Wolfgang Petersen, the director of hit films such as Das Boot and Air Force One, has died.
The German filmmaker, 81, had been battling pancreatic cancer and passed away at his home in Los Angeles, California, on Friday.
Petersen shot to fame with his breakthrough war epic Das Boot in 1982, it was the most expensive film in German history and tells the story of claustrophobic life on-board a doomed German U-boat during the Battle of the Atlantic, with Jurgen Prochnow as the submarine’s commander.
Heralded as an antiwar masterpiece, Das Boot was nominated for six Oscars, including for Petersen's direction and his adaptation of Lothar-Gunther Buchheim’s best-selling 1973 novel.
Petersen, born in 1941 in Emden, a port city in north Germany, recalled as a child running alongside American ships as they threw down food. In the confusion of post-war Germany, Petersen — who started out in theatre before attending Berlin’s Film and Television Academy in the late 1960s — gravitated towards Hollywood films with clear clashes of good and evil.
"In school they never talked about the time of Hitler — they just blocked it out of their minds and concentrated on rebuilding Germany," Petersen told The Los Angeles Times in 1993. "We kids were looking for more glamorous dreams than rebuilding a destroyed country though, so we were really ready for it when American pop culture came to Germany. We all lived for American movies and by the time I was 11 I'd decided I wanted to be a filmmaker."
Das Boot launched Petersen as a filmmaker in Hollywood, where he made features such as Outbreak (1995), The Perfect Storm (2000) and Troy (2004) with Brad Pitt.
But Petersen’s first foray in American filmmaking was the enchanting 1984 child fantasy The NeverEnding Story. Adapted from Michael Ende’s novel, The NeverEnding Story was about a magical book that transports its young reader into the world of Fantasia, where a dark force known as the Nothing rampages.
Arguably Petersen’s finest Hollywood film came almost a decade later in 1993’s In the Line of Fire, starring Clint Eastwood as a Secret Service agent protecting the US president from John Malkovich’s assassin. In it, Petersen marshalled his substantial skill in building suspense for a more open-air but just as taut thriller that careened across rooftops and past Washington DC monuments.
Seeking a director for the film, Eastwood thought of Petersen, with whom he had chatted a few years earlier at a dinner party given by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Eastwood met with Petersen, viewed his work and gave him the job. In the Line of Fire was a major hit, grossing $177 million worldwide and landing three Oscar nominations.
“You sometimes have seven-year cycles. You look at other directors; they don’t have the big successes all the time. Up to NeverEnding Story, my career was one success after another,” Petersen told Associated Press in 1993. “Then I came into the stormy international scene. I needed time to get a feeling for this work — it’s not Germany anymore.”
Petersen considered the political thriller — which cast the heroic Eastwood as the tired but devoted defender of a less honourable president — an indictment of Washington.
"When John’s character says: ‘Nothing they told me was true and there’s nothing left worth fighting for,’ I think his words will resonate for many people,” Petersen told The Los Angeles Times. “The film is rooted in a profound pessimism about what’s unfortunately happened to this country in the last 30 years. Look around — the corruption is everywhere and there’s not much to celebrate."
After Outbreak, with Dustin Hoffman, Rene Russo and Morgan Freeman, Petersen returned to the presidency in Air Force One (1997). Harrison Ford starred as a president forced into a fight with terrorists who hijack Air Force One.
Air Force One, with $315 million in global box office, was a hit, too, but Petersen went for something even bigger in 2000's The Perfect Storm, the true-life tale of a Massachusetts fishing boat lost at sea. The cast included George Clooney and Mark Wahlberg but its main attraction was a 30-metre computer-generated wave. With a budget of $120 million, The Perfect Storm made $328.7 million.
For Peterson, who grew up on the northern coast of Germany, the sea long held his fascination.
“The power of water is unbelievable,” Petersen said in a 2009 interview. “I was always impressed as a kid how strong it is, all the damage the water could do when it just turned within a couple of hours, and smashed against the shore.”
Petersen's followed The Perfect Storm with Troy, a sprawling epic based on Homer's Iliad that found less favour among critics but still made nearly $500 million worldwide. The big-budget Poseidon (2006), a high-priced flop for Warner Bros, was Petersen's last Hollywood film. His final film was 2016's Four Against the Bank a German film that remade Petersen's own 1976 German TV movie.
Petersen was first married to German actress Ursula Sieg. When they divorced in 1978, he married Maria-Antoinette Borgel, a German script supervisor and assistant director. He's survived by Borgel, son Daniel Petersen and two grandchildren.
— With additional reporting by Associated Press
Sinopharm vaccine explained
The Sinopharm vaccine was created using techniques that have been around for decades.
“This is an inactivated vaccine. Simply what it means is that the virus is taken, cultured and inactivated," said Dr Nawal Al Kaabi, chair of the UAE's National Covid-19 Clinical Management Committee.
"What is left is a skeleton of the virus so it looks like a virus, but it is not live."
This is then injected into the body.
"The body will recognise it and form antibodies but because it is inactive, we will need more than one dose. The body will not develop immunity with one dose," she said.
"You have to be exposed more than one time to what we call the antigen."
The vaccine should offer protection for at least months, but no one knows how long beyond that.
Dr Al Kaabi said early vaccine volunteers in China were given shots last spring and still have antibodies today.
“Since it is inactivated, it will not last forever," she said.
Lexus LX700h specs
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RESULTS
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Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
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- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
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- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Sarfira
Director: Sudha Kongara Prasad
Starring: Akshay Kumar, Radhika Madan, Paresh Rawal
Rating: 2/5
THE BIO
Mr Al Qassimi is 37 and lives in Dubai
He is a keen drummer and loves gardening
His favourite way to unwind is spending time with his two children and cooking
The specs
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The specS: 2018 Toyota Camry
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Engine: 3.5-litre V6
Gearbox: Eight-speed automatic
Power: 298hp @ 6,600rpm
Torque: 356Nm @ 4,700rpm
Fuel economy, combined: 7.0L / 100km
NO OTHER LAND
Director: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor, Hamdan Ballal
Stars: Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham
Rating: 3.5/5
Ferrari 12Cilindri specs
Engine: naturally aspirated 6.5-liter V12
Power: 819hp
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Company%20Profile
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Company profile
Date started: 2015
Founder: John Tsioris and Ioanna Angelidaki
Based: Dubai
Sector: Online grocery delivery
Staff: 200
Funding: Undisclosed, but investors include the Jabbar Internet Group and Venture Friends
Tearful appearance
Chancellor Rachel Reeves set markets on edge as she appeared visibly distraught in parliament on Wednesday.
Legislative setbacks for the government have blown a new hole in the budgetary calculations at a time when the deficit is stubbornly large and the economy is struggling to grow.
She appeared with Keir Starmer on Thursday and the pair embraced, but he had failed to give her his backing as she cried a day earlier.
A spokesman said her upset demeanour was due to a personal matter.
VEZEETA PROFILE
Date started: 2012
Founder: Amir Barsoum
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: HealthTech / MedTech
Size: 300 employees
Funding: $22.6 million (as of September 2018)
Investors: Technology Development Fund, Silicon Badia, Beco Capital, Vostok New Ventures, Endeavour Catalyst, Crescent Enterprises’ CE-Ventures, Saudi Technology Ventures and IFC
Panipat
Director Ashutosh Gowariker
Produced Ashutosh Gowariker, Rohit Shelatkar, Reliance Entertainment
Cast Arjun Kapoor, Sanjay Dutt, Kriti Sanon, Mohnish Behl, Padmini Kolhapure, Zeenat Aman
Rating 3 /5 stars
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Schedule
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'Cheb%20Khaled'
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Sole survivors
- Cecelia Crocker was on board Northwest Airlines Flight 255 in 1987 when it crashed in Detroit, killing 154 people, including her parents and brother. The plane had hit a light pole on take off
- George Lamson Jr, from Minnesota, was on a Galaxy Airlines flight that crashed in Reno in 1985, killing 68 people. His entire seat was launched out of the plane
- Bahia Bakari, then 12, survived when a Yemenia Airways flight crashed near the Comoros in 2009, killing 152. She was found clinging to wreckage after floating in the ocean for 13 hours.
- Jim Polehinke was the co-pilot and sole survivor of a 2006 Comair flight that crashed in Lexington, Kentucky, killing 49.
Titanium Escrow profile
Started: December 2016
Founder: Ibrahim Kamalmaz
Based: UAE
Sector: Finance / legal
Size: 3 employees, pre-revenue
Stage: Early stage
Investors: Founder's friends and Family
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
What is graphene?
Graphene is extracted from graphite and is made up of pure carbon.
It is 200 times more resistant than steel and five times lighter than aluminum.
It conducts electricity better than any other material at room temperature.
It is thought that graphene could boost the useful life of batteries by 10 per cent.
Graphene can also detect cancer cells in the early stages of the disease.
The material was first discovered when Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov were 'playing' with graphite at the University of Manchester in 2004.
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How much do leading UAE’s UK curriculum schools charge for Year 6?
- Nord Anglia International School (Dubai) – Dh85,032
- Kings School Al Barsha (Dubai) – Dh71,905
- Brighton College Abu Dhabi - Dh68,560
- Jumeirah English Speaking School (Dubai) – Dh59,728
- Gems Wellington International School – Dubai Branch – Dh58,488
- The British School Al Khubairat (Abu Dhabi) - Dh54,170
- Dubai English Speaking School – Dh51,269
*Annual tuition fees covering the 2024/2025 academic year
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