NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – NBC has ordered the drama pilot “Hatfields & McCoys,” a modern-day tale of the famously warring families from a team that includes executive producerCharlize Theron.
The series bears no relation to History’s hit miniseries of the same name, which aired last year. But it does trade on the same legend of feuding West Virginia families.
In the new version, the families have moved to nearby Pittsburgh, where a startling death rekindles the feud. The blue-collar McCoys battle the wealthy Hatfields for control of the city.
And no, they aren’t fighting over which family gets to not be in charge of Pittsburgh, which is a lovely place, if you’ve ever been.
The series is written and executive produced by John Glenn, with Theron, A.J. Dix, Dawn Olmstead, and Beau Flynn also executive producing. It comes from ABCS, Denver & Delilah,Tower Hill, Beau Flynn Productions and Grady Girl.
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Recently, researchers from the department of sport science at the University of Innsbruck in Austria stood on the slopes at a local ski resort and trained a radar gun on a group of about 500 skiers and snowboarders, each of whom had completed a lengthy personality questionnaire about whether he or she tended to be cautious or a risk taker.
The researchers had asked their volunteers to wear their normal ski gear and schuss or ride down the slopes at their preferred speed. Although they hadn’t informed the volunteers, their primary aim was to determine whether wearing a helmet increased people’s willingness to take risks, in which case helmets could actually decrease safety on the slopes.
What they found was reassuring.
To many of us who hit the slopes with, in my case, literal regularity — I’m an ungainly novice snowboarder — the value of wearing a helmet can seem self-evident. They protect your head from severe injury. During the Big Air finals at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colo., this past weekend, for instance, 23-year-old Icelandic snowboarder Halldor Helgason over-rotated on a triple back flip, landed head-first on the snow, and was briefly knocked unconscious. But like the other competitors he was wearing a helmet, and didn’t fracture his skull.
Indeed, studies have concluded that helmets reduce the risk of a serious head injury by as much as 60 percent. But a surprising number of safety experts and snowsport enthusiasts remain unconvinced that helmets reduce overall injury risk.
Why? A telling 2009 survey of ski patrollers from across the country found that 77 percent did not wear helmets because they worried that the headgear could reduce their peripheral vision, hearing and response times, making them slower and clumsier. In addition, many worried that if they wore helmets, less-adept skiers and snowboarders might do likewise, feel invulnerable and engage in riskier behavior on the slopes.
In the past several years, a number of researchers have attempted to resolve these concerns, for or against helmets. And in almost all instances, helmets have proved their value.
In the Innsbruck speed experiment, the researchers found that people whom the questionnaires showed to be risk takers skied and rode faster than those who were by nature cautious. No surprise.
But wearing a helmet did not increase people’s speed, as would be expected if the headgear encouraged risk taking. Cautious people were slower than risk-takers, whether they wore helmets or not; and risk-takers were fast, whether their heads were helmeted or bare.
Interestingly, the skiers and riders who were the most likely, in general, to don a helmet were the most expert, the men and women with the most talent and hours on the slopes. Experience seemed to have taught them the value of a helmet.
Off of the slopes, other new studies have brought skiers and snowboarders into the lab to test their reaction times and vision with and without helmets. Peripheral vision and response times are a serious safety concern in a sport where skiers and riders rapidly converge from multiple directions.
But when researchers asked snowboarders and skiers to wear caps, helmets, goggles or various combinations of each for a 2011 study and then had them sit before a computer screen and press a button when certain images popped up, they found that volunteers’ peripheral vision and reaction times were virtually unchanged when they wore a helmet, compared with wearing a hat. Goggles slightly reduced peripheral vision and increased response times. But helmets had no significant effect.
Even when researchers added music, testing snowboarders and skiers wearing Bluetooth-audio equipped helmets, response times did not increase significantly from when they wore wool caps.
So why do up to 40 percent of skiers and snowboarders still avoid helmets?
“The biggest reason, I think, is that many people never expect to fall,” says Dr. Adil H. Haider, a trauma surgeon and associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and co-author of a major new review of studies related to winter helmet use. “That attitude is especially common in people, like me, who are comfortable on blue runs but maybe not on blacks, and even more so in beginners.”
But a study published last spring detailing snowboarding injuries over the course of 18 seasons at a Vermont ski resort found that the riders at greatest risk of hurting themselves were female beginners. I sympathize.
The takeaway from the growing body of science about ski helmets is in fact unequivocal, Dr. Haider said. “Helmets are safe. They don’t seem to increase risk taking. And they protect against serious, even fatal head injuries.”
The Eastern Association for the Surgery of Trauma, of which Dr. Haider is a member, has issued a recommendation that “all recreational skiers and snowboarders should wear safety helmets,” making them the first medical group to go on record advocating universal helmet use.
Perhaps even more persuasive, Dr. Haider has given helmets to all of his family members and colleagues who ski or ride. “As a trauma surgeon, I know how difficult it is to fix a brain,” he said. “So everyone I care about wears a helmet.”
Lanny A. Breuer, the federal prosecutor who led the Justice Department’s response to corporate crime in the wake of the financial crisis, will announce on Wednesday that he is stepping down after nearly four years in the post.
As head of the Justice Department’s criminal division, one of the most senior roles at the agency, Mr. Breuer tackled corporate bribery and public corruption. But it was his focus on Wall Street that received the most attention, from supporters and critics alike.
While he has come under fire for a dearth of prosecutions on Wall Street in response to the crisis, Mr. Breuer also oversaw an aggressive crackdown on money-laundering and interest-rate manipulation at some of the world’s biggest banks. In two weekslast month, he joined a nearly $2 billion case against HSBC for money-laundering and a $1.5 billion settlement with UBS for rate-rigging. Next week, he is expected to take a similar rate-rigging action against the Royal Bank of Scotland.
“I think the criminal division is a fundamentally different place than it was four years ago,” Mr. Breuer said in an interview. “It’s the highlight of my professional career.”
His departure, effective March 1, was widely expected. Mr. Breuer had told friends for weeks that he was ready to leave the public sector. While he has not announced his next step, it is expected that he will return to private practice. He was previously a partner at Covington & Burling, a white-shoe law firm.
By virtue of his perch at the Justice Department in Washington, Mr. Breuer became the face of Wall Street prosecutions in the aftermath of the financial crisis. But when few such cases materialized, critics like the Occupy Wall Street protesters turned on him, portraying him as an apologist for banks at the center of the mortgage mess.
In contrast, he drew praise for the sweeping crackdown on rate-rigging in the banking industry, which has largely involved international benchmark rates.
In a rate manipulation case last month, Mr. Breuer’s team secured a major payout from UBS and a guilty plea from the bank’s Japanese unit, making UBS the first big global bank in more than two decades to have a subsidiary plead guilty to fraud. Mr. Breuer, who announced the action after rejecting a last-minute plea from the bank’s chairman, also filed criminal charges against two former employees at the bank.
The deal sent a strong signal that the authorities wanted to hold banks responsible for their wrongdoing.
Following the UBS model, the Justice Department is now pursuing a guilty plea from a Royal Bank of Scotland subsidiary in Asia over its role in the interest rate manipulation scandal, people briefed on the matter said. That settlement, which could come as soon as next week, is likely to include more than $650 million in fines imposed by American and British authorities, two other people with direct knowledge of the matter said.
In an interview, Mr. Breuer said the rate-rigging case amounted to “egregious criminal conduct.” He struck a similar tone about two other major financial cases — the convictions of executives from Taylor, Bean & Whitaker, a now-defunct mortgage lender, and the 110-year prison term imposed on R. Allen Stanford for his Ponzi scheme.
Mr. Breuer has also focused on money-laundering, creating a task force in 2010 that has levied more than $3 billion in fines from banks, including the record fine against HSBC. He stopped short of indicting HSBC after some regulators warned that doing so could destabilize the global financial system.
Mr. Breuer argued that the charges he did not bring — for example, against Goldman Sachs and other banks suspected of fraud after selling toxic mortgage securities to investors — could not have been proved. It was not for a lack of trying, he said, noting that United States attorneys across the country, after reviewing the same evidence he did, also declined to act.
“It’s important for me to hold the financial institutions accountable,” he said. “There’s never been a time that a prosecutor said we should bring a securitization case and I said no.”
Under Mr. Breuer, the division has also increasingly used a 1977 law, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, to prosecute corporate bribery.
He also helped run the Justice Department’s investigation of the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, resulting in the company paying $4.5 billion in fines and other penalties and pleading guilty to 14 criminal charges related to the rig explosion in 2010.
In a statement, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. praised Mr. Breuer. “Lanny has led one of the most successful and aggressive criminal divisions in the history of the Department of Justice,” he said.
Mr. Holder stood behind Mr. Breuer when questions arose about his involvement in the botched gun-trafficking case known as Operation Fast and Furious. The pair, who were both largely cleared after an inspector general investigation, worked together at Covington.
For years, Mr. Breuer moved in and out of government. The son of Holocaust survivors who fled Europe and settled in Queens, he landed at the Manhattan district attorney’s office after graduating from Columbia Law School. In between stints at Covington, he worked as a White House special counsel, defending President Bill Clinton amid federal investigations and impeachment proceedings.
In the interview on Tuesday, Mr. Breuer reflected on his unusual path to the Justice Department.
“The fact that I got to go from Elmhurst, Queens, to the criminal division is remarkable,” he said.
During his nearly 40 years as a columnist for this newspaper, my late father occasionally tweaked his readers — quite disingenuously — by belittling his cat, knowing the slur would stir invective so passionate and erudite that he could fill another column without having to do much writing of his own.
I had no intention of employing that device when I recently wrote — quite sincerely — in defense of motorcyclists who navigate the space between cars to get ahead on crowded freeways.
To be sure, I knew some motorists would object out of fear of hitting a rider, or annoyed by the intrusion on their space. I was prepared to shrug them off because, I thought, my opinion was based on logic, experience and the law.
How fragile is the hard shell of reason! Among the emails that flooded my inbox, those that left me most humbled were from motorists who mostly agreed with me. But they were hurt by my admonishment that they should not move slightly out of my way.
Specifically, I wrote: "If you want to show solidarity, just hold your course and be sure you're a little in front or a little behind the car beside you."
Joe Edward of Beverly Hills was insulted. "Moving over, even briefly, gives you more room and I, maybe mistakenly, thought it shows courtesy," he wrote. "I thought it was the olive branch between those on four and two wheels, and is confirmed when I get the two-fingered 'thank you' wag from cyclists. When that happens, just for a moment, LA freeways are a nicer place and, yes, to the late Rodney King, we can all just get along.... But now you say NOT to move over? Ok. Forget the olive branch. Forget wanting to get along. It's on!"
I certainly never intended to turn plowshares into swords. And I'd like to think that if Joe knew me personally he'd see I'm not like the name he called me at the end of his email.
But I do apologize. I was myopic when I wrote, "Hold your course." The comment was aimed at drivers who turn their wheels sharply when surprised by a motorcycle. I appreciate drivers who ease slightly left or right, giving me the room to slide by comfortably, but more important letting me know they too are attuned to their surroundings.
And yes, I always give them the wave and momentarily feel better about humanity.
As you may have noticed, motorcyclists also give each other the two-finger salute when passing, a mutual acknowledgment of our membership in a minority that embraces the fun and physics of vehicular transportation along with its practical benefits.
The wave is also a silent bond between boomers like me and gen-whatevers who wear red mohawks on their helmets and wouldn't notice me under any other circumstances.
My aggressiveness in standing up for our somewhat outcast status surprised and pleased many fellow riders.
"Doug! You are the bomb!!!" wrote Arlene Battishill, who produces a line of head-turning women's motorcycle apparel and rides a Kawasaki. "I nearly screamed out loud.... Man oh man, I could just kiss you right now!"
Yes, we can be an exuberant bunch, inebriate of air, as Emily Dickinson so nicely put it. I can't deny that a few respondents castigated me for being irrational and self-aggrandizing, predicted my untimely demise or, worse, implied that such might be the due reward for my impudence.
I think my cat-baiting father would have gotten a sly smile from the reaction of an anonymous trucker who asked, "Ever heard of a CB?
"I know when one of you guys is coming for miles," he wrote, warning that outside my state I could become "road pizza" for riding like a Californian. He claimed to have seen semis "run bikes off in the grass more then once."
To my surprise, though, the critiques that hit home were also from fellow motorcyclists.
Some noted the bad behavior of "squids," those hyper riders who weave back and forth on screaming "crotch rockets." No wonder the "cagers," those dull people imprisoned in their cars, are up in arms.
David Lasher, who makes a continuous video of his commute from Northridge to Santa Monica, sent me a clip of his own crash when a car veered into his lane seemingly in contradiction of my assertion that a motorist cannot swerve fast enough to hit me as I pass by.
Lasher followed the cowboy mantra and got right back on a replacement Suzuki. Another, John Greenwood, told me of his "deal with God" never to ride again after one bad day ended 20 great years of riding.
By carefully parsing these scary stories, I can show that none directly refute the thesis that motorcycles are safer between lanes than in them, assuming a few guidelines are followed. Lasher, for example, conceded that he shouldn't have been lane-splitting in the HOV transition zone. Some materials I got from motorcycle safety experts convinced me further.
But instead of lining up the reaction as pro versus con, I think the collective lesson I've drawn from 100 emails is that Angelenos are up for a reasoned conversation about bettering the quality of life on L.A.'s freeways, the one place that draws us all together, whether we like it or not.
Sandy Driscoll epitomized this conciliatory effect, writing to me about an encounter on Pico Boulevard.
"A motorcyclist very quickly passed me on the left (lane splitting) gave a quick (and I must say, graceful) arm signal, and moved in front of me," she wrote. "Just as quickly, I saw him move in and out of traffic ahead of me, always with an arm signal. It was like an amazing ballet, and I was mesmerized. Thanks for your article."
"Motorcycling is not for me, but I hope you keep spreading the word about its benefits," wrote Dan Brooks of Santa Barbara. "In the meantime, I'll try to heed your driving advice and will offer a respectful salute rather than a New York salute."
Reading numerous such comments I've done some self-searching about my own behavior on the road.
As a result, I find I've become a more conservative, patient and polite rider in the last couple weeks.
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Even in death, there can be great beauty. Consider supernova remnants, the results of massive stars dying in great explosions, creating some of the most spectacular cosmic objects around.
Every 50 years or so, a star in our galaxy with more than 10 times the mass of our sun will expire. When such stars die, they go supernova, one of the most violent events in our universe. These explosions shoot off tons of material from the central star at up to 10 percent the speed of light.
Though the area surrounding stars seems empty, it is usually home to vast amounts of interstellar gas and dust. The supernova’s outburst runs into this surrounding material, creating a shockwave and heating it to temperatures greater than 10,000 Celsius. Over thousands of years, the local structure of the gas and dust shapes the stellar outpouring into shells, filaments, and other diffuse forms. Astronomers call these objects supernova remnants.
Supernova explosions and the remnants they leave behind have wide-ranging effects. They heat up the interstellar medium, creating complex chemistry out in space, and are responsible for accelerating protons and other atomic nuclei, which go zipping around the universe as cosmic rays. Perhaps most importantly, supernova explosions generate and liberate heavy elements, such as oxygen, carbon, and all metals, distributing them out into the wider cosmos. These elements eventually find their way into planetary systems, making life possible on at least one world that we know of.
Here, we take a look at some of the most famous and beautiful supernova remnants, giving you a chance to contemplate life, death, and cycles of renewal in the universe.
Above:
The supernova remnant N186 D appears as a bright pink spot at the top of this new image released by NASA on Jan. 28, spewing off tremendous amounts of X-rays. Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud about 160,000 light-years away, the remnant is blowing a huge bubble (the giant structure below the bright spot) as hot wind carves out a shock wave in the surrounding material.
Image: X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Michigan/A.E.Jaskot, Optical: NOAO/CTIO/MCELS
NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – IFC Films has acquired domestic distribution rights to David Lowery‘s “Ain’t Them Bodies Saints,” which premiered Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival.
The film stars Rooney Mara and Casey Affleck as married bandits in 1970s Texas who set their sights on a local sheriff, played by Ben Foster.
IFC paid in the low seven figures for the rights, an individual with knowledge of the deal told TheWrap.
“Coming into Sundance, this was one of the biggest titles on our list and probably on many buyers lists, and so we ecstatic about this acquisition for our company,” Jonathan Sehring, president of Sundance Selects/IFC Films, said in a statement. “This is a beautiful and exquisitely crafted romantic American drama, with superlative performances across the board. We are honored to now be able to say we get to work with David Lowery, a remarkable new voice in filmmaking, as we take this film to audiences.”
This is just the second film directed by Lowery, a Texan with numerous editing credits to his name, including another film that premiered at Sundance – Shane Carruth’s “Upstream Color.” Toby Sailor Bear’s Toby Halbrooks and James M. Johnston produced the movie with Parts & Labor’s Jay Van Hoy and Lars Knudsen and Primary Productions’ Amy Kaufman and Cassian Elwes.
Elwes and WME made the deal with IFC.
Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News
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Manhattan’s only remaining hospital south of 14th Street, New York Downtown, has found a white knight willing to take over its debt and return it to good health, hospital officials said Monday.
NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital, one of New York City’s largest academic medical centers, has proposed to take over New York Downtown in a “certificate of need” filed with the State Health Department. The three-page proposal argues that though New York Downtown is projected to have a significant operating loss in 2013, it is vital to Lower Manhattan, including Wall Street, Chinatown and the Lower East Side, especially since the closing of St. Vincent’s Hospital after it declared bankruptcy in 2010.
The rescue proposal, which would need the Health Department’s approval, comes at a precarious time for hospitals in the city. Long Island College Hospital, just across the river in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, has been threatened with closing after a failed merger with SUNY Downstate Medical Center, and several other Brooklyn hospitals are considering mergers to stem losses.
New York Downtown has been affiliated with the NewYork-Presbyterian health care system while maintaining separate operations.
“We are looking forward to having them become a sixth campus so the people in that community can continue to have a community hospital that continues to serve them,” Myrna Manners, a spokeswoman for NewYork-Presbyterian, said.
Fred Winters, a spokesman for New York Downtown, declined to comment.
Presbyterian’s proposal emphasized that it would acquire New York Downtown’s debt at no cost to the state, a critical point at a time when the state has shown little interest in bailing out failing hospitals.
The proposal said that if New York Downtown were to close, it would leave more than 300,000 residents of Lower Manhattan, including the financial district, Greenwich Village, SoHo, the Lower East Side and Chinatown, without a community hospital. In addition, it said, 750,000 people work and visit in the area every day, a number that is expected to grow with the construction of 1 World Trade Center and related buildings.
The proposal argues that New York Downtown is essential partly because of its long history of responding to disasters in the city. One of its predecessors was founded as a direct result of the 1920 terrorist bombing outside the J. P. Morgan Building, and the hospital has responded to the 1975 bombing of Fraunces Tavern, the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center, and, this month, the crash of a commuter ferry from New Jersey.
Like other fragile hospitals in the city, New York Downtown has shrunk, going to 180 beds, down from the 254 beds it was certified for in 2006, partly because the more affluent residents of Lower Manhattan often go to bigger hospitals for elective care.
The proposal says that half of the emergency department patients at New York Downtown either are on Medicaid, the program for the poor, or are uninsured.
NewYork-Presbyterian would absorb the cost of the hospital’s maternity and neonatal intensive care units, which have been expanding because of demand, but have been operating at a deficit of more than $1 million a year, the proposal said.
That’s what President Obama said about his pick to run the Securities and Exchange Commission, Mary Jo White. The nomination of Ms. White, a former prosecutor who took on the terrorists behind the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993 and the Mafia boss John Gotti, was meant to signal that the S.E.C. would be getting tough on Wall Street. CBS called her “Wall Street’s new sheriff.” The Wall Street Journal said she would be “putting a tougher face on an agency still tainted by embarrassing enforcement missteps in the run-up to the financial crisis.” The New York Times said her appointment represented a “renewed resolve to hold Wall Street accountable.”
Hold on.
While Ms. White is a decorated prosecutor, she has spent the last decade vigorously defending — and billing by the hour — Wall Street’s biggest banks, as a rainmaking partner at the white-shoe law firm Debevoise & Plimpton. The average partner at the firm was paid $2.1 million a year, according to American Lawyer; but she was no average partner, very likely being paid at least double that. Her husband, John W. White, is a corporate partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. He counts JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse and UBS as clients. The average partner at Cravath makes $3.1 million. He, too, was a former official at the S.E.C. — he left Cravath to run the corporate division of the S.E.C. starting in 2006 just in time for the run-up to the financial crisis. He left in November 2008, a month after the bank bailouts, to return to Cravath.
It seems Mr. and Ms. White have made a fine art of the revolving door between government and private practice.
So how conflicted is Ms. White? Let’s count the ways.
They are well documented: she was JPMorgan Chase’s go-to lawyer for many of the cases brought against it relating to the financial crisis. She was arm-in-arm with Kenneth D. Lewis, Bank of America’s former chief executive, keeping him out of trouble when the New York attorney general accused Mr. Lewis of defrauding investors by not disclosing the losses at Merrill Lynch before completing Bank of America’s acquisition of the firm. (And empirically, Mr. Lewis did keep crucial information about the deal from investors.)
This is what she had to say about Mr. Lewis, in a court filing submitted on his behalf: “Some have looked to assign blame for every aspect of the financial crisis, even where there is no evidence of misconduct. This case is a product of that dynamic and does not withstand either legal or factual scrutiny.” It was a refrain she often made about her clients related to the financial crisis.
And then there was Senator Bill Frist, the Republican from Tennessee, whom she successfully represented when the S.E.C. and the Justice Department started an investigation into whether he was involved in insider trading in shares of HCA, the hospital chain. She persuaded them to shut down the investigation.
She also worked with Siemens, the German industrial giant, when it pleaded guilty to charges of bribery, paying a record $1.6 billion penalty.
And then, of course, there was John Mack. She worked for the board of Morgan Stanley during a now well-publicized 2005 investigation into insider trading that ended soon after she made a phone call to the S.E.C. Using her connections at the top of the agency, she dialed up Linda Thomsen, then the commission’s head of enforcement, to find out whether Mr. Mack, who was being considered for Morgan Stanley’s chief executive position, was being implicated. He ultimately wasn’t. As the Huffington Post pointed out in a recent article about Ms. White, Robert Hanson, an S.E.C. supervisor, later testified, “It is a little out of the ordinary for Mary Jo White to contact Linda Thomsen directly, but that White is very prestigious and it isn’t uncommon for someone prominent to have someone intervene on their behalf.”
All of Ms. White’s previous engagements create not only an “optics” problem, but a practical, on-the-job problem. She will most likely need to recuse herself from just about anything related to her previous work.
“I will not for a period of two years from the date of my appointment participate in any particular matter involving specific parties that is directly and substantially related to my former employer or former clients, including regulations and contracts,” is the language in an ethics pledge that she will have to agree to follow.
Some appointees, including Mary L. Schapiro, the former chairwoman of the S.E.C., recused themselves from any involvement in work that was related to a previous employer even after the two-year moratorium. Gary Gensler, the chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, recused himself from the investigation into MF Global because of his previous employment at Goldman Sachs, where Jon Corzine was the firm’s head, even though it had been years since the two had worked together.
And then there is the issue of Mr. White’s husband, who will have a continuing role at Cravath, one of the most pre-eminent firms in the country, whose clients include some of the nation’s largest corporations.
“This president has adopted the toughest ethics rules of any administration in history,” said Amy Brundage, a White House spokeswoman, “and this nominee is no exception. As S.E.C. chair, Mary Jo White will be in complete compliance with all ethics rules.”
None of these conflicts gets at another potential problem for Ms. White. The job of chairwoman of S.E.C. isn’t simply about enforcement; she has a deputy for that. The biggest challenge anyone who takes the job will have to confront over the next several years will be executing and enforcing provisions of Dodd-Frank and working to regulate electronic trading — something that even the most sophisticated financial professionals, let alone a lawyer, often have a tough time understanding. She has zero experience in this area.
Of course, there can always be a value to inviting a onetime rival onto the team.
“I believe she is one of those people who will understand that her public role will be very, very different than her role as a defense lawyer,” Dennis M. Kelleher of Better Markets, a watchdog group, told me. “I don’t think she’s going to be like so many others who don’t get that they have a very different role when they hold high public office.
“No question, she’s said some things that are controversial and questionable,” Mr. Kelleher said. “Moreover, I hope and expect that she will be asked publicly about them in the confirmation process and that she will have convincing answers.”
Of course, if she is confirmed, we must all hope that she can put her previous client relationships behind her and work for her new client — us.
Ben Affleck's “Argo” seems to be unstoppable. The film about a CIA plot to rescue American hostages in Iran in 1980 won the 19th Screen Actors Guild Award on Sunday night for ensemble in a motion picture.
The win came hours after the film, which also stars Affleck, took the Producers Guild Award on Saturday night — an honor that is one of the leading indicators of Oscar gold. Two weeks ago, “Argo” won the Golden Globe for best dramatic motion picture, one of the many honors it has recently picked up this season.
“Argo” heads into next month's Academy Awards with momentum — and seven nominations, including best picture, supporting actor for Alan Arkin, and adapted screenplay. (Shockingly, Affleck was not nominated for a directing Oscar, even though he received a Directors Guild of America nomination and won the Golden Globe for director.)
PHOTOS: SAG Awards red carpet
The outlook seems equally golden for Daniel Day-Lewis, Jennifer Lawrence and Anne Hathaway, whose Golden Globe awards two weeks ago were followed Sunday night with SAG awards.
Day-Lewis won the trophy — and a standing ovation — for lead actor as the nation’s 16th president in “Lincoln.” Lawrence won her award for female actor playing a young widow in the quirky romantic comedy “Silver Linings Playbook.” Hathaway took the SAG award for female actor in a supporting role as the tragic Fantine in “Les Miserables.”
Tommy Lee Jones won his first major award of the season for male supporting actor for “Lincoln.” Jones is also nominated for an Academy Award for supporting actor.
SAG 2013:Winners | Show highlights | Complete list | Red carpet
The SAG movie wins offered a rare moment of clarity as the highly unpredictable awards season enters its final stretch, culminating with the Academy Awards on Feb. 24.
A SAG win does not guarantee Oscar gold, but history suggests it's nearly impossible to win an Academy Award in the acting categories without a SAG nomination.
On the television side of the awards ceremony, it was a three-peat night for Claire Danes, Julianne Moore, Kevin Costner and the ABC sitcom “Modern Family.”
FULL COVERAGE: SAG Awards 2013
The performers made it a clean sweep by winning the Emmy, the Golden Globe and the SAG award.
Danes won for female actor in a drama series for Showtime’s political thriller “Homeland.” Moore’s uncanny performance as 2008 Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin in HBO’s “Game Change” earned her female actor in a television movie or miniseries. And Costner nabbed male actor in a television movie or miniseries for History’s “Hatfields & McCoys.”
“Modern Family,” meanwhile, earned its third consecutive SAG award for ensemble in a comedy series.
PHOTOS: Best & Worst moments
Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey earned a great parting gift when they won for their lead roles in a comedy series for NBC's “30 Rock.” Fey used the win to ask people to tune in at 8 Thursday night for the series’ one-hour finale, opposite the highly rated CBS sitcom “The Big Bang Theory.”
“Just tape ‘The Big Bang Theory’ for once, for crying out loud!” Fey pleaded.
Bryan Cranston won for male actor in a drama series for “Breaking Bad.” “It is so good to be bad,” purred Cranston as he picked up the honor. And PBS’ “Downton Abbey” won for ensemble in a drama series.
SAG 2013:Winners | Quotes | Photo Booth | Red carpet | Backstage | Best & Worst
One highlight was a spry and chipper 87-year-old Dick Van Dyke, honored for a career that has spanned nearly seven decades.
Van Dyke was met with a standing ovation and cheers. “That does an old man a lot of good,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. He was supposed to receive the life achievement honor from Carl Reiner, who created the seminal 1961-66 CBS series “The Dick Van Dyke Show,” the show that turned Van Dyke into a TV legend. Because Reiner was sick with the flu, Baldwin did the honors.
“I've knocked around this business for 70 years, but I still haven’t figured out what exactly I do,” Van Dyke cracked during his acceptance speech. He noted that it was great to pick a career “full of surprises and a lot of fun” and one that does “not require growing up.”
The awards were telecast live on TBS and TNT from the Shrine Exposition Hall in downtown Los Angeles.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — He’s acted, danced and sang his way through movies, television and the stage, making Dick Van Dyke an entertainment triple-threat long before Hollywood used such hyphenates.
The 87-year-old actor, best known for the 1960s hit comedy “The Dick Van Dyke Show” and Disney’s big-screen musical “Mary Poppins,” can now add lifetime achievement honoree. He picked up that honor at Sunday night’s 19th annual Screen Actors Guild Awards.
“I’ve knocked around in this business for 70 years and I still haven’t quite figured out exactly what it is I do,” Van Dyke said after accepting his trophy from presenter Alec Baldwin.
“The years have been full of surprises for me and a lot of fun. Aren’t we lucky to have found a line of work that doesn’t require growing up?”
Van Dyke‘s career has spanned eight decades, starting with work as a disc jockey and a standup comic in the late ’40s. He even worked as a national television morning-show host, with no less than Walter Cronkite serving as his news anchor.
But perhaps Van Dyke‘s most critical career break came in 1960, when director Gower Champion hired him as the male lead opposite Chita Rivera in the new Broadway-bound stage musical “Bye Bye Birdie.”
Van Dyke had no professional dance experience, and out-of-town tryouts did not go well. Nevertheless, Champion refused to fire the actor, who would go on to New York with Rivera and win a Tony award for his performance.
About a year later, Van Dyke was starring in his own sitcom, in the role of TV comedy writer Rob Petrie on “The Dick Van Dyke Show.” Three prime-time Emmys for Van Dyke and more than 50 years later, the series remains revered by many critics as one of the earliest models of great workplace comedy.
“‘The ‘Dick Van Dyke Show’ was the most fun I ever had and the most creative period of my life,” he said on the red carpet.
During the series’ run, Van Dyke also enjoyed big-screen hits, including the 1963 “Birdie” movie and the 1964 all-star comedy, “What a Way to Go!” But biggest of all was “Mary Poppins,” in which he introduced the Oscar-winning song “Chim Chim Cher-ee.”
“I’m world-famous for my Cockney accent,” Van Dyke kidded in his acceptance speech. He has said his British-born co-star, Julie Andrews, told him he never got the accent right.
Van Dyke also saluted the room full of actors who gave him a standing ovation.
“I’m looking at the greatest generation of actors in the history of acting. You’ve all lifted the art to another place now,” he said. “Besides that you’re everywhere. You’re in Darfur, Somalia, Haiti. You’re all over the place trying to do what’s right.
“This very heavy object here means that I can refer to you as my peers. I’m a happy man, God bless.”
Last year, Van Dyke presented the same lifetime achievement honor to his former TV co-star, Mary Tyler Moore.
These days, Van Dyke sings with his vocal group, The Vantasix, and enjoys life with his wife of one year, makeup artist Arlene Silver. The couple met seven years ago at the SAG Awards.
“They tell me you never work again once you get this award,” Van Dyke said on the red carpet. “I’ll have to let them know I’m available.”
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