Gazprom, an industrial and financial conglomerate created in 1992, is the key weapon in the Kremlin's geopolitical strategy. First producer of natural gas, Russia indeed holds a third of the world's total reserves. Responsible for producing, distributing and selling it, Gazprom is a company like no other, where gas market professionals work, but also ministers, deputies and advisers close to the Russian president. It was during the winter of 2005-2006 that Europe, which buys 30% of its gas from Russia, suddenly became aware of its vulnerability. Comment ? Overnight, Russia had just cut gas supplies to the pro-Western Ukraine of Viktor Lushchenko, who refused to pay tariffs multiplied by five. Since then, the continuous rise in oil prices, coupled with ever-increasing Chinese demand, has confirmed the key role that its hydrocarbons give to Russia.
Gazprom, an industrial and financial conglomerate created in 1992, is the key weapon in the Kremlin's geopolitical strategy. First producer of natural gas, Russia indeed holds a third of the world's total reserves. Responsible for producing, distributing and selling it, Gazprom is a company like no other, where gas market professionals work, but also ministers, deputies and advisers close to the Russian president. It was during the winter of 2005-2006 that Europe, which buys 30% of its gas from Russia, suddenly became aware of its vulnerability. Comment ? Overnight, Russia had just cut gas supplies to the pro-Western Ukraine of Viktor Lushchenko, who refused to pay tariffs multiplied by five. Since then, the continuous rise in oil prices, coupled with ever-increasing Chinese demand, has confirmed the key role that its hydrocarbons give to Russia.
2008-02-05
10
Mobile Suit SD Gundam Mk. II delivers with more tongue-in-cheek humor than the first series. In "The Rolling Colony Affair," a colony is hosting a cabaret show featuring the girls of Gundam. But the show turns disastrous when men and mobile suits go crazy over the girls, sending the colony rolling out of control. A parody of the videogame RPG genre, "Gundam Legend" has Amuro, Kamille and Judau sent on a perilous quest to rescue the princess of the Zeta Kingdom from Char Aznable and his vicious Zeon MS forces.
Seven years ago, Zaid went to war against the Copenhagen underworld to avenge his dead brother. His identity as a respected doctor of cardiology and life as a family man is but a fading dream, and in prison Zaid suffers the loss of his son Noah, whom he barely knows. When a police agent approaches Zaid and offers him a deal to be released in exchange for infiltrating the Copenhagen underworld, he sees his chance to reclaim the remnants of the family life he left behind. But everything has a price, and Zaid realizes that he has now seriously endangered his son's life. After all, once you become part of the underworld, is there any way out?
A Romance of the Three Kingdoms retelling using SD Gundams. (Source: Myanimelist.net)
A collection of short parodies of the Mobile Suit Gundam saga. Episode 1 pokes fun at key events that occurred during the One Year War. In episode 2, Amuro, Kamille and Judau fight over who runs the better pension when Char comes in to crash their party. Episode 3 is the SD Olympics, an array of athletic events pitting man with mobile suit.
Ava, an award-winning chef at a big-city restaurant, has lost her spark. Her boss sends her out to find herself to save her menu and her job. She returns home and finds little to inspire her, but when she reunites with her childhood friend Logan, Ava has to get her head out of the clouds and her foot out of her mouth to rediscover her passion for food.
The first theatrically release of the SD Gundam series. Contains two shorts, "The Storm-Calling School Festival" and "The Tale of the SD Warring States: The Chapter of the Violent Final Sky Castle".
Returning wounded from the war Maksym was overcome by self-doubt, in his physiological state. He is undergoing rehabilitation. He loses contact with his wife. He is tormented by dreams. In one of his dreams Maksym goes to the island to catch a lot of fish, as the paramedic advised him. Maksym takes a boat, net, dynamite from the best man and sails to the island.
A collection of short parodies of the Mobile Suit Gundam saga. Episode 1 pokes fun at key events that occurred during the One Year War. In episode 2, Amuro, Kamille and Judau fight over who runs the better pension when Char comes in to crash their party. Episode 3 is the SD Olympics, an array of athletic events pitting man with mobile suit.
A naval officer reprimanded after Pearl Harbor is later promoted to rear admiral and gets a second chance to prove himself against the Japanese.
Ko Chun, the God of Gamblers, vows to keep his identity hidden while looking for the gangsters who murdered his pregnant wife.
After much training, Karasuno again meets Aoba Jouhsai in the Spring Tournament. Though intimidated by Oikawa, the team's renowned setter, Karasuno is determined to do whatever it takes to advance to nationals.
Kyousuke and Madoka have finally arrived at the point where they are close to graduation and have to decide where they want to go to college. Naturally, they want to go together, so beside all the studying they also have to look for a proper college where they can enter both. Hikaru, still a year from graduating, wants to support Kyousuke as well and does that in her own way. But while she does that, Madoka feels jealous and tells her feelings to Kyousuke. And then Kyousuke has to take action to finally decide on the girl he loves.
The Elric brothers meet their toughest opponent yet — a lone serial killer with a large scar on his forehead.
A man is imprisoned for a crime he didn't commit. When his wife is murdered and his son kidnapped and taken to Mexico, he devises an elaborate and dangerous plan to rescue his son and avenge the murder.
An intimate portrayal of a quest for love and acceptance at any cost, Q depicts the influence of a secretive matriarchal religious order on filmmaker Jude Chehab’s family and the unspoken ties and consequences of loyalty that have bonded her mother, grandmother, and herself to the mysterious organization. A love story of a different kind, Q is a multigenerational tale of the eternal search for meaning.
While settling into married life with Akiko, Ryu is brought into a case involving a woman named Katsuragi Aoi, a member of a pickpocketing ring with most of her teammates murdered from unknown masked vigilantes that Ryu fought as Accel. As the details of the case begin to unravel, Ryu is framed and Akiko believes that he may not be faithful to her. As the clock ticks down, Ryu must solve the case, clear his name, and save his marriage before everything comes to an explosive end!
The SD Gundams are at it again: first with a race among all of the prior SD Gundam characters, then the SD Zeons run a space travel agency in the second episode.
The "Jackpot Island - Kumanthong Returns" continues to spread obsession and doubts about one of Southeast Asia's most terrifying divinities. Who is really hiding behind the evil, monstrous face and holding terrifying secrets? What does a deadly island and the terrifyingly mysterious appearance of monstrous mermaids have to do with this brutal and terrifying spell?
UFC 21: Return of the Champions was a mixed martial arts event held by the Ultimate Fighting Championship on July 16, 1999 at the Five Seasons Events Center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The event was seen live on pay per view in the United States, and later released on home video.
After twenty years in power, Vladimir Putin continues to implement his geopolitical strategy with Russia’s comeback on the big stage of world politics. He already announced his ambitions in 2007 – and still, it seems like the western governments were hit completely unprepared. What is behind this repeat of the Cold War?
After losing his job during lockdown, Natan signs up to a microtask website. Having become a “Turker” alongside tens of thousands of others, he is paid a cent for each face he erases on Google Street View. Under the guise of Otto, a fictional character, he embarks on an experimental and playful investigation into “clickworkers”, haunted by the spectre of Beckett.
An artistic hybrid documentary, ZERO IMPUNITY is the centerpiece of an ambitious global transmedia project. ZERO IMPUNITY sheds a powerful spotlight on the seemingly total Impunity for the use of sexual violence in armed conflicts worldwide. ZERO IMPUNITY is an important and necessary eye opening Scream, raising awareness and outrage.
More than twenty years after Vladimir Putin came to supreme power in Russia on May 7, 2000, Russian society is deeply divided. A young, modern generation opposes the growing repression by the regime, which still retains the support of many members of previous generations. Who are these ordinary citizens who dream of living in a different Russia? What price will they have to pay to achieve the freedom and justice they so desire?
Ukrainian journalist Katya Soldak, currently living in New York City and working for Forbes magazine, chronicles Ukraine's history: its strong ties to Russia for centuries; how it broke away from the USSR and began to walk alone; the Orange Revolution, the Maidan Revolution, the Crimea annexation, the Donbass War; all through the eyes of her family and friends settled in Kharkiv, a large Ukrainian city located just eighteen miles from the Russian border.
The murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamic extremist in 2004, followed by the publishing of twelve satirical cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed that was commissioned for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, provides the incendiary framework for Daniel Leconte's provocative documentary, It's Hard Being Loved by Jerks.
The apocalyptic blast in the Port of Beirut, Lebanon, on August 4, 2020, exacerbates anger at those in power: protests cross religious boundaries as the Lebanese people curse corruption, nepotism, gross economic mismanagement and squandering of resources. How did the Land of Cedars, a country with so much to offer, allow itself to get into such a dire situation? And will it be able to bounce back?
Featuring new, previously unseen footage documenting the bizarre and unsettling things that happened to filmmakers David Farrier and Dylan Reeve as Tickled premiered at film festivals and theaters in 2016. Lawsuits, private investigators, disrupted screenings and surprise appearances are just part of what they encounter along the way. Amidst new threats, the duo begins to answer questions that remained once the credits rolled on Tickled, including whether the disturbing behavior they uncovered will ever come to an end.
This documentary draws on new evidence to reveal that a fire was raging in Titanic's boiler rooms before she left port, that it was kept secret and, it's now believed, that it led to the tragedy
How does a nation slip into war? Dateline-Saigon profiles the controversial reporting of five Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists -The New York Times' David Halberstam, the Associated Press' Malcolm Browne, Peter Arnett, and legendary photojournalist Horst Faas, and UPI's Neil Sheehan -- during the early years of the Vietnam War as President John F. Kennedy is secretly committing US troops to what is initially dismissed by some as 'a nice little war in a land of tigers and elephants.' 'When the government is telling the truth, reporters become a relatively unimportant conduit to what is happening,' Halberstam tells us. 'But when the government doesn't tell the truth, begins to twist the truth, hide the truth, then the journalist becomes involuntarily infinitely more important.'
The Black Book, drafted during World War II, gathers numerous unique historical testimonies, in an effort to document Nazi abuses against Jews in the USSR . Initially supported by the regime and aimed at providing evidence during the executioners’ trials in the post-war era, the Black Book was eventually banned and most of its authors executed on Stalin’s order. Told through the voices of its most famous instigators, soviet intellectuals Vassilli Grossman, Ilya Ehrenburg and Solomon Mikhoels, the documentary, provides a detailed account of the tragic destiny of this cursed book and puts the Holocaust and Stalinism in a new light.
Russia, China and Iran: three former empires are determined to take their revenge and reassert their power after centuries of humiliation. Since the start of the war in Ukraine, they have never been so aligned on the international stage. Their common goal: to put an end to Western hegemony, restore their zone of influence and propose a new model of society. To achieve this, they are waging a hybrid war against the democracies: military, technological, economic, informational and ideological. Are they on the verge of joining forces to create a new world order?
Green lights dance across a star-filled sky, and snowflakes sparkle on the trees. It is little wonder Lapland is famous as a realm of elves and flying reindeer, the magical home of Santa Claus. This northernmost region of mainland Europe, however, is a real place, with real animals such as reindeer, Great Gray owls, wolverines, eagles, wolves, musk oxen and Brown bears who live out their lives in the tundra and forest.
A woman’s Holocaust memoir takes the world by storm, but a fallout with her publisher-turned-detective reveals her story as an audacious deception created to hide a darker truth.
Raised in an orthodox home, Amos Dov Silver dreams of becoming Prime Minister. But when the State continues to shun him, he soon finds unexpected solace in the velvety smoke of Marijuana. Spreading his new Torah, he establishes an online community using a mobile app called "TeleGrass" that turns into the largest marketplace for drugs in Israel, raising Silver to Messiah status. Through exclusive footage of Silver, his family and his partners’ investigations, as well as secretly filmed footage of Silver in the Ukrainian prison, a polarizing portrayal of the man charged with heading a crime organization emerges. Champion of the people, or a lost soul corrupted by power?
Lukas Moodysson's acclaimed film Lilja 4-ever, seen by 100,000's of moviegoers is based on a real life story. The film's Lily was in fact called Danguole Rasalaites and came from Lithuania to Sweden when she was 16 years old. She was stripped of her passport and held captive in an apartment in Malmö where she was forced into prostitution.
A young investigative journalist and his fiancée are brutally murdered in their home in Slovakia. Their deaths inspire the biggest protests in Slovakia since the fall of communism. The story takes an unexpected turn when a source leaks the secret murder case file to the murdered journalist’s colleagues. It includes the computers and encrypted communications of the assassination’s alleged mastermind, a businessman closely connected to the country’s ruling party. Trawling these encrypted messages, journalists discover that their country has been captured by corrupt oligarchs, judges and law enforcement officials. A reckoning awaits.