Latinos In America

Story By: by David Edelstein

Zoe Saldana is Uhura and Zachary Quinto is Spock in the new J.J. Abrams-directed Star Trek: Into Darkness, the 12th installment in the franchise.

Star Trek: Into Darkness

Rated PG-13 for intense sequences of sci-fi action and violence.

With: Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Benedict Cumberbatch

Before I tell you about J.J. Abrams’ second Star Trek film, with its youngish new Starship Enterprise crew, let me say that just because I’ve seen every episode of the original Star Trek and of The Next Generation, and most of the spinoff series, and every movie, I’m not a Trekkie — meaning someone who goes to conventions or speaks Klingon or greets people with a Vulcan salute.

But hey, even President Obama can give the Vulcan salute; it’s mainstream. We live — thanks to the Internet — in a fan culture. We can all get up to speed on anything quickly. We can all appreciate the new Star Trek: Into Darkness not just on its own terms but also as a kind of cinematic dialogue among Star Treks past and present.

The first thing Abrams did in his first Star Trek picture was not so much wipe the slate as alter it. A ship from the future radically changed the early lives of Kirk, Spock and the others. Presto: Kirk and Spock are the same — but different. The fatherless Kirk is a hothead. Spock is having an affair with Uhura. Things change.

Now, in his second Star Trek, Abrams and his screenwriters establish a kind of conversation across time with Nicholas Meyer’s 1982 Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan — the one with an aging Ricardo Montalban chasing an aging William Shatner around the galaxy, declaiming like Ahab. It’s the best of all the movies, the one that found the ideal balance between wonky sci-fi and rousing nautical adventure.

“ By the end of the original Trek, the actors were a collection of paunches and hairpieces, while these guys are so trim and tender-skinned they’re like the ‘Baby Looney Tunes.’

Abrams’ No. 2 isn’t nearly as good. The plotting is clunky, and the action more relentless and violent than I’d like; there are no pauses for ideas. There are too many self-deflating quips. The movie doesn’t hold up to post-viewing scrutiny — which matters if you want to see it again.

But I found it so much fun to see its variations on an old theme that I found myself having a good time. I surrendered to the bombardment.

The new cast is still disconcerting. By the end of the original Trek, the actors were a collection of paunches and hairpieces; these guys are so trim and tender-skinned, they’re like the Baby Looney Tunes.

But the villain is on a different level. The studio doesn’t want me to utter his name, though I’ll tell you it’s not Voldemort. You probably know who it is. In any case, he’s played by Benedict Cumberbatch, who made Sherlock Holmes his own and makes this character his, too.

Even without makeup, Cumberbatch looks alien, ravenlike in repose, with a preternatural stillness, his eyes so wide apart they could have twice the peripheral vision of humans. He’s beyond pain, beyond good and evil — a Nietzschean superman.

Midway through, he lets himself be captured by Chris Pine’s vengeful Captain Kirk, who confronts him in a jail cell on board the Enterprise. The villain tells Kirk he can offer 72 reasons to convince Kirk to listen to him.

Seventy-two? That’s the number of things on board that the villain feels protective of. And you probably don’t know what I’m talking about. I have to be circumspect. Too many plot details would provoke what I call the Wrath of Comic-Con, and I’m not like the bad guy here — supernaturally impervious.

I do have quibbles. Chris Pine’s Kirk might be too much of a pretty boy. And Zachary Quinto’s Spock seems one-quarter Vulcan rather than half, his human emotions too much on the surface. The whole Enterprise is staffed with wiseacres and exhibitionists. At least the women are more present: Zoe Saldana’s Uhura kicks some butt, and blond Alice Eve has potential as a character from another Star Trek movie, only younger and hotter.

I went with it — it was, as Leonard Nimoy’s Mr. Spock would deadpan, “Fascinating.” Familiar lines have peculiar contexts. Alliances get muddled. The narrative never stops twisting.

It can be thrilling to watch familiar characters be strange — if only so you can return to the originals with fresh eyes. Star Trek: Into Darkness is a mixed enterprise, but hail to the prospect of seeing it boldly go where no Trek has gone before.

Iron Man 3 has stormed to the top of the US box office, with the second-biggest ever opening weekend in the US.

The comic book sequel, starring Robert Downey Jr, took an estimated $175.3m (£112.5m) across the weekend.

Only 2012's The Avengers, which united Iron Man with fellow Marvel characters, had a bigger opening, taking $207.4m (£133.1m) when it opened last May.

Iron Man 3 follows Tony Stark's battle with terrorist "the Mandarin".

Directed by Shane Black, who previously worked with Downey Jr on Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, the film co-stars Gwyneth Paltrow, as Pepper Potts, and Sir Ben Kingsley as the Mandarin.

The third film, which has enjoyed largely positive reviews has easily outstripped the opening weekends of the first two films, which took $98.6m and $128.1m respectively.

Kenneth Turan, writing in The Los Angeles Times, called it "unexpectedly – and successfully – darker and more serious than its predecessors", while CNN's Tom Charity called it "a confidently tongue-in-cheek piece of blockbuster engineering".

The film opened a week earlier overseas, taking $504.8m (£324.1m) at the international box office – meaning it has already grossed $680.1m (£436.7m) in total.

Downey Jr is expected to reunite with fellow comic book characters Captain America, Thor and the Hulk in the forthcoming Avengers sequel, which is scheduled to be released in 2015.

Author Anne Bronte, the sister of Charlotte and Emily, has been given a new gravestone after 164 years to correct an error on the original.

Anne, who wrote Agnes Grey and The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, died in Scarborough in 1849 after succumbing to tuberculosis at the age of 29.

But her headstone in St Mary's Churchyard gave her age as 28.

A new plaque on her grave has been officially unveiled during a service of dedication.

Anne is the only member of the famous literary family who is not buried at their home in Haworth, West Yorkshire.

She travelled to Scarborough because she loved the resort and hoped that the air may improve her condition. But she died just three days after arriving.

Her death came during a bleak period for the Bronte family. Brother Branwell had died eight months earlier, followed by Emily, who had written Wuthering Heights.

Anne's original gravestone was refaced three years after her death, when Charlotte returned to discover five errors on it. The other mistakes were corrected but the age was not.

The Bronte Society has installed the new plaque alongside the original, which has deteriorated over the years.

"Anne was the quietest Bronte and can still sometimes be overlooked in favour of her sisters Charlotte and Emily," said the society's Sally McDonald.

"In some ways, though, she is now viewed as the most radical of the sisters, writing about tough subjects such as women's need to maintain independence, and how alcoholism can tear a family apart.

"It is a pleasure to honour her in this modest way… in the coastal town she loved so much."

Often left alone together in their isolated Haworth home, Charlotte, Emily and Anne began to write stories at an early age

Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are now hailed as British classics, while The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was a huge bestseller.

Charlotte continued to write after her siblings' deaths and later married, only to die herself in March 1855.

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Whoever survives the process will join a troupe of about 80 Rockettes who are “a part of history, an iconic part of New York City,” said choreographer Linda Haberman, who directs the Christmas show.

Monica Woods, 21, didn’t last the day, “but I’ll be back, for sure.”


Sci-fi action film Oblivion has cruised to the top of the UK and Ireland box office.

It has taken a total of £22.7m in the UK and Ireland since its release.

Cruise's last action movie, Jack Reacher, had failed to topple The Hobbit from the number one spot when it was released after Christmas.

There were two further new entries in the top five.

Scary Movie 5 was third with takings of £2m, while fourth was The Place Beyond the Pines, a crime drama starring Ryan Gosling, Bradley Cooper and Eva Mendes, which took £671,119 after being shown at 114 screens.

GI Joe: Retaliation fell from last week's number two slot to number five, with takings of £525,234 across 407 screens.

There were no other new entries this week, with the top 10 being completed by fantasy film Jack The Giant Slayer (6), Oz: The Great and Powerful (7), Trance (8), Dark Skies (9) and The Host (10).

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“Put simply, if Kardashian were to formally apologise to Humphries in court — and if he felt it were sincere — he would likely agree to end the marriage and avoid the trial,” the source said.

But Humphries also wants her to apologise by releasing a formal statement to the media.

“If Kardashian comes into the court with an attitude and acting full of herself, he will absolutely take this to trial,” the source added.

After being married for 72 days, the estranged couple will meet Friday in court for the first time in a year-and-a-half. The trial will proceed on May 6 if they don’t reach an agreement.

Story By: Ask Me Another

House musician Jonathan Coulton plays a new version of an old standard: The Hokey Pokey. He puts two new lines of trivia in, and you answer with a rhyming two-word phrase, like “Nutter Butter.” Turning yourself around may be optional, but singing the answer is not. That’s what it’s all about!

Published April 14th, 2013 – 15:14 GMT via SyndiGate.info

Is she just trying too hard? Just when things threaten to go stale for Haifa’s co-national and rival, Lebanese singer Roula Saad, the pop-star pulls out all the stops as she prepares to throw an Iraqi number into the mix. Determined to make her mark on the Arab-scape, the diva is recording a new song in the Iraqi dialect, marking her first foray into the Babylonian tongue since enetering the world of pan-Arab music. 

The song is aptly titled “Majnoonah” (Crazy), since the singer has to be quite bold to try to master a fine music tradition. 

According to Sayidaty.net, Rola – former collaborator with big-hitter Sabah – has set her sights on filming the video for the song home-side in Beirut, in the coming few days.

Roula is very upbeat about the release and is hopeful it will go down a treat with her expectant fanbase and join the ranks of other crowd-pleasing tunes.

Story By: by NPR Staff

Ice musician Terje Isungset plays the ice blocks at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.

Terje Isungset (ice) with Mari Kvien Brunvoll (vocals)

“A Glimpse of Light” by Terje Isungset

For Terje Isungset, the cold weather in Washington, D.C., this week is no problem. The Norwegian musician was in town to perform as part of the Kennedy Center’s “Nordic Cool” series, and he needed low temperatures to keep his instruments in good shape.

He has chimes, drums, a marimba and a “tube-ice” (like a tuba). They’re all carved out of shimmering ice, harvested from the frozen lakes of Ottawa, Canada, and shipped to the Kennedy Center for an hour of melting music.

It’s worth the effort, Isungset says, to get the perfect sound.

“Artificial ice doesn’t have any sound at all, nearly. So we have to try to find lake ice,” he says. “But when you come to lake ice, there is only some lakes that have sound, and even if you find the lake there might be just a few pieces that will have a good sound.”

Bill Covitz is the ice engineer in charge of making the instruments. He carves a new set for each concert and hands the instruments to Isungset just before he plays them to get the most sound out of each piece before it melts.

Because the instruments are custom-carved for each performance, every concert presents a unique challenge for Isungset.

“Quite often, I don’t actually know how my instrument will sound. So I just have to listen to the sound that is being created and try to create music out of this sounds,” he says.

But Isungset was trained as a jazz musician, and he appreciates the improvisation that is fundamental to working with ice.

“If you work like this, then you suddenly can be led into something else — some other kind of music that you did not think of, that you did not plan,” he says. “It’s like you find a new flower, maybe. A new color.”

This element of surprise keeps Isungset on his toes, even after 13 years of coaxing music from the ice. If he hits a piece too hard, it will break. That happened during his first set at the Kennedy Center, when he hit an ice block to create a bass sound and shattered the instrument. It didn’t worry Isungset; he just used his foot to grind the shards into the floor to create a crunching sound.

The hollow bell tones from the ice chimes along with vocalizations from singer Mari Kvien Brunvoll transport the listener to the frigid Nordic tundras where Isungset draws inspiration. But he says his favorite element of ice music is also the most simple.

“I think my favorite is if I get a little piece of ice to sing long, like a long lasting tone,” he says. “When ice can make a tone that lasts for 10 seconds, I nearly start crying I think it’s so beautiful.”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Breaking out of a famous parent’s shadow can be daunting, but Brandon Cronenberg, son of Canadian filmmaker David Cronenberg, is rising to the challenge with his first feature film, the science-fiction “Antiviral.”

Opening in U.S. movie theaters on Friday, “Antiviral” was written and directed by the 33-year-old Cronenberg and satirizes society’s obsession with celebrity with a horrific twist.

The film stars Caleb Landry Jones as Syd March, an employee at a clinic that harvests viruses from sick celebrities and sells the injections to obsessed fans. When Syd becomes infected with a virus that killed a popular starlet, he has to solve the mystery of her death to save his own life.

Critics are comparing “Antiviral” to David Cronenberg’s early work, which included such classic sci-fi horror films as “Videodrome,” “The Fly” and “Dead Ringers.”

While Brandon Cronenberg acknowledges the connection, he says some of it “is very legitimate and some of it is kind of overstated.

“This film has horror science fiction elements, technology elements, bodily elements so I get why people make those comparisons,” he said.

However, he noted that his father’s filmography also includes the crime thrillers “The History of Violence” and “Eastern Promises” and the biographical “A Dangerous Method,” which are not in the sci-fi genre at all.

“My dad has had a very broad varied career and it would be very hard for me to make a film that didn’t touch on anything that he hasn’t touched on,” Cronenberg said.

CELEBRITY OBSESSION

The concept for “Antiviral” came to Cronenberg while he was studying film at university and caught the flu.

“I was obsessing over the fact that I had this thing physically in my body that had come from someone else’s body and how that was a weirdly intimate thing,” the filmmaker said.

Cronenberg wondered if a fan obsessed with Angelina Jolie would want the actress’s cold “as a way of physically feeling connected to her.”

He said he thought it would make “an interesting metaphor for discussing the (celebrity-obsessed) culture” fueled by 24/7 websites such as TMZ.com and magazines like Us Weekly.

Chuck Wilson from The Village Voice wrote that with “Antiviral,” the younger Cronenberg “proves to be just as hide-your-eyes yucky” as his father was in early films.

Kevin Jagernauth, a critic at Indiewire.com’s movie blog The Playlist, called the film “exactly the oddball and crooked tale you’d want and expect from a Cronenberg with all the gratuitous blood, pus, bone and multiple closeups of needles piercing skin you could ask for.”

Brandon Cronenberg decided to pursue film in his early twenties after trying his hand at writing fiction, the visual arts and playing in bands.

While in film school, he made a number of shorts, making a conscious effort to “ignore as much as possible (my father’s) career and to just do what was interesting to me.”

He said he’s not trying to “embrace deliberately or avoid deliberately” topics that his father might do.

“If I was trying to completely avoid anything that people would see as connected to his stuff, I would be defining myself totally in opposition to his career, which would be still be defining myself in terms of his career,” Cronenberg said.

So is David Cronenberg, 70, proud of his son’s debut?

“Yeah, I think so,” said Brandon Cronenberg before breaking in to a laugh. “But he has to say that.”

(Reporting By Zorianna Kit; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Paul Simao)