Biden administration will boost states' vaccine allocation for next week by about 17%
WASHINGTON (AP) — Biden administration will boost states' vaccine allocation for next week by about 17%.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Biden administration will boost states' vaccine allocation for next week by about 17%.
Inside, Kazuyoshi Sasaki carefully dials his late wife Miwako's cellphone number, bending his large frame and cradling the handset. He explains how he searched for her for days after the devastating earthquake and tsunami a decade ago, visiting evacuation centres and makeshift morgues, returning at night to the rubble of their home. Sasaki's wife was one of nearly 20,000 people in northeastern Japan killed by the disaster that struck on March 11, 2011.
Josh Humiston, a respected music agent and Partner at Agency for the Performing Arts (APA), passed away on March 3, the agency announced on Thursday. He was 48. The head of the agency’s music department died of a sudden stroke. More to come… Read original story Josh Humiston, Partner at Agency for the Performing Arts, Dies at 48 At TheWrap
“Coming 2 America,” the long-awaited sequel to Eddie Murphy’s 1988 “Coming to America,” has released early on Amazon Prime. Originally, the pic was set to drop on the streaming service on Friday. The sequel to John Landis’ hit comedy follows Prince Akeem (Murphy), who is set to become the king of the fictional country of […]
A 73-year-old woman who kept helping a scammer receive money, even after the police had warned her against it, was jailed seven months in Singapore.
Vice President Kamala Harris, in a call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Thursday, reaffirmed U.S. opposition to an International Criminal Court probe of possible war crimes in the Palestinian Territories, the White House said. The call, the first between the two since Harris and President Joe Biden took office in January, came a day after the ICC prosecutor said she would launch the probe, prompting swift rejections by Washington and Jerusalem. Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who will be replaced by British prosecutor Karim Khan on June 16, said in December 2019 that war crimes had been or were being committed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
When movie theaters finally reopen in New York City on Friday, Hollywood will be watching to see if this will be the first wave in a more widespread box office recovery — and send a message to studios that it may soon be safe to release big-budget tentpole films in theaters again. For the cinemas that do reopen, two new family films will be on offer this weekend: Warner Bros.’ “Tom & Jerry,” which managed a $13 million opening last weekend despite also being available on HBO Max, and Disney’s “Raya and the Last Dragon,” which will be released on more than 2,000 screens — as well as a $30 premium on-demand offering for Disney+ subscribers. With some theaters offering discounts on tickets, the hope is that moviegoers will see theaters as a cheaper alternative to a PVOD “Raya” and push the film to a mid-teens opening similar to the ones earned by “Tom & Jerry” and “Wonder Woman 1984.” “Consumer confidence in coming back to movie theaters is getting stronger over the past month,” said Joe Masher, COO of Bowtie Cinemas and president of the National Association of Theater Owners’ New York branch. “So we need to start reopening...Read original story Will Reopened NYC Movie Theaters Lead to Box Office Recovery (and Blockbusters’ Return)? At TheWrap
Tidewater (TDW) delivered earnings and revenue surprises of -16.33% and 9.23%, respectively, for the quarter ended December 2020. Do the numbers hold clues to what lies ahead for the stock?
Stellus Capital (SCM) delivered earnings and revenue surprises of 0.00% and -1.74%, respectively, for the quarter ended December 2020. Do the numbers hold clues to what lies ahead for the stock?
Playa Hotels (PLYA) delivered earnings and revenue surprises of 6.38% and 15.22%, respectively, for the quarter ended December 2020. Do the numbers hold clues to what lies ahead for the stock?
Mar.04 -- Amazon.com Inc. could get exclusive streaming rights to National Football League Thursday night games, according to the Wall Street Journal. Spencer Soper reports on "Bloomberg Technology."
Mar.04 -- Joanne Feeney, portfolio manager at Advisors Capital Management, discusses the cause of the global microchip shortage and what it will take to help alleviate the problem. She speaks with Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology."
Mar.04 -- Todd Mckinnon, chief executive officer of Okta Inc., a maker of identity-verification software, discusses the company's "conservative outlook" despite strong 4Q earnings. He also talks about the agreement to buy smaller rival Auth0 for about $6.5 billion. He speaks with Emily Chang on "Bloomberg Technology."
In today’s TV news roundup, Netflix revealed the premiere date and trailer for “The Serpent,” and Apple TV Plus announced the streaming premiere date for “It’s the Easter Beagle, Charlie Brown.” DATES Netflix announced that crime drama “The Serpent” will premiere on April 2. Inspired by real events set in the 1970s, the limited series tells the […]
Cincinnati Reds outfielder Shogo Akiyama returned to spring training after a week away to be with his wife, who was seriously injured when a tree fell on her in a park in Ohio. Akaya Akiyama was hospitalized after being injured by the tree last week while she was walking in Sharon Woods in Cincinnati. “I was in the hospital with her, I was spending time with (the) kids,” the 32-year-old Akiyama said through a translator at the team's spring training complex in Goodyear, Arizona.
NGM Biopharmaceuticals (NGM) delivered earnings and revenue surprises of 14.89% and -14.45%, respectively, for the quarter ended December 2020. Do the numbers hold clues to what lies ahead for the stock?
Anika (ANIK) delivered earnings and revenue surprises of -1000.00% and -2.40%, respectively, for the quarter ended December 2020. Do the numbers hold clues to what lies ahead for the stock?
Confidence in COVID-19 vaccines is growing, with people's willingness to have the shots increasing as they are rolled out across the world and concerns about possible side effects are fading, a 14-country survey showed on Friday. Co-led by Imperial College London's Institute of Global Health Innovation (IGHI) and the polling firm YouGov, the survey found trust in COVID-19 vaccines had risen in nine out of 14 countries covered, including France, Japan and Singapore which had previously had low levels of confidence. This is up from 55% in November, shortly before the first COVID-19 vaccine - co-developed by Pfizer and BioNTech - gained regulatory approval for use in Britain.
A version of this story about “My Favorite War” first appeared in the Oscar Nominations Preview issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine. An animated documentary that mixes history and a personal story in the manner of the 2007 Oscar-nominated film “Persepolis,” “My Favorite War” finds Latvian director Ilze Burkovska Jacobsen examining her childhood during the Cold War, when Latvia was under Soviet occupation. And while that’s not typical subject matter for an animated feature, its director envisioned it as that from the start. “When I got the idea that I will make a film summarizing those 20 years before we gained our independence and freedom (with the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991), I knew that animation was the only possibility to make it,” she said. “I knew it would be an animated documentary, and I saw that animation would be maybe 75% of the film. It became 85%, and I’m very happy with that.” The point of the film, Burkovska Jacobsen added, was to grapple with the complicated legacy from World War II, when Latvia was occupied by Nazi Germany and then by the USSR. “We went through a collective trauma,” she said. “And only in the last 10 years did I start to realize how wrong my beliefs were as a child, when we were taught to appreciate war. The Soviet Union wanted us to love war as an idea. I wanted to put my life into perspective of all the things that have happened here.” Also Read: Oscars Animated Feature Race Gets a Big, Late Boost From International Contenders Ilze Burkovska Jacobsen, “My Favorite War” Animated documentaries are more common now than when Burkovska Jacobsen first envisioned “My Favorite War” almost a decade ago – at this year’s Sundance, for instance, the animated doc “Flee” sold to Neon in a nine-figure deal. At the time she began planning her film, though, the filmmaker had to rely on a single model. “‘Persepolis’ gave me the courage to think that it is possible,” she said. “I was touched and impressed by ‘Persepolis’ when I saw it in the cinema in Norway in the little town where I live. And it was also a very big help later when we started to pitch our film. We pitched it mostly for documentary people, and the only thing they could relate to it was ‘Persepolis.’ Now animation has become more and more common in documentary films, but then the documentary people were very skeptical.” While she initially envisioned a film that would incorporate lots of stories from other people in her life, Burkovska Jacobsen ended up structuring “My Favorite War” around her own memories. The film’s central character is a young girl named Ilze, whose recollections are intercut with occasional historical footage that the director said is “additional proof that it all happened.” Deliberately and effectively unsentimental in its view of childhood, the film finds Ilze uncovering the remains of a Nazi soldier in her sandbox at one point and undergoing the conflict of having a father who joined the Communist Party to advance his career at another; it’s an intricate mixture of the personal and the political. Also Read: 'Flee' Film Review: Afghan Refugee Shares His Journey in Empathetic Animated Doc “It’s a complicated story,” Burkovska Jacobsen said, “because we have Ilze growing up in the ’70s and ’80s listening to these stories from wartime. And then there is the live-action, and the adult filmmaker who is commenting on those memories from the perspective of the current day. “It was challenging to balance it all in one film–and to be honest, I was struggling with those questions in my life, too. But we are still a very young country, still finding our way to communicate, and I guess I felt that there is something in our story which could be useful to other people in the world.” Read more from the Oscar Nominations Preview issue here. Read original story How ‘My Favorite War’ Put a Country’s Collective Trauma Into Animated Documentary At TheWrap
Ten years ago, actresses struggled to find substantial leading parts. Today, they’re increasingly creating their own. “Land” doesn’t just give Robin Wright an enormous canvas on which to prove herself behind the camera, it also offers us another chance to admire her work in front of it. In her feature directorial debut, Wright plays Edee Holzer, a woman clearly shattered from some overwhelmingly enormous tragedy. As the film begins, she is already leaving her former life behind by purchasing an isolated cabin on a Wyoming mountain, tossing her cell phone in the trash and having her truck towed away as soon as she arrives. These choices are so irrational that one might assume she’s chosen a spot to conclude her pain. But she’s also brought the sorts of books and camping supplies a city dweller might use to try and survive the unknown. The mountain, of course, merely mocks her. An angry bear destroys her supplies, books won’t trap her food, and she can’t get much water by dipping some plastic bottles in a swift-moving river. Also Read: How Robin Wright Began 'Compiling Confidence' to Direct 'Land' (Video) Regardless of her original intentions, her mission is built on madness. And when she finally collapses out of hunger and hypothermia (wood chopping also turns out to be much harder than she imagined), it seems the end is near. Her luck turns when a kind stranger checks in on her. Soft-spoken local Miguel (Demián Bichir, “A Better Life”) stops by just in time to save Edee, not only physically but spiritually. Though she tries to warn him off — she doesn’t want anything to do with humanity anymore — he gives her just enough space to heal. Over the next few seasons, he teaches her how to live with the land rather than fight against it. If that sounds trite, well — Jesse Chatham and Erin Dignam’s script is not strong on subtlety. Indeed, its lack of depth feels strikingly at odds with an otherwise refined film. The characters are barely sketched, with supporting turns from Sarah Dawn Pledge and Kim Dickens written down to nearly nothing. Miguel has plenty of screen time, but he suffers from being a cliché; even Edee calls him Yoda for his laconic but film-friendly wisdom. Also Read: 5 Films From 2021 That Could Shake Up the 2020 Oscars Race Chatham and Dignam may have felt that Edee’s pain is so deep that a backstory would be extraneous. And Wright is able to delve further into Edee’s emotions, approaching her sense of loss — and lost sense of self — with moving and understated empathy. But since Miguel never feels like a real person, and Edee is so contained, we need more. We get it from cinematographer Bobby Bukowski, who approaches the setting with evident reverence. (The movie was shot on Moose Mountain in Alberta, Canada, and could reasonably be touted by their tourism bureau.) He often keeps a respectful distance, following Edee through trees and from afar as though he doesn’t want to disturb her, either. But this gives him room to take in those stunning vistas, as they shift from one mercurial season to the next. Beautiful as the mountain is, Edee never knows what new surprise will greet her each day. It might be a sunrise and a field of wildflowers. Or it could be a snowstorm and an ornery animal. Also Read: Demián Bichir Accuses Telemundo, Daily Mail of 'Despicable Acts' After His Wife's Death: 'You Are Absolutely Heartless' The movie is so visually striking, it’s no surprise that Wright worked with two top editors, Anne McCabe (“A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood”) and Mikkel E.G. Nielsen (“Sound of Metal”). The strings-heavy score from composers Ben Sollee and Time for Three also offers effective support, as it fluctuates in discreet unison with Edee’s experiences. It would be nice to see Wright work from a stronger script next time, but she rises above the limitations admirably. And for anyone unable to leave the confines of their own home or neighborhood right now, “Land” offers simple lessons and stunning landscapes that may feel like a welcome balm. “Land” opens in theaters Feb. 12, the premieres on VOD on March 5. Read original story ‘Land’ Film Review: Robin Wright Relies on Nature for Her Subdued Directorial Debut At TheWrap
Sirens were heard in American Samoa on March 4 after an 8.1-magnitude earthquake near the Kermadec Islands led to tsunami warnings across the Pacific.The earthquake, which struck in the morning, was the strongest of three large quakes recorded in the region in less than 24 hours.This footage captures sirens ringing on Thursday morning in Utulei, American Samoa. After initially issuing a tsunami warning and evacuation orders for coastal areas, authorities downgraded guidance to a tsunami advisory. Credit: Fiu Elise Tamalemai Fa’atonu via Storyful