Grand Theft Auto IV Trailer 1 "Things Will Be Different"
The Character: Niko Bellic
Niko Bellic is the main character and is described by Rockstar as "tough." His home was in Eastern Europe, and he likely may never have traveled to Liberty City if it wasn't for his cousin Roman who is described as a "friendly buffoon" by Rockstar. Life wasn't going well, and Bellic turns up in Liberty City because he's been receiving e-mails from Roman that are full of lies about how great he is doing in America. Roman is actually in trouble.
However, Niko knows that Roman is the only person he knows in America. Roman serves as one of his main friends, motivations, and connections at the start of the game. Unlike San Andreas, players won't get a chance to see Bellic in his homeland. You will see his life unfold from the moment he steps into Liberty City. Why Go Back To Liberty City?
Dan Houser, the creative vice president of Rockstar Games had the following answer when asked why Liberty City was chosen for GTA IV:
"[New York City] is an environment we felt had never been done to the level we were envisioning it in a video game. From looking at all of the locations, this was the one that really stood out to us, and really had that impact. It has all of these iconic things that you couldn't put into a game before."
In another magazine article, Houser explained again with this:
"We've always wanted to do New York properly. With GTA III, we were dealing with so many technical issues and design issues about making a game like that, that we didn't really think that trying to make somewhere like a real place was important at the time and then we discovered later that that gave an added element of content to the place.
We've got a full time team of researchers and photographers in the office in New York who get emails from the artists in Scotland saying, "Hey can you find out what this building's like, or what the traffic flow's like around here?" or the designers want to find out how the law systems work. We wouldn't be as confident doing a next-gen game the way we wanted, somewhere we didn't have a base."
Sam Houser's E3 2005 Speech
Sam Houser, President of Rockstar Games, spoke at the E3 2005 Sony Conference on video. While he didn't mention that he was necessarily talking about the GTA franchise, it was fairly obvious that he was. You can download the video or watch it below. Below the video window is the transcript.
"I think what we're most looking forward to creating in a PlayStation 3 game is a truly-realized, truly-immersive living, breathing world. This is what we live for. You know, every five or six years, these amazing companies like Sony comes along and gives you this wonderful new piece of equipment that allows you to start unlocking your vision and unlocking the dream that you've been having for however long. With Cell and with PlayStation 3, we feel very excited and very confident that we're going to be able to absolutely push the limits of what can be created and the experiences that we can immerse our audience in. We really know that we're going to be able to go to the next level in terms of realistic simulations and realistic immersion combined with incredible narrative...incredible storytelling, and those two elements combined are what are going to create the experiences of the future."
One year after this video was released, it was officially announced that, although GTA IV would still come out for the PlayStation 3, Rockstar Games began favoring Microsoft and the Xbox 360 by letting them make the aforementioned announcement as well as giving the console two exclusive pieces of episodic content which are due out in 2008.
When vaudeville impresario Martin Beck "discovered" a struggling Harry Houdini in 1899, it was Houdini's ability to escape from handcuffs which caught his attention. Although Houdini was hardly the first or only performer to do handcuff escapes, he would take the act to a new level over the next several years, and it was as the "Handcuff King" that he gained his first measure of fame.
There was no one "secret" to Houdini's ability to escape from handcuffs, but a combination of technical knowledge, physical skill, and trickery. It all started with what one locksmith who knew him called his "remarkable knowledge of locks and locking devices." Houdini collected and studied locks all of his life and claimed that he had "photographic eyes" that helped him remember how each type worked and could be opened.
Most of the time Houdini used a key hidden in or smuggled into the cabinet or jail cell, either on his person or by an assistant. Depending on how he was bound, Houdini would manipulate the keys with his hands -- sometimes using specially designed extension rods -- or with his teeth. But he also knew tricks for opening many of the simpler types of cuff without keys.
In "Handcuff Secrets," a book he published in 1910 to discourage the legion of imitators trying to ride his coattails, Houdini wrote that "you can open the majority of the old-time cuffs with a shoestring. By simply making a loop in the string, you can lasso the end of the screw in the lock and yank the bolt back, and so open the cuff in as clean a manner as if opened with the original key." And as he demonstrated in his own defense during the slander trial in Germany in 1902, some cuffs could be opened simply by banging them against a hard surface, which might include a lead plate fastened at the knee under his trousers.
Escape Handcuffs With Your Watch... Houdini also used tricks that didn't involve opening locks. If presented with a particularly difficult lock, he might insist it be placed higher on his forearm, then simply slip these cuffs over his wrists once the easier cuffs placed there had been removed. And he was not above using trick cuffs, designed to pass inspection but easily opened by means of a fake rivet.
But as he reminded us in "Handcuff Secrets," the unique magic of his escape act lay in its presentation: "You will notice that some of these tricks are very simple -- but remember it is not the trick that is to be considered, but the style and manner in which it is presented."
- The pop princess and her husband don’t want the saucy tape to be made public
By: Entertainment News Staff
Britney fears that the allegedly x-rated video she made with her husband Kevin Federline will be released on the
market.
The pop princess and her husband could be facing an embarrassing exposure if someone reveals the saucy secret to all their fans.
Apparently, someone from Britney’s group allegedly recorded the nasty video while Britney was pregnant with her first baby, Sean Preston. He is reportedly threatening to release it.
According to The Sun online, a source was quoted by US Weekly magazine as saying: "He has threatened to release raunchy footage of the two taken before Spears looked pregnant."
It seems that a copy of the original tape viewed by the couple's lawyers "elicited laughter and disgust".
But Kevin and Britney, whose Chaotic reality TV series is currently airing on digital channel E4, are desperately seeking to avoid the public release of their home-made video.
Colin Farrell has also found himself in the same situation earlier this year. The Hollywood actor appealed to the Court to block the release of a tape he made with his ex-girlfriend, Playboy playmate Nicole Narain.
Limp Bizkit front man Fred Durst also sued 10 website operators this spring, for posting the rocker's 2003 homemade sex tape after it was stolen from his computer.
· Former boyfriend faces prison after extradition · 100,000 copies circulating amid cultural clean-up
Robert Tait in Tehran Thursday November 23, 2006 The Guardian
Ebrahimi has dismissed the film as a fake made by a vengeful former fiance. Photograph: Robert Tait
An Iranian actor at the centre of a video sex scandal has spoken for the first time publicly to deny being a collaborator in the now notorious home-made film.
Zahra Amir Ebrahimi, one of Iran's best known television performers, is facing social ostracism, a wrecked career and a possible lashing after police seized copies of the footage, which appears to show her having sex.
The film, which has been distributed in street markets and posted on websites, has caused profound shock at a time when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Islamist government is trying to banish the "corrupting" effects of western culture.
Video fragment of this scandalous history
It has been given added impact by Ebrahimi's reputation for playing religious, morally upstanding characters in Iranian state TV soaps. One highly successful series, Narges, was watched by an estimated 68% of the population.
Police interrogated Ebrahimi at length after being alerted to the film's existence. She has not been charged but investigations are continuing.
However, in an exclusive interview with the Guardian, Ebrahimi, 25, denied being the woman in the film. She dismissed it as a fake made by a vengeful former fiance who used studio techniques to form a montage of incriminating images designed to destroy her career.
"I watched the film after I heard about the fuss from colleagues and the girl in it is not me," Ebrahimi said.
"I admit there are some similarities to the character I played in Narges. It is possible to use studio make-up to have a person look like me. I have some knowledge of montage techniques and I know you can create a new face by distorting the features of another person."
Legal experts say Ebrahimi's denial may be sufficient to avoid punishment. Under Iranian law, video footage must be corroborated by supporting evidence or a confession. According to the legal code, sex between two unmarried people carries punishment of up to 99 lashes.
Ebrahimi's ex-fiance, an assistant film producer who has been referred to publicly only as Mr X, is in custody after being extradited from Armenia. He faces up to three years in jail and a £6,000 fine if found guilty of making and distributing the film, which contravenes Iran's strict indecency laws.
He admits taking part but claims that Ebrahimi suggested the film, which he says was shot in her home, and then distributed it herself. However, in a 45-minute interview, Ebrahimi - wearing a hijab and a long woollen coat - said her former fiance threatened revenge after she ended their relationship a year ago because of his infidelity. "He had a lot of affairs and our relationship ended in a very immoral way," she said. "He said he would do something that would mean I would be unable to hold my head up and would prevent me ever working again in Iran. I think this film is him trying to put his threats into action."
An estimated 100,000 copies have been circulating in the last two months. The accompanying publicity has prompted some parents to voice concern that their children have asked to see the film, which has been dubbed Narges II.
Private films showing sex scenes are not uncommon in Iran. However, Ebrahimi's high profile and the ongoing cultural clean-up campaign have prompted a sensitive reaction from the authorities. Tehran's chief prosecutor, Saeed Mortazavi, has ordered police to conduct a special investigation and wants death sentences for those convicted of circulating such productions.
Ebrahimi acknowledged that she had been emotionally upset but denied reports that the affair had driven her to attempt suicide. Her acting career is in jeopardy amid reports that her employers are considering dropping her.
But Ebrahimi, who comes from a religious family, said the heaviest burden came from being accused of immorality in a religious society. "According to the moral norms of Iranian society, it is very damaging for this film to be distributed under my name," she said. "If you look at my professional resume, you will see that I have taken part in mainly spiritual or religious films and programmes.
"My parents and I thought we were living in a society with common sense. Instead, we find that 90% of people are following this thing and taking it seriously. If people have a chance, they are curious about indecent and vulgar things."
About 20 San Francisco police officers will be suspended because of their alleged involvement in what the mayor and police chief describe as videos that mock minorities and treat women as sex objects, the officials said Wednesday night.
"This is a dark day -- an extremely dark day -- in the history of the San Francisco Police Department for me as a chief to have to stand here and share with you such egregious, shameful and despicable acts by members of the San Francisco Police Department,'' Chief Heather Fong said at a City Hall press conference.
An officer at the department's Bayview Station, who is among those ordered suspended, produced the videos over the past two years using other officers and acquaintances and intended them as morale boosters, he and his attorney said Wednesday night. The officer denied he had done anything wrong, and his attorney said the suspensions were a politically motivated attack on free speech.
Many of those ordered suspended are connected to Bayview Station, including its former captain, Rick Bruce, who went on leave three months ago for unrelated reasons. He appears in one of the videos, which was shot while he was still on duty.
The five videos shown at Wednesday's press conference with Fong and Mayor Gavin Newsom depict officers, some in uniform, responding to a variety of mock calls. One video shows a homeless black woman railing against white people after apparently being hit by a patrol car, followed by an officer grumbling about having to deal with her. "They get us involved with their business,'' the officer said.
Another video depicts an officer ogling a woman he has stopped for a traffic violation. One shows two officers attempting tai chi to vaguely Asian music. The two later go into a massage parlor and radio dispatchers try unsuccessfully to reach them -- the suggestion being the two are having sex with masseuses.
One video, with the theme to the old TV show "Charlie's Angels" as the soundtrack, shows various officers saying, "Oh, captain," and flicking their tongues suggestively. The captain involved, Bruce, flicks his tongue in apparent response -- although the officer who produced the videos said Bruce had not known what the shot was to be used for.
One of those depicted in that sequence is the same homeless woman who was earlier shown yelling about white people. Another is a police officer dressed as a transgender person.
In another video, a female officer is shown putting on lipstick in the middle of a mock drug raid.
Newsom called the videos the tipping point that will lead to changing the culture of the Police Department.
"Enough is enough,'' said Newsom, who promised dramatic changes, including the creation of a panel to review the entire department's operations.
The mayor, who consulted in his office with his chief political strategist, Eric Jaye, before starting the press conference, said he would convene the panel today. He also has asked the city Human Rights Commission and the city Commission on the Status of Women to conduct their own investigations.
The videos have the potential to turn into one of the biggest crises of Newsom's 2-year-old administration. Their revelation comes as the mayor faces demands from African American leaders, in particular, to do something about a homicide rate that is at its highest level in a decade. The Bayview Station serves Bayview-Hunters Point and surrounding neighborhoods with large black populations, where many of the slayings have occurred.
Newsom said lawyers in both the city attorney's and district attorney's offices have reviewed the videos, which suggests that officials are looking at whether criminal charges should be filed.
Newsom said the videos mocked African Americans, Asians, women and transgender people.
The conduct, he said, "is shameful. It is offensive, it is sexist. It is homophobic, it is racist, and we're going to make sure it ends.''
Fong said she was first made aware of the videos Tuesday afternoon after a captain alerted her that they had been posted on the producing officer's private Web site.
"The investigation will reveal who knew what, who did what, who told who to do what,'' Fong said.
She said command staff would fan into all the district stations and investigative bureaus starting today to make clear that the department has no tolerance for conduct that makes fun of others. The department already requires that all officers undergo sensitivity training.
Officer Andrew Cohen, 39, who works at Bayview Station, said he was the producer of the videos. He was suspended without pay Tuesday.
In a phone interview, Cohen said he had worked as a liaison to the department's public affairs unit and had produced nine videos in his 10 years on the force, some of them humorous but others dealing with training issues.
The videos that got him suspended "started out as a fun-and-games thing to give a sendoff" to Bruce, Cohen said. "It was supposed to show the cute characters we have at the station, kind of to make fun of ourselves."
He said the goal of the videos was "to boost the morale of law enforcement" and that they were never intended to be shown outside the ranks.
Cohen expressed amazement that "this micromanaging chief" would be worried about videos with the homicide total for the year nearing 100. "She has bigger fish to fry," Cohen said.
"We're outgunned. We're outmanned," Cohen said. "The fact of the matter is that she has an out-of-control department. She lives in the Bayview and has never stopped by the station to see her own officers.
"She doesn't have much confidence of the rank and file. She's putting a nail in her coffin."
The video came to the attention of department officials after Cohen posted scenes of it and other films he has done on the Web.
"My mistake was deciding a lot of cops wanted to see funny video clips," he said. "I put a few clips on there and boom."
Cohen said he had carte blanche with police chiefs going back to Fred Lau to make videos for the department. "In fact, this is the fourth humorous one I've done and I've never had any flak," he said. "I've never been in trouble before in my life. This is not me."
He has retained attorney Daniel Horowitz, and said neither of them had been told about Wednesday night's press conference in advance.
Horowitz managed to get to the tail end of the event and in interviews berated Fong and Newsom. "They're cowards. The mayor is a coward, and so is the chief,'' he said.
Horowitz, who said he has been friends with Cohen for 20 years, said the officer was raised a Berkeley liberal and "is the opposite of a homophobe, the opposite of a racist.''
He called the suspension unjust and said he will ask members of the Bayview community to "rise up and support Officer Cohen.''
Horowitz said he had seen all the videos and denied they were in any way insensitive. He said they amounted to art and commentary about the department.
Malaika Parker of Bay Area PoliceWatch called the videos an outrage. "They were absolutely disgusting, there were assaults on women, people of color and the transgender community," she said. "I hope they bring deep, deep changes to the department.''
Sam Zell, the real estate investor captain, has a fortune for the cycle, the shape of its industry. In those days, he believes that the current turbulence in financial markets is more of an emotional reaction to yet another period of more than a real credit collapse.
In a wide-ranging speech at the Wharton Real Estate moderated by Professor Peter Linneman, the Chicago-based investor said markets are being spooked by problems with U.S. subprime lending. But they do not have capital, unlike other real estate busts in the financing could not be arranged at any price.
"We are not really a quote 'credit squeeze." I think what we in a 'trust matters,' "said Zell, donors of the Samuel Zell and Robert Lurie Real Estate Center at Wharton." I would argue that the excess liquidity, which are eight weeks today. It has a different risk premium on, but the actual amount of liquidity has not changed. "
Zell said the burglary should come as no surprise: "In the last three years were frivolous. You have what they wanted and were proud that they do not diligence. I think they were all annoyed and scared out of their minds. "
'The Godfather offer "
After Zell, private equity firms with a capital flooded were in a position to benefit from "grotesque" leverage and offer premium prices of publicly held real estate companies. Zell, said he believes that an agreement as a "Godfather," because not publicly held accountable could be disposed of. Indeed, in February, Zell sold his flagship, Equity Office Products (EOP), and its portfolio of 540 prime office buildings to the Blackstone Group for $ 39 billion. At that time it was the largest private equity is always completed. Cell predicted that the market will soon stabilize, although they more risk averse and less leveraged than in the past few years. "Today we would never be able to replicate the Blackstone deal."
After the sale of EOP, Zell turned his attention to another transaction. It has become a major investor in the Tribune Company, which publishes the Chicago Tribune and Los Angeles Times and other media properties. The company is privately: The shareholders recently adopted an ESOP (employee ownership). If the transaction ends ESOP will be 100% of the company. Zell is itself an arrest warrant to buy 40% of the company may exercise that at a later date over the next 10 years. ESOP remains the majority owner of the company. The Tribune transaction is under regulatory review and is expected to close by the end of the year.
Zell not discuss that directly, but referred to his reputation as a contrarian investor. He recalled the first time he saw the market turn. In the early 1970s, the real estate industry has been infused with optimism and rapidly. Zell not see how it would be enough demand to fill the real estate market in development. So he stopped doing new deals and structured a company to focus on distressed real estate. "Everyone else said, 'Sam, you do not understand." I have heard that my entire career. Even if I buy newspapers in the year 2007 everyone says, 'If you do not understand until now really not understand "."
Zell is chairman of Equity Group Investments, a mix of private and public enterprises, establishments, including Equity Residential, a leading owner of the apartment; Equity Lifestyle Properties, which owns 300 holiday and manufactured housing communities, and Capital Trust, a commercial real estate finance. He said the Wharton audience that he had never recovered from his first course in economics, when he learned about supply and demand. "I would say that no matter what I did -- real estate, barges, cars -- it's all about supply and demand."
While still a basic study, and later a law student at the University of Michigan in the mid-1960s, cell began to buy property in Ann Arbor. Later, he and his fraternity brother, Robert Lurie, and together they built a real estate empire before Lurie died of cancer in 1990 at the age of the 48th
Following the market crash in 1973, cell spent the next three years the purchase of $ 3 billion in real estate assets, much of it for $ 1 He built the portfolio by selecting the lenders, and offers the future operating losses on their hands in return for equity. Zell was to the properties long enough for them to come to -- and exceed -- reviews. "It turns out that we have a lucky," he said. In the 1980s, the real estate industry was again marked by aggressive lending, sparked a development boom. "The idea was to build it and buy someone, and that the Japanese people", recalls cell.
Edifice Complex
If Linneman asked Zell why he has never been a developer, the bearded, gravelly voiced mogul replied that the development is too risky for his taste. "In this business, it is helpful to have a complex entity," said Zell. "At least half the yield comes from the psychological benefits you see the building go. I have never suffered from that particular disaster."
Again concerned that the market is not sustainable, the prices that investors were paying, Zell and Lurie spent much of the 1980s, the diversification of their holdings in other companies. Their strategy would be the same as it was in real estate -- the search for ways in places where others have been ignoring the rules of supply and demand. "We thought that if we are good guys properties, then we are good business people," said Zell.
While brokers have excellent transactional capabilities, he added, they often lack the foresight to plot. "When it comes to delegate the negotiation of a transaction, I would always choose a real estate guy on a corporate guy," said Zell. On the other hand, real estate people did not have the ability "to the corner. For them, the tree is always in the sky grow. Therefore, we have enormous and very volatile cycles, which continue to this day."
In the early 1990s most of the nation commercial properties concentrated in the hands of about 50 or 60 large private investors. Even the cycle himself and the company in a severe credit squeeze marked by massive foreclosures and the nation's savings and loan debacle. The way cell was declared to the public markets, was previously a little-known financing vehicle, the Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). REITs continue to be the driving force in commercial real estate until the last year or so, when private equity acquisitions, such as his own Blackstone transaction, the number of farms in private hands, according to Zell.
He described his strategy during the three weeks bids for EOP war broke out between Blackstone and Vornado Realty Trust, the nation's second-largest REIT, a combination of cash and stock for cell of the company. The key to the deal was structured a $ 720 million fee resolution, Zell said, and added that the stock itself would have taken months to conclude, in retrospect, might have serious problems after the market jitters, develops in August.
Beschleunigten housing demand
Today, Linneman noted, cell operations are divided between real estate and other businesses. One example is Anixter International, which dominates the market for Ethernet cable. When it comes to real estate, Zell said he focuses on the development in the emerging markets by a company called Equity Group International.
In 1999, Zell decided that the REIT concept had worked so well in the United States could be in other parts of the World. He now controls large homebuilders in Mexico and Brazil is also branching, in India, China and Egypt. He said that the Guadalajara office of the Mexican companies, Homex, 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to meet the needs of the Mexican homebuyers. "The beauty of all these places, there is unlimited demand," said Zell. "If you back to Econ 101, these countries have huge backlog in housing demand.'s Population is increasing and housing is not."
Cell acknowledged that it is not always true. He tells the story of how the Carter Hawley Hale Stores in California 1992. His company has an analysis and found that the 79-store chain would be worth at least 80% of the purchase price, if there was a fire, in the sale. Soon thereafter, cell faced with a sharp recession, and a major earthquake in Southern California. In 1995 he decided to salvage and sell the chain to its rival, Federated Department Stores. The price? Even if he lost money on the cell Comfort noted that his company properly calculated the downside. Federated paid 80% of what Zell has done. "The investment was a mistake, but the process was a success. We have a risk we were prepared, and we have it."
Linneman noted that cell is known by the nickname "the grave dancer." After Zell, the term is from the headline of the article he wrote describing his strategy to benefit from distressed real estate bubble inevitable after the investment enthusiasm. Zell, said the article shows, like "I was dancing on the skeletons from the mistakes of other people."
Zell, but also pointed out that the last sentence of the article reads: "Who is dancing next to the graves has always ensure that they do not fall Customs"
There was no one "secret" to Houdini's ability to escape from handcuffs, but a combination of technical knowledge, physical skill, and trickery. It all started with what one locksmith who knew him called his "remarkable knowledge of locks and locking devices." Houdini collected and studied locks all of his life and claimed that he had "photographic eyes" that helped him remember how each type worked and could be opened.
