Tag: Director

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Cannes Movie Pageant: The Director of ‘Showgirls’ Takes on Lesbian Nuns

Cannes Film Festival: The Director of ‘Showgirls’ Takes on Lesbian Nuns

CANNES, France – Forgive them, Father, for they have sinned. Repeated! Creative! And wait to hear what they did with this statuette of the Virgin Mary.

The bad girls I mean are Benedetta and Bartolomea, two 17th century lesbian nuns who are the focus of the new drama Benedetta, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival on Friday. It’s a delicious, sacrilegious provocation from Paul Verhoeven, director of Basic Instinct, Showgirls and Elle, and at the age of 82, Verhoeven proves to be as playful as ever.

Based on the non-fiction book “Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Well in Renaissance Italy” by Judith C. Brown, the film follows Benedetta (Virginie Efira), a young nun who is so convinced that she is the bride of Christ she even dreams of a handsome shirtless Jesus who is flirting with her. And why shouldn’t he? Benedetta is a blonde bombshell who looks less like a pious nun from the 17th century and more like a disguised angel for Charlie, and when the pretty peasant woman Bartolomea (Daphne Patakia) arrives at the monastery, she also begins to close Benedetta’s eyes do.

Nun versus nun action happens a lot faster than you might expect as this monastery is run by a strict superior (Charlotte Rampling) and Benedetta is prone to visions that end with the manifestation of stigmata. But as her religious ecstasy grows more orgasmic, Benedetta eventually finds a steamy, more earthbound way to chase that high. “Jesus gave me a new heart,” she says to Bartolomea, baring a breast. “Feel it.” (Look, in the 17th century they played foreplay very differently.)

Once their sexual relationship heats up, these nuns find it easy to break their habits, but difficult to break. Finally, a statue of the Virgin Mary is carved into a sex toy and after Benedetta and Bartolomea have, uh, accepted it, the audience at the press screening in Cannes applauds the blasphemous nerve of the film. Verhoeven has always had the gift of making the ridiculous divine, and now the opposite is also true.

Even so, at the press conference for “Benedetta”, Verhoeven insisted that the scene wasn’t blasphemous at all.

“I don’t really see how to gossip about something that happened in 1625,” he said, offering excerpts from Brown’s book. “You can’t change history, you can’t change the things that happened, and I based them on things that happened.”

Maybe, but Verhoeven’s version still gives the truth a bit of a makeover, as Benedetta and Bartolomea always seem to wear eye makeup, foundation, and lipstick. While their faces are never bare, their bodies are often, and would you be surprised to learn that when these lithe nuns undress, they are as toned and well-groomed as a Playboy centerfold? God may be watching in the monastery, but Verhoeven’s gaze trumps everything.

If any spectator rang “Benedetta” because they were serving religious commentary with a side dish of cheesecake, Verhoeven was unmolested. “When people have sex, they generally undress,” said Verhoeven soberly. “I’m basically stunned how we don’t want to look at the reality of life.”

His actresses raised no concerns about their sex scene. “Everything was very happy when we undressed,” said Efira, while Patakia told the news media that when Verhoeven is directing, “You forget that you are naked.”

Even so, they have never lost sight of how much they need to push the boundaries.

“I remember reading the script to myself and thinking, ‘There isn’t a single normal scene,'” said Patakia. “There is always something destabilizing.” She added, “So I said yes right away.”

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Entertainment

Ballet Tech Names a New Inventive Director

Ballet Tech Names a New Artistic Director

Ballet Tech, the nonprofit group that brought ballet training to thousands of promising New York school children, has a new leader. The organization announced on Friday that the dancer Dionne D. Figgins will succeed its founder Eliot Feld as artistic director in August.

“We are delighted to have found in Dionne the ideal person to work with the staff, board of directors and the community of Ballet Tech to advance the fundamental ideas,” said Patricia Crown, chairwoman of the board of the Ballet Tech Foundation.

When the pandemic broke out, Figgins was preparing to appear in Miami in the musical “A Wonderful World” about Louis Armstrong. But when performances were canceled, she began teaching dance online at the Jones-Haywood School of Ballet in Washington. It was this experience that convinced her to move from the stage towards the studio and classroom.

“I was really inspired by the determination of my students,” she said. “I was inspired by how much they put into the room and it really made me realize that this is a room that I should be in all the time.”

Figgins began her career at the Dance Theater of Harlem, where she played leading roles in George Balanchine’s “Four Temperaments” and “Agon”, among others. She is also a Broadway actress and has appeared in several productions including “Motown: The Musical” and “Memphis”.

In 2012 she co-founded Broadway Serves with Dana Marie Ingraham and Kimberly Marable, a nonprofit dedicated to creating charitable opportunities for theater professionals.

Field, 78, shared his plans to retire last year, citing his desire to “pass the baton on to a new generation of leaders.” “I wish to wish my good hopes and goodwill to Dionne in completing the work that I have half done,” he said in a statement.

Part of this work is Feld’s goal of recruiting students from all of the city’s public elementary schools. Figgins said in an interview that “part of my mission is to get these other schools involved in what is happening at Ballet Tech so they at least know that this is an option.”

The educational initiative that resulted in Ballet Tech began in the late 1970s as an offshoot of Feld Ballet, the founder’s professional company. Public schoolchildren in grades 3 to 5 were invited to try it out and students who were gifted for dancing were able to continue their education in Feld’s studio near Union Square in Manhattan.

Ballet Tech, which founded its own public school for grades four through eight in 1996, estimates that in more than 40 years it has auditioned around 900,000 students and enrolled more than 20,000 in non-teaching classes.

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Health

CDC leaving it as much as states to set tips for masks, director says

CDC leaving it up to states to set guidelines for masks, director says

Rochelle Walensky, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), takes off a protective mask during a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Wednesday, May 19, 2021.

Greg Nash | Bloomberg | Getty Images

CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Wednesday the U.S. agency is leaving it up to states and local health officials to set guidelines around mask-wearing even after the World Health Organization urged fully vaccinated people to continue the practice.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has “always said that local policymakers need to make policies for their local environment,” Walensky said during an interview on the NBC program “TODAY.” She added that the agency’s guidelines broadly recommend that vaccinated people don’t need to wear masks.

“There are areas of this country where about a third of people are vaccinated, they have low vaccination rates,” Walensky said. “There are areas where they have more disease in the context of people not being vaccinated. So, in those areas, we’ve always said please look, make suggestions.”

She added, “If you are vaccinated, you are safe from the variants that are circulating here in the United States.”

The CDC director’s comments come days after WHO officials urged fully vaccinated people to continue to wear masks, social distance and practice other pandemic safety measures as the highly contagious delta variant spreads rapidly across the globe.

Delta, now in at least 92 countries, including the United States, is expected to become the dominant variant of the disease worldwide, according to the WHO. In the U.S., the prevalence of the strain is doubling about every two weeks.

WHO officials said Friday they are asking fully vaccinated people to continue to “play it safe” because a large portion of the world remains unvaccinated and highly contagious variants, like delta, are spreading in many countries and spurring outbreaks.

“People cannot feel safe just because they had the two doses. They still need to protect themselves,” Dr. Mariangela Simao, WHO assistant director-general for access to medicines and health products, said during a news briefing.

The WHO’s comments were a departure from the CDC, which has said fully vaccinated Americans can go maskless in most settings, and sparked widespread confusion.

Walensky said Wednesday that the WHO makes recommendations for a global population, adding many regions of the world remain unvaccinated.

“When the WHO makes those recommendations, they do so in that context,” she said.

Still, while many states have lifted most of their mask restrictions, places like Mississippi are recommending that residents continue to wear masks indoors even if they are fully vaccinated.

Delta is the dominant variant in Mississippi right now and only 31% of the state’s eligible population is vaccinated, state health officials said on a call late Tuesday. About 96% of new Covid cases are unvaccinated people, they added.

– CNBC’s Rich Mendez contributed to this report.

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Donald York, Musical Director of Paul Taylor Firm, Dies at 73

Donald York, Musical Director of Paul Taylor Company, Dies at 73

In her review for The Times, Anna Kisselgoff described the score as “contains panting sounds, pop songs and the occasional mean beating of a drumstick that breaks through the classical structures and struggles to stay intact at the bottom of the pit”.

Once, Mr. York waved his baton and conducted an absolutely silent orchestra.

Donald Griffith York was born on June 19, 1947 in Watertown, NY. His mother Magdalene (Murphy) York was an organist and choir director; his father, Orel York, was a history teacher who later worked as an instructor for the FBI

Donald grew up in Delmar, a suburb of Albany. He had perfect hearing and was already composing piano music at the age of 7. As a teenager, he attended a summer program at the Juilliard School in Manhattan. In 1969 he earned a bachelor’s degree in composition from Juilliard.

Recognition…York family

After graduating, he played in several contemporary bands, including a synthesizer group called The First Moog Quartet, and for the pop duo Hall and Oates, before joining Paul Taylor in the mid-1970s. He has also conducted for the New York City Ballet and Broadway musicals, including “Clams on the Half Shell Revue”, Bette Midler’s mockery of Broadway show tunes. And he composed choral works and song poems.

In the early 1990s, Mr. York moved to Southern California. He is survived by his companion Debbie Prutsman, a performer and educator; his wife Anne York, a graphic artist he was separated from; three stepchildren, Nick, Tasha, and Andrew Bogdanski; and a brother, Richard. In 1985 he divorced his first wife.

Mr. York was a nocturnal composer. It was his habit to go to bed at 7 p.m., wake up between 1 and 2 a.m., make a pot of coffee, and go to work. He called these hours his “crazy time,” Ms. Prutsman said, adding that he would normally be ready by dawn.

Mr. York retired on November 17, 2019 and bowed at the final performance of the Paul Taylor Company season at Lincoln Center. His last concert composition for the American Brass Quintet will be performed in July at the Aspen Music Festival and School, where he studied as a teenager. On his death, Mr. York wrote an operatic musical about a child prodigy named “Gifted”.

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Health

CDC director testifies earlier than Home lawmakers on company’s finances

‘We are following the science’

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CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky testifies before Congress Wednesday about the agency’s annual budget as the US battles the Covid-19 pandemic that killed nearly 600,000 Americans.

Dr. Anne Schuchat, the deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, also testified before the subcommittee on home remedies, labor, health and human services, education and related facilities on Wednesday.

The hearing comes just over a week after Schuchat announced her resignation from the health department after 33 years. It also comes because the agency has received criticism of its updated guidelines on face masks for fully vaccinated Americans.

The CDC announced on May 13 that fully vaccinated individuals would no longer need to wear face masks or stay 6 feet away in most environments, whether indoors or outdoors. Unvaccinated individuals should continue to wear masks as they continue to be at risk of mild or serious illness, death, and the risk of spreading the disease to others.

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CDC director defends lifting masks steering for vaccinated

‘We are following the science’

The director of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, is seen during a Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing to discuss the ongoing federal response to COVID-19 on May 11 at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. 2021.

Greg Nash | Pool | Reuters

CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky last week defended the agency’s decision to lift its mask guidelines for people fully vaccinated against the coronavirus as state and local health officials grapple with whether to follow suit.

“This was not permission to take off masks for everyone everywhere. This was a really scientifically motivated, individual assessment of your risk,” Walensky said on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday morning.

The Chief Medical Officer of the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci, reiterated the guidance when he appeared on CBS’s “Face The Nation” later that morning.

“There has been an accumulation of data showing the effectiveness of the vaccines in the real world,” said Fauci.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated their guidelines Thursday stating that it is safe for fully vaccinated Americans to remove their masks in most environments, whether they are outdoors or indoors. It is the first time in more than a year that the federal government has endorsed the shedding of masks and marks a major turning point for the pandemic.

“Right now, the data, the science, is showing us that it is safe for people who have been vaccinated to take their mask off. I, as the CDC director, made a promise to the Americans that if I knew I would teach you that science, and that’s what It’s Thursday, “said Walensky.

The agency’s recommendation has been criticized as being too ambiguous or rash. It’s also not mandatory, so states, communities, and corporations can choose whether or not to comply. There is also no definitive way of tracking who received a vaccine, and many places have to work on some kind of honor system.

“We ask people to be honest with themselves,” said Walensky. “If you are vaccinated and you don’t wear a mask, you’re safe. If you’re not vaccinated and you don’t wear a mask, you’re not safe.”

Some states and companies have already decided to keep mask mandates. New Jersey and Hawaii will ask people to continue wearing masks indoors. Some retailers, including Target, Gap, Home Depot, and Ulta Beauty, have also announced that they will be keeping the pandemic logs.

“Elementary workers are still being forced to play masked police for shoppers who are not vaccinated and who refuse to follow local COVID safety measures. Should they become the vaccination police now?” Said Marc Perrone, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Union in a statement shared with CNBC on Friday.

Others have praised the decision, saying it could encourage more people to get vaccinated against the virus as the pace of shots fired has slowed in recent weeks.

Illinois, Connecticut, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, Minnesota, Nevada, Kentucky, and Oregon have all said they were relaxing their mask rules. Texas had canceled its mask mandates prior to the CDC’s recommendation.

In addition, officials from New York and California, two of the hardest-hit states, are currently reviewing the CDC’s changes and have not yet issued any guidance as to what means mandates remain.

Fauci said the CDC will come out in the next few weeks and clarify in more detail when masks are appropriate.

As of Friday, more than 156 million Americans had received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, according to the CDC. According to the agency, around 121 million are fully vaccinated.

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‘It’s a giant deal’ for America’s push to reopen, says NIH Director on Pfizer vaccine approval for adolescents

Pfizer and BioNTech begin the process of seeking full U.S. approval for their Covid vaccine

The director of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, called the Food and Drug Administration approval for emergency use of Pfizer and BioNTech’s Covid vaccine for children ages 12-15 as “a big deal” in America’s drive to reopen.

“This is exciting news,” said Collins. “We know that since this pandemic started, one and a half million teenagers have been infected with Covid-19, and not all have been as good as most. And some of them have ended up where they have been with this long Covid We are not doing any better , even weeks or months after the illness, so we really want to protect young people. “

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Vaccine Advisory Board has scheduled a meeting on Wednesday to review recordings for children. If approved by the CDC as expected, it could be distributed to teens as early as this week.

More than 44% of all adults in the US are fully vaccinated, and according to the CDC, around 58% have now received at least one dose of the Covid vaccine. The White House aims to increase that number to 70% by July 4th.

Collins told CNBC’s “The News with Shepard Smith” that the US is “on a pretty good path” and that the nation should be able to see CDC regulations to relax indoor masks.

“It’s just about finding the right way to balance the desire not to create another wave. This is the last thing we need right now with the fact that people are really fed up with masks to wear, “said Collins.

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Monte Hellman, Cult Director of ‘Two-Lane Blacktop,’ Dies at 91

Monte Hellman, Cult Director of ‘Two-Lane Blacktop,’ Dies at 91

“We thought it was good advertising,” Hellman said of the Esquire problem in a 1999 Los Angeles Times interview when Two-Lane Blacktop finally made it on video. “In retrospect, we wouldn’t have done it. I think that raised people’s expectations. They couldn’t accept the film for what it was. “

French film critics did, and their enthusiasm spread to the United States. As the 1970s became recognized as the golden age of independent film, the reputation of the film and that of its director rose. In 2005 Cahiers du Cinéma magazine declared it was “one of the greatest American films of the 1970s”.

Monte Himmelbaum was born July 12, 1929 in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and grew up in Albany, NY, where his father ran a small grocery store. When he was s6 the family moved to Los Angeles.

He studied language and theater at Stanford University, where he directed radio plays, and after graduating in 1951, studied film at the University of California in Los Angeles. Around this time he changed his last name.

In 1952, Mr. Hellman helped found the Stumptown Players, a summer theater company, in Guerneville, California. Carol Burnett was a member. He has directed numerous productions and appeared as an actor when necessary.

His first marriage was to one of the theater’s actresses, Barboura Morris. The marriage ended in divorce. He was married three more times, said his daughter. In addition to his daughter, he is survived by a son, Jared, and a brother, Herb.

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U.S. sees rising Covid instances related to youth sports activities, CDC director says

U.S. sees rising Covid cases associated with youth sports, CDC director says

Youth hockey has had more positive coronavirus cases across the country than most sports.

Adam Glanzman | The Washington Post | Getty Images

There are increasing reports of Covid-19 cases related to youth sports in the US, said Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Friday.

The connection between youth sports and increased coronavirus cases is that the highly infectious B.1.1.7 variant identified for the first time in Great Britain has become the most common Covid strain in the USA

There are growing numbers of Covid cases related to variant B.1.1.7 in Michigan and Minnesota, Walensky said. “Both states have concerns about transmission in youth sports, both club and sport.” connected in schools. “

“What is happening in Michigan and Minnesota is similar to what we are seeing across the country: increasing reports of cases related to youth sports,” Walensky said at a White House press conference on Covid-19 Friday.

There were 291 outbreaks in Michigan between January and March that came from youth sports teams that involved at least 1,091 people, health officials said at a separate news conference on Friday. Governor Gretchen Whitmer urged schools and clubs to pause personal exercises and games for two weeks to control the outbreak. She also urged schools to stop personal learning during this time.

In Minnesota, the B.1.1.7 strain quickly spread throughout Carver County, with at least 68 cases of coronavirus linked to participants in school and club sports activities such as hockey, wrestling, basketball, alpine skiing, and other sports, the state reported Health Department March.

A Covid outbreak at a wrestling tournament in Florida in December resulted in at least 38 coronavirus cases, according to a CDC study.

Walensky emphasized that Covid-19 cases related to youth sports are not necessarily related to an increased risk of transmission in classrooms.

“As cases increase in the community, we expect the cases seen in schools to increase too. This is not necessarily indicative of school-based transmission,” Walensky said.

“We haven’t seen any evidence of significant transmission of Covid-19 within schools once schools have fully implemented the CDC’s harm control guidelines,” she said.

The CDC director also highlighted an increase in Covid-19 cases and emergency rooms in younger adults, most of whom have not yet been vaccinated.

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CDC director says U.Ok. pressure changing into the predominant pressure in elements of U.S.

CDC director says U.K. strain becoming the predominant strain in parts of U.S.

CDC director Dr. Rochelle Walensky speaks to the press after visiting the FEMA mass vaccination center at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston, Massachusetts on March 30, 2021.

Erin Clark | Pool | Getty Images

The highly contagious variant of coronavirus, first identified in the UK, is becoming the predominant strain in many regions of the United States, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said on Wednesday.

The variant known as B.1.1.7 now accounts for 26% of the nationwide spread of Covid-19 cases, said CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky reporters during a White House press conference on the pandemic. It’s the predominant variety in at least five regions, she added.

The UK identified B.1.1.7 last fall, which appears to be more deadly and spreads more easily than other strains. Since then, it has spread to other parts of the world, including the US, which on Tuesday identified 11,569 cases in 51 jurisdictions, according to the CDC.

Florida has the most confirmed cases of the new variant, according to a map from the CDC data, closely followed by Michigan, Wisconsin and California. Public health officials say they are working as soon as possible to identify more cases.

Walensky said on Wednesday that she expected further infections in the United States due to the portability of variant B.1.1.7. She urged the public to continue pandemic security measures such as hand washing, wearing masks and social distancing.

Walensky’s comments come two days after she issued a terrible warning to reporters. She said Monday that she feared the nation was facing “impending doom” as variants spread and daily Covid-19 cases rise again, threatening to send more people to the hospital.

“I’m going to pause here, I’m going to lose the script, and I’m going to think about the recurring feeling I have of impending doom,” Walensky said. “We can look forward to so much, so much promise and potential where we are and so much reason to hope, but right now I’m scared.”

According to the Johns Hopkins University, an average of more than 63,000 new Covid-19 cases per day have been reported in the U.S. That number is up 16% over a week.

The Chief Medical Officer of the White House, Dr. Anthony Fauci said Sunday that the recent surge in cases is not only being caused by new varieties of the virus, but that travel and the relaxation of business restrictions are also a factor in the increase in infections.

“This is a critical moment in our fight against the pandemic,” Walensky said on Wednesday. “We cannot afford to let go of our watch.”

– CNBC’s Nate Rattner contributed to this report.