Here are a bunch of little bites to satisfy your hunger for movie culture:
Movie Promo of the Day:
To promote Disney’s upcoming live-action Beauty and the Beast remake, the movie’s cast members personally wish fans a happy Valentine’s Day on social media (click to see the video and more):
Speaking of Disney movies, for the holiday, Oh My Disney got strangers to attempt to recreate the iconic spagetti dinner scene from Lady and the Tramp:
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Supercut of the Day:
Perfect for the holiday, here is a collection of great couples in movies, including Manhattan, Titanic, The Princess Bride and La La Land by Alejandro Villarreal:
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Screenwriting Lesson of the Day:
With a classic romantic comedy for Valentine’s Day, Lessons from the Screenplay looks at how When Harry Met Sally breaks genre conventions:
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Vintage Image of the Day:
Jacqueline Kennedy with TV journalist Charles Collingwood during the filming of A Tour of the White House with Mrs. John F. Kennedy, which aired on this day in 1962 and is reenacted in the new movie Jackie:
Movie Takedown of the Day:
Batman Begins is taken down a notch by some real Jokers with the latest Honest Trailer:
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Movie Trivia of the Day:
Speaking of the Caped Crusader, since there’s a new movie starring him in theaters, here’s some trivia about the 1989 Batman:
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Alternate Ending of the Day:
And one more Batman thing, here’s an animated depiction of how the title fight in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice really would have gone down:
Video Essay of the Day:
For Fandor Keyframe, Jacob T. Swinney explores the term “Oscar bait” and whether it should be considered derogatory:
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Classic Trailer of the Day:
Today is the 25th anniversry of the release of Wayne’s World. Watch the original teaser for the comedy classic below.
Members of the Indian media watch Rajiv Bansal, then the CFO of Infosys, during the announcement of the company’s first quarter results in July 2014 in Bangalore. Indian software services firms draw tens of billions of dollars in revenue from U.S. contracts each year, and that’s partly reliant exporting computer science talent on H1-B visas.
Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images
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Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images
With the Trump administration vowing to tighten rules for skilled workers entering the United States, India’s software services companies are worried. Indian IT giants outsource tens of thousands of tech specialists to the United States each year, and limiting the visa program that brings them in could disrupt their multibillion-dollar industry.
Congress and the White House have targeted what is arguably the most coveted of U.S. visas: the H1-B. It’s “a kind of temporary work visa that allows professionals from other countries to work in the United States for a designated U.S. employer,” explains Stephen Yale-Loehr, a Cornell University immigration law professor.
Yale-Loehr says that with the economy strengthening, the program is in particularly big demand. Last year, U.S. companies that sought to bring highly skilled workers to the U.S. filed 236,000 petitions that went into a lottery for just 85,000 H1-B visas, the legal cap. The bulk of the winners: Indian computer specialists, many of them graduates of U.S. universities.
Yale-Loehr says that places like Europe and Australia have special visas to attract such talent, but that the United States doesn’t.
“We have to shoehorn high-tech workers into categories like the H1-B, and it’s getting more difficult every year,” he says.
For many H1-B holders, the temporary work visa — issued for a maximum of six years — has been a stepping stone to obtaining a green card. That grants permanent residence in the U.S., and in turn provides a path to citizenship.
Executives from the software services firms will travel to Washington this month to lobby against measures that threaten one of India’s most successful industries — which last year earned 60 percent of its $108 billion in export revenues from the U.S.
One bill proposes more than doubling the minimum wage of H1-B holders, which by law is set at $60,000. Critics argue the H1-B has been misused to displace American workers, and that there has been an incentive to prefer Indian IT workers because they are cheaper.
Shailesh Chitnis, with the data mining and analysis company Compile, says that while the median salary for all H1-B holders is $71,000, most but not all Indian outsourcers pay below that. If they had to double salaries, Chitnis says, Indian IT companies would have to change their 20-year-old business model.
“Because these organizations are not going to be bringing in people at $120,000 to fill those jobs — it would simply be too expensive,” he says. “They’ll have to look at some other alternatives.”
But Shevendra Singh with India’s National Association of Software Services Companies, or NASSCOM, refutes allegations that Indian companies are dislocating American workers or supplying low-paid labor. Singh says there is demand in the U.S. for Indian technical talent because of a severe shortage of qualified Americans with degrees in science, technology, engineering and math.
“The crux of the issue is the STEM skill shortage in the U.S.,” Singh says.
In its 2012 report, the U.S. president’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology found that “fewer than 40-percent of students who enter college intending to major in a STEM field complete a STEM degree.” The council concluded that by 2022, economic forecasts suggested a need to produce “approximately 1 million more college graduates in STEM fields than expected under current assumptions.”
R. Chandrashekhar, president of NASSCOM, says that if the skills aren’t available in the U.S. — and companies can’t bring workers in — the jobs either won’t get done or they will go out of the country and be done remotely.
“Talent has become more important than investment or trade,” he says. “And those who consciously cut themselves off from the global supply chains of talent are depriving themselves of a good thing.”
Chandrashekhar notes that the intermingling of American and Indian ingenuity helped build Silicon Valley, and saysprotectionist impulses could weaken the United States, and what makes it unique.
“America is No. 1,” Chandrashekhar says. “What has really helped them to rise, absolutely, to the top, is that they have attracted talent from across the world. … It would be really a pity if that was reversed without thinking it through.”
Immigration expert Yale-Loehr, co-author of a 21-volume treatise on immigration law, agrees that the United States faces a crisis in maintaining its innovative and competitive edge, and says it should be inviting more, not less, IT talent to its shores.
“In a globalized economy, the best and the brightest want to work in the best places — and if they’re unable work in the United States, or it takes too long or is too difficult, they’ll find a place in Canada or Europe or India where their talents can be appreciated,” he says.
If implemented, Yale-Loehr says the draft executive order would initiate a review of the H1-B program but likely have no direct, immediate impact.
However, he says “it sends a strong signal that we no longer like foreign workers — we’re all about only U.S. workers.
With the GOP fully in control of the federal government for the first time since 2006, Congressional Republicans are taking their first steps to assert their power over the District of Columbia’s local government.
After an impassioned debate, the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee voted Monday evening to block a D.C. law giving District physicians the right to prescribe lethal medication to terminally ill patients who have less than six months to live.
Committee chair Jason Chaffetz and other Republican conservatives have argued that the D.C. law should be nullified because it runs counter to ethical prohibitions against suicide. Most of the Republicans on the committee framed their opposition as a “pro-life” stance, with a number expressing concerns that the D.C. law could leave vulnerable dying patients at the mercy of physicians and relatives eager to hasten their exit.
“I worry that assisted suicide will create a marketplace for death,” Chaffetz said.
Rep. Darrell Issa R-Calif., who represents one of six states that already have enacted legislation similar to D.C.’s right-to-die bill, was the only Republican to vote against the measure. Issa argued that given Congress’ failure to stop such legislation nationally, he didn’t think interference in D.C. affairs was justified.
In a statement after the committee vote, Mayor Bowser called it “a signal to DC residents that Congress has zero respect or concern for their will or the will of their elected officials.”
Though the District gained an elected mayor and legislature in 1973, Congress retained broad authority over the city. That included the right to disapprove of bills — or, in simpler words, block bills passed by the D.C. Council from taking effect. But that right has been used sparingly: Congress has only formally blocked three D.C. bills over the last 45 years.
The panel voted 22-14 in favor of sending to the House floor the bill to the House floor. However that may be as far as it goes.
Unless conservative Republican backers of the manage to get the committee-passed “resolution of disapproval” through the House and Senate and signed by President Donald Trump by the end of the week — an exceedingly uphill battle given the normal pace of Congress — the law appears likely to take effect as passed by D.C. Council and signed into law by Mayor Muriel Bowser.
The bill becomes law if it is not blocked within 30 legislative working days of being sent Congress. By the D.C. City Council’s calculations, time is up for opponents of the Death With Dignity bill on or about Saturday.
That leaves an almost impossibly narrow window for floor votes in the House and Senate. Moreover, it is not even certain that Trump would sign a disapproval resolution. White House press secretary Sean Spicer refused to say what the president might do when asked about the Death With Dignity law at a press briefing last week.
The audience at the committee meeting, which lasted until past 7:30, included activists in the right-to-die movement, including at least one who considers herself a potential beneficiary: Mary Klein, a 69-year-old D.C. resident who is dying of cancer. In an earlier interview with WAMU, Klein described the measure’s passage, by an 11-2 D.C. Council vote in November, as “a great relief.” Dan Diaz, the widower of Brittany Maynard, a young woman who wrote about her decision to end her life after a long battle with brain cancer, also turned up “to support D.C.,” he said.
Connecticut’s Napheesa Collier, (center) celebrates with teammates (from left) Crystal Dangerfield, Saniya Chong and Gabby Williams in Storrs, Conn., after beating South Carolina 66-55 — the Huskies’ 100th win.
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Jessica Hill/AP
Pushing their win streak to a new level — triple digits — the University of Connecticut’s women’s basketball team achieved a milestone Monday, beating No. 6 South Carolina, 66-55, for their 100th win.
No other basketball team, male or female, has neared the mark in the NCAA.
As of Monday night, the last time UConn lost a game was 818 days earlier — back in November of 2014, when another No. 6 team — Stanford — got the better of the Huskies in overtime. That was a road game for UConn; last night’s game was a home win, and former Huskies stars such as Sue Bird, Maya Moore and Breanna Stewart turned out to watch Coach Geno Auriemma’s latest run at history.
Putting the team’s feat in perspective, Christine Brennan of USA Today tells Morning Edition that the only attainment left for UConn to pursue might be the one that Wayland Baptist University set in the 1950s, when they won 131 straight.
“That was in the days of the AAU,” Brennan says, “so I guess UConn has one more streak to go.”
She notes that the legendary UCLA men’s team under John Wooden won 88 games in a row.
“Bottom line,” she says, is that in the NCCA, “no one’s ever done this.”
Two of UConn’s four consecutive national championships happened during the streak. More than a quarter of their 100 wins came against ranked opponents, the NCAA says — but only two games ended with a margin of fewer than 10 points.
“There haven’t been too many stressful games for the Huskies faithful to watch,” the NCAA adds.
In last night’s game in Storrs, Conn., South Carolina worked to slow the pace and keep the game close in the first half and trailed by only three points in the third quarter. But the Huskies responded with stifling defense and strong rebounding to build on the 35-29 lead it had amassed at halftime.
And even though UConn’s leading scorer, Katie Lou Samuelson, being held to under 10 points, junior Gabby Williams stepped up with a career-high 26 points and 14 rebounds — along with four steals and two blocks — to help the Huskies reach the 100-win mark.
