Take a peek at this animation short as it takes you on a sleek adventure through a noirish world of smooth music and an elusive action hero. Animator and director Etop Akpabio borrows style from comic strips and spy films and adds an impressive soundtrack.
Ok ok, so you have to sit through the commercial in the beginning, but hey it’s the one with Carlton dancing like Michael Jackson!
The legendary singer and actress Lena Horne died Sunday at New York Presbyterian Weill Cornell Medical Center.
The 92 year-old entertainer started her six-decade career as a chorus girl at Harlem’s Cotton Club during the depression in 1933 and later went on to star in Hollywood musicals including “Stormy Weather,” in which she sang the signature song and became most known for.
She became the first black person to appear on the cover of a movie magazine, Motion Picture, as her appearance was deemed “safe” and “acceptable” by white Hollywood. “I was unique in that I was a kind of black that white people could accept,” Horne once said. “I was their daydream. I had the worst kind of acceptance because it was never for how great I was or what I contributed. It was because of the way I looked.”
Born in Brooklyn to a upward middle-class family, her grandmother, a prominent member of the Urban League and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, enrolled her in the NAACP at the young age of 2. But Horne did not play an active role in race relations until 1945 when she turned her back on POW German soldiers to sing to Black American soldiers who were seated in back of them.
In the early ’60s, Horne became more active in the civil-rights movement, participating in a meeting with prominent blacks in 1963 with then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the wake of violence in Birmingham, Ala., and singing at civil rights rallies.
Horne was a Kennedy Center Honors recipient in 1984, and received a lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1998.
New York’s Long Island weekly newspaper, Smithtown Messenger, published a photo spread entitled “Before and After” of the past five presidential couples and the Obamas at the beginning and end of their respective presidential terms. The piece would’ve been clever had not the paper chosen to depict the Obamas “after” as Esther (LaWanda Pages) and Fred Sanford (Redd Foxx) from the early 1970s sitcom Sanford and Son.
After accusations of racism, publisher Phillip Sciarello defended the piece as satire but said the newspaper would run a retraction in its next edition.
The NAACP’s Long Island regional director Tracey Edwards described the piece as “despicable and disrespectful. If this was intended as satire, it misses the mark.”
Hazel N. Dukes, president of the state NAACP conference said in a statement on Wednesday, “it is simply shocking and outrageous that such a blatantly racist ad would run in any paper, much less an official paper of Suffolk County,” Dukes said. “New Yorkers of all races and ethnicity are disgusted by it and reject it.”
If satire is meant to be witty, even ironic, or at least exaggerate a bit of truth, Blindie thinks that the Smithtown Messenger definitely missed the mark -Esther is not Fred Sanford’s wife but his bickering sister-in-law and the only similarities between them and the Obamas is their race. The satire relies upon the stereotype that black people are of a depressed economic class, bicker frequently, and are generally comedic because of that.
Either you’re outraged to hear that President Barack Obama is busy calling Tiger Woods to console him during his time of sexual scandal instead of fixing the healthcare plan OR you can sniff out media hype a mile away.
Apparently the rumor that Obama “made a personal call to offer encouragement” to Woods, has been traced back to Golf Digest, as reported by VanityFair.com, don’t worry it’s been expunged already (ah, the convenience of online reporting), but not before a ton of blogs ran with the story, including PerezHilton.com.
Latest rumor has it, Bill Clinton called Tiger. Now that we can believe -the man has been known to make bad choices, and even People.com ran with that story!
In the never-ending, broken record saga of blackface as an art form, Dutch model Lara Stone is the latest white person to dip into the shoe polish.
Stone’s face, arms and legs were painted in dark make-up to resemble what we can all assume to be a black person. French Vogue‘s editor-in-chief Carine Roitfield styled the shoot, and is rumored to be next in line as editor-in-chief at the American Vogue.
Needless to say the photos, taken by Steven Klein, are causing controversy as bloggers and editors speak out against it. Fashion magazineJezebel said, “What Klein and Roitfeld should know is that painting white people black for the entertainment of other white people is offensive in ways that stand entirely apart from cultural context.”
Can someone call Harry Connick Jr.? and get him to explain the whole blackface thing to French Vogue.
Tennis sensation Serena Williams bares her birthday suit for the cover of ESPN magazine’s first Body Issue which debuted this past Friday.
“They told me that I have a great body and wanted me for the cover, and I was super flattered that they asked. I think they did a great job with the photos,” Williams said.
The special publication features athletes from a range of sports showing off their semi-nude physiques including mixed martial artist Gina Carano (also known as “Crush” on the recent NBC revival of American Gladiators), Dwight Howard of the Orlando Magic, and NFL superstar running back Adrian Peterson of the Minnesota Vikings.
But will it rival Sports Illustrated‘s Swimsuit Issue?
Much to the chagrin of Republicans and haters everywhere, President Barack Obama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize on Friday.
The Norwegian Nobel Committee praised the President’s “efforts to strengthen international diplomacy,” his “vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons” and for inspiring hope and creating “a new climate in international politics.”
Obama responded to the honor saying he was surprised and deeply humbled. “Let me be clear: I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments, but rather as an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people in all nations,” hesaid. “To be honest, I do not feel that I deserve to be in the company of so many of the transformative figures who’ve been honored by this prize.”
And what did all the critics say? “Apparently Nobel Prizes are now being awarded to anyone who is not George Bush,” Air America correspondent Ana Marie Cox wrote on Twitter. Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein also commented on Twitter: “Obama also awarded Nobel Prize in chemistry. ‘He’s just got great chemistry,’ says Nobel committee.”
The Daily Beast’s Peter Beinart wrote: “I like Barack Obama as much as the next liberal, but this is a farce.” And Michael Russnow wrote on the Huffington Post that he too is an Obama supporter but, “Whatever Happened to Awarding for Deeds Actually Done?”
horbjoern Jagland, chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, told the AP, “Some people say — and I understand it — ‘Isn’t it premature? Too early?’ Well, I’d say then that it could be too late to respond three years from now,” T “It is now that we have the opportunity to respond — all of us.”
Obama is the third sitting U.S. president to win the award after President Theodore Roosevelt in 1906 and President Woodrow Wilson in 1919. He plans to donate the cash prize of $1.4 million to charity.
){kind=logo}
