WASHINGTON – The Departments of Justice and Education reached a settlement agreement with the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), to resolve an investigation into complaints of racial harassment against African-American students on campus. Titles IV and VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 each prohibit harassment based on race.
Daily Archives: April 18, 2012
Education Department Releases Action Plan To Improve Measures of Postsecondary Success
To provide more complete information on student persistence and completion, the Education Department released an action plan today that takes steps to augment its current measures of student success in postsecondary education.
Philanthropic Leaders Pledge $1 Million as Initial Investment in Public Private Partnerships for AAPI Community
WASHINGTON – With newly released figures from the U.S.
The 2012 Race to the Top Fund Continues Investments in Statewide Systems of High Quality Early Education Programs
The U.S. Department of Education and U.S.
U.S. Department of Education Awards Joplin Schools Nearly $50,000 to Support Local Recovery Efforts
The U.S. Department of Education awarded Joplin Schools a $49,780 Project SERV grant to help provide local students and education staff with academic and mental health services following the Category 5 tornado that struck the Joplin community on May 22, 2011.
Statement by U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan today issued the following statement on the shootings Monday at Oikos University in Oakland, Calif.
I was saddened to learn of the senseless violence and loss of life at Oikos University in Oakland. My thoughts are with the community and families of the victims.”
Alfred Hitchcock’s complete films to be shown in London retrospective
Newly restored silent movies included in BFI’s biggest ever project, part of London 2012 Festival
Alfred Hitchcock is to be celebrated like never before this summer, with a retrospective of all his surviving films and the premieres of his newly restored silent films – including Blackmail, which will be shown outside the British Museum.
The BFI on Tuesday announced details of its biggest ever project: celebrating the genius of a man who, it said, was as important to modern cinema as Picasso to modern art or Le Corbusier to modern architecture. Heather Stewart, the BFI’s creative director, said: “The idea of popular cinema somehow being capable of being great art at the same time as being entertaining is still a problem for some people. Shakespeare is on the national curriculum, Hitchcock is not.”
One of the highlights of the season will be the culmination of a three-year project to fully restore nine of the director’s silent films. It will involve The Pleasure Garden, Hitchcock’s first, being shown at Wilton’s Music Hall; The Ring at Hackney Empire, and Blackmail outside the British Museum, where the film’s climactic chase scene was filmed in 1929, both inside the building and on the roof.
Stewart said the restorations were spectacular and overdue. “We would find it very strange if we could not see Shakespeare’s early plays performed, or read Dickens’s early novels. But we’ve been quite satisfied as a nation that Hitchcock’s early films have not been seen in good quality prints on the big screen, even though – like Shakespearean and Dickensian – Hitchcockian has entered our language.”
The films, with new scores by composers including Nitin Sawhney, Daniel Patrick Cohen and Soweto Kinch, will be shown the London 2012 Festival, the finale of the Cultural Olympiad.
Between August and October the BFI will show all 58 surviving Hitchcock films including his many films made in the UK – The 39 Steps, for example, and The Lady Vanishes – and those from his Hollywood years, from Rebecca in 1940 to Vertigo in 1957, The Birds in 1963 and his penultimate film, Frenzy, in 1972.
And Psycho, of course. “Psycho is a great work of modern art,” said Stewart. “Who hasn’t stood in the shower and had a little moment.”
Special guests during the Genius of Hitchcock season will include Tippi Hedren, the hapless victim of bird attacks in the film of the same name, and Bruce Dern who starred with Hedren in Marnie.
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Natascha Kampusch kidnap ordeal to be made into feature film
The film’s working title, 3096, is taken from the number of days Natascha Kampusch was held captive by Wolfgang Priklopil
The ordeal of an Austrian woman who was kept locked in a cellar for eight years is to be turned into a feature film involving members of the team who produced a hit biopic about Hitler’s last days in his bunker.
The €6m (£4.9m) film about Natascha Kampusch has the working title 3096 after the number of days she was held hostage by her kidnapper, Wolfgang Priklopil, before escaping in 2006. The production crew aim to capture her claustrophobic nightmare by recreating in the studio an exact replica of her 2m x 3m cell.
The screenplay was drafted by Bernd Eichinger, the main force behind the 2007 hit film Downfall about Hitler’s last days. Eichinger based his screenplay on several intense discussions with Kampusch in the months before his death in January 2011.
Cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, who has collaborated with directors such as Werner Fassbinder, Martin Scorsese and Francis Ford Coppola, agreed to come out of retirement to work on 3096, at the request of its director, his wife Sherry Hormann.
The young Natascha will be played by the 10-year-old Londoner Amelia Pidgeon, while her older self will be portrayed by 29-year-old Antonia Campbell-Hughes from Ireland, who is best known for her role in Jane Campion’s Keats film, Bright Star. Danish actor Thule Lindhardt will play Priklopil.
The attempt to recreate Kampusch’s cramped confinement has led inevitably to comparisons with Downfall, whose success many critics put down to the effective way in which it managed to conjure the closed space and oppressive atmosphere of the Nazi leader’s bunker as Russian troops closed in on Berlin.
Filming of 3096 starts in Munich in May and the film is scheduled to open in cinemas around next spring. Its makers say the film will cover every aspect of the story, from Kampusch’s capture on her way to school at the age of 10 to her escape at the age of 18, and will not shy away from the topic of the sexual abuse she suffered.
Die Welt said a film was an appropriate way to retell the Kampusch story and that it had her blessing. “The suffering of Natascha Kampusch is the most oft-repeated story from the German-speaking world so far this century,” it wrote.
Martin Moszkowicz, the head of the film’s production company, the Munich-based Constantin Films, compared the Kampusch story to a Greek myth. “Essentially it’s like the story of Prometheus. Just as he shaped man out of clay, so [Kampusch's] kidnapper tried to create out of her a woman according to his own imagination and rules. But she defies him and triumphs.”
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Iron Man’s next adventure to shoot in China
Iron Man 3 will be co-produced by Chinese company DMG Entertainment
Iron Man is flying to China after Disney subsidiary Marvel announced that the metallic Avenger’s next stand-alone adventure will be co-produced by Chinese company DMG Entertainment.
The move will see stars Robert Downey Jr, Gwyneth Paltrow and Don Cheadle film part of the franchise’s third outing in the far east. DMG will invest at least 1bn yuan (£99m) in Iron Man 3, according to Business Week. It will also help to distribute the film domestically.
“This signifies the first multibillion-dollar franchise to be produced between Hollywood and China,” said Dan Mintz, head of DMG Entertainment. He described the collaboration as a “milestone” in global entertainment. “Adding a local flavour, and working with our new local partner, will enhance the appeal and relevance of our characters in China’s fast-growing film marketplace,” said Rob Steffens, Marvel’s general manager of operations and finance.
Hollywood has increasingly been looking east, encouraged by the recent relaxation of the quota on foreign films allowed into China and the popularity of Hollywood-made but China-based international blockbusters such as Kung Fu Panda 2. Disney rival DreamWorks Animation’s Shanghai-based studio is due to release its first films in 2016. The studio behind the Shrek franchise struck a deal earlier this year with two Chinese media companies and the Shanghai municipal government to bring DreamWorks products to a Chinese audience.
The Iron Man movies see Downey Jr play Tony Stark, a billionaire entrepreneur who has developed a suit of armour that grants him superpowers. The character is due to appear in Marvel’s forthcoming Avengers Assemble, which teams the metallic mastermind with Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye, Black Widow and the Incredible Hulk. Iron Man 3 will start filming in the US next month, before moving abroad later this summer.
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Bond causes a stir with taste for beer in Skyfall
Daniel Craig defends James Bond’s beer-sipping in the next film, following a product placement deal with Dutch brewer Heineken. He also says he asked Sam Mendes to direct the project
Daniel Craig has given his backing to a commercial deal which will see 007 switching to Heineken beer in the latest James Bond movie, Skyfall, and revealed that he personally helped recruit Oscar-winning director Sam Mendes to take charge of the film.
The British secret agent, traditionally known for his penchant for Martinis, shaken not stirred, is set to enjoy one of the Dutch brewers’ beers in at least one scene in the 23rd official Bond adventure as part of a reported $45m (£28.2m) product placement deal. Craig said the tie-in was a necessary part of the business of making an expensive project such as Skyfall.
“We have relationships with a number of companies so that we can make this movie,” he told Moviefone during a break on set. “The simple fact is that, without them, we couldn’t do it. It’s unfortunate but that’s how it is.
“This movie costs a lot of money to make, it costs nearly as much again if not more to promote, so we go where we can. The great thing is that Bond is a drinker, he always has been, it’s part of who he is, rightly or wrongly, you can make your own judgement about it, having a beer is no bad thing, in the movie it just happens to be Heineken.”
Craig also revealed that he had been instrumental in recruiting Mendes to take charge of Skyfall. “I didn’t realise you weren’t supposed to go up to people and just ask them,” he said. “I was in a social situation with Sam, started chatting to him, and it just came to me in a flash. I said, ‘It’s not my place to do this but would you be interested?’ I got on the phone to (producers) Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson that night. So he came to see them, they really got on and it snowballed from there. It’s really been great for me because he takes care of a lot of stuff that I would worry about normally on a film set.”
Craig will be playing Bond for the third time in Skyfall, which follows 2006′s Casino Royale and 2008′s Quantum of Solace. Dame Judi Dench reprises her role as the suave spy’s boss, M, for the seventh time, with British actors Albert Finney and Ralph Fiennes in undisclosed parts. Javier Bardem will be one of the villains, while Ben Whishaw debuts in the role of gadget guru Q. Naomie Harris is playing a field agent named Eve and French actor Bérénice Marlohe is set to play an enigmatic Bond girl named Severine.
The film is still shooting in Turkey at the moment as part of a tough schedule that will also take in locations in China, Scotland and England, and Craig said the 12-hour days usually left him “fucked”. “We’re here about seven in the morning, start work at eight, work until about 8:30pm, then I go to the gym for 40 minutes in the evening, and then I go home to bed,” he said. Skyfall’s production received some negative publicity yesterday when a stuntman lost control of his motorcycle and smashed into the window of a 330-year-old shop in Istanbul’s 15th-century Grand Bazaar, according to Turkish media.
“It is very nice for the Grand Bazaar to be chosen as a location for shooting this kind of movie. But the bazaar’s administration … didn’t notify us the shooting would be like this,” said Mete Boybeyi, the owner of the shop, which once served members of the Ottoman court from the nearby palace. “No one from the movie crew came to ask: ‘What are your losses?. We filed a complaint at the police station.
Out on 26 October, Skyfall’s plot reportedly centres heavily on Dench’s M, with some rumours suggesting she may be killed off. “Bond’s loyalty to M is tested as her past comes back to haunt her”, reads the official synopsis.
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