Entertainment
Alan Arkin, Oscar-Winning ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ Actor, Dies At 89
(LOS ANGELES) – Alan Arkin, the witty character actor who displayed his versatility in everything from hilarious comedy to chilling drama while receiving four Academy Award nominations and winning an Oscar for “Little Miss Sunshine,” has died. He was 89.
On Friday, his sons Adam, Matthew, and Anthony acknowledged their father’s death through the actor’s publicist. “Our father was a uniquely talented force of nature, both as an artist and as a man,” the family said in a statement.
Paul Reiser, Michael Rapaport, and Patton Oswalt were among those who paid tribute to Arkin. “What a wonderful, unique voice for comedy.” And, on the few occasions I was in his company, he was a kind and generous soul. I learned a lot from watching him. “And the laughs I got from his glorious work seem endless,” Jason Alexander tweeted.
Arkin, a member of Chicago’s legendary Second City comedy group, was an initial success in films with the Cold War parody “The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming” and peaked late in life with his award for best-supporting actor in the surprise 2006 smash “Little Miss Sunshine.” His first Oscar nomination, for “The Russians Are Coming,” came more than 40 years after his nomination for playing a devious Hollywood executive in the Oscar-winning “Argo.”
In recent years, he co-starred with Michael Douglas in Netflix’s comedy series “The Kominsky Method,” for which he received two Emmy nods.
“When I was a young actor, people wanted to know if I wanted to be a serious actor or a funny one,” Michael McKean said on Twitter on Friday. ‘I’d respond, ‘Which type is Alan Arkin?’ and that would silence them.”
Arkin reportedly told The Associated Press that the best part about being a character actor was not having to strip naked for a role. He wasn’t a sex symbol or a superstar, but he was always busy, appearing in over 100 TV and feature films. His trademarks were likability, relatability, and complete immersion in his roles, no matter how unusual, whether he was playing a Russian submarine officer in “The Russians Are Coming” who struggles to communicate with the equally jittery Americans or he was the foul-mouthed drug-addicted grandfather in “Little Miss Sunshine.”
“Alan’s never had an identifiable screen personality because he just disappears into his characters,” “The Russians Are Coming” director Norman Jewison famously noted. “His accents are flawless, and he can even change his appearance.” He’s always been underrated, partly because he’s never worked for his success.”
While still with Second City, Carl Reiner cast Arkin as the young protagonist in the 1963 Broadway comedy “Enter Laughing,” based on Reiner’s semi-autobiographical novel.
He drew rave reviews and the attention of Jewison, who was planning to helm a 1966 comedy about a Russian submarine that causes panic when it gets too close to a small New England town. Arkin’s next major film proved, albeit unwillingly, that he could also play a villain. In ‘Wait Until Dark’, Arkin is featured as a ruthless drug dealer who takes a blind woman (Audrey Hepburn) hostage in her flat, convinced that a narcotics shipment is stashed there.
Alan Arkin, the witty character actor who displayed his versatility in everything from hilarious comedy to chilling drama, has died.
In a 1998 interview, he recalled how tough it was to terrorize Hepburn’s persona.
“Just awful,” he exclaimed. “Being mean to her was difficult because she was an exquisite lady.”
Arkin’s career took off again in 1968 with “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter,” in which he portrayed a sensitive man who couldn’t hear or talk. He played the bumbling French investigator in “Inspector Clouseau” the same year, although the picture was overshadowed by Peter Sellers’ Clouseau in the “Pink Panther” films.
Arkin’s reputation as a character actor flourished further when fellow Second City graduate Mike Nichols cast him as Yossarian, the victim of wartime red tape, in 1970’s “Catch-22,” based on Joseph Heller’s million-selling novel. Arkin appeared in films such as “Edward Scissorhands,” in which he played Johnny Depp’s neighbor, and in David Mamet’s “Glengarry Glen Ross,” he played a tenacious real estate salesman. In the 1998 film “The Slums of Beverly Hills,” he and Reiner played siblings, one successful (Reiner) and the other struggling (Arkin).
“I used to believe that my work was diverse. “However, I realized that for the first twenty years or so, most of the characters I played were outsiders, strangers to their surroundings, foreigners in some way,” he told The Associated Press in 2007.
“That began to shift as I became more and more at ease with myself.” A few days ago, I received one of the finest compliments I’ve ever received. They stated that they believed my characters were frequently the heart, or moral center, of a picture. I didn’t understand it, but I enjoyed it, and it made me happy.”
Other recent projects include “Going in Style,” a 2017 remake starring fellow Oscar winners Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman and “The Kominsky Method.” He portrayed a Hollywood talent agency and Douglas’ character’s pal, a once-promising actor who now runs an acting school after his career faltered.
He also played Wild Knuckles in the 2022 animated feature “Minions: The Rise of Gru.”
Arkin also directed the film adaptations of Jules Feiffer’s 1971 dark comedy “Little Murders” and Neil Simon’s 1972 play about feuding old vaudeville partners, “The Sunshine Boys.” Arkin was featured on television in the short-lived programs “Fay” and “Harry” and played a night court judge in Sidney Lumet’s drama series “100 Centre Street” on A&E. He also wrote several children’s novels.
Alan Arkin, the witty character actor who displayed his versatility in everything from hilarious comedy to chilling drama, has died.
He was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn and relocated to Los Angeles with his family, including two younger brothers, when he was 11. His parents got positions as teachers but were sacked because they were Communists during the post-World War II Red Scare.
“We were dirt poor, so I couldn’t afford to go to the movies very often,” he explained to the Associated Press in 1998. “But I went whenever I could and focused on films, as they were more important than anything else in my life.”
He studied acting at Los Angeles City College, California State University, Los Angeles, and Bennington College in Vermont, where he received a scholarship.
He married Jeremy Yaffe, a fellow student, and they had two boys, Adam and Matthew.
After his divorce from Yaffe in 1961, Arkin married actress-writer Barbara Dana, with whom he had a son, Anthony. All three sons became actors, with Adam appearing on the TV show “Chicago Hope.”
“It was certainly nothing that I pushed them into,” Arkin claimed in 1998. “It didn’t matter to me what they did as long as it allowed them to grow.”
Arkin began his entertainment career as an organizer and vocalist with The Tarriers, a group that briefly rode the late 1950s folk musical revival wave. Later, he moved on to theatre acting, mostly off-Broadway and in tragic parts.
He collaborated with Nichols, Elaine May, Jerry Stiller, Anne Meara, and others at Second City to create intelligent, high-speed impromptu parodies on current fads and follies.
“I had no idea I could be funny until I joined Second City,” he explained.
SOURCE – (AP)
Entertainment
TikTok Will Start Labeling AI-Generated Material When Technology Becomes More Mainstream.
When submitted from outside its platform, TikTok will start categorizing content using artificial intelligence.
TikTok claims its initiatives are intended to counteract misinformation on its social media platforms.
“AI enables incredible creative opportunities, but it can confuse or mislead viewers if they don’t know the content was AI-generated,” the business said in a prepared statement Thursday. “Labeling helps make that context clear—which is why we label AIGC made with TikTok AI effects, and have required creators to label realistic AIGC for over a year.”
The move is part of a larger effort by individuals in the technology industry to strengthen protections for AI use. Meta stated in February that it was working with industry partners to develop technical standards to make it easier to identify photos and, eventually, video and audio generated by artificial intelligence algorithms. Facebook and Instagram users could read labels on AI-generated photographs in their feeds.
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TikTok Will Start Labeling AI-Generated Material When Technology Becomes More Mainstream.
Last year, Google said AI labels would be coming to YouTube and its other services.
In October, US President Joe Biden signed an executive order promoting digital watermarking and labeling AI-generated content.
TikTok announced collaborating with the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity to leverage its Content Credentials platform.
The company claims that the technology can attach metadata to information, instantly recognizing and categorizing AI-generated content. TikTok announced Thursday that it began using the feature on photos and videos and will soon expand to audio-only content.
In the future months, material Credentials will be tied to TikTok material and will remain on it when downloaded. This will let people recognize AI-generated material on TikTok and determine when, where, and how it was created or altered. Other platforms using Content Credentials will be able to automatically label it.
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TikTok Will Start Labeling AI-Generated Material When Technology Becomes More Mainstream.
TikTok claims to be the first video-sharing platform to use the credentials and will join the Adobe-led Content Authenticity Initiative to assist in boosting their adoption throughout the industry.
“TikTok is the first social media platform to support Content Credentials, and with over 140 million users in the United States alone, their platform and their vast community of creators and users are an essential piece of that chain of trust needed to increase transparency online,” Dana Rao, Adobe’s executive vice president, general counsel, and chief trust officer, wrote in a blog post.
TikTok’s previous policy encouraged users to flag AI-generated or drastically modified videos. Now, the company requires users to label any AI-generated content, including realistic visuals, audio, or video.
“Our users and creators are so excited about AI and what it can do for their creativity and their ability to connect with audiences,” Adam Presser, TikTok’s Head of Operations, Trust, and Safety, told ABC News. “At the same time, we want to make sure that people have that ability to understand what fact is and what is fiction.”
The announcement first appeared on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Thursday.
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TikTok Will Start Labeling AI-Generated Material When Technology Becomes More Mainstream.
TikTok’s AI actions come just two days after the company announced that it and its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, had filed a lawsuit challenging a new American law that would prohibit the video-sharing app from operating in the United States unless sold to an approved buyer, claiming that it unfairly singles out the platform and is an unprecedented attack on free speech.
The complaint is the latest development in what appears to be a protracted legal battle for TikTok’s future in the United States — one that could end up before the Supreme Court. If TikTok loses, it says it will be forced to close next year.
SOURCE – (AP)
NEW YORK — Harvey Weinstein appeared in a New York City courthouse on Thursday as authorities considered California’s extradition request to serve his awaiting term for a 2022 rape conviction in Los Angeles.
The 16-year sentence Harvey received in 2023 for raping a woman at a 2013 Los Angeles film festival was put on hold while he spent time in New York after being convicted of rape in 2020. However, the Empire State conviction was reversed late last month, erasing the 23-year term.
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Harvey Weinstein Is Back In Court As New York Considers California Prison Request.
According to prosecutors and defense attorneys, the hearing in Queens criminal court on Thursday morning, only days after Weinstein left a city hospital, was related to California’s request. Weinstein arrived at the hearing in a wheelchair and wearing a dark suit.
The 72-year-old remains in New York detention while Manhattan’s district attorney seeks to retry him. During a hearing last week, prosecutors stated that they could be ready as early as September and that at least one of the two accused victims was willing to testify again.
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Harvey Weinstein Is Back In Court As New York Considers California Prison Request.
In one case, the once-powerful former movie magnate is charged with raping an aspiring actor in 2013 and sexually abusing a TV and film production assistant in 2006. He rejects the charges.
New York’s highest court vacated Weinstein’s conviction, finding that the trial judge prejudiced him with incorrect rulings, including allowing other women to speak about charges he was not charged with.
The 2020 conviction was hailed at the time as a watershed moment in the #MeToo movement, which began in 2017 with a slew of complaints against Weinstein.
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Harvey Weinstein Is Back In Court As New York Considers California Prison Request.
Weinstein was sentenced to upstate New York state prison. Following the appeals court verdict, he was transferred to city custody and taken to Manhattan’s Bellevue Hospital, where his publicist claims he was treated for pneumonia and other medical conditions. He was sent to the city’s Rikers Island detention complex on Monday.
SOURCE – (AP)
Celebrity
Fans Are Following Taylor Swift To Europe After Finding Eras Tour Tickets Less Costly There
LONDON — Thousands of die-hard Taylor Swift fans who missed her U.S. concert tour last year or didn’t want to pay high prices to see her again discovered an unusual solution: fly to Europe.
The pop artist is ready to begin the 18-city European leg of her record-breaking Eras Tour in Paris on Thursday, and planeloads of Swifties will follow Miss Americana across the water in the coming weeks. The arena where Swift performs reported that Americans purchased 20% of the tickets for her four sold-out gigs. The next leg of the tour, Stockholm, is expected to draw approximately 10,000 concertgoers from the United States.
A concert may seem like a weird reason to visit a distant nation, especially because fans can watch the Eras Tour documentary from home on Disney+. However, Expedia, an online travel website, claims that Swift’s fans’ continent-hopping is part of a bigger trend known as “tour tourism,” after noticing a tendency during Beyoncé’s Renaissance world tour.
Some North American fans who intend to fly overseas for Swift’s Eras Tour said they justified the cost by noting that tighter limitations on ticket costs and resales in Europe made Swift perform abroad no more expensive—aand possibly cheaper — than seeing her closer to home.
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Fans Are Following Taylor Swift To Europe After Finding Eras Tour Tickets Less Costly There
“They said, ‘Wait a minute, I can either spend $1,500 to go see my favorite artist in Miami, or I can take that $1,500 and buy a concert ticket, a round-trip plane ticket, and three nights in a hotel room,” Melanie Fish, an Expedia representative and travel specialist, said.
Jennifer Warren, 43, of St. Catharines, a community in Ontario’s Niagara region, has had this experience. She and her 11-year-old son adore Swift but needed help finding reasonably priced tickets in the United States. Undeterred, Warren and her husband decided to arrange a European holiday based on where she could obtain tickets. The location turned out to be Hamburg, Germany.
“You get out, you get to see the world, and you get to see your favorite artist or performer all at once, so there are a lot of benefits,” said Warren, director of research and innovation at a mutual insurance firm.
The three VIP tickets she got near the stage eras tour— “I would call it brute-force dumb luck” — were 600 euros ($646) each. Swift then announced six November tour dates in Toronto, within driving distance of Warren’s house. “Absolute nose-bleed seats” are already selling for 3,000 Canadian dollars ($2,194) on secondary resale sites such as Viagogo, Warren added.
AP – VOR News Image
Fans Are Following Taylor Swift To Europe After Finding Eras Tour Tickets Less Costly There
Hardcore fans following their favorite musician or band on tour is not a recent phenomenon. “Groupie” first appeared in the late 1960s as a somewhat pejorative term for devoted rock band fans. Deadheads hit the road in the 1970s to follow the Grateful Dead from city to city.
More recently, according to Fish, music festivals such as Coachella in California and Glastonbury in England, as well as musical residencies in Las Vegas by Elton John, Lady Gaga, and Adele, have drawn visitors to places they might not have visited otherwise.
Since the coronavirus outbreak, travel and entertainment specialists have reported a pent-up consumer demand for “experiences” rather than tangible items. Some believe that music fans’ readiness to widen their fandom horizons is part of a larger societal adjustment.
“It does seem like it’s more than a structural shift, maybe a personality transformation we all went through,” said Natalia Lechmanova, the Mastercard Economics Institute’s top Europe economist.
As Swift travels around Europe, Lechmanova anticipates restaurants and hotels to experience the same increase that Mastercard saw within a 2.5-mile (4-kilometer) radius of performance venues in the cities she visited in 2023. According to the economist, the strong strength of the US dollar against the euro may also boost retail spending on apparel, collectibles, beauty items, and materials for the friendship bracelets fans exchange during the Eras Tour.
Former college roommates Lizzy Hale, 34, of Los Angeles, and Mitch Goulding, 33, of Austin, Texas, already had tickets to see the Eras Tour in L.A. last summer when they decided to try to obtain them for Paris, London, and Edinburgh, Scotland. They saw a concert trip to Europe as a replacement for a trip they planned to celebrate Goulding’s birthday in May 2020 but had to cancel due to the pandemic.
Goulding got VIP seats to one of Swift’s three Stockholm gigs. He, Hale, and two other pals planned a ten-day tour that included stops in Amsterdam and Copenhagen.
“As someone who enjoys both traveling and music, finding a way to combine the two is really special,” said Hale, expecting her first child.
The local economic impact of what the zeitgeist has dubbed “Swiftonomics” and the “Swift lift” can be significant. It’s no surprise that Singapore’s government signed an exclusive deal with Swift to make the city-state her lone tour stop in Southeast Asia earlier this year, sparking regional envy.
European governments have yet to acknowledge that their countries were not among the 12 chosen for the Eras Tour’s Europe leg, while some fans are surprised that Gelsenkirchen, a city with a population of around 264,000, is one of three German places that made the list
Airbnb announced Tuesday that searches on its site for the U.K. cities where Swift will perform in June and August — Edinburgh, Liverpool, Cardiff, and London — jumped by an average of 337% since tickets went on sale last summer.
Not to be outdone in identifying trends, the property rentals firm identified the demand as an example of “passion tourism,” or travel “driven by concerts, sports, and other cultural events.”
According to Stockholm Chamber of Commerce Chief Economist Carl Bergqvist, 120,000 visitors from 130 countries, including 10,000 from the United States, are scheduled to visit Sweden’s capital this month. Stockholm is the only Scandinavian destination on Swift’s tour, and airlines have increased flights from nearby Denmark, Finland, and Norway to bring fans to the May 17-19 gigs, he said.
Even though rates for the tour dates have soared, the city’s 40,000 hotel rooms are all booked, according to Bergqvist. He said that concertgoers are likely to spend roughly 500 million Swedish kroner, or more than $46 million, on the local economy during their stay, excluding the cost of Swift tickets and travel to Sweden.
“So this is going to be huge for the tourism sector in Sweden and Stockholm in particular,” said Bergqvist.
Nightclubs, restaurants, and bars are taking advantage of the opportunity to pander to fans by hosting Taylor Swift-themed activities such as karaoke, quizzes, and after-concert dance parties.
Caroline Matlock, 29, of Houston, saw Swift more than a year ago on the Eras Tour in Texas. She’s now making additional friendship bracelets and trying to learn a few Swedish words in preparation for the three-and-a-half-hour presentation in Stockholm. Swift’s friend proposed seeing her in Europe, and Matlock initially needed convincing.
“I said, ‘I only want to travel if it’s a nation I’ve never been to. “I’ve seen Taylor Swift,” she explained.
Their itinerary includes visits to Scandinavian destinations such as Oslo and Gothenburg. The event is the trip’s final night, and Matlock looks forward to meeting Swifties from other countries. “Americans tend to have a very obsessive culture, especially Taylor Swift-related, so I’m curious if the crowd will be more toned-down.”
It remains to be seen whether the music tourism trend will last as long and as strong as Swift’s and Beyoncé’s and whether it will spread to Billie Eilish, Usher, and other artists who have world tours planned for next year. Expedia’s Fish believes that other well-known singers performing in Europe this summer will demonstrate that planning a foreign trip around a concert is becoming popular.
AP – VOR News Image
Fans Are Following Taylor Swift To Europe After Finding Eras Tour Tickets Less Costly There
Kat Morga, a travel consultant in Nashville, is still determining. Morga watched Swift perform in Nashville last year and assisted two clients with school-aged children in booking European family holidays this summer, which included seeing Swift in concert. However, she believes that the complexity of navigating ticket purchases through language hurdles, currency conversions, international banking restrictions, and the danger of cancellations will limit the popularity of regular gig vacations.
“I think this is an anomaly,” Morga stated. “People aren’t going to spend $20,000 on a lavish family trip just because Taylor Swift is there. She’s a unique individual. “She’s unique.”
Glenn Fogel, CEO of Booking Holdings, owns Booking.com, Priceline.com, agoda.com, Kayak, and OpenTable, is even less excited about concert tours as a tourist promoter. The Swift Effect creates a “little blip” when the superstar visits smaller destinations, but for the global travel sector, “one star touring around does not make a difference,” he explained.
“It may only shift it somewhat. A person planned a week-long vacation in the Caribbean. Instead, that individual says, ‘Let’s go to the Taylor Swift thing,'” Fogel explained. “It does not increase it. “It just moves it from here to there.”
SOURCE – (AP)
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