Author: Ohart

The bestselling book of all time is believed to be the Bible, but the holy book is not the only title attracting readers looking for books that reflect Christian values.

Christian publishers produce a variety of fiction novels covering traditional commercial genres — historical, suspense, romance, contemporary — but their readers desire more than a good story.

“Your reader is looking for something consistent with the biblical world view,” says Andrea Doering, editorial director for Revell Books, a division of Baker Publishing Group, one of the dominant Christian publishers in the market. “They are not going to run into language that’s offensive, they’re not going to run into premarital sex being celebrated as a real lifestyle or having affairs as something that is commonplace or OK. It’s not that that doesn’t happen in the plotline, but it’s not considered the best way of living. They want the story, but they don’t want to have to put a filter on.”

The Christian book market accounts for 7 percent of the total book market so far in 2018, earning $44 million, up from $39 million, or about 6 percent of the total book market, last year, according to The NPD Group. Between 2016 and 2017, the Christian market saw a revenue increase of 5 percent.

These steady increases over the past three years have continued despite a decline in Christian book distributors and the shuttering of Family Christian Stores, the largest retailer of Christian books and merchandise in the country, which closed all 240 of its stores in 36 states in 2017, after declaring bankruptcy in 2015.

Nonfiction titles tend to dominate the Christian publishing market. In December 2018, the top five Christian bestsellers were nonfiction, according to The NPD Group.

One of 2018’s overall breakout publishing stars is blogger Rachel Hollis. Her self-help book, Girl Wash Your Face, has sold more than 2 million copies since its publication in February 2018 and has stayed on The New York Times bestseller list for 34 weeks. Hollis’s runaway hit was published by Thomas Nelson, a division of HarperCollins that focuses on providing Christian content.

At Baker Publishing Group, the current bestselling title is a “clean” joke book for kids. Other big moneymakers for the publisher include Manual to Manhood and The Girls’ Guide to Conquering Life, which offer basic tools for living for adolescents.

“Revell publishes books for people with a faith-based background that are looking for hope and help in their everyday life. They’re looking for inspiration. They’re looking for tools to live better,” says Doering. “In all of our fiction even, hope is definitely an element, even in the suspense. You know, the good guy wins, justice is always served. We want to show basically that there is power in the truth and there’s power in the gospel.”

The average Christian book buyer is a woman, about half of Christian book buyers are over the age of 45, and almost half of Christian book-buying households earn less than $50,000, according to a 2015 report released by Nielsen BookScan (which was acquired by The NPD Group in 2017).

On the fiction side, suspense, romantic suspense and romance are among Revell’s bestselling titles, according to Doering. Stories set in America, including in Amish country, have the most appeal to readers.

Certain rules apply in Christian fiction. For example, cursing and premarital sex are big no-no’s.

Author Vanessa Riley, a Stanford graduate with a PhD in mechanical engineering, says she rarely thinks about guidelines when writing her faith-filled historical romances. Her books are influenced by her upbringing in the American South, the so-called Bible Belt, and her own 30-day Christian courtship, during which she met and became engaged to her husband of 22 years.

“As a woman of faith, writing a story of faith, there’s just things that you’re just not going to do,” Riley says. “If you have an inground faith, if you have a passion to tell a story that’s going to edify the soul and make people think that there’s hope, you don’t really need a list of this, that and the other thing to make sure your stories fit.”

Riley, whose historical romances feature multicultural characters, has been published by both mainstream and Christian publishers, but she says it’s been a challenge to find a home for her stories in the Christian publishing world.

“I think that the inspirational market as is, is telling very similar stories to what they’ve always told and I think there is a definite market for that,” Riley says. “If they want to diversify their readership so they look like more of middle America, the urban cities, the South as we see it every day, then they’re going to have to look for more stories and I think that’s their quandary. They don’t know how to tap into these other markets.”

Doering, who has not worked with Riley, says she welcomes all kinds of characters.

“If someone positions a book as ‘This would be great to add to your multicultural or your diversity landscape,’ I would say, ‘Well, you tell me a great story and then let’s talk.’ That’s the key. For a reader, it’s all about the story.”

Although author Shawn Smucker is the son of a pastor, he says he didn’t set out to write overtly religious books, yet his young adult mysteries do reflect his Christian values. When his agent tried to sell his first book, Smucker ran into obstacles from both mainstream and Christian publishers.

“Most of the Christian houses that we sent to said, ‘Well, I’m not sure this is Christian enough. It’s a good story, it’s good writing, but we kind of are looking for things a little bit more straightforward, more easily recognizable as Christian,’” Smucker says, “and then the secular houses that we sent out to said, ‘Oh well, this is too religious.’”

Smucker eventually found a publishing home at Revell, which also published Smucker’s latest book, Once We Were Strangers, a nonfiction account of his friendship with a Muslim Syrian refugee.

Reaching a mainstream audience continues to be a challenge for authors who write books that reflect their Christian faith.

“You want to reach as many people as possible with hope,” Doering says, “and so the desire to write something that’s going to be scripturally consistent, but that would reach beyond the borders of someone who is going to church and would reach someone who needs hope…I think that’s a challenge for authors. They would really love to keep the door open and reach those people.”
…

Everyone involved in the making of “Mary Poppins Returns” felt the pressure to do justice to the original 1964 film.

 

Rob Marshall worked on it for three straight years. Animators came out of retirement to do hand-drawn animation in the style of the first. Sets were built. Cast members moved their family to London for a year. But perhaps no one short of Emily Blunt and Marshall were as heavy with responsibility as composer Marc Shaiman and his co-lyricist Scott Wittman. They had the Oscar-winning songwriting duo Robert and Richard Sherman to live up to, after all.

 

Shaiman, who composed the score and nine original songs for the new film, credits the Shermans for getting him interested in music to begin with. He remembers being four years old and listening to the “Mary Poppins” album and thinking, “This is what I want to do with my life.”

 

“He was a precocious 4-year-old,” added Wittman, who has known Shaiman for over four decades. The two are Broadway mainstays and have worked together on the “Hairspray” and “Catch Me if You Can” musicals.

 

As a framework, Marshall said he “didn’t want to reimagine the music and have it be a contemporary version of “Mary Poppins,” or Mary Poppins singing ‘Let It Go’ or something.” He wanted it in the style of the Sherman brothers and classic movie musicals, which became an opportunity for Shaiman and Wittman.

 

“We realized this was our chance to thank them via music and lyrics,” Shaiman said. “The whole movie is to say thank you, you’ve taught us all of these things, let us show you what you’ve given us by doing our take on the story.”

 

The process of writing the score and the songs was long and laborious, and a true team effort: Four months of twice-a-week sessions with Marshall and screenwriters David Magee and John DeLuca to hammer out the story, the script and the direction of the songs together, and decide which moments in the P.L. Travers books to musicalize.

 

“Very often we would say to David, can you write a monologue of what you think this should be?” Wittman said. “And then we’d say OK thanks we’re taking that and we’re going to write a lyric to it.”

 

They also were able to write specifically for Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda, playing to their strengths. The two men said Blunt has the rare gift of “perfect pitch.”

 

“I loved working with those two guys, they’re a rip,” Blunt said. “They’re just hilarious to be around.”

 

Wittman likes to quote Lin-Manuel Miranda’s summation of the music.

 

“He said this Mary Poppins rhymes with the first movie,” Wittman said. “We felt it was important that they both live in the same world. That influenced the writing.”

 

Wittman, the co-lyricist, had books upon books about London in the 30s, dictionaries of cockney rhyming slang and encyclopedias of odd Victorian words piled up in his studio that he studied and would go back to in crafting the new lyrics. He laughed that despite his extensive research, there were a few times he and Shaiman, both Americans, got caught with a rhyme that didn’t quite work with an English accent. One was pointed out by Miranda’s dialect coach, the other by the young actors portraying the Banks children.

 

The lyrics in question that the kids caught, “hand” and “command,” were to be sung by Meryl Streep, who, because of the “bizarre, bouillabaisse” of an accent she was affecting was able to make it work.

 

The whole experience has been something of a dream for Shaiman and Wittman. They got the rare privilege of getting to record the actors singing along with a 100-piece orchestra before filming began. They’ve also gotten to spend time with Richard Sherman (Robert Sherman died in 2012), and hear legends like Dick Van Dyke and Angela Lansbury sing their songs.

 

“As someone who usually can’t shut up, I have yet to find the words to describe what it is to hear them,” Shaiman said.

 

Sherman has told them that he’s happy with what they’ve done. As is their director.

 

“Marc and Scott have written this very sophisticated, hummable, fun (piece),” Marshall said. “The lyrics are so clever and so smart. You feel like you’ve heard them and know them but they’re new.”

 

Wittman said they’re, “Just proud of the movie the way it came out. It could have gone wrong in so many ways.”

 

“My agent said that!” Sherman added. “He said there are so many ways this could have gone so terribly wrong. And it’s such a miracle that none of those things happened.”
…

When Salt Lake City pursued the Winter Olympics more than two decades ago, competition was so fierce that lavishing International Olympic Committee members with gifts and favors seemed commonplace. Salt Lake City got caught in a bribery scandal that nearly derailed the plans for the 2002 Winter Olympics. 

Two decades later, the script has flipped. 

The IOC is struggling to find cities willing to take on the financial and societal burden of hosting the Winter Olympics. The race to host the 2026 Winter Olympics is down to just two cities after several dropped out over a lack of local support. Beijing got the 2022 Winter Olympics by attrition, winning by four votes over Almaty, Kazakhstan, after a half-dozen European bidders dropped out, discouraged by soaring costs and taxpayer backlash. 

That’s why a city that, for a time, stood out as a pariah in the Olympic world is a serious contender again, this time for the 2030 Winter Games — decades sooner than anyone expected and despite that bid scandal. 

Venues are already built

Utah’s capital city is among an increasingly small group of cities worldwide that has the venues needed for winter sports and the willingness to take on the costly task of hosting Olympics that have lost some of their cache. The U.S. Olympic Committee last week chose Salt Lake City over Denver as a future bid city. The IOC will choose a 2030 host by 2023 at the latest. 

Jules Boykoff, a Pacific University professor who has written widely on the Olympics, said the bribery scandal is “a pretty big stain on the history of the games.” 

“But these days, the International Olympic Committee is not in a position to be overly picky,” Boykoff said. 

The scandal broke in 1998, three years after Salt Lake City was chosen over cities in Canada, Sweden and Switzerland. Salt Lake’s bid committee doled out $1 million in cash, scholarships, medical care, gifts and other favors to IOC members and their families. That included ski trips, NBA tickets, plastic surgery, knee replacements, violins and housing and salary for children of IOC members, according to report by an ethics panel. 

It led to the expulsion of six IOC members, the resignation of four others severe warnings for several others though none faced criminal charges. U.S. prosecutors brought criminal charges against two Salt Lake bid leaders, but both men were acquitted by a judge halfway through a federal trial. 

The IOC brought in outside experts to help reshape the organization. The IOC approved a 50-point reform package that included a ban on member visits to bid cities, creation of an independent ethics committee and term limits.

 Bribery scandal hasn’t been forgotten

Olympic historian David Wallechinsky said Salt Lake City’s current bid officials will have to talk about the scandal, but he doesn’t think it will impact their candidacy. The Salt Lake City bribery scandal capped off decades of cities trying to win the favor of IOC board members behind the scenes. 

“They learned from the corruption of other cities that beat them before,” Wallechinsky said. “It’s not like they invented the corruption . . . they just got caught.” 

Mitt Romney, who was brought in to steer the 2002 Games through the scandal, said the city selection process is a now a more transparent process than it was in the past.

“That’s good for Salt Lake City,” said Romney, elected last month to represent Utah in the U.S. Senate. “We will be judged on the merits.” 

Boykoff said it is naive for anyone to think corruption is a thing of the past at the IOC, citing the case of honorary member Carlos Nuzman of Brazil who headed the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. He was suspended on corruption allegations connected with vote-buying. 

Before the IOC picks a city for 2030, it will have to choose a host for 2026 between Stockholm and the duel bid of Milan and Cortina d’ Ampezzo, Italy. Calgary, Canada, host of the 1998 Winter Olympics, backed out after voters rejected a referendum. Three other cities withdrew earlier this year and Erzurum, Turkey, was eliminated last month by the IOC. 

Bid of $1.35 billion

Salt Lake City says it can host the Olympics for about $1.35 billion, not including additional security costs covered by the U.S. government, relying mainly on existing venues. Stockholm and Milan/Cortina d’ Ampezzo offer similar plans and similarly low estimates, $1.5 billion. 

Wallechinsky and Boykoff doubt any city can host the Olympics for that little. A 2016 study at Oxford University found the Olympics have the highest average cost overrun of any type of megaproject. 

Salt Lake City’s 2002 Olympics cost $2.52 billion, a 24 percent cost overrun, the Oxford report found. That was actually the second lowest cost overrun behind only the 2010 Vancouver Olympics among all Olympics held from 1960-2016. 

The lack of public opposition that helped make Utah appealing to the USOC could change as the real costs emerge, Boykoff said. 

“Right now, everything is kind of like unicorns and rainbows and low budgets,” Boykoff. “Almost inevitably the price tag tends to go up.” 
…

John Cena doesn’t believe in ego. How could he when he’s used to tens of thousands of WWE fans chanting “John Cena sucks” every time he walks out to the ring?

 

It’s a philosophy that’s helped him survive both the demands of professional wrestling, where he was never supposed to be a success, and now Hollywood, where he’s made a miraculous comeback from some terrible films in the earlier 2000s. In the past three years, Cena has become a reliable highlight of whatever project he’s in, whether as a boyfriend who bares it all in “Trainwreck,” as an overprotective father to a teenager in this year’s “Blockers,” or even as a military man with some great one-liners in a big budget Transformers movie like “Bumblebee,” which hits theaters Friday.

 

“I’m not afraid to fall on my face, I’m not afraid to look ridiculous,” Cena said on a recent afternoon in Los Angeles. “My ego lies with the moviegoer…I want to entertain folks. I want to make people happy.”

 

And Cena is finally achieving that goal in films after a rocky start. Up until a few years ago, Cena’s Rotten Tomatoes scores for forgettable and generically-titled action pics like “12 Rounds,” “The Marine” and “Legendary” barely broke 30 percent. But ever the athlete, he didn’t crumble under the weight of negative reviews, he learned from it.

 

“My heart wasn’t in them. I wanted to be somewhere else. I did those movies because it was good for a business model,” Cena said.”What I learned from that is do what you love.”

 

And he got his chance with the 2015 Amy Schumer relationship comedy “Trainwreck,” which, following a divorce, he found he “totally related to.” That breakout role as the sort-of boyfriend of Schumer’s character put him on the map as not only novelty casting, but a veritable talent as well, leading to roles in “Sisters,” “Daddy’s Home 2” and “Blockers.” And now there’s “Bumblebee,” his biggest and, at 97 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, highest-rated movie yet.

 

Cena wasn’t looking for a franchise, or an action film to do when the script for “Bumblebee” came across his desk. He didn’t even care much about Transformers. But then he read it and found a sweet story about a misfit teenage girl (played by Hailee Steinfeld) and a robot that was more E.T. than Michael Bay, and decided it was something he wanted to do.

 

“I was like ‘I’ll be Bumblebee’s spare tire, I don’t even care,'” Cena said. “I wanted to do something in the movie.”

 

He and director Travis Knight settled on Agent Burns, who might have the dressings of a cartoon villain, but also has some surprises, and humor up his sleeve. Steinfeld marveled at how prepared Cena was every day and his “infectious energy.”

 

In all of his films, Cena considers himself at the service of the story and the director.

 

“I became successful in WWE by always learning and evolving. I believe that the people around me are smarter than me,” he said. “Same thing in movies. I never watch playback. I never give feedback. I take feedback.”

 

It’s something of a director’s dream to have someone so open to constructive criticism.

 

“I love him. He is so coachable. He would do anything I asked him. And I’m saying anything,” said “Blockers” director Kay Cannon. “If there was a time where he felt like he didn’t give what I wanted, he would text or call or check-in and apologize, like, ‘I’m so sorry, I’ll do better next time.’ He’s very much an athlete.”

 

His biggest learning curve in films thus far has been adapting to performing without an immediate audience of thousands in front of him.

 

“I just started telling directors, ‘Hey don’t be afraid to tell me to turn it down. You’re going to have to do that because of the world I come from,'” he said. “Tell me I suck and tell me what you need.”

 

It’s not uncommon, he said, for a director to come from behind the monitor and say, “You’re at a 10, I need you to be at a 1.”

 

“I’m humble and vulnerable enough to say I’m still learning,” Cena said.

 

One person he’s learned a lot from is Jackie Chan, who he is co-starring with in a 2019 action film from Scott Waugh.

 

“I firmly believe he’s a robot because he does not know the word stop,” Cena said.

 

For now, he’s still happy juggling both the WWE and his rising film career, and every time he has a spare minute, he’s either looking for another acting project or looking for a WWE engagement. He was supposed to have a month off after “Bumblebee” came out before his next film starts shooting, but he decided find out what WWE events are happening instead. Now, he’ll be doing that right up until he has to leave for the film.

 

“None of those are televised,” he said. “I just want to go back because I love it. When that process becomes too much, I’ll be at the precipice of a choice. But it’s not right now and I’m enjoying it.”
…

She takes on a beloved movie character and dances with penguins, but what really terrified British actress Emily Blunt was descending slowly from the clouds as the new Mary Poppins.

More than 50 years after it first charmed audiences worldwide, Blunt stars in the sequel “Mary Poppins Returns” as the magical English nanny with a no-nonsense demeanor but a twinkle in the eye.

The Walt Disney movie, starting its global roll-out this week, is set 20 years after the musical fantasy that made Julie Andrews a star.

Despite new music, a new cast and new director Rob Marshall, “Mary Poppins Returns” pays homage to the original 1964 film, including the arrival of the singing nanny from the skies above London.

This time, however, Poppins floats down holding a battered kite rather than her parrot umbrella but with her signature carpet bag still in hand.

Blunt said she was “terrified” filming the scene while hoisted high up on a crane. “It’s very high. Rob (Marshall) wanted to do one shot where I start in the air and I come down and the cameras are here and I walk straight into my close-up.”

​”We did about four takes and then I was like, ‘Rob – please say you have it now. Have you got it? Just say you have it,'” said the actress, best known for her roles in thriller “A Quiet Place” and comedy “The Devil Wears Prada.”

Like the original, “Mary Poppins Returns” features fantasy sequences, dance numbers, animated dancing penguins. There’s even a cameo for a tap-dancing Dick Van Dyke, 93, who played Bert, the cheery London chimney sweep, in the 1964 film.

However Andrews, 83, who won an Oscar for her performance as Mary Poppins, has placed herself outside the spotlight, with no role in the sequel and no appearances at red carpet events.

Blunt, 35, said Andrews has been supportive of her taking on the role.

“I was very moved that she wanted this just to be my version of Mary Poppins and embraced as that, rather than her coming in at some point and being a distraction,” she said.

“I hear she’s just seen the film and loved it, so that means a lot to us,” Blunt added.

“Mary Poppins Returns,” which has been nominated for four Golden Globe awards, also stars Lin-Manuel Miranda, British actors Emily Mortimer and Ben Whishaw, and Meryl Streep in a cameo role.
…

Why don’t chickens fly? When did the moon learn to be kind? 

Those and other mysteries were unravelled by dozens of African storytellers in Nairobi on Saturday, helping keep alive oral traditions increasingly under threat in the internet and smartphone age.

“To have that storyteller in front of you with an audience being able to interact is something very precious that we are in danger of losing,” said Maimouna Jallow, who organized the one-day Re-Imagined Storytelling Festival in Kenya’s capital.

Although written history has existed for centuries in West Africa, elsewhere on the continent knowledge and morality have mostly been transmitted through performance art, including the spoken word.

Tales from East African villages

For her research, Jallow collected folk tales from East African villages. “Nearly everywhere I went people had no recollection of their own stories, and the generation who used to tell these stories are now in their 80s,” she told Reuters.

“For me it was really important to see how we preserve not only the stories but in particular the culture of telling (them).”

With nods to giants of African culture such as Thomas Sankara and Fela Kuti, those narrated in Nairobi addressed issues common to African societies, ranging from war and materialism to humility and respect for children, often with a contemporary twist.

Storytelling relevant for rapper

For Alim Bamara, a rapper from Sierra Leone who grew up in London, storytelling has never been more relevant or topical.

“There’s a story about truth, and how truth knocked on people’s doors, and was always rejected and turned away,” he told Reuters.

“One day, parable took truth home, and fed truth and clothed truth in story. “Now truth… knocked on those people’s doors and this time was readily welcomed.”

Accompanying some performances was Gambian kora (African harp) player Sanjally Jobarteh, whose family has kept alive oral histories for over seven centuries.

Why chickens don’t fly?

For Usifu Jalloh, from Sierra Leone, storytelling can help validate existence. 

“When Africans were enslaved, and when invaders came in, the first thing they did was wipe out the identity of the people that they conquered and superimposed theirs on top,” he said. “When you know your story, you have a lot of power. When you forget your story you are just like a sheep.”

So why don’t chickens fly? Because chicken squandered all the wealth given to him as king of the sky. When the other birds found out, he was banished from the air and became man’s favorite food.
…

A number of Oscar hopefuls just got one step closer to a nomination with Monday’s reveal of nine Academy Awards shortlists, including best foreign language film where Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma” and Lee Chang-dong’s thriller “Burning” are among nine films in consideration.

 

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences on Monday announced shortlists for a number of below the line categories including hair and makeup, score, original song and best documentary, where crowd-pleasers like the Ruth Bader Ginsburg documentary “RBG” and the Fred Rogers film “Won’t You Be My Neighbor?” made the cut.

 

Shortlists, decided on by executive committees in the film academy, help narrow the playing field in many of the categories before they are whittled down further to five final nominations in late January.

 

Many believe Mexico’s “Roma” to be a front-runner for a best picture nomination as well, while the acclaimed “Burning,” which is based on a Haruki Murakami story, could make history by becoming South Korea’s first ever nominee.

 

Other films in contention include Poland’s “Cold War,” which was snubbed by the Golden Globe Awards, Lebanon’s “Capernaum,” Japan’s “Shoplifters,” Colombia’s “Birds of Passage,” Denmark’s “The Guilty,” Germany’s “Never Look Away” and Kazakhstan’s “Ayka.”

 

Notable documentary features also included on the shortlist include “Minding the Gap,” a 12-year odyssey about a group of skateboarders growing up in Rockford, Illinois, the too-wild-to-be-true “Three Identical Strangers,” about triplets separated by adoption at birth who find each other later in life, and the intense climbing film “Free Solo.”

 

This is the first time since 1979 that the film academy has released a shortlist for the music categories. Fifteen original songs were selected from 90 submissions and include “Shallow” from “A Star Is Born,” “All The Stars” from “Black Panther,” Dolly Parton’s “Girl in the Movies” from “Dumplin’,” and two songs from “Mary Poppins Returns” — “The Place Where Lost Things Go” and “Trip a Little Light Fantastic.”

 

“Mary Poppins Returns” and “Black Panther” were also shortlisted for best original score, as was “Vice” and “If Beale Street Could Talk,” which were both composed by Nicholas Brittell.

 

Nominations for the 91st Academy Awards will be announced on Jan. 22, with one month before the Oscars on Feb. 24.
…

There’s something for everyone at the popular Downtown Holiday Market in Washington, DC.

Spreading holiday cheer

Every Christmas season for the past 14 years, small business owners from across the United States and overseas come to the heart of the nation’s capital to sell their crafts in a festive, village environment.

Visiting the market has become a fun annual tradition for locals and a nice surprise discovery for many out-of-town visitors who chance upon the two-block-long event with its neatly arranged rows of white tents.

They come to enjoy live music and exotic street food, but also to take advantage of the chance to find the perfect holiday gift…and meet the artisans who made the one-of-a-kind products for purchase.

A personal touch

“It’s a way to find authentic things that are handmade that have meaning beyond what you can find in a department store,” says Colorado resident Barbara Joseph, who’s in town to visit her family.

Her daughter, Jessica Hutzell, describes it as a more personal shopping experience, “because you’re talking maybe directly to the artist, or the person that made the beautiful piece of wood that you’re going to serve your cheese on.”

The wooden boards she’s describing come from Jeffrey Oh, who works with wood sourced from all corners of the U.S. in his DC area shop. There’s a photo in his booth of renowned Chef Jose Andres holding one of Oh’s signature boards, which he sells in a variety of wood grains, colors and textures.

Blazing glass

Glass artist Ryan Eicher drew a small crowd as he carefully aimed an open flame at a small piece of glass he was shaping into a sphere.

“I’m doing flame working,” he explained as he rotated the object at the end of a glass rod. “I’m making a glass pendant with a torch.”

“For me, being able to be out here and meet people and have them appreciate what I do, means a lot,” he says. “And I think the fact that I’m out here actually blowing glass helps people gain an appreciation for what I do and to understand the work and the effort that goes into each piece. It can be hard to really understand that without seeing the process.”

“It’s also a good sales tactic!” he added with a smile.

Crossing borders

Hector Zarate represents 17 native Peruvian artisans whose one-of-a-kind creations include ornaments, mirrors, and hand-woven alpaca clothing.

He says people enjoy meeting — or learning about — the people behind the products. “Anybody can shop online, anybody can go to a mall, but coming here makes it a very unique experience and a chance to buy something truly unique,” he said.

 

“I think the idea of engaging one-on-one with the artist, with the sources, with the people that represent the artist here is very important to them,” he added. “They feel connected, they feel like they’re supporting local businesses in a more direct way.”

Canadian visitor Kathryn was one of those people. After perusing the shelves at Zarate’s booth, she ended up buying a hand-woven scarf made of soft wool from a baby alpaca.

She excitedly lifted the new purchase from her shopping bag and explained how happy she was to have bought it. “I’d only gotten five or six stalls in, and here I am, buying something!”

Home-grown goodies and hoodies

Like-minded customers also enjoyed the experience of browsing through the covered booths while being able to talk with vendors about their handicrafts.

One customer found it hard to choose a scent among so many choices at a specialty soap shop. Another shopper, a soon-to-be-grandmother, couldn’t decide which onesie to buy for her unborn granddaughter. So she bought all three varieties. And a group of young women seemed to enjoy debating the definition of the perfect pair of silver earrings.

And that is a win-win experience for vendors and customers alike, says event co-founder and organizer Michael Berman.

“We do something a little bit different here where we really focus on the entrepreneurs as small-businesses, the artisans, the creators of their own products. So we really have unique items and unique gifts that you can’t find anywhere else. So in addition to the customer experiencing talking to the maker that you can’t do at a mall, it’s also this great interactive, festive atmosphere outside and is joyful and is fun and there’s something for everybody.”

Trendy arts

For some vendors, this year’s market also provided an opportunity to sell items that reflected the mood of the country.

Maryland-based Chouquette Chocolates, for example, developed a new line of artisan chocolates called “Phenomenal Women,” in honor of women “who have inspired us,” said Sue Cassidy, director of sales at the company.

One of the portraits molded in chocolate is of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. “Our stores demanded that [her chocolates] have their own box, so she now has her own box and we can’t keep them in stock,” she said. “They are just selling like crazy!”

During its 31-day run, organizers expect more than 10,000 people will visit the market every day before it closes on December 23.
…

The Philippines’ Catriona Gray was named Miss Universe 2018 in a competition concluding Monday in Bangkok, besting contestants from 93 other countries and delighting her home country.

The 24-year-old Gray wore a sparkling red dress she said is inspired by a volcano in the Philippines as she was handed the crown to the delight of a roaring crowd that generally favored Southeast Asian contestants.

She said she wore red because “when I was 13 my mom said she had a dream that I would win Miss Universe in a red dress.” She said her mom cried when they saw each other after she won the competition.

Gray edged out first runner-up Tamaryn Green of South Africa and third-place Sthefany Gutierrez of Venezuela. She succeeds Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters of South Africa.

In the Philippines, pageants are a popular attraction, and Gray’s countrymen cheered wildly and jumped for joy when she was declared the winner. Celebrations were especially buoyant in Oas town in the northeastern province of Albay, from which Gray’s Filipina mother hails.

The office of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte was quick to congratulate the winner. Gray is the fourth Filipina to be named Miss Universe.

​”Ms. Gray truly made the entire Philippines proud when she sashayed on the global stage and showcased the genuine qualities defining a Filipina beauty: confidence, grace, intelligence and strength in the face of tough challenges,” he said in a statement from the presidential palace. “In her success, Miss Philippines has shown to the world that women in our country have the ability to turn dreams into reality through passion, diligence, determination and hard work.”

An early round of questioning touched on the issue of drugs, where Duterte’s aggressive ‘war on drugs’ has taken thousands of lives, many in what critics charge were extrajudicial executions. Duterte raised even more controversy when he recently joked that he smoked marijuana to deal with the busy schedule of meetings with other Asian leaders at a regional summit.

Asked what she thought about legalizing marijuana, Gray said: “I’m for it being used for medical use, but not so for recreational use. Because I think if people will argue, then what about alcohol and cigarettes? Everything is good but in moderation.”

This year’s Miss Universe competition included the first-ever transgender contestant, Miss Spain Angela Ponce. She said in a video presentation that it was not important for her to win but was more important for her “to be here.”

One of the few controversies of this year’s contest involved Miss United States Sarah Rose Summers seeming to mock contestants from Cambodia and Vietnam over their English language skills. Summers apologized.

The finale was again hosted by Steve Harvey who infamously announced the wrong winner in the 2015 contest. Harvey joked briefly about the incident in exchanges with contestants and said “You all can’t let that go” and “I’m still here.”

The theme of the 67th Miss Universe pageant was “Empowered Women” and was judged by seven women including former pageant winners, businesswomen, and a fashion designer.

The contestants spent nearly a month in Thailand to compete in preliminary rounds wearing elaborate national costumes, visit famous tourist sites and even met the country’s prime minister. 
…

An outdoor holiday market in downtown Washington has become a popular annual tradition. Every holiday season for the past 14 years, small business owners from across the U.S. and overseas come to the heart of the nation’s capital to sell their crafts in a festive, village environment. Visitors from all corners of the U.S. get to enjoy live music, exotic street food and the opportunity to meet the artisans who made the one-of-a-kind products they’re purchasing. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
…

About 100 years ago, the town of Nome, Alaska, was a busy place with a population of more than 20,000, most of them gold seekers. Today, fewer than 4,000 people live here and prospecting for gold is no longer the main occupation. Still many come to this town with a golden past hoping to find a share of the precious metal. Natasha Mozgovaya visited Nome.
…

A relatively modest, independently owned bookstore in Washington has become a standout on the cultural scene in the U.S. capital. It’s called Politics and Prose. Since opening in 1984, it’s managed to survive the age of online book buying and thrive as a magnet for some of the world’s highest profile authors, from former Presidents Clinton and Obama, to J.K. Rowling, Salman Rushdie and photographer Annie Leibovitz. Ani Chkhikvadze stopped by Politics and Prose to learn more about its success.
…

Alarmed by the growing popularity of rap among Russian youth, President Vladimir Putin wants cultural leaders to devise a means of controlling, rather than banning, the popular music.

Putin says “if it is impossible to stop, then we must lead it and direct it.’’

But Putin said at a St. Petersburg meeting with cultural advisers Saturday that attempts to ban artists from performing will only bolster their popularity.

Putin noted that “rap is based on three pillars: sex, drugs and protest.’’ But he is particularly concerned with drug themes prevalent in rap, saying “this is a path to the degradation of the nation.’’

He said “drug propaganda” is worse than cursing.

Putin’s comments come amid a crackdown on contemporary music that evoked Soviet-era censorship of the arts.

Crackdown on rappers

Last month, a rapper known as Husky, whose videos have more than 6 million views on YouTube, was arrested after he staged an impromptu performance when his show was shut down in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar.

The 25-year-old rapper, known for his lyrics about poverty, corruption and police brutality, was preparing to take to the stage Nov. 21 when local prosecutors warned the venue that his act had elements of what they termed “extremism.’’

Husky climbed onto a car, surrounded by hundreds of fans, and chanted “I will sing my music, the most honest music!’’ before he was taken away by police.

On Nov. 30, rapper Gone.Fludd announced two concert cancellations, citing pressure from “every police agency you can imagine,’’ while the popular hip hop artist Allj canceled his show in the Arctic city of Yakutsk after receiving threats of violence.

Other artists have been affected as well: Pop sensation Monetochka and punk band Friendzona were among those whose concerts were shut down by the authorities last month.
…

Nicole Curtis is all about before and after. She purchases abandoned, broken-down buildings and renovates them, giving them a new life. Anush Avetisyan met with Nicole Curtis and learned how this single mom turned into a TV star and a godmother for Detroit’s many collapsing houses.
…

As politicians haggle at a U.N. climate conference in Poland over ways to limit global warming, the industries and machines powering our modern world keep spewing their pollution into the air and water.

The fossil fuels extracted from beneath the Earth’s crust — coal, oil and gas — are transformed into the carbon dioxide that is now heating the planet faster than scientists had expected even a few years ago.

The devastating wildfires, droughts, floods and hurricanes of recent months and years are intensifying the urgency of the two-week conference in Katowice, which is due to end Friday.

But not far from the conference center, plumes of smoke rise from Europe’s largest lignite, or brown coal, power plant, in the central Polish town of Belchatow. Of the 50 most polluted cities in the European Union, 36 are in Poland.

IN PHOTOS: The Urgency of Climate Talks 

Elsewhere, from the U.S. to Japan and China, the coal plants, oil refineries and other installations needed to power factories and heat homes are playing their role in a warming Earth.

The negotiators at the international talks are also discussing financial support to poor countries, which are bearing the brunt of drought and flooding, which translate often into agricultural disaster and famine and are a factor behind greater migration.

The challenge of reducing emissions is made more difficult by the growing demand in the developing world for fuel as people there also seek to achieve the benefits and comforts of the industrialized world.

In Africa and Asia, which have become dumping grounds for the rich world’s waste, it is now common to see poor people scavenging for scraps of paper and other recyclable materials at garbage dumps, competing sometimes with crows or storks.

Fumes from cars are also playing their role in poisoning the air in many cities, from Jakarta and Katmandu to Moscow to Brussels.

Environmentalists in Katowice are warning that time is running out to prevent ecological disaster, a message also being taken up by artists.

In London, 24 large blocks of glacial ice from the waters surrounding Greenland have been placed in front of the Tate Modern and six at other city locations. Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson hopes his installation, called “Ice Watch” and launched Tuesday to coincide with the climate conference in Katowice, will impact people emotionally and inspire urgent public action.

The installation will be on show until the ice melts.
…

Spanish prosecutors are charging pop music star Shakira with tax evasion, alleging she failed to pay more than 14.5 million euros ($16.3 million) between 2012 and 2014.

The charges Friday allege Shakira listed the Bahamas as her official residence for tax purposes during those years but was in fact living in Spain with her partner, Spanish soccer player Gerard Pique.

Prosecutors in Barcelona say her travel abroad was for short periods because of professional commitments, while most of the year she stayed in Spain. They want her to pay tax in Spain on her worldwide income.

The Colombian singer officially moved to Spain for tax purposes in 2015.

A magistrate will assess whether there is enough evidence to put Shakira on trial.

Shakira’s representatives said they had no immediate comment.
…

Grammy award winning singer Nancy Wilson has died. She was 81 years old.

Wilson, who retired from touring in 2011, died late Thursday  after a long illness at her home in Pioneertown, a California desert community.

Wilson referred to herself as a “song stylist” instead of a singer and she did have a way of styling a song to make it her own.

Probably her best-known and most stylized song is “Guess Who I Saw Today,” a tour de force of cool  in which she ever so patiently waits for her lover to come home so she can share the details of her day.  

She sweetly asks him, “Guess who I saw today” after stopping in “a most attractive French cafe and bar.”  

She saw two people “so in love even I could spot it clear across the room.”  

And then she teases, asking over and over “Guess who I saw today” and finally and dramatically  reveals  “I saw you.”

Wilson resisted being identified with any one genre of music, winning musical accolades in several categories, from R&B to jazz and funk..

“How Glad I Am” brought her a Grammy in 1965 for best R&B performance, and she later won Grammys for best jazz vocal album in 2005 for the intimate “R.S.V.P (Rare Songs, Very Personal)” and in 2007 for “Turned to Blue,” a showcase for the relaxed, confident swing she mastered later in life. The National Endowment for the Arts awarded her a “Jazz Masters Fellowship” in 2004 for lifetime achievement.

Wilson also had a busy career on television, film and radio, her credits including “Hawaii Five-O,” “Police Story,” the Robert Townsend spoof “Meteor Man” and years hosting NPR’s “Jazz Profiles” series. Active in the civil rights movement, including the Selma march of 1965, she received an NAACP Image Award in 1998.

Wilson listed Nat King Cole, Dinah Washington and Jimmy Scott among her influences.  

The Associated Press reports that in accordance with Wilson’s wishes, there will not be a funeral service.  Instead, a celebration of her life will likely be held in February, her birthday month.
…

With the New Year just weeks away, New York taxi drivers have prepared their own unique gift to the city, a 2019 calendar featuring themselves. According to statistics, around 90 percent of yellow cab drivers are immigrants, and the calendar, which is a comedic take on the traditional pin-up, draws attention to this fact while being light and entertaining. Nina Vishneva reports from New York in this story narrated by Anna Rice.
…

The dogs were primped, pampered and posed like fashion models before their big moment in front of the camera. A pair of matching, elegant-looking pups decked out with black velvet and rhinestone collars looked like they should belong to the Kardashians. 

About 100 dogs got their pictures taken with Santa Claus by a professional pet photographer at Dogma Gourmet Dog Bakery and Boutique in Arlington, Virginia. From large Golden Retrievers to pint-sized Chihuahuas, the pups were dressed for the holidays.

“I like the ones where you can see the interaction where the dog looks like he’s having a conversation quietly with Santa,” said professional pet photographer, Jeannie Taylor. “They’re part of the family. They should have their Santa photos, just as they should be part of family photos.”

“It’s fun, it’s festive and making memories,” said Sheena Cole who came with her Corgi to the annual event.

Annual event for some

Some people bring their dogs every year, including Brian Rose who arrived with two Schnauzers he calls his kids. 

“We get the girls dressed up in their little ribbons and see all the other dogs in their costumes,” he said.

They included canines wearing a Santa hat or dressed as elves. Alycia Foley wanted the Santa picture with her bulldog Quincy to reflect both Christmas and Hanukkah. 

“I put a yamaka and scarf on him for Hanukkah because I’m Jewish. I celebrate both Christmas and Hanukkah, so I wanted him to celebrate both.”

Money to charities

A large portion of the $25 cost for each photo is donated to several local dog rescue groups. Zach Klipple with Vindictive Pit Bull Rescue said the money goes to buy items like food, toys, crates and kennels.

​Many of the dogs at the event were rescues. Melinda Thalor, who calls herself a pet grandparent, asked her daughter’s rescue dog, “to show me your smile.” 

“The support this event gives to the animals is wonderful. We’ve always had rescue dogs and they’re the best kind,” Thalor said.

Say ‘cheese’

During the photo shoots it was a challenge to get the dogs to stay still, so Taylor and her assistant used innovative ways to get their attention, which seemed to do the trick.

“We make sounds that are out of the norm of their daily routine — high pitch squeaky toys, and weird noises with our mouths,” Taylor explained.

While some dogs enjoyed the attention, others tried to make a bolt for the door.

“Let’s get out of here,” said Santa laughing, reflecting on what the dogs must be thinking.

Santa knows

Jim Greer, who for years has played Santa for both children and dogs, said the pups can be like kids, too.

“Some of them will jump up in your lap. Others will run away from you. I get one once in a while that will bark at me. I’ve been nipped at a couple of times, but I haven’t been bitten, and hopefully we can keep it that way,” he said and laughed.

Penny Edwards and her 3-year-old daughter came in their matching pajamas, along with their brown-and-white dog named Blue. The little girl told Santa what she would like for Christmas, and said Blue told Santa he wanted cheese and a ball. 

Pet parent Amy Kessler is looking forward to sending Christmas cards with her cute white dog’s photo to friends and family.

“He’s so happy and smiling and it cheers everyone up, I think, to see a little pup with Santa,” she said with a smile. 
…

“A Star Is Born” led nominations for the 25th Screen Actors Guild Awards with four nods including best ensemble on Wednesday, firmly establishing Bradley Cooper’s romantic revival as this year’s Academy Awards front runner.

In nominations announced in West Hollywood, Calif., the actors guild — one of the most predictive bellwethers of the Oscars — threw cold water on the awards campaigns of numerous contenders while elevating others. But “A Star Is Born” fared the best of all, landing nominations for Cooper (best male actor), Lady Gaga (best female actor) and Sam Elliott (best supporting male actor).

The other nominees for the group’s top award, best ensemble, were: “Black Panther,” “Bohemian Rhapsody,” “BlacKkKlansman” and “Crazy Rich Asians.”

That category is the most closely watched because only once in the last two decades has the eventual Oscars best picture winner not been nominated for best ensemble at the SAG Awards. The one aberration, though, was last year, when Guillermo del Toro’s “The Shape of Water” overcame the SAG omission on its way to winning best picture.

Unless a new trend is forming, that’s worrisome news for Oscar hopefuls like “Vice,” Adam McKay’s Dick Cheney biopic (which led last week’s Golden Globe nominations); Alfonso Cuaron’s Netflix drama “Roma” (the overwhelming choice of critics groups); and the 1962 road trip “Green Book.”

“Vice” still scored SAG nods for Christian Bale and Amy Adams, just as “Green Book” won nominations for Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali.

But “Roma” was shut out entirely, as was Damien Chazelle’s Neil Armstrong drama “First Man” and Barry Jenkins’ Harlem love story “If Beale Street Could Talk.” Most expected Regina King of “Beale Street” to be among the supporting female actor nominees.

Instead, Wednesday’s nominations gave an unlikely boost to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” the Freddie Mercury biopic that has been a hit with audiences but was slammed by critics. Despite being widely viewed as a riveting one-man show by Rami Malek, the film ended up nominated for its ensemble cast. Malek was also nominated for best actor.

The screen actors appeared to favor big ticket sellers over smaller independent ensembles.

Ryan Coogler’s comic-book sensation “Black Panther” also landed a nomination for its stunt ensemble team. Spike Lee’s “BlacKkKlansman” scored nods for both John David Washington and Adam Driver. “Crazy Rich Asians” co-star Awkwafina, a presenter Wednesday morning, has the unusual pleasure of announcing the hit romantic comedy’s ensemble nomination. “It was all me,” she joked.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ period romp “The Favourite” failed to crack best ensemble, but its three leads — Olivia Colman, Rachel Weisz and Emma Stone — were all nominated, as expected. Stone added a second nod for her performance in the Netflix miniseries “Maniac.”

 

 Emily Blunt also scored two nominations herself: one for her lead performance in “Mary Poppins Returns” and one for her supporting role in “A Quiet Place.”

The other best female performance nominees alongside Blunt, Lady Gaga and Colman were Glenn Close (“The Wife”) and Melissa McCarthy (“Can You Ever Forgive Me?”)

Blunt’s nomination for “A Quiet Place” was among the nominations’ many surprises, as was Margot Robbie’s supporting turn as Queen Elizabeth in “Mary Queen of Scots.”

Timothee Chalamet (“Call Me By Your Name”) scored his second straight SAG nomination for his supporting performance in the addiction drama “Beautiful Boy.” Rounding out the category alongside Ali, Driver and Elliott was Richard E. Grant for “Can You Ever Forgive Me?”

Usually, about 15 of the SAG’s 20 individual acting nominees line up exactly with the eventual Oscar field.

In television categories, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” and “Ozark” led with four nominations each. “Barry,” “GLOW,” “The Handmaid’s Tale” and “The Kominsky Method” trailed close behind with three nominations each.

Up for best ensemble in comedy are “Atlanta,” “Barry,” “GLOW,” “The Kominsky Method” and “The Marvelous Mrs Maisel.” The drama series ensemble nominees went to: “The Americans,” “Better Call Saul,” “The Haidmaid’s Tale,” “Ozark” and “This Is Us.”

Though Netflix was nearly shut out on the film side (its lone nomination was for the stunt ensemble of “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”), it dominated the television categories with 15 total nods.

The SAG Awards will be held Jan. 27 and broadcast live by TNT and TBS. This year’s show will honor Alan Alda with the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award.
…

Sports, disaster and death were among the top searches on Google last year.

Each December, the technology company releases it’s top trending searches of the year. Topics that drew the interest of Americans included the World Cup, Hurricane Florence and three people who died in 2018 — rapper Mac Miller, designer Kate Spade and TV host and author Anthony Bourdain.

Google does not come up with its lists based on the number of total searches. Instead, the company looks at the search terms that enjoyed the highest spike compared to the previous year.

“Black Panther” topped the list of most searched movies, while rising stars in the Democratic party dominated the list of most searched politicians.

Here are the Top 10:

1. World Cup

2. Hurricane Florence

3. Mac Miller

4. Kate Spade

5. Anthony Bourdain

6. Black Panther

7. Mega Millions Results

8. Stan Lee

9. Demi Lovato

10. Election Results

Other categories include:

News

1. World Cup

2. Hurricane Florence

3. Mega Millions

4. Election Results

5. Hurricane Michael

People

1. Demi Lovato

2. Meghan Markle

3. Brett Kavanaugh

4. Logan Paul

5. Khloe Kardashian

Politicians

1. Stacey Abrams

2. Beto O’Rourke

3. Ted Cruz

4. Andrew Gillum

5. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Movies

1. Black Panther

2. Incredibles 2

3. Deadpool 2

4. Avengers: Infinity War

5. A Quiet Place

All of the 2018 Google top trending search lists can be found here.
…

Yalitza Aparicio had just gone along with her sister to the casting call for Alfonso Cuaron’s new film. She had no intention of trying out herself.

But destiny put her in front of the camera and that was how the Mexican woman of indigenous origins, who had just graduated as a teacher but wasn’t yet working, became the star of “Roma.”

She is likely now to spend the next few months learning how to handle Tinseltown red-carpet ceremonies — Cuaron’s latest film is a sensation, and her work is generating major buzz.

“Roma” won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, has been nominated for three Golden Globes and is a strong favorite for the Oscars in February.

“It wasn’t something that I really wanted or had dreamed about,” Aparicio, who turned 26 on Tuesday, told AFP.

“Because of your socioeconomic status or your culture, you think you can’t aspire to be an actress, and to participate in this medium that sounds like a fantasy.”

Passion project

After his Oscar-winning “Gravity,” which took home seven trophies, Cuaron bet on a very personal project.

“Roma” tells the story — in black and white — of the two women who made a deep mark on his childhood in Mexico City.

Cleo, played by Aparicio, is a domestic worker who becomes pregnant after her first sexual encounter.

The director’s mother and lady of the house, played by Marina de Tavira, is about to be left by her husband for another woman.

Framing all of it is the turbulent Mexico of the early 1970s.

Aparicio had no Cleo in her childhood in Tlaxiaco, a town of 40,000 people in the southwestern state of Oaxaca.

But her own mother, who raised her on her own, worked as a maid and that helped Aparicio understand the relationship of love and heartbreak that can form between caregivers and their bosses.

“There were scenes during the filming that stirred my memories, and there arose, all by itself, my character’s need to protect the children from what was happening so they would not suffer,” she said.

Cuaron, who also directed “Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban,” said the actors in “Roma” were “the best” he has ever worked with.

The film, which had a cinematic release in select U.S. theaters, will be available on Netflix on December 14.

Casting call

The first requirement for becoming a member of the cast of “Roma” was to physically resemble the real people in the director’s life.

“The directive was that they had to physically look as much like the original people as possible,” Cuaron told AFP. “And on top of that, they should have the same energy.”

Aparicio’s sister ended up not being cast because of her advanced pregnancy.

But since the young teacher was there, she did the first of many screen tests that led ultimately to her winning the part inspired by Libo, the director’s nanny, who Cuaron says “cries every time” she sees the movie.

Before filming began, Aparicio met with the now elderly ex-domestic worker.

“She told me only how she came to the house, about her relationship with the family, but it was left at that,” she said.

Then filming began.

Change ‘little by little’

Cuaron did not give out the entire script at once, only parts of it.

Filming unfolded in a replica of the house where he had lived as a child in the upper middle class Mexico City neighborhood of Roma — hence the film’s title.

The set was so close to the real thing that his mother, who died recently, and the rest of the family were impressed.

Despite having no previous experience, Aparicio has been applauded by other actors, like Tom Hanks, and by critics. The New York Times included her in a list of best performances of 2018.

“After living through this whole adventure, I realized that the movies aren’t as far away as I thought from what I had always dreamed of doing,” she said.

“Through films, you can educate people in a more massive way. But let’s see if some offers come my way,” she added, discussing her future with humility.

For now, Aparicio plans to experience the moment, which has included not just accolades but also ugly racist and class-related insults from some of her compatriots after she appeared in designer clothes in Vanity Fair magazine.

She ignores the abuse, though, and focuses on what’s important to her: change.

“I am showing my people that they also can reach something like this, that just because you don’t have blonde hair and green eyes, it doesn’t mean you can’t be a part of it,” she said.

“There are certain things that will change little by little in our culture and let’s hope that with this picture, something is learned.”
…

Some films about race in America are angry, many are passionate, or terrifying or heartbreaking, and a few are funny.

If Beale Street Could Talk, opening in U.S. theaters in major cities Friday, is marked by a quiet beauty and dignity, despite the despair that runs through it.

Based on the 1974 novel with the same title by the late James Baldwin, the film is director Barry Jenkins’ follow-up to his 2016 Oscar-winner Moonlight.

It is the latest in a slew of movies by or about African-Americans that were nominated last week for Golden Globe Awards, including Spike Lee’s Ku Klux Klan thriller BlacKkKlansman, superhero movie Black Panther, and 1960s road trip Green Book.

​If Beale Street Could Talk is the story of two hopeful young lovers in Harlem whose future is ruined when the man is imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Baldwin said Beale Street could stand for any black community in the United States.

Jenkins said he was drawn to make the film because of its blend of “sensuality and love — both physical and emotional love — but also this other voice that was very, very clear about social critique and taking America to task for the role it has played in the lives and the degradation of black folks.”

Yet Jenkins, who also adapted the screenplay, says rage is not in his wheelhouse as a filmmaker.

“I feel like anger has never been the best place for me to work from,” he said.

In contrast to the more strident tone of the novel, the film is made from the perspective of young and pregnant Tish, played by newcomer KiKi Layne, and her loving family.

“Tish is so young and pure and wide-eyed and so innocent, that to work from any other place than that would have felt like a false move,” Jenkins said.

Jenkins sees Beale Street and Moonlight as companion pieces, partly because he wrote both films during the summer of 2013. They are also about black families, albeit very different.

Moonlight depicted a young black gay man growing up in a hard-scrabble neighborhood of contemporary Miami.

“I still get notes and letters from total strangers who feel their lives have been impacted or in some ways improved because of the visibility that Moonlight brought to their personal lives,” he said.

Jenkins hopes Beale Street leaves audiences with “a sense of optimism that the lives and souls of black folks in America have often been rooted in despair and degradation, and yet there has always been love, joy, family and community.”
…

Even though Henry Golding garnered instant fame from starring in the smash hit Crazy Rich Asians, the British-Malaysian actor isn’t sure if he’ll ever eclipse his meteoric success in the box-office hit.  

  

“I don’t know how I’m going to top this year. It’s all downhill from here,” he told The Associated Press recently, with a twinge of sarcasm.  

  

Even Golding knows that viewers are clamoring for more of the 31-year-old actor, who starred in his first-ever movie role as the suave, Oxford-educated heir Nick Young in Crazy Rich Asians, the romantic comedy that spent three weeks at the top of the North American box office and grossed more than $173 million in North America alone.  

  

It was the first Hollywood film to have a predominantly Asian-American cast since The Joy Luck Club, which debuted 25 years ago.  

  

Golding had a sense the movie would resonate with audiences when filming it because it “was an amazing work of art.” But it wasn’t until after the movie’s release that he was able to measure its impact on viewers.  

  

“That’s when I started getting messages. People were coming up to me saying, ‘The movie is amazing,’ ‘You guys did such a fantastic job,’ ‘It means so much to me to see our faces portrayed on the big screen,’ ” he said. “For me, it was wild.”    

For Golding, his rise has certainly been pretty wild since director Jon M. Chu chose him to star in Crazy Rich Asians without any movie appearances. Golding had primarily worked as a television host for shows on BBC, Discovery Channel Asia and ESPN Asia networks.  

  

Now, Golding is on the fast track as others are seeing the potential in him. After Crazy Rich Asians, he took on a much darker role in Paul Feig’s thriller A Simple Favor starring Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick.  

  

Next, Golding will be playing a gay British-Vietnamese man who travels to his birth country in Vietnam to scatter the ashes of his parents in the film Monsoon, expected to be released in 2019. He’ll also star in Guy Ritchie’s Toff Guys with Matthew McConaughey and Kate Beckinsale.  

  

Golding said his recent projects have given him more confidence. He’s been putting in extra work through acting classes to hone his skills.  

  

“If you’re looking for longevity, you have to be a hard worker,” he said. “You have to put in the due diligence. You’ve got to be that people person. Essentially you become a commodity. You need to be that showman. … It’s a long road, but I’m getting to that point.” 
…

The Golden Globe Awards will introduce a new TV special achievement trophy at next month’s telecast and name it after its first recipient — comedic icon Carol Burnett.

The Hollywood Foreign Press Association said Tuesday the Carol Burnett Award — the small-screen version of the group’s film counterpart, the Cecil B. DeMille Award — will annually honor someone “who has made outstanding contributions to television on or off the screen.”

The first Carol Burnett Award will, fittingly, go to Burnett, a five-time Golden Globe winner who was the first woman to host a variety sketch show, “The Carol Burnett Show.”

In a statement, association President Meher Tatna said: “We are profoundly grateful for her contributions to the entertainment industry and honored to celebrate her legacy forever at the Golden Globes.”
…

Egyptian authorities have launched an investigation into images said to show a naked couple who scaled the Great Pyramid that has sparked outrage in the conservative Muslim country, an official said Tuesday.

In a video titled “Climbing the Great Pyramid of Giza”, Danish photographer Andreas Hvid appears to scale the 4,500-year-old tomb on the outskirts of Cairo at night with an unidentified woman who is later seen taking off her top.

Hvid says the video was taken in late November but it was published on YouTube on December 8.

A photograph released by Hvid appears to show the couple completely naked on top of each other while looking in the direction of a nearby pyramid with the horizon illuminated.

“The public prosecution is investigating the incident of the Danish photographer and the authenticity of the photos and video of him climbing the pyramid,” Mostafa Waziri, the secretary general of Egypt’s supreme antiquities council, told AFP.

If the video was actually filmed at the top of the pyramid, that would make it a “very serious crime”, Waziri said.

The nearly three-minute video has taken social media by storm and has been the subject of late night talk shows. It has notched up almost three million views on YouTube alone.

“A 7,000-year-old civilization has turned into a bed sheet,” a Twitter user in Egypt lamented.

Another protested that “they want to soil the dignity and pride of Egyptians because the pyramid reflects the glory and grandeur of the Egyptian people”.

The authenticity of the images has been disputed with some arguing the photograph showing the pair naked appears to be very bright whereas the video showed them scaling the pyramid at night.

Antiquities Minister Khaled el-Enany told government newspaper Al-Ahram that the video has stirred “anger and outrage among Egyptians”, and that officials in charge of guarding the pyramids would be punished if found to have been negligent.

Hvid, 23, explained back home to the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet that he had “dreamed for many years of climbing the Great Pyramid” as well as of taking a naked photograph.

“I’m sad that so many people have got angry but I’ve also received a lot of positive responses from many Egyptians,” he said in an interview.

The young Norwegian, who runs his own YouTube channel, said he had absolutely no interest in stirring up a crisis such as that triggered by cartoons in Western newspapers of the Prophet Muhammad.

As for the girl in the video, she was not his girlfriend. “It was just a pose. We did not have sexual relations,” Hvid said.

The Great Pyramid, also known as the Khufu pyramid, is the largest in Giza, standing at 146 meters (480 feet) tall, and the only surviving structure of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.

Climbing pyramids is forbidden in Egypt.

In 2016, a German tourist was barred from entering the country for life after he posted online footage of climbing one of the ancient structures.
…