Need a quick recap on the past week in movie news? Here are the highlights:
BIG NEWS
John Cena joins the Transformers movies: Could John Cena be the next wrestler to become a big blockbuster star? He’s joining the Transformers spin-off Bumblebee, so we think his time is now. Read more here.
SURPRISING NEWS
The Karate Kid returns: We’ve already gotten a remake of The Karate Kid, but the original movie will be resurrected for a new series called Cobra Kai that will bring back Ralph Macchio and William Zabka as still rivals in middle age. Read morehere.
SUPERHERO BUZZ
Deadpool 2 shows off: We got a few updates on Deadpool 2 this week, including a first look at Zazie Beetz as Domino, got teased about Cable and the brawls of the movie and learned the sequel will be like Rush Hour. Read more here and here and here.
EXCLUSIVE SCOOP
Samuel L. Jackson on Captain Marvel: We recently chatted with Samuel L. Jackson about The Hitman’s Bodyguard, but he also shared some thoughts on reprising his role as a younger Nick Fury in the upcoming Captain Marvel. Read all about it here.
MUST-WATCH TRAILERS
Call Me By Your Name reveals a Sundance sensation: One of the favorites of this year’s Sundance Film Festival, the romantic drama Call Me By Your Name finally has a trailer. Watch it here:
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Angelina Jolie presents First They Killed My Father: The new drama directed by Angelina Jolie, First They Killed My Father, focuses on the devastating Cambodian genocide in the 1970s? Check out the trailer here:
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Death Wish showcases a vengeful Bruce Willis: Joe Carnahan and Eli Roth’s remake of Death Wish has a new trailer with Bruce Willis going after the criminals who tore his family apart. Watch it below.
Uber leased cars it knew were unsafe to its drivers in Singapore, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal. Above, Uber’s San Francisco headquarters in June.
Eric Risberg/AP
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Eric Risberg/AP
Uber knowingly leased unsafe cars to its drivers in Singapore, The Wall Street Journalreported Thursday.
One of those cars, a recalled Honda Vezel with an Uber driver at the wheel, spouted flames from its dashboard in January, melting the car’s interior and cracking its windshield. The driver had just dropped off a passenger when he began smelling the smoke.
Uber had bought more than 1,000 of the defective cars, which were recalled by Honda in April 2016 due to an electrical component that can overheat and catch fire.
And though Uber knew the cars needed repairs to make them safe, the company continued to lease them to drivers unfixed, according to the Journal.
The newspaper says it reviewed internal Uber emails and documents, and interviewed people familiar with the company’s operations in Asia.
And those emails show executives knew the vehicles had been recalled, but didn’t want to take them off the roads. “Asking drivers to give up their keys with no suggested fix will send panic alarm bells to the mass market,” wrote Uber’s Singapore general manager in an email, the Journal reported.
Word of the fire apparently reached Uber’s executives in San Francisco shortly after the company’s insurer in Singapore said it wouldn’t cover the damage to the scorched Vezel due to the known recall.
When Uber launched in Singapore in early 2013, it marked the company’s first expansion into Asia.
It was a good market to enter: In addition to all the rain you might expect in a tropical climate with two monsoon seasons, owning a car in Singapore is extremely expensive. The government requires owners to buy a certificate of entitlement, which represents “a right to vehicle ownership and use of the limited road space for 10 years.” The certificates are released through competitive bidding, and recently they’ve fetched prices from $44,000 and up.
That kind of expense made it hard for Uber to find drivers, the Journal reports, and so the company created a unit, Lion City Rentals, that would lease cars to drivers. It represented a new approach for the company, which avoids owning assets.
Instead of buying cars from authorized Honda and Toyota dealers, the company reportedly began importing hundreds of used cars a month from small dealers in the “gray market”, where safety standards are hard to enforce. At least one of those dealers didn’t get the Vezels fixed before selling them to Uber. While Uber was aware of the problem and asked the dealer to hasten its repairs, the company continued to lease the defective vehicles to drivers without warning them of the safety issue.
Even after the fire, Uber told drivers that the Vezels needed “immediate precautionary servicing” — without mentioning the risk of fire and overheating.
In a statement to NPR, Uber says it took action, but “could have done more.”
“As soon as we learned of a Honda Vezel from the Lion City Rental fleet catching fire, we took swift action to fix the problem, in close coordination with Singapore’s Land Transport Authority as well as technical experts,” Uber said in the statement. “But we acknowledge we could have done more—and we have done so. We’ve introduced robust protocols and hired three dedicated experts in-house at LCR whose sole job is to ensure we are fully responsive to safety recalls. Since the beginning of the year, we’ve proactively responded to six vehicle recalls and will continue to do so to protect the safety of everyone who uses Uber.”
Uber lost nearly $3 billion in 2016 but is nevertheless is one of the largest privately held companies, valued at nearly $70 billion.
Usain Bolt from Jamaica celebrates winning the gold medal in the men’s 200-meter final during the athletics competitions of the 2016 Summer Olympics at the Olympic stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
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David J. Phillip/AP
Saturday in London, Jamaican Usain Bolt will run a final 100 meters at track and field’s World Championships at approximately 4:45 p.m. ET. A week later, after a relay finale, he says he’ll retire. Bolt will leave with an eye-popping highlight reel that includes eight Olympic gold medals over the past three summer games.
Initially, there were nine golds – the hallowed Triple Triple – he won the 100 meters, 200 meters and 4 X 100 relay in three straight Olympic games – 2008, 2012 and 2016. But earlier this year, Bolt lost one of the medals when a teammate on the 2008 Jamaican relay team tested positive for a banned drug after his urine sample was re-analyzed by the International Olympic Committee in 2016.
Nine or 8, I was lucky enough to see all the races.
“Here I Am”
And I remember something he said after winning the last one. It was a year ago, in Rio de Janiero, Brazil. At his press conference, someone asked Bolt about growing up in a rural part of Jamaica, playing sports like cricket and soccer. And running. Did he start with big dreams?
Not really.
“I just started out in athletics and I was really good and I just continued,” Bolt said. “Over the years, I started making goals because I started getting better and I just continued running and pushing myself and working hard until … here I am.”
Here. I. Am.
Usain Bolt has announced his presence to the world so many times over the past nine years. But no hello was as big or gob-smacking as the first one. August 2008, in China. I remember the hazy Beijing night at the Bird’s Nest Stadium. The quiet before the gun – that moment of exquisite tension in any 100- meter race. But especially now. Bolt was the sport’s new phenom; the lanky 6- foot- 5 inch Jamaican giant among much smaller and more compact sprinters, had people buzzing about his potential.
Usain Bolt from Jamaica celebrates after crossing the line to win the gold medal in the men’s 200-meter final at the 2016 Summer Olympics at the Olympic stadium in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Thursday, Aug. 18, 2016.
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Mark Baker/AP
Those 100 meters in Beijing turned the buzz to awe. Four-time Olympic medalist Ato Boldon was part of the crew covering the race as track and field analyst for NBC.
“When he accelerated from about 30 to 70 [meters],” Boldon says, “I have never seen anything like it before. And I’ve never seen anything like it since.”
Indeed, none of us at the Bird’s Nest could fathom what we were watching. The world’s fastest men blazing down the track, and suddenly it was like they were all standing still.
Except for one.
A Tractor Wheel
Beijing was our introduction to the Bolt surge, and the most dramatic. But since 2008, we’ve seen it again and again. In the 100 meters and 200 meters, his preferred and best distance. Surging and winning without a cloud of doping hanging over him.
There is a physical explanation.
“Usain Bolt is a big wheel,” Boldon explains. “Think of a tractor wheel, able to turn over with the same speed as a smaller wheel. Once a big wheel gets going, it’s going to cover so much more ground that quite frankly, small wheels have no chance.”
“That’s why people ask me, how would you have done against Usain Bolt? Well, I’m 5 feet 9 inches. I’d have gotten out ahead of him and right about 40, 50 meters, he would’ve caught me and it wouldn’t have been pretty in the end.”
Four-time Olympic medalist for Trinidad and Tobago and NBC Track and Field Ato Boldon says Usain Bolt is the greatest sprinter of all time.
Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images for IAAF
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Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images for IAAF
But for those of us who have simply watched, it’s always been pretty in the end. The joyous celebrations, the lightning bolt poses (which actually aren’t), the smiling and mugging to the cameras pre-race, when the tension is supposed to be highest.
This irresistible combo of speed and charisma let us overlook the few public blemishes – a sex romp in Brazil, selfies included, with the widow of a slain drug kingpin, or Bolt’s long time relationship with a controversial German sports doctor who’s known to inject patients with calves’ blood and the crests of cockerels.
In the end, they were minor speed bumps on the road to what should be a towering legacy.
“Jesse Owens was history’s most important sprinter, for obvious reasons,” Boldon says. “Carl Lewis made it profitable to be a sprinter. He sort of dragged track and field kicking and screaming into the professional era. But Usain Bolt is the greatest sprinter of all time. And I think he has been maybe the best thing that has happened to this sport in many generations.”
Which prompts the questions: who will fill the void? Will there ever by anyone as great?
“I have to be careful with that,” Boldon says. “I was on the podium for the Michael Johnson race [the 200 meters at the 1996 Summer Olympics], and I remember everyone being blown away by Michael running 19.32, when nobody had gotten close.”
“I felt that night that record would never be broken. That was 1996. Twelve years later, it was gone.”
Bolt, of course, smashed his 2008 Olympic world record times in boththe 100 meters and 200 meters, a year later.
“I think Bolt’s records [9.58 seconds in the 100; 19.19 seconds in the 200] are so good they won’t be gone in 12 years,” Boldon says. “I think they’ll last for a very, very long time. But I won’t be so bold as to say they’ll never be broken.”
Jamaica’s Usain Bolt celebrates after winning the “Salute to a Legend ” 100 meters during the Racers Grand Prix n Kingston, Jamaica, Saturday, June 10, 2017. Bolt is set to run his final 100 meters at the World Championships on Saturday in London.
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Bryan Cummings/AP
Last Bit Of Business
Bolt comes to London this weekend for the World Championships after a subpar season. His fastest time in the 100 meters this year ranks him seventh in the world. There’s talk about him being an underdog, to which he answers, “If I show up at a championship, I’m confident. I’m fully ready to go.”
Ato Boldon says it’s critically important to Bolt to finish with a win. Despite all that’s come before.
“He does not want to lose, he cannot lose, because he feels that’ll put a little bit of a dent in what otherwise has been a perfect vehicle.”
But Boldon thinks Bolt’s legacy is safe.
“If he doesn’t have a good race here in London, people will say well that’s too bad he couldn’t go out on top,” Boldon says. “But he does have eight Olympic gold medals, and I think most real track and field fans will remember the joy they felt watching him perform over the last nine seasons.”
On Saturday, one last time in the 100m, Bolt hopes to proclaim, “Here I Am.” When he’s done, probably in 9 point something seconds, the world will say, with a touch of sadness, “There he goes.”
NPR’s Maquita Peters produced this story for the Web.
Shannon McGrath, pictured with her son Rayder, says it has been a lot easier to make her medical appointments recently, thanks to help from a “patient navigator” — assigned to her by Kaiser Permanente — who arranged McGrath’s transportation.
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Kristian Foden-Vencil/OPB
When a receptionist hands out a form to fill out at a doctor’s office, the questions are usually about medical issues: What’s the visit for? Are you allergic to anything? Up to date on vaccines?
But some health organizations are now asking much more general questions: Do you have trouble paying your bills? Do you feel safe at home? Do you have enough to eat? Research shows these factors can be as important to health as exercise habits or whether you get enough sleep.
Some doctors even think someone’s ZIP code is as important to their health as their genetic code.
That’s why Shannon McGrath was asked to fill in a “life situation form” this spring when she turned up for her first obstetrics appointment at Kaiser Permanente in Portland, Ore. She was 36 weeks pregnant.
“When I got pregnant, I was homeless,” she says. “I didn’t have a lot of structure. And so it was hard to make an appointment. I had struggles with child care for my other kids, transportation, financial struggles.”
The form asked about her rent, her debts, her child care situation and other social factors. On the strength of her answers, Kaiser Permanente assigned her what is called a “patient navigator.”
“She automatically set up my next few appointments and then set up the rides for them, because that was my No. 1 struggle,” McGrath says. “She assured me that child care wouldn’t be an issue and that it would be OK if they came. So I brought the kids and everything was easy, just like she said it would be.”
McGrath’s navigator helped her get in touch with local nonprofits that helped her with rent, a phone and essentials for the baby — such as diapers and bottles — all in the hope that making her life easier might keep her healthier and, in turn, keep Kaiser’s medical costs lower.
McGrath says her patient navigator, Angelette Hamilton, was a bureaucratic ninja, removing paperwork obstacles that kept her from taking care of herself and her family.
Angelette Hamilton works as a patient navigator at Kaiser Permanente Northwest, helping patients get social services. After Kaiser started offering patients this sort of support, one study found a 40 percent reduction in emergency room use.
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Kristian Foden-Vencil/OPB
Patient navigators have been around for a while. What is new is the form that McGrath filled out and how hospitals are using the socioeconomic and other data the forms glean to serve patients. The details now go into a patient’s file, which means providers such as Dr. Sarah Lambert have more information at a glance.
“I find it incredibly helpful because it can be very hard to find out,” says Lambert, who is McGrath’s OB-GYN and works at Kaiser Permanente Northwest. “Having it coded right there — we have this problem list that jumps up — really can give you a much better understanding as to what the patient’s going through.”
Federal officials introduced new medical codes for the social determinants of health a few years ago, says Cara James, director of the Office of Minority Health at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“More providers are beginning to recognize the impact that the social determinants have on their patients,” she says.
Nicole Friedman, a regional manager at Kaiser Permanente Northwest, agrees. But she goes one step further.
She hopes giving doctors more information about the home life of each patient will push health care in a new direction — away from more high-priced treatments and toward providing the basics.
“My personal belief is that putting more money into health care is a moral sin,” she says. “We need to take money out of health care and put it into other social inputs like housing and food and transportation.”
Linking health organizations like Kaiser with nonprofit social services such as the Oregon Food Bank will help governments and medical providers see where their money can make the biggest difference, Friedman says.
For example, spending more on affordable housing for homeless people can also have health benefits, in turn saving the government money down the line.
McGrath was initially skeptical when doctors offered to help her with things like rent and transportation.
“I didn’t want someone to see my situation and have it raise alarms,” she says.
But ultimately she was glad to have shared that information.
“I’m able to look at life and not feel overwhelmed or burdened,” she says, “or like I’ve got the whole world on my shoulders.
This story is part of NPR’s reporting partnership with Oregon Public Broadcasting and Kaiser Health News, which is an independent journalism organization and not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.
