April 19, 2016

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Entertainment April 19, 2016

Today in Movie Culture: Tim Burton's 'Game of Thrones,' a 'Star Wars: The Force Awakens' Reunion and More

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

Fan Art of the Day:

Artist Xenia Rassalova shows us what a Game of Thrones (animated?) movie might look like as designed by Tim Burton. See more character drawings at Geek Tyrant:

Charitable Contest of the Day:

See Star Wars: The Force Awakens buddies Poe (Oscar Isaac) and BB-8 reunited in a short video promoting Star Wars: Force for Change:

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Cosplay of the Day:

Beauty and the Beast is mashed with Star Wars for these cosplayers dressed as Belle and Chewbacca (via Fashionably Geek):

Movie Comparison of the Day:

Little White Lies shows how Jeff Nichols‘s Midnight Special evokes John Carpenter‘s Starman:

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Alternate Poster of the Day:

It’s slightly more conventional in design than the official posters for The Hateful Eight but that doesn’t make this Mondo print by Jason Edmiston any less desirable (via /Film):

Movie Takedown of the Day:

In an election for the fans, Superman Returns was chosen to be pummeled in the latest Honest Trailer:

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Mashup of the Day:

Batman and The Iron Giant are crossed in this latest Photoshop piece by BossLogic:

Vintage Image of the Day:

Tim Curry, who turns 70 today, gets his hair done on the set of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1974:

Filmmaker in Focus:

This supercut celebrates Guillermo del Toro‘s uses of color in his movies for emotional emphasis (via Cinematica Montage Creators):

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Classic Trailer of the Day:

This weekend marks the 30th anniversary of the release of “Crocodile” Dundee. Watch the original trailer for the Oscar-nominated comedy below.

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Health April 19, 2016

Life Expectancy Drops For White Women, Increases For Black Men

Demographers can use average life expectancy of a population as a clue to underlying changes in health and culture.

Daniel Fung/iStockphoto

White women are dying at a slightly younger age than they used to. That’s according to a report released Wednesday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics.

The life expectancy for non-Hispanic white women in the United States declined by one month — from 81.2 years to 81.1 years — from 2013 to 2014. Though just one month may not seem like much, demographers worry — it’s the first time since the government began keeping records that white women saw their life expectancy decline, according to the report.

The numbers don’t include cause of death, but demographer Elizabeth Arias, who wrote the analysis, decided to dig deeper. She looked at cause of death among white people in the U.S. over the last 15 years. And the changes she found troubled her.

“For the age group 25 to 54, suicide went up,” she says. ” ‘Unintentional poisonings,’ which is mainly alcohol and drug poisoning, and chronic liver disease — those went up by quite a bit.”

Those underlying factors affected men and women, Arias says, but affected women more. The life expectancy of white men over the same time period did not change.

Many other causes of death declined, she says — including heart disease, cancer and stroke. But those health improvements were offset by the increases in drug overdose, suicide and chronic liver disease.

The report comes just a few months after a separate study by Princeton economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton showed that middle-age mortality among white people is on the rise. The authors of that study also said the increase in deaths was likely due to suicides, drug overdoses and alcoholism.

Ellen Meara, a professor at Dartmouth’s Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice, said the numbers are surprising because mortality has been in decline for so long.

“There are people for whom life expectancy is falling — and that’s happening at a time where everywhere else and for every other group we’re seeing all these amazing gains in survival,” Meara says.

The NCHS report does have some good news: The average life expectancy for non-Hispanic black men increased by about a half year — from 71.8 years to 72.2 in that same time period. Arias says that improvement seems linked to declines in cancer deaths, homicides and heart disease.

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Sports April 19, 2016

Court Upholds Snowboarding Ban At Utah Ski Resort

A skier gets ready to plunge down Alta Ski Area's extreme run, Eddie's High Nowhere. The resort has banned snowboarding since the sport was invented.

A skier gets ready to plunge down Alta Ski Area’s extreme run, Eddie’s High Nowhere. The resort has banned snowboarding since the sport was invented. Kirk Siegler hide caption

toggle caption Kirk Siegler

In Utah, the Alta Ski Area gets to keep its slogan “Alta is for Skiers.”

A federal appeals court has upheld the resort’s long-standing snowboarding ban in a legal challenge brought by a group of local snowboarders.

The case touched on a sensitive topic in the ski industry and especially in the West, where most resorts depend on leasing land from the U.S. Forest Service for their operations. Does a ski area have the right to prohibit or single out a certain type of user’s access to federal public land that’s supposed to be open to everyone?

A nonprofit organization calling itself Wasatch Equality argued it didn’t. The group, which includes professional snowboarder Bjorn Leines, filed suit in 2014 alleging the ban violated the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

But the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals, in upholding a lower court ruling, concluded that Alta had a right to enforce its policy because the U.S. Forest Service didn’t influence the decision and therefore it wasn’t a blanket “state action” that could have amounted to discrimination.

There’s long been friction between skiers and snowboarders. And Alta, east of Salt Lake City, has prided — and marketed — itself as a snowboarder-free destination. Slogans boast this all over the mountain, including at lift ticket windows and near an entrance gate that connects Alta with the adjacent Snowbird Resort, where snowboarding is allowed.

The case was closely watched because a ruling in favor of the snowboarders could have called into question the legality of the few remaining snowboarding bans at ski resorts in the U.S.

Only Alta, Deer Valley in Utah, and Vermont’s Mad River Glen still ban snowboarders. Taos Ski Valley Resort in New Mexico lifted its ban several years ago.

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