Month: February 2021

The Oscars ceremony, delayed until April 25 due to the coronavirus pandemic that has rocked the entire film industry, will be broadcast live from “multiple sites,” including Hollywood, the Academy announced on Wednesday.Despite the COVID-19 epidemic, which still places restrictions on the Los Angeles area, “the Academy is determined to present an Oscar ceremony like no other, while emphasizing the public health and safety of all the participants,” said a spokesperson for the Academy of Cinema Arts and Sciences, which presents the prestigious golden statuettes.”To create the live performance that our global audience wants to see while adapting to the constraints of the pandemic, the ceremony will be broadcast live from multiple venues, including the iconic Dolby Theater” which traditionally hosts the Oscars in the heart of Hollywood, according to the statement sent to AFP.The Academy has not given more details at this stage on the ceremony or the distribution of sites for this 93rd edition, the culmination of a season of film awards upset by the health crisis, between closure of cinemas and postponement of many big productions.This is not the first time that the Oscars ceremony has been held simultaneously in several locations. In the 1950s, the broadcast was from Los Angeles and New York.This is the formula chosen this year by the organizers of the Golden Globes for the award ceremony, which will be held on February 28.Even though the size of the audience drops a little more each year, with an all-time low of 23.6 million viewers last year in the United States, the Academy Awards have traditionally remained one of the most watched events in the country, preceded only by the American football championship Superbowl.This year, the show was entrusted to Steven Soderbergh, director of the visionary film “Contagion,” by the Academy of Oscars, whose leaders believe that this pandemic is an opportunity “to innovate and reimagine” the ceremony. 
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Jay-Z, Foo Fighters, Tina Turner and Iron Maiden lead this year’s nominees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a female-heavy list of 16 acts that includes for the first time The Go-Go’s, Mary J. Blige and Dionne Warwick.
Artists are eligible for a nomination 25 years after the release of their first official recording. There are two newly eligible acts in Jay-Z and Foo Fighters while artists nominated for the first time include Blige, The Go-Go’s, Iron Maiden, Warwick and Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti.
Several candidates are looking for a second spot in the hall. Turner would be inducted for a second time, having gone to the hall as part of Ike & Tina Turner in 1991. Nominee Carole King is already in the hall as a songwriter and she would go in again this time as a performer. Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl is already in the hall as a member of Nirvana.
If elected, King and Turner would become the second and third female artists inducted twice, following Stevie Nicks’ 2019 election; she was also in as a member of Fleetwood Mac.  
“This remarkable ballot reflects the diversity and depth of the artists and music the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame celebrates,” said John Sykes, Chairman of Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation, in a statement Wednesday. “These nominees have left an indelible impact on the sonic landscape of the world and influenced countless artists that have followed them.”
Other nominees this year include: Kate Bush, Devo, Chaka Khan, LL Cool J, New York Dolls, Rage Against the Machine and Todd Rundgren. LL Cool J is on his sixth nomination and Chaka Khan is on her third solo nomination.  
The class of 2021 will be announced in May.
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The Super Bowl champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers are celebrating their victory Wednesday with a boat parade amid continued concern over the coronavirus pandemic.
The parade will be held on the Hillsborough River near downtown Tampa. Mayor Jane Castor is again emphasizing that people attending the parade must wear masks outdoors and observe social distancing rules.
After Tampa Bay’s 31-9 win over the Kansas City Chiefs in Sunday’s title game, throngs of people gathered in the city’s entertainment districts. Many were seen maskless despite the ordinances requiring them.
Brian Ford, chief operating officer of the Buccaneers, said in video announcement that fans should heed the rules as they celebrate the team’s victory.
“It’s essential we do it the right way,” Ford said. “We want to do our part to ensure it’s done in a safe and responsible manner.”
The boat parade is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Wednesday.
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As the world grappled with COVID-19, a recession and a racial reckoning, the ultrawealthy gave to a broader set of causes than ever before — bestowing multimillion-dollar gifts on food pantries, historically Black colleges and universities and organizations that serve the poor and the homeless, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy’s annual rankings of the 50 Americans who gave the most to charity last year.Another cause that got outsize attention from billionaire philanthropists: climate change. Jeff Bezos topped the list by donating $10 billion to launch the Bezos Earth Fund. Bezos, who last week announced he was stepping down as Amazon CEO to devote more time to philanthropy and other projects, also contributed $100 million to Feeding America, the organization that supplies more than 200 food banks.FILE – In this March 4, 2018, file photo, then-MacKenzie Bezos arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party in Beverly Hills, Calif. MacKenzie Scott is one of the 50 Americans who gave the most to charity in 2020.No. 2 on the list was Bezos’s ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who gave $5.7 billion in 2020 by asking community leaders to help identify 512 organizations for seven- and eight-figure gifts, including food banks, human-service organizations, and racial-justice charities.Another donor who gave big to pandemic causes and racial-justice efforts was Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, who ranked No. 5. He put $1.1 billion into a fund that by year’s end had distributed at least $330 million to more than 100 nonprofits.The financier Charles Schwab and his wife, Helen (No. 24), gave $65 million to address homelessness in San Francisco. Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and wife, Patty Quillin (No. 14), gave $120 million for financial aid for students at historically Black colleges and universities. Michael Jordan, the basketball great (No. 31), pledged $50 million to racial and social-justice groups.”When I look at the events of the last year, there was an awakening for the philanthropic sector,” says Nick Tedesco, president of the National Center for Family Philanthropy. “Donors supported community-led efforts of recovery and resiliency, particularly those led by people of color.”Giving experts say they think the trend toward broader giving is likely to persist.”I don’t think this approach is just a 12-month moment that started with COVID and continued following George Floyd and is going to recede,” says Melissa Berman, president of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, which counsels donors around the world. “There has been change building among private donors.”All told, the 50 biggest donors contributed $24.7 billion in 2020, compared with $15.8 billion in 2019. Still, those gifts come from a small share of the billionaire class. Only 23 of the people on the Forbes 400 gave enough to qualify for the list. Many of the multimillion-dollar donations came from people far less wealthy, like Gordon Rausser, a former dean of natural resources at the University of California at Berkeley.The Chronicle’s rankings are based on the total amount philanthropists awarded in 2020. The information is based on extensive research with donors, their beneficiaries, and public records.The No. 3 donor was Michael Bloomberg, who contributed $1.6 billion to arts, education, public health, and many other causes. Nike founder Phil and Penelope Knight were next, donating $1.4 billion, $900.7 million of it to their Knight Foundation.The $1 billion-plus of giving by each of the top five on the Philanthropy 50 matches last year’s record. No more than three donors gave $1 billion or more in any of the previous years.Sixteen donors in this year’s list — nearly a third of the Philanthropy 50 — made their fortunes in technology, and 20 of them live in California.Joe Gebbia (No. 47), the 39-year-old co-founder of Airbnb, has seen his net worth shoot up to around $12 billion following his company’s initial public offering in December. During 2020, he gave $25 million to two San Francisco charities that are tackling homelessness and helping people who have suffered economically due to the pandemic.”I’ve been incredibly fortunate and believe that comes with the responsibility of giving back,” Gebbia says. “Where will I take it? The sky is the limit.”At a time when tech billionaires’ wealth is compounding and many working people are still suffering from the pandemic’s fallout, philanthropic expectations have never been higher. David Beasley, executive director of the United Nations World Food Program, highlighted the disparate effects of the pandemic in a January interview on the PBS NewsHour.”During the pandemic, billionaires made $5.2 billion in increased wealth per day,” he said. “All we are asking for is $5 billion to avert famine around the world. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”Elon Musk, whose $180 billion fortune puts him neck-and-neck with Bezos for richest person in the world, is not on the Philanthropy 50. Musk has faced criticism for his meager lifetime donations, estimated in a recent Vox article at just 0.05 percent of his current net worth.If small and midsize charities were the notable winners in 2020, does that make large universities the losers? Hardly. Colleges and universities received $2.2 billion from Philanthropy 50 donors in 2020.But Benjamin Soskis, a research associate in the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy at the Urban Institute, says the most striking change with this year’s Philanthropy 50 list is that it presents a plurality of options for giving.”There’s a big difference between a hypothetical ‘Why didn’t you give to an HBCU instead of Harvard?’ and today’s list, where you can point to donors who actually did that.”More details about the Philanthropy 50 are available at philanthropy.com.
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Super Bowl 2021 in now history – and it also made history for a number of reasons. Maxim Moskalkov has the story.Camera:  Yuriy Zakrevskiy   
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The head of the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board said Tuesday that the pilot of the helicopter that crashed and killed basketball superstar Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others apparently violated federal safety standards by flying into clouds. The Sikorsky S-76B helicopter was taking the passengers to a youth basketball tournament amid heavy fog in January 2020 when it crashed into hilly terrain outside Los Angeles. NTSB Chairman Robert Sumwalt made the revelation at the beginning of a meeting to determine the likely cause of the crash. Pilots can experience “spatial disorientation” when they are unable to see the sky or landscape around them, NTSB investigator-in-charge Bill English said.  FILE – Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna are honored along with all of the other helicopter crash victims, in Miami Gardens, Fla., Feb. 2, 2020.The board said in June that Pilot Ara Zobayan told air traffic controllers the helicopter was climbing out of heavy clouds when it was, instead, descending immediately before crashing into a hillside near the town of Calabasas. Some attendees at the hearing traded blame for the crash. Bryant’s widow, Vanessa Bryant, faulted the pilot, while she and relatives of the other victims blamed the companies that owned and operated the aircraft. While not blaming the former Los Angeles Lakers’ star directly, the pilot’s brother said Bryant was aware of the risks of flying. The helicopter companies blamed the air traffic controllers and argued that foggy conditions before the helicopter hit the ground was an act of God. Board members could give recommendations Tuesday for how to prevent similar disasters in the future. The NTSB previously said there was no sign of mechanical failure on the helicopter, and that the crash is believed to be an accident.  While the NTSB is an independent federal agency that investigates transportation-related accidents, it has no enforcement authority. The deaths of the 18-time National Basketball Association all-star and the other passengers sparked an outpouring of shock and grief from sports fans worldwide. The crash triggered several lawsuits and led to the passage of state and federal legislation. 
 
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America’s latest first lady is breaking with tradition as the first presidential spouse to keep her job while in the White House.  Jill Biden, who has a doctorate in education, is an English professor at a community college near Washington.  “I think in particular, the fact that she is in a profession that is seen as a helping profession, that is seen as not innately a controversial profession, that she will be more accepted by the American people in continuing her professional life,” says Katherine Jellison, a professor of history at Ohio University. “Also, she’s in a traditionally female profession — teaching.”  Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
Jacqueline Kennedy poses during a tour of the White House East Room in Washington in 1962.Ever since she embraced historic preservation in the 1960s, every first lady has adopted at least one public service project.   Lady Bird Johnson was an environmentalist who pushed for the preservation of wildflowers and other native plants. Nancy Reagan encouraged children to “Just Say No” to drugs. Barbara Bush championed literacy for children and adults, while Michelle Obama promoted healthy eating by planting a White House vegetable garden. “Things that are related to women — children, health literacy, drugs, gardening, historical preservation — those are the things that Americans are comfortable with their first lady doing,” says Perry. “The American people have a limited role they want the first lady to play, and if she steps outside that role, they turn on her.”   Hillary Clinton learned that firsthand in 1993 after President Bill Clinton appointed her to lead his task force on national health care reform. It was an unprecedented policy role for a first lady. But fierce public backlash, some of it personally directed at Clinton, herself, helped doom the plan, which never even got a floor vote in Congress.   “We saw where that got her — much hatred, people turned on her, it didn’t pass,” Perry says. “And then, she had to go back to more soft-power approaches to being first lady.” Behind the scenes  While first ladies are often seen as motherly symbols of American womanhood, history shows these women can have considerable behind-the-scenes influence.  A portrait of former first ladies: Nancy Reagan and Barbara Bush (standing). Seated, left to right: Lady Bird Johnson, Pat Nixon, Rosalynn Carter and Betty Ford, Nov. 4, 1991 in Simi Valley, California.“Melania Trump had a top national security adviser fired in her husband’s administration because she didn’t like the way her staff was treated on a foreign trip by this adviser. So, they can also determine who’s around the president,” says presidential historian Kate Andersen Brower, author of “First Women.” “Nancy Reagan was really the human resources department for her husband. She decided who would be in and who was out.” And the same year she tried to push health care reform through Congress, Clinton made a quiet suggestion to her husband.  “She’s one of the reasons why Ruth Bader Ginsburg was on the Supreme Court,” Andersen Brower says. “She told her husband that she thought she would make an excellent Supreme Court justice.”    Former President Bill Clinton, left, Hillary Clinton, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Oct. 30, 2019, in Washington.It’s an example of soft power and how private conversations between spouses can have a huge impact on the country.     “These women are really strong. I think that they’re constantly underestimated, and I think that’s partially because women in our society are often underestimated,” says Andersen Brower. “I hope and I think that we are moving in the right direction having Jill Biden as a working woman who can be both things at the same time. She can be a wife, a supporting actor, but also a strong woman.”     While Biden is redefining her current role, the biggest shake-up could come once a woman is elected president, Jellison says, and a man takes up the role of first spouse.    
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U.S. rhythm and blues singer Mary Wilson, who rose to fame as a member of the legendary female singing trio The Supremes in the 1960s, has died at the age of 76.
 
Her friend, publicist Jay Schwartz, said Wilson died suddenly Monday at her home in Las Vegas, Nevada.   
 
Wilson founded The Supremes with Diana Ross and Florence Ballard while living in a public housing project in Detroit, Michigan in 1959.  The group signed with local R&B music label Motown Records two years later, but their first hit did not occur until 1964 with the classic chart-topping single “Where Did Our Love Go.”
 
The Supremes would go on to sing a record 12 number one hits, including such classics as “Baby Love,” “Come See About Me,” “Stop! In the Name of Love,” “I Hear a Symphony,” and “You Can’t Hurry Love.”  Their songs, numerous television appearances and live shows made them one of most popular musical acts of the 1960s,  and helped transform Motown Records into an iconic figure on the American cultural landscape.
 
Ballard was replaced by Cindy Birdsong in 1967, and Ross left the group in 1969 for a solo career, but Wilson remained with The Supremes with various singers until it was formally disbanded in 1976.  She remained active for many years as a solo performer, motivational speaker and U.S. cultural ambassador. The lineup of Wilson, Ross and Ballard were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1988.   
 
Motown founder Berry Gordy praised Wilson in a statement as “quite a star in her own right” who worked hard over the years “to boost the legacy of The Supremes.”
 
“She was a trailblazer, a diva and will be deeply missed,” Gordy said.  
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The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board meets Tuesday to vote on a probable cause for the helicopter crash that killed basketball superstar Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others in California last year. The NTSB has said there was no sign of mechanical failure on the helicopter, and that the crash is believed to be an accident. Board members Tuesday could give recommendations for how to prevent similar disasters in the future. The helicopter was taking the eight passengers to a youth basketball tournament amid heavy fog when it crashed into hilly terrain outside Los Angeles. 
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The Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9 Sunday to win a Super Bowl title and complete the National Football League’s season without any games being canceled amid the coronavirus pandemic.The usual spectacle surrounding one of the most watched television events of the year was toned down, and the site of the game was more subdued with only 25,000 fans in attendance and the rest of the seats filled with cardboard cutouts. Fans were absent from the seats closest to the field and were spaced apart. Those trying to buy food had to do so without using cash.Among those who did get to see the game in person were approximately 7,500 health care workers who were among the first in the United States to get COVID-19 vaccines.“I have to start by saluting all the health care workers here. They’re the real champions,” Buccaneers owner Joel Glazer said after the game.The events leading up to the game itself were mostly virtual, and access to locker rooms was more limited this year. And while Tampa Bay got the rare chance to play a Super Bowl in its home stadium, the Kansas City team delayed its travel until the day before the game instead of being at the Super Bowl site for about a week.Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Rob Gronkowski (87) reacts after scoring a touchdown during the first half of the NFL Super Bowl 55 football game against the Kansas City Chiefs, Feb. 7, 2021, in Tampa, Fla.Minutes before the game began, U.S. President Joe Biden appeared in a video message with his wife, Jill, asking people to observe a moment of silence for the more than 400,000 people who have died from COVID-19 in the United States.He called the Super Bowl “one of those great American celebrations,” and noted the typical gatherings for the game that are not happening this year.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention had advised people to find ways to gather virtually for the game and said that if people planned to watch with those not in their household they should do so outdoors, if possible.Tampa Mayor Jane Castor signed an order requiring face masks be worn outdoors in the areas holding Super Bowl events, and indoors when people were not able to socially distance.With its season over, the NFL has offered the use of its stadiums around the country as COVID-19 vaccination sites. Seven stadiums are already part of that effort. Biden, who pledged to ramp up the U.S. vaccination campaign during his first months in office, said in an interview with CBS, “I’m going to tell my team they’re available and I believe we’ll use them.”Super Bowl LV-City Scenes, Feb. 8, 2021.Tampa quarterback Tom Brady was named the game’s Most Valuable Player. It was his fifth time winning the award in ten Super Bowl appearances. The victory also gave him seven championships in his career.The 43-year-old was in his first season with Tampa Bay after spending his entire career with the New England Patriots. He threw two first-half touchdowns to tight end Rob Gronkowski, another former Patriots player, as the Buccaneers built a 21-6 lead before halftime.Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, MVP of last year’s Super Bowl, amassed 270 passing yards, but threw two interceptions as his team’s offense struggled to put together scoring drives. The Chiefs finished with just three field goals and no touchdowns.
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Christopher Plummer, the dashing, award-winning actor who played Captain von Trapp in the film The Sound of Music and at 82 became the oldest Academy Award acting winner in history, has died. He was 91.Plummer died Friday morning at his home in Connecticut with his wife, Elaine Taylor, by his side, said Lou Pitt, his longtime friend and manager.Across more than 50 years in the industry, Plummer enjoyed varied roles. He was a sophisticated businessman in the film The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, the voice of the villain in 2009’s Up and a canny lawyer in Broadway’s Inherit the Wind. In 2019, he starred as a murdered mystery novelist in Rian Johnson’s whodunnit Knives Out.But it was his role as von Trapp, opposite Julie Andrews, that made him a star. He played an Austrian captain who must flee the country with his folk-singing family to escape service in the Nazi navy, a role he lamented was “humorless and one-dimensional.” Plummer spent the rest of his life referring to the film as “The Sound of Mucus” or “S&M.”‘Cardboard figure'”We tried so hard to put humor into it,” he told The Associated Press in 2007. “It was almost impossible. It was just agony to try to make that guy not a cardboard figure.”The role catapulted Plummer to stardom, but he never took to leading-man parts, despite his silver hair, good looks and slight English accent. He preferred character parts, considering them more meaty.Tributes quickly came from Hollywood and Broadway. Joseph Gordon-Levitt called him “one of the greats” and George Takei posted, “Rest in eternal music, Captain von Trapp.” Dave Foley, a fellow Canadian, wrote: “If I live to be 91 maybe I’ll have time to fully appreciate all the great work of Christopher Plummer.”Plummer had a remarkable film renaissance late in life, which began with his acclaimed performance as Mike Wallace in Michael Mann’s 1999 film The Insider and continued in films such as 2001’s A Beautiful Mind and 2009’s The Last Station, in which he played a deteriorating Tolstoy and was nominated for an Oscar.FILE – Christopher Plummer holds his Oscar for best actor in a supporting role for “Beginners” in the press room at the 84th Annual Academy Awards, Feb. 26, 2012, in Hollywood, Calif.In 2012, Plummer won a supporting actor Oscar for his role in Beginners as Hal Fields, a museum director who becomes openly gay after his wife of 44 years dies. His loving, final relationship becomes an inspiration for his son, who struggles with his father’s death and how to find intimacy in a new relationship.”Too many people in the world are unhappy with their lot. And then they retire and they become vegetables. I think retirement in any profession is death, so I’m determined to keep crackin’,” he told AP in 2011.Plummer in 2017 replaced Kevin Spacey as J. Paul Getty in All the Money in the World just six weeks before the film was set to hit theaters. That choice that was officially validated in the best possible way for the film — a supporting Oscar nomination for Plummer, his third. In 2019, he starred in the TV suspense drama series Departure.There were fallow periods in his career — a Pink Panther movie here, a Dracula 2000 there and even a Star Trek — as a Klingon, no less. But Plummer had other reasons than the scripts in mind.Better hotels, beaches”For a long time, I accepted parts that took me to attractive places in the world. Rather than shooting in the Bronx, I would rather go to the south of France, crazed creature that I am,” he told AP in 2007. “And so I sacrificed a lot of my career for nicer hotels and more attractive beaches.”Plummer performed most of the major Shakespeare roles, including Hamlet, Cyrano, Iago, Othello, Prospero, Henry V and a staggering King Lear at Lincoln Center in 2004. He was a frequent star at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada.”I’ve become simpler and simpler with playing Shakespeare,” he said in 2007. “I’m not as extravagant as I used to be. I don’t listen to my voice so much anymore. All the pitfalls of playing the classics — you can fall in love with yourself.”FILE – Actor Christopher Plummer, shown June 15, 1973, poses for a photo before making his musical debut on Broadway in “Cyrano.”He won two Tony Awards. The first was in 1974 for best actor in a musical for playing the title role in Cyrano, and his second was in 1997 for his portrayal of John Barrymore in Barrymore. He also won two Emmys.Plummer was born Arthur Christopher Orme Plummer in Toronto. His maternal great-grandfather was former Canadian Prime Minister Sir John Abbott. His parents divorced shortly after his birth and he was raised by his mother and aunts.Plummer began his career on stage and in radio in Canada in the 1940s and made his Broadway debut in 1954 in The Starcross Story. While still a relative unknown, he was cast as Hamlet in a 1963 performance co-starring Robert Shaw and Michael Caine. It was taped by the BBC at Elsinore Castle in Denmark, where the play is set, and released in 1964. It won an Emmy.Marriages, daughterPlummer married Tony-winning actress Tammy Grimes in 1956, and fathered his only child, actress Amanda Plummer, in 1957. Like both her parents, she also won a Tony, in 1982 for Agnes of God. (Grimes won two Tonys, for Private Lives and The Unsinkable Molly Brown.)Plummer and Grimes divorced in 1960. A five-year marriage to Patricia Lewis ended in 1967. Plummer married his third wife, dancer Taylor, in 1970, and credited her with helping him overcome a drinking problem.He was given Canada’s highest civilian honor when he was invested as Companion of the Order of Canada by Queen Elizabeth II in 1968 and was inducted into the American Theatre’s Hall of Fame in 1986.   
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Donald Trump has resigned from the Screen Actors Guild after the union threatened to expel him for his role in the Capitol riot in January.In a letter dated Thursday and addressed to SAG-AFTRA president Gabrielle Carteris, Trump said he was resigning from the union that he had been a member of since 1989. “I no longer wish to be associated with your union,” wrote Trump in a letter shared by the actors guild. “As such, this letter is to inform you of my immediate resignation from SAG-AFTRA. You have done nothing for me.”  The guild responded with a short statement: “Thank you.”  Last month, the SAG-AFTRA board voted that there was probable cause that Trump violated its guidelines for membership by his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol siege. Trump, the guild said, had sustained “a reckless campaign of misinformation aimed at discrediting and ultimately threatening the safety of journalists, many of whom are SAG-AFTRA members.” Trump’s case was to be weighed by a disciplinary committee. In his letter, the former president said he had no interest in such a hearing. “Who cares?” he wrote.”While I’m not familiar with your work, I’m very proud of my work on movies such as ‘Home Alone 2,’ ‘Zoolander’ and ‘Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps’; and television shows including ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,’ ‘Saturday Night Live,’ and of course, one of the most successful shows in television history, ‘The Apprentice’ — to name just a few!” wrote Trump. “I’ve also greatly helped the cable news television business (said to be a dying platform with not much time left until I got involved in politics), and created thousands of jobs at networks such as MSDNC and Fake News CNN, among many others,” Trump continued.  On Thursday, the Screen Actors Guild announced nominees to its annual awards. Losing guild membership doesn’t disqualify anyone from performing. But most major productions abide by union contracts and hire only union actors.
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On frozen lakes and snow-covered fields in Canada’s wilds, magnificent geometric formations have suddenly appeared — the work of a retired headmaster stomping around in snowshoes to beat back pandemic blues. “I start with a shape — a hexagon, a square or a triangle — and draw lines through it or intersecting circles,” Kim Asmussen said in a telephone interview. The 62-year-old spends a lot of time tinkering with sketches in advance, he told AFP, “because once you’ve made a mark in the snow you can’t erase it. It’s not like drawing on a piece of paper. This undated family handout photo obtained Feb. 4, 2021, shows retired headmaster and artist Kim Asmussen in Schreiber, Ontario.”The biggest part,” he explained, “is just figuring out how we’re gonna go about walking it. You have to go back and forth quite a bit to pack the snow.” He started last year and has made 20 snowshoe artworks in and around the town of Schreiber, Ontario, about 1,200 kilometers (750 miles) northwest of Toronto on the shores of Lake Superior, which he photographs using drones and posts online. The largest measures about 400 meters long. Compass, rope, friends Asmussen said he uses drafting software to create designs and mapping tools to scope out suitable locations to use as canvasses. Then with a compass, a rope for measuring and a team of friends or local students, he sets about stamping out shapes in the snow, which can take up to three days depending on their size and intricacy. “There aren’t many fields in town, but there’re lots of [frozen] lakes around here,” he said. Asmussen said he got the idea while researching snow sculptures online and landed on snowshoe art by acclaimed artist Simon Beck, whose works have graced the mountainsides of Banff National Park, including a giant snowflake, a wolf and a maple leaf.  This aerial view received courtesy of Kim Asmussen on Feb. 3, 2021, shows geometric formations in the snow created by Asmussen near Rongie Lake in Schreiber, Ontario, Canada.”It’s just starting to take off,” said Asmussen, who hopes to popularize the method. “I thought to myself, maybe I can do that too,” he said, adding that it helps keep his mind sharp while getting a bit of fresh air. Sunny holiday substitute Several friends who were prevented from taking their usual winter holidays in sunbelts this year because of travel restrictions volunteered to help. Asmussen said he’d like to involve more people to help pack the snow, but local pandemic restrictions in place since December permit only a maximum of five to gather in groups outside. He is looking to involve more schools and set up a snowshoe art festival and is scouting locations near the TransCanada Highway to showcase artworks to passing truckers and tourists. Ideally, he said, there needs to be 15 to 30 centimeters (6 to 12 inches) of fresh snow in which to mark out a design. Most last only a few days before being covered up by the next snowfall. “I kind of like when it does snow right after [making a formation],” he said, “because you’ve got this new blanket of the snow and you can do it all over again.” 
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An outcry by Hindu nationalists and criminal complaints for allegedly hurting Hindus’ religious sentiment has prompted the director of a new Amazon television political drama to delete scenes that allegedly mocked Hindi deities and a dialogue with derisive references to lower castes.The show, Tandav, released last month here, was widely expected to win many viewers as it boasted of some of the biggest names in Bollywood. But political analysts say the backlash against the TV series has again put the spotlight on a rising tide of Hindu nationalism in India.  “This signals a new political culture supportive of intolerance, of a hardline Hindu ideology which is endorsed by the ruling party,” said Niranjan Sahoo at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, pointing out that members of the ruling right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party and Hindu groups were among those who filed police complaints, voiced strident objections and called for the show to be banned.A Bharatiya Janata Party supporter wearing mask rests on bike as she waits to take part in a protest against The Amazon Prime Video web series Tandav in Mumbai, India, Jan 19, 2021.The TV show is centered on a power-hungry politician bent on becoming India’s prime minister. The scenes that offended Hindu nationalists include one in which a university student plays the role of the Hindu god Shiva and scenes in which characters insult lower castes. One of the police complaints filed in the northern Uttar Pradesh state, ruled by the BJP, also said that the political drama portrays the prime minister’s post in “an indecent manner.” In a statement after the controversy erupted, the show’s director, Ali Abbas Zafar, called the TV series a “pure work of fiction” and said that the cast and crew “unconditionally apologize if it has unintentionally hurt anybody’s sentiments.” However, the apology and the deletion of the offending scenes have not assuaged those who have objected to the TV series. A BJP member of Parliament, Manoj Kotak, told VOA the makers of the TV series and actors must face legal action.  
 
“What they did is not pardonable,” he said. “It is not enough to say ‘sorry’ after doing something wrong. You have to be answerable for what has been done.”   
 
Soon after the show went on the air last month, he had said that the show “deliberately mocked Hindu gods and disrespected Hindu religious sentiments.”Tandav is not the only TV series that has angered Hindu nationalists. Objections to a scene in which a Hindu woman and a Muslim man kiss against the backdrop of a Hindu temple in a Netflix TV series, A Suitable Boy, had prompted a police complaint in November in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh by a BJP youth wing member, Gaurav Tiwari, who said the scene “hurt religious sentiments.”  A stand-up comedian, Munawar Faruqui, who was scheduled to give a comedy show in Madhya Pradesh, has been in jail since last month after the leader of a local Hindu group, Eklavya Singh Gaud, complained to police that he had outraged religious feelings. Faruqui had not begun his show when he was arrested. Gaud told reporters later that “he has made indecent remarks on Hindu gods and goddesses in the past.” Three BJP-ruled states have also passed controversial legislation prescribing prison terms for anyone using marriage to force religious conversion.  Dubbed the “love jihad” law, it aims to address concerns among Hindu nationalists that women are being lured into marriage by Muslim men in order to convert them to Islam — critics have dismissed such fears as a “conspiracy” theory. In Uttar Pradesh, several Muslim men have been arrested under the law.Political analysts such as Sahoo say the trend is disturbing.“Filing police complaints, dragging people to courts, this all will have a chilling impact on our democracy, on free speech and creative expression,” he said. There have been growing calls for regulation of content on platforms such as Netflix, Amazon and Disney’s Hotstar as it raises the ire of some amid the growing wave of Hindu nationalism.   BJP lawmaker Kotak said the problem is not just with Tandav.“The way shows on streaming services are portraying sex, violence, abuse, women, Hindu gods and goddesses is not correct,” he told VOA.Kotak is among those who have called on the Information and Broadcasting Ministry to regulate streaming platforms. Unlike films, streaming TV services are not subject to the country’s censorship boards.  India has emerged as a big market for Amazon and other streaming platforms, which, besides airing international shows, are producing a lot of local content as they gain popularity.In the days after the controversy over Tandav erupted last month, an editorial in The Times of India newspaper, “Democracy’s Killjoys,” said, “This bullying of artists and creative expression doesn’t serve India well, culturally or commercially.” “Cinema is a source of immense soft power for India,” the editorial said.Using an abbreviation for “over-the-top media,” which refers to media distributed by internet, the paper said, “The Bollywood-centred OTT industry is booming, generating jobs and new experiential spaces for creators and consumers.“However,” it continued, “censorship, harassment and governmental overreach endanger this India story too, after other India stories have come off the rails.”
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