Director Sebastian Lelio feels that A Fantastic Woman has gone beyond the cinematic experience with its social message, to a great extent thanks to the performance of its star, Daniela Vega.

The film follows Marina, a transgender woman who, after the passing of her older lover, is mistreated by his family and the police officers investigating his death. It is Chile’s selection for the Academy Awards and on Monday was nominated for a Golden Globe Award in the best foreign film category.

“I am very proud of Daniela, of how she faced the challenge of a movie that not only meant an absolute leading role … that goes through an emotional spectrum, but that in addition flies, faces windstorms, sings two operatic arias. In short, it’s a polytonal role of great complexity and she … didn’t have much experience, so it was an all-or-nothing betting,” Lelio told The Associated Press in a phone interview shortly after the Globes nominations were announced.

“It was very beautiful to see how she gave herself completely and played this character with such complexity and beauty,” he added about Vega, whose performance has received Oscars buzz. If she is nominated next month, it would be the first Oscar nomination for a transgender actress.

“Somehow Daniela’s presence and the power that her body brings are the heart of the movie and it has been very nice and exciting to witness how she has become a voice not only of the movie but a sort of symbol of everything that is fragile, cornered,” said Lelio. “In some ways this is when cinema surpasses cinema and gets in the social fabric, and that is very powerful.”

​A winner in Berlin

A Fantastic Woman debuted last February at the Berlin International Film Festival, where it won the Teddy Award for best feature film as well as the Silver Bear for its screenplay, written by Lelio and Gonzalo Maza. Among other honors, it has also been nominated at the Independent Spirit Awards.

Lelio is in Los Angeles filming an English version of his acclaimed 2013 film Gloria, starring Oscar-winner Julianne Moore.

“It has been very exciting to be able to revisit what’s universal in the story and see a performer as powerful as Julianne Moore playing this role,” he said.

For now, he is savoring the Globes nomination, where A Fantastic Woman will compete against Angelina Jolie’s First They Killed My Father (Cambodia), In the Fade (Germany/France), Loveless (Russia) and The Square (Sweden/Germany/France).

“It’s a joy for the team, for everyone who made this movie, to be among this select group of such powerful movies that have been selected,” the director said.

As for Vega, he said: “I spoke to her this morning and she was very happy with the news. She is already getting her dress.”
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Seven-year-old Brooklynn Prince is sitting in a darkened TV studio with lights, cameras and control panels all around her. “Mission to Mars, mission to Mars,” she says. “This is Apollo.”

Brooklynn, the cheerful star of “The Florida Project,” has indeed lifted off. Her performance as Moonee, a brash, trouble-making pipsqueak living with her mom (Bria Vinaite) in a low-rent Orlando motel, may be the most spirited thing of 2017. Brooklynn is the exuberant energy at the center of one the year’s most acclaimed films, and some believe she should be the youngest Oscar nominee ever. Brooklynn included.

“I really want to be nominated,” she says. “Even if I get close to nominated, that’s a real honor.”

But she’d also — maybe even more so — really like to meet Emma Watson and Elle Fanning.

“They have been my girls for years,” she says.

None of the year’s breakthrough performers has enjoyed their moment more than Brooklyn. She has shot a selfie with Gary Oldman, shaken hands with Adam Sandler and met Margot Robbie, whom she confirms was “super-duper nice.”

“I never thought I would have this chance,” Brooklynn says. “It’s this crazy little movie that’s everywhere.”

She has Instagramed, Snapchatted and tweeted her adventures, from the Cannes Film Festival to the recent Gotham Awards, by borrowing her parents’ phones. She carries pins for homeless awareness with her to give away as a way to magnify the message of “The Florida Project.”

“I’ve always said: It doesn’t matter how small you are or what age you are to change the world. You can get into the business anytime. I was two when I got into the business,” says Brooklynn, the veteran. “Now I know that this is really what I want. My mom and dad aren’t pushing me for this. It’s what I want. Acting is, like, my life and I want to keep doing it forever.”
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“Star Wars: The Last Jedi” won warm reviews from most critics on Tuesday, a day before the latest installment in the sci-fi saga begins hitting movie theaters worldwide in what is projected to be the biggest-grossing movie of 2017.

The Walt Disney Co. movie received four or five stars from most reviewers, along with praise for its energy and emotion. “The Last Jedi” scored a 94 percent “fresh” rating on aggregator site RottenTomatoes.com.

The film, arriving in movie theaters from Dec. 13, picks up from 2015’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” which took in more than $2 billion at the global box office to become the third-biggest-grossing movie of all time.

Written and directed by Rian Johnson, “The Last Jedi” kicks off with the Resistance fighting Supreme Leader Snoke’s First Order, which is trying to take control of the galaxy.

The movie features the final appearance of Carrie Fisher, who plays the franchise’s Princess Leia. The actress died at age 60 last December, weeks after completing filming.

Numerous critics including The Hollywood Reporter felt that at 2-1/2 hours, the movie’s run time was a little too long. But the Hollywood Reporter added, “there’s a pervasive freshness and enthusiasm to Johnson’s approach that keeps the film, and with it the franchise, alive, and that is no doubt what matters most.”

The London Times newspaper deemed it the best “Star Wars” movie yet, calling it a “film of wit and wonder, of eye-gouging visual spectacle, and one that is buttressed by entirely unexpected, and frequently devastating, emotional power.”

Entertainment Weekly said “The Last Jedi” was a “triumph with flaws,” while USA Today said it was “a stellar entry” in the “Star Wars” franchise.

The Washington Post praised the film’s “irreverent humor and worshipful love for the original text.”

Variety was among a handful of less enthusiastic reviews, calling the film “ultimately a disappointment.” CNN said “Last Jedi” felt “like a significant letdown, one that does far less than its predecessor to stoke enthusiasm for the next leg in the trilogy.”

Before the reviews were out, Boxoffice.com projected that “Last Jedi” would haul in $185 million to $215 million in North America in its first weekend, which would rank as one of the biggest film debuts in history.

Disney said in November that Johnson will oversee a new trilogy of “Star Wars” films that will not follow the Skywalker saga, which George Lucas kicked off in 1977.

 
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Russia’s Olympic Committee agreed on Tuesday to support its athletes who choose to compete in next year’s Winter Games in South Korea as neutrals following a ban on the Russian national team.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) last week banned Russia from the Games, due to take place in Pyeongchang in February, for what it called “unprecedented systematic manipulation” of the anti-doping system.

But it left the door open for Russian athletes with a clean history of non-doping to be invited to compete as neutrals under an Olympic flag, not a Russian one.

President Vladimir Putin said last week Russia would not prevent its athletes from competing, dismissing calls by some for a boycott, and a Russian Olympic official said on Monday most Russian athletes still wanted to attend.

The Russian committee (ROC) agreed on its position at a meeting on Tuesday attended by sporting figures including the national men’s hockey team, figure skaters, speed skaters and the presidents of winter sports federations.

“All the participants were of the same opinion — our sportsmen need to go to Korea, need to compete, achieve victory for the glory of Russia, for the glory of our motherland,” ROC President Alexander Zhukov said.

Zhukov said Russia would do its best to support Russian athletes competing under a neutral flag and hold serious talks with the IOC in the near future to discuss the problems and practicalities of the arrangement.

He did not say what form this support would take.

“Russian sportsmen have stated their readiness to take part in the Olympic Games, despite the difficult conditions and decision of the IOC, which is undoubtedly unfair in many ways,” he said.

Zhukov added that Russia would also support the athletes who had decided not to compete in Pyeongchang.

Senior Russian Olympic official Vitaly Smirnov, who heads Russia’s state-backed anti-doping commission, said the country had made the “right decision” not to boycott.

“A boycott is not a solution,” Smirnov said. “That [would mean] new sanctions and problems for our athletes.”

In recent weeks, more than 30 Russian athletes who competed at the 2014 Sochi Games have been banned for life from the Olympics for allegedly breaching anti-doping rules.

And the IOC slapped lifetime bans on six Russian female ice hockey players a few hours after the Russian announcement Tuesday.

Russian authorities have vehemently denied any state support for doping and have pledged to cooperate with international sports bodies to counter the use of banned performance-enhancing drugs.

Russia’s athletics federation, paralympic committee and anti-doping agency RUSADA remain suspended over doping scandals.

‘Olympic Athlete from Russia’

Sitting in the front row of the Russian Olympic Committee auditorium ahead of the meeting, hockey star Ilya Kovalchuk said he would not mind competing at the Games as an “Olympic Athlete from Russia,” the term the IOC uses to designate the Russians who will go to Pyeongchang.

“We are athletes from Russia, after all,” Kovalchuk told reporters. “They took the flag away but they can’t take away our honor and our conscience.”

Kovalchuk, one of the first to call for athletes to compete in Pyeongchang after the IOC ban, thanked authorities for taking the opinions of athletes into consideration.

“Thank you for having heard us, for having believed us,” Kovalchuk said. “I think that every athlete who takes part in the Olympic Games in Pyeonchang will do everything possible.”

Olympic fencer Sofya Velikaya, chair of the ROC’s athletes commission, called on the Russian public to respect athletes’ decisions to go to Pyeongchang amid concerns that some could be branded traitors for agreeing to compete without the country’s flag.

“The athletes will show their love for their motherland and their patriotism through their results, through their accomplishments and medals,” Velikaya said.
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A reality TV show that celebrates honest civil servants in corruption-plagued countries has grown to reach new audiences in Mali and Liberia and aims to enlist the public’s help in fighting graft, the organizers said.

Integrity Idol asks the public to nominate model civil servants and then vote for their favorite by text message after the finalists appear on national TV and radio.

The show launched in Nepal in 2014 and has since spread to Pakistan, Nigeria, Mali and Liberia.

In finals this weekend in the West African nations of Liberia and Mali, a nursing instructor and a teacher were voted the winners from among thousands of nominees.

“There are lots of challenges to being a person of integrity in Liberia,” said winner Rebecca Scotland, a nursing teacher in Liberia’s capital Monrovia.

Corruption is so common in Liberia and across the region that patients even bribe nurses to ensure they receive the proper medicine and care, she said.

“Sometimes my colleagues push me away because I have integrity. They say I am hard to deal with, that I won’t change,” she said in an interview with Integrity Idol.

She plans to create a network with other winners to boost honesty and transparency in the public sector, she told Reuters following the award.

Liberia is in the midst of an election to replace President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf that has been delayed by allegations of fraud. The Supreme Court cleared it for a runoff last week.

The country ranked 90th out of 176 countries on watchdog Transparency International’s global corruption perception index last year, while Mali ranked 116th.

In Mali, politicians are sometimes arrested for graft but avoid penalties because the judges are also corrupt, said Moussa Kondo, who launched Integrity Idol there last year.

“We want to show young generations that there’s another way to become famous, without getting rich,” he told Reuters.

Mali’s winner Mahamane Mahamane Baba teaches at a public high school in Timbuktu and organizes literacy classes in his free time.

The show has grown quickly in both countries, said its organizers at U.S.-based organization Accountability Lab.

In Mali, people made 3,011 nominations for Integrity Idol this year compared to 2,850 last year, said Kondo.

Liberians submitted 4,689 nominations this year, more than three times the number when the show started in 2015, while the reach of the campaign through radio and TV stations has grown eight-fold to over 4 million people.

“Especially given the difficult situation with electoral politics at the moment, it is inspiring to see so many people discussing and voting for government officials with integrity,” said Lawrence Yealue, director of Liberia’s Accountability Lab.
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This may or may not come as a surprise: Merriam-Webster’s word of the year for 2017 is “feminism.”

Yes, it’s been a big year or two or 100 for the word. In 2017, look-ups for feminism increased 70 percent over 2016 on Merriam-Webster.com and spiked several times after key events, lexicographer Peter Sokolowski, the company’s editor at large, told The Associated Press ahead of Tuesday’s annual word reveal.

There was the Women’s March on Washington in January, along with sister demonstrations around the globe. And heading into the year was Democrat Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and references linking her to white-clad suffragettes, along with her loss to President Donald Trump, who once boasted about grabbing women.  

The “Me Too” movement rose out of Harvey Weinstein’s dust, and other “silence breakers” brought down rich and famous men of media, politics and the entertainment worlds.

Feminism has been in Merriam-Webster’s annual Top 10 for the last few years, including sharing word-of-the-year honors with other “isms” in 2015. Socialism, fascism, racism, communism, capitalism and terrorism rounded out the bunch. Surreal was the word of the year last year.

“The word feminism was being use in a kind of general way,” Sokolowski said by phone from the company’s headquarters in Springfield, Massachusetts. “The feminism of this big protest, but it was also used in a kind of specific way: What does it mean to be a feminist in 2017? Those kinds of questions are the kinds of things, I think, that send people to the dictionary.”

Feminism’s roots are in the Latin for “woman” and the word “female,” which dates to 14th century English. Sokolowski had to look no further than his company’s founder, Noah Webster, for the first dictionary reference, in 1841, which isn’t all that old in the history of English.

“It was a very new word at that time,” Sokolowski said. “His definition is not the definition that you and I would understand today. His definition was, ‘The qualities of females,’ so basically feminism to Noah Webster meant femaleness. We do see evidence that the word was used in the 19th century in a medical sense, for the physical characteristics of a developing teenager, before it was used as a political term, if you will.”

Webster added the word in revisions to his “An American Dictionary of the English Language.” They were his last. He died in 1843. He also added the word terrorism that year.

“We had no idea he was the original dictionary source of feminism. We don’t have a lot of evidence of what he was looking at,” Sokolowski said.

Today, Merriam-Webster defines feminism as the “theory of the political, economic and social equality of the sexes” and “organized activities on behalf of women’s rights and interests.”

Another spike for the word feminism in 2017 occurred in February, after Kellyanne Conway spoke at the Conservative Political Action Committee.

“It’s difficult for me to call myself a feminist in the classic sense because it seems to be very anti-male and it certainly seems to be very pro-abortion. I’m neither anti-male or pro-abortion,” she said. “There’s an individual feminism, if you will, that you make your own choices…. I look at myself as a product of my choices, not a victim of my circumstances. And to me, that’s what conservative feminism is all about.”

She was applauded, and she sent many people to their dictionaries, Sokolowski said. The company would not release actual look-up numbers.

Other events that drew interest to the word feminism was the popular Hulu series, “The Handmaid’s Tale,” and the blockbuster movie, “Wonder Woman,” directed by a woman, Patty Jenkins, Sokolowski said.

Merriam-Webster had nine runners-up, in no particular order:

Complicit, competitor Dictionary.com’s word of the year.
Recuse, in reference to Jeff Sessions and the Russia investigation.
Empathy, which hung high all year.
Dotard, used by Kim Jong-un to describe Trump.
Syzygy , the nearly straight-line configuration of three celestial bodies, such as the sun, moon and earth during a solar or lunar eclipse.
Gyro, which can be pronounced three different ways, a phenom celebrated in a Jimmy Fallon sketch on “The Tonight Show.”
Federalism, which Lindsey Graham referred to in discussing the future of the Affordable Care Act.
Hurricane, which Sokolowski suspects is because people are confused about wind speed.
Gaffe, such as what happened at the Academy Awards when the wrong best picture winner was announced. That was a go-to word for the media, Sokolowski said.
…

Propelled by the power of hearing their stories in their own language, some Cambodian American audience members fled in tears from a screening of First They Killed My Father, the Angelina Jolie film adaptation of an English-language memoir of a 5-year-old girl who witnessed the Khmer Rouge takeover of Cambodia in 1975.

The movie uses the Khmer word “pa” for “father” a word the Khmer Rouge banned as foreign-sounding and elitist and replaced with “puk,” which the regime preferred as a purer Khmer word for “father.”

Other words recalled other horrors —“-srek khlean” “ohh sangkhoeum” and “kosang” are Khmer words which mean “hungry” “hopeless” and “build or rebuild” in Khmer, the language of Cambodia. During the Khmer Rouge era, the first two carried the weight of a brutal social transformation that killed an estimated 2 million. “Kosang” in the black-is-white world of dictator Pol Pot meant near-certain “execution.”

​“When Cambodians hear these phrases they will just cry because it is our story,” said Panha Nith, a 45-year-old Battambang native who now works as a cosmetologist in Leesburg, Virginia, some 70 kilometers from a screening of the film based on the memoir by Cambodian-American Loung Ung. “They forced us to change from ‘pa’ and ‘mak’ to ‘puk’ and ‘mae.’ It took a while to get used to that.” 

Jolie attended the first screening, which was in Cambodia in February, and Netflix began streaming its production in September. Panha Nith decided to wait for a traditional theater screening, where other people would also attend. She saw the film in October at Montgomery College, just outside Washington, D.C. at a community screening and panel discussion designed to bring first and second generation Cambodians together to revisit the Khmer Rouge era, the first chapter in the refugee stories of many Cambodian-Americans. Many who attended the screening came as a family. The most recent screening was on Dec. 9 in Lowell, Massachusetts, home to the second largest Cambodian community in the United States outside California. 

If the movie, the first major Khmer-language Hollywood-standard movie with English subtitles, had been in English, Cambodians would “still understand the story but some meaning and nuances will get lost and it may not feel as tragic,” said Panha Nith, whose own story of childhood survival and a father who disappeared mirrors that of Loung Ung’s. 

Other movies, The Killing Fields  (1984), andThe Missing Picture (2013) have focused on the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge era, but not completely in Khmer. 

About thirty minutes into the screening of the Oscar-submitted Jolie film, Panha Nith left, crying. “At the scene where the children were given porridge, and it was so little … it reminded me of our situation where there was barely any rice in the porridge,” she said. “I can’t even describe it — I had to add leaves and gave it to my younger siblings, willing to starve myself.” 

Panha Nith’s 10-year-old daughter Beaunita Nith attended the screening with her mother even though she has watched the film three times on Netflix. She said her mother, whom she calls “mak” at home, had prepared her for a possibly traumatic experience.

“She always kept on telling me” that her father was a teacher, “and that they didn’t find him and that my grandma almost died, too, like a lot of people almost died,” said Beaunita Nith, a fifth-grader who can speak some Khmer. 

She liked hearing the language as she followed Loung Ung’s experience because the story felt closer to her mother’s experience. “This is a story of a Cambodian but if it is (told) in a voice of an American, that won’t make any sense,” said Beaunita Nith. 

Cambodian-American Sarah Kith, 46, is a convener at the Library of Congress who lives in northern Virginia. She had not read or streamed First They Killed My Father because the story too closely parallels her own, rekindling difficult memories. 

Sarah Kith attended the screening with three generations of her family, including her grandmother who barely speaks English. Hearing Khmer words such as “srek khlean” (hungry) and “ohh sangkhoeum” (hopeless) triggered vivid memories of Sarah Kitch’s five-year-old self.

“While (the book) was written in English, the way it is played out in the movie is … very culturally appropriate,” said Sarah Kith. It was written “from the perspective of a young girl so there are many lenses that are superimposed or rather filtered through. But it quite accurately captured (events), so we get to re-experience it in a way that helps us heal.” 

For Heng Kim, 81, of Arlington, Virginia, the Khmer words in the film such as “kosang” (rebuild/reeducation) brought back memories of his near execution in the Ba Phnom district of his native Prey Veng province. If he hadn’t escaped to Vietnam, his daughter’s story would have echoed that of Loung Ung.

Many of the Khmer words would be difficult to express in English because of what was happening at the time; “kosang” carried the connotation of “execution.”

“As Cambodians, these words hit us hard,” said Kim Heng. “I understood parts of The Killing Fields, and had to rely on translation for some parts. But for this movie, the Khmer-language is so real I couldn’t bear it. It gave me headaches.” 

The Killing Fields, the first Khmer Rouge-themed movie to attract international acclaim —including Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for the late Cambodian Haing S. Ngor, and best cinematography and best film editing — was shot mainly in English on locations outside Cambodia, which was still engulfed in civil war. First They Killed My Father featured an all-Cambodian crew of over 3,500 actors and was also filmed completely in Cambodia’s Siem Reap and Battambang provinces.

Visal Sam, 45, was born in Battambang city, one of the First They Killed My Father locations. Like Loung Ung, in the movie, she too lost her father who was a former military official during the Lon Nol regime. 

Visal watched the movie with her husband and her four children.

Her daughter, Vichethyda Sam, 19, and the oldest of her children said that although she understood the film without reading the English subtitles, the movie made her want to learn more Khmer and connect with Cambodian-Americans her age.

“I’m glad that the movie was in Khmer,” she said. 

Building a sense of family and community were the main goals of Kunthary de Gaiffier, 61, one of the event organizers. 

She was pleased that more than 200 people came to the Friday night screening, and that many were second-generation Cambodian-Americans with their parents.

Kunthary de Gaiffier said that she believed the film may open intergenerational dialogue among Cambodian-American families, conversations that may help with trauma healing.

“After the screening of this movie, they start to open up, at least those who dare not discuss in the past now at least dare to ask,” she said.” 

Kunthary de Gaiffier, who was in France during the Khmer Rouge era and has two adult Cambodian-American children, says the film may prompt second-generation Cambodian-Americans to learn more about Cambodian history, language and culture.  “They can relate to family experience and can become more curious to learn more and ask more questions that they dared not ask for many years.” 
…

Women were shut out of the directors race at the 2018 Golden Globe nominations Monday, while Ridley Scott’s scramble to reshoot All the Money in the World led to a surprise nod for actor Christopher Plummer, who replaced Kevin Spacey.

Greta Gerwig, who made her solo directorial debut with the warmly reviewed coming-of-age tale Lady Bird, was snubbed in a category in which Scott, Guillermo del Toro, Martin McDonagh, Christopher Nolan and Steven Spielberg were nominated.

Patty Jenkins, who delivered box office superhero smash Wonder Woman, was also left out, along with directors Dee Rees, of Netflix Inc’s racial period drama Mudbound, and Kathryn Bigelow, of the racially charged drama Detroit.

“It’s a terrible shame, to be honest,” said McDonagh, who wrote and directed small-town drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. “I know there have been great screenplays by women recognized this year but not directing, and maybe that will change in the Oscars.”

Gerwig, 34, was nominated for best screenplay for writing Lady Bird, which also landed two acting nods for its star, Saoirse Ronan, and supporting actress, Laurie Metcalf.

Metcalf told Reuters that Gerwig’s Lady Bird set was collaborative and stress-free.

“I’m spoiled rotten,” Metcalf said. “She just made it a beautiful and personal experience for the entire cast and crew.”

Scott’s All the Money in the World received nominations for supporting actor Plummer and lead actress Michelle Williams in the drama about the 1973 kidnapping of oil heir John Paul Getty III.

Plummer replaced Spacey last month in the role of Jean Paul Getty after Spacey was cut because of multiple sexual misconduct allegations against him.

Spacey issued an apology for the first reported incident, involving actor Anthony Rapp. Reuters could not independently confirm the allegations.

Scott did last-minute reshoots to have the Sony Pictures film completed in time for its Dec. 25 release.

“I am especially proud that the beautiful performances of Michelle and Chris were celebrated today,” Scott said in an emailed statement. “Despite the unexpected challenges we encountered after shooting was completed, we were determined that audiences around the world would be able to see our film.”

Other surprises included Vietnamese-American actress Hong Chau for her breakout role in the best supporting actress race for futuristic comedy Downsizing.

Other key snubs included Amazon’s interracial romantic comedy The Big Sick, which failed to land any nominations, especially for its star Kumail Nanjiani, who wrote the film with his real-life wife on the circumstances that brought them together.
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