12/05/2018 | Page 2 of 2

‘Black Panther’ Poised to Become an Oscars Heavyweight

By Uponent | 12/05/2018 | No Comments | Entertainment

“Black Panther” has, in a way, already been the Oscars.

Much of the film’s cast was eagerly highlighted at March’s ceremony: a welcome splash of blockbuster luster at an Academy Awards that largely lacked it. “Black Panther” had at the time already been in theaters for a few weeks, leading host Jimmy Kimmel to note:

“This is a night for positivity and our plan is to shine a light on a group of outstanding and inspiring films, each and every one of which got crushed by ‘Black Panther’ this weekend,” said Kimmel while much of the audience either laughed or winced. (On Oscar Sunday alone, “Black Panther” grossed $19.9 million.)

As Hollywood’s awards season properly gets under way, “Black Panther” is poised to return to the Academy Awards, but this time as a nominee — and potentially a major one. Ryan Coogler’s superhero sensation has already notched countless records, pulverized box-office myths and set new marks for inclusivity. And now, “Black Panther” is in line to shatter Oscar norms, too.

All of this year’s contenders have by now screened, and Oscar prognosticators generally have “Black Panther” in, comfortably, as a best picture nominee. Both the pundit survey “Gurus of Gold” and Hollywood Reporter awards analyst Scott Feinberg place “Black Panther” fifth, behind front-runners “A Star Is Born,” “Roma,” “Green Book ”and “The Favourite.” Gold Derby slots “Black Panther” in at No. 7, still easily within the category’s range of up to 10 nominees.

Much is still in flux in the Oscar race ahead of Thursday morning’s Golden Globes nominations. But unless something drastic happens, “Black Panther” will next month become the first comic book film to be nominated for best picture and easily Marvel Studios’ most significant Oscar contender ever.

That’s very good news for ABC’s Feb. 24 telecast which is coming off an all-time low of 26.5 million viewers. Some 55.2 million watched “Titanic” sweep the 1997 Oscars, and producers have long harbored dreams of another big-tent blockbuster pulling viewers to a broadcast increasingly dominated by independent films like “The Shape of Water,” “Moonlight” and “Spotlight.” Usually, bigger movies mean bigger ratings.

For the makers of “Black Panther,” it’s a new chapter for a film — with more than $1.3 billion in ticket sales, the third-highest all-time domestic gross and the biggest box-office hit ever directed by a black man — that has already filled record books. What does Coogler think of “Black Panther” as an Oscar movie?

“Fortunately, I don’t have to think about it that much,” the 32-year-old filmmaker of “Fruitvale Station” and “Creed” said in an interview. “I’ve grown to have close relationships with my collaborators, so I care about the crafts people who work on the film and the actors who work on the film. Because of those relationships, I’m happy when they’re happy. It’s always nice when people are recognized for their work. But beyond that, I really don’t worry about it.”

Yet few films will be watched more closely through awards season than “Black Panther,” which is also in the running for Ruth Carter’s costume design, the cinematography of Rachel Morrison (who last year became the first woman ever nominated in the category), Hannah Beachler’s production design, Coogler’s direction, the script by Joe Robert Cole and Coogler, Kendrick Lamar’s song “All the Stars” and Michael B. Jordan’s supporting performance.

“Black Panther” has already been at the center of the uproar over the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ short-lived plans to institute a “best popular film” category. The academy’s move was intended to rope in more box-office hits to the broadcast, but critics said such a category would potentially ghettoize films like “Black Panther” from the prestigious honor of best picture. (Coogler declined to address the category’s scuttling.)

While superhero films have dominated multiplexes for the last decade, the Oscars have been famously resistant to them. Ten years ago, “The Dark Knight” earned eight nominations but missed out on best picture, prompting the film academy to expand the category the following year.

Many of the academy’s members resent how superheroes have come to dominate the industry, but there have been some signs lately that anti-Marvel sentiment is ebbing. Last year, while “Wonder Woman”failed to earn a nod, the Wolverine sequel “Logan” became the first superhero film nominated for best adapted screenplay. This year, best animated film may also be a superhero battle, with “Incredibles 2”and “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse” among the favorites.

But the awards campaign for “Black Panther” is predicated less on its superhero DNA than on its cultural impact and on its personal nature as, despite its budget, an auteur film by one of the most widely respected young filmmakers in Hollywood. “Black Panther” last week for a day played for free in arthouse theaters nationwide in an event put on by Art House Convergence and Film Comment.

For Coogler, making “Black Panther” couldn’t be more personal. It was a journey in finding his own connection to Africa. While developing the script, he visited South Africa, Kenya and the Kingdom of Lesotho — a tiny nation that inspired Coogler’s Wakanda.

“In simple terms, the film is what brought me to the continent,” says Coogler. “It was kind of a lifelong thing just to get there and see it. The thing that I found was a sense of identity as an African person. I found in those trips and through that research a definition for myself of what it means to be African. That was a question I was seeking as a filmmaker.”

Coogler had a sense he wasn’t alone in wanting that connection, that others felt a need for it, too. “But,” he says, “I could never imagine to the extent that it did.”

“Black Panther” arrived to feverish enthusiasm and debuted in the most resplendent and regal Hollywood premiere of the decade. It has been called “a defining moment for Black America,” pop-culture myth-making at its best and the best big-budget studio epic in ages. Parents took their kids and kids took their parents in a groundbreaking generational event. Theaters were rented out. It was the No. 1 film at the U.S. box office for five straight weeks.

“We always saw it as a film to watch with your loved ones, with your friends and with strangers, in communal settings,” says Coogler. “People are still interested in doing that and it feels fortunate.”

In a year where Netflix has a formidable Oscar contender in Alfonso Cuaron’s “Roma,” and fears of the diminishing of the theatrical experience pervade the industry, that may be the most appealing reason for academy members to vote for “Black Panther”: It proved the still-vibrant, earth-shattering power of the movie theater. Black Panther, to the rescue.
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Gorillas, Given a Puzzle, Find Way to Cheat

By Uponsci | 12/05/2018 | No Comments | Science

Gorillas at a zoo in England have demonstrated a distinctly human trait while attempting to solve a puzzle: cheating.

The gorillas were presented with a wall-mounted puzzle that requires the user to guide a peanut through a series of obstacles by poking a stick through various holes. Eventually, the peanut reaches the bottom of the device and drops out.

Some gorillas, however, figured out an easier way to retrieve the nut.

“We’ve seen a lot of cheating behavior where they’ve been putting their lips up against the device and sucking the nut out, which was not how we intended the device to be used. But it just shows you that they’re very flexible. They’re capable of creating new solving strategies to access the food,” Dr. Fay Clark from Bristol Zoo Gardens told Reuters.

“They have some fascinating problem-solving abilities that have probably not been witnessed before,” she added.

In addition, the endangered western lowland gorillas, which were introduced to a prototype device earlier this year, have shown that they quite like the game. They regularly returned to play with it, even when there were no more nuts to win, scientists said.

Experts from the University of Bristol and Bristol Zoological Society developed the “Gorilla Game Lab” to encourage the gorillas’ cognitive and puzzle-solving abilities. The prototype device had to be strong enough to withstand a frustrated gorilla, which can be seven times stronger than humans. It also had to be engaging enough to keep them coming back for more.

Each of the modules in the game “are removable, so we can take the modules out, redesign them and put in an additional module or change the actual structure. So it creates an endless stream of new and novel puzzles for them to solve,” said Dr. Stuart Gray of the University of Bristol.

While the main aim of the project is to create a “positive psychological state of pleasure and satisfaction in the gorillas,” the researchers are already setting their sights on more advanced models that would help zookeepers better understand both the mental and physical conditions of the animals.

“Things like eyesight, hearing, other cognitive functions — all of these could be measurable further on down the line,” Gray said.
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VW May Use Ford’s US Plants to Build Cars

By Uponbiz | 12/05/2018 | No Comments | Business

Volkswagen AG’s chief executive said Tuesday after a meeting at the White House that the German automaker was building an alliance with Ford and might use the U.S. automaker’s plants to build cars.

VW CEO Herbert Diess said the company was also “considering building a second car plant” in the United States, adding, “We are in quite advanced negotiations and dialog with Ford Corporation to really build up a global automotive alliance, which also would strengthen the American automotive industry.”

Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. told reporters at an event near Detroit on Tuesday that talks with Volkswagen about an alliance were going “very well.”

Asked about Diess’ comments that VW could use some of Ford’s unused capacity for car production, Bill Ford said the companies “haven’t gotten that granular in our talks yet.”

He said he did not want to say much about a VW alliance until the automaker had “a lot of definitive things to talk about.”

The proposed alliance between Volkswagen and Ford suggests the days of carmakers going it alone are over, as tariffs, new technology and tougher emissions rules fragment markets that were once global, Reuters reported last week.

Firms that once sought vehicles with universal global appeal to create economies of scale are now seeking advantages in specific market segments like hybrid SUVs, North American pickup trucks or European city cars.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Joseph Spak said in a research note on Tuesday that Diess’ comments raised the chances that VW would use some of Ford’s unused capacity as part of a broader partnership. Spak also said that a European or Asian automaker could seek to acquire some of General Motors’ unused capacity. GM announced last week it plans to idle five North American plants.

“VW may have a little negotiating power as some of the GM facilities could be bought (although this could impact their broader intentions with Ford),” Spak wrote.

VW has an assembly plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. Of the need for a new plant, Diess said the company was in “quite advanced negotiations in Tennessee but there might be other options as well.”

Diess said VW would not take an equity stake in Ford as part of its alliance. “We are building an alliance with Ford which will strengthen Ford’s position in Europe because we will share platforms,” he said. “We might use Ford capacity here in the U.S. to build cars for us.”
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Rich, Poor Struggle to Shoulder Losses From Devastating Storms

By Uponbiz | 12/05/2018 | No Comments | Business

The devastation caused by powerful storms is a growing threat to both poor and rich nations, propelling Caribbean islands to the top of a global index of countries most severely affected by weather disasters last year, researchers said Tuesday.

The U.S. territory of Puerto Rico was ranked as the hardest-hit, and the island of Dominica came in third place after both were battered by Hurricane Maria last September, according to an annual climate risk index from Germanwatch, an environmental policy group.

The United States ranked 12th in the 2017 index, with 389 fatalities and nearly $175 billion in losses from extreme weather.

“Recent storms with intensity levels never seen before have had disastrous impacts,” said the index’s lead author, David Eckstein.

Such weather disasters are likely to worsen further in coming years, the U.N. humanitarian agency warned Tuesday, creating significant new humanitarian needs.

Floods, storms and droughts all are expected to strengthen, the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in its Global Humanitarian Overview 2019 report.

It cited World Bank data predicting 140 million people could be internally displaced by 2050 as a result of global warming.

Among the countries being significantly hit by climate-linked extreme weather is the United States, whose President Donald Trump is one of the most prominent skeptics of man-made climate change, the agency said.

Hurricanes and storms in the United States and Caribbean caused more than $220 billion worth of damage last year, representing nearly two-thirds of global losses caused by natural disasters in 2017, OCHA said.

“Climate events are contributing to greater humanitarian problems than we have seen in the past,” said Jens Laerke, a spokesman for OCHA. “This is something the world has not yet adapted fully to.”

As hurricanes and tropical cyclones intensify in strength, they are particularly hurting poor nations that are unprepared for the threat, researchers said on the sidelines of U.N. climate talks in Poland.

In the tiny island country of Dominica, Maria caused losses equal to more than twice its gross domestic product, damaging or destroying about 90 percent of housing.

Lloyd Pascal, a Dominican climate negotiator whose home has yet to be fully repaired after being hit by the storm, urged the U.N. talks to pay more attention to “weaker countries.”

Dominica, with 72,000 people, lacks the ability to prepare for the increasingly severe weather it is suffering, he said.

Even though storm warnings are received, the state does not have resources to evacuate people into shelters, he said, nor understand clearly how heavy rainfall will boost river levels.

“We are just not prepared to do that kind of work,” he told reporters. “We are like sitting ducks.”

But rich countries, including the United States, also are seeing clearer climate impacts, and need to step up efforts to keep their people safe, Germanwatch said.

“Effective climate protection, as well as increasing resilience, is … in the self-interest of these countries,” Eckstein said.

The Germanwatch index highlighted other types of weather-related damage as well, from unusually heavy rainfall to landslides.

Sri Lanka, the second most-affected country in 2017, saw dramatic floods that year that killed 200 people and left hundreds of thousands homeless.

The U.N. climate negotiations should drum up more support for the poorest countries like Nepal, Vietnam, Sierra Leone and Madagascar to deal with rising losses linked to climate change, Germanwatch said.

All four of those countries figured in the index’s top 10 of nations most affected by weather disasters in 2017.

“They need predictable and reliable financial support for dealing with climate-induced loss and damage,” Eckstein said.

Five years ago, the U.N. climate talks set up a mechanism to better understand the damage that now will be unavoidable as a result of the 1 degree Celsius hike in global temperatures that has already occurred.

The mechanism also seeks to find ways to deal with the consequences as the world warms further.

But industrialized countries — which have historically emitted the most climate-changing emissions — have refused to pay compensation to those who are less to blame for global warming yet find themselves on the front line of impacts.

Instead, they are providing access to insurance.

At the Dec. 2-14 talks in Poland, arguments are expected over how progress on dealing with “loss and damage” should be assessed in 2023, when countries measure their climate action against the goals of the Paris climate accord.
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