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A team of researchers is examining how different perceptions of masculinity can influence HIV prevention messages in Central America, the Columbia State reports. The team, which is supported by USAID and Population Services International, has held focus groups with 1,200 men from El Salvador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Panama to learn about different perceptions of masculinity and how the hands see themselves. The work force completed 11-point surveys on issues such as what motivates them, what is important in life and what watchword best describes them. Using the surveys, the researchers developed six-spot primary categories to which HIV/AIDS bar messages can be customized, according to the State. "It's another approach for behavioral change messages," Susana Lungo, plan director for the opening move, said.
The six primary categories ar powerful, men to whom researchers should stress that they have the office to choose condom use; energetic, wHO can be reached by emphasizing that they can make a contribution to the fight against HIV/AIDS; protector, world Health Organization should be given messages about fidelity and prophylactic use for the rice beer of protecting their families; relaxed, world Health Organization tend to be receptive to condom use because of in the main open attitudes; searchers, to whom safe use has to be presented in interesting and engaging ways; and passionate, men wHO are receptive to faithfulness and safety use messages out of respect for their partners.
According to the researchers, although the categories were developed to promote HIV prevention, they also can be used for teenaged pregnancy bar and other health issues (Reid, Columbia State, 8/21).
Reprinted with kind permit from hypertext transfer protocol://www.kaisernetwork.org. You can opinion the entire Kaiser Daily Health Policy Report, search the archives, or mark up for email delivery at hTTP://www.kaisernetwork.
Wednesday, 27 August 2008
Thursday, 7 August 2008
Movie review: The undead return in 'The Mummy'
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor: Action. Starring Brendan Fraser, Jet Li and Maria Bello. Directed by Rob Cohen. (PG-13. 112 transactions. At Bay Area theaters. For discharge movie listings and show up times, and to buy tickets for select theaters, go to sfgate.com/movies.)
"The Mummy" series has been dead for a long meter, but like the mummies it depicts, it won't stay inhumed. You'd suppose that doing story after story around people world Health Organization haplessly revivify a dead thing, only to have things end in disaster, might clew somebody in, but no. The quest of celebrity and treasure goes on, despite the consequences.
The new installment, "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor," fails despite being given the best possible chance of success, with Rob Cohen in the director's electric chair. Cohen ("The Fast and the Furious") is one of the most gifted action directors in the business. He's no hack writer who just stands there shaking a camera. His action scenes are imaginatively conceived and meticulously emended and choreographed. He doesn't sacrifice clarity for rumpus, and he also knows how to work with actors. "Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" has the most natural acting and is the most human and emotionally inhabited of this late "Mummy" franchise.
Yet none of this matters because of the way the action is used - or misused - which brings up a major script job. It's a problem this movie shares, alas, with a set of action movies. The action isn't used to advance the story but to detain it.
Hear more than about "Mummy'' on "Movies With Mick LaSalle" >>
Audiences want to see things happen. But to an audience, "what happens" refers to tale, to stuff happening to the characters, to the narrative forward-moving. Action sequences, at their best, set ahead the tale in an exciting means. Conversely, if the hearing knows that an action sequence, situated as it is, won't move the story forward - that it can only be a lot of vigorously crafted social movement - the audience volition become world-weary. As in real bored. As in climbing the walls.
This is what happens with "Tomb of the Dragon Emperor." It tells a tiny story. The heroes go one place. Then they go to another place. Then they fit up with the bad guy. There's a showdown. Soup to nuts, this story could have been told in 45 proceedings with no trouble. To do it in 60 would deliver been push it. Instead, "Tomb" stretches this little bonbon of a plot into 112 minutes, which means that every small turn has to be inflated with an action sequence - one that most oftentimes leaves the characters about where they were when the shooting started.
One actor stands out for particular kudos, however: Rachel Weisz, for deciding non to make this third "Mummy" film. She's replaced here by Maria Bello, who manages to seem more English than Weisz would experience. Since the last instalment, Evelyn (Bello), in addition to completely changing her look, has become an adventure writer, and her husband, Rick (Brendan Fraser), is instruction. But, world-weary by staid domesticity, they jump at an assignment that takes them to China.
The pre-credits sequence is the best thing in the movie. It sets up what seems like the beginning of a great yarn near an evil emperor (Jet Li) in ancient China, who is cursed by a good witch (Michelle Yeoh). He and his army all of a sudden get mummies, which makes them look care the terra cotta soldiers that toured the world's museums last year. Maybe that's where someone got the idea.
Of course, the emperor wants to arrive at a comeback, and of course Rick and Evelyn have to stop him, and it doesn't acquire much more complicated than that. Along the direction, they make a detour to Shangri-la, which is always nice. Actually, a little more Shangri-la wouldn't have been bad. They could get at least stayed long enough to see if Sam Jaffe was noneffervescent there.
When Bello played a working-class New Jersey woman in "World Trade Center," she had the accent down but not the soul. But in "Tomb," she is identifiably a certain kind of bright, polished, energetic English lady, and she's a lot of fun - at least to the extent that she gets to be fun. As for Fraser, his awkward humanity is endearing, but by now, assuming he has invested wisely, he should have enough money saved so as to not bear to neutralize his talent anymore. Even doing dinner theater would be more rewarding than this.
-- Advisory: The heroes shoot a lot of people and don't think much nearly it.
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