Author: Martin D'Anjou

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Cinéma

Bridget Jones looking for a director

The producers of Bridget Jones 3 are looking for a British director since Paul Feig (Bridesmaids) has withdrawn after developing the most recent draft of the script, reports Deadline.

Since the romantic-comedy is quintessentially British humor, the plan is to find a director who has a British sensibility. The film is set to begin production in January, and in the third installment, Bridget, now in her forties, decides to have a child before it’s too late.

The popular original cast of Renee Zellweger, Colin Firth and Hugh Grant are eager to return. Despite the controversy that an American Texan would be playing the lead as a British everywoman, Zellweger’s performance silenced her critics and won her an Oscar nomination.

Since sharing her adventures in 2001, the first two Bridget Jones films have earned more than $480 million at the box office worldwide.

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A natural, cheap product helps smokers quit

Research by British and Polish scientists on a drug called Tabex, developed by the Soviets more than 40 years ago, shows promising results as an affordable alternative for those who hope to quit smoking, according to a study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Available since 1964 in the former Eastern bloc, Tabex contains a natural product, cytisine, extracted from the Golden Rain acacia plant, and as a smoking-cessation aid is similar to nicotine replacement drugs such as Chantix, patches and gums.

The drug only costs $15 for a full course 3- to 4-week treatment. In the study, 740 smokers were randomly assigned to cytisine or a placebo for 25 days. Participants also received minimal counseling to help them quit. More than 80 percent of participants had already tried to quit.

After one year, 8.4 percent of those who had taken cytisine were still not smoking, compared with 2.4 percent of those who received the placebo.

Adverse side effects included stomach ache, dry mouth, difficulty breathing and nausea, however, these were generally mild and not long lasting, the authors noted.

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Super broccoli developed by UK researchers

British scientists from the John Innes Centre and the Institute of Food Research have designed a ‘super broccoli’ with increased nutritional benefits.

The new broccoli, called Beneforté, has two to three times the regular amount of glucopharanine. When consumed, glucopharanine is transformed into sulforaphane, a compound that exhibits anti-cancer, anti-diabetic, and anti-microbial properties.

“Our research has given new insights into the role of broccoli and other similar vegetables in promoting health, and has shown how this understanding can lead to the development of potentially more nutritious varieties of our familiar vegetables”, said Professor Richard Mithen at the Institute of Food Research. “Now there will also be something brand new for consumers to eat as a result of the discoveries we have made.”

Eaten raw, lightly boiled or stir-fried a few times a week, the Beneforté broccoli could help reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease and colorectal, stomach, lung and prostate cancer.

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Cinéma

Leonardo DiCaprio to star in Satori

Warner Bros. has acquired the film rights for Don Winslow’s bestselling novel Satori, with plans to develop it for Titanic actor Leonardo DiCaprio, reports Deadline.

Satori tells the story of Nicholai Hel (Leonardo DiCaprio), an American assassin raised in Japan and trained as a martial arts expert. Hel gets caught up in the chaos after World War and is hired by the CIA for a dangerous assassination assignment.

If the film is a success, the studio plans to develop a film franchise based on the Trevanian novels. Satori is the prequel to the book by another author, Shibumi by Trevanian, a pen name for the late Rodney Whitaker.

No director is currently attached to the project, nor has a release date been announced.

Leonardo DiCaprio is a busy actor these days. He can soon be seen in Clint Eastwood’s biopic of CIA director J. Edgar, and is about to begin filming Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.

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School lunches often lack fruit and vegetables

Two-fifths of U.K. schoolchildren who bring a packed lunch to school aren’t getting any fresh fruit or vegetables in their lunchbox, according to a study conducted by the World Cancer Research Fund.

Only 58 percent of packed lunches contain at least one fresh fruit or serving of vegetables, compared to 90 percent of meals served in school cafeterias, reports the Daily Mail.

"It can sometimes be difficult for parents to control what their children eat, particularly if they are passing shops on the way home from school or visiting their friends," noted Kate Mendoza, head of education at the WCRF. "But parents can influence what is in their packed lunches and the fact that not all of them are doing so is a missed opportunity."

Mendoza recommends including a piece of fruit or using a portion of salad to top off a sandwich, as easy and affordable ways to give kids the nutrition they need at lunch.

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Palmetto extract has no effect on prostate

About half of men over 50 in the U.S. suffer from an enlarged prostate, which makes urination difficult and causes urinary tract infections, reports the Times of Malta, and by the age of 80, this number increases to 75 percent of all men.

The global market for a herbal supplement reported to help shrink enlarged prostates, saw palmetto extract, is about $700 million a year. However, recent randomized trials in North America showed that even triple doses of the over-the-counter drug neither worked nor harmed the patients.

“These supplements are apparently not doing anything measurably above and beyond what we call the placebo effect,” said co-author Dr Roehrborn in the latest edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Researchers tracked 379 men age 45 and older whose symptoms included difficulty emptying their bladders, and weak or frequent urination.

As part of the study, some patients received the saw palmetto extract – which comes from the berries of the saw palmetto dwarf plant tree – and others were given a sugar pill that smelled and tasted the same.

Measurements over 72 weeks showed the drug, even when increased in dosage, had no impact on urinary symptoms such as nighttime urination or incontinence, and did not improve sexual function.

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Cinéma

Kurt Russell joins cast of Django Unchained

After working together on Grindhouse, veteran actor Kurt Rusell and cult director Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs, Kill Bill), have reunited for Django Unchained, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

Russell, 60, will be replacing Kevin Costner, who withdrew from the production due to scheduling conflicts, for the role of Ace Woody, the sadistic manager of a slave-owner’s cotton plantation.

Russell joins a star-studded cast including Leonardo DiCaprio, Jamie Foxx, Christoph Waltz and Samuel L. Jackson, who have all signed on with the Oscar-winning director for his latest tale of violence and revenge.

Django Unchained is a spaghetti western set in the American Deep South, and tells the story of a German bounty hunter (Waltz) and his protégé, a slave-turned-bounty hunter (Foxx), who journey to rescue his slave wife, held captive by a plantation owner.

Filming is scheduled to begin this November, for a release next December 25, 2012.

Russell appeared as villain Stuntman Mike in Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof segment of the film Grindhouse.

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Pushing too hard during exercise could backfire

Women who engage in moderate-intensity workouts are more likely to enjoy a mood boost and continue with the exercise regime than women who do high-intensity workouts, according to a new study presented at a meeting of the North American Menopause Society.

Researchers from Penn State University in Pennsylvania worked with 255 women between the ages of 40 and 60. The women were randomly assigned to do either moderate or vigorous exercise and asked to keep a daily diary of activities and feelings for two weeks.

The women who did the moderate exercise – where they completed a 30-minute session on a treadmill at a self-selected pace – reported feeling happier, calmer, more energetic and much more likely to continue with the exercise than those women who did an intense workout where they were made to run on a treadmill until they could no longer tolerate the pace.

Other examples of moderate exercise include brisk walking, dancing, biking over flat land, canoeing, baseball, water aerobics and even gardening.

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Negative effects of vegetarianism

As more and more people make the decision to reduce their intake of red meat, or all meat, it is important to plan a balanced menu in order to make up for certain nutrients, reports MedicMagic.

While there are many health benefits to eating more fruits and vegetables, vegetarianism also brings negative effects, such as an increased risk of psychological problems such as memory loss due to inadequate vitamin B12, according to Praveen Gupta, neurologist at the Artemis Health Institute in India.

Vegetarians who give up meat for reasons of taste, lifestyle or to lose weight, must be careful to consume enough vitamin B12. This vitamin is commonly found fish, meat, milk and other products.

A vegetarian diet plan should be carried out thoughtfully, and attention given to proper vitamin intake to make up for lack of meat in the diet. Pesticide-free legumes, fruits, greens and fiber are recommended.

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Cinéma

Steve Carell to star in Foxcatcher

No stranger to comedy, actor Steve Carell is taking on a new challenge in the role of mentally-ill millionaire John du Pont who shot and killed Olympic wrestler David Schultz, reports Variety.

The film Foxcatcher directed by Bennett Miller (Capote, Moneyball) tells the story of a man struggling with severe mental illness. The screenplay was written by E. Max Frye and Dan Futterman, who also wrote Capote.

John du Pont was a paranoid schizophrenic and heir to the du Pont chemical fortune. He built a wrestling training facility called Team Foxcatcher on his Pennsylvania estate, where in 1996, he shot and killed Olympic gold medal-winning wrestler David Schultz.

Schultz was a longtime friend of du Pont who had repeatedly tried to help him. Police never established a motive for the crime, which was witnessed by Schultz’s wife and du Pont’s head of security. After the shooting, du Pont locked himself in his mansion for two days while he negotiated with police on the telephone.

Filming is set to begin next March, however no release date has been announced yet.

A versatile actor, Steve Carell, 49, is one of Hollywood’s hardest working stars with a career in film and television. Since 2005, he starred in the popular NBC series The Office. In film, in addition to voicing various characters (Despicable Me, Over the Hedge, Horton Hears a Who!), he also plays the leading man in popular feature films (The 40-Year-old Virgin, Get Smart, Date Night, Crazy, Stupid, Love).