POPGAZETA

New York — On a quiet weekend in movie theaters, “Mean Girls” repeated atop the box office with $11.7 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday, while a handful of awards contenders sought to make an impact ahead of Oscar nominations Tuesday. With a dearth of new releases in cinemas, Paramount Pictures’ Tina Fey-scripted musical “Mean Girls” pushed its two-week total past $50 million, along with $16.2 million internationally. So far, it’s outpacing the tally for the 2004 original “Mean Girls.” Only one new film debuted in wide release: “I.S.S.,” a modestly budgeted sci-fi thriller starring Ariana DeBose. The film, which speculates what would happen aboard the International Space Station if war broke out between the U.S. and Russia, debuted with $3 million on 2,518 screens for Bleecker Street. Expectations weren’t high for “I.S.S.,” which drew only so-so reviews and was lightly marketed. Audiences also didn’t like it, giving the film a “C-” CinemaScore. But even for January, historically a low ebb for moviegoing, it was a sparsely attended weekend, with paltry options on the big screen. The top 10 films collectively accounted for just $51.3 million in box office, according to Comscore. With a similarly thin release schedule …

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SEOUL, South Korea — Video footage released by an organization that works with North Korean defectors shows North Korean authorities publicly sentencing two teenagers to 12 years’ hard labor for watching K-pop. The footage, which shows the two 16-year-olds in Pyongyang convicted of watching South Korean movies and music videos, was released by the South and North Development (SAND) Institute. Reuters was unable to independently verify the footage, which was first reported by the BBC. North Korea has for years imposed tough sentences on anyone caught enjoying South Korean entertainment or copying the way South Koreans speak in a war on outside influences since a sweeping new “anti-reactionary thought” law was imposed in 2020. “Judging from the heavy punishment, it seems that this is to be shown to people across North Korea to warn them. If so, it appears this lifestyle of South Korean culture is prevalent in North Korean society,” said Choi Kyong-hui, president of SAND and Doctor of Political Science at Tokyo University, who defected from North Korea in 2001. “I think this video was edited around 2022. … What is troublesome for (North Korean leader) Kim Jong Un is that Millennials and Gen Z young people have changed …

NEW YORK — New York prosecutors on Friday returned two pieces of art they say were stolen by Nazis from a Jewish performer and collector murdered in the Holocaust. The artworks were surrendered by museums in Pittsburgh and Ohio, but prosecutors are still fighting in court to recover third artwork by the same artist, Austrian expressionist Egon Schiele, that was seized from a Chicago museum at the same time. On Friday in Manhattan, the estate of Holocaust victim Fritz Grünbaum accepted Portrait of a Man, which was surrendered by the Carnegie Museum of Art and Girl with Black Hair, surrendered by the Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College. Prosecutors have collectively valued the two pieces at around $2.5 million. Ten of Schiele’s works have now been returned to the family, but Russian War Prisoner remains at the Art Institute of Chicago, which maintains that it was legally acquired. Grünbaum was the son of a Jewish art dealer and law school student who began performing in cabarets in Vienna in 1906. As the Nazis rose to power, he mocked them, once saying on a darkened stage, “I can’t see a thing, not a single thing; I must have stumbled into National …

VALLEJO, Calif. — The ordeal of Denise Huskins, whose kidnapping from her boyfriend’s Northern California home was first dismissed as a hoax by law enforcement, is getting renewed attention as the subject of a new Netflix docuseries, American Nightmare. Here’s a look at the facts of the case, which captivated the country: The kidnapping On March 23, 2015, Huskins was kidnapped by a masked intruder who broke into the home in Vallejo, a city in the San Francisco Bay Area. Her boyfriend, Aaron Quinn, told detectives he woke up to a bright light on his face and that intruders had drugged, blindfolded and tied both of them up before forcefully taking Huskins in the middle of the night. Quinn also said the kidnappers were demanding an $8,500 ransom. A Vallejo police detective interrogated Quinn for hours, at times suggesting he may have been involved in Huskins’ disappearance. Quinn took a polygraph test which an FBI agent told him he failed, the couple said later in a book about their ordeal. Huskins, who was 29 at the time, turned up unharmed two days later outside her father’s apartment in Huntington Beach, a city in Southern California, where she said she was dropped …

AYODHYA, India — The private jet parking lots at airports near the Indian city of Ayodhya are full and the shops have run out of gold-plated idols, as wealthy devotees prepare for the invitation-only opening ceremony of one of Hinduism’s holiest temples. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Asia’s richest man, Mukesh Ambani, are among the 8,000 or so attendees at Monday’s inauguration event for the Ram Temple, which devotees believe is built on the birthplace of Lord Ram, a sacred Hindu deity. The temple is built on land where the Babri mosque stood until it was demolished in 1992, leading to some of the worst Hindu-Muslim rioting in the country, killing nearly 3,000 people. The construction of the temple began after the Supreme Court awarded the site to Hindus in 2019. Its completion fulfills a key campaign promise of Modi and his Hindu nationalist party. The opening ceremony, organized by the trust that built the temple, comes months before a national election that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is widely expected to win, and the who’s who of India is expected to be there. “It’s become like a status symbol to be invited to this event,” said Rajan Mehra, CEO …

SANTA FE, NEW MEXICO — A grand jury indicted Alec Baldwin on Friday on an involuntary manslaughter charge in a 2021 fatal shooting during a rehearsal on a movie set in New Mexico, reviving a dormant case against the actor.  Special prosecutors brought the case before a grand jury in the city of Santa Fe in New Mexico this week, months after receiving a new analysis of the gun that was used. They declined to answer questions after spending about a day and a half presenting their case to the grand jury.  Defense attorneys for Baldwin indicated they’ll fight the charge.  “We look forward to our day in court,” said Luke Nikas and Alex Spiro, defense attorneys for Baldwin, in an email.  While the proceeding is shrouded in secrecy, two of the witnesses seen at the courthouse included crew members — one who was present when the fatal shot was fired and another who had walked off the set the day before due to safety concerns.  Baldwin, the lead actor and a co-producer on the Western movie “Rust,” was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal on a movie set outside Santa Fe in October 2021 when the …

Paris — The oldest person ever to win an Oscar, renowned director James Ivory, is still making films at 95, with a documentary about his formative trip to Afghanistan in 1960. Though American, Ivory is best-known for a string of costume dramas about the repressed emotions of Brits, including Remains of the Day and Howard’s End, both starring Anthony Hopkins, and Room with a View with Daniel Day-Lewis. In 2017, he reached a new generation with his screenplay for Call Me By Your Name starring Timothee Chalamet as a teenager discovering his sexuality, which won Ivory an Oscar at the age of 89. But his career began as a student making films about art in Venice and South Asia. “I was making a film in India, and it was getting hotter and hotter,” he told AFP. “I couldn’t take it another minute. The backers told me to go to a cooler climate, so I went to Afghanistan. I knew nothing about it, but I went.” Decades later, his footage from Kabul has been worked into a documentary that shows a peaceful Afghanistan, before the wars and extremism that would drag it into decades of violence. “(The footage) was amazing from the …

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — The director and producer of a banned Malaysian film that explores the afterlife were charged Wednesday with offending the religious feelings of others in a rare criminal prosecution of filmmakers, slammed by critics as an attack on freedom of expression. Mohamad Khairianwar Jailani, the director and co-scriptwriter of Mentega Terbang, and producer Tan Meng Kheng pleaded not guilty to having a “deliberate intention of wounding the religious feelings of others” through the independent, low-budget film. If found guilty, they could face up to a year in jail, a fine or both. Defense lawyer N. Surendran said the two believe the charge is “unreasonable and unconstitutional” because it violates their right to freedom of expression. “As far as we are concerned, these are groundless charges and we will challenge those charges in court,” he said. The film, which debuted at a regional film festival in 2021, revolves around a young Muslim girl who explores other religions to figure out where her ailing mother would go when she dies. Scenes that angered Muslims included ones showing the girl desiring to eat pork, which is forbidden in Islam, and pretending to drink holy water, and her father supporting her wish …

In the Western United States, professional bull riders risk serious injury on the back of bulls that can weigh more than 700 kilograms. But eight seconds on a bucking beast can mean thousands of dollars. VOA’s Scott Stearns takes us to the show. …

LOS ANGELES — List of the top winners of the prime-time Emmy Awards. BEST DRAMA SERIES: “Succession” BEST COMEDY SERIES: “The Bear” BEST LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES: “Beef” ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES: Kieran Culkin, “Succession” ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES: Jeremy Allen White, “The Bear” ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES: Sarah Snook, “Succession” SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES: Ayo Edebiri, “The Bear” ACTRESS IN A COMEDY SERIES: Quinta Brunson, “Abbott Elementary” SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA SERIES: Jennifer Coolidge, “The White Lotus” SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA SERIES: Matthew Macfadyen, “Succession” SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY SERIES: Ebon Moss-Bachrach, “The Bear” SCRIPTED VARIETY SERIES: “Last Week Tonight With John Oliver” SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES OR MOVIE: Niecy Nash-Betts, “Dahmer, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” REALITY COMPETITION SERIES: “RuPaul’s Drag Race” TALK SERIES: “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah” SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A LIMITED OR ANTHOLOGY SERIES OR MOVIE: Paul Walter Hauser, “Black Bird” LIVE VARIETY SPECIAL: “Elton John Live: Farewell From Dodger Stadium” ACTOR IN A LIMITED SERIES OR TV MOVIE: Steven Yeun, “Beef” ACTRESS IN A LIMITED SERIES OR TV MOVIE: Ali Wong, “Beef” …

LOS ANGELES — “Succession” secured its legacy with its third best drama series award, “The Bear” feasted as the night’s top comedy, and the two shows about squabbling families dominated the acting awards at Monday night’s Emmys. Historic wins also came for Quinta Brunson of “Abbot Elementary” and Steven Yeun and Ali Wong of “Beef” at the 75th Primetime Emmy Awards in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day ceremony that was finally held four months late after a turbulent year of strikes in Hollywood. “Succession,” the HBO saga of the dysfunctional generations of a maladjusted media empire, won the top prize for its fourth and final season. It also won best actress in a drama for Sarah Snook and best actor in a drama for Kieran Culkin. “We all put our all into it and the bar was set so high,” Snook said. “The Bear,” the FX dramedy about a contentious family and a struggling restaurant at the center of the life of a talented chef, won best comedy series for its first season. It also made a meal of its acting categories, with Jeremy Allen White winning best actor in a comedy, best supporting actress in a comedy for Ayo …

london — Lionel Messi has been named FIFA’s best men’s player after moving from Paris Saint-Germain to Inter Miami and leading the David Beckham-owned team to a little-known Leagues Cup title — all while single-handedly elevating soccer’s relevance in the United States. The 36-year-old Argentine on Monday was selected over Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland,  the same pair he beat for his eighth Ballon d’Or award last October.  Messi was not in attendance at Hammersmith Apollo theater in west London.  Moments later, World Cup champion Aitana Bonmati, 25, of Spain was named FIFA’s best women’s soccer player, building on her Ballon d’Or award last October, which followed a Union of European Football Associations award in August. And that was after she led Spain to World Cup glory and Barcelona to the Champions League title. She was named player of the tournament for both competitions.  Bonmati won Monday over Spain teammate Jenni Hermoso and Colombia star Linda Caicedo. They were FIFA finalists in voting by a global panel of national team coaches and captains, selected journalists, plus fans online. The women’s eligibility period covered performances from August 1, 2022, through the World Cup final last August.  Spain’s women won their first World …

Los Angeles — The time has finally come for a most unusual Emmys.  The 75th Primetime Emmy Awards are arriving four months past their due date on Monday night at the Peacock Theater, coming after a year of historic Hollywood turbulence in an industry whose upheavals are evident everywhere.  Strikes by both actors and writers, seismic shifts toward streaming, and the dismantling of the traditional TV calendar mean the envelopes opened during the Fox telecast hosted by Anthony Anderson on Martin Luther King Jr. Day will display winners that were decided months ago for shows that in some cases were completed years ago — and have a fraction of the audience they had a few decades ago.  But for actors and others taking part in the ceremony, norms just aren’t a thing anymore in this business.  “Since the pandemic it’s been really strange, you shoot something, then sometimes it’s another couple years until you see it, and a while longer until something like this,” actor Nick Offerman told The Associated Press last week after winning an early Emmy for “The Last of Us,” a show that is among Monday night’s top nominees along with “Succession,” “Ted Lasso” and “The Bear.”  The …

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New York — Joyce Randolph, a veteran stage and television actress whose role as the savvy Trixie Norton on “The Honeymooners” provided the perfect foil to her dimwitted TV husband, has died. She was 99. Randolph died of natural causes Saturday night at her home on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, her son Randolph Charles told The Associated Press Sunday. She was the last surviving main character of the beloved comedy from television’s golden age of the 1950s. “The Honeymooners” was an affectionate look at Brooklyn tenement life, based in part on star Jackie Gleason’s childhood. Gleason played the blustering bus driver Ralph Kramden. Audrey Meadows was his wisecracking, strong-willed wife Alice, and Art Carney the cheerful sewer worker Ed Norton. Alice and Trixie often found themselves commiserating over their husbands’ various follies and mishaps, whether unknowingly marketing dogfood as a popular snack or trying in vain to resist a rent hike, or freezing in the winter as their heat is shut off. Randolph would later cite a handful of favorite episodes, including one in which Ed is sleepwalking. “And Carney calls out, ‘Thelma?!’ He never knew his wife’s real name,” she later told the Television Academy Foundation. Originating in …

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WASHINGTON — Archaeologists have uncovered a cluster of lost cities in the Amazon rainforest, an area that was home to at least 10,000 farmers around 2,000 years ago.  A series of earthen mounds and buried roads in Ecuador was first noticed more than two decades ago by archaeologist Stephen Rostain. But at the time, ” I wasn’t sure how it all fit together,” said Rostain, one of the researchers who reported on the finding Thursday in the journal Science.  Recent mapping by laser-sensor technology revealed those sites to be part of a dense network of settlements and connecting roadways, tucked into the forested foothills of the Andes, that lasted about 1,000 years.  “It was a lost valley of cities,” said Rostain, who directs investigations at France’s National Center for Scientific Research. “It’s incredible.”  The settlements were occupied by the Upano people between around 500 B.C. and 300 to 600 A.D. — a period roughly contemporaneous with the Roman Empire in Europe, the researchers found.  Residential and ceremonial buildings erected on more than 6,000 earthen mounds were surrounded by agricultural fields with drainage canals. The largest roads were 33 feet (10 meters) wide and stretched for 6 to 12 miles (10 to …

KYIV, Ukraine — Hundreds of people attended a ceremony Thursday honoring the memory of renowned Ukrainian poet Maksym Kryvtsov, who was killed in action while serving as a soldier in the war Russia started in Ukraine nearly two years ago. A large crowd gathered in the courtyard of Kyiv’s St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery, where ceremonies are often held to honor soldiers killed in the war. People brought flowers adorned with blue and yellow ribbons — the colors of the Ukrainian flag — and patiently queued up to enter the monastery and pay their respects. A funeral was scheduled to be held in Kryvtsov’s hometown of Rivne on Friday. Among those attending the memorial service were many fellow soldiers, including some who had served with Kryvtsov since 2014. “He became a warrior right away, but he was very kind,” said a soldier who asked to be identified by his military call sign Grandpa. He said he finds it difficult to speak about Kryvtsov, saying that it feels like “a piece of the heart has been torn out.” “He did not die,” Grandpa said. “We just gained another guardian angel. He will always be with us.” Book earns high praise Kryvtsov was killed …

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. — Six-time National Football League champion Bill Belichick agreed to part ways as the coach of the New England Patriots, ending his 24-year tenure as the architect of the most decorated dynasty of the league’s Super Bowl era. Belichick and team owner Robert Kraft announced the move to the media Thursday at Gillette Stadium. They didn’t take questions, though Kraft scheduled an availability for later in the day. Belichick, 71, is just the third coach in NFL history to reach 300 career regular-season victories earlier this season, joining Hall of Famers Don Shula and George Halas. With 333 wins including the playoffs, Belichick trails only Shula (347) for the record for victories by a coach. But the Patriots ended this season 4-13, Belichick’s worst record in 29 seasons as an NFL head coach. It supplanted the 5-11 mark he managed in his last year in Cleveland in 1995 and again in his first year in New England in 2000. Including the playoffs, he ends his Patriots tenure with a 333-178 overall record. With his cutoff hoodies and ever-present scowl, Belichick teamed with quarterback Tom Brady to lead the Patriots to six Super Bowl victories, nine AFC titles and 17 …

Los Angeles — Fresh from its wins at the Golden Globes, Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” on Wednesday topped the nominations for the influential Screen Actors Guild Awards, which are key to Oscars success. The SAG Awards, voted on by Hollywood actors, are likely to enjoy a profile boost of their own this year as they are broadcast globally on Netflix — an awards show first for the world’s biggest streamer. “Oppenheimer,” which tells the story of the inventor of the atomic bomb, earned nods for Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt, as well as “outstanding performance by a cast” — the SAG Awards’ top prize. Nolan’s three-hour epic, which earned nearly $1 billion and received rave reviews from critics, is rapidly becoming the clear favorite for the Academy Awards in March. “Barbie,” the other half of last summer’s “Barbenheimer” box office phenomenon, and the year’s highest grossing film, picked up nominations for Margot Robbie, Ryan Gosling and overall cast. The surreal comedy based on the wildly popular doll also picked up an additional nomination for its stunt performers. The other films with three acting nominations were Martin Scorsese’s epic “Killers of the Flower Moon” — despite Leonardo DiCaprio missing out …

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LONDON — Irish singer Sinead O’Connor, who was found unresponsive at an address in London in July last year, died of natural causes, the coroner said on Tuesday.  O’Connor, known for her stirring voice, outspoken views and 1990 chart-topping hit “Nothing Compares 2 U,” was pronounced dead at the scene. Police had said her death, at the age of 56, was not being treated as suspicious.  The coroner’s court said at the time that an autopsy would be conducted before a decision was made on whether to hold an inquest.  “This is to confirm that Ms O’Connor died of natural causes. The coroner has therefore ceased their involvement in her death,” London Inner South Coroner’s Court said in a statement.  Artists around the world reacted to the news of her death last year, with REM frontman Michael Stipe and U.S. musician Tori Amos among those who paid tribute to O’Connor’s fierce honesty, intense presence and uncompromising spirit.  Thousands gathered outside O’Connor’s former seaside home to bid farewell to her when her funeral was held in August, some singing along to hits blasted from a vintage Volkswagen camper van and others showering her hearse with flowers.  …

Munich — Franz Beckenbauer, who won the World Cup both as player and coach and became one of Germany’s most beloved personalities with his easygoing charm, has died, news agency dpa reported Monday. He was 78. “It is with deep sadness that we announce that my husband and our father, Franz Beckenbauer, passed away peacefully in his sleep yesterday, Sunday, surrounded by his family,” the family said in a statement to dpa, the German news agency. “We ask that we be allowed to grieve in peace and be spared any questions.” The statement did not provide a cause of death. The former Bayern Munich great had struggled with health problems in recent years. Beckenbauer was one of German soccer’s central figures. As a player, he reimagined the defender’s role in soccer and captained West Germany to the World Cup title in 1974 after it had lost to England in the 1966 final. He was the coach when West Germany won the tournament again in 1990, a symbolic moment for a country in the midst of reunification, months after the Berlin Wall fell. Beckenbauer was also instrumental in bringing the highly successful 2006 World Cup to Germany, though his legacy was later …