- Maybe Martin Scorsese has been too busy filming damn
freaking ubiquitous iPhone commercials to remember all of the projects he has
committed to over the past couple of decades. The acclaimed director has become
one of the most annoying presences on television with his inescapable taxicab
conversations with Siri during every commercial break of seemingly every show,
but it’s a place he isn't showing up that is casuing him trouble at the moment.
A man who has directed too many great films to list is catching heat from the production
company behind a film project the Oscar-winning director allegedly promised to
make more than two decades ago. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Los Angeles
Superior Court by Vittorio Cecchi Gori,
alleges that his company, Cecchi Gori Pictures, entered into several agreements
with Scorsese and his Sikelia Productions for him to direct a project named
“Silence,” which is based on a Japanese novel by Shusaku Endo about missionaries who are sent to Japan in 1683
to investigate reports of Christians being tortured by the emperor. According
to the lawsuit, Cecchi Gori invested $750,000 to develop the property under the
premise that Scorsese agreed way back in 1990 to direct it. The project was
repeatedly pushed back and in 2004
and 2011, Scorsese and his company allegedly signed deals to postpone Silence so he could direct “The Departed,” “Shutter Island” and “Hugo.”
To secure those deals, Scorsese allegedly agreed to pay "substantial
compensation and other valuable benefits, for the right to direct these three
other films prior to Silence.”
However, Cecchi Gori Pictures claims the director never paid the $1 million to
$1.5 million per film he agreed to in exchange for the postponements and now he
must pay, or so the lawsuit says. The breaking point seems to be Scorsese
signing on to direct “Wolf of Wall
Street” with Leonardo DiCaprio
leading an all-star cast instead of “Silence.” In response to the lawsuit,
Scorsese’s representatives released a statement claiming a “amicable working
relationship existing between Martin Scorsese and the principals of Cecchi Gori
Pictures” and expressing shock over the suit…………
- Ah, the tried and true sex strike tactic to fire up a
revolution. Nothing fires up a group to affect change quite like not getting
any at home. Following election protests last week in which police
arrested about 120 opposition supporters, a Togolese opposition leader is
calling on women to go on a weeklong sex strike to demand the freedom of those
detained protestors. Government officials claimed all but eight had been
released and insisted those still in custody were in possession of knives at
the rally. "You don't go demonstrate with these," security minister
Damehane Yark said of the blades. Her words did not seem to placate Isabelle
Ameganvi, leader of the opposition Let's Save Togo. Ameganvi’s group has led
protests in the streets in the capital of Lome for weeks to protest new
electoral reforms they believe are biased in favor of the ruling party was
elections conveniently scheduled for October. Protests raged on Saturday and
later in the day, Ameganvi called for sex strikes starting Monday. "I am
inviting all women to observe a one-week sex strike, fasting and prayers to set
our arrested brothers and husbands free," she said before unleashing one
of the worst sexual metaphors in the history of sexual metaphors. "So all
you ladies have to keep the gate of your 'motherland' locked up to all men from
Monday up to Sunday." Better still, Ameganvi explained that her challenge
was inspired by Nobel laureate and current President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, who
in 2003 called on women in her nation to observe a sex strike to press for
peace amid a raging war. Such strikes have become a common form of social
dissidence in recent years throughout Africa and Asia, including a 2009 Kenyan
sex strike to demand cooperation among coalition government officials and a
2011 strike by women in a violence plagued area of the Philippines to demand an
end to violence in their region. To futher communicate the point of the strike,
Ameganvi called on women to wear a special color during a demonstration
Thursday. "You all have to be dressed up in red pants to show your
anger," she said to a crowd of demonstrators. Opposition members declined
a government invitation for negotiations Friday, insisting it would not hold
any discussions with the government except those aimed at negotiating President
Faure Gnassingbe's departure from power…………
- SEAL Team Six putting a bullet between Osama bin Laden’s
eyes and dumping is lifeless body into the ocean clearly was not enough closure
for some Americans. For the gun-toting kooks in the greater New Hope, Minn.
area, the opportunity to put their own burning slug between bin Laden’s eyes is
required. The Sealed Mindset Firearms
Studio will provide them that opportunity and all they ask is $325 for gun
owners to secure their spot in a role-playing game. “Start your Navy SEAL
adventure with a mission briefing where you will learn that your target is
mysteriously named GERONIMO,” the center’s website says. The man behind the
game is Sealed Mindset Firearms Studio owner Larry Yatch, a former Navy SEAL.
The game begins with players being briefed on the Navy SEAL Team Six mission
that resulted in bin Laden’s death in May 2011. From there, they head to a
firing range and take target practice at pictures of bin Laden using real, live
assault rifles. Yatch’s instructions fall under the heading of shooting "anything
above the moustache to below the turban.” But wait…there’s more. To finish up
their pretend elite combat experience, players rush off to their final stage,
grabbing a paintball gun made to look like an assault rifle, moving through hallways
and rooms modeled after bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound and shooting an actor
dressed like bin Laden. Clad in a robe, turban and fake beard, the actor wears rubber
padding and a helmet underneath to protect himself from bruises. What is the
purpose of all of this? According to Yatch, it is to teach self-defense skills.
You know, the sort of self-defense skills one needs if attacked by paper
targets or dropped into a fake foreign country to kill the world’s most-wanted
terrorist………
- Smoking and being a runner are typically mutually
exclusive. Running any further than the small smokers’ area outside the office
where all the leathery-faced, gravelly-voiced, noxious-smelling cancer stick
users gather to choke down their heaters is simply too much to ask of those
with voluntarily reduced lung function and drastically increased chances for
lung cancer and emphysema. However, British medical researchers being a study
on smoking and exercise have suggested that smokers who are trying to
cut down or quit may want to try a little distance running the next time a
cigarette craving overcomes them. The study combined the data from 19 previous
clinical trials and found that an exercise session generally helped would-be
quitters reduce their nicotine cravings. While the potential for that
short-term gain to translate into a greater chance of quitting was not proven
by the study, the results were enough for its authors to endorse exercise for
smokers who want to abandon their habit. "Certainly, exercise seems to
have temporary benefits, and as such can be strongly recommended," said lead
researcher Adrian Taylor, a professor of exercise and health psychology at the
University of Exeter in Britain. Trials used for the study randomly assigned
smokers to either exercise in the form of brisk walking, jogging or biking, or
to some kind of "passive" activity, such as watching television or
sitting quietly. Taylor’s team found that participants had less desire to smoke
after working out than they did before, although the reason was not clear.
There is the possibility that exercise served as a distraction, that the
adrenaline rush from physical activity boosted a person’s mood or that exercise
simply put them in a better frame of mind. At a minimum, the research begs for
more dollars to be thrown at the topic so the questions it raised can be
answered…………
- Duuuuuuuuudddde, this is NOT cool. For as long as the
Winter X Games have existed, Snowboarder X and Skier X have been part of the
festivities. That will not be true when the X Games return to Aspen in January
2013, as event organizers have cut them from the schedule. ESPN decided to cut
the events, as well as Mono Skier X, and will not build the X Course for the
first time in history, meaning competitors like Lindsey Jacobellis will lose
their signature event at the biggest event in extreme sports. X Games debuted
in 1997 and both Snowboarder X and Skier X were staged alongside Snowboard
Superpipe and Slopestyle. Snowboarder X was one of three events that had taken
place every year since debuted in 1997 and Skier X had been staged 15 of those
16 years. In defending the indefensible, Tim Reed, senior director of content
strategy for ESPN X Games, tried to explain his rationale. "These
decisions are never easy, obviously. We understand the ramifications these
things bring. We come up with what we believe are the best events to showcase
to our fans on-site and obviously the networks, too,” Reed said. "There
wasn't one single factor that led to this decision. It just comes down to
filling the schedule with how much we believe we need to make the event
enjoyable to the fans and deliver on what we need from a product
standpoint." Just to be clear, ESPN X Games wants to make the event better
by taking two of its premier competitions out of the mix. In place of
Snowboarder X and Skier X in Aspen will be Snowmobile SnoCross and Speed and
Style, two events that were dropped last year. The news landed with a heavy thud in the extreme
sports world this week as athletes heard the news. "It's a devastating
blow to our sport and skiercross, too, because X Games has been our Super Bowl
for years," said Nate Holland, who has won six of the past seven gold
medals in Snowboarder X. "I have
sponsors that put a value on X Games and the exposure I get there. Basically,
my stock went down as soon as
that news came out." Daron Rahlves, the 2008 Skier X gold medalist, cited
the event’s presence at X Games as a reason it was able to gain status as an
Olympic event. Reed left the door open for the discontinued events being added
back to the X Games schedule in the future, but the prospects don’t seem
bright……….
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