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Cate Blanchett laments that the #MeToo movement ‘got killed very quickly’ in Hollywood

CANNES, France (AP) — Cate Blanchett said the #MeToo movement “got killed very quickly” in Hollywood, speaking Sunday at the Cannes Film Festival.

In a wide-ranging staged conversation, Blanchett lamented that the tide of #MeToo has been turned in Hollywood, where she has been outspoken about gender equality.

“It got killed very quickly, which I think is interesting,” said Blanchett.

“There are a lot of people with platforms who are able to speak up with relative safety and say this has happened to me,” Blanchett said. “And the so-called average woman on the street, person on the street, is saying MeToo. Why does that get shut down?”

In 2018, when she was president of the jury in Cannes, Blanchett took part in a red-carpet protest. She and 81 other women appeared on the steps of the Palais des Festivals, symbolically representing the number of female director who were selected for Cannes’ competition lineup. Over the same period, 1,866 male directors had been selected.

“I’m still on film sets and I do the headcount every day. There’s 10 women and there’s 75 men every morning,” Blanchett said.

“I love men, but what happens is the jokes become the same,’ she said. “You just have to brace yourself slightly, and I’m used to that, but it just gets boring for everybody when you walk into a homogeneous workplace.”

Beijing bans 4 New Zealand lawmakers from entering China because they visited Taiwan

WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — Beijing banned four New Zealand lawmakers from traveling to China for a year and demanded they apologize because they visited Taiwan on a parliamentary trip, according to a message from the Chinese embassy conveyed via parliamentary officials and shown to The Associated Press on Thursday. China has hit lawmakers from other countries with sanctions related to contact with Taiwan before, but it's the first time for New Zealand parliamentarians, the government in Wellington said. Beijing has been increasing pressure in recent years on the democratically governed island that it claims as its own territory. Two lawmakers reached by the AP on Thursday rejected the demand for an apology, while the other two could not be immediately reached. New Zealand's government said it would express concern about the travel bans to Beijing. The elected officials visited Taipei in May, as New Zealand parliamentarians have done “for decades,” a spokesperson for Foreign Minister Winston Peters said in a statement.
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