January 3, 2018

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Entertainment January 3, 2018

Today in Movie Culture: 'Dunkirk' Meets 'Darkest Hour,' New 'Star Wars: The Last Jedi' Porg Toys and More

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

Mashup of the Day:

Given that both Darkest Hour and Dunkirk deal with the same events during World War II, it was only a matter of time before they were joined together like so (via Geek Tyrant):

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Re-created Scene of the Day:

You’ve seen Star Wars: The Last Jedi, now see the awesome Snoke throne scene redone with Lego by Huxley Berg Studios:

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Action Figure of the Day:

Speaking of The Last Jedi spoilers, here’s a new unofficial BBQ Porg action figure from Forces of Dorkness:

How does #PorgNation feel about this amazing action figure, @AshCrossan? pic.twitter.com/RXnzN18hP9

— ErikDavis (@ErikDavis) January 3, 2018

DIY Craft of the Day:

And speaking of Porgs, learn how to make your own adorable nesting dolls from the official Star Wars site with the link in this tweet:

Create your own flock of porgs with this easy DIY craft. https://t.co/XtNP2N098Kpic.twitter.com/kYs9wFTTd6

— Star Wars (@starwars) January 3, 2018

FX Breakdown of the Day:

See how they brought Rachel back for Blade Runner 2049 in this effects breakdown from IAMAG:

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Vintage Image of the Day:

Legendary editor Thelma Schoonmaker, who turns 78 today, with Martin Scorsese and director Michael Wadleigh and the spirit of W.C. Fields during the making of the documentary Woodstock in 1970:

Actor in the Spotlight:

The latest edition of No Small Parts looks at the career of Daniel Kaluuya leading up to his breakthrough in Get Out:

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Cosplay of the Day:

We’ve probably seen this Transformers cosplayer before, but his Bumbebee is so great it’s worth sharing again:

This Transformers cosplay is incredibly realistic ?? pic.twitter.com/H3uNAnL2Bq

— INSIDER (@thisisinsider) January 3, 2018

Remixed Movie of the Day:

Eclectic Method repurposes some dialogue and sounds from Doctor Strange and turns them into a dance mix:

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Classic Movie Clips of the Day:

This week is the 25th anniversary of the Hong Kong premiere of Chen Kaige’s Farewell My Concubine. Watch 10 clips from the Oscar-nominated classic below.

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and

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Business January 3, 2018

Sweeping New Music Law Expedites A $1.6 Billion Lawsuit Against Spotify

The introduction of the Music Modernization Act had the effect of prompting Wixen, a music publishing company, to file legal action against Spotify before the beginning of the new year.

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When it comes to reporting on Spotify and the company’s strained relationship with songwriters and publishers, it’s beginning to sound like a broken … system. But a possible fix is in.

Just two days before New Year’s Eve, the music publishing company Wixen, which manages the compositions of a wide cross section of artists from Neil Young to Rage Against The Machine, filed a lawsuit against Spotify over its failure to properly license those works before making them available to stream.

The new lawsuit is not the first (or the second or the third) brought against the world’s most popular streaming service over compositions, which are legally discrete from recordings and require a separate license (a “mechanical”). In fact, Wixen’s action is directly related to a $43 million settlement that Spotify struck six months ago over a largely identical suit against it that it hoped would sunset further court battles.

“Unfortunately, the Ferrick settlement,” reads Wixen’s complaint, referring to that agreement last year, “is still grossly insufficient to compensate songwriters and publishers for Spotify’s actions, as well as procedurally unjust.” It seeks a “total statutory award of at least $1.6 billion.” That language closely mirrors that of another legal action, brought against Spotify one month after the Ferrick settlement was announced.

The timing of the suit is inauspicious for Spotify — Wednesday it reportedly filed papers with the SEC for an initial listing on the stock exchange some time in the first half of this year.

While the reason for the suit isn’t new, the reason for its as-late-in-the-year-as-you-can-get filing is. If that settlement didn’t quite protect Spotify against lawsuits like Wixen’s (songwriters and publishers can opt out of the Ferrick deal) then a new piece of legislation will — and it’s the reason the company is going after Spotify now.

On Dec. 21, 2017, Republican Rep. Doug Collins of Georgia introduced that new piece of bipartisan legislation, which makes sweeping changes to the labyrinthine licensing system for compositions that has left many songwriters in the lurch and tech companies on the hook. It would also prevent lawsuits like Wixen’s from being filed.

“It’s the Music Modernization Act, and the Jan. 1 deadline it imposes forced our clients’ hands,” Daniel Schacht of Donahue Fitzgerald LLP, the firm handling Wixen’s case, tells NPR of the Dec. 29 filing.

“We’ve been working on this now for a little over 4 1/2 years,” Collins said in an interview with NPR conducted on Dec. 20. “We’re trying to provide a way so that [digital services] can provide the music they want to, have a safe haven where they can match the royalties, where the songwriters can also benefit — that they can get fairly compensated. It’s really is a product of a lot of hard work to reach a consensus. I have to admit, there were times during the journey that I would have — that I’d just throw up my hands and not find the answer.”

The Music Modernization Act establishes, among many other things, what tech companies, songwriters and publishers have needed but failed to create for some time: a central database that identifies which songwriter and/or publisher controls which composition. (A bill introduced late last summer by Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner, R-Wis., also attempted to address the database issue but was not taken seriously by the stakeholders involved.)

That database, while long needed, has never been created — or really even come close — mostly owing to its cost and disagreements about control of the proprietary information that would have to be held within it.

“It allows the digital service providers to have a central place to go for not only paying royalties,” Collins says, “but protects songwriters from them using things they shouldn’t be. But also, to give songwriters a place where they can be confident that they’re going to be compensated as well.”

To accomplish this, tech companies would foot the bill for its creation in exchange for a blanket license that would cover the compositions within it, helping them pay the songwriters who control those works.

Digital services “will basically be indemnified, where they will not be able to be sued, which is something that songwriters and publishers had to give them — with all these things, it’s all quid pro quo,” Michael Eames, president of the Association of Independent Music Publishers, tells NPR. Eames says that organizations like his, which represents smaller music publishers, could benefit from the bill. “We’re having to monitor and police our data in multiple databases through multiple vendors in order to get paid. It’s difficult, to say the least.”

The bill was drafted after consultation with industry groups that represent the major stakeholders involved, including the National Music Publishers Association, the Digital Media Association (which represents services like Spotify), ASCAP and BMI (the two leading performance-rights organizations) and the Nashville Songwriters Association International, among others. All support its passage.

However, Songwriters Guild of America President Rick Carnes issued a letter the day of the bill’s introduction detailing his organization’s doubts around the new law. Among his concerns:

… serious fairness, transparency and practical issues related to the proposed processes of setting up the licensing collective, the distributing of unidentified monies on a market share basis and the need to better protect music creator economic rights in that context, the vague nature of any opt-out mechanisms, the granting of relief from statutory damages liability to prior willful infringers, the scope of the musical composition database (including songwriter/composer information), the provisions concerning shortfall and other funding aspects of the collective, the absence of direct distribution of royalties by the collective to songwriters and composers, the vague nature of the audit activities to be optionally conducted by the collective, and the complications in that and other regards raised by obvious conflicts of interest issues.

Spotify declined to comment on both the Music Modernization Act and Wixen’s lawsuit. But considering its forthcoming public listing, it will have to assuage investors’ worries over a seemingly endless parade of litigation. Apple was sued on Dec. 28 over the same issue.

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Sports January 3, 2018

Terrell's World Marathon Challenge Raises Money For Mental Health

David Greene talks to Jonathan Terrell, founder of the consulting firm KCIC, about running seven marathons on seven continents in seven days to raise money for pediatric mental health.

AILSA CHANG, HOST:

Here’s a question for you – would you run a marathon? Maybe. But what about seven marathons? What about seven marathons in seven days on seven different continents? Well, that’s exactly what Jonathan Terrell is planning to do this month. It’s called The World Marathon Challenge. And he’s running to raise money for pediatric mental health. Terrell lives in Washington, D.C. And when he stopped by our studio, our co-host David Greene asked him, why are you doing this to yourself?

JONATHAN TERRELL: I think I might be a little crazy. And that’s why I took it on because it is so crazy. And if I was running a 5K, I don’t think anyone would care.

DAVID GREENE, HOST:

Have you been a marathon runner for a long time?

TERRELL: Well, not really. I’m 55 now. And I ran my first marathon when I was 49.

GREENE: Wow. OK.

TERRELL: And I’ve – did the JFK 50-mile Ultra Marathon, and that was my 25th marathon. So I’ve been packing them in.

GREENE: And so what is the training regimen beyond what you’re describing? I mean, are you on a special diet? Do you have to kind of get your head in the right place to get ready for something like this?

TERRELL: There’s the actual physical training. And I train about 20 to 25 hours a week. I do triathlon training – so a lot of running but also swimming and biking and strength training. Secondly, I’m very particular about my diet. And then, as you say, the mental game is really huge. And, you know, exercises in belief and gratitude and meditation are all part of how I get myself ready for this.

GREENE: So what is your exercise? Belief – is that what you said?

TERRELL: So, you know, I start off with gratitude. Grateful to be in this physical shape. Grateful for the people in my life who are supporting me. But I also have to visualize and believe that I can achieve this. And once you start thinking that defeatist way, pretty soon you’re dropping out. But I do consciously exercise a sense of belief that I will get to the finish line in each of these seven marathons.

GREENE: I keep going back to you saying you’re 55 years old. I mean…

TERRELL: But I’m spry.

GREENE: A spry 55. I mean, is there something different in your experience, do you think, compared to someone who has been running marathons since they were, you know, like, 14?

TERRELL: Well, I come from a place of having health problems in my mid-40s. And I had kids late in life. And I think when you start having children in your 40s, it makes you attitudinally stay a little bit younger, perhaps, because I want to be physical and present and involved in my children’s lives.

GREENE: I just want to get kind of a picture of what your week is going to be like. Where’s the first marathon?

TERRELL: Well, we’re going to be meeting up in Cape Town.

GREENE: OK. South Africa, right?

TERRELL: South Africa, yes. And then we’ll fly down to Nuvo, Antarctica. And then two hours later, we’ll run the first marathon. After that, we’ll all get back to Cape Town and run the second. And then on to Perth, Australia – from there to Dubai, from there to Lisbon, Portugal, from there to Barranquilla, Colombia and finishing, finally, in Miami in Florida.

GREENE: And you’re traveling with a group. Are you’re also running with other people, or is this a very solitary thing for you?

TERRELL: No. It’s an organized event. The first two years, there were 12 runners. There was about 30 last year. And this year, it’s much bigger. It will be 60. And there’s a very great camaraderie between runners when you’re on these kinds of events and a lot of high-fives and encouragement and all that. So I think there will be, you know, a good energy and a good group dynamic.

GREENE: Well, congratulations for improving your health. It sounds like this is just such an important cause that you’re working for. And best of luck to you in these seven marathons.

TERRELL: Thank you.

CHANG: That was runner Jonathon Terrell. He plans to run seven marathons in seven days on seven continents in January.

Copyright © 2018 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced using a proprietary transcription process developed with NPR. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.

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Health January 3, 2018

Brush With Death Leads Doctor To Focus On Patient Perspective

A doctor’s nearly fatal medical event opened her eyes to communication lapses, uncoordinated care and at times a total lack of empathy in the health care system.

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The searing abdominal pain came on suddenly while Dr. Rana Awdish was having dinner with a friend. Soon she was lying in the back seat of the car racing to Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, where Awdish was completing a fellowship in critical care.

On that night nearly a decade ago, a benign tumor in Awdish’s liver burst, causing a cascade of medical catastrophes that almost killed her. She nearly bled to death. She was seven months pregnant at the time, and the baby did not survive. She had a stroke and, over the days and weeks to come, suffered multiple organ failures. She required several surgeries and months of rehabilitation to learn to walk and speak again.

Helpless, lying on a gurney in the hospital’s labor and delivery area that first night, Awdish willed the medical staff to see her as a person rather than an interesting case of what she termed “Abdominal Pain and Fetal Demise.” But their medical training to remain clinically detached worked against her. Later, in the intensive care unit, she overheard her case being discussed by the surgical resident during morning rounds.

“She’s been trying to die on us,” he said. It made her angry, she says, because she was trying desperately not to die. “I felt he was positing me as an adversary. If my care team didn’t believe in me, what possible hope did I have?”

Awdish survived and returned to her work at Henry Ford Hospital, but her perspective was indelibly altered. In her recently published book, In Shock, she describes her through-the-looking-glass experience as a critically ill patient. The ordeal opened her eyes to communication lapses, uncoordinated care and at times a total lack of empathy at an institution that says on its home page that health care there “should be built around just one person: you.”

The health system has embraced many of her suggestions for change.

Today, she splits her time working as a critical care physician and as the medical director of care experience for the Henry Ford Health System. In the past five years, she and three colleagues have developed a program called Clear Conversations to improve empathy and communication with patients. At retreats that typically last two days, Henry Ford Hospital staff practice having difficult conversations with improvisational actors who play their patients. The program also trains providers in fundamental patient communications skills and offers real-time physician “shadowing” to provide feedback.

“To listen to our patients with a generous ear does require a willingness to relinquish control of the narrative,” Dr. Rana Awdish says in her book.

Courtesy of Henry Ford Health System

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Courtesy of Henry Ford Health System

Awdish regularly speaks about her work around the country at conferences and medical schools, “trying to capture the students a bit upstream,” she says.

“To listen to our patients with a generous ear does require a willingness to relinquish control of the narrative,” she says in her book. “Our questions allow for the possibility that we do not already know the answers. By not dominating the flow of information, we allow the actual history to emerge.”

Awdish spoke with me recently about her book. The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Interview Highlights

What about being a patient surprised you?

What surprised me the most about being a critically ill patient was how much what I needed as a patient was different than what as a physician I would have thought I needed. As a physician, I was truly focused on trying to provide the best medical care possible. I thought that meant trying to treat people and bring them back to health as fast as possible, not staying in emotional spaces.

As a patient, I realized that someone could treat me but if I didn’t feel they really saw me, that somehow I didn’t feel healed. That emotional space is really where healing occurs.

Through the Clear Conversations program, you’re trying to address the lack of effective communication and empathy you experienced as a patient. Did it help or hinder you that you were bringing this idea to your own hospital?

What helped me in my patient experience was that as much as I saw what was missing, I also saw myself in every failure. And it was very clear that as a physician I was a product of my training. We all are. That removed much of the shame. That very much helped.

Though I believed we were doing this for the patients, what was shocking for me was how valuable the physicians found the training. As physician and author Atul Gawande said, “We all need a coach.” Once we go into practice, where do you go for guidance?

Do the changes really “take” after a two-day workshop?

By immersing departments, by training not only senior staff physicians in how to have these conversations with patients but also their fellows and residents, we gain traction. Because if residents don’t see the communication tools valued by their mentors, they won’t value it. And everyone holds each other accountable. Everyone’s ears are attuned to the same thing. It does start to create change in the sense that expectations have changed for everybody.

How is insurance a barrier to change?

The system is not set up to facilitate conversation, to facilitate time spent with patients. It doesn’t facilitate things that are of value. The need to see patients so often to keep up productivity, and the limitations on time because we’re so caught up in electronic medical record charting — all those things pull you away from patients. It’s up to physicians to keep that space sacred against the competing priorities.

Is there anything that patients can do to help connect with a physician?

What I most wish people knew is that while the system is broken, the people are good. The system actually obstructs things like communication and access. So it’s up to us to figure out the best way to communicate on a one-on-one basis and create that sacred space between ourselves.

Kaiser Health News is an editorially independent news service that is part of the nonpartisan Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Michelle Andrews is on Twitter @mandrews110.

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