February 27, 2016

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Entertainment February 27, 2016

Best of the Week: Getting Ready for the Oscars, First Look at the New 'Pete's Dragon' and More

The Important News

Star Wars Mania: Disney released more concept art and other details on Star Wars Land. Star Wars: Episode VIII is fighting off set spies with drones. Star Wars: The Force Awakens will hit iTunes next month.

Marvel Madness: Crossbones made an official debut in new images from Captain America: Civil War. Finn Jones is Marvel’s Iron Fist for Netflix.

DC Delirium: Justice League – Part 1 received a shooting start date. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice will have an R-rated version available on video. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice might have received rewrites from Ben Affleck.

Franchise Fever: Demian Bichir joined the cast of Alien: Covenant.

Sequelitis: Pacific Rim 2 will move ahead with director Steven S. DeKnight. Brant Daugherty will play Anastasia’s bodyguard in Fifty Shades Freed. Lin-Manuel Miranda may co-star in the Mary Poppins sequel. Both Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon 3 and Cloverfield 3 might happen.

Remake Report: Michael B. Jordan will star in a new version of The Thomas Crown Affair. James Mangold will direct a prequel reboot of a new 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Casting Net: Emily Ratajkowski will co-star in In Darkness. Jon Bernthal joined the cast of Baby Driver. Tyler Sheridan will star in Steven Spielberg’s Ready Player One.

Reel TV: Amy Adams will star in the TV adapation of Gillian Flynn’s Sharp Objects. Jean-Claude Van Damme will star in a comedy series for Amazon.

New Directors/New Films: Joe Wright will direct the supernatural thriller The Ruins. Ava DuVernay will direct Disney’s adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time. Chris Weitz will helm a movie about infamous Nazi Adolf Eichmann.

Writers Block: Dan and Kevin Hageman are now writing Guillermo del Toro’s Scary Stories.

First Look: Zac Efron’s enlarged muscles made a big splash in a new Baywatch image.

Box Office: Deadpool broke more records last weekend. And it became the biggest X-Men movie.

Celebrating the Classics: FerrisFest, honoring Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, will be held in Chicago in May.

Tie-in Time: Morgan Freeman’s voice is now available for your GPS system. Fake tie-in product Slusho will return in 10 Cloverfield Lane.

Awards Season: Moviegoers chose The Revenant as the favorite to win Best Picture.

The Videos and Geek Stuff

New Movie Trailers: Pete’s Dragon, Alice Through Looking Glass, Kill Your Friends, Precious Cargo, I Am Wrath and The Light Between Oceans.

Clip: Rise of the Legend.

Behind the Scenes: The makers of The Big Short explain how to make sense of financial nonsense.

See: Deadpool‘s last-minute Oscar campaign ad.

Watch: Deadpool answers fans questions.

See: Mysterious Spaceballs sequel ads posted in NYC subways.

Watch: J.J. Abrams fixes more franchises in a parody video.

See: Best Picture nominees aligned with which presidential candidate. And Best Picture nominees told as emojis. And kids explain what they think the Best Picture nominees are about.

Watch: Parodies of Best Picture nominees The Martian and Mad Max: Fury Road. And a parody of Spotlight.

See: Every Leonardo DiCaprio movie in one supercut.

Watch: An in-depth profile of character actor Crispin Glover.

See: A first look at the new Universal Studios ride based on Kong: Skull Island.

Watch: A celebration of the Coen Brothers and a comparison between the Fargo movie and show.

See: This week’s best new movie posters.

Our Features

Oscar Nominee Guide: Where and when you can find this year’s Oscar nominees On Demand. Geeky recommendations for old movies starring current Oscar nominees.

Sci-Fi Movie Guide: Revisiting Star Wars: the Force Awakens at the end of its theatrical run.

Comic Book Movie Guide: About that R-rated Batman v Superman cut.

Filmmaker Guide: An appreciation of Triple 9 director John Hillcoat.

Foreign Film Guide: Why you need to know about Stephen Chow’s The Mermaid.

Home Viewing: Here’s our guide to everything hitting VOD this week. And here’s our guide to everything hitting HBO Now next month. And here’s our guide to everything hitting Netflix next month.

and

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Business February 27, 2016

Do Big Cash Denominations Help Organized Crime?

4:05

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The European Central Bank is considering abandoning the 500 euro note. Harvard University’s Peter Sands explains why the 500 euro note is the currency of choice for organized crime and terrorists.

Transcript

ERIC WESTERVELT, HOST:

Ever thought of getting rid of the $100 bill? What about the 500-euro note? The European Central Bank right now is talking about getting rid of the big note, which is a controversial move for some countries tied to the euro, especially Germany. Critics of the 500-euro note saying it’s the currency of choice for organized crime groups looking to use cash for drug trafficking, corruption, money laundering, even for terrorist activities. Some even call the 500 euro the bin Laden. Meanwhile, supporters of the 500 note fear the move is a step toward getting rid of all cash transactions. Peter Sands is a former bank executive who’s now a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He wrote a report on why such high-dollar currency should be eliminated to make it tougher for criminals to transfer funds. And Peter Sands joins us now. Thanks for being with us.

PETER SANDS: Hi.

WESTERVELT: What’s your evidence that these big bills do in fact fuel criminality and corruption and even terrorism? Do we have hard evidence of that?

SANDS: I don’t think it’s right to say they necessarily fuel or encourage them. What high-denomination notes are doing is making it easier for the criminals to do what they want to do. And by taking them away, you’re simply making their lives harder. People underestimate how sort of heavy cash is. If you want to move a million dollars in $20 bills, it weighs 110 pounds. It’s actually pretty hard for a single individual to carry surreptitiously 110 pounds. In 500-euro notes, that’s less than 4 pounds.

WESTERVELT: There’s been some strong pushback, especially from Germany. Why are the Germans been so strong in support of the big note?

SANDS: It’s funny that high-denomination notes in almost every currency carry symbolism to people. And I think that is certainly true in Germany. You know, Germany’s history with currency has had its up and downs from the sort of terrible disaster the Weimar Republic to the Deutsche mark being very much a symbol of the resurgence of Germany in the postwar era.

WESTERVELT: One of the main arguments is that restricting cash could force that money back into banks, which is as we’ve seen in the past not always as reliable or 100 percent reliable.

SANDS: Well, for all the mistakes and gaps in the scrutiny and surveillance systems the bank have, at least they have some. The reality is we have no idea what’s happening in the criminal flows of cash because cash is completely anonymous and leaves no transaction record.

WESTERVELT: And aren’t there legitimate reasons for carrying 500-euro notes?

SANDS: Look, there are some legitimate reasons. People like high-denomination notes for giving gifts. They like it as emergency money when they’re traveling. But you’ve got to trade that off against the fact that when we do seizures of drug trafficking or human traffickers or you’re looking at the way that terrorist organizations finance themselves, you will find that a very large percentage of what is going on is being driven by high-denomination notes.

WESTERVELT: What about here in the U.S.? Is the Ben Franklin in any danger?

SANDS: I think there should be a debate as to the level of issuance and the role of the hundred-dollar bill. There are about 30 hundred-dollar bills for every U.S. citizen, yet the role they play in everyday life is extremely small. Around 5 percent of American adults have a hundred-dollar bill in their pocket at any one time. Yet somebody is holding those bills. And if you look at the data on seizures of drug cash, say, crossing the U.S.-Mexican border, the stuff that gets seized is almost invariably in hundred-dollar bills.

WESTERVELT: That’s former banker Peter Sands. He’s now a senior fellow at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. Peter, thanks for speak with us.

SANDS: Thank you, Eric.

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Sports February 27, 2016

FIFA Elects New Leader To Replace Blatter

4:07

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Gianni Infantino is the new leader of FIFA, replacing the disgraced Sepp Blatter. NPR’s Lourdes Garcia-Navarro speaks to ESPN’s Howard Bryant about whether soccer will see any real changes.

Transcript

LOURDES GARCIA-NAVARRO, HOST:

It’s time for sports.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yesterday, the world’s soccer organization, FIFA, elected a new president, but a new face might not be enough to salvage FIFA’s image following last year’s scandal that brought down many in the governing body. ESPN’s Howard Bryant joins us now to talk all things football. Hi, Howard.

HOWARD BRYANT: Good morning, how are you?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I’m all. So Gianni Infantino replaces Sepp Blatter as the leader of FIFA. Who is he, what can we expect of him, is he a reformer?

BRYANT: Well, that’s a great question. Those are all great questions, though, but we know who he is. He’s a Swiss – the second Swiss to head FIFA, following Sepp Blattter, who is now facing or in the middle of an eight-year ban. I think that’s a great question as to whether or not he’s going to be a reformer. One of the big questions obviously with the scandal that has rocked this entire – the largest sport governing body in the world has been whether or not this organization can turn the corner.

And the one thing that Infantino has said is that he wants to move FIFA forward, whatever that means. And transparency was one of the big questions and that was of course the big – the first fail…

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Right.

BRYANT: …Which the body promised transparency. And what did we get? We got a secret ballot, which led to his presidency. So that’s the first fail, but the next thing, too, is there’s a big difference between change and reform. The FBI and the investigation that rocked FIFA created change, but when you change from within, you wonder if it’s going to be more of the same. And he is an insider, so he’s got a lot of work to do to convince people that he’s different.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, he’s the ultimate insider. And the whiff of scandal is still strong. Is there anything the new president could do to restore the governing body’s reputation?

BRYANT: Well, he’s got a 90-day plan. That was one of the things that he was running on was his 90-day reform plan. I think that they should go much, much bigger than the small reforms. I think that one of the things, if you are a casual fan, or even if you’re a big fan of the World Cup, one of the big questions that led to all of this was how on Earth did a nation the size of my hand, Qatar, get the World Cup for 2022? And I think that maybe one of the things that they should do is really look at that, get the World Cup out of Qatar, put it in the United States, put in a place – or Europe someplace – where it would show that they were actually aware and convinced that this was pure corruption and it was time to try some thing different. I think that would send a huge message to me.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Well, let’s turn now to the Olympics, another big mega-event, which opens in Brazil in August. Yesterday, the CDC issued its first explicit warning saying pregnant women or women and their partners who are considering becoming pregnant should avoid traveling to Brazil because of the Zika virus.

BRYANT: Yeah. This is gigantic and this is huge because we already have, on the women’s side in the United States, the best team in the world – the women’s national soccer team. Hope Solo, the goaltender, had already said that she had been concerned about going and really didn’t know if she wanted to go until there was some sort of feeling that this was a problem that had been solved, and clearly it hasn’t been. And I think it’s a huge issue, one, because the Olympics are very, very close. You’re not going to be able to change the venue. And it’s going to be a huge issue for the athletes that don’t go because this is not the NBA or it’s not baseball where you’ve got a game tomorrow. You work four years to get here, and so if you miss this you’re not going to be having – you’re not going to have a chance to do this again for another four years. And so the sacrifice would be pretty big, but then again, also, do you really want to go down there with this sort of risk?

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, briefly, 200,000 Americans were also expected to travel to Brazil for the games.

BRYANT: Exactly.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: Yeah, this could potentially be a big damper on already depressed ticket sales there.

BRYANT: There’s no question about it. And let’s face it. Rio as well – the infrastructure after the World Cup, as well, they could use a success, and this is not helping.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: All right, Howard Bryant of espn.com and ESPN the Magazine, thanks so much.

BRYANT: My pleasure.

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Health February 27, 2016

Keeping Up With The Joneses' Latest Medical Procedure

Katherine Streeter for NPR

Katherine Streeter for NPR

My father is approaching his 78th birthday, blessed with health good enough to still be an avid golfer and tennis player.

His regular group of tennis buddies changes from time to time. The lineup depends on how they’re feeling.

I remember when one of the gents renowned for his fitness and fastidious diet underwent a quadruple-bypass heart operation. The other guys were in shock. If Mr. Fit had a bum ticker, they all figured they better get to their doctors pronto.

“Don’t I need an operation or something to clean out my arteries?” Dad asked me.

It doesn’t work like that, I explained. We don’t recommend [they are done, let’s be honest] preventive heart surgeries, though many people make that assumption because of our culture’s worship of the latest, greatest medicine and technology.

Heart surgery should be considered disaster relief, I told him, not part of a regular tune-up or a solution for unhealthful habits.

When my father saw his own doctor a few weeks later and got his usual clean bill of health, Dad wasn’t satisfied. There must be some danger brewing somewhere inside him, he told me, despite reassurances from me and his doctor.

His concern faded after a while, but then several months later one of his cronies underwent a knee replacement. Dad’s first reaction: “When should I get my knee replaced?”

I tried to talk him through it. “Do you have pain with every step you take?” I asked. Clearly not, I thought, since he’s still playing tennis three times a week. He admitted that his pain is only intermittent. But as he has aged, he’s grown concerned that his balance has become wobbly.

I can’t fault my dad. He’s a child of the 1950s and has an unshakable belief in American ingenuity and medical progress. Newer is always better. For patients like him, more medical care equals more health.

If there’s one thing he and I have battled over (and as his doctor-son I’m sure I’ve disappointed him in this regard), it’s my insistence that quite the opposite is usually true: less is more in medicine and health care.

In the last decade a whole science has arisen to examine medical overuse — a big contributor to our country’s world-leading health care costs.

These talks with Dad got me thinking about his way of looking at things. I’ve even coined a name for his impulses. I call it, “medical me-tooism.” It reminds me of a millennial’s fear of missing out (FOMO!), but for the geriatric set.

One thing’s for sure, my father’s not alone. In clinical practice, I see medical me-tooism frequently.

Take my patient Jack. He’s 89, and he only stopped playing tennis when he moved to town from Las Vegas a year or so ago to be closer to his son.

Jack was awarded a Purple Heart in World War II, and he sees every day as a gift. But at a recent visit, he told me that out of a group of 13 childhood friends from his original neighborhood, only he and one other remain.

“Isn’t there some pill I can have,” Jack asked, only half-jokingly, “to keep me in good health?” He does take a few medicines, one for blood pressure and another for heartburn. Medically speaking, I think Jack is happier to do less, but his anxiety persists about his good fortune. It’s a form of survivor’s guilt.

Classically, survivor’s guilt is reaction to war, trauma, or natural disaster: Why did I live when others perished?

But it exists in the medical realm, too, especially for cancer survivors who see many of their afflicted compadres succumb to illness, suffering and death.

When I approached my father for permission to write about him, he and I wound up having a heart-to-heart talk about the indignities of our aging bodies, life and its natural end.

He didn’t entirely buy my view that he suffers from medical me-tooism when it comes to his tennis buddies. But he agreed conceptually that medical me-tooism is really a form of survivor’s guilt.

Having reached the average life expectancy for an American male, my father is acutely aware of life’s limits. Sadly, many of his friends have dropped from the tennis group, never to return. Some have died while others became too feeble to continue playing.

Still, compared with their peers, the tennis elders seem to be enjoying life and living longer than their spectating counterparts.

The observation is anecdotal, to be sure, but I’m convinced it speaks to the value of moving around and socializing.

Those are two things my father and I fully agree on.

John Henning Schumann is a writer and doctor in Tulsa, Okla. He serves as president of the University of Oklahoma, Tulsa. He also hosts Public Radio Tulsa’s Medical Matters. He’s on Twitter: @GlassHospital

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