All Things Considered on WRVO-1: NPR News

The movie Battleship, based on the popular board game, opens today in the U.S. In most respects, it's a typical popcorn picture — the kind of effects-laden action movie that audiences often turn into a summer blockbuster.

And while it may not be any good, it is undeniably ours — American from the water up: a Universal Studios picture about an alien invasion, crammed with special effects from Industrial Light and Magic and set largely on American warships.

But there is one respect in which this homegrown sci-fi epic is something of an outlier: American audiences are among the last to see it.

Mark Zuckerberg is, among many other things, the highest-profile taxpayer on the planet today.

After today's Facebook IPO, Zuckerberg will owe nearly $200 million in California state taxes alone. That's "among the largest tax liabilities that a single individual has ever paid at a given point in time," says Jason Sisney of the California State Budget Legislative Analyst's Office.

Zuckerberg's profits will be taxed at a 10% rate in California. That's a much higher rate than in many other states.

In all, Facebook's employees and early investors are expected to pay about $2 billion in California state taxes over the next 13 months. But California is almost 16 billion dollars in the hole. Facebook won't solve that problem.

Documents have been released in the investigation of George Zimmerman's shooting of Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch captain, shot Martin, an unarmed teen. He's claiming self-defense. Robert Siegel talks to Greg Allen.

Pop singer Donna Summer, whose long career began in the 1960s and reached its apex in the disco era of the '70s, died of cancer on Thursday at her home in Naples, Florida. Summer was 63 years old. According to Billboard magazine, the singer born LaDonna Gaines had 32 singles that charted in the Hot 100. Fourteen of them made it into the top 10. To hear Sami Yenigun's appreciation of Donna Summer's life and career, as heard on All Things Considered, click the audio link.

When you hear Cecil Taylor perform, you never forget it. He's a force of nature at the piano, with a furious attack and a sound all his own.

"His piano is an orchestra," says Ben Ratliff, music critic for The New York Times. "Cecil has been with us for so long. And every once in a while he does these amazing, galvanizing solo piano performances. And you go see them, and you think, like, 'Wow. What was that? That was amazing.' And I can't get that anywhere else in the world. And that's unique."

Ruta Sepetys is the author of Between Shades of Gray.

"You are an erotic phenomenon."

That's what the stranger seated next to me on the plane whispered. We had exchanged the basic bios of airline chitchat, and he had inquired about the title of my recent book.

"Erotic phenomenon, oh no, that's not me," I quickly tried to explain.

"Well, OK, it's not really you. It's your character. That's what you tell people," grinned the stranger.

That's not what I tell people.

I tell people that they're confusing Between Shades of Gray, my novel about a Lithuanian girl exiled to Siberia, with the saucy S&M blockbuster, Fifty Shades of Grey.

Utica area lawmakers, activists  and residents are trying to save the Mohawk Valley Psychiatric Center.  The community is galvanizing its support of the facility, which has been in the area for over a century.

May is the month we see strawberries explode in the market. There are strawberry festivals in every corner of the nation celebrating the juicy ruby beauties, and Strawberry Queens crowned galore. Those traditional harvest time festivals make us think our strawberries are mostly grown on the farm just down the road.

But in fact, one state — California — supplies 80 percent of America's strawberries, and the percentage is growing.

The man known as the Godfather of Go-Go has died. Chuck Brown pioneered a musical style of percussion-heavy funk that was born in Washington, D.C. Brown died at age 75 after suffering from pneumonia. Robert Siegel has this remembrance.

Governor Andrew Cuomo came to Syracuse today to promote his legislation for protecting people with special needs and disabilities.

The legislation creates a center which would have primary responsibility for investigating allegations of abuse and neglect of disabled people in state operated or licensed facilities. Last year there were 10,000 such allegations.

The wife of former Syracuse University basketball coach Bernie Fine is suing ESPN. Laurie Fine accused the sports network of libel in a news conference at a resort in Geneva today.

Fine, flanked by her two daughters, a son-in-law and nephew, told reporters that her life was destroyed after ESPN covered allegations that her husband had sexually abused two ball boys.

Looking to get more popular on Facebook? Alex Melen will sell you 1,000 "likes" for about $75.

Melen runs an Internet marketing company. About six months ago, companies he worked with started coming to him more and more with a simple problem: They had created pages on Facebook, but nobody had clicked the "like" button.

"You would go there, and there would be two likes," Melen says. "And one of them would be the owner. And people right away lost interest in the brand."

For the right price, Melen can fix that.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

One of Mexico's greatest writers has died: Carlos Fuentes. He was 83. Fuentes was a central figure in the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s and '70s. And he was publishing fiction and essays until the end, including an essay published today in the Mexican newspaper Reforma. I'm joined by Ilan Stavans, professor of Latino Studies in Amherst College. And, Professor Stavans, give us a sense of the broad sweep of Fuentes' career and what made his work so important.

Transcript

ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST:

One of Mexico's greatest writers has died: Carlos Fuentes. He was 83. Fuentes was a central figure in the Latin American literary boom of the 1960s and '70s. And he was publishing fiction and essays until the end, including an essay published today in the Mexican newspaper Reforma. Our own book critic Alan Cheuse knew Fuentes and reviewed many of his novels. Hi, Alan.

ALAN CHEUSE, BYLINE: Hi, Robert.

SIEGEL: And first, give us a sense of the broad sweep of Carlos Fuentes' career, and what made his work so important?

Time now for a home viewing recommendation from our film critic Bob Mondello. This time Bob urges taking the plunge from the seven-and-a-half-th floor into the Criterion Collection's Blu-ray release of Being John Malkovich.

1999 Weirdness run amok: Struggling puppeteer John Cusack gets a filing job in an office building where one floor — seven-and-a-half — isn't quite tall enough for him to stand, but does have a portal into the mind of actor John Malkovich. As he tells co-worker Catherine Keener, "you see the world through John Malkovich's eyes, and then after about 15 minutes, you're spit out into a ditch on the side of the New Jersey Turnpike."