Tiger

For director Ang Lee's "Life of Pi," the story of a spiritual Indian boy stranded at sea with a tiger, Oscar-winning visual effects supervisor Bill Westenhofer, who is nominated for this year's Oscars, started with shots of actor Suraj Sharma alone on a lifeboat in a water tank against a blue screen. Working with 1,200 visual effects artists at several companies, he transformed this footage into the character of Pi Patel and a Bengal tiger on a vast, changeable sea. Rhythm & Hues, where Westenhofer works, conjured up most of the animals, seas and skies; other effects companies tackled everything from creating storm sequences and a sinking ship to making Sharma skinnier and Pondicherry, India, look like the 1970s.

We had a great development in sports over the weekend. Tiger Woods and Sergio Garcia did for golf what Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan once did for figure skating. Images can change so fast. The PGA Tour is no longer merely a parade of boring thirtysomethings with vanilla personalities in logo shirts, smiling a lot while hitting little white balls over perfectly manicured landscapes. Now, we have Tiger in the red corner and Sergio in the blue. Bob Arum has to be goose-bumpy.

MOSCOW -- A hunter in the Russian Far East was sentenced Tuesday to 18 months of community service and fined about $18,500 for killing a tiger, a rare case in this country of punishment for poaching the animal. Khasan District Court found Alexander Belyayev guilty of killing one of the remaining 500 tigers in the Maritime Territory and the Khabarovsk Territory. Ecologists hailed the verdict as a success in the struggle to protect the rare species. An estimated 30 to 50 tigers are killed each year by poachers and local residents, said Vladimir Krever, head of the World Wildlife Fund's Russian Biodiversity Program.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. -- Sergio Garcia was only 19 when he first challenged Tiger Woods during the final round of the 1999 PGA Championship. Woods nipped the fist-pumping Spaniard - then affectionately known as El Nino - by a shot for a second major championship. Yet, the stage was set for a classic rivalry. It never happened. Tiger would do his part, but Sergio could not keep up, especially when the two were paired together. Garcia, now 33, will get another chance to stand up to the pressure of a pairing with Woods on Saturday when the two longtime foes face off in the final group at the Players Championship.

The composer of the Survivor hit "Eye of the Tiger" has sued Newt Gingrich to stop the Republican presidential candidate from using the "Rocky III" anthem at campaign events. The lawsuit was filed Monday in federal court in Chicago by Rude Music  Inc., the Palatine-based music publishing company owned by Frank Sullivan, who composed the song and copyrighted it in 1982. The lawsuit states that as early as 2009, Gingrich has entered rallies and public events to the pulsing guitar riffs of the song, which was the background track to Rocky Balboa's training montages in the film and became a No. 1 hit. The suit lists appearances by Gingrich at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2009, 2010 and 2011 and numerous stops in Iowa among events at which the candidate has used the song without Sullivan's permission, as well as Internet videos featuring Gingrich that have been posted by American Conservative Union.

The face of violence wears many expressions. It can be a look of such malevolence that most will avoid it, or a mask of such benevolence that all will be drawn to it. Violence smiles between explosions and speaks softly in a crowd but, like the smile on the face of the tiger, belies the hunger of its nature. Ted Bundy was the pure, burning essence of violence and yet wore the demeanor of a man women trusted until the last tortured moment of their lives.

Join the throngs lining Hill Street and North Broadway in Chinatown for the 111th Annual Golden Dragon Parade and Chinese Lunar New Year Festival, which has grown to encompass nearly two dozen floats, multiple marching bands, dignitaries, cultural groups, public figures and entertainers. Parade at 1 p.m. Sat. Festival 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Sat.-Sun. Los Angeles Chinatown, Broadway and Cesar Chavez Avenue. www.lagoldendragonparade.com.

NEW YORK — A man was mauled by a 400-pound tiger at the Bronx Zoo on Friday after he leaped from a moving monorail train and plummeted over a protective fence. The man was alone with the tiger for about 10 minutes before he was rescued by zoo officials, who used a fire extinguisher to chase the animal away. He suffered bites and puncture wounds on his arms, legs, shoulders and back and broke an arm and a leg. "If not for the quick response by our staff and their ability to perform well in emergency situations, the outcome would have been very different," zoo director Jim Breheny said.

Perfect weekend -- Father's Day Perfect location -- Torrey Pines Perfect matchup -- Tiger vs. Rocco Perfect ending -- Tiger by one after 19 holes Who put this together, David Stern? Willis Barton Los Angeles Is there a more gracious loser than Rocco Mediate? I can't copy his golf swing, but I can surely copy his smile. Jeff Prescott La Jolla

So Tiger Woods [Oct. 10] acknowledges his responsibilities to his fans, his sponsors, his family, etc. What about the responsibility he has to the union he joined when he began to make commercials? Guess that one slipped his mind as he jetted off to Canada to do a scab commercial. Maybe he needed the money. ROBERT BRISCOE EVANS Valley Village

Director John Woo, who has primarily relocated from Hollywood to Asia, will next make the World War II drama “Flying Tigers” as a combination movie-television miniseries in China. The production, announced in Shanghai this week, will be co-financed by Holland's Cyrte Investments and China Film Group, with filming set to begin early next year. The production, based on the true story of an American who trained the Chinese to fly fighter planes against Japanese invaders, and produced by Woo's longtime partner Terence Chang, will yield a two-part feature and a six-hour miniseries, the companies said.

It was a high-wire act for Angels starter Tommy Hanson and two relievers Friday night, but the defense provided a nice safety net, and the offense provided a rare cushion in an 8-1 victory over the Detroit Tigers at Angel Stadium. Detroit had 16 baserunners, and loaded the bases with one out in the seventh inning when it trailed only 2-0. But the powerful Tigers, who were shut out in Seattle on Thursday, didn't score until the ninth, after the Angels broke open the game with five eighth-inning runs.

Torii Hunter's first at-bat in Angel Stadium on Friday night was delayed by a standing ovation, which the Detroit Tigers right fielder acknowledged by waving his helmet. When Hunter took his position in the first inning, fans in the right-field bleachers rose in unison, one row of spectators holding up a large “THANK U TORII” sign. For Hunter, who hit .286 with 105 homers and 432 runs batted in during a five-year stint with the Angels in which he was also the heart and soul of the club, it wasn't just about appreciation.

Tiger Woods has been the butt of many jokes since his marital meltdown in 2009, and new girlfriend Lindsey Vonn's ex-husband, Thomas Vonn, has joined the chorus of would-be comedians. Woods came under scrutiny on Friday night after he took a questionable drop following his watery approach at No. 15 during the second round of the Masters tournament. His original shot struck the flagstick on the fly and drew back into Rae's Creek in front of the green. It seems Masters officials took some phone calls from television viewers who called out Tiger for taking his drop from behind his original spot when he determined the designated drop zone was less than desirable.

AUGUSTA, Ga. - The ornery, tormenting course has taken so much back over two days, and now a brimming Sunday at Augusta National will give everyone everything they could want at the Masters. There is Angel Cabrera, the unaffected Argentine who brought coffee to the practice range on a sun-splashed Saturday morning and a pack of cigarettes to the interview room. There are three Australians lingering near the lead, swinging against the history of their countrymen's past failings on this ground.

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- Suddenly, Tiger Woods had a second chance to do something special at the Masters. He needed to look at this as an opportunity, not a curse. Before he was scheduled to tee off in the third round of this event, which is watched and revered worldwide, we learned he had been assessed a two-stroke penalty for taking a drop farther from the proximity of his original shot that went into the water on No. 15 on Friday. That penalty came about after a TV viewer noticed what he had done and called Masters officials.

An 8-week-old female Sumatran tiger cub makes her debut Friday (today) at the San Francisco Zoo .  Visitors are encouraged to “walk softly” (without a big stick) because the cub might hide if she hears a loud noise.  The cub, born Feb. 10, now weighs almost 14 pounds. Her birth and 9 1/2-year-old Leanne's pregnancy was closely watched . The cub's naming rights will be auctioned at a May 11 zoo fundraiser. I asked Corinne MacDonald, the zoo's curator of carnivores and primates, whether Leanne was different with her girl cub. Leanne had three male cubs in 2008.

AUGUSTA, Ga. -- The course wouldn't be eaten alive again Friday, not by anyone, from the clammy outset and soggy middle to the wind-whipped end. Augusta National again had most everyone under control, and that included the one guy whose force-of-nature runs can turn the place inside out. So there stood Tiger Woods, brilliantly extricated from pine straw along the 15th fairway, staring directly at the pin and full command of the weekend....