FILM CHOICE
by Stephen Dalton

The Times (London)
April 25, 2006, Tuesday

NIAGARA (1953)

Channel 4, 1.20pm. Marilyn Monroe graduated to headline movie stardom
with an untypical role as a scheming femme fatale.

On the surface, Rose Loomis (Monroe) is visiting Niagara Falls in
an attempt to rekindle her marriage to George (Joseph Cotten). But
in reality she is waging a psychological war against her husband,
hatching a murder plot in which a young couple (Jean Peters and Max
Showalter) become fatally entangled. Henry Hathaway’s glossy thriller
is notable chiefly for Monroe’s smouldering, malevolent performance.

(92 min)

ALMOST FAMOUS (1999)

ITV2, 9pm/11.45pm. The writer and director Cameron Crowe revisited
his early career as a teenage reporter for Rolling Stone magazine in
the 1970s for this warm-hearted, lightly fictionalised memoir. The
fresh-faced newcomer Patrick Fugit is charming and gangly as the
young Crowe surrogate, a southern Californian mummy’s boy who ends up
sharing groupies and life lessons on the road with a bickering rock
band. Kate Hudson, Billy Crudup, Jason Lee and an Oscar-nominated
Frances McDormand co-star. Philip Seymour Hoffman also makes an
appearance as the legendary rock writer Lester Bangs. (122 min).

THE COLOUR OF POMEGRANATES (1968)

Artsworld, 10pm. Imprisoned and banned by the Soviet authorities for
his human rights activism and homosexuality, the Armenian director
Sergei Parajanov crafted an exquisitely beautiful, occasionally
impenetrable tribute to the 18th-century poet Sayat Nova in The
Colour of Pomegranates. Laden with religious and cultural symbols,
Parajanov’s absorbing visual poem eventually became an underground
festival hit in the West despite censorship at home. He returned to
film-making after his release from jail, dying in 1990 just as the
Soviet Union crumbled. (79 min)

The defendants, who were indicted Thursday, have been charged with
conspiracy, health care fraud, Medicare kickbacks, making false
statements to Medicare and money laundering.

The group allegedly was led by Konstantin Grigoryan, 56, of Altadena,
a former colonel in the Soviet army; his wife, Mayya Leonidovna
Grigoryan, 54; the Grigoryans’ son-in-law, Eduard Gershelis, 34, of
Los Angeles; Mayya Grigoryan’s brother-in-law, Aleksandr Treynker,
48, of Canoga Park; and Haroutyun Gulderyan, 36, of Tujunga.

The Grigoryans and Gershelis have been in federal custody since their
March 21 arrests. Gulderyan and Treynker have been released on bond.

The five are scheduled to appear in court June 13.

Gershelis’ attorney, Jerome Mooney, described the episode as “a very
unfortunate circumstance.” Attorneys for the other defendants did
not return phone calls from the Los Angeles Daily News seeking comment.

Last December, three operators of an Orange County clinic pleaded
guilty to charges they bilked insurers out of nearly $15 million by
operating on healthy people, authorities said.