July 27, 2016

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Entertainment July 27, 2016

Today in Movie Culture: The Action of the 'Bourne' Movies, 'Pitch Perfect' Political Propaganda and More

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

Franchise Recap of the Day:

With Jason Bourne out this week, Kevin B. Lee looks at the first three Bourne movies to show how action movies evolved in just five years (via Fandor Keyframe):

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Actor in the Spotlight:

Meanwhile, Matt Damon has evolved, too, and Burger Fiction has the montage to showcase his development:

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Classic Movie Poster of the Day:

In honor of artist Jack Davis, who died today at age 91, here’s one of his greatest movie posters, for The Long Goodbye:

Political Propaganda of the Day:

Elizabeth Banks put together a video for the Democratic National Convention and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign inspired by the Pitch Perfect movies:

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Casting Depiction of the Day:

Now that Kurt Russell’s character in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 has been revealed to be the living planet Ego, BossLogic shows us what that could look like (via Twitter):

Movie Takedown of the Day:

If you’ve got room for yet another critical slam against Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the Nerdwriter intelligently highlights the one fundamental flaw of the movie:

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Cosplay of the Day:

At this year’s Comic-Con, Adam Savage went incognito as the bear from The Revenant (via Fashionably Geek):

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Vintage Image of the Day:

Maya Rudolph, who turns 44 today, in her movie debut, 1997’s Gattaca, wearing a surgical mask and holding a baby:

Filmmaker in Focus:

Sergio Leone gets a musical montage tribute in this video essay showcase of his films by editor Alejandro Villarreal (via Cinematic Montage Creators):

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Classic Trailer of the Day:

Today is the 50th anniversary of the release of Alfred Hitchcock’s Torn Curtain. Watch the original trailer for the movie, which stars Julie Andrews and Paul Newman, below.

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Health July 27, 2016

Sen. Tim Kaine's Record On Health Care: He's With Hillary

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine counted health care policy among his chief concerns at a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton in Miami on July 23.

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine counted health care policy among his chief concerns at a campaign rally for Hillary Clinton in Miami on July 23. Justin Sullivan/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

As he takes the stage Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine is firmly in Hillary Clinton’s camp — and his party’s — on the big health care issues. Now a U.S. senator from Virginia, Kaine supports the Affordable Care Act and pushed its Medicaid expansion. He also worked to overhaul the mental health system when he was governor of Virginia.

Here are highlights and a few flashpoints of controversy from Kaine’s health policy record:

Mental health

A defining moment in Kaine’s tenure as governor was the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech, where 33 people, including the gunman — a student at the school — died.

Almost exactly one year later, Kaine signed a $42 million legislative package to overhaul the state’s mental health system. The money was used mostly for emergency mental health services, children’s mental health services, increased case managers and doctors and jail diversion projects, according to the Virginia Office of the Attorney General.

“Somebody shouldn’t be imprisoned because we won’t provide funding for community mental health,” Kaine said at a mental health conference in 2008, shortly after the bills were signed, according to the Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk.

The package of laws made it easier for authorities to commit someone having a mental health crisis into treatment involuntarily. They no longer had to prove the patient was in “imminent danger.” Instead, the new standard only required authorities to demonstrate a “substantial likelihood” that the person could cause serious harm to himself or others.

Together, Kaine and the state’s General Assembly made a down payment on longer-term reforms for the delivery of mental health and behavioral health services in Virginia, says Peter Cunningham, a professor of health behavior and policy at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Abortion

As a Catholic who worked with Jesuit missionaries in Honduras in 1980, Kaine says he opposes abortion personally but supports a woman’s right to choose for herself. His stance has drawn criticism over the years.

“Personally, I’m opposed to abortion and I’m opposed to the death penalty,” he said on NBC’s Meet the Press in June. “The right thing for government is to let women make their own decisions.”

That was a change from Kaine’s position in 2005, when he supported parental consent laws and bans on “partial birth” abortions, causing the Virginia chapter of NARAL Pro-Choice America to withhold an endorsement in his gubernatorial campaign. As governor, he signed a bill creating “Choose Life” license plates in Virginia, which he said was an issue of free speech.

Since then, Kaine has actively supported Planned Parenthood and opposed abortion restrictions.

In 2013, Kaine cosponsored legislation to improve access to contraception.

Affordable Care Act

Kaine did not mark himself as a health care reformer when he was Virginia’s governor, but his 2006-2010 term overlapped the recession when little change was happening anywhere at state or national levels, Cunningham points out.

“He was probably pretty typical of the middle-of-the-road Democratic governors in sort-of-purple states,” Cunningham says. “When the recession hit, that precluded any other major health reform effort that he might have contemplated.”

Kaine supported Obamacare when he ran for Senate in 2012 and has since cosponsored bills to improve the law. Kaine has pushed for Medicaid expansion in Virginia and cosponsored legislation to incentivize expansion in other states as well. Like Clinton, Kaine has proposed adjusting the federal health care law to include some low-income families that aren’t currently covered — fixing the so-called family glitch. This year, he cosponsored a bill to require more businesses to provide benefits under the ACA.

Public health

Kaine has occasionally incited controversy, as in 2007 when Virginia became the first state to require all girls to get the human papillomavirus vaccine (protection against a virus that can cause cervical cancer) before enrolling in high school. In 2009, he backed a bill that banned smoking in bars and restaurants in the tobacco-producing commonwealth.

Opioids

Since his election to the Senate four years ago, Kaine has cosponsored bills that would establish an advisory committee to help the FDA approve new opioids, reform guidelines for the VA regarding the prescription of opioids, protect first responders from lawsuits when they administer emergency drugs to counteract an overdose, and create a drug monitoring program for Medicare.

Many of those bills were rolled into CARA — the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of 2016, which was signed by President Obama in July. The bill bore Kaine’s name as a cosponsor.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation.

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Business July 27, 2016

Many Well-Known Hospitals Fail To Score High In Medicare Rankings

Memorial Hermann Hospital System in Houston was one of very few nationally renowned hospitals to get a five-star ranking from Medicare.

Memorial Hermann Hospital System in Houston was one of very few nationally renowned hospitals to get a five-star ranking from Medicare. Ed Uthman/Flickr hide caption

toggle caption Ed Uthman/Flickr

The federal government released its first overall hospital quality rating on Wednesday, slapping average or below average scores on many of the nation’s best-known hospitals while awarding top scores to many unheralded ones.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services rated 3,617 hospitals on a one- to five-star scale, angering the hospital industry, which has been pressing the Obama administration and Congress to block the ratings.

Hospitals argue that the government’s ratings will make teaching hospitals and other institutions that treat many tough cases look bad. They argue that their patients are often poorer and sicker when admitted, and so are more likely to suffer further complications or die, than at institutions where the patients aren’t as sick.

Medicare, which already publicizes on its website more than 100 hospital metrics, many of which deal with technical matters, acknowledges that the ratings don’t reflect cutting edge care, such as the latest techniques to battle cancer. Still, it has held firm in publishing the rankings, saying that consumers need a simple way to objectively gauge quality. Medicare does factor in the health of patients when comparing hospitals, though not as much as some hospitals would like.

Medicare based the star ratings on 64 individual measures that are published on its Hospital Compare website, including death and infection rates and patient reviews.

Just 102 hospitals received the top rating of five stars, and few are those considered as the nation’s best by private ratings sources such as U.S. News & World Report, or viewed as the most elite within the medical profession.

Medicare awarded five stars to relatively obscure hospitals and a notable number of hospitals that specialized in just a few types of surgery, such as knee replacements. There were more five-star hospitals in Lincoln, Neb., and La Jolla, Calif., than in New York City or Boston. Memorial Hermann Hospital System in Houston and Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., were two of the only nationally known hospitals to get five stars.

Medicare awarded the lowest rating of one star to 129 hospitals. Five hospitals in Washington, D.C., received just one star, including George Washington University Hospital and MedStar Georgetown University Hospital, both of which teach medical residents. Nine hospitals in Brooklyn, four hospitals in Las Vegas and three hospitals in Miami received only one star.

Some premiere medical centers received the second-highest rating of four stars, including Stanford Health Care in California, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, Duke University Hospital in Durham, N.C., New York-Presbyterian Hospital and NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio, and Penn Presbyterian Medical Center in Philadelphia. In total, 927 hospitals received four stars.

Medicare gave its below-average score of a two-star rating to 707 hospitals. They included the University of Virginia Medical Center in Charlottesville, Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, North Shore University Hospital (now known as Northwell Health) in Manhasset, N.Y., Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis, Tufts Medical Center in Boston and MedStar Washington Hospital Center in D.C. Geisinger Medical Center in Danville, Pa. — which is a favorite example for national health policy experts of a quality hospital — also received two stars.

Nearly half the hospitals — 1,752 — received an average rating of three stars. Another 1,042 hospitals were not rated, either because they did not have enough cases for the government to evaluate accurately, or because, as with all Maryland hospitals, Medicare does not collect the necessary data.

The government said in a statement that it has been using the same type of rating system for other medical facilities, such as nursing homes and dialysis centers, and found them useful to consumers and patients. Those ratings have shown, Medicare said, “that publicly available data drives improvement, better reporting, and more open access to quality information for our Medicare beneficiaries.”

In a statement, Rick Pollack, president of the American Hospital Association, called the new ratings confusing for patients and families. “Health care consumers making critical decisions about their care cannot be expected to rely on a rating system that raises far more questions than answers,” he said. “We are especially troubled that the current ratings scheme unfairly penalizes teaching hospitals and those serving higher numbers of the poor.”

A preliminary analysis Medicare released last week found hospitals that treated large numbers of low-income patients tended to do worse.

A sizable proportion of the nation’s major academic medical centers, which train doctors, scored poorly, according to a Kaiser Health News analysis. Out of 288 hospitals that teach significant numbers of residents, six in 10 received below-average scores, the analysis found. Teaching hospitals comprised one-third of the facilities receiving one-star. A number were in high-poverty areas, including two in Newark, N.J., and three in Detroit.

“Hospitals cannot be rated like movies,” Dr. Darrell Kirch, president of the Association of American Medical Colleges, said in a statement. “We are extremely concerned about the potential consequences for patients that could result from portraying an overly simplistic picture of hospital quality with a star-rating system that combines many complex factors and ignores the socio-demographic factors that have a real impact on health.”

Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service supported by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

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Sports July 27, 2016

For Olympic Boxer Claressa Shields, Round 2 Brings New Expectations

Boxer Claressa Shields, shown here in November 2015, wants to follow in Muhammad Ali's footsteps.

Boxer Claressa Shields, shown here in November 2015, wants to follow in Muhammad Ali’s footsteps. Harry How/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Harry How/Getty Images

Claressa Shields will be back in the ring Aug. 17 to defend her Olympic gold medal. The 2012 Olympics in London were the first time women were allowed to box in the Games and the 17-year-old high school student from Flint, Mich., made history.

But winning a gold medal didn’t change her life as much as she thought it would.

As an independent journalist and filmmaker, I’ve been following Claressa for the past five years. When I first met Claressa in 2011, I was in a dimly lit auditorium in Toledo, Ohio, photographing the women who were trying to become the first to box in the Olympics. A teenage girl with short hair, thick biceps and a determined stare entered the ring — it was her first fight against adult women.

Shields, who is 5-foot-10 and fights at 165 pounds, dispatched her opponent before the end of the first round.

Claressa had been training in the basement of a small neighborhood gym in Flint, one of the most dangerous cities in the country. Few people had ever seen her fight. Less than a year after I first saw her, there she was in London with a gold medal around her neck.

“I just remember being on the podium and I’m like, ‘Holy crap! This medal is huge,’ ” she told me last month. “And it was so heavy. And when he put it on, I just held [it] and looked and I thought I was about to go crazy. I wanted to jump down and run around the ring, and jump on the ropes and put my hands in the air holding the medal. Just shaking and laughing. It was like someone handed me a million dollars and said, ‘Here you go.’ “

Claressa (right) exchanges punches with Nadezda Torlopova of Russia during the Women's Middle Boxing final bout during the London 2012 Olympic Games.

Claressa (right) exchanges punches with Nadezda Torlopova of Russia during the Women’s Middle Boxing final bout during the London 2012 Olympic Games. Scott Heavey/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption Scott Heavey/Getty Images

Claressa slept with the gold medal, its ribbon wrapped around her wrist, for weeks. After years working toward this goal, she’d achieved it.

But just days after the Olympics ended, Claressa remembers sitting in her coach’s living room back in Flint and thinking: Now what?

“You know, I guess, I’ve won the Olympic gold medal and I don’t know what to think about now,” she told me. “I don’t know what to dream about. That was my dream for years. I was literally going to sleep and I would see all black, like I wasn’t able to dream. My dream had been accomplished. What do I do now?”

Soon she was back in high school, living with her coach because things were too unstable at home. Her mother has long struggled with addiction.

Claressa, showing her championship belts to a classmate, was a high school junior when she won the Olympic gold in 2012. She is the first in her family to graduate from high school. She won a scholarship to Olivet College and studied for a semester, but was unable to keep up with classes and her international tournament schedule. She plans to study again after Rio.

Claressa, showing her championship belts to a classmate, was a high school junior when she won the Olympic gold in 2012. She is the first in her family to graduate from high school. She won a scholarship to Olivet College and studied for a semester, but was unable to keep up with classes and her international tournament schedule. She plans to study again after Rio. Sue Jaye Johnson hide caption

toggle caption Sue Jaye Johnson

As a member of the U.S. national boxing team, Claressa received a stipend of $1,000 a month. But those earnings were going to pay her mom’s water bill and helping her older brother, who was in prison.

“Everybody was saying, ‘You should be signed with Nike, you should be on a Wheaties box, how come you aren’t in this magazine?’ It got to the point where I just shut everybody out. I can’t hear that anymore. I really can’t dwell on what I didn’t get,” she told me.

Why didn’t any of those things happen?

“I don’t know why it didn’t happen,” she said. “I take it as I wasn’t ready for it, I guess. I wasn’t the ideal woman. I wasn’t the pretty girl who wears her hair straight. I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t what they were looking for.”

A few months after the London Games, Claressa was back on the amateur circuit. At her first tournament, Claressa and her coach met with USA Boxing officials about a PR strategy. The officials had one suggestion: Claressa should stop talking about how she likes to beat people up.

“You want me to stop saying that?” Claressa asked the boxing officials. “Why?”

Jason Crutchfield, Claressa's coach, examines her after a sparring session at Berston Field House in Flint, Michigan. Claressa trained at Berston from age 11 to 17. When she was 13, and before it was announced that women would be allowed to box in the Olympics, Crutchfield predicted she would win the Olympic gold.

Jason Crutchfield, Claressa’s coach, examines her after a sparring session at Berston Field House in Flint, Michigan. Claressa trained at Berston from age 11 to 17. When she was 13, and before it was announced that women would be allowed to box in the Olympics, Crutchfield predicted she would win the Olympic gold. Sue Jaye Johnson hide caption

toggle caption Sue Jaye Johnson

Julie Goldsticker, a USA Boxing PR consultant at the meeting, offered some advice on attracting endorsements.

“I box,” said Claressa.

“I understand that,” Goldsticker replied.

“It’s an image thing,” Jason Cruthchfield, Claressa’s coach, explained. “Just tone it down a little bit.”

Claressa wouldn’t budge.

“Their definition of a woman — you can be tough, but not too tough,” she told me when we spoke recently. “If I want to get in there and kick a girl’s ass, I’m going to kick her ass. That’s it. You might as well have told me to start punching my opponents a little softer so girls won’t feel so threatened.”

It’s one thing for a girl to fight — but to admit that you like it makes a lot of people uncomfortable.

Until 2012, boxing was the last male-only sport in the Olympics. Having women in the ring is a stretch for advertisers and promoters – even for many fans. Claressa’s own father, Clarence Shields, had trouble with it. And he was a boxer.

Clarence was locked up for most of Claressa’s childhood, in prison for robbery. These days, he’s supportive of her boxing career, but it wasn’t always that way.

He and his daughter first talked about boxing when she was 11. He told her it was too bad he didn’t have any sons to train.

“Maybe you could live your dreams through me a bit,” Claressa told him.

Claressa, her niece and her father, Clarence Shields, read a letter from Claressa's older brother, who is in prison. Clarence was a boxer who was in prison for most of Claressa's childhood. When Claressa started boxing, he thought she would get beaten up and quit.

Claressa, her niece and her father, Clarence Shields, read a letter from Claressa’s older brother, who is in prison. Clarence was a boxer who was in prison for most of Claressa’s childhood. When Claressa started boxing, he thought she would get beaten up and quit. Sue Jaye Johnson hide caption

toggle caption Sue Jaye Johnson

A week later, she asked her dad if she could box. “And my answer was, ‘Hell, no,'” Clarence said.

“Do you remember the exact words? You said boxing is a man’s sport and that made me so mad.”

“And you should have taken it that way. That was a chauvinist statement, that a girl can’t do it.”

“I’ve been at it ever since. I’m still proving people wrong.”

“Truth be known, little mama, you are awesome.”

Proving people wrong is one of Claressa’s biggest motivations. Now 21, her record is 74 wins and one loss. That single loss was four years ago.

Her goal is to be unstoppable, because that’s what will make people respect and pay attention to women’s boxing. And to her.

To focus on training for Rio, Claressa moved last year to the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs. She’s gotten away from the chaos and stress of life in Flint. She’s seen a bigger world. And that’s what she also wants for her mom and younger sister and brother.

“So now, after this Olympics, I want to move my family to Florida or a better place where they can be safer and make a living,” she told me. “I want my family to see things I’ve seen.”

Growing up in Flint, Claressa would run early in the morning to avoid the gun violence that has plagued the city. Last year, Claressa moved to the Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center. After the Rio Olympics, she plans to settle her mother and younger brother, sister and nephew in Florida.

Growing up in Flint, Claressa would run early in the morning to avoid the gun violence that has plagued the city. Last year, Claressa moved to the Colorado Springs Olympic Training Center. After the Rio Olympics, she plans to settle her mother and younger brother, sister and nephew in Florida. Sue Jaye Johnson hide caption

toggle caption Sue Jaye Johnson

This time around, it’s about more than winning a gold medal. Claressa wants to follow in the footsteps of another young, black Olympic boxer who redefined beauty and power both in and out of the ring.

And like Muhammad Ali, Claressa’s fight for recognition is both personal and political. She wants to make the world embrace her power and aggression.

“In Rio, what’s going to happen [is] everybody’s going to be talking about that girl, Claressa Shields, can fight,” she says. “I know for a fact I’m gonna win the Olympics again. I know already. I’m just telling you what is going to happen. I’m going to win. Period.”

Sue Jaye Johnson is the producer of T-Rex: Her Fight for Gold, a film about Claressa Shields premiering Aug. 2 on PBS Independent Lens. She co-produced for Radio Diaries Claressa’s fight to make it to the 2012 Olympics and has been chronicling her life ever since. You can listen to Claressa’s 2012 audio diary on the Radio Diaries Podcast.

The radio version of this online story was produced by Joe Richman and Nellie Gilles of Radio Diaries.

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