Virginia McLaurin and the Harlem Globetrotters (YOUTUBE SCREENSHOT)
article by Yesha Callahan via theroot.com Virginia McLaurin, the 107-year-old woman who danced with President Barack Obama and the First Lady Michelle Obama last month, is now hanging out with the Harlem Globetrotters.
On Tuesday, while volunteering at the Roots Public Charter School in Washington, D.C., McLaurin had a chance to meet Moose Weekes and Zeus McClurkin and show them her ball handling and dancing skills. On top of that, McLaurin was also presented with her own jersey with No. 107 on the back. The basketball players also donated 107 tickets to the school so the students can attend an upcoming game.
Take a look at the charming video of McLaurin and the Harlem Globetrotters:
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y80tL7lsO44&w=560&h=315]
As a follow up to her #62MillionGirls social media campaign, First Lady Michelle Obama is encouraging people to take the Change.Org 62 Million Girls pledge to help support more girls in school. Obama announced the pledge in an essay featured in Wednesday morning’s Lenny Letter just hours before she took the stage for her SXSW keynote event in Austin.
“So often when people talk about the issue of global girls’ education, they dive right into the policy weeds,” Obama began her essay. And while policy is important, the First Lady explained why experience is just as integral to the conversation.
“It’s also very much about attitudes and beliefs,” Obama wrote. “The belief that girls should be valued for their bodies, not their minds; the belief that girls simply aren’t worthy of an education, and their best chance in life is to be married off when they’re barely even teenagers and start having children of their own.”
Obama explained that the issue is personal to her because she’s met many of these young girls while traveling as First Lady. “They are so smart and hardworking, and so hungry for an education,” she wrote. “I’ve met girls who make long, dangerous journeys each day to school and then come home and study for hours each night. I’ve met girls studying at rickety desks in bare concrete classrooms who are raising their hands so hard they’re almost falling out of their chairs.”
Big stars like Kelly Clarkson, Janelle Monae, Missy Elliot and more have already signed the 62 Million Girls pledge. Obama commissioned the artists to create a song about women’s empowerment titled “This Is For My Girls,” produced by MAKERS, AOL’s digital platform that highlights women’s stories. To Preview “This Is For My Girls”: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/this-is-for-my-girls-single/id1093266044
Jennifer Yuh Nelson, Gregory Nava and Reginald Hudlin (REX SHUTTERSTOCK) article by Tim Gray via Variety.com
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences furthered its efforts at diversity by adding three members to the board of governors, and six members to various board committees.
The board OK’d president Cheryl Boone Isaacs’s choices of Reginald Hudlin (directors branch), Gregory Nava (writers branch) and Jennifer Yuh Nelson (short films and feature animation). They will serve three-year terms, effective immediately.
“I’m proud of the steps we have taken to increase diversity,” said Boone Isaacs. “However, we know there is more to do as we move forward to make this a more inclusive organization.”
The board also appointed additional Academy members to each of the six board committees that provide oversight to specific Academy areas.
Actor Gael García Bernal joins the awards and events committee, chaired by first VP Jeffrey Kurland. Cinematographer Amy Vincent joins the preservation and history committee, chaired by VP John Bailey. Producer Effie Brown joins the museum committee, chaired by VP Kathleen Kennedy. Executive Marcus Hu and animator Floyd Norman join the education and outreach committee, chaired by VP Bill Kroyer.
Executive Vanessa Morrison joins the finance committee, chaired by treasurer Jim Gianopulos. Producer Stephanie Allain joins the membership and administration committee, chaired by secretary Phil Robinson.
article by Dave McNary via Variety.com
“The Birth of a Nation” filmmaker Nate Parker will write the movie adaptation of the inspirational wrestling story “Carry On.” Walden Media will develop, finance and produce “Carry On,” based on Lisa Fenn’s memoir that’s due to be published by HarperCollins in August.
Parker wrote, directed and starred in “The Birth of a Nation,” which debuted at Sundance in January and won the audience award and grand jury prize.
Fenn is an ESPN producer who went back to her hometown of Cleveland in 2009 to pursue a story about two disabled wrestlers who attended an impoverished public high school. Dartanyon Crockett, legally blind yet the best wrestler on the team, would carry Leroy Sutton, who had lost both his legs in a train accident when he was 11, to practices and meets.
Fenn formed a connection with the two young men and dedicated the next six years of her life to ensuring their success. Sutton graduated from college and Crockett won a bronze medal at the 2012 Paralympic Games. To read more, go to: http://variety.com/2016/film/news/nate-parker-paralympic-wrestling-movie-carry-on-1201729655/
Last year I was offered the opportunity to script an 11-issue series of Black Panther, for Marvel. The Black Panther—who, when he debuted in an issue of Fantastic Four, in 1966, was the first black superhero in mainstream American comics—is the alter ego of T’Challa, the king of Wakanda, a mythical and technologically advanced African country.
By day, T’Challa mediates conflicts within his nation. By night, he battles Dr. Doom. The attempt to make these two identities—monarch and superhero—cohere has proved a rich vein for storytelling by such creators as Jack Kirby, Christopher Priest, and Reginald Hudlin. But when I got the call to write Black Panther, I was less concerned with character conflict than with the realization of my dreams as a 9-year-old.
The September 1976 cover of Jungle Action, the first Marvel series starring the Black Panther (Marvel Entertainment)
Some of the best days of my life were spent poring over the back issues of TheUncanny X-Men and The Amazing Spider-Man. As a child of the crack-riddled West Baltimore of the 1980s, I found the tales of comic books to be an escape, another reality where, very often, the weak and mocked could transform their fallibility into fantastic power. That is the premise behind the wimpy Steve Rogers mutating into Captain America, behind the nerdy Bruce Banner needing only to grow angry to make his enemies take flight, behind the bespectacled Peter Parker being transfigured by a banal spider bite into something more.
But comic books provided something beyond escapism. Indeed, aside from hip-hop and Dungeons & Dragons, comics were my earliest influences. In the way that past writers had been shaped by the canon of Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and Wharton, I was formed by the canon of Claremont, DeFalco, and Simonson. Some of this was personal. All of the comics I loved made use of two seemingly dueling forces—fantastic grandiosity and ruthless efficiency. Comic books are absurd. At any moment, the Avengers might include a hero drawn from Norse mythology (Thor), a monstrous realization of our nuclear-age nightmares (the Hulk), a creation of science fiction (Wasp), and an allegory for the experience of minorities in human society (Beast).
Justin Cornwell (photo via deadline.com) article by Nellie Andreeva via deadline.com
Young Chicago actor Justin Cornwell has landed the co-lead opposite Bill Paxton in CBS’ drama pilot Training Day.
Written by Will Beall and directed by Danny Cannon, Training Day is a present-day reimagining of Antoine Fuqua’s acclaimed 2001 feature. Set 15 years after the film left off, the show centers on a bright, gung-ho, idealistic young African-American police officer, Kyle Craig (Cornwell), who is appointed to an elite squad of the LAPD where he is partnered with seasoned, morally ambiguous detective Frank Rourke (Paxton).
Cornwell’s Kyle is one of the good guys — an LAPD cop who is fearless in the face of terrible odds and driven to avenge the murder of his father, also a cop. Tapped to go undercover, Kyle is reassigned to the Special Investigation Section, where he’s supposed to take down rogue cop Rourke.
Cornwell, who started his acting career at the Chicago Shakespeare Theater, is a local actor who has done guest stints on two series that film in the Windy City — Fox’s Empire and NBC’s Chicago P.D. He also had a small part in Spike Lee Chicago-themed movie Chi-Raq. To read more, go to: http://deadline.com/2016/03/training-day-justin-cornwell-cast-cbs-pilot-kyle-1201719908/
When Dehanza Rogers first heard of the Four Sisters Endowed Scholarship, she wondered at the meaning of the name.
“I mean what sisters are we talking about?” she remembers thinking to herself. “It could have meant any number of things.”
Then a first-year MFA student at the UCLA School of Theater Film and Television, the 2014 graduate applied for the scholarship to help fund her thesis film years late.
But when she saw the names behind the scholarship, she knew what sistas they were actually talking about: Sara Finney-Johnson, Mara Brock Akil, Gina Prince-Bythewood and Felicia D. Henderson. From Being Mary Jane and Moesha to Love & Basketball and Soul Food: The Series, these four women have created some of the most important talking points in Black television and film lexicon.
Indeed, for decades, they have consistently been telling stories of the Black experience, navigating an industry that is notorious as much for its lack of diversity in storytelling as its storytellers. Each had her share of pushback and difficulties. And it was from these experiences that the idea —- to endow a scholarship towards filmmakers wanting to create African-American themed projects — was born. And the four friends agreed to endow it in a place that molds future industry influencers: film school.
article by Justin Kroll via Variety.com
Warner Bros. is continuing its efforts to tackle Hollywood’s diversity problem by launching an emerging film directors workshop, a talent incubator designed to give access and voice to new and underrepresented talent. The studio will begin accepting applications next month and hopes to have the workshop up and running by the end of the third quarter.
The emerging film directors workshop will provide aspiring helmers from underrepresented communities with the opportunity to showcase their work to the film world after an intensive nine-month fellowship at Warner Bros. participants will be partnered with a Warner Bros. executive mentor as they work through the entire film production process, from pitch to final cut to premiere. The inaugural class will have five filmmakers.
“Our emerging film directors workshop continues Warner Bros.’ commitment to being the industry’s most talent-focused studio,” said Greg Silverman, Warner Bros.’ president of creative development and worldwide production. “There are so many bright, creative individuals at the threshold, who just need access to bring their vision and voice to a bigger audience. By providing that access, as well as a professional network and funding for a short film, Warner Bros. will play a small part in developing the next generation of great storytellers, whether they work in film or television, at our studio or elsewhere.”
Silverman came up with the plan and spearheaded the program, which has been in development for about two years.
Designed to re-create the features production process on a micro level, the workshop will have participants pitch, write or work with a screenwriter, and develop a script for a short film that’s three to 10 minutes long and budgeted at $100,000. Once they have a final screenplay, filmmakers will work with physical production to prep, create a budget, cast, shoot on the lot and edit with a full post-production process. Warner Bros. will cover all production costs and salary for filmmakers for the duration of the workshop.
The workshop will culminate in a film festival showcasing the directors’ work that will be held for agents, managers, producers and film executives from across the industry. More information on the program and the application process can be found here. To read more, go to: http://variety.com/2016/film/news/warner-bros-film-directors-workshop-1201727406/
Jussie Smollett, left, and Jurnee Smollett-Bell. (Credit: Taylor Glascock for The New York Times) article by Melena Ryzik via nytimes.com
CHICAGO — When Jussie Smollett and Jurnee Smollett-Bell were growing up, bouncing with their parents and four siblings between New York and Los Angeles, as the kids pursued careers in modeling, acting and music, their downtime was just another chance for performance and togetherness.
“Creating was something that we just were expected to do,” Mr. Smollett said, in a joint interview with his sister here, where he tapes the Fox series “Empire.” Seated next to him in a downtown restaurant, she was nodding in agreement. “And I don’t remember a time not wanting to do that.”
Aldis Hodge and Jurnee Smollett-Bell in v>“Underground.” (Credit: Sony Pictures Television)
The members of the Smollett clan have made good on their childhood promise. Mr. Smollett, 32, is a singer and a breakout star of the hit drama “Empire,” in which he plays Jamal, the most talented member of the Lyon hip-hop dynasty.
Ms. Smollett-Bell, 29, who made her mark as an actress by the age of 10, with the 1997 film “Eve’s Bayou,” is one of the leads in “Underground,” a new WGN America show about a group of slaves who try to escape from their Georgia plantation; her brother guest-stars.
Though it’s their first project together in 20 years, it’s clear that the more creative freedom they have, the more their tastes will converge.
The Smolletts have also been outspoken politically and, since their school years, devoted to causes like H.I.V./AIDS prevention and ending apartheid. They were raised in the orbit of the Black Panthers and, lately, have lent their voices to the Black Lives Matter movement. Their trajectory, from child stars to successful adults, is born of their family and its history of activism.
“Their sense of justice is very strong, and it permeates everything that they do,” said Alfre Woodard, who has known Jussie and Jurnee since they were children; they worked with her at the nonprofit Artists for a New South Africa. “They’re like a model sibling unit. They look out for each other, all the time. And they all reach across and say, ‘O.K., I got my foot in this door; here, grab my hand, we’re going in together.’”
Raised on a diet of classic films (they’ll gladly quote the 1945 version of “Mildred Pierce”), Jussie and Jurnee still count their mother, Janet Smollett, as their only acting coach. An African-American from New Orleans, Ms. Smollett met their father, Joel Smollett Sr., a Russian-Polish Jew, in the Bay Area, where they campaigned for civil rights. “My mom was in the movement with Bobby Seale and Huey Newton, and one of her first mentors was Julian Bond,” Mr. Smollett said of the Black Panther founders and the civil rights leader. “To this day, Angela Davis is one of her dearest friends. We’ve spent Mother’s Day with Angela.”
Janelle Monae attends 2016 Billboard Power 100 Celebration at Bouchon Beverly Hills. (Photo by Jason Merritt/Getty Images for Billboard)
article by Jeff Sneider via thewrap.com
Pop star Janelle Monae has landed the third lead alongside Taraji P. Henson and Octavia Spencer in the Fox 2000 drama “Hidden Figures.”
Ted Melfi is directing the movie and producing with Chernin Entertainment and Donna Gigliotti of Levantine Films. The film is based on Margot Lee Shetterly’s upcoming book “Hidden Figures: The Story of the African-American Women Who Helped Win the Space Race,” which will be published in September by HarperCollins.
The story follows three African-American women who served as the brains behind NASA’s Friendship 7 mission, which saw astronaut John Glenn become the first American to orbit the Earth in February 1962.
Henson will play Katherine Johnson, Spencer will play Dorothy Vaughan and Monae will play the youngest member of the trio, Mary Jackson. Kevin Costner will co-star as the head of the space program. To read more, go to: http://www.thewrap.com/janelle-monae-joins-taraji-p-henson-octavia-spencer-in-fox-2000s-hidden-figures-exclusive/
article by Paula Rogo via 
