April 18, 2016

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Entertainment April 18, 2016

Today in Movie Culture: Incredible Indian Versions of 'Star Wars' Music, 'E.T.' is Barbecued and More

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

Re-Arranged Movie Score of the Day:

Watch and hear music producer Tushar Lall perform his Indianized versions of Star Wars music, including the score from The Force Awakens (via Reddit):

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Movie Parody of the Day:

Saturday Night Live takes on the God’s Not Dead franchise and controversial religious freedom laws in this fake trailer:

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Movie-Themed Cookout of the Day:

Some vegans made a life-size, meatless replica of E.T. and roasted him on a spit and then ate him to protest “the needs of eaters who seek a surrogate for the sacrificial and ritual aspects of convivial, meat-based, barbecues.” See more photos of the disturbing event at Geekologie.

Animated Franchise Recap of the Day:

Curious what the deal was with the three Hobbit movies but don’t have to watch them? Mashable animates the whole trilogy in less than three minutes:

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Vintage Image of the Day:

Veronica Lake and Alan Ladd in a publicity photo for the Oscar-nominated film noir The Blue Dahlia, which opened 70 years ago today:

Fan Theory of the Day:

Is Joy really the villain of Pixar‘s Inside Out? This video makes the case that she at least does more harm than good:

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Cosplay of the Day:

There’s no Captain Marvel movie yet, but when there is one can it be as adorable as this cosplay photo (via Live for Films)?

Reimagined Movie of the Day:

Mashable cut a trailer for Lincoln, inserting some clips from Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, to make it look like an old English language-dubbed kung fu movie:

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Filmmaker in Focus:

In anticipation of The Neon Demon coming out this summer, here’s a (NSFW) video on Nicolas Winding Refn‘s use of color, particularly red, blue and yellow, in his films (via Cinematic Montage Creators):

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Classic Trailer of the Day:

Today is the 20th anniversary of the release of Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie. Watch the original trailer for the movie, in which the gang watches This Island Earth, below.

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and

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Business April 18, 2016

Seeking A Warmer Welcome, Gun Factory Moves Down South

A worker assembles a handgun at the new Beretta plant in Gallatin, Tenn. The Italian gun maker has cited Tennessee's support for gun rights in moving its production from its plant in Maryland.

A worker assembles a handgun at the new Beretta plant in Gallatin, Tenn. The Italian gun maker has cited Tennessee’s support for gun rights in moving its production from its plant in Maryland. Erik Schelzig/AP hide caption

toggle caption Erik Schelzig/AP

When companies uproot, executives usually point to factors like lower government taxes or fewer unions.

But one gun maker, Beretta, blames something entirely different — a law passed in Maryland to try to curb mass shootings.

The company recently moved its factory to Nashville, Tenn., because it says the law in Maryland threatened its business. The opening day was celebrated with shooting demonstrations and a warm welcome from state officials.

The Italian gun maker says it’s being driven out of its longtime U.S. home on the outskirts of Washington, D.C. The political culture there has grown hostile to guns and to the people who make them, the company says.

The view couldn’t be more different in the city of Gallatin.

“They do what the people who live here really appreciate and respect and enjoy,” says Mayor Paige Brown. “And so it’s been a real pride thing for us.”

The state of Tennessee spent more than $10 million to woo Beretta. Gallatin has also thrown in a $2 million property tax break and 100 acres for free.

Gov. Bill Haslam says the plant has made him the envy of his Republican colleagues.

“I literally had the governors of Texas and Georgia and North Carolina and South Carolina and I’m sure a few others walk up and go, ‘Dang, Haslam, that’s one we really wanted,’ ” he says.

That the governor would even attend the opening shows just how different the climate is for gun makers in Tennessee, says Jeff Reh of Beretta.

“Beretta USA was the second-largest private employer in Southern Maryland,” Reh says. “In the history of the state, we never had a governor visit the facility.”

A History Of Tension In Maryland

The company’s history in Maryland goes back to the late 1970s.

In the decades since then, Beretta has clashed periodically with state officials. In 2013, in response to the Newtown, Conn., school shootings, then Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley led a clampdown on ownership of high-powered weaponry.

Some proposals would have made it illegal for Beretta to import some of its own products — even for sale to the military, Reh says. The exceptions the company managed to get written into the law were not enough.

“But after that experience, we realized how close we had come to being forced out of business by the state government,” Reh says. “And that’s when we started thinking about moving the entire factory to a gun-friendly state.”

One of Beretta’s competitors, Remington, is also relocating jobs, from a plant in New York to Alabama. It also cites gun laws passed after Newtown as a reason for the move.

Beretta will spend about $45 million on the first phase of its Tennessee plant. Although the ceremonial opening was last week, the factory has operated since December.

The new plant is expected to create 300 jobs, the company says, and most workers have been hired locally. One exception is Kevin Lancto, a quality manager.

He has worked for firearm companies throughout the Northeast and taken some cold shoulders through the years.

“Even people in my own family,” Lancto says. “You know, when you know people, some people have different ideas about things.”

Lancto says even his own thinking about guns has changed. He was once an avid shooter. Now he’s more interested in the weapons’ technical aspects.

Still, Lancto says he appreciates working in a part of the country where gun making is more often a source of pride than controversy.

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Health April 18, 2016

New Polio Vaccine Rollout Comes With A Big Risk

This week the world is attempting a first — the largest, quickest rollout of a vaccine in history. The goal is to make the polio vaccine safer, but it comes with a big risk.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

This week, health workers all over the world are attempting a first, to pull off the largest and quickest rollout ever of a new vaccine. It’s for polio. The goal is to replace the existing vaccine with a safer one. And as NPR’s Michaeleen Doucleff reports, this extraordinary effort comes with a risk.

MICHAELEEN DOUCLEFF, BYLINE: The world uses nearly 2 billion doses of polio vaccine each year. They’re all stored in little vials at clinics and hospitals across the globe. Now every single vial has to be destroyed and switched out with a new one, and it all has to get done in two weeks.

WALTER ORENSTEIN: This is a tremendous amount of difficult logistics.

DOUCLEFF: That’s Walter Orenstein. He’s the associate director of the Emory Vaccine Center. He says countries have been training for this switch for months. Health workers have been taught to destroy the old vaccine by boiling it, incinerating it, even burying it in the ground.

ORENSTEIN: And what’s being done is to go out and have independent monitors visit these sites to make sure the vaccine has been collected and destroyed.

DOUCLEFF: Do you know how many sites there are, like just scale wise?

ORENSTEIN: That I don’t know, but it’s huge. It’s mind-boggling.

DOUCLEFF: Thousands of monitors are visiting thousands and thousands of sites. But Orenstein says it’s all being done for a really good reason, to get the world closer to eradicating polio. Robin Nandy is the chief of immunization at UNICEF, which is helping with the vaccine switch out. He says the vaccine used in most countries contains a live virus. Now, the virus has been weakened, so it doesn’t make people sick but…

ROBIN NANDY: In very rare instances, the live vaccine virus can mutate and cause polio.

DOUCLEFF: Last year, the world recorded about 100 cases of polio. About 30 of them were caused by mutant strains from the old vaccine. The new vaccine also has a live virus in it, but it mutates much less often. So in the long run, it should cause about 90 percent fewer cases.

But there’s one big catch. You see, the new vaccine doesn’t protect against one type of polio, a type that the world eradicated 15 years ago. And that’s why it’s so important that all those vials of the old vaccine are completely destroyed. If some aren’t, some of that virus could leak out into the world, and we could have outbreaks of a type of polio we haven’t seen since 1999.

NANDY: We do expect this and we have put in place measures to detect this very quickly and respond to this.

DOUCLEFF: And Nandy says it’s all worth the risk because if the world is ever going to wipe out polio, we have to first make sure the vaccine isn’t causing it. Michaeleen Doucleff, NPR News.

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 Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Sports April 18, 2016

Boston Marathon Results: Ethiopian Runners Shut Kenyans Out Of Top Spots

Boston Marathon women's winner Atsede Baysa and men's winner Lemi Berhanu Hayle, led a dominant group of Ethiopian runners in Monday's race.

Boston Marathon women’s winner Atsede Baysa and men’s winner Lemi Berhanu Hayle, led a dominant group of Ethiopian runners in Monday’s race. Boston Globe via Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Boston Globe via Getty Images

Two Ethiopian runners wore the golden laurels denoting winners of the Boston Marathon Monday, marking the first time in the race’s 120 years that Ethiopian racers won both the men’s and women’s divisions.

For the men, it was newcomer Lemi Berhanu Hayle, 21; for the women, it was Atsede Baysa, 29, whose career includes wins in Paris and Chicago.

Runners from Kenya, who had for years been considered the best of the best in the world, were nearly shut out of the podium entirely. As the AP reports, “Joyce Chepkirui was third in the women’s race, the lone Kenyan to medal in a race that had been dominated by her countrymen for decades.”

From Boston, NPR’s Tovia Smith reports for our Newscast unit:

“21-year-old Lemi Berhanu Hayle did a little skip-jump as he took the men’s race at 2 hours, 12 minutes, 45 seconds. He beat defending champion Lelisa Desisa.

“On the women’s side, Atsede Baysa, 29, crossed the finish line in an unofficial time of 2:29:19. She got a hug from her coach on the other side and sent up a quick prayer of thanks. Baysa had been almost 40 seconds behind just a few miles back, but she made up the time to take the lead, and then some. Defending women’s champion Caroline Rotich dropped out in the first 5 miles.

“Also running in the race this year: two survivors of the 2013 bombing who each lost a leg in the blast, Adriana Haslett and Patrick Downes.”

The men’s wheelchair race provided the closest finish of the day, with Marcel Hug of Switzerland breaking the tape at the 1:24:06 mark – just ahead of Ernst Van Dyk of South Africa (second) and Kurt Fearnley of Australia, who were nose-and-nose in Hug’s wake.

Tatyana McFadden of the U.S. won the women’s wheelchair race, earning her fourth consecutive victory in Boston with a time of 1:42:16.

Like many runners in today’s race, McFadden competed in honor of Martin Richard, who was eight years old when he was killed in the 2013 attacks. On social media and at the race, runners showed their support for the Martin Richard Foundation (goal: to invest in education, athletics, and community) by using the hashtag MR8 — the boy’s initials and his sports number. Dozens of athletes wore jerseys featuring MR8 today.

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