January 17, 2017

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Entertainment January 17, 2017

Today in Movie Culture: 'Stranger Things' Meets 'Star Wars,' the Best Shots in Disney Animation and More

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

Remade Trailer of the Day:

Want to see what an old school Spider-Man: Homecoming video game would look like? JoBlo redid the movie’s trailer in that style:

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Mashup of the Day:

We would love an all-kid remake of Star Wars starring the kids from Stranger Things after seeing this poster by Michael Maher Jr. (via Geek Tyrant):

Fan Theory of the Day:

Is Harry Potter the biggest Dark Lord in the Harry Potter movies? MatPat goes deep to tackle this theory:

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Fake Movie of the Day:

In her Saturday Night Live hosting gig, Felicity Jones plays the star of a movie called Hot Robot 3: Journey to Boob Mountain. Watch the sketch here:

Vintage Image of the Day:

Betty White, who turns 95 today, as a senator in her feature film debut, 1962’s Advise & Consent:

Supercut of the Day:

Get a newfound appreciation for animation cinematography with Jorge Luengo’s video of the most beautiful shots in Disney movies:

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Movie Takedown of the Day:

Fans voted for an Honest Trailer for Space Jam, and it seems to be their easiest slam dunk yet:

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Dream Casting of the Day:

Baby Daddy actor Derek Theler really wants to play Captain Marvel in DC’s Shazam! opposite The Rock. So BossLogic shows us what that would look like (via ComicBook.com):

Screenwriting Lesson of the Day:

See the iconic diner scene from Michael Mann’s Heat side by side with its note-filled script in this video essay by Vashi Nedomansky (via Geek Tyrant):

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Classic Trailer of the Day:

Today is the 25th anniversary of the release of Juice, which marked the acting debut of rapper Tupac Shakur. Watch the original trailer for the classic crime film below.

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Sports January 17, 2017

Obama Pardons Famous Hotelier And Baseball Star

In a flood of clemency orders before he leaves office, President Obama commuted the sentences of 209 people and pardoned 64 others on Tuesday. The vast majority of offenders had been convicted of drug-related crimes. Two were involved in cases about leaks of government material. And two were cultural stars of past decades who had run afoul of the IRS.

Ian Schrager in front of his new, luxurious Hotel Delano in Miami Beach, Florida on Sept. 13, 1995. Schrager, who was convicted of tax evasion in 1979, was pardoned by President Obama. Rick Bowman/ASSOCIATED PRESS hide caption

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Rick Bowman/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Ian Schrager, the co-founder of the famous nightclubs Studio 54 and the Palladium, who then created boutique hotels, spent a year in prison between 1980 and 1981 and paid a $20,000 fine for tax evasion. His business partner, Steve Rubell, had drawn the attention of federal authorities by bragging that Studio 54 made money second only to the Mafia. The two came out of prison and eventually re-created the hotel industry by making accommodations luxurious and hip. Rubell passed away in 1989. Schrager, whose name is often associated with New York’s gliteratti has said of his jail time, “I made certain mistakes and I paid for them.”

Willie McCovey of the San Francisco Giants pictured in April 1966 near the height of his 21 year career. He pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 1995 and was pardoned by President Obama. AP hide caption

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AP

Willie L. McCovey had his troubles with the tax man too. He was once one of Major League Baseball’s most feared sluggers as a teammate with Willie Mays on the San Francisco Giants in the 1960s and 1970s. Nicknamed “Stretch” for his ability to dig out errant throws to first base, McCovey had a .270 career batting average, clobbered 521 homeruns and 1,555 runs batted in. He was inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1986, his first year of eligibility. The water just outside of the Giants ballpark, McCovey Cove, is named for him. Most fans probably overlooked his guilty plea in 1995 after he was accused of not reporting all of the cash income he made from signing autographs at sports memorabilia shows. McCovey was sentenced to two years probation and a $5,000 fine.

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Business January 17, 2017

Obama Pardons Famous Hotelier And Baseball Star

In a flood of clemency orders before he leaves office, President Obama commuted the sentences of 209 people and pardoned 64 others on Tuesday. The vast majority of offenders had been convicted of drug-related crimes. Two were involved in cases about leaks of government material. And two were cultural stars of past decades who had run afoul of the IRS.

Ian Schrager in front of his new, luxurious Hotel Delano in Miami Beach, Florida on Sept. 13, 1995. Schrager, who was convicted of tax evasion in 1979, was pardoned by President Obama. Rick Bowman/ASSOCIATED PRESS hide caption

toggle caption

Rick Bowman/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Ian Schrager, the co-founder of the famous nightclubs Studio 54 and the Palladium, who then created boutique hotels, spent a year in prison between 1980 and 1981 and paid a $20,000 fine for tax evasion. His business partner, Steve Rubell, had drawn the attention of federal authorities by bragging that Studio 54 made money second only to the Mafia. The two came out of prison and eventually re-created the hotel industry by making accommodations luxurious and hip. Rubell passed away in 1989. Schrager, whose name is often associated with New York’s gliteratti has said of his jail time, “I made certain mistakes and I paid for them.”

Willie McCovey of the San Francisco Giants pictured in April 1966 near the height of his 21 year career. He pleaded guilty to tax evasion in 1995 and was pardoned by President Obama. AP hide caption

toggle caption

AP

Willie L. McCovey had his troubles with the tax man too. He was once one of Major League Baseball’s most feared sluggers as a teammate with Willie Mays on the San Francisco Giants in the 1960s and 1970s. Nicknamed “Stretch” for his ability to dig out errant throws to first base, McCovey had a .270 career batting average, clobbered 521 homeruns and 1,555 runs batted in. He was inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame in 1986, his first year of eligibility. The water just outside of the Giants ballpark, McCovey Cove, is named for him. Most fans probably overlooked his guilty plea in 1995 after he was accused of not reporting all of the cash income he made from signing autographs at sports memorabilia shows. McCovey was sentenced to two years probation and a $5,000 fine.

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Health January 17, 2017

18 Million People Could Lose Insurance In First Year After Partial Obamacare Repeal

House Speaker Paul Ryan, joined by (from left) Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy and Rep. Diane Black, discuss their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act on Jan. 10. J. Scott Applewhite/AP hide caption

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J. Scott Applewhite/AP

A partial repeal of Obamacare could leave 18 million people who have insurance today with no coverage one year later, according to an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office.

The report estimates that 32 million people would lose their insurance over 10 years.

The CBO based its estimates on a bill passed by Republicans and vetoed by President Obama in 2015. That bill amounted to a partial repeal of the Affordable Care Act, also called Obamacare, eliminating the penalty for people who didn’t have health insurance. It also cut out the government subsidies that currently help people pay their premiums.

The CBO estimated that getting rid of the penalty for people who do not purchase insurance would lead to 18 million fewer insured people within a year and that the number would eventually grow to 32 million after subsidies and a Medicaid expansion were also eliminated.

As NPR’s Alison Kodjak reported, “congressional Republicans haven’t introduced legislation to repeal Obamacare yet [this year], but they’ve suggested they’ll follow the model of the previous [2015] bill.”

So far, lawmakers pushing for the repeal have no plan for encouraging people to have insurance without the mandate and subsidies.

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“We’re not holding hard deadlines, only because we want to get it right,” House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said last week.

On Monday, President-elect Donald Trump told The Washington Post he was working on a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act with a proposal that would provide “insurance for everybody.”

As we reported, “he did not get into any specific details about his health care plan during a telephone interview with the newspaper. But he did say it would be ‘much less expensive’ and would involve ‘much lower deductibles.’ “

He also told the newspaper he does not plan to cut benefits for Medicare and that he does not want a single-payer health care system.

The CBO analysis makes clear that repealing Obamacare would affect millions of Americans, even those who do not lose their health insurance outright. The report found that in the first year after a repeal-without-replacement law, premiums would rise about 20 to 25 percent over the levels predicted with Obamacare, which itself has been criticized for its failure to control premium costs.

The analysis also found that without the federal mandate requiring people to buy insurance, some insurance companies would stop offering plans, and in the first year “roughly 10 percent of the population would be living in an area that had no insurer participating” in the market for individuals buying health insurance.

By 2026, that would grow to 75 percent of the general U.S. population.

Although Republicans have already taken steps toward a partial repeal, the marketplaces established by Obamacare are still operating. Open enrollment for 2017 ends Jan. 31, with a few exceptions, as we have reported.

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Entertainment January 17, 2017

Pakistani Pop Star Halts Show To Save Female Fan From Alleged Harassment

Pakistani singer and actor Atif Aslam, here performing in Dhaka, Bangladesh in May 2016. Sk Hasan Ali/Corbis via Getty Images hide caption

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Sk Hasan Ali/Corbis via Getty Images

A popular Pakistani musician and actor, Atif Aslam, is being hailed worldwide after he stopped a live performance on Saturday night to rescue a female fan who was allegedly being sexually harassed by a group of men at the concert.

Videos of the incident shot by concertgoers are circulating online. Aslam stops his musicians mid-song, and in a mix of Urdu and English, begins berating the alleged harassers, who seem to be right in front of the stage. “Wait a second,” the singer says angrily. “Have you ever seen a girl? Your mother or sister could be here, too, huh?”

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He then instructs security to pull the young woman up onto the stage with him, saying: “I’m going to rescue her.”

Many fans are heard cheering the singer’s actions, chanting: “Atif! Atif! Atif!” Aslam goes on to address the attackers directly again, saying: “Act like a human being.”

The show, in which Aslam was co-billed with Sufi singing legend Abida Parveen, took place at the Institute of Business Administration, a highly ranked university in Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city. The show was organized by MUNIK, the school’s Model United Nations.

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Aslam is a household name in Pakistan and is well-known throughout the South Asian subcontinent. His video for the wildly popular Coke Studios Pakistan series, a tribute to the Sufi singers The Sabri Brothers, has been viewed on YouTube more than 56 million times. He made his acting debut in the 2011 film Bol — whose plot involves a family with a transgender daughter and which broke box-office records in Pakistan.

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Coke Studio YouTube

Yesterday, the newspaper The Daily Pakistan reported in the aftermath of Saturday’s show that “dozens of girls were molested and sexually harassed at the venue,” and citing an anonymous tipster, charged that students at the university who helped organize the show sold thousands of fake tickets to the performance, leading to chaos and lack of security.

The Pakistani newspaper Dawn posted a number of social media accounts of what happened. One female concertgoer named Mahnoor Alamgir wrote on Facebook: “Not a single girl escaped harassment unless she was with a male friend or husband…I’m utterly disgusted right now.”

Another woman in the audience named Yusra Habib wrote on Facebook: “You know something is terribly problematic when a singer has to stop in between his performance, spot harassment from within a massive crowd and ask his team to ‘rescue the girl.’ You know its [sic] even more uncomfortable when three more girls have to be lifted on stage and taken away safely. It only goes on to prove that no matter how butt-hurt our awaam [people] gets over this reverse-sexism and so called misogyny at public events, it is what we as a crowd need the most.”

In many of the South Asian news accounts of this incident, the harassment and molestation of women is referred to by a common regional euphemism: “eve-teasing.”

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