Former pharmaceutical CEO Martin Shkreli has put the only known copy of a Wu-Tang Clan album he bought for $2 million in 2015 up for sale on eBay.

In the auction listing for “Once Upon A Time in Shaolin,” Shkreli writes that he has “not carefully listened to the album.” He adds that he purchased the double album “as a gift to the Wu-Tang Clan for their tremendous musical output,” but instead “received scorn” from one of the members of the group. Ghostface Killah mocked Shkreli in a video last year, calling him “the man with the 12-year-old body.”

The top bid for the album stood at just less than $1 million early Thursday.

“Pharma Bro” Shkreli was convicted last month of deceiving investors in a pair of failed hedge funds.
…

Few institutions in cinema can match the teeming, overwhelming Toronto International Film Festival as a conversation-starting force. It simply has a lot of movies worth talking about.

And this year, many of the films that will parade down Toronto red carpets will hope to shift the dialogue not just in terms of awards buzz, but in other directions, too: equality in Hollywood; politics in Washington; even about the nature of the movies, themselves. At TIFF, expect debate.

That’s what the filmmakers behind “The Battle of the Sexes,” one of the anticipated films heading to TIFF in the coming days, are hoping for. After the festival opens Thursday with another tennis movie, the rivalry drama “Borg/McEnroe,” Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris (the directing duo who helmed 2006’s “Little Miss Sunshine”) will premiere their drama about the 1973 showdown between Billie Jean King and Bobby Riggs.

The movie, starring Emma Stone and Steve Carell, holds obvious parallels for a movie industry with its own issues of gender equality, in both pay disparity and directing opportunity. For others, it will recall issues that dominated last year’s U.S. presidential campaign. But “Battle of the Sexes” may surprise moviegoers in its broad sympathies on both sides of the net.

“The one thing we didn’t want to have happen was this polarizing political document,” said Dayton. “Right now, there’s enough of that in the world. We wanted to tell a more personal story and keep it from becoming too binary.”

The filmmakers say they are expecting “a variety of opinions in any one audience.”

“It’s really the best way to release a film, at a festival like Telluride or Toronto,” said Faris. “It’s a great way to get the word out about a film. It’s a great thing for the filmmakers to have what is usually a pretty film-oriented, film-loving audience. It gives you hope that they’re still out there.”

The Toronto International Film Festival comes right on the heels of the Venice and Telluride festivals, but the size and scope of Toronto has long made it the centerpiece of the fall movie season. It’s where much of the coming awards season gets handicapped, debated and solidified. It’s also a significant market for new films, and this year several intriguing films — “I, Tonya,” with Margot Robbie as Tonya Harding, and “Hostiles,” a brutal Western with Christian Bale — are on the block.

But most eyes will be on the gala premieres of the fall’s biggest films, including Alexander Payne’s “Downsizing,” Guillermo Del Toro’s “The Shape of Water,” George Clooney’s “Suburbicon,” and maybe the most explosive movie of the season, Darren Aronofsky’s mystery-shrouded allegorical thriller “mother!”

It can be a competitive landscape, with dozens of daily premieres and their respective parties, all trying to stand out. But several first-time directors may end up stealing the spotlight. Greta Gerwig’s “Lady Bird” will sail into Toronto on waves of rave reviews from Telluride. Aaron Sorkin, arguably the top screenwriter in Hollywood for two decades, will present his directorial debut, “Molly’s Game.”

Sorkin didn’t initially anticipate he’d direct his script. But he became, he says, obsessed with the story of Molly Bloom (Jessica Chastain), the former elite skier who was indicted for running a high-stakes poker game in Los Angeles. It’s a potentially career-redefining movie for Sorkin — and he’s appropriately anxious.

“I’d feel the same way if we were launching it in Wyoming. I’m nervous because other than test audiences, this will be the first time people see it,” said Sorkin. “The Toronto Film Festival is a very prestigious place to debut a film, so I’m aware of the company I’m in and what’s expected in the movie. It will be up to others to decide if it delivered.”

“The Disaster Artist” poses a similar turning point for its star and director, James Franco. It’s about the making of what’s widely considered one of the worst movies ever made — the cult favorite “The Room,” by Tommy Wiseau. Franco, who plays Wiseau, considers it a new step for him as a filmmaker, and says the film’s parody is laced with affection.

“The characters are outsiders. They are weirdos,” said Franco. “But everybody can relate to having a dream and trying to break into this incredibly hard business.”

The film will premiere to a surely raucous audience at a midnight screening. Franco, who first saw “The Room” with an especially excitable Vancouver audience, expects it to be the perfect debut for his film: “Canadians know how to do ‘The Room.”’

“The Disaster Artist,” which A24 will release in December, might give TIFF what “La La Land” did last year — a happily escapist movie about Hollywood. Other films will tackle less comic real-life tales, including Angelina Jolie’s searing Cambodia drama “First They Killed My Father,” the Winston Churchill biopic “Darkest Hour,” with Gary Oldman; and the documentary “The Final Year,” about the last year of Barack Obama’s administration.

Cameron Bailey, artistic director of the festival, said Trump’s presidency “was not a factor in the films we selected,” though he expects it to color the reception of many.

“Some of them will be received with the current political climate in mind,” said Bailey. “One of the things I think you learn from films like (the Watergate drama) ‘Mark Felt’ and (the Ted Kennedy drama) ‘Chappaquiddick’ and others that we have here is that the process of politics is not a pretty one. It involves a lot of conflicted motives, shall we say.”

And who better to make sense of the current political landscape than Armando Iannucci (“Veep,” “The Thick of It”), the master of rapid-fire political farce. In his second feature film, “The Death of Stalin,” he travels back to 1950s Russia only to find an expectedly timely tale of the madcap machinations of political power.

“It is bizarre, isn’t it? When I started showing it to people in January and February earlier this year, people said it resonated with Trump and Putin and fake news,” said Iannucci. “It is about autocracy. It is about what happens when democracy falls apart and one person decides everything. I’m kind of glad it does resonate now. But am I pleased?”
…

Donald Sutherland, the star of “MASH,” “The Hunger Games” and more than 140 other movies, is to get a lifetime achievement Oscar, along with Belgian director Agnes Varda, Oscar organizers said on Wednesday.

Sutherland and Varda will be joined by African-American indie film director Charles Burnett and cinematographer Owen Roizman in receiving honorary Oscars at a ceremony in Los Angeles in November, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences said in statement.

Academy president John Bailey said the honorees reflect “the breadth of international, independent and mainstream filmmaking, and are tributes to four great artists whose work embodies the diversity of our shared humanity.”

Canadian actor Sutherland, 82, has a career spanning five decades starting with his 1967 breakthrough in “The Dirty Dozen.” He went on to play wisecracking army surgeon Hawkeye Pierce in the 1970 movie version of “MASH,” as well as roles in thriller “Don’t Look Now” and “Klute.”

Sutherland, the father of “24” actor Kiefer Sutherland, played President Snow in all four of the recent “Hunger Games” young adult movie franchise. He has never been Oscar nominated.

Belgian-born Varda has experimented with shorts, documentaries and feature films during her more than 60-year career. Called the mother of the French New Wave, her movies include “Cleo from 5 to 7,” “Le Bonheur,” and “One Sings, the Other Doesn’t.”

Burnett is an independent filmmaker whose work, including “America Becoming,” has been praised for its portrayal of the African-American experience.

Roizman has five Oscar nominations for his work as a cinematographer on movies including “The French Connection,” “Tootsie” and “Network.”

The honorary Oscars will be presented at a gala dinner on Nov. 11.
…

A bronze sphere damaged during the Sept. 11 attacks is now at its permanent home overlooking the rebuilt World Trade Center site.

The 25-ton (23-metric ton) Koenig Sphere was officially placed on view Wednesday at the new Liberty Park overlooking the 9/11 memorial.

The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey last year approved plans to move the sculpture from its temporary place in Battery Park at Manhattan’s southern tip.

The sphere once stood between the trade center’s two towers.

The late German artist Fritz Koenig created the work commissioned by the Port Authority, which later lost 84 employees.

Its eternal flame honors the more than 2,700 people who died at the trade center in 2001.
…

Boy wonder, tyrant, genius: Zac Posen has been called that and more.

The fashion designer, at 36, has experienced more ups and downs than his years might indicate and all are laid bare in a new documentary, “House of Z,” available on demand Wednesday at Vogue.com.

Without a theatrical release, after debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival in April, the film traces Posen’s creative-fueled childhood in the heart of Soho, his young and beautiful muses, some of whom he met in high school, his best and worst moments on the runway and a painful falling out with loved ones who helped make his dreams come true during lean times indeed.

In some ways, the intensely personal film, the directorial debut of Toronto’s Sandy Chronopoulos, feels more like a retrospective than the comeback tale it tells. So why now?

“I was at a place in my career, in my company and in myself, to be open to tell a story. I’ve had time to reflect. I knew I wouldn’t want to be part of a puff piece but I didn’t know what kind of story she was going to tell. It was terrifying,” Posen told The Associated Press in a recent interview.

Soon after his first independent runway show in 2002, when he was 21, key fashion critics hailed Posen as a star. The “Vogue baby” got a boost when he put his luscious creations on the backs of Naomi Campbell, Claire Danes and Natalie Portman, this after he hosted buyers for Henri Bendel in his parents’ living room, when his company was more “air and interns” than financially secure.

With his mother, corporate attorney and Wall Streeter Susan Posen, and his sister, Alexandra, by his side on the job, Posen received help in 2004 from rap mogul Sean “Puffy” Combs, who pumped money, prestige and really great runway soundtracks into their company.

But Posen, a gay, dyslexic kid who attended his high school graduation dressed as the pope, went on to experience a darker side of fashion. He became known more as the ultimate “song and dance kid” rather than the master draper, the craftsman of luxury gowns, that he is.

His mother and his sister, who sit on his board and own a piece of the company today, departed in a contentious falling out. The 2008 recession hit, and the cutthroat fashion world in New York turned on Posen, especially after he decamped to Paris Fashion Week and showed a collection roundly torn apart by American critics.

Posen, depressed, not speaking to his family, returned to New York to double down on craft and regain the respect he had lost in his hometown. That moment is framed in the film by a stunning model walking in a stunning green gown during a February 2014 runway show that sealed his comeback.

Before that?

“We were a wreck. There were lots of ferocious rumors about us. It was very isolating. I was very physically sick from it. I think mind over body, it’s real. It was hugely humbling, hugely reflective. It was scary,” Posen recalled.

Regrets? Posen said he has some, particularly over the shabby way he treated his sister at his most frustrated, angry and lost moments. The family reunited several years ago, learning once again how to be with each other.

“I don’t live with regret any more,” he said. “My family and I have certainly evolved and come to terms and grew from that experience, because it makes everything very real. I just don’t think I was very understanding at certain moments, understanding of her needs, of her desires, of where she wanted to be in her life. I think that in some ways it came out as selfish.”

Chronopoulos told The Associated Press by phone from Toronto that digging through Posen family business was perhaps the most difficult for the designer. She spent three-and-a-half years on the film.

“When I first started, Zac didn’t really want to talk about it, not even off camera. He would talk about his family but not the separation from the company. That came with time and trust,” she said. “The film really was part of the healing process for his family because they had never talked about it before.”

Today, Posen is a presence on TV as a judge on “Project Runway,” which began its 16th season in August. He’s the creative director for womenswear at Brooks Brothers and maintains an atelier in New York, turning out ready-to-wear and red carpet couture that continues to wow. Come October, he’s putting out his first cookbook, “Cooking with Zac,” based on his popular home meals with a following of their own on Instagram.

What would he like viewers to take away from the film?

“Hopefully what it does is inspire people to follow their dreams. I want people to follow their creative passion. I believe that creativity is an important human experience and element, in the same way as sleeping, eating, having sex,” Posen said. “I also want people to realize what it takes to build anything, that there’s sacrifice, there’s struggle, and it’s important to be resilient.”

Does he feel like the genius he was made out to be?

“No, not yet. I don’t,” Posen said. “I’m just me.”
…

Hollywood’s famous archeologist Indiana Jones has nothing on Mark Fairchild. 

The film character and the religion professor both teach at a university in Indiana.  Like Jones, Fairchild travels to far-off places in search of Biblical antiquities and doesn’t like snakes.  In fact, his students call him Indiana Mark.  And like the hero of five adventure movies, Fairchild is also a film star, of sorts, in a new documentary by two of his former students.

Matt Whitney says when he and his friend Logan Bush went on their first trip to Turkey with Mark Fairchild, they couldn’t believe a film hadn’t already been made about the Huntington University professor of Biblical studies and religion.  “This guy is in his 60s and is climbing giant mountains all day long and discovering lost cities out in the middle of the wilderness!”

After the students graduated in 2015, they formed a production company called Squatchagawea Films.  They returned to Turkey with Dr. Fairchild, and this past May, completed filming a documentary, tentatively titled The Last Apostle: Journeys in the Holy Land.

​”We’re using this trip that we take along St. Paul’s missionary route as a backdrop and a story to bring us along on Dr. Fairchild’s day to day life,” Whitney explains.  “You’re going to be seeing this amazing archeologist who’s done all these amazing things, but you’ll also be learning all about Turkey.”

An accidental archeologist

Mark Fairchild didn’t start out to be an archeologist.  As a Biblical historian, he was fascinated that most of the New Testament takes place in Turkey.  Twenty years ago, he made a side trip to the country, and was so impressed with the antiquities he saw there that he became a self-taught archeologist and began spending all his free time in Turkey.

He says that by finding Hellenistic and Jewish sites, he’s often able to learn more about early Christianity.  On one of his trips in 2012, he uncovered the oldest synagogue in the world.  “As I was climbing up,” he recalled, “I noticed off to my left there are many other buildings dated to the Hellenistic period, looked off onto my left-hand side and there’s what appears to be a menorah.”

Fairchild has visited more than 350 sites in Turkey.  He often makes his discoveries by visiting the countryside and talking with the locals.  While they’re often aware of many ruins, they seldom know what they are or have visited themselves.  That’s partly because they’re so remote and overgrown and partly because the country sees its history as beginning with Islam.

A better understanding of Turkey

Fairchild hopes his work, as well as this film, gives Westerners not only an appreciation of the past, but a better understanding of Turkey’s role in the modern world.

“If we’re ever going to resolve this problem of terrorism, Turkey, in my belief, has to be a player,” he insists.  “Turkey is 99 percent Muslim, but they are very secular.  It is the most moderate Muslim nation in the world.  They have good relations with most Western countries, they’re part of NATO and they want more.”

The filmmakers hope to have their feature-length documentary ready for release by the end of September.  It will then make the rounds at several film festivals and be available on the internet.
…