Author: Ohart

Women and inclusivity continued to dominate the awards season conversation Saturday at the Producers Guild Awards, where Guillermo del Toro’s fantastical romance The Shape of Water won the top award and honorees like Jordan Peele and Ava DuVernay gave rousing speeches to the room of entertainment industry leaders.

The untelevised dinner and ceremony, held at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Beverly Hills, Calif., is closely watched for its capacity to predict the eventual Oscar best picture winner, but this year the “awards race” seemed to be the secondary show to the more urgent questions facing the industry, including the crisis of representation and sexual misconduct.

The Producers Guild on Friday ratified guidelines for combating sexual harassment in the entertainment industry, and everyone from DuVernay to Universal Chair Donna Langley and television mogul Ryan Murphy made mention of the changing times and the work that still needs to be done.

“If we want more brilliant films like Get Out … we need to have many different perspectives including equal numbers of women, people of color, people of all faiths and sexual orientation involved in every stage of filmmaking,” Langley said in accepting the Milestone Award, noting that she was only the third woman to do so.

It was not the only time Get Out got a special mention, despite not winning the top award. Peele also won the Stanley Kramer Award.

Del Toro was not present to accept the PGA’s Darryl F. Zanuck Award for Outstanding Producer of Theatrical Motion Pictures, due to the health of his father.

His film was up against 10 others this year, including Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, which won big at the Golden Globes earlier this month, Lady Bird, Get Out, Dunkirk, The Post, Call Me By Your Name, The Big Sick, I, Tonya Wonder Woman and Molly’s Game — many of which were represented by actors and directors in attendance, such as Timothee Chalamet, Christopher Nolan, Margot Robbie, Patty Jenkins and Greta Gerwig.

In television, The Handmaids Tale picked up best drama series, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel won best comedy series, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver won best TV variety series, Black Mirror for long-form TV, Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath for nonfiction television, Sesame Street for children’s program and Carpool Karaoke for best short-form program.

The pre-announced honorees stole most of the show, however.

Norman Lear presented the Stanley Kramer Award to Peele invoking the award’s namesake in speaking of Get Out, which Lear proudly said he’s seen three times.

Peele said he was proud to call Lear a friend.

“I want to say, you can use my body for your brain anytime,” Peele laughed, before taking a more serious turn in his speech.

Peele likened the idea of “the sunken place” in the film to what is happening in the world right now, referencing Haiti, the water crisis in Flint, and President Donald Trump’s criticisms of athletes for protesting on the field.

“What really scares me … is the silencing of voices,” Peele said “Get Out is my protest against that.”

Peele ended on a hopeful note, however.

“Finally unique voices are breaking through,” he said. “Diverse and honest storytelling opens eyes and hearts. We can break out of the sunken place together.”

​Selma and A Wrinkle in Time director Ava DuVernay gave a similarly poignant speech in accepting the Visionary Award,

“It’s an odd moment, you have a women’s march and you have a country with a government shut down,” DuVernay said. “We’re in the midst of times that will be long remembered.”

DuVernay said what is important is, “The way we work. The people we actually choose to see. That we choose to amplify in the moments where no one is looking.”

“Don’t think of diversity as a good thing to do,” she added. “Think of it as a must. An absolute must.”
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Bobsled and Nigeria are not two words typically used in the same sentence. But soon they will be heard together often. Bobsledders Seun Adigun, Ngozi Onwumere and Akuoma Omeoga will not be heading to February’s Winter Olympic Games just to be a “feel good” side story. They say they want to win something they can bring back to West Africa. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports on the historic participation of the Nigerian bobsledding team in this year’s games.
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Afghanistan’s arts and architecture were once the pride of Asia. However, more than four decades of war have left many of the country’s traditional crafts on the verge of extinction. Now a Britain-based organization, Turquoise Mountain, is working to preserve Afghan heritage in the capital’s still surviving commercial district, Murad Khani. VOA Deewa service’s Munaza Shaheed reports from a recent trip to Kabul.
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Tom Petty died last year of an accidental drug overdose that his family said occurred the same day he found out his hip was broken. He had just finished a string of dozens of shows with a less serious injury.

His wife and daughter released the results of Petty’s autopsy via a statement Friday on his Facebook page, moments before coroner’s officials in Los Angeles released their findings and the rocker’s full autopsy report. Dana and Adria Petty say they got the results from the coroner’s office earlier in the day that the overdose was the result of a variety of medications.

Fentanyl among drugs

The coroner’s findings showed Petty had a mix of prescription painkillers, sedatives and an antidepressant. Among the medications found in his system were fentanyl and oxycodone. An accidental overdose of fentanyl was also determined to have killed Prince in April 2016.

Petty suffered from emphysema, a fractured hip and knee problems that caused him pain, the family said, but he was still committed to touring.

He had just wrapped up a tour a few days before he died in October at age 66.

“On the day he died he was informed his hip had graduated to a full-on break and it is our feeling that the pain was simply unbearable and was the cause for his overuse of medication,” his family’s statement said, adding that he performed more than 50 concerts with a fractured hip.

The family said Petty had been prescribed various pain medications for his multitude of issues, including fentanyl patches, and “we feel confident that this was, as the coroner found, an unfortunate accident.”

They added: “As a family we recognize this report may spark a further discussion on the opioid crisis and we feel that it is a healthy and necessary discussion and we hope in some way this report can save lives. Many people who overdose begin with a legitimate injury or simply do not understand the potency and deadly nature of these medications.”

Common prescriptions

Painkillers and sedatives are among the most commonly prescribed medications in the U.S., but both drug types slow users’ heart rate and breathing. The Food and Drug Administration has warned against mixing them because the combination can lead to breathing problems, coma and death.

Government figures released in December showed that for the first time, the powerful painkiller fentanyl and its close opioid cousins played a bigger role in the deaths than any other legal or illegal drug, surpassing prescription pain pills and heroin.

Petty was a rock superstar with the persona of an everyman who drew upon the Byrds, Beatles and other bands he worshipped as a boy in Gainesville, Florida. He produced classics that include Free Fallin’, Refugee and American Girl. He and his longtime band the Heartbreakers had recently completed a 40th-anniversary tour, one he hinted would be their last.

The shaggy-haired blond rose to success in the 1970s and went on to sell more than 80 million records. He was loved for his melodic hard rock, nasally vocals and down-to-earth style. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, which inducted Petty and the Heartbreakers in 2002, praised them as “durable, resourceful, hard-working, likable and unpretentious.”
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Oscar nominations balloting might be finished but Hollywood’s “Me Too” moment has kept right on going.

When Academy Awards nominations are announced Tuesday morning, it might be a brief, celebratory reprieve for an industry enflamed by sexual harassment scandals and gender equality protests.

Or it might just add more fuel to the fire.

Will the motion picture academy, as it has done in 85 out of 89 years, field an all-male field of film directors? Will James Franco squeak into the best actor category after several women made allegations against him of sexual impropriates while filming sex scenes? Franco denied the claims on late-night shows just days before nomination voting closed last Friday.

Either of those outcomes could make the Oscar nominations — a morning often dominated by Harvey Weinstein in the past — one more fraught chapter in the ongoing “Me Too” saga that has shaped and contorted an Oscar race unlike any before.

Here are four questions in the lead-up to Tuesday:

​Is there a front-runner?

After winning four Golden Globe Awards, including best feature, drama, Martin McDonagh’s Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri may have finally taken the Oscar race position that no one wants: favorite. It has the most unblemished score card of all the contenders, including nine BAFTA nods, an ensemble nomination from the Screen Actors Guild (which hands out its awards Sunday), top award nods from the directors and producers guilds, and the often predictive Toronto Film Festival audience award.

But Three Billboards, which many have criticized for its portrayal of a racist police officer (played by Sam Rockwell), has proven a lightning rod, both celebrated for the timeliness of a tale about female vengeance and derided as out of touch. If Three Billboards is out in front, it’s only by a hair. Nearly its equal is Guillermo del Toro’s The Shape of Water, a much admired Cold War fable that may earn the most nominations Tuesday thanks to its lavish craft and celebrated ensemble cast. Yet it crucially missed out on a SAG ensemble nomination, which historically has been a must-have for any Oscar best-picture winner. Every best-picture winner in the last 22 years first landed SAG ensemble nod.

And still just as much in the mix are Greta Gerwig’s Lady Bird, Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk. Each can stake its own claim. Lady Bird is the only top contender made by a woman, and is perhaps the most critically acclaimed movie of the year. Get Out is a landmark genre-bending film about racism, and for many a vital film for the Donald Trump era. Dunkirk is the lone big-screen, blockbuster spectacle of the bunch. While it has been quiet thus far in awards season, Dunkirk will get a boost in the technical categories Tuesday.

How will ‘Me Too’ alter things?

Oscar campaigns from Kevin Spacey to Dustin Hoffman have already bit the dust. Before Franco (The Disaster Artist) was awkwardly answering tough questions from Stephen Colbert he was a borderline best actor contender, slotting in behind Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour), Timothee Chalamet (Call Me By Your Name), Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread), Daniel Kaluuya (Get Out) and Tom Hanks (The Post). Many Oscar votes had been cast by the time allegations hit, but, then again, a lot of academy members wait until the last minute to send in their ballots. This year, with such a never-ending stream of revelations, voters would have been advised to wait until the very last second before one final Google search.

Particular attention, though, will be on the best director category, where only four women have ever been nominated. Among the many statistics that depict the imbalanced maleness of Hollywood, it’s among the most telling. Gerwig, who was nominated by the Director’s Guild, is poised to be the fifth. But it’s a competitive category, with five seats for the presumed final six: del Toro, Nolan, McDonagh, Spielberg, Peele and Gerwig.

A wildcard is Ridley Scott, who has won admiration for his last-minute reshoots on All the Money in the World, in order to replace the disgraced Spacey with Christopher Plummer. Plummer, too, could crash the best supporting actor category.

Could Oscars-so-white return?

Last year, Moonlight triumphed and films like Fences and Hidden Figures led a firm rebuke to two years straight of all-white acting nominees. Tuesday’s nominations aren’t likely to be a repeat of 2015 and 2016, but they also aren’t likely to overwhelm in their multicultural selections.

Kaluuya, Mary J. Blige (Mudbound) and Octavia Spencer (The Shape of Water) are all favored for nominations, but none are considered among their categories’ front-runners. Much will hinge on how the academy receives Get Out. It’s the only film currently handicapped for a best-picture nomination with a protagonist who’s a person of color. As a horror film from a first-time feature-film director, it’s far from a prototypical Oscar contender. Peele’s movie came out last year on Oscar weekend.

But even if all the above wins nods as expected on Tuesday, critics will wonder why Girls Trip breakout Tiffany Haddish or Downsizing scene-stealer Hong Chau were overlooked.

Can the Oscars top the Globes?

Whoever is nominated, an unusual question will hang in the air: Will the March 4 Oscars feel like merely a buttoned-down sequel to the Globes?

The Golden Globes are usually a frothy kind of dress rehearsal for the main event. But this year, thanks to the black-attired protest by female attendees and stirring speeches from the night’s female winners, the Globes had an almost Oscar-like veneer of importance. As the first major awards show to confront the post-Weinstein landscape, they may have stolen some of the Oscars’ thunder.

Jimmy Kimmel, who will host the ABC telecast for the second straight year, told reporters at the Television Critics Association press tour that, in the current climate, the two months between the Globes and the Academy Awards are a lifetime.

“I do thank (Globes host Seth Meyers) for being that litmus test,” Kimmel said. “As far as how I will handle it, the problem is it’s two months from now. So it’s almost like getting into a hot tub or something; you can’t really know what the temperature is until you get there.”

But the Oscars will lack one element the Globes had: Oprah. It will take more than an envelope flub to top that.
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Brazilian soccer great Pele has canceled a trip to England where he was to receive an award from the English Football Writers’ Association.

A spokesman for Pele said the former soccer (football) player was resting at his home in Guaruja, Brazil, and that reports that he had been taken to a hospital were “fake news.”

“He said he’s not going [to England] because it’s going to be very tiring, very stressful,” said spokesman Pepito Fornos.

Pele, 77, was supposed to attend a dinner in his honor Sunday at the Savoy Hotel in London, organized by the Football Writers’ Association. The group said Pele would not appear after having collapsed from what appeared to be severe exhaustion.

Pele has frequently been admitted to hospitals in the past few years for kidney and prostate problems, and has also undergone hip surgery.

Fornos said Pele had reduced his scheduled appearances recently so he could receive more therapy for his hip issues.

Pele appeared in a wheelchair in Moscow in December for the draw for this year’s World Cup. Fornos said Pele was planning to attend the World Cup in Russia.

Pele is the only player to win three World Cups, helping Brazil to win victories in 1958, 1962 and 1970.
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A “Game of Thrones”-themed ice hotel complete with a bar and a chapel for weddings has opened in northern Finland in a joint effort by a local hotel chain and the U.S. producers of the hit TV series.

Lapland Hotels said Friday they chose “Game of Thrones” to be the theme for this season’s Snow Village, an annual ice-and-snow construction project covering 20,000 square meters (24,000 sq. yards) in Kittila, 150 kilometers (93 miles) above the Arctic Circle.

Snow Village operations manager Janne Pasma told Finnish national broadcaster YLE that he was a huge fan of the series and it was “a dream come true” that HBO Nordic agreed to go along.

The hotel, which stays open until April, suggests that guests stay only one night due to below-zero temperatures.
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Olympics organizers on Friday welcomed an agreement between North and South Korea to unite athletes at the upcoming Winter Games in Pyeongchang, and promised that “much more exciting initiatives” promoting Korean unity will emerge this weekend.

“Watch this space,” International Olympic Committee presidential spokesman Mark Adams told the Associated Press in an interview, a day before a crucial meeting of Korean delegations at Olympics headquarters in Lausanne. He declined to elaborate, saying the decisions would come Saturday.

Referring to a detailed peace-making agreement between the rival countries announced Thursday by South Korea’s Unification Ministry, including a joint team in the women’s hockey tournament, Adams said it was “great … but these are discussions.”

The announcement from South Korea, which hasn’t yet been finalized by the IOC, would mark the first time the two national Olympic committees would be competing together in a single team.

“I can tell you that there will also be some much more exciting initiatives coming through as well tomorrow,” Adams added.

Some have questioned the fine print of the agreement announced by the two Koreas, saying it gives the combined hockey squad a far larger roster than any other national team.

Asked how the IOC planned to maintain the integrity of the sport, Adams said: “People would say that these are exceptional circumstances, and we need exceptional measures.”

“This is about the Olympic spirit,” Adams added. “And the Olympic spirit is about nations competing, athletes competing, and we will do our best make sure that it sends a signal that sport can improve the world.”
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It has been called the longest and toughest professional sporting event on earth. The eight-month Volvo Ocean Race is a 24-hour-a-day open-water marathon pitting sailing teams against one another as well as a mutual competitor: nature. Arash Arabasadi has the story.
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Former French actress and sex symbol Brigitte Bardot said in an interview published Thursday that she thinks most actresses protesting sexual harassment in the film industry are “hypocritical” and “ridiculous” because many play “the teases” with producers to land parts.

The star of And God Created Woman also said in the interview with weekly Paris-Match magazine that in her view, so many actresses are coming out with sexual misconduct allegations “so that we talk about them.”

Bardot, 83, is the second French film legend to distance herself from the worldwide protest movement against sexual misconduct, known as the #MeToo campaign. Last week, Catherine Deneuve signed a collective op-ed that said “insistent or clumsy hitting-on is not a crime.”

Bardot, who is known as an animal rights activist these days but inspired the term “sex kitten” as a young actress, said she never had been a victim of sexual harassment and found it “charming to be told that I was beautiful or that I had a nice little ass.”

“This kind of compliment is pleasant,” she said.

Bardot said her comments on sexual misconduct only concerned actresses, not women in general. She added that actresses campaigning against sexual harassment in the entertainment industry are “of no interest.”

“This [issue] takes the place of important topics that could be discussed” instead in the news, she argued

As for actresses who allege they have been victims of misconduct, Bardot suggested they might become the targets of a personal backlash instead of the publicity she thinks they want.

“Actually, rather than benefit them, it only harms them,” Bardot said.

In an open letter published last week in Le Monde newspaper, Deneuve and 100 or so performers, scholars and other prominent French women said men are being unfairly accused of sexual misconduct and harassment and should be free to hit on women.

The signatories argued that the “legitimate protest against sexual violence” stemming from the Harvey Weinstein scandal had gone too far and threatened hard-won sexual freedoms.

After the op-ed encountered intense criticism in the French press and on social media, Deneuve, who is known as a women’s advocate, apologized to victims of “odious” acts of sexual abuse.

Bardot has a different profile. Since ending her acting career more than four decades ago, she has dedicated herself to the cause of animal welfare. Politically, she defines herself as a right-wing conservative.

Bardot also has been convicted of multiple racial hatred offenses for comments about Islam and the Muslim community.
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Prosecutors preparing for Bill Cosby’s retrial on sexual assault charges want to call 19 other accusers to try to show a pattern of “prior bad acts” over five decades.

The comedian’s first trial ended with a hung jury in June. In that proceeding, prosecutors asked to call 13 other accusers, but the judge allowed only one to testify.

A lawyer for Cosby says she can’t comment on Thursday’s filing.

The 80-year-old comedian is charged with knocking out a Temple University employee with pills and sexually assaulting her in 2004.

Cosby has said the sexual encounter was consensual.

Pennsylvania law allows testimony about “prior bad acts” if they fit a nearly identical crime pattern. Prosecutors say that’s the case for the TV star once dubbed “America’s Dad.”
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The South Korean public has been generally supportive of North Korea participating in the upcoming Olympics as a way to foster cooperation with its nuclear-armed neighbor, but they are divided over the decision to field a joint women’s hockey team that critics say places politics over competitive fairness.

According to a recent poll, more than 80 percent of South Koreans welcome the North’s decision to send a large delegation to the upcoming 2018 Pyeongchang Olympics in the South. But 70 percent of the public opposes the formation of a combined North, South team.

“I think it is not good. It feels like it is to show some kind of political result,” said Seoul resident Lee Hae-jun.

The decision Wednesday to add North Korean players to the South’s women’s hockey team, which has already qualified for the games, is seen by many as unfair to the players, who earned their positions.

And the South Korean hockey coach, Sarah Murray, earlier voiced concern it could leave the team at a competitive disadvantage.

“Adding somebody in so close to the Olympics is a little bit dangerous, just for team chemistry, because the girls have been together so long,” Murray said.

The International Olympic Committee and the National Olympic Committees of the two Koreas must agree to combining the women’s hockey teams before such a roster change can be made.

​Olympic goal

But for South Korean President Moon Jae-in, the greater goal for this Olympics is to promote peace and eventually denuclearization with the isolated and repressive Kim Jong Un government.

“If the South and North form a united team and participate in the Olympic games, I think it will become a historic moment. Not only Koreans, but people from all over the world will be moved to see such a historic moment, and it will be a great start to resolve inter-Korean issues,” said President Moon while visiting Pyeongchang Olympics sites this week.

Though most South Koreans disagree with inserting politics into sports, some say fostering peace would be a better prize than a gold medal.

“I think they can sacrifice for a better future, and if we can live in peace with North Korea, there’s nothing better than that,” said Seoul resident Kim Joo-wook.

Since taking office in May 2017, the liberal leader in Seoul has tried to balance support for strong North Korean sanctions with increased engagement to persuade the Kim Jong Un government to enter into negotiations to end its threatening nuclear and missile programs.

​North Korea delegation

During recent inter-Korean talks, Pyongyang accepted Seoul’s invitation to join in the Olympic Games, and the two sides agreed to engage in further military talks to avoid the potential for conflict.

In addition to fielding a combined women’s hockey team, the two sides this week worked out more details regarding the more than 400-member North Korea delegation planning to visit the South for the Olympics.

These include:

North and South Korean athletes will to walk together under a special united Korea flag during the opening ceremony of the Olympics.

North Korea will send a cheering squad of around 230 members that will root for teams from both the South and the North.

North Korea will send a 30-member Taekwondo demonstration team and a large orchestra that will both perform in the Pyeongchang region and in Seoul.

North Korea will also participate in the Paralympics that immediately follow the winter games.

And skiers from both sides will train at North Korea’s Mount Kumgang mountain resort before the games.

Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.
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As South Korea prepares to host the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang in early February, some South Korean athletes are pushing back against government efforts to showcase inter-Korean unity between North and South by fielding unified teams. South Korea’s women’s ice hockey team is the first to be singled out to include North Korean players, and this proposal is meeting opposition, as Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Hong Kong actress Kara Wai says she is ecstatic over receiving this year’s Asian Film Awards’ Excellence in Asian Cinema Award. 

“This is not an acting award, it’s an achievement award, so I’m thrilled and feel as if I’m walking on clouds,” the star of Wu Xia said in a recent interview. 

With a career that spans more than 40 years and success in both television and film, the 57-year-old actress was named Best Actress for the second time at Taiwan’s Golden Horse Awards in November for the role of a manipulative matriarch in The Bold, the Corrupt and the Beautiful. 

 

Wai began her career in the 1970s in Hong Kong as a kung fu star in the Shaw Brothers films. In 1982, she received a Best Supporting Actress Award at the Hong Kong Film Awards for her role in the action movie My Young Auntie. 

 

Wai thrilled audiences and impressed critics with her performance as a desperate mother in 2009’s At the End of the Daybreak and an Alzheimer’s patient in Happiness in late 2016. Last November’s Golden Horse Award was icing on the cake. 

 

As she approaches her 58th birthday, Wai said she knows it was a mixture of luck and preparedness that got her career to where it is today. 

 

“The lifespan of an actress is short. It started happening when I was 50 and now I’m 58. This rarely happens for actresses, and it’s happening to me. I think you can say that I’ve had help from a lot of good friends,” she said. 

 

“Was there hardship? Yes, I worked very hard, and only I know what I have encountered,” she said. “So it has been bitter and sweet.” 

 

Wai is to receive the Excellence in Asian Cinema Award at the Asian Film Awards ceremony in Hong Kong on March 17.
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A growing number of actors are distancing themselves from Woody Allen and his next film, heightening questions about the future of the prolific 82-year-old filmmaker in a Hollywood newly sensitive to allegations of sexual misconduct.

Timothee Chalamet on Tuesday said he will donate his salary for an upcoming Woody Allen film to three charities fighting sexual harassment and abuse: Time’s Up, the LGBT Center in New York and RAINN. The breakout star of “Call Me By Your Name” announced on Instagram that he didn’t want to profit from his work on Allen’s “A Rainy Day in New York,” which wrapped shooting in the fall.

“I want to be worthy of standing shoulder to shoulder with the brave artists who are fighting for all people to be treated with the respect and dignity they deserve,” said Chalamet.

Chalamet is just the latest cast member of an Allen production to express regret or guilt about being professionally associated with the director. In recent weeks, Rebecca Hall (“A Rainy Day in New York,” ”Vicky Cristina Barcelona”), Mira Sorvino (“Mighty Aphrodite”), Ellen Page (“To Rome With Love”), David Krumholtz (“Wonder Wheel”) and Griffith Newman (“A Rainy Day in New York”) have all in some way distanced themselves from Allen or vowed that they wouldn’t work with him again.

The rising chorus suggests the road ahead for Allen may be particularly challenging, even for a director whose personal controversies have for decades made him an alternatively beloved and reviled figure in movies. Financial support for the filmmaker has not previously waned in part because of the eagerness many stars have for working with a cinematic legend. But fielding a starry cast may prove increasingly difficult for Allen in a movie industry in the midst of a “Me Too” reckoning.

“If I had known then what I know now, I would not have acted in the film,” Greta Gerwig, who co-starred in Allen’s 2012 comedy “To Rome With Love,” told The New York Times last week . “I have not worked for him again, and I will not work for him again. Dylan Farrow’s two different pieces made me realize that I increased another woman’s pain, and I was heartbroken by that realization.”

Dylan Farrow, Allen’s adopted daughter, has said Allen molested her in an attic in 1992 when she was seven. Allen, who has long denied the allegations, was investigated for the incident but not charged.

Farrow has previously questioned why the “Me Too” movement hasn’t ensnarled Allen. In an op-ed published last month in The Los Angeles Times , she wrote: “Why is it that Harvey Weinstein and other accused celebrities have been cast out by Hollywood, while Allen recently secured a multimillion-dollar distribution deal with Amazon, greenlit by former Amazon Studios executive Roy Price before he was suspended over sexual misconduct allegations?”

Price, the former head of Amazon Studios, resigned in October following an allegation that he had sexually harassed television producer Isa Hackett while she was working on the Amazon series “The Man in the High Castle.”

“A Rainy Day in New York” is the fourth project for Allen with Amazon, which bet heavily on the filmmaker to help establish its film production arm as a home to auteur filmmakers. It reportedly spent $80 million to lure Allen into television to make the 2016 series “Crisis in Six Scenes.”

Amazon, which didn’t respond to queries Tuesday, also distributed Allen’s “Cafe Society” in 2016 and “Wonder Wheel,” which opened December 1. It has grossed a mere $1.4 million domestically on an estimated budget of $25 million but had more success overseas, grossing $7.8 million.

“A Rainy Day in New York,” a romantic comedy due out sometime this year, also stars Selena Gomez, Jude Law, Liev Schreiber and Elle Fanning. In his statement, Chalamet tellingly noted that due to “contractual obligations” he couldn’t comment on the long-standing allegations against Allen.

The announcement by Chalamet, a favorite Oscar contender for best actor this year, followed a similar one Friday by his co-star Hall. She said she was donating her salary from the film to Time’s Up, the recently formed initiative to combat gender inequality in the entertainment industry. “It’s a small gesture and not one intended as close to compensation,” Hall wrote on Instagram.

Some have continued to publicly support Allen, though, including Alec Baldwin.

“Woody Allen was investigated forensically by two states (NY and CT) and no charges were filed,” Baldwin said Tuesday on Twitter. “The renunciation of him and his work, no doubt, has some purpose. But it’s unfair and sad to me. I worked with Woody Allen three times and it was one of the privileges of my career.”
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A Bulgarian skier has come out of retirement for another shot at Olympic gold. He competed in Sochi under the Balkan country’s flag, but at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, he’d be a one-man team. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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Curling, once a minority pastime played mostly by Scots and Canadians, will sweep onto the ice at next month’s Pyeongchang Olympics with the proud boast of being the world’s fastest-growing winter sport.

The “roaring game,” with its origins in the frozen ponds and mists of medieval Scotland, is now popping up in the sort of sunny places where ice usually comes in cubes to cool the drinks.

Qatar’s men’s curling team celebrated their first international victory last November, beating Kazakhstan on Australia’s sun-soaked Central Coast north of Sydney.

A few months earlier, Middle Eastern neighbors Saudi Arabia secured conditional membership of the World Curling Federation along with fellow-newcomers Kyrgyzstan, Afghanistan and Portugal.

Las Vegas, in Nevada’s Mojave desert, will host the men’s world championship next April.

“You’d obviously think curling is for winter sport countries, it’s not really,” said Kate Caithness, the Scottish head of World Curling and one of only two female presidents of any Olympic sports. “You can have curling anywhere in the world.

“Give us a hall and we’ll make ice. We’ve got these new facilities where we can almost roll out a mat, plug it in, add water and freeze it,” she told Reuters from her headquarters in Perth, Scotland.

In order to be included on the full program at the 1998 Nagano Olympics, curling needed to have 30 member nations. Twenty years on and there are 60, with more to come and a growth explosion predicted.

“We’ve never been in better shape, actually,” said Caithness. “Mexico and Guyana are new members, and there’s other members in South America waiting to come on board.”

At the 2010 Games in Vancouver, curling was the most watched Winter Olympic sport on television in Brazil — a country that recently challenged Canada for a place at the men’s world championships.

There are no member nations from Africa as yet, but there has been interest with South Africa most likely to be the first on board.

Looking to Beijing

Curling is big in Korea and Japan, and the main growth areas over the next four years for a sport also known as “chess on ice” are likely to be China, host of the 2022 Olympics, and the United States.

“China is a huge, huge market for us,” Caithness said. “We’ve just signed a $13.4 million contract with a sponsor [Kingdomway Sports] in China for the next four years in the runup between now and 2022.”

Curling at those Beijing Winter Games will be held in the “Water Cube” facility that hosted swimming at the 2008 summer Olympics.

Transformed into the “Ice Cube,” the plan is to have a three sheet rink in the basement so that fans can watch the competition upstairs and try their hand at the sport downstairs.

“I’m on the 2022 IOC co-ordination commission, so I do have the inside information. I’ve been there already with the IOC,” Caithness said.

“They are going to put 300 million people through winter sport [in China] between now and 2022. … I understand they are building 500 new ice rinks. I think the sport’s going to explode.”

Sleeping giant

Starting this year, a new made-for-television World Cup will start up with four city events on three continents forming the “Road to Beijing.”

In the United States, USA Curling last year signed a sponsorship deal with Pepsico’s Frito-Lay brand Cheetos that features tight end Vernon Davis of the National Football League’s Washington Redskins.

As part of the promotion, the cheese curl snack has come up with a rap video “Teach me how to Curl” featuring curling moves and dance.

Even if Cheetos said in a statement that the deal aimed to “help raise awareness for one of America’s least participated in sports,” Caithness felt things were moving in the right direction.

“I think we’re going to see things go crazy in the United States. They’ve woken up at last,” she said.

Curling, whose tournament starts a day before the opening ceremony in Pyeongchang and runs right through to the last Sunday, can also expect more television coverage than any other sport.

To win a gold medal in men’s or women’s curling takes up to 33 hours on the field of play, with nine round robin games of three hours each followed by a semi-final and final. Pyeongchang sees the debut also of mixed doubles.

“We’ll have non-stop curling every day from dawn until dusk. We have huge TV coverage and this is really going to help our sport as well,” Caithness said.

Watch related VOA video story: 
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Edwin Hawkins, the gospel star best known for the crossover hit “Oh Happy Day” and as a major force for contemporary inspirational music, died Monday at age 74.

 

Hawkins died at his home in Pleasanton, California. He had been suffering from pancreatic cancer, publicist Bill Carpenter told The Associated Press.

 

Along with Andrae Crouch, James Cleveland and a handful of others, Hawkins was credited as a founder of modern gospel music. Aretha Franklin, Sam Cooke and numerous other singers had become mainstream stars by adapting gospel sounds to pop lyrics. Hawkins stood out for enjoying commercial success while still performing music that openly celebrated religious faith.

 

An Oakland native and one of eight siblings, Hawkins was a composer, keyboardist, arranger and choir master. He had been performing with his family and in church groups since childhood and in his 20s helped form the Northern California State Youth Choir.

 

Their first album, “Let Us Go into the House of the Lord,” came out in 1968 and was intended for local audiences. But radio stations in the San Francisco Bay Area began playing one of the album’s eight tracks, “Oh Happy Day,” an 18th-century hymn arranged by Hawkins in call-and-response style.

 

“Oh Happy Day,” featuring the vocals of Dorothy Combs Morrison, was released as a single credited to the Edwin Hawkins Singers and became a million-seller in 1969, showing there was a large market for gospel songs and for inspirational music during the turbulent era of the late 1960s.

 

“I think our music was probably a blend and a crossover of everything that I was hearing during that time,” Hawkins told blackmusic.com in 2015. “We grew up hearing all kinds of music in our home. My mother, who was a devout Christian, loved the Lord and displayed that in her lifestyle.”

 

“My father was not a committed Christian at that time but was what you’d call a good man,” he said. “And, of course, we heard from him some R&B music but also a lot of country and western when we were younger kids.”

 

In 1970, the Hawkins singers backed Melanie on her top 10 hit “Lay Down (Candles in the Rain)” and won a Grammy for best soul gospel performance for “Oh Happy Day.”

 

Meanwhile, George Harrison would cite “Oh Happy Day” as inspiration for his hit “My Sweet Lord,” and Glen Campbell reached the adult contemporary charts with his own version of the Hawkins performance. Elvis Presley, Johnny Mathis and numerous others also would record it.

 

Hawkins went on to make dozens of records and won four Grammys in all, including for the songs “Every Man Wants to Be Free” and “Wonderful!” In 2007, he was voted into the Christian Music Hall of Fame. He also toured on occasion with younger brother Walter Hawkins, a Grammy winner who died in 2010.

 

Edwin Hawkins is survived by his siblings Carol, Feddie, Daniel and Lynette.
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A stop at the towering stone faces on Mount Rushmore in South Dakota marked the halfway point of Mikah Meyer’s quest to visit all 417 National Park sites.

He was impressed with the carving by Gutzon Borglum and his son — but he was awed by what nature had carved just a short drive to the east, in Badlands National Park.

The Lakota called this area mako sica, which means “bad lands,” because the terrain was hard to travel through or live in. The layers of sedimentary rock were deposited over the last 75 million years. The landscape evolved from a shallow inland sea to a lush subtropical forest and then to an open woodland with meandering rivers, all of which brought in sediment that gradually built up the land. About 500,000 years ago, the Cheyenne River began the process of cutting through the rock layers, and Mikah could see the result during a helicopter ride with Black Hills Aerial Adventures.

“We flew over just this incredible landscape that goes for miles and miles and it’s all of these kind of jagged looking peaks that are created by the erosion of really soft rock.”

The Badlands landscape also includes mixed-grass prairie and rugged spires, and the 98,000-hectare park offers some incredible hiking opportunities. But, the erosion that created this landscape is continuing, at the rapid rate of about two-and-a-half centimeters per year.

Erosion also reveals some of the creatures that once roamed the badlands. The sedimentary rocks contain one of the world’s largest and most complete assemblage of mammal fossils, from extinct camels, three-toed horses, rhinos, and antelope-like animals. But there are dozens of very much alive mammal species wandering the park today, from tiny shrews to massive bison.

One more sunset

The most incredible part of Badlands National Park, for Mikah, came at sunset.

“I don’t know if the GoPro can capture this beauty just before the sun sets for good,” he said as he panned his video camera across the shadowed landscape, “but it is incredible. This is my second sunset in Badlands National Park and I am hooked. I feel like it’s impossible to take a bad picture of this time of day. The light coming from the west and hitting these rocks with their red stripes. During the daytime, the sun beats down, then the sun starts to set and it cools down and the magic just comes out.”

If he lived in the area, he admitted, he would find it nearly impossible to not spend every sunset in the park. He says he even changed his carefully worked-out schedule “so I could come back to Badlands for one more sunset.”

Mikah invites you to follow him on his National Parks adventure by visiting him on his website MikahMeyer.com, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube.
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There are plenty of reasons why the sport of bobsleigh is sometimes referred to as Formula One on ice but few as obvious as Italy’s World Cup sleds.

Resplendent in Ferrari red, and with a set of team sponsor Pirelli’s P-Zero tires painted on the sides, they are even liveried to look like racing cars.

Ferrari, Formula One’s most glamorous and successful team, have worked with the Italian federation, whose sleds run without sponsor branding at the Olympics, since 2010 and in the run-up to next month’s Pyeongchang Winter Games.

Former rivals BMW, title sponsors of the World Cup, have long partnered the U.S. bobsleigh team while McLaren teamed up with Britain’s bob and skeleton athletes for the 2014 Sochi Games in Russia.

“There’s always the link between the Formula One companies, or any motor company, and skeleton and bobsleigh,” says Rachel Blackburn, the engineer who has been involved in Britain’s skeleton program since 2006 and who used to work for McLaren.

“There’s the Ferrari sleds and the BMW sleds, … when we were at McLaren it kind of made a good story,” she told Reuters by telephone from her home in Dubai.

That somewhat manufactured rivalry has died down in the years since Sochi, with McLaren no longer involved and Ferrari’s presence distinctly low key.

But the worlds of grand prix motor racing and sliding sports still have plenty in common.

Bobsleigh, luge and skeleton are among the fastest of Olympic sports, with bobsleds reaching speeds in excess of 150 kph (93 mph). Drivers are subjected to gut-wrenching G-forces, crashes can be fatal.

And then there is the ongoing debate about cost controls, the direction of future rules, preserving a level playing field and obsessive secrecy — all endlessly recurring themes in Formula One.

Tea-tray

Blackburn said skeleton, where riders hit 130 kph (81 mph) on what has glibly been compared to an oversized tea-tray, sits somewhere between Americas Cup yachts and Formula One cars in terms of speed and aerodynamics.

“Applied engineering is far more interesting than the pure stuff, so when its applied to something that’s fun and exciting it does make it a lot easier to solve problems,” she said.

“There is the Americas Cup, sailing, Formula One and the high speed ice sports as well. It’s the same concept. In the skeleton we’re still looking at chassis dynamics, it’s not dissimilar.”

The Briton, who lent her name to the “Project BlackRoc” that helped Amy Williams and Lizzy Yarnold win golds in 2010 and 2014, now chairs the world governing body’s Skeleton Material Committee.

James Roche, the aero expert and other half of “BlackRoc” who also went to McLaren after the 2010 Games, married Yarnold last year and has turned his talents to Americas Cup yachting with Ben Ainslie Racing.

Together Blackburn and Roche helped design the “super sled,” also known as “Mervyn,” that may help Yarnold become the first British athlete to defend a Winter Olympics title.

Yarnold spoke before the season started about the thrill of being presented with new developments for the Games, and the accompanying buzz of secrecy.

Blackburn, who now has her own consultancy, compared that to a Formula One team testing pre-season while keeping the latest front wing developments firmly under wraps until the opening race.

“Athletes come and go and you don’t want your work getting spread around the world before you’ve made it work. so there is quite a bit of secrecy,” she said. “With some of the things … they will just be brought out at the very last minute. They’ll be things we’ve worked on but not rolled out until the Games because we don’t want Germany, Canada, America copying something.”

Painful process

Although the sled’s structural innards are seen only by the competing nation and competition inspectors, Blackburn said there were few real secrets from past Games as coaches and athletes moved around.

Most of the loopholes have also been closed and Blackburn, an advocate for change, said it remained “an incredibly painful process” to bring the rules into a more modern era and encourage innovation.

A skeleton sled has a carbon fiber pan on the outside but the chassis is made from steel, a material that is both heavy and expensive as well as distinctly low-tech compared to other options.

“There’s lots of different materials now that could be used that are much easier and cheaper to manufacture,” said Blackburn. “With the onset of 3-D printing, if somebody wanted to get something custom made they could probably do that now but not with steel. The fact that we still limit things to steel makes it quite a lot trickier for small nations now to get things made, especially to the precision that skeleton sleds require given the speeds and the temperatures they are going through.”

 
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Comedian Aziz Ansari has responded to allegations of sexual misconduct by a woman he dated last year.

Ansari said in a statement Sunday that he apologized last year when she told him about her discomfort during a sexual encounter in his apartment he said he believed to be consensual.

The woman, identified as a 23-year-old photographer in an interview with Babe.net, says she was furious when she saw Ansari was wearing a “Time’s Up” pin while accepting a Golden Globe on Jan. 7.

She said it brought back memories of him assaulting her after a date in his apartment.

The next day, the woman texted Ansari letting him know that she was upset with his behavior that night.

Ansari says he was surprised and apologized.
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Following an outcry over a significant disparity in pay between co-stars, Mark Wahlberg agreed Saturday to donate the $1.5 million he earned for reshoots for All the Money in the World to the sexual misconduct defense initiative Time’s Up.

Wahlberg said he’ll donate the money in the name of his co-star, Michelle Williams, who reportedly made less than $1,000 on the reshoots.

“I 100% support the fight for fair pay,” Wahlberg said in a statement.

Williams issued a statement Saturday, saying: “Today isn’t about me. My fellow actresses stood by me and stood up for me, my activist friends taught me to use my voice, and the most powerful men in charge, they listened and they acted.”

She noted that “it takes equal effort and sacrifice” to make a film.

“Today is one of the most indelible days of my life because of Mark Wahlberg, WME (William Morris Endeavor) and a community of women and men who share in this accomplishment.”

The announcement Saturday came after directors and stars, including Jessica Chastain and Judd Apatow, shared their shock at reports of the huge pay disparity for the Ridley Scott film. The 10 days of reshoots were necessary after Kevin Spacey was replaced by Christopher Plummer when accusations of sexual misconduct surfaced against Spacey. USA Today reported Williams was paid less than $1,000 for the 10 days.

Both Williams and Plummer were nominated for Golden Globes for their performances.

Talent agency William Morris Endeavor, which represents both Williams and Wahlberg, said it will donate an additional $500,000 to Time’s Up. The agency said in a statement that wage disparity conversations should continue and “we are committed to being part of the solution.”
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Saudi women were allowed into a sports stadium for the first time Friday to watch a soccer match between two local teams, though they were segregated in the stands from the male-only crowd with designated seating in the so-called “family section.”

The move was the first of Saudi Arabia’s social reforms planned for this year to ease restrictions on women, spearheaded by the kingdom’s 32-year-old crown prince. The kingdom has also announced that starting in June, women will be allowed to drive, lifting the world’s only ban on female drivers.

Integrate women into society

More than just an incremental step toward greater rights, the presence of women in the sports stadium underscored a wider effort to integrate women into society and grant them more public visibility in a country where gender segregation is widely enforced and where most women cover their faces and hair with black veils and don loose-flowing black robes, known as abayas.

The first stadium to open its doors to women was in the Red Sea city of Jiddah. The stadium in the capital, Riyadh, will open to women on Saturday, followed by the western city of Dammam on Thursday.

At the Jiddah stadium Friday, young Saudi women wearing bright orange vests over their abayas were deployed to help with the female crowds. “Welcome to Saudi families,” read a sign in Arabic erected across the section of the stadium reserved for women.

“It’s very festive and very well organized. A lot of people are just really happy to be here. I think there’s a lot of excitement when you walked in, especially among the children,” said Sarah Swick of the match between Saudi soccer teams Al-Ahli and Al-Batin.

​Family sections

To prepare for the change, the kingdom designated so-called “family sections” in the stands for women, separated by barriers from the male-only crowds. The stadiums were also fitted with female prayer areas and restrooms, as well as separate entrances and parking lots for female spectators. Local media said women would also have their own designated smoking areas.

“Family sections” are ubiquitous across the kingdom, allowing married couples, direct relatives and sometimes groups of friends to sit together, isolated from male-only tables at restaurants and in waiting areas at banks and hospitals. The sections also include women out on their own or in groups with other women.

Although only 20 riyals ($5.33) a ticket, the family section for Friday’s match was still less than half full.

“A lot of people wanted to wait and see how it is. Some thought it wouldn’t be very safe or organized,” said Swick, who attended the game with her Saudi husband and son, and her American mother.

Swick, who grew up in Maryland and has been living in Saudi Arabia for the past nine years, has attended football games in the U.S. and soccer matches in France, but said she was impressed with how organized Friday night’s match was.

“I definitely think we will come back,” she said.

​Some opposed

An Arabic hashtag on Twitter about women entering stadiums garnered tens of thousands of tweets on Friday, with some using the hashtag to share photos of female spectators wearing their team’s colors in scarves thrown over their black abayas.

While many welcomed the decision to allow women into stadiums, others spoke out against it.

Some used the hashtag to write that women’s place should be in the home, focusing on their children and preserving their faith, and not at a stadium where male crowds frequently curse and chant raucously.

Change and jobs

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is seen as the driving force behind the loosened restrictions on women. Still in place, however, are guardianship laws that prevent women from traveling abroad, obtaining a passport or marrying without a male relative’s consent.

Set to inherit a country where more than half the population is younger than 25 and hungry for change, the young crown prince has looked to boost his popularity by curbing nearly four decades of deeply entrenched ultraconservative influence. His reforms, which include allowing movie theaters to open in March after a more than 35-year ban, are also aimed at creating more jobs and increasing local spending on entertainment as the country faces several more years of budget deficit amid continued lower oil prices.

The country’s large, new stadiums were built with hundreds of millions of dollars when oil prices were nearly double what they are now. The government spent lavishly on them in an effort to appease young Saudis and provide spaces for fans eager to cheer on local clubs, as well as hold national parades and ceremonies.

In a one-off, the stadium in Riyadh allowed families to enter and watch National Day festivities in September, marking the first time women had set foot inside.

Earlier failures, successes

In 2015, a Saudi woman who tried to attend a soccer game in Jiddah was arrested after local media said she was spotted by security officers “deliberately disguised” in pants, a long-sleeve top, a hat and sunglasses to avoid detection.

Over the years, though, there have been some exceptions for foreign women.

In 2015, an Australian female supporter of Western Sydney Wanderers soccer club was permitted to attend a match at Riyadh’s main stadium and a group of American women traveling with a U.S. Congress delegation also watched a local club match there.
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Doreen Tracey, a former child star who played one of the original cute-as-a-button Mouseketeers on The Mickey Mouse Club in the 1950s, has died, according to Disney publicist Howard Green. She was 74.

Tracey died of pneumonia Wednesday at a hospital in Thousand Oaks, Calif., following a two-year battle with cancer.

Tracey maintained ties to Disney and show business throughout her life, appearing in the film Westward Ho the Wagons! and touring with the Mouseketeers. She later served as a publicist to musician Frank Zappa and worked at Warner Bros.

It was the pig-tailed Tracey and her talented co-stars — including Annette Funicello — who appeared on television in black hats with ears following the anthem “M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E …” on ABC’s The Mickey Mouse Club.

Millions of kids raced home from school to watch in wonder as the bouncy Mouseketeers announced themselves at the top of the show.

The Mickey Mouse Club was the brainchild of Walt Disney during the flowering of his company’s fortunes in the mid-1950s. To help finance the Disneyland park, he agreed to supply ABC with TV shows. One was designed for children in the pre-dinner hour.

The hourlong show proved a sensation with its Oct. 3, 1955, debut. It flourished for two seasons, then was reduced to a half-hour for two more. Tracey stayed for its four-year run.

The black-and-white series was syndicated in 1962-65. The 1990s version of The Mickey Mouse Club launched the careers of singers Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, and actors Keri Russell and Ryan Gosling.

Born in London on April 3, 1943, to parents who worked in vaudeville, Tracey arrived in the United States when she was 4 and learned to sing and dance. She nabbed a spot on The Mickey Mouse Club when she was 12.

Lorraine Santoli, a former executive at Disney who wrote The Official Mickey Mouse Club Book, said Tracey remained close to her Disney roots, maintaining longtime friendships with her fellow Mouseketeers.

Tracey strained her relationship with Disney by posing for a men’s magazine in 1976 with nothing on except her mouse ears and later wearing nothing but an open trench coat in front of Disney Studios. Still, she often appeared at Mickey Mouse Club reunion shows at Disneyland and at Disney conventions, last celebrating the show’s 60th anniversary in 2015.

Tracey is survived by her son, Bradley, and two grandchildren, Gavin, 9, and Autumn, 12.
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President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer brokered a $130,000 payment to a porn star to prevent her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Trump, according to a report Friday in The Wall Street Journal.

Trump met Stephanie Clifford, whose goes by the name Stormy Daniels in films, at a golf event in 2006 — a year after Trump’s marriage to his wife, Melania.

According to the Journal’s report, Clifford began talking with ABC News in the fall of 2016 for a story involving an alleged relationship with Trump, but reached a $130,000 deal a month before the election, which prevented her from going public.

Trump’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen arranged for the payment through Clifford’s lawyer, Keith Davidson, the Journal reported.

In a statement to the Journal, Cohen did not address his role in negotiating the supposed payment but said Trump denies any such relationship with Clifford. Clifford has previously denied an alleged relationship with Trump.

On Friday afternoon, the White House issued a statement calling the Journal’s story “old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election.”

Cohen also accused the Journal of perpetuating “a false narrative for over a year.”

Just days before the 2016 election, the Journal published a story stating that the National Enquirer — run by David Pecker, a fervid supporter of Trump — had paid $150,000 to silence former Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal about a sexual relationship she allegedly had with Trump a decade ago. 
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A paraplegic rock climber in Hong Kong is China’s first-ever nominee for the world’s greatest moment in sports. The wheelchair user hopes to inspire his countrymen and others living with disabilities to overcome the challenges that stand between them and their dreams. Arash Arabasadi reports.
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