October 15, 2016

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Entertainment October 15, 2016

Review: 'Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk' Offers a Brand New Way to Watch a Movie

We’re on a bit of a war binge right now.

The success of recent films like American Sniper and Lone Survivor has paved the way for a new crop of war movies that isolate individual soldier stories, many of them true, and moviegoers are feasting on ’em. In November alone there are two, Mel Gibson’s Hacksaw Ridge and Ang Lee’s Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, while Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk awaits us this July.

But it’s Billy Lynn — based on Ben Fountain’s acclaimed novel of the same name — that takes the rare approach of actually acknowledging our obsession with romanticizing war stories through cinema, and when the film tackles those issues head on it’s incredibly refreshing and thought-provoking in a way we usually don’t experience. Of course the experience of watching Billy Lynn is the other story — Ang Lee choosing to shoot his film at a higher frame rate than we’ve ever seen: 120 frames-per-second 3D, with 4K clarity.

Very few will actually be able to watch the film this way; there aren’t many theaters equipped to project Billy Lynn as the complete package that was showcased during its premiere at the New York Film Festival. It’s still worth talking about, though, as the brightness, crispness and creepy realness of the picture sort of mirrors the story of a soldier home on leave who slowly begins to embrace his own clarity while experiencing life as a war hero on display at a big, splashy Thanksgiving Day football game.

During a fierce fire fight in Iraq, Billy Lynn (newcomer Joe Alwyn) courageously rushes to defend a wounded soldier, and in the process fights off approaching insurgents with nothing but a hand gun, a knife and his fists. All of it is caught on camera, and Lynn’s story eventually finds its way home, leading to a victory tour for his entire Bravo team while on leave for the Thanksgiving holiday.

It’s home in Texas that Lynn finds a family (and especially a sister, played by Kristen Stewart) proud but desperate to have him back home for good. Then there are the thousands of beer-guzzling, chicken finger-devouring football fans who loudly cheer for Lynn and his team as if auto-programmed to acknowledge the troops even if they can’t ever understand the horrific realities of war unless it’s projected back at them on a big screen full of celebrities. There are agents trying to cut movie deals, cheerleaders yearning for their own soldier to love and miss and write to, and all of it is a lot for one movie — leading much of Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk to feel overstuffed like the obnoxious all-you-can-eat Thanksgiving buffet the soldiers are treated to at one point.

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There’s a lot of melodramatic meat on the table with this one, and its twangy Texan score just adds to the soap opera-ish vibe of the film, at times masking many of its rich, soulful themes. When Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk settles into its quieter moments — specifically between Billy Lynn and his sister, or Lynn and his sergeants Shroom (Vin Diesel) and Dime (Garett Hedlund), or Lynn and the cheerleader he strikes up a brief fling with — that’s when you feel it and you appreciate it. That’s when it becomes more about the complexities of being a soldier, and less about putting a soldier on display.

The reality is that many of us will never know what reality is actually like for a soldier who’s been to war, no matter how close Ang Lee pushes the camera into Billy Lynn’s bloodshot eyes with 4K clarity. There’s a conversation to be had, though, about the business of war heroes, and the exploitation of what in many cases are the worst days and moments of a person’s life. Why are we so drawn to it? Why do we celebrate it? Why do we cheer a soldier on more than we actually help them adjust to life before, during and after the fight?

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk scratches the surface of these issues, and even if it feels a little too muddled and busy in its execution, there’s enough here to inspire a more thoughtful and educated approach to telling a soldier’s story. Respecting and accepting that story without feasting on it like hungry spectators ogling the violence that comes with war… or, well, a football game.

A Quick Guide to Watching Billy Lynn in 120fps

1. What is this higher frame rate thing?

Most traditional films are projected at 24 frames-per-second, while recently Peter Jackson experimented with projecting one of his Hobbit movies at 48 frames-per-second. For Billy Lynn, Ang Lee blew past that by projecting the film at 120 frames-per-second in 3D, with 4K clarity versus the typical 2K.

2. So… what? Should I care about this in any way?

If you’re into higher frame rates and what it’s like to experience some of the latest cutting edge technology cinema has to offer, then yes. In my opinion, Billy Lynn is more successful with the format than Peter Jackson was, only because the picture is so clear, not many genres can pull it off without the whole thing feeling too staged. This in no way works for a fantasy movie or a genre film, but for a sporting event or a documentary, it could very well change the game in a way that brings audiences a more intimate experience.

3. Is Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk worth seeing in 120fps 3D?

Ultimately yes, but there’s a caveat. If you happen to be in one of the rare spots where Billy Lynn is actually playing in this format, then you have to see it for yourself if you’re any kind of fan interested in the evolving moviegoing experience. The sequences set in Iraq, for example, are so remarkably vivid that I quite frankly have never seen anything like it. That right there — the ability to watch a movie in a way you’ve never watched a movie before — is reason enough to check it out.

That being said, Billy Lynn is also worth an additional watch in a more conventional setting, simply because it’s hard not to focus on the new format and the ways with which Lee utilizes it — most notably with several close-ups hoping the stark details bring us closer to the characters.

4. Does it work? Do you feel closer to the characters?

Yes and no. The war scenes offer pretty incredible edge-of-your-seat action, but they are brief. Same goes for the halftime show Billy Lynn and his fellow soldiers take part in. The show itself is typically over the top, and its glitzy bells and whistles are quite gripping to watch in the format. Colors pop. Uniforms glisten. Bullets linger. But in terms of feeling the characters more, it doesn’t really work. The picture is too crisp, too stiff, and lacks certain nuances that assist in connecting with a character or story on a more emotional level.

5. What about Vin Diesel? How does he look in 120fps 3D 4K?

Bald. Balder than before, if that’s even possible.

And if you’re looking for more info on the format, here’s a featurette you can check out.

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Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk hits theaters on November 11.

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Health October 15, 2016

West Virginia Grapples With High Drug Costs

State lawmakers in West Virginia say their budget choices are only getting tougher. About a third of state residents are on Medicaid. OZinOH/Flickr hide caption

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OZinOH/Flickr

Skyrocketing prices for essential medicines like the EpiPen, are generating public outcry, congressional hearings and political promises for policy fixes. In the meantime, the increases continue to hit pocketbooks — even of people who don’t rely on these expensive drugs. In a state like West Virginia, where dire budget shortfalls have been a problem over the last few years, the problem is especially pronounced.

Kimberly Earl, of Charleston, W.Va., is feeling the pinch. She has four children, all of whom need medication.

“I have a 13-year-old who’s a pediatric cancer survivor,” she says. “I have two children who are allergic to foods, medication and environmental factors, and both of those children both have asthma.”

Last year, two of her children needed new EpiPens — which come in a 2-pack. (The dose of epinephrine each pen delivers is designed to be used in an emergency, to stop a severe allergic reaction.) The Earls have private health insurance, but had yet to meet their $10,000 family deductible for 2015. They didn’t have enough money for two boxes of EpiPens at the $600 price — even with a $100 discount from the drug’s manufacturer. So the family improvised.

“We took the pens and we split the two pens between two kids,” Earl explains. “I actually took the pens out and wrote on the top — ‘use this one first’ on the current pens, and ‘use this one second’ on the expired pens. So each kid was walking around with one current pen and one expired pen. And we were just hoping that if there was an issue they wouldn’t have to use that second pen.”

While Earl paid for the drugs out of pocket, about a third of West Virginians are insulated from these direct costs because they are covered by Medicaid. The state expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, giving lower-income people the government-sponsored insurance. Most Medicaid patients don’t have premiums or copays.

But in the end, rising drug prices affect everybody in West Virginia. When lawmakers consider the state’s budget, they only have so much revenue to divvy up among priorities that include health care services, roads and schools, says Dr. James Becker, the medical director of Medicaid in West Virginia.

“So when the cost of a drug goes up dramatically,” he says, “that impacts our system and we have to step in and make adjustments to regulate the drug appropriately.”

The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources can regulate the cost of drugs by negotiating lower prices through the federal rebate program. The rebate program is a complex system, but basically comes down to this: The more Medicaid patients enrolled in the program, the more bargaining power the government has to make drug companies lower their prices. Another way Medicaid manages costs is by including older, cheaper, but still effective drugs in its formulary, rather than relying on more costly new brands.

But even with these measures, the overall increase in the price of medications has forced some shifting of funds in other parts of the state budget, says Ron Stollings, a Democrat and state senator from Boone, W.Va.

“Certainly for Medicaid funding in West Virginia, [the hike is drug prices] is a huge cost,” says Stollings, a former chairman of the state senate’s health committee. “So when we have to put money into funding Medicaid, we have to cut funding for higher education and secondary education; we have to put off paving projects, etc.”

Stollings says these rising Medicaid costs — partially due to higher drug costs — fall on the taxpayer, who may end up paying more state taxes to fund the budget.

“If you’re a taxpayer, it impacts you,” Stollings says. “If you’re an insured person it will impact your premiums, and if you are on Medicaid you may get this expensive medication, but they may be ratcheting down coverage for other things.”

Medicaid is a large portion of the West Virginia’s budget, right behind public education. And it will probably get even bigger next year, as the state picks up more of the Medicaid expansion costs from the federal government.

This story is part of a reporting partnership with NPR, West Virginia Public Broadcasting and Kaiser Health News.

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Business October 15, 2016

Police Searches Of Social Media Face Privacy Pushback

Twitter and Facebook have restricted access to users’ data for Geofeedia, a data analytics firm, over privacy concerns. Geofeedia/Screenshot by NPR hide caption

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Geofeedia/Screenshot by NPR

Law enforcement is increasingly worried about losing access to powerful tools for searching social media because of changing attitudes at the social media companies that allow the searches.

Earlier this week, Facebook and Twitter restricted the bulk data access to users’ information for a company called Geofeedia, after the ACLU of Northern California published a report revealing that Geofeedia had suggested to police departments that they could use the service to track protests.

Social media monitoring services such as Geofeedia rely on bulk data access to be able to search far larger volumes of social media posts, and more efficiently, than the average user. It’s the kind of large-scale social media analysis that’s mainly used by commercial clients, such as marketers, but which has also been sold to law enforcement agencies.

The social media posts being scanned are public, but the ACLU’s Nicole Ozer says the practice is still an invasion of privacy, because of the sheer scale.

“Many of these police departments are actually surveilling entire communities,” Ozer says. That’s a reference to the services’ ability to pinpoint social media posts by location — although most people don’t enable location tagging on their social media, and wouldn’t be subject to this kind of “geo-fencing.”

Still, services such as Geofeedia can comb through and analyze vast numbers of public social media posts, which can sometimes allow police to track someone down, even if that person isn’t visible online.

Recently, police in Texas used social media to locate a teenage girl who had run away after stealing her father’s handgun and car, says Nick Selby, a police detective there.

“What we had to do is look for her in the traffic of other people talking with her or about her,” Selby says.

Signs of restricting access

It’s easier to cast a wide net like that with a social media monitoring service such as Geofeedia. But in recent months, these tools have become less available to police.

Twitter, in particular, appears to be getting more restrictive. Not only did it cut off Geofeedia’s access to bulk data following the ACLU report, earlier this year it quietly cut off data to another company, Dataminr, because it provided deep searches of public Twitter feeds to U.S. intelligence agencies.

The same thing may now be happening to companies that provide searches to law enforcement. Selby, the detective in Texas, says the change has affected the social media search abilities at his disposal.

“I have had to re-work tools to emulate the [bulk data stream] from Twitter, and scrape the public Twitter feeds of people of interest because we can no longer buy this from a lot of the vendors who used to have it,” he says.

A spokesman for Twitter would not say whether the company has changed its policy toward searches by law enforcement; in an email, a spokesman pointed NPR to the company’s guidelines for developers (that is, companies such as Geofeedia that use Twitter data). The guidelines bar search companies from allowing law enforcement agencies to use the data to “investigate, track or surveil Twitter’s users (…) in a manner that would require a subpoena, court order, or other valid legal process or that would otherwise have the potential to be inconsistent with our users’ reasonable expectations of privacy.”

But that policy is very much open to interpretation, because police don’t usually need legal orders to search public social media, and it’s arguable whether such searches violate users’ “expectation of privacy.”

The ACLU’s Ozer believes it does, and that privacy laws need to catch up.

“There’s a difference between posting something online, and thinking that that information is going to end up in a huge database that the police are going to be able to search through at any time for any reason,” Ozer says.

Tide turns amid fears of surveillance

If Twitter has decided to cut off law enforcement, it would represent a dramatic change. In recent years, several data analytics companies have openly marketed Twitter-based search tools to law enforcement, with no complaints from the social media company itself — at least, not in public.

Now some people inside policing believe the climate has turned against them. A few departments have tried to address fears of surveillance by establishing internal rules to make sure officers don’t search social media “at any time for any reason,” as Ozer put it.

The police department in Dunwoody, Ga., for instance, requires officers to get their social media searches approved ahead of time by a supervisor.

“So you can’t target particular groups, or classes of people, or different ideologies,” says Chief Billy Grogan.

But rules like this have been slow to catch on. Most police departments don’t restrict social media searches, in part because it doesn’t occur to police that they shouldn’t be searching public data the same way a marketing company does.

That freedom may now be at risk, as companies such as Twitter feel pressure from activist groups such as the ACLU to turn off the data tap.

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Sports October 15, 2016

Latest In Sports: Cubs In MLB Playoffs, Colin Kaepernick To Start For 49ers

NPR’s Scott Simon and Tom Goldman discuss the latest in baseball playoffs.

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

Finally time for sports.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

SIMON: American and National League Championship Series are underway – LA, Chi-Town, Cleveland and Toronto. NPR’s Tom Goldman joins us. Morning, Tom.

TOM GOLDMAN, BYLINE: Hello.

SIMON: Last night, the Cleveland Indians handcuffed the Toronto Blue Jays, didn’t they?

GOLDMAN: Oh, boy, they did. You know, they won – I’ll wait till the theme song goes away. They won…

SIMON: That’s for you, my friend, yeah.

GOLDMAN: (Laughter) They won – they being the Indians – won two to nothing. Zero runs for a Toronto team that averaged seven runs a game in its first round sweep of Texas. And, you know, in the first few innings, Toronto repeatedly threatened to score, but Kluber and the Cleveland defense snuffed out each threat.

SIMON: Corey Kluber, yeah.

GOLDMAN: Yeah, very, very impressive.

SIMON: I’m beginning to think that Cleveland just finds a way.

GOLDMAN: You know, last night was only game one of a best 4 out of 7 American League Championship Series. But, Scott, maybe it is time to start paying attention to the Indians. You know, remember, they swept Boston in the first round, pretty much shut down the best hitting team in baseball, the Red Sox. So the Indians are undefeated so far in the postseason. Their pitching and defense is neutralizing opponents – opponents’ offenses. They haven’t won a World Series in 68 years, Scott. Is that the drought that is going to end?

SIMON: Well, there are droughts and there are droughts – 68 years versus 108 years. National League Series starts tonight. Dodgers versus Cu Cu Cu Cu Cu Cu (ph) Cubs. And I believe this is the latest in the season that they’ve played for a title in Illinois since the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858.

GOLDMAN: (Laughter) Ba-boom (ph) 108 years – yeah. Well, of course, you know, they played in the National League Championship Series last year. Likewise in 2003, 1989, 1984, but, you know – so they were a round away from the World Series. But of course, 108 years without a title – the mother of all baseball droughts compared to Cleveland, which – I don’t know what – the father of all droughts. But I will tell you, Scott, our David Schaper, reporter in Chicago, has been out talking to Cubs fans, and he says they’re pumped and most are not thinking about billy goats and black cats and other superstitions and curses. So come on, are you anxious? Are you anxious?

SIMON: I ain’t afraid – I ain’t afraid of no curses, no, no. This is a – this is a genuinely great team, win or lose. And, you know, I think we ought to get past that damn goat. What can I tell you? You know, I think I want to go to a Greek restaurant (laughter) and have a little – maybe some cabrito at Rick Bayless’ place. Listen, I want to go to the NFL because after after Colin Kaepernick, after weeks of being known for his protest during the national anthem, is going to be the San Francisco 49ers’ starting quarterback on Sunday – significance of this please, doctor.

GOLDMAN: (Laughter) Doctor – you know, it’ll raise his visibility more. It’ll give his political messages a new bump. That’s good news for those who consider him a hero; bad news for those who consider him an anti-American traitor. It’ll be fascinating if he does play well and gets back to his 2012-2013 forum. It’ll be a challenge because the 49ers are not a good team. Their problems go way beyond quarterback. But if he does get the team going in the right direction, what’ll it do for his reputation in NFL front offices, which right now is not good. He’s considered a distraction, a troublemaker. If after the season he becomes a free agent, will teams go after him if he plays well now? I’ll bet they would. Nothing makes you less of a pariah than winning.

SIMON: Right, distraction, troublemaker, who wins? I want that guy. NPR’s Tom Goldman, thanks very much for being with us.

GOLDMAN: You’re welcome.

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