Why are the Ad Council and Library of Congress doing tie-ins with Disney? Then again, it may be a public service to recommend reading John Carter books versus seeing the movie.
Showing posts with label hollywood. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hollywood. Show all posts
9921: Ad Council Is A Sellout.
Why are the Ad Council and Library of Congress doing tie-ins with Disney? Then again, it may be a public service to recommend reading John Carter books versus seeing the movie.
9782: Considering Black Characters.
From The New York Times…
Black Characters in Search of Reality
By Brent Staples
Through most of the 20th century, images of African-Americans in advertising were mainly limited to servants like the pancake-mammy Aunt Jemima and Rastus, the chef on the Cream of Wheat box. Imagine a Rip Van Winkle who fell asleep during the era of the Negro as household retainer and woke up in 2012. He would be struck speechless by billboards and commercials featuring affluent black people advising consumers on pharmaceuticals, real estate, financial services and the virtues of owning expensive cars. This kind of transformation has yet to take hold in the dramatic arts.
Advertisers, who must create the world anew every day, have to keep close tabs on changing social and cultural realities. The industry began to normalize images of black affluence in response to the civil rights revolution, and embraced those images as it became clear that they were good for selling breakfast cereal and mutual funds, too.
The dramatic arts are less nimble, partly because they draw on material that is rarely written by people of color and often firmly rooted in a past that allowed for only a narrow, impoverished view of African-American life. The black middle and upper classes have long fumed that stage and film have rendered them largely invisible — and are hungry for serious works with rounded characterizations of themselves.
This hunger was not satisfied by “The Help,” a movie about maids in the racist, early 1960s South that has been nominated in multiple categories for the Oscar. In addition to its best picture nomination, the film has produced a best actress nomination for the wonderful Viola Davis, who stars as the quietly volcanic Aibileen, and a best supporting actress nod for Octavia Spencer, who plays her voluble friend.
The troubling thing is that the only two black actors in this year’s Oscar competition are cast as domestics, and would probably not have found meaty, starring roles in other films had they passed on “The Help.” This brings to mind the first black Oscar winner, Hattie McDaniel, who received the award in 1940 for her portrayal of the loyal maid in “Gone With the Wind.” When criticized for often playing a mammy on film, Ms. McDaniel famously said she would rather play a maid in the movies than be one.
Black artists are often faced with the problem of having to elevate through sheer skill material that is stereotypical or even racist. The director Diane Paulus and her talented stars, Audra McDonald and Norm Lewis, undertake just such a renovation in the new Broadway production of “The Gershwins’ Porgy and Bess.” African-Americans have generally disliked this work, the story of a love affair between a crippled beggar and a drug-addicted woman.
Sidney Poitier initially refused the role of Porgy in the 1959 film (calling it “not material complimentary to black people”), but later succumbed to Hollywood pressure. The New Yorker critic Hilton Als, who has praised the revised version, is no fan of the original either. The opera, he writes, is traditionally staged in a way that casts the love affair in the context of a poor black community’s “will to destruction.” There is “no uplift, just sweat, blood, carnality and resignation.”
Some purists have condemned the new version as a betrayal of the creators’ intentions. But the show now fleshes out the lives of the lovers, excavating the humanity of characters long buried beneath early-20th-century preconceptions.
In their vacation homes in Sag Harbor and Martha’s Vineyard, the black upper classes have complained about the white world’s tendency to equate blackness almost exclusively with poverty and deprivation. This grievance was in no way salved by late-20th-century sitcoms like “The Cosby Show” or “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” which were comedies, after all, and could be dismissed as imaginary.
The hunger for textured depictions of black lives found an indulgence this season on Broadway. The Cort Theater in Manhattan was jumping during the two performances I attended of Lydia Diamond’s “Stick Fly.” This family drama is set in the Martha’s Vineyard vacation home of a black neurosurgeon and the blue-blooded wife he met at a “paper bag” party — so named because no African-American darker than the bag was supposed to be admitted.
The play deals interestingly, if melodramatically, with that special class tension that has always existed between the black elites and the less well off, with whom they were often pushed into close proximity by segregation. The playwright makes a passing reference to Jack and Jill, a once quasi-secret black organization, scarcely heard of among whites, whose chapters met mainly at the homes of black elites and served to foster what often became lifelong alliances.
At the performances I saw, the show unfolded with comfortable familiarity and knowing laughter from a largely black audience that was pleased to see itself credibly rendered onstage.
9673: George Lucas Goes To The Dark Side.
From The Huffington Post…
George Lucas: Hollywood Didn’t Want To Fund ‘Red Tails’ Because Of Its Black Cast
In an appearance on The Daily Show last night, George Lucas said that he had trouble getting funding for his new movie, “Red Tails,” because of its black cast.
“This has been held up for release since 1942 since it was shot, I’ve been trying to get released ever since,” Lucas told Jon Stewart. “It’s because it’s an all-black movie. There’s no major white roles in it at all...I showed it to all of them and they said no. We don’t know how to market a movie like this.”
“Red Tails,” which stars Cuba Gooding, Jr., and Terrence Howard, is based on the Tuskegee Airmen, the group of pioneering black pilots who fought in the United States’ segregated armed forces during World War II. The movie is directed by Anthony Hemingway, the rare black director getting a chance to direct a big-budget feature.
Last week, Lucas told USA Today that he was worried that if Red Tails was a failure, it could have negative repercussions for black filmmakers. “I realize that by accident I’ve now put the black film community at risk [with Red Tails, whose $58 million budget far exceeds typical all-black productions],” he said. “I’m saying, if this doesn’t work, there’s a good chance you’ll stay where you are for quite a while. It’ll be harder for you guys to break out of that [lower-budget] mold. But if I can break through with this movie, then hopefully there will be someone else out there saying let’s make a prequel and sequel, and soon you have more Tyler Perrys out there.”
9609: Celebrities Not Lovin’ Mickey D’s.
From The Chicago Tribune…
Celebrities take McDonald’s to task over U.S. egg practices
Ryan Gosling, Zooey Deschanel, Steve-O and Alicia Silverstone send letter to CEO Jim Skinner
By Zoe Galland Tribune staff reporter
Nearly a month after fast food giant McDonald’s dropped an egg supplier over reports of animal cruelty, a number of celebrities are pushing the company to adopt stricter animal welfare policies.
In a letter to Jim Skinner, CEO of Oak Brook-based McDonald’s, actors including Ryan Gosling, Zooey Deschanel, Steve-O and Alicia Silverstone ask for standards similar to the ones they claim McDonald’s has in Europe.
“While McDonald’s has already established a 100 percent cage-free purchasing policy in Europe, your U.S. restaurants continue to support egg factory farms that confine hens for most of their lives in cages so small they can’t even spread their wings,” the celebrities write.
“As you should know, battery cages are considered so cruel that leading animal welfare experts condemn them, and the entire European Union, as well as California and Michigan, have banned their use ... It’s time for McDonald’s to stop clowning around and help put an end to some of the most abusive factory farming practices.”
McDonald’s announced in November that it was dropping Sparboe Farms, the egg supplier, after ABC News and Mercy for Animals, a non-profit organization devoted to animal welfare, released a video of alleged abuses towards hens at Sparboe locations in Iowa, Minnesota and Colorado.
The video, first shown on “Good Morning America,” showed hens packed into industrial cages too small for them to spread their wings. It also shows dead fowl left to rot in cages with egg-laying hens, chicks’ beaks being burned off and chicks being crushed in workers’ hands.
In a statement Tuesday, McDonald’s said Skinner had not yet received the celebrities’ letter.
“McDonald’s cares about how our food is sourced and we have a long history of action and commitment to improve the welfare of animals in our supply chain around the world,” the company said. “In the United States, we are a founding member of the Coalition for Sustainable Egg Supply (CSES) and are participating in an unprecedented three-year study that compares traditional, cage-free, and enriched laying hen housing systems on a commercial scale”
9541: Atlanta Is The Black Hollywood…?
From The New York Times…
Stars Flock to Atlanta, Reshaping a Center of Black Culture
By Kim Severson
ATLANTA — Cynthia Bailey, arguably the most glamorous of the “Real Housewives of Atlanta,” shivered in a sleeveless red shift, microphone in hand.
It was oddly cold, but the intrepid model carried on. She had a job to do: interviewing the talent that swaggered down the red carpet for the Soul Train Awards.
All along the police barriers that closed down Peachtree Street, fans screamed and elbowed one another for a better view. Those lucky enough to have tickets slipped into the Fox Theater, all glittery and prepared to party.
This was celebrity black Atlanta at its best.
A few years ago, the city probably would not have been able to pull off such a show. But fueled by a generous entertainment tax credit, the migration of affluent African-Americans from the North and the surprising fact that even celebrities appreciate the lower cost of living here, this capital of the Deep South is emerging as an epicenter of the black glitterati.
“It’s so ripe with African-American flavor and talent,” said Stephen Hill, an executive vice president for Black Entertainment Television, which will show the awards Sunday night.
“Atlanta is home to our core audience,” he said. “I’m trying not to make it a racial thing, but Atlanta is our New York, our L.A.”
To be sure, Atlanta has long had a high concentration of well-connected, affluent blacks. But the Atlanta area is now home to such a critical mass of successful actors, rappers and entertainment executives that few would argue its position as the center of black culture. Tyler Perry and his movie and television empire are based here. Sean Combs has a house in a suburb north of the city. The musicians Cee Lo Green, Ludacris and members of OutKast call it home. So does the music producer and rapper Jermaine Dupri.
Gladys Knight, an Atlanta native who was honored at the awards, which were taped Nov. 17, runs a chicken and waffle restaurant here. And it is not unusual to spot Usher at one of the city’s better restaurants.
“It seems like everything is happening here now,” said Dave Hollister, an R&B singer who spends a lot of time in Atlanta. “It feels like New York used to feel with a little more nicety.”
Atlanta’s A-list evolution was driven in part by the state’s 2008 Entertainment Industry Investment Act, which gives qualified productions a 20 percent tax break, said Warrington Hudlin, president of the Black Filmmaker Foundation, which is based in New York.
Producers who embed a Georgia promotional logo in the titles or credits can take another 10 percent off the tax bill. In the last fiscal year, $683.5 million worth of production — music videos, television shows and movies — was staged here.
“Atlanta is really becoming the black Hollywood,” Mr. Hudlin said. Because many black filmmakers are working on tighter budgets than white filmmakers, they need to save money and Georgia helps them do that, he said.
And producers of films and shows like the Soul Train Awards can find a variety of people to fill sets and seats. “This is one of our strengths, the diversity of people in Atlanta,” said Lee Thomas, director of the state’s Film, Music and Digital Entertainment Office. “It’s something we have over, say, Canada.”
The growth has also been fed by a decade of migration of blacks from the North. Nearly a quarter of a million blacks moved to the greater Atlanta area from outside the South between 2005 and 2010, making it the metro area with the largest number of black residents after New York.
More than a third of the new migrant households made more than $50,000 a year. One of the newcomers is Jasmine Guy, the actress whose most famous role was Whitley Gilbert on the sitcom “A Different World.” She was raised in Atlanta but spent 30 years in New York and Los Angeles.
She moved back three years ago, largely because she finds Atlanta offers an easier, gentler life for her family.
“At first I thought, how am I going to work?” she said. “But I have not stopped working since.”
In addition to acting, she directs and teaches younger actors. Like others in Atlanta’s black elite, she likes the fact that she finds herself among the majority at art museums and sophisticated restaurants.
And an added bonus? Paparazzi activity is at a minimum, but stars still get to feel like stars.
“They get the love and attention here like they wouldn’t get in New York,” said Kelley Carter, a pop culture journalist who has worked her share of rope lines and writes for publications like Ebony and Jet. She recently moved to Atlanta from Los Angeles herself.
It also doesn’t hurt that real estate here costs much less than in New York or Los Angeles.
“You can stretch a dollar more here,” said Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who played Theo in “The Cosby Show” and has been in Atlanta shooting a new sitcom, “Reed Between the Lines,” for BET.
“Atlanta affords you a different kind of vibe,” he said. “A little more warmth.”
But like several people interviewed, he’s not ready to say that Atlanta can best New York or Los Angeles.
Lance Gross is a star in the Tyler Perry constellation who spends part of his time in Atlanta. “A lot of people come through here,” he said, “but I can’t give it to Atlanta yet.”
Ms. Bailey, the “Housewives” star, still takes monthly trips to New York for what she calls a culture fix.
But she is investing in Atlanta, and recently opened the Bailey Agency — School of Fashion to help connect Atlanta’s most promising models with power players in the fashion world.
“Atlanta in two or three years is going to be perfect,” she said.
Maybe. The comedian Cedric the Entertainer, who hosted the Soul Train Awards, said Atlanta had always been a black mecca and continues to be one. He used to travel to the city when he was growing up in St. Louis. The city just keeps improving, he said. The talent pool gets bigger every day, which makes it easy to stage shows here.
“You can make some quick calls and say, ‘I had a fall-out. Let’s see if Ludacris can stop by,’” he said. “You have the real down-home love and you have a lot of transplants who give it a real sexy, young progressive energy.”
But, he said, Georgia will always be Georgia.
“It’s serious business down here but at the same time they’re still country,” he said. “I mean, sweet tea don’t go with everything.”
Robbie Brown contributed reporting.
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