"Upstream Color" review: You'll be shocked, repelled and confused - but never bored

By Leah Rozen

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) - This is an art-house movie with a capital "A." And you might as well capitalize the "R" and the "T," too, because films don't come artier than this. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

"Upstream Color" is the eagerly anticipated second film from Shane Carruth, an engineer turned self-taught filmmaker. His first movie was 2004's "Primer," an intriguing, geeky time-travel thriller made for a reported $7,000 - and which won the Grand Jury Prize for drama at the Sundance Film Festival.

Just as he did on "Primer," Carruth wears multiple hats for "Upstream Color": screenwriter, director, editor, director of photography, score composer and star. (Just typing that list tires me out; imagine how he must have felt.)

He has made a film of uncommon beauty, haunting mystery and massive obscurity. No one is going to understand or know exactly what's happening in the whole movie. And you're probably not supposed to,though Carruth claims otherwise in interviews.

Here is the plot synopsis, in its totality, from the production notes: "A man and woman are drawn together, entangled in the lifecycle of an ageless organism. Identity becomes an illusion as they struggle to assemble the loose fragments of wrecked lives."

Here's what happens on screen: A woman, Kris (Amy Seimetz), is seemingly kidnapped and drugged by a man (Thiago Martins) who covertly has her ingest a maggot (or maybe it's a grub worm) which then multiplies inside her, slithering about just beneath her skin in scenes guaranteed to cause Goosebumps.

This man, identified only in the credits as The Thief, also steals all of Kris' money and her house. And he has her undergo some sort of crude medical procedure in which she exchanges blood or another body fluid with a pig.

When Kris comes out of all this, she's a shattered wreck, a sort of walking human shell with apparently no memory of exactly what happened. Then she meets Jeff (Carruth), who may have gone through a similar experience, and they become romantically involved.

Meanwhile, another major character keeps popping up who's simply identified as Sampler (Andrew Sensenig). He wanders around sampling and listening to natural sounds (rain, stones on metal, pigs snuffling, etc.) with a recorder and tending to pigs on a pig farm.

Carruth also tosses in lots of scenes of nature, filling the screen with fields, orchids, water and pigs. There are also many snuffling porkers, be they big, little, pink or muddy. And several characters read and quote from Henry David Thoreau's "Walden, or Life in the Woods," the 19th-century New England bachelor's treatise on nature and self-sufficiency.

What does it all mean? That none of us are in control? That human contact and love are what matters? That we're all connected to nature? Or maybe it's all some sort of hallucinogenic dream or, possibly, we're inside Kris' mental breakdown?

Take your pick. Probably a little of all of those and a whole lot more.

What's fascinating is how well the movie works despite its willful opacity. One is never bored watching "Upstream Color," especially during the first half, which is filled with images that shock. Unlike Terrence Malick's forthcoming "To the Wonder," another impressionist film that never explains itself and lays on the nature imagery with a heavy hand, Carruth's film manages to draw a viewer in rather than leaving one feeling excluded from some sort of personal reverie.

Seimetz, a director herself (the forthcoming "Sun Don't Shine"), has an Everywoman face, but one that's sharp and anxious beneath its placid blandness. Her Kris is all emotion, trying to save herself even as she has no idea who or what, if anything, might be trying to do her in.

For some viewers, "Upstream Color" will be an uphill struggle. But many others will find themselves alternately fascinated, repelled and excited by it.

Carruth clearly thinks that a film can communicate big ideas without its actually articulating and spelling them out. It remains for the rest of us to catch up to and begin fully to comprehend his new language.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/upstream-color-review-youll-shocked-repelled-confused-never-212639184.html

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Party intransigence dims hopes for 'grand bargain'

WASHINGTON (AP) ? The bipartisan cease-fire that kept the government running this spring gave birth to hopeful talk ? among pundits and some senators, at least ? of a much larger "grand bargain" that would reduce the federal deficit for years.

Such optimism, however, seems to ignore how far apart the two parties remain on key issues, and how adamantly they defend positions that prohibit compromise.

The mutual obstinance disappoints those who felt top Republicans and Democrats were close to a major accord on spending cuts and tax increases in December.

When that potential deal evaporated, President Barack Obama settled for $620 billion in new tax revenue over 10 years, as part of the "fiscal cliff" resolution on Jan. 1. That's about half the total revenue he has sought as part of a proposed grand bargain in which Democrats would agree to slow the growth of social programs they hold dear

Congress then enacted $85 billion in spending cuts this year, the "sequester" deal once considered unacceptable to both parties. Some Democrats had hoped to extract new tax revenues as part of a compromise to mitigate those across-the-board program cuts.

Now, despite widespread grumbling about the sequester cuts and the still-growing deficit, both parties seem more inclined to stand pat than to make the types of compromises that might begin to shrink the nation's debt, $16.8 trillion and growing.

For Republicans, that means blocking any further income tax increases on the wealthy, even though Obama campaigned on that issue last year. Democrats in turn refuse to consider slowing the growth of popular and costly "entitlement" programs, including Social Security and Medicare.

"The chief impediment to reaching a grand bargain has been the refusal of Republicans to ask the wealthiest and well-connected to pay even a dime more to help us deal with our deficit challenges," White House spokesman Josh Earnest said recently. Some GOP lawmakers, he said, "are actually running around the country bragging about their intransigence on this."

Republicans say Obama is fixated on raising taxes.

Americans tell pollsters the debt is a serious problem, but they're disinclined to make sacrifices to reduce it. When Pew Research asked in March which was more important, reducing the national debt or keeping Social Security and Medicare benefits as they are now, the public sided with safeguarding the benefits programs, 53 percent to 36 percent.

Congressional GOP leaders repeatedly have said the $620 billion in new revenues demanded by Obama during the fiscal cliff action ? which Republicans were powerless to block ? is all he will get. That revenue comes largely from increasing tax rates on couples' incomes above $450,000, a more lenient threshold than the $250,000 target Obama campaigned for.

Some lawmakers say Republicans might allow overall revenue to rise through another means: trimming enough tax credits and loopholes to generate more net government income.

The alternative is a "revenue-neutral" change to tax laws. It would shift tax burdens among various payers but generate the same grand total for federal programs.

Kevin Smith, a spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, noted that the House Republican budget "called for revenue-neutral tax reform."

It's possible, of course, that both sides are posturing and compromise is attainable. A few columnists and lawmakers suggest Republicans might accept $250 billion to $400 billion in new revenues over 10 years ? via tax code changes, not income tax rate increases ? in exchange for Democrats' agreement to start reining in entitlement programs.

"Republicans, if they saw true entitlement reform, would be glad to look at tax reform that generates additional revenues, and that doesn't mean increasing rates," Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., told "Fox News Sunday" in mid-March.

It's hard to find House Republicans who say the same thing, however. Most of them echo Boehner, who told ABC: "The president got his tax hikes on January 1. The talk about raising revenue is over." He told reporters in February, "we don't have a revenue problem. We have a spending problem. How much more money do we want to steal from the American people to fund more government?"

Obama and Boehner began talks about a deficit-reduction "grand bargain" in 2011. Boehner suggested new revenues of $800 billion over 10 years in exchange for reductions in entitlements and other programs. Obama and congressional Democrats demanded more revenue, and the talks ended.

It was never clear that Boehner could have persuaded his House GOP colleagues to support his ideas, which were short on detail in some areas. But his actions convinced many people that Boehner would like history to regard him as a Republican speaker who struck a politically courageous deal with a Democratic president to put the nation's fiscal house in better order.

Obama and Boehner tried again in late 2012. Boehner offered changes that he said would generate $1 trillion in new government revenue over 10 years in exchange for roughly the same level of spending cuts, including trims to entitlement programs.

Obama again sought somewhat higher revenue increases. He proposed smaller spending cuts than Boehner wanted. But he offered to slow the cost-of-living increases for Social Security benefits, which liberals consider a huge concession.

It's impossible to know if the deeply divided Congress would have enacted any of these plans. But some independent groups say the December gap was bridgeable, and they despair at the renewed partisanship.

Erskine Bowles, the former Clinton White House chief of staff who co-chaired a deficit-reduction commission, was grim-faced at a Feb. 19 forum in Washington. "The idea of a grand bargain is at best on life support," he said.

The other co-chairman, former Sen. Alan Simpson, R-Wyo., was no cheerier. With Democrats keen on protecting retirement and health-care spending, and Republicans bent on averting income tax hikes, he said, neither side seems ready to make hard choices to curb deficit-spending.

"These guys here aren't interested in winning," Simpson said. "They're interested in making the other side lose ? in fact, rubbing the other side's nose in it."

In interviews, House Republicans typically are most passionate when describing their opposition to income tax increases. Over the years that goal has risen from a GOP policy to a near-religion. House Republicans generally seem less passionate when calling for spending cuts, including entitlement reductions.

Many Democrats, meanwhile, say it's politically impossible for Obama to support trims to Medicare and Social Security without securing further tax increases on the rich ? something he advocated consistently in his 2008 and 2012 campaigns.

The results frustrate groups that say a mix of new revenues and targeted spending cuts is the only feasible way to tame deficit spending.

Scott Lilly, a former House Appropriations Democratic staff director, said it's possible ? though far from certain ? that eventual public unhappiness with the sequester cuts will prompt House Republicans to agree to higher taxes on the wealthy. And that possibly could spur Democratic budget concessions.

"Until you go through that exercise," said Lilly, now at the Center for American Progress, "not only are they not willing to go for a big deal, I don't think there's any way a magician could put the pieces together at this point to make an offer."

___

Follow Charles Babington on Twitter: https://twitter.com/cbabington.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/party-intransigence-dims-hopes-grand-bargain-173237677--finance.html

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BOJ to pump $1.4 trillion into economy in unprecedented stimulus

By Leika Kihara and Stanley White

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Bank of Japan unleashed the world's most intense burst of monetary stimulus on Thursday, promising to inject about $1.4 trillion into the economy in less than two years, a radical gamble that sent the yen reeling and bond yields to record lows.

New Governor Haruhiko Kuroda committed the BOJ to open-ended asset buying and said the monetary base would nearly double to 270 trillion yen ($2.9 trillion) by the end of 2014, a dose of shock therapy officials hope will end two decades of stagnation.

The U.S. Federal Reserve may buy more debt under its own quantitative easing program, but since Japan's economy is about one-third the size that of the United States, the scope of Kuroda's "Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing" is unmatched.

"This is an unprecedented degree of monetary easing," a smiling Kuroda told a news conference after his first policy meeting at the helm of the central bank.

"We took all available steps we can think of. I'm confident that all necessary measures to achieve 2 percent inflation in two years were taken today," he said.

One of those steps was to abandon interest rates as a target and become the only major central bank to primarily target the monetary base -- the amount of cash it pumps out to the economy. It adopted a similar policy in 2001-2006, but not on this scale.

Kuroda's first policy meeting since taking office on March 20 was seen as a big test of his ability to steer the BOJ towards unorthodox measures to meet the inflation target it adopted in January, and markets liked what they saw.

The Nikkei stock index jumped 2.2 percent, closing just shy of a last month's 4-1/2 year closing high, while on Wall Street, shares of Toyota Motor rose 4.5 percent.

The yen fell more than 3 percent against both the dollar and euro and the 10-year government bond yield fell to a record low.

A weaker yen aids Japanese companies by making their products less expensive to overseas buyers and should help create price inflation.

CAUTIOUS ENDORSEMENT

Top policymakers at the Fed gave cautious endorsements of the Bank of Japan's move, saying it could help economies around the world.

"Having Japan over the last many years going in and out of deflationary periods and being poised on the knife's edge of deflation and reflation, versus growth, is not a healthy element of the global scene," Atlanta Fed President Dennis Lockhart said on the sidelines of a student investment forum in Ohio.

"How it will work or how effective it will be, it's too early to say," he added.

Charles Evans, president of the Chicago Fed, called the move "pretty aggressive," adding: "I certainly hope that every foreign central bank around the world is able to adopt policies that ultimately lead to the most vibrant economies that those economies can have because we need it around the world."

The Fed and Bank of England have also embraced large-scale bond purchases in an effort to boost growth, while the European Central Bank said Thursday it would keep policy loose for as long as necessary to revive the struggling euro zone economy.

Still, the scope of Kuroda's overhaul offered major risks.

It could leave the central bank heavily exposed to government debt and potentially huge losses if it failed to stoke inflation and investors lost faith in its efforts to revive the economy. It could trigger a currency war as other Asian exporters seek to remain competitive with a weaker yen.

"It is as if we've gone back to the quantitative easing of the 2000s," said Hiroaki Muto, senior economist at Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management in Tokyo.

"Targeting the monetary base will lead to a huge increase in current account balances that commercial banks keep at the BOJ, but I'm still not sure if this money will move through the economy."

Bill Gross, founder and chief investment officer at giant bond fund PIMCO, noted on his Twitter account that the size of Japan's stimulus relative to the country's total output would be twice as big as the Fed's asset purchase plan.

"It may not work but they will go down swinging," Gross wrote. "Sell yen."

Currency analysts said they expected the dollar, last at 96.19 yen, could hit 100 in the months ahead, a level it last reached four years ago.

Monetary base, or cash and reserves at the BOJ, already hit a record in March, but the huge pile of money has failed to end deflation or boost wages.

PERFECT ANSWER

The BOJ will buy 7.5 trillion yen of long-term government bonds per month, roughly 70 percent of bonds sold in markets. It combined two bond-buying schemes, its asset-buying and lending program and the "rinban" market operation, to buy longer-dated government bonds, including those with duration of 40 years.

The central bank will also increase purchases of exchange-traded funds (ETF) by 1 trillion yen per year and real-estate trust funds (REIT) by 30 billion yen per year.

"I can say that the BOJ came up with a perfect answer in response to market expectations," said Junko Nishioka, chief Japan economist at RBS Securities.

"Kuroda made good on his promise of boosting monetary easing in terms of both volume and types of assets that the bank purchases."

Kuroda said the BOJ wanted to push down bond yields enough so that investors will start buying riskier assets, such as property and stocks, and to prompt households and companies to spend now rather than later on expectations of rising prices.

The central bank temporarily scrapped a self-imposed rule of capping its holdings of government bonds to the value of bank notes in circulation, despite reservations by some board members that doing so could nudge it closer to monetizing public debt -- or directly underwriting government borrowing.

Kuroda brushed aside concerns that excess money printing by the BOJ will sow the seeds of a future asset price bubble, which was repeatedly mentioned by his predecessor.

"I don't see a risk of a sudden spike in long-term interest rates or a creation of an asset price bubble," Kuroda said.

(Additional reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto and Kaori Kaneko; Editing by John Mair and Chizu Nomiyama)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bank-japan-scraps-overnight-call-rate-sets-money-051241062--business.html

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US starts building first nuclear reactors in 30 years

After a three-decade hiatus, work is finally under way on a new wave of reactors thanks to government funding ? but China is already way ahead

Editorial: "It's too early to herald a US nuclear renaissance"

YOU could be forgiven for thinking a new era of nuclear energy is under way in the US. On 11 March, crews at the Virgil C Summer power plant in South Carolina completed a 51-hour marathon of pouring concrete. Three days later, in Burke County, Georgia, another concrete base was completed.

The two reactors that will sit on these bases will be Westinghouse AP1000s. Like older models, they will use uranium fission to heat water and drive a turbine, but these reactors will be smaller, simpler to build, and each will add more than 1100 megawatts of capacity to the region's power grid when they come online in 2016 or 2017 ? without emitting carbon dioxide.

They will be the first new reactors on US soil in over three decades. Besides the two reactors in progress, two more are planned ? one at each plant. And work has resumed on a half-built reactor, Watts Bar 2 in Tennessee. It could be connected to the grid by 2015.

"There's no question it's a big deal," says Neil Wilmshurst of the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, California. "There were no new plants being constructed for decades, and now there is a new wave of building going on."

What seems like a sudden rush back to nuclear was actually put in motion years ago, when US utility companies began to pre-empt the possibility of government-mandated cuts in carbon emissions. But to get construction under way, the firms needed a big helping hand from the government. As part of President Barack Obama's goal of promoting clean sources of energy, he guaranteed $8.3 billion in federal loans for the reactors, which helps spread the massive cost of the projects.

All four new plants will be AP1000s. These reactors are descendants of the ones that have been in service since the middle of the 20th century. However, they have major safety upgrades, new pump designs and more straightforward circulation systems. More exotic designs remain on the horizon, such as reactors powered by thorium fuel, but the AP1000 and other more conventional designs are important for one simple reason: they are being built. That means adding reliable, low-carbon energy to the US grid on a scale that other technologies can't yet match.

Whether the construction signals the start of a US nuclear energy boom remains to be seen. Reactors are expensive and fossil fuels are cheap enough that utility companies are nervous about undertaking such long, costly projects. "It's a bet-the-company proposition," says Wilmshurst.

That's not the case in China, where massive government backing has allowed construction there to race ahead of the US. Across China, 28 reactors are being built, many of them AP1000s, including one nearing completion at the Sanmen Nuclear Power Station in Zhejiang Province. It will become the first operative AP1000 if it comes online later this year as planned.

Mitchell Singer of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry advocacy group in Washington DC, says the comparatively slow take up of the AP1000 could be down to its unproven nature. "Someone's got to take the first step and blaze the trail into the wilderness," he says. "In the next decade, once plants come online successfully, that will give confidence to others to follow with their own projects."

This article appeared in print under the headline "A nuclear dawn for the US"

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Two charged in bribe probe related to New York mayor's race (reuters)

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Sanford wins South Carolina GOP primary

PARIS, April 2 (Reuters) - Paris St Germain 2 Barcelona 2 - Champions League quarter-final, first leg result At Parc des Princes Scorers: Paris St Germain: Zlatan Ibrahimovic 79, Blaise Matuidi 90+4 Barcelona: Lionel Messi 38, Xavi 89 penalty Halftime: 0-1; Teams: Paris St Germain: 30-Salvatore Sirigu; 26-Christophe Jallet, 13-Alex, 2-Thiago Silva, 17-Maxwell; 29-Lucas, 32-David Beckham (24-Marco Verratti 70), 14-Blaise Matuidi, 27-Javier Pastore (19-Kevin Gameiro 76); 18-Zlatan Ibrahimovic, 11-Ezequiel Lavezzi (7-Jeremy Menez 66) Barcelona: 1-Victor Valdes; 2-Daniel Alves, 3-Gerard Pique, ...

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Obama to return 5 percent of salary to Treasury

Marines salute as President Barack Obama jogs off of the Marine One helicopter before boarding Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Wednesday April 3, 2013, en route to Colorado. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

Marines salute as President Barack Obama jogs off of the Marine One helicopter before boarding Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base, Md., Wednesday April 3, 2013, en route to Colorado. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

WASHINGTON (AP) ? President Barack Obama will return 5 percent of his salary each month to the Treasury in a show of solidarity with federal workers smarting from government-wide spending cuts, the White House said Wednesday.

Obama's decision grew out of a desire to share in the sacrifice that government employees are making, said a White House official, who was not authorized to discuss the decision publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Hundreds of thousands of workers could be forced to take unpaid leave ? known as furloughs ? if Congress does not reach an agreement to undo the cuts.

The president is demonstrating that he will be paying a price, too, as the White House warns of dire economic consequences from the $85 billion in cuts that started to hit federal programs last month after Congress failed to stop them. In the weeks since, the administration has faced repeated questions about how the White House itself will be affected. The cancellation of White House tours has drawn mixed reactions.

A 5 percent cut from the president's salary of $400,000 per year amounts to $1,667 per month. The move will be retroactive to the March 1 ? the day the cuts started to kick in ? and will remain in effect for the rest of 2013, the White House official said.

The notice followed a similar move a day earlier by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who committed to taking a salary cut equal to 14 days' pay ? the same level of cut that other Defense Department civilians are being forced to take. As many as 700,000 civilians will have to take one unpaid day off each week for up to 14 weeks in the coming months.

On Monday, the White House said 480 workers on the president's budget staff had been notified they may have to take days off without pay. Obama's press secretary, Jay Carney, wouldn't say whether notices have gone out to Obama aides outside the Office of Management and Budget, including senior staff in the West Wing. But he said pay cuts remained a possibility for additional White House employees if a budget deal to undo the cuts isn't reached.

Every federal agency is grappling with spending cuts. Carney said the White House also has been trying to cut costs by slowing down hiring, scaling back supply purchases, curtailing staff travel, reducing the use of air cards for mobile Internet access and reviewing contracts to look for savings.

___

Associated Press writer Lolita C. Baldor contributed to this report.

Associated Press

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