The New York Times

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VOL. CLXIV. . . No.56,633

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NEW YORK | TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2014

© 2014 The New York Times

71˚

U.S. and Allies Strike Sunni Militants in Syria

57˚

Today, Mostly sunny, a light breeze, high 71 Tonight, mainly clear, cool, low 57

BUSINESS DAY B1-9 Rules to Curb Moves Overseas A Syrian family was among the more than 130,000 who fled to Turkey to escape Islamic State militants.

The administration, sidestepping congressional action, announced rules that moake it harder for United States companies to relocate overseas through mergers to gain tax benefits. PAGE B1

INTERNATIONAL A4-14 Secrecy Binds Afghan Deal Western officials pressed the Afghan election commission to declare Ashraf Ghani, left, president-elect without releasing a final vote count, a condition set by the losing candidate for unity rule.

By HELENE COOPER and ERIC SCHMITT

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NEW YORK A23-27 Bear Kills Man in New Jersey A Rutgers University student died while hiking with friends at a nature preserve, the first fatal bear attack recorded in the state since the 1850s. PAGE A25

SCIENCE TIMES D1-8 Nature, Unbalanced A special issue exanmines the tradeoffs of climate change for wildlife and people the likely food supply of the future, and the species pised at the climate’s cuting edge. PAGE D1

NATIONAL A16-21 A Third Rail for Rabbis Debate zmong Jews about Israel has become so hearted that many rabbis are anguishing over what to say on the subject in their sermons during the High Holy Days. U L A S Y U N U S TO S U N / EU R O P E A N P R E S S P H OTO AG EN CY

Attacks From Air and Sea Open a Risky New Stage in the Conflict WASHINGTON — The United States and allies launched airstrikes against Sunni militants in Syria early Tuesday, unleashing a torrent of cruise missiles and precision-guided bombs from the air and sea on the militants’ de facto capital of Raqqa and along the porous Iraq border. American fighter jets and armed Predator and Reaper drones, flying

alongside warplanes from several Arab allies, struck a broad array of targets in territory controlled by the militants, known as the Islamic State. American defense officials said the targets included weapons supplies, depots, barracks and buildings the militants use for command and control. Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from United States Navy ships in the region.

The strikes are a major turning point in President Obama’s war against the Islamic State and open up a risky new stage of the American military campaign. Until now, the administration had bombed Islamic State targets only in Iraq, and had suggested it would be weeks if not months before the start of a bombing campaign against Islamic State targets in Syria. Bahrain, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates took part in the strikes, American officials said, although the Arab governments were not expected to announce their participation until later Tuesday. The new coalition’s makeup is significant because the United States was able to

recruit Sunni governments to take action against the Sunni militants of the Islamic State. The operation unites the squabbling states of the Persian Gulf. The strikes came less than two weeks after Mr. Obama announced in an address to the nation that he was authorizing an expansion of the military C O N T I N U ED O N PAG E A 1 2 ISIS HOLDS FIRM IN IRAQ

Iraqi forces have scarcely budged Islamic State fighters.

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FRENCH HOSTAGE TAKEN

Supporters of the Islamic State Said they had abducted a Frenchman in Algiers and threatened to kill him.

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North Carolina, In Political Flux,Is a Purple State

By ADAM NOSSITER

By RICHARD FAUSSET dumped in new graves, and a worker in a short-sleeve shirt carried away the stretcher, wearing only plastic bags over his hands as protection. The outlook for the day at King Tom Cemetery was busy. “We will need much more space,” said James C. O. Hamilton, the chief gravedigger, as a colleague cleared the CO N T I N U ED O N PAG E A 1 4

James Hamilton said of burying Ebola victims in Sierra Leone, “We will need much more space.” S A M M U EL A R A N DA FO R T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S

SILER CITY, N.C. — In Raleigh, conservative Republicans may be running North Carolina like they own it, but go almost anyplace in the state, even to this former textile town that looks like a movie-set re-creation of an older, more traditional South, and the political picture quickly blurs. At Chatham Industrial Supply, a hardware store here, its owner, Richard Kernodle, grumbled recently about what he called the “liberal artists” who have moved to this city of 8,100 — opening galleries, throwing pottery and generally bringing the kind of lifestyle and politics one might expect 45 minutes away in the progressive college town of Chapel Hill. Mr. Kernodle, 56, said that some of the newcomers wanted to paint murals on downtown buildings without securing the proper permits. They want gay rights taught in the schools. And he

has heard a rumor that some of them tend their gardens in the nude. So with liberals making inroads even in towns like Siler City, was it them or the conservatives who had the upper hand in North Carolina? Mr. Kernodle, a lifelong Republican, did not know: “I’ll tell you,” he said, “It’s a 50-50 thing here.” Unlike other Southern states, which have shifted decidedly rightward in recent years, North Carolina often seems like it is moving in both directions at once. Barack Obama shocked the political world by winning the state in 2008. Two years later, Republicans wrested control of both legislative houses for the first time in more than a century. Last year, aided by a new Republican governor, Pat McCrory, the legislature enacted one of the most far-reaching conservative agendas in the country,

ARTS C1-8 The Path Bill Cosby Blazed Mark Whitaker’s “Cosby:Hits Life and Times,” is dignified and distant, but still reminds readers why the comedian means so much to his fans. PAGE C1

FASHION A22 Toning It Down in Milan The Italian read-to-wear collections, once known for flesh and fantasia, moved to a more blandly choreographed tune this year. PAGE C1

M a r k W i l s o n /G e t t y I m a g e s

Intruder’s Past Raises Concern at White House By MICHAEL D. SHEAR and MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

accused of knowingly supporting specific terrorist acts in and around Israel during the second Palestinian uprising of the early 2000s. The verdict is expected to have a impact on similar legal efforts to hold financial institutions responsible for C O N T I N U ED O N PAG E A 2 6

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Jury Finds Arab Bank Liable for Aiding Terror

This article is by Benjamin Weiser, Michael Schwirts and Michael Winerip.

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

As alarm mounted this year over conditions at the Rikers Island jail complex, the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio largely managed to escape scrutiny, because the problems were rooted in its predecessor. But on Monday, the top federal prosecutor in Manhattan criticized the de

A federal jury on Monday found Arab Bank liable for supporting terrorism efforts connected to dozen attacks in the Middle East, the first time a bank has ever been held liable in a civil suit under a broad antiterrorism statute. Arab Bank, a major Middle Eastern bank with $46 billion in assets, was

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WASHINGTON — Secret Service officers stopped Omar Jose Gonzalez last month as he carried a hatchet in front of the White House, but let him go even though he had been arrested this summer in Virginia with a mini-arsenal of semiautomatic weapons, a sniper rifle and a map clearly marking the White House’s location. Prosecutors on Monday also said Mr. Gonzalez, 42, an Iraq war veteran who on Friday scaled an iron fence and made his way through the front door of the White House before he was apprehended, had 800 rounds of ammunition, two hatchets and a machete in his car when law enforcement officers searched it after Friday’s incident. A judge on Monday agreed to a request by the prosecutors that Mr.

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U.S. Attorney Says City Risks Rikers Lawsuit Blasio administration for the first time, suggesting that New York officials were not moving quickly enough to make reforms at Rikers and warning that his office stood ready to file a civil rights lawsuit against the city to force changes. He referred to an article in The New

As the array of genetic tests for cancer risks has grown, doctors worry that they may open a can of worms.

After six weeks of Western air support,

Fresh Graves Point Undercount of Ebola Toll FREETOWN, Sierra Leone — The gravedigger hacked at the cemetery’s dense undergrowth, clearing space for the day’s Ebola victims. A burial team, in protective suits torn with gaping holes, arrived with fresh bodies. The backs of the battered secondhand vans carrying the dead were closed with twisted, rusting wire. Bodies were

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After Gene Tests, Questions


Arts&Leisure

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 21, 2014

THEATER | MUSIC | FILM | DANCE | TELEVISION | ART

20 POP 14 FILM 16 FILM Exotic cinema from that other Georgia. A rare bond in the coal fields of Wales. Brooding with Perfume Genius. BY WILLIAM VAN METER BY J. HOBERMAN BY PATRICK HEALY

6 THEATER Scenes from a provocateur. BY ERIK PIEPENBURG

Art Man of Alcatraz The Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei is taking his vision to one of the most infamous prisons, using it as an inspiration for a monumental installation. By JORI FINKLEL SAN FRANCISCO — Judging from the large bags of colorful Legos on the floor and dozens of plastic base plates piled on tables, this room could have been the activities station for a well-funded summer camp. And the five women and men drifting in and out, slicing open boxes and rooting around for the right size toy bricks, were young enough to pass as camp counselors. Only the place where they were working is the opposite of summer camp: Alcatraz, the notoriously bleak military prison turned maximum-security penitentiary turned national park. With its banks of small windows and a “gun gallery” for surveillance, this building is where inmates once laundered military uniforms. It’s usually off limits to tourists. An assistant helps with Ai Weiwei’s artwork “trace,” protraits of prisoners made of Legos; at right, Memetjan Abdula, who is Chinese, is an ethnic Uighur editor sentenced to life in prison. P H OTO G R A P H S BY T H O R S W I F T FO R T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S

But starting on September 27, visitors will be able to see for themselves, spread across the floor, where so many Legos were heading: an ambitious installation by the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, featuring 176 portraits of prisoners of conscience and political exiles around the world — from the South African leader Nelson Mandela and the Tibetan pop singer Lolo to the American whistleblower Edward Snowden — composed of 1.2 million Lego pieces. The work is part of an exhibition called “Large: Ai Weiwei on Alcatraz,” organized by For-Site, a producer of public art in San Francisco, in the prison hospital, A Block cells, dining hall and that former laundry building. Given Mr. Ai’s sharp critiques of the Chinese government and the tireless campaigning for freedom of expression that led to his own imprisonment in 2011, he could have included himself in the

group portrait. He did not. But his 81-day detainment, a numbing and mostly solitary confinement, fueled some of the exhibition’s themes, and the seizure of his passport at that time — it was never returned — has shaped the making of this show. “Even now, I am still in a soft detention, my passport withheld by the state and my right to move freely across borders restricted,” he explained in a series of lengthy email exchanges. His situation makes the “@Large” title seem wishful, if not ironic, and raises questions both practical and philosophical. How exactly did this outspoken artist manage to realize this site-specific exhibition without ever visiting the site and despite an ever-present risk of reincarceration? And to what extent are installations like this — which required more than 100 volunteers in San Francisco and For-Site staffers on Alcatraz Island helping

with assembly, as well as Amnesty International contributing research — truly Mr. Ai’s work? Certainly, the monumental Lego installation, “Trace,” has his fingerprints all over it. A few celebrity freedom fighters aside, most of the portraits showcase figures “forgotten by society,” he said. One is Shin Suk-ja, a South Korean prisoner

of North Korea who was sent into penal labor with her two daughters in 1987 after her husband defected to Europe. Ms. Shin appears to have died in captivity, according to an information binder provided by For -Site, San Francisco prcpublic art, in the prison hospital, A Block cells, dining hall and C O N T I N U ED O N PAG E 2 3

A Ruckus Offstage, Then On

Wrought In Their Creator’s Image

Season rescued, the Met turns to an Oddly resonant ‘Figaro.’ By ZACHARY WOOLFE

Shonda Rhimes has a new TV heroine. Watch out.

The great comedy of Mozart “Le Nozze di Figaro,” which opens the Metropolitan Opera’s season on Monday, begins with hopefulness, dissolves into chaotic upheaval and, rescued at the last minute, concludes with reconciliation, peace and celebration. It is a plot arc that could serve as a handy history of the new productio itself. Staged by the British theater veteran Richard Eyre, who recently directed

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY

C O N T I N U ED O N PAG E 1 2 J O U S UA B R I G H T

Viola Davis in “How to Get Away With Murder”

ABC / CRAIG SJODIN

When Shonda Rhimes writes her autobiography, it should be called “How to Get Away With Being an Angry Black Woman.” On Thursday, Ms. Rhimes will introduce “How to Get Away With Murder,” yet another network series from her production company to showcase a powerful, intimidating black woman. This one is Annalise Keating, a fearsome criminal defense lawyer and law professor played by Viola Davis. And that clinches it: Ms. Rhimes, who wrought Olivia Pope on “Scandal” and Dr. Miranda Bailey on “Grey’s Anatomy,” has done more to reset the image of African-American women on television than anyone since Oprah Winfrey. Ms. Rhimes didn’t just construct a series around

one African-American woman. She has introduced a set of heroines who flout ingrained television conventions and preconceived notions about the depiction of diversity. Her women are authority figures with sharp minds and potent libidos who are respected, even haughty members of the ruling elite, not maids or nurses or office workers. Be it Kerry Washington on “Scandal” or Chandra Wilson on “Grey’s Anatomy,” they can and do get angry. One of the more volcanic meltdowns in soap opera history was Olivia’s “Earn me” rant on “Scandal.” Ms. Rhimes has embraced the trite but persistent caricature of the Angry Black Woman, recast it in her own image and made it enviable.

She has almost single-handedly trampled a taboo even Michelle Obama couldn’t break. Her heroines are not at all like the bossy, sassy, salt-of-the-earth working-class women who have been scolding and uh-uh-ing on screen ever since Esther Rolle played Florida, the maid on “Maude.” They certainly are not as benign and reassuring as Clair Huxtable, the serene, elegant wife, mother and dedicated lawyer on “The Cosby Show.” In 2008, commentators as different as the comedian Bill Cosby and the Republican strategist Karl Rove agreed that it was the shining, if fictional, example of the Huxtables that prepared America for a black president and first lady. C O N T I N U ED O N PAG E 18


THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 2014

Thursday Styles 3 SKIN DEEP Improving the view from the back. BY. MARISA MELTZER

4 CRITICAL SHOPPER Kent & Curwen is playing a new game. BY JON CARAMANICA

FASHION | BEAUTY | NIGHTLIFE

8 HASHTAG NATION Miss America’s very unusual talent. BY VALERIYA SAFRONOVA

10 IN VOGUE Fashion photography gains as an art form. BY WILLIAM VAN METER

At First Blush The gathering known as BeautyCon is a day camp that meets Sephora meets the ‘American Idol’ live tour. By SHEILA MARIKAR

Clockwise from top, BeautyCon attendees posing for photos, standing for more photos, putting on makeup and standing in crowds to take more photos.

LOS ANGELES — Gigi Gorgeous needed a break. “It’s fandemonium,” said Ms. Gorgeous, the YouTube beauty guru and comedian, leaning against a couch in the very, very important person section at BeautyCon, a summit for online beauty enthusiasts and the young women who love them, and exhaling as much as her crop top allowed. “There were a couple girls that were crying when they came up to the meet and greet counter,” said Ms. Gorgeous. Blonde and bubbly, she has courted nearly a million subscribers with frank, funny videos about subjects like her favorite foundation brush and the time she and her friends were pulled over for taking selfies by the side of the road. In the flesh, she inspired

P H OTO G R A P H S BY K EN D R I C K B R I N S O N FO R T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S

giddy jumps.“It’s a 3-D image in real life,” said Ms. Gorgeous, 22. “You are blinking and breathing in front of them.” It was around 3 p.m. on a recent Saturday, and nearby, a battalion of burly security guards escorted Bethany Mota, another YouTube star, though a mob of frenetic fans. “Bethany, Bethany, I’m right here!” cried one girl, smartphone outstretched like a selfie-seeking tentacle as Ms. Mota, 18, squeezed by. When she turned and smiled, screams soared through the cavernous hall of LA Mart, little eruptions of enthusiasm that, if CO N T I N U ED O N PAG E E 17

A Shortcut To Comic Celebrity An outrageous Instagram star hopes to go mainstream By BEE SHAPIRO Josh Ostrovsky, a.k.a. “The Fat Jew.” is known for his profane humor and huge web presence. S T E V EN B R A H M S FO R T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S

Sharon Chuang, 23, posing for a phone photo for a friend after writing her name on a wall in chalk.

Josh Ostrovsky, who is Jewish and weighs a paunchy 250 pounds, would prefer that you not call him a fat Jew. But he does hope millions more people will soon come to know him as “The Fat Jew.” It is his comedic alter ego, his Instagram persona and, if he has his way, his ticket to wealth and mainstream media success. Thus far he has parlayed a profane sense of humor that mocks the tropes of social-media culture and the hipsters who propagate them; an apparent affection for pot, pets and grandparents; and his own slovenly, outlandish physical appearance into a huge web following and the beginnings of an entertainment career. Mr. Ostrovsky, 30, is in talks with Showtime to appear in a Dick Wolf-created reality series called “After 3 A.M.,” and has sold to Comedy

The Queen’s Guard Isn’t Laughing The cliché of British fashion as crazy no longer holds true By VANESSA FRIEDMAN LONDON — On the penultimate evening of London Fashion Week, Samantha Cameron, Britain’s first lady and British Fashion Council ambassador, and Natalie Massenet, the council’s chairwoman, co-hosted a cocktail event at 10 Downing Street to celebrate what both women were careful to call “British fashion,” a.k.a. the “most successful of our creative industries,” according to Ms. Cameron — bigger than film, music and advertising. Note that they said “British fashion,” not “English fashion.” What exactly does that mean these days? It’s a legitimate question, not just due to the Scottish independence referendum on Thursday, which has sparked a long, dark night of the soul among many in fashion who have personal and professional ties to the north that go beyond knitwear into formative myth. And not just because London art schools are now so globally renowned they attract students from numerous other countries who then stay to make their career in the capital. But because the old stereotype of British

fashion — of crazy creative types pushing sartorial boundaries without any regard for sales or sense or, sometimes, the finished seam — no longer really holds true. Or mostly doesn’t. There are some young designers such as Thomas Tait whose mishmash of bright pink and peach and yellow and nude in counterintuitive geometries saw a triangle jut out from a shoulder here, checkerboards flap from a skirt there and silk charmeuse dresses sliced and diced like an aesthetic experiment gone wrong. But in general, you know something has changed when even Giles Deacon, a former agent provocateur of British fashion, left behind his once-signature cartoonish tendencies (or at least toned them down) in favor of some pop-flavored, but not overly exaggerated, jungle-lovin’. A black jeweled snake curled down the front of a pink shift; giant pink panther paws were knit into oversize sweaters or appeared clasping one shoulRocksanda

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Central a scripted project he wrote, which is based on his life. He is co-writing a book for Grand Central Publishing, tentatively scheduled to be published next fall. His résumé also includes paid appearances at a pregnant women’s wet T-shirt contest as well as at a bar mitzvah in Portugal. He is working on a sponsored Instagram campaign for a beef jerky company in which he will be photographed in a jerky jacket, and has already shilled for Burger King. “I got a tattoo of the logo, which I did for the money but also because I love chicken fries so much because I am very fat,” he wrote in an email. He won’t reveal his income but said it is “enough to have my dad take me seriously now. Sort of.” His résumé also includes paid appearances at a pregnant women’s wet T-shirt contest as well as at a bar mitzvah in Portugal. He is working on a sponsored Instagram campaign for a beef jerky company in which he will be photographed in a jerky jacket, and has already shilled for Burger King. “I got a tattoo of the logo, which I did for the money but also because I love C O N T I N U ED O N PAG E E 16

Exposure is on the minds of many designers this season By ALEXANDRA JACOBS LONDON — Self-exposure, and how to mete it out, whether in dress or personal publicity, seems to be an issue on many designers’ minds this season. Quite a few seem to be frantically scanning women’s bodies — like the QR code readers clutched by the gatekeepers at Somerset House, the site of many shows here — looking for new parts to reveal. The stretchy pants at Marios Schwab revealed, suddenly, a flash of the entire inner leg as the models wearing them came down the runway on Sunday. Sleeves on a white, nurselike shirtdress C O N T I N U ED O N PAG E E 1 5


Business Day

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2014

International

E-Commerce

Technology

3 Europe’s Maze of Rules Airbnb, Rber and other start-ups find themselves hampered by thorny regulations in Europe.

3 Big Alibaba Payoff The investment firm Silver Lake is a big winner from Alibaba’s initial public offering.

4 Virtual Becomes Real Oculus VR is teaming up with Samsung to create a portable virtual reality experience.

I L LU S T R AT I O N BY S A M M A N C H E S T ER / T H E N E W YO R K T I M E S

Sealed Tight China has clamped down on web traffic, and companies like Google have found the Great Firewall even harder to scale. By KEITH BRADSHER and PAUL MOZUR HONG KONG — Google’s problems in China just got worse. As part of a broad campaign to tighten internal security, the Chinese government has draped a darker shroud over Internet communications in recent weeks, a situation that has made it more

Publications See Pinterest as Key Ally By CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY Autumn is not yet upon us, but Jill Waage, a top editor at Better Homes and Gardens, has already predicted some of the biggest trends of the coming

difficult for Google and customers to do business. Chinese exporters have struggled to place Google ads that appeal to overseas buyers. Biotechnology researchers in Beijing had trouble recalibrating a costly microscope this summer because they could not locate the online instructions to do so. And international companies have had difficulty exchanging Gmail messages among far-flung offices and setting up meetings on applications like Google Calendar. “It’s a frustrating and annoying drain on productivity,” said Jeffrey Phillips, an American energy executive who has lived in China for 14 years. “You’ve got people spending their time figuring out how to send a file instead of getting their work done.” The pain is widespread. Two popular messaging services owned by South Korean companies, Line

and Kakao Talk, were abruptly blocked summer, as were other applications like Didi, Talk Box and Vower. American giants like Twitter and Facebook have been censored by China’s Great Firewall, a system of filters the government has spent on to control Internet traffic in and out of the country. Even as Google and other big technology companies have lobbied heavily for an easing of the restrictions, Beijing’s broader scrutiny of multinationals has intensified. In late July, antimonopoly investigators raided Microsoft offices in four Chinese cities to interrogate managers and copy large amounts of data from hard drives. Qualcomm, a big maker of computer chips and a holder of wireless technology patents, faces a separate antimonopoly investigation. The increasingly pervasive blocking of the C O N T I N U ED O N PAG E 2

It’s Muted but Buzz for Fall TV Returns By BILL CARTER and EMILY STEEL It is a throwback, an archaic model, a vestige of a fading business. So why does a ripple of excitement continue to surround the start of another television season? Excitement may overstate the case. But among those in the business, as the broadcast networks once again offer full slates of original programming this week, a sense of eager expectation still beats C O N T I N U ED O N PAG E 4

The Warner Bros. executives Toby Emmerich, left, Greg Silverman and Sue Kroll have been charged with leading an expansion of film output by the studio. E m i ly B e r l fo r T h e N ew Yo r k T i m e s

holidays. Painted pumpkins are about to replace carved pumpkins. Snowman cookies with jiggly eyes will overtake traditional gingerbread men. And decorative ribbons on Christmas presents are going to get much more creative.

But instead of spotting these trends by consulting colleagues or outside experts, Ms. Waage has tapped Pinterest, the social media site that lets its members pin, or post, images of their favorite foods, hairstyles and clothes. Pinterest has forged close relationships with magazines, especially those focused on women, who make up 71 percent of Pinterest users. It is a leading driver of traffic to certain magazines, and in some cases — like Self — it serves as a bigger source of reader referrals than either Facebook or Twitter. “That’s one more piece of brain food that editors have,” Ms. Waage, the editorial director for home content at Better Homes, said of Pinterest. “It’s just a subconscious part of their lives now.” And Pinterest is redoubling its focus on working with publishers. On Monday, Robert Macdonald will join the company to manage media relationships for the site, a job he previously held at Google, and it plans to hire more people in the coming CO N T I N U ED O N PAG E 6

Warner Bros., After Shake-Up and Shaky Summer, Digs In By MICHAEL CIEPLY and BROOKS BARNS BURBANK, Calif. — Summer was brutal at Warner Bros., and not just because the thermometer hit 105 degrees on its sun-scorched lot here last week. Eight films, starting with “Godzilla” in midMay, took in barely more at the worldwide box office than a single “Harry Potter” sequel did in 2011. That year, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” had $1.34 billion in global ticket sales, backed up by typical Warner hits, including “The Hangover Part II” and “Horrible Bosses.” To date, the studio, often a front-runner, ranks third in domestic ticket sales, as misses like “Jersey Boys” and “Blended” failed to charm audiences.

A July attempt by 21st Century Fox to take over Warner Bros.’ parent, Time Warner, while ultimately thwarted, further threw the studio for a loop. Stable, steady Warner was suddenly in an unaccustomed position of public vulnerability. Its prospects for the fall are wobbly. “This Is Where I Leave You,” an ensemble dramedy about death and family foibles that opened to an estimated $11.9 million in ticket sales over the weekend, does not remotely resemble the muscular fare that made Warner “the biggest movie producer and distributor in the world,” as Jeffrey L. Bewkes, Time WarC O N T I N U ED O N PAG E 5


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