HARVEY WEINSTEIN IS CONVICTED OF RAPE IN LOS ANGELES TRIAL: According to AP News, a jury in Los Angeles found Harvey Weinstein guilty of rape on Monday (December 19th) after nine days of deliberation. This marks the movie mogul’s second criminal trial, as he is currently two years into a 23-year sentence for a rape and sexual assault conviction in New York. Weinstein was found guilty of three charges related to an accuser known as Jane Doe 1, but the jury was unable to reach a verdict regarding allegations by his other accusers, including Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Governor Gavin Newsom.
TWITTER USERS BOYCOTT ‘AVATAR: THE WAY OF WATER:’ According to The Los Angeles Times, a social media campaign led by Native Americans is asking people to boycott James Cameron‘s Avatar: The Way of Water. Asdzáá Tłʼéé honaaʼéí, a Navajo artist and co-chair of Indigenous Pride Los Angeles, tweeted on Sunday (December 18th), “Join Natives & other Indigenous groups around the world in boycotting this horrible & racist film. Our cultures were appropriated in a harmful manner to satisfy some white flag emoji man’s savior complex.”
STEVEN SPIELBERG ‘TRULY REGRETS’ THE IMPACT ‘JAWS’ HAS HAD ON THE SHARK POPULATION: On a recent episode of BBC’s Desert Island Discs, Steven Spielberg shared the remorse he feels about the effect Jaws has had on the shark population. “I truly and to this day regret the decimation of the shark population because of the book and the film. I really, truly regret that,” he said. According to The New York Post, researcher George Burgess said in 2016, “When the movie came out, there was a collective testosterone rush that went up and down the East Coast of the United States,” which increased the level of shark hunting.