Venice, Italy — Hollywood heavyweights George Clooney and Brad Pitt admit they are disappointed their latest comedy “Wolfs” is not getting a broad cinema release and instead heading almost straight onto Apple TV.

“It is a bummer,” Clooney said on Sunday, adding that television streamers, such as Apple AAPL.O, were nevertheless vital to the future of filmmaking, presenting actors with opportunities and generating bigger audiences for their work.

“Streaming, we need it, our industry needs this,” he said.

Written and directed by Jon Watts, “Wolfs” is an old-fashioned crime caper with Clooney and Pitt playing lone-wolf professional fixers who are forced to work together with comically unfortunate consequences.  

Apple originally signaled it would place the film in a large number of cinemas before the TV release, but instead opted to show it briefly in a restricted number of U.S. movie theatres and then run it on its global TV service.

“We’ll always be romantic about the theatrical experience. At the same time, I love the existence of the streamers because we get to see more story, we get to see more talent, it gets more eyes,” said Pitt. “It’s a delicate balance right now and it’ll right itself.”

Asked what it meant if two of the biggest names in the business could not get a broad cinema release, as they had requested, Clooney quipped: “Clearly we’re declining.”

Sixteen years after last appearing together in 2008’s Coen brothers’ comedy “Burn After Reading,” Pitt and Clooney said they jumped at the chance to reunite when they read Watts’ script for “Wolfs.”

“I got to say, just as I get older, just working with the people that I just really enjoy spending time with has really become important to me,” said Pitt, who turned 60 last year.

In a news conference full of light-hearted banter, Clooney, said Pitt, was fortunate still to be offered parts. “He’s 74 years-old and he’s very lucky at this age to still be working.”

On a more serious note, he denied a New York Times story in August that said both he and Pitt had been paid more than $35 million each to appear in the film.

“I’m only saying that because I think it’s bad for our industry if that’s what people think is the standard bearer for salaries. I think that’s a terrible thing. It will make it impossible to make a film,” he said.

“Wolfs” is showing out of competition at the Venice Film Festival, which runs until Sept. 7.
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Blantyre, Malawi — A 72-year-old woman has shot to music stardom in Malawi, challenging societal norms in a country where elderly people are often abused, tortured or even killed over false accusations of witchcraft.

Christina Malaya, now popularly known by her stage name, Jetu, is breaking the internet with her amapiano-style tracks.

Jetu started her music career last year, at the age of 71 — soon after the death of her husband, in central Malawi, where she was staying.

Relatives suggested she go to Blantyre to stay with grandchildren. Those grandchildren were “doing music,” she said, and asked her to join them as a way to overcome her loneliness and boredom.

Under the management of her grandson, musician Blessings Kazembe, popularly known as Emmu Dee, Jetu has released three powerful singles: “Wakalamba Wafuna,” “Chakwaza” and “Simunatchene.”

Her fans and admirers have crowned her the Malawian queen of amapiano — a subgenre of South African house music — which dominates the music scene in Malawi.

Jetu is excited that music has allowed her to go places she never dreamed of visiting, including Johannesburg and Cape Town when she performed in South Africa in June.

Her talent has earned her recognition as an ambassador for elderly people in Malawi, helping to reduce attacks and killings. Older people in Malawi are faced with attacks and killings on suspicion of practicing witchcraft even though Malawi law does not recognize witchcraft.

Andrew Kavala, executive director of the Malawi Network of Older Persons’ Organizations, told VOA that in 2023, his organization recorded 25 killings and 87 cases of violence, including setting fire to homes and assault. That was up from 2022’s 17 deaths.

So far in 2024, he said, 17 elderly people have been killed and 89 have been abused.

Kavala said his organization chose Jetu as an ambassador for elderly Malawians because of her strong appeal to youth, who studies show make 86% of the witchcraft accusations.

“We are trying to explore means through which Jetu can use her platform to convey the message to the youth, ‘Stop bullying, stop abusing elderly persons,’” he said.

Malawi’s youthful and renowned fashion designer Xandria Kawanga, owner of the House of Xandria fashion brand, has started to dress Jetu for events.

“Most people at her age have already given up or they feel they cannot do anything, entertainment or arts, because they are old now,” Kawanga said “So, I thought one of the best ways [to help] is to complement her art and to give her that push.”

Jetu and her grandson/manager, Emmu Dee, are working to promote their new song, which has a video that was was produced this month.
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New York — Does American tennis have a pickleball problem?

Even as the U.S. Open opened this week with more than a million fans expected for the sport’s biggest showcase, the game’s leaders are being forced to confront a devastating fact — the nation’s fastest-growing racket sport (or sport of any kind) is not tennis but pickleball, which has seen participation boom 223% in the past three years.

“Quite frankly, it’s obnoxious to hear that pickleball noise,” U.S. Tennis Association President Dr. Brian Hainline grumbled at a recent state-of-the-game news conference, bemoaning the distinctive pock, pock, pock of pickleball points.

Pickleball, an easy-to-play mix of tennis and ping pong using paddles and a wiffleball, has quickly soared from nearly nothing to 13.6 million U.S. players in just a few years, leading tennis purists to fear a day when it could surpass tennis’ 23.8 million players. And most troubling is that pickleball’s rise has often come at the expense of thousands of tennis courts encroached upon or even replaced by smaller pickleball courts.

“When you see an explosion of a sport and it starts potentially eroding into your sport, then, yes, you’re concerned,” Hainline said in an interview with The Associated Press. “That erosion has come in our infrastructure. … A lot of pickleball advocates just came in and said, ‘We need these tennis courts.’ It was a great, organic grassroots movement but it was a little anti-tennis.”

Some tennis governing bodies in other countries have embraced pickleball and other racket sports under the more-the-merrier belief they could lead more players to the mothership of tennis. France’s tennis federation even set up a few pickleball courts at this year’s French Open to give top players and fans a chance to try it out.

But the USTA has taken a decidedly different approach. Nowhere at the U.S. Open’s Billie Jean King National Tennis Center is there any such demonstration court, exhibition match or any other nod to pickleball or its possible crossover appeal.

In fact, the USTA is flipping the script on pickleball with an ambitious launch of more than 400 pilot programs across the country to broaden the reach of an easier-to-play, smaller-court version of tennis called “red ball tennis.” Backers say it’s the ideal way for people of all ages to get into tennis and the best place to try it is (wait for it) on pickleball courts.

“You can begin tennis at any age,” USTA’s Hainline said. “We believe that when you do begin this great sport of tennis, it’s probably best to begin it on a shorter court with a larger, low-compression red ball. What’s an ideal short court? A pickleball court.”

And instead of the plasticky plink of a pickleball against a flat paddle, Hainline said, striking a fuzzy red tennis ball with a stringed racket allows for a greater variety of strokes and “just a beautiful sound.” Players can either stick with red ball tennis or advance through a progression of bouncier balls to full-court tennis.

“Not to put it down,” Hainline said of pickleball, “but compared to tennis … seriously?”

So what does the head of the nation’s pickleball governing body have to say about such comments and big tennis’ plans to plant the seeds of its growth, at least in part, on pickleball courts?

“I don’t like it but there is so much going on with pickleball, so many good things, I’m going to stick to what I can control, harnessing the growth and supporting this game,” said Pickleball USA CEO Mike Nealy.

Among the positive signs, Nealy said, is the continuing construction of new pickleball courts across the country, raising the total to more than 50,000. There’s also growing investment in the game at clubs built in former big-box retail stores, pro leagues with such backers as Tom Brady, LeBron James and Drake, and the emergence of “dink-and-drink” establishments that tap into the social aspect of the game by allowing friends to enjoy pickleball, beer, wine and food under the same roof.

“I don’t think it needs to be one or the other or a competition,” Nealy said of pickleball and tennis. “You’re certainly going to have the inherent frictions in communities when tennis people don’t feel that they’re getting what they want. … They’re different games but I think they are complimentary. There’s plenty of room for both sports to be very successful.”

Top-ranked American tennis player Taylor Fritz agreed. “There are some people in the tennis world that are just absolute pickleball haters, and that’s fine. But for me, I don’t really have an issue with pickleball. I like playing sometimes. … I don’t see any reason why both of them can’t exist.”
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CAIRO — It was another day of war in Gaza, another day of what 19-year-old Palestinian TikTok star Medo Halimy called his “Tent Life.”

As he often did in videos documenting life’s mundane absurdities in the enclave, Halimy on Monday walked to his local internet cafe — rather, a tent with Wi-Fi where displaced Palestinians can connect to the outside world — to meet his friend and collaborator Talal Murad.

They snapped a selfie — “Finally Reunited” Halimy captioned it on Instagram — and started catching up.

Then came a flash of light, 18-year-old Murad said, an explosion of white heat and sprayed earth. Murad felt pain in his neck. Halimy was bleeding from his head. A car on the coastal road in front of them was engulfed in flames, the apparent target of an Israeli airstrike. It took 10 minutes for an ambulance to arrive. Hours later doctors pronounced Halimy dead.

“He represented a message,” Murad said on Friday, still recovering from his shrapnel wounds and reeling from the Israeli airstrike that killed his friend. “He represented hope and strength.”

The Israeli military said it was not aware of the strike that killed Halimy.

Israel’s campaign in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians — according to Gaza’s Health Ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between civilians and militants — and spawned a humanitarian disaster. It has also transformed legions of ordinary teenagers, who have nothing to do every day but survive, into war correspondents for the social media age.

“We worked together, it was a kind of resistance that I hope to continue,” said Murad, who collaborated with Halimy on “The Gazan Experience,” an Instagram account that answered questions from followers around the world trying to understand their lives in the besieged enclave, which is inaccessible to foreign journalists.

Halimy launched his own TikTok account after taking refuge with his parents, four brothers and sister in Muwasi, the southern coastal area that Israel has designated a humanitarian safe zone. They had fled Israel’s invasion of Gaza City to the southern city of Khan Younis before escaping the bombardment again for the dusty encampment.

Sparked by Hamas’ surprise attack on Israel on October 7 that killed 1,200 people and resulted in about 250 people taken hostage, the Israel-Hamas war has produced a torrent of images now numbingly familiar to viewers around the world: Bombed-out buildings, contorted bodies, chaotic hospital halls.

Turning his camera on the intimate details of his own life in Gaza, Halimy reached viewers far and wide, revealing a maddening tedium that’s largely left out of news coverage about the war.

He filmed himself going about his day: waiting restlessly in long lines for drinking water, showering with a jar and a bucket (“there’s no shampoo or soap, of course”), scavenging ingredients to make a surprisingly tasty baba ganoush, the Middle East’s smoky eggplant dip (“Mama mia!” he marvels at his creation), and becoming very, very bored (“then I went back to the tent, and did nothing”).

Hundreds of thousands of people around the world were captivated. His videos went viral — some amassing more than 2 million views on TikTok.
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KINGSTON, New York — On a residential block in upstate New York, college students dug and sifted backyard dirt as part of an archeological exploration this summer of a centuries-old cemetery for African Americans.

Now covered with green lawns in the city of Kingston, this spot in 1750 was part of a burial ground for people who were enslaved. It was located on what was then the outskirts of town. An unknown number of people who were denied church burials were interred here until the late 19th century, when the cemetery was covered over as the city grew.

The site is now being reclaimed as the Pine Street African Burial Ground, one of many forgotten or neglected cemeteries for African Americans getting fresh attention. In the last three summers, the remains of up to 27 people have been located here.

Advocates in this Hudson River city purchased a residential property covering about half the old cemetery several years ago and now use the house there as a visitor center. Money is being raised to turn the urban backyard into a respectful resting place. And while the names of people buried here may be lost, tests are planned on their remains to shed light on their lives and identify their descendants.

“The hardships of those buried here cannot just go down in vain,” said Tyrone Wilson, founder of Harambee Kingston, the nonprofit community group behind the project. “We have a responsibility to make sure that we fix that disrespect.”

While the more-than-0.2 hectares site was designated as a cemetery for people who were enslaved in 1750, it might have been in use before then. Burials continued through about 1878, more than 50 years after New York fully abolished slavery. Researchers say people were buried with their feet to the east, so when they rise on Judgment Day they would face the rising sun.

Remains found on the Harambee property are covered with patterned African cloths and kept where they are. Remains found on adjoining land are exhumed for later burial on the Harambee property.

Students from the State University of New York at New Paltz recently finished a third summer of supervised backyard excavations in this city 129 kilometers upriver from Manhattan. The students get course credit, though anthropology major Maddy Thomas said there’s an overriding sense of mission.

“I don’t like when people feel upset or forgotten,” Thomas said on a break. “And that is what’s happened here. So we’ve got to fix it.”

Harambee is trying to raise $1 million to transform the modest backyard into resting spot that reflects the African heritage of the people buried there. Plans include a tall marker in the middle of the yard.

While some graves were apparently marked, it’s still hard to say who was buried there.

“Some of them, it’s obvious, were marked with just a stone with no writing on it,” said Joseph Diamond, associate professor of anthropology at New Paltz.

The only intact headstone recovered with a name visible was for Caezar Smith, who was born enslaved and died a free man in 1839 at age 41. A researcher mined historical records and came up with two more people potentially buried there in 1803: a man identified as Sam and a 16-year-old girl named Deyon who was publicly hanged after being convicted of murdering the 6-year-old daughter of her enslavers.

The cemetery was at first covered by a lumberyard by 1880, even though some gravestones were apparently still standing by that date.

In 1990, Diamond was doing an archaeological survey for the city and noticed the cemetery was marked on a map from 1870. He and the city historian went out to find it.

Coincidentally, Pine Street building owner Andrew Kirschner had just discovered buried bone chips while digging in front of the building in search of a sewer pipe. He put the pieces in a box. Kirschner said he was still digging when Diamond told him what they were looking for.

“The conversation begins and then I go, ‘Well, let me show you what I found.’ Of course, they were amazed,” said Kirschner, who had owned the building next to the current Harambee property.

Even after the discovery, Diamond said it was difficult to convince people there were graves on Pine Street. There were even plans in 1996 to build a parking lot over much of the site. Advocates purchased the property in 2019.

Similar stories of disregard and rediscovery have played out elsewhere.

In Manhattan, the African Burial Ground National Monument marks the site where an estimated 15,000 free and enslaved Africans were buried until the 1790s. It was discovered in 1991 during excavations for a federal building. Farther up the Hudson River, the renovation in Newburgh of a century-old school into a courthouse in 2008 led to the discovery of more than 100 sets of remains.

Antoinette Jackson, founder of The Black Cemetery Network, said many of the 169 sites listed in their online archive had been erased.

“A good deal of them represent sites that have been built over — by parking lots, schools, stadiums, highways. Others have been under-resourced,” said Jackson, a professor of anthropology at the University of Southern Florida.

She added that the cemeteries listed on the archive are just the “tip of the iceberg.”

Given the meager historical record in Kingston, advocates hope tests on the remains will help fill in some gaps. Isotopic analyses could provide information on whether individuals grew up elsewhere — like South Carolina or Africa — and then moved to the region. DNA analyses could provide information on where in Africa their ancestors came from. The DNA tests also might be able to link them to living descendants.

Wilson said local families have committed to providing DNA samples. He sees the tests as another way to connect people to heritage.

“One of the biggest issues that we have in African culture is that we don’t know our history,” he said. “We don’t have a lot of information of who we are.”
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WASHINGTON — Movie ticket sales in China have generated more than $1.5 billion so far this summer, a little more than half of last year’s record total of $2.89 billion, according to China’s Film Data Information Network, an institution directly under the Central Propaganda Department. 

Summer is usually one of three lucrative periods for China’s movie industry, but industry analysts, observers and customers say a slower economy and a lack of creative domestic films are to blame for the decline.

Some would-be moviegoers explained why they are staying home this summer.

One posted on social media: “The impact from last year’s economic downturn officially appeared this year. Everyone thinks 40-80 yuan ($5-$11) per ticket is expensive.” 

“Many movies in theaters in July are on streaming services in August,” another posted. “We’d rather watch them at home than go to the theater.”

A moviegoer in Beijing who identified herself as Ms. Yu, told VOA that this year’s film market is sluggish because the themes are plain, and streaming services allow everyone to watch movies at home without spending money.

“Everyone’s life is already miserable,” she said, “so we don’t want to watch sad movies.”

Although the streaming services have become theaters’ biggest competitors, the economic downturn may be the main reason for the ticket sales plunge, said Shenzhen-based film director Zhang, who did not want to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue.

 

“The spending power of young people and parents has decreased,” Zhang told VOA. “One [reason] is that young people don’t date, and parents whose income has been reduced are under great pressure to raise children, so they naturally cut the consumption activities except eating and drinking, not just movies.”

China’s economy has been struggling to stabilize since the pandemic, according to the World Bank, with growth falling to 3% in 2022 before a moderate recovery to 5.2% in 2023. The global lender expects China’s growth rate to drop back below 5% this year, while youth unemployment has surged.

China’s National Bureau of Statistics removed students from its unemployment calculation after China hit a record high 21.3% youth unemployment rate in June 2023, prompting authorities to temporarily suspend publication of the statistic. 

Darson Chiu, director-general of the Confederation of Asia-Pacific Chambers of Commerce and Industry in Taiwan, told VOA that China’s controls on film and creativity have also contributed to the lackluster box office figures.

“China has a very strict censorship system,” Chiu said. “Cultural activities need creativity, and it must be bottom-up. But it is obviously a top-down [censorship] mechanism, so it [the Chinese film industry] is not as creative as it is in other more open and free economies.”

Lee Cheng-liang, an assistant professor of communications at National Chengchi University in Taipei, Taiwan, said Chinese cinemas in the summer mainly show domestic movies, which are struggling to find investors.

“The economy is declining; investors are more cautious to minimize risks. So they diversify the movie themes they invest in,” Lee told VOA. “If you focus on the Chinese market, you will not necessarily make money unless you are at the top of the pyramid.”

Director Zhang said the Chinese summer comedies “Successor,” which critiques the Chinese social education system, and “Upstream,” which portrays package deliverers, are movies that do not “empathize with the general public.” 

Commercial movies are often condescending, he said, with hypocritically fabricated plots to show the suffering of people at the bottom. “It is actually a very deformed route,” Zhang added.

Other film critics, however, find “Upstream” a great work with increasing favorable audience feedback, which uncovers China’s immense economic problems and the struggle of its army of gig workers.

China’s state Xinhua News agency said “Successor,” grossing nearly 3.2 billion yuan as of Aug 20, accounted for almost 30% of China’s summer box office sales.

Zhang said the more depressed the social and historical period is, the more popular comedy is because the audience wants to feel “dreamy and painless.”

Despite the poor summer box office showing, not all critics are negative about China’s film industry.  

“The ticket sales are not good this summer, but it does not mean that their [China’s] movies are bad,” Michael Mai, a film critic based in Taipei, told VOA. “Their audience is hard to please. Why? Because their appetite is too big. They have all kinds of movies.”

Mai noted that there are three major periods in the Chinese movie market: the Lunar New Year, in January and February; the summer season, from June to August; and the weeklong National Day season from Oct. 1.  

Movie ticket sales always have seasonal ups and downs, Mai said, so people should be focusing more on long-term trends.      

Adrianna Zhang contributed to this report.
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Paris — The Opening Ceremony of the Paris Paralympics got underway Wednesday in the center of the French capital, firing the starting gun on 11 days of intense competition.

Just as for the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics on the River Seine in July, it took place away from the main stadium for the first time at a Paralympics.

In balmy weather — in contrast to the heavy rain that blighted the opening of the Olympics on July 26 — the Games opened in Place de la Concorde, in the presence of French President Emmanuel Macron.

The ceremony culminates with the lighting of the cauldron, which has already become a highly popular point of interest in the city since its debut at the Olympics.

When the sporting action begins on Thursday, a new generation of Paralympians will join seasoned veterans competing in many of the same venues that hosted Olympic sports.

Eighteen of the 35 Olympic venues will be used for the Paralympics, which run until September 8, including the Grand Palais, which scored rave reviews for its hosting of fencing and taekwondo under an ornate roof.

The La Defense Arena will again host the swimming events, and track and field will take place on the purple track of the Stade de France.

Sluggish ticket sales have picked up since the Olympics, and more than 2 million of the 2.5 million available have been sold, with several venues sold out.

The Paralympic flame was lit at Stoke Mandeville hospital in England, the birthplace of the Games, and brought to France through the Channel Tunnel before touring French cities.

Theater director Thomas Jolly, who also oversaw the Olympics Opening Ceremony, said there was a deep symbolism in having the Paralympics ceremony in the center of Paris — a city whose Metro system is not adapted to the needs of wheelchair users.

“Putting Paralympic athletes in the heart of the city is already a political marker in the sense that the city is not sufficiently adapted to every handicapped person,” Jolly said earlier this week.

Organizers say wheelchair users can take Paris buses, and they have laid on 1,000 specially adapted taxis as well.

Paralympic powerhouse China will send a strong squad — the Chinese dominated the medals table at the Covid-delayed Games in Tokyo three years ago, winning 96 golds. Britain was second with 41 golds.

Riding the wave of its Olympic team’s success, host nation France will be aiming for a substantial upgrade on the 11 golds it won in 2021, which left it in 14th position. French Sports Minister Amelie Oudea-Castera said she wants France to finish in the top eight of the medals table.

Ukraine, traditionally one of the top medal-winning nations at the Paralympics, have sent a team of 140 athletes spread over 17 sports despite the challenges they face in preparing as the war against Russian forces rages at home.

Russia and Belarus are sending a total of 96 athletes, who will compete under a neutral banner but are barred from the opening and closing ceremonies because of the invasion of Ukraine.

Every Games produces new stars, and in this edition, look to American above-the-knee amputee sprinter/high jumper Ezra Frech to make the headlines.

Away from the track, Iranian sitting volleyball legend Morteza Mehrzad, who stands 8 feet, 1 inch tall, will attempt to take gold again.

International Paralympic Committee President Andrew Parsons told AFP earlier this year he hopes the Paris edition will restore the issues facing disabled people to the top of the list of global priorities.

Parsons believes the Games “will have a big impact in how people with disability are perceived around the world.”

“This is one of the key expectations we have around Paris 2024; we believe that we need people with disability to be put back on the global agenda,” the Brazilian said.

“We do believe people with disability have been left behind. There is very little debate about persons with disability.”
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Before Russia invaded in February 2022, American football was becoming popular in Ukraine. Today, most of the players are on the front lines. A gentler version of the game — flag football — is gaining ground in the meantime among kids and youth. Tetiana Kukurika has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Sergiy Rybchynski
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rome — Stars from Angelina Jolie to George Clooney will gather this week at the Venice Film Festival, bringing a high dose of Hollywood pizzazz back to the watery city’s sandy Lido. 

With 21 films vying for the top Golden Lion prize, the 81st edition of the prestigious festival kicks off Wednesday, with Lady Gaga, Daniel Craig and Brad Pitt expected on the red carpet during the 10-day affair. 

The dazzle is welcome after the Hollywood strikes last year kept most studio films and their A-lister stars away from the world’s longest-running festival, known as “La Mostra.” 

In the spotlight, but out of competition, is “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice,” the long-anticipated sequel to Tim Burton’s 1988 cult classic that opens the festival Wednesday, with Michael Keaton, Catherine O’Hara and Winona Ryder reprising their original roles.  

High-profile contenders in the main competition include Todd Phillips’ “Joker: Folie a Deux,” the sequel to the U.S. director’s 2019 Venice-winning film that sees Joaquin Phoenix paired with Lady Gaga; and “Queer” from Italy’s Luca Guadagnino, starring Craig and based on the William Burroughs novel set in 1940s Mexico City. 

Jolie headlines “Maria,” a Maria Callas biopic from Chile’s Pablo Larrain, who returns to Venice following his Diana drama “Spencer” in 2021, while Nicole Kidman and Antonio Banderas star in the erotic thriller “Babygirl” from Dutch director Halina Reijn. 

To keep the drama on the screen — and avoid it behind the scenes — “Maria” will premiere on the festival’s first full day Thursday, while “Wolfs” starring Jolie’s ex, Brad Pitt, will screen out of competition Sunday. 

Joining Pitt in the Apple TV+ film from “Spider-Man” director Jon Watts is Clooney, with the actors playing rival professional fixers in the action comedy. 

The main competition also includes the first full-length film in English for a Venice regular, Spain’s Pedro Almodovar — “The Room Next Door” with Tilda Swinton and Julianne Moore — while “The Order” from Australian director Justin Kurzel sees Jude Law playing an FBI agent investigating a terror ring in the Pacific Northwest. 

 

Weaver, Costner and Kline  

Wednesday’s opening night will feature the introduction of the international jury led by its president, French actress Isabelle Huppert, and the awarding of an honorary Golden Lion for lifetime achievement to “Alien” star Sigourney Weaver. 

Also having its out-of-competition debut is the second chapter of Kevin Costner’s “Horizon: An American Saga.” The first part of the actor-director’s Western epic premiered at Cannes in May.  

Running until September 7, the international festival has increasingly become known for showcasing films that go on to Oscar glory for its directors and cast members, including former Golden Lion winners “Poor Things,” “Nomadland” and “Joker.”  

Unlike at the rival Cannes Film Festival, Venice accepts films produced by streaming services in competition, especially Netflix, which has found great success launching titles such as “Maestro” and “Roma” at the Italian festival.  

Besides “Wolfs,” Apple TV+ also produced “Disclaimer,” a thriller series starring Cate Blanchett, Kevin Kline and Sacha Baron Cohen, which is also having its premiere in Venice. 
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Los Angeles — In a sleepy summer weekend at the box office, holdovers reigned supreme as newcomers landed without a splash.

“Deadpool & Wolverine” reclaimed first place at the North American box office in its fifth weekend with $18.3 million. Its cumulative international earnings now sit at over $1.2 billion.

The Walt Disney Co., which owns 20th Century Studios, claimed the top two spots on the charts for the second weekend in a row with “Alien: Romulus” following close behind the foul-mouthed superhero movie. The latest installment in the 45-year-old franchise brought in $16.2 million in its second weekend after a promising opening. Disney’s “Inside Out 2” also remained on the charts, raking in $2.1 million domestically in its 11th weekend. Its global earnings are now over $1.6 billion.

“This is an incredible turnaround for Disney, who almost fell off the radar, shockingly enough, last year and over the course of the pandemic,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “They got a couple of billion-dollar films out so far and ‘Moana 2’ is still up on the way. This is a huge comeback year for Disney – no question about it.”

Romantic drama “It Ends With Us,” another repeat chart-topper, landed in third place for the second consecutive weekend with $11.9 million. The Sony movie starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni, who also directed, has made $242.6 million to date globally. It cost only $25 million to produce.

The new releases were victim to the crowded movie marketplace, resulting in what Dergarabedian called “box office deja vu,” with the familiar films dominating and making it harder for the new releases to find their footing. Dergarabedian says the upcoming Labor Day holiday will likely benefit the newer titles as word-of-mouth spreads and more people head to theaters during the long weekend.

“Blink Twice,” directed by Zoe Kravitz and starring her life partner Channing Tatum, saw a modest opening, taking in $7.3 million and claiming fourth place on the charts. The Amazon MGM Studios psychological thriller follows Tatum as tech magnate Slater King, who whisks two women away to his private island.

While it may seem like a picture-perfect vacation at first, much more sinister events unfold as the visitors learn the truth about the island and the billionaire. The film’s budget has been reported at $20 million.

Reviews have been mixed, with audiences giving the film a B- CinemaScore, but the film has been deemed Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with a 79% score.

Rounding out the top five was “The Forge,” a faith-focused coming-of-age movie about a young man finding his way through Christianity. The film opened with $6.6 million and received an A+ CinemaScore from audiences. It was released by Affirm Films, Sony’s faith-based banner.

Another new release, “The Crow,” was beat out by “Twisters” and “Coraline” in the rankings. “Twisters” entered its sixth week with $6.2 million in domestic earnings and “Coraline,” which was re-released for its 15th anniversary last week, brought in an additional $5.1 million in its second weekend.

Lionsgate’s “The Crow,” an R-rated adaptation of the acclaimed graphic novel and a remake of the 1994 film of the same name, opened with $4.6 million. The studio also floundered in August with the release of “Borderlands,” an adaptation of the video game, which made $15.2 million over three weekends compared to its reported $120 million budget.

To complete the “tale of the holdovers,” as Dergarabedian put it, “Despicable Me 4” and “Inside Out 2” closed out the top 10 films of the weekend, bringing in $4.4 million and $2.1 million, respectively. “Inside Out 2” has been on the charts for 11 consecutive weekends and remains the No. 1 animated film of all time globally.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Deadpool & Wolverine,” $18.3 million.

2. “Alien: Romulus,” $16.2 million.

3. “It Ends With Us,” $11.9 million.

4. “Blink Twice,” $7.3 million.

5. “The Forge,” $6.6 million.

6. “Twisters,” $6.2 million.

7. “Coraline,” $5.1 million.

8. “The Crow,” $4.6 million.

9. “Despicable Me 4,” $4.4 million.

10. “Inside Out 2,” $2.1 million.
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Dubai, United Arab Emirates — U.S. rapper Macklemore has announced he is cancelling an upcoming show in Dubai over the UAE’s involvement in the conflict in Sudan, charges the Gulf state has denied.

The rapper best known for hits like 2012’s “Thrift Shop” made the announcement in a post on social media on Saturday.

“I have decided to cancel my upcoming show in Dubai this October,” he said.

“Over the last several months I’ve had a number of people reach out to me, sharing resources and asking me to cancel the show in solidarity with the people of Sudan,” he said.

“Until the UAE stops arming and funding the RSF I will not perform there,” Macklemore added, referring to the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces that have been battling the Sundanese army.

War has raged since April 2023 between the Sudanese army, under the country’s de facto ruler Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the RSF, which is commanded by Burhan’s former deputy Mohamed Hamdan Daglo.

For months, the army has accused the UAE of supporting the RSF.

In June, Sudan’s ambassador to the United Nations Al-Harith Idriss al-Harith Mohamed called Abu Dhabi’s financial and military support for the RSF the “main reason behind this protracted war.”

The UAE has denied allegations of RSF support as “disinformation,” saying that it’s efforts are focused exclusively towards de-escalation and alleviating Sudan’s humanitarian suffering.

Macklemore has released socially aware music in the past, supporting LGBTQ+ rights while also criticizing ills including poverty and consumerism.

In his latest track released in May, Macklemore voices support for Palestinians and also praises students across the United States protesting against Israel’s war in Gaza.

The song, “Hind’s Hall,” is named after a building at Columbia University that students recently occupied and renamed after Hind Rajab, a six-year-old Palestinian girl killed in Gaza. 
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Herat, Afghanistan — Seated in front of a searing furnace, Ghulam Sakhi Saifi teases forth sinews of molten blue glass — the guardian of an Afghan glassblowing trade refusing to break with tradition.

“This is our art, our inheritance. It has fed us for a long time,” he told AFP, resting from the work that has singed his knuckles and calloused his palms.

“We are trying to make sure it is not forgotten. If we do not pass it down, it will disappear from the whole world,” said Saifi, who guesses his age is around 50.

Glassblowing in Afghanistan’s western city of Herat is an ancient craft. Saifi says it has run in his family for about three centuries.

The last two furnaces in the windswept metropolis near the border with Iran are in his family home and a mud-and-straw shed with a holey roof in the shadow of Herat’s citadel.

‘Slow suffocation’

Saifi now lights one of the furnaces only once a month — eking out around $30 from his stock of cups, plates and candleholders after expensive wood for fuel, dyes and other raw materials are accounted for.

He attributes the dramatic downturn to the exodus of already low numbers of foreign customers during the COVID-19 pandemic followed by the 2021 Taliban takeover, which saw many diplomats and aid workers pack up and leave.

Cheaper Chinese-made imports have also dented demand.

“There have been times when we haven’t worked for three months — we sit at home forever,” he said.

“Locals have no use for these products, for the price they would first think to buy two loaves of bread for their children.”

But when the furnace is lit, Saifi is in his element.

With a crude kitchen knife and a blowpipe he pulls glowing globs of glass out of the mud furnace and inflates them into household wares.

Unlike in the past, when they used quartz, the glassblowers now use easier-to-find recycled bottles shattered into shards and superheated back into their liquid state.

The green and blue pieces cool into charmingly imperfect shapes, shot through with air bubbles, and are sold from clattering piles in shops in Herat and the capital Kabul for around $3 each.

Outside the shed it is already 36 degrees Celsius but stepping over the threshold is like being gripped by a sudden fever.

“Sometimes we really feel the heat, I think I am being slowly suffocated,” Saifi said. “But this is our inheritance, we are used to it.

“Today is a bad day, but maybe it will get better in the future. Maybe the day after tomorrow, we hope to God.”

‘Craft needs to endure’

A gaggle of boys and teenagers assists Saifi in his work, but it is growing hard to tempt the younger generation into a trade they view as a dead end.

His eldest son became an expert in the craft only to abandon it for migrant labor over the border in Iran.

Two cousins who learned to blow glass also saw no future and downed their tools.

His middle son, 18-year-old Naqibullah, vows he will continue the trade, though it’s not clear how.

Before the Taliban takeover there was still enough demand for three days of work a week — a distant prospect for the young man who shares shifts with his father on the rare occasion they light the furnaces.

“We hope that there is a future and that day by day things will get better,” Naqibullah said.

“Even if we’re not making much money the craft needs to endure,” he added. “The art of making things by hand needs to be preserved. We can’t let this skill disappear.”
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NEW YORK — It started a couple of years ago when Juliana Pache was doing a crossword puzzle and got stuck.

She was unfamiliar with the reference that the clue made. It made her think about what a crossword puzzle would look like if the clues and answers included more of some subjects that she was familiar with, thanks to her own identity and interests — Black history and Black popular culture.

When she couldn’t find such a thing, Pache decided to do it herself. In January 2023, she created blackcrossword.com, a site that offers a free mini-crossword puzzle every day. And Tuesday marked the release of her first book, Black Crossword: 100 Mini Puzzles Celebrating the African Diaspora.

It’s a good moment for it, nearly 111 years after the first crossword appeared in a New York newspaper. Recent years have seen an increasing amount of conversation around representation in crossword puzzles, from who’s constructing them to what words can be used for answers and how the clues are framed. There’s been a push to expand the idea of the kinds of “common knowledge” players would have to fill them out.

“I had never made a crossword puzzle before,” Pache, 32, said with a laugh. “But I was like, ‘I can figure it out.’”

And she did.

Made ‘with Black people in mind’

Each puzzle on Pache’s site includes at least a few clues and answers connecting to Black culture. The tagline on the site: “If you know, you know.”

The book is brimming with the kinds of puzzles that she estimates about 2,200 people play daily on her site — squares made up of five lines, each with five spaces. She aims for at least three of the clues to be references to aspects of Black cultures from around the world.

Pache, a native of the New York City borough of Queens with family ties to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, had a couple of goals in mind when she started. Primarily, she wanted to create something that Black people would enjoy.

“I’m making it with Black people in mind,” she said. “And then if anyone else enjoys it, they learn things from it, that’s a bonus but it’s not my focus.”

She’s also trying to show the diversity in Black communities and cultures with the clues and words she uses, and to encourage people from different parts of the African diaspora to learn about each other.

“I also want to make it challenging, not just for people who might be interested in Black culture, but people within Black culture who might be interested in other regions,” she said. “Part of my mission with this is to highlight Black people from all over, Black culture from all over. And I think … that keeps us learning about each other.”

What, really, is ‘general knowledge’?

While on the surface if might just seem like a game, the knowledge base required for crosswords does say something about what kind of knowledge is considered “general” and “universal” and what isn’t, said Michelle Pera-McGhee, a data journalist at The Pudding, a site that focuses on data-driven stories.

In 2020, Pera-McGhee undertook a data project analyzing crossword puzzles through the decades from a handful of the most well-known media outlets. The project assessed clues and answers that used the names of real people to determine a breakdown along gender and race categories.

Unsurprisingly, the data indicated that for the most part, men were disproportionately more likely than women to be featured, as well as white people compared to racial and ethnic minorities.

It’s “interesting because it’s supposed to be easy,” Pera-McGhee said. “You want … ideally to reference things that people, everybody knows about because everyone learns about them in school or whatever. … What are the things that we decide we all should know?”

There are efforts to make crosswords more accessible and representative, including the recently started fellowship for puzzle constructors from underrepresented groups at The New York Times, among the most high-profile crossword puzzles around. Puzzle creators have made puzzles aimed at LGBTQ+ communities, at women, using a wider array of references as Pache is doing.

Bottom line, “it is really cool to see our culture reflected in this medium,” Pache said.

And, Pera-McGhee said, it can be cool to learn new things.

“It’s kind of enriching to have things in the puzzle that you don’t know about,” she said. “It’s not that the experience of not knowing is bad. It’s just that it should maybe be spread out along with the experience of knowing. Both are kind of good in the crossword-solving experience.”
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DALLAS, Texas — Nearly a century after Babe Ruth called his shot during the 1932 World Series, the jersey worn by the New York Yankees slugger when he hit the home run to center field could sell at auction for as much as $30 million.

Heritage Auctions is offering up the jersey Saturday night in Dallas.

Ruth’s famed, debated and often imitated “called shot” came as the Yankees and Chicago Cubs faced off in Game 3 of the World Series at Chicago’s Wrigley Field on October 1, 1932. In the fifth inning, Ruth made a pointing gesture while at bat and then hit a home run off Cubs pitcher Charlie Root.

The Yankees won the game 7-5 and swept the Cubs the next day to win the series.

That was Ruth’s last World Series, and the “called shot” was his last home run in a World Series, said Mike Provenzale, the production manager for Heritage’s sports department.

“When you can tie an item like that to an important figure and their most important moment, that’s what collectors are really looking for,” Provenzale said.

Heritage said Ruth gave the road jersey to one of his golfing buddies in Florida around 1940 and it remained in that family for decades. Then, in the early 1990s, that man’s daughter sold it to a collector. It was then sold at auction in 2005 for $940,000, and that buyer consigned it to Heritage this year.

In 2019, one of Ruth’s road jerseys dating to 1928-30 sold for $5.64 million in an auction conducted at Yankee Stadium. That jersey was part of a collection of items that Ruth’s family had put up for sale.
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SINTRA, Portugal — The doorbell to Martinho de Almada Pimentel’s house is hard to find, and he likes it that way. It’s a long rope that, when pulled, rings a literal bell on the roof that lets him know someone is outside the mountainside mansion that his great-grandfather built in 1914 as a monument to privacy.

There’s precious little of that for Pimentel during this summer of “overtourism.”

Travelers idling in standstill traffic outside the sunwashed walls of Casa do Cipreste in Cintra sometimes spot the bell and pull the string “because it’s funny,” he says. With the windows open, he can smell the car exhaust and hear the “tuk-tuk” of outsized scooters named for the sound they make. And he can sense the frustration of 5,000 visitors a day who are forced to queue around the house on the crawl up single-lane switchbacks to Pena Palace, the onetime retreat of King Ferdinand II.

“Now I’m more isolated than during COVID,” the soft-spoken Pimentel, who lives alone, said during an interview this month on the veranda. “Now I try to (not) go out. What I feel is: angry.”

This is a story of what it means to be visited in 2024, the first year in which global tourism is expected to set records since the coronavirus pandemic brought much of life on Earth to a halt. Wandering is surging, rather than leveling off, driven by lingering revenge travel, digital nomad campaigns and so-called golden visas blamed in part for skyrocketing housing prices.

Cue the violins, you might grouse, for people like Pimentel who are well-off enough to live in places worth visiting. But it’s more than a problem for rich people.

“Not to be able to get an ambulance or to not be able to get my groceries is a rich people problem?” said Matthew Bedell, another resident of Sintra, which has no pharmacy or grocery store in the center of the UNESCO-designated district. “Those don’t feel like rich people problems to me.”

Overtourism generally describes the tipping point at which visitors and their cash stop benefiting residents and instead cause harm by degrading historic sites, overwhelming infrastructure and making life markedly more difficult for those who live there.

Look a little deeper and you’ll find knottier issues for locals and their leaders, none more universal than housing prices driven up by short-term rentals like Airbnb, from Spain to South Africa.

The summer of 2023 was defined by the chaos of the journey itself — airports and airlines overwhelmed, passports a nightmare for travelers from the US. Yet by the end of the year, signs abounded that the COVID-19 rush of revenge travel was accelerating.

In January, the United Nations’ tourism agency predicted that worldwide tourism would exceed the records set in 2019 by 2%. By the end of March, the agency reported, more than 285 million tourists had travelled internationally, about 20% more than the first quarter of 2023. The World Travel & Tourism Council projected in April that 142 of 185 countries it analyzed would set records for tourism, set to generate $11.1 trillion globally and account for 330 million jobs.

Aside from the money, there’s been trouble in paradise this year, with Spain playing a starring role in everything from water management problems to skyrocketing housing prices and drunken tourist drama.

Protests erupted across the country as early as March, with thousands of people demonstrating in Spain’s Canary Islands against visitors and construction that was overwhelming water services and jacking up housing prices.

Japan set records for tourist arrivals. In Fujikawaguchiko, a town that offers some of the best views of Mount Fuji, leaders erected a large black screen in a parking lot to deter tourists from overcrowding the site. The tourists apparently struck back by cutting holes in the screen at eye level.

Air travel, meanwhile, only got more miserable, the U.S. government reported in July.

Tourism is surging and shifting so quickly, in fact, that some experts say the very term “overtourism” is outdated.

Michael O’Regan, a lecturer on tourism and events at Glasgow Caledonian University, argues that “overtourism” doesn’t reflect the fact that the experience depends largely on the success or failure of crowd management.

“There’s been backlash against the business models on which modern tourism has been built and the lack of response by politicians,” he said in an interview. Tourism “came back quicker than we expected,” he allows, but tourists aren’t the problem. “So what happens when we get too many tourists? Destinations need to do more research.”

Virpi Makela can describe exactly what happens in her corner of Sintra. Incoming guests at Casa do Valle, her hillside bed-and-breakfast near the village center, call Makela in anguish because they cannot figure out how to find her property amid Sintra’s “disorganized” traffic rules that seem to change without notice.

“There’s a pillar in the middle of the road that goes up and down and you can’t go forward because you ruin your car. So you have to somehow come down but you can’t turn around, so you have to back down the road,” says Makela, a resident of Portugal for 36 years. “And then people get so frustrated they come to our road, which also has a sign that says `authorized vehicles only.’ And they block everything.”

A 40-minute train ride to the west, Sintra’s municipality has invested in more parking lots outside town and youth housing at lower prices near the center, the mayor’s office said.

More than 3 million people every year visit the mountains and castles of Sintra, long one of Portugal’s wealthiest regions for its cool microclimate and scenery. Sintra City Hall also said via email that fewer tickets are now sold to the nearby historic sites. Pena Palace, for example, began this year to permit less than half the 12,000 tickets per day sold there in the past.

It’s not enough, say local residents, who have organized into QSintra, an association that’s challenging City Hall to “put residents first” with better communication, to start. They also want to know the government’s plan for managing guests at a new hotel being constructed to increase the number of overnight stays, and more limits on the number of cars and visitors allowed.

“We’re not against tourists,” reads the group’s manifesto. “We’re against the pandemonium that (local leaders) cannot resolve.”
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Xolo Maridueña is currently starring in the sixth and final season of the hit karate series “Cobra Kai,” which premiered on Netflix in July. But he also made waves last year when he was cast as the first Latino superhero lead in “Blue Beetle.” The actor spoke with Veronica Villafañe about the impact of these roles in his career and the need for Latino representation in Hollywood.
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KATHMANDU, Nepal — Hundreds of LGBTQ+ people and their supporters rallied in Nepal’s capital Tuesday during the annual Pride parade, the first since gay couples were able to register same-sex marriages officially in the Himalayan nation.

The event brought together the sexual minority community and its supporters in Kathmandu during the Gai Jatra festival. A government minister, diplomats and officials participated in the rally, which began at the city’s tourist hub and went around its main streets.

“Gai Jatra festival is a festival that is a long tradition that has been carried for years, and we all are here to help preserve and continue the tradition, and as a sexual minority are doing our part to save the tradition. We also celebrate the day as a Pride parade,” said Bhumika Shrestha, a gay rights activist who was at the parade.

The Gai Jatra festival is celebrated to remember family members who have passed away during the year but has long had colorful parades that brought in sexual minorities.

After years of struggle, gay couples were able to register same-sex marriages for the first time in November 2023 following a Supreme Court order. Rights activists had long sought to amend laws and end provisions that limited marriage to heterosexual couples.

Nepal has undergone a transformation since a court decision in 2007 asked the government to make changes in favor of LGBTQ+ people. People who do not identify as female or male are now able to choose “third gender” on their passports and other government documents. The 2015 constitution also states that there can be no discrimination based on sexual orientation.
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