(Reuters) – The big-budget “Hobbit” fantasy movie ruled movie box office charts for a second straight weekend, fending off Hollywood heavyweight Tom Cruise in new crime drama “Jack Reacher.”
“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” hauled in nearly $ 37 million from theaters in the United States and Canada, according to studio estimates of Friday-through-Sunday ticket sales. The film is the first of three movies based on the classic J.R.R. Tolkien novel about a world of dwarfs, elves and dragons in the fictitious Middle Earth.
In second place, Cruise’s “Jack Reacher” about the investigation into a sniper shooting brought in just short of $ 17 million at U.S. and Canadian theaters. Distributor Paramount Pictures postponed a premiere of the film after the fatal school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, sparked new scrutiny of violent movies.
Adult comedy “This is 40,” starring Paul Rudd and Leslie Mann as a middle-aged couple, brought in $ 12 million, finishing in third place.
“The Hobbit” was distributed by Time Warner Inc’s Warner Bros. studio. Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc, released “Jack Reacher.” Comcast Corp’s Universal Pictures distributed “This is 40.”
(Reporting By Lisa Richwine and Andrea Burzynski)
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Dr. Donald Bergstrom is a cancer specialist at Sanofi, one of three companies working on a drug to restore a tendency of damaged cells to self-destruct.
For the first time ever, three pharmaceutical companies are poised to test whether new drugs can work against a wide range of cancers independently of where they originated — breast, prostate, liver, lung. The drugs go after an aberration involving a cancer gene fundamental to tumor growth. Many scientists see this as the beginning of a new genetic age in cancer research.
Great uncertainties remain, but such drugs could mean new treatments for rare, neglected cancers, as well as common ones. Merck, Roche and Sanofi are racing to develop their own versions of a drug they hope will restore a mechanism that normally makes badly damaged cells self-destruct and could potentially be used against half of all cancers.
No pharmaceutical company has ever conducted a major clinical trial of a drug in patients who have many different kinds of cancer, researchers and federal regulators say. “This is a taste of the future in cancer drug development,” said Dr. Otis Webb Brawley, the chief medical and scientific officer of the American Cancer Society. “I expect the organ from which the cancer came from will be less important in the future and the molecular target more important,” he added.
And this has major implications for cancer philanthropy, experts say. Advocacy groups should shift from fund-raising for particular cancers to pushing for research aimed at many kinds of cancer at once, Dr. Brawley said. John Walter, the chief executive officer of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, concurred, saying that by pooling forces “our strength can be leveraged.”
At the heart of this search for new cancer drugs are patients like Joe Bellino, who was a post office clerk until his cancer made him too sick to work. Seven years ago, he went into the hospital for hernia surgery, only to learn he had liposarcoma, a rare cancer of fat cells. A large tumor was wrapped around a cord that connects the testicle to the abdomen. “I was shocked,” he said in an interview this summer.
Companies have long ignored liposarcoma, seeing no market for drugs to treat a cancer that strikes so few. But it is ideal for testing Sanofi’s drug because the tumors nearly always have the exact genetic problem the drug was meant to attack — a fusion of two large proteins. If the drug works, it should bring these raging cancers to a halt. Then Sanofi would test the drug on a broad range of cancers with a similar genetic alteration. But if the drug fails against liposarcoma, Sanofi will reluctantly admit defeat.
“For us, this is a go/no-go situation,” said Laurent Debussche, a Sanofi scientist who leads the company’s research on the drug.
The genetic alteration the drug targets has tantalized researchers for decades. Normal healthy cells have a mechanism that tells them to die if their DNA is too badly damaged to repair. Cancer cells have grotesquely damaged DNA, so ordinarily they would self-destruct. A protein known as p53 that Dr. Gary Gilliland of Merck calls the cell’s angel of death normally sets things in motion. But cancer cells disable p53, either directly, with a mutation, or indirectly, by attaching the p53 protein to another cellular protein that blocks it. The dream of cancer researchers has long been to reanimate p53 in cancer cells so they will die on their own.
The p53 story began in earnest about 20 years ago. Excitement ran so high that, in 1993, Science magazine anointed it Molecule of the Year and put it on the cover. An editorial held out the possibility of “a cure of a terrible killer in the not too distant future.”
Companies began chasing a drug to restore p53 in cells where it was disabled by mutations. But while scientists know how to block genes, they have not figured out how to add or restore them. Researchers tried gene therapy, adding good copies of the p53 gene to cancer cells. That did not work.
Then, instead of going after mutated p53 genes, they went after half of cancers that used the alternative route to disable p53, blocking it by attaching it to a protein known as MDM2. When the two proteins stick together, the p53 protein no longer functions. Maybe, researchers thought, they could find a molecule to wedge itself between the two proteins and pry them apart.
The problem was that both proteins are huge and cling tightly to each other. Drug molecules are typically tiny. How could they find one that could separate these two bruisers, like a referee at a boxing match?
In 1996, researchers at Roche noticed a small pocket between the behemoths where a tiny molecule might slip in and pry them apart. It took six years, but Roche found such a molecule and named it Nutlin because the lab was in Nutley, N.J.
But Nutlins did not work as drugs because they were not absorbed into the body.
Roche, Merck and Sanofi persevered, testing thousands of molecules.
At Sanofi, the stubborn scientist leading the way, Dr. Debussche, maintained an obsession with p53 for two decades. Finally, in 2009, his team, together with Shaomeng Wang at the University of Michigan and a biotech company, Ascenta Therapeutics, found a promising compound.
The company tested the drug by pumping it each day into the stomachs of mice with sarcoma.
Maybe you want to help others. Maybe you long to lend a hand. But you're not sure where and you're not sure how and you don't know who to call.
You could ask around. Or you could book a seat on the Do Good Bus.
You will pay $25. You will get a box lunch. You will put yourself in the hands of a stranger.
CITY BEAT: Life in the Southland
When the bus takes off, you will not know where you are going — only that when you get there, you will be put to work.
You find yourself on this weekday afternoon one of an eclectic group, gathered a little shyly on an East Hollywood curb.
There's a Yelp marketer, a grad student, an actor, a novelist, a Manhattan Beach mother with her son and daughter, who just got home from prep school and college.
You see a school bus pull up. You step on board. It feels nostalgic, like day camp or a field trip.
Rebecca Pontius welcomes you, wearing jeans and sneakers and a black fleece vest. She looks like the kind of person who would plunge her hands deep into dirt, who wouldn't be afraid of the worms, who could lead you boldly.
The bus takes off, and Pontius stands toward the front, sure-footed. She founded the Do Good Bus, she tells you, to 1) build awareness, 2) build community, 3) encourage continued engagement.
Oh, she says, and to 3a) have fun. Hence the element of mystery, the faux holly branches that decorate some of the rows of seats, the white felt reindeer antlers she's wearing on her head.
She smiles a wide, toothy smile that makes you automatically reciprocate.
So you go along when she asks you to play get-to-know-you games. Even though you're embarrassed, you don't object when she assigns you one of the 12 days of Christmas to sing and act out when it's your turn.
Everyone's singing and laughing as the bus fits-and-starts down the freeway.
Maids-a-milking, geese-a-laying, bus-a-exiting somewhere in South Los Angeles.
It stops outside a boxy blue building — the Challengers Boys and Girls Club — where, finally, Pontius tells you you'll be helping children in foster care build the bicycles that will be their Christmas gifts.
She did it last year, she says. It was great. And she's brought along some powder that turns into fake snow, which the kids will like.
You step inside a large gym, where nothing proceeds quite as expected.
It's the holiday season, so way too many volunteers have shown up. The singer Ne-Yo is coming to lead a toy giveaway. There's a whole roomful of presents the children can choose from, including pre-assembled bikes — which means no bikes will need to be built.
You stand and you sit and you wait. Then the kids come. You try to help where you can — making sure they get in the right lines, handing out raffle tickets.
You see their joy at getting gifts, which is nice. You're in a place you might not ordinarily be, which is interesting. And as the children head out, you offer them snow. You put the powder in their cupped hands. You add water. The white stuff grows and begins to look real. It's even cold.
It makes them go wide-eyed. It makes them laugh. And you feel such moments of simple happiness are something.
It's chilly as you wait to get back on the bus. You get in a group hug with your fellow bus riders, who seem like old friends.
On the trip back in the dark, Pontius plays Christmas music. She serves you eggnog in Mason jars.
And she says she's sorry your help wasn't more needed today.
She promises the January ride will be more hands-on.
Come or don't, she tells you. But whatever you do, find a way to do something.
nita.lelyveld@latimes.com
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Athey Moravetz is doing some tasty work with her 3-D printers.
The video game designer has worked on PlayStation games like Resistance Retribution and Uncharted Golden Abyss. She's also a self-described "jack-of-all-trades," skilled with 3-D modeling tools like Maya, and knows how to design compelling characters with them.
After having two children she decided to work from home, and in addition to keeping active in the computer graphics industry, she also created a wildly successful Etsy shop, where she sells 3-D printed cookie cutters based on nerd culture favorites Pokemon, Dr. Who and Super Mario Brothers.
NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) – Glen Mazzara, who led AMC‘s “The Walking Dead” to ratings highs after the exit of Frank Darabont, is leaving the show.
The announcement came with the unsurprising news of a fourth-season pickup for the series. It continues AMC’s rocky record with its showrunners, but the network said the decision was mutual.
While AMC has clashed with showrunners before over money, a person familiar with the situation told TheWrap that this time the issue is “100 percent not about money or contracts.”
Rather, it is about a difference of opinion over where the show should go in the fourth season and beyond. It involves AMC, Mazzara and the show’s writers and producers, who include Robert Kirkman, creator of the comics that provide the basis of the series.
Kirkman might be the fans’ choice to take over as showrunner, given that most of its characters were born on his pages. But he also has a busy career writing comics and novels.
In a statement, Kirkman said he believes Mazzara and AMC came to the decision “in the best interest of the future of the show.”
In an interview with TheWrap in October, Mazzara said he would love to remain with the show until the end, “if AMC and the fans would have me.”
“I would love to be the guy shutting the lights off,” he said at the time.
It didn’t work out that way, even though Mazzara has made “The Walking Dead” this season’s top-rated drama — even beating network shows. It also has a legitimate shot at ending the season as TV’s top scripted show overall.
“Both parties acknowledge that there is a difference of opinion about where the show should go moving forward, and conclude that it is best to part ways,” AMC said in a statement.
AMC also said the decision is “amicable” and that Mazzara will remain showrunner for the remainder of the third season, which resumes airing in February. The episodes have already been filmed, and Mazzara will oversee postproduction.
He is also looking for his next project.
“My time as showrunner on ‘The Walking Dead’ has been an amazing experience, but after I finish season 3, it’s time to move on,” said Mazzara. “I have told the stories I wanted to tell and connected with our fans on a level that I never imagined. It doesn’t get much better than that. Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this journey.”
Mazzara took over the show after Darabont parted ways with it after its first season. Darabont was just one of several showrunners to have issues with AMC.
Jason Horwitch left “Rubicon” during its lone season. The third season of “Hell on Wheels” was briefly put on hold last month when showrunner John Shiban left.
“Mad Men” creator Matthew Weiner nearly walked from the show during a contract dispute last year. And “Breaking Bad” briefly looked into leaving AMC before creator Vince Gilligan’s contract was renewed.
Kirkman’s full statement included his thanks to Mazzara and the show’s fans.
“I am in full support of both AMC and Glen Mazzara in the decision they have come to and believe the parties came to this decision in the best interest of the future of the show,” Kirkman said. “I thank Glen for his hard work and appreciate his many contributions to ‘The Walking Dead’ and look forward to working with him as we complete post production on Season 3. I am also excited to begin work on another spectacular season of this show that I know means so much to so many people. This show has always been the result of a wide range of extremely talented men and women working tirelessly to produce their best work collectively. I believe the future is bright for ‘The Walking Dead.’ Thank you to the fans for your continued support.”
Executive producer Gale Anne Hurd also expressed her thanks.
“I am appreciative and grateful to Glen for his hard work on ‘The Walking Dead,’” she wrote. “I am supportive of AMC and Glen’s decision and know that the series is in great hands with one of the most talented and dedicated casts and crews in the business. I look forward to the show’s continued success.”
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The 12-year-old suspect arrested in connection to celebrity "swatting" incidents at Ashton Kutcher and Justin Bieber's homes may not face criminal charges because of his youth and the non-violent nature of the offense, authorities said.
Instead, the case may be handled by the Probation Department, which seeks to divert young offenders into programs that set them on the right path.
The boy has been linked to three swatting incidents -- two involving celebrities and a third involving a bank. The Los Angeles Police Department, which investigated the case with the Long Beach Police Department and FBI, said they have strong evidence linking the boy to several incidents that prompted a SWAT response, hence the term "swatting."
Police Lt. Marc Reina said the boy used a computer program that allowed him to make TTY calls used by people who are hearing impaired. The boy set up a fake account and began making the calls via message to the LAPD, he said.
He has not yet been charged by prosecutors, who are trying to determine how the matter should be handled.
DIstrict Attorney's spokesman Sandi Gibbons said that the case is being reviewed, but may fall under the control of the Los Angeles County Probation Department because of the boy's age and non-violent nature of the alleged crimes.
Bieber's home was targeted Oct. 10, when Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies received a report claiming a gunman had fired shots and was threatening to harm police when they showed up. The message was received through a TTY device typically used by the deaf to type text over the telephone.
Deputies were unaware it was Bieber's residence and arrived in force. They searched the home and interviewed people on the property, who told them that no call had been made to authorities and that the pop star was away on tour. They determined the incident was a hoax.
A week earlier, Los Angeles police dispatched several units and tactical officers to Kutcher's home on Arrowhead Drive after they received a report through a TTY device from a woman who said she was hiding in a closet because there was a man with a gun inside her residence, according to sources familiar with the case.
But after interviewing workers who were briefly held at gunpoint at the actor's home, as well as contacting Kutcher himself, LAPD investigators determined the incident also was contrived.
The megayacht that Steve Jobs commissioned in the final years of his life has been impounded in Amsterdam after a payment dispute by the designer, Philippe Starck.
The Venus, a 100-million-euro, 260-foot-long yacht, made its unofficial debut in late October. It’s currently stuck in the Port of Amsterdam after Starck hired a debt-collection agency to attempt to remit the final payment for his design.
According to lawyers at Ubik – Starck’s design company – speaking with Reuters, the designer has only received 6 million of the 9-million-euro commission and is seeking the rest of the payment before the Venus will be released.
“These guys [Jobs and Starck] trusted each other, so there wasn’t a very detailed contract,” Roelant Klaassen, a lawyer for Ubik, told Reuters.
The Venus is a floating ode to both Jobs and Starck’s minimalist aesthetic. Made entirely out of aluminum, with 40-foot-long floor-to-ceiling windows lining the passenger compartment and seven 27-inch iMacs making up the command center.
In Walter Isaacson’s biography of Jobs, the late Apple CEO is quoted as saying that, “I know that it’s possible I will die and leave Laurene with a half-built boat, but I have to keep going on. If I don’t, it’s an admission that I’m about to die.”
NEW YORK (Reuters) – For British director Tom Hooper, the key to turning “Les Miserables” from the wildly popular stage musical to a cinematic experience both sweeping and intimate, was all in the close-up.
The stage musical has left audiences around the world wiping away tears with its themes of justice, redemption and romantic and familial love. So bringing it to life on screen for fans and filmgoers was “hugely daunting,” Hooper says.
Still, the Oscar-winning director of “The King’s Speech,” was ambitious, wanting to offer even more of the “intense emotional experience” that has kept fans returning to various stage productions since “Les Miserables” made its English language debut 27 years ago.
“I felt very aware of the fact that so many millions of people hold this close to their hearts and would probably sit in the cinemas in complete fear,” Hooper told reporters about his big screen take on the tale of French revolutionaries rising up against powerful forces.
Movie stars Hugh Jackman, Russell Crowe and Anne Hathaway were all put through an intense audition and rehearsal process, to make sure they could sing take after take, live, with cameras positioned right in their face.
It also features a large ensemble including Amanda Seyfried and Eddie Redmayne, as well as Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter who lead the comic relief song, “Master of the House.”
“I thought the great weapon in my arsenal was the close up, because the one thing on stage that you can’t enjoy is the detail of what is going on in people’s faces as they are singing,” Hooper said. “I felt (that) having to do a meditation on the human face was by far the best way to bring out the emotion of the songs.”
That tactic may or may not have paid off for a movie that is seen as one of the front runners for Oscar awards in February. Early screenings of the film that opens on Christmas Day have moved some audiences. Critics have praised the performances, but given the movie as a whole less than top marks.
The movie reunites the same team that worked on the original musical, including French composer Claude-Michel Schonberg, lyricist Alain Boublil, and English language adapter Herbert Kretzmer. It adds one original song to the existing show, which includes the well-known “I Dreamed a Dream”.
Jackman plays petty thief Jean Valjean, the protagonist of the story based on French writer Victor Hugo’s epic 1862 historical novel “Les Miserables.” Valjean transforms himself into a respected businessman but struggles for decades to escape the clutches of his nemesis, police inspector Javert (Russell Crowe), and along the way encounters factory worker Fantine (Anne Hathaway).
TIMELY MESSAGE
Inspired by films such as 1991′s “The Commitments,” singing was filmed live rather than later recorded in a studio to give the movie a more authentic feel.
Hathaway lost 25 pounds (11.3 kg) for the role and cut her long brown hair. She spent six months perfecting the task of crying and singing at the same time for “I Dreamed a Dream” and is a hot favorite for a best supporting actress Oscar.
In a twist of fate, Hooper had initially seen Hathaway singing to Jackman a boisterous version of the “Les Miserables” song “On My Own” at the 2011 Academy Awards ceremony, just when he was trying to decide whether to direct the film and was thinking about casting.
“I was sitting there, going: ‘There is something very strange happening’,” he joked. “Whatever happened, it certainly worked, because I ended up casting both of them.”
Hooper said he took his inspiration mostly from Hugo’s novel rather than any one stage production, and thus saw Crowe’s Javert more as a “deeply honorable” character than a simplistic “bad guy” as portrayed in some productions.
The time also felt right, he said, to bring the story to a larger audience on the big screen.
“There are so many people hurting around the world because of social, economic, inequality and inequity. There is such anger against the system,” he said, “whether it’s the protests on Wall Street or in London at St Paul’s, or the seismic shifts happening in the Middle East.”
“‘Les Miserables’ is the great advocate of the dispossessed,” Hooper said. “It teaches you the way to collective action is through passionate engagement with the people around you. It starts with love for the person next to you.”
(Editing by Jill Serjeant and David Storey)
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Myra Biblowit, the president of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and Larry Norton, the scientific adviser to the foundation, say it is dependent on donors who give regularly and generously.
THIS is a time of year when solicitations for donations are coming at you from every direction, and for good reason: the end of the year is when people make most of their gifts to charity.
But these requests for money, from the checkout line to the mailbox, can pull well-intentioned people in too many directions and turn an act of generosity that should lift the spirits of the donor and help a worthy cause into another stressful obligation.
This onslaught and a story I was told this week — more about that later — got me thinking about the argument for focused giving, for picking an area that you care about and putting most of your philanthropic dollars into it. This is something my wife and I have done for many years and have found very rewarding: it has made us more knowledgeable, passionate and involved in the area we support.
Patrick Rooney, associate dean for academic affairs and research at Indiana University’s School of Philanthropy, said he did not want to deter people from giving away their money however they wanted. But he added, “You’re better off to target three, four or five charities and give larger gifts to a small number of charities as opposed to giving a large number of small checks.”
Part of the reason is that a single larger gift could do more good. But that was not the only benefit. “From the recipient organization’s perspective, having a gift from $1, $100, $1,000, to $100 million, there are some transaction costs,” Mr. Rooney said. “You’ve got to book it, deposit it, acknowledge the donor and cultivate the donor for future gifts. If you have a lot of checks for $5 and $10, you have a lot of transaction costs for a relatively small gift.”
The other side of this debate is equally valid: it’s your money, and if you want to give a little bit to 27 different groups, that’s your choice. As Melissa Berman, president and chief executive of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisers, told me: “Philanthropy is voluntary. When someone tells you how your money is supposed to be used and in what proportion, that’s called a tax.”
I can appreciate both sides. But I spent this week talking to a group of people focused on one cause — breast cancer research. Their desire to support this cause, which has had great success, made an interesting argument for being more selective with donations. Here’s the story.
THE LUNCH Addressing about two dozen women over lunch in late November, Leonard A. Lauder, chairman emeritus of Estée Lauder, told how he had bought his wife, Evelyn, a piece of jewelry every time she finished a round of chemotherapy and they thought she was better.
Mrs. Lauder, who learned she had breast cancer in 1987 and survived it, started the Breast Cancer Research Foundation in 1993, with the goal of raising funds for research that would eradicate the disease. Last year, she died of ovarian cancer.
A few weeks before she died, Mr. Lauder said, he found her standing in their kitchen one night wearing a ring he had bought her.
“She said, ‘I’ll never have a chance to wear this ring. so I’m wearing it tonight,’ ” Mr. Lauder told me. “When she died, I had all this jewelry. I didn’t feel right giving it to someone. I thought, ‘What should I do with the jewelry?’ ”
He decided to auction it off and give all the money to the foundation. He said he got Sotheby’s to waive the commission it charges sellers so that any money raised would go to a new fund at the foundation to focus on the genetic links between different types of cancers.
Among those in the audience of prospective bidders that day was Cindy Citrone. Mrs. Citrone’s mother and father died of cancer, and she is active in various cancer charities in Connecticut, where she lives. She also sits on the board of visitors of M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. Cancer charities are something she and her husband, Rob, who runs a hedge fund, support in many different ways.
She was moved by Mr. Lauder’s account of how he wanted his gifts to his wife to be passed on as part of a continuing contribution to the fight against cancer. “After hearing him tell this story of love and the legacy of joy,” she said, “I came home and wanted to be part of it.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 21, 2012
A picture caption with an earlier version of this column misspelled the surname of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation’s scientific adviser. He is Larry Norton, not Nortan.
A flag flies on the facade of the New York Stock Exchange. (Richard Drew / Associated Press / December 20, 2012)
By Andrew Tangel
December 20, 2012, 6:30 a.m.
NYSE Euronext, operator of the New York Stock Exchange, has agreed to sell itself to the IntercontinentalExchange in an acquisition that would reshape Wall Street.
ICE, a 12-year-old electronic exchange operator based in Atlanta, will pay $33.12 a share for NYSE Euronext in a stock-and-cash deal worth $8.2 billion.
The companies announced the acquisition early Thursday, saying both of their boards or directors unanimously approved the deal. The acquisition is slated to close in the second half of 2013, pending the blessing of U.S. and European regulators and both companies' shareholders.
Quiz: How much do you know about the 'fiscal cliff'?
"This transaction leverages the strength of our iconic brand and the value we have created in our global equity and derivatives franchises -- positioning the business for solid long-term growth and development," Duncan Niederauer, chief executive of NYSE Euronext, said in a statement.
Although the New York Stock Exchange is the most public window into Wall Street, the Big Board's share of equities trading has declined sharply in recent years, as NYSE Euronext has expanded its trading venues in an increasingly electronic and fragmented marketplace.
Founded in 2000, ICE has grown into a leading venue for commodities and energy futures exchanges and derivatives clearinghouses.
NYSE Euronext's stock closed at $24.05 a share, with a market cap of $5.84 billion. The NYSE's stock was surging $10 a share, or 42%, in pre-market trading.
