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NEW YORK — Norman Jewison, the acclaimed and versatile Canadian-born director whose Hollywood films ranged from Doris Day comedies and “Moonstruck” to social dramas such as the Oscar-winning “In the Heat of the Night,” has died at age 97. 

Jewison, a three-time Oscar nominee who in 1999 received an Academy Award for lifetime achievement, died “peacefully” Saturday, according to publicist Jeff Sanderson. Additional details were not immediately available. 

Throughout his long career, Jewison combined light entertainment with topical films that appealed to him on a deeply personal level. As Jewison was ending his military service in the Canadian navy during World War II, he hitchhiked through the American South and had a close-up view of Jim Crow segregation. In his autobiography “This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me,” he noted that racism and injustice became his most common themes. 

“Every time a film deals with racism, many Americans feel uncomfortable,” he wrote. “Yet it has to be confronted. We have to deal with prejudice and injustice or we will never understand what is good and evil, right and wrong; we need to feel how ‘the other’ feels.” 

He drew upon his experiences for 1967’s “In the Heat of the Night,” starring Rod Steiger as a white racist small-town sheriff and Sidney Poitier as a Black detective from Philadelphia trying to help solve a murder and eventually forming a working relationship with the hostile local lawman. 

James Baldwin condemned the film’s “appalling distance from reality,” and thought the director trapped in a fantasy of racial harmony that would only heighten “Black rage and despair.” But The New York Times’ Bosley Crowther was among the critics who found the movie powerful and inspiring and, in a year, featuring such landmarks as “The Graduate” and “Bonnie and Clyde,” Jewison’s production won the Academy Award for best picture while Steiger took home the best actor Oscar. (Jewison lost out for best director to Mike Nichols of “The Graduate”). 

Among those who encouraged Jewison while making “In the Heat of the Night”: Robert F. Kennedy, whom the director met during a ski trip in Sun Valley, Idaho. 

“I told him I made films and he asked what kind I make,” he recalled in a 2011 interview with The Hollywood Reporter. “So I told him that I was working on ‘In the Heat of the Night’ and that it’s about two cops: one a white sheriff from Mississippi and the other a black detective from Philadelphia. I told him it was a film about tolerance. So he listened and nodded and said ‘You know, Norman, timing is everything. In politics, in art, in life itself.’ I never forgot that.” 

He received two other Oscar nominations, for “Fiddler on the Roof” and “Moonstruck,” the beloved romantic comedy for which Cher won an Academy Award for best actress. He also worked on such notable films as the Cold War spoof “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” the Steve McQueen thriller “The Thomas Crown Affair” and a pair of movies featuring Denzel Washington: the racial drama “A Soldier’s Story” and “The Hurricane,” starring Washington as wrongly imprisoned boxer Rubin “Hurricane” Carter. 

A third project with Washington never made it to production. In the early 1990s, Jewison was set to direct a biography of Malcolm X, but backed out amid protests from Spike Lee and others that a white director shouldn’t make the film. Lee ended up directing. 

Five Jewison films received best Oscar nominations: “In the Heat of the Night,” “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” “Fiddler on the Roof,” “Moonstruck” and “A Soldier’s Story.” 

Jewison and his wife Margaret Ann Dixon (nicknamed Dixie) had three children, sons Kevin and Michael and daughter Jennifer Ann, who became an actress and appeared in the Jewison films “Agnes of God” and “Best Friends.” The Jewisons were married 51 years, until her death in 2004. He married Lynne St. David in 2010. 

Jewison, honored by Canada in 2003 with a Governor General’s Performing Arts Award, remained close to his home country. When he wasn’t working, he lived on a 200-acre farm near Toronto, where he raised horses and cattle and produced maple syrup. He founded the Canadian Film Centre in 1988 and for years hosted barbecues during the Toronto Film Festival. 

The Toronto-born Jewison began acting at age 6, appearing before Masonic lodge gatherings. After graduating from Victoria College, he went to work for the BBC in London, then returned to Canada and directed programs for the CBC. His work there brought offers from Hollywood, and he quickly earned a reputation as a director of TV musicals, with stars including Judy Garland, Danny Kaye and Harry Belafonte. Jewison shifted to feature films in 1963 with the comedy “40 Pounds of Trouble,” starring Tony Curtis and Suzanne Pleshette. 

The director’s light touch prompted Universal to assign him to a series of comedies, including “The Thrill of It All,” which paired Day with James Garner, and “Send Me No Flowers,” starring Day and Rock Hudson. Wearying of such scripts, Jewison used a loophole in his contract to move to MGM for 1965’s “The Cincinnati Kid,” a drama of the gambling world starring McQueen and Edward G. Robinson. He followed with “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming,” which starred Carl Reiner and Eva Marie Saint and was the breakthrough film for Alan Arkin. 

His other films included “F.I.S.T.”, a flop with Sylvester Stallone as a Jimmy Hoffa-style labor leader; “… And Justice for All” (1979), with Al Pacino fighting a crooked judicial system; and “In Country,” featuring Bruce Willis as a Vietnam War veteran. His most recent work, the 2003 thriller “The Statement,” starred Michael Caine and Tilda Swinton and flopped at the box office. 

“I never really became as much a part of the establishment as I wanted to be,” he told The Hollywood Reporter in 2011. “I wanted to be accepted. I wanted people to say ‘that was a great picture.’ I mean I have a big ego like anyone else. I’m no shrinking violet. But I never felt totally accepted — but maybe that’s good.” 
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New York — On a quiet weekend in movie theaters, “Mean Girls” repeated atop the box office with $11.7 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday, while a handful of awards contenders sought to make an impact ahead of Oscar nominations Tuesday.

With a dearth of new releases in cinemas, Paramount Pictures’ Tina Fey-scripted musical “Mean Girls” pushed its two-week total past $50 million, along with $16.2 million internationally. So far, it’s outpacing the tally for the 2004 original “Mean Girls.”

Only one new film debuted in wide release: “I.S.S.,” a modestly budgeted sci-fi thriller starring Ariana DeBose. The film, which speculates what would happen aboard the International Space Station if war broke out between the U.S. and Russia, debuted with $3 million on 2,518 screens for Bleecker Street.

Expectations weren’t high for “I.S.S.,” which drew only so-so reviews and was lightly marketed. Audiences also didn’t like it, giving the film a “C-” CinemaScore.

But even for January, historically a low ebb for moviegoing, it was a sparsely attended weekend, with paltry options on the big screen. The top 10 films collectively accounted for just $51.3 million in box office, according to Comscore.

With a similarly thin release schedule on deck for next weekend, it could be the start of a chastening trend for Hollywood in 2024. Due to production delays caused by last year’s strikes, there are significant holes throughout this year’s movie calendar.

The Jason Statham thriller “The Beekeeper,” from Amazon MGM Studios, remained in second place, grossing $8.5 million in its second weekend to bring its total to $31.1 million. Warner Bros. “Wonka,” six weeks into its smash run in theaters, was third, with $6.4 million in ticket sales. It’s taken in $187.2 million domestically.

Also continuing to leg out was Sony Pictures’ “Anyone But You.” The rom-com starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell, crossed $100 million globally in its fifth week of release. It’s the highest grossing R-rated romantic comedy — a genre that has largely migrated to streaming platforms — since 2016’s “Bridget Jones’s Baby.” Domestically, it came in fourth with $5.4 million.

Much of the weekend’s action was in expanding awards contenders.

After a qualifying release in December, Ava DuVernay’s “Origin,” starring Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor as the “Caste” author Isabel Wilkerson, launched in 125 theaters and pulled in $875,000 — a strong start for the acclaimed film.

Yorgos Lanthimos’ dark fantasy “Poor Things,” starring Emma Stone, added 820 theaters and grossed $2 million from 1,400 locations. The Searchlight Pictures release, which won the Golden Globe for best comedy-musical, has earned $33.7 million globally in seven weeks of slowly expanding release.

Cord Jefferson’s “American Fiction,” starring Jeffrey Wright as a frustrated novelist, expanded to 850 screens and pulled in $1.8 million. “American Fiction,” up to $8 million in six weeks, will look for a boost in Tuesday’s Oscar nominations.

Jonathan Glazer’s Auschwitz film “The Zone of Interest” expanded to 82 screens, grossing $447,684 for A24.

But after a strong launch, another awards contender, “The Color Purple,” has quickly fallen off the radar of moviegoers. Though widely acclaimed and with the backing of producers Oprah Winfrey and Steven Spielberg, the Warner Bros. musical has dropped fast in recent weeks. In its fourth week of release, the Blitz Bazawule-directed film starring Fantasia Barrino, Taraji P. Henson and Danielle Brooks, grossed just $720,000. Its domestic total is $59.3 million, below hopes for the $100-million budgeted film.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Mean Girls,” $11.7 million.

2. “The Beekeeper,” $8.5 million.

3. “Wonka,” $6.4 million.

4. “Anyone But You,” $5.4 million.

5. “Migration,” $5.3 million.

6. “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” $3.7 million.

7. “I.S.S.,” $3 million.

8. “Night Swim,” $2.7 million.

9. “The Boys in the Boat,” $2.5 million.

10. “Poor Things,” $2 million.
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SEOUL, South Korea — Video footage released by an organization that works with North Korean defectors shows North Korean authorities publicly sentencing two teenagers to 12 years’ hard labor for watching K-pop.

The footage, which shows the two 16-year-olds in Pyongyang convicted of watching South Korean movies and music videos, was released by the South and North Development Institute, or SAND.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the footage, which was first reported by the BBC.

North Korea has for years imposed tough sentences on anyone caught enjoying South Korean entertainment or copying the way South Koreans speak in its war on outside influences. A sweeping new “anti-reactionary thought” law was imposed in 2020.

“Judging from the heavy punishment, it seems that this is to be shown to people across North Korea to warn them. If so, it appears this lifestyle of South Korean culture is prevalent in North Korean society,” said Choi Kyong-hui, president of SAND and doctor of political science at Tokyo University, who defected from North Korea in 2001.

“I think this video was edited around 2022. … What is troublesome for [North Korean leader] Kim Jong Un is that Millennials and Gen Z young people have changed their way of thinking. I think he’s working on turning it back to the North Korean way.”

The video, made by North Korean authorities, shows a large public trial in which the two students in grey scrubs are handcuffed while watched by about 1,000 students in an amphitheater. All the students, including the two 16-year-olds, are wearing face masks, suggesting the footage was shot during the COVID pandemic.

The students were sentenced, according to the video, after being convicted of watching and spreading South Korean movies, music and music videos over three months.

“They were seduced by foreign culture … and ended up ruining their lives,” the narrator states, as the video cut away to young girls being handcuffed and Pyongyang women wearing South Korean fashion and hairstyles.

Reclusive North Korea and the rich, democratic South are technically still at war after their 1950-53 conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, and are divided by a heavily fortified demilitarized zone.
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A 23-year-old Taylor Swift fan died at the singer’s Eras Tour concert in Rio de Janeiro Friday night, according to a statement from the show’s organizers in Brazil. Both fans and politicians reacted to the news with outrage.

While a cause of death for Ana Clara Benevides Machado has not been announced, fans complained they were not allowed to take water into Nilton Santos Olympic Stadium despite soaring temperatures.

A group launched an online petition Saturday morning calling for a “Benevides Law” to “make water in events mandatory.”

The petition garnered more than 150,000 signatures in just a few hours. Federal authorities announced that free water would be made available at all future concerts.

In a handwritten note shared on her social media, Swift said she had a “shattered heart.”

“There’s very little information I have other than the fact that she was so incredibly beautiful and far too young,” the singer wrote of the young woman.

The show’s organizer, Time4Fun, said on Instagram that paramedics attended to Benevides after she reported feeling unwell. She was taken to a first-aid center and then to a hospital, where she died an hour later, the statement from the Brazilian live entertainment company said.

Concertgoers said they were not allowed to bring water bottles into the stadium even though Rio and most of Brazil have had record-breaking temperatures this week amid a dangerous and lasting heat wave. The daytime high in Rio on Friday was 39.1 degrees Celsius (102.4 degrees Fahrenheit), but it felt much hotter.

Elizabeth Morin, 26, who recently moved to Rio from Los Angeles, described “sauna-like” conditions inside the stadium.

“It was extremely hot. My hair got so wet from sweat as soon as I came in,” she said. “There was a point at which I had to check my breathing to make sure I wasn’t going to pass out.”

Morin said she drank plenty of water but saw “a good amount of people looking distressed” and others “yelling for water.” She said that she was able to get water from the sidelines of the area she was standing in, but that water was a lot harder to access from other parts of the stadium, “especially if you were concerned about losing your specific position.”

During the show, Swift paused her performance and asked from the stage for water to be brought to a group of people who had successfully caught the singer’s attention, according to Morin.

“They were holding up their phones saying ‘We need water,’” she recalled.

Justice Minister Flávio Dino said on X that the ministry would implement “emergency rules” in response to the situation. He later announced that “water bottles for personal use, in suitable material, will be allowed” at concerts and other events and that show producers must provide free and easily accessible drinking water.

Before the show, Benevides posted a video of herself on Instagram wearing a Taylor Swift T-shirt and waiting in line to enter the stadium while seeking shade under an umbrella. Like her, thousands of fans waited hours in the sun before being allowed inside.

She told her followers while fanning her face that she’d arrived at 11 a.m. — the show began around 7:30 p.m. — and was “still in the mess.”

Benevides’ friend, Daniele Menin, who attended the concert with her, told online news site G1 that her friend passed out at the beginning of the concert as Swift performed her second song, “Cruel Summer.”

“We always said that when [Taylor Swift] came to Brazil we would find a way to go. The ticket was very expensive, but we still found a way,” Menin told G1.

Rio de Janeiro Mayor Eduardo Paes said on X the “loss of a young woman’s life … is unacceptable.”

While authorities are investigating the circumstances of the death, Paes wrote, the municipality will demand Saturday that the show’s production company provide new water distribution points, more brigades and ambulances, and advance entrance to the show by one hour.

Swift has two more shows scheduled in Rio, one Saturday and one Sunday.

“I’m not going to be able to speak about this from stage because I feel overwhelmed by grief when I even try to talk about it,” she wrote. “I want to say now I feel this loss deeply and my broken heart goes out to her family and friends.” 
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A drawing of a nude Donald Trump. A punching bag sculpture shaped like a woman’s torso. A display of women’s party shoes standing proudly on prayer rugs. All are pieces of contemporary art that have provoked debate and, sometimes, violent reactions. 

These pieces and dozens more that were subjected to some sort of censorship have found a home in Spain at Barcelona’s Museum of Forbidden Art, or “Museu de l’Art Prohibit” in Catalan. The collection of over 200 works, including ones by well-known creators such as American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and Spain’s own Pablo Picasso, is intended to challenge visitors and question the limits imposed on artists in an increasingly polarized world. 

Director Rosa Rodrigo said the museum is the only one in the world dedicated exclusively to art that faced petitions — often successful ones — for their removal from public view on moral, political, religious, sexual or commercial grounds. 

“The museum gives an opportunity to works of art that, for whatever reason, at some point had been banned, attacked, censored, or canceled, because there are so many,” Rodrigo told The Associated Press. 

The museum is the creation of Catalan art collector Tatxo Benet, who owns all but one of the 42 works currently on display — and the 200 more in storage. He was already collecting contemporary art when he began gathering “banned” works. 

Five years later, Benet’s idea became the Museum of Forbidden Art, which opened its doors in October. Since then, over 13,000 people have visited its galleries. 

Museum is “imperative”

As more works come under attack, people like art critic and curator Gabriel Luciani say the exhibit is essential. “I think it’s imperative to have a place like this in Europe and around the world. Especially in these moments of censorship that we’re seeing. Not only in the arts but also in other political contexts,” he said. 

In March, a Hong Kong department store took down a digital artwork that contained hidden references to jailed dissidents. The same month on the other side of the world, a Florida charter school principal was forced to resign after a parent complained about a lesson on Renaissance art that included Michelangelo’s David sculpture. 

Barcelona’s new museum features well-known works of contention, including “Piss Christ” by Andres Serrano, a photo of a crucifix plunged into a vat of the artist’s urine; as well as Mapplethorpe’s “X Portfolio,” photos of sadomasochism that were challenged in court for obscenity. 

“I think the collection could even be more shocking,” Luciani said. 

But the works by women, which have drawn ire from conservative religious groups or been repressed for their feminist content, are among the most powerful of the collection. 

“Silence,” an installation by French Algerian artist Zoulikha Bouabdellah that displays 30 pairs of stiletto heels on the same number of Islamic prayer rugs, dominates the center of a room. Bouabdellah agreed to have her work removed from a museum in Clichy, France, after the 2015 attacks in Paris against the staff of the Charlie Hebdo satirical newspaper, which had published cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad. 

Modern and classic

The physical abuse of women is captured by Kazakh artist Zoya Falkova in Evermust, a leather sculpture of a woman’s torso as a boxer’s punching bag. It was one of six works removed from a museum in Kyrgyzstan when an exhibition of feminist art came under fire from officials who said it went against traditional values. 

While most of the works are from the 21st century, Goya, Picasso and Klimt all have their place in the halls of the elegant modernist mansion that houses the museum. Goya had to sell his late-1790s “Los Caprichos” prints to the Spanish crown when he feared they could come under the scrutiny of the Inquisition, while Picasso saw his “Suite 347” of erotic drawings displayed in a private room in 1960s Paris. 

Although censorship has taken many forms, the museum shows that the drive to silence artists who make challenging works is alive and kicking. 

“Censorship in art has always existed because artists are always forerunners and touch on different themes,” Rodrigo said. “[But] it is true that most of the works on display are from the years 2010 to 2020. In those 10 years, in many different areas of the world, I think that societies themselves have undergone a regression of values, because it has not necessarily been governments which have acted [against artworks], but rather it has been society itself.” 

In 2016, the Australian artist Illma Gore posted her full-monty drawing of Trump on Facebook and had her account shut down for obscenity and nudity. Gore believes the piece led to her being assaulted on a Los Angeles street. 

Following a series of canceled shows after he was accused of making inappropriate sexual comments to potential models, the late American painter Chuck Close, a master of photorealism, has a self-portrait on display at the Museum of Forbidden Art. 

Hoping for no attacks

Commercial interests have also played a role in muzzling free expression. 

Yoshua Okón’s video of an obese woman lying nude on a table in McDonald’s, called “Freedom Fries,” was removed from a gallery in London after, according to the Barcelona museum, members of gallery’s board were worried about damaging the fast-food chain’s reputation. 

The museum also houses several works that have come under physical attack, including “Piss Christ.” 

Spanish artist Charo Corrales’ “With Flowers for Mary,” which depicts a Virgin Mary masturbating, was slashed while exhibited in southern Spain after Catholic legal groups filed a lawsuit against the work for offending religious sensibilities. It is now on display in Barcelona with an open gash in the canvas. 

Rodrigo said her museum hopes it won’t see any attacks because visitors should come prepared to be shocked. She also believes that by grouping these works, they produce a more balanced impact. Plus, she has faith that the spectator will show respect and restraint when granted the freedom to come in contact with provocative artwork. 

“We want our visitors to feel comfortable, not that they are in a fortress,” Rodrigo said, “because if we did that, we would be sending the wrong message.”
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