05/21/2023 | UPONSOFT

‘Fast X’ Speeds to No. 1; Knocks ‘Guardians 3’ to 2nd

By Uponent | 05/21/2023 | No Comments | Business, Entertainment

The 10th installment of the “Fast and Furious” franchise was off to the races this weekend, knocking “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” out of first place and easily claiming the No. 1 spot at the box office. “Fast X” earned $67.5 million in ticket sales from 4,046 North American theaters, according to estimates from Universal Pictures on Sunday.

It’s on the lower end of openings for the series which peaked with “Furious 7’s” $142.2 million launch, the sole movie in the series to surpass $100 million out of the gates. “Fast X’s” domestic debut only ranks above the first three. The last movie, “F9,” opened to $70 million in 2021.

But this is also a series that has usually made the bulk of its money internationally, often over 70%. True to form, overseas it’s on turbo drive. “Fast X” opened in 84 markets internationally, playing in over 24,000 theaters, where it earned an estimated $251.4 million. The top market was China with $78.3 million, followed by Mexico with $16.7 million. And it adds up to a $319 million global debut — the third biggest of the franchise.

“It’s a global franchise with a very broad audience,” said Jim Orr, Universal’s head of domestic distribution. “The themes resonate across the world.”

Directed by Louis Leterrier (who took over from Justin Lin during production), “Fast X” brings back the familiar crew including Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson and Jordana Brewster and adds several newcomers, like Brie Larson, Rita Moreno and a villain played by Jason Momoa. The ever-expanding cast includes Jason Statham, Charlize Theron, Scott Eastwood and Helen Mirren.

Reports say the movie cost $340 million to produce, not including marketing.

Reviews were mixed for “Fast X,” the beginning of the end for the $6 billion franchise, which currently has a 54% on Rotten Tomatoes. AP’s Mark Kennedy wrote in his review that, “It has become almost camp, as if it breathed in too much of its own fumes” and that it’s also “monstrously silly and stupidly entertaining.”

According to exit polls, audiences were 29% Caucasian, 29% Hispanic and 21% Black, and 58% were between the ages of 18 and 34. They gave the film a B+ CinemaScore.

In its third weekend, Disney and Marvel’s ” Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ” made an estimated $32 million in North America to take second place. It’s now made $266.5 million domestically and $659.1 million globally.

Third place went to another Universal juggernaut, “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which is now in its seventh weekend and available to rent on VOD. Nevertheless, it earned an additional $9.8 million in North America, bringing its domestic total to $549.3 million.

“Book Club: The Next Chapter ” added $3 million in its second weekend to take fourth place, while “Evil Dead Rise” rounded out the top five in its fifth weekend with $2.4 million.

“Mario” and “Fast X” are just the latest success stories for Universal, following hits like “Cocaine Bear” and “M3GAN.” And later this summer, on July 21, they’ll release Christopher Nolan’s ” Oppenheimer.”

“Universal as a studio is just on a roll like no other by having this incredible slate of films from all different types of genres,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “They’ve created a release strategy that’s really picture perfect so far.”

“Fast X” doesn’t have an entirely open runway though. Next weekend there will be sizable competition in Disney’s live-action “The Little Mermaid,” in addition to a slew of crowd-pleasers hoping to catch a Memorial Day weekend audience, including Julia Louis-Dreyfus in “You Hurt My Feelings” and the broad comedy “About My Father,” with Sebastian Maniscalco and Robert De Niro.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

“Fast X,” $67.5 million.
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” $32 million.
“The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” $9.8 million.
“Book Club: The Next Chapter,” $3 million.
“Evil Dead Rise,” $2.4 million.
“John Wick: Chapter 4,” $1.3 million.
“Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret,” $1.3 million.
“Hypnotic,” $825,000.
“MET Opera: Don Giovanni,” $701,025.
“BlackBerry,” $525,000.
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SpaceX Launching Saudi Astronauts on Private Flight to Space Station

By Uponsil | 05/21/2023 | No Comments | Business, Science, Silicon Valley

SpaceX’s next private flight to the International Space Station awaited takeoff Sunday, weather and rocket permitting.

The passengers include Saudi Arabia’s first astronauts in decades, as well as a Tennessee businessman who started his own sports car racing team. They’ll be led by a retired NASA astronaut who now works for the company that arranged the 10-day trip.

It’s the second charter flight organized by Houston-based Axiom Space. The company would not say how much the latest tickets cost; it previously cited per-seat prices of $55 million.

With its Falcon rocket already on the pad, SpaceX targeted a liftoff late Sunday afternoon from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. It’s the same spot where Saudi Arabia’s first astronaut, a prince, soared in 1985.

Representing the Saudi Arabian government this time are Rayyanah Barnawi, a stem cell researcher set to become the kingdom’s first woman in space, and Royal Saudi Air Force fighter pilot Ali al-Qarni.

Rounding out the crew: John Shoffner, the racecar buff; and Peggy Whitson, who holds the U.S. record for the most accumulated time in space at 665 days.
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Iraq Rebuilding Efforts Get High-Tech Boost

By Uponsil | 05/21/2023 | No Comments | Business, Science, Silicon Valley

It’s been more than a decade since the end of the Iraq War. Much of the country still bears the scars of the U.S.-led invasion. But Iraqis today are working to clean up their country, and some have turned to technology for help. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more.
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Cholera Outbreak Claims Ten More Lives in South Africa

By Uponsci | 05/21/2023 | No Comments | Business, Science, Silicon Valley

The provincial health department in the South African province of Gauteng on Sunday announced 19 new cases of Cholera in Hammanskraal, including 10 deaths.

South Africa reported its first cholera death in February, after the virus arrived in the country from Malawi.

It was unclear how many cholera cases there was nationally as of Sunday, but the most populous province of Gauteng, where Johannesburg and Pretoria are situated, has been hardest hit.

Cholera can cause acute diarrhea, vomiting and weakness and is mainly spread by contaminated food or water. It can kill within hours if untreated.

The last outbreak in South Africa was in 2008/2009 when about 12,000 cases were reported following an outbreak in neighboring Zimbabwe, which led to a surge of imported cases and subsequent local transmission.
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Mexico Keeps Close Eye on Volcano That Threatens 22 Million

By Uponsci | 05/21/2023 | No Comments | Business, Science, Silicon Valley

Mexico’s Popocatepetl volcano rumbled to life again this week, belching out towering clouds of ash that forced 11 villages to cancel school sessions.

The residents weren’t the only ones keeping a close eye on the towering peak. Every time there is a sigh, tic or heave in Popocatepetl, there are dozens of scientists, a network of sensors and cameras, and a roomful of powerful equipment watching its every move.

The 5,426-meter volcano, known affectionately as “El Popo,” has been spewing toxic fumes, ash and lumps of incandescent rock persistently for almost 30 years, since it awakened from a long slumber in 1994.

The volcano is 72 kilometers southeast of Mexico City, but looms much closer to the eastern fringes of the metropolitan area of 22 million people. The city also faces threats from earthquakes and sinking soil, but the volcano is the most visible potential danger — and the most closely watched. A severe eruption could cut off air traffic, or smother the city in clouds of choking ash.

Ringed around its summit are six cameras, a thermal imaging device and 12 seismological monitoring stations that operate 24 hours a day, all reporting back to an equipment-filled command center in Mexico City.

A total of 13 scientists from a multidisciplinary team take turns staffing the command center around the clock. Being able to warn of an impending ash cloud is key, because people can take precautions. Unlike earthquakes, warning times can be longer for the volcano and in general the peak is more predictable.

On a recent day, researcher Paulino Alonso made the rounds, checking the readings at the command center run by Mexico’s National Disaster Prevention Center, known by its initials as Cenapred. It is a complex task that involves seismographs that measure the volcano’s internal trembling, which could indicate hot rock and gas moving up the vents in the peak.

Monitoring gases in nearby springs and at the peak — and wind patterns that help determine where the ash could be blown — also play a role.

The forces inside are so great that they can temporarily deform the peak, so cameras and sensors must monitor the very shape of the volcano.

How do you explain all of this to 25 million non-experts living within a 62-mile (100-kilometer) radius who have grown so used to living near the volcano?

Authorities came up with the simple idea of a volcano “stoplight” with three colors: green for safety, yellow for alert and red for danger.

For most of the years since the stoplight was introduced, it has been stuck at some stage of “yellow.” The mountain sometimes quiets down, but not for long. It seldom shoots up molten lava: instead it’s more the “explosive” type, showering out hot rocks that tumble down its flanks and emitting bursts of gas and ash.

The center also has monitors in other states; Mexico is a country all too familiar with natural disasters.

For example, Mexico’s earthquake early alert system is also based at the command center. Because the city’s soil is so soft — it was built on a former lake bed — a quake hundreds of miles away on the Pacific coast can cause huge destruction in the capital, as happened in 1985 and 2017.

A system of seismic monitors along the coast sends messages that race faster than the quake’s shock waves. Once the sirens start blaring, it can give Mexico City residents up to half a minute to get to safety, usually on the streets outside.
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‘Bone-Chilling’ Auschwitz Drama Is Early Cannes Favorite

By Uponent | 05/21/2023 | No Comments | Business, Entertainment

A powerful Auschwitz-set psychological horror film, The Zone of Interest, is emerging as the hot ticket at the Cannes Film Festival, with reviews Saturday were near-unanimous in their praise.

British director Jonathan Glazer’s film focuses on the family of Rudolf Hoess, the longest-serving commandant of the Auschwitz camp, who lived a stone’s throw from the incinerators.

While the screams and gunshots are audible from their beautiful garden, the family carries on as though nothing was amiss.

The horror “is just bearing down on every pixel of every shot, in sound and how we interpret that sound… It affects everything but them,” Glazer told AFP.

“Everything had to be very carefully calibrated to feel that it was always there, this ever-present, monstrous machinery,” he said.

The 58-year-old Glazer, who is Jewish, focused on the banality of daily lives around the death camp, viewing Hoess’s family not as obvious monsters but as terrifyingly ordinary.

“The things that drive these people are familiar. Nice house, nice garden, healthy kids,” he said.

“How like them are we? How terrifying it would be to acknowledge? What is it that we’re so frightened of understanding?”

“Would it be possible to sleep? Could you sleep? What happens if you close the curtains and you wear earplugs, could you do that?”

The film is all the more uncomfortable as it is shot in a realist style, with natural lighting and none of the frills that are typical of a period drama.

It has garnered gushing praise so far from critics at the French Riviera festival.

A “bone-chilling Holocaust drama like no other,” The Hollywood Reporter said of the “audacious film,” concluding that Glazer “is incapable of making a movie that’s anything less than bracingly original.”

Variety said that Glazer had “delivered the first instant sensation of the festival,” describing it as “profound, meditative and immersive, a movie that holds human darkness up to the light and examines it as if under a microscope.”

‘I cogitate a lot’

Glazer is known for taking his time — it has been a decade since his last film, the acclaimed, deeply strange sci-fi Under the Skin starring Scarlett Johansson.

He made his name with music videos for Radiohead, Blur and Massive Attack in the 1990s before moving into films with Sexy Beast (2000) and Birth (2004).

“I cogitate a lot. I think a lot about what I’m going to make, good or bad,” he said.

“This particular subject obviously is a vast, profound topic and deeply sensitive for many reasons and I couldn’t just approach it casually.”

A novel of the same title by Martin Amis was one catalyst for bringing him to this project.

It provided “a key that unlocked some space for me… the enormous discomfort of being in the room with the perpetrator.”

He spent two years reading other books and accounts on the subject before beginning to map out the film with collaborators.

Glazer’s film is one of 21 in competition for the Palme d’Or, the top prize at Cannes, which runs until May 27.

French reviewers were equally impressed by Glazer’s film, with Le Figaro calling it “a chilling film with dizzying impact” and Liberation saying it could well take home the Palme.
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