Federal gay marriage challenge is a Hollywood tale

By Peter Henderson
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The story of two famous U.S. lawyers from opposite ends of the political spectrum banding together to launch a bold and unexpected fight for gay marriage sounds like it could have been written in Hollywood.
It was.
A small band of political filmmakers led by a Democratic consultant crafted the challenge they aim to eventually reach the U.S. Supreme Court, ignoring cautions from advocates steeped in the fight.
Their bid, which has its first hearing in a San Francisco federal district court on July 2, could make gay marriage a national right in a few years -- or cripple the movement.
"Patience is a virtue I've quite frankly never possessed -- if patience is a virtue," said Chad Griffin, 35, who began his career in the political big leagues more than a decade ago as the youngest person ever to work on a president's West Wing staff.
"History is on our side, law is on our side," added Griffin, who is gay and now has on his side Ted Olson and David Boies, the lawyers who faced off in the 2000 election vote recount that led to George W. Bush's presidency.
Rob Reiner, the "When Harry Met Sally" director and advocate for children's health, and Bruce Cohen, the producer of "Milk," a film about the first openly gay elected politician in California, are two of the six-member board of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, founded for the court challenge.
HIGH STAKES
Despite losses in California courts and at the ballot box, gay rights advocates have made major strides in recent months with marriage and domestic partner rights in a number of states, especially in the Northeast.
President Barack Obama's Justice Department this week argued in a federal case against recognizing same-sex marriage, but Obama on Wednesday extended some federal rights to gay partners of federal workers in what he called a first step to end discrimination against gays and lesbians.
The federal judiciary is widely seen as conservative, and gay rights movement leaders have argued that a gradual approach to change public opinion and win in states would be crucial preparation for a challenge in the Supreme Court, which gauges public opinion in such morality-linked cases.
But with a swing vote in the nine-member Supreme Court, Justice Anthony Kennedy, already ruling in favor of gays in two important cases -- and no signs of court conservatives retiring soon -- the Los Angeles-based filmmaker group decided to act.
"You get into the habit, which I think is a good one, of going for it," said Cohen. "From the political world we bring the knowledge that there is no such thing as a sure thing. From the Hollywood world, everything is a one in a million chance."
Gays and their allies were astounded when California, considered trendsetter for social change, ended a summer of legal same-sex marriage last November by passing Proposition 8, a state constitutional amendment that limited marriage to man-and-woman couples. The state's top court, which opened the way to gay marriage last year backed the ban in late May.
Griffin, expecting the state court's rebuff, had been talking to friends who led him to one of the most conservative lawyers in the land -- Olson, who won Bush his presidency. But Olson passionately believed gays should be able to marry and believed the lawsuit, arguing Prop 8 was unconstitutional on equal rights and due process bases, could win. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Young Iraqi gays find safe haven in Turkey

By Khalid al-Ansary
ISTANBUL (Reuters) - Iraqi militants warned Ameer they would kill him for working with the U.S. military. Then he received a more chilling death threat -- for being gay -- so he sold his home in Baghdad and fled to Turkey.
Now the 28-year-old from a middle class family shares a small apartment in Istanbul with five other gay Iraqi men, exiles from a wave of intolerance, and says for the first time in his life he can express his sexual orientation in public.
Homosexuality is banned almost everywhere in the Middle East, but conditions for gays and lesbians in Iraq have become particularly dangerous since the rise of religious militias after U.S.-led forces removed Saddam Hussein six years ago.
"I could be tracked down and killed if I would say I am gay," Ameer told Reuters. "But here in Turkey we are treated as humans and we have rights, which is not the case in my country."
In Baghdad, he led his life in secret, without the knowledge of his family. In a country where homosexual acts are punished with up to seven years in prison, only his closest friends knew he was gay.
Ameer had stayed on after relatives fled Iraq's sectarian violence, living in a Shi'ite Muslim district and working for the Americans in the capital's heavily-fortified Green Zone.
Then the death threats started.
Sermons condemning homosexuality were given by clerics at Friday prayers in Sadr City, a sprawling Shi'ite slum, where six gay men were found murdered in March and April, four of them with Arabic signs reading "pervert" on their chests.
One local official, who declined to be identified, described the other two as "sexual deviants" and told Reuters the men had been killed by their tribes to restore their families' honor.
"NO MORE FEARS"
Sadr City is a bastion of support for fiery anti-American Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr and his Mehdi Army militia. The Mehdi Army has frozen its activities in the past year and Iraqi government forces have retaken control.
Many young men who might have cut their hair short and grown beards when religious gangs controlled much of Iraq now dress in a more Western style as government forces patrol the streets.
As a result, some are accused of being homosexual.
Ameer, who left Baghdad in June 2007, had an asylum request approved after three interviews at the U.N. headquarters in Ankara. He hopes one day to join relatives in the United States.
"Friends and cousins in the United States have told me I will enjoy the gay life there, and that I won't be embarrassed by this issue any more," he said. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Placido Domingo, five operas at Verona Festival

ROME (Reuters Life!) - Verona will open its 87th Opera Festival on Friday, a summer-long event with five operas and a special evening for tenor Placido Domingo, celebrating 40 years since his debut in the northern Italian town's arena.
The summer season begins with George Bizet's "Carmen," which has already been represented 189 times in 20 different editions in the oval Roman amphitheatre, built in 30 A.D.
This production of Carmen will be the re-edition of the 1995 Franco Zeffirelli version, with renewed sets.
Other operas during the June 19 - August 30 festival include Giuseppe Verdi's "Aida," Giacomo Puccini's "Turandot" and "Tosca," and "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" by Gioachino Rossini.
On July 24, Spaniard Domingo will lead a gala evening -- the 40th anniversary of when he first sang in the city of Romeo and Juliet fame. It will include the last acts of "Othello," "Cyrano de Bergerac" and "Carmen."
Domingo debuted at the Verona Arena in the summer of 1969, with "Turandot" and "Don Carlo."
"He nostalgically recalls singing the famous aria 'Nessun dorma' while looking up at the sky enlightened by the silvery moon, his thought was that only a few days before a man had landed there for the first time," the festival's website said.
Domingo will also act as conductor by opening the festival with the first four performances of "Carmen."
Verona's arena has a unique location. Its huge performance space allows for hundreds of singers, dancers and extras.
And under a star-studded sky and open to the soft evening breeze, spectators enjoy a different feel to indoor opera houses like Milan's regal La Scala, with its red cushions and balconies.
(Writing by Marie-Louise Gumuchian, editing by Paul Casciato)

Source: Reuters

Remember, you read it here first -- centuries ago

By Stefano Ambrogi
LONDON (Reuters Life!) - Think the heinous crimes, disastrous wars and seemingly never-ending financial scandals of recent years are something new? Then think again.
Courtesy of the British Library, readers can now immerse themselves in vivid newspaper accounts of a 19th Century society that appears to have changed little from today's chaotic world.
Evocative descriptions of children as young as nine smoking and getting drunk, a banking collapse in 1878 and first-hand reports of the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805 can all be pored over for free online.
Some of the period's most celebrated authors, Charles Dickens and William Makepeace Thackeray are also represented, as is one of its most infamous villains: Jack the Ripper.
The digital archive, made available for the first time, comprises more than two million pages of 49 national and regional newspapers dating back to 1800.
Then as now, public drunkenness was often a problem, with sunshine and public holidays triggering a rise in public disorder.
Under the headline "Whit Monday and Drunkenness," The Penny Illustrated of 1874 reported: "In the afternoon and evening it was impossible to walk along the streets of London without meeting drunken men -- many of them inclined to be violent and disorderly."
Children who have been labeled feral and antisocial in the press today, appeared to display the some of the same characteristics more than 100 years ago.
The Graphic, on June 13, 1871 reported: "Boys and girls, some as young as nine, working in brickyards were often seen smoking and drinking beer -- drunkenness and brick-making seem inseparable."
The collapse of the City of Glasgow Bank, one of Scotland's largest, with 12 million pounds of debt, also rings a loud bell today.
The Aberdeen Weekly Journal, in February 1879, reported how one of the bank's directors, James Nichol Fleming, absconded on his yacht.
The paper described him as a "polished, gentlemanly man, a noted agriculturalist and breeder of Ayrshire cattle and Clydesdale horses, and a daring speculator in ships, public companies and blockade-running."
He was eventually caught and jailed.
With the Ashes series against the Australians coming up, could the following extract from a previous series be an omen?
Picked from the Graphic, published in April 1877, the report said: "The news from the Antipodes, with details of certain matches, is very interesting, showing that the Australian cricketers have shown much excellent form against the English Eleven." Continued...
Source: Reuters

Just a minute with: Sandra Bullock

By Michelle Nichols
NEW YORK (Reuters Life!) - Actress Sandra Bullock says romantic comedies are bad and she is fighting against her latest movie, "The Proposal," being put in that category.
In "The Proposal," which will be released in U.S. theaters on Friday, Bullock plays a Canadian book editor who declares she is engaged to her unsuspecting assistant, played by Ryan Reynolds, to avoid deportation from the United States.
She spoke to Reuters about why she made the film, what she thinks of romantic comedies and the restrictions women face in the film industry.
Q: What have you been doing for the past couple of years?
A: "I have been told that I have been gone for two years. I just haven't been in this business, in front of the camera. I have other things that are my business that I love to do ... but aren't in front of cameras. I made this film. I produced another film. I have businesses, restoring architecture that I turn into businesses when I am done.
"I just opened a bakery and a Viennese pastry shop in an old restored building in Austin. We also have our restaurant there. I'm always working. I'm always on some construction site because that's what I love, it's my art form, the restoration of architecture, so I'm always doing something, just not in the media all the time."
Q: How did you come to make "The Proposal"?
A: "Pressure, pure pressure. I didn't want to read it ... it's categorized as romantic comedy because we women are only allowed to do one of four categories and that's it.
"But I didn't want to read it. And they said 'Look, just as a favor, read it so we can legitimately say no thank you to it.' And I read it and I was laughing and I don't ever find anything funny. And I didn't look at it as a romantic comedy. This is a comedy that has romance elements in it, but it's something completely different.
"It goes back to the olden days of comedy where it's smart and it's about the characters and you don't go 'this is about finding love and losing love.' It has nothing to do with that but in the end what happens when you're not looking for it there it is. It was just funny.
"I was a little open then just to hearing what they said and I figured they would screw up the casting. Then they brought up Ryan (Reynolds) who I have known for a long time. As soon as they said Ryan it made it even harder because I could visualize how we could do the comedy because we work very similarly.
"To find your comedic match, I have had it once with Hugh (Grant) and I have had it with other actors on a smaller scale, but when you find that you can't pay for that and it just made it hard to say no. I just don't want it to be called a romantic comedy because they're bad. They're neither romantic nor funny. It's just a lame word for most mediocre films."
Q: But you have had a lot of success with roles in romantic comedies?
A: "'Miss Congeniality' was a romantic comedy, I call that a buddy flick. It's a new kind of film. If you really think about it; it wasn't about romance, it was about her saving her friend at the beauty pageant. Men do films like this, 'The Proposal' or 'Miss Congeniality,' all the time and they're considered comedies and there's always love in it. There's always love in it. There's always a relationship. I would like to help create a broader spectrum of categories where the writing gets better. There are great writers out there."
Q: Are you finding it more difficult to find roles as you get older? Continued...
Source: Reuters

Polluted water endangers Mekong dolphins: WWF

PHNOM PENH (Reuters Life!) - Toxic waste in the Mekong River is a factor pushing an endangered dolphin species to extinction, the WWF warned on Thursday, estimating there were less than 80 left in a stretch of water between Cambodia and Laos.
Conservation group the World Wildlife for Nature (WWF) said high levels of mercury and other pollutants had caused the deaths of 88 Mekong River Irrawaddy dolphins since 2003, over 60 percent of them calves under two weeks old.
Bacterial disease killed many of the calves, it said.
"This disease would not be fatal unless the dolphin's immune systems were suppressed, as they were in these cases, by environmental contaminants," said Verne Dove, a veterinarian with WWF Cambodia, in a statement.
"Pollution in the Mekong River has pushed the local population of Irrawaddy dolphins to the brink of extinction," the conservation group said, estimating the number left in the 190 km (118 mile) stretch of the Mekong at between 64 and 76.
The WWF said limited genetic diversity due to inbreeding was another factor in the deaths of the Mekong dolphins, which were isolated from other members of the species.
However, one Cambodian specialist, Touch Seang Tana, who heads a group called Mekong River Dolphins Conservation, denied the animal was in danger of extinction and estimated there were 150 in Cambodia.
"How come the dolphin is on the brink of extinction when the animals give birth to more than 10 calves a year?" Seang Tana told Reuters.
He said an estimated 1,000 lived in Asia, including in India, Myanmar and Thailand.
The Mekong River Irrawaddy dolphin is listed as a critically endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.
The WWF researchers also warned that pollutants found in the Mekong water could affect the health of millions of humans who rely on resources from the river.
The Mekong produces an estimated 2.5 million tons of fish per year, with a value of at least US$2 billion, making it the world's largest inland fishery, the WWF said.
(Reporting by Ek Madra; Editing by Miral Fahmy)

Source: Reuters

Auto obsession fuels Beijing vintage car museum

By Kitty Bu and Marc Detemple
BEIJING (Reuters Life!) - Russian revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin's wooden Rolls-Royce and cars from the first made-in-China brand are on display at a newly opened Chinese museum geared toward showcasing the wheels of Communism.
Set up by a private antique car collector who sold his multi-million dollar transport business to finance his hobby, the China Classic Car Museum exhibits some 170 vintage, and rare, automobiles from various eras and from all over the world.
But to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, on October 1, the museum has polished up its "red" fleet, which includes the convertible vehicle Chairman Mao used for army inspections and a car that once belonged to former leader Deng Xiaoping.
There is also a Gaz-69, an Soviet army vehicle, which collector Luo Wenyou sought the help of one of China's former vice premiers to obtain.
Among the antiques, there are motorcycles with sidecars that were used by the German army in World War Two, worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The museum is a dream come true for 57-year-old Luo, who has been obsessed by cars since he was a child and who spent more than $4 million to build up the collection.
"Now, cars are seen as means of transport. When I was young, the coolest professions were those of doctor or driver. These were the trendiest jobs. If you could drive a car, you could be really proud of yourself," he told Reuters.
Luo, who started out as a miner and then built a successful delivery business from scratch, spent all his savings and borrowed money from relatives who thought he was crazy to set up the museum. And money remains his biggest concern.
"The main thing is money. As long as I have money, everything will be fine. I was lucky to have the local government's support. I couldn't afford to pay the rent of this space so the government acted as my warrant so I could get a mortgage," he said.
"Red Flag," a household name in China, made the country's first batch of cars. However, its origin is not as socialist as its name may suggest, Luo says.
In 1958, about a year before the 10th anniversary of the founding of the republic, the government ordered the country's main automobile manufacturer to produce a local car brand in time for an anniversary parade.
According to Luo, the factory workers, under pressure, purchased a Chrysler car, dismantled it, hand-painted every part and then re-created an exact copy. On October 1, 1959, ten "Red Flag" cars took part in the parade.
Luo, who set up the China Classic Car Association in 1999 which now has more than 300 members, believes his collection could inspire others to do the same. His museum is open to other collectors who cannot find, or afford, space for their items.
Art expert Chen Lingran, whose company specializes in paintings and Chinese calligraphy, said Luo may just spark off a new collecting trend.
"I believe that sooner or later vintage cars will become very popular in China, just like in some Western countries. After all, classic cars represent a culture and a particular culture from a particular time period. When you look at these cars, you can see the lifestyle of that era," Chen said.
(Editing by Miral Fahmy)

Source: Reuters

Made in EU -- fashion's legal loopholes

By Adam Tanner and Maja Zuvela
GJIROKASTER, Albania/TRAVNIK, Bosnia (Reuters) - The road to the continent's high fashion boutiques often leads through little-known towns in the Balkans, but you wouldn't know it from reading the labels.
Blerza Kallajnxhi held up a cluster of labels saying 'Made in E.U.' at her factory in Gjirokaster, Albania -- birthplace a century ago of Enver Hoxha, the Communist dictator who isolated Albania from the rest of Europe -- as she explained how she fills orders from abroad.
"We get an order from Greece and they send the material, the model design and the labels," said Kallajnxhi, who bought the small factory in the mountain stronghold of Gjirokaster with her husband two years ago.
Greece -- unlike Albania -- is in the European Union.
In the eyes of many consumers, a product made in Europe might be of better quality than one made in China, Bangladesh or Thailand, where many fashion groups have outsourced manufacturing. But few know what 'made in Europe' really means.
"Nothing says 'Made in Albania,'" said Kallajnxhi. "Of course we are proud of our country, but that's what the client wants."
Global fashion brands are doing nothing illegal in labeling clothes this way, provided the manufacture includes inputs from within the 27-country bloc.
Under EU rules that are obscure to most consumers, goods made in more than two countries are said to originate in the place of "their last, substantial, economically justified working or processing."
It's a loophole that helps cut costs and is now more important than ever, in light of a fall in apparel demand since last September.
But EU-based fashion companies often do not advertise the full extent of their supply chains in lesser-known corners of Europe.
"It is not required that we have to add a label 'Made in Bosnia' though the consumer could inform himself regarding the country of origin by reading a registration number sewn into the garment," Jan Ahlers, vice chairman of the Ahlers AG supervisory board, told Reuters in an email.
German-based Ahlers makes Pierre Cardin suits in Bosnia under license and is the label's exclusive distributor in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the former Yugoslavia.
Some consumer groups argue brands should be more transparent about their production, and some luxury groups say such outsourcing is a threat.
"Research shows that consumers' trust in retailers is waning," said Josie Nicholson, founder member of Ethical Fashion Forum which advocates social and environmental sustainability in the industry. "Clear and honest labeling is the best way for retailers to win back consumers' confidence."
BUNKERS Continued...
Source: Reuters

Cohen camps it up as Queen's guard for UK premiere

By Cindy Martin and Mike Collett-White
LONDON (Reuters) - British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen adopted his latest guise as an outrageous gay Austrian fashion reporter on Wednesday for the London premiere of "Bruno," which hits cinemas in most territories next month.
Hoping to replicate the success of his surprise 2006 box office hit "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan," the 37-year-old has been typically over-the-top in promoting Bruno.
On Wednesday evening he led a brass band and dressed as a camped-up member of the Queen's guard, complete with towering bearskin hat, sleeveless red tunic revealing his midriff, ultra-tight black hotpants and knee-length boots.
Sticking to his habit of appearing only in character, he addressed the crowd in central London and called Bruno "the most important movie starring a gay Austrian since 'Terminator 2,'" a joking reference to Austrian Terminator star, and now California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Cohen has also appeared naked on the cover of the latest edition of GQ magazine and last month staged a successful publicity stunt at the MTV Movie Awards in the United States.
After spinning in a harness above the audience at the show, he landed face down in the lap of rap artist Eminem, exposing his naked buttocks in the process.
Eminem stormed out, although he has since confirmed that he was in on the joke.
Asked about the GQ cover shot, Cohen told Reuters at the premiere: "I didn't even know they were filming that. I would never have posed. I don't try to get attention myself. The last thing I wanted would be to be the most famous Austrian since Hitler."
Asked what he wanted to do next, he replied: "Ich really want to win a Nobel prize."
And of his previous big screen incarnation, he said:
"You know, I just saw this movie called 'Borat'. To be honest, I found it a really offensive portrayal of a foreigner. There's a guy who acts it apparently called Sacha Baron Cohen. That guy is clearly gay."
Fans flocked to Borat, a fake documentary about a Kazakh journalist traveling across the United States that used comedy to expose bigotry. It earned $128 million at U.S. and Canadian box offices and $133 million in other countries.
Bruno is also a "mockumentary" that follows the fashion reporter after he loses his job in Austria and goes to America looking to become a celebrity.
His unscripted encounters with everyday Americans and prominent figures, who think he is real, often prompt strong reactions to Bruno's in-your-face sexuality.
While Universal Pictures, the studio behind Bruno, has said the film's intention is to satirize homophobia, some gay advocates are worried that Cohen could reinforce negative stereotypes about homosexuals.
(Editing by Jon Hemming)

Source: Reuters

Cuba is "rolling museum" of vintage U.S. cars

By Tom Brown
HAVANA (Reuters) - Elvis Presley croons "All Shook Up" from the CD player as Florentino Marin wipes down his 1955 Buick Century sedan on a central Havana street.
"It's always been said that Buicks and Cadillacs were the Kings of the Road," Marin says proudly, admiring the paint job on his two-tone, chrome-plated taxi as it glistened under a few drops of steamy morning rain.
"We have a museum here, but it rolls," said Marin, referring to the vintage American cars from the 1940s and '50s that are everywhere in the Cuban capital.
The cars predate communist Cuba's 1959 revolution, having rolled off the assembly line decades before the U.S. auto industry's current crisis of steep losses in reputation and market share.
They hark back to a time when Detroit's Big Three automakers were the envy of the world and a symbol of American economic power.
The years before Fidel Castro swept down from the Sierra Maestra mountains and began his triumphal march across Cuba also came before Detroit embraced so-called "planned obsolescence," a term popularized in the 1950s and early '60s for products designed to break down easily or go out of style.
The crisis now threatening the auto lifeblood of Detroit is rooted, at least in part, in the backlash from consumers who learned that U.S. vehicle manufacturers had stimulated short-term demand by ensuring that their products would fail after a certain amount of use.
"I don't think they ever meant to build cars that would last as long as this," said Jose Antonio Garcia, who drives a 1953 four-door Chevrolet Bel Air.
"This is a tank," Garcia said. "It's not something disposable like the clunkers that came along later."
The classic American cars of the early post-war years were indeed durable, as can be seen in the tens of thousands of them still running in Cuba.
ENGINE SWAPS
Iron-clad chassis, scooped body and once lavishly appointed interior often seem to be the only original parts of the cars built during the heyday of General Motors Corp, Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler, now run by Fiat of Italy, that are seen lumbering down Cuba's roads today.
A peek under the hood and second-hand paint job on Marin's Buick, for instance, reveals that he swapped out the original V-8 engine for a more fuel efficient four-cylinder diesel powerplant from Toyota Motor Corp.
Engine replacements have been made on most of the aging Dodges, Fords and Chevys that serve as taxis alongside the Russian Ladas and new Korean cars in Havana, as high fuel prices force drivers to sacrifice power for savings at the pump.
Drivers say most of the engine changes are performed by themselves, with the help of some strong-armed friends or neighbors to cut out the cost of hiring a professional mechanic. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Walt Disney museum to focus on man behind brand

By Michelle Nichols
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Walt Disney is a global brand with film studios and theme parks bearing his name, but now his family are unveiling a museum to tell the story of the animation pioneer they say has been lost behind the trademark.
The Walt Disney Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization established in 1995 to promote education and writing about Disney as well as scholarships in his name, will open the Walt Disney Family Museum on October 1 in San Francisco.
"My father's name is probably one of the most well-known names around the world, but as the 'brand' or trademark has spread, for many, the man has become lost," Disney's daughter and museum founder, Diane Disney Miller, said in a statement.
The museum will trace Disney's life from his birth in Chicago and childhood in Missouri to his move to California in 1920s, where he married and his animation career took off with the creation of the "Mickey Mouse" character.
Among the exhibits on display will be early animation drawings, film clips, scripts, cameras and many of Disney's numerous Academy Awards, including an honorary Oscar in 1939 for his first feature length animation film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs."
There will also be a model of the Disneyland theme park he first envisioned, quite different from the park that opened in California in 1955, and a model of the Lily Belle train that ran on half a mile of track around his Hollywood home.
"Visiting my grandpa was pretty fun," Walter Miller, the foundation's president, recalled at a launch of the museum in New York on Wednesday.
REVOLUTIONIZED ANIMATION
"Perhaps my grandfather's greatest gift, without question his greatest pleasure, was to bring imagination to life," he said. "He never lost that childhood sense of wonder and of curiosity."
Disney, whose other movies included "Cinderella," "Bambi" and "Mary Poppins," which mixed live action and animation, died in 1966.
John Canemaker, an Academy Award winning animator and animation studies professor at New York University, said at the launch that Disney's development of "personality animation," beginning with Mickey Mouse, revolutionized the industry.
"Within a remarkably short period of time, a mere decade, Disney set the course for animation in the 20th century and beyond," Canemaker said.
"There would be no 'Toy Story' and no Pixar (Walt Disney Co's animation studio) without Disney personality animation, nor other studios that yield to the pantheon of stories and characters that fascinated throughout the years," he said.
Richard Benefield, executive director of the museum, said the Walt Disney Co had made their resources and archives available to the foundation and loaned several exhibits to the museum.
"Walt Disney reached people because he was a magical story teller," he said. "Now it's our turn to tell his story, to narrate the life of someone whose name is often confused with a brand and to present him simply as a human being with an extraordinary vision."
(Editing by Paul Simao)

Source: Reuters

Happy Together, again: rocker relives glory daze

By Sue Zeidler
LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - They say that if you can remember the '60s, you weren't really there.
But Howard Kaylan, the lead singer with the psychedelic pop band the Turtles, found himself in the center of the action, cavorting with the likes of the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix.
And his memory is undiminished. In fact, he is about to release a DVD dramatizing the Turtles' 1967 adventures in "Swinging London" shortly after his band attained its own short-lived stardom with the No. 1 hit "Happy Together."
Kaylan, 61, hopes the comedic film, "My Dinner with Jimi," set for a June 23 release via Rhino Entertainment, will be merely the first of many stories he gets to share about his psychedelic exploits.
"As long as I have the will power and love power to tell these stories, I'll try. I want to share some revealing stories about those people in those days without getting my legs broken," he joked.
Kaylan, who lives in Seattle and plies the oldies concert circuit, began writing "My Dinner with Jimi" in 2001, aiming to show how a "fat little American kid" got to mix with rock 'n' roll royalty. The low-budget movie, directed by Bill Fishman, hit the film-festival circuit two years later.
"We met Graham Nash, Donovan, Brian Jones and the Beatles all on the same night," Kaylan recalled. "I wound up having dinner with Hendrix at 4 a.m."
The first half of the film shows Kaylan and bandmates muddling through the Los Angeles club scene and running into the likes of Jim Morrison, Mama Cass and Frank Zappa. After "Happy Together" tops the charts, they venture to London, reuniting with their old friend Nash.
In an intriguing sequence, Nash plays them an advance copy of the Beatles' "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band" and introduces them to the Fab Four. But the Turtles also find themselves on the receiving end of John Lennon's acrid wit, to the embarrassment of his bandmates.
Kaylan's "bleary-eyed 20-year-old self" is portrayed in the film by Justin Henry. Actor Royale Watkins offers a convincing turn as Hendrix, while Turtles co-founder Mark Volman is played by Jason Boggs, and Lennon by Brian Groh.
Kaylan is finishing up a memoir, "How Not to Be Me," which he hopes will be turned into another film. It would depict his encounters with Bob Dylan and Zappa, as well as the band's historic yet chaotic 1970 White House performance at the request of first daughter Tricia Nixon.
"We didn't want to do it because we were so anti-Nixon and so anti-war, but our manager, who was Bill Cosby at the time, said it was like an invitation to sing before the Queen," said Kaylan, noting the president was not there for the performance, which he describes as a "social nightmare."
FLO AND EDDIE
The Turtles dissolved in litigation over the ownership of the band's name and rights to master tapes later in 1970.
Kaylan and Volman went on to join Zappa's Mothers of Invention under the names "Flo and Eddie" since the litigation prevented them from using their names. Continued...
Source: Reuters

Judge halts "Catcher in the Rye" spin-off for now

By Christine Kearney
NEW YORK (Reuters) - A U.S. federal judge on Wednesday temporarily halted publication of a novel using characters from J.D. Salinger's classic "The Catcher in the Rye" written without the original author's permission.
U.S. District Judge Deborah Batts issued a temporary restraining order against publication for 10 days at which time she would rule on whether to grant Salinger's legal request to ban its publication in the United States.
The case involves a book entitled "60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye" by a Swedish author, Fredrik Colting, written under the nom de plume John David California that was due to come out later this year.
The new work features a character named "Mr. C" based on Holden Caulfield, the protagonist of the 1951 classic.
Salinger, 90, who has lived for decades out of the public eye, sued this month to block its publication.
"This is a case where a sequel has been created without the author's permission," his lawyer, Marcia Paul, told the judge.
Paul said the case was about the right to keep Holden Caulfield "frozen" under Salinger's copyright.
But a lawyer for Colting argued the book came under a fair use exception because it was literary commentary or parody.
"Over the past 60 years he may have become famous ... but that doesn't make him a specially copyrighted character," Edward Rosenthal said of Holden Caulfield.
"This book does comment on Catcher in the Rye and J.D. Salinger and Holden Caulfield," Rosenthal said.
Colting's book examined the fictional relationship between Salinger and Mr. C and was therefore not a sequel.
"The Catcher in the Rye" has been hailed as a classic coming-of-age novel and is commonly taught in American high schools. It begins with Caulfield leaving the boarding school he's been kicked out of and spending a few days wandering around New York. Colting's book begins with Mr. C leaving a retirement home 60 years later. Both end near a carousel in Central Park.
The judge called the books "substantially similar," noting other characters contained in both books and similar sayings and settings including New York parks and museums.
But Rosenthal, who admitted that Mr. C was based on Caulfield, said Colting's book was "not about what happened to Holden Caulfield but it is about J.D. Salinger trying to deal with this character."
Salinger, who has health problems, was not present in court. Since publishing two novellas in 1963, the reclusive author has published little, although a former lover said he wrote every day and had completed two novels. Continued...
Source: Reuters