WEINSTEIN MAY FACE MORE CHARGES
Prosecutors in Los Angeles are reviewing eight cases accusing disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault, an official said Thursday.
The Los Angeles and Beverly Hills police departments each brought four investigations to prosecutors, according to Ricardo Santiago, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office.
The office will decide whether to move forward with prosecution. No charges have been filed, Santiago said. He did not know details about the allegations or when the cases were presented to prosecutors.
Juda Engelmayer, Weinstein’s publicist, said he had “nothing to add right now” in an email to The Associated Press.
District Attorney Jackie Lacey created a task force more than two years ago to handle the surge in sexual misconduct allegations against entertainment figures after the accusations against Weinstein launched the #Metoo movement. He has denied allegations of non-consensual sex.
Dozens of women, including actresses Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, Lupita Nyong’o and Ashley Judd, have accused Weinstein of sexual harassment, while actresses Asia Argento, Rose Mcgowan and others have accused the Oscar winner of raping them.
Weinstein is scheduled to stand trial Jan. 6 in New York on charges he raped a woman in a Manhattan hotel room in 2013 and performed a forcible sex act on a different woman in 2006. He has pleaded not guilty and says any sexual activity was consensual.
“Game of Thrones” author and television producer George R.R. Martin is adding bookstore owner to his résumé.
The fantasy writer quietly opened Beastly Books last month in Santa Fe next to the movie theater he revived in 2013, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.
The shop sells books by him and by local authors and “Game of Thrones” merchandise.
Martin, a longtime Santa Fe resident, wrote on his blog that he opened the bookstore in part because the lobby of his Jean Cocteau Cinema theater was too small to display books by visiting authors.
Martin in June joined a New Mexico-based art collective known as Meow Wolf.
He will serve as “chief world builder” for a permanent installation inside a multidimensional Santa Fe mystery house.
Martin’s novel series, “A Song of Ice and Fire,” inspired the TV show “Game of Thrones.”
A brief kiss between two female characters was removed from screenings of “Star Wars: The Rise of
Skywalker” in Singapore, a country with restrictive laws against gay people.
Though lasting just a few seconds, the kiss was notable as the first overt appearance of gay characters in a “Star Wars” film. Disney cut the kiss to preserve the film’s PG-13 rating in Singapore, according to reports.
“The applicant has omitted a brief scene which under the film classification guidelines would require a higher rating,” a representative of Singapore’s media regulator, Infocomm Media Development Authority, told The Guardian.
The next-highest rating, NC-16, would have barred children under 16 from attending.