Dame Dash Says He Needs Dr.Phil to Talk About Friendship With Jay-Z

Occupy Sandy: Onetime protesters find new cause By MEGHAN BARR | Associated Press – 58 mins ago Living through another night of … NEW YORK (AP) — You might be surprised at what has become a lauded and effective relief organization for victims of Superstorm Sandy: Occupy Wall Street. The social media savvy that helped Occupy protesters create a grass-roots global movement last year — one that ultimately collapsed under its leaderless format — is proving to be a strength as members fan out across New York to deliver aid including hot meals, medicine and blankets. They're the ones who took food and water to Glenn Nisall, a 53-year-old resident of Queens' hard-hit and isolated Rockaway section who lost power and lives alone, with no family nearby. "I said: 'Occupy? You mean Occupy Wall Street?'" he said. "I said: 'Awesome, man. I'm one of the 99 percent, you know?'" Occupy Wall Street was born in late 2011 in a lower Manhattan plaza called Zuccotti Park, with a handful of protesters pitching tents and vowing to stay put until world leaders offered a fair share to the "99 percent" who don't control the globe's wealth. The world heard the cry as that camp grew and inspired other ones around the globe. Ultimately, though, little was accomplished in the ways of policy change, and Occupy became largely a punch line. But core members, and a spirit, have persisted and found a new cause in Occupy Sandy. It started at St. Jacobi Church in Brooklyn the day after the storm, where Occupiers set up a base of operations and used social media like Twitter and Facebook to spread the word. There is a sense of camaraderie reminiscent of Zuccotti, as young people with scruffy beards and walkie-talkies plan the day's activities. Donations come in by the truckload and are sorted in the basement, which looks like a clearinghouse for every household product imaginable, from canned soup and dog food to duvet covers. "This is young people making history," said Mark Naison, a professor at Fordham University who has been studying Occupy Wall Street. "Young people who are refusing to let people suffer without putting themselves on the line to do something about it." Now the group has dozens of relief centers across the city and a stream of volunteers who are shuttled out to the most desperate areas. It is partnering with local community and volunteer organizations. A recent post on Occupy Sandy's Facebook page announced: "Attention! If anyone in Rockaway needs to have their basement pumped, please contact Suzanne Hamalak at suzybklyn(at)aol.com. Her family wants to help and have industrial pumps...they will do it for free....." In Rockaway Park, Occupier Diego Ibanez, 24, has been sleeping on the freezing floor of a community center down the street from a row of charred buildings destroyed by a fire. "You see a need and you fulfill it," he explained. "There's not a boss to tell you that you can't do this or you can't do that. Zuccotti was one of the best trainings in how to mobilize so quickly." There is little public transportation in the neighborhood, where most people still don't have power and many homes were wrecked. Occupy has supplied residents with hot meals, batteries and blankets. Medics and nurses knock on doors to check on the elderly. At one Occupy outpost in Rockaway, residents wandered in recently off the garbage-strewn streets looking for medicine. They lined up in an ice-cold abandoned store that had been hastily transformed into a makeshift pharmacy. Gauze bandages and bottles of disinfectant were piled on tables behind a tattered curtain. "I think we wouldn't be able to survive without them," said Kathleen Ryan, who was waiting for volunteers to retrieve her diabetes medication, stamping her feet on the plywood floor to keep warm. "This place is phenomenal. This community. They've helped a great deal." Is this Occupy Wall Street's finest hour? In the church basement, Carrie Morris paused from folding blankets into garbage bags and smiled at the idea. "We always had mutual aid going on," she said. "It's a big part of what we do. That's the idea, to help each other. And we want to serve as a model for the larger society that, you know, everybody should be doing this."

High court to take new look at voting rights law By MARK SHERMAN | Associated Press – 6 hrs ago Email Share3 Print Enlarge Photo Reuters/Reuters - People line up for admission at the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington October 1, 2012. REUTERS/Gary Cameron WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will consider eliminating the government's most potent weapon against racial discrimination at polling places since the 1960s. The court acted three days after a diverse coalition of voters propelled President Barack Obama to a second term in the White House. With a look at affirmative action in higher education already on the agenda, the court is putting a spotlight on race by re-examining the ongoing necessity of laws and programs aimed at giving racial minorities access to major areas of American life from which they once were systematically excluded. "This is a term in which many core pillars of civil rights and pathways to opportunity hang in the balance," said Debo Adegbile, acting president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. In an order Friday, the justices agreed to hear a constitutional challenge to the part of the landmark Voting Rights Act that requires all or parts of 16 states with a history of discrimination in voting to get federal approval before making any changes in the way they hold elections. The high court considered the same issue three years ago but sidestepped what Chief Justice John Roberts then called "a difficult constitutional question." The new appeal from Shelby County, Ala., near Birmingham, says state and local governments covered by the law have made significant progress and no longer should be forced to live under oversight from Washington. "The America that elected and reelected Barack Obama as its first African-American president is far different than when the Voting Rights Act was first enacted in 1965. Congress unwisely reauthorized a bill that is stuck in a Jim Crow-era time warp. It is unconstitutional," said Edward Blum, director of the not-for-profit Project on Fair Representation, which is funding the challenges to the voting rights law and affirmative action. But defenders of the law said there is a continuing need for it and pointed to the Justice Department's efforts to block voter ID laws in South Carolina and Texas, as well as a redistricting plan in Texas that a federal court found discriminated against the state's large and growing Hispanic population. "What we know even more clearly now than we did when the court last considered this question is that a troubling strain of obstructing the path to the ballot box remains a part of our society," Adegbile said. Since the court's decision in 2009, Congress has not addressed potential problems identified by the court. Meanwhile, the law's opponents sensed its vulnerability and filed several new lawsuits. Addressing those challenges, lower courts have concluded that a history of discrimination and more recent efforts to harm minority voters justify continuing federal oversight. The justices said they will examine whether the formula under which states are covered is outdated because it relies on 40-year old data. By some measures, states covered by the law are outperforming some that are not. Tuesday's election results also provide an interesting backdrop for the court's action. Americans re-elected the nation's first African-American president. Exit polls across the country indicated Obama won the votes of more than 70 percent of Hispanics and more than 90 percent of blacks. In Alabama, however, the exit polls showed Obama won only about 15 percent of the state's white voters. In neighboring Mississippi, the numbers were even smaller, at 10 percent, the surveys found. The case probably will be argued in February or March, with a decision expected by late June. The advance approval, or preclearance requirement, was adopted in the Voting Rights Act in 1965 to give federal officials a potent tool to defeat persistent efforts to keep blacks from voting. The provision was a huge success, and Congress periodically has renewed it over the years. The most recent occasion was in 2006, when a Republican-led Congress overwhelmingly approved and President George W. Bush signed a 25-year extension. The requirement currently applies to the states of Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia. It also covers certain counties in California, Florida, New York, North Carolina and South Dakota, and some local jurisdictions in Michigan and New Hampshire. Coverage has been triggered by past discrimination not only against blacks, but also against American Indians, Asian-Americans, Alaskan Natives and Hispanics. Before these locations can change their voting rules, they must get approval either from the U.S. Justice Department's civil rights division or from the federal district court in Washington that the new rules won't discriminate. Congress compiled a 15,000-page record and documented hundreds of instances of apparent voting discrimination in the states covered by the law dating to 1982, the last time it had been extended. Six of the affected states, Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, South Carolina, South Dakota and Texas, are backing Shelby County's appeal. In 2009, Roberts indicated the court was troubled about the ongoing need for a law in the face of dramatically improved conditions, including increased minority voter registration and turnout rates. Roberts attributed part of the change to the law itself. "Past success alone, however, is not adequate justification to retain the preclearance requirements," he said. Jurisdictions required to obtain preclearance were chosen based on whether they had a test restricting the opportunity to register or vote and whether they had a voter registration or turnout rate below 50 percent. A divided panel of federal appeals court judges in Washington said that the age of the information being used is less important than whether it helps identify jurisdictions with the worst discrimination problems. Shelby County, a well-to-do, mostly white bedroom community near Birmingham, adopted Roberts' arguments in its effort to have the voting rights provision declared unconstitutional. Yet just a few years earlier, a town of nearly 12,000 people in Shelby County defied the voting rights law and prompted the intervention of the Bush Justice Department. Ernest Montgomery won election as the only black member of the five-person Calera City Council in 2004 in a district that was almost 71 percent black. The city redrew its district lines in 2006 after new subdivisions and retail developments sprang up in the area Montgomery represented, and the change left his district with a population that was only 23 percent black. Running against a white opponent in the now mostly white district, Montgomery narrowly lost a re-election bid in 2008. The Justice Department invalidated the election result because the city had failed to obtain advance approval of the new districts. The case is Shelby County v. Holder, 12-96.

DaniKshoes / Etsy Though the recent spate of in-your-face jeans trends has made us re-think our standards about denim (floral jeans? whiskers? jeans shirts with jeans pants, a la the cowboy tuxedo ? We're in!), every women has to draw the line somewhere. And that line is the Jean Sandal Boot. Made from vintage blue jeans by Israeli Etsy designer DaniKshoes, this unimaginably odd footwear is handmade, one-of-a-kind, and sports four useable pockets. On its website, DaniKShoes touts the Jean Sandal Boot as "fun that never goes unnoticed!" and is selling them for $140 a pop. All jokes aside, we're wondering how one could possibly style these. Maybe with a pair of matching jeans tucked in to them? (A sort of denim version of the movie "Inception"--you could have jeans within jeans!) What we really want to know is how you get them on: Fingers crossed it's a zipper fly—we can't imagine buttons would be easy to work at ankle-level (though they might make the fun never go unnoticed). If these boots aren't exactly your style, fear not—the Etsy shop that sells them makes a wide variety of jean-flops, each more horrific than the next. At $140, we'll save our money for some less fashionably traumatic shoes. Like Crocs, or rollerskates with missing wheels.

Watch More News Videos at ABC | 2012 Presidential Election | Entertainment & Celebrity News

Windows 8 Apps: A Look at the Beautiful Apps - ABC News

Windows 8 Apps: A Look at the Beautiful Apps - ABC News

Oldest U.S. Mom of Twins Frieda Birnbaum Is 65 and 'More Excited' Than Ever Before - ABC News

Oldest U.S. Mom of Twins Frieda Birnbaum Is 65 and 'More Excited' Than Ever Before - ABC News

Consider him un-unforgiven? President Barack Obama shrugged off Clinton Eastwood's memorable Republican National Convention performance in part of a USA Today interview published Sunday, declaring: "I am a huge Clint Eastwood fan." "He is a great actor, and an even better director," the president told the paper aboard Air Force One on Saturday. "I think the last few movies that he's made have been terrific." Eastwood's 12-minute improvised riff at the convention in Tampa centered on a exchange in which he pretended to have a conversation with an invisible Obama, represented by an empty chair. Obama's campaign Twitter account hit back with a photo of Obama in a chair with a presidential plate. "This seat's taken," it said. So was the president offended? "One thing about being president or running for president — if you're easily offended, you should probably choose another profession," the president said. By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News

Chris Lighty's Brother & Russell Simmons Question Suicide Reports: "I Don't Think He Killed Himself - Nothing's Adding Up" | SOHH.COM

Chris Lighty's Brother & Russell Simmons Question Suicide Reports: "I Don't Think He Killed Himself - Nothing's Adding Up" | SOHH.COM

Heard and seen backstage and on red carpet at SAG

By BETH HARRIS | Associated Press – 51 mins ago

Related Content

Octavia Spencer, left, and Viola Davis pose backstage with the award for outstanding …

Viola Davis, left, and Cicely Tyson arrive at the 18th Annual Screen Actors Guild …

LOS ANGELES (AP) — It was admiration at first sight when Viola Davis and Cicely Tyson met up on the red carpet at Sunday's Screen Actors Guild Awards, with Tyson approaching Davis from behind as she was being interviewed.

"I said, 'That's my Viola.' I could tell her from the back," Tyson said after "The Help" co-stars embraced and posed for photos together.
Tyson said she was pleasantly surprised by the reaction she got to her small role in "The Help."
"I did not expect this reaction my character would have that put it, for me, on a whole other level," the 78-year-old former Oscar nominee said. "Oprah (Winfrey) said to me, 'You blew me away.'"

Davis, an Oscar nominee for her role in the movie, described herself as "a little brown-skinned girl in an Afro who had a big dream."

She was living the dream Sunday, working the carpet with her husband, Julius Tennon.
"It's her show. I'm just here to support her and make her feel comfortable," Tennon said.
"I'm shy," Davis added.
___

Armie Hammer, nominated as supporting actor for his role in "J. Edgar," stopped on the SAG Awards red carpet long enough to make light of being on the wrong side of the law in West Texas after a drug-sniffing dog discovered marijuana in his car.

"Be more aware of your surroundings next time you're traveling with contraband," quipped Hammer, who played FBI director Hoover's friend and fellow lawman, Clyde Tolson, in the film.

The 25-year-old actor spent about a day in jail before paying a $1,000 bond after his Nov. 20 arrest in Sierra Blanca, Texas.

___

Christopher Plummer, the winner of this year's supporting actor SAG award, gave much of the credit for his win, not to mention his long life, to his "long-suffering wife Elaine who 43 years ago came to my rescue."

Plummer had a well-known fondness for drinking when he met Elaine Taylor, who eventually became his third wife.
"She said, 'Listen, if you're serious about getting together in life, you've got to stop drinking,'" Plummer said backstage. "She was dead right and she was quite vicious about it. She did save my life because I was really going downhill."
Plummer won for his role in "Beginners," portraying an elderly dad who comes out as gay after his wife's death. If he repeats that triumph at this year's Academy Awards he would become the oldest actor to win an Oscar at age 82.

"I can't talk about that because it's miles down the road," he said.

Asked if he would like to win, Plummer said jokingly, "No, I think it's frightfully boring.

"We don't go into this business preoccupied by awards. If we did, we wouldn't last five minutes."

MADONNA'S Premiere for "W.E."

LONDON (Reuters) - The first single from Madonna's upcoming album "MDNA" is called "Give Me All Your Luvin'" and is set for a February 3 release, two days before the singer performs at the Super Bowl on Sunday.

The track features Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. and was composed by Martin Solveig and Michael Tordjman, and marks Madonna's return to music after focusing on directing her new movie "W.E."

MDNA, to be released on Universal Music Group's Interscope Records on March 26, will be the singer's 12th studio album and the follow-up to 2008's "Hard Candy" which debuted at the top of the charts in 37 countries.

An excerpt from the video to Give Me All Your Luvin' will air on U.S. television show "American Idol" on February 2, and the full video appears on Madonna's YouTube channel the following day.

MDNA was recorded in New York and Los Angeles and reunited Madonna with William Orbit who co-wrote and co-produced several cuts on the new album.

The Grammy-winning 53-year-old will headline Sunday's halftime show at the 2012 Super Bowl in Indianapolis in a performance co-created by Cirque Du Soleil.

More than 160 million TV viewers watched last year's halftime performance, making it the most-watched musical event of the year.

BBC America To Co-Produce Third Series Of "Luther"

by Emmanuel Akitobi
 

I guess it pays to be a winner.  Because now that Idris Elba has been awarded the Golden Globe for his performance in BBC's Luther, everybody's on board to help get the next installment of the popular drama back on screens. BBC America issued this press release a few days ago:

New York - Thursday, January 26, 2012 -Following Idris Elba’s best actor win at the 2012 Golden Globes®, BBC AMERICA has today confirmed it is to co-produce the next installment of the critically-acclaimed drama, Luther, starring Idris Elba. The four-part mini-series will premiere in 2012 as part of BBC AMERICA’s Dramaville.

Perry Simon, General Manager, Channels, BBC Worldwide America says: “We’re delighted that Idris’ performance in Luther has been recognized this year with a Golden Globe® Award, an NAACP Image Award and a Primetime Emmy® Award nomination. His iconic role as John Luther has quickly become one of the most powerful detective characters television audiences have ever seen. Luther has been integral in establishing our new Dramaville franchise, the home for groundbreaking British drama. We’re excited to work once again with the incredibly talented writer Neil Cross and executive producer Phillippa Giles on this new ambitious four-part mini-series.”

I'm really looking forward to the show's return, as I'm sure many readers are, too.  My only hope is that they continue to allow the character played by Nikki Amuka-Bird (DS Erin Gray) to remain as involved in the show's plot as we saw with the previous series of Luther.

They Shoot Black Movies...Don't They?

Monday, 30 January 2012 09:59

They Shoot Black Movies...Don't They?  (The Realization of a Hustlerz Ambition) By Barry Michael Cooper At the dawn of the Black Hollywood Renaissance of the '90s, the sodality of filmmakers like Spike Lee, The Hudlin Brothers, Bill Duke, Stan Lathan, John Singleton, The Hughes Brothers, George Jackson, Doug McHenry, Mario Van Peebles, Robert Townsend, Keenan Ivory Wayans, Kevin Hooks, Fred "Fab Five Freddy" Braithwaite, Charles Stone, III, Nelson George and this writer, to name a few, felt like the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. We--like Rossetti, Millais, and Hunt at the height of their artistic revolt in the U.K. during the late 1800s--were cinematic reformers, rejecting the cartoonish mythos of African American life, as depicted in the Black Exploitation flicks of the 1970s. In the 1990's we were Dr. Martin Luther King, we were Malcolm X, we were Gordon Parks, we were Melvin Van Peebles. We were insatiable American Dreamers, like Oscar Michaeux; albeit with limos, first-class, transcontinental transport, five-star luxury hotels and cuisine, Armani-Brioni-Versace-Zegna-Valentino-Ferragamo gear, expanding bank accounts, and cell phones. We had Been To The Mountaintop and had G.P.S.'d that noble glide-path while tracking the Realization of a Negro's Ambition, guided by the voice from an ancestral control tower which intoned, By Any Means Necessary. We just knew The Dream would last forever. Twenty years later Spike Lee--one of the most talented and prolific directors this country has produced in the 20th Century--can't get a green light for the sequel to Inside Man, despite the fact that the original film grossed nearly $200 million dollars worldwide. Twenty years later, two supremely talented actresses--Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer--are given Oscar nods for their portrayals of wise but weathered Mississippi domestics in a highly praised film titled The Help.  Twenty years many black filmmakers (including myself) haven't had a movie financed by a major studio in over twenty years. Twenty years later and America has its first African American President of the United States, seeking re-election for a second term at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Twenty years later, African American filmmakers navigate a course that is slightly sticky, smelly, and saggy, the aftermath of an exploding Dream deferred by Hollywood's Grand Illusion of Inclusion. Twenty years later, is this the way it's supposed to be? Twenty years ago, it was a heady time in Hollywood for a young black screenwriter like me. To be honest, it was unbelievable, and it's almost like it never happened at all. Sitting in meetings along with the late, great film producer George Jackson (and his partner Doug McHenry) at Warner Brothers in Burbank, California, was nothing short of surreal. Months earlier, George Jackson--who read my May 1986 Spin Magazine cover story on the Baltimore "Yo Boy" drug gang culture while changing planes in Denver--hired me away from the loading dock of the Hecht Company department store in Baltimore, to write the script of a movie that became the Rosetta Stone for modern urban culture; 1991's New Jack City. As the first black screenwriter in history to have two films--Sugar Hill and Above the Rim--released not only in the same year (1994), but 30 days apart from each other, I felt weightless in Hollywood's zero-gravity of glitz, fraudulent gravitas, and artifice. As Biz Markie once said (describing the ego-toxic euphoria dispensed by the laughing gas known as The Vapors), "Damn it feels good to have people up on it..." I wasn't alone; Spike had Malcolm X, Jungle Fever, Mo Betta Blues. Singleton got an Oscar nod for Boyz n the Hood, and continued building his visual corpora with Poetic Justice, Higher Learning, Rosewood, Baby Boy and many other films. The Hudlin Brothers created a franchise with House Party, and Reggie Hudlin directed one the best American romantic comedies in the last 30 years (and one of Eddie Murphy's greatest performances) with Boomerang. The Hughes Brothers ignited their spectacular career with Menace II Society. Nelson George penned the wildly successful west-coast rap spoof CB4 (which featured two New Jack City stars, Chris Rock and Al Payne). The success story of African-Americans in Hollywood in the 1990s, was the result of a cultural harvest planted a century earlier, by Oscar Michaeux, the African American filmmaker who changed the game, at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Born on 2 January 1884 in Murphysboro, Ill., Michaeux was the son of a former slave from Kentucky. Using funds he saved up from shining shoes in a white barber shop in Chicago, and work as a Pullman porter and a homesteader in the Southwest, Micheaux channeled his love for communication as a journalist (for the Chicago Defender), a novelist, and then a director. His first two films, The Homesteader (adapted from his novel, The Conquest) and Within Our Gates (which many observers at the time felt was Michaeux's answer to D.W. Griffiths anathematical racist epic, Birth of a Nation), not only blew the explosive depiction of African-Americans as nannies, coons, and sambos to anthropological smithereens, it defined black folk as human beings who wanted to be accorded the same dignity and rights as their white counterparts. Oscar Micheaux's films were pointed at the dead center/critical mass of Jim Crow's diseased heart of darkness, which made him more than just a courageous and acclaimed filmmaker, and his movies more than just entertainment. Micheaux's work was also a political statement.  And maybe, the decade-long dearth of African American films in recent years, is Hollywood's political statement to Black Americans. Maybe it's Hollywood's way of saying, Listen, my niggas; you got a black President, stop yer yappin'!! You overcame! Do you know how many unreported suicides and heart attacks took place in the Deep South (and the Northwest, too) among the offspring of Klansman and racial hate mongers, the night of 4 November 2008? Do you know how many good 'ol boys woke up, thinking they were having a nightmare about some darkie winning the White House...only to wake up and find out that a darkie was really gonna be in the White House?! Don't you see how those white Congressmen and Senators look at Obama when he's up on the podium giving the State of the Union Address to the entire world! The entire f---ing world! This is a guy who should be driving them to the airport, not sitting in the motherf---ing Oval Office! But he is, so please, cut us some slack. We're not green-lighting anymore black films right now; and especially films directed, written by, or produced by Blacks. With your boy Obama as President, now we have a pass to go back to the past, back to this nation's comfort zone, and you all can't say a damn thing about it! You had a ten-year run! You had your day! Be happy! I remember moderating a panel on Hip Hop at Howard University back in 2009, the day before President Obama's Inauguration. It was part of an all day conference titled Refresh Everything, and it was sponsored by Spike Lee, Pepsi, and Howard University. I had an illustrious panel of guests: Sean "Diddy" Combs, Queen Latifah, Ludacris and his manager Chaka Zulu, noted lawyer and entertainment executive L. Londell McMillan, and MC Lyte. It was a spirited conversation, and my Hip Hop panel got a lot of attention; all 1508 seats in Howard's beautiful Cramton Auditorium were filled, and people were standing in the aisles.  A few days later, I remember emailing my thanks to Spike--the both of us basking in the radiantly historic glow of a Black President of the United States of America--and me thinking that now...in 2009...with a President Barack Hussein Obama, that Hollywood was going to be wide open for us. Wide open! What a difference three years can make. Last week, the critics at the Sundance Film Festival did their best to tweet and feather Spike Lee and his film Red Hook (written by Lee's talented collaborator James McBride, and financed by Lee himself). Red Hook--a controversial coming-of-age story about a young black teen and his life-altering summer vacation in Brooklyn's Red Hook projects--seemed to make critics uneasy. Many critics at the Sundance screening condemned Lee's film outright, as opposed to taking the time to discuss with their readers, what elements of the film made them squirm. Which is what real critics are supposed to do. Last week, two of The Help's stars--the gifted Viola Davis and Octavia Spencer--were given well-deserved Oscar nominations for playing maids during the heat of civil rights unrest. Hollywood insists on rewinding those anachronistic ghost clocks of Mississippi, as long as the timekeepers are sympathetic white characters who retrofit the story from their sanitized and patronizing, p.o.v. Last week, I had an interesting conversation with a well-known and visionary television producer--who is also white--who told me in no uncertain terms, "Barry, I don't have to tell you, the era of the 'hood movie, is pretty much over. The executives at the studios won't even take a meeting on that genre any more. Black films are having are hard time finding a home at the studios. If its not a big bucks sequel, or something that fits into their formula of huge box office, it's not going to get a green light. Which also includes small and really good films by white directors, too. It's a new day in Hollywood." So are African American filmmakers still writing and shooting great Black films? Of course: Spike Lee just did it with Red Hook, Dee Rees did it with Pariah, and there will be more films like that to follow. True, Tyler Perry, the Hughes Brothers and John Singleton are creating incredible, viable, big budget studio films. But if it means that other African-American filmmakers have to go back to the grind of digging their own wallets--She's Gotta Have It and Hollywood Shuffle-style--and making it happen with a Canon 5D camera with a bare bones crew, then so be it. There is a gorgeous freedom of expression with that kind of cinema, and most assuredly, there is a growing audience in the millions (and a potential global audience in the hundreds of millions or even billions) who want view their work. And that growing audience is responsible for the emergence of streaming video services like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Videos, and Vudu, which in a few years--GOD Willing--may make cable television obsolete. However, Hollywood is not completely out of the 'hood film bidness. Imagine if you will, some of those same bright-eyed number and career crunching studio execs, who publicly claim they are true blue Democrats--but surreptitiously vote crimson red G.O.P.--orchestrating attack ads portraying President Obama as a Harvard-educated Nino Brown and the White House as his very own New Jack City? A menace to their polite society; a "Nino Obama" who pushes their great country into the crack house of oblivion. Hyperbole, you say? Perhaps. But if I'm not mistaken, Newt "The Notorious N.E.W.T." Gingrich recently labeled (or is it libeled?) President Obama as the "Food Stamp President." Those of us--no matter what race, social stratum, religion, or whoever we are--who want four more seasons of That Virtuous Brother Doing His Thing in the West Wing (And Trying To Make It Work For Everyone), need to show up at polls in droves (just like last time, with lines around the block), just to make sure that the GOP's post-mod minstrel show they are putting into production at this very moment, doesn't get that green light. Be sure to order Barry Michael Cooper's debut anthology of street journalism from the 1980s (and more current essays), titled "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young," which is now available on Kindle/Amazon. Don't have a Kindle? No problem; Amazon has a free app available for download, to read "Hooked On The American Dream-Vol.1: New Jack City Eats Its Young," on your PC, Mac, iPad, iPhone, and Android devices. Click here to go to the Amazon site.  [Source: Hooked on the American Dream]

LL Cool

LL Cool J To Host 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards

GRAMMY-winning rapper/actor is the first host in seven years for Music's Biggest Night

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  Photo: Jesse Grant/WireImage.com

  
  

  LL Cool J

GRAMMY.com

(For a complete list of 54th GRAMMY Awards nominees, click here.)
Two-time GRAMMY winner LL Cool J is set to host the 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards, marking the first time in seven years that the music industry's premier event will have an official host.

"I'm thrilled to be part of Music's Biggest Night," said LL Cool J. "I will always have fond memories of my first GRAMMY Awards and to now be hosting the GRAMMY show, in the company of so many other incredible artists, is a dream come true. Great performances and great music — it's gonna be a great night!"

LL Cool J has hosted "The GRAMMY Nominations Concert Live!! — Countdown To Music's Biggest Night" since its inception in December 2008, and this will be his first time hosting the annual GRAMMY Awards telecast. Recent past hosts include Queen Latifah at the 47th GRAMMY Awards and Jon Stewart at the 43rd and 44th GRAMMY telecasts. Over the years, additional GRAMMY hosts include Billy Crystal, Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O'Donnell, among others.

LL Cool J joins previously announced performers and current GRAMMY nominees Jason Aldean and Kelly Clarkson, Foo Fighters, Bruno Mars, Nicki Minaj, and Taylor Swift. Aldean and Minaj will perform on the GRAMMY telecast for the first time, while Clarkson, Foo Fighters, Mars, and Swift are returning to the GRAMMY stage.

The 54th Annual GRAMMY Awards are produced by John Cossette Productions and AEG Ehrlich Ventures for The Recording Academy. Ken Ehrlich is executive producer, Louis J. Horvitz is director, and David Wild and Ken Ehrlich are the writers.

Music's Biggest Night will take place live on Sunday, Feb. 12 at Staples Center in Los Angeles and will be broadcast in high definition and 5.1 surround sound on the CBS Television Network from 8–11:30 p.m. (ET/PT). The show also will be supported on radio worldwide via Westwood One/Dial Global, and covered online at GRAMMY.com and CBS.com, and on YouTube. For GRAMMY coverage, updates and breaking news, visit The Recording Academy's social networks on Twitter and Facebook.

Demi Moore 911 Call: The Details

The recording of a 911 call that was made from Demi Moore's home on Monday has been released to the public, and ET has obtained a copy.

In the recording, a female caller says, "She smoked something. It's not marijuana, but it's similar to incense and she seems to be having convulsions of some sort." She added that Demi was, "semi-conscious, barely." The caller also said, "She's been having some issues lately with some other stuff, but I don't know what she's been taking or not."
Demi Moore To Be Treated for 'Exhaustion'
As expected, personal details about the star's medical condition and/or medications were omitted by The Los Angeles Fire Department, who responded to the 911 call, in order to comply with federal medical privacy laws and at the insistence of the Los Angeles City Attorney's office.
Demi Moore - Her Life in Photos (Nudity! Divorce! Fame!)
According to internet reports, the emergency call was placed after the actress had inhaled a dangerous amount of nitrous oxide, also known as "whip-its."
Demi Moore's Tipsy First ET Interview

Following the incident, Moore's rep told ET, "Because of the stresses in her life right now, Demi has chosen to seek professional assistance to treat her exhaustion and improve her overall health. She looks forward to getting well and is grateful for the support of her family and friends."

'Real Housewife' Kim Richards: 'I'm An Alcoholic'

Access Hollywood

After an emotional season of high and lows, "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" star Kim Richards has come clean about her struggles with addiction.

In a sit-down interview with Bravo's Andy Cohen - as part of the show's three-part reunion special - Kim reveals the reason behind her sometimes erratic and often tear-filled behavior this past season.
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"I'm an alcoholic," Kim tells Andy in a preview clip of the upcoming reunion episode. "I'm an alcoholic."
The 47-year-old, who began treatment for alcohol abuse in December, was not part of the group reunion episodes with co-stars Taylor Armstrong, Camille Grammer, Adrienne Maloof, sister Kyle Richards and Lisa Vanderpump, but the ladies of the 90210 offered up their support and observations on Kim and her behavior during the season.
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"I think we were all aware that something was off, but we didn't know quite what it was. It was very difficult to try and ascertain," Lisa said in a preview clip when asked if she knew Kim was struggling. "I think she wouldn't have gone without really needing to be there. She obviously has to sort something out."
Adrienne, who remained a close friend to Kim during Season 2, said, "It takes a lot of courage to do what she has done. It's a step in the right direction."
"The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" reunion special begins on January 30 at 9 PM on Bravo.

PIC: Ashton Kutcher Returns to L.A. Amid Demi's Crisis

Us Weekly

Welcome home, Ashton.

A quiet, subdued Ashton Kutcher was photographed at LAX on Thursday, touching down in Los Angeles after a fun trip to Sao Paulo, Brazil. (X17 was first to reveal the shots.)
PHOTOS: Inside Demi's troubling slimdown
During his time in South America, the Two and a Half Men star, 33, frolicked in a rainstorm, checked out a sexy fashion show, shot a campaign for Colcci with pregnant model Alessandra Ambrosio and hit a nightclub, his estranged wife Demi Moore was having a decidedly less awesome week.
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The 49-year-old actress checked into a hospital Monday after suffering seizures and announced that she was seeking treatment for "exhaustion."
Kutcher, who split from Moore in November after six years of marriage, hasn't yet commented or tweeted about Moore's condition.
PHOTOS: Demi and Ashton in happier times
"He cares a lot for her," a source tells Us Weekly. "He's very concerned and will always support her."

No confirmation yet whether he'll be visiting with Moore as she convalesces.

Take a Class on Beyonce

The Insider

Where was this when I was in college?!

Everyone knows that Beyonce is a worldwide music superstar, not to mention a successful designer and entrepreneur -- but now she's being deemed worthy of her own college course.
Seriously.
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Rutgers University in New Jersey is planning on offering a course on how Queen B has altered America's views on race, sex and gender called "Politicizing Beyonce." But those thinking the class will be a walk in the park just because they know the entire dance to Single Ladies are mistaken -- this class is apparently a whole lot deeper.
"This isn't a course about Beyonce's political engagement or how many times she performed during President Obama’s inauguration weekend," says professor and doctoral student Kevin Allred.
Destiny's Child Crew on Beyonce's Baby Girl

Instead, the course will frame her impressive body of work in the context of Black feminism. The class will compare Beyonce's work with writings from the likes of Bell Hooks, Sojourner Truth and Alice Walker.

Welcome Back, Kotter's Robert Hegyes, Who Played Epstein, Dies

By Kate Stanhope | TV Guide

Robert Hegyes, best known for playing Juan Epstein on Welcome Back, Kotter, died Thursday from an apparent heart attack, The Star-Ledger reports. He was 60.
A New Jersey native, Hegyes studied speech and theater at Rowan University (where he taught later in his career) before finding stage work in New York both on and off Broadway.  In 1975, Hegyes was cast on Welcome Back, Kotter as one of the Sweathogs alongside a young John Travolta. After the comedy's four-year run, Hegyes joined the detective series Cagney & Lacey as undercover detective Manny Esposito.
Watch full episodes of Welcome Back, Kotter
More recently, Hegyes guest-starred on shows like NewsRadio, Diagnosis Murder and The Drew Carey Show. Health problems in the past several years, including a heart attack, kept him out of the limelight. However, he did reunite with the rest of the Welcome Back, Kotter cast at last year's TV Land Awards.
Hegyes is survived by three siblings, two children, Cassie and Mac, and two stepchildren, Sophia and Alex.

Oprah Winfrey Isn't Godmother to Beyonce's Daughter Blue Ivy Carter

Blue Ivy Carter really is going to live her best life.

On Wednesday and Thursday, another rumor about Beyonce and Jay-Z's infant daughter blazed the web: That the couple chose pal Oprah Winfrey to be Blue's godmother.
PHOTO: Beyonce's bikini body
When asked by Us Weekly about the story, a rep for Beyonce declined to comment. But Winfrey's BFF Gayle King finally cleared things up Friday morning on CBS' The Early Show.
"It's absolutely not true that she's the godmother," King explained.  "She's friends with them, of course, and likes them both very much. She's working on sending them a baby gift. She hasn't even had time to send a baby gift because she's been away."
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She added, "Let me just say, if (that report is) true, it is news to her. It is news to her. You know, she was heading to South Africa when the baby was born."
Before King debunked the story, Kathy Griffin joked about Beyonce's famous pals. "R u fing kidding me??? Oprah is Blue Ivy's godmother???" the comedienne tweeted Thursday. "Gwyneth must b PISSED."
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Beyonce, 30, and Jay-Z, 42, are close pals with Gwyneth Paltrow (she was among the first to tweet about Blue's birth) and well as Winfrey, 57.
Hip hop gossip site MediaTakeOut first reported the supposed news, adding that Jay-Z's BFF Tyran "Ty Ty" Smith was named godfather.
PHOTOS: Beyonce and Oprah together
Blue Ivy was born in NYC on Jan. 7. "She is so beautiful," Beyonce's Destiny's Child bandmate Kelly Rowland recently gushed. The first-time mom has yet to emerge in public since giving birth.

Rihanna lands own fashion show, unknown designers will compete to dress her

AFP Relax News

Rihanna in one of her daring stage outfits

Rihanna has announced her debut television project, launching a fashion series where unknown designers will compete for the chance to dress her when she performs at London's Wireless festival in July.

Launching exclusively on UK channel Sky Living HD, it was announced January 26 that the singer will be executive-producing and appearing on the currently unnamed program.
Despite being the current face of Armani Jeans and lingerie, the star is known for championing more obscure designers on the red carpet from time to time.
"I have been very fortunate to work with some truly amazing designers and stylists throughout my career, and they have been instrumental in making sure my creative vision reaches the stage," explained the star.

"I am excited to follow the journey of our aspiring contestants and see how their individuality influences their efforts during the course of the show."

The show will run over ten weeks, challenging the unknown creators to create outfits for a string of celebrities before the ultimate challenge of creating Rihanna's unique stage outfit.

Set to air this summer, it will be presented by Nicola Roberts of UK girl group Girls Aloud, whose fashion credentials include launching her own Dainty Doll makeup range.

Designers can find application information at the following address; http://skyliving.sky.com/are-you-fashions-next-big-thing.

Cynthia Nixon wrestles with life in a moving 'Wit'

By MARK KENNEDY | Associated Press

  

In this theater image released by Boneau/Bryan-Brown, Cynthia Nixon, left, and Carra …In this theater image released by Boneau/Bryan-Brown, Cynthia Nixon is shown in a …

NEW YORK (AP) — Another "Sex and the City" star has made her way to Broadway but she's brought along a different kind of cocktail.

Cynthia Nixon has a combination of the drugs Hexamethophosphacil and Vinplatin in her veins as she fights back ovarian cancer in a tight and powerful Manhattan Theatre Club production of "Wit," which opened Thursday at Samuel J. Friedman Theatre.

The play about the final days of a scholar of John Donne's metaphysical poetry is making its Broadway premiere 13 years after it earned playwright Margaret Edson the Pulitzer Prize for drama.

It is a deceptive play — seemingly so simple yet layered with nuance and self-consciousness. "I've got less than two hours. Then: curtain," quips the scholar at the top of the piece in a typically — yes, witty — line.

The part of Professor Vivian Bearing is catnip for any serious actress — Emma Thompson and Judith Light have played her — and Nixon has scrubbed all glamour from her face and body to inhabit a woman who goes from detached observer of her own condition to one consumed by raw feeling, whimpering childlike in pain.

And yet Nixon has decided to play her character far too robotic at the beginning, perhaps to heighten her arc. The result is a more shocking payoff when Bearing finally succumbs, but it comes at the cost of initially emotionally connecting with her audience. For too many stretches here, Nixon is like a Vulcan, her character's humanity hidden behind the walls of her formidable mind.

Nixon on stage appears on stage bald from chemo and wears a baseball cap and two formless hospital gowns. It's a far cry from her "Sex and the City" comrade Kim Cattrall, who just finished her latest stint on Broadway in Noel Coward's frothy "Private Lives" while sipping Champagne in silky gowns.

The humor in Nixon's play is grim, grim, grim and Nixon — along with director Lynne Meadow, who are both cancer survivors — have wrung out every ounce in a 100-minute, intermission-less production. The production gets its biggest laughs for tweaking hospitals as inhuman factories, with the ubiquitous question to patients "How are you feeling today?" particularly mocked.

The role of a slightly dim but goodhearted nurse (played by Carra Patterson) seems ill-defined in this production. But two smaller roles are very well executed.
Greg Keller plays the brisk Dr. Jason Posner, a one-time student of the imperial Professor Bearing who is in many ways her medical soul mate. He, too, is unhappy dealing with humans, preferring to be hidden away in a research lab just as she hides behind wit.

"So. The young doctor, like the senior scholar, prefers research to humanity," Bearing tells us in an aside.

Keller shows a lovely flash of awkwardness when he begins a pelvic exam of his old teacher and his speech about why the disease she battles is so interesting to him — "Cancer's the only thing I ever wanted," he thoughtlessly says — mimics his patient's detached rapture for her beloved poet, Donne.

The other memorable performance is from Suzanne Bertish, who pops up twice as E.M. Ashford, Bearing's mentor who encourages the younger woman to engage with life in a flashback scene and then tenderly reads to her as she dies in the play's most tear-jerking moment.

Meadow has handled the flashbacks and quick scene changes flawlessly. She has been aided by Santo Loquasto's simple yet effective set, which is really just an industrialized-colored wall that spins, allowing one scene to play out and then twist to present another on the reverse side.
In one flashback, a lecture about one of Donne's sonnets by a still-formidable Bearing armed with a pointer she smacks around to make her points is a glorious moment to see her in her full arrogant, passionate past, one made even more poignant when she is interrupted by a nurse requesting another medical test. Nixon shines here as she allows her irritability to come out.
Edson's writing grows in strength as the play builds and so does Nixon, whose stilted language at the beginning ("It is not very often that I do feel fine") gives way to the use of contractions, swears and slang. ("What's left to puke?" she asks.) Bearing learns to accept and then enjoy human touch. She licks a Popsicle then laughs at herself for being corny.
"Once I did the teaching, now I am taught," she says.

In a play about ultimately reconnecting with one's humanity, Nixon is almost too hard to watch at the end. A ball of pain, and a curdling cry, is all she seems. But she ultimately achieves the state that the playwright intended: grace.

Sajak: Vanna and I drank between 'Wheel' tapings

Associated Press

• FILE - In this Sept. 29, 2007 file photo, Co-host Vanna White and host Pat Sajak …

NEW YORK (AP) — The "Wheel of Fortune" wasn't the only thing spinning for Pat Sajak and Vanna White back in the day.

Sajak said in an interview on ESPN2 this week that the long-time game show team would occasionally walk over to a restaurant for "two or three or six" margaritas during a break in taping early "Wheel of Fortune" shows in California. Sajak has hosted the show since 1981; White joined him a year later.

Sajak recalled the margarita stops after answering "yes" to a question about whether he had ever hosted the show "a little bit drunk."

Although he joked that he had "trouble recognizing the alphabet" for shows taped after the drinks, no one ever said anything to them.

Now that he's older, Sajak said he couldn't do that anymore.

911 call from Demi Moore's home to be released

 

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Authorities are set to release a 911 call made from Demi Moore's home earlier this week.

The Los Angeles Times (http://lat.ms/x6Lu2n ) says the Los Angeles city attorney's office has recommended that certain portions of the call be deleted to comply with federal privacy laws.

City attorney's office spokesman Frank Mateljan tells the Times that the office has reviewed the tape and has made certain recommendations.

A spokeswoman for Moore said Tuesday that the actress is seeking professional help to treat her exhaustion and improve her health. Publicist Carrie Gordon says the decision is due to the stresses in Moore's life, and she looks forward to getting well.

Moore announced in November that she had decided to end her marriage to Ashton Kutcher following news of alleged infidelity.

Sundance fest embraces hip-hop on stage and screen By SANDY COHEN | Associated Press

PARK CITY, Utah (AP) — Hip-hop is making itself heard — and seen — at the Sundance Film Festival.

Along with a slew of performances by rappers and DJs around town, this year's festival includes documentary and narrative films about hip-hop culture.

"It's a beautiful thing to see," said Luther Campbell of 2 Live Crew fame, who stars in a short film playing at the festival called "The Life and Freaky Times of Uncle Luke." ''When you look at the success of Ice Cube and Will Smith, these are traditional hip-hop guys that are very successful in the movie business, so it's a great thing and I'm happy for all the other guys who are here."

Rapper-actor Ice-T made his directorial debut at Sundance with the documentary "Something From Nothing: The Art of Rap," which features interviews with hip-hop artists such as Grandmaster Flash, Eminem, Mos Def, Run-DMC, KRS-One, Snoop Dogg and Ice Cube.

Ice-T said he made the movie to give viewers "a better understanding of what it takes and what we do."

"I wanted to talk about the craft, not the cars, the money, the girls," the 53-year-old entertainer said. "How do you write rhymes? Let's go into the songwriting process. And everybody was really excited because they were like, 'Nobody ever asks us that.'"

After interviewing his friends and colleagues on both coasts, Ice-T ended up with a four-hour film that he trimmed down to 106 minutes for festival consideration.

"Our only ambition was to make it to Sundance," he said. "This is a festival about art, and this movie's about art."

Another film with a hip-hop focus is dramatic-competition contender "Filly Brown." The film starring Lou Diamond Phillips, Edward James Olmos and newcomer Gina Rodriguez tells the story of a rising Hispanic hip-hop star and the challenges she faces on the way to fame.

"Hip-hop, the soul of hip-hop and the foundation of hip-hop is just staying true to who you are and your voice, and so I think it's really nice that the Sundance films are reflecting that," said Rodriguez, who raps on screen.

"We didn't set out to make a hip-hop movie," added co-director Youssef Delara. "We set out to tell the story of this young woman in music, and it's just like hip-hop is so ingrained in our culture, and a lot of different types of culture, that you really can't tell a youth story without some element of hip-hop."

The Sundance Institute Film Music Program hosted a concert at the ASCAP Music Café featuring Ice-T, Chuck D of Public Enemy and rap pioneer Grandmaster Caz.

"Every year the films are so wonderful here and so diverse, and they keep adding new elements and experiences to the festival to keep it current and fresh," said Loretta Munoz, producer of the ASCAP Music Café. "I'm very happy about 'The Art of Rap' and seeing how that goes forward."

In addition to the films and official music programs, various corporate-sponsored locations held their own parties with big-name rap stars.

Common, a star and producer of "LUV," a contender in the U.S. dramatic competition, celebrated the film by performing into the wee hours at the Express afterparty. Drake and Wiz Khalifa each took the stage at the Bing Bar, and Drake also hosted a gathering at Park City Live, where Ludacris headlined earlier in the week.

Lil Jon took to the turntables at the Skullcandy Compound above a massive disco ball and Kendrick Lamar inspired the crowd to sing along at Sugar nightclub on Main Street, where Nas is set to perform Friday.

"Hip-hop changed the world," Ice-T said. "I'm amazed it took so long to get here."

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AP Entertainment Writer Ryan Pearson and AP Movie Writer David Germain contributed to this report.

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AP Entertainment Writer Sandy Cohen is on Twitter: www.twitter.com/APSandy .

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Online:

www.sundance.org/festival