February 29, 2016

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Entertainment February 29, 2016

Today in Movie Culture: Oscars Hangover Edition

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

Best Oscar Nominee Parodies:

From the show itself, here are the hilarious parodies of Joy, The Revenant, The Danish Girl and The Martian featuring Whoopi Goldberg, Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan and Chris Rock:

Best Alternate Ending to an Oscar Win:

It’s a good thing the bear from The Revenant wasn’t actually at the Oscars, because Leonardo DiCaprio‘s win for Best Actor could have gone more like this [via Above Average]:

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Best Oscar Winner Sequel Idea:

Speaking of The Revenant, in the sequel Leonardo DiCaprio is apparently miniaturized and this time attacked by a hamster:

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Best Use of the Oscar Speech Thank You Scroll:

In case you missed it, Inside Out director Pete Docter used the new thank you scroll as an opportunity to give his kids a special message [via Cinema Blend]:

Best TV Ad for an Upcoming Movie:

Disney‘s Zootopia parodied the titles of some of this year’s Oscar nominees in a new TV spot that ran during the awards show:

#Zootopia‘s biggest night in film is almost here! See it in theatres this Friday! Get tix: https://t.co/GGBCDUchyXhttps://t.co/kx7s9yaRtH

— Zootopia (@DisneyZootopia) February 27, 2016

Best Print Ads for an Upcoming Movie:

Also getting in on the nominee poster parody idea was the upcoming comedy Keanu, via Twitter:

It’s a tough race for the A-cat-emy Awards this year. #KEANU pic.twitter.com/McDVFLVHEL

— #KEANU (@KeanuMovie) February 26, 2016

Best Misunderstanding of an Oscar Winner:

See an alien from the future analyze the multiple Oscar winner Mad Max: Fury Road in the latest episode of Earthling Cinema:

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Best Oscar Party Cosplay:

U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill donned some Mad Max: Fury Road cosplay while watching the awards:

I’m in a fierce mood these days. When your family #Oscarnight costume game on point. #MadMax pic.twitter.com/F9f4WXYE45

— Claire McCaskill (@clairecmc) February 28, 2016

Best Oscar Presenter Craving:

Morgan Freeman seems to have developed a certain craving from his old PBS children’s television colleague Cookie Monster. Watch him grab a Girl Scout Cookie from Chris Rock after presenting the Best Picture award to Spotlight [via Cinema Blend]:

You can tell Morgan Freeman is a cookie savage #Oscars pic.twitter.com/jW2DflHZ3M

— Andrew Jerell Jones (@sluggahjells) February 29, 2016

Best Oscar Nominee Montage:

What’s next for the 2016 Oscars? How about a movie adapted from and piecing all of the nominees together? Here’s its trailer (via Cinematic Montage Creators):

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Business February 29, 2016

Originals: How To Spot One, How To Be One

Adam Grant is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Originals.
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Adam Grant is a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Originals. Michael Kamber/Adam Grant hide caption

toggle caption Michael Kamber/Adam Grant

Consider this: Frank Lloyd Wright was a procrastinator. Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin are afraid of taking risks. Most of Beethoven’s compositions are pretty awful. Conventional wisdom suggests these originals were successful despite their hemming and hawing, their hedging, and their many flops. But Wharton professor Adam Grant says these defects are actually fundamental to originality. In his new book, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World, Adam investigates who comes up with great ideas, how, and what we can do to have more of them. This week, we bring you our conversation with him.

The Hidden Brain Podcast is hosted by Shankar Vedantam and produced by Kara McGuirk-Alison, Maggie Penman and Max Nesterak. To subscribe to our newsletter, click here. You can also follow us on Twitter@hiddenbrain,@karamcguirk,@maggiepenman and @maxnesterak, and listen for Hidden Brain stories every week on your local public radio station.

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Sports February 29, 2016

Steph Curry's Off-The-Charts Shooting Game Breaks 'NBA 2K'

3:11

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Reigning NBA MVP Steph Curry is destroying the league with the kind of shooting we’ve never seen before. NPR’s Ari Shapiro talks to Mike Wang, gameplay director of the video game “NBA 2K,” and John Fontanella, author of The Physics of Basketball, about Curry’s shooting game.

Transcript

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

The Golden State Warriors are trying to break the NBA record for wins in a single season. Meanwhile, the Warrior’s star, Stephen Curry, is pretty much breaking the NBA.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER: Curry way downtown – bang, oh, what a shot from Curry with six-tenths of a second remaining.

(CHEERING)

SHAPIRO: That’s Curry making a game-winning three-pointer against Oklahoma City on Saturday, and he took that shot 38 feet away from the net. John Fontanella is a retired physics professor from the Naval Academy, and he wrote the book “The Physics Of Basketball.” Welcome to the show.

JOHN FONTANELLA: Thank you, Ari.

SHAPIRO: That single shot we just heard is pretty remarkable on its own. But Curry has been making these kinds of shots all the time. How extraordinary is this?

FONTANELLA: Oh, he’s really amazing – friend of mine says that’s revolutionary. I really think it’s probably more evolutionary, but he’s a very impressive young man.

SHAPIRO: Why do you see him as an evolutionary figure rather than a revolutionary one?

FONTANELLA: Because there’s nothing really new that he’s doing. It’s that he’s doing it better. What he does has its origins back in the ’50s with something called the set shot. The classic jumpshot – the ball is released from the top of your head. Well, he’s just eliminated that step. The real starting point is at the chest, and it just goes there, straight from the chest to the basket.

SHAPIRO: And that lets him make the shot a lot faster than other players used to.

FONTANELLA: Exactly. He is much, much – he’s the quickest release that I’ve ever seen.

SHAPIRO: Steph Curry is so good that he’s created havoc for the makers of some video games. Mike Wang is gameplay director of “NBA 2K.” It’s a game that prides itself on being realistic.

MIKE WANG: You know, in real life, you’ve got to take good shots. You’ve got to take high-quality shots. You got to be open. You know, with Steph, he’s, like – he could throw those things out the window and go off the dribble, (unintelligible) for 10 seconds, shoot in double teams with two guys draped all over him and still hit the shot. So that’s something that we need to go back to the drawing board and see if we can get that back into our game.

SHAPIRO: Well, yeah. I was going to ask what does this mean for you now that he’s rewriting the rulebooks in real life.

WANG: Well, it’s going to spend some time. It’s – he’s – kept throwing a wrench into the system. You know, we had a lot of rules and things in our game that kind of make it so that we balance the game out.

SHAPIRO: If you change the virtual Steph Curry to be more like the real Steph Curry, isn’t everybody playing your game just going to want to be the Warriors?

WANG: You know, it’s not a bad choice, though (laughter), you know? Everyone wants to be the Warriors already. And why would you not want to be the best? I mean, they’re, you know, on pace to be the most winningest team in the league history. I think it’s going to happen regardless.

SHAPIRO: You have, obviously, a professional stake in this. This is your job. But I assume you also have a personal interest in basketball. What was it like for you watching that shot on Saturday?

WANG: Oh, it was amazing. I was sitting at home with my wife. And you know, I was – I think it was at one point when they were down toward the end, we were both like, you know, it’s not over yet. You know, it’s awesome watching the Warriors. You never know what you’re going to get, especially from Steph. He can shoot from anywhere. He can shoot the shots that no one expects to go in, and he hits them with – on a regular basis, and that’s just exciting for the league and exciting for us as fans.

SHAPIRO: That was Mike Wang, gameplay director of NBA 2K. We also heard from John Fontanella, author of “The Physics of Basketball.”

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Health February 29, 2016

'Wilhemina's War' Explores Barriers To AIDS Treatment In U.S. South

3:41

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While many Americans now view HIV and AIDS as survivable conditions, treatment and care can still be difficult to get in the southern states, especially for African-Americans. A new Independent Lens documentary, Wilhemina’s War, explores those challenges.

Transcript

ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:

More than a million Americans are now living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. For some people, it’s a serious but manageable condition. In the rural South, many struggle to get treatment. The Independent Lens documentary “Wilhemina’s War” explores that issue. It airs tonight on PBS. For NPR’s Code Switch team, Alexandra Starr reports.

ALEXANDRA STARR, BYLINE: Six years ago, filmmaker June Cross was shocked to learn that nearly half of all new cases of HIV were in the South.

JUNE CROSS: I was like, wow, what’s going on here?

STARR: Cross investigated to find out for herself. That’s how she met Wilhemina Dixon of Williston, S.C. In this scene, Dixon shares her story in a black church in nearby Orangeburg.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, “WILHEMINA’S WAR”)

WILHEMINA DIXON: First, I’d like to thank the reverend for having us here, and I came this morning to ask you all to listen at me since AIDS is in my family.

STARR: HIV struck two generations in her family. Her daughter, Toni Dicks, contracted the virus after years of drug use. She passed it onto her own daughter, Dayshal Dicks, who was born HIV-positive. Toni has since died. Dayshal, who is now 21, says Wilhemina Dixon has always been her caretaker and confidant.

DAYSHAL DICKS: Whenever I have problems, I go talk to her. She’s, like, my best friend.

STARR: And her sole support. Dixon works several odd jobs, earning about $12,000 a year. It’s all part of her fight to keep Dayshal from falling victim to a grim trend. AIDS is now one of the leading causes of death for African-American women of childbearing age. As June Cross explains, there are a lot of different factors behind that.

CROSS: Unemployment, poverty, lack of education, lack of access to health care. In a larger sense, it’s become one more way that we can measure inequality.

STARR: You see this in the experience of Dixon’s family. They had difficulty navigating the health care system, finding doctors. Even getting to the doctor was a challenge. Cross says Dixon had to drive her granddaughter 90 minutes each way for her appointments.

CROSS: There’s about one doctor for 4,000 to 10,000 people. There’s one county in South Carolina where it’s one doctor for 10,000 people.

STARR: But even for those who could get medical care, there’s the issue of stigma. Gina Wingood is a professor of public health at Columbia University. She says shame can be an obstacle to diagnosis and treatment of HIV.

GINA WINGOOD: If you have high rates of stigma, people aren’t going to go get health care. They’re not going to maybe even get a HIV test.

STARR: There are efforts to change this. In the documentary, we meet HIV outreach workers who operate a mobile health clinic. In one scene, an activist talks with an African-American woman who is about to be tested for HIV.

(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, “WILHEMINA’S WAR”)

UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: You know back in the day, they used to say that this was a white, gay disease. Guess who the face of HIV is now – me and you.

STARR: While there are unique challenges to battling HIV in the Bible Belt, Cross also points to high infection rates in poor urban neighborhoods and clusters of HIV developing in the rural Midwest. Still, she’s inspired by people like Dixon who have made fighting AIDS a personal mission.

CROSS: Wilhelmina gave me hope because she just refuses to stop. Dayshal is beginning to find strength to step forward and speak for herself now.

STARR: Dayshal is making a point of sharing her own story.

DICKS: My main motto is, HIV don’t have me. I have HIV.

STARR: And she’s planning to fight it all the way. For NPR News, I’m Alexandra Starr.

Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by a contractor for NPR, and accuracy and availability may vary. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Please be aware that the authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio.

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Entertainment February 29, 2016

Latitudes: Our Favorite Global Music Right Now

Portuguese singer Ana Moura.

Portuguese singer Ana Moura. Frederico Martins/Courtesy of the artist hide caption

toggle caption Frederico Martins/Courtesy of the artist

Oh, February. It’s the month that feels like it will never end, leap year or not. The air is cold and damp, the sky is gray, the sidewalks are slushy and I just want to be transported far, far away.

So for this month’s edition of Latitudes, I chose five songs I hope will lift your end-of-winter blues — because they definitely hit the spot for me.

If you know Portuguese music at all, you probably know the wistful, dark-hued, sadness-soaked music called fado. And one of fado’s greatest stars is singer Ana Moura — heck, even Prince is a fan. Moura certainly knows how to work a song, and in her latest, “Dia De Folga” (Day Off), she applies her smoke-and-whisky contralto to something surprising: a tune as light and sweet as a French macaron. “There are so many reasons/for the sadness to take a day off,” she sings — and pulls you into her sugar rush.

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Ana Moura VEVO YouTube

Just as in the U.S., reality TV singing competitions now launch local stars around the globe. One of them is singer Shayma Helali, who in 2007 made it to the semifinals of “Star Academy Arabia,” which cultivates aspiring entertainers from all over the Arab world. Though she is originally from Tunis, Helali has mostly gone of late for glossy, over-the-top ballads with pan-Arab mainstream appeal. But for this current song, “Aalamak,” she takes on the distinct sound and rhythms of the Gulf’s khaleeji music. The video is, admittedly, quite cheesy, but this project — featuring a female singer and dancers as well as Gulf men of different races — shows off a culture that doesn’t get a lot of airtime in the West.

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Rotana YouTube

Even though the video for this song was released last summer, French-born singer Jain‘s “Come” is just now hitting the Billboard‘s tally of the French digital song charts. With its quirky visuals and catchy chorus, “Come” is a charming little diversion (though the lyrics, which she is singing in English, are a bit hard to understand.) And Jain has bigger horizons in mind. Part Malagasy, she was raised in locales as far-flung as Dubai and Congo, and says she grew up with “Youssou N’Dour and Fela Kuti in her ears,” and plans to incorporate some African sounds into her alt-jazzy milieu down the road. She’s only 24, so hopefully she will have lots of opportunities to spin her past into her future.

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Jain VEVO YouTube

The Nigerian music scene is making a big play right now for North American attention. Sony BMG just signed their first African musician to a worldwide deal: It’s pop star Davido, the son of a very wealthy man and the godson of a man whom Forbes has named as the richest in Africa (with about $15 billion in assets). Davido has become the Nigerian king of bling-bling, a worldview that’s front and center in songs like “The Money.” (“Life is all about the money,” in case you miss his point.) More endearing — though with its share of video vixens — is the bouncy love song “Panya” from the duo Bracket, featuring Tekno. At any rate, count on seeing more Nigerian artists around the scene in the rest of 2016.

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Official Bracket YouTube

Lastly: Since St. Patrick’s Day is nearly upon us, it’s a perfect time to revisit the music of the stunningly good all-star band The Gloaming. Their new album, 2, was released just this past week, and opens with this tune, “The Pilgrim’s Song.” The Gloaming’s marriage of old instruments and new textures is so cozy and magical that maybe they’ve given me a reason to hang on to winter for just a tad bit longer.

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The Gloaming YouTube

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