Month: November 2018

Oscar-winning filmmaker Peter Jackson is returning to the big screen with adventure fantasy “Mortal Engines,” a post-apocalyptic tale of survival in his first feature film project since his award-winning adaptations of J.R.R. Tolkien’s novels.

The New Zealand-born director, known for his “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Hobbit” trilogies, produced and co-wrote the script for the film, based on the young adult book series by Philip Reeve.

Oscar-winning visual effects artist Christian Rivers, who worked with Jackson on the Tolkien adaptations as well as 2005’s “King Kong” makes his directorial in the film, set hundreds of years after a catastrophic event wipes out civilizations.

“Once ‘The Hobbit’ was done, we were looking forward to getting this made,” Jackson told Reuters at the film’s premiere in London on Tuesday.

“I didn’t want (Rivers) to make his first feature with somebody else … I wanted to be part of helping him get his feature film career off the ground … He’s done an amazing job.”

In the film, humans live in gigantic moving cities which devour smaller towns. A group made up of an outlaw, outcast and mysterious woman lead a rebellion against one such predator city, London.

“It was the fear of saying yes because I knew how much work it would be and it was also a fear of saying no, if I said no and someone else made it and it wasn’t any good, I’d be kicking myself,” Rivers said about directing “Mortal Engines.” “It was a freight train, it was a big film that came in and I had to jump on and take the ride.”

On top of his work in the art department, Rivers was a second unit director on the last two “Hobbit” films, the last of which came out in 2014.

Since then, Jackson directed World War I documentary “They Shall Not Grow Old”, released this month.

“Mortal Engines” features a young cast led by Icelandic actress Hera Hilmar. “Matrix” and “The Hobbit” actor Hugo Weaving also stars in the film.
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One of the most famous songs of Christmas was celebrated Tuesday as it approaches its 200th anniversary, with a concert at the New York City church where “Silent Night” is believed to have been sung in the United States for the first time and where a priest was the first to publish an English translation of the Austrian carol.

 

The performance of the carol by Austria’s Kroell Family Singers and ensembles from Trinity Church took place at the Alexander Hamilton memorial in the Trinity churchyard. The singers stood in front of the memorial in the darkened yard as onlookers gathered and horns from passing cars beeped on nearby streets.

 

The Kroell singers opened the carol with verses in the original German, followed by the Trinity singers with verses in languages including French, Spanish, and finally English. After the outdoor performance, they went inside the church, where the Austrian group sang some other songs before they finished with another rendition of “Silent Night.”

 

The song resonates with people because of its simple melody and straightforward message, said Elisabeth Frontull, a member of the Kroell group.

 

“You sing it from the bottom of your heart; that’s the reason why the song is so popular,” she said.

 

Organizers of the event said it’s believed the song was first sung at the Trinity Church location in 1839 by the Rainer family singers, a traveling singing group from Austria.

 

“Silent Night” initially debuted as a musical piece in December 1818, with words by Joseph Mohr, a priest, and music by Franz Xaver Gruber, in Oberndorf, Austria.

 

In 1859, a priest at Trinity, John Freeman Young, published the first English translation of three verses of the carol, including the well-known first verse that ends with “sleep in heavenly peace.”

 

It has become one of the most recorded songs in the world and declared as part of Austria’s cultural heritage.

 

To mark its anniversary, Austrian tourism organizations put together a number of events in that country, including concert and exhibitions.

 

The concert at Trinity — a historic church and tourist attraction that survived the destruction of the nearby World Trade Center in 2001 — was the only stateside event done through that effort, said Sigrid Pichler, spokeswoman for New York City’s Austrian Tourist Office.

 

“It touches the hearts of people deeply,” she said. “It’s a very simple song, it has an eternal message of peace. It is also something that the whole world needs to hear.”
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Stevie Wonder wants to raise money through his benefit concert for California fire victims impacted by the catastrophic wildfires.

The R&B legend announced his plan Tuesday to also help firefighters and first responders who assisted with the fires through his 22nd annual House Full of Toys Benefit Concert on Dec. 9. The charity billed as “The Stevie Wonder Song Party: A Celebration of Life, Love & Music” will be held at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. 

Concertgoers are being asked to bring an unwrapped toy or other gift. 

“We have to do our best to raise money for those that have been so less fortunate, for those that have lost dreams, lost their homes,” he said. “I am very happy to do this again this year but very, very, very excited to do something to help those in a bigger sense the less fortunate.”

Wonder said his foundation House Full of Hope along with the Entertainment Industry Foundation will also help raise money for those affected by the wildfire.

Nearly 90 people were killed in the massive wildfires as thousands have been displaced from their homes.

After his announcement, Wonder performed a few songs including “My Cherie Amour,” “The Christmas Song (Merry Christmas to You)” and “Golden Lady.”

Wonder also spoke on the importance of taking care of the planet.

“I know we’re dealing with a drought,” he said. “There are some who don’t believe in global warming. I do. We have to protect the planet. We have to be cognizant of what we do. … I pray that all of us, even those who are non-believers, understand that if we don’t love and take care of our planet, we won’t have it.”

The lineup for this year’s charity has not been announced. Last year’s performers included Tony Bennett, Pharrell Williams and Andra Day. 
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In the first major soiree of Hollywood’s awards season, Chloe Zhao’s elegiac, lyrical Western “The Rider” took best feature film at the 28th annual Gotham Awards. 

It was a surprising, but far from baffling conclusion to the Gothams, the New York-based gala for independent film, held Monday night at Cipriani’s Wall Street in downtown Manhattan. The awards were generally spread around, including a pair of prizes for Bo Burnham’s coming-of-age directing debut “Eighth Grade” and Paul Schrader’s impassioned Catholic drama “First Reformed.”

But the night’s final honor went to “The Rider,” the second feature by the Chinese-born Zhao, despite no previous awards on the night and only one other nomination: an audience award nod alongside 14 other films. Some may have forgotten it was eligible. Having first premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2017, “The Rider” was nominated by the Gotham’s West Coast corollary, the Independent Film Spirit Awards, in February as one of last year’s best. 

Zhao, too, wasn’t in attendance (she is prepping her next film). And few looked more surprised than the producers — Bert Hamelinck and Mollye Asher — who accepted the award. “This is going to be the worst acceptance speech,” stuttered Hamelinck. 

Yet “The Rider,” filmed with Lakota cowboys on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Reservation, persevered over a few Oscar favorites, including Yorgos Lanthimos’ period romp “The Favourite” and Barry Jenkins’ James Baldwin adaptation “If Beale Street Could Talk.” 

“The Favourite” still went home with two honorary awards: an award for its acting ensemble, led by Olivia Colman, Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz; and a tribute to Weisz. Jenkins applauded the choice of “The Rider’’ with a standing ovation and a retweet of his earlier praise of the film, in which he called it “ravishing, sublime imagery paired with deeply earnest storytelling.” 

Unpredictability pervaded the ceremony, especially for the winners, themselves. When the Fred Rogers documentary “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” won the Gothams’ audience award (not typically a category for documentaries but “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” proved a modest summer blockbuster), its director Morgan Neville was stunned, partially since he had already lost best documentary to RaMell Ross’ “Hale County This Morning, This Evening.” 

“To say this was a surprise would be an extreme understatement,” Neville said. “Since I didn’t know we were nominated.” 

As an Oscar bellwether, the Gothams, presented by the not-for-profit Independent Film Project , are of little value. Their nominees are chosen by small juries of filmmakers and film critics before some of the fall’s films have been seen. 

But in the early going, any momentum helps an underdog Oscar campaign, and that seemed especially true of “First Reformed” and “Eighth Grade” — both releases from A24, the indie distributor of “Moonlight” and “Lady Bird.” 

“First Reformed” star Ethan Hawke took best actor and its 72-year-old writer-director Schrader (“Taxi Driver,” “Raging Bull”) won best screenplay. 

“Fourteen years. Best attendance. Sunday school,” said Schrader, who chose filmmaking over the seminary but remained gripped by his Calvinist upbringing. “I earned this award.”

Burnham’s “Eighth Grade,” starring 15-year-old Elsie Fisher, won for both breakthrough director and breakthrough actor. 

“I’m pretty sure this was a glitch in the system or something,” began Fisher, who said she had been considering giving up on acting before Burnham cast her. “Me from two years ago would be really proud of me right now.” 

Tributes were also paid to “At Eternity’s Gate” star Willem Dafoe, “22 July” director Paul Greengrass and RadicalMedia founder Jon Kamen. But one of the night’s abiding themes was who wasn’t there. Toni Collette, star of the horror film “Hereditary,” wasn’t on hand to collect her best actress award. And Weisz was the only star of “The Favourite” there for the film’s ensemble award. 

Weisz held up cardboard paddles of Colman and Stone’s faces and read statements from each claiming that they were the real standout in Lanthimos’ triangular tale of a power struggle in Queen Anne’s 18th century court. 

“Considering that I’m the only one to turn up,” Weisz concluded, “I think I might be the favorite.” 
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“Game of Thrones” actor Jason Momoa brings the latest superhero spin-off to the big screen, this time “Aquaman,” to tell the story of the DC Comics half-human, half-Atlantean character.

The 39-year-old first made an appearance in the role in 2016’s “Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice” but now has his own movie exploring the superhero’s origins.

Momoa portrays the character, known as Arthur Curry, as he embarks on a journey of self-discovery, and with plenty of action and special effects, viewers are taken to the underwater world of the seven seas.

Walking a blue carpet – in line with the film’s aquatic theme – at the film’s world premiere in London on Monday, Momoa said the role was the toughest he had undertaken so far.

“Physically it’s just really challenging and demanding to do the stunts and then stay in shape,” the actor told Reuters, adding he identified with the character for various reasons including “being an outcast.”

“I had two stunt doubles. I’ve never had stunt doubles really ever…This had so many stunts.”

The film also stars “The Rum Diary” and “Magic Mike XXL” actress Amber Heard as warrior Mera. Dressed in a floor-length green dress with matching head cap, Heard said she was not keen at first on doing a superhero film.

“I was pretty allergic to the idea…In my very limited experience with that world, I didn’t see intuitively what that would have to appeal to me,” she said. “I’m interested in complex nuanced roles that depict women in more accurate and more organic ways. And then the creators called me (saying) she’s a warrior queen.I was like.. ‘OK, I’m interested.'”
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Mick Jagger likes a buzz. A natural buzz.

 

The Rolling Stones frontman, who will tour America next spring with his iconic band, says live shows give him a rush that can’t be matched and is the reason that at 75, he still loves touring.

 

“When you go out in front of all those people you get an enormous rush of chemicals in your body — your own chemicals, not chemicals you’ve put in,” he said laughing.

 

“Let’s face it, it is a huge buzz. Must be like playing football or something,” he said.

 

Jagger should feel like a football player — since he’ll be playing the same stadiums as NFL stars when the Stones’ No Filter tour launches in Miami on April 20, 2019.

 

Tickets go on sale Friday and the 13 shows will hit Florida, Texas, Arizona, California, Washington, Colorado, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Illinois and Washington, D.C.

 

“Basically your life’s attuned to doing those few hours onstage and everything else is a build up to that. Of course, you get to enjoy yourself at other times, but really you’re thinking about the next show or the show you’re doing that night,” said Jagger, who will be joined onstage with Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts. “A lot of prep time goes into that — keeping yourself (together) so you can get through the whole thing without screwing up physically and mentally and keeping yourself really sharp. But I really enjoy it.”

 

In an interview Monday with The Associated Press, Jagger talked about the tour, only having three Grammys and appearing in the new-but-old Aretha Franklin concert documentary, “Amazing Grace,” filmed at a Los Angeles church in 1972.

 

AP: What can fans expect from the U.S. shows?

 

Jagger: A good night out! A good night out for all. We did a kind of similar tour in Europe this summer, so it’s got a lot of fun. …It’s pretty high energy and it’s a good a show, I think. I’m into it.

 

AP: Is it different performing in the U.S. compared to other territories?

 

Jagger: Well, I don’t have to speak foreign languages normally, so that’s a big difference. When you tour Europe it’s a lot of languages, so I try to do them all and that takes up some time, so (in the U.S.) I can concentrate on some other things. There’s lots of regional differences, say between Houston and New York, so you’ve got to tune yourself to that a little bit. It’s slightly about adjusting your set and attitude. Its different. It’s nice that it’s different, you don’t want it to be completely homogenous. But it’s great to be going around so many different areas, different states and so on.

 

AP: How’s the new music you’re writing coming along?

 

Jagger: It’s going good. I’ve got lots of stuff. I’m doing some more writing this week. And I’m always, like, messing around. I enjoy the writing process a lot. I mean, you always think the last thing you wrote is really wonderful and sometimes they’re really not (laughs). But it’s really fun doing it and it’s really enjoyable doing new things.

 

AP: You don’t even need to release music because of the band’s catalog…

 

Jagger: Yeah, and we haven’t released that much and I think it’s a shame we haven’t released more new music. So, I would hope we’re going to release some music. We do have a huge catalog. The thing about the catalog is when we come up to doing a tour like this, I try and go back and find some stuff that we haven’t done ever or we haven’t done very much and try to mix it in, so it isn’t always the same show. But when you’re playing a really big show, there’s a certain amount of songs people want to hear — you don’t have to play them — but there’s a certain percentage of the songs that people will want to hear and if you don’t do them, they’ll go, “Wish he’d done that one.”

 

AP: Were you happy with the success of the band’s blues album, which won a Grammy this year?

 

Jagger: That was good. We weren’t really setting out to do that. It just happened. It was a fun thing to do. It was … stuff we’d known for years since we were kids and played in like clubs and we knew it all pretty well. I really thought it was great and the response was really surprising, and I thought that was really wonderful. And I just hope we’re going to come up with some new stuff as well.

 

AP: I’m surprised the Stones only have three Grammys, when other acts have 10 or 20. Does that bother you?

 

Jagger: No, I don’t really care about Grammys very much. I’m not saying it’s not not nice to have, it’s lovely to have. But it’s not going to break my heart if I don’t get Grammys and if my Grammys count is not as big as other peoples. But it’s very nice to get a Grammy. I appreciate it.

 

AP: I saw you in the new Aretha documentary…

 

Jagger: I didn’t even see it yet! …It was like an amazing event. It was so delayed and long and I don’t think Aretha wanted it to come out for whatever reasons and there were so many technical problems with the sound, but I’m glad it’s out and I can’t wait to see it. …It was quite a lot of preaching. Did they leave the preaching in?

 

AP: They did.

 

Jagger: I remember that very well.

 

AP: What else do you remember about that day?

 

Jagger: I remember it really well. It was just a wonderful event. It was quite mesmerizing from start to finish really. I think I went with Charlie (Watts) and I think Billy Preston quite possibly, but I don’t know if you see him there. It was really an amazing, really fantastic day in church really, which I haven’t had for a while.

 

AP: What do you remember about working with filmmaker Nicolas Roeg, who died a couple days ago and directed you in 1970’s “Performance”?

 

Jagger: He was a wonderful filmmaker and I only worked with him that one time, and he was co-directing. And he’s a wonderful cinematographer and did some great movies, and he was very quirky and all his films were very different, one to the other. He did some great work and he had a long life and I’m sad he passed away, but I always remember working with him; a wonderful guy to work with.

 

AP: I know you’ve produced a lot lately, from TV shows to documentaries, but do you want to do more acting?

 

Jagger: I just actually finished doing a cameo part in a movie which is kind of a twisted thriller, which is called “The Burnt Orange Heresy.” I just finished doing that in Italy. I did a couple weeks on that, so it’ll be out next year. It was only a small part, but fun to do.
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Patricia Hall went to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum in 2016 hoping to learn more about the music performed by prisoners in World War II death camps.

The University of Michigan music theory professor heard there were manuscripts, but she was “completely thrown” by what she found in the card catalogs: Unexpectedly upbeat and popular songs titles that translated to “The Most Beautiful Time of Life” and “Sing a Song When You’re Sad,” among others. More detective work during subsequent trips to the Polish museum over the next two years led her to several handwritten manuscripts arranged and performed by the prisoners, and ultimately, the first performance of one of those manuscripts since the war.

“I’ve used the expression, ‘giving life,’ to this manuscript that’s been sitting somewhere for 75 years,” Hall told The Associated Press on Monday. “Researching one of these manuscripts is just the beginning — you want people to be able to hear what these pieces sound like. … I think one of the messages I’ve taken from this is the fact that even in a horrendous situation like a concentration camp, that these men were able to produce this beautiful music.”

Sensing the historical importance of resurrecting music for modern audiences, Hall enlisted the aid of university professor Oriol Sans, director of the Contemporary Directions Ensemble, and graduate student Josh Devries, who transcribed the parts into music notation software to make it easier to read and play.

Last month, the ensemble gathered to record “The Most Beautiful Time of Life” (“Die Schonste Zeit des Lebens”), and it plans to perform the work Friday during a free concert at the university.

Hall believes the piece, a popular fox trot of the day, was performed in 1942 or ’43 by the prisoners in front of the commandant’s villa for Sunday concerts for Auschwitz garrison. Although the prisoners didn’t compose the songs, they had to arrange them so they could be played by the available instruments and musicians.

Based on the prisoner numbers on the manuscript, Hall has so far identified two of the three arrangers: Antoni Gargul, who was released in 1943, and Maksymilian Pilat, who was released in 1945 and later performed in the Gdansk Symphony Orchestra. They were Polish political prisoners.

The recording will become part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum, which recently obtained a baton of one of the inmate orchestra’s conductors.

While survivors and museum officials have said the musicians received more food, had clean clothes and were spared the hardest labor, museum director Piotr M. A. Cywinski recently said in a statement that they experienced “an element of humiliation and terror.”

Hall said they weren’t immune to the greatest horrors of the camp.

“We like to think of a narrative in which the musicians were saved because they had that ability to play instruments,” she said. “However, it’s been documented by another prisoner [in an orchestra] that around 50 of them … were taken out and shot.”

During 1940-45, some 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, perished in Auschwitz-Birkenau’s gas chambers or from hunger, disease or forced labor.

Hall said it’s a little surprising that no one discovered the manuscripts earlier given their significance, but “not everybody wants to do manuscript study in an archive.” She said she found about eight similar manuscripts that would be worth recording and performing, though it might be for someone else to do.

“Despite everything I do, I find the atmosphere in Auschwitz-Birkenau quite depressing,” she said. “I go back and forth about how much further I’m going to research these manuscripts.”

Still, she said she has been buoyed by the spirit with which her colleagues and students embraced the project.

“It was wonderful to bring it back to this atmosphere with so much positive enthusiasm behind it,” she said. “I thought it was a great idea, but I could imagine talking to someone who said, ‘I don’t really want to perform music from a concentration camp.’ It’s very inspiring for me watching these talented musicians.”
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Misinformation, as opposed to disinformation, was chosen Monday as Dictionary.com’s word of the year on the tattered coattails of “toxic,” picked earlier this month for the same honor by Oxford Dictionaries in these tumultuous times.

Jane Solomon, a linguist-in-residence at Dictionary, said in a recent interview that her site’s choice of “mis” over “dis” was deliberate, intended to serve as a “call to action” to be vigilant in the battle against fake news, flat earthers and anti-vaxxers, among other conduits.

It’s the idea of intent, whether to inadvertently mislead or to do it on purpose, that the Oakland, California-based company wanted to highlight. The company decided it would go high when others have spent much of 2018 going low.

“The rampant spread of misinformation is really providing new challenges for navigating life in 2018,” Solomon told The Associated Press ahead of the word of the year announcement. “Misinformation has been around for a long time, but over the last decade or so the rise of social media has really, really changed how information is shared. We believe that understanding the concept of misinformation is vital to identifying misinformation as we encounter it in the wild, and that could ultimately help curb its impact.”

In studying lookups on the site that trended this year, Dictionary noticed “our relationship with truth is something that came up again and again,” she said.

For example, the word “mainstream” popped up a lot, spiking in January as the term “mainstream media,” or MSM, grew to gargantuan proportions, wielded as an insult by some on the political right. Other words swirling around the same problem included a lookup surge in February for “white lie” after Hope Hicks, then White House communications director, admitted to telling a few for President Donald Trump.

The word “Orwellian” surfaced in heavy lookups in May, after a statement attributed to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders accused the Chinese government of “Orwellian nonsense” in trying to impose its views on American citizens and private companies when it declared that United Airlines, American Airlines and other foreign carriers should refer to Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau as part of China in public-facing materials, such as their websites.

Misinformation, Solomon said, “frames what we’ve all been through in the last 12 months.” In that vein, the site with 90 million monthly users has busied itself adding new word entries for “filter bubble,” “fake news,” “post-fact,” “post-truth” and “homophily,” among others. Other word entries on the site have been freshened to reflect timely new meanings, including “echo chamber.”

The company’s runners-up for the top honor include “representation,” driven by the popularity of the movies “Black Panther” and “Crazy Rich Asians,” along with wins during the U.S. midterm elections for Muslim women, Native Americans and LGBTQ candidates.

But the rise of misinformation, Solomon said, stretches well beyond U.S. borders and Facebook’s role in disseminating fake news and propaganda in the Cambridge Analytica scandal. The use of Facebook and other social media to incite violence and conflict was documented around the globe in 2018, she said.

“Hate speech and rumors posted to Facebook facilitated violence against Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, riots started in Sri Lanka after false news set the country’s Buddhist majority against Muslims, and false rumors about child kidnappers on WhatsApp led to mob violence in India,” Solomon said.

Is disinformation or misinformation at play in terms of the year’s most prominent conspiracy theories? Solomon noted proliferation on social media over students in the Parkland school shooting being crisis actors instead of victims of violence, and over a group of migrants from Honduras who are making their way north being funded by “rich liberals.”

Elsewhere in the culture, countless podcasts and videos have spread the absurd notion of a global cover-up that the Earth is flat rather than round. The idea of “misinfodemics” has surfaced in the last several years to identify the anti-vaccination movement and other beliefs that lead to real-world health crises, Solomon said.

There are distinctions between misinformation and disinformation to be emphasized.

“Disinformation would have also been a really, really interesting word of the year this year, but our choice of misinformation was very intentional,” she said. “Disinformation is a word that kind of looks externally to examine the behavior of others. It’s sort of like pointing at behavior and saying, ‘THIS is disinformation.’ With misinformation, there is still some of that pointing, but also it can look more internally to help us evaluate our own behavior, which is really, really important in the fight against misinformation. It’s a word of self-reflection, and in that it can be a call to action. You can still be a good person with no nefarious agenda and still spread misinformation.”

She pointed to “Poe’s law” in slicing and dicing “misinfo” and “disinfo.” The term, dating to 2005, has become an internet shorthand to sum up how easy it is to spread satire as truth online when an author’s intent isn’t clearly indicated.

The phrase is based on a comment one Nathan Poe posted on a Christian forum during a discussion over creationism, in which he commented: “Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is uttrerly [sic] impossible to parody a Creationist in such a way that someone [italics used] won’t mistake for the genuine article.”

Dictionary.com chose “complicit” as last year’s word of the year. In 2016, it was “xenophobia.”

 

 

 
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