New Guns N' Roses album hits stores

Guns N' Roses, the rock band that ruled the music world in the early 1990s and then self-destructed in a slow-motion death march, will release its first album of new material in more than 17 years worldwide on Sunday.

Some equate "Chinese Democracy" to the Second Coming, or at least to the resurrection of Elvis Presley.

"It's just a remarkable moment in popular culture," said Blender magazine editor-in-chief Joe Levy, without a trace of hyperbole. "It really is. We never thought we would get here."

Others are hedging their bets. Reclusive singer Axl Rose, 46, is the only original member left. His volatile behavior drove out key members such as top-hatted guitarist Slash years ago. Some purists say he should not have used the Guns N' Roses name with this new project.

Either way, "Chinese Democracy" has assumed mythical proportions over the years. Fans and skeptics alike are driven by sheer curiosity to see whether the album justifies its status as a lost masterpiece, or whether it turns out to be the anti-climactic equivalent of "The Godfather III."

"Chinese Democracy" was originally envisaged as a 1995 release, the follow-up to the pair of "Use Your Illusion" albums that came out simultaneously in September 1991. But as work proceeded at a snail's pace, Rose took control of the group, and parted ways not only with all his original bandmates but with several of their replacements. He tinkered on the project with a succession of producers at his Malibu hideaway.

90 MILLION ALBUMS

Release dates came and went, along with presidential administrations and bull markets. By 2005, the cost of the project was estimated at more than $13 million. The band's Geffen Records label declined to discuss financials.

But fans never forgot about Guns N' Roses. This year alone, a hits record released in 2004 has sold 388,000 copies in the United States, and 4.3 million to date, according to Nielsen SoundScan. The band's 1987 full-length debut "Appetite for Destruction" has sold 106,000 copies this year. It is the biggest debut of all time, with U.S. shipments of more than 18 million copies. The band's worldwide sales are estimated at more than 90 million, according to its Geffen Records label.

Electronics retailer Best Buy Co Inc will release "Chinese Democracy" exclusively in the United States, pricing it cheaply at $11.99. It will go on sale internationally through traditional retailers.

Best Buy Senior Entertainment Officer Gary Arnold was confident consumers would cast their ballots for "Chinese Democracy," predicting it would be the week's top seller, ahead of a new album by hip-hop star Kanye West, whose last release kicked off with 957,000 copies last September.

But is the record any good? Rolling Stone magazine declared it "audacious, unhinged and uncompromising," while Blender's Levy said the ballads were "completely killer." Arnold said the album was on par with such classics as the Beach Boys' "Pet Sounds" and the Rolling Stones' "Exile on Main Street."

The enthusiasm seemed a little more restrained at a listening event in Los Angeles on Tuesday, one of six that Best Buy organized nationwide for fans.

About 400 people packed the Roxy on the Sunset Strip and awkwardly faced the stage, perhaps expecting a surprise appearance by the band itself. The music was piped in at ear-splitting volume through the public address system.  Continued...

Obama Tilts to Center, Inviting a Clash of Ideas

Now, his reported selections for two of the major positions in his cabinet — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state andTimothy F. Geithner as secretary of the Treasury — suggest that Mr. Obama is planning to govern from the center-right of his party, surrounding himself with pragmatists rather than ideologues.

The choices are as revealing of the new president as they are of his appointees — and suggest that, from its first days, an Obama White House will brim with big personalities and far more spirited debate than occurred among the largely like-minded advisers who populated President Bush’s first term.

But the names racing through the ether in Washington about the choices to follow also suggest that Mr. Obama continues to place a premium on deep experience. He is widely reported to be considering asking Mr. Bush’s defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, to stay on for a year; and he is thinking about Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander and Marine Corps commandant, for national security adviser, and placing Lawrence H. Summers, the former Treasury secretary whom Mr. Obama considered putting back in his old post, inside the White House as a senior economic adviser.

“This is the violin model: Hold power with the left hand, and play the music with your right,” David J. Rothkopf, a former Clinton official who wrote a history of the National Security Council, said on Friday, as news of Mrs. Clinton’s and Mr. Geithner’s appointments leaked. “It’s teaching us something about Obama: while he wants to bring new ideas to the game, he is working from the center space of American foreign policy.”

The reason, several of Mr. Obama’s transition team members say, is that they believe that the new administration will have no time for a learning curve. With the country facing a deep recession or worse, global market turmoil, chaos in Pakistan and a worsening war in Afghanistan, “there’s going to be no time for experimentation,” a member of the Obama foreign policy team said.

That explains Mr. Obama’s first selection: Rahm Emanuel, another centrist Democrat and former member of the Clinton White House, as his chief of staff.

In some ways, the choices made so far are reminiscent of the way the last senator to be elected president, John F. Kennedy, chose a cabinet. As president-elect, Kennedy soon picked three top officials significantly more conservative than he was: Dean Rusk as secretary of state, Robert S. McNamara as secretary of defense and C. Douglas Dillon, a Republican, as secretary of the Treasury. They helped him navigate the Cuban missile crisis, but also got him bogged down in Vietnam.

Of all the choices Mr. Obama has made so far, it is the selection of Mrs. Clinton that appears the biggest gamble, in part because she has never had to engage in the give-and-take of high-stakes diplomacy, and in part because no one really knows how she will mesh with the Obama White House.

In her discussion with the president-elect, several members of his transition team said, Mrs. Clinton expressed no doubt that she could be a loyal member of the Obama team — though she was reportedly deeply conflicted about giving up her Senate seat and the independent power base it afforded her.

During the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination, Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton went out of their way to point out their foreign policy differences, with Mrs. Clinton portraying herself as a hawkish Democrat and defending her decision to vote in favor of the 2002 resolution that Mr. Bush later considered an authorization to use military force against Saddam Hussein. (Later, she said she fully expected Mr. Bush to use diplomacy first — and was shocked that he did not.)

Now the question is less one of ideological differences than whether a Clinton State Department could become something like Colin L. Powell’s: an alternative, though weak, power center that made little secret of its differences with the White House.

“Anyone who tells you they really know how this is going to work out,” one senior transition official said Thursday, “is telling less than the truth.”

If Mrs. Clinton is taken from the “Team of Rivals” model, Mr. Geithner, president of theFederal Reserve Bank of New York, is from the Team of Neutrals.

“He’s no liberal,” said a former colleague at the Treasury Department, where he managed the American response to the Asian financial crisis in the 1990s.

At the time Mr. Geithner developed a reputation as the ultimate pragmatist, putting together a package of more than $100 billion in aid to halt the financial contagion. That turned out to be a training session for his role, a decade later, in the bailouts of Bear Stearns, A.I.G. and the injection of nearly $350 billion in Congressionally authorized money, whose exact use has become something of a political football.

Mr. Geithner grew up in Asia — in Tokyo, New Delhi and Bangkok — and keeps his ego well in check. He asks a lot of questions, but does not have Mr. Summers’s overwhelming — some say overbearing — personality.

“He clicked with Obama,” one outside adviser said. “If you think about it, their sort of cool, distant styles are alike.”

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《功夫熊猫》“花絮版曝光五侠秘密

《功夫熊猫》“花絮版”曝光五侠秘密

一部《功夫熊猫》，让不少观众“意犹未尽”。日前，一则名为《功夫熊猫：盖世五侠的秘密》的短片就在网络疯传，曝光了阿宝几位师兄师姐的身世。

短片中，阿宝开办了一个功夫培训班，班里的学生是小巧可爱的兔子们。阿宝以讲故事的方式，曝光了师兄师姐的身世——娇虎自小被遗弃在孤儿院，由于无人收养被视为怪物，直到师傅出现；猴子身手敏捷却作恶多端，直到碰到乌龟大师，才回归正途；个头小小的螳螂虽然武功盖世，却因为性急差点送命；没有毒牙的小灵蛇一度被父亲认为不是习武的材料；仙鹤在找到自信之前只是“大力武馆”的看门清扫工。

记者向《功夫熊猫》片方中国内地代表方了解，这个短片的确来源于片方。原来我们所看的《功夫熊猫》，也只是国外观众看到的3/4，因为还有1/4的内容，“藏”在一张专门的DVD中。

《梅兰芳》即将正式公映

陈凯歌执导的影片《梅兰芳》即将于12月5日正式公映。近日，电影面向全国院线经理进行了小范围提前试映，反响不错。11月21日，中影集团董事长韩三平在接受采访时表示，将集合一切力量发行好这部影片，预计数字和胶片两种拷贝投放数量达1400,这一发行规模也超过了此前的《赤壁（上）》，创下华语电影发行历史纪录据介绍，为了保证这些拷贝能顺利到达全国各大院线，发行方预备了六百人的专业团队负责护送拷贝、硬盘。同时，为了有效杜绝盗版的发生，《梅兰芳》在正式上映之前，也仅进行这一次面向院线经理的小范围试映。而试映也采取了严格保密措施，所有看片人员均需持请帖、并接受安检方能进影院。

　　观看过影片试映的北京新影联院线总经理高军说：“这部电影凯歌导演拍的很"开"，梅孟恋情，福芝芳和孟小冬的关系，梅兰芳和十三燕的斗戏都处理得很到位，非常吸引人。而且演员表演都很不错，每个演员都出彩，是一个大群像，把影片整体感觉提高了。”

　　中影南方新干线院线总经理谢围嘉在看过电影后认为，《梅兰芳》完全适合年轻人观看。“与陈凯歌过去的电影相比，《梅兰芳》更上一个台阶。这部片子跟《霸王别姬》绝不是同一个类型，不论是情爱的表达，还是人物刻画，都很清透。黎明章子怡的表演也很到位。可以说这是一部非常时尚华丽的片子，尤其是适合年轻人观看。它其实很时尚前卫，会令人耳目一新。”