- Frank Sinatra is dead and now, so too is famed director Martin
Scorsese’s attempted biopic of the legendary singer’s life. After almost eight
years spent trying to get the project off the ground, Scorsese reluctantly admitted
that the project has been shelved due to lack of approval from the Sinatra family.
“We can’t do it,” the Oscar-winning director said. “I think it is finally over.
[The Sinatra estate] won’t agree to it.” The script, written by “Field of
Dreams” director and screenwriter Phil Alden Robinson, probably didn’t sound
too appealing to the family because it reportedly touched on some of darker
aspects of the singer’s life and while painting a solely sunny picture of a man
with a known rough-and-tumble life tale would have come across as ridiculous,
the family clearly didn’t want to see all of the ugliness dragged out on the
big screen. “Certain things are very difficult for a family, and I totally
understand,” Scorsese said. “But if they expect me to be doing it, they can’t
hold back certain things. The problem is that the man was so complex. Everybody
is so complex – but Sinatra in particular.” In a way, the director all but
assured that the project would never happen when he said some time ago that he
wanted the film to be an unfettered portrait of the star. “We can’t go through
the greatest hits of Sinatra’s life,” he said at the time. “We tried this already.
Just can’t do it.” Word on the street is that Leonardo DiCaprio was in the
running to play Sinatra before the film was killed off, but now we’ll never
know if he could have pulled off a truly convincing portrayal of the musical
icon…….
- Germany has been awfully kind to people from outside its
borders in recent years. It’s a nice change from trying to take over the world
and systematically exterminate an entire race of people a few decades ago, but
the kind-hearted approach hasn’t exactly gone swimmingly for Deutschland. Its
migrant-related issues are well-documented, but this time, the country isn't opening
its doors to outsiders as much as it’s claiming it may make payments to Namibia
for the killing of 65,000 tribespeople by German colonial troops during the
early 20th century. According to Germany says Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin
Schaefer, the two-year talks with Namibia's government "aren't easy
because it's a difficult topic, which is often the case when 65,000 people are
killed and a foreign country is to blame, except they take a century or so to
get around to trying to make amends. Still, Schaefer said the negotiations have entered a phase in which
both sides are talking "in very concrete terms" about how to treat
the events in the future and "this may include further payments."
Sure, Germany already provides Namibia significant development aid, but that didn’t
stop representatives of the Herero and Nama tribes from filing a class-action
complaint in the United States this week against the German government, seeking
reparations and a place at the negotiating table. The German government’s official
position is that it has "good reasons" for not negotiating directly
with the tribes, but that sort of vague reasoning is the type of approach that
has dragged this situation out this long to begin with……..
- It’s been a busy season for NBA players and coaches
publicly calling out their own. Portland Trailblazers All-Star Damian Lillard
has done so on multiple occasions and now, Denver Nuggets coach Michael Malone
is joining the party - albeit tagged with an apology to his veteran players for
calling them out for a lack of leadership following a loss to the Sacramento
Kings this week. Malone lit up his team, calling the Nuggets' defense "a
joke right now" after a 120-113 loss to the Kings. "No veteran
leadership stepping up, don't hear anyone speaking, taking the lead,"
Malone said. "We have two young guys trying to speak up on the team, which
you applaud, but you need some leadership to shine and step up." A day
later, prior to the Nuggets' 127-99 loss to the San Antonio Spurs, the coach
was in full backpedaling mode, issuing a mea culpa and promising to handle
situations differently in the future. “The only thing I'll say regarding that
-- and I apologize to our veterans -- anything that's going on in our locker
room should be left in the locker room," Malone said. "So I failed in
that regard the other night. I let my frustrations after that loss get the best
of me. If I have issues with our veterans, I'll address it with our veterans
one-on-one to try and resolve whatever issues there may be.'' Still, the coach
insisted that he doesn't believe there's any lingering animosity following him
taking a blow torch to his guys publicly and said he believes the locker room
is united. At this point, it might be united against him, but unity is still
unity……..
- It’s often disappointing how little imagination would-be
drug smugglers show when trying to sneak product across the border. If you’re
carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth or pot, heroin or cocaine on
your person, then the least you can do is go to some hack plastic surgeon and
have him cut open your leg or abdomen and sew those bags of drugs inside your
person. But sadly, there are too many stories like this, when U.S. Customs and
Border Protection officials share photos of suspects who strapped drugs around
their legs and taped them around their stomachs, hoping to get past border
checkpoints undetected. CBP officers arrested two people in separate attempts
to smuggle a combined $224,000 worth of methamphetamine and heroin through the
Port of Nogales and really, the agency shouldn’t be congratulating themselves too
much because these look like two of the easier arrests they’ve had in a long
time. On one occasions, officers working with a CBP narcotics detection canine
a found more than 19 pounds of meth and nine nine pounds of heroin, worth more
than $209,000, in the rocker panels of a Dodge hatchback driven by a Tucson
woman. The same freaking night, officers stopped a man from Nogales, Sonora,
Mexico, driving a Dodge truck and he’d stashed five pounds of meth, worth
approximately $15,000, around his midsection as well as around his calves. It
was a layup of an arrest for the CBP, which typically should have to work a
little harder than asking a person to lift up their shirt in order to confiscate
a massive quantity of illegal substances. This is a new year, drug smugglers of
the world, so how about you try to come up with an original idea or two……..
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