Tag: disney

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There’s a new scene-stealer in town: kid actor Yara Shahidi, who isn’t only taking over where little Dakota Fanning left off, but is a bankable star in the latest Eddie Murphy flick, Imagine That.

The cute kid from Minneapolis beat out 3,000 girls for the role of Olivia, an imaginative kid with real life stock tips, which her dad (Eddie Murphy) finds useful!

But Eddie isn’t the only A-Lister Yara’s sharing screen time with: she’s starring (with her little brother Sayeed) in Unthinkable as Samuel L. Jackson’s tots and with Angelina Jolie in the thriller Salt.

Of Jolie, whom she recently shot a scene with, Yara said, “[She] was really nice, not intimidating. It was like saying hello to a friend.”

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Disney unveiled Prince Naveen, the dashing young who will try to win the hand of their first black princess Taina in the upcoming film The Princess and The Frog, and critics are in an uproar over his questionable ethnicity.

With a name like Naveen and a complexion that rivals Aladdin, many are wondering why Disney chose to take an ambiguously ethnic route instead of portraying a Prince of darker brown tones more in line with Taina.

Princess Taina might be groundbreaking for Disney, and only after they cleaned up some of the racial stereotypes, but Prince Naveen is disappointing as he perpetuates the Disney tradition of white to near-white royal men.

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Disney revealed on Wednesday that Oprah Winfrey will join the cast of the upcoming animated film The Princess and the Frog.

The talk-show host will voice the character Eudora, who is mother to lead character Princess Tiana, in Disney’s African-American re-telling of the classic Grimm fairytale The Frog Prince. Tony Award-winning actress Anika Noni Rose of Dream Girls will voice Tiana.

The Princess and the Frog, previously titled The Frog Princess, is slated for release in late 2009.

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In the latest media blitz for Disney’s High School Musical 3: Senior Year, stars Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens and Ashley Tisdale appear in a Grease-inspired photo spread for Elle. But blatantly missing (once again!) are black stars Corbin Bleu and Monique Coleman.

Granted Coleman isn’t necessarily a major player in the Disney Channel megahit, but Bleu is definitely a tween heartthrob.

Although race is the obvious difference between these stars, it still confuses Blindie as to why the media continues to crop out Bleu, who is a hunk in his own right.

Coleman, who plays smarty-pants Taylor McKessie in HSM, told Ebony that nabbing the role was important to her so she could “show that the smartest girl in the school is a Black girl!”

Of the coverage given to Tisdale, Efron and Hudgens, Coleman told USA Today last month, “It’s a popularity situation, and I can be really thrilled by the fact that it hasn’t happened to me yet.”

PHOTO: Tierney Gearon for Elle

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Last year, the Walt Disney Co. began production on an animated fairy tale, The Frog Princess, set for 2009, featuring Disney’s first black princess. Fastforward a year later and the original concept has been criticized for its reinforcement of racial prejudice and stereotypes, according to the U.K.’s Telegraph.

Originally, the film’s heroine was to be a chambermaid named Maddy (ahem, “mammy”?!) working for a spoilt white debutante in 1920s New Orleans. Maddy was supposed to be helped by a voodoo priestess fairy godmother to win the heart of a white prince, after he rescued her from a voodoo magician.

As a result of its damaging and demeaning racial tones, the groundbreaking film’s title has been changed to The Princess and The Frog, with the princess being renamed Tiana.

“It’s disappointing,” Rodney Hinds, features editor of The Voice newspaper, said. “Some of the stereotyping of people from our community is still rigid in people’s minds. We have our own dreams and stories like everyone else, and we want them to be portrayed positively.”

A spokesman for Disney said: “The story takes place in the charming elegance and grandeur of New Orleans’ fabled French Quarter during the Jazz Age… Princess Tiana will be a heroine in the great tradition of Disney’s rich animated fairy tale legacy, and all other characters and aspects of the story will be treated with the greatest respect and sensitivity.”

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