked and the project was cancelled.

Mehta and Rushdie have been working together on the screenplay for the past two years. International sales agents FilmNation are handling the film and have already concluded distribution deals with E1 in the UK and UGC in France.

FilmNation CEO Glen Basner said, "At once epic, comic and magical, Midnight's Children conjures images and characters as rich and unforgettable as India herself. It's a wonderful project and we are humbled that we have been chosen to represent it."

Midnight's Children is the riveting personal story of Saleem, and his changeling twin Shiva, who are both born right at midnight on August 15, 1947, just as India gained its independence from the British Raj. We learn about other children born close to Independence Midnight who, like Saleem, possess special powers and can communicate with each other telepathically. He is not alone. The lives of all the Midnight's Children are magically tied to the fate of Mother India. Saleem grows up in the shadow of the Raj, in a former British compound. His romantic nature (and his ability to "dial up" his Midnight's Children comrades telepathically) keeps him afloat. Then shattering revelations about his true identity and a forbidden love send him spinning. Wars and terrible hardships overwhelm Saleem and the other Midnight's Children but through it all, a bruised and hard-earned sense of hope and renewal is restored.

Midnight's Children won both the 1981 Booker Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. It was awarded the "Booker of Bookers" Prize and the best all-time prize winners in 1993 and 2008 to celebrate the Booker Prize 25th and 40th anniversary. Midnight's Children is also the only Indian novel on Time's list of the 100 best English-language novels since it's founding in 1923.

Mehta said of her passion for the novel, "I am intrigued by epic stories with complex people who have many layers and secrets, and tricks up their sleeves. This great novel of Rushdie's is one of the most famous examples of this kind of generous storytelling, and had an instantaneous appeal for me."
Speaking of his relationship with Mehta, Rushdie said, "Deepa asked me who had the rights to Midnight's Children, and I told her that I did. She said "Can I do it?" and I said "Yes." When asked why this was a such quick, sure decision for him, "Because her work has great beauty, and I always follow the passion."

Midnight's Children is produced by David Hamilton with Executive Producers Doug Mankoff and Andrew Spaulding from Echo Lake Entertainment and Steven Silver and Neil Tabatznik from Blue Ice Entertainment.

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Facebook is expected to unveil a revamped set of communications services that will include an e-mail system in which users will have addresses with the facebook.com suffix, two people briefed on Facebook's plans told the New York Times. Facebook has invited reporters to a press conference on 15 November, but has refused to say what it plans to announce. The company declined to comment on any unannounced communications services.

Facebook already offers an online chat service and an internal message system between Facebook users. The new communications services would not be meant to be used on their own, like other e-mail systems. Instead, they would be tightly coupled with Facebook's other services.

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West cannot defeat al-Qaeda, says UK forces chief

The West can only contain, not defeat, militant groups such as al-Qaeda, the head of the UK's armed forces has said. General Sir David Richards, a former Nato commander in Afghanistan, said Islamist militancy would pose a threat to the UK for at least 30 years.

But he told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show a clear-cut victory over militants was not achievable. The BBC's Frank Gardner said the comments reflect a "new realism" in UK and US counter-terrorism circles.
Our security correspondent said such an admission five years ago might have been considered outrageous and defeatist.

'Secure lives'
Before he was due to lay a wreath at the Cenotaph as part of the UK's Remembrance Sunday commemorations, Gen Richards told the BBC's Andrew Marr Show it was important to get the balance of remembrance right.

"It's something we've got to be very careful about... there's a lot of dwelling on death as opposed to what those people who have died achieved in their sadly too often too brief lives, but those people have done immense things that are good and I think we need to focus a bit more on that," he said.

Britain has lost 343 soldiers in Afghanistan since 2001.

But Gen Richards told the BBC it was not possible to defeat the Taliban or al-Qaeda militarily.

"You can't. We've all said this. David Petraeus has said it, I've said it.

"The trick is the balance of things that you're doing and I say that the military are just about, you know, there.

"The biggest problem's been ensuring that the governance and all the development side can keep up with it within a time frame and these things take generations sometimes within a time frame that is acceptable to domestic, public and political opinion," he said.

He said extremist Islamism could not be eradicated as an idea.

"I don't think you can probably defeat an idea, it's something we need to battle back against as necessary, but in its milder forms why shouldn't they be allowed to have that sort of philosophy underpinning their lives.

"It's how it manifests itself that is the key and can we contain that manifestation - and quite clearly al-Qaeda is an unacceptable manifestation of it," he said.
 

Security lapse

Shadow defence secretary Jim Murphy told the BBC Gen Richards was "right" that there was no purely military solution and said there would be "no white flag surrender moment".
Gen Sir David Richards Gen Sir David Richards is currently head of the British army

"This is a complicated issue. It will be for the long haul. It's got to do with history.

"But I think he's right to talk about the different ways that this has got to be taken on - militarily yes but diplomatically and in a peaceful sense of nation building in Afghanistan is also important," he said.

Former British Chief of the General Staff, General Sir Richard Dannatt, agreed warfare had entered a new era and needed the support of development programmes.

"In conventional wars, you talk about winning and losing.

"What we're trying to do here is succeed sufficiently to put Afghanistan as a sufficiently stable state that can look after itself and doesn't become ungoverned space into which al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups could reoccupy," he said.

Gen Richards comments came as the Foreign Office apologised to a group of MPs after a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan and Pakistan had to be called off because of a security lapse.

Next week's visit by members of the Commons defence select committee was cancelled after an unencrypted e-mail was sent out by an embassy official in Kabul, prompting fears that the MPs' safety may have been compromised.

The Foreign Office said it would be trying to rearrange a visit for the MPs.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: "We have offered our apologies for this regrettable lapse in our procedures and have assured the committee that we will do all we can to arrange a successful visit in the future."



http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11751888

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