By Lindsey Bahr
The Oscar-nominated documentary short "The Last Repair Shop" is coming to broadcast television this weekend. The 40-minute film will air Saturday on ABC owned television stations and select affiliates, the studios announced Thursday. It's also currently available to stream on Hulu and Disney+.
From co-directors Ben Proudfoot and Kris Bowers, "The Last Repair Shop" is about a unique service in the Los Angeles Unified School District which has provided free and freely repaired musical instruments to public school students since 1959. It is one of the last in the country of its kind and the film takes viewers inside the downtown warehouse where it happens.
Bowers, an acclaimed composer whose has scored many films and television shows including "King Richard" and "The Color Purple," said he found out that one of the main subjects in the film, Steve Bagmanyan, "personally tuned the school pianos that I grew up playing and learning on." As a kid, he didn't know the shop existed but he said he sees the film as paying a "delayed debt of gratitude to those unsung heroes who gave me and countless others the gift of music.
"It's not too much to say I owe my career to people like the four repair people in our film," Bowers said.
The broadcast push is a first for an Oscar nominated short documentary. On Saturday it will air on ABC stations in major California cities, including San Francisco, Los Angeles, Palm Springs and Fresno, as well as in other big markets throughout the country including Chicago, Houston, Philadelphia, New York and Raleigh-Durham.
"This is a beautiful and moving film about how the gift of music, as experienced by people on both sides of the instruments, can affect and inspire people of all ages," said Matthew Greenfield and David Greenbaum, presidents of Searchlight Pictures, in a statement. "We are all so excited that The Last Repair Shop has the opportunity to connect with audiences across the country."
Lindsey Bahr is an AP film writer
Apple sells $46 billion worth of iPhones over the summer as AI helps end slump
Apple snapped out of a recent iPhone sales slump during its summer quarter, an early sign that its recent efforts to revive demand for its marquee product with an infusion of artificial intelligence are paying off.
Sales of the iPhone totaled $46.22 billion for the July-September period, a 6% increase from the same time last year, according to Apple's fiscal fourth-quarter report released Thursday. That improvement reversed two consecutive year-over-year declines in the iPhone's quarterly sales.
The iPhone boost helped Apple deliver total quarterly revenue and profit that exceeded the analyst projections that sway investors, excluding a one-time charge of $10.2 billion to account for a recent European Union court decision that lumped the Cupertino, California, company with a huge bill for back taxes.
Apple earned $14.74 billion, or 97 cents per share, a 36% decrease from the same time last year. If not for the one-time tax hit, Apple said it would have earned $1.64 per share — topping the $1.60 per share predicted by analysts, according to FactSet Research. Revenue rose 6% from last year to $94.93 billion, about $400 million more than analysts forecast.
But investors evidently were hoping for an even better quarter and appeared disappointed by an Apple forecast that implied its revenue for the October-December quarter covering the holiday shopping season might not grow as robustly as analysts envisioned. Apple's stock price shed about 2% in Thursday's extended trading, leaving the shares hovering around $221 — well below their peak of about $237 reached in mid-October.
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