NASA’s last shuttle blasts off. Cross examination - California’s top cop takes the stand. July 8 is National Collector Car Day. FilmWeek: KPCC film critics Claudia Puig and Tim Cogshell join Larry to review the week’s new film releases including Zookeeper, Horrible Bosses, The Ward, The Ledge, Ironclad, The Chameleon and more. TGI-FilmWeek! Animal wrangling on film sets can be a real zoo.
NASA’s last shuttle blasts off
In a momentous event, the space shuttle Atlantis launched from The Kennedy Space Center in Florida this morning. It marks the beginning of the end of NASA’s shuttle program. Its achievements included the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990, the assembly of the International Space Station and multiple space probe deployments. The goal of the program was to provide regular trips to low earth orbit, but a pair of tragedies reminded NASA that space travel was not to be as routine as experts had hoped. Challenger exploded right after lift-off in 1986, and Columbia disintegrated during atmospheric re-entry in 2003. Fourteen astronauts lost their lives on the pair of fated missions. The end of the shuttle program leaves a gap in America’s ability to launch manned missions into space. Ongoing service missions to the ISS will be left to the Russian space program. What is the future of the American space program? What did we learn from the space shuttle missions?
Guest:
Bill Nye, The Science Guy; Executive Director of The Planetary Society; TV presenter on "The 100 Greatest Discoveries” on the Science Channel; “The Eyes of Nye” on PBS; and his latest on Planet Green called “Stuff Happens.”
Video of the shuttle launch from NASA's website:
Cross examination - California’s top cop takes the stand
Today, AirTalk kicks off a new, semi-regular series with California’s top law enforcement official, Kamala Harris. It’s been about six months since Harris, a career prosecutor who served two terms as San Francisco’s District Attorney, was sworn in as California’s 32nd Attorney General. She’s the first woman, the first African-American, and the first Asian-American, to hold the office in the state’s history and is considered by many to be a rising star in politics. But her stances on gay marriage (she thinks Prop 8 is blatantly unconstitutional), and on the death penalty (she doesn’t support it), rankle many conservatives. Since taking over office Harris has pledged to fight transnational gang crime, protect consumers from mortgage fraud and other scams, and to focus on reducing the state’s high recidivism rate, which represents a peril to public safety and a serious drain on the budget. How’s she doing so far? What impact will Governor Jerry Brown’s new “austerity” budget have on law and order spending? How will this impact the AG’s agenda? Larry checks in with California’s top cop and invites listener questions.
Guest:
Kamala Harris, Attorney General of the State of California
July 8 is National Collector Car Day
Harley J. Earl turned making cars into an art and is the designer who created the collector car art market. Considered by the Boston Globe, “the most important figure ever to emerge from Detroit,” Harley’s avant-garde designs sparked America’s love affair with the automobile and revolutionized the auto industry by turning Henry Ford’s function-over-form philosophy on its head. Born and raised in Hollywood, CA and educated at Stanford, Harley Earl got his start designing custom cars for stars of the newly budding film industry including Cecil B. DeMille, Tom Mix, and Fatty Arbuckle. When he teamed with General Motors in 1927 to become their first-ever V.P. of Design, it was his department’s pioneering techniques and artfully designed cars that fueled GM’s meteoric rise in the 30s, 40s and 50s. Spearheading GM’s famed Motorama Shows, creating the world’s first concept cars, initiating annual model changes, fathering the Corvette, having an all-female design team – Earl was a true Renaissance man. Richard Earl, the grandson of Harley J. Earl, joins us in studio to talk about collector cars and his grandfather’s legacy.
Guest:
Richard Earl, automotive historian and curator of the photo exhibition Automotive Hollywood: A Tribute to Harley Earl
FilmWeek: Zookeeper, Horrible Bosses, The Ward, The Ledge, Ironclad, The Chameleon and more
FilmWeek: KPCC film critics Claudia Puig and Tim Cogshell join Larry to review the week’s new film releases including Zookeeper, Horrible Bosses, The Ward, The Ledge, Ironclad, The Chameleon and more. TGI-FilmWeek!
Guests:
Claudia Puig, film critic for KPCC and USA Today Tim Cogshell, film critic for KPCC and Box Office Magazine
Live tweeting this week's reviews:
Animal wrangling on film sets can be a real zoo
Animals in movies are adorable and exciting – think of Dr. Doolittle, Babe, Free Willy and Water for Elephants. But this week, the animal activist organization PETA organized a rally at the premiere of the film Zookeeper to protest the fact that a giraffe named Tweet collapsed and died the day after wrapping his scenes for the film in 2009. While a necropsy did not support the group’s claims that Tweet died as the result of mistreatment on the set, they have raised the question of how the film’s many wild animals – including elephants, lions and monkeys -- were handled during filming. The treatment of animals on Hollywood sets has been carefully monitored by the American Humane Association since 1939, when a horse was forced to jump off a cliff to its death during the filming of Jesse James. Representatives of AHA are on set to ensure humane care and maintain safety standards, and films that follow their guidelines earn that familiar and reassuring “No Animals Were Harmed” end credit disclaimer. But animals, as we know, can be scared, confused, unpredictable and even dangerous in a strange environment. So, just how do professional animal wranglers get their exotic actors to cooperate – and even emote -- on film? What do they do to make sure animals are comfortable and stress-free? What are the guidelines for animal filming, and are they strict enough? Is any use of wild animals in films humane?
Guests:
Eric Weld, Co-owner, Hollywood Animals, Inc.
Karen Rosa, Senior Vice President of Film and Television Unit of the American Humane Association