Confirmed: Billy Porter Will Play the Fairy Godmother in Upcoming CINDERELLA Film
BroadwayWorld recently reported on a rumor that Billy Porter would be joining the cast of the upcoming Cinderella film from Sony, starring Camila Cabello.
According to Deadline, Porter confirmed that he is joining the film in a Q&A Saturday evening at the New Yorker Festival. He will take on the role of the Fairy Godmother.
It was also recently rumored that Idina Menzel would be joining the cast as the evil stepmother.
The adaptation is described as a modern retelling of the classic story of Cinderella. It is directed and written by Kay Cannon, and will star Camila Cabello.
James Corden produces with Leo Pearlman.
Cinderella is set to shoot in London in February next year.
Billy Porter is a Tony, Emmy, and Grammy Award-winning singer, composer, actor, playwright and director from Pittsburgh, PA. He currently stars Pray Tell on the FX television series Pose.
He originated the role of ‘Lola’ in the Broadway hit Kinky Boots, which won him 2013 Tony, Grammy, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards. Other theatre: Shuffle Along, Miss Saigon, Five Guys…, Grease, Smokey Joe’s…, Dreamgirls, Angels in America,The Merchant of Venice, Radiant Baby, Birdie Blue, Songs for a New World, Ghetto Superstar (one-man show),Topdog/Underdog, King Lear.
As a recording artist, Porter’s solo albums include his first CD, Untitled, on A&M records, At the Corner of Broadway + Soul – LIVE on Sh-K-Boom Records, and Billy’s Back on Broadway, on Concord Records.
Article via BroadWayWorld
Tyra Banks Talks Being In An Emotionally Abusive Relationship
Supermodel Tyra Banks is opening up on Sunday’s episode of Uncensored where she speaks about being in an emotionally abusive relationship. Though the mother of one didn’t state who she was speaking about in the show’s video preview, she did say it involved an ex whom she was in a long-term relationship with.
Speaking in the video preview, Tyra stated the following.
“I remember being kind of judgmental for women that were in bad relationships. And I’m just like, ‘Get out. Come on, like what are you doing? Leave him! I don’t get it.’ Until I experienced it myself. I was in a relationship for many years, and we probably broke up 14-15times. There were things that he said and made me feel like, I couldn’t leave, or if I left I had to go back.”
Tyra did a good job of hiding that she was going through so much when she was in the relationship. You may see the video preview with Tyra Banks in the player below.
Tyra Banks has a three-year-old son, York Banks Asla, with her ex-boyfriend Erik Asla. It’s still unknown if Tyra was specifically referring to Erik or another ex-boyfriend from her past. Tyra opened up about a very emotional time in her life and touched on a few points in the preview.
First, Tyra explained that she never understood fully what women in abusive relationships go through or why it is so hard to leave until she was in an abusive relationship herself. She isn’t alone in her sentiments as most women who are in similar situations would readily agree that they never saw themselves being a victim or staying in a relationship that isn’t positive or helpful.
Tyra also made it clear that the abuse was only emotional and never physical. She stated the following.
“He never hit me, but I would say there were blows to my spirit, blows to my emotional well-being every day. He was a master at being able to be happy and nice to everybody else but whispering these negative things to me.”
What do you think of Tyra Banks openness about what she went through? Are you going to watch Tyra Banks on Uncensored Sunday?
Article via CelebrityInsider
New Jersey girl, 10, dies after being ‘ejected’ from festival ride, police say
A 10-year-old girl in New Jersey has died after falling off a ride at a festival, officials said.
The child was at the Deerfield Township Harvest Festival in Cumberland County after 6 p.m. on Saturday night when she was “ejected from an amusement ride,” according to New Jersey State Police.
Authorities said the child fell off a ride titled “Extreme,” and “as a result, she sustained serious injuries.”
The 10-year-old was airlifted to Cooper University Health Care in Camden, where she was pronounced dead at 7:20 p.m.
Before news reports emerged of the girl’s death, festival organizers wrote on Facebook that a parade scheduled for Sunday had been canceled, but said “all other festivities will continue.”
Article via FoxNews
SpongeBob Squarepants Is A ‘Violent,’ ‘Racist’ Colonizer, College Professor Says
You know you know the answer. It’s SpongeBob SquarePants, the iconic cartoon character loved by kids and adults alike, who on Friday turned 20 years old.
The animated sponge spends his days getting into wacky adventures along with his buddies Patrick Starfish, Squidward Tentacles, and Mr. Krabs. And without speaking down to children, the lovable, absorbent square doles out some life lessons along the way.
But a University of Washington professor thinks SpongeBob is violent and racist.
Yes, seriously.
Holly M. Barker has penned a piece titled, “Unsettling SpongeBob and the Legacies of Violence on Bikini Bottom.”
“Billions of people around the globe are well-acquainted with SpongeBob Squarepants and the antics of the title character and his friends on Bikini Bottom. By the same token, there is an absence of public discourse about the whitewashing of violent American military activities through SpongeBob’s occupation and reclaiming of the bottom of Bikini Atoll’s lagoon. SpongeBob Squarepants and his friends play a role in normalizing the settler colonial takings of Indigenous lands while erasing the ancestral Bikinian people from their nonfictional homeland,” reads the abstract for Barker’s piece.
Barker’s abstract asserts that SpongeBob has colonized Bikini Bottom — the underwater home to the lovable characters — and claims the cartoon is “whitewashing” the “violent American military activities” against natives on Pacific islands, specifically the Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands, used by the U.S. military for nuclear testing:
This article exposes the complicity of popular culture in maintaining American military hegemonies in Oceania while amplifying the enduring indigeneity (Kauanui 2016) of the Marshallese people, who maintain deeply spiritual and historical connections to land — even land they cannot occupy due to residual radiation contamination from US nuclear weapons testing — through a range of cultural practices, including language, song, and weaving. This article also considers the gendered violence of nuclear colonialism and the resilience of Marshallese women.
The Bikini Atoll remains uninhabitable, and some conspiracy theorists claim the cast of SpongeBob SquarePants were mutated by the testing.
Barker declares that as an “American character” allowed to live there, SpongeBob showed his privilege of “not caring about the detonation of nuclear bombs.”
“SpongeBob’s presence on Bikini Bottom continues the violent and racist expulsion of Indigenous peoples from their lands (and in this case their cosmos) that enables U.S. hegemonic powers to extend their military and colonial interests in the postwar era,” she wrote.
Barker even rips the theme song, saying it denounces Bikini Bottom as full of “nautical nonsense.”
“The song’s directives, ensconced in humor, provide the viewer with an active role in defining Bikini Bottom as a place of nonsense, as the audience is instructed ‘If nautical nonsense be something you wish… drop on the deck and flop like a fish,’ ” she wrote.
Barker says the children’s show is full of gender bias as well, writing, “all of the main characters on the show are male.” Sandy Cheeks, a squirrel that lives underwater with the aid of an old-fashioned diving suit, is, of course, a female, but Barker says she’s just a token.
In conclusion, Barker writes, “We should be uncomfortable with a hamburger-loving American community’s occupation of Bikini’s lagoon and the ways that it erodes every aspect of sovereignty.”
Nautical nonsense, indeed.
Article via DailyWire
Transgender Activist Mentioned In Dave Chappelle’s ‘Sticks & Stones’ Netflix Special Dies
A transgender comedienne, actress and activist who was referenced in Dave Chappelle’s Sticks & Stones Netflix special has died.
Daphne Dorman, who lived in San Francisco, died by suicide, according to the Office of Transgender Initiatives for the City & County of San Francisco.
In a “hidden extra” of the Netflix special, Chappelle talked about becoming friends with a transgender woman.
Dorman confirmed that she was the person Chappelle was referring to, even changing her Twitter bio to reflect it:
“Yep, I’m the Daphne that Dave Chappelle is talking about in Sticks & Stones,” she wrote, adding “Actress. Activist. Author. Advocate. Amazon.”
Chappelle claimed that Dorman was “laughing the hardest” at the jokes. But not everyone was laughing. Some claimed the comedy was transphobic.
Dorman posted a goodbye message on Facebook on Friday. “I’ve thought about this a lot before this morning. How do you say “goodbye” and “I’m sorry” and “I love you” to all the beautiful souls you know? For the last time.”
Dorman was a software engineer and held at senior position at Vineti, a software automation and analytics company for cell and gene therapies.
Article via Deadline
Healthier diet may help lift depression symptoms
(Reuters Health) – Young adults who eat poorly and feel blue might be able to perk themselves up by switching to a healthier diet, a small study suggests.
In a randomized trial, men and women aged 17-35 in Australia who switched to a healthier diet had fewer depression symptoms after three weeks. And those who kept up the healthy eating for three months continued to feel better than at the start, researchers report in the journal PLoS ONE.
“This has 100% reach (since everybody needs to eat), is more cost effective than medications, and is an aspect of treatment that individuals can control themselves,” said lead study author Heather Francis of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
“This raises the possibility that making changes to diet can act as a therapy to improve depression symptoms,” she told Reuters Health by email.
Francis and colleagues studied 76 people who scored high on two depression and anxiety scales – indicating moderate or high depression symptoms – and who also scored high on a questionnaire about dietary fat and sugar consumption.
Participants were randomly assigned to a diet-change group or a habitual-diet group for three weeks. The diet-change group received instructions from a registered dietician through a 13-minute video, which they could re-watch as needed. The video provided dietary guidance based on the 2003 Australian Guide to Healthy Eating as well as the Mediterranean Diet eating pattern. This included instructions to increase intake of vegetables to five servings per day, fruits to two or three servings per day, whole grains to three servings per day, lean protein to three servings per day, unsweetened dairy to three servings per day and fish to three servings per week.
The program also recommended daily consumption of three tablespoons of nuts and seeds, two tablespoons of olive oil, and one teaspoon each of turmeric and cinnamon. Participants were also told to decrease refined carbohydrates, sugars, fatty or processed meats and soft drinks.
The diet-change group also received sample meal plans and recipes, as well as a box of food items, including olive oil, natural nut butter, walnuts, almonds, sunflower seeds, cinnamon and turmeric. They were told to keep their shopping receipts to be reimbursed with a $60 gift card.
After three weeks, average depression scores had dropped into the normal range in the diet-change group, while remaining elevated or severe in the habitual-diet group – and the improvements were maintained three months later, the research team reports.
“Depression is a whole-body disorder, not just a disorder of the brain,” Francis said. “Depression is associated with a chronic inflammatory response, but what is the source of this inflammation? (Earlier research has shown) that poor diet both increases systemic inflammation and is also a risk factor for depression.”
Still, researchers should be careful about suggesting cause-and-effect relationships in studies like these, said Marc Molendijk of Leiden University in The Netherlands, who wasn’t involved in the research.
Molendijk, who studies dietary habits and mental health and also serves on the PLoS ONE editorial board, cautioned against giving the results too much weight.
“There probably are expectancy effects at play, leading to a placebo effect,” he said by email. “It’s also a bad message to depressed people, as they may attribute the responsibility for their depression to themselves.”
On the other hand, noted Joseph Firth of the University of Manchester in the UK, “the age-old saying, ‘Healthy body, healthy mind’ really is true.”
Firth, who also wasn’t involved in the study, told Reuters Health by email, “No secret formula or complicated diets are required. Even simple positive behaviors such as eating healthier and being more active have notable benefits.”
Article via YahooNews
Inspector general report shows at least 16 officers involved in cover-up of Laquan McDonald shooting
Several false statements served to “mischaracterize the events leading up to the McDonald shooting, and to thereby bolster a false narrative which might offer justification for the shooting,” the report said.
CHICAGO — An internal report investigating 16 police personnel involved in covering up the 2014 fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald by a former Chicago police officer was released Wednesday after being kept secret for almost three years.
The formerly confidential report, written in 2016 by the city of Chicago’s inspector general, Joseph Ferguson, revealed that several officers committed numerous ethical and internal violations in order to cover up former officer Jason Van Dyke’s shooting of the 17-year-old, including giving false statements “to exaggerate the threat McDonald posed.”
According to the report, Anthony Wojcik, a former Chicago Police Department lieutenant who was at the scene, improperly disposed of three original general progress reports containing detectives’ handwritten notes of the statements three civilian witnesses made the night of the shooting. He then “personally recreated the reports,” before disposing of the original notes, the investigation showed.
The report also revealed that at least two officers, who were not fired after the inspector general’s investigation, untruthfully claimed they heard Van Dyke tell McDonald to drop a small weapon he was holding, and that the teen repeatedly ignored the officers’ calls to stay down.
The false statements served to “mischaracterize the events leading up to the McDonald shooting, and to thereby bolster a false narrative which might offer justification for the shooting,” the report said.
The report found that the officers not only fabricated the details, but that they would also not have been able to hear any interaction between Van Dyke and McDonald from where they were standing during the encounter.
At least four officers who were present the night of the shooting failed to “visually and audibly record events” with in-car video systems, and were found to withhold and shield video evidence establishing what actually transpired between Van Dyke and McDonald, according to the report.
The inspector general recommended the firing of 11 individuals, but only four were let go, according to the NBC affiliate WMAQ.
None of the four officers fired by the police board were charged criminally. However, they were stripped of police powers and assigned to desk duty as their case proceeded, The Associated Press reported.
Former Sgt. Stephen Franko, who was fired for his role in the cover-up, was found to have reviewed and approved false reports submitted by Van Dyke and his partner regarding the night of the shooting.
Franko’s endorsement of those false statements “served to establish the false narrative that McDonald initiated an attack on Van Dyke,” the report stated.
The report also detailed how Van Dyke tried to cover facts and did not openly comply with an investigation by the inspector general.
“Van Dyke made numerous false statements and material omissions in his interviews with CPD and [the Independent Police Review Authority] regarding the McDonald shooting,” the report said. In addition,Van Dyke made “false reports, false statements, and material omissions” to exaggerate the danger he faced with McDonald.
Article via NBCNews
$3G ‘Jesus Shoes’ filled with holy water sell out within minutes
A limited-edition sneaker, which is filled with holy water in the soles and blessed by a priest, sold out within minutes of its debut, despite each pair costing a whopping $3,000.
Brooklyn-based creative label MSCHF is responsible for releasing the shoe, which is a pair of all-white Nike Air Max 97s — though the design is in no way affiliated with Nike — that have been injected with holy water sourced from the Jordan River. The water, which is visible in the see-through sole, has some coloring added to enhance visibility, the shoe’s creator told Fox News.
The kicks, succinctly called “Jesus Shoes,” also feature the Bible verse Matthew 14:25 — the passage describing Jesus walking on water — and a single blood drop to represent the blood of Christ.
Among the other religious details are the frankincense-scented insoles, a crucifix threaded through the laces, and a red sole, which references the red shoes traditionally worn by past Popes.
The shoebox itself also displays an angel and a seal that resembles the official papal seal.
The shoes, which were bought at Nike retail value by MSCHF designers before being re-designed, were part of a desire for the MSCHF brand to poke fun at collaboration culture.
“We thought of that Arizona Iced Tea and Adidas collab, where they were selling shoes that [advertised] a beverage company that sells iced tea at bodegas,” head of commerce Daniel Greenberg tells the New York Post. “So we wanted to make a statement about how absurd collab culture has gotten.”
“We were wondering, what would a collab with Jesus Christ look like?” he added. Among the other religious details is a red sole, which references the traditional red shoes worn by the Pope, frankincense-scented insoles, and a crucifix threaded through the laces.
Less than two dozen of the Jesus Shoes were made with no plans to create more, according to MSCHF. Although, Gabriel Whaley, founder of the brand, hinted there may be a “second coming” in the future.
The MSCHF label releases new items every 2nd and 4th Tuesday of the month.
Article via FoxNews