Tag: Arts and Humanities

Roadhouse CEO unloads $6.9M in stock; tragedy strikes Calif. Taco Bells when pregnant worker killed in car crash; fiancé is employee, too; Ford extends $400K supercar production

A news summary focused on 10 big employers; updated 8:55 p.m.

Ford 2017 GT supercar
An overhead photo of the 2017 GT; Ford will produce them for four years.
Kent Taylor
Taylor

TEXAS ROADHOUSE founder and CEO Kent Taylor sold $6.9 million of company stock at a hair more than $46 a share Tuesday through yesterday, according to a Securities and Exchange Commission filing. Taylor still owns 4.2 million shares worth $192 million at TXRH shares‘ closing price this afternoon of $45.47.

TACO BELL: In San Jose, Calif., a one-day-old baby boy was in critical condition at a South Bay hospital early this morning, after his 18-year-old mother died in a car accident Wednesday. Both the victim, Dulce Capetillo, and the infant’s father, her fiancé Pedro Cortes, were Taco Bell employees working the late shift. Capetillo’s brother was driving her to pick up Cortes at the Taco Bell where he worked. “I just can’t imagine the pain he is going through right now,” said Taco Bell area supervisor Jose Gonzalez. South Bay Taco Bells now have donation boxes in honor of Dulce; the company plans to match customer donations. And a GoFundMe page is also in place to help with funeral costs (ABC 7).

In Toledo, Ohio, a sheriff’s deputy has been fired after making what were considered inappropriate Facebook posts about Taco Bell employees he said had made vulgar remarks about him.

Deputy Thomas Hillenbrand, 57, a 19-year employee, was canned Wednesday. His Facebook post July 23 said a black employee and a co-worker inside the restaurant yelled “Black lives matter,” and laughed at him while he was in his car in the drive-thru. The deputy was in uniform at the time.

His Facebook post said: “I guess we’ll see if they’re still laughing after I call their corporate office on Monday and unload on someone.” He also encouraged fellow officers to boycott the restaurant. Replying to a comment on his post saying he should have reached through the drive-thru window, Hillenbrand wrote: “Couldn’t reach them. In the pre-camera days, Continue reading “Roadhouse CEO unloads $6.9M in stock; tragedy strikes Calif. Taco Bells when pregnant worker killed in car crash; fiancé is employee, too; Ford extends $400K supercar production”

In films this weekend at the Speed, Herzog asks: ‘Have the monks stopped meditating? They all seem to be tweeting’

In this year’s “Lo and Behold,” The Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog “dissects the virtual world from its beginnings to its speculative future possibilities,” according to the Speed Museum Cinema. “Always asking provocative questions, Herzog investigates the ways the online world has transformed virtually every aspect of the way contemporary life is conducted — from business to education, space travel to healthcare and to how we as humans interact with each other.”

98 minutes. Rated PG-13. A selection of the 2016 Sundance Film Festival; BAM Cinefest and 2016 AFI Docs. Watch the trailer:

Tickets: $9, adults (non-Speed members); $7 members. Click on a showtime below for more details and to buy tickets.

About the cinema

Speed Art Museum logoThe 142-seat theater is part of the newly renovated museum’s expansion. It’s equipped with state-of-the-art technology, including 16-mm, 35-mm and DCI-compliant 4K digital projection systems.

Lawrence’s ‘Red Sparrow’ may cast Australian actor Edgerton

Jennifer LawrenceBoulevard reviews the latest media coverage of the Oscar-winning Louisville native in our exclusive Jennifer Lawrence Diary™. Today’s news, rated on a scale of 1-5 stars:

Three starsOne of Jennifer Lawrence‘s next projects — espionage thriller “Red Sparrow” — is inching forward with reports Australian actor Joel Edgerton is in talks to co-star. The film, scheduled for release November 2017, according to Variety, is based on 33-year CIA veteran Jason Matthews2013 novel of the same name.

Deadline, which reported Egerton’s negotiations today, describes the plot:

Red Sparrow“The book is set in contemporary Russia, and state intelligence officer Dominika Egorova (Lawrence) struggles to survive in the cast-iron bureaucracy of post-Soviet intelligence. Drafted against her will to become a “sparrow,” a trained seductress in the service, Dominika is assigned to operate against Nathaniel Nash (possibly Edgerton), a first-tour CIA officer who handles the agency’s most sensitive penetration of Russian intelligence. The two young intelligence officers collide in a charged atmosphere of trade craft, deception, and inevitably, a sexual attraction that threatens their careers and the security of America’s valuable mole in Moscow.”

The Red Sparrow script has a tenuous connection to one of Lawrence’s previous movies: It’s a rewritten version of one originally by the author of 2013’s “American Hustle.”

Lawrence, now juggling multiple projects, turns 26 on Aug. 15.

Edgerton, 42, played Tom Buchanan in “The Great Gatsby,” the 2013 remake based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel set partly in Louisville. Here’s a clip featuring Edgerton and co-stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Carey Mulligan:

Now at the Speed Cinema: ‘The Seer: A portrait of Wendell Berry’

From the Speed’s website: “Traversing four seasons of the farming cycle in Henry County, Ky., this documentary illustrates Wendell Berry’s agrarian philosophy. Berry moved back to the Henry County rural community in 1965, where he settled into a life of farming, writing, and teaching, with the relationship of the individual to land and community being central to his work. Within one generation, the balance between these core issues has been tested by the commercialization of agriculture.” Here’s a clip:

Directed by Laura Dunn. Co-producers: Gill Holland of Louisville; Nick Offerman of “Parks and Recreation”; and Owsley Brown III, a documentary filmmaker in San Francisco.

Tickets: $7 for members; $9 for non-members. Show times, with links to buy tickets:

* director Dunn will be there in person.

 

About the cinema

Speed Art Museum logoThe 142-seat theater is part of the newly renovated museum’s expansion. It’s equipped with state-of-the-art technology, including 16-mm, 35-mm and DCI-compliant 4K digital projection systems.

At tonight’s Forecastle Festival, the chillwave Georgia man behind ‘Portlandia’s’ dreamy theme music

There are so many things to anticipate at the annual three-day Forecastle music festival starting tomorrow at Waterfront Park, including artisanal corn dogs (they had them last year), and luxury, air-conditioned bathrooms for those who’ve sprung for $400 weekend VIP tickets.

Forecastle logoBut most of all, a performance by Washed Out from 8:30 to 9:30 p.m. ET tonight. Recorded by Ernest Greene — that’s him in the photo, top — Washed Out is known to many for “Feel It All Around,” the opening theme for the hit IFC series “Portlandia.” Listen to it in the music player in the sidebar, left, or in the video, below:

Greene, 33, was born in Perry, Ga. His recordings fall within genres that include chillwave, and dreampop, according to Wikipedia. From Forecastle’s bio:

His music has been nothing if not dreamy, but for his second full-length, he’s taken the idea of letting your mind wander to another state a huge leap further. On “Paracosm,” the musician explores the album’s namesake phenomenon, where people create detailed imaginary worlds. The concept has been used to describe fantasy lands like Tolkien’s Middle Earth and C.S. Lewis’ Narnia, and it’s at the heart of the 2004 documentary “In The Realms Of The Unreal,” about outsider artist Henry Darger.

Fund for the Arts raises $9 million, but campaign illustrates risk of shifting Louisville economy

The Fund for the Arts said it received $8.7 million in contributions during its fundraising campaign ended last month, up slightly from last year’s $8.6 million. The money will be distributed to more than 100 charities, schools and other nonprofits to support arts programs, according to The Courier-Journal.

Fund for the Arts logoBut in announcing the figures, the 67-year-old organization warned Louisville’s economy has made it harder to raise more money, especially when big contributions from companies such as GE Appliances and Humana may be threatened by ownership changes.

The Humana Foundation is one of the fund’s biggest supporters. Of the $8.3 million it gave to charity in 2014, $366,000 went to the arts fund, according to the foundation’s most recent IRS tax return. Only six other charities got more:

With $179 million, the Humana Foundation is the fourth-largest foundation in Louisville, according to Boulevard’s database of richest nonprofits. While it’s legally separate from the company, their leadership overlaps. The foundation’s five directors are Humana CEO Bruce Broussard; General Counsel Christopher Todoroff; board member David A. Jones Jr.; his father, company co-founder David A. Jones Sr., and Chairman Michael McCallister, a retired Humana CEO and former chairman.

Michael McCallister
McCallister

It’s unclear whether Aetna would change any of those officers — and the foundation’s giving, too — assuming the Hartford insurer completes its $37 billion purchase of Humana. That deal is subject to final regulatory approval, a hurdle that’s recently grown higher within the Department of Justice’s antitrust division.

Related: As GE Foundation gets new chief, its Louisville ties are less certain after Haier deal.