, a joint venture with Venezuela’s PDVSA and four other Russian oil companies, launched production on Thursday, targeting 50,000 barrels per day this year.
It is considering other plays in Latin America. Einchcomb said it had registered for a licence round in Colombia this year but decided against participation.
HRT Chief Executive Marcio Mello has promised to secure an outlet for the gas by the end of 2013, either by selling it for power generation or as feedstock for fertiliser or alternative fuel production.
Einchcomb said the gas could be used to produce 20,000-30,000 barrels per day of ethanol at the field with new gas-to-liquids technology, and the ethanol shipped by barge to Petrobras refineries.
A study on the gas options is due for completion by the end of March 2013, he said.Twilight 4, which has in Bill Condon a new and (some think, anyway) higher profile director, is every bit as bad as its three predecessors, maybe worse. For the teenage girls who flock to cinemas for the franchise (which has taken in nearly two billion dollars so far), the subject matter this time is earthshaking beyond all imagining. But is it, really? Isn’t violent, painful childbirth a bit outside a teenage girl’s normal range? Anyway, this is when in the trashy Stephanie Meyer “young adult” novel series Bella Swan (played always on screen by Kirsten Stewart) gives in to the desire to lose her virginity and at eighteen marries her handsome, pallid vampire boyfriend, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). They have sex at an ultra-romantic location somewhere near Rio. Edward tears up the bedroom and covers her with bruises. She begs for more. In between they play chess (her bruises disappear in those shots). He gets Bella pregnant. And in the movie version, at least, Bella starts to swell up almost immediately.
It’s dangerous. It seems in Stephanie Meyer, pregnancy is as scary as sex. Bella has a “demon” inside her because Edward is one, according to a Brazilian cleaning lady. Back in the Pacific Northwest at the Cullens’ palatial forest modern dwelling, Bella suffers through a rapid pregnancy, and in under two hours (spoiler alert) Bella gives birth (an event we don’t see) to a sweet baby (of which sex we don’t know yet). But childbirth nearly kills Bella, because the kid is a vampire. Or half one anyway.
I’m not sure the direction this segment goes is the delight to teenage girls its predecessors were. The pain of childbirth may be a bit beyond their everyday fantasies. But there’s a wedding, and Robert Pattinson covers Kirsten Stewart with lots and lots of sweet kisses. Will American high school girls take up chess now?
Condon’s Twilight debut is a peculiar effort. It is quite extraordinary to know that the budget was an estimated $110 million. What was that for? Special effects? A trip to Rio at Mardi Gras time depicted in five-second snatches? Rental of a posh honeymoon cottage on a special island? More body building for Taylor Lautner? The lighting is very strange at times here, to put it kindly, and to allow for the anomalies of digital filmmaking. During the wedding, which is skipped through without any logic, speeches being given as at a prenup party and cut back and forth out of chronological sequence, there are no shadows. Under such circumstances (observable also in large swaths of Scorsese’s new Hugo), people, understandably, don’t look so good. That happens again later at the most romantic (as well as violent) moments. On the moonlit honeymoon island, sometimes Edward looks great, but sometimes he looks sickly, and not in the pallid handsome vampire way. Bella just looks gray in the face on most of the honeymoon and throughout her subsequent uneasy pregnancy. Well, some people say she’s “sick.” The vampire fetus inside her, which requires her to drink blood from medical containers to appease it and keep it from draining her strength away, causes damage to her rib cage and spine. (Gee, it must be a boy.) The editing conveys no understandable sense of time, and the pregnancy zips forward, with a lot of confusing, worried (and bad) dialogue, and no scene of the birth itself. All we know is Bella dies and Edward tries to bring her back to life by biting her, all over.  All part of the afterbirth scene, I guess.
The editing throughout this movie is as strange as the lighting and cinematography are ugly. Logical visual sequences are not followed. The effect is what amounts to a feeling of constant jump cuts. The angles defy expectations. And there’s no conceivable logic. This isn’t the French New Wave or some sophisticated Hong Kong or Taiwan auteur’s work. It’s a bad movie, by a director who could do much better. The filmmakers seem to have concluded that since their vampire characters can jump around in space, the editing can too.
Most critics have merely differed as to whether the three preceding Twilight pictures were watchable or just plain lousy; distinguishing differences in their irrelevant quality levels is hairsplitting out of medieval scholasticism. The girls flock to the cinemas and the money rolls in. One must protest to any reviewers, such has Manohla Dargis of the New York Times, who should know better, who now proclaim themselves converts to the franchise. This is a bad time to switch. Unless you just want follow the money. In its first ten days of release now, which included Thanksgiving weekend, Breaking Dawn is estimated to be going to make double its production cost in the US and $490 million worldwide. But to an outside observer Twilight was better for the first couple of films. At least Meyer’s clumsy, jejune story seemed fresh back then, and Catherine Hardwicke has a knowing touch with teenagers the subsequent directors have lacked.
I have not said anything about the alleged “war” in Breaking Dawn — Part I between — who? — in which Jacob (the fresh-faced, airheaded Lautner), strongly allied with the vampire Cullens now, is apparently going to play an important role. None of that ever seems to make any sense, probably because a Mormon housewife (Meyer), or this one, anyway, isn’t really too good at dramatizing feuds and battles. Neither are the filmmakers in this outing. As Justin Chang ofVariety comments in reviewing Breaking Dawn, “Two nocturnal wolves-vs.-vamps combat scenes are essentially thrill-free, and so underlit that one is inclined to suspect slapdash CGI.” Anyway none of the key fighting happens yet in this session. A big battle, in which Bella will play a big role too, so they say, will be a new thing for Bill Condon to fail at next year.
Pastoral Meanderings: Toward a Chinese Christianity...
Apparently the Chinese government is moving ahead on the heels of their success with the Vatican. This time, apparently, they are moving to transform Christianity IN China to a Chinese VERSION of Christianity, more friendly to socialism and one that has incorporated some of the wisdom of Chairman Mao into the Scriptures. This is more than a Bible with some added material but a material revision of Christianity.
The Chinese have a plan called Sinicization with the goal of transforming the heart and soul of Christian theology and re-translating the Bible or revising biblical commentaries. This would actually involving summarizing the Old Testament with some Buddhist additions and Confucian teachings and new commentary for the New Testament. The five-year plan appears to be expansive, even incorporating Chinese elements into church worship services, hymns and songs, clergy attire, and the architectural style of church buildings. Everyone knows that between 4,000 to 6,000 crosses of state-sanctioned churches have been torn down but the churches that do have crucifixes on the inside must put up pictures of Chairman Mao and Chairman Xi [Jinping] on either side of the crucifix. Music that begins worship will include the revolutionary songs of communist China. In addition the state will seek to close or merge many of the state-sanctioned churches as well as step up efforts to close the more than 20,000 house churches not sanctioned by the state.
In many ways, this is even more overt and profound than the attempt of Nazis to define Christianity in a way that was friendly to Hitler and to find accommodation within Scripture for the Nazi ideology. While hundreds of Christian leaders have condemned the effort, it remains to be seen if they will be more successful than the churches of Germany were in resisting the state sponsored control of Christian dogma, worship, and piety. What is clear, however, is that Pope Francis recent accord with the Chinese in allowing them a role in naming bishops and exercising certain authority over Chinese Roman Catholics appears now to have been a real sell out and an encouragement to the emboldened efforts of China to do more than control the churches and to undertake an actual remake of the Christian message and identity within their borders. All of this comes at a time when it is clear, that despite appearances, China is closing doors rather than opening them to freedom and to the West. It also appears to justify those who suggest that our dependence upon the Chinese is providing the financial cover for their consolidation of power within their borders and their moves to strengthen their position within the world.
Of course, liberals will insist that those who cry foul are overreacting and that the same kind of cultural appropriation of the Christian faith has been done in many other places. For the orthodox Christian community concerned about doctr