Arts

A transgender Chilean actress has turned in one of the most buzzed-about performances of the year and some are hoping she could be the first trans actor to land an Oscar nomination.

Daniela Vega, 28, stars in Sebastian Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman. She plays Marina, a transgender woman whose partner (Francisco Reyes) dies, after which Marina is subjected to harsh treatment by the family of her deceased lover and by police investing the death.

Chile has selected the film as its Academy Awards submission this year. But the bigger spotlight may be on whether Vega’s breakout performance — one of stirring strength and compassion — could make Oscar history. Reviewing the movie at its Berlin Film Festival premiere, Variety called her performance “a multi-layered, emotionally polymorphous feat of acting,” that deserves “so much more than political praise.”

While several transgender musicians have been Oscar-nominated, no trans performer has ever earned an acting nod.

“It’s too early to talk about that, to think about it. I have lots of festivals to attend, lots of dresses to wear,” Vega said with a grin in an interview. “The Oscars are a little bit beyond the timeline I’m thinking about right now. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

Vega and A Fantastic Woman will not have an easy road to the Oscars. Performances in foreign-language films rarely break into the acting categories, and this year, like most, the field of potential contenders boasts plenty of heavyweight, bigger-name performers like Meryl Streep (The Post) and Jessica Chastain (Molly’s Game).

But Vega has two things going for her: the depth of her performance and the possibility of a long-awaited Oscar landmark. Such a result could have great meaning for a trans community that President Donald Trump recently banned from entering the military.

“If we broaden our gaze, it will be more interesting, more beautiful. If we can make more diverse colors, people, stories, it will be interesting,” Vega said. “Uniforms are for the military and the police, not for our thinking.”

Hollywood has far from shied away from telling transgender stories, but the industry has come under increasing criticism for not casting them in high-profile parts. Hilary Swank (Boys Don’t Cry) and Jared Leto (Dallas Buyers Club) have taken home awards, and movies like 2015’s The Danish Girl, with Eddie Redmayne, and 2005’s Transamerica, with Felicity Huffman, have garnered nominations.

While those films and the Amazon series Transparent have been widely applauded, pressure has mounted urging producers to cast trans actors for trans parts. Progress has instead come in smaller, offbeat productions like Sean Baker’s Tangerine, the much-lauded 2015 film Baker shot with iPhones. It starred a pair of transgender performers, Mya Taylor and Kitana Kiki Rodriguez. Taylor last year won an Independent Spirit Award for her performance.

“There is very beautiful transgender talent,” Taylor said, accepting the supporting actress award. “You better get out there and put it in your movie.”

Transgender people have been nominated in other Oscar categories. The composer Angela Morley received two nods, for 1974’s The Little Prince and 1976’s The Slipper and the Rose.

Most recently, singer Anohni, formerly known as Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, became the first transgendered performer ever nominated. She collaborated with J. Ralph on the nominated song Manta Ray for the documentary Racing Extinction. But when the category’s other nominees — Lady Gaga, Sam Smith, the Weeknd — were given performing slots during the 2016 broadcast, Anohni was not, and she opted to boycott the ceremony.

In a fiery essay announcing her refusal to attend, Anohni declared: “They are going to try to convince us that they have our best interests at heart by waving flags for identity politics and fake moral issues.” 

Whether Vega — and Oscar voters — can change history won’t be decided for months. Sony Picture Classics, which has guided performers to dozens of Academy Award nominations, will release the film on Nov. 17. For now, Vega is soaking up her moment.

“It’s like living a dream,” said Vega. “It’s like a film in a film.”
…

To say that Josie Ho has been busy is an understatement.

The Hong Kong singer and actress is putting out new music, touring Asia and has shot a new travel show on TLC.

Together with her indie rock band, Josie and the Uni Boys, Ho is releasing seven new singles on vinyl records, one song at a time. She said her new music is inspired by the psycho thriller film Split starring James McAvoy, about three young girls kidnapped by a man who suffers from a multiple personality disorder. Fittingly, the first single is named Skitzo.

“I believe everyone has at least five personalities, like when you go home and face your parents, your lover, your friends, your colleagues, your boss and like, some PR friends,” Ho explained. “Some people have guilt trips about having different faces, like they feel like they’re two-faced, which I don’t think so. That’s why we need to put this concept out there, so when people really understand our lyrics and our music, I hope everyone feels that ‘We’re OK. We’re all OK. We’re fine.'”

Split might just be the way Ho, 42, feels about her life. The daughter of Macau casino mogul Stanley Ho, Ho defied her parents and refused to join the family business. Instead, she wanted to become an actress and singer.

In 1996, she released her first solo albums and also began acting in films. However, it wasn’t until she played a prostitute in the 2003 movie Naked Ambition that critics began to take her seriously as an actress. For that performance, Ho won the Best Supporting Actress award at the Hong Kong Film Awards. She also attempted to break into Hollywood, gaining a small part in Steven Soderbergh’s movie Contagion about the SARS epidemic. 

This year, Ho is celebrating the 10th anniversary of her band. They will kick off a tour in Tokyo in October, and Ho could hardly contain her excitement.

“I’m going to be able to perform like a Japanese band at their live houses. Those are not just any live houses, those are scared rock ‘n’ roll, hall of fame places. So, I’m really honored to play there,” Ho said.   

After Japan, Josie and the Uni Boys head to China, the Philippines and Taiwan before returning home to Hong Kong next spring.

Until then, fans can catch Ho on TLC, A Taste of Hong Kong with Josie Ho, where she hosts other Asian celebrities in Hong Kong and shows them around town. Her favorite spot in Hong Kong? Surprisingly, the outdoors.

“A lot of countries have outdoor sports as well, but our outdoor sports are only 20 minutes away from the city. So I think we have the upper hand, compared to other cities in Asia. So you can go wakeboarding, take 45 minutes to shower and change, and go to work in central. I think that’s a really important point to tell people,” she said.
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Selena Gomez recently received a kidney transplant from television actress Francia Raisa due her struggle with lupus, the singer revealed Thursday.

Gomez revealed in an Instagram post confirmed by her publicist early Thursday that she has been somewhat out of the spotlight this summer because she was recovering from the procedure. The 25-year-old calls the transplant “what I needed to do for my overall health.”

 

The post didn’t reveal Gomez’s current condition or say where or when the procedure took place. Gomez’s publicist declined to release more information.

Gomez wrote “there aren’t words to describe” how she can thank Raisa, who she says gave “the ultimate gift and sacrifice by donating her kidney.”

“I am incredibly blessed,” she added.

 

The Instagram post includes a picture of Gomez and Raisa holding hands while lying side-by-side in hospital beds and another photo of a scar on Gomez’s abdomen. The 29-year-old Raisa is best known for her role on the ABC Family series “The Secret Life of the American Teenager.” Raisa’s publicist didn’t immediately return a request for comment Thursday.

 

Gomez revealed her lupus diagnosis in 2015 and took a break from her career last year to deal with anxiety, panic attacks and depression stemming from her battle with the disease. The disease causes fibrous tissue and inflammation of internal organs, skin rashes and joint pain. It affects women nine times more than men. Organs affected by lupus include the kidneys, heart and lungs.

 

Gomez got her start as a child actress before launching her music career. She appeared on “Barney and Friends” before breaking through as a teen star on the Disney Channel’s “Wizards of Waverly Place.” She has a massive following on social media. Her 126 million followers on Instagram are the most on the platform.

 

 
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CBS’ “60 Minutes,” the newsmagazine that can credit consistency for much of its success as it enters its 50th anniversary year, is about to see a major change with the addition of Oprah Winfrey.

 

Winfrey will debut Sept. 24, reporting on a story about America’s political divisions.

 

It’s a testament to the power of the Sunday-night newsmagazine that it seeks to absorb one of television’s biggest stars into its fabric instead of the other way around. One of the medium’s best-known celebrity interviewers will do some, but will largely work against type in reporting stories, said Jeff Fager, the show’s executive producer.

 

“She wants to do stories with impact,” he said. “She’s driven by that and so are we. That’s part of why this is such a good fit for her.”

 

Many of the names that made “60 Minutes” great — Mike Wallace, Morley Safer, Ed Bradley, Don Hewitt — are gone now. But the stopwatch keeps ticking every Sunday at 7 p.m. While everything in media seems to have changed around it, the show’s mix of investigations, news-making interviews, esoteric and entertaining features timed to the length of founding executive producer Hewitt’s attention span remains remarkably unchanged.

 

“It’s a miracle,” correspondent Lesley Stahl said.

 

When she joined in 1991, Hewitt told Stahl that he wanted correspondents to be like actors in a repertory troupe who could play all the roles, and that’s still the philosophy she uses to plan stories she pursues.

 

Gone, too, are the volatile days of throwing coffee cups, shouting matches and feuds, of Wallace peeking at colleagues’ notebooks to steal stories. But it’s still keenly competitive. Newcomer Bill Whitaker told Fager he dreamed of screening a story that his bosses found so perfect it merited no changes. Fager leaned in and told him, “that’s not going to happen.”

 

There’s a different pressure from the daily deadlines of the evening news, Whitaker said. At “60 Minutes,” correspondents have time, talented producers and travel budgets. So they’d better deliver.

 

“Everyone is trying to find an original story, something that breaks news or helps people to understand a big story,” Fager said. “That’s what we do. New people up here realize that’s a higher bar than is set anywhere else.”

 

“People think it’s cutthroat,” he said. “It’s not like that, the way our image would suggest. But it’s a tough place to succeed. Part of how you’re judged is how original your reporting is, and how well you cover a big story.”

 

Scott Pelley, Stahl, Steve Kroft, Whitaker and Anderson Cooper make up the show’s core. Charlie Rose, Winfrey, Sharyn Alfonsi, Lara Logan, David Martin, Norah O’Donnell and Jon Wertheim are among the contributors who also do stories.

 

“There are a lot of people who are contributors who have other jobs, and that has changed the feel of the place,” Kroft said. “I don’t think the show has changed very much on the air.”

 

Fager, who just completed a book on the show to mark the anniversary, talks now about how hard it was to replace Hewitt 15 years ago. Colleagues say his status as an insider at CBS News and “60 Minutes” helped him, along with the absence of an ego-driven need to make changes for change’s sake.

 

His biggest push has been to make the show more on the news. Interviewing former presidential adviser Steve Bannon this past Sunday illustrates the point, and Fager pushed out excerpts of the interview for a few days in advance to make headlines and attract attention. Comments Bannon made about the James Comey firing were posted on the “60 Minutes Overtime” website, which delivers outtakes from the show’s segments, and became so newsworthy Monday that they arguably should have been used in the original piece.

 

The show would often ignore big breaking-news stories in the past, figuring they were told elsewhere. Fager likes to find some element that hasn’t received much attention but can help a viewer better understand the event, citing Kroft’s reporting on the financial crisis a decade ago.

 

“The quality of the show has not dropped off,” Kroft said. “We’ve had good seasons and bad seasons all during the 30 years I’ve been here. I think the show is more timely than it used to be.”

 

Producers watch the ratings, but refuse to test audience preferences with polls.

 

“It’s really risky to do what we do,” Fager said. “It goes against everything the professionals in news organizations believe, that you have to pander, that you have to look for stories that they’re going to want, as opposed to doing stories that are important and figuring out how to do it well.”

 

 “60 Minutes” has made high-profile mistakes; the reliance on a bad source in Logan’s 2014 Benghazi story was a major blemish. If the show has a weakness, it is that story length can simplify some stories too much, said Tom Bettag, a longtime television news producer who now teaches at the University of Maryland.

 

Yet the storytelling and writing put the show far ahead of the competition. Unlike newsmagazines like “Dateline NBC” and ABC’s “20/20” that have chased after trends and lost their identity, “what `60 Minutes’ did was stay consistent to its brand, to its vision, year in and year out,” he said.

 

“60 Minutes” has a rich tradition of principals who hold on to their jobs well past retirement age. The 72-year-old Kroft, who has cut back on stories and recently signed a two-year contract, doesn’t want to be one of them. Stahl, 75, said she wants to continue as long as she can do the job. She went to Fager a few years ago and said she didn’t want to fade on television and would tell him if she could sense herself slipping.

 

“He looked at me and said, ‘No, you won’t. Nobody ever does that.’ And he very kindly offered to do it for me,” she said with a laugh.

 

 

 

 
…

South African musician Johnny Clegg, who has had chemotherapy and other treatment for pancreatic cancer, says he feels “fit and strong” as he begins his last international tour.

 

The 64-year-old Clegg told journalists Thursday that he is “dealing with another, parallel world that I live in with my diagnosis” ahead of shows in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia in the coming months. He performs Sept. 20 in Dubai.

 

The tour, scheduled to end in March, is called “The Final Journey.”

 

Clegg blended Western and African musical styles in multi-racial bands during white minority rule in South Africa. His song “Asimbonanga,” meaning “We’ve never seen him” in Zulu, refers to South Africans who grew up under apartheid, when images of then-imprisoned Nelson Mandela were banned.

 

 
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There’s a happy ending for two motherless tiger cubs now at a zoo in California. Faith Lapidus has the story.
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The World Anti-Doping Agency has dismissed all but one of the first 96 Russian doping cases forwarded its way from sports federations acting on information that exposed cheating in the country.

 

The cases stem from an investigation by Richard McLaren, who was tasked with detailing evidence of a scheme to hide doping positives at the Sochi Olympics and beforehand.

 

The 95 dismissed cases, first reported by The New York Times , were described by WADA officials as not containing enough hard evidence to result in solid cases.

 

“It’s absolutely in line with the process, and frankly, it’s nothing unexpected,” WADA director general Olivier Niggli told The Associated Press on Wednesday at meetings of the International Olympic Committee. “The first ones were the quickest to be dealt with, because they’re the ones with the least evidence.”

McLaren uncovered 1,000 potential cases, however, and a WADA spokesperson told AP it is the agency’s understanding that sports federations are considering bringing some of them forward.

Tainted samples missing

 

Niggli cautioned that it will be difficult to pursue some cases, because the Russian scheme involved disposing of tainted samples, and the Russians were not cooperative with McLaren in turning over evidence.

 

“There are a thousand names, and for a number of them, the only thing McLaren’s got is a name on a list,” Niggli said. “If you can prosecute an athlete with a name on a list, perfect. But this is not the reality. There were thousands of samples destroyed in Moscow.”

The revelation of the 95 dropped cases comes with a deadline fast approaching to make a decision on Russia’s participation at next February’s Winter Olympics.

 

Two IOC committees that will decide the matter — one reviewing individual cases and another looking at the overall corruption in Russia — are due to deliver interim reports at the IOC meetings later this week.

270 Russian athletes cleared for Rio 

 

In resolving the case against Russia’s suspended anti-doping agency (RUSADA), WADA has insisted the agency, the country’s Olympic committee and its sports ministry “publically accept the outcomes of the McLaren Investigation.” Track’s governing body put similar conditions in place for the lifting of the track team’s suspension.

 

The IOC, however, has made no such move. More than 270 Russian athletes were cleared to compete in the Summer Games last year in Rio.

“The best we can do to protect clean athletes is to have a really good, solid anti-doping process in Russia,” said WADA president Craig Reedie, who is also a member of the IOC. “That’s our role and our priority. The rest of it, you have to go and ask the IOC.”

IOC president Thomas Bach said the committees are “working hard all the time.”

Russia blames WADA

Meanwhile, Russian officials are showing no signs of acknowledging they ran a state-sponsored doping program.

 

This week, the country’s deputy prime minister, Vitaly Mutko, blamed RUSADA and the former head of the Russian anti-doping lab, Grigory Rodchenkov, for the corruption, and suggested WADA was at fault, too. Rodchenkov lives in hiding in the United States after revealing details of the plot.

 

“We are rearranging the system but it should be rearranged so that WADA could also share responsibility,” Mutko told Russia’s R-Sport news agency. “They should have been responsible for (Rodchenkov) before, as they have issued him a license and given him a work permit. They were in control of him but now the state is blamed for it.”
…

This was one of those rare Olympic moments where everyone walked away a winner.

 

Paris for 2024. Los Angeles for 2028. And the International Olympic Committee for transforming an unruly bidding process to lock down its future by choosing not one, but two Summer Olympics hosts at the same time.

 

The IOC put the rubber stamp on a pre-determined conclusion Wednesday, giving Paris the 2024 Games and LA the 2028 Games in a history-making vote.  

 

The decision marks the first time the IOC has granted two Summer Olympics at once. It came after a year’s worth of scrambling by IOC president Thomas Bach, who had only the two bidders left for the original prize, 2024, and couldn’t bear to see either lose.

Both cities will host their third Olympics.

 

The Paris Games will come on the 100th anniversary of its last turn — a milestone that would have made the French capital the sentimental favorite had only 2024 been up for grabs.  

 

Los Angeles moved to 2028, and those Olympics will halt a stretch of 32 years without a Summer Games in the United States. In exchange for the compromise, LA will grab an extra $300 million or more that could help offset the uncertainties that lie ahead over an 11-year wait instead of seven.

 

Doing away with the dramatic flair that has accompanied these events in years past, there were no secret ballots and no dramatic reveals to close out the voting.

 

Bach simply asked for a show of hands from the audience, and when dozens shot up from the audience, and nobody raised their hand when he asked for objections, this was deemed a unanimous decision.

 

A ceremony that has long sparked parties in the plazas of winning cities — and crying in those of the losers — produced more muted, but still visible, shows of emotion. Paris bid organizer Tony Estaguent choked up during the presentation before the vote.

 

“You can’t imagine what this means to us. To all of us. It’s so strong,” he said.

Later, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo stood by Bach’s side and dabbed away tears as the vote was announced and the IOC president handed the traditional — but now unneeded — cards to she and LA mayor Eric Garcetti. One read “Paris 2024,” and the other “Los Angeles 2028.”

But there was no real drama. As if to accentuate that, the LA delegation wore sneakers to the presentation.

 

Bid chairman Casey Wasserman said the footwear “reflects who we are, and the unique brand of California-cool that we will bring to the 2028 Games.”

Bach asked the 94 IOC members to allow the real contests to play out at the Olympics themselves and turn the vote into a pure business decision — not a bad idea considering the news still seeping out about a bid scandal involving a Brazilian IOC member’s alleged vote-selling to bring the 2016 Olympics to Rio de Janeiro.

 

 More than that, Bach needed to ensure stability for his brand.

 

The public in many cities, especially those in the Western democracies that have hosted the majority of these games, is no longer eager to approve blank checks for bid committees and governments that have to come up with the millions simply to bid for the Olympics, then billions more to stage them if they win.

 

That reality hit hard when three of the original five bidders for 2024 — Rome, Hamburg, Germany, and Budapest, Hungary — dropped out, and the U.S. Olympic Committee had to pull the plug on its initial candidate, Boston, due to lack of public support.

“This is a solution to an awkward problem,” said longtime IOC member Dick Pound of Canada. “Many of the (candidate) cities are not prepared. They say, ‘Let’s have an Olympics,’ but they haven’t done the background work, checked the finances. But I guess we have to share it and say, ‘Have you done A, B, C, and D?’”

Only two candidates made it to the finish line — Paris and Los Angeles, each with a storied tradition of Olympic hosting and an apparent understanding of Bach’s much-touted reform package, known as Agenda 2020. It seeks to streamline the Games, most notably by eliminating billion-dollar stadiums and infrastructure projects that have been underused, if used at all, once the Olympics leave town.

 

Can they deliver?

 

Paris will have the traditional seven-year time frame to answer that.

 

Only one totally new venue is planned — a swimming and diving arena to be built near the Stade de France, which will serve as the Olympic stadium. Roland Garros, which will host tennis and boxing, will get a privately funded expansion. In all, the projected cost of new venues and upgrades to others is $892 million.

 

To be sure, Paris already has much to work with. Beach volleyball will be played near the Eiffel Tower; cycling will finish at the Arc de Triomphe; equestrian will be held at the Chateau de Versailles. And what would an Olympics be without some water-quality issues? There will be pressure to clean up the River Seine, which is where open-water and triathlon will be held.

 

Los Angeles, meanwhile, will get an extra four years, though the city claims it doesn’t need them. All the sports venues are built, save the under-construction stadium for the NFL’s Rams and Chargers, which will host opening ceremonies. Los Angeles proposed a $5.3 billion budget for 2024 (to be adjusted for 2028) that included infrastructure, operational costs — everything. A big number, indeed, though it must be put into perspective:

 

 Earlier this summer, organizers in Tokyo estimated their cost for the 2020 Games at $12.6 billion. The London Games in 2012 came in at $19 billion.

 

Traffic could be a problem — it almost always is in LA — but the city will be well along multi-decade, multibillion-dollar transit upgrade by 2028, and those with long memories recall free-flowing highways the last time the Olympics came to town, as locals either left the city or heeded warnings to use public transportation or stay home.

 

Those 1984 Games essentially saved the Olympic movement after a decade of terror, red ink and a boycott sullied the brand and made hosting a burden. The city points to its Olympic legacy to explain a nearly unheard-of 83 percent approval rating in a self-commissioned poll — not an insignificant factor when the IOC picks a place to hold its crown-jewel event.

 

Along with Paris, LA is stepping in again to try to change the conversation about what hosting the Olympics can really be.

 

“It’s a unique opportunity to do two at the same time,” Wasserman said. “Hopefully, it’s an interesting paradigm for the world going forward. We’re two great cities, it’s two great Olympic hosts and it’s going to be two great games.”

 
…

Urged on by dozens of stars who turned out to sing, tell stories and plead for support for hurricane victims in a one-hour televised benefit, organizers said more than $44 million was raised Tuesday and donations are still being accepted.

With Stevie Wonder singing “Lean on Me” and Usher and Blake Shelton joining for “Stand By Me,” the message was clear: Americans were being asked to help those whose lives were upended by wind and rain.

Justin Bieber, George Clooney, Barbra Streisand, Al Pacino, Lupita Nyong’o, Jay Leno and dozens of others sat at phone banks to accept donations. Beyonce, Will Smith and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson sent in taped pleas for support during the event, shown on more than a dozen television networks and online simultaneously.

Originally conceived as a benefit for victims of Hurricane Harvey in Texas, the “Hand in Hand” telethon was expanded to help people in Florida and the Caribbean devastated in recent days by Irma.

“We’re here to raise money, lift some spirits,” said Jamie Foxx, standing with actor Leonardo DiCaprio. “When tough times hit, this is who we are. We’re compassionate. We’re unstoppable.”

Hollywood talent manager Scooter Braun, who organized the event with Houston rap artist Bun B, said that after the show, all the celebrities manning the phone banks stayed to take more calls. “No one left,” he said. “Everyone just kept answering phones and answering phones and answering phones. People want to give. Like, people want to help. And you don’t have to be a celebrity to do it.”

For many of the stars, the storms hit close to home.

“I have family in Puerto Rico, I have family in Miami. I’ve been on the road. I haven’t been able to be there. So you can imagine how it’s been,” “Despacito” singer Luis Fonsi said after the show, adding that all his family, including his wife and young children in Miami, survived the storm and are safe.

“”Helpless – helpless is an understatement,” Fonsi said of being on tour and unable to be with his family. He noted that his experience paled in comparison to the pain the storms have caused for many.

“You can imagine how frustrating it is to not be able to sort of protect your own family,” he said. “Imagine all of these people that have nothing to do. The videos that you see online. So as an artist, as a singer, I think it’s part of our job, it’s part of our resume, to take time off and come together and do these kind of things.”

The quick-moving show took a form familiar to viewers since a sad template was set in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks. Celebrities requested donations, told heartwarming survival stories involving people caught in the storm and sang songs. Several organizations will benefit, including the United Way and Save the Children.

Stages in Los Angeles, New York and Nashville, Tennessee, were filled simultaneously, although the night’s final performance – a tribute to Texans by George Strait, Robert Earl Keen, Chris Stapleton, Miranda Lambert and Lyle Lovett – originated from San Antonio.

Fonsi and Tori Kelly sang “Hallelujah” together. Dave Matthews picked his guitar from a studio above New York’s Times Square, and Darius Rucker, Brad Paisley, Demi Lovato and Cece Winans sang the Beatles’ “With a Little Help From My Friends.” Wonder, backed by a gospel chorus, opened the show with the Bill Withers classic.

“Natural disasters don’t discriminate,” Beyonce said. “They don’t care if you’re an immigrant, black or white, Hispanic or Asian, Jewish or Muslim, wealthy or poor.” Cher and Oprah Winfrey told the story behind a frequently seen picture of strangers forming a human chain to save someone from flooding in Houston.

Usually competitive network morning personalities Matt Lauer, Norah O’Donnell and Michael Strahan stood before a satellite image of an ominous Irma to describe devastation the storm had caused.

Donations were announced from some deep pockets. Computer maker Michael Dell and his wife, Susan, pledged to match the first $10 million in donations Tuesday. They’ve given a total of $41 million to the Rebuild Texas Fund. Basketball star Chris Paul gave $20,000 and said the NBA Players Association would match donations of up to the same amount given by any NBA player.

Announcing Apple’s promise to give $5 million, comic Stephen Colbert quipped said it was coincidentally “also the price of the new iPhone.”

ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, HBO, MTV, BET and Univision were among the networks carrying the program, which was also streamed online.
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American tennis star Serena Williams on Wednesday announced the name and released first pictures of her baby girl, revealing that they had spent a week in the hospital following the Sept. 1 birth in Florida because of unspecified complications.

“Meet Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr.” the former world No. 1 and 23-time Grand Slam champion said in postings on her social media sites that included a video diary of her pregnancy.

Williams, 35, who is engaged to Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, said the baby was born Sept. 1 and weighed 6 lbs 14 oz (3.1 kg).

“So we’re leaving the hospital after six days. It’s been a long time.  We had a lot of complications, but look what we got!” Williams said in the video, cradling the baby who has a mass of black hair.

The video showed Williams dancing, hitting tennis balls as her pregnancy progressed, selfies of her expanding belly, and home video of the couple putting together the baby’s crib.

Williams confirmed her pregnancy in April hours after triggering speculation when she accidentally posted a short-lived selfie on social media with the caption: “20 weeks.”

Williams, the world’s highest-paid female athlete, was about two months pregnant when she captured her 23rd grand slam singles title at the Australian Open.

She has not competed since announcing her pregnancy but she told Vogue magazine last month that she intends to defend her title next year in Australia, where the year’s first grand slam will be played from Jan. 15-28.

Reddit was among the first to congratulate the couple on Wednesday.

“Congrats to two of our all-time favorite redditors who just welcomed a new baby Snoo into their family: u/Kn0thing and u/serenawilliams!,” the social news and discussion website posted on Twitter.
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Online bidding is winding down for dozens of items with direct connections to Britain’s late Princess Diana.

Eighty items being sold at auction 20 years after her death in a Paris car crash include articles of clothing, jewelry, signed papers and photographs. There’s even a piece of her wedding cake still stored in a commemorative box.

Boston-based RR Auction is handling the sale, which ends Wednesday evening.

Auction house executive vice president Bobby Livingston says interest in Diana memorabilia remains high because “she still resonates all over the world.” He says the items “give you a little snapshot into this beautiful woman’s life.”

The items include belongings Diana donated to charity months before her death on Aug. 31, 1997.

Bidding began last week.
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The Cambodian Space Project, long on the forefront of a local rock’n’roll revival, is a band making good with their pre-Khmer Rouge Cambodia sound.

The Cambodian-Australian group, kicked off a mini-U.S. tour on Tuesday with a performance at the Kennedy Center’s Millennium Stage. Channthy Kak, 38, also known as Srey Thy, said she was honored to have been invited to perform at the Washington venue, where the band played their original brand of psychedelic rock, before heading to New York City and California. On the West Coast, they’ll rock out in Long Beach, which has the largest Cambodian population in the U.S.

“It is very special that we are invited to perform on a very big stage and in a very big city,” Chanthy said about the Kennedy Center gig. “It is unbelievable.” 

Perhaps more at home among the rice paddies and rural villages of her home province of Prey Veng, Chanthy formed The Cambodian Space Project  after being approached by Julien Poulson, a musician from Australia’s island state of Tasmania, while working as a karaoke singer at a bar in Phnom Penh. Neither of them expected to be on the international scene just eight years after forming.

Video: A Ros Sereysothea song uploaded to YouTube

‘Lost’ Cambodian rock 

Inspired by the great artists of Cambodia’s golden era of the 1960s, the band aims to revive the country’s lost rock’n’roll scene, which was wiped out during the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s.

Fans heard original favorites such as “Whiskey Cambodia,” as well as covers of 1960s divas such as Pan Ron and Ros Sereysothea.

American music brought to Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War influenced Cambodia’s music scene in the 1960s. Bands like Baksei Cham Krong, Bayon and Draka introduced Phnom Penh to new sounds, said Seng Dara, a music preservationist.

“They were highly educated artists. Though they were influenced by Western culture, they were able to integrate Western music to be authentically Khmer,” he said. “It’s good to conserve pure Khmer culture, but it’s not very creative.”

As the Vietnam War ended in April 1975, the Khmer Rouge occupied Phnom Penh and erased foreign influences. The regime targeted intellectuals, artists and musicians, destroying documents, cultural records and songs. Citizens identified as the “cultural elite” were sentenced to death during the regime’s four-year rule. An estimated 1.7 million lives were lost.

Cambodian Space Project takes off

Chanthy says the inspiration for song comes either from the heart or the head, and the songs of the 1960s “are very deep in the heart.” 

“When I started writing my own songs, I didn’t have a mentor,” she recalled. “But what I experience, see and feel, which can be easily forgotten, I put into words, I put it into a song so that it will always be meaningful and remembered.” 

Chanthy dropped out of elementary school with only basic reading and writing skills, and that has made communicating with composers her greatest challenge. 

“I don’t know melody. I don’t know the ‘do, re, mi’ things,” she said. “We use body language. I raise my hands up, they play the high keys, and as I put my hands down they play lower keys.” 

Her musical idol is Pan Ron, who became a national star in Cambodia in the mid-60s when she teamed up with Sinn Sisamouth. She is believed to have been executed during the final days of the Khmer Rouge regime.

“Her songs are sexy. Her laugh and sense of humor and her voice are beautiful. Ros Serey Sothea also had a golden voice. But Pan Ron, you know, it’s just like me. We only fit with rock and roll because we’re a funny kind of person. Not sentimental. I’m very playful,” Chanthy said.

Her mother was the best singer in her town, Prey Veng, Chanthy said, and she recalls how her father often listened to music on the radio.

At 19, Chanthy moved to Phnom Penh to look for work. After almost being duped into working in a brothel, she tried her hand at everything from construction to owning a souvenir store – until the beat freed her soul.

“Rock’n’roll is the type of music genre that helps people get relief and become happy,” she said. “It helps them get out of painful feelings because of its humble and funny lyrics.” 

Rock revival

The Cambodian Space Project was the subject of a feature-length film, Not Easy Rock’n’Roll, which premiered in 2015. 

Director Marc Eberle said the film’s recent screening on BBC World was “a great way to bring Cambodian culture to the world. In many countries in South America, Africa and across Asia, the story resonates well with the audience.”

Along with The Cambodian Space Project, the Los Angeles-based group Dengue Fever pursues a similar mission to preserve and innovate in the Cambodian music scene.

Jimmy Kiss, a rising Cambodian pop-rock musician, says he is impressed by the current state of Cambodian rock’n’roll. He disagrees with those who say it is stuck in the past.

“The only difference between musicians in the past and the musicians in the present is how people value the music,” he said. “There are so many talented musicians out there nowadays. The thing is that people in the past valued musicians more than people do now.” 
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Andy Serkis, perhaps best-known for his role as Gollum in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, intentionally avoided a somber tone in his directorial debut Breathe, he said Tuesday.

The film, which had its world premiere Monday night in Toronto, is inspired by the parents of producer Jonathan Cavendish, Robin and Diana (played by Andrew Garfield and Claire Foy), who defied medical convention after Robin was paralyzed by polio in his 20s and later blazed a trail as disability rights advocates.

“We took license, and I took license with elevating it and slightly lifting it,” Serkis said at a news conference following the premiere where it received three standing ovations, including one for the real-life Diana who was in attendance.

Early reviewers have been more critical, however, comparing the film unfavorably to The Theory of Everything, a biopic about Stephen Hawking for which Eddie Redmayne won an Oscar in 2015.

“This is very much a crude copy, its noble intentions hobbled by a trite script, flat characters and a relentlessly saccharine tone that eventually starts to grate,” a reviewer at the Hollywood Reporter wrote.

The pair are portrayed falling in love in an idyllic English countryside scene at the opening before honeymooning in Kenya and discovering they are expecting a child, Jonathan, just before Robin’s early-onset polio hits.

They later enlist a friend to create the first battery-powered mobile respirator mounted on a wheelchair, then push for them to be made widely available to those with polio.

“The essence of Robin and Diana was not drab in any sense, it was not murky or gray or somber, it was bright, they burned bright,” said Serkis, who also drew a personal connection to the film. His father was a doctor, his mother taught disabled children, and his sister has multiple sclerosis.

“This is a template of how any human being can deal with suffering, struggle and limitation,” actor Garfield said on the red carpet, later saying it was “strangely enjoyable” to play a character unable to control his body beyond facial expressions.

The Toronto International Film Festival is seen as an important stop for filmmakers showcasing their work in the long Hollywood awards season that culminates with the Oscars in March.

Serkis has also directed a Jungle Book film currently in post-production. Following its Toronto debut, Breathe will open next month’s London Film Festival before a broader October release.
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With five months to go before the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics open, the games are barely an afterthought for most South Koreans, with slow local ticket sales amid the biggest political scandal in years and a torrent of North Korean weapons tests.

South Korea wants more than a million spectators for the games, and it expects 70 percent to be locals. But if South Koreans are excited about the games, they didn’t fully show it during the first phase of ticket sales between February and June. There were 52,000 tickets sold — less than 7 percent of the 750,000 seats organizers aim to sell domestically.

International sales got off to a faster start, with more than half of the targeted 320,000 seats sold. But now there’s fear that an increasingly belligerent North Korea, which has tested two ICBMs and its strongest ever nuclear bomb in recent weeks, might keep foreign fans away from Pyeongchang, a ski resort town about 80 kilometers (50 miles) south of the world’s most heavily armed border.

South Korean Olympic organizers reopened online ticket sales on September 5 and hope for a late surge in domestic sales as the games draw closer. Locals purchased nearly 17,000 tickets on the first two days of resumed sales.

In a recent interview with The Associated Press, Lee Hee-beom, president of Pyeongchang’s organizing committee, said the North is highly unlikely to cause problems during the games because North Korean athletes could compete in the South. This is not yet clear, though. North Korea is traditionally weak at winter sports, though a figure skating pair has a chance to qualify and organizers are looking at ways to arrange special entries for North Korean athletes.

Lee also linked his optimism about ticket sales to South Korean experience in managing past global events, including the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul, three Asian Games and the 2002 World Cup soccer tournament.

“This is a country that sold more than 8 million tickets even for the Expo 2012 in Yeosu,” said Lee, 68, a former Cabinet minister and corporate CEO. “We can definitely handle a million tickets.”

Local apathy

Organizers have overcome construction delays, local conflicts over venues, and a slow pace in attracting domestic sponsorships. They must now figure out how to create genuine local excitement for the games and boost ticket sales.

The 1988 Olympics in Seoul were easier. Those games marked South Korea’s arrival on the world stage as a growing industrial power and budding democracy.

In what’s now the world’s 11th-richest nation, there’s no longer an obvious public craving for the global attention brought by hosting a large sports event. There’s also worry over the huge cost of hosting the games and maintaining facilities that might go unused once the party leaves town.

Or perhaps South Koreans, after a whirlwind past year, are simply too tired to be enthusiastic about the Olympics. Millions took to the streets last year and early this year over a corruption scandal that eventually toppled the president from power and landed her in jail, where she remains during an ongoing trial.

It also doesn’t help that South Korea has never really had a strong winter sports culture, said Heejoon Chung, a sports science professor at Busan’s Dong-A University.

“I don’t think there are many people who are willing to stay outdoors in the cold for hours to watch races on snow,” he said.

Lee, the organizing committee president, is, unsurprisingly, more optimistic. Most South Koreans tend to wait until the last minute to buy tickets, and the atmosphere will improve once the Olympic torch relay arrives in South Korea in November, he said.

November is also when organizers will start to sell tickets offline at airports and train stations. Kim Dai-kyun, director general of communications for Pyeongchang’s organizing committee, said strong advertisement campaigns are planned for television, newspapers, movie theaters and on the internet.

Strong ticket sales are critical, because organizers are currently 300 billion won ($267 million) short of the 2.8 trillion won ($2.4 billion) they need to operate the games. Lee expects new sponsors to sign on and help erase the gap.

Organizers also aim to raise 174.6 billion won ($155 million) by selling about 1.07 million tickets, or 90 percent of the 1.18 million available seats. The 229,000 seats sold during the first phase of ticket sales equal about 21 percent of the target. While this might seem modest, Lee said Pyeongchang has been selling tickets at a faster pace than Sochi was at a similar point ahead of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

Cost estimate

 

The Olympics will cost about 14 trillion won ($12.4 billion) for South Korea, including the 11 trillion won ($9.7 billion) being spent to construct roads, railways and stadiums for the games. This is larger than the 8 million to 9 trillion won ($7 billion to $8 billion) Seoul projected as the overall cost when Pyeongchang won the bid in 2011.

Lodging could be another problem as tourists are already complaining about soaring room rates. Officials hope prices will stabilize after five new hotels are built by the end of the year, adding more than 2,000 rooms. The government is also planning to add hundreds of apartment rentals, and a 2,200-room cruise ship will serve as a floating hotel in the nearby port of Sokcho.

Organizers say a new high-speed rail line will link Seoul and Pyeongchang in an hour, starting in December, and will also allow travelers from the Seoul area to visit the games and return home the same day.
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J.J. Abrams is returning to Star Wars and will replace Colin Trevorrow as writer and director of Episode IX, pushing the film’s release date back seven months.

Disney announced Abrams’ return on Tuesday, a week after news broke of Trevorrow’s departure. After several high-profile exits by previous Star Wars directors, Lucasfilm is turning to the filmmaker who helped resurrect the franchise in the first place. Abrams will co-write the film with screenwriter Chris Terrio, who won an Oscar for adapting Argo and co-wrote Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.

As the director of The Force Awakens, Abrams rebooted Star Wars to largely glowing reviews from fans and more than $2 billion at the box office. Abrams had said that would be his only film for the franchise, but he’s now been pulled back in.

 

Lucasfilm President Kathleen Kennedy said that Abrams “delivered everything we could have possibly hoped for” on The Force Awakens and added, “I am so excited that he is coming back to close out this trilogy.”

This move also means Abrams will be the only director aside from Star Wars creator George Lucas to direct more than one Star Wars film.

Final installment

Star Wars: Episode IX was originally slated to hit theaters in May 2019, but in the wake of the shift it has officially been pushed back to a December 20, 2019, release. It is the final installment in the new “main” Star Wars trilogy that began with Abrams’ The Force Awakens in 2015 and will continue this December with director Rian Johnson’s The Last Jedi.

Lucasfilm has had a number of public fallouts with Star Wars directors over the past few years.

 

Earlier this year, the young Han Solo spinoff film parted ways with director Phil Lord and Christopher Miller and swiftly replaced them with Ron Howard deep into production. In 2015, the company fired director Josh Trank from work on another Star Wars spinoff. And extensive reshoots on Rogue One: A Star Wars Story led to widespread speculation that director Gareth Edwards had been unofficially sidelined by Tony Gilroy.

 

News of Abrams’ return was greeted warmly by fans on social media Tuesday. He hasn’t directed or committing to directing another project since The Force Awakens, and instead had been focused on producing.

“I’m very much enjoying taking a moment. Since I’ve done the show Felicity, I’ve gone from project to project. So it’s been 20 years since I haven’t been prepping, casting, shooting, editing something,” Abrams told The Associated Press in March.

 

That moment, however brief, is over. For Abrams, it’s time to go back to the Millennium Falcon and that galaxy far, far away.
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When cameras pan across the faces of anxious Emmy Award nominees at Sunday’s ceremony, TV viewers will see a record 12 African-Americans vying for comedy and drama series acting honors. But it’s a lop-sided outcome in the struggle for diversity.

Master of None star Aziz Ansari, who is of Indian heritage, is the sole Asian-American to be nominated for a continuing series lead or supporting role. Not a single Latino is included in the marquee acting categories.

An Emmy version of the 2015-16 #OscarsSoWhite protests would miss the point: Worthy films and performances from people of color were snubbed by movie academy voters, while insiders say the scant Emmy love for non-black minorities largely reflects closed TV industry doors.

“There are a lot of us, but because we haven’t gotten the opportunity to shine, you don’t know we’re around,” said Ren Hanami, an Asian-American actress who’s worked steadily in TV in smaller roles but found substantive, award-worthy parts elusive.

The hard-won progress made by the African-American stars and makers of Emmy-nominated shows including Black-ish and Atlanta has brought them creative influence, visibility and, this year, nearly a quarter (23.5 percent) of series cast nominations.

While that success is cheered by other ethnic groups, they say it illuminates how narrowly the entertainment industry views diversity despite the fact that Latinos and Asian-Americans are America’s first- and third-largest ethnic groups, respectively.

Failure assumed

“TV has never been brown-ish,” said actor-comedian Paul Rodriguez, riffing on the title of the hit African-American family comedy. He starred in the 1984-85 sitcom a.k.a. Pablo, one of the handful of short-lived, Hispanic-centered series, and wrote The Pitch, or How to Pitch a Latino Sitcom that Will Never Air, a 2015 stage show he’s reprising this month in Los Angeles because, he said, little has changed for Hispanics.

“They don’t put us on television enough for them to even know if it’s not working,” Rodriguez said. “They just assume it won’t work. And it goes on year after year. Our population keeps growing, and so does our frustration.”

That frustration is at critical mass, said Alex Nogales, president of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, which has for years pushed for more diversity on television.

“I’m tired of being the nice Mexican. It hasn’t taken us anywhere,” Nogales said. His new plan: Make sure networks and digital platforms such as Netflix know when Latinos — who have an estimated buying power of about $1.5 trillion and growing — are unhappy with their shows.

“Networks have brands that have been around for a very long time. We can damage that brand. We can do it by marching in front of their offices and embarrassing them. We can do it through social media,” Nogales said.

The financial bottom line is key, agreed Gary Mayeda, president of the Japanese American Citizens League that was established in 1929 and focuses on civil rights issues affecting Asian and Pacific Islander Americans and others.

“Diversity is profitable,” Mayeda said. “Cultural diversity takes nothing nor steals from any other group.”

He called for more and better market research about consumers, a point Rodriguez drives home in his play Pitch. In one scene, a network executive character uses a pie chart that purports to show why Latinos are a loser for TV: They don’t watch enough TV.

‘Look a little further’

Dispelling stereotypes and tired assumptions is familiar to Tiffany Smith-Anoa’i, CBS executive vice president for entertainment diversity, a department she created in 2009.

“I’m always saying diversity doesn’t mean black, it means so much more,” Smith-Anoa’i said. She’s used to encountering the industry attitude that casting one minority means the search is over.

” ‘Have your eyes look a little further,’ ” she advises producers. “It might take three phone calls to find an actor, writer or director [of color] instead of the two that you’re used to. But it definitely is worth it when you’re looking for real authenticity and fresh voices, and you get it.”

Brooklyn Nine-Nine actress Stephanie Beatriz knows what can happen when those with power are part of the solution.

The sitcom’s creators, Daniel J. Goor and Michael Schur, assembled people whose stories aren’t part of their own experience, she said, “but they want to help tell them. As straight white men, they are the strongest allies that underrepresented groups could ever have.”

Established actors of color and others with clout also are taking matters into their own hands. African-Americans are well into the ownership game — music star John Legend’s projects include the TV series Underground, Laurence Fishburne is a producer on Black-ish — and, increasingly, they’re not alone.

Daniel Dae Kim (Lost, Hawaii Five-0) started 3AD, a film and production company whose projects include The Good Doctor, a fall drama for ABC about a young surgeon (Freddie Highmore) with autism and savant syndrome. The company has nine other projects in active development, Kim said, aimed at representing the range of the human condition, ethnic and otherwise.

“It’s a conscious effort on my part, because this is the world that I’d like to see reflected,” said the Korean-born actor, who came to America as a child. “If my company can help be one color in the spectrum of the diversity of entertainment, then that’s the place I would like to hold.”
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The arrest of prominent Russia’s Kirill Serebrennikov has complicated plans to stage the premiere of a ballet he’s directing about the late Soviet ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev at the Bolshoi Theatre, its director general said Tuesday.

It is also possible that the ballet Nureyev, originally due to premiere on July 11, will be performed in Serebrennikov’s absence, Vladimir Urin said.

Russian authorities detained Serebrennikov in August on charges of embezzling state funds, placing him under house arrest until October 19 pending trial.

Serebrennikov has a history of criticizing the authorities, but President Vladimir Putin denied last week that censorship or political pressure was behind his detention.

“I want to confirm that I strongly hope that we will definitely stage the premiere of Nureyev in the 2017-18 season,” Urin told reporters.

Urin said he had agreed with Serebrennikov before his arrest that they would meet again in September to decide on the time frame of the premiere.

Urin also said he had asked investigators to allow him to meet Serebrennikov while he is under house arrest.

“Now it [the premiere] depends on one person, on what decision Serebrennikov takes — whether he allows us to stage the ballet without him or asks us to wait until his situation has been clarified and that it go ahead in his presence,” Urin said.

The ballet was pulled in July just two days before it had been due to open. Urin said at the time the performers were not ready and that it would instead be staged next May.

Russia’s Investigative Committee has said it suspects Serebrennikov of embezzling at least 68 million rubles ($1.18 million) in state funds earmarked for an art project. Serebrennikov denies the charges.

Nureyev is viewed as one of the world’s most gifted male ballet dancers. His dramatic defection to the West in 1961 was a blow to Soviet prestige. He later served as director of the Paris Opera Ballet and died of AIDS in 1993 aged 54.
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A documentary about the life of renowned guitarist Eric Clapton does not attempt to whitewash over the darker side of the hard-drinking musician’s life, even though it is directed by his longtime friend, filmmaker Lili Fini Zanuck said Monday.

Zanuck, who has known Clapton for 25 years, directed “Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars,” following the life of the 72-year-old British guitarist from childhood to international stardom, through his struggle with drugs and alcohol and the 1991 death of his four-year-old son.

“To watch myself going through that was not easy,” Clapton told reporters on Monday at the Toronto International Film Festival, where the film made its debut.

“Right up until the time I stopped drinking, everything I said was complete blather,” he added, to laughter from the audience.

In his 2007 autobiography, Clapton described a 20-year drug and alcohol addiction that he said saw him spending about $16,000 a week on heroin in the 1970s. The death of his son Conor, in a fall from a New York high-rise, was the trigger to sobriety.

The musician, who is a producer on the film, spoke about his struggles with having his life documented on screen and doing interviews with Zanuck in a film that does not shy away from examining his faults.

“I do not like having my picture taken, I do not like talking to journalists. I love to play music,” Clapton said.

Zanuck, who won an Oscar for 1989’s “Driving Miss Daisy,” said Clapton did not second-guess the responsibility he gave her in telling his story.

“For me, the movie is about redemption — personal redemption, not necessarily what society thinks,” Zanuck told Reuters.

“No one got him out of despair, he did it himself,” she added.

With hits such as “Bell Bottom Blues,” “Cocaine” and “Layla,” Clapton has won 17 Grammy Awards, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000. He was ranked No. 2 on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2015 list of 100 greatest guitarists of all time, behind Jimi Hendrix.

“Eric Clapton: Life in 12 Bars” will be released in North American theaters later this year and air on premium cable channel Showtime in February.
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Hurricane Irma may have shattered homes and flooded communities across Florida, but the Key West museum dedicated to acclaimed American author Ernest Hemingway and descendants of his beloved six-toed cats emerged unscathed.

Irma hit the Florida Keys as a powerful Category 4 hurricane early on Sunday, inflicting widespread damage on the archipelago off the tip of southern Florida.

The storm brought sustained winds of up to 130 mph (209 kph) and submerged the highway that connects the string of tropical islands with the rest of the state. Evacuees were told on Monday they could not return to their homes yet.

While Key West remains without water and electricity, the Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum, sitting on one of the highest points in the area, was undamaged, curator Dave Gonzales said on Monday.

“We were well prepared and very blessed,” Gonzales told Reuters by telephone.

All 54 cats on the property – six-toed felines descended from a tomcat named Snow White that the author adopted while he lived there in the 1930s – were accounted for, Gonzales said.

The museum keeps the bloodline of the original polydactyl cat intact, as well as the author’s penchant for naming the cats after famous people like actors Grace Kelly, Liz Taylor and Lionel Barrymore, Gonzales said.

Owned by a private group, the house and grounds were deemed a National Historic Landmark in 1968, seven years after Hemingway’s death, said general manager Jacque Sands, who lives in the main house and sheltered on the property with 11 staff members during the storm.

Built in 1851, the Spanish Colonial home was purchased by Hemingway and his second wife, Pauline, in 1928. The couple did extensive renovations to the house and grounds, including building the city’s first swimming pool.

Two of Hemingway’s iconic literary works, the novel “To Have and Have Not” and the short story “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” were written during the years he lived in Key West.

The museum is filled with Hemingway artifacts, including antique European furnishings, and mounted animal heads and skins Hemingway amassed while on African safaris and hunting trips to the American West.

Sands said she never considered evacuating the property as leaving would have meant abandoning the cats.

“The cats took care of us, or so they think,” she said.
…

Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie says she never intended to step behind the camera, but traveling around the world for the United Nations opened her eyes to the conflicts that have inspired many of her most recent films.

“I never thought I could make a movie or direct,” Jolie told an audience at the Toronto Film Festival on Sunday, which is screening her Cambodian genocide film “First They Killed My Father” and Afghan film “The Breadwinner.”

Jolie said her first major film as a director, the 2011 Bosnian war drama “In the Land of Blood and Honey,” was prompted by her humanitarian work as a special envoy for the United Nations refugee agency.

“I wanted to learn more about the war of Yugoslavia. I had been in the region and traveling in the UN. It was a war I really couldn’t get my head around. … It was not a goal to become a director,” she said.

“The Breadwinner,” an animated film that she produced, is about a young Afghan girl who cuts her hair and poses as a boy in order to feed her family.

It “tells the sad reality of many girls having to work and not go to school,” said Jolie, who has made several trips to Afghanistan. “The people I have met over the years are truly my heroes.

The nice thing about being a director is to champion other people,” Jolie added.

Jolie said “First They Killed My Father,” was inspired by wanting to learn more about the history of Cambodia, the birthplace of her son Maddox, one of her six children.

She said she wanted “Maddox to learn about himself as a Cambodian in a different light.”

The film, which was screened in Cambodia earlier this year, tells the story of a young girl during the country’s 1970s genocide who is forced into the countryside to toil in rice paddies and then take up arms as a child soldier.

Jolie, 42, who won a supporting actress Oscar for “Girl, Interrupted” in 2000, shrugged off her status as a role model for women.

“I have a lot to learn and need role models myself,” she said.
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