NEW YORK In a story Oct. 18 about a controversy over Susan Sarandon referring to Pope Benedict XVI as a Nazi, The Associated Press erroneously reported that the actress gave Benedict a copy of the book on which her 1995 film “Dead Man Walking” was based. Sarandon said she gave the book to the previous pope, John Paul II.

(Reuters) Bank of New York Mellon (BK.N) said on Wednesday that fourth-quarter earnings fell 26 percent after the world’s No. 1 custody bank reported lower forex volume and took a restructuring charge as part of a large-scale plan to make its operations more efficient.

BNY Mellon reported net income of $505 million, or 42 cents a share, compared with $679 million, or 54 cents a share, a year earlier. The results included a $107 million restructuring charge that reduced net income by 6 cents a share.

Chief Executive Officer Gerald Hassell said in a press release that general financial uncertainty in Europe and other parts of the globe depressed client activity, pressuring revenue.

Investment management and performance fees, for example, were $730 million, a decrease of 9 percent from a year earlier. BNY Mellon laid some of the blame on money market funds, whose miniscule yields have forced the company to waive fees to keep investors.

In the fourth quarter, foreign exchange revenue totaled $183 million. That was a decline of 11 percent from the year-ago period because of lower volume.

(Reporting By Tim McLaughlin; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn)

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) James Franco is in early talks for a starring role in “The Game,Cheap Ed hardy Shoes,” the MGM movie based on Neil Strauss’ New York Times bestseller about picking up women, TheWrap has confirmed.

Strauss documented his experiences in “The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists,” which was released by Regan Books in 2005. Franco’s role would be as Mystery, who taught Strauss how to become a pick-up artist.

“The Game” is directed by Brian Koppelman and David Levien, both of whom worked on the screenplay. Writers D.B. Weiss (HBO’s “Game of Thrones”), and Lee Eisenberg and Gene Stupnitsky — the Emmy-nominated writer-producers of NBC’s “The Office” — also worked on the project.

Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum, Andrew Miano, Chris Weitz and Paul Weitz are producing “The Game.”

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) Geek chic will soon be back when Napoleon Dynamite returns in an animated TV show and joins “Family Guy” and “The Simpsons” on the Fox network’s “Animation Domination” night.

“Napoleon Dynamite,Cheap Ed hardy bags,” the 2004 independent film about a socially awkward teenager in a small town, directed by Jared Hess and starring Jon Heder, became a hit and received praise for bringing something fresh to the teen comedy genre.

The film is about a high-school loser, Napoleon, who becomes a bit of a winner while retaining his geekiness. The original cast is voicing their animated characters in the TV shows that debuts on January 15.

They are joined by new characters and guest stars including Amy Poehler, Sam Rockwell and Jemaine Clement.

Heder, 34, talked to Reuters about returning to play Napoleon and working in animation.

Q: Napoleon is back! Why now?

A: “We played around with the idea of an animated series or live-action series for a sequel, but we never played around seriously because we made this with a bunch of friends, so we weren’t thinking cash franchise. But it came out and became a success, and I think all these years later, when Fox came to us, we said, ‘Hey, we’d talked about it. We think the time is right, let’s do it,’ and we were all on board.”

Q: Why animation over live action, especially with the original cast?

A: “Honestly, because it’s probably cheaper and we’re probably all old and flabby now! A live-action show still has a certain lifespan, but with shows like “Family Guy” and “King of the Hill,” successful animated shows can go on forever.”

Q: Where does the new series pick up from after the film?

A: “Napoleon is already friends with Pedro and Deb, and he still has a rivalry going with Summer and Don, but Kip really hasn’t met LaFawnduh yet. The idea was that Kip might have lots of potential female romantic interests. It’s kind of a prequel, in between the end of the movie and the wedding (between Kip and LaFawnduh), because the wedding at the end of the movie, that could have been much later, even years later, so maybe they took some time apart to try out some different mates.”

Q: What can we expect from Kip’s online dating adventures?

A: “We just like the idea that Kip is always online, especially because he doesn’t really know what he’s getting into. In one of the episodes, he’ll be talking to Tatiana from Russia, and he has no idea who she is, she could be a man, so we’re playing with the idea that Kip is clueless. It also lends itself to stories where Kip and Napoleon are going after the same girl, some sibling rivalry there.”

Q: Do you ever feel pigeonholed by playing Napoleon?

A: “He’s very much like me. He’s not pretentious. He was raised in a small town, and he’s an outsider. So, I relate a ton to the character. It is kind of a part of me and it probably will be for the rest of my life. That’s why I have no problem coming back and doing Napoleon again.”

Q: How do you think fans will respond?

A: “… I think true fans will like it, hopefully. It’s animated but it’s trying to capture the feeling and the integrity of the movie. There’s an innocence that’s still there and the naivety of the characters and there’s such a lovability about them.”

Q: Does Napoleon’s iconic dance to Jamiroquai’s “Canned Heat” make an appearance?

A: “Sadly, because it’s animated, unless they do some motion-capture on me, that was the only thing I was a little bit bummed about. I’m playing the part, but it’s only the voice, and so much of the Napoleon character is capturing the image and the physical movements. But from what I’ve seen, the animators are doing a pretty funny job.”

(Editing by Bob Tourtellotte and Patricia Reaney)

NEW YORK Nick Cannon is spending the first week of the new year in the hospital, with wife Mariah Carey by his side. Carey tweeted that Cannon is suffering from “mild kidney failure.” His representative confirmed Cannon’s hospitalization. He is in Aspen,wholesale Ed hardy belts, Colo., where he and Carey were vacationing.

Carey posted a picture on her website of a miserable-looking Cannon in a hospital bed as she lay beside him. She asked for prayers and said Cannon’s situation was “very painful.” She later called it a “serious moment that’s very tough on all of us.”

The pair became the parents of twins a boy and a girl last year.

Cannon is 31. His representative had no further information Wednesday about his condition, but said he is still hospitalized.

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Online:

http://www.mariahcarey.com

The Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has opened its doors, at long last, to one of its most highly anticipated exhibitions: “Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty.” Even in its first few weeks, this show has broken attendance records. Organized by curator Andrew Bolton, the retrospective celebrates one of the fashion industry’s most important designers, the late Lee McQueen, founder and creative director of the label Alexander McQueen. His unprecedented designs marked a critical shift not only in fashion design, but in the reception of fashion as a form of installation, performance, and art.

Nearly 200 items are featured in the exhibition, which spans the 19 years of McQueen’s career that was cut short in February of last year by his suicide. Rarities from his graduate collection at Central St. Martins are displayed alongside work from the unfinished final collection of 2010, his swan song. While “Savage Beauty,” on view through July 31, showcases the designs within the context of the label, it is clearly homage to the man himself,Inflatable Jumpers, and the creative intuition that produced one of the most innovative visions of contemporary fashion.

Despite the commercial aspirations of the show — “Savage Beauty” was funded almost entirely by the label whose clothing it features — it is nevertheless difficult to look at a single one of the designs without being mesmerized, intrigued, or provoked into some response, oftentimes confusion. No designer has better embodied Yves Saint Laurent’s incisive dictum that while fashion is not exactly art, it requires the creativity of an artist in order to exist. McQueen’s originality and genius derived from the fact that his tremendous talent as a designer was matched by his capacity as an artist.

His technical training as a tailor’s apprentice on Savile Row formed the basis for the attention to craftsmanship and expert tailoring that have become synonymous with the label’s aesthetic. At the same time, fashion served him as a medium to explore complex ideas. Despite his background as a tailor, he was able to see beyond the garment itself and its construction, and as a result his understanding of fashion extended far beyond clothing. Each piece had an individuality about it, but was nonetheless part of a sustained vision that governed the aesthetic of a collection as well as that of the final runway presentation.

His Spring/Summer 2001 collection, for example, was based on avian imagery (which he revisited frequently) and the gothic aesthetics of a mental institution, with garments including extraordinary pieces such as a dress with taxidermy eagles protruding from the shoulders as though in flight, as well as head bandages and embellished, asymmetrical jackets that were vaguely reminiscent of nurses’ uniforms. Models paced around inside of a boxed, mirrored room clawing at the glass walls as though trying to escape from their asylum-like runway. In the final moments of the presentation, the walls of another box within the faux psychiatric ward collapsed to reveal a startling tableau vivant inspired by the Joel-Peter Witkin photograph “Sanitarium”: a reclining, masked nude breathing through a tube and surrounded by fluttering moths.

Other presentations included snarling wolves, life-sized chess boards, and rain pouring down over models as they walked the runway. The famous showing of his Spring/Summer 1999 collection featured two automated robots who shot a model clad in white with sprays of green and black paint.

The artistry of McQueen’s artistry vision is also seen in his love of an idea over (or at least as much as) its product. Many of his designs had little or nothing to do with fashion, and their translation into clothing design was far was from obvious or literal. Plato’s account of Atlantis, Darwin’s “Theory of Evolution,” Lucien Freud’s paintings, films such as “They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?,” and elements of 19th-century Victorianism (McQueen would refer to himself as the Edgar Allen Poe of fashion) were incorporated into his designs. Historical events were of great influence as well, and one of his early collections, “Highland Rape,” was based on what McQueen called the “rape of Scotland” by the British Empire during the Jacobite Risings and the Highland Clearances of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Another source of inspiration that McQueen drew heavily on throughout his career was Medieval and Renaissance art, specifically Flemish painting. His last collection, presented posthumously, was unofficially titled “Angels and Demons,” and the references to the work of Botticelli, Hieronymous Bosch, Jean Fouquet, and Hans Memling were clear both materially and in concept. New textile technologies were used to photograph the paintings and weave their images into jacquard fabrics and embroideries that were cut into highly tailored garments. Moreover, the collection mirrored a theme present in the works McQueen was focusing on: death and the afterlife. In a way, it is this set of source images for his last collection that best illustrate McQueen’s view of fashion. Major characteristics of Flemish painting include highly detailed imagery, sumptuous colors, and fantastical narratives that often focus on the grotesque, and McQueen’s work offers an aesthetic that values and masterfully combines all of these aspects.

The innumerable tributes to the designer since his death aim both at commemorating his contributions to fashion and securing his legacy. It is somewhat difficult as a result to keep sight of the man beneath the weight of so many accolades — commercial as well as critical — and in a sense, there is little need for these displays of recognition; Lee McQueen’s legacy was ensured long before his death. One of the most important aspects of this legacy was the nature of his vision, which related fashion to art in a way that few designers, or artists, have been able to do. McQueen created a new class of designer, and in so doing expanded the field for those to come.

“Pariah,” writer-director Dee Rees’ feature debut, achieves a difficult, intriguing balance. It’s at once raw and dreamlike, specific to a particular, personal rite of passage yet widely relatable in its message of being true to oneself.

Adepero Oduye gives a subtly natural performance as Alike (pronounced ah-lee-kay), a 17-year-old Brooklyn girl who’s struggling to come out as a lesbian. Each day at school, she dresses the way that makes her feel comfortable in baggy T-shirts and baseball caps, and she pals around with her brash best friend, Laura (Pernell Walker), who’s already happily out. But on the bus ride home, she must transform herself into the young lady her mother, Audrey (Kim Wayans), approves of and loves. You can see the weight of resignation hanging on her shoulders, the sadness in her eyes as she catches a glimpse of herself in the window.

Audrey hopes arranging a new friendship with a colleague’s daughter, Bina (Aasha Davis), will set Alike down a traditionally straight, female path, but this budding relationship only complicates matters further. While the two girls don’t exactly bond at first, Bina eventually becomes beguiling to Alike on a number of levels; their mutual fascination with each other would be believable even if they’d forged a simply heterosexual connection.

But nothing is ever simple with girls at this age, and so there are gray areas, a phenomenon Rees herself clearly understands. “Pariah” isn’t exactly an autobiographical tale for the filmmaker, but the struggle Alike endures is obviously quite personal to her.

Simultaneously, Alike’s home life is deteriorating, as her police officer father (Charles Parnell) begins keeping suspiciously late hours; it’s a subplot that bogs things down and feels like a distraction from Alike’s journey, a device to crank up the tension. The growing rift between mother and daughter certainly provides enough angst already, with Audrey remaining fiercely closed-minded, even as Alike finally begins to feel free.

Her story is inspiring to see, whether you’re gay or straight and regardless of age or race; she’s searching for her place in the world at a difficult, transitional time, something we’ve all experienced. Oduye is both melancholy and radiant in the role, and she makes you long for her character to finally find peace. And Bradford Young’s award-winning cinematography gives “Pariah” the gauzy,wholesale Ed hardy belts, gorgeous feel of an urban fairy tale one in which our heroine doesn’t necessarily live happily ever after, but at least she has hope. And she knows who she is.

“Pariah,” a Focus Features release, is rated R for sexual content and language. Running time: 86 minutes. Three stars out of four.

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Motion Picture Association of America rating definitions:

G General audiences. All ages admitted.

PG Parental guidance suggested. Some material may not be suitable for children.

PG-13 Special parental guidance strongly suggested for children under 13. Some material may be inappropriate for young children.

R Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

NC-17 No one under 17 admitted.

LOS ANGELES Oprah Winfrey earned the rare opportunity to convert her media charisma into a monogramed TV channel. Now she’s the one tasked with rescuing OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network, after a disappointing first year.

It’s a high-stakes, potentially ego-shattering challenge that could make the strongest woman or man flinch. But win or lose, Winfrey says she relishes the fight to turn OWN’s fortunes around.

“Yes, some mistakes were made. Who hasn’t made mistakes? The real beauty is you can say, `I learned from that,’” Winfrey said. “I don’t worry about failure. I worry about, `Did I do all I could do?’”

The cable channel, which marks its first year Jan. 1, is trying for a fresh start after executive turnover and missteps that proved OWN lacked a solid foundation on which to build, this despite a Discovery Communications investment of a reported $250 million and counting.

Viewers snubbed the lineup that skimped on programming and, surprisingly, what should have been OWN’s unique weapon of choice: Winfrey herself, whose limited on-air presence will be boosted Sunday with a new weekly series, “Oprah’s Next Chapter.”

OWN has failed to improve on, or in some instances even match, the modest ratings and small audience earned by the low-profile Discovery Health channel it replaced.

“I would absolutely say it is and was not where I want it to be for year one,” Winfrey said. “My focus up until (last) May was doing what I do best, which is `The Oprah Winfrey Show,’ and giving that my full attention” until its conclusion.

But Winfrey, who said management team errors in planning and execution could serve as a cautionary tale (“I was never interested in writing a book. … THIS could be a book”), rejects the idea that a single year’s performance will determine OWN’s ultimate fate. Or hers.

“Somebody was talking to me in that kind of saddened, `How are you?’ tone, and I was thinking, `I’m fine,’” said Winfrey, 57, who ruled as the queen of daytime TV until she ended her talk show after 25 years and turned her attention to the channel.

“I realized the reason people have this tone is they’re reading all the press (about OWN), so you see me and wonder if I can still walk. … I am a determined and committed woman. I don’t give up. I’m just getting started,” she said in a recent interview.

One bonus of being Oprah: She has received pep talks from other media movers and shakers.

“Everybody has told me Ted Turner has told me, Barry Diller has told me, Lorne Michaels has told me, David Geffen has told me anybody who’s ever worked with a channel, who’s ever done anything, has said it takes three to five years,” she said, adding, “You have to do the work. … You do not have to pay attention to the criticism.”

Year two for OWN will reflect executive changes made last July, when Winfrey expanded her role at the channel by adding the roles of chief executive and chief creative officer to her position as chairman. Discovery Communications COO Peter Liguori had filled in as interim head after OWN CEO Christina Norman was dismissed in the wake of poor ratings.

Although the channel’s ownership is split evenly between Discovery and Winfrey’s Chicago-based production company, Harpo Inc., it is Discovery’s money that’s on the line.

With more scheduling consistency, movies, original series with and without Winfrey, and “a lot more Oprah in general,” Discovery is “a lot more confident that we’re heading in the right direction,” said company spokesman David Leavy.

Sheri Salata and Erik Logan, two veteran Harpo executives, were brought on board to share the title of OWN president, with Logan moving from Chicago to OWN’s Los Angeles headquarters.

Logan said he clearly understands the hard work in establishing any cable channel, and this one in particular.

“One of the greatest gifts and challenges is to have her name on the door,” Logan said of his top boss. “Everything you do garners a high level of scrutiny and attention. … We don’t run from that.”

The initially slight programming lineup is being beefed up, most notably with “Oprah’s Next Chapter.” The weekly series debuts 9 p.m.-11 p.m. EST Sunday with Winfrey’s visit to the New Hampshire home of Steven Tyler.

“Next Chapter” turns the once studio-bound Winfrey into a globe-trotting interviewer who drops into the home of a Hasidic Jewish family in New York, George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch in California and cook Paula Deen’s Georgia estate. There is also a trip with Sean Penn to Haiti, fire-walking with Tony Robbins and a planned India trip with Deepak Chopra.

The injection of Winfrey on-screen, not just in the executive suite, is sorely needed, suggested one industry analyst.

“The biggest mistake they made is, if it’s the Oprah Winfrey Network, where’s Oprah?” said Bill Carroll of media buying firm Katz Media.

He compared OWN’s Winfrey vacuum to programming the Court TV channel without courtroom shows or the Major League Baseball channel without games: “After a while, viewers stop going,” Carroll said.

OWN has averaged about 136,000 viewers a day, a drop of 8 percent from what Discovery Health drew in 2010, although it’s up slightly in total viewers in prime time and has seen an 8 percent increase among women ages 25 to 54, part of the channel’s hoped-for demographic.

Popular shows include “The Judds,” which ran for six episodes in April and May; “Our America With Lisa Ling”; and the reality series “Welcome to Sweetie Pie’s,” which attracted a strong African-American audience (prompting media reports that OWN intended to skew toward black viewers, an assertion that Discovery and Winfrey deny. “It doesn’t mean we’re going to turn into the `Roots’ channel,” Winfrey said, wryly.)

Winfrey also is on-air with “Oprah’s Lifeclass,” which draws on her talk-show archives, and “Oprah’s Master Class,” a series of high-achiever biography specials. But, she said, she never “was supposed to carry the channel on my back, and it never was supposed to be about me being on the air as much as possible.” Instead, O magazine, with Winfrey as monthly cover girl and articles reflecting her better-life philosophy, is the intended model.

She attributes the channel’s rough start to a more basic error: The lack of a “library” of programming for the many hours of airtime not filled by original shows, compounded by overconfidence about her market value in general.

“I don’t understand what anybody was thinking. You’re going on the air, you’ve got four shows. What do you think you’re going to do by Tuesday? Did they think people were going to turn on the channel just because it had my name on it?” she said, sounding almost eager to cast doubt on her drawing power.

“People didn’t turn on `The Oprah Winfrey Show’ because my name was on it. It was absolutely topic driven every day,” she said.

Such modest expressions aside, Winfrey’s involvement clearly is key to the channel’s success. She’s glad to make the commitment, she said. As her longtime boyfriend Stedman Graham told her, she’d be bored silly today if she’d taken any lengthy break after ending her daytime show.

Discovery is also in it for “the long term,” said spokesman Leavy,Replica Juicy Couture tracksuits, citing the three to five years that other cable channels have needed to develop audience-grabbing hits and firmly establish themselves.

He declined to specify what Discovery has spent so far on the venture, calling media estimates high. But he pointed to long-term advertising contracts with major companies including Procter & Gamble, and hopes of new carriage fees from cable providers that have been airing the channel for free.

Viewership that has been lower than expected, however, has meant “make goods” in ad time for sponsors.

Winfrey, who describes herself as obsessed by ratings for the first time in her career, said she’s giving OWN “everything I’ve got. I’ve spent more energy doing this than anything I’ve ever done in my whole life.”

With good reason. “I walked in today (to OWN’s offices) and felt uplifted to see my name on the door, Oprah Winfrey Network,” she said. “Just to … be able to sit in a room with a team of people presenting you with ideas what a gift that is.”

It has also made OWN her ultimate responsibility.

“Every third week, someone new was in charge, and now she’s in charge. From where I sit, this is going to be her success or her failure,” said analyst Carroll.

Winfrey claims to have an unlikely sounding Plan B if the channel falls short.

“If this doesn’t work out, I’m going to go into organic farming in Maui. And I’m not kidding.”

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Online:

http://www.oprah.com/own

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EDITOR’S NOTE Lynn Elber is a national television columnist for The Associated Press. She can be reached at lelber(at)ap.org.

BEIJING (Reuters) China’s most wanted man, who was deported from Canada in July after a decades-long legal battle, has admitted to his crimes and will now be handed over to prosecutors,Inflatable Bouncers, state media reported on Friday.

Beijing had sought the deportation of Lai Changxing for years, accusing him of running a multi-billion dollar smuggling ring in the southeastern city of Xiamen in the 1990s in one of China’s biggest political scandals in decades.

Nothing has been heard of him since he was returned to China over the summer.

A brief report on state radio’s website (www.cnr.cn) said the probe into his crimes had finished and that Lai would now be handed over to Xiamen prosecutors.

“Lai Changxing and other mainstay members of his criminal clique candidly confessed the facts of their smuggling and bribery crimes,” state radio said.

The “legal rights” of Lai and the other suspects were “fully guaranteed,” with Lai able to meet with his lawyer, the report added.

The investigation team carried out the probe “fairly and in accordance with the law,” it said.

Lai may face life imprisonment, state media has reported. But some legal experts and human rights activists have said it was unlikely Lai could receive a fair trial in China.

The report did not say when Lai’s case may come to trial.

The probe found that between 1996 and 1999, Lai and his accomplices smuggled cars, oil, chemicals, cigarettes and other goods and bribed “dozens” of government officials, state radio added.

“The figure involved was enormous,” it said, without providing other details.

Lai, whose case had plagued Sino-Canadian relations, was sent back after a Canadian court dismissed concerns he could be tortured or executed back home.

Lai fled to Canada with his family in 1999 and claimed refugee status, saying the allegations against him were politically motivated.

China had promised Canada Lai would not be tortured or executed and that Canadian officials would have access to him.

Lai’s alleged crimes occurred in the special economic zone of Xiamen in Fujian province in the mid-1990s when Jia Qinglin, now the ruling Communist Party’s fourth most senior leader, was the province’s Party boss.

Beijing has accused Lai’s business empire, the Yuanhua Group, of bribing officials to allow a massive smuggling ring in a scandal that implicated more than 200 senior figures, including Jia’s wife, Lin Youfang. She denied any wrongdoing.

Lai admitted in a 2009 interview with Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper that he had avoided taxes by exploiting loopholes in the law, but he denies bribery charges. He said he would have been executed had he not been in Canada.

China put more than 300 suspects on trial and sentenced 14 to death, including provincial officials and a former vice minister of public security, in a case Beijing has used for a propaganda campaign against corruption.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Paul Tait)

Macy’s is on a roll. Last month, the retail giant debuted collections by Karl Lagerfeld and Anna Dello Russo, and now, a covetable series of looks created by Giambattista Valli. Drawing on his experience as a world traveler, the Paris-based designer’s capsule collection for Macy’s Impulse offers a wardrobe for the chic jet-setter, at prices ($50 to $150) that don’t strain your wallet like a trip to Bali might. If you recall, earlier this month, the designer cited very similar inspirations at his ready-to-wear show in Paris. So you’ll find the Macy’s Valli girl is likely to cross paths with shoppers of his namesake line, equipped with safari-inspired animal prints and pink rosy florals. The pieces, like the flirty red dress, are individually injected with the same zest Valli is known for. Both Giambattista devotees and newcomers looking to get a taste of Valli’s signature flair will be pleased. The tan leopard-print pants and the jacket are both likely to be top sellers when the collection hits stores across the U.S. at the end of this month.
—Kristin Studeman

Photos: Courtesy of Macy’s