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JAKE COYLE, AP Film Writer
That I was one of the relative few to see "The Interview" is not a boast I take any pleasure in.
It's with heavy sadness, not pride, that I review Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's North Korean farce. As of Thursday morning, the film has been shelved just a week ahead of its planned release due to terrorist threats by hackers said to be connected to North Korea. The movie's prospects of ever seeing the light of day are very much in doubt.
Yet "The Interview" is already assured of cinematic infamy. Whatever its future, it will go down as the satire that provoked an authoritarian dictatorship, roiled Sony Pictures in a massive hacking attack and prompted new questions of cyber warfare, corporate risk-tasking and comedic audacity.
The movie's fate is a travesty, regardless of its merits. But what of its merits?
Though "The Interview," directed by Rogen and Goldberg, never quite manages the duo's calibrated blend of sincerity and over-the-top crudeness, it nevertheless usually pulses with an unpredictable absurdity and can-you-believe-we're-doing-this glee. Its greatest charm is that it so happily brings the silliest, most ludicrous of knives (a preening James Franco, lots of butt jokes) to North Korea's militarized gunfight.
Rogen plays Aaron Rapoport, a journalism-school grad who has found himself, ignobly, producing an "Extra!"-like entertainment news show, "Skylark Tonight," hosted by his friend Dave Skylark (Franco). The show traffics in the fluff of celebrity with occasional scoops. (Eminem makes a funny cameo as himself with the out-of-the-blue confession that he's gay.)
When it's learned that North Korea leader Kim Jong Un is a fan of the show, they maneuver to land an interview for a kind of modern "Frost/Nixon" televised tete-a-tete, though one with the same penchant for ascots. (Franco's Skylark is an extreme dandy who speaks largely in over-used slang and has a strange obsession with "Lord of the Rings.")
Before their trip to Pyongyang, a CIA agent (Lizzy Caplan) recruits the pair with the mission to turn their big interview into an assassination. "Take him out," she instructs before putting them through training.
PETER ORSI, Associated Press
ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press
HAVANA (AP) —
The restoration of diplomatic ties between Cuba and the United States has unleashed expectations of even more momentous changes on an island that often seems frozen in a past of classic cars and crumbling Art Deco buildings.
On the first full day after the surprise announcement Thursday, many Cubans expressed hope that it will mean greater access to jobs and the creature comforts taken for granted elsewhere, and lift a struggling socialist economy where staples like meat, cooking oil and toilet paper are often hard to come by.
That yearning, however, was tempered with anxiety. Some fear a cultural onslaught, or that crime and drugs, both rare in Cuba, will become common along with visitors from the United States. There is also concern that the country will become just another Caribbean destination.
"There are things that shouldn't get lost, that have gone very well here even though Cubans complain," said Nayda Martinez, a 52-year-old chemical engineer in Havana.
"I don't want the system, the country or the regime, whatever you want to call it, to change," Martinez said. "What the people want is to live better."
That mix of optimism and concern was a common refrain Thursday among Cubans trying to digest the implications of such a seismic shift between the two Cold War rivals after more than half a century of bad blood.
Trade with the U.S. will help the country develop, said 55-year-old homemaker Maria Betancourt, but she worried it would bring another kind of isolation.
"I wouldn't want to lose that uniquely Cuban solidarity, or for this to become a more consumerist or individualist society," she said.
DENISE LAVOIE, AP Legal Affairs Writer
BOSTON (AP) —
Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev returned to court Thursday for the first time since he was arraigned in July 2013, and he received a shout of encouragement from the mother-in-law of a man who was shot and killed while being questioned by law enforcement after the bombings.
Security was tight at the federal courthouse in Boston for Tsarnaev's final pretrial conference. Tensions ran high, and one bombing victim had a testy exchange with protesters outside.
During the brief court hearing, U.S. District Court George O'Toole Jr. made no rulings, saying he would rule in writing on pending motions, including the defense's latest push to move the trial out of Boston.
David Bruck, one of Tsarnaev's lawyers, told the judge that the defense plans to file a motion to delay the trial, which is now scheduled to begin on Jan. 5 with jury selection. Bruck did not say how long of a delay the defense will seek.
At one point, the mother-in-law of Ibragim Todashev called out to Tsarnaev in Russian in the courtroom. Elena Teyer said she told him: "We pray for you. Be strong, my son. We know you are innocent."
Later, in English, she yelled to the law enforcement officers escorting her out of the room: "Stop killing innocent people. Stop killing innocent boys."
Tsarnaev never flinched or acknowledged the shouts.