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Jersey's government will give a copy of a holographic portrait of the Queen, commissioned in 2004, to the National Portrait Gallery.

The artwork, called Equanimity, was produced by artist Chris Levine to mark 800 years of the island's allegiance to the Crown.

The original has already been on show at the gallery as part of a tour.

Chief Minister Senator Ian Gorst will present the copy on behalf of the island to mark the Diamond Jubilee.

The work that will be given to the National Portrait Gallery is a new, more technically refined version of the original piece.

It was the product of two sittings with the monarch where more than 10,000 individual photographs were made using a tracking camera.

Senator Gorst, who is hosting an official reception in London on 21 May, said: "Equanimity is a remarkable portrait and a fitting tribute to Jersey's long-standing allegiance to the Crown."

The work will also appear on a £100 note and holographic stamp to mark the Jubilee.

A Rajasthan court Thursday summoned Shah Rukh Khan to appear before it on May 26 in connection with a complaint against him for publicly smoking at the Sawai Man Singh Stadium during an Indian Premier League (IPL) match, a lawyer said.

The Bollywood star had allegedly smoked while watching the IPL match between Rajasthan Royals and Kolkata Knight Riders on April 8.

"Smoking publicly is banned in Rajasthan since 2000 under the Rajasthan Prevention of Smocking Act. However, Shah Rukh Khan was smoking publicly in front of thousands of spectators. The actor was broadcast live while smoking on the TV channel which was showing the match," said lawyer Nem Singh Rathore, who filed the complaint on behalf of Jaipur Cricket Academy director Anand Singh Rathore.

"The court of the additional chief judicial metropolitan magistrate issued a summons to Shah Rukh Khan after taking cognisance of the complaint. The actor has been directed to appear before the court on May 26," he said.

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Story By: by Mark Jenkins

Nicknamed “Oscar” by Chimpanzee‘s filmmakers, the young chimp at the center of the film is adopted by an older male chimp — a rare occurrence — after his mother is killed.

Chimpanzee

Rated G; animal violence

It’s a classic scenario in sentimental fiction: An adorable orphan humanizes a crusty old codger. “Humanize” might not seem the obvious verb for what happens in Chimpanzee, Disneynature’s latest kiddie documentary. But it’s dead on; this escape to the planet of the apes is anthropomorphic to a fault.

The story, delivered excitedly by narrator Tim Allen, is about a “precious baby boy,” given the only-in-Hollywood tag of Oscar by filmmakers Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield. They call the baby’s mother Isha, and the local chimp patriarch Freddy. The leader of a nearby chimp “mob” that threatens Freddy’s clan is outfitted with the name Scar (although not with Jeremy Irons’ voice).

After Isha’s off-screen death — only partially the fault of Scar and his gang — Oscar is abandoned. None of the other moms in the 35-chimp tribe is prepared to take responsibility for another hungry baby. But before he starves to death, Oscar is adopted by an older male chimp, which is apparently a rare occurrence.

In brief interviews at the movie’s end, the filmmakers say that the story is basically authentic. But even if the narrative’s outline is true, that doesn’t mean the details are accurate. It’s impossible to tell if Allen’s commentary always reflects what the images show.

For example, the movie was shot primarily in the Ivory Coast’s remote Tai Forest. But the filmmakers, who are BBC nature-doc veterans, also worked in Uganda and Gabon. Did the secondary locations yield only the psychedelic time-lapse footage of rain, insects and mutating vegetation? Or are some of the on-screen chimps actually ringers from another jungle altogether?

Such questions make Chimpanzee a frustrating experience for adults. But the movie is designed for kids, who may not mind its oversimplifications, or narration that terms edible leaves “side salad” and makes reference to the chimps’ family photos. And children familiar with Disney cartoons probably won’t balk at the scenes edited to suggest that the chimps are jiving to Caro Emerald’s neo-retro jazz ditty “That Man.”

Yet the movie will be problematic for children as well, and not only because the hero’s mother meets a violent end. The omnivorous chimps don’t consume just the leaves, nuts and pulpy fruit with which the narration has such fun. There’s a sequence, impressively constructed but chilling, in which Freddy’s clan hunts, kills and eats a colobus monkey.

Primate fans who were saddened by Project Nim should be pleased to see chimps at play in their natural habitat in Fothergill and Linfield’s impressively intimate footage. For such viewers, much of Chimpanzee will be a treat. But perhaps the best strategy for enjoying the movie would be to a) leave sensitive tykes at home and b) bring a portable music player to provide an alternative soundtrack.

The movie is the first offering from Shetty’s production company.

"We are very excited about our very first production. This is a splendid script that will reach out to the large mainstream audience and it’s our pleasure to be associated with Eros and its global distribution network," Shetty said in a statement.

Dishkiyaaoon is set in the Mumbai underworld and has been shot at real locations by German director of photography Axel Fischer.

The action film, to be directed by debutante Sanamjit Singh Talwar, features Sanjay Dutt, Harman Baweja, Prashant Narayanan and Aditya Pancholi in key roles.

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Story By: by Bilal Qureshi

“There’s a very primal, emotional response I feel when I hear flamenco,” sitar player Anoushka Shankar says. “It’s quite in the belly in a way.”

Anoushka Shankar is the daughter and protege of the renowned Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar, who is credited with introducing Indian classical music to Western audiences. Now, Anoushka Shankar carries on this tradition in more ways than one. On her new album, Traveller, she goes back in time to make the connections between India and Spain.

The younger Shankar took the stage at an industrial Berlin nightclub late one Tuesday night. It’s not where one might expect to find the sitar, but she loves clubs and she loves electronic music. On previous albums, Shankar has often pushed her classical training into slithering digital soundscapes.

“I do think evolution is an important aspect of keeping a tradition alive,” Shankar says. “If it freezes and remains very static in its form, it dies, and so a natural evolution has to occur.”

Flamenco’s Roots In India

On her latest album, the 30-year-old Shankar moves her sitar out of urban lounges and into the winding alleys of Andalusia, in search of the musical and historical ties between India and Spain.

“There’s a very primal, emotional response I feel when I hear flamenco,” Shankar says. “It’s quite in the belly in a way.”

There’s a reason she feels that connection. Flamenco traces its roots to the music of India, in the traveling communities that moved across South Asia and the Middle East, settling in Europe.

“We tend to overprivilege this time as unique,” says Sonia Seeman, an ethnomusicologist at the University of Texas. “That was a period of dramatic exchanges. The 15th century was a period in Europe when great prestige was given to travelers. Pilgrims were considered sacred guests, but they were given safe passage, and also food and places to stay.”

‘That Little Space Of Longing’

And, of course, they brought their music. As a result, there are technical links between Spanish and Indian music: the use of certain rhythmic cycles; the complex interplay of vocals and strings; and, as Anoushka Shankar says, something deeper.

“It is that kind of space, that little space of longing, whether it is in something like romantic or divine love, something that is not quite in your grasp — a very powerful place to explore as an artist,” Shankar says. “It can be a joy. It has this pang that is something that kind of brings alive what you are playing and what the listener connects to.”

Shankar is careful to call Traveller not just an album, but a musical project. These are original compositions, worked out during months of experimentation in Madrid — and still being worked out in concert performances. Some of these experiments are more successful than others and, as Shankar says, her favorite is not a blending at all, but a simple back-and-forth duet between her and flamenco guitarist Pepe Habichuela.

“We were having a hard time trying to figure out what to do together, and we were wanting to play something very beautiful, and we kept running into this wall of having to break the other’s form,” Shankar says. “And, after much experimentation, we found an old form called the granaina, and we discovered a particular raga that I could play very freely and in only this particular key. It would match the granaina form, and so he was able to play a purely granaina form while I was able to play a pure raga form, and yet together it sounds like a very synergized and cohesive piece of music. I found it very beautiful that those two traditions could be very symbiotic.”

Carrying On Traditions

Anoushka Shankar’s father brought Indian music to the West through his collaborations with classical and jazz musicians — and, of course, his association with The Beatles. But Shankar says she’s wary of sharing her own experiments with her 92-year-old father.

“He could even just twitch a smile and frown, and it’s totally going to send me running,” she says. “I’m going to think it’s not good enough.”

Both Anoushka and Ravi Shankar are carrying on a centuries-old tradition in their own way.

“I do feel a commitment to this art form and to my father’s teachings, and the older I am getting, the more I am feeling it,” Shankar says. “I have been given something really, really special and really unique, and it is not just in and of itself having learned from my father, who is the greatest exponent of this musical style. But it is an oral tradition that is only generally passed on in that manner, and so without the people who continue to … learn it and perform it, it dies. And so, in that sense, I feel a great sense of wanting to share the music with people and push it forward.”

That movement of music across nations and time is what Anoushka Shankar’s latest album is all about.

Shazahn Padamsee had little to do in Housefull 2, but says she was lucky to be signed for a film of this scale — with 11 other actors.

"Being signed for Housefull 2 was a great thing for me. I still consider myself a newcomer and getting to be part of such a brand like Housefull 2 … it was a dream come true," the 24-year-old said here.

After featuring in films like Rocket Singh: Salesman of the Year, Dil Toh Baccha Hai Ji and Housefull 2, Padamsee says she is open to bold roles. "I am from the theatre. My dad [Alyquee Padamsee] has always told me from the beginning that forget about everything and only think — ‘Is it an interesting role for you to play or not?’

"Whether it is bold or an innocent character, whatever it is, as long as the character appeals to me, and it is an interesting character, I’ll do it," said Padamsee.

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The Dabangg actor announced at a press conference in Mumbai earlier this month that he was eyeing the UAE market for selling merchandise to support his charity Being Human.

“I want to take Being Human through the roof. Even though we will run it as a business, the idea is not to treat it as one. Whatever money we make from it will go back to the charity and the country,” Khan was quoted as saying by Indian media.

tabloid! can confirm that the actor will partner with high-street retailer Splash in the Middle East. While the merchandise will be available from May, Khan’s appearance and Dubai date is still uncertain.

The actor has recently spoken out against rip-offs of his Being Human-branded products flooding the market.

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If a talk with Robert De Niro and Judd Apatow can be considered a meeting of drama and comedy, humour easily won out when the two took the stage at the Tribeca Film Festival.

De Niro, a co-founder of Tribeca, and Apatow, the director of The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, convened Thursday for a conversation built around the 100th anniversary of Universal Studios.

But as stark as the differences between De Niro and Apatow, the conversation proved the blurring of genre lines.

De Niro, who segued into comedy with Meet the Parents, is far more jovial than his intimidating big-screen presence. And Apatow’s films, while uproarious, are personal expressions that make room for drama too.

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LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Singer-songwriter Carly Simon, 66, known for 1970s smash hits like “You’re So Vain,” is being honored this week with the prestigious ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) Founders Award.

The award comes four decades after Simon released her first solo record, the self-titled “Carly Simon” with the break-through hit “That’s the Way I’ve Always Heard it Should Be,” followed quickly by her “Anticipation,” album and then “No Secrets” with the single, “You’re So Vain.”

The winner of multiple Grammys and an Oscar for her song “Let the River Run” from the 1988 film “Working Girl,” Simon is the daughter of the late Richard Simon, co-founder of book publisher Simon & Schuster. She also has penned five childrens books and is currently working on an autobiography.

Simon spoke with Reuters by phone from her house in Martha’s Vineyard about her upcoming book, her fear of performing and her battle with breast cancer in 1997-1998.

Q: Did having cancer affect your career, your creativity and writing?

A: “There’s a bigger story about the breast cancer than the cancer. It’s about relationships.”

Q: How did your relationships change?

A: “I wasn’t treated well. I think I was let go of certain jobs and affiliations. It was very confusing but everything was smoothed over because people are smart and don’t want you to be hurt. People were saying it’s got nothing to do with that. It is hard to disregard.

Q: How did you deal with that?

A: “It was like I was the disappearing woman. When I went to the Grammys that year, I noticed how many people avoided me. There were a lot of people who were just not looking at me. It was the first time I was out in public since I’d been diagnosed. The record that I had (just) put out had been dropped and the head of my record label didn’t look at me. It’s like there were masks on. I had disappeared in the audience. Some people were so scared they moved away from me in their hearts and minds.”

Q: What did you work on after that?

A: “Then I went into a wonderful period where I did some work for Disney on the Pooh films. It was about three years of work. They were not big movies, but I got a lot of good feeling in my heart. And then I moved lock, stock and barrel to Martha’s Vineyard … moving to the Vineyard was like coming home to Tara. The land held me in its embrace.”

Q: Do you plan to sing at the ASCAP event? It’s well known that you are stage shy.

A: “My whole life has been very much led by the fact that I have a handicap. I have a bad stammer. When I was a child it was much, much worse. And when you see me talk, it’s worse. I have ticks in my face when I talk. I’m going to sing a song at the ASCAP event. It’s not easier when I sing.”

Q: That’s must be very difficult. How do you deal with it?

A: “There was no specific remedy for it when I was a kid, so I never coped with it. I just had my mom’s lap. I would sit on her lap and cry all the time. I’d be so embarrassed and afraid to go to school. When my nervous system was bad, my mom would just say “Sing it.” I started living an opera beginning when I was 7. I would sing as much as I could or start tapping my hand on my thighs. As long as there was a rhythm, I could get through it.”

Q: You think it would have been easier now?

A: “It’s another thing that people didn’t know that much about. If ‘The King’s Speech’ had come out when I was in high school, then people would have had more understanding about stuttering.”

Q: Sounds like you’ve had some difficult times in spite of all your success.

A: “I’ve had a very glorious and glamorous and wonderful life and a very scary and handicapped existence, which is promoted by fear. It’s made for a very pointy edge on my fear knife. As a result, I could disappear from the scene or be open and talk about it so that people can identify with it.”

Q: What makes you happy these days?

A: “I have a wonderful partner, a man who is a surgeon. He’s a very Type A personality, but I can’t imagine a surgeon not being that way. He’s great. His name is Richard and he’s handsome and he’s brilliant and very dear and loving.”

Q: And how’s your work?

A: “I’m trying to spend the rest of the year getting completed with the book. I’m not sure how I’ll sell it, either as a memoir or an autobiography. I have an agent. It seems like everyone is writing memoirs or everyone in the music business is. Hopefully, by the time mine comes it will have died down. But this is not as (crucial) as the writing of the story.”

Q: Does writing a book feel the same as writing a song?

A: “Yes. It’s like baking. Writing books is like a combination of writing a song and a letter. I love writing songs. It’s my love.”

(Editing by Patricia Reaney and Bob Tourtellotte)

A pair of African-American men expect to file a lawsuit against ABC television and the producer of reality dating shows The Bachelor and The Bachelorette charging racial discrimination, attorneys said on Tuesday.

The class action, to be filed in federal court on Wednesday, is being brought by two residents of Nashville, Tennessee who claim the popular shows intentionally exclude people of color.

Nashville residents Nathaniel Claybrooks, an All-American football player, and Christopher Johnson, an aspiring National Football League player, will claim that in the 10 years the shows have been on the air — a combined 23 seasons — neither has ever featured a person of color in a central role, according to a statement from the attorneys.

They plan a news conference on Wednesday to discuss the legal action taken "on behalf of all persons of color who have applied for the role of the Bachelor or the Bachelorette but been denied the equal opportunity for selection on the basis of race."

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