Unreleased songs recorded by Jimi Hendrix between 1968 and 1970 will be released next year.

 

Experience Hendrix and Legacy Recordings announced Wednesday that they will release Hendrix’s “Both Sides of the Sky” on March 9, 2018. The 13-track album includes 10 songs that have never been released.

 

Hendrix died in 1970 at age 27. The new album is the third volume in a trilogy from the guitar hero’s archive. “Valleys of Neptune” was released in 2010, followed by “People, Hell and Angels,” released in 2013.

 

Eddie Kramer, who worked as recording engineer on every Hendrix album made during the artist’s life, said in an interview that 1969 was “a very experimental year” for Hendrix, and that he was blown away as he worked on the new album.

 

“The first thing is you put the tape on and you listen to it and the hairs just stand up right on the back of your neck and you go, `Oh my God. This is too (expletive) incredible,” said Kramer. “It’s an incredible thing. Forty, 50 years later here we are and I’m listening to these tapes going, ‘Oh my God, that’s an amazing performance.”’

 

Many of the album’s tracks were recorded by Band of Gypsys, Hendrix’s trio with Buddy Miles and Billy Cox. Stephen Stills appears on two songs: “$20 Fine” and “Woodstock.”

 

“It sounds like Crosby, Stills & Nash except it’s on acid, you know,” Kramer, laughing, said of “$20 Fine.”

 

“Jimi is just rocking it,” he added. “It’s an amazing thing.”

 

Johnny Winter appears on “Things I Used to Do”; original Jimi Hendrix Experience members Mitch Mitchell and Noel Redding are featured on “Hear My Train A Comin”’; and Lonnie Youngblood is on “Georgia Blues.”

 

Kramer produced the album alongside John McDermott and Janie Hendrix, the legend’s sister and president of Experience Hendrix. Kramer said though “Both Sides of the Sky” is the last of the trilogy, someone could find new Hendrix music in an attic or a basement, which could be re-worked.

 

He also said they have live footage of Hendrix, some just audio and some in video, which they plan to release.

 

“It was amazing just to watch him in the studio or live. The brain kicks off the thought process — it goes through his brain through his heart and through his hands and onto the guitar, and it’s a seamless process,” Kramer said. “It’s like a lead guitar and a rhythm guitar at the same time, and it’s scary. There’s never been another Jimi Hendrix, at least in my mind.”
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A memoir by the late Japanese Emperor Hirohito about the years leading up to World War II has been purchased by a Japanese cosmetic surgeon who has has been condemned for denying the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany and imperial Japanese forces.

Katsuya Takasu purchased the handwritten document Wednesday from Bonham’s auction house in New York City for $275,000, nearly double its expected top price, at an auction in Manhattan on Wednesday.

The 173-page document was dictated to Hirohito’s aides soon after the end of the war. It was created at the request of General Douglas MacArthur, whose administration controlled Japan at the time.

The memoir, also known as the imperial monologue, covers events from the Japanese assassination of Manchurian warlord Zhang Zuolin in 1928 to the emperor’s surrender broadcast recorded Aug. 14, 1945.

The document’s contents caused a sensation when they were first published in Japan in 1990, just after the emperor’s death.

The two volumes are each bound with strings, the contents written vertically in pencil.

It was transcribed by Hidenari Terasaki, an imperial aide and former diplomat who served as a translator when Hirohito met with McArthur.

The monologue is believed among historians to be a carefully crafted text intended to defend Hirohito’s responsibility in case he was prosecuted after the war. A 1997 documentary on Japan’s NHK television found an English translation of the memoir that supports that view.

According to the Associated Press, the manuscript, was in the possession of the daughter of Terasaki. Hirohito wrote the document in 1946, a year after Japan surrendered to Allied forces and the emperor faced the possibility of being tried as a war criminal.

Takasu says he purchased the document so it can be kept in Japan.

Takasu has been condemned by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Jewish human rights group, for using social media to praise Nazi Germany and describe the Holocaust and the Nanjing massacre in China as fabrications.

Japanese forces swept through Nanjing in December 1937 and killed scores of civilians and soldiers over a brutal six-week period.

The transcript was kept by Terasaki’s American wife, Gwen Terasaki, after his death in 1951 and then handed over to their daughter, Mariko Terasaki Miller, and her family.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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Han Solo is dead. Luke Skywalker is back, but changed. And Leia Organa’s story will soon be coming to an end. 

The Star Wars that inspired four decades of passionate fandom appears to be slowly but surely fading as “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” prepares to descend on Dec. 15, giving way to a newer generation of intergalactic rebels and their foes, like Rey and Kylo Ren, and a fresh voice behind the endeavor in writer-director Rian Johnson (“Looper”).

J.J. Abrams’ “The Force Awakens” set the stage for this new era of the franchise, but “The Last Jedi” has to move it forward and keep audiences interested for the next one too.

After all these years and billions of dollars, Star Wars isn’t exactly a scrappy underdog anymore, but the franchise is in somewhat uncharted territory. The prequels did their own damage, but at least no one had to say goodbye to their original heroes.

And then there’s the seemingly impossible standard set by that other Star Wars sequel, “The Empire Strikes Back.” 

​Premiere is Dec. 9

Besides the main cast, filmmakers and some Lucasfilm and Walt Disney Co. brass, no one will see “The Last Jedi” until the Los Angeles premiere on Dec. 9. And determining what exactly audiences should expect is a bit like trying to assemble a puzzle with no picture and most of the pieces missing. The cast has left some adjective breadcrumbs (“intense,” “emotional,” “intimate,” “cinematic”) but for the most part, it’s a mystery.  

“For me, ‘The Last Jedi’ is not a particularly happy story to tell, but it’s just my part,” Mark Hamill says cryptically. Hamill, 66, returns to play Luke Skywalker after being seen in only a few frames of “The Force Awakens,” which ends on a wind-swept cliff as the young protege Rey (Daisy Ridley) approaches him looking for training from the missing Jedi. Luke and Rey are just one of the new pairings promised for the film, which finds every character out of their comfort zone and facing new challenges as the Resistance organizes to go up against the First Order. 

 “It’s got so much going on,” Hamill adds. “You can cut from the more somber scenes I have to the action/adventure, the suspense, the humor … I’ve only seen it once but I thought, “This is too much information to process.’”

The marketing campaign, no doubt playing into the tone set by “Empire,” has focused on the darkness and intensity of “The Last Jedi,” but Johnson says that’s only one element. He stresses that it is, first and foremost, a Star Wars movie. To him, that means capturing that thing that makes you want to “run out of the theater and into your backyard” to play with your spaceship toys — even without the curmudgeonly wit of Harrison Ford’s Han Solo.

“That’s what everyone was concerned about going in: How do you do it without him?” Johnson, 43, says. “I saw so much potential for humor in it. I was looking at every single character and trying to find opportunities to break the tension. I think people are going to be surprised by how fun and light on its feet it is.” 

Expanded roster

In addition to Luke and Rey, the film brings back Carrie Fisher as Leia in her last film role (Fisher died after filming had wrapped), Adam Driver’s Kylo Ren, fresh off murdering his father Han Solo, the mysterious Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis), Domnhall Gleeson’s General Hux, the ace pilot Poe (Oscar Isaac), the ex-Stormtrooper Finn (John Boyega) and his old boss Captain Phasma (Gwendoline Christie), Chewbacca, the droids and a host of newcomers, like Laura Dern’s purple-haired Vice Admiral Holdo, a maintenance tech, Rose (Kelly Marie Tran), a hacker (Benicio Del Toro) and some cute little creatures called Porgs. 

His script, which he was able to write while “The Force Awakens” was being made, took some of the cast aback at first. 

“I was going, ‘Uh, I’m not sure about this,’” Ridley says. “It just took us all a second to be like, ‘Ok this is where the story is heading.’” 

​The new boyfriend

Johnson jokes that he’s like the new boyfriend at Thanksgiving dinner who everyone has to get used to.

“(Rian) had a different challenge which was to expand the Star Wars universe further with more inventive ideas, taking more risks,” Boyega says. “He was a real fan. I feel like he ticked off his Star Wars fanboy theories just one by one with this film.”

That fandom has also helped Johnson, who Hamill refers to as his Obi-Wan, reach a sort of zen-like state with the film. It also doesn’t hurt that Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, who has not been afraid to make tough decisions and fire or bench directors if something isn’t working, was so pleased with their collaboration and the resulting film that she has already enlisted Johnson to develop a new Star Wars trilogy separate from the Skywalker saga (he’ll write and direct the first). 

 

Loyal fanbase

Now it’s just a matter of putting “The Last Jedi” out in the world. Financially, there’s not much to worry about — it’s tracking to open somewhere in the $200 million range (far below “The Force Awakens”’ $248 million debut, but stunning nonetheless). Also box office and the expectations and hopes of a loyal fanbase, who have been burned before, are two very different things.

“Having been a Star Wars fan myself for the past 40 years, I know intimately how passionate they are about it and how everyone has stuff they love and hate in every single movie. That takes the pressure off a little bit just thinking, `Ok, there’s going to be stuff that everyone likes, there’s going to be stuff that people don’t like and it’s going to be a mixture,”’ Johnson says. 

And with a smile and a shrug, he adds: “That’s what being a Star Wars fan is.”
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Six women filed a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein on Wednesday, claiming that the movie mogul’s actions to cover up assaults amounted to civil racketeering.

The lawsuit was filed at a federal court in New York seeking to represent a class of “dozens, if not hundreds” of women who say they were assaulted by Weinstein.

The lawsuit claims that a coalition of companies and people became part of the growing “Weinstein Sexual Enterprise” and that they worked with Weinstein to conceal his widespread sexual harassment and assaults.

“The Weinstein Sexual Enterprise had many participants, grew over time as the obfuscation of Weinstein’s conduct became more difficult to conceal,” the suit said.

A lawyer for Weinstein declined comment.

According to the lawsuit, actresses and other women in the film industry were lured to industry events, hotel rooms, Weinstein’s home, office meetings or auditions under the pretense that they were to discuss a project.

Plaintiffs included the scriptwriter and actress Louisette Geiss and the actresses Katherine Kendall, Zoe Brock, Sarah Ann Thomas, Melissa Sagemiller and Nanette Klatt.

The Associated Press generally doesn’t name alleged victims of sexual assault without their permission. All of the women have told their stories publicly.

At least 75 women have come forward in the media to detail accounts of assault, harassment and inappropriate conduct by Weinstein. Weinstein’s representatives have denied all accusations of non-consensual sex, but no charges have been filed.

Weinstein, 65, is being investigated by police in Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, New York and London

Weinstein was ousted from the movie company he founded following a barrage of sexual harassment allegations that began with a bombshell New York Times article in early October. Since then, numerous prominent men in entertainment, business and politics and the media have been hit with allegations of improper behavior with women.

 
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Women who say they were sexually harassed or mistreated by powerful men in television news have banded together to form a support network aimed at changing a newsroom culture they say has given men a free pass to misbehave for decades.

The women behind the Press Forward initiative tell The Associated Press they want a zero-tolerance policy for sexual misconduct at networks, better awareness of legal rights for women coming into the industry and better accountability for executives to ensure safety and improvements.

“Women should not have to go to work and worry that something like this is going to happen to them,” said Eleanor McManus, who said she was a 21-year-old job seeker when then-ABC News political reporter Mark Halperin tried to kiss her during a meeting in his office. “Women should not worry that mentors may act in an aggressive manner toward them. That’s not fair.”

Press Forward evolved over the last two months after McManus and other women went public with allegations against Halperin, CBS and PBS host Charlie Rose and NBC’s “Today” show host Matt Lauer, and others.

Halperin has said that he is “profoundly sorry for the pain and anguish” he has caused and, in reading the women’s accounts, recognized “conduct for which I feel profound guilt and responsibility.” Rose and Lauer have also offered apologies, while saying some the allegations are untrue. All have been fired.

This was the second wave of an industry-wide reckoning that began at Fox News with the removal last year of Fox News chief Roger Ailes and the dismissal in April of the network’s star host Bill O’Reilly. But the most recent revelations came as many Hollywood and other media executives have faced allegations, and more network women have come forward.

At first, McManus and a small group shared stories and hugs over drinks. They kept in touch via text messages and private Facebook groups, including one called “The Silver Lining.” Now they have reached out to other women with shared experiences to build a growing coalition.

“Nobody here is wallowing in their pain and anger,” said Dianna Goldberg May, a former ABC News researcher who said Halperin demanded she close the door and sit on his lap in his office in the mid-1990s when she was 23. “We are doing something to effect positive change in the workplace.”

The group’s first mission: figuring out what’s needed to make the television news business more equitable and effective. The women say they’ll spend the next six months talking with everyone from interns to executives and designing best practices that tear down the status quo.

After Lauer’s firing, NBC initiated a review of its handling of the matter and implemented in-person training on sexual harassment awareness and appropriate behavior in the workplace.

McManus said some of the networks have already expressed an interest in working with Press Forward.

“There are many reasons to have an industry-wide conversation about how we’re doing and how we’re living up to our norms,” said McManus, a co-founder of the Washington, D.C. public relations firm Trident DMG. “This is, perhaps, the most pressing because this is about the shameful power imbalance that has been in place too long.”

They already have plenty of ideas.

May, now a lawyer, wants the government to give sexual harassment victims more time to file a complaint. Currently, they have up to 300 days.

McManus wants newsrooms to evolve so women at all levels are not afraid to report wrongdoing by a top anchor or producer.

“We stayed silent because we thought we were the only ones,” said McManus. “We didn’t think that this happened to others, and that’s why we stayed silent so long. The cult of silence is finally broken.”

Emily Miller tweeted that Halperin sexually assaulted her while she was a researcher at ABC News. Lara Setrakian was 24 when she says Halperin kissed and touched her while they talked politics in his office.

They said they learned later that some people at the network had been aware of Halperin’s behavior, but that it didn’t stop. Setrakian said Halperin’s treatment of young women was considered an “open secret” in some circles.

“There’s clearly a problem here,” said Setrakian, now the chief executive of the digital media outlet News Deeply. “They should be launching rigorous investigations on how to fix the problem.”

Changing the culture of television news so that men and women are on equal footing – with the same opportunities for advancement – is vital to ensuring its future, Setrakian said. That means not only eliminating the sexual misconduct that has caused scores of women to leave the industry, she said, but getting rid of double standards that judge women on their appearance.

“The current culture is muddling the meritocracy,” Setrakian said. “It’s pushing talented people out. It’s allowing toxic behavior to affect the performance and contribution of certain colleagues. That’s bad for business.”

Marcy McGinnis, who worked her way from secretary to senior vice president at CBS News, said as much as women should be told what resources are available to them if there is an incident, men need to know how to act in the workplace.

“Then we wouldn’t have to train women how to deal with it,” said McGinnis, who now works at the Alan Alda Center for Communicating Science at Stony Brook University. “Why don’t we go to the source and fix that?”
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Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is working on a book about his years in former President Gerald Ford’s administration.

Threshold Editions tells The Associated Press on Wednesday that “When the Center Held” is scheduled for publication in May.

Rumsfeld was chief of staff and then defense secretary under Ford, who became president in 1974 after the Watergate scandal led to Richard Nixon’s resignation. Rumsfeld says in a statement that he’ll offer Ford as proof that leaders can “rise to the challenge” when needed most.

Previous books by Rumsfeld include the best-selling “Known and Unknown: A Memoir,” which includes some reflections on the Ford years.

Financial terms for the new book were not disclosed.

Rumsfeld is represented by the Washington-based Javelin agency, whose other clients include former FBI head James Comey.
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When Marvel’s The Punisher debuted on Netflix last month, it was greeted with great interest and high anticipation.

But it arrived as just one of many comic-book adaptations. The Punisher is only the latest in a flood now comprising some 28 shows across nine broadcast, cable and streaming platforms, with no end in sight.

Granted, all comic-book shows aren’t created equal.

AMC’s The Walking Dead, beset by zombies, differs markedly from the teen adventures of Archie Andrews on the CW’s Riverdale and from Amazon’s superhero spoof The Tick.

But the majority exists within either of two expansive brands, not dissimilar to Pepsi and Coke.

One is DC, which (with the midseason arrival of Black Lightning on the CW) will be represented by nine shows on three networks. The other is Marvel with 13 shows arrayed on six outlets, chiefly Netflix, which currently hosts a half-dozen of its own.

That all adds up to more spandex get-ups than you’d find in an aerobics class. But before concluding that superheroes have taken over the small screen, it’s worth noting a few things.

Trends

First, TV has always chased trends. Think: cop shows, doctor shows, lawyer shows. Way back in Fall 1959, more than two dozen Westerns were airing on just three broadcast networks. That would dwarf the current slate of comic book shows as a percentage of the 500-odd scripted original prime-time series airing in 2017.

“Comics-related television series have always been a mainstay of television,” said Paul Levinson, professor of communications and media studies at Fordham University. “Now it may seem like they’re all over the place. But that’s because there’s television all over the place.”

Even so, an upsurge of comic-based shows the past few years is unmistakable. Consider the CW, where, without Smallville after a decade’s run, no such shows were in its lineup in Fall 2011. But after a subsequent year-by-year buildup, it will boast seven this season.

Along the way, comics-related movies proliferated, while in October 2010, The Walking Dead made clear from its explosive arrival that a comic-book property could be a TV smash.

Technology

By then, the CGI (computer graphics imagery) that any superhero show requires had become more sophisticated yet sufficiently affordable for weekly TV productions. Conversely, superhero series were a perfect TV showcase for those ever-more-eye-popping special effects in a way that more realistic cop dramas or sitcoms could never be.

Meanwhile, the launch of more and more channels, especially streaming platforms with their limitless capacity, signaled an ever-escalating need to create content.

“With this extraordinary appetite for source material, decades of comic books offered material just waiting to be plucked,” said Robert Thompson, director of Syracuse University’s Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture.

Even better, they’re perfectly formatted for turning into TV.

“A comic book is like a TV storyboard: visual dialogue in frames,” Thompson said. “It’s so perfectly transferable. Comic books make the life of a network development executive really, really easy.”

Escapism

But none of this accounts for the apparently insatiable hunger for these shows with which the audience receives them.

“All of it, on some level, is escapism,” explained Brett Rogers, classics professor at the University of Puget Sound. “If I’m watching Jessica Jones for an hour, I’m not dealing with some real thing in my life. But the flip side is that comic-book-inspired shows can be spaces for thinking through some serious questions: Jessica Jones is an opportunity to explore sexual violence and post-traumatic stress disorder.

“The comic book industry famously has had to fight the stigma of being for just for children and idiots,” he said. But as gifted “kids and idiots” like Joss Whedon and Kevin Smith came of age and made waves by nurturing a comics ethos across multiple media including TV, comics gained new gravitas, respect and urgency.

“It’s now being normalized as shared myth of mainstream culture,” Rogers said. “It’s a common myth shared between readers and viewers, adolescents and adults, comics and film buffs alike — NOT just kids’ culture.”

Morality tales

Such shows, like the comics that spawned them, can offer welcome moral clarity in an ever-more-confounding world.

“It’s much easier to identify the heroes and villains, the good guys vs. the bad guys, than it is on other television shows,” says Levinson. “And, by and large, the good characters and heroes endure and triumph over adversity.”

“These characters were created as morality tales. They have a primal appeal, a simple appeal,” said Glen Weldon, a panelist on NPR’s “Pop Culture Happy Hour” podcast and author of Superman: The Unauthorized Biography.

“They represent our best selves. We are meant to look at them and strive to be more like them.”

And thanks to the internet, the appreciation of these comic-book heroes, whether they exist on the page or the screen, can now be enjoyed as a communal experience.

“In the past, if you grew up a nerd, you thought you were alone,” said Weldon. “Now you can go online and find people just like you who share your passion.”

Versatility

How long will this craze last? For more than a half-century, TV’s trends have burst on the scene, then flared out and been given up for dead. (How many current TV Westerns can you count?)

But comics-inspired TV may not follow that cycle.

“It may ebb as well as flow,” said Thompson, “but I don’t think there’s any reason to believe that this genre will exhaust itself as others have done, or that viewers will get tired of it. It’s such a versatile genre.”

Versatile, and with room to grow, he adds, unlike other genres that may have reached their peak. While the police procedural may well have plateaued creatively, “the comic-book genre is still maturing,” he said. “We’re still seeing it evolve.”
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