An interview with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder, Columbia's 'Black Girls Matter' study, Talkhon Hamzavi talks about her Oscar-nominated short, 'Parvaneh' and Take Two talks with Sony employees about life after the cyber attack.
Eric Holder on his legacy, improving police-community relations
Protests broke out across the country following the officer-involved deaths of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Eric Garner in New York, and Ezell Ford in Los Angeles last year. The very public unrest forced politicians and law enforcement agencies to examine the distrust between police and communities of color.
In an effort to address the issues, Attorney General Eric Holder has been touring the U.S. as part of the Justice Department's "National Initiative for Building Community Trust and Justice."
During his stops in Oakland and San Francisco on Thursday, Holder spoke with Take Two about improving relations between law enforcement and the public, and about how he views his legacy as his six years in office come to a close.
INTERVIEW HIGHLIGHTS:
On how the U.S. tour has been going so far
"This is the sixth stop on the tour that I have been doing and what I think we've generally been hearing is a real strong desire on the part of people in law enforcement and the communities that they serve to reach across some traditional boundaries and to interact with one another in a way that has not happened in the past. [To] rebuild the trust that needs to exist between law enforcement and the communities that they serve. And one of the things we're trying to do is to try to be a catalyst to build that trust up."
On whether the Justice Department will step in with civil rights charges in the cases of Michael Brown and Eric Garner
"Well we have a very high bar that we have to meet in order to bring federal charges. We are still in the process of reviewing what happened in Ferguson, we're reviewing what happened with [the] Eric Garner matter. My hope is that we will be able to announce, at least with regard to the Ferguson investigations that we have under way, announce the results of those before I leave as Attorney General probably some time the latter part of February or early March."
On whether he has concerns about the public reaction if federal charges are not brought against the officers
"My hope would be that however it is announced that people understand that what we did at the Justice Department was as I promised: thorough, independent, and decided irrespective of anything other than the facts and the law. And so I'm not going to say we're going to decide it one way or the other, but I would hope that people have confidence in the process in which we have engaged."
On what he sees as his top achievements as Attorney General
"That'll be for others I think to decide. I certainly think the efforts that we've made [in] criminal justice reform, our 'Smart on Crime' initiative I think has been something about which we're going to be proud over the years. The whole focus on civil rights issues, dealing with LGBT issues and the way in which we have conducted ourselves there, and kind of pushed I think to make sure that all of our citizens are treated in a fair and equitable way. I think these are among the things that historians will say that this Justice Department got right."
Marjane Satrapi directs Ryan Reynolds and a talking dog and cat in 'The Voices'
The new movie "The Voices" is a comedy starring Ryan Reynolds and a talking dog and cat. But it's not the film you think it is.
Reynolds plays Jerry Hickfang, a mentally unhinged young man who fatally stabs one of his colleagues. The talking cat? He's a voice in Jerry's head... with a Scottish accent.
"The Voices" was directed by Marjane Satrapi, whose other films include "Persepolis" and "Chicken with Plums."
While Satrapi usually only works on films she's written, she says after she read the script for "The Voices," she knew had to direct it. And she knew right away that Ryan Reynolds would make the perfect "likable serial killer."
To hear the full interview with Marjane Satrapi, click the link above.
The other Oscars: 'Parvaneh,' nominee for best Live Action Short
Many immigrants who come to the US live a life feeling isolated in a foreign land and in fear of being caught.
But that's a story paralleled around the world.
"Parvaneh" is among the Oscar nominees for best live action short film. It's about a young woman named Parvaneh, an Afghan immigrant to Switzerland.
PARVANEH - Trailer from hiddenframe on Vimeo.
It becomes clear early on that she's in that country illegally. She's working odd jobs and barely scraping by.
Then she finds out her father back home is ill. To help pay for the doctor, she takes her meager stash of savings so she can wire it via Western Union.
That's when she travels to Zurich -- overwhelmed by the city -- to find help.
"Parvaneh" is actually a student film by Iranian-Swiss filmmaker Talkhon Hamzavi. She tells A Martinez that she just aimed to get the movie finished -- she never expected it to be honored like this.
Sony hack: After 3 months, employees still deal with frozen credit, work disruptions
Three months after the massive hack that disabled Sony Pictures Entertainment's computers, employees tell Take Two that they are still feeling the impact.
Past and present employees — who agreed to speak with Take Two only if we protected their identities out of fear of losing their jobs — recounted a litany of problems:
- Employees had their identities stolen, with strangers opening credit accounts in their names.
- At work, employees have had their computers replaced, plans disrupted and Internet access affected.
- Internet problems have affected production shoots.
In the days after the hack, embarrassing emails between studio executives surfaced online, along with the personal details of almost 4,000 employees.
And on Thursday this week, Sony Pictures co-chair Amy Pascal stepped down in the wake of the data breach, as was widely expected; she'll stay with the company as an independent producer.
Still reeling from the hack
Past and present employees say they're still feeling the impact of the hack in the office and their personal lives.
"I had four accounts opened with Allied Bank," one employee said. "It was three IRA accounts and one savings account. There was an attempt to open a Toys R Us credit card, a Visa credit card application and a MasterCard."
The source has been forced to freeze her credit, right in the middle of a search for a new place to live. She's also concerned about her taxes and what hackers may do with her details.
“We just got a note from corporate," she said, adding: "You need to file your taxes really early because, ... since your social [security number's] out there, someone can try and file their taxes using your social so that in case there is a return, they’ll receive it."
Sony has provided staff members with an identity monitoring service called All Clear, which lets them know if their personal information has been leaked online. Our source told Take Two that the company has been supportive of employees.
“They had FBI agents come, and conferences and meetings, and even HR has been really helpful," she said. "Even the people I work with will tell me, 'If you need to go take care of something, go leave; don’t worry about it. Take the day off.'"
Workflow issues
Workflow issues have come up in the weeks after the data breach, too. The computers in entire departments have been replaced; employees have delayed leave; and there have been problems with the Internet on production shoots.
In some cases, according to one source, the Internet was swapped out for what seemed like a slower, less reliable connection.
“Sony gave us an alternate Internet," the source said. "And every now and then, out of nowhere, it will go down. ... Things would halt because of that. If we had to send out a calendar or a schedule, halted.”
As a workaround, production teams have been setting up mobile hotspots and running some projects on cell phone networks.
But those hotspots are finicky, expensive and need to be constantly monitored, which just adds more problems to a system that's already having a lot of trouble.
“It has slowed things down, and it has cost money. It has caused frustration on a set, which is already naturally just a very tense place because ... it's a well-oiled machine. When something like this goes wrong that shouldn’t go wrong, it creates all this weird tension.”
The source doesn’t know when these issues will be fixed, but others at Sony are saying that things are slowly returning to normal.
If you work in the entertainment industry and would like to chat, we're always looking for sources to talk. Send me an email at JMargolis@scpr.org. I can also communicate via encrypted email.
New study finds young black women have it worse than black men
Voting rights, fear of the police: These are but a few of the issues people of color in this country have to grapple with.
A new report finds that struggles with racism can begin at a very early age, and can be even tougher for girls than it is for boys.
The study, from Columbia Law School and the African American Policy Forum, is titled Black Girls Matter: Pushed Out, Overpoliced and Underprotected.
Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor of law at UCLA and the lead author of the report, elaborated on the findings, which focused on the experiences of black female students in New York and Boston.
"What we found was absolutely astonishing," she said. "We found that in New York, for example, girls were disciplined 10 times more often than white girls. And in Boston, they were disciplined 11 times more often than white girls.
We generally know that African-American students tend to be disciplined far more than their white counterparts, but what we don’t know, and this is what was surprising, is that black girls’ disparity, relative to white girls, is far greater than the disparity between black boys and white boys."
Crenshaw says more research is needed to determine why black girls are faring so much worse than black boys.
"We have some suggested analysis that comes from other research and what some of the girls told us," she said. "The girls told us that first of all, they felt that there were particular stereotypes that their teachers had on them – that they were loud, that they were rowdy, they were defiant."
Crenshaw added that the girls tended to be suspended for "subjective offenses, , things that the teachers think warrant some kind of punitive intervention, but aren’t actually formal rule violations."
LA port labor dispute drags on, could mean shutdown
West Coast ports could shut down in the next week if a months-long labor dispute isn't settled. AP reporter Justin Pritchard explains where things stand.
Bringing more racial diversity to the great outdoors
It's not unusual for minorities in California to never see the beach.
When going for a hike, many of the faces on the trail might be friendly but they're probably white, too. So there's a broad effort to change that.
The Parks Forward Commission launched a new site this week aimed, in part, to get more diversity to fill the great outdoors.
"While California has the largest state park system in the entire United States, the population that actually goes hiking or camping in the state parks is not as diverse as California's actual population," said Michael Woo, who is the dean of the College of Environmental Design at Cal Poly Pomona and a Parks Forward commissioner. "This app is one of several ways in which we're trying to get information out there in our effort to diversify the audience of who uses the state parks."
Also on the campaign: Deon West. He's an 18-year-old African-American student at UC Irvine, and he'll go before the state legislature Friday to argue for ways that the outdoors can be more accessible to people like him.
West spoke to host A Martinez about how the outdoors changed his view on the environment, and and why he thinks other minorities should join him in nature.
Chimps can re-learn grunts to communicate in new setting
If you were to move to New York, chances are that you'll start picking up some of the slang and accent too!
Well, that's what happened to a group of Dutch chimps that were moved to Scotland. The study was published Thursday in the journal Current Biology.
Katie Slocombe, one of the study's authors, joined Take Two to talk more about the study.
Lots at stake in this year's LAUSD school board election
Local elections are just weeks away.
Four seats are open on the Los Angeles Unified School board, and since it's a seven-member board, there's a lot that could change for schools after the election on March 3rd.
Annie Gilbertson, who covers Los Angeles public schools for Southern California Public Radio, joined Take Two to talk more about this year's election.
Weekend on the cheap: 1¢ beers, tequila+chocolate and Get Your Phil
Your friends in the Northeast and Midwest are STILL probably digging themselves out from blizzards that have socked them, lately.
So your chill life here in sunny SoCal is probably making them a little jealous. Let's rub it in, shall we?
SCPR's Kristen Lepore writes a column with what to do with your weekend, and some of the highlights: 1¢ beers in Koreatown, a chocolate and tequila tasting in Culver City and a romantic evening with the LA Philharmonic in downtown.
Previewing the top picks for this weekend's Grammy Awards
We get a preview of the nominees and the potential winners of the 57th annual Grammy Awards with Shirley Halperin, music editor at Billboard Magazine.