Author: Ohart

Jordan Spieth won golf’s British Open on Sunday, outdueling fellow American Matt Kuchar over the final holes to capture his third major championship.

Spieth, just shy of turning 24 in the coming week, won the tournament at the Royal Birkdale course in Lancashire, England by three shots over the 39-year-old Kuchar, long a fixture on the world golf scene.  

Spieth, who won the Master’s and U.S. Open championships in 2015, led the British tournament by three shots over Kuchar after the third round and both carded final round scores of 69, one under par.

But through 13 holes Sunday, Kuchar had pulled a shot ahead of Spieth before he regained control with three birdies and an eagle on the 14th to 17th holes to win the Claret Jug, the tournament’s signature trophy.

Three different golfers have now won the first three major tournaments this year, with Spain’s Sergio Garcia winning the Master’s in April and American Brooks Koepka the U.S. Open in June. The last of the sport’s four annual major championships, the Professional Golfers’ Association tournament, will be contested next month.

 
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The U.S., Canada and Mexico have joined forces for a bid to host the 2026 Football World Cup. If they get the nod, the three nations would be the first joint hosts of football’s (soccer’s) most prestigious international tournament. The bid comes as the sport continues to gain in popularity with American kids, both boys and girls — especially as the U.S. Women’s Team has won several World Cup Titles . Behzod Muhammadiy has this report from a Virginia children’s tournament.
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You may have heard of the downward dog pose in yoga, or the cobra or the cow. Now, get ready for the goat, it’s goat yoga. Faith Lapidus explains.
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Chris Froome stands on the doorstep of the Tour de France’s greatest champions.

Sewing up his fourth Tour crown with a cool-as-a-cucumber ride in a high-pressure time trial in heat-baked Marseille on Saturday means he needs just one victory more to join the record-holders who have five.

His winning margin in this Tour, 54 seconds over Rigoberto Uran of Colombia going into Sunday’s processional final stage, is narrower than Froome’s previous wins in 2013, 2015 and 2016. It is the first he has won by less than one minute.

Over the three weeks, Froome executed fewer of his trademark devastating accelerations in the high mountains. He ran out of gas and temporarily lost the race lead on a super-steep climb in the Pyrenees. He didn’t win any of the 20 stages before Sunday’s Stage 21, which is traditionally a peaceful ride into Paris with only the sprinters dashing for the line at the end, for the bragging right of winning the stage on the Champs-Elysees.

But Froome at 90 or 95 percent of his previous best still proved plenty.

Certainly good enough to be able to start dreaming of win No. 5 — and of joining the exalted company of Jacques Anquetil, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and Miguel Indurain. They have been the joint leaders since Lance Armstrong’s string of seven doping-assisted victories was expunged from the history of the 114-year-old race.

“It’s a huge honor just to be mentioned in the same sentence as the greats,” Froome said, adding that he had newfound appreciation for the five-time winners. “It certainly isn’t getting easier each year.”

Crowd backed Bardet

Yet he made the deciding time trial look easy enough. To boos and whistles from the partisan crowd backing Romain Bardet, the French rider who was only 23 seconds behind him in the overall standings, Froome set off last from the Stade Velodrome football stadium. Bardet had set off two minutes ahead of him.

Froome rode so strongly that by the end, he had Bardet in his sights. The French rider wilted on the twisting, tricky course with long, wind-affected straightaways by the sea and a short sharp uphill to Notre-Dame de la Garde cathedral, the dominant landmark in France’s second-largest city.

The suspense was quickly over. By the first time check, after just 10 kilometers (six miles) of riding, Froome was already 43 seconds quicker than Bardet. The only question became whether Bardet would even be able to save a place for himself on the podium. He did, by the narrowest of margins. Just one second was all that separated his third place from Mikel Landa of Spain, Froome’s teammate in fourth.

“It’s just an amazing feeling,” Froome said. “It was so close coming into this TT. This was my closest Tour de France, the most hard-fought between the riders. … I didn’t think it would come down to this TT in Marseille. There was a bit of pressure but, for me, it’s always a good thing having pressure.”

Uran was far quicker than Bardet over the 22.5-kilometer (14-mile) stage, despite overshooting a left-hand bend before the stadium finish and ricocheting off barriers. He vaulted over Bardet in the overall standings, into the runner-up spot. And with that, the 104th Tour had its podium. All that’s left for the 167 survivors — from 198 who started on July 1 — is to cross the line in Paris.

No risks

“Today I did not take risks, I took all the bends carefully. You can lose everything on a day like this,” Froome said.

Bardet endured his first bad day of the three grueling weeks. He said he woke up feeling poorly on Saturday, “and I paid for it, in cash.”

Twice a runner-up at the Giro d’Italia, Uran added another second-place finish at a Grand Tour to his resume.

The time trial was won by Polish rider Maciej Bodnar, who covered the distance at an average speed of nearly 48 kph (30 mph) on the special aerodynamic bikes the riders used for the discipline. Froome has long excelled in it, winning Olympic bronzes in 2012 and 2016.

“I still can’t believe it,” Bodnar said. “Last year was close and this year was even closer, and now I finally get one. It’s amazing.”

Froome’s teammate, Michal Kwiatkowski, placed second, one second slower than Bodnar. Froome was third, just six seconds off what could have been a stage win to adorn his Tour crown.

But Froome wasn’t even slightly bothered about that.

 

He’d known from the start in Germany that this Tour would be unusual and likely open, because it had few mountain-top finishes, not huge amounts of time-trial kilometers, and many tricky days over all five of France’s mountain ranges. Unlike at previous Tours won with knockout blows in the high peaks, this victory had to be pieced together bit-by-bit like a jigsaw puzzle.

 

“Just chipping away on every stage,” he said. “It was always the tactic to ride a three-week race and basically not to go out there on one day with the aim of trying to blow the race apart and smash it.”
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Actor John Heard, whose many roles included the father in the Home Alone series and a corrupt detective in The Sopranos, has died. He was 71.

His death was confirmed Saturday by the Santa Clara Medical Examiner’s office in California. TMZ reported that Heard, who lived in southern California, was found at a Palo Alto, California, hotel where he was recovering from back surgery.

Heard played Peter McCallister, the father of Kevin, played by Macaulay Culkin, in Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York. He said in later interviews that he sought a movie with kids in it so his son, age 5 at the time, could come to the set and have someone to play with.

After it became a big hit, he was reluctant to revisit the role but his agent convinced him the money was too good to pass up.

“I didn’t want to be the Home Alone dad for the rest of my life,” he told Yahoo News in 2013.

He was born March 7, 1946, in Washington, D.C., and grew up performing in local theater. One of his memorable early roles was as a disabled Vietnam War veteran in the 1981 film Cutter’s Way.

He was active in film for the next decade, playing Tom Hanks’ rival in Big, actress Geraldine Page’s son in The Trip to Bountiful and in the movies The Pelican Brief, Beaches, Gladiator, Rambling Rose and After Hours.

He earned an Emmy nomination for playing Vin Makazian in The Sopranos. Television also kept him busy. He acted in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, Elementary, Prison Break, Modern Family and Entourage. One of his favorite jobs came in the original Sharknado television movie in 2013.

“I knew it was going to be a cult classic,” he told the Baltimore Media Blog last year. “It’s just ridiculous. I thought it would replace people calling me the `Home Alone’ dad.”

Fellow actor Michael McKean paid tribute on Twitter Saturday: “RIP John Heard. Never not good.”

Heard was married and divorced three times, including briefly to actress Margot Kidder. He had three children.
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With so many dining choices in New York City, keeping up with the trendiest restaurants can seem next to impossible even for a dedicated gourmand.  

But lately, it’s not any one restaurant that commands foodies’ attention, rather, the physical space where many eateries live.

Food halls, communal dining spaces featuring a variety of food vendors under one roof, are quickly becoming a popular option for eating out in New York City.

Food hall projects in the U.S. experienced a 37.1 percent growth during the first nine months of 2016, according to real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield. Celebrity chef Todd English kick-started the trend in New York, opening Todd English’s Food Hall at the Plaza Hotel in 2010. Mario Batali and Lidia Bastianich’s Italian-focused Eataly followed soon after.

Just in the last 6 months, four new food halls have opened in New York.

“Food is kind of the new rock and roll, it’s the thing that the public is just so excited about,” said Jonathan Butler, co-founder of the popular Smorgasburg outdoor food market in Brooklyn and the Berg’n food hall which opened in 2014.

Butler was on hand to discuss the pros and cons of operating a food hall at the recent “Cities for Tomorrow” conference hosted by The New York Times.

Social media undoubtedly fuels that dining-out excitement – photogenic foods like blooming rose ice cream have become international trends.

“My kids are 12 and 14, and they’re big foodies. All their friends are foodies. They’re all following all this stuff on Instagram. It’s just something the whole family can do that’s fun. Everyone has to eat, right?” Butler said.

Alternative business model

In major cities like New York, where high rents and operating costs have made it difficult for aspiring restaurateurs to establish themselves, food halls also offer start-up food vendors an alternative business model.

Vendors at Berg’n have typically gotten their start selling at outdoor stands, via food trucks or by operating solely as caterers. Food halls are a way for these less established vendors to test a brick-and-mortar location without fully committing to all the headaches that come with being a restaurant owner.

“One of the great trends we’ve seen is this hyper-local push – it’s less of the operators who have four or five locations,” said Carolyn Vahey, an associate at Hospitality House, a restaurant consulting firm. “They’re really pulling in a lot of operators who might have not had the opportunity to get into the space,” said Vahey.

Danie Garcia is general manager at Landhaus, a local “farm to sandwich” vendor popular for its bacon-on-a-stick. Besides food festivals and outdoor markets, Landhaus’ only retail location is inside Berg’n food hall.

“This gives us a little bit of flexibility because it’s less maintenance than having an entire restaurant, it’s a little bit easier to manage,” Garcia said

Berg’n other vendors include local favorites, Lumpia Shack, which specializes in Filipino-inspired spring rolls, and Mighty Quinn’s Barbeque. For small local vendors like these, food halls can also be marketing tool. “It’s a really great way for them to develop a brand identity in the market and align themselves with like-minded food and beverage operators,” Vahey said

Property developers are also taking note, some bringing food halls right to city dwellers’ front doors. Gotham West Market and Gotham Market at the Ashland are food halls located on the ground floor of residential high rises.

With the growing number of locations, will diners ever tire of the food hall concept? Vahey doesn’t think so.

“We feel as though the shift in dining is going to really switch over to this side and what you’ll see is a more diverse portfolio of types of food halls,” she said.

In a city with countless dining options, food halls appear to be a welcome addition to the menu for the New York City foodie.
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Food halls, communal dining spaces featuring a variety of food vendors under one roof, are becoming a popular option for dining out in New York City. In a city where high rents and operating costs have made it difficult for aspiring restaurateurs to establish themselves, food halls offer an alternative path to profit. Foodies, culinary upstarts and investors are flocking to get a seat at the table. VOA reporter Tina Trinh explores.
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You may have seen her in magazines, modeling the latest fashions, whether they be for men or women. Rain Dove is becoming a fashion icon, and along the way, altering perceptions of masculinity and femininity. VOA’s Maxim Moskalkov profiles this gender-bending model.
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Nigeria’s top female golfer, Uloma Mbuko, has won more than 200 trophies in her 17-year career as an international player. Now, she’s passing on her crown, training the next crop of young golfers in Nigeria. VOA’s Chika Oduah reports.
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A team of forensics experts Thursday opened the tomb of famed Spanish surrealist Salvador Dali to take DNA samples to settle a paternity suit.

In a spectacle that most likely would have pleased the eccentric Dali, a crowd stood outside the Dali Theater-Museum in Figueras, Spain, to watch the experts file in.

Officials in Spain say that hair, nails and two long bones have been removed from Dali’s embalmed remains to find genetic samples for a paternity test.

The sample will be sent to Madrid, where it will be analyzed for a match with the DNA in a saliva sample provided by Maria Pilar Abel, 61.

Abel alleges her mother and Dali had an affair in the fishing village where he lived and that it was no secret among the villagers.

The Dali estate is worth about $460 million. But Abel has said she’s not interested in money and only wants to be recognized as Dali’s daughter.

Dali is the world’s most renowned surrealist painter. His picture of melting watches, The Persistence of Memory, is an icon of surrealism.

Dali was was also known for his long, pencil-thin mustache that curled on each end. He delighted in painting mustaches on the upper lips of those he met.
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From the dragons of Westeros and the “Walking Dead” zombies to the deadly humanoid robots of “Westworld,” the golden age of television is dominating the limelight at San Diego’s annual Comic-Con.

Kicking off on Thursday, this year’s four-day Comic-Con gathering of nerd and pop culture fans will see fewer films being marketed by movie studios, which are instead focusing more narrowly on projects that tie directly into the interests of the convention’s fandom.

Meanwhile, numerous hit sci-fi television shows have garnered avid viewers and Emmy nominations, and can drum up buzz for upcoming seasons with an already engaged fan base.

Drawing more than 100,000 attendees, Comic-Con has become an increasingly important tool for Hollywood to generate interest in upcoming projects. Yet this year, only three major Hollywood film studios – Fox, Warner Bros and Disney – and newcomer Netflix will hold panels for upcoming movies, a vast difference from five years ago when movies dominated the buzz from the convention.

Warner Bros. will bring its sci-fi sequel “Blade Runner 2049,” virtual reality thriller “Ready Player One” and its DC movie franchise of superheroes, while Disney will bring its Marvel superhero franchise.

“Studios are eyeing more quality than quantity at Comic-Con,” Entertainment Weekly’s senior writer Darren Franich told Reuters.

“There are less films debuting now, but there’s high stakes for the ones that are, as studios are thinking ‘if we do well here then that can create buzz over a year,'” he added.

On Thursday, Fox hosted a panel on upcoming British spy comedy sequel “Kingsman: The Golden Circle,” with Colin Firth and Halle Berry.

“You really feel like [Comic-Con] is owned by fans,” Firth told Reuters Television. “I don’t think I’ve been in an environment where it’s more about the passion for the material.”

The fandom of Comic-Con attendees is what drove organizers in 2012 to give medieval fantasy “Game of Thrones,” zombie drama “The Walking Dead” and nerd comedy “The Big Bang Theory” a coveted spot at Comic-Con’s prestigious Hall H. The 6,500-capacity hall is usually reserved for movie studios bringing in A-list talent, and fans often sleep outside overnight to gain access.

Hall H is where Netflix’s 1980s-set supernatural mystery series “Stranger Things” will make its Comic-Con debut on Saturday, almost a year after it became a breakout hit “largely thanks to the passion of the fan base,” producer Shawn Levy told Reuters.

“Comic-Con is such a hub of fans and passionate fanhood, so it feels like an organic match to the ‘Stranger Things’ franchise,” he said.

But celebrity panels alone aren’t enough for engaging fans.

This year, Warner Bros has a virtual reality experience of its upcoming “Blade Runner 2049” sequel, HBO has installations of the futuristic theme park of “Westworld” and “Stranger Things” fans can experience the dark, evil “Upside Down” world from the show.

“It’s no small thing to get yourself to Comic-Con and spend money and time in a high-intensity environment, and we want to reward that interest level and commitment with something special,” Levy said.
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Rio de Janeiro’s port area may be one of the city’s most inviting spots since being renovated for the Olympic Games last year. But while the area is home to attractions that include two museums and an aquarium, its rich history remains unknown to most locals and tourists.

 

A new app seeks to educate visitors about the area’s role in Brazilian history, from colonization and the arrival of slave ships to recent cases of corruption.

 

Launched in late June by the nonprofit investigative journalism agency Agencia Publica, the app called “Museum of Yesterday” offers tours of the port in Portuguese and English.

 

But there’s a catch. Inspired by Pokemon Go, the app detects users’ geo-location and only reveals the stories once users arrive at the location where the story took place.

 

With over 160 points of interest, the app offers five options. The terror tour explores slavery, colonization and the country’s military dictatorship, along with other incidents like the 1993 Candelaria massacre in which eight people — many of them teenagers — were killed while sleeping on the steps of the Candelaria church. The corruption tour investigates bribery from the time of King John VI of Portugal to recent kickback schemes. The samba tour explores the roots of Rio’s traditional Carnival music. Finally, the tour of ghosts explores important historical figures that are sometimes forgotten.

“Rio’s port carries a lot of the history of Brazil,” said Gabriele Roza, a journalist at Agencia Publica who contributed to the stories in the app. “What we realized was that these stories are not present here.”

 

Indeed during the Rio Olympic Games, local authorities emphatically promoted the port’s new attractions such as the futuristic looking Museum of Tomorrow designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava that cost $55 million, and a new boulevard decorated by internationally acclaimed street artists.

 

But the city neglects other historical attractions located a few blocks away such as the Valongo Wharf, an archaeological site where hundreds of thousands of slaves debarked after their harrowing journey across the Atlantic.

Francesca Declich, an Italian anthropologist visiting the Valongo Wharf on July 9, the day it was named a UNESCO World Heritage site, complained that the wharf was hard to find and that there was only basic information available on a three-paragraph-long plaque next to the pit.

 

The port is also connected to the present-day Car Wash corruption investigation. For example, Eduardo Cunha, who led Brazil’s impeachment effort against former President Dilma Rousseff, is now being investigated over allegations that he received $16 million in kickbacks related to the port renovation, which cost the city of Rio over $4 billion.

 

Rio’s former mayor Eduardo Paes is also being investigated for taking bribes in the port renovation. Despite the scandal, the revitalized area is considered one of the few positive legacies from the Rio Olympics.

 

The app, which has been downloaded over 2,000 times so far, tells these and other stories through text but also through illustrations, photographs, audio, videos and a map from the 1830s when most of today’s port was still ocean.

“As you start walking along the port area you can actually capture the stories from Rio’s past and put them in a vault,” explained Mariana Simoes, another journalist from Agencia Publica who was part of the team that developed the app.

 

“You are actually being encouraged to walk and discover the area, discover these elements of our past as you walk through them.”
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The lead singer of rock group Linkin Park, Chester Bennington, was found dead in his California home Thursday. He was 41.

According to news reports, Bennington committed suicide by hanging himself in his home. The Los Angeles County Coroner’s office is investigating.

Bandmate Mike Shinoda confirmed the news via Twitter, saying, “Shocked and heartbroken, but it’s true.” He promised an official statement from the band “as soon as we have one.”

Successful records, MTV darling

​Linkin Park’s blend of rap, electronica and heavy metal had wide appeal; nearly all of the band’s records took the top spot on the charts when released. Its style, dubbed “nu-metal,” made it an MTV darling in the early 2000s.

Linkin Park released its debut album, Hybrid Theory, in 2000, and sold 10 million records. The band went on to produce a string of successful records, including this year’s One More Light, released in May.

The band had a show scheduled next week in New York with the group Blink 182.

While playing an essential part in Linkin Park’s sound, Bennington also participated in side projects Dead by Sunrise and Kings of Chaos, groups of high-profile musicians working together on short-term projects. Bennington also served as the lead singer for Stone Temple Pilots from 2013 to 2015 after the departure of vocalist Scott Weiland. In interviews, Bennington said performing with Stone Temple Pilots was the realization of a lifelong dream.

Difficult childhood

Born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1976, Bennington had a difficult childhood. He was the son of a police officer, and he spoke openly about being the victim of physical and sexual abuse by an older friend. He also suffered bullying in his teen years. He said in interviews that he channeled frustration in his early years into poetry, art and songwriting.

In his teens, he took up drugs and alcohol, developing the addictions that haunted him for much of his life, despite periods of sobriety. He also took up music, but found little success until the late 1990s when he won a spot in the band that would become Linkin Park.

The pains of Bennington’s childhood and young adulthood played into the band’s music, connecting with fans with songs of anger, disappointment, frustration and pain. Their videos were dramatic as well, featuring elaborate sets and scenes of deep emotion, even the one released Thursday morning, Talking to Myself, a song about disconnection and sorrow.

In 2002, Bennington told Rolling Stone magazine, “There’s something inside me that pulls me down.”

Creativity, addiction

While Bennington used creativity to cope with his feelings, he also used drugs and alcohol off and on, he said, starting in his teenage years. He spoke openly about his struggles, telling reporters about his bandmates staging an intervention for him in the early years of Linkin Park’s success. Later, he performed in concerts to benefit anti-addiction causes.

The band’s One More Light, was released just days before the death of Bennington’s close friend Chris Cornell, singer for the band Soundgarden who died of apparent suicide in a Detroit hotel room May 18.

Bennington sang Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah at Cornell’s funeral in May. His death fell on what would have been Cornell’s 53rd birthday.

Bennington was married twice and had six children.
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The Confederation of African Football’s executive committee has approved expanding the African Cup of Nations from 16 to 24 teams and moving the continent’s top tournament from the beginning of the year to June-July.

CAF says the changes should come into effect for the next tournament in 2019 in Cameroon.

Other radical proposals for the African Cup — that it be hosted outside of Africa and invite non-African teams to play — were ditched by the executive committee. CAF says the African Cup will be “exclusively held on African soil with African national teams.”

CAF president Ahmad Ahmad says the approved changes will now be put to CAF’s general assembly in Rabat, Morocco, on Friday to be endorsed by African soccer’s member countries.

Moving the tournament from its January-February slot to the European summer months of June and July has long been seen as necessary to ensure the continent’s top players play at the Cup of Nations.

The move will avoid it taking place at the height of the European league season, a clash which has often undermined the Cup of Nations by making African players choose between staying with their European clubs or representing their country.
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“Emeralds,” “Rubies” and “Diamonds” will dazzle as never before as three of the world’s top dance companies share the stage for the first time to mark the 50th anniversary of “Jewels,” the world’s first full-length plotless ballet, this week.

The work by legendary choreographer George Balanchine, in three acts honoring the French, American and Russian styles that shaped his career, has joined the repertoire of many companies worldwide since it was created in 1967.

Now, on the stage where it premiered, at New York’s Lincoln Center, the Paris Opera Ballet will dance “Emeralds,” which recalls French Romanticism, to music by Gabriel Fauré. The New York City Ballet and the Bolshoi Ballet will alternate in “Rubies,” with its jazzy Igor Stravinsky score, and “Diamonds,” which reflects Imperial Russia with music by Tchaikovsky.

Unlike traditional full-length ballets that preceded it, “Jewels” has no narrative.

Each company is costumed by its own designer, including French couturier Christian Lacroix, to evoke the jewelry of Claude Arpels which inspired Balanchine, widely regarded as 20th century’s greatest ballet choreographer.

“I am so thrilled the Bolshoi is returning, I can hardly breathe!” enthused Andrea Becker, a self-professed “ballet nut” who bought tickets to all five performances. “It’s my chance to see the Russian and French dancers that I don’t normally get to see.”

Some balletomanes paid $1,000 to become an event sponsor in order to buy tickets before sales opened to the public in March, said one Lincoln Center box office agent.

The event is the brainchild of Nigel Redden, director of the Lincoln Center Festival.

“It’s inherent in the idea of the ballet” to feature the three companies, he said, since Balanchine trained in Russia, choreographed and danced in France and founded the New York City Ballet in 1948.

“What is amazing with dance is you don’t need to speak the language of the country,” said Aurelie Dupont, director of the Paris Opera Ballet. “You will see the language of the different national schools.”

Peter Martins, who became ballet master of New York City Ballet after Balanchine died in 1983, first danced in “Jewels” as a guest artist in 1968.

“He would have been very happy how dancers improved, pay more attention to details,” Martins said. “In my generation we were a little careless perhaps. But since his departure, we fuss, we take care of it.”

For dancers, the collaboration is a chance to compare notes.

“I’m excited to see Paris Opera dancers and the Russians, and how they interpret it because I’ve seen our company do it many, many times,” said Teresa Reichlen, a New York City Ballet principal. “So I think it’ll be a nice fresh reading or interpretation that I haven’t seen before.”

While there are no plans for a repeat, newly appointed Bolshoi Ballet head Makhar Vaziev said he would love to bring it to Russia.

“The biggest event here is Balanchine himself, because I can’t imagine who else could have united together these three famous, renowned companies,” he said.

“This is a relatively young ballet – 50 years is nothing,” Martins said. “The fact that it lasted this long, and that so many companies around the world are dancing this ballet is a testament to its greatness.”

The performances will run from Thursday to Sunday.
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The stranglehold that autumn prestige films have on Oscar season just might be wilting in the summer sun.

Christopher Nolan’s World War II epic Dunkirk hits theaters Friday, but the overflowing reviews have made it abundantly clear: It’s a major Oscar contender and a best-picture front-runner, even in July.

And Dunkirk, which analysts expect to debut this weekend with $60 million-plus in domestic ticket sales, might not be the only box-office hit to crash this year’s awards season. The zeitgeist-grabbing sensations Get Out and Wonder Woman could also be players come Academy Awards time.

Handicapping the Oscars

It is, of course, exceptionally early to handicap the Oscars. And it’s far from uncommon for early breakouts to recede once the fall film festivals start firing out heavily anticipated releases from Hollywood’s most acclaimed directors. Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson and Alexander Payne are just some of those waiting in the wings this year.

But any influx from the rest of the calendar year would be a welcome change of pace for an awards season that has in recent years only further solidified as a predominantly September-December affair. Last year, August’s Hell or High Water was the earliest best-picture nominee. 

Aside from spreading out what are potentially some of the year’s best movies, any awards love for the likes of Dunkirk, Get Out or Wonder Woman would give the Oscars something it has often lacked in recent years: major release crowd-pleasers. 

“It’s not really a factor for us, the awards thing,” says Emma Thomas, producer of Dunkirk. “This film we primarily thought of as an entertainment. For us, we make films for audiences. My feeling is always: If your film works and people engage with it, anything that comes later is a huge bonus.”

Summer movie spectacle

Dunkirk may bear the look and seriousness of an Oscar season film, right down to the wool coats. But shot in 70mm IMAX, it also has much of the visceral spectacle of a summer movie. Thomas and Nolan have also previously had success July. It’s when they released Inception (which earned eight Oscar nods and won four awards) and The Dark Knight. The Oscar oversight of the latter, released in 2008, was seen as a major motivation for the expansion of the best-picture category the next year from five nominees to up to 10.

“We’ve had very good luck in July in the past and we like this date. It’s an accessible movie,” said Thomas. “When you put movies at the end of the year, you’re sort of saying something about it. You’re almost limiting it, in a way, and we don’t want to limit the film.”

The Oscars haven’t been without crowd-pleasers. La La Land made more than $440 million globally. Hidden Figures charmed North American audiences to $230 million. The year before, the May-released Mad Max: Fury Road crashed the Academy Awards with 10 nominations and six wins.

Dunkirk may be a similar force in craft categories. Its ensemble nature may leave less room for acting attention, though recent Oscar-winner Mark Rylance is a standout. More notably, Nolan seems likely to finally land his, some would say overdue, first directing nomination. He has already earned the praise of fellow filmmakers like Rian Johnson (who called the film “an all timer”) and Jon Favreau (“believe the hype”).

Other candidates

Other summer movies might also shake up the Oscars. The acclaimed romantic comedy The Big Sick has the backing of Amazon, which last year similarly acquired Manchester by the Sea at Sundance and made it an Oscar heavyweight. The War for the Planet of the Apes even has some buzz, including pleas for considering Andy Serkis’ motion-capture performance as the ape Caesar. Such an honor, while unlikely, would be a game-changer in an increasingly digitized movie world.

Jordan Peele’s horror sensation Get Out ($252 million worldwide after opening in late February) could well be the first horror film nominated for best picture since 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs” At the least, Peele should be a likely nominee for best screenplay.

Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman has been an even bigger box-office dynamo and earned nearly as good reviews as Get Out. Whereas Peele’s film was received as landmark film for its fusion of genre with a satirical critique of race in America, Wonder Woman set a new record for top-grossing film by a female director. Jenkins and star Gal Gadot could well be in the hunt. The unlikely awards run last season of Deadpool suggested voters may be open to awarding a superhero film.

Female directors

A campaign for Jenkins, who helmed the Oscar-winning Monster, would be closely watched because only four women have ever been nominated for best director. Kathryn Bigelow, the sole winner of the four, also has a film upcoming: her ambitious Detroit riots drama Detroit, out Aug. 4.

Usually, a highly relevant, socially conscious film from one of Hollywood’s most celebrated filmmakers would be plunged right into awards season. But the calculus was different for Detroit, which was deliberately timed to the 50th anniversary of the riots. And she, like many others, doesn’t love the increased emphasis on Oscar season. 

“It’s not why we make these films,” Bigelow said.

“The motivation behind the release has to do with the 50-year anniversary,” she said. “I think it’s important to honor that and the resiliency of the city of Detroit. Whatever happens along any other lines, I have no idea.”

Bigelow knows from experience. Her The Hurt Locker was a June release but went on to best Avatar at the Oscars. “To say that it was even a remote thought would be in inaccurate,” she said, laughing.
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Catchy summer dance song Despacito has set a record as the most streamed music track of all time, with 4.6 billion plays across leading platforms, record company Universal Music said Wednesday.

The song, first released in January in Spanish by Puerto Rican singer Luis Fonsi and rapper Daddy Yankee and then in a remixed version featuring Justin Bieber, has topped charts in 35 countries around the world and dominated radio play.

Its 4.6 billion streams surpassed the record set by Bieber with his 2015 single Sorry and its remixes, and made it the most successful Spanish-language pop song of all time.

“Streaming has opened up the possibility of a song with a different beat, from a different culture and in a different language to become a juggernaut of success around the world,” Universal Music Group Chief Executive Lucian Grainge said in a statement.

Despacito (Slowly) has spent 10 consecutive weeks on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart, 17 weeks at No. 1 in Spain and nine weeks in the top spot in Britain, Universal Music said.

Fonsi, previously little known outside Puerto Rico, said it was “truly an honor that Despacito is now the most streamed song in history.”
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Images of life under Islamic State rule are rare because taking photos, drawing or painting was discouraged or even banned. An artist who escaped from Raqqa, an Islamic State stronghold in Syria which is now under siege, depicts scenes from the occupied city in a temporary shelter where he now lives. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports Faisal’s drawings and paintings are rare historic documents as well works of art.
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Two of country music’s biggest stars, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, whose onstage chemistry spawned hit duets like “Islands in the Stream” and “Real Love,” will be making their final performance together this year.

Rogers, who is retiring from touring, says his final performance with Parton will be part of an all-star farewell show to be held at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena on October 25. The two have been performing together for more than 30 years since “Islands in the Stream,” written by the Bee Gees, became a pop crossover platinum hit in 1983.

Other performers for the farewell show are Little Big Town, Flaming Lips, Idina Menzel, Elle King, Jamey Johnson and Alison Krauss, with more names to be announced. Rogers made the announcement Tuesday at a press conference in Nashville. Tickets for the show will go on sale July 21.

Rogers, 78, said it’s been more than a decade since he performed with Parton for a CMT special.

“I think we owe it to her to let her go on with her career, but we owe it to me to do it one more time, and we’re going to do that,” Rogers said after the press conference.

In his 60-year career, Rogers has had several successful duet partners, including Dottie West, Kim Carnes, Sheena Easton and Linda Davis, but Parton’s star power made their collaborations a tour de force.

“We can go three years without talking to each other and when we get together, it’s like we were together yesterday,” Rogers said. “We both feel that comfort.”

“Performing with Kenny for the last time ever on October 25th is going to be emotional for both of us, but it’s also going to be very special,” Parton said in a statement. “Even though Kenny may be retiring, as he fades from the stage, our love for each other will never fade away.”

The actor, singer and photographer with hits like “The Gambler,” “Lady” and “Lucille,” announced in 2015 he would do a final farewell tour before retiring to spend more time with his family.

Rogers said he and Parton would definitely sing “Islands in the Stream,” but beyond that, he wasn’t sure yet.

“Whether we do something else, I don’t know,” Rogers said. “That would require a rehearsal and I don’t know that Dolly or I, either one, are up for that.”
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Boston has launched a new public service campaign to fight Islamophobia by offering the public ways to address aggression toward others because of their appearance or beliefs.

The campaign launched Monday involves 50 posters that provide a step-by-step guide to handling when someone is being harassed. They will be posted on bus stop benches and other public places around the city.

Titled “What to do if you are witnessing Islamophobic harassment,” the posters encourage people to engage with the person who is being targeted and to draw attention away from the harasser. The technique is called “non-complementary behavior,” and is intended to disempower an aggressive person by countering their expectations.

“These posters are one tool we have to send the message that all are welcome in Boston,” Mayor Marty Walsh said. “Education is key to fighting intolerance, and these posters share a simple strategy for engaging with those around you.”

The city’s Islamic community lauded the campaign.

“We encourage all of our fellow Bostonians to apply the approach in these posters to anyone targeted — whether Muslim, Latino or otherwise,” said Suzan El-Rayess, civic engagement director at the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center.

San Francisco has a similar campaign. Thea Colman, whose sister had worked with San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit to have posters installed throughout that system, approached Walsh’s office.

The posters, designed by French artist Maeril, will stay up for six months.

 
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Actor Daniel Radcliffe came to the aid of a man who was mugged by moped-riding attackers in London.

Former police officer David Videcette told the Evening Standard newspaper that two moped riders attacked a man just off the upmarket King’s Road in west London, slashing him across the face and making off with a Louis Vuitton bag.

He said he saw 27-year-old Radcliffe consoling the victim after the attack.

A spokeswoman for Radcliffe confirmed Tuesday that the “Harry Potter” star had been present but gave no other details, calling it a police matter.

The Metropolitan Police force said officers were called Friday to reports of a robbery in the area, in which a man in his 50s suffered a cut to the face. There have been no arrests.
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Walt Disney was already a well-known creative genius — the creator of Mickey Mouse and the 1938 feature-length cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs — when he had an idea to create Disneyland, his famed Anaheim, California, amusement park.

 

“All my life I heard him talk about doing this park, from the time I was five,” daughter Diane Disney Miller said in a documentary about Disneyland.

“The dream just grew,” she says in the film, adding that by the time she turned 21, her father had finally done it, at a cost of $17 million.

​On opening day, July 17, 1955, everything that could go wrong did, according to those who helped build the amusement park. 

That day — it became known as “Black Sunday” — more people showed up than the park could accommodate and mountains of trash stood uncollected. That same day there was a strike by plumbers in Anaheim, so organizers were forced to choose between working bathrooms or working water fountains. Rivers in the park that had been filled the night before, ran dry.

Disney was deeply disappointed, but he and his team kept improving the park, adding new rides and characters, and a giant monorail system in 1959.

Expanding on his dream, work began on an even bigger amusement park in Orlando, Florida, in 1965.

Walt Disney died in 1966. Walt Disney World was opened in his honor on Oct. 1, 1971.
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Walt Disney pursues dream of Disneyland despite investor doubts and a chaotic opening day in 1955
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American filmmaker Martin Scorsese is backing an international effort to preserve African movies, hoping to protect the work of some of Africa’s most influential directors. Arzouma Kompaore reports.
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After weeks of uncertainty, the U.S. Women’s Open stopped being about President Donald Trump, his course and his views toward women and it turned out to be what the USGA wanted: a good tournament on a good course.

Not surprisingly, the best player this week won, making up for a bad weekend in this event a year ago.

Sung Hyun Park shot her second straight 5-under 67 on Sunday and won a final-round battle with front-running Shanshan Feng and teenage amateur sensation Hye-Jin Choi at Trump National Golf Club for her first LPGA Tour victory.

The 23-year-old Park birdied the 15th to move into a tie for the lead and the 17th to open a two-shot edge after Choi made a double bogey to squander her chance of becoming the second amateur to win the event.

Park finished with an 11-under total of 277, two shots better than Choi, who shot a final-round 71.

It was a far cry from a year ago when Park hit into the water on the 18th hole at CordeValle in California and missed a playoff with eventual winner Britanny Lang and Anna Nordqvist by two shots.

“The experience was definitely worth it, because based on that good experience that I had last year, I think I was able to garner the championship this year,” Park said through an interpreter.

The USGA was criticized for not moving the event from Trump National after comments made by the president about women came to light during the election campaign. There were threats of protests, especially after Trump decided to attend the tournament after his trip to Paris on Thursday and Friday.

Trump arrived Friday and became the first sitting president to attend a Women’s Open, seeing parts of the final three rounds. There was a small protest after he arrived at his box near the 15th green shortly after 3 p.m., but it was peaceful.

It ended up being a quiet week of politics at the course. The golf was excellent.

Park needed a fine chip from over the green on the par-5 18th hole to save par and win the $900,000 top prize from the $5 million event.

Walking to the scoring tent to sign her card, she got a thumps-up from Trump from his box.

“Well, to be honest with you, I still cannot believe that it is actually happening,” said Park, who is the leading rookie on the LPGA Tour. “It’s almost feel like I’m floating on a cloud in the sky. Of course, I did have many winnings in other tournaments, but winning here at U.S. Open means so much more.

Choi was the low amateur for the second straight year. She was 38th in 2016. The only drawback was she could not pocket the $540,000 second-place prize.

“I mean it will be nice if I could get the money but I think my primary goal was to come here and compete so, to me, getting this second place in runner-up actually means more to me,” the 17-year-old said.

Top-ranked So Yeon Ryu (70) and fellow South Korean Mi Jung Hur (68) tied for third at 7 under. Feng, from China, had a 75 to drop into a tie for fifth at 6 under with Spain’s Carlota Ciganda (70) and South Korea’s Jeongeun6 Lee (71).

South Koreans Sei Young Kim (69), Mirim Lee (72) and Amy Yang (75) tied for eighth at 5 under. Marina Alex of nearby Wayne, New Jersey, was the best of the American at 4 under after a 70. It was the worst finish in the Open for the top American since Paula Creamer was seventh in 2012.

Choi was the story for most of the final round. She had a two-shot lead with nine holes to play and needed a 5-foot birdie at 15 to regain a piece with Park, who had made a 20-footer in the group in front of her.

The 139-yard, par-3 16th over water ended Choi’s hopes. Her 7-iron landed in the water to the right of the hole. She ended with a double bogey and basically lost her chance of winning.

“At the time I felt that all this work, hard work I put together was going to disappear so I was bit disappointed but I had to refocus,” said Choi, who birdied the final hole.

Choi’s 279 was the best by an amateur in the Open, four shots better than the old mark by Grace Park in 1999. Catherine Lacoste remains the only amateur to win the Open, doing it in 1967.

Feng, who was the leader after the first three rounds and carried a one-shot edge into the final 18 holes, triple bogeyed the final hole.

“I think overall, before the last hole I did pretty well,” said Feng, who had only two birdies in the last two rounds. “I mean I did a good job hanging in right there because my putting was not really that great.”

It was not her first professional win for Park, who won seven times on the KLPGA Tour in 2016 and three times the year before.

“She’s young and long so she hits the ball very long and very straight, very accurate and has very good short game, also,” Feng said about Park. “I don’t see any weak part in her game.”
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Martin Landau, the chameleon-like actor who gained fame as the crafty master of disguise in the 1960s TV show “Mission: Impossible,” then capped a long and versatile career with an Oscar for his poignant portrayal of aging horror movie star Bela Lugosi in 1994’s “Ed Wood,” has died. He was 89.

 

Landau died Saturday of unexpected complications during a short stay at UCLA Medical Center, his publicist Dick Guttman said.

 

“Mission: Impossible,” which also starred Landau’s wife, Barbara Bain, became an immediate hit upon its debut in 1966. It remained on the air until 1973, but Landau and Bain left at the end of the show’s third season amid a financial dispute with the producers. They starred in the British-made sci-fi series “Space: 1999” from 1975 to 1977.

 

Landau might have been a superstar but for a role he didn’t play — the pointy-eared starship Enterprise science officer, Mr. Spock. “Star Trek” creator Gene Rodenberry had offered him the half-Vulcan, half-human who attempts to rid his life of all emotion. Landau turned it down.

 

“A character without emotions would have driven me crazy; I would have had to be lobotomized,” he explained in 2001. Instead, he chose “Mission: Impossible,” and Leonard Nimoy went on to everlasting fame as Spock.

 

Ironically, Nimoy replaced Landau on “Mission: Impossible.”

 

After a brief but impressive Broadway career, Landau had made an auspicious film debut in the late 1950s, playing a soldier in “Pork Chop Hill” and a villain in the Alfred Hitchcock classic “North By Northwest.”

 

He enjoyed far less success after “Mission: Impossible,” however, finding he had been typecast as Rollin Hand, the top-secret mission team’s disguise wizard. His film career languished for more than a decade, reaching its nadir with his appearance in the 1981 TV movie “The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan’s Island.”

 

He began to find redemption with a sympathetic role in “Tucker: The Man and his Dream,” the 1988 Francis Ford Coppola film that garnered Landau his first Oscar nomination.

 

He was nominated again the next year for his turn as the adulterous husband in Woody Allen’s “Crimes and Misdemeanors.”

 

His third nomination was for “Ed Wood,” director Tim Burton’s affectionate tribute to a man widely viewed as the worst Hollywood filmmaker of all time.

 

“There was a 10-year period when everything I did was bad. I’d like to go back and turn all those films into guitar picks,” Landau said after accepting his Oscar.

 

In “Ed Wood,” he portrayed Lugosi during his final years, when the Hungarian-born actor who had become famous as Count Dracula was ill, addicted to drugs and forced to make films with Ed Wood just to pay his bills. A gifted mimic trained in method acting, Landau had thoroughly researched the role.

 

“I watched about 35 Lugosi movies, including ones that were worse than anything Ed Wood ever made,” he recalled in 2001. “Despite the trash, he had a certain dignity about him, whatever the role.”

 

So did the New York-born Landau, who had studied drawing at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and worked for a time as a New York Daily News cartoonist before switching careers at age 22.

 

He had dabbled in acting before the switch, making his stage debut in 1951 at a Maine summer theater in “Detective Story” and off-Broadway in “First Love.”

 

In 1955, he was among hundreds who applied to study at the prestigious Actors Studio and one of only two selected. The other was Steve McQueen.

 

On Broadway, Landau won praise for his work in “Middle of the Night,” which starred Edward G. Robinson. He toured with the play until it reached Los Angeles, where he began his film career.

 

Landau and Bain had two daughters, Susan and Juliet. They divorced in 1993.
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