December 22, 2020 4
A second inauguration on January 20th?
A second inauguration on January 20th?
Outgoing President Donald Trump is organizing a “second inauguration” online at the same time that Bidel will take his oath of office and officially begin the term of 46th U.S. President, Democrat Joe Biden
Author Juana Carrasco Martín | juana@juventudrebelde.cu
December 22, 2020
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
People have spoken, says cartoonist Author: Juventud Rebelde Published: 22/12/2020 | 12:34 am
The height of irrationality among supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump: they are organizing a “second inauguration” for him, on January 20, at noon, at the same time that he will be sworn in and officially begin the term of 46th U.S. President, Democrat Joe Biden.
Trump’s inauguration will be online and can be considered a provocation and probably a violation of constitutional norms, but there they go proclaiming that it is their right “to freedom of expression.”
As social networks endure everything, more than 60,000 Facebook users are promoting the event they have called “Donald J. Trump’s second presidential inauguration ceremony,” and they claim in a “disclaimer” that they are a sum of 325,000 private individuals, not affiliated with any formal organization, who want to show their support for “President Donald Trump”.
In the face of such ignorance of the popular will expressed in the ballot box and the certification of the Electoral College, Facebook has simply issued another “disclaimer”: “Joe Biden is the president-elect. He will be inaugurated as the 46th president of the United States on January 20, 2021.”
As reported in The Hill, the event will be hosted by Ilir Chami and Evi Kokalari, who was allegedly part of Trump’s 2020 campaign and is featured in regular on right-wing news networks such as One American News Network.
In a recent post on the Facebook page, Kokalari re-posted Facebook’s disclaimer, writing: “Our voting rights are under attack! So is our freedom of speech! And FB’s disclaimer in this post proves it.”
One could not expect less from these fans when Trump has not recognized himself as a loser and continues to encourage such false news and disruptive actions.
Rumor has it that in his obsession with staying in the White House he seems to have in mind appointing attorney Sidney Powell as special counsel to investigate allegations of voting fraud.
For identification purposes, Powell was separated from the Trump campaign in November when he was mocked for claiming that there was a broad “national conspiracy” to deny the current president victory and an “immense influence of communist money from Venezuela, Cuba and probably China” that interfered with the elections, in addition to claiming that the voting machines used were “created in Venezuela by Hugo Chávez” to ensure that he would never lose an election.
At the time, Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s personal lawyer, had said in a statement: “Sidney Powell is practicing on her own. She is not a member of Trump’s legal team. Nor is she an attorney for the President in her personal capacity.”
Now, that statement comes crashing down. Desperate Trump put her in the ring and provided evidence that anywhere in the world psychiatry would have already rendered a verdict of committal or at least strong treatment of insanity.
2020: Hollywood’s worst year
2020, the worst year for Hollywood and theaters
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Internet
With only a few days to go before 2020 becomes a historical reference, what many had been predicting is being confirmed: theaters in the United States had the worst box office results since 1980, the year in which the calculation of the collections began.
But if you look back at inflation and other indexes moviesof the economy, you can be sure that 2020 has been the most chaotic year, not only for U.S. movie houses, but in the history of the Hollywood film industry, the most powerful in the world.
Losses from the pandemic have been in the millions, and according to the Hollywood Reporter, box office receipts in 2020 represent an 80% drop in revenue from 2019.
If the damage was not greater, it is because US cinemas were able to function fully until mid-March, but since then they have been intermittent, with few spectators and essential isolation, while in territories like California and New York the policy of closed doors was maintained.
Also, the box office in Asian countries that exhibited films produced in Hollywood contributed to the fact that the collapse was not total, as well as the films released in streaming, an option before which some production houses have remained hesitant, waiting for the vaccines against covid-19 to end up recovering the luminous paths of the great cinematographic business.
But time is running out, capitals are contracting, and there is no lack of studios like Warner Bros. who have already announced that they will not wait for the movie theaters and will play films in 2021 by releasing them in streaming, ignoring the movie theater owners who, standing at the entrance of their theaters, continue to shout and talk about betrayal.
Houdini and Doyle
Houdini and Doyle
Among the criminal and detective series to which Multivision has accustomed us at night, a rare advert snuck in: Houdini & Doyle
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Internet
Among the crime and detective series to which Multivision has accustomed us at night, a rare advert has crept in: Houdini & Doyle. What did the famous escapist, precursor of David Copperfield’s truculence, have to do with the creator of Sherlock Holmes? How much truth and how much imagination is there in the approach to the cases developed throughout the ten chapters conceived by David Shore, Dr. House’s own, in the service of the 2016 British-Canadian co-production?
The truth was that, in real life, Harry Houdini (Budapest, 1874-Detroit, 1926) and Arthur Conan Doyle (Edinburgh, 1859-Crowborough, 1930), met, dealt with and made enemies. The bond and the antagonism had a certain basis. The writer who applied with tenacity and contumacity the deductive method became fanatical about occultism. meanwhile, the magician who made an epoch in Europe and the United States by untying chains, overcoming immersions and weaving optical illusions, disbelieved in spiritualism and appealed to reason to explain complex phenomena. So much so that he publicly denounced the medium who sold him an alleged message sent by his mother from the beyond: the text, headed by a Christian cross, was written in impeccable English. The magician’s mother was ignorant of that language, spoke in Yiddish, and professed Judaism.
Again and again, in each chapter of the series, the two confront each other in the effort to decipher mysteries and misunderstandings come to light. There is no progression in their views, for when Doyle (Stephen Mangan) seems to fail, and Houdini (Michael Weston) is stubborn, the case is solved by plausible, though sophisticated, explanations that leave a margin of doubt for Houdini to admit the possibility of supernatural intervention, and Doyle, more defeated than convinced, becomes more like Holmes than himself.
Shore and the Canadian scriptwriter David Titcher, known among us for the series The Librarians, got their hands on a third character, Detective Stratton (Rebecca Liddiard), the first woman with that degree in the English police force, a fact that was never sufficiently taken advantage of -it would have been an interesting feminist note- and ended up paling in the face of the antagonists’ clashes.
Neither by polishing the epochal reconstruction to the last detail, nor by mixing ingredients from the gothic novel and the psychological thriller, nor by putting into the plot, to the cannon, real characters, such as the inventor Thomas Alva Edison and Bram Stoker, the creator of Dracula, managed to hold the artistic breath of the series, which was canceled at the end of the first and only season. Critics recalled the counterpoint between Houdini and Doyle as a washed-up version of the debates between Mulder and Scully in the X-Files.
The Bravery of the Bravos
The Bravery of the Bravos
The event was chaired by Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Cuba (Minrex), and Alpidio Alonso Grau, Minister of Culture (Mincult), who personally presented the award.
Translated and edited by Walter Lippmann for CubaNews.
Photo: Ariel Ley Royero/ACN
If bravery is a quality to face each step in life with courage, it is abundant in the political and artistic career of Estela and Ernesto Bravo. She, a North American, he, an Argentine, supportive, internationalists and Cubans by conviction since they decided to share dreams and destiny in the homeland of Marti and Fidel.
The Distinction for National Culture awarded to both of them last Saturday honors their passionate contributions to art and their permanent commitment to the ethical values and ideals of justice advocated by revolutionary Cuba.
Culture Minister Alpidio Alonso presented the award to the Bravo couple in a ceremony attended by Bruno Rodríguez Parrilla, a member of the Party’s Political Bureau and Minister of Foreign Affairs, during which the poet Nancy Morejón gave the words of praise.
Estela’s contribution to the documentary screen as a director, always assisted by Ernesto as a scriptwriter, consultant and coordinator in the tasks of production, stands out among the most lucid and penetrating in the cinema of the last four decades, starting with the 1980 release of Los que se fueron [Those Who Left].
With a catalog of more than 30 works of diverse footage, a substantial part of the Bravos’ filmography bears witness to events related to Cuban migration to the United States and the traumatic human and family cost of the hostility of that country’s rulers towards Cuba.
It is worth looking at the Latin American and Caribbean context of the time of the dictatorships and the US interventions in the region.
But, without a doubt, the most endearing productions of Estela and Ernesto are those that have had the historic leader of the Cuban Revolution in the forefront. Fidel, the untold story is revealed as one of the most complete portraits of the Commander in Chief’s personality.
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