According to Variety.com, Toni Braxton will star as singer Darlene Love in OWN’s biopic of the famed pop vocalist. My Name is Love: The Darlene Love Story is slated for a December premiere, and the telefilm revolves around Love’s long career in the music industry, starting out as the key voice behind Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound hits from the 1960s. OWN’s first scripted movie was brought to the network by Morgan Neville, the documentarian who was behind last year’s Academy Award-winning feature, Twenty Feet from Stardom, about Love and other well-known backup singers.
OWN has also announced it’s set Octavia Spencer to star in a miniseries revolving around a journalist investigating the notorious mass murder and cover-up in Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1921. Tulsa comes from drama veteran (and Oklahoma native) Nancy Miller (TNT’s Saving Grace).
Additionally, OWN has ordered 20 more episodes of Tyler Perry’s hit primetime soap The Haves and the Have Nots, bringing it to 56 episodes to air through 2015. A new Perry drama series, Single Mom’s Club, is set for a fall debut with a 20-episode order.
Justin Timberlake is lined up as the first guest on the new season of Oprah Winfrey’s interview series Oprah’s Master Class, to premiere May 11. Another programming tentpole planned for next year is the seven-part documentary series Belief, examining the origins of faith “through the eyes of believers.”
Good Black News
Black emojis have arrived. Recently, Apple executives said they would work on getting emojis of color. But Africa couldn’t wait. Oju Africa, a division of African mobile company Mi-Fone, released 15 emojis this week on the Google Play store.
“We follow global trends but we are differentiated by our authentic African voice. So as a brand we wanted to do something that only Africa could pull off, something that could become so iconic that it would have the world talking. I believe what we have created will ensure that every African on the planet won’t be able to help but love it!” Eserick Fouché, the creative director of Oju Africa, told International Business Times.
Accordingly, Oju translates as “face” in the Yoruba language of Nigeria. The emojis, which are similar to Apple’s yellow smiley face, are available now for Android (search for “oju emoticon app” in the Play Store), and will be released soon for iOS.
article by Dominique Zonyeé via bet.com
Michael Strahan is in negotiations to join ABC’s Good Morning America. Strahan will remain cohost with Kelly Ripa of Live with Kelly and Michael, the Disney-distributed syndicated morning show. He’s expected to join the GMA ensemble in the studio a couple of times a week.
Strahan, a former NFL player, is also an analyst on Fox’s NFL Sunday. He was a surprise choice to fill Regis Philbin’s shoes opposite Ripa on Live in the fall of 2012. Since then, he’s been widely praised for his warmth and versatility on-air. The Disney parentage of Live and ABC makes it feasible for him to shuttle between the two morning shows.
Sources said GMA’s discussions with Strahan have been going on for months and are not tied to Josh Elliott’s recent departure for NBC Sports.
article via Variety.com
The Melvin B. Tolson/Denzel Washington Forensics Society of Wiley College has added another historic feat to its list of accomplishments by winning the Overall Sweepstakes Championship of the 2014 Pi Kappa Delta National Comprehensive Tournament. Wiley is the first historically black college to earn this national award.
Wiley’s win comes during a record-making year for Pi Kappa Delta’s prestigious annual tournament – the 2014 event saw 80 schools (with 2,000 entries) competing to prove they have the best forensicators (speech and debate) in the country.
“We earn victories at Pi Kappa Delta each year, but this year’s overall championship victory is especially meaningful to Wiley,” said Haywood L. Strickland, Wiley’s President and CEO. “We are pleased that our students performed so well against all these strong teams. Their accomplishment is a clear reflection of the legacy of excellence at Wiley,” he said. “We are grateful to Professor Melvin B. Tolson, Denzel Washington, and all who paved the way for this victory to occur.”
Forensic speech and debate is woven into the fabric of Wiley College. Notably, the College’s 1935 debate team, led by Professor Melvin B. Tolson, defeated the then reigning national forensics champion, University of Southern California.
The 2007 movieThe Great Debaters tells the story of this competition, and the movie’s star and director, Denzel Washington, donated the funding that helped relaunch the College’s debate team in 2008.
Wiley’s 23-member Forensics Team is coached by Chris Medina. The team will next travel to Tempe, Arizona, to compete in the American Forensics Association Nationals – a tournament of champions for selective student who qualify through earlier high tournament rankings. On the heels of that event, two members of the team will travel to Ypisilanti, Michigan, to compete in the National Forensics Association Nationals.
Nobody can agree on who invented the blues or birthed rock & roll, but there is no question that house music came from Frankie Knuckles, who died Monday afternoon of as-yet-undisclosed causes at age 59. One of the Eighties and Nineties’ most prolific house music producers and remixers, Knuckles is, hands down, one of the dozen most important DJs of all time. At his Chicago clubs the Warehouse (1977-82) and Power Plant (1983-85), Knuckles’ marathon sets, typically featuring his own extended edits of a wide selection of tracks from disco to post-punk, R&B to synth-heavy Eurodisco, laid the groundwork for electronic dance music culture—all of it.
Knuckles made an abundant number of dance classics, including early Jamie Principle collaborations “Your Love“(1986) and “Baby Wants to Ride“(1987); “Tears“(1989), with Satoshi Tomiie and Robert Owens; “The Whistle Song“(1991); and his remixes of Chaka Khan’s “Ain’t Nobody“(1989), Sounds of Blackness’s “The Pressure” (1992), and Hercules and Love Affair’s “Blind” (2008).
http://youtu.be/rd0Zo1WAk5I
Born Francis Nicholls in the Bronx on January 18, 1955, Knuckles began hitting New York’s after-hours spots such as the Loft, the Sanctuary, Better Days, and Tamburlaine—the clubs where disco was born—as a teenager, along with his best friend, Larry Philpot. By the mid-Seventies, both of them were DJs themselves, and Philpot had changed his surname to Levan. The duo worked together at two of the most important early discos: the Gallery (presided over by Nicky Siano, whose smooth on-beat mixing style was enormously influential) and the Continental Baths, a multi-room gay bathhouse on Manhattan’s West Seventy-fourth Street. (Two other entertainers got their start there: Bette Midler and her pianist, Barry Manilow.)
By 1977, both started their own clubs in difference cities. While Levan (who died in 1992) helmed the Paradise Garage in Soho, Knuckles moved to Chicago, where Robert Williams, an old friend of both, was opening what became the Warehouse. A narrow building with oblong windows at 206 South Jefferson St. (today it’s a law office), the Warehouse was where Knuckles began honing his sound and style—”a wide cross-section of music,” as he told The Guardian in 2011. His mélange of disco classics, weird indie-label soul curiosities, the occasional rock track, European synth-disco and all manner of rarities would eventually be codified (at Importes, Etc., the record shop where Knuckles bought much of his music) as “House Music”—short, of course, for the Warehouse. (In 2004, the block where the Warehouse stood was renamed Honorary Frankie Knuckles Way.)
Three days ago, Good Black News shared an article about Washington D.C. wunderkind Avery Coffey, who was accepted to five Ivy League colleges. Today, 17-year-old New Yorker, violist and aspiring physician Kwasi Enin went one better – make that three better – and earned acceptance to all EIGHT Ivys!
According to usatoday.com, the acceptances began rolling in over the past few months, and by late last week when he opened an e-mail from Harvard, Enin found he’d been accepted to every one. School district officials provided scanned copies of acceptance letters from all eight on Monday. Yale confirmed that it was holding a spot for Enin.
The feat is extremely rare, say college counselors — few students even apply to all eight, because each seeks different qualities in their freshman class. Almost none are invited to attend them all. The Ivy League colleges are among the nation’s most elite.
“My heart skipped a beat when he told me he was applying to all eight,” says Nancy Winkler, a guidance counselor at William Floyd High School, where Enin attends class. In 29 years as a counselor, she says, she’s never seen anything like this. “It’s a big deal when we have students apply to one or two Ivies. To get into one or two is huge. It was extraordinary.”
For most of the eight schools, acceptance comes rarely, even among the USA’s top students. At the top end, Cornell University admitted only 14% of applicants. Harvard accepted just 5.9%.
Grammy Award-winning producer/musician Pharrell Williams will join NBC’s singing competition The Voice next season, the show announced on Twitter. He replaces original coach CeeLo Green who recently announced his departure.
“It’s been a huge year for Pharrell, with recognition for his contribution in the world of music — the ‘Despicable Me’ franchise soundtracks, his Oscar-nominated song ‘Happy’ and his Grammy-winning collaboration with Daft Punk on the breakout dance hit ‘Get Lucky.’ His dominance in record sales in 2014, coupled with his incomparable accomplishments in the world of fashion and design, make him an irresistible addition to ‘The Voice’ family,” said Paul Telegdy, President, Alternative and Late Night Programming, NBC Entertainment.
Said executive producer Mark Burnett: “I am thrilled to have Pharrell come back to ‘The Voice’ family, and this time … as a coach. Continuing in ‘The Voice’ tradition of having the biggest and most current music stars as coaches, Pharrell fits perfectly.” Pharrell, who was previously an adviser to team Usher on season four of “The Voice,” is a multi-platinum and international singer-songwriter, producer and fashion designer.
article by Nellie Andreeva via deadline.com
Television veteran Tichina Arnold will help round out the cast of Starz’s new original comedy series Survivor’s Remorse, executive produced by LeBron James. The half-hour show centers on two men (one an NBA star, the other one not) who make it out of North Philadelphia’s inner city to a more extravagant life of fame and fortune. Along the way, they fight with the guilt of their struggling peers left behind.
Jessie T. Usher will take the lead of basketball talent Cam Calloway who signs a multi-million dollar contract, while Arnold plays his mother.
Let’s Stay Together supporting actor Ronreaco Lee has been cast as Cam’s cousin and confidant Reggie Vaughn and Erica Ash of The Real Husbands of Hollywood will play Cam’s sister M-Chuck. The group joins Teyonah Parris who will play Lee’s wife Missy.
Survivor’s Remorse is set to air this fall.
article by Camille Travis via uptown magazine.com
The collection is haunting: black-and-white stills of another place from another time, a documentation of the Gullah, or Geechee, people—a population of African descendants living on the Sea Islands off the Eastern coastline. The images of a place and a people that time forgot were captured by celebrated photographer Jeanne Moutoussamy-Ashe—the wife of renowned tennis player Arthur Ashe—between 1977 and 1981.
Bank of America donated the collection of more than 60 photos to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture. The photographs center on the people and life of Daufuskie Island, a cultural and national treasure tucked away off the coast of South Carolina.
A “time capsule” is how the island was aptly described by Lonnie Bunch, the museum’s founding director, who is thrilled at the addition to the yet-to-be-finished museum. In addition to the stunning collection, which Bank of America originally obtained through its acquisition of Merrill Lynch in 2007, the financial institution also donated $1 million toward the building of the museum, a $500 million project.
“We’ve had a great history with the [museum]. We were one of the first donors [and have a] long-standing partnership,” Bank of America spokeswoman Diane Wagner told The Root. “[The collection] seemed like a very natural fit to be donated to the museum as one of their key exhibitions once they open in 2015.
“We feel that the arts have the power to connect people and … can connect people across cultures, across geography and socioeconomic status … People can take a look at art and understand a different culture, or they can understand their heritage, where they come from and how they’ve been established,” she added.
WASHINGTON – This is the college acceptance season — frequently a nervous time for high school seniors. But D.C.’s Avery Coffey can relax. He applied to five Ivy League universities and all five accepted him.
Coffey attends Benjamin Banneker Academic High School, a D.C. public school with strict rules. None of the 439 students at Banneker is allowed to bring a cell phone into the building. They are also not allowed to go to their lockers during the school day. (That has spawned the peculiar tradition of piling up textbooks at the base of lockers, so kids can switch books between classes without violating the locker rule.)
The strict rules at Banneker have fostered a rather serious academic environment. Principal Anita Berger says year after year after year, 100 percent of Banneker graduates are accepted into post-secondary institutions. Among these brainy and motivated public school students is 17-year-old Coffey who, like a lot of kids, enjoys sports. What does he play?
“Baseball, basketball, tennis, soccer,” Coffey told us.
He also enjoys academics, and he has a 4.3 high school report card average, adjusted for the demanding International Baccalaureate courses he takes. Coffey scored very high on standardized tests also. He calls himself a “determined” student.
Coffey applied to five Ivy League universities, and, amazingly, has been accepted at all of them: Harvard, Princeton, Yale, the University of Pennsylvania, and Brown. And four of the five universities have already offered very generous financial aid packages. (Harvard is still formulating its offer.)