Kim Kardashian and her husband Kanye West visited a centuries-old Armenian church in Jerusalem on Monday for the baptism of their daughter, North West. Fending off fans as they entered the Saint James Cathedral in the Old City, Kardashian appeared overwhelmed as she clutched the baby, accompanied by West, her sister Khloé and hooded clergymen. “Stop,” she shouted to the crowd. “Stop. It’s not safe for the baby,” her sister added. Archbishop Aris Shirvanian, an Armenian church official, said: “Kim Kardashian’s daughter will be baptised and become a Christian officially and a member of the Armenian church. All I know is that she’s a famous personality. I don’t know her in person. In any case she is welcome with her family.” The family had arrived on a private jet at Israel’s international airport on Monday for what was described as a private two-day visit. It follows a high-profile visit to Armenia, where the Kardashian family has its roots. – AP
Bollywood v Hollywood at US stunt awards
Bollywood blockbusters Kick and Bang Bang! have been nominated for several gongs at the Taurus World Stunt Awards, alongside Hollywood biggies such as The Amazing Spider-Man 2 and Transformers: Age of Extinction. Salman Khan's Kick is up against The Expendables 3, 22 Jump Street and Transformers for the Best High Work Award. It is also nominated in Best Stunt Rigging category. Hrithik Roshan's Bang Bang! is up for the Best Fight award along with 300: Rise of an Empire, Captain America and John Wick. It is also nominated for Best Work With a Vehicle, Best Specialty Stunt award and Best Overall Stunt by a Stunt Woman. The awards will be presented during a ceremony in California on May 9. – IANS
Director quits DC’s Wonder Woman movie
DC's forthcoming Wonder Woman movie has lost its director. Michelle MacLaren, a prolific television director known for her work on Breaking Bad, The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones, has left the superhero film due to creative differences, Warner Bros said. She would have been the first woman to direct a major comic-book adaptation in recent years. Gal Gadot will star as the Amazonian warrior-turned-superhero, who will be introduced to audiences in director Zack Snyder's Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which is due to be released in March next year. Wonder Woman is due out in 2017. – AP
Female director to open Cannes for first time
A film by a woman director will kick off the Cannes Film Festival for the first time. La Tete Haute, a French drama directed by Emmanuelle Bercot, will open the 68th edition on May 13. The film is about the upbringing of a juvenile delinquent and stars Catherine Deneuve. Cannes head Thierry Fremaux said the choice "is a clear reflection of our desire to see the festival start with a different piece, which is both bold and moving". Joel and Ethan Coen will preside over this year's jury. The full schedule will be announced on Thursday. The festival runs from May 13 to 24. – AP
HBO renews two more shows
HBO has renewed its political satirical comedy Veep for a fifth season and its tech-savvy sitcom Silicon Valley for a third. "Veep and Silicon Valley are terrific series and I'm immensely proud that they will return to HBO next year," said the channel's programming president, Michael Lombardo. "Along with Game of Thrones and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, both of which have already been renewed for 2016, they give HBO a stellar Sunday night like no other." Created by Scottish writer and producer Armando Iannucci, and based on his British political comedy The Thick of It, Veep portrays the political rise of a gaff-prone American vice president played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Season four began on Sunday on HBO. Silicon Valley, which has just started its 10-episode second season, is a humorous take on the daily life of California computer geeks. – AFP
Istanbul Film Festival censorship row
The annual Istanbul Film Festival on Monday scrapped all of its competitions this year due to a bitter row over a film about Kurdish rebels that was pulled from the event following intervention by Turkish authorities.
Dozens of Turkish filmmakers, including Cannes Palme d’Or winner Nuri Bilge Ceylan, has earlier said that they would boycott the festival over “censorship”.
The documentary, Bakur (North), was scheduled to be shown on Sunday afternoon, but that was cancelled at the last minute after the organisers received a letter from the Turkish culture ministry saying it did not have the necessary registration certificate.
More than 100 filmmakers – including Ceylan who won the top prize last year for his epic drama Winter Sleep – signed an open letter alleging "oppression and censorship" by the Turkish government.
At least 23 directors withdrew their films from the festival in solidarity.
The festival organisers said they backed the directors’ decision to withdrew their films and were cancelling all the competitions, including the prestigious Golden Tulip, as well as the festival’s closing ceremony.
The Dutch-Australian film director Rolf de Heer, who headed the jury for international competitions, said the jury members had withdrawn from their posts because they saw the move as “an attack on freedom of expression”.
The row also prompted the online Radikal newspaper to cancel its annual "Radikal Peoples' Prize" for this year because "art, creativity and freedom of expression cannot exist in the presence of censorship."
The documentary, directed by Cayan Demirel and Ertugrul Mavioglu, shows the daily life of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fighters and includes interviews with senior figures including the PKK’s Iraq-based operational commander Cemil Bayik.
The festival began on April 4 and runs until Sunday. Other screenings will continue. – AFP
John Legend launches jail campaign
John Legend has launched a campaign to end mass incarceration. The Grammy-winning singer announced the multiyear initiative, Free America, on Monday. He will visit and perform at a correctional facility tomorrow in Austin, Texas, where he also will take part in a press conference with state legislators to discuss the criminal justice system in Texas.
“We have a serious problem with incarceration in this country,” Legend said. “It’s destroying families, it’s destroying communities and we’re the most incarcerated country in the world, and when you look deeper and look at the reasons we got to this place, we as a society made some choices politically and legislatively, culturally to deal with poverty, deal with mental illness in a certain way and that way usually involves using incarceration.”
Legend, 36, will also visit a California state prison and co-host a criminal justice event with Politico in Washington, DC, this month. The campaign will include help from other artists – to be announced – and organisations committed to ending mass incarceration.
“I’m just trying to create some more awareness to this issue and trying to make some real change legislatively,” he said. “And we’re not the only ones. There are senators that are looking at this, like Rand Paul and Cory Booker, there are other nonprofits that are looking at this, and I just wanted to add my voice to that.”
Legend's speech at the Academy Awards this year struck a chord when he spoke about mass incarceration. He won the Oscar for best original song with rapper Common for Glory from the film Selma.
The singer said an early victory for his campaign was the approval of Proposition 47 in California in November, which calls for treating shoplifting, forgery, fraud, petty theft and possession of small amounts of drugs – including cocaine, heroin and methamphetamines – as misdemeanours instead of felonies.
“Once you have that tag of a felony on your name, it’s hard for you to do anything,” Legend said. “Getting those reduced to misdemeanours really impacted a lot of lives and we hope to launch more initiatives like that around the country.” – AP
Turing notebook sells for $1million
A handwritten notebook that belonged to British Second World War code-breaking genius Alan Turing, who was the subject of the 2014 Oscar-winning film The Imitation Game, sold for more than US$1 million at auction on Monday.
The 56-page manuscript was written at the time the mathematician and computer-science pioneer was working to break the seemingly unbreakable Enigma codes used by the Germans throughout the war. It contains his complex mathematical and computer-science notations and is believed to be the only extensive Turing manuscript known to exist, Bonhams auction house said.
The sale price was $1,025,000.
The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch in the role of Turing, won Best Adapted Screenplay at this year's Academy Awards.
Turing’s notebook dates from 1942, when he and his team of cryptanalysts were at Britain’s Second World War code and cipher school Bletchley Park.
The sale also included a working German Enigma enciphering machine. The three-rotor device, manufactured for the German military in July 1944, sold for $269,000. – AP
‘Salman Khan was driving at time of fatal crash’, prosecution states
The prosecution in the 2002 Salman Khan fatal road accident case reiterated its stand that the Bollywood actor, and not his driver Ashok Singh, was driving the vehicle when it ran over sleeping pavement-dwellers, killing one man, in its written submissions in the ongoing final arguments.
Public prosecutor Pradeep Gharat said that Khan was behind the wheel of the Toyoto Land Crusider and not his driver Singh as claimed in court.
He described Singh as “a dummy witness” who had lied under oath, in the written submissions of the final arguments that the prosecution concluded last week before Additional Sessions Judge DW Deshpande.
On Friday, defence counsel Shrikant Shivade began his closing arguments, which will resume again today.
The prosecution says Khan was drunk and driving, when the SUV crashed in early hours of September 28, 2002, into the American Express Bakery in Bandra west, killing one person on the pavement and injuring four others.
Gharat said that witnesses have testified before the court that they had seen Khan getting off the driver’s seat, but nobody had seen Singh behind the wheel.
“Ashok Singh is a liar. I pray that action may be taken against him for perjury. He is a stooge and dummy witness,” Gharat said in the 30-page written arguments submitted to the court. – IANS
