One of our main gripes with the Armour39 fitness tracker was the lack of polish on its iOS app and inability to access stats via web. Well, it seems Under Armour is getting serious about improving in those areas as the outfit has acquired MapMyFitness. With over 20 million users, the software ...If you bumped into your eight-year-old self on the street and told him that actual Transformers would walk—fly, crawl, and swim—the planet within his lifetime, your eight-year-old self's head would probably explode. But shape-shifting autonomous robots are exactly what's in the works at the Sandia National Laboratory.
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If the Republican Party is at a crossroads, two distinct paths are being blazed by two very different candidates on Election Day 2013.
In New Jersey, a pragmatic and often aggressive incumbent is poised to run up the score on the Democratic challenger -- despite the state's deep shade of blue.
In Virginia, a strong social conservative with tea party support is in real danger of losing to a flawed Democrat -- despite the state's history of electing governors from the party that's shut out of the White House.
The result is that the two "off-year" races that have long been viewed as national harbingers are instead offering lessons primarily to a Republican Party that's still engaged in a spirited fight for its own identity.
The split decision that's likely to emerge today seems certain to exacerbate tensions over which way Republicans should be headed, a year after an election debacle for the GOP, and a year before the midterm elections.
"If the polls hold true and [Ken] Cuccinelli loses, it shows that successful Republicans drive down the middle of the right-hand side of the road -- they don't drive off into the ditch on the right," said Whit Ayres, a veteran Virginia-based Republican pollster.
"It's hard to say that the Republican Party is in a stronger position today than a year ago," Ayres added. "But I'm hopeful that more and more Republicans are willing to see the light at the end of the long, dark tunnel."
That light will be shining on Gov. Chris Christie, R-N.J., whose 30-point-plus lead in pre-election polls leave him poised to become perhaps the biggest GOP winner in a trying year.
Christie's team is hoping for a win that will hold conservative voters and make deep inroads among Latinos, Democrats and independents -- proving that a certain style of leadership can overcome partisan leanings.
"His apparent success proves that people will reward decisive action and truth-telling, and that people are prepared to look beyond maybe their own party affiliations or even ideological predispositions where they see an instance of effective action in the public interest," said former Gov. Mitch Daniels, R-Ind., who is now president of Purdue University. "Plainly, that's what's going on when a guy like Gov. Christie is that successful in a state like the one he lives in."
Though Republican leaders rarely say so directly, the flip side of that success is evident in Virginia. The GOP candidate for governor, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, has trailed consistently in polls against Democrat Terry McAuliffe, swamped by independents and female voters in particular.
Virginia has been trending Democratic in recent years, but Cuccinelli barely sought out the center. His campaign has been defined by his tea party ties and strong social conservative views, with late efforts aimed primarily at turning out the Republican base.
McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chairman and longtime friend of Bill and Hillary Clinton, was thought by many Democrats to be deeply flawed as a candidate, owing to a colorful business past and ties to the unsavory money side of politics. He didn't even make it through the Democratic primary when he ran for governor 2009.
On the eve of the election, though, McAuliffe aides see national implications in the fact that he's been able to reach moderate voters with a pro-jobs message, without sacrificing support inside the Democratic base.
"We have no real conflict in appealing to the base of our party and the center of the electorate," said Geoff Garin, McAuliffe's pollster. "Cuccinelli is emblematic of the Republican dilemma. It is impossible to do both of those things at the same time."
Though Republicans remain optimistic publicly about Cuccinelli's prospects, the second-guessing has already begun. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, now a Virginia resident, said Cuccinelli appears to have been too badly outspent by a finely tuned Clinton-backed machine to overcome his own flaws as a candidate.
"If he does lose, it may say more about the candidate than the movement," Gingrich said Monday in an interview for the ABC News/Yahoo! News "Power Players" series. "No one survives a 25-to-1 disadvantage in funding [down the stretch]. And this is the first great victory of the Clinton march back to the presidency."
"If McAuliffe wins the governorship, he is a Hillary Clinton total devotee," Gingrich continued. "He will spend half of his time as governor trying to help her to win the presidency. And I think it is a sign of the power of the Clinton machine."
In New Jersey, meanwhile, Christie is building a machine of his own. A party that's seen its identity defined by tea party firebrands Sen. Ted Cruz and Sen. Rand Paul counts among its stars a tough-talking Northeasterner who's proving he can win broadly in a blue state, said Julian Zelizer, a professor of history and public affairs at Princeton University.
"Chris Christie has defined himself around this theme -- that he's the person that's different from the national party, the person who's distancing himself from extreme views," Zelizer said. "The message he wants is that his brand of Republican politics is nationally potent."
That won't necessarily convince a conservative base that sees Christie as a social moderate who criticized tea party leaders over the government shutdown -- and that remembers Christie's embrace of President Obama's leadership after Hurricane Sandy, Zelizer said.
"A lot of conservative Republicans will say, 'We won't care. Ted Cruz is our guy,'" he said.
In a sense, the election in Virginia is demonstrating one of Christie's biggest obstacles moving forward. Cuccinelli captured the Republican nomination at a party convention dominated by conservative activists, as opposed to through a traditional primary that would draw a broader swath of voters.
"Virginia Republicans made this far harder than this needed to be," said Ayres, the Republican pollster.
After John McCain fell short of the presidency in 2008 and Mitt Romney followed with a loss in 2012, the appetite for moderates is limited among Republican primary voters and caucus-goers.
The path for Christie, should he choose to pursue it, only gets tougher from here. Should he run for president, he will need to at least neutralize a tea party movement that's grown more restive during the second Obama term.
Winning, though, will likely help.
"He has a powerful platform from which to preach," Ayres said.
In this photo taken on Sept. 1, 2013, scientist Simon Kutcher, project manager of the Eliminate Dengue Vietnam research program, blood feeds a cage of mosquitoes in a lab in Hanoi, Vietnam. The mosquitoes are being reared with Wolbachia bacteria that works as a natural vaccine to keep them from becoming infected with the virus that causes dengue. They were released on an island as part of research to help determine whether the bacteria can help in the fight against the disease. (AP Photo/Na Son Nguyen)
In this photo taken on Sept. 1, 2013, scientist Simon Kutcher, project manager of the Eliminate Dengue Vietnam research program, blood feeds a cage of mosquitoes in a lab in Hanoi, Vietnam. The mosquitoes are being reared with Wolbachia bacteria that works as a natural vaccine to keep them from becoming infected with the virus that causes dengue. They were released on an island as part of research to help determine whether the bacteria can help in the fight against the disease. (AP Photo/Na Son Nguyen)
In this photo taken on Sept. 2, 2013, specimens collected from traps are taken back to the lab in Pasteur Institute in Nha Trang city, Khanh Hoa province, Vietnam, for analysis to determine how well Wolbachia mosquitoes are infiltrating the native population. The Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes not only died quicker but they also blocked the dengue virus partially or entirely, sort of like a natural vaccine. New research suggests some 390 million people are infected with the virus each year, most of them in Asia. That’s about one in every 18 people on Earth, and more than three times higher than the World Health Organization's previous estimates. (AP Photo/Na Son Nguyen)
In this photo taken on Sept. 3, 2013, Le Van Minh, 44, takes care of his daughter Le Thi Kim Tho, 9, who has dengue fever at the central hospital of Nha Trang city, Khanh Hoa province, Vietnam. The province has a record year and home to the country's highest rate of dengue. New research suggests some 390 million people are infected with the virus each year, most of them in Asia. That’s about one in every 18 people on Earth, and more than three times higher than the World Health Organization's previous estimates. Known as “breakbone fever” because of the excruciating joint pain and hammer-pounding headaches it causes, the disease has no vaccine, cure or specific treatment. Most patients must simply suffer through days of raging fever, sweats and a bubbling rash. (AP Photo/Na Son Nguyen)
In this photo taken on Sept. 3, 2013, Dang Thi Kim Muon, 21, who has dengue fever, lays on the emergency room at the central hospital of Nha Trang city, Khanh Hoa province, Vietnam. The province has a record year and home to the country's highest rate of dengue. New research suggests some 390 million people are infected with the virus each year, most of them in Asia. That’s about one in every 18 people on Earth, and more than three times higher than the World Health Organization's previous estimates. Known as “breakbone fever” because of the excruciating joint pain and hammer-pounding headaches it causes, the disease has no vaccine, cure or specific treatment. Most patients must simply suffer through days of raging fever, sweats and a bubbling rash. For those who develop a more serious form of illness, known as dengue hemorrhagic fever, internal bleeding, shock, organ failure and death can occur. (AP Photo/Na Son Nguyen)
In this Sept. 4, 2013 photo, patients with dengue fever are treated at Khanh Hoa General Hospital in Nha Trang, Vietnam. Mosquitoes are being reared with Wolbachia bacteria that works as a natural vaccine to keep them from becoming infected with the virus that causes dengue. They were released on an island in central Vietnam as part of research to help determine whether the bacteria can help in the fight against the disease. (AP Photo/Margie Mason)
TRI NGUYEN ISLAND, Vietnam (AP) — Nguyen Thi Yen rolls up the sleeves of her white lab coat and delicately slips her arms into a box covered by a sheath of mesh netting. Immediately, the feeding frenzy begins.
Hundreds of mosquitoes light on her thin forearms and swarm her manicured fingers. They spit, bite and suck until becoming drunk with blood, their bulging bellies glowing red. Yen laughs in delight while her so-called "pets" enjoy their lunch and prepare to mate.
The petite, grandmotherly entomologist — nicknamed Dr. Dracula — knows how crazy she must look to outsiders. But this is science, and these are very special bloodsuckers.
She smiles and nods at her red-hot arms, swollen and itchy after 10 minutes of feeding. She knows those nasty bites could reveal a way to greatly reduce one of the world's most menacing infectious diseases.
All her mosquitoes have been intentionally infected with bacteria called Wolbachia, which essentially blocks them from getting dengue. And if they can't get it, they can't spread it to people.
New research suggests some 390 million people are infected with the virus each year, most of them in Asia. That's about one in every 18 people on Earth, and more than three times higher than the World Health Organization's previous estimates.
Known as "breakbone fever" because of the excruciating joint pain and hammer-pounding headaches it causes, the disease has no vaccine, cure or specific treatment. Most patients must simply suffer through days of raging fever, sweats and a bubbling rash. For those who develop a more serious form of illness, known as dengue hemorrhagic fever, internal bleeding, shock, organ failure and death can occur.
And it's all caused by one bite from a female mosquito that's transmitting the virus from another infected person.
So how can simple bacteria break this cycle? Wolbachia is commonly found in many insects, including fruit flies. But for reasons not fully understood, it is not carried naturally by certain mosquitoes, including the most common one that transmits dengue, the Aedes aegypti.
The germ has fascinated scientist Scott O'Neill his entire career. He started working with it about two decades ago at Yale University. But it wasn't until 2008, after returning to his native Australia, that he had his eureka moment.
One of his research students figured out how to implant the bacteria into a mosquito so it could be passed on to future generations. The initial hope was that it would shorten the insect's life. But soon, a hidden benefit was discovered: Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes not only died quicker but they also blocked dengue partially or entirely, sort of like a natural vaccine.
"The dengue virus couldn't grow in the mosquito as well if the Wolbachia was present," says O'Neill, dean of science at Monash University in Melbourne. "And if it can't grow in the mosquito, it can't be transmitted."
But proving something in the lab is just the first step. O'Neill's team needed to test how well the mosquitoes would perform in the wild. They conducted research in small communities in Australia, where dengue isn't a problem, and the results were encouraging enough to create a buzz among scientists who have long been searching for new ways to fight the disease. After two and a half years, the Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes had overtaken the native populations and remained 95 percent dominant.
But how would it work in dengue-endemic areas of Southeast Asia? The disease swamps hospitals in the region every rainy season with thousands of sick patients, including many children, sometimes killing those who seek help too late.
The Australians tapped 58-year-old Yen at Vietnam's National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, where she's worked for the past 35 years. Their plan was to test the Wolbachia mosquitoes on a small island off the country's central coast this year, with another release expected next year in Indonesia.
Just getting the mosquitoes to Tri Nguyen Island was an adventure. Thousands of tiny black eggs laid on strips of paper inside feeding boxes had to be hand-carried inside coolers on weekly flights from Hanoi, where Yen normally works, to Nha Trang, a resort city near the island. The eggs had to be kept at just the right temperature and moisture. The mosquitoes were hatched in another lab before finally being transported by boat.
Yen insisted on medical checks for all volunteer feeders to ensure they weren't sickening her mosquitoes. She deemed vegetarian blood too weak and banned anyone recently on antibiotics, which could kill the Wolbachia.
"When I'm sleeping, I'm always thinking about them," Yen says, hunkered over a petri dish filled with dozens of squiggling mosquito pupae. "I'm always worried about temperature and food. I take care of them same-same like baby. If they are healthy, we are happy. If they are not, we are sad."
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Recently, there have been several promising new attempts to control dengue. A vaccine trial in Thailand didn't work as well as hoped, proving only 30 percent effective overall, but it provided higher coverage for three of the four virus strains. More vaccines are in the pipeline. Other science involves releasing genetically modified "sterile" male mosquitoes that produce no offspring, or young that die before reaching maturity, to decrease populations.
Wolbachia could end up being used in combination with these and other methods, including mosquito traps and insecticide-treated materials.
"I've been working with this disease now for 40-something years, and we have failed miserably," says Duane Gubler, a dengue expert at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School in Singapore who is not involved with the Wolbachia research.
"We are now coming into a very exciting period where I think we'll be able to control the disease. I really do."
Wolbachia also blocks other mosquito-borne diseases such as yellow fever and chikungunya, O'Neill says. Similar research is being conducted for malaria, though that's trickier because the disease is carried by several different types of mosquitoes.
It's unclear why mosquitoes that transmit dengue do not naturally get Wolbachia, which is found in up to 70 percent of insects in the wild. But O'Neill doesn't believe that purposefully infecting mosquitoes will negatively impact ecosystems. He says the key to overcoming skepticism is to be transparent with research while providing independent risk analyses and publishing findings in high-caliber scientific journals.
"I think, intuitively, it makes sense that it's unlikely to have a major consequence of introducing Wolbachia into one more species," O'Neill says, adding that none of his work is for profit. "It's already in millions already."
Dengue typically comes in cycles, hitting some areas harder in different years. People remain susceptible to the other strains after being infected with one, and it is largely an urban disease with mosquitoes breeding in stagnant water.
Laos and Singapore have experienced their worst outbreaks in recent history this season. Thailand has also struggled with a large number of patients. Cases have also been reported in recent years outside tropical regions, including in the U.S. and Europe.
Vietnam has logged lower numbers this year overall, but the country's highest dengue rate is in the province where Yen is conducting her work.
At the area's main hospital in Nha Trang, Dr. Nguyen Dong, director of infectious diseases, says 75 of the 86 patients crammed into the open-air ward are infected with the virus.
Before jabbing his fingers into the stomach of one seriously ill patient to check for pain, he talks about how the dengue season has become much longer in recent years. And despite the government's increased education campaigns and resources, the disease continues to overwhelm the hospital.
If the experiment going on just a short boat ride away from the hospital is successful, it eventually will be expanded across the city and the entire province.
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The 3,500 people on Tri Nguyen island grew accustomed to what would be a bizarre scene almost anywhere else: For five months, community workers went house-to-house in the raging heat, releasing cups of newborn mosquitoes.
And the residents were happy to have them.
"We do not kill the mosquitoes. We let them bite," says fisherman Tran To. "The Wolbachia living in the house is like a doctor in the house. They may bite, but they stop dengue."
Specimens collected from traps are taken back to the lab for analysis to determine how well Wolbachia mosquitoes are infiltrating the native population.
The strain of bacteria used on the island blocks dengue 100 percent, but it's also the hardest to sustain. At one point, 90 percent of the mosquitoes were infected, but the rate dropped to about 65 percent after the last batch was released in early September. A similar decrease occurred in Australia as well, and scientists switched to other Wolbachia strains that thrive better in the wild but have lesser dengue-blocking abilities.
The job is sure to keep Yen busy in her little mosquito lab, complete with doors covered by long overlapping netting.
And while she professes to adore these pests nurtured by her own blood, she has a much stronger motivation for working with them: Dengue nearly claimed her own life many years ago, and her career has been devoted to sparing others the same fate.
"I love them," she says, "when I need them."
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On the Net: http://www.eliminatedengue.com/
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Follow Margie Mason on Twitter: twitter.com/MargieMasonAP
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/3d281c11a96b4ad082fe88aa0db04305/Article_2013-11-05-Vietnam-Dengue-Blocking%20Mosquito/id-6c84b66a6ce64e069108139b4c19763c
Throughout the 1930s and '40s, Americans flocked to their local movie theaters to be scared out of their wits. Sure, they loved the classic movies of the time like Frankenstein, Dracula and The Mummy. But it was the terrifying and humorous stage shows—known generically as the Midnight Ghost Show—that really packed the theaters to capacity.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Washington Post is reporting that the National Security Agency has secretly broken into the main communications links that connect Yahoo and Google data centers around the world. The Post cites documents obtained from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden and interviews with officials.
According to a secret accounting dated Jan. 9, 2013, NSA sends millions of records every day from Yahoo and Google internal networks to data warehouses at the agency's Fort Meade, Md., headquarters. In the last 30 days, the report Wednesday on the Post website said, field collectors had processed and sent back more than 180 million new records — ranging from "metadata," which would indicate who sent or received emails and when, to content such as text, audio and video.
The NSA's principal tool to exploit the data links is a project called MUSCULAR, operated jointly with the agency's British counterpart, GCHQ. The Post said NSA and GCHQ are copying entire data flows across fiber-optic cables that carry information between the data centers of the Silicon Valley giants.
White House officials and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA, declined to comment, the Post said.
In a statement to the Post, Google said it was "troubled by allegations of the government intercepting traffic between our data centers, and we are not aware of this activity."
At Yahoo, a spokeswoman said: "We have strict controls in place to protect the security of our data centers, and we have not given access to our data centers to the NSA or to any other government agency."
Associated PressSource: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/386c25518f464186bf7a2ac026580ce7/Article_2013-10-30-NSA-Yahoo-Google/id-9579db3496be491da0bbef7d0f207d7bSAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Happily hunched over his iPad, Britain's most celebrated living artist David Hockney is pioneering in the art world again, turning his index finger into a paintbrush that he uses to swipe across a touch screen to create vibrant landscapes, colorful forests and richly layered scenes.
"It's a very new medium," said Hockney. So new, in fact, he wasn't sure what he was creating until he began printing his digital images a few years ago. "I was pretty amazed by them actually," he said, laughing. "I'm still amazed."
A new exhibit of Hockney's work, including about 150 iPad images, opened Saturday in the de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, just a short trip for Silicon Valley techies who created both the hardware and software for this 21st-century reinvention of finger-painting.
The show is billed as the museum's largest ever, filling two floors of the de Young with a survey of works from 1999 to present, mostly landscapes and portraits in an array of mediums: watercolor, charcoal and even video. But on a recent preview day, it was the iPad pieces, especially the 12-foot high majestic views of Yosemite National Park that drew gasps.
Already captured by famed photographer Ansel Adams, and prominent painters such as Thomas Hill and Albert Bierstadt, Hockney's iPad images of Yosemite's rocks, rivers and trees are both comfortingly familiar and entirely new.
In one wide open vista, scrubby, bright green pines sparkle in sunlight, backed by Bridalveil Fall tumbling lightly down a cliff side; the distinct granite crest of Half Dome looms in the background. In another, a heavy mist obscures stands of giant sequoias.
"He has such command of space, atmosphere and light," said Fine Arts Museums director Colin Bailey.
Other iPad images are overlaid, so viewers can see them as they were drawn, an animated beginning-to-end chronological loop. He tackles faces and flowers, and everyday objects: a human foot, scissors, an electric plug.
Some of the iPad drawings are displayed on digital screens, others, like the Yosemite works, were printed on six large panels. Hockey's technical assistants used large inkjet prints reproduce the images he created on his IPad.
Exhibiting iPad images by a prominent artist in a significant museum gives the medium a boost, said art historians, helping digital artwork gain legitimacy in the notoriously snobby art world where computer tablet art shows are rare and prices typically lower than comparable watercolors or oils.
"I'm grateful he's doing this because it opens people's mind to the technology in a new way," said Long Island University Art Historian Maureen Nappi, although she described Hockney's iPad work as "gimmicky."
Writing about the historic shift of drawing from prehistoric cave painting to digital tablets in this month's MIT journal "Leonardo," Nappi said that while iPad work is still novel, the physicality of painting and drawing have gone on for millennia.
"These gestures are as old as humans are," she said in an interview. "Go back to cave paintings, they're using finger movements to articulate creative expressions."
Hockney, 76, started drawing on his iPhone with his thumb about five years ago, shooting his works via email to dozens of friends at a time.
"People from the village come up and tease me: 'We hear you've started drawing on your telephone.' And I tell them, 'Well, no, actually, it's just that occasionally I speak on my sketch pad,'" he said.
When the iPad was announced, Hockney said he had one shipped immediately to his home in London, where he splits his time with Los Angeles.
He creates his work with an app built by former Apple software engineer Steve Sprang of Mountain View, Calif., called Brushes, which along with dozens of other programs like Touch Sketch, SketchBook Mobile and Bamboo Paper are being snapped up by artists, illustrators and graphic designers.
Together, the artists are developing new finger and stylus techniques, with Hockney's vanguard work offering innovative approaches.
"David Hockney is one of the living masters of oil painting, a nearly-600-year-old technology, and thus is well positioned to have thought long and hard about the advantages of painting with a digital device like the iPad," said Binghamton University Art Historian Kevin Hatch in New York.
Hatch said a "digital turn" in the art world began about 25 years ago, as the Internet gained popularity, and he said today most artists have adapted to using a device in some way as they create art.
A similar shift happened almost 100 years ago with the dawn of photography, he said, when innovations such as the small photograph cards and the stereoscope captured the art world's imagination.
And Hatch said there are some drawbacks to the shift to tablet art.
"A certain almost magical quality of oil paint, a tactile, tangible substance, is lost when a painting becomes, at heart, a piece of code, a set of invisible 1's and 0's," he said.
Hockney, who created 78 of the almost 400 pieces in the de Young show this year, isn't giving up painting, or drawing, or video, or tablets, any time soon. When asked where he sees the world of art going, he shrugged his broad shoulders and paused.
"I don't know where it's going, really, who does?" he said. "But art will be there."
Making a smooth and sexy appearance at the Intercontinental Hotel, Isla Fisher and Robert Pattinson attended the 2nd Annual Australians in Film Awards Gala Thursday (October 24).
Dressed to kill at the red carpet event, the “Bachelorette” starlet wore a tight patterned black dress, showing off her legs and sporting a pair of black heels. Holding her close, “Twilight” stud Robert delivered his suave smile, dressed to the nines in a silky blue suit, and wearing sporty brown shoes.
In related news, the 27-year-old star is awaiting the release of his new movie, “The Rover,” a drama set for release toward the end of this year.
According to the synopsis, “A loner tracks the gang who stole his car from a desolate town in the Australian outback with the forced assistance of a wounded guy left behind in the wake of the theft.”
Source: http://celebrity-gossip.net/robert-pattinson/robert-pattinson-and-isla-fisher-go-down-under-2nd-annual-australians-film-awards-9According to this based-on-a-true-story account of the making of Mary Poppins, when Walt Disney offered to buy the rights to P.L. Travers’ book, the author insisted on just two things: that she would retain script approval and that there would be no animation. History records that she didn’t exactly get her way, at least as far as the animation was concerned. But dancing penguins aside, Saving Mr. Banks suggests that Travers put up a good fight, going sturdy pump-to-brogue with Disney, then one of the most powerful studio heads in the business.
Kelly Marcel and Sue Smith’s ingenious script, which famously featured on Franklin Leonard’s Black List, adroitly builds layers on top of this central conflict, using flashbacks to reveal how bleak events in Pamela Lyndon Travers’ childhood nourished the cheerful story of Mary Poppins, making her so protective of her work. The finished product, directed by John Lee Hancock, is a cunningly effective, if rather on-the-nose study of the transformation of pain into art, marbled with moments of high comedy.
Some contrarians will balk at the highly sympathetic depiction of Walt Disney himself (played by Tom Hanks), hardly a surprise given that the logo of the company he founded opens the credits. However, audiences will swallow this tasty spoonful of sugar without complaint. A most delightful box-office result should be expected when it opens in the U.S. Dec. 13 (two weeks after Britain), a frame well chosen to maximize the family market and position the film in the awards-season calendar.
STORY: Tom Hanks on Becoming Walt Disney for 'Saving Mr. Banks'
In a part once mooted for Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson takes charge of the central role of the waspish P.L. Travers with an authority that makes you wonder how anybody else could ever have been considered. Firing off withering, perfectly timed put-downs in a musical Received Pronunciation accent (disguising the character’s Australian origins), with the confident stride of a governess tidying up the nursery, she’s a fearsome figure of feminine steeliness. There’s an echo here of Sandra Bullock’s tiger-mom in Hancock’s The Blind Side, except that Travers is considerably less maternal, despite being a children’s writer. When a woman with a babe-in-arms on the plane to Los Angeles offers to move her own hand luggage to make room for Travers’ bag, she offers no thanks, and only asks if, “the child will be a nuisance” on the flight.
Only a glancing allusion in the script betrays that the real Travers did in fact have an adopted child, but then there’s quite a lot else about her, presumably in the interests of making the character more accessible, that scribes Marcel and Smith have declined to incorporate. Apparently there were also rumored affairs with women and an interest in mysticism and the occult, though there is only a shot here of her reading a book by guru George Gurdjieff to show for it. The end credits thank author Valerie Lawson for inspiration from her respected biography Mary Poppins, She Wrote: The Life of P.L. Travers, but a warts-and-all portrait was never going to happen on a film with this much budget and visibility at stake.
That goes double or more for the portrait drawn of Walt Disney. The twinkly-eyed, avuncular figure incarnated by a mustachioed Hanks -- who only for a fleeting moment shows off a glower worthy of a mafia crime boss ordering a hit -- couldn’t be further from the negative analyses of Disney depicted in, say, Richard Schickel’s scathing biography The Disney Version or the recent Philip Glass opera The Perfect American.
Some will no doubt call this a whitewash, but looked at from the viewpoint of the studio and the estate of Walt Disney, Saving Mr. Banks presents a grittier version of Disney than one might have expected 10 or even five years ago. Okay, so there’s no mention here of strike breaking or informing on suspected Communists to the FBI, but at least it’s conceded that not everyone was enchanted by Walt’s magic kingdom, and that there were murky shadows in his own biography, like an abusive father. Heck, they even show him smoking, and that’s way worse than being an FBI informant these days.
Taken strictly on its own terms, Saving Mr. Banks works exceedingly well as mainstream entertainment. At first a classic fish out of water, with her haughty Old World ways when she lands in laid back informal 1961 Hollywood, Mrs. Travers (as she insists she should be called) is gradually won round by Walt and staff. Three men in particular are tasked with coaxing her script approval and trust: writer Don DaGradi (Bradley Whitford), composer Richard Sherman (Jason Schwartzman) and his lyricist brother Robert Sherman (B.J. Novak). The last two really have their work cut out for them given Travers is only mildly less resistant to having songs in the film than she is to animation.
As they slug it out in the rehearsal room over the script (she even quibbles over the wording of the scene headings), golden-hued flashbacks to Travers’ own Australian childhood uncover the scars that her writing of Mary Poppins would try to heal. Like Mr. Banks in the book, Pamela’s father Travers Goff (Colin Farrell, doing his best work for some time) was a bank manager who had a temper at times, but there the parallels end. An alcoholic whose irresponsibility pulled his family down the social scale, he’s seen as a child-man always eager to participate in their games. Clearly, Mary Poppins the character inherited something from him, as she did from Pamela’s aunt (Rachel Griffiths), who shows up with a carpetbag full of wonders just when the family most needs help. Ultimately, Mary Poppins turns out to be an idealized version of Pamela Travers, nee Helen Goff, herself, and it’s only when Disney figures out how to lift the veil over her own backstory that he can persuade her to let go of her creation.
The scene where Disney plays amateur shrink to secure the signature he needs is the script’s clumsiest, most irritating misstep, despite the laudable efforts of Hanks and Thompson to save it. Profoundly anachronistic with its smattering of psychobabble notions, it represents a shameless bit of self-flattery aimed at the industry and, no doubt, awards bodies with lines like, “It's what we storytellers do: we restore order with imagination.” Likewise, more anachronism in the service of sappiness is deployed elsewhere when Travers presents her chauffeur (Paul Giamatti, otherwise endearing) with a list of famous people -- Albert Einstein, Frida Kahlo, etc. -- with disabilities to provide inspiration for his wheelchair-bound daughter. Oh come on, barely anyone outside Mexico or France and a few art buffs knew who Frida Kahlo was in 1961.
However, these are faults most mainstream viewers probably won’t notice or even mind, especially if they read Saving Mr. Banks as a charming work of fiction, not that much more fantastical than stories about nannies that fly. Folks will swallow anything if it’s done well enough, a point charmingly made near the end when Travers attends the premiere at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. For the most part, the camera holds on Travers face, bathed in the reflected bluish light from the screen, as she cries at the parts we’ve learned meant the most to her, smiles at the jokes and winces during the dancing penguins.
As well as the outstanding performances by the leads and supporting cast, sturdy craft contributions from all departments add polish, while the use of what looks like the real Disney Burbank facility, adds veracity. (The Australian locales, however, are far less convincing-looking.) The picture gets an extra lift from the extensive use of the cracking original songs written by the Sherman Brothers for Mary Poppins, which mesh nicely with Thomas Newman's newly composed score. They're inventively woven into the story and used for dramatic counterpoint, making this on one level a musical in itself, but with borrowed songs. Presumably, the producers of Saving Mr. Banks had no trouble clearing the rights.
Opens: December 13 (Disney)
Production: Ruby Films, Essential Media & Entertainment production in association with BBC Films,
Hopscotch Features
Cast: Emma Thompson, Tom Hanks, Colin Farrell, Annie Rose Buckley, Paul Giamatti, Rachel Griffiths, Bradley Whitford, Jason Schwartzman, Ruth Wilson, B.J. Novalk
Director: John Lee Hancock
Screenwriter: Kelly Marcel, Sue Smith
Producers: Ian Collie, Alison Owen, Philip Steuer
Executive producers: Christine Langan, Troy Lum, Andrew Mason, Paul Trijbits
Director of photography: John Schwartzman
Production designer: Michael Corenblith
Costume designer: Daniel Orlandi
Editors: Mark Livolsi
Music: Thomas Newman
PG-13 rating, 126 minutes
