Names and faces
J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series, says she is working on a new children’s book. There could be a bit of a wait for it, though. Rowling told the BBC that she has not abandoned children’s fiction, even though she is now busy writing detective novels under the pen name Robert Galbraith and working on a screenplay for the film adaptation of her book Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. “I’ve written part of a children’s book, which I really love. I will definitely finish that,” she said. Rowling’s literary agent, Neil Blair, said Wednesday that work on her children’s book “is ongoing, with no plans to publish as yet.”
After a week of backlash from police groups threatening to boycott his new film,
Quentin Tarantino stood by his comments about police brutality and said he wouldn’t be intimidated from voicing his opinion. Tarantino told the Los Angeles Times on Tuesday that law enforcement groups are trying to bully him. “Instead of dealing with the problem of police brutality in this country, better they single me out,” the film director told the newspaper. “And their message is very clear. It’s to shut me down. It’s to discredit me. It is to intimidate me. It is to shut my mouth, and even more important than that, it is to send a message out to any other prominent person that might feel the need to join that side of the argument.” The director’s response showed that he wasn’t retracting his statements from last month during an anti-police brutality rally in New York City’s Brooklyn borough.. Tarantino said he was “on the side of the murdered.” His comments led to a growing number of police groups calling for the boycott of Tarantino’s December release of The Hateful Eight. They include the National Association of Police Organizations and groups in New York, New Jersey, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia. “Tarantino lives in a fantasy world,” Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck said Tuesday. “That’s how he makes his living. His movies are extremely violent, but he doesn’t understand violence. He doesn’t understand the nature of the violence that police officers confront. Unfortunately he mistakes lawful use of force for murder, and it’s not.” Tarantino told the Los Angeles Times that “it feels lousy to have a bunch of police mouthpieces call me a cop hater. I’m not a cop hater. That is a misrepresentation. … What I said was the truth. I’m used to people misrepresenting me. I’m used to being misunderstood.” On Tuesday, the Weinstein Co., the distributor of Tarantino’s films, said it supported Tarantino’s right to say what he wants.