September 20, 2016

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Entertainment September 20, 2016

Today in Movie Culture: Disney/Pixar Crossover, Grindhouse 'Green Room' Trailer and More

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

Crossovers of the Day:

Since Ellen DeGeneres is the voice of Dory from Disney/Pixar’s Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, when she has a guest from another Disney animated film on her talk show, she likes to create crossovers. Here’s one with Kristen Bell as Anna from Frozen and then one with Tom Hanks as Woody from Toy Story (via /Film):

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Mashup of the Day:

Let’s call this crazy scene of people in T.rex cosplay beating each other up for your entertainment a mashup of Jurassic Park, Fight Club and Mad Max Beyond the Thunderdome (via Fashionably Geek):

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Reworked Trailer of the Day:

If Green Room was a 1970s Grindhouse picture, here’s what its trailer might have looked like:

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Trailer Parody of the Day:

The latest parody of Justice League redoes the trailer in Archer-style animation (via Geek Tyrant):

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Poster Parody of the Day:

This week Documentary Now! spoofs Jiro Dreams of Sushi, so it’s a great time for this parody poster for another spoof idea involving actor Jim Belushi (via Twitter):

Movie Takedown of the Day:

See how non-tubular Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows is in the latest Honest Trailer beatdown:

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F/X Breakdown of the Day:

Watch how the visual effects were done for Pete’s Dragon with this breakdown for Wired magazine (via Geek Tyrant):

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Vintage Image of the Day:

Fernando Rey, who was born on this day in 1917, with co-star Gene Hackman and director William Friedkin on the set of 1971’s The French Connection:

Supercut of the Day:

Learn how to speak like the characters from Fargo in this Fandor Keyframe video condensing the film into just “yah” and “jeez” lines (via Geek Tyrant):

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Classic Trailer of the Day:

Today is the 20th anniversary of the release of The First Wives Club. Watch the original trailer for the comedy below.

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and

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Business September 20, 2016

Regulating Self-Driving Cars For Safety Even Before They're Built

Self-driving Uber vehicles are lined up to take journalists on rides during a media preview at the company’s Advanced Technologies Center in Pittsburgh earlier this month. Gene J. Puskar/AP hide caption

toggle caption Gene J. Puskar/AP

The U.S. government wants to help you take your hands off the wheel.

The Department of Transportation on Tuesday issued its Federal Automated Vehicle Policy, which outlines how manufacturers and developers can ensure safe design of driverless vehicles, tells states what responsibilities they will have and points out potential new tools for ensuring safety.

Regulators say they want to prepare for the transition to self-driving vehicles, which they say will save money, time and lives. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx tells NPR’s Robert Siegel he hopes these guidelines will ensure that safety is a priority as the technology continues to be developed.

Asked to predict how soon self-driving vehicles will represent, say, 25 percent of the cars on the road, Foxx says, “I don’t know about percentages, but it’s very clear that there is a growing interest in the marketplace to bring these vehicles into the lives of Americans. And it’s incumbent upon us to get ahead of it and to make sure that safety is part of the thought process at the very beginning, and that’s part of what our policy will set forth.”

Interview Highlights

On why self-driving cars need federal regulation in the early stages

Well, I would say that there’s not really a conflict between innovation and safety. That you can actually have innovation, you can have safety, and you can innovate in the safety arena if you take the right approach.

Secretary Of Transportation: ‘I See The Future’ When I’m In A Self-Driving Car

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We did not have the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration back when the Model T was put on the assembly line, and if we had, we probably would have saved untold numbers of lives by having that kind of vigilance at the beginning. We have that opportunity today. This is a once-in-a-hundred-year moment to capture a technology while it’s in its early stages and build a culture of safety within it, and that’s what we intend to do.

On whether the guidelines require manufacturers to share research

We’ve had good experience with data sharing among highly competitive cohort of industry. I would say the Federal Aviation Administration is our best example of this, where data is shared anonymously, but it has helped us in many ways predict safety challenges and avert safety challenges within the industry.

We think this model could be used in the auto industry, particularly with a driverless environment where there is going to be so much more data available than we currently have today. We certainly want to encourage collaboration within the industry.

On the issue of liability with self-driving cars

I think that’s a question that’s going to need further conversation, and in the guidance we’ve laid out we expect the states to be engaged in that discussion as well. …

The policy recognizes there are areas that we have deep knowledge today and can develop policy around, and there are areas that need to be discussed over a longer time frame and that’s one of them.

On whether U.S. infrastructure is ready for self-driving vehicles

Well, I have questions about whether our streets are in a condition for human drivers today. That’s why I went and argued so strenuously for a long-term surface bill. Obviously, our infrastructure needs to be kept at a good state of repair.

I also believe that over the next decade or so we’re going to start integrating more technological capability into the infrastructure itself — much more sophisticated street signal alignment. The street lights networks that we have today actually communicating with cars, and turning off when there are no cars on the road, and turning on when there are. I think you’re going to see a lot of that technology take root, and you’re going to see it at the municipal level, at the state level.

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Health September 20, 2016

Doctors Who Treat Opioid Addiction Often See Very Few Patients

Health care providers have to have permission from the federal government to provide medication-assisted treatment for opioid addiction. The Washington Post/Getty Images hide caption

toggle caption The Washington Post/Getty Images

Many people struggling with opioid addiction can’t find a doctor to provide medication-assisted treatment, even though it’s highly effective. One reason could be that doctors who are qualified to prescribe the medication typically treat just a handful of patients.

Researchers at the RAND Corporation looked at pharmacy records from the seven states with the most doctors approved to prescribe buprenorphine, which helps people manage cravings and avoid withdrawal. They found 3,234 doctors who had prescribed the drug, also known as Suboxone, to new patients from 2010 to 2013. The median number of patients by a doctor treated each month was 13. About half of the doctors treated 4 to 30 patients; 22 percent treated less than 4; 20 percent treated 31 to 75.

“We were really surprised,” says Dr. Bradley Stein, a psychiatrist and lead author of the study, which was published Tuesday in JAMA, the journal of the American Medical Association. “We found that only about 10 percent of doctors were what we would call heavy prescribers, with more than 75 patients a month.”

Only a fraction of the 4 million people thought to abuse prescription painkillers or heroin in the U.S. are getting medication-assisted treatment.

There’s been a big push to make it easier for doctors to prescribe buprenorphine, including new rules announced by the Obama administration in July that raised the number of patients a doctor can treat from 100 to 275. But this data suggests that those limits aren’t the only barrier to getting treatment to more people.

The researchers also were surprised to find that most patients weren’t prescribed buprenorphine for very long, even though it can be used long term. The mean length of prescribing was 53 days per patient.

“This really brought home for us the need for multiple approaches, so doctors are willing and able to prescribe buprenorphine,” Stein says.

Urban areas have typically been better equipped to provide treatment for opioid addiction, whether with methadone clinics or with buprenorphine, which people can take at home and doesn’t require people a daily clinic visit. But many people struggling with opioid addiction live in smaller cities or rural areas where physicians have little experience with treating addiction to heroin and prescription opioids.

That includes towns like Bridgton, Maine, where family physicians shied away from treating addicts until they realized that their own patients were the ones overdosing and dying.

Just taking an online course on how to prescribe buprenorphine won’t be enough for many providers, Stein says, especially since many patients with opioid addiction also have other problems that need care. “We really need to think about providing mentorship, providing consultation, providing clinical support,” Stein says.

Medication-assisted treatment is supposed to include counseling, and that can be hard to find, especially in rural areas. “So we may need to think about telehealth or online counseling,” Stein says. “We may need to be creative to have people receive effective treatment, no matter where they live.”

Treatment can work, “People can recover. They go on to live incredibly productive lives. And we want to have the high-quality treatment to get them there.”

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Sports September 20, 2016

Vin Scully, 88, Will Retire Soon As LA Dodgers' Announcer

One of the greatest sports play-by-play announcers of all times, Vin Scully, is set to retire after 67 years calling plays for the Los Angeles Dodgers. He talks to David Greene about his career.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

You are about to hear one of the most famous voices in America. Vin Scully has been the play-by-play announcer for the Dodgers for 67 years. When he started, the Dodgers played baseball in Brooklyn. They moved to Los Angeles in 1958. Scully’s voice, as baseball fans know, is like no other, and the memorable moments are countless.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

VIN SCULLY: And look who’s coming up.

GREENE: This was 1988, World Series, Game 1. Injured Dodgers slugger Kirk Gibson limps to the plate.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SCULLY: High fly ball into right field – she is gone.

GREENE: Gibson’s ninth inning home run helped send the underdog Dodgers to a championship over the Oakland A’s. Vin Scully – he’s now 88 years old, and he is going to be calling his final Dodgers game in a couple weeks. When I reached him by phone, he talked about, well, this sound that you’re hearing.

(CHEERING)

GREENE: This drew him to sports in 1935. He was 8 years old. He would crawl under his family’s four-legged radio to listen to college football, waiting for the roar of the crowd.

SCULLY: When that roar would come, it was like water coming out of a shower head. It would just seem to pour all over me, and I would get goose bumps. And originally, I thought, gee, I would love to be there.

GREENE: Well, this is an amazing thing because you often hear about your belief in the art of silence and sometimes just as a broadcaster stepping back and allowing the roar of that crowd to just sit there with all of us. And I guess I now understand why listening to you talk about that.

SCULLY: Yes. In fact, it’s just come to me second nature. I would try to call the play as accurately and quickly as possible, and then I would shut up and sit there listening to the roar. And for a brief moment, I was 8 years old again, you know.

GREENE: Well, you know, one moment when you really let the roar of that crowd stand – 1974 and Henry Hank Aaron breaking Babe Ruth’s home run record. I mean, can you take me to that moment?

SCULLY: It was an incredible moment. In fact, it was the most important home run I’ve ever called.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SCULLY: One ball and no strikes, Aaron waiting, the outfield deep and straightaway – fastball, it’s a high fly to the deep left center field. Buster goes back to the fence. It is gone.

(CHEERING)

SCULLY: The first thing I did was shut up because that place went bananas, and his family was coming out onto the field, and firecrackers were going off. So there were no words for me to express at all. And I got up from the table and went to the back of the room and let them roar.

(CHEERING)

SCULLY: And I think I poured a little glass of water and took a sip. And all of a sudden, while I was standing there, luxuriating with the roar of the crowd, it suddenly hit me. And that minute or however long shut up gave me that thought, which I then expressed.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SCULLY: What a marvelous moment for baseball. What a marvelous moment for Atlanta and the state of Georgia. What a marvelous moment for the country and the world…

That a black man in the Deep South was being honored for breaking the record of a white icon.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

SCULLY: The record of an all-time baseball idol. And it is a great moment for all of us and particularly for Henry Aaron.

That really, through the grace of God, summed up the moment I think very well.

GREENE: It sure did. And, you know, I wondered if you, thinking that that could happen, had written some of those notes down…

SCULLY: Oh, no.

GREENE: …Because it was so poetic – no.

SCULLY: In all honesty, David, I have never, ever prepared to say something about an event that might occur because I might be so interested in displaying my pearls of wisdom that I might do it prematurely, and it doesn’t work. So that would be terrifying. So no, it was a very honest moment for me completely.

GREENE: You know, your final game is going to be calling a Dodgers-Giants game, you know, once rival franchises in New York now transplanted like you to California. How special is that?

SCULLY: It’s extremely special, David. And if you don’t mind, I’ll tell you one little story.

GREENE: Please.

SCULLY: I was about not quite 9 years old, and it was 1936. It was – the World Series was on, and it was October the 2. And I was walking home from school, and I went by a Chinese laundry, and there was the line score of that World Series game. And I stopped to look at it, and the score was 18 to 4 in favor of the Yankees. And my first reaction as a child was, oh, the poor Giants. And because of that, I became A, a baseball nut and two, a rabid Giants fan. Well, it makes it kind of interesting my last game will be a Giants-Dodgers game in San Francisco, October the 2, 2016.

GREENE: Yeah.

SCULLY: It will be exactly 80 years to the day when I first discovered baseball.

GREENE: That’s amazing. Being a rabid Giants fan as a youngster, are you pulling for the Giants even though you’re a – you’re the Dodgers broadcaster?

SCULLY: No. In all honesty, once you become a professional, number one, you’re no longer a fan. I don’t root for the Dodgers really. I just try to do the game as best I can. And the winning and the losing will take care of itself.

GREENE: Why retire now? How did you know this was the moment?

SCULLY: Well, you know, in November, I’m going to be 89, and I’ve been able to do just about everything that I ever wanted to do. I didn’t feel that it would be right that I would try to continue broadcasting when I’m going to be 90 – God willing – next year. And then I also thought that I’ve had so many yesterdays, I’m not sure how many tomorrows I’m going to have. I have a wife I adore, 16 grandchildren, three great-grandchildren. So the only reason that I would want to do baseball would be for some selfish reason, and I don’t want to do that. So no, I will spend my tomorrows where I should be – with my family.

GREENE: Vin Scully, real pleasure and honor talking to you, and enjoy these final games you’ll be calling and just thank you – thank you so much.

SCULLY: Thank you very much, David.

(SOUNDBITE OF UNIDENTIFIED SONG)

UNIDENTIFIED SINGERS: (Singing) Your Dodger blue, your Dodger blue (ph).

GREENE: Dodger Blue. Vin Scully has been the voice of the LA Dodgers – well, they were the Brooklyn Dodgers when he started. He’s been doing it for an astonishing 67 seasons.

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