January 14, 2016

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Today in Movie Culture: 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' VFX Reel, Hologram Versions of Classic Movies

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

Visual Effects Reel of the Day:

See why Star Wars: The Force Awakens was nominated for a visual effects Oscar today in this reel showing the making of practical and computer-generated spectacle:

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Cosplay of the Day:

This is part of a great photo shoot of Rey cosplay from Star Wars: the Force Awakens. See more images at KamiKame.

The Future of Movies?

Watch a couple of guys make hologram re-creations of scenes from The Big Lebowski, Apocalypse Now and more (via Devour):

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Film History Lesson of the Day:

Today is the 120th anniversary of the premiere of Birt Acres‘s Rough Sea at Dover, the first film publicly screened in England. Watch the then-thrilling short documenting waves crashing below.

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Vintage Image of the Day:

Happy birthday to Faye Dunaway, who turns 75 today. Here she is in a promotional photo for one of her first movies, The Happening, in 1966:

Reimagined Movie of the Day:

It’s hard to believe Dumb & Dumber could be sold as a highbrow romantic movie, but Mashable made it happen (via Geek Tyrant):

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Classic Cartoon of the Day:

Today is the 60th anniversary of the release of the classic Merrie Melodies animated short Bugs’ Bonnets, starring Bugs Bunny and directed by Chuck Jones. Watch the cartoon below.

Streaming Service Parody of the Day:

College Humor spoofs the Netflix original documentary series Making a Murderer and their partnership with Adam Sandler:

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Supercut of the Day:

Roman Holiday was commissioned by an international agency to make this montage of cinematic bedrooms, which includes bits from Iron Man and Ghostbusters:

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Classic Trailer of the Day:

Today is the 35th anniversary of the release of David Cronenberg‘s Scanners. Watch one of the original trailers from the horror classic’s UK run below.

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Goldman Sachs Will Pay $5 Billion To Settle Financial-Crisis Claims

Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, shown here at a September 2014 panel discussion, says he is pleased to resolve the allegations against the firm.

Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein, shown here at a September 2014 panel discussion, says he is pleased to resolve the allegations against the firm. Mark Lennihan/AP hide caption

toggle caption Mark Lennihan/AP

Goldman Sachs will pay about $5 billion to resolve state and federal investigations into its handling of mortgage-backed securities in the years leading up to the 2008 financial crisis, the bank said today.

The agreement will settle “actual and potential civil claims” by the U.S. Justice Department and the attorneys general of New York and Illinois, as well as the Federal Home Loan Banks of Chicago and Seattle and the National Credit Union Administration, the firm said in a press release issued after the close of trading Thursday.

“We are pleased to have reached an agreement in principle to resolve these matters,” said Lloyd C. Blankfein, Goldman’s chairman and chief executive officer.

The firm said it will pay a civil monetary penalty of $2.385 billion, a cash payment of $875 million and $1.8 billion in consumer relief:

“The consumer relief will be in the form of principal forgiveness for underwater homeowners and distressed borrowers; financing for construction, rehabilitation and preservation of affordable housing; and support for debt restructuring, foreclosure prevention and housing quality improvement programs, as well as land banks.”

Goldman said the settlement, an agreement in principle, has not yet been finalized by the parties involved. If it is, it will reduce earnings for the last three months of 2013 by $1.5 billion.

Ever since the subprime mortgage crisis upended the global financial system, authorities have been investigating a number of large financial institutions and their sale of mortgage-backed securities.

The investigations have centered on whether the banks misrepresented the real value of the assets.

Regulators have already won large multibillion-dollar settlements from several large banks, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup.

Last May, Goldman announced it was negotiating with federal and state authorities to resolve claims against it.

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World Anti-Doping Agency Report Slams Track And Field's Governing Body

An independent commission formed by the World Anti-Doping Agency released the second part of its damning report Thursday, detailing illicit state-sanctioned doping by track and field athletes, and corruption among top international officials.

While the first part of the report, released in November, focused mainly on wrongdoing by the Russian athletics federation (ARAF) and the Russian anti-doping agency (RUSADA), Thursday’s report centers on the corruption of the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF), which was found to have contributed to the corruption that allowed athletes with dirty blood tests to continue competing.

The report says that former president of the IAAF Lamine Diack “was responsible for organizing and enabling the conspiracy and corruption that took place in the IAAF.”

As the Two-Way previously reported, the institutions failed completely; athletes who had doped were even allowed to compete in the 2012 Olympic Games. The report found that Diack knew of extorting athletes to hide abnormal blood tests.

“He sanctioned and appears to have had personal knowledge of the fraud and the extortion of athletes carried out by the actions of the informal illegitimate governance structure he put in place,” the report says.

But it also says that the illegal activity went beyond Diack.

“The corruption was embedded in the organization. It cannot be ignored or dismissed as attributable to the odd renegade acting on its own,” the report said.

It went on to assert that “at least some of the members of the IAAF Council could not have been unaware of the extent of doping in Athletics and the non-enforcement of applicable anti-doping rules.”

In the wake of WADA’s first report, the IAAF ethics committee handed down three lifetime bans last week (including to the former president of Russia’s athletic federation) and one five-year ban to the former head of the IAAF’s anti-doping unit.

At the time, Russian Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko said he thought the IAAF announced the bans to help its own image and distract from the looming publication of the second part of WADA’s report, according to Reuters.

Now that the second installment of the report has been published, Mutko said he “supported all the outcomes” of the investigation and understood Russia’s share of the responsibility for the doping scandal, the news service said, citing the Tass news agency.

With the IAAF now in the spotlight, it will be up to the current president, Sebastian Coe of Britain, to take the next steps.

Dick Pound, a former WADA president said Coe was the right person to lead the organization, according to the Associated Press.

“There’s [an] enormous amount of reputational recovery that has to occur here and I can’t … think of anyone better than Lord Coe to lead that. All our fingers are crossed in that respect.”

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