Arts

Former football star and convicted felon O.J. Simpson will command the world’s attention once again Thursday when he pleads for his freedom on live TV.

 

Simpson was convicted in 2008 of an armed robbery involving two sports memorabilia dealers in a Las Vegas hotel room. The 70-year-old will ask four parole board members to release him in October after serving the minimum nine years of a 33-year sentence.

 

An aging Simpson will appear as inmate No. 1027820, dressed in blue jeans and a blue button-down shirt, in a stark hearing room in a remote Nevada prison.

 

Lovelock Correctional Center Warden Renee Baker said Wednesday she couldn’t say how Simpson’s parole hearing might turn out.

 

“We’ll see tomorrow,” she said.

 

Simpson was convicted of enlisting some men he barely knew, including two who had guns, to retrieve from two sports collectibles sellers some items that Simpson said were stolen from him a decade earlier.

 

“My crime was trying to retrieve for my family my own property,” Simpson told the parole officials in 2013 before apologizing.

 

“Make no mistake, I would give it all back,” he said, “to get these last five years back.”

 

The robbery was a new low for Simpson, whose celebrity spanned sports, movies, television and advertising before his fall from grace during his highly-publicized murder trial in 1995.

 

Simpson was found not guilty in the killings of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend Ronald Goldman. In 1997, he was found liable in civil court for the deaths and ordered to pay $33.5 million to survivors including his children and the Goldman family.

 

The Goldmans believe Simpson got away with murder in Los Angeles, and many people felt the stiff sentence handed down in Las Vegas wasn’t just about the robbery.

 

A Goldman family spokesman said Ron Goldman’s father and sister, Fred and Kim, won’t be part of Simpson’s parole hearing but feel apprehensive about “how this will change their lives again should Simpson be released.”

 

The retired district attorney who prosecuted Simpson for the heist denied Simpson’s sentence was “payback” for his acquittal in the Los Angeles slayings.

 

David Roger said Simpson took a gamble when he rejected an offer to avoid trial by pleading guilty to a felony that could have gotten him 2 years+ in prison.

 

“He thought he was invincible, and he rolled the dice,” Roger said.

 

However, Roger acknowledges that Simpson has a good chance to go free.

 

By most accounts, Simpson has a clean prison record and a good chance for release.

 

Simpson is expected to reiterate that he has kept a promise to stay out of trouble, coaches in the prison gym where he works and counsels other inmates.

 

“I guess, my age, guys come to me,” Simpson told parole officials four years ago.

 

The same commissioners granted him parole during his last public appearance in 2013 on some of his 12 charges, leaving him with four years to serve before reaching his minimum term.

 

At Simpson’s side in his bid for freedom will be lawyer Malcolm LaVergne, close friend Tom Scotto, sister Shirley Baker and daughter Arnelle Simpson.

 

O.J. Simpson is expected to tell the board what he would do and where he would live if he is granted parole.

 

 

 
…

Malaysia has banned Despacito on state radio and television, though it might be hard to slow the song’s record-breaking popularity.

 

The ban applies only to government-run radio and TV outlets, not to private stations or YouTube or the music streaming services fueling the song’s success. 

 

Communications Minister Salleh Said Keruak said late Wednesday the song was reviewed and banned because of a public complaint that the lyrics are obscene. He urged private radio stations to censor the song themselves out of sensitivity to local culture. Salleh didn’t give further details on the complaint and couldn’t be reached Thursday. 

 

An Islamic party Amanah has earlier denounced the song and called for it to be kept off Malaysia’s airwaves as many young children were singing the song without understanding the words.

 

“We respect the right to be entertained but there should be clearer guidelines so that the entertainment does not spoil people but makes them better,” party official Atriza Umar told The Star newspaper.

 

The Spanish-language song — its title means “slowly” — was released by Puerto Rican artists Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee in January. The original and a remix featuring Justin Bieber together are the most streamed track of all time with more than 4.6 billion plays across streaming platforms. The previous record was held by Bieber for his 2015 song Sorry. 

 

When the record was announced earlier this week, Fonsi credited streaming for helping his music reach every corner of the planet.
…

“Emeralds,” “Rubies” and “Diamonds” will dazzle as never before as three of the world’s top dance companies share the stage for the first time to mark the 50th anniversary of “Jewels,” the world’s first full-length plotless ballet, this week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The performances will run from Thursday to Sunday.
…

The stranglehold that autumn prestige films have on Oscar season just might be wilting in the summer sun.

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

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

Handicapping the Oscars

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

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

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

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

Summer movie spectacle

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

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

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

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

Other candidates

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

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

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

Female directors

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

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

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

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

Bigelow knows from experience. Her The Hurt Locker was a June release but went on to best Avatar at the Oscars. “To say that it was even a remote thought would be in inaccurate,” she said, laughing.
…

Catchy summer dance song Despacito has set a record as the most streamed music track of all time, with 4.6 billion plays across leading platforms, record company Universal Music said Wednesday.

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

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

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

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

Fonsi, previously little known outside Puerto Rico, said it was “truly an honor that Despacito is now the most streamed song in history.”
…

An impending auction of pop star Madonna’s personal items, including a love letter from her ex-boyfriend the late rapper Tupac Shakur, a pair of previously worn panties and a hairbrush containing her hair, was halted by a judge on Tuesday.

Manhattan state Supreme Court Judge Gerald Leibovitz ordered Gotta Have It! Collectibles to pull 22 items from its rock-and-roll-themed auction scheduled for Wednesday.

The Material Girl had earlier sought an emergency court order saying she was “shocked to learn” of the planned online auction of the Tupac letter and had no idea it was no longer in her possession.

“The fact that I have attained celebrity status as a result of success in my career does not obviate my right to maintain my privacy, including with regard to highly personal items,” Madonna said in court papers. “I understand that my DNA could be extracted from a piece of my hair. It is outrageous and grossly offensive that my DNA could be auctioned for sale to the general public.”

Court papers said the Tupac letter was expected to fetch up to $400,000. Tupac, one of the best-selling rappers of all time, dated Madonna in the early 1990s and died of injuries suffered in a Las Vegas drive-by shooting in 1996.

Madonna, behind such hit songs as “Like a Virgin” and “Vogue,” has sold hundreds of millions of albums. Other Madonna items scheduled to be auctioned were private photographs taken at a bachelorette party at her Miami home, personal letters and cassette tapes of unreleased recordings.

Madonna’s court papers name Darlene Lutz, a former friend, art consultant and “frequent overnight guest” in Madonna’s home when she was “not in residence,” as behind the sale of the property.

A spokesman for Lutz and the auction house said the allegations will be “vigorously challenged and refuted” in court.

“Madonna and her legal army have taken what we believe to be completely baseless and meritless action to temporarily halt the sale of Ms. Lutz’s legal property,” spokesman Pete Siegel told the New York Post. “We are confident that the Madonna memorabilia will be back.”

 
…

Two new books from the Harry Potter universe are set to be released as part of a British exhibition that celebrates the 20th anniversary of the launch of the series.

The British Library’s Harry Potter exhibition, “A History of Magic,” opens in October and runs through February 2018. In an earnings statement released Tuesday, British publishing house Bloomsbury revealed that two new Potter books will be released in conjunction with the event.

“Harry Potter: A History of Magic – The Book of the Exhibition” promises to take readers through subjects studied at Potter’s wizarding school, Hogwarts. “Harry Potter – A Journey Through A History of Magic” will touch on mystical things such as alchemy, unicorns and ancient witchcraft.

Both books will be published in October.
…

Images of life under Islamic State rule are rare because taking photos, drawing or painting was discouraged or even banned. An artist who escaped from Raqqa, an Islamic State stronghold in Syria which is now under siege, depicts scenes from the occupied city in a temporary shelter where he now lives. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports Faisal’s drawings and paintings are rare historic documents as well works of art.
…

Two of country music’s biggest stars, Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton, whose onstage chemistry spawned hit duets like “Islands in the Stream” and “Real Love,” will be making their final performance together this year.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Whether we do something else, I don’t know,” Rogers said. “That would require a rehearsal and I don’t know that Dolly or I, either one, are up for that.”
…

Boston has launched a new public service campaign to fight Islamophobia by offering the public ways to address aggression toward others because of their appearance or beliefs.

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

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

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

The city’s Islamic community lauded the campaign.

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

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

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

 
…

The executive who oversaw Spain’s rise to dominate world soccer in recent years was arrested Tuesday in an anti-corruption investigation, dealing yet another blow to the sport’s already-tarnished image.

 

Angel Maria Villar, his son, Gorka Villar, and two other soccer officials were detained while raids were conducted at the federation headquarters and other properties, the state prosecutor and Spanish police said.

 

The elder Villar, who has led the Spanish Football Federation for three decades and is the senior vice president of FIFA and a vice president for the European football organization, is suspected of having arranged matches for Spain that led to business deals benefiting his son, said the office of the state prosecutor in charge of anti-corruption.

Angel Maria Villar is a longtime power broker in football both inside and beyond Spain’s borders, and he was singled out for questionable conduct in the 2014 FIFA report on the World Cup bidding process that rocked the sport.

 

A 2015 U.S. investigation into corruption in world soccer led to the eventual resignation of longtime president Sepp Blatter and other top officials.

 

Several hours after Tuesday’s arrests, police escorted Villar into the federation offices in Las Rozas, on the outskirts of Madrid. He emerged from a Guardia Civil vehicle flanked by two uniformed agents. Two policemen guarded the entrance to the federation offices near the training grounds for Spain’s national teams.

 

Also arrested were Juan Padron, the federation’s vice president of economic affairs who is also president of the regional federation for Tenerife, and Ramon Hernandez, the secretary of that regional federation.

 

The four were arrested on charges of improper management, misappropriation of funds, corruption and falsifying documents as part of an inquiry into the finances of the federations.

 

“We have taken note of the media reports concerning the situation of Mr. Villar Llona,” FIFA said in a statement. “As the matter seems to be linked to internal affairs of the Spanish Football Association, for the time being we kindly refer you to them for further details.”

 

As part of an operation called “Soule,” the Guardia Civil said it raided the national federation’s headquarters, the offices of the regional soccer federation on the island of Tenerife and “headquarters of businesses and several private homes linked to the arrested individuals.”

 

Police began the investigation in early 2016 after a complaint from Spain’s Higher Council of Sport, the government’s sports authority.

 

The probe led the state prosecutor’s office to suspect that Angel Maria Villar “could have arranged matches of the Spanish national team with other national teams, thereby gaining in return contracts for services and other business ventures in benefit of his son.”

 

Unregulated by FIFA, friendly matches between national teams can be more easily corrupted. Scandals in recent years involving FIFA were tied to the siphoning of cash from deals struck for friendly matches, often held in North and South America.

 

Gorka Villar, a lawyer, worked in recent years for the South American body CONMEBOL as legal director and then as the CEO-like director general for three presidents who were implicated in the U.S. investigation. Gorka Villar left CONMEBOL in July 2016.

 

The prosecutor’s office said it also suspects that Padron and the Tenerife secretary “favored the contracting of business” for their personal benefit.

 

Inigo Mendez de Vigo, minister of education, culture and sport, told national television after the raids that “in Spain the laws are enforced, the laws are the same for all, and nobody, nobody is above the law.”

 

Calls by The Associated Press to the Spanish and Tenerife federations went unanswered.

 

UEFA said in a statement it was aware of the reports regarding Villar, but “we have no comment to make at this time.” The Higher Council of Sport said it will “use everything in its means to ensure that competitions are not affected” by the arrests.

In the wake of the arrests, the Royal Spanish Federation of Football postponed meetings to draw the Spanish football league schedule.

 

A former professional player, the 67-year-old Villar has been the head of Spain’s soccer federation since 1988, overseeing the national team’s victories in the 2010 World Cup and the 2008 and 2012 European Championships.

 

Villar won an eighth term as president in May, running unopposed after another candidate, Jorge Perez, withdrew to protest what he called irregularities in the election of the federation’s general assembly.

 

He has been at the heart of FIFA and UEFA politics since the 1990s, and has worked closely with several international soccer leaders who have since been indicted by the U.S. Justice Department.

 

Villar was a tough midfielder for Athletic Bilbao and Spain before retiring to work as a lawyer and soccer administrator. He was elected to the UEFA executive committee 25 years ago, and to FIFA’s ruling committee 19 years ago. He has also been an influential figure in the legal and referees committees of both organizations.

 

He led the Spain-Portugal bids for the 2018 and 2022 World Cup competitions. In 2010, FIFA’s ethics committee investigated an alleged voting pact involving South American countries. Russia won the bid for 2018 and Qatar won for 2022.

 

His conduct in a wider 2014 probe of the bids was singled out in a 2014 report by then-FIFA ethics prosecutor Michael Garcia.

 

“He [Villar] was not willing to discuss the facts and circumstances of the case,” Garcia wrote in the report, published last month. “Moreover, his tone and manner were deeply disturbing, as the audio recording of the interview … makes evident.”

 

Increasingly seen as a polarizing figure, Villar decided against trying to succeed Michel Platini as UEFA president last year.

 

Before joining CONMEBOL, Gorka Villar was a prominent sports lawyer in Madrid. He helped represent cyclist Alberto Contador in a failed appeal at the Court of Arbitration for Sport of a positive doping test that cost him the 2010 Tour de France title.

 

The arrests are the latest step by Spain to crack down on financial wrongdoing in soccer. Last year, Barcelona forward Lionel Messi and his father were found guilty of tax fraud. In recent weeks, prosecutors have opened tax fraud investigations into several others, including Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo and former Madrid coach Jose Mourinho. Both Ronaldo and Mourinho deny cheating on their taxes.
…

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

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

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

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

The Metropolitan Police force said officers were called Friday to reports of a robbery in the area, in which a man in his 50s suffered a cut to the face. There have been no arrests.
…

Netflix is pulling in new viewers and award nominations in droves, but the online video service still faces a long-term problem: Its acclaimed programming line-up is costing far more money than what subscribers pay for it.

 

That hasn’t been a big issue so far, thanks to investors’ willingness to accept scant profits in exchange for robust subscriber growth.

 

Netflix delivered on that front again Monday, announcing that it added 5.2 million subscribers in the second quarter covering April to June. That’s the largest increase ever during the period, which has always been the company’s slowest time of year.

 

Wall Street rewarded Netflix by driving up its stock by more than 10 percent to $178.30 in extended trading, putting the shares on track to hit a new high in Tuesday’s regular trading.

 

International Costs

 

The Los Gatos, California, company now has 104 million subscribers worldwide. For the first time in its history, most of those subscribers (slightly more than 52 million) are outside the U.S.

 

That milestone could further complicate Netflix’s cost issues, since the company will need to keep creating more shows that appeal to the unique interests of viewers in countries such as Japan, India and Indonesia.

 

“It is going to be imperative for them to have more locally produced content,” says CFRA Research analyst Tuna Amobi. “They can’t afford to pursue a ‘one-size-fits-all’ strategy.”

 

As part of its efforts to boost its profits, Netflix is becoming more aggressive about dumping shows that aren’t drawing enough viewers to justify their costs. In the second quarter, Netflix jettisoned both the high-concept science fiction show “Sense 8” and the musical drama “The Get Down.”

 

In a Monday letter to shareholders, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings made it clear that the company plans to exert more discipline in the future. “They are becoming more like any other Hollywood studio and paying more attention to the economics of their shows,” Amobi said.

 

Programming Coups

 

The subscriber growth further validates Netflix’s decision to expand into original programming five years ago. Two of its longest running shows —  “House of Cards” and “Orange Is The New Black” — recently launched their latest seasons.

 

Those two series, along with new hits like “Master of None” and “13 Reasons Why,” helped Netflix easily surpass the average 1.8 million subscribers it has added in the second quarter over the past five years.

 

This fall, new seasons of two other hits, “Stranger Things” and “The Crown,” are due. Those two series accounted for about a third of the 91 Emmy nominations that 27 different Netflix programs received last week — more than any other TV network except its role model, HBO, which landed 111 nominations.

 

Cash Burn

 

But the success hasn’t come cheaply.

 

Netflix is locked into contracts requiring it to pay more than $13 billion for programming during the next three years, a burden that has forced the company to borrow to pay its bills.

 

After burning through $1.7 billion in cash last year, Netflix expects that figure to rise to as much as $2.5 billion this year. It’s continuing to invest in more original programming amid increasing competition from the likes of Amazon, Hulu and YouTube.

 

Netflix expects to be spending more money than it brings in for several more years. It posted a more detailed explanation about its negative cash flow to give investors a better grasp of its programming expenses.

 

The company is still profitable under corporate accounting rules, although its earnings remain puny by Wall Street standards. It earned $66 million on revenue of $2.8 billion in revenue during its latest quarter.

 

Funding international operations remains Netflix’s biggest financial drag, although the overseas losses are narrowing. The company now expects its international operation to produce a small operating profit for the full year.

 

Netflix also could make more money by raising its prices closer to the $15 per month that HBO charges for its streaming service, but the company has said no increases are planned in the near future. Netflix’s U.S. rates currently range from $8 to $12 per month.
…

Walt Disney was already a well-known creative genius — the creator of Mickey Mouse and the 1938 feature-length cartoon Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs — when he had an idea to create Disneyland, his famed Anaheim, California, amusement park.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Walt Disney died in 1966. Walt Disney World was opened in his honor on Oct. 1, 1971.
…

Walt Disney pursues dream of Disneyland despite investor doubts and a chaotic opening day in 1955
…

American filmmaker Martin Scorsese is backing an international effort to preserve African movies, hoping to protect the work of some of Africa’s most influential directors. Arzouma Kompaore reports.
…

After weeks of uncertainty, the U.S. Women’s Open stopped being about President Donald Trump, his course and his views toward women and it turned out to be what the USGA wanted: a good tournament on a good course.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“She’s young and long so she hits the ball very long and very straight, very accurate and has very good short game, also,” Feng said about Park. “I don’t see any weak part in her game.”
…

Martin Landau, the chameleon-like actor who gained fame as the crafty master of disguise in the 1960s TV show “Mission: Impossible,” then capped a long and versatile career with an Oscar for his poignant portrayal of aging horror movie star Bela Lugosi in 1994’s “Ed Wood,” has died. He was 89.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

Filmmaker Ken Burns views the Vietnam War as a virus that infected Americans with an array of chronic illnesses — alienation, a lack of civil discourse, mistrust of government and each other. And he hopes his new documentary can be part of a cure.

“What if the film was just an attempt at some sort of vaccination, a little bit more of the disease to get you immune to the disunion that it has sponsored?” Burns said in a recent interview. “It’s important for us to begin to have creative but courageous conversations about what took place.”

Burns and co-director Lynn Novick had just finished work on their World War II documentary a decade ago when he turned to her and said, “We have to do Vietnam.” The result is their 10-part, 18-hour series that will air beginning Sept. 17 on PBS.

“For me, it was the sense that Vietnam was the most important event for Americans in the second half of the 20th century, yet we had done almost everything we could in the intervening years to avoid understanding it,” Burns said. “As horrible as they are, wars are incredibly valuable moments to study, and I thought what Vietnam lacked was a willingness to engage in that.”

The film brings together the latest scholarly research on the war and features nearly 80 interviews, including Americans who fought in the war and those who opposed it, Vietnamese civilians and soldiers from both sides. Burns and Novick have been showing excerpts of the film around the country in recent months, most recently at Dartmouth College on Thursday night.

“I think this will be for a general American audience a kind of revelation, a cascade of new facts and new figures, and I don’t mean numeral figures, but biographical figures that will stagger their view of what was, and hopefully get everybody, regardless of political perspective to let go of the baggage of the superficial and the conventional,” Burns said.

Having been blamed for the war itself, many Vietnam War soldiers were understandably reluctant to share their stories, the co-directors said. But compared to his earlier series on World War II and the Civil War, Burns said there was one challenge he didn’t face.

“One of the great tasks for us as filmmakers — amateur historians if you will — was how to cut through all the nostalgia and sentimentality that had attached itself to the Civil War and World War II,” he said. “There’s no such problem with Vietnam.”

After watching the hour-long preview, U.S. Army veteran David Hagerman, of Lyme Center, said he can’t wait to watch the entire series.

“It was powerful,” said Hagerman, who spent his nine months in Vietnam running a treatment center for soldiers addicted to heroin. While strangers now approach him and thank him for his service, he said coming home in 1972 was traumatic.

“I walked into the Seattle airport, and I was in my Army outfit,” he said. “The reception I received was so negative and so powerful that I walked into the nearest men’s room, took my uniform off, threw it in the trash, and put on a T-shirt and a pair of pants.”

Burns said while he doesn’t buy into the notion that history repeats itself, it’s clear that human nature doesn’t change. And he acknowledges that many of the themes his series explores are uncannily relevant to the present.

“If I backed up this conversation and said, ‘OK, I’ve spent the last year working a film about a White House in disarray obsessed with leaks, about a huge document drops into the public of classified information … about a deeply polarized country, about a political campaign accused of reaching out to a foreign power during an election, about mass demonstrations across the country,’ you’d say, ‘Gee, Ken, you stopped doing history, you’re doing the present moment,’” he said.

At Dartmouth, Novick and Burns were joined by U.S. Army veteran Mike Heaney, of Hartland, Vermont, who is shown in the film describing losing fellow platoon members in a 1966 ambush and spending the night paranoid that a dead Viet Cong soldier lying next to him was just faking it and would rise up to kill him.

After the screening, he told the audience about returning to Vietnam in 2008, where he compared war wounds with former enemies turned fellow “grandpas.” He said he’s been able to cope thanks to the support of his family, as well as both Americans and the Vietnamese people.

“I don’t expect to ever get closure on this kind of experience that I had,” he said. “And that’s OK.”
…

George Romero, whose classic “Night of the Living Dead” and other horror films turned zombie movies into social commentaries and who saw his flesh-devouring undead spawn countless imitators, remakes and homages, has died. He was 77.

 

Romero died Sunday following a battle with lung cancer, said his family in a statement provided by his manager Chris Roe. Romero’s family said he died while listening to the score of “The Quiet Man,” one of his favorite films, with his wife, Suzanne Desrocher, and daughter, Tina Romero, by this side.

 

Romero is credited with reinventing the movie zombie with his directorial debut, the 1968 cult classic, “Night of the Living Dead.” The movie set the rules imitators lived by: Zombies move slowly, lust for human flesh and can only be killed when shot in the head. If a zombie bites a human, the person dies and returns as a zombie.

 

Romero’s zombies, however, were always more than mere cannibals; they were metaphors for conformity, racism, mall culture, militarism, class differences and other social ills.

 

“The zombies, they could be anything,” Romero told The Associated Press in 2008. “They could be an avalanche, they could be a hurricane. It’s a disaster out there. The stories are about how people fail to respond in the proper way. They fail to address it. They keep trying to stick where they are, instead of recognizing maybe this is too big for us to try to maintain. That’s the part of it that I’ve always enjoyed.”

 

“Night of the Living Dead,” made for about $100,000, featured flesh-hungry ghouls trying to feast on humans holed up in a Pennsylvania house. In 1999, the Library of Congress inducted the black-and-white masterpiece into the National Registry of Films.

 

Romero’s death was immediately felt across a wide spectrum of horror fans and filmmakers. Stephen King called him his favorite collaborator and said, “There will never be another like you.” Guillermo del Toro said, “The loss is so enormous.”

“(‘Night of the Living Dead’) was so incredibly DIY I realized movies were not something that belonged solely to the elites with multiple millions of dollars but could also be created by US, the people who simply loved them, who lived in Missouri, as I did,” wrote James Gunn, the “Guardians of the Galaxy” director, who penned the 2004 remake of “Dawn of the Dead.”

 

Romero’s influence could be seen across decades of American movies, from John Carpenter to Jordan Peele, the “Get Out” filmmaker. Many considered “Night of the Living Dead” to be a critique on racism in America. The sole black character survives the zombies, but he is fatally shot by rescuers. When Edgar Wright made 2004’s “Shaun of the Dead,” he acknowledged, “What we now think of as zombies are Romero zombies.”

 

Ten years after “Night of the Living Dead,” Romero made “Dawn of the Dead,” where human survivors take refuge from the undead in a mall and then turn on each other as the zombies stumble around the shopping complex.

 

Film critic Roger Ebert called it “one of the best horror films ever made — and, as an inescapable result, one of the most horrifying. It is gruesome, sickening, disgusting, violent, brutal and appalling. It is also … brilliantly crafted, funny, droll, and savagely merciless in its satiric view of the American consumer society.”

Romero had a sometimes combative relationship with the genre he helped create. He called “The Walking Dead” a “soap opera” and said big-budget films like “World War Z” made modest zombie films impossible. Romero maintained that he wouldn’t make horror films he couldn’t fill them with political statements.

 

“People say, ‘You’re trapped in this genre. You’re a horror guy.’ I say, ‘Wait a minute, I’m able to say exactly what I think,” Romero told the AP. “I’m able to talk about, comment about, take snapshots of what’s going on at the time. I don’t feel trapped. I feel this is my way of being able to express myself.”

 

The third in the Romero’s zombie series, 1985’s “Day of the Dead,” was a critical and commercial failure. There wouldn’t be another “Dead” film for two decades.

 

“Land of the Dead” in 2005 was the most star-packed of the bunch — the cast included Dennis Hooper, John Leguizamo, Asia Argento and Simon Baker. Two years later came “Diary of the Dead,” another box-office failure.

 

There were other movies interspersed with the “Dead” films, including “The Crazies” (1973), “Martin” (1977), “Creepshow” (1982), “Monkey Shines” (1988) and “The Dark Half” (1993). There also was 1981’s “Knightriders,” Romero’s take on the Arthurian legend featuring motorcycling jousters. Some were moderately successful, others box-office flops.

 

George Andrew Romero was born on Feb. 4, 1940, in New York City. He grew up in the Bronx, and he was a fan of horror comics and movies in the pre-VCR era.

 

“I grew up at the Loews American in the Bronx,” he wrote in an issue of the British Film Institute’s Sight and Sound magazine in 2002.

 

His favorite film was Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s “The Tales of Hoffman,” based on Jacques Offenbach’s opera. It was, he once wrote, “the one movie that made me want to make movies.”

 

He spoke fondly of traveling to Manhattan to rent a 16mm version of the film from a distribution house. When the film was unavailable, Romero said, it was because another “kid” had rented it — Martin Scorsese.

 

Romero graduated from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh in 1960. He learned the movie business working on the sets of movies and “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” which was shot in Pittsburgh.

 

The city became Romero’s home and many of his films were set in western Pennsylvania. “Dawn of the Dead” was filmed in suburban Monroeville Mall, which has since become a popular destination for his fans.

Romero struggled to get films made late in life. The last film he directed was 2009’s “Survival of the Dead,” though other filmmakers continued the series with several sequels, including the recently shot “Day of the Dead.”

 

But Romero held strong to his principles. A movie with zombies just running amok, with no social consciousness, held no appeal, he often said.

“That’s not what I’m about.”
…