Month: December 2017

Mexican filmmaker Guillermo del Toro’s fantasy romance “The Shape of Water” led the nominations for the 2018 Golden Globes on Monday, landing seven nods, including for best drama film, director and actress Sally Hawkins.

Press freedom movie “The Post” had six nominations, including for its director, Steven Spielberg, and stars Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep.

Teen coming of age movie “Lady Bird” got four nominations, including for best musical or comedy film and for lead actress Saoirse Ronan.

British World War II tale “Dunkirk,” small-town drama “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri” and gay romance “Call Me By Your Name” also won nominations in the best drama film category.

Best comedy or musical film nominees also included James Franco’s “The Disaster Artist,” racial horror movie “Get Out,” ice-skating saga “I, Tonya” and “The Greatest Showman.”

Winners will be announced on Jan. 7 at a televised ceremony hosted by Seth Meyers in Beverly Hills, California.

For television, British royal series “The Crown,” “Game of Thrones,” “The Handmaid’s Tale,” “Stranger Things” and “This Is Us” will compete for the best drama series award.

“Black-ish,” “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” “Master of None, “SMILF” and “Will & Grace” were nominated in the best TV comedy category.
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Saudi Arabia announced on Monday it will allow movie theaters to open in the conservative kingdom next year, for the first time in more than 35 years, in the latest social push by the country’s young crown prince.

It’s the latest stark reversal in a county where movie theaters were shut down in the 1980’s during a wave of ultraconservatism in the country. Many of Saudi Arabia’s clerics view Western movies and even Arabic films made in Egypt and Lebanon as sinful.

Despite decades of ultraconservative dogma, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has sought to ram through a number of major social reforms with support from his father, King Salman.

The crown prince is behind measures such as lifting a ban on women driving next year and bringing back concerts and other forms of entertainment to satiate the desires of the country’s majority young population.

The 32-year-old heir to the throne’s social push is part of his so-called Vision 2030, a blueprint for the country that aims to boost local spending and create jobs amid sustained lower oil prices.

According to Monday’s announcement, a resolution was passed paving the way for licenses to be granted to commercial movie theaters, with the first cinemas expected to open in March 2018.

Many Saudis took to Twitter to express their joy at the news, posting images of buckets of movie theater popcorn and moving graphics of people dancing, fainting and crying.

“It’s spectacular news. We are in a state of shock,” said Saudi actor and producer, Hisham Fageeh.

Fageeh starred in and co-produced the Saudi film “Barakah Meets Barakah” by director Mahmoud Sabbagh, which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in February. The movie, which has been called the kingdom’s first romantic comedy, tells the story of a civil servant who falls for a Saudi girl whose Instagram posts have made her a local celebrity.

“We are essentially pioneers because we all took risks to work in this industry,” he said. “We were super lucky, because luck is always a factor of whether we make it or not.”

Even with the decades-long ban on movie theaters, Saudi filmmakers and movie buffs were able to circumvent traditional censors by streaming movies online and watching films on satellite TV. Many also travel to neighboring countries like Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to go to movie theaters.

Despite there being no movie theaters in Saudi Arabia, young Saudi filmmakers have received government support and recognition in recent years.

The government has backed a Saudi film festival that’s taken place for the past few years in the eastern city of Dhahran. This year, some 60 Saudi films were screened.

The film “Wadjda” made history in 2013 by becoming the first Academy Award entry for Saudi Arabia, though it wasn’t nominated for the Oscars. The movie follows the story of a 10-year-old girl who dreams of having a bicycle, just like boys have in her ultraconservative neighborhood where men and women are strictly segregated and where boys and girls attend separate schools. The film was written and directed by Saudi female director Haifaa al-Mansour, who shot the film entirely in the kingdom.

That film and “Barakah meets Barakah”, though four years apart, tackle the issue of gender segregation in Saudi Arabia, which remains largely enforced.

It was not immediately clear if movie theaters would have family-only sections, segregating women and families from male-only audiences. Another unknown was whether most major Hollywood, Bollywood and Arabic movie releases would be shown in theaters and how heavily edited the content will be.

The Ministry of Culture and Information said there are no additional details available at this time, responding to a query from The Associated Press. The government said it will announce regulations in the coming weeks.

Fageeh said that while he’s concerned with the censorship rules that might be in place, he’s also concerned that scenes of violence are typically permitted on screens across the Arab world, but “any kind of intimacy and love is considered taboo and a moral violation.”

“It’s a global conversation we need to have,” he said.

The Saudi government says the opening of movie theaters will contribute more than 90 billion riyals ($24 billion) to the economy and create more than 30,000 jobs by 2030. The kingdom says there will be 300 cinemas with around 2,000 screens built in the country by 2030.

Fageeh said it’s important the government provides even greater support to local filmmakers now that international films will dominate theaters.

“There needs to be an effort to be cognizant and inclusive for this element of local films or we will be completely flushed out because of the nature of capitalism and will be operating in the margins,” he said.
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Mixed messages from the United States and concerns of a North Korean provocation could undermine South Korea’s plans to use the upcoming PyeongChang Winter Olympics to further peace and reconciliation efforts.

On Sunday, Nikki Haley, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview with Fox News that the full U.S. Olympic team would participate in the winter games to be held in South Korea in February. However, she again left open the possibility that heightened security concerns could force the U.S. to reconsider this commitment. Haley said, “We always look out for the best interests of United States citizens.”

Last week Haley said U.S. participation was an “open question” due to high tensions with North Korea over its continued missile and nuclear tests.

The White House and State Department have both expressed unqualified support for sending the full Olympics team and delegation. White House press secretary Sarah Sanders wrote on Twitter Thursday, “The protection of Americans is our top priority and we are engaged with the South Koreans and other partner nations to secure the venues.”

But Haley’s equivocal comments reflect increasing anxiety the U.S. nuclear standoff with North Korea could mar the games. 

H.R. McMaster, President Trump’s national security adviser, recently said the potential for military conflict between the U.S. and North Korea is “increasing every day,” as the Kim Jong Un government’s efforts to develop a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), able to target the U.S., constitute an unacceptable security threat.

North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said that U.S. and South Korean large-scale military drills conducted last week made the outbreak of war “an established fact.” On Monday, Japan joined the U.S. and South Korea in two days of missile tracking drills.

South Korean anxiety

Officials in Seoul have opted to focus on the reassurance of Olympics participation offered by the White House.

“President Trump has said the U.S. team will participate in the PyeongChang Olympics in a phone call between two heads of South Korea and the U.S. on November 30th. Also, he promised to send high-level delegation during the Olympics,” said South Korean Unification spokesperson Lee Eugene on Friday.

But South Korean newspapers on Monday voiced alarm that the U.S. might withdraw from the Olympics, especially after the International Olympic Committee banned Russia from participating over state-sponsored athlete doping violations.

“Dark clouds are hanging over the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics,” wrote the Korea Joongang Daily in an editorial Monday. Adding, “We wonder what our government has been doing to reassure the United States.”

A Korean Herald editorial said it is “unusual and shocking” that a U.S. official would contemplate such a “worst case scenario” regarding a North Korean threat during the Olympics, and said it indicates “a grave (security) situation indeed.”

Peace Olympics

South Korean President Moon Jae-in has emphasized that the PyeongChang Olympic Games should be an “Olympics for Peace,” and his government has been urging North Korea to participate, to both insure there are no provocations during the games, and to help ease regional tensions.

A Korea Times editorial criticized Moon for focusing more on persuading its adversary in the North to come to the games while seeming to neglect the concerns of “our allies and traditional powerhouses in winters sports.”

The North Korean Olympic Committee missed the Oct. 30 deadline to register for the winter games, but the International Olympic Committee has indicated it is still not too late. Figure skaters Ryom Tae Ok and Kim Ju Sik are the only North Korean athletes to qualify for the Olympics so far.

North Korean provocation

The possibility that North Korea would attempt to disrupt the Olympics with a missile or nuclear test, a cyberattack or even launching a minor skirmish against South Korea is a credible threat, said Ahn Chan-il, a North Korean defector and analyst with the World Institute of North Korean Studies

“If North Korea decides not to participate and relations between North Korea and the U.S. worsen, it is possible North Korea may disturb our glorious event by provocation,” said Ahn. 

In the last two years, North Korea has conducted numerous missile launches and three nuclear tests, despite facing increasing international sanctions for its provocative actions.

After a long range Hwasong-15 missile test in November, which reportedly reached an altitude of 4,475 kilometers and flew 950 kilometers, Pyongyang claimed it successfully reached operational ICBM capability. But the U.S. and South Korea dispute the operational aspect of this claim and expect further tests in the future.

Youmi Kim in Seoul contributed to this report.
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Simeon Booker, a trail-blazing journalist and the first full-time African-American reporter at The Washington Post, has died at the age of 99.

Booker died Sunday in Solomons, Maryland, according to a Post obituary, citing his wife Carol.

Booker served for decades as the Washington bureau chief for the African-American publications Jet weekly and Ebony monthly. He is credited with bringing to national prominence the death of Emmett Till, the 14-year old African-American boy whose brutal murder in Mississippi became a galvanizing point for the nascent civil rights movement.

Booker was born in Baltimore and raised in Youngstown, Ohio. He joined the Post in 1952, but moved on two years later to found the Washington bureau for Jet and Ebony.

In 2016, he received a career George Polk Award in journalism.
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A rare painting by Albert Namatjira, one of Australia’s most iconic Aboriginal artists, is to be sold to raise money for kidney patients in remote parts of central Australia. Indigenous people suffer kidney disease at 15 times the national average.

Albert Namatjira was a trailblazer. Born in 1902 near Alice Springs in Australia’s rugged Northern Territory, he did not start painting seriously until he was 32-years old.

His Western-inspired watercolors were a radical departure from traditional Indigenous art’s symbols and design, and he became a household name in Australia. The renowned Aboriginal artist was even featured on an Australian postage stamp in the late 1960s.

His famous painting, called “Mount Hermannsburg”, is considered to be one of the most valuable examples of his work. It has been donated by an Aboriginal group to a renal center in Alice Springs to raise money to help indigenous patients receive treatment nearer to home rather than travel hundreds of kilometers.

Sarah Brown, the head of The Purple House, the kidney unit that has been given the Namatjira painting, says it is an incredible gesture.

“So I got a phone call saying ‘hey Sarah, the Ngurratjuta [Aboriginal Corporation] board has met, we would like you to come to the Araluen Arts Center [in Alice Springs] and choose an Albert Namatjira painting.’ And I thought I am never going to have a phone call like that ever again. Central Australia is really the center of the universe for kidney failure, there is well over 350 people in Central Australia who need dialysis, which is usually hemodialysis, which is three days a week, five-hours a session,” said Brown.

Namatjira’s ‘Mount Hermannsburg’ painting is expected to fetch about $75,000 at auction.

The painter died in 1959 at the age of 57.

Australia’s Aboriginal people are by far the country’s most disadvantaged group, suffering high rates of ill health, poverty, imprisonment and unemployment. They make up about 3 per cent of Australia’s population of almost 25 million people.

 
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A sculptor who produced the image of Queen Elizabeth used on Britain’s coins has been chosen to create a new statue of Princess Diana, the office of Princes William and Harry said Sunday, to commemorate 20 years since her death.

Ian Rank-Broadley, whose effigy of the Queen has appeared on all UK and Commonwealth coinage since 1998, will design the statue, which will not be unveiled until 2019.

“Ian is an extremely gifted sculptor and we know that he will create a fitting and lasting tribute to our mother,” Prince William and his younger brother, Harry, said in a statement.

In January, the brothers commissioned a statue in honor of their mother, who died in a Paris car crash 20 years ago, to be erected outside their official London home Kensington Palace.

Diana, the first wife of the heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles, was killed when the limousine carrying her and her lover Dodi al-Fayed crashed in a Paris tunnel in August 1997.

William was 15 and Harry was 12 at the time.

“We have been touched by the kind words and memories so many people have shared about our mother over these past few months,” the brothers said. “It is clear the significance of her work is still felt by many in the UK and across the world, even 20 years after her death.”

It had been hoped that the statue would be unveiled before the end of the year to mark the anniversary, but Kensington Palace said that it was now envisaged that the statue would be unveiled in 2019.

The first permanent memorial to her, a 210-meter (689-foot) long fountain was unveiled in Hyde Park in 2004 after years of bureaucratic wrangling and squabbling over the design.
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If God were a stonemason … Utah’s Arches National Park would be the back room of his workshop. The Arches National Park, established almost a century ago, is now one of the most popular destinations for Americans and tourists from around the world. The park has more than 2,000 natural stone arches, in addition to hundreds of soaring pinnacles, massive fins and giant balanced rocks. VOA’s Alex Yanevskyy had a chance to take in these majestic wonders.
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