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August 26, 2015

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Entertainment August 26, 2015

Today in Movie Culture: Homemade 'Batman v Superman' Trailer, 'The Dark Knight Rises' in Real Life and More

Here are a bunch of little bites to satisfy your hunger for movie culture:

Trailer Redo of the Day:

Get pumped for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice all over again with this sweded version of the movie’s trailer:

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Star Wars of the Day:

Here’s another trailer redo, this one for The Empire Strikes Back made in the style of the Star Wars: Force Awakens spot (via Live for Films):

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Movie Memorabilia of the Day:

Forget real-life or replica hoverboards, wouldn’t you rather have a replica of Marty’s ’80s skateboard from Back to the Future? Now you can (via /Film):

Classic Movies Up Close:

Film-Drunk Love has isolated all the shots of streets in Martin Scorsese‘s Taxi Driver “to explore New York from the point of Travis Bickle through the streets he roams…the places he considers filthy or pure” (via Cinematic Montage Creators):

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Filmmaker in Focus:

If you want more movies up close, here’s a look at Steve McQueen‘s use of close-ups specifically on hands and fingers for character development (via Cinematic Montage Creators):

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Scene Analysis of the Day:

Today’s real film studies lesson comes to you from Roger Corman, who in this old video analyzes the Odessa Steps scene from Eisenstein‘s Battleship Potemkin (via Filmmaker IQ):

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Vintage Image of the Day:

Satyajit Ray directs the wonderful Chunibala Devi for Pather Panchali, which debuted in Indian cinemas on this day 60 years ago.

Fan Theory of the Day:

If you’re not familiar with the Harry Potter fan theory that Dumbledore is the embodiment of death, Dan Casey breaks it down for Nerdist:

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If Movies Were Real:

Check out a fake documentary that might actually exist if the events of The Dark Knight Rises happened in real life:

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Classic Trailer of the Day:

15 years ago today, David Mamet‘s underrated Hollywood satire State and Main premiered at the Montreal Film Festival, giving us a necessary distinction between fun and entertainment (“if you don’t make it yourself, it ain’t fun…”). Watch the original trailer below.

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Business August 26, 2015

Wal-Mart To End Sales Of Some Semi-Automatic Rifles, Citing Low Demand

This fall, Wal-Mart will end sales of military-style assault rifles like the AR-15.

This fall, Wal-Mart will end sales of military-style assault rifles like the AR-15. Joe Songer/AL.COM/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Joe Songer/AL.COM/Landov

Wal-Mart, thought to be the largest seller of firearms in the U.S., will stop selling military-style modern sporting rifles, such as the the AR-15, this fall.

Wal-Mart spokesman Kory Lundberg said the decision to phase out the controversial semi-automatics was based in business, not politics, citing declining demand.

“If you have a product customers aren’t buying, you phase it out,” he said, according to Bloomberg.

He added that Wal-Mart shoppers “were buying shotguns and rifles, and so we are increasing assortment in that.”

Lundberg tells NPR the move is happening now because of the change in seasons:

“As our Sporting Goods departments are resetting this week from Summer to Fall, the MSRs are being taking out of the assortment and replaced with new rifles and shotguns.”

The soon-to-be phased out AR-15 was used in several high-profile shootings over the past few years, including the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook school in Newton, Conn., and the movie theater shooting in Aurora, Colo. Gun control advocates support bans on these types of weapons and welcome Wal-Mart’s decision to remove them from the shelves.

Spokeswoman Lori Haas from the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, based in Washington, D.C., praised Wal-Mart’s decision.

“I think it’s a great idea. I think it’s a great signal that things are changing and that we have responsible citizens reacting to the gun violence in our country,” Haas told NPR.

But while Haas embraced Wal-Mart’s move, she questioned its claim that demand had indeed dropped. Wal-Mart does not disclose gun-sales figures.

“It would be lovely if there had been a decrease in demand,” Haas said, adding, “I would be very interested to learn of the gun manufacturer’s sales.”

According to a spokeswoman for the National Rifle Association, Amy Hunter, the AR-15 is highly popular in the U.S.

“The AR-15 is America’s most popular general use rifle,” Hunter told NPR.

In Hunter’s emailed statement, the NRA called Wal-Mart’s recent move disappointing.

“While we’re disappointed in Wal-Mart’s decision, we appreciate the firearms retailers who continue to carry these firearms and enable law-abiding citizens to purchase the firearm of their choice.”

In 2006, Wal-Mart also cut back on gun sales, removing firearms from about a third of its stores, again chalking the decision up to “diminished customer relevancy.” But then in 2011, it reintroduced guns to more stores around the country.

According to CNN Money, a Wal-Mart spokesman said at the time that the retail giant “realized there is broader appeal for guns in some areas because of sporting needs.”

Wal-Mart will be selling the discontinued rifles at steeply discounted rates as it phases them out.

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Sports August 26, 2015

From Quiet Kid To Trash-Talking Titan: Ronda Rousey's Year Speaks For Itself

Ronda Rousey celebrates her most recent Ultimate Fighting Championship win on Aug. 1, shortly after knocking out Bethe Correia in just over half a minute.
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Ronda Rousey celebrates her most recent Ultimate Fighting Championship win on Aug. 1, shortly after knocking out Bethe Correia in just over half a minute. Ricardo Moraes/Reuters/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Ricardo Moraes/Reuters/Landov

Clock yourself the next time you tie your shoes. Chances are, in the time it took you to get those shoes laced up, Ronda Rousey would have knocked out her opponent in a typical mixed martial arts match.

Rousey, the reigning women’s bantamweight champion in the sport, has held the title since the women’s Ultimate Fighting Championship was established in 2012 — more or less to showcase her talent. The most lethal of those talents is the arm bar, a move that she brought over from her days as an Olympian in judo. Today, she continues to use it to her advantage, often taking down fighters in seconds.

Known also for her ice cold stare, Rousey’s used to getting booed by the crowd for her trash talk — and loves it, too. Yet Rousey needed speech therapy when she was a child.

“I had a lot of trouble speaking as a kid. I didn’t really speak in coherent sentences until I was like 6 years old,” she tells NPR’s Audie Cornish. Diagnosed with apraxia when she was young, she fell behind in relation to other kids her age. “There was a long time where everybody was very worried, because my sisters were so advanced for their age and I would barely talk.”

Even later, she struggled for years to overcome her shyness.

“I was painfully shy for a long time,” she says. “I mean, that’s something I really had to work my way out of. And I really think it was because, after the 2008 Olympics, I spent a whole year bartending. It was the one thing that really forced me to be just not so scared to start conversations with strangers.”

These days, it’s her outspokenness and her fearsome reputation that have been nabbing headlines — and screen time. She has appeared in movies like the last of the Fast and Furious franchise and The Expendables 3, in which she was the only female action star on the bill full of men.

Still, though, in the octagon she’s never just another name on the card. In fact, she’s one of the most dominant athletes alive.

To hear their full conversation, click the audio link above.

Ronda Rousey (right), mid-fight with Bethe Correia. This bout didn't last much longer after the photo was taken. It didn't last very long, period.

Ronda Rousey (right), mid-fight with Bethe Correia. This bout didn’t last much longer after the photo was taken. It didn’t last very long, period. Matthew Stockman/Getty Images hide caption

itoggle caption Matthew Stockman/Getty Images

Interview Highlights

On the fine art of trash-talking

I always thought I was really bad at it, because I could barely hang in there with my sisters and my mom. But then, when I got away from the Olympics, over to professional sports, where I was into entertainment and getting people involved, that’s when I really got to find a new means of expression of, like, I get to create this superhero character version of myself.

I don’t have to think about, “Oh my God, I might be misrepresenting my country in doing so,” because it wasn’t about representing my country anymore. It was about building myself as an individual.

On the pre-fight comments about Rousey’s family from opponent Bethe Correia, whom Rousey eventually defeated in 34 seconds

Well, I’m used to opponents trying to say as many mean things as possible as they can about me. But when it gets to the part where they’re saying things that are hurtful to my family, that’s when it gets to a point where I feel like I have to make an example out of that person — so people know where the lines are, and where to not cross them. And I don’t think anyone’s going to be crossing that line ever again after that last fight. …

The lines are there. I mean, they’re a little bit more flexible than, you know, any other workspace environment. But they’re still there and they still need to be respected.

On her long-running war of words with Floyd Mayweather, her remarks about his history of domestic violence — and whether she’d ever step into the ring for a fight with him

I don’t think it’s my duty or anything like that, I don’t think I have to do anything, but I’m in a position where I can say something. If I feel like somebody insults me, I don’t have to sit there and bow my head and be a good little girl and just take it. I can say something back. And it’s actually encouraging that he’s in the kind of situation where he feels like he has to respond to me. …

Honestly, I don’t even think that any kind of coed fight would be good for the sport at all. … Because I don’t think there should ever be a situation where everyone gathers around an arena to see a man hit a woman.

On the first time she recalls seeing an MMA fight

I saw Gina Carano fight Julie Kedzie on Showtime, and I thought it was just the most amazing thing — not just seeing how great they were fighting each other, and how great of a fight it was, but seeing the reaction of all the men I was watching that fight with. And where they would speak vulgarly about the ring girls that whole night, when the girl fighters came on, they spoke about them with awe and respect. And I envied them [Carano and Kedzie] in a lot of ways, because I trained with a lot of these guys and the kind of reverence they were giving these girls was something that I never received from them.

On the female fan base for mixed martial arts

Actually, MMA has a — pretty even when it comes to the fan base. I think it’s like 60-40 [percent] men/women. It’s much more even than people would think.

And I think one reason why women are so drawn to fighting is because it’s an instinct that everyone has. It’s not an instinct to hit a ball with a bat or to put a ball in a hoop or to kick a ball between two posts. But it is an instinct in every single human being to fight, and everyone has that thought in their mind of what would I do if I was in there? And it’s not something that we’re taught; it’s something that we have in us. It’s not a man or woman thing; it’s a human thing.

On the physical toll the sport takes on her

I’m actually a lot more healed now, doing MMA, than I was doing judo. In judo, I was on the verge of having to quit, because my joints, my knees, everything was so worn out. … It’s actually a lot more internally damaging.

Everyone thinks [MMA is] a lot worse than it is, because you’ll get a little cut here or there and it’ll bleed, it’ll look bad, but it’s not nearly as bad as, say, boxing when someone’s taking 12 rounds of punishment to the head, or judo, where someone’s face-planting and they could break their neck or something like that. As long as I keep walking out of the cage without a single bruise on me, I’ll be able to fight a lot longer. …

I say all the time, it’s the pretty fighters you gotta look out for, because they’re the ones that get hit the least.

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Health August 26, 2015

Illicit Version Of Painkiller Fentanyl Makes Heroin Deadlier

Heroin sold in the U.S., like this dose confiscated in Alabama last fall, is often cut with other drugs.
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Heroin sold in the U.S., like this dose confiscated in Alabama last fall, is often cut with other drugs. Tamika Moore/AL.com/Landov hide caption

itoggle caption Tamika Moore/AL.com/Landov

Angelo Alonzo, a resident of Portland, Maine, says he nearly died last month after injecting what he believed to be a safe dose of heroin — the same amount he’s taken before. But this time, he says, the drug knocked him to his knees.

“An amount that usually gives me a good mellow high was just way too much,” he says, “and I woke up in the shower and I was cold. And I didn’t put myself there.”

Alonzo was lucky: A friend quickly treated him with Naloxone, an emergency antidote, and he entered a rehab program. While it would take a toxicology workup to discover exactly what was in the “heroin” that floored him, Alonzo says he suspects some form of fentanyl — a drug that’s making a big showing in Maine.

All around North America, U.S. drug officials warn, some drug dealers are lacing heroin with an illicit version of the potent anesthesia drug fentanyl. The dangerous combination is quickly killing unsuspecting users — and worsening the nation’s epidemic of deaths from heroin overdose.

According to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, fentanyl is 30 to 50 times more potent than heroin, and 80 to 100 times more potent than morphine.

Regional drug dealers add the illicit form of fentanyl to the heroin they sell in hopes of restoring the potency of a product that’s been diluted by dealers higher up the distribution chain.

“If you make that right mix, everyone loves your stuff,” Alonzo explains. “But, you know, that right mix might kill some people, too.”

Pharmaceutical-grade fentanyl is useful during surgery as an anesthesia drug and, in carefully titrated amounts. It also can be a blessing for patients in severe pain. But in the past two years, according to federal drug agents, Mexican cartels have ramped up production of a variant called acetyl fentanyl in clandestine labs. They are smuggling this version into the United States.

According to the DEA, acetyl fentanyl may be slightly less potent than fentanyl, but is still quite powerful. It is not yet included in many screens for toxic drugs, the DEA says. And this variant of fentanyl is also not approved for medical use in the United States.

Acetyl fentanyl’s street price is slightly higher than heroin’s, according to the DEA. But drug dealers apparently think the drug’s stunning potency makes it a good deal, nonetheless. The flip side? Two milligrams or less — a dose the size of a few grains of salt — can kill.

“Heroin is bad enough, but when you lace it with fentanyl, it’s like dropping a nuclear bomb on the situation,” says Mary Lou Leary, a deputy director in the White House’s office of National Drug Control Policy. “It’s so, so much more dangerous.”

There were at least 700 fentanyl-related deaths nationwide in a period from late 2013 through 2014, say federal officials. And many states, as well as Canadian provinces, are reporting a sudden wildfire of overdose deaths.

Two years ago, for example, Maine authorities documented just seven deaths related to illicit fentanyl. A year later the number of deaths jumped to 43, and Maine Attorney General Janet Mills says the problem is getting worse.

“In July alone, we suspect that approximately one death a day in Maine was due to a drug overdose of some sort,” she says. “We are confirming this with laboratory testing, but a substantial number of those involved fentanyl.”

Law enforcement officers and policymakers are struggling to react to the problem’s fast-moving spread. Only a handful of states have added acetyl fentanyl to their lists of banned substances. And the DEA added it to the federal list just this year.

Mills says prosecutors should seek the ability to make felony charges in fentanyl cases. That would not only facilitate dealmaking with users to get better information about drug networks, she says, but would also be useful leverage in getting more heroin users into drug treatment.

“We want to have a significant sentence hanging over them, Mills says, “so that we can encourage them — force them, if you will — into treatment.”

Federal and state authorities are trying to boost public awareness about fentanyl and have tried to get out the word locally when they discover a particularly dangerous batch of heroin on the streets.

But there’s a terrible irony in all this: For some heroin users, as Angelo Alonzo says, danger is magnetic.

“Usually when someone hears that people are dropping or dying out there — that’s usually when an addict wants that specific stuff,” Alonzo says. “They think that the high is unbelievable and they want it. You can understand why. But that’s a tough call. You’re playing with your life. “

It’s unclear what Alonzo’s next call may be in his own difficult road toward recovery. He recently checked out of the local rehab shelter — against medical advice.

Fred Bever is a freelance reporter in Portland, Maine.

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