Month: October 2017

It seems unreal in this 21st century, but an astonishing number of people are bought and sold around the world. The U.S. Department of State estimates between 600,000 and 800,000 people are trafficked across international borders each year. Millions more are enslaved within national borders. A grass- roots effort to raise the awareness of the crime of human trafficking is taking place in the Washington area. VOA’s June Soh has more on the arts-based campaign called ArtWorks for Freedom.
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To play a blind woman for her latest film role, Blake Lively took no short cuts into the darkness.

The 30-year-old actress learned to use a walking cane, wore opaque contact lenses off-camera to better understand her character, and learned how to navigate the main set without her vision.

“I wanted to know the experience of filling in the blanks in my head, learning it and then opening my eyes and seeing that, no matter what I had in my head, it was so different than I imagined,” she says.

Lively stars in All I See Is You, a dreamy, beautiful movie about a woman who lost her eyesight as an adolescent in a car accident but regains her vision through surgery in her 20s. She begins a period of self-discovery, which threatens to upend her life and marriage.

“That happens in all relationships, where you’re in an established relationship and then you start to not see things,” says Lively. “This movie speaks to relationships, I think, whether we have the literal blindness or it’s just figurative.”

It’s the brainchild of director and co-writer Marc Forster, whose career includes varied films such as World War Z, Quantum of Solace, Monster’s Ball and The Kite Runner. Inspiration for the new film came in one of the strangest places — the shower.

Forster, who has always admired fine art painters, was searching for a story that could lend itself to being painted onscreen. “I pushed it aside because I said, ‘OK, you’re a filmmaker. You’re not a painter. You’re not a true artist. You’re just a visual storyteller,”‘ he says. But one day in the shower, with soap clouding his eyes, he realized he had a visual template.

All I See Is You is certainly arty, with scenes decorated with a blur of images, bleeding colors and abstract symbols, even giving physical sensations an intense visual representation.

Forster says he was trying to shake the Hollywood cookie-cutter approach and recapture the feel of films from the 1970s, when character studies and open-ended plots ruled. “Movies became more and more close-ended and they also had to tick every box emotionally for an audience,” he says.

Indeed, Forster’s film is hard to categorize — part mystery, part horror, part a woman’s reawakening, part kaleidoscopic journey. He is very happy it cannot be pigeonholed.

“He’s created something that I’ve never seen before with the visuals,” says Lively. “So it was really just about taking a leap of faith with him and trusting him and being excited by that journey. But I think that if you even removed all of those visuals from this movie, it still works and that’s what’s important.”

The film also gave Lively, last seen in a bikini in The Shallows, a meaty and complex role — though a challenging one, too, since it centers on a woman with a disability. She says she was sensitive to making sure it was correct.

“This isn’t representative of any one person’s story. I was trying to take different peoples’ experiences and be as honest as possible,” she says. One person she leaned on to get her performance right was Ryan Knighton, a blind author who taught Lively how the blind walk, move and even argue. (The filmmakers honored him by having Blakely wear his signature red-tinted glasses onscreen.)

Both Lively and Forster realize that the film — featuring a woman learning to be strong and independent — comes at a time when women across the country are talking about their role in male-centered businesses and society.

“I think what’s happened in this past year, since the election, is that women have really stood up for themselves. I think we realized how much further we had to go than we thought we did,” Lively says.

Foster, for his part, hopes the film will remind people to open their eyes, see what’s actually happening and make better choices. 

“We, as humanity, ultimately have to really wake up and become conscious and start seeing things,” he says. “Otherwise, we’re going to go down a path that will be unreturnable.”
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France’s famed film institute La Cinematheque Francaise says it will go ahead with a retrospective of works by director Roman Polanski despite opposition by feminist groups.

 

La Cinematheque said Wednesday that calls to cancel the Polanski screenings – attended by the director – only began “in the last few days” as the sexual harassment accusations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein gained force. The statement said it would not change the program that begins Monday.

 

Weinstein denies the allegations.

 

The institute said its role was not to moralize – in regard to the Polish-born director who in the 1970s pleaded guilty to having sex in the U.S. with a 13-year-old girl whom he plied with champagne and Quaaludes.

 

Since Polanski fled the U.S., he mostly has lived in Paris.

 
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An aspiring actress has sued The Weinstein Co. alleging it was aware of sexual misconduct by its co-founder, Harvey Weinstein.

 

Dominique Huett claims in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in Los Angeles that Weinstein performed oral sex on her against her wishes at a Beverly Hills hotel in 2010.

 

A representative for The Weinstein Co. and Weinstein himself did not immediately respond Wednesday to emails seeking comment.

 

Huett’s negligence lawsuit seeks unspecified damages.

 

Her attorney, Jeff Herman, says Huett is suing Weinstein’s former company because she only recently discovered claims that it knew of sex harassment allegations against its co-founder dating back to the 1990s.

 

Herman says the recent discovery argument is key to Huett overcoming the statute of limitations barring a lawsuit based on the alleged conduct.

 
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Fats Domino, the amiable rock `n’ roll pioneer whose steady, pounding piano and easy baritone helped change popular music while honoring the traditions of the Crescent City, died Tuesday. He was 89.
 
Mark Bone, chief investigator with the Jefferson Parish, Louisiana, coroner’s office, said Domino died of natural causes at 3:30 a.m. Tuesday.
 
In appearance, he was no Elvis Presley. He stood 5-feet-5 and weighed more than 200 pounds, with a wide, boyish smile and a haircut as flat as an album cover. But Domino sold more than 110 million records, with hits including “Blueberry Hill,” “Ain’t It a Shame” and other standards of rock ‘n’ roll.
 
He was one of the first 10 honorees named to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the Rolling Stone Record Guide likened him to Benjamin Franklin, the beloved old man of a revolutionary movement.
 
His dynamic performance style and warm vocals drew crowds for five decades. One of his show-stopping stunts was playing the piano while standing, throwing his body against it with the beat of the music and bumping the grand piano across the stage.
 
Domino’s 1956 version of “Blueberry Hill” was selected for the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry of historic sound recordings worthy of preservation. The preservation board noted that Domino insisted on performing the song despite his producer’s doubts, adding that Domino’s “New Orleans roots are evident in the Creole inflected cadences that add richness and depth to the performance.”
 
Domino became a global star but stayed true to his hometown, where his fate was initially unknown after Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005. It turned out that he and his family were rescued by boat from his home, where he lost three pianos and dozens of gold and platinum records, along with other memorabilia.
 
Many wondered if he would ever return to the stage. Scheduled to perform at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in 2006, he simply tipped his hat to thousands of cheering fans.
 
But in May 2007, he was back, performing at Tipitina’s music club in New Orleans. Fans cheered – and some cried – as Domino played “I’m Walkin’,” “Ain’t It a Shame,” “Shake, Rattle and Roll,” “Blueberry Hill” and a host of other hits.
 
That performance was a highlight during several rough years. After losing their home and almost all their belongings to the floods, his wife of more than 50 years, Rosemary, died in April 2008.
 
Domino moved to the New Orleans suburb of Harvey after the storm but would often visit his publishing house, an extension of his old home in the Lower 9th Ward, inspiring many with his determination to stay in the city he loved.
 
“Fats embodies everything good about New Orleans,” his friend David Lind said in a 2008 interview. “He’s warm, fun-loving, spiritual, creative and humble. You don’t get more New Orleans than that.”
 
The son of a violin player, Antoine Domino Jr. was born on Feb. 26, 1928, to a family that grew to include nine children. As a youth, he taught himself popular piano styles – ragtime, blues and boogie-woogie – after his cousin left an old upright in the house. Fats Waller and Albert Ammons were early influences.
 
He quit school at age 14, and worked days in a factory while playing and singing in local juke joints at night. In 1949, Domino was playing at the Hideaway Club for $3 a week when he was signed by Imperial record company.
 
He recorded his first song, “The Fat Man,” in the back of a tiny French Quarter recording studio.
 
“They call me the Fat Man, because I weigh 200 pounds,” he sang. “All the girls, they love me, ’cause I know my way around.”
 
In 1955, he broke into the white pop charts with “Ain’t it a Shame” – but actually sang the lyrics as “ain’t that a shame.” The song was covered blandly by Pat Boone as “Ain’t That a Shame” and rocked out years later by Cheap Trick. Domino enjoyed a parade of successes through the early 1960s, including “Be My Guest” and “I’m Ready.” Another hit, “I’m Walkin,’ ” became the debut single for Ricky Nelson.
 
Domino appeared in the rock ‘n’ roll film “The Girl Can’t Help It” and was among the first black performers to be featured in popular music shows, starring with Buddy Holly and the Everly Brothers. He also helped bridge rock ‘n’ roll and other styles – even country/western, recording Hank Williams’ “Jambalaya” and Bobby Charles’ “Walkin’ to New Orleans.”
 
Like many of his peers, Domino’s popularity tapered off in the 1960s as British and psychedelic rock held sway.
 
Domino told Ebony magazine that he stopped recording because companies wanted him to update his style.
 
“I refused to change,” he said. “I had to stick to my own style that I’ve always used or it just wouldn’t be me.”
 
Antoine and Rosemary Domino raised eight children in the same ramshackle neighborhood where he grew up, but they did it in style- in a white mansion, trimmed in pink, yellow and lavender. The front double doors opened into an atrium with chandeliers hanging from the ceiling and ivory dominos set in a white marble floor.
 
In 1988, all of New Orleans seemed to be talking about him after he reportedly paid in cash for two Cadillacs and a $130,000 Rolls-Royce. When the salesman asked if he wanted to call his bank about financing, Domino smiled and said, “I am the bank.”
 
In 1998, he became the first purely rock ‘n’ roll musician to be awarded the National Medal for the Arts. But he cited his age and didn’t make the trip to the White House to get the medal from President Clinton.

That was typical. Aside from rare appearances in New Orleans, he dodged the spotlight in his later years, refusing to appear in public or even to give interviews.
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Qatari soccer and television executive Nasser al-Khelaifi was scheduled to be questioned by Swiss investigators who allege he bribed a top FIFA official in World Cup broadcasting rights deal.

 

Al-Khelaifi, the Paris Saint-Germain president, was set to meet with Switzerland’s federal prosecutors on Wednesday, two weeks after they revealed criminal proceedings against him.

 

He denies wrongdoing and has not been charged.

 

As CEO of BeIN Media Group — formerly Al Jazeera Sports — Al-Khelaifi secured Middle East TV rights for four World Cups, including the 2022 tournament in Qatar.

 

Al-Khelaifi and former FIFA secretary-general Jerome Valcke are suspected of bribery, fraud, criminal mismanagement and document forgery linked to a 2026-2030 rights deal.

 

A luxury villa on Sardinia was seized two weeks ago, and Italian financial police alleged al-Khelaifi allowed Valcke to use it.

 

 
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Pumpkins are everywhere across the United States each fall – flavoring lattes and ice cream, baked into pies and cookies, cut into jack-o-lanterns … and, in one New York City back yard, smashed into pieces. Faith Lapidus explains.
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Two-time Emmy Award-winning actor Robert Guillaume, who became one of the most prominent black actors on U.S. television playing the cantankerous title character in the hit 1980s series Benson, died of complications from prostate cancer on Tuesday, his wife said. He was 89.

The gravelly voiced Guillaume, who thrived in Broadway musicals before starring on the TV series Soap and its spinoff Benson, died at his Los Angeles home, his wife Donna Brown Guillaume said in a statement. It is not known how long he had been battling cancer.

Robert Guillaume first played sarcastic and irascible butler Benson DuBois on the over-the-top soap opera parody series Soap, which debuted in 1977 and also starred Katherine Helmond, Richard Mulligan and Billy Crystal.

His work on that show won Guillaume won the Emmy for outstanding supporting actor in a comedy series in 1979.

His character became so popular that the ABC network created Benson for him and that series ran for seven seasons from 1979 to 1986. Guillaume’s character had been a butler on Soap but on Benson he served as a state governor’s director of household affairs, then state budget director, lieutenant governor and candidate for governor.

Guillaume won the Emmy for outstanding lead actor in a comedy series in 1985 for Benson, the last of six times that he was nominated for an Emmy playing the character. He became the first black actor to win that award.

In accepting the Emmy, he joked, “I’d like to thank Bill Cosby for not being here,” referring to the fact that the star of The Cosby Show and the leading contender for the award had earlier taken himself out of the running for it.

Guillaume said he was sensitive about not playing his character as a racial stereotype and was pleased that Benson evolved from being a butler to a political power player — albeit one that retained the same crotchety attitude.

‘Upward mobility’

“In all honesty and candor and modesty, I always wanted the character to have that kind of upward mobility because it mirrored the American dream,” Guillaume told the Washington Post in 1985.

“When I took a role like Benson, which was in that time-honored sense ‘another black person in a servant’s role,’ I only took the part because it was a good part, it was a part in which I thought, with my own set of ideas about things, I could say something. And, indeed, that has been the case. We saw Benson was in no way anyone’s inferior.”

After the end of Benson, he starred in the short-lived sitcom The Robert Guillaume Show in 1989, as well as the series Pacific Station (1991-1992) and Sports Night (1998-2000). He suffered a stroke in 1999 on the set of Sports Night, but was able to return to his role within weeks.

On film, Guillaume provided the voice for the mandrill Rafiki in Disney’s animated 1994 hit The Lion King and appeared with Morgan Freeman in the 1989 drama Lean on Me.

In 1977, he earned a Tony Award nomination for his role in the Broadway musical Guys and Dolls. He also had leading roles on stage in Purlie and Golden Boy.

Born Robert Peter Williams on Nov. 30, 1927, he changed his name to Robert Guillaume to make it more distinctive (Guillaume is French for William). He was raised by his strong-willed grandmother in a St. Louis slum after his alcoholic mother gave up her children and his father abandoned the family.

After a brief military stint, he worked a series of jobs including as a trolley driver to save money for college.

He studied music at Washington University in St. Louis, where he was noticed by a Hungarian opera singer who helped him get a scholarship to the 1957 Aspen Music Festival and School in Colorado. That was followed by an apprenticeship at a theater in Cleveland where he made his professional debut.
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The world’s most famous sled dog race has become engulfed in a doping scandal involving a four-time champion’s team of huskies, giving animal rights activists new ammunition in their campaign to end the grueling, 1,000-mile Iditarod.

The governing board of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race disclosed Monday that four dogs belonging to Dallas Seavey tested positive for a banned substance, the opioid painkiller Tramadol, after his second-place finish last March.

It was the first time since the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog race instituted drug testing in 1994 that a test came back positive.

Seavey strongly denied administering any banned substances to his dogs, suggesting instead that someone may have sabotaged their food, and race officials said he would not be punished because they were unable to prove he acted intentionally. That means he will keep his titles and his $59,000 in winnings this year.

But the finding was just the latest blow to the Iditarod, which has seen the loss of major sponsors, numerous dog deaths, attacks on competitors and pressure from animal rights activists, who say the huskies are often run to death or left bleeding and desperately ill.

“If a member of the Iditarod’s ‘royalty’ dopes dogs, how many other mushers are turning to opioids in order to force dogs to push through the pain?” People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals said in a statement Tuesday.

It added: “This doping scandal is further proof that this race needs to end.”

“The race is all about winning and getting to the finish line despite the inhumane treatment towards the dogs,” said Fern Levitt, director of the documentary Sled Dogs.

Earlier this year, the Anchorage-to-Nome trek lost a major corporate backer, Wells Fargo, and race officials accused animal rights organizations of pressuring the bank and other sponsors with “manipulative information” about the treatment of the dogs.

Five dogs connected to this year’s race died, bringing total deaths to more than 150 in the Iditarod’s 44-year history, according to PETA’s count. And last year, two mushers were attacked by a drunken man on a snowmobile in separate assaults near a remote village. One dog was killed and others were injured. The attacker was given a six-month sentence.

Seavey won the Iditarod in 2012, 2014, 2015 and 2016. He finished second this year to his father, Mitch, and has had nine straight top-10 finishes.

Dogs are subject to random testing before and during the race, and the first 20 teams to cross the finish line in Nome are all automatically tested.

Latest controversy

“I have never given any banned substance to my dogs,” the 30-year-old Seavey said in a video posted on his Facebook page. He said that security is lax along the route and that someone might have tampered with his dogs’ food.

He added that he wouldn’t be “thrown under the bus” by the race’s governing board and that he has withdrawn from the 2018 race in protest.

Seavey said he expects the Iditarod Trail Committee to ban him from the race for speaking out. Mushers are prohibited from criticizing the race or sponsors.

Iditarod spokesman Chas St. George said that decision would be up to the committee’s board of directors.

The committee decided to release the name of the offending musher on Monday after scores of competitors demanded it do so. Race officials initially refused to do so because, they said, it was unlikely they could prove the competitor acted intentionally and because a lawyer advised them not to make the name public.

At the time of this year’s race, the rule essentially said that to punish a musher, race officials had to provide proof of intent. That rule has since been changed to hold mushers liable for any positive drug test unless they can show something happened beyond their control.

Wade Marrs, president of the Iditarod Official Finishers Club, said he doesn’t believe Seavey intentionally administered the drugs to his animals. Marrs said he believes the musher has too much integrity and brains to do such a thing.

“I don’t really know what to think at the moment,” Marrs said. “It’s a very touchy situation.”
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“Sex and the City” star Kim Cattrall says she didn’t have kids in-part because of the demanding production schedule of the long-running HBO series.

 

The 61-year-old actress told Piers Morgan for an interview on Britain’s ITV that she decided against undergoing fertility treatments when she was starring on the show in her early 40s because she questioned how she could keep up with 19-hour days while raising a child.

 

Cattrall also opened up about her relationship with her co-stars on the franchise, telling Morgan she has “never been friends” with Sarah Jessica Parker, Kristin Davis or Cynthia Nixon.

 

Cattrall says she turned down the chance to appear in a third “Sex and the City” film and will never play her character Samantha Jones again.

 

 
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A US government bunker, originally built in case of nuclear war, is now offering protection for a happier purpose. VOA’s Karina Bafradzhian shows us how America’s entertainment history is preserved in an underground space near Washington.
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