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Hollywood director charged with defrauding $11m from Netflix

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A Hollywood director has been arrested and accused of using studio funds intended to complete a sci-fi series to buy luxury cars, cryptocurrency and fancy bedding for himself.

Carl Erik Rinsch, 47, is charged with federal fraud and money laundering related to $11m (£8.5m) he was given by Netflix to create a series called White Horse.

Mr Rinsch, who is best known for the 2013 film 47 Ronin, declined to enter a plea when appearing in a Los Angeles court on Tuesday.

The indictment does not name Netflix, referring to a “subscription video on-demand streaming service”, but Mr Rinsch’s long-running dispute with Netflix over the failed series has been previously publicised in US media reports.

Netflix has declined to comment on his arrest.

Between 2018 to 2019, the streaming giant gave Mr Rinsch an initial budget of $44m to film the show, which depicts artificial human clones, but he allegedly never completed a single episode.

In March 2020, Netflix sent him another $11m after he argued that the initial budget was “not sufficient”, according to prosecutors.

But instead of using the funds for the series, he allegedly transferred them to his personal bank accounts and used it to invest in several risky financial ventures, the US Justice Department said.

“Carl Erik Rinsch orchestrated a scheme to steal millions by soliciting a large investment from a video streaming service, claiming that money would be used to finance a television show that he was creating,” prosecutor Matthew Podolsky said in a statement on Tuesday.

“But that was fiction.”

Only two months after receiving the $11m, about half of it had already been spent, the indictment says.

While he “was in the process of losing” the money, Mr Rinsch allegedly informed Netflix that the show was “awesome and moving forward really well”, according to the indictment.

He allegedly used the remaining funds to speculate on cryptocurrency, and on personal expenses and luxury items for himself, including a fleet of Rolls-Royces and a Ferrari, court documents state.

The spending spree also included $1.8m for credit card bills, $3.7m on furniture and antiques and $933,000 on mattresses and luxury bedding, the Justice Department states.

The indictment also alleges that $1m of the cash was sent to lawyers to sue Netflix in hopes of receiving more funds, and for a divorce.

A profile of the dispute published by the New York Times in 2023 reported that friends and colleagues had described Mr Rinsch of growing increasingly erratic shortly after he signed the Netflix deal.

The newspaper reports that he believed he could predict lightning strikes and volcanic eruptions and knew about a “secret transmission mechanism” for Covid-19.

According to the Associated Press, Mr Rinsch made an initial court appearance on Tuesday. When asked by the judge whether he had read the 12-page indictment, he reportedly responded, “Not cover to cover”.

He was released on a $100,000 bail, and he is expected to attend trial in New York at a later date. If found guilty, he faces 20 years in prison.

(BBC News)

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Child damages €50m Rothko painting in Dutch museum

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A child has damaged a painting worth millions of pounds by the American artist Mark Rothko at a museum in Rotterdam.

A spokesperson for the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen said it was considering the “next steps” for the treatment of Rothko’s Grey, Orange on Maroon, No. 8.

The damage occurred during an “unguarded moment”, a museum spokesperson told the Dutch media outlet Algemeen Dagblad (AD) last week.

A spokesperson for the museum told the BBC the damage was “superficial”, adding: “Small scratches are visible in the unvarnished paint layer in the lower part of the painting”.

The abstract painting is estimated to be worth up to €50m (£42.5m), according to newspaper AD.

“Conservation expertise has been sought in the Netherlands and abroad. We are currently researching the next steps for the treatment of the painting”, the museum spokesperson told the BBC.

“We expect that the work will be able to be shown again in the future,” they added.

Sophie McAloone, the conservation manager at the Fine Art Restoration Company, said that “modern unvarnished” paintings like Rothko’s Grey, Orange on Maroon, No. 8 are “particularly susceptible to damage”.

This is “owing to a combination of their complex modern materials, lack of a traditional coating layer, and intensity of flat colour fields, which make even the smallest areas of damage instantly perceptible,” she said.

“In this case, scratching of the upper paint layers can have a significant impact on the viewing experience of the piece,” Ms McAloone said.

The Rothko painting was hanging in the museum’s Depot – a publicly accessible storage facility beside the main museum – as part of an exhibition displaying a selection of “public favourites” from the gallery’s collection.

Jonny Helm, a marketing manager at the art restoration service Plowden & Smith, said the incident had implications for UK institutions such as V&A East and the British Museum, which are considering “opening up the display of things that would otherwise be obscured in archives.”

“How will this event affect other UK institutions who are opening up their archives in the same way?” Mr Helm said.

Restoring a Rothko painting is a difficult task because “Rothko’s mixture of pigments and resins and glues were quite complex”, Mr Helm said.

He said the fact the painting is unvarnished – meaning it is “open to the environment” – will pose an additional challenge to conservators.

Conservators working to restore the painting will now likely be in the process of documenting the extent of the damage and researching “historic successful treatments” of Rothko paintings.

“Rothko works seem to have terrible luck – this isn’t the first damaged Rothko we’ve heard about,” Mr Helm said.

Rothko’s 1958 work, Black on Maroon, was deliberately vandalised by Wlodzimierz Umaniec at London’s Tate Modern gallery in October 2012.

Umaniec was sent to prison for two years and subsequently apologised for his actions.

During his trial, prosecuting barrister Gregor McKinley said the cost of repairing the work would be about £200,000. It took conservators 18 months to repair the painting.

Rachel Myrtle, Head of Specie and Fine Arts at Aon, a company that offers insurance broking to its clients, said fine art insurance policies typically cover “all risks associated with physical loss and damage to artwork”.

This includes “accidental damage caused by children or visitors, albeit with certain exclusions”, she said.

She said that when an artwork is damaged, a gallery’s insurer will appoint a specialist fine art loss adjuster to visit the museum.

The loss adjustor typically “reviews the damage to the artwork, examines any CCTV footage to determine the exact cause of the loss, and assesses conservation options”, Ms Myrtle said.

The museum did not comment on who will be held liable for the damage to the 1960 painting, which the gallery reportedly bought in the 1970s.

The Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has previously billed visitors who have caused damage to artworks on display.

In 2011, the museum asked an unsuspecting tourist who stepped on Wim T. Schippers’ peanut butter floor artwork, called Pindakaasvloer, to pay for repairs to the work.

Sharon Cohen, a spokesperson for the museum at the time, was quoted by AD as saying: “It is normal procedure for people to pay if they damage art.”

The Rothko painting is described by the museum as an example of colour field painting, a term used to describe art characterised by large blocks of flat, solid colour spread across a canvas.

Rothko’s Grey, Orange on Maroon, No. 8 painting is one of several works of modern art that have been damaged in the Netherlands in recent years.

In November 2024, multiple screen prints by the US pop artist Andy Warhol were damaged by thieves during an attempted robbery of the MPV art gallery in the town of Oisterwijk.

In another incident, a Dutch town hall admitted it “most likely” disposed of 46 artworks by accident – including an Andy Warhol print of the former Dutch queen – during renovation works last year.

Museums have different policies when responding to damage caused by children.

In August last year, a four-year-old boy accidentally smashed a 3,500-year-old jar into pieces at the Hecht Museum in Israel.

At the time, Hecht Museum worker Lihi Laszlo told the BBC the museum would not treat the incident “with severity” because “the jar was accidentally damaged by a young child”.

The family were invited back to the exhibition with his family for an organised tour shortly after the incident occurred.

(BBC News)

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Veteran singer Saman De Silva passes away

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Veteran singer Saman De Silva, a renowned and popular Baila artist, has passed away, family sources confirmed.

Saman De Silva was widely celebrated for his contribution to Baila music.

Among his popular songs are ‘Niyare Piya Nagala’, ‘Punchi Kurulu Kuduwe’, ‘Suroopi Viroopi’ (Epa Epa Rewatenu), ‘Santhosa Wenna Preethi Wenna’, ‘Thana Nilla Dige’, and ‘Pura Handa Neguna’, all of which remain favorites among audiences.

Throughout his musical career, Saman De Silva travelled extensively, performing in many countries around the world.

He was an alumnus of Nalanda College, Colombo.

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Boyce Avenue arrives in Sri Lanka

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Popular music group Boyce Avenue arrived in Sri Lanka last night (April 24)  to perform at an upcoming concert.

The band landed at Katunayake Bandaranaike International Airport at 10:00 p.m. aboard AirAsia flight AK-047 from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 

They were warmly welcomed by members of the Sri Lankan concert organizing team upon arrival.

The much-anticipated concert will take place at Waters Edge in Colombo, featuring performances by three Sri Lankan Western music groups alongside Boyce Avenue.

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