Saturday, October 1, 2016

Phiona: A Virtual Reality Portrait of "Queen of Katwe"


QUEEN OF KATWE MOVIE REVIEW

Watch the full 360-degree video here or in VR with the Jaunt app for iOS, Android and Samsung Gear.

Life in one of Uganda"s worst slums is one of daily struggle. Without basic utilities, food and safe housing, many people fend for themselves on the street.

After losing her father, Phiona Mutesi and her family found themselves homeless in the Katwe slum fighting to survive.

Many residents in Katwe remain in the slum for their whole lives. But for Phiona, a fateful encounter with the game of chess changed her entire path. Join her as she walks through Katwe, recounting her life on the streets and how she"s using her advanced chess skill to give hope to the next generation of Uganda"s slum kids.

Phiona"s story is the basis for the Walt Disney film "Queen of Katwe."

Disney is the parent company of ABC News.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/International/phiona-virtual-reality-portrait-queen-katwe/story?id%3D42225695

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Donald Trump"s Twitter tirade caps off a bad week


Donald Trump Senior Advisor "Embarrassed" By Alicia Machado | MSNBC

Donald Trump"s decision to launch a Twitter tirade in the middle of the night against a former Miss Universe contestant caps off a pretty terrible week for the presidential hopeful.

He lost overwhelmingly to Hillary Clinton in the first debate after a performance that was widely mocked by the media and even labelled a "disaster" by sources in his own campaign team.

The bad news did not stop there, however.

Post-debate polls have shown a bounce for Mrs Clinton in important battleground states.

A number of traditionally conservative newspapers have also rejected Mr Trump and backed his Democratic rival, while USA Today took sides for the first time in its history to urge its readers not to vote for the businessman on November 8.

Mr Trump"s reaction has been to lash out.

He has:

But it is his highly personal attacks on Alicia Machado that will worry his campaign - and delight Mrs Clinton"s - the most.

Ms Machado burst into the national spotlight during Monday"s debate when Mrs Clinton recalled how Mr Trump called the Venezuelan-born beauty queen "Miss Piggy" and publicly humiliated her about her weight when he owned the beauty contest.

Mr Trump - angered by the public show of sympathy towards Ms Machado - sent a string of tweets at around 5:15am on Friday morning, accusing the mother-of-one of having a "disgusting" past and encouraging his supporters to watch a s*x tape she was allegedly involved in.

It would not be a surprise if Team Trump were sitting with their heads in their hands tonight, pondering how they can get their campaign back on track.

They know their candidate"s latest outburst may further damage his chances of winning over college-educated white women - a group he desperately needs if he is to have any chance of securing the presidency.

They also know other undecided voters will wonder: if his reaction to criticism from a former Miss Universe is to stay up all night and start a Twitter war, what on earth is his reaction going to be if he is criticised as commander-in-chief?

His behaviour has deepened Republican"s worries that the campaign is fast losing focus and direction.

Ari Fleischer, George W Bush"s former press secretary, wrote that Mr Trump was in danger of "blowing it".

A Wisconsin Republican told Politico that Mrs Clinton "should send him a thank you note" for his antics over the past four days.

Mrs Clinton will certainly be having her happiest weekend for a while.

As the Trump campaign spend it attempting to regroup, she will happily sit back, continue the conversation about her opponent"s attitude to women and plot how she can maintain her momentum.

Could the next 38 days get even uglier? Don"t bet against it.

Source: http://www.itv.com/news/2016-10-01/donald-trumps-twitter-tirade-caps-off-a-bad-week/

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BYU football: Leading tackler Pau"u misses game with knee injury


Recap: Arizona football loses to BYU on last-minute field goal

Pau"u was leading the team in tackles, with 50, and also has six tackles for loss, a sack and an interception.

Defensive tackle Travis Tuiloma played for the second-straight week, but was on a play count as he continues his recovery from a Lisfranc foot injury.

What a start

BYU entered the game without a passing play of more than 40 yards, but got one on the first play. Taysom Hill threw a 75-yard touchdown pass to Jonah Trinnaman to give the Cougars a 7-0 lead just 11 seconds into the game. However, Toledo promptly drove 75 yards in seven plays to tie it up.

Let byes be gone

For the second-straight week, the Cougars faced a team coming off a bye. It will happen one more time, when UMass visits Provo on Nov. 19. The Cougars will get a bye before they face Cincinnati on Nov. 5.

"For us, it is a disadvantage only because it is one less game to prepare for, from their film," BYU coach Kalani Sitake said. He also wasn"t concerned that BYU had to play a weeknight game, to boot.

"I don"t care as long as there are 100-yard fields, we can play football," Sitake said. "You know, what makes this special is we are home."

Briefly

Former players Itula Mili, Derik Stevenson and Donny Atuaia carried out the alumni flags before the game. Current players Alema Pilimai and Garrett Juergens carried out the team flags. 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney, a 1971 BYU graduate, performed the traditional lighting of the Y before the game.

Source: http://www.sltrib.com/home/4418659-155/byu-football-leading-tackler-pauu-misses

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Queen of Katwe Is the Best Kind of Feel-Good Story


Queen of Katwe - In Theaters September 30!

Most movies that fall under the umbrella of feel good have a few things in common. Theyre often, to varying degrees, sentimental or agreeably superficial. They follow fairly straightforward emotional arcs that end in upliftwith a triumph or epiphany or a moral lesson learned. They can be guilty pleasures (Love Actually), nostalgic classics (The Princess Bride), romantic weepies (The Notebook), or tales of transformation (The Shawshank Redemption). Or, in the case of the latest Disney film Queen of Katwe, they can be biographical sports dramas.

Sports movies are especially prone to telling feel-good stories because they follow a simple formula: a protagonists journey to becoming a winner. And what feels better than watching someone struggle only to come out on top? The young woman at the heart of Queen of Katwe did precisely that. Directed by Mira Nair, the film follows Phiona Mutesi, a Ugandan girl living in the Kampala slum of Katwe who learns to play chess and quickly emerges as a prodigious talent despite not knowing how to read. Within a few years, she becomes good enough to play nationallyand then on a global stage. Today, shes one of the first two women from Uganda to become titled chess players.

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Like most feel-good films, Queen of Katwe doesnt shy away from platitude-filled dialogue and aww-inspiring moments and meaningful swells of music. But neither does it feel like just another charming underdog story. Thanks in part to a wonderful lead performance by the newcomer Madina Nalwanga, Queen of Katwe offers a surprisingly nuanced portrait of a young woman learningin the most difficult of circumstancesthat winning can be a complicated joy. Victory sometimes equals redemption or happiness or money or fame, but it doesnt always guarantee those things. Sometimes, winning can be confusing or isolating. Sometimes, it can even feel empty. These are unconventional, but worthy lessons for a family-friendly Disney movie like Queen of Katwe to unpack, and in some ways, the films streaks of realismnot fantasyare what make it such a genuine pleasure to watch.

Queen of Katwe isnt interested in offering an easily digestible account of Mutesis life, a fact that might help explain the films hefty 124-minute running time. The movie begins in 2007: Phiona and her younger siblings live with their widowed mother, Nakku Harriet (played beautifully by Lupita Nyongo), in a hut they can barely afford with the money they make from hawking maize. Their community of Katwe is a desperately poor one, but Nairs skillful directing finds the beauty in both the place and the lives of its inhabitants. The film neither pities nor romanticizes their poverty and industriousness. How is your life, Phiona? one neighbor cheerfully calls out to her by way of greeting early in the movie. It is fine, she replies with a smile that suggests by fine she means not okay but wonderful.

Wonderful is an optimistic overstatement, to be sure. Phiona only comes across a childrens chess club run by a local Christian ministry because shes hungry, and they have free porridge. The other children arent kind to her at first (She smells! one screams), but their teacher, Robert Katende (played by David Oyelowo), welcomes her, saying, This is a place for fighters. Phionas curiosity is piqued when her peers begin to explain why they like the game so much. In chess, one boy says, the small one can become the big one. The David-and-Goliath metaphor is just one of many Queen of Katwe uses to sum up the existential appeal of chess: The game doesnt care how strong or rich you are, but it can teach you to strategize your way to a better life. In other words, its about power and escape.

Disney

Its no surprise that Phiona commits to practicing her game wholeheartedly,soon becoming the clubs best player under Katendes dogged mentorship. The movie is loosely structured around her risethrough local tournaments, country-wide championships, the 2010 Chess Olympiad in Russiaand the many bureaucratic challenges she and her fellow teammates face. But in between these dramatic inflection points, Queen of Katwe carries out an intimate psychological and emotional study of its subject.

Nalwanga fully captures the ambivalence Phiona feels as she improves her game and eventually gains international attention for Uganda. At times, Phiona sees her talent as a weapon, as a way to knock her smug, wealthy opponents down a couple pegs. Other times, it brings little more than anxiety and self-doubt. The film wisely stops short of selling Phionas chess genius as some kind of golden ticket out of Katwe, and takes care to spend time with Nyongos character, who tries to protect her daughter from danger and disappointment, while keeping their family afloat.

Queen of Katwes focus on its supporting characters is key: Woven into the tale of Phionas ascent is the belief that community is indispensable. As much as it celebrates its heroines intelligence and persistence, the movie isnt in the business of monomyth-making. In addition to her mother and to Katende, Phiona is surrounded by sparkling charactersher chess-playing peers from Katwe, her siblings, her neighborswho come to life thanks to the unknown actors who play them. Her triumph is the triumph of her hometown, a place very much unaccustomed to this kind of glory. Her pride is their pride.

While inspirational biographical films are some of Hollywoods favorite projects to make, Queen of Katwe stands out for being a rare major studio movie with an all-black cast (including a female lead) thats directed by a woman of color. Statistically, such movies barely exist. So when they do exist and they happen to be gorgeously shot, well-acted, and with an original story to tell, it feels like a clear victory for the industry, filmmakers, and audiences alike. There may be viewers and critics who, unfortunately, find it hard to look past some of the more familiar feel-good tropes to fully appreciate all the ways in which this film is a novelty. But especially coming after an atrocious summer-movie season and amid criticism of Hollywoods problems with representation, Queen of Katwe deserves praiseboth for the story it tells and how it chose to tell it.

Source: http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/09/queen-of-katwe-review/500849/

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BYU football: Cougars seeing many happy returns on special teams


BYU vs Utah football 2016

"All of it has been really good," coach Kalani Sitake said, crediting special teams coordinator Ed Lamb and graduate assistants JD Falslev and Harvey Unga for their work with the return teams. "I am looking forward to getting more long returns. I give a lot of credit to the players themselves, and the coaches that put in the work."

Hadley, a junior safety, got it started with a 29-yard return against Arizona that set up the drive that ended with Jake Oldroyd"s game-winning field goal. There were no opportunities for kick returns against Utah and UCLA at altitude, so the next time Hadley touched the ball, he took it 41 yards from the 2 against West Virginia.

He would be sixth in the country at 35 yards per return if he had the minimum of 1.2 returns per game. Not bad for a safety who was "definitely a little surprised" when coaches asked him to give returning a try in camp.

"They saw that I had done it in high school, so it was kind of something last-minute that they decided to do, I guess," Hadley said. "It was definitely not something I planned on doing."

Hifo, a true freshman wide receiver, got both of his returns against the Mountaineers, including a 50-yarder that set up Rhett Almond"s 25-yard field goal right before halftime.

"It was kind of something I wanted to do return either kicks or punts," said Hifo, from Menifee, Calif. "I like being in the open field. It just took practice and them trusting me with ball security and things like that."

Lamb said training camp was pretty much an open tryout for the three returner jobs, and Hadley, Hifo and Juergens stood out because they had the best ball security.

"There are guys on the team that have good shakes, and athletic ability, and they are fast," Lamb said. "But players who can take the habits of practice into a game with ball security and not spill the ball on the turf won the jobs."

Nationally, the Cougars are tied for 56th in kickoff returns (22.0) and 48th in punt returns (9.71). More importantly to Lamb, they haven"t had any fumbles or muffed punts.

"So far, we haven"t emphasized any kind of home run hitters on punt return and the scheme," Lamb said. "What we are looking to do is do a good job of holding up, keeping the other team from faking, and then trying to get 10-15 yards on the return. Garrett has done an excellent job of taking those available yards."

drew@sltrib.com

Twitter: @drewjay

Source: http://www.sltrib.com/home/4405095-155/byu-football-cougars-seeing-many-happy

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It"s official: Lady Gaga to headline 2017 Super Bowl halftime show ...


Lady Gaga - Perfect Illusion

Colin Stutz, Billboard

Sep 29th 2016 8:37PM

Following much speculation, Lady Gaga confirmed on Thursday that she will be performing at the Super Bowl LI halftime show.

This will be her second time performing at the Super Bowl. She sang the National Anthem at Super Bowl 50 last February.

Gaga announced the news on Twitter:

"Lady Gaga is one of the most iconic and talented artists of this generation, said Mark Quenzel, NFL senior vp of programming and production. "After her remarkable performance singing the National Anthem at Super Bowl 50, we are excited to see what she has in store for the world"s biggest stage the Pepsi Zero Sugar Super Bowl LI Halftime Show."

RELATED: See images of Gaga performing at the Oscars

18 PHOTOS

Lady Gaga performs at the 2016 Oscars

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Singer Lady Gaga performs on stage at the 88th Oscars on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. AFP PHOTO / MARK RALSTON / AFP / MARK RALSTON (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Singer Lady Gaga performs on stage at the 88th Oscars on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. AFP PHOTO / MARK RALSTON / AFP / MARK RALSTON (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Singer Lady Gaga performs on stage at the 88th Oscars on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. AFP PHOTO / MARK RALSTON / AFP / MARK RALSTON (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Singer Lady Gaga performs on stage at the 88th Oscars on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. AFP PHOTO / MARK RALSTON / AFP / MARK RALSTON (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

HOLLYWOOD, CA - FEBRUARY 28: Singer-songwriter Lady Gaga performs onstage during the 88th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

HOLLYWOOD, CA - FEBRUARY 28: Singer-songwriter Lady Gaga performs onstage during the 88th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

HOLLYWOOD, CA - FEBRUARY 28: Singer-songwriter Lady Gaga performs onstage during the 88th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Singer Lady Gaga performs on stage at the 88th Oscars on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. AFP PHOTO / MARK RALSTON / AFP / MARK RALSTON (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Singer Lady Gaga performs on stage at the 88th Oscars on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. AFP PHOTO / MARK RALSTON / AFP / MARK RALSTON (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Singer Lady Gaga performs on stage at the 88th Oscars on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. AFP PHOTO / MARK RALSTON / AFP / MARK RALSTON (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

HOLLYWOOD, CA - FEBRUARY 28: Singer-songwriter Lady Gaga performs onstage during the 88th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Singer Lady Gaga performs on stage at the 88th Oscars on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. AFP PHOTO / MARK RALSTON / AFP / MARK RALSTON (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

HOLLYWOOD, CA - FEBRUARY 28: Lady Gaga performs onstage during the 88th Annual Academy Awards at the Dolby Theatre on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Singer Lady Gaga performs on stage at the 88th Oscars on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. AFP PHOTO / MARK RALSTON / AFP / MARK RALSTON (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Singer Lady Gaga performs on stage at the 88th Oscars on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. AFP PHOTO / MARK RALSTON / AFP / MARK RALSTON (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Singer Lady Gaga performs on stage at the 88th Oscars on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. AFP PHOTO / MARK RALSTON / AFP / MARK RALSTON (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

Singer Lady Gaga performs on stage at the 88th Oscars on February 28, 2016 in Hollywood, California. AFP PHOTO / MARK RALSTON / AFP / MARK RALSTON (Photo credit should read MARK RALSTON/AFP/Getty Images)

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This article originally appeared on Billboard.com.

Read more: Watch Lady Gaga"s "Perfect Illusion" Video

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Source: http://www.aol.com/article/entertainment/2016/09/29/its-official-lady-gaga-to-headline-2017-super-bowl-halftime-sh/21483617/

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Mega "GMA" Deals and Steals for Cyber Monday


WEAR LUCK Spotlighted on "Good Morning America" "Deals $ Steals"

Transcript for Mega "GMA" Deals and Steals for Cyber Monday

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This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

Source: http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/video/mega-gma-deals-steals-cyber-monday-35487387

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