LOS ANGELES (AP) — Steven Spielberg has extended his domination at the Directors Guild of America Awards, earning a nomination Tuesday for his Civil War epic “Lincoln” to pad the record he already held to 11 film nominations from the guild.
Also nominated were past winners Kathryn Bigelow for her Osama bin Laden thriller “Zero Dark Thirty”; Tom Hooper for his musical “Les Miserables”; and Ang Lee for his lost-at-sea story “Life of Pi.”
Rounding out the Directors Guild lineup is first-time nominee Ben Affleck for his Iran hostage-crisis tale “Argo.”
The Directors Guild field is one of Hollywood’s most-accurate forecasts for who will be in the running at the Academy Awards, whose nominations come out Thursday. The winner at the Directors Guild almost always goes on to win the directing prize at the Oscars, too. Only six times in the 64-year history of the guild awards has the winner there failed to follow up with an Oscar.
Besides the record number of feature-film nominations, Spielberg also has won the Directors Guild prize a record three times, for “The Color Purple,” ”Schindler’s List” and “Saving Private Ryan,” along with directing Oscars for the latter two. He received the guild’s lifetime-achievement award in 2000.
Bigelow became the first woman ever to win the guild honor and the directing Oscar three years ago for “The Hurt Locker.” Hooper won the same prizes a year later for “The King’s Speech,” while Lee is a two-time guild winner for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Brokeback Mountain,” the latter also earning him the directing Oscar.
Affleck, who also stars in “Argo,” follows such actors-turned-filmmakers as Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner and Mel Gibson to earn a Directors Guild nomination.
Overlooked by the guild were past nominees Quentin Tarantino for his slave-revenge tale “Django Unchained” and David O. Russell for his oddball romance “Silver Linings Playbook.”
The film that receives the Directing Guild prize typically also goes on to win the best-picture Oscar, a prize Spielberg has earned only once, for “Schindler’s List.” No clear front-runner has emerged yet for the Feb. 24 Oscars, with “Lincoln,” ”Zero Dark Thirty” and “Les Miserables” all considered strong prospects to take home Hollywood’s highest honor.
Sunday’s Golden Globes will help sort out the Oscar picture, as will the various guild prizes that will be handed out in late January and February on the run-up to the Academy Awards.
Winners for the 65th annual Directors Guild awards will be announced at a Hollywood dinner Feb. 2, with Kelsey Grammer as host for the second year in a row.
Milos Forman, director of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” and “Amadeus,” will receive the guild’s lifetime-achievement award.
___
Online:
http://www.dga.org
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
The agency said the problems were in the aft electrical bay of the Boeing Co. jet, and affected the auxiliary power unit, which was in operation at the time of the fire reported around 10:30 am ET Monday.
A second incident, a fuel leak on Tuesday, forced another 787 operated by JAL to cancel its takeoff and return to the gate at Boston's Logan International Airport, a fire official said.
The leak occurred on a different plane than the 787 that experienced an electrical fire Monday at Logan, said Richard Walsh, a Massport spokesman.
The fuel-leaking plane had left the gate in preparation for takeoff on a flight to Tokyo when the fuel spill of about 40 gallons was discovered, Walsh said. No fire or injuries occurred, he said.
The plane was towed back to the gate, where passengers disembarked and were waiting for a decision on whether the flight would leave, he said.
"The airline will make that determination," Walsh said.
A spokeswoman for Japan Airlines, Carol Anderson, said the plane had returned to the gate because of a mechanical issue, but said exact details were not yet confirmed.
Boeing said it was aware of the issue and was working with its customer.
The NTSB this issue wouldn't warrant an investigation because there was no accident.
In December, the Federal Aviation Administration ordered inspections of 787s after fuel leaks were found on two aircraft operated by foreign airlines. The leaks stemmed from incorrectly assembled fuel line couplings, which could result in loss of power or engine fire, the FAA said.
Boeing shares were down 2.8 percent at $73.98 in late trading. It fell 2 percent on Monday.
Walsh, the Massport spokesman, said the leak was noticed at 12:25 pm ET Tuesday, as the flight, JAL 007, was taxiing toward the runway for takeoff. Crews used an absorbent to soak up the spilled fuel, Walsh said.
Some analysts had raised concerns about Boeing's jet after the JAL 787 suffered an electrical fire on Monday. Today's fuel leak caused further alarm about the impact on public perceptions of Boeing and the plane.
"We're getting to a tipping point where they go from needing to rectify problems to doing major damage control to the image of the company and the plane," said Richard Aboulafia, a defense and aerospace analyst with Teal Group, a consulting firm based in Fairfax, Virginia.
"While they delivered a large and unexpected number of 787s last year, it's possible that they should have instead focused on identifying glitches and flaws, rather than pushing ahead with volume production," he said.
Aboulafia said there is still no indication that the plane itself is flawed.
"It's just a question of how quickly they can get all the onboard technologies right, and whether or not the 787 and Boeing brands will be badly damaged," he said.
BA data by YCharts
Heliotes, 20, won a bout on the streets of Lincoln Park when he took down a parolee who robbed a woman after threatening her with a screwdriver late Saturday night, according to police.
The 150-pound fighter had just stepped off the Brown Line around 11:45 p.m. after finishing his day job as a cook. He was about half a block from the Diversey station when he noticed a man across the street who appeared to be hugging a woman. The man seemed drunk because he was wrapped around her.
"Then I realized he was grabbing her purse, he was kind of wrestling with her," said Heliotes, who recently won his first local fight in Orland Park. "I've never really seen anybody get mugged before, but it was kind of my instincts."
As he crossed Diversey, the robber wrested away the woman's purse and she began screaming, Heliotes said. Without thinking, Heliotes said he ran after the man as he headed for the station. "I didn't know if he had a knife or what, so I tried to knock him to the floor by pushing him into the wall," Heliotes said. "He kept running."
Heliotes spotted people up ahead, and the woman called out for them to stop the robber. A 24-year-old man who was with his girlfriend blocked the robber's path and forced him onto the street.
"I just heard someone yell out, 'Stop that guy," and he's literally 30 or 40 feet in front of me," said the man, who did not want his named used. "For me it was just a split-second decision that I'm going to do this, I'm protecting the people near me."
He and Heliotes wrestled the robber to the ground and took the purse back. That's when they spotted the screwdriver. "I said, 'Was he sticking you up with the screwdriver? She had a mark on her back," Heliotes said. "He was a pretty strong guy."
The two good Samaritans had the robber face-down on the street, but he continued to struggle as police sirens grew louder, they said. At least one other man stepped up and held the man's head down as officers arrived.
"It's one of those hypothetical situations that I think you're always, 'What would I do?' It doesn't even seem like it's real life," said the 24-year-old man. "I'm not even sure you could chalk it up to instincts."
He said he is protective by nature, and that seemed to kick in because he was with his girlfriend and has a younger sister.
The victim, 29, said she was returning to her home after spending the evening watching a movie at a friend's home nearby. She initially thought the screwdriver the robber pressed against her back was a gun.
"I actually thought it was a joke. . .then I realized, 'He may actually have a gun,' " said the woman, who works for a local non-profit organization. "Then he took my purse."
Not only did the two men help get her purse back, they sat with her for more than four hours at a police station as they were interviewed by police and prosecutors.
"How do you say thank you to just kind guys off the street who don't know you and just provided so much safety and security at that time for you," the woman said. "They not only gave me the security that night. . .they gave me the faith that there is good out there."
Jose Rodriguez, 30, was charged with armed robbery with a dangerous weapon and a parole violation. He was ordered held on $500,000 bail. He has six felony convictions in his background, prosecutors said.
Contributing: Rosemary Regina Sobol
csadovi@tribune.com
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — David Letterman says he sees a psychiatrist once a week, part of his attempt to be the person he once believed he was.
The late-night talk show host gave an extraordinary interview to Oprah Winfrey in which he talked about his feuds with her and Jay Leno, and his own effort to make amends for the affairs that became public three years ago when a man tried to extort him.
The interview aired Sunday night on Winfrey’s OWN network after it was done in November.
The CBS host says his wife has forgiven him for his transgressions and his life is more joyful than ever, but he hasn’t necessarily forgiven himself.
Letterman also called his late-night rival Leno the funniest guy he’s ever known.
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Jakob Schiller for The New York Times
Survivors Lucinda Marker and John Tull at home a decade after having the plague.
It was November 2002, little more than a year after planes had been flown into the World Trade Center and anthrax mailings had killed five Americans. New York City was still in a state of high alert for suspected terrorists.
Suddenly all eyes were on a middle-aged married couple from Santa Fe, N.M., on a brief vacation to New York, who had the remarkably ill luck to come down with the city’s first case of bubonic plague in more than a century. Television news trucks surrounded Beth Israel Medical Center North, where they had dragged themselves after being stricken in their hotel room with rampaging fevers, headaches, extreme exhaustion and mysterious balloonlike swellings.
It took just over a day for public health officials to dispel fears about bioterrorism; there had been no unusual rise in the number of very high fevers that could have suggested an attack.
It turned out that the couple, Lucinda Marker and John Tull, had been bitten by fleas infected with Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes plague. Their home state, New Mexico, accounts for more than half of the average seven cases of plague in the country every year. (In 2012, just one case was reported in the state.)
“It was an absolute fluke,” Ms. Marker, now 57, said during a recent visit to New York. “Just rotten luck.”
Like most people who contract the disease and are quickly treated with antibiotics, she recovered in a few days. But 10 years later, her husband is still badly scarred.
In the days after they were bitten, Mr. Tull, a burly, athletic lawyer — a former prosecutor who volunteered with search-and-rescue teams — developed septicemic plague, as the infection spread throughout his body.
His temperature rose to 104.4, his blood pressure plummeted to 78/50. His kidneys were failing, and so much clotted blood collected in his hands and feet that they turned black.
Mr. Tull was put into a medically induced coma. When he was brought out of it, nearly three months later, he found out that both his legs had been amputated below the knee to drain the deadly infection. The surgery that saved his life radically changed it, but did not dampen his resilient spirit.
Even before he was released from the hospital to begin a long rehabilitation, he vowed he would once again be hiking on the rustic trails above his home.
Today Mr. Tull, 63, drives his own car, sometimes takes over the controls of a private plane, and goes on an annual trout-fishing trip to Colorado with friends. But he has not been able to hike that trail.
“That is one of the things I miss most,” Mr. Tull, now retired and receiving a disability pension, said in a telephone interview from his home. “Every single hour of every single day, the plague affects our lives, but about the only time I really get angry these days is when, because of my physical condition, there is something I want to do but can’t.”
He has appeared in several television documentaries, speaking to medical researchers around the world and dealing with a posse of journalists as his very private ordeal has been played out in public.
“Basically Lucinda and I surrendered our privacy to the press and the people who make documentaries,” Mr. Tull said. “But you know what? That didn’t bother us a bit. Lucinda had been an actress and I had been a trial lawyer. We were used to it.”
Ms. Marker, who has started to write about their ordeal, says that after 10 years she is coming to terms with it emotionally and psychologically. Yet many aspects of their case still puzzle medical experts.
In particular, no one knows why she was so easily cured while he nearly died.
Bubonic plague is transmitted by fleas that feed off pack rats, ground squirrels and prairie dogs in the mountains of New Mexico and several other states. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the disease probably came to the United States around 1900, in Asian rats that escaped from ships in the port of San Francisco.
Initially, plague was restricted to cities. The worst outbreak came in 1907, after the San Francisco earthquake. Vermin control programs prevented further outbreaks, but fleas hitched onto other animals in the wild.
Dr. Paul Ettestad, public health veterinarian for the New Mexico Department of Health, said prairie dogs became an “amplification host,” carrying the disease to their burrows and spreading it throughout their territory. Today, the easternmost limit of the plague roughly corresponds to the 100th meridian, which passes through central Texas. Known as the plague line, is it also the extent of the prairie dog population.
CBS MoneyWatch's Alexis Christoforous reports for CBS2. (1/7/2013)
The settlements and transactions and other charges will result in Bank of America posting only a small profit for 2012's fourth quarter. The bank is due to report results Jan. 17.
Fannie Mae and its sibling, Freddie Mac, have been pushing banks to buy back loans they sold to the two companies that never should have been sold to them because the loans did not meet the companies' criteria for purchasing.
Bank of America said most of the settlement would be covered by reserves, and another $2.5 billion, before taxes, that it set aside in the fourth quarter.
A separate settlement over foreclosure delays will result in Bank of America paying $1.3 billion to Fannie Mae, the mortgage company said. Bank of America had already set aside money to cover most of that, but took another $260 million charge in the fourth quarter to cover the balance.
Bank of America also sold the rights to collect payments on about $306 billion of loans to Nationstar Mortgage Holdings and Walter Investment Management Corp. Nationstar is paying $1.3 billion for the right to service some $215 billion of loans, while Walter Investment is paying $519 million for the right to service about $93 billion of mortgages.
Reuters first reported that Bank of America was talking to Nationstar and Walter Investment on Friday.
There is one person dead and another injured after a fatal shooting on the Dan Ryan.
An early morning shooting on the Dan Ryan Expressway near Canalport Avenue left a 22-year-old man dead and another man injured, authorities said.
Both men were traveling northbound in a Nissan Sentra when shots rang out about 2:35 a.m., Trooper Ivan Bukaczyk of the Illinois State Police said.
Following the shooting, the damaged car pulled up to Rush University Medical Center, with two of its occupants bleeding from gunshot wounds.
The driver was not hurt in the shooting, according to a police spokeswoman. A fourth person, who was sitting next to the driver at the time of the shooting, fled from the vehicle at some point, according to the spokeswoman.
Police said they believe the shots came from another vehicle but they have been unable to come up with a description of the other vehicle.
The two men who had been shot were rear-seat passengers. The deceased man was sitting directly behind the driver as bullets hit the body and shattered the windows of the vehicle, the spokeswoman said.
Lavonshay Cooper, of the 4200 block of West Cortez Street. was pronounced dead at 3:05 a.m., according to the Cook County medical examiner's office.
A police source said Cooper was on parole.
The other man who was shot was transferred to John H. Stroger, Jr. Hospital of Cook County, where he was treated and later released, police said. Reports had earlier listed him in critical condition, the spokeswoman said.
State Police officers located the scene of the shooting and were able to collect evidence, Bukaczyk said.
chicagobreaking@tribune.com
Twitter: @ChicagoBreaking
KUWAIT (Reuters) – A Kuwaiti court sentenced a man to two years in prison for insulting the country’s ruler on Twitter, a lawyer following the case said, as the Gulf Arab state cracks down on criticism of the authorities on social media.
According to the verdict on Sunday, published by online newspaper Alaan, a tweet written by Rashid Saleh al-Anzi in October “stabbed the rights and powers of the Emir” Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah.
Anzi, who has 5,700 Twitter followers, was expected to appeal, the lawyer, who asked not to be named, told Reuters.
Kuwait, a U.S. ally and major oil producer, has been taking a firmer line on politically sensitive comments aired on the Internet.
In June 2012, a man was sentenced to 10 years in prison after he was convicted of endangering state security by insulting the Prophet Mohammad and the Sunni Muslim rulers of Saudi Arabia and Bahrain on social media.
Two months later, authorities detained Sheikh Meshaal al-Malik Al-Sabah, a member of the ruling family, over remarks on Twitter in which he accused authorities of corruption and called for political reform, a rights activist said.
While public demonstrations about local issues are common in a state that allows the most dissent in the Gulf, Kuwait has avoided Arab Spring-style mass unrest that toppled three veteran Arab dictators last year.
But tensions have intensified between the hand-picked government, in which ruling family members hold the top posts, and the elected parliament and opposition groups.
(Reporting by Mahmoud Harbi; Writing by Mahmoud Habboush; Editing by Jason Webb)
Internet News Headlines – Yahoo! News
LOS ANGELES (AP) — It took Leatherface and his chainsaw to chase tiny hobbit Bilbo Baggins out of the top spot at the box office.
Lionsgate‘s horror sequel “Texas Chainsaw 3-D” debuted at No. 1 with $ 23 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. The movie picks up where 1974′s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” left off, with masked killer Leatherface on the loose again.
Quentin Tarantino‘s revenge saga “Django Unchained” held on at No. 2 for a second-straight weekend with $ 20.1 million. The Weinstein Co. release raised its domestic total to $ 106.4 million.
After three weekends at No. 1, part one of Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” trilogy slipped to third with $ 17.5 million. That lifts the domestic haul to $ 263.8 million for “The Hobbit,” the Warner Bros. blockbuster that also has topped $ 500 million overseas to raise its worldwide total to about $ 800 million.
Also passing the $ 100 million mark over the weekend was Universal’s musical “Les Miserables,” which finished at No. 4 with $ 16.1 million, pushing its domestic total to $ 103.6 million.
Like other horror franchises, “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” has had several other remakes or sequels, but the idea always seems ripe for a new wave of fright-flick fans. Nearly two-thirds of the audience was under 25, too young — or not even born — when earlier “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” movies came out.
“It’s one of those that survives each generation. It’s something that continues to come back and entertain its audience,” said Richie Fay, head of distribution for Lionsgate.
“Texas Chainsaw” drew a hefty 84 percent of its business from 3-D screenings. Many movies now draw 50 percent or less of their revenue from 3-D screenings, but horror fans tend to prefer paying extra to see blood and guts fly with an added dimension.
In narrower release, Matt Damon‘s natural-gas fracking drama “Promised Land” had a slow start in its nationwide debut, coming in at No. 10 with $ 4.3 million after opening in limited release a week earlier.
Released by Focus Features, “Promised Land” stars Damon as a salesman pitching rural residents on fracking technology to drill for natural gas. The film widened to 1,676 theaters, averaging a slim $ 2,573 a cinema, compared with $ 8,666 in 2,654 theaters for “Texas Chainsaw.”
Hollywood began the year where it left in 2012, when business surged during the holidays to carry the industry to a record $ 10.8 billion at the domestic box office.
Overall business this weekend came in at $ 149 million, up 7 percent from the same period last year, when “The Devil Inside” led with $ 33.7 million, according to box-office tracker Hollywood.com. But with strong business on New Year’s Day last week, Hollywood already has raked in $ 254.2 million, 33 percent ahead of last year.
Box-office results ebb and flow quickly, so that lead could vanish almost overnight. But with a steady lineup of potential hits right through December, studios have a chance at another revenue record this year.
“The month that we had at the end of last year that led us to a record year continued right through New Year’s and on now to the first official weekend of 2013,” said Hollywood.com analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “We’re looking for an even stronger year this year. That’s in the realm of possibility. But we have 51 weekends to go.”
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.
1. “Texas Chainsaw 3-D,” $ 23 million.
2. “Django Unchained,” $ 20.1 million.
3. “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” $ 17.5 million.
4. “Les Miserables,” $ 16.1 million ($ 14.5 million international).
5. “Parental Guidance,” $ 10.1 million.
6. “Jack Reacher,” $ 9.3 million ($ 22.3 million international).
7. “This Is 40,” $ 8.6 million.
8. “Lincoln,” $ 5.3 million.
9. “The Guilt Trip,” $ 4.5 million.
10. “Promised Land,” $ 4.3 million.
___
Online:
http://www.hollywood.com
http://www.rentrak.com
___
Universal and Focus are owned by NBC Universal, a unit of Comcast Corp.; Sony, Columbia, Sony Screen Gems and Sony Pictures Classics are units of Sony Corp.; Paramount is owned by Viacom Inc.; Disney, Pixar and Marvel are owned by The Walt Disney Co.; Miramax is owned by Filmyard Holdings LLC; 20th Century Fox and Fox Searchlight are owned by News Corp.; Warner Bros. and New Line are units of Time Warner Inc.; MGM is owned by a group of former creditors including Highland Capital, Anchorage Advisors and Carl Icahn; Lionsgate is owned by Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.; IFC is owned by AMC Networks Inc.; Rogue is owned by Relativity Media LLC.
Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News
Copyright © News Yuhu. All rights reserved.
Design 
And Business Directories
