June 15, 2016

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Entertainment June 15, 2016

Today in Movie Culture: Manchester United Fights 'Independence Day' Aliens, Donald Glover as Spider-Man and More

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

Movie Promos of the Day:

UK’s Manchester United fights aliens in the below cross-promotion between 20th Century Fox and the English football team for Independence Day: Resurgence. See previous promos for X-Men: Apocalypse and Deadpool at io9.

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Movie Trivia of the Day:

Speaking of Independence Day: Resurgence, in anticipation of the sequel check out a bunch of trivia about the 1996 original:

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Dream Casting of the Day:

Donald Glover has actually been cast in Spider-Man: Homecoming, but we’re not sure whom he’s playing. BossLogic illustrates what he’d look like as the Miles Morales version of Spidey (via Twitter):

Movie Comparison of the Day:

In one of the most unlikely comparison video yet, Couch Tomato shows us 24 reasons Zootopia is the same movie as The Amazing Spider-Man 2:

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Fan Theory of the Day:

In anticipation of the release of Finding Dory, The Film Theorists continue their evidence that Dory is faking her short-term memory loss:

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Vintage Image of the Day:

Helen Hunt, who turns 53 today, in her 1973 screen acting debut, a TV movie titled Pioneer Woman:

Filmmaker in Focus:

The following supercut from Jacob T. Swinney highlights David Fincher’s use of the long shot:

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Cosplay of the Day:

Once again we have some cosplay based on movie fan art with the art nouveau Cinderella below based on these drawings. See the rest of the Disney Princesses in this style at Fashionably Geek.

Video Essay of the Day:

For Fandor Keyframe, Drew Morton explores how reputation is everything in Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds:

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Classic Trailer of the Day:

Today is the 50th anniversary of the release of The Endless Summer. Watch the original trailer (which sounds like it’s narrated by Orson Welles) for the popular surfing documentary below.

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Business June 15, 2016

Orlando's Tourism Industry Hopes To Overcome A Nightmarish Week

Tourists walk past the flag flying at half-staff at Disney's Epcot theme park in Orlando on Monday.

Tourists walk past the flag flying at half-staff at Disney’s Epcot theme park in Orlando on Monday. Dewayne Bevil/Orlando Sentinel/TNS via Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Dewayne Bevil/Orlando Sentinel/TNS via Getty Images

The streets around the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla., are slowly coming back to life — slowly.

Police removed one of the roadblocks a few blocks away from the gay nightclub Wednesday, allowing local traffic to drive past a makeshift memorial of flowers, balloons, candles and crosses for the 49 victims, to within view of the club.

Alex Brehm was standing by the door of a still-shuttered 7-Eleven, watching scores of federal and local law enforcement officials work the scene, thinking about what’s next for his home and the city of Orlando.

“Especially now,” he says. “We’ve had three things on the major news in a week.”

It’s been a nightmarish week for the city. First, 22-year old Christina Grimmie, a singer and former contestant on NBC’s The Voice, was shot and killed in the city on Friday. Days later, a gunman entered Pulse and killed 49 people before being killed by police.

On Tuesday, a toddler at a Disney World resort was playing on the shoreline when he was snatched by an alligator and pulled underwater. His body was recovered Wednesday.

The string of events would be devastating to any community, but it has the potential to be particularly so for the city of Orlando.

Tourism is a multibillion-dollar industry in Orlando and Orange County, Fla. More than 66 million people visited the city last year to see attractions like Disney World and Universal Studios, according to Visit Orlando, making it the one of the most visited places in the U.S. The leisure and hospitality industry makes up more than 20 percent of the city’s workforce.

A report by the New York-based investment research firm Maxim Group says that the attack on the Pulse nightclub has the potential to “reduce tourism-related spending” over the next couple of months. The report compared the attacks to those that happened in Paris in November. “Holiday bookings travel dropped 13 percent after those attacks,” says Stephen Anderson, a senior vice president at Maxim.

At Orlando International Airport, arriving passengers expressed concern over the attacks. In the baggage claim area, many people said that they had talked about changing their travel plans or were altering their plans on the ground.

“I was a little green over it,” says Jennifer Trujillo, who was planning to visit Disney World with her husband, Robert, and two kids. Her husband, who spent 24 years in the military, was less concerned.

“You weigh the options and mitigate the risk,” Robert Trujillo says. “Honestly, you’d think that the awareness is raised and the security is probably a little more enhanced now than it is normally.”

River and Jacob Anderson felt the same way.

“There’s no point in walking around scared of it,” says Jacob Anderson.

“That’s the point of terrorism,” says River Anderson. “That you stop living your life the way that you would’ve.”

Disney World, Universal Studios and other major tourist attractions haven’t reported slowdowns in visitors. George Aguel, the president of Visit Orlando, says that’s been the case for businesses across the city so far. But there’s no avoiding the problem, he says.

“The name Orlando will be associated with [the attack] for a time to come, but we hope it will not deter people from visiting our theme parks and hotels,” Aguel says.

He hopes that people’s relationship with Orlando — be it memories or stories shared — will be enough to overcome whatever shadow recent events have cast on the Central Florida city.

Closer to the Pulse nightclub, at Brick and Fire Pizza and Pasta Parlor, owner Mark Dollard is more worried about how the community will get back to some semblance of normal.

The business has been closed off to major traffic since the attack Sunday night, but his employees have still been making pizzas. There are still bills to pay, he says, but that’s not why they’ve remained open.

“We’re open because we want to provide anybody that walks through the door a degree of normalcy and in this community, that’s something that’s going to be sought for a while,” he says.

Dollard knew people that were killed at Pulse. He knows the owners. Any financial loss he and other businesses have suffered, or will suffer, are meaningless compared with the loss of life there, he says.

A couple of days ago he talked to a local politician about what comes next, how the city recovers.

She didn’t have an answer, he says. “She just had a hug.”

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Entertainment June 15, 2016

A Band From Beirut Speaks To Tragedy In Orlando

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Monday morning, as we were all absorbing the horrors of the Pulse attack in Orlando — the deadliest mass public shooting in modern U.S. history — Mashrou’ Leila arrived to play a Tiny Desk concert. For this band from Beirut, Lebanon, the full weight of the tragedy hung heavily, and its members wanted to begin their set by addressing the Pulse shootings. We’ll have their full performance available soon, but this was so timely, we wanted to share it right away.

Mashrou’ Leila (the name translates as “Night Project”) includes five young Beirutis — singer Hamed Sinno, violinist Haig Papazian, keyboardist and guitarist Firas Abou Fakher, Ibrahim Badr on bass and drummer Carl Gerges — of mixed religious heritage. They are well acquainted with the targeting of both LGBT people and those questioning the political, religious and cultural status quo.

Sinno, who is also the band’s lyricist, is openly gay, and Mashrou’ Leila has faced condemnation, bans and threats in its home region, including some from both Christian and Muslim sources. The group’s sound is beautifully layered, with vocals that allude to the Arab tradition of ornamenting melodies, but is also fresh, modern and compelling. Sinno’s nuanced lyrics run deep.

The group opened its Tiny Desk set with “Maghawir” (Commandos), a song Sinno wrote in response to two nightclub shootings in Beirut — a tragic parallel to what happened in Orlando. In the Beirut shootings, which took place within a week of each other, two of the young victims were out celebrating their respective birthdays. So “Maghawir” is a wry checklist of sorts about how to spend a birthday clubbing in their home city, but also a running commentary about machismo and the idea that big guns make big men.

“All the boys become men / Soldiers in the capital of the night,” Sinno sings. “Shoop, shoop, shot you down … We were just all together, painting the town / Where’d you disappear?”

Ibn El Leil (Son Of The Night) is available now. (iTunes) (Amazon)

Set List

  • “Maghawir” (Commandos)

Credits

Producers: Anastasia Tsioulcas, Niki Walker; Audio Engineer: Josh Rogosin; Videographers: Niki Walker, Claire Hannah Collins, Kara Frame; Production Assistant: Sophie Kemp; Photo: Ruby Wallau/NPR.

For more Tiny Desk concerts, subscribe to our podcast.

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Health June 15, 2016

Dying In A Hospital Means More Procedures, Tests And Costs

When it comes to the end of life, hospital stays are more intensive and more expensive than alternatives.

When it comes to the end of life, hospital stays are more intensive and more expensive than alternatives. Medicimage/Science Source hide caption

toggle caption Medicimage/Science Source

People who die in the hospital undergo more intense tests and procedures than those who die anywhere else.

An analysis by Arcadia Healthcare Solutions also shows that spending on people who die in a hospital is about seven times that on people who die at home.

The work confirms with hard data what most doctors and policymakers already know: Hospital deaths are more expensive and intrusive than deaths at home, in hospice care, or even in nursing homes.

“This intensity of services in the hospital shows a lot of suffering that is not probably in the end going to offer people more quality of life and may not offer them more quantity of life either,” says Dr. Richard Parker, chief medical officer at Arcadia.

Where people died and how much the final month of care cost:

  • 42% of patients died at home: $4,760
  • 40% of patients died in the hospital: $32,379
  • 7% of patients died in hospice: $17,845
  • 7% of patients died in a nursing facility: $21,221
  • 5% of patients died in the ER: $7,969

Source: Arcadia Healthcare Solutions

Arcadia analyzed all the Medicaid claims data for a private Medicaid insurance company in one Western state and detailed how many billable medical procedures each patient received and where. Patients in hospitals were billed for far more medical interventions in the last days of their lives than people who died in other settings. The company declined to name the state or company.

The study showed that 42 percent of patients died at home at a cost of about $4,760 for their last month of life, while 40 percent died in a hospital at a cost of $32,379. Dying in a nursing home was the second most expensive locale, inpatient hospice was third and an emergency room was fourth.

“In the end, everyone died. They all died,” Parker tells Shots. “If we look at this retroactively, retrospectively — and we could go back and ask people — I bet most of them would say I’d rather be home with my family.”

Parker says the cost of hospital deaths paid for by Medicare or private insurance are likely even higher because they pay doctors and hospitals more for their services.

Many studies have shown that people, when asked, say they’d prefer to die at home rather than in a hospital. However, those wishes aren’t always realized if a person hasn’t given clear instructions to a doctor or family member.

Parker says hospitals are designed to cure people who are ill rather than to allow people to die peacefully.

“The culture of American medicine today and for the last several decades is to keep treating patients regardless of the quality of life,” he says. “A lot of physicians have been reluctant to admit that the patient’s life is coming to an end.”

The picture is more complicated than the data show, says Dr. Lachlan Forrow, a professor of medicine and medical ethics at Harvard University.

Many patients move from home to hospice to hospitals and back during the last 30 days of life. And some may end up in the hospital because their pain or symptoms weren’t adequately controlled at home.

Still, he says, hospitals are just not good at caring for dying people.

“We do lots of very expensive things in hospitals to people in the last part of life who would rather be home, and we do those in part because in the hospital they get paid for,” he says.

It’s the only way to justify keeping in a hospital the people who need around the clock nursing care but can’t get it at home.

“If we really tried to make sure people at home could have what they needed at home, we could take better care of them, with less medical system-caused suffering, at lower cost, sometimes much lower cost,” he says.

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Sports June 15, 2016

Pistorius Walks Without His Prosthetic Legs In Dramatic Show At Sentencing Hearing

Oscar Pistorius walks without his prosthetic legs Wednesday during his resentencing hearing at the Pretoria High Court for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp.

Oscar Pistorius walks without his prosthetic legs Wednesday during his resentencing hearing at the Pretoria High Court for the 2013 murder of his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. Alon Skuy/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Alon Skuy/AFP/Getty Images

Oscar Pistorius reached out a hand to steady himself as he walked across the South African High Court room on the stumps of his amputated legs.

Lawyers for the former track star, nicknamed “blade runner” for his speed and double-prostheses, are trying to demonstrate that Pistorius is severely disabled and deserves a more lenient murder sentence than the 15-year minimum term for killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, on Valentine’s Day 2013.

Under South Africa’s sentencing rules, minimum sentences can be reduced under special circumstances, at the discretion of the judge.

Pistorius, who sobbed during Wednesday’s hearing, was acquitted of murder but convicted of culpable homicide in 2014 for shooting Steenkamp multiple times through a bathroom door. Prosecutors appealed the conviction, and an appeals court found him guilty of murder. Pistorius appealed and was denied earlier this year. He was released on bail last year, and has been living under house arrest while he awaits sentencing.

In the sentencing hearings this week, defense lawyer Barry Roux has focused on his client’s mobility and fame. On Wednesday, he called Pistorius a “broken man,” and said Pistorius is not the “strong, ambitious” person he is perceived to be. He also said the Olympic runner has made a “series of enemies” over the course of his legal saga.

“It was not the man winning gold medals that must be judged,” Roux said in his closing arguments. He pointed out that without his prosthetics, Pistorius is much shorter than his 6-foot frame with them.

A clinical psychologist, Jonathan Scholtz, testified that Pistorius suffers from both depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Chief prosecutor Gerrie Nel pointed out on cross-examination that although Pistorius said he could not testify at the hearing because of psychological problems, he did recently give a TV interview.

According to The Associated Press, the courtroom in Pretoria was packed with both Pistorius’ and Steenkamp’s family members.

The sentencing judge, Thokozile Masipa, is the same one who originally acquitted Pistorius of murder. Sentencing hearings are scheduled to continue through Friday, and the judge is expected to make her decision in early July.

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