Five other children aged between two and five at the Wee Ones school in Wandsworth

Five other children, aged between two and five, at the Wee Ones school in Wandsworth, south London, were strongly suspected of having TB. Three children at a private nursery school were confirmed yesterday as having caught tuberculosis from their teacher. Five other children, aged between two and five, at the Wee Ones school in Wandsworth, south London, were strongly suspected of having TB.
The sick children had coughs and were lethargic. They were in isolation for a fortnight at their homes while they were having drug treatment, health officials said.An investigation is under way to discover why the teacher, a young woman, was not diagnosed with tuberculosis until March, up to six months after she became infected. Health officials said it was “fairly clear” how she caught the disease but declined to disclose the cause.The school has closed while children are screened and treated.Dr Yvonne Doyle, director of public health at Merton, Sutton and Wandsworth health authority, said up to 100 people who had close contact with the woman over the past year would now be screened.. It is not so much the smell of napalm in the morning but money in the bank which has prompted Francis Ford Coppola to relaunch his Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now.

It is not so much the smell of napalm in the morning but money in the bank which has prompted Francis Ford Coppola to relaunch his Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now.
The cinematic art of making millions of pounds from the cutting-room floor will be shown in all its glory today with the unveiling of the ultimate director’s cut.The veteran American film-maker is re-launching his 1979 classic with almost an hour’s hitherto unseen footage. The extra 53 minutes will make the film three hours 17 minutes-long and enhance the original movie’s strong anti-war perspective.The new version will also give Marlon Brando fans the treat of new scenes featuring the actor and create a starring role for a French actress who was entirely deleted from the earlier version. It will also contain new love and sex scenes which the director hopes will give a different dimension to the war and action feel of the original.But the aesthetic reasons for the release of Apocalypse Now Redux, as it will be called, appear to be only a part of Coppola’s motivation. His production company expects the film to make £15m when it is re-released in Britain this summer. Releases in America and across the world will treble those profits, at a conservative estimate.Indeed, the director had originally thought only of re-instating the cut footage for a DVD release.Directors from Steven Spielberg downwards have indulged in directors’ cuts, and while some have received critical acclaim and box office success, the majority have been targeted at the DVD market to provide new scenes for the armchair viewer at home.The increasing demand for films on DVD is fast becoming a major money-spinner for the film studios.Although sales of VHS videotapes still outnumber DVDs ­ by 23 million to 8.4 million in the UK last year ­ sales are roughly doubling every month.DVDs’ initial attraction is better picture quality ­ twice as detailed as VHS ­ and CD-quality sound.

But it can also include many more elements from a film, which can be seamlessly added to the original footage.Lavinia Carey, director-general of the British Videotape Association (BVA), said: “Directors can add different endings or include scenes that studios cut out.”People like that, especially if the director or film has a cult status. To have the director telling you how they planned a scene is something that both the directors and the fans love ­ so for film buffs, DVD is really great.”But when Coppola and his team sat down and considered the extra elements they had wanted to include in the original film they realised the financial potential of, in effect, re-launching it as a new movie for general cinema release.Adding footage for a theatrical re-release is not that usual; but adding 53 minutes with substantial new story lines, as Coppola is doing, is extraordinary.Timothy Gray of Variety magazine said yesterday: “The potential for making money is certainly there. The Exorcist was re-released after 26 years with just eight minutes of additional footage from the director William Friedkin, and it made $30m at the box office. The Star Wars trilogy was not exactly a director’s cut, but they digitally altered it and enhanced the sound with new technology, and audiences felt they were getting something new.

That was a massive earner.”On DVD, a lot of films feature changes, including contemporary films like Erin Brockovich and There’s Something About Mary. When a film is re-released theatrically it doesn’t always take off if it’s around on video, and there is no change to the original. The Graduate only took a couple of million dollars when it was re-released recently.”Coppola, also the director of the Godfather movies, said in Cannes yesterday that when he originally made the film he did not feel audiences would accept more than two hours 20 minutes, and he made the cut purely for reasons of length.The new scenes will include soldiers and Playboy bunny girls making love on a helicopter, and a scene with Marlon Brando which Coppola says cryptically could not be shown 22 years ago as “it supplies clear facts as to how the American public were lied to”.’There is also a love scene between Martin Sheen and French actress Aurore Clement. She was cut completely from the original.She said yesterday: “I was full of shock and emotion when I saw this new version. It was like opening a box and seeing yourself after 20 years.”One new scene takes place in a typhoon which hit the original shoot in the Philippines Coppola insisted that filming continue. “We’ve got rain that no machine can make,” he told the actors and film crew.Yesterday, Coppola claimed that the new scenes would emphasise “how young boys were exploited by war”.The original movie, which also starred Dennis Hopper and Robert Duvall, was partly based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. Filming took so long to complete that it was dubbed Apocalypse Later.

During the making of the movie Coppola, who had been riding high in Hollywood after the success of the Godfather films, was wracked by self-doubt.The American military refused to co-operate with the film because of its anti-war message and after replacing the original leading man, Harvey Keitel, with Martin Sheen filming was further delayed when Sheen suffered a heart attack.When it eventually reached the cinema it was far from being an outright critical success. Time magazine called it “emotionally obtuse and intellectually empty”.Another film gazetteer described it as “a pretentious war movie, made even more hollow sounding by the incomprehensible performance of Brando as the mad martinet. Some vivid scenes along the way, and some interesting parallels with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, but these hardly atone for the director’s delusion that prodigal expenditure of time and money will result in great art.”Coppola admitted at the time: “It’s more of an experience than a movie At the beginning there’s the story. Along the river the story becomes less important and the experience more important.”The film went on to win the Palme d’Or at Cannes and built up a cult following, becoming something of a classic.. One of the most expensive film projects ever made, the £190m trilogy of JR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was seen, or rather glimpsed, in Cannes last night. One of the most expensive film projects ever made, the £190m trilogy of JR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings was seen, or rather glimpsed, in Cannes last night.
As the first photographs from the film became available, the American production company Newline, in charge of the movie, brought a 20-minute trailer to show to invited guests.The producers are also flying in the cast for interviews and are holding an exclusive party in a chateau on Sunday. The promotion of the movie in Cannes alone is said to be costing around £2m as Newline begins the process of trying to sell it across the world.The first film in the trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, is expected to be released in Britain at Christmas, going head-to-head with the Harry Potter film.