Pornhub to Release First Ever Non-Adult Film, About Black Lesbian Strip Club Culture
Ubiquitous American pornography website Pornhub is releasing its first ever non-adult film on Wednesday, the company exclusively announced to Variety.
The move places the digital giant, which estimated 42 billion visits to the site last year, in the company of other streamers seeking to expand audiences and diversify its content portfolios. The movie in question is the documentary “Shakedown,” from filmmaker and conceptual artist Leilah Weinraub. It hails from the upper echelons of the art world, where the project enjoyed a prestige rollout in exhibits at the Whitney Museum and MoMA over the last three years.
“Shakedown” is a stream-of-consciousness, nonfiction narrative about the queer women and men who populated the lesbian strip club scene in Los Angeles in the early aughts. It is culled from neatly 15 years of footage shot by Weinraub over her adult life, and offers a humorous, sensual and informative look at a vibrant subculture.
Repped by distributor Grasshopper, the movie will stream on Pornhub for free for the entire month of March before hitting broadcast on the Criterion Channel, and, finally, the iTunes store by summer.
“There’s a cool opportunity right now to present films in the art space, there’s more openness to diversity and content, and a different sort of storytelling,” Weinraub said, adding she’s specifically hoping to engage Pornhub’s female users. While the company would not comment specifically on the gender composition, their 2019 user data is staggering, and includes figures like: 115 million visits per day, 39 billion unique searches for the year and 1.36 million hours of new content uploaded. That translates, Pornhub noted, to 169 years worth of content to watch.
Weinraub and Pornhub have collaborated before, when she led the buzzy streetwear brand Hood by Air. Official Pornhub merchandise and clothes emblazoned with search engine terms featured prominently in the line’s 2016 fall collection. Numerous sets of pearls were clutched at that New York Fashion Week show.
“This film is part of a larger general commitment Pornhub has to supporting the arts. We want to be seen as a platform that artists and creators can use,” said Pornhub’s brand director Alex Klein. “We’ve seen artists in general upload content to the site, that might not have a home at places like YouTube or Vimeo, who don’t permit nudity. For us, premiering a feature length film is a first. We’re very excited about it.”
In their quest to thoughtfully reach women, the site and Weinraub have built a self-contained online home for the project, itself a sort of performative space where Weinraub hopes users can be “alone, together.” A chat window will be open for discourse, and Weinraub will drop in once a week to have conversations with users.
In “Shakedown,” gay women of color in South Los Angeles converge in a world informed and nurtured by ballroom drag and cisgender exotic dancers. The dreamy footage presents their stories, without a conventional arc seen in most modern docs.
“I feel like it complicates the history of subcultures, like Los Angeles. It reorients your placing of things in that history. I feel like that was my goal, not to put a finger on it, but complicate and add to that richness,” Weinraub said.
Article via Variety
Co-Host Named In Tamar Braxton’s New Beauty Show
Tamar Braxton may not have new music but she’s coming back to television with a new beauty show. Details of the show are unclear but what is known is that the Braxton Family Values star is bringing her sass to VH1.
She’s adding credibility to the show by enlisting the help of a co-host with renowned celebrity clients and tons of experience in hair and beauty.
Tamar Braxton lands new beauty show
After Braxton was fired from the FOX daytime talk show The Real, she vowed to return to daytime television. She announced that she was working with Steve Harvey on developing her own talk show, but after several years passed, nothing ever came to fruition.
“It’s not, because of contractual reasons. We couldn’t get my network down to kind of free me of that,” she revealed when asked what the hold up was. “I’m waiting on my talk show too.”
She continued filming her WeTV reality series Braxton Family Values and Tamar & Vince before getting another spin-off on the network to focus on her life post-divorce from Vincent Herbert.
Fans finally received the news they were waiting for when Braxton announced she partnered with VH1 for a different show.
“I have a VH1 show coming up that got picked up for 20 episodes. I’m really excited about it. So they’re being a little bit more lenient nowadays,” The Jasmine Brand reported in June 2019. Months later, the outlet revealed more details about the show. The untitled beauty competition series was greenlit for production in January 2020.
Celebrity stylist, Johnny Wright, will co-host Tamar Braxton’s new beauty show
Details of the show have not been released to the public but The Jasmine Brand announced on March 3 that celebrity hairstylist, Johnny Wright, will join Braxton as a co-host. Wright comes with years of experience in the beauty world and even has some hosting gigs under his belt.
Wright’s most famous client is First Lady Michelle Obama. He spoke to The Beauty Experience on how he began working with the former FLOTUS.
“Obama had announced his presidential candidacy two weeks earlier, and he was calling to tell me about an opportunity to style Michelle Obama’s hair at a photoshoot for Essence,” he explained. “It was the chance of a lifetime.” From there, he spent 8 years working side by side with her at the White House.
From there, the Chicago native’s clientele grew. He’s worked with other stars, including Kerry Washington, Tamron Hall, Janet Mock, Angela Rye, Cynthia Bailey, Regina King, and Queen Latifah to name a few.
Article via CheatSheet
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Looks like I need to get some more popcorn !!!
‘Mulan’: Why Captain Li Shang Isn’t in the Live-Action Remake
As Disney fans eagerly await the theatrical release of the live-action Mulan, some wonder how this version will hold up compared to the animated classic without its heartthrob Li Shang. When fans noticed Captain Li Shang’s name was absent from the casting notices for Mulan, an avalanche of displeasure made its way across social media, calling the decision “dishonor on you.”
General Li Shang was not only a key character in the animated film, but he stole our hearts with his good looks, sick martial arts skills, a catchy song, and status as a bisexual icon. His character helped drive the story forward, pushing not only Mulan but the rest of his troops to be their best and rise to a massive challenge. We also saw the devastation of war through his experience of losing his father.
Li Shang’s bond with Mulan’s male alter-ego Ping speaks volumes for the LGBTQ community, so why isn’t Li Shang in the movie? According to producer Jason Reed, we’ll actually still have Li Shang in the new Mulan—sort of.
“We split Li Shang into two characters. One became Commander Tung (Donnie Yen) who serves as her surrogate father and mentor in the course of the movie. The other is Honghui (Yoson An) who is [Mulan’s] equal in the squad.”
Reed cites #MeToo movement as an influence on their decision to rework the character.
“I think particularly in the time of the #MeToo movement, having a commanding officer that is also the sexual love interest was very uncomfortable and we didn’t think it was appropriate.”.
This decision removes the power differential, but how will Mulan and Honghui Chen’s dynamic play out? Reed and his team used the animated movie as the model for that level of relationship.
New Zealand actor Yoson An who plays Honghui describes his character as very still, honorable, and observant, and talks about his and Mulan’s initial dynamic.
“They start off on the wrong foot, really. As they progress through the training together, they kind of have this unspoken bond about it because they recognize each other’s warrior spirit. That’s how they kind of build their friendship up to begin with, through the training and acknowledging each other.”
While remaining tight-lipped on the LGBTQ aspect of his character, An talked about how he drew his inspiration for Honghui,
“I see this film as a different variation from the animated version and the original story of The Ballad of Mulan. I kind of took a different angle from Li Shang’s character. I can’t really say to a lot of how that will come across but there is a multi-dimensional layer to him and the audience will be able to see that when they watch the movie.“.
Li Shang will always have a special place in our hearts and we’ll see for ourselves how the dynamic between Mulan and Honghui plays out on March 27th when Mulan hits theaters. Tickets are on sale starting today.
For more of my set visit coverage, check out my rundown of the biggest differences from the animated film and why the characters won’t be breaking out into song.
Article via Collider
‘Shark Tank’ star duped out of $400k in phishing scam
“Shark Tank” star Barbara Corcoran was taken for nearly $400,000 after her office was the victim of a phishing scam out of China.
One small typo was all the difference.
According to TMZ, an email chain was forwarded to Barbara’s bookkeeper that appeared to show the reality TV star’s executive assistant saying that Barbara had approved a $388,700.11 payment to a company called FFH Concept GmbH in Germany. However, the email didn’t come from her executive assistant, but rather from an email that looked just like it.
The bookkeeper asked the standard questions, and all the answers seems to line up with Barbara’s real estate dealings in Germany. However, the bookkeeper didn’t notice that the scammers changed the assistant’s email address by removing one letter, so unbeknownst to her, they were the ones actually communicating.
TMZ reports that the bookkeeper sent off the requested wire payment to the account listed in the original email. Afterward, she messaged the assistant at her real email. It was then that they discovered they had been victimized.
Barbara’s team traced the original scam emails back to a Chinese IP address. Her attorney’s are now looking into the matter, but it appears that the money is gone.
Article via Wonderwall
Amazon’s new Nazi-hunting series is slammed for fictitious Holocaust scenes
Auschwitz Memorial blasts ‘Hunters,’ which stars Al Pacino, saying: “Inventing a fake game of human chess for [“Hunters] @huntersonprime is not only dangerous foolishness & caricature. It also welcomes future deniers.” Subscribe: http://smarturl.it/reuterssubscribe Reuters brings you the latest business, finance and breaking news video from around the globe. Our reputation for accuracy and impartiality is unparalleled.
Dragon Ball Z Abridged Comes To An Abrupt End
I’ll never forget the period of time during which a bunch of my friends got super into Dragon Ball Z Abridged, a YouTube series that cuts up episodes of Dragon Ball Z and stitches them back together with loads and loads of jokes. It was a different era of YouTube, the internet, and my life; back when the series first debuted in 2008, I was a teenager. DBZA has been an internet fixture for ages. Now it’s over.
Fans were not expecting series creators Team Four Star to bring the series to a sudden close yesterday. As far as anybody knew, at least one more season—this one focused on Dragon Ball Z’s final arc, the Buu saga—was on the way. But Team Four Star decided that, after completing their homage-parody of DBZ’s Cell saga last year and spending some time away from the series, their hearts weren’t in it anymore.
“Many shows lose steam as time goes on as the creators extend their work far beyond its natural lifespan; we’re feeling that with this, and that’s a scary, depressing thought,” wrote director and editor Scott “KaiserNeko” Frerichs in a post on Patreon, noting that the team doesn’t just want to tear down and mock an arc of the show. “We don’t want to end up like The Simpsons, Dexter, Scrubs, just to name a few. And yes, we know, there’s more story to work with. But in all honesty… there just isn’t the emotional attachment and passion for the arc that drove the last three seasons.”
Frerichs and his fellow creators are also at their wit’s end with the process of creating the show. “We’re burned out on the original method, in general,” he said. “It’s been an absolute blast to bring DBZA to life, but after 11 years of the same project… it’s gotten oppressive. Which, again, is a scary thought.”
On top of all that, in the current, copyright-claim-happy era of YouTube, Dragon Ball Z Abridged poses an existential risk to Team Four Star that it didn’t back in the day.
“Copyright claims have put us at risk of losing that channel, and our livelihoods in jeopardy,” wrote Frerichs. “We have our employees to look out for; our friends, our colleagues, and doing right by them—by striving to create original, monetizable, copyright friendly content, that also carries our heart and soul as creatives—is undeniably important. We’ve thought about hosting DBZA on other sites, but nowhere has been safe, and worse, it would serve to draw attention away from our hub, which ultimately could lead to less views, less support, and either the scaling back or collapse of our company.”
Team Four Star has, so far, managed to avoid major clashes with big companies, but Frerichs said that he and his co-workers want to “live in a less gray area, without the Sword of Damocles above our heads.”
Some fans have reacted with the requisite “But they promised another season!” complaints, but many just seem thankful for all the episodes they did get, especially given that the Cell saga finale already felt like a proper sendoff. Some have also observed the impact that the series had on the internet comedy and voice acting scenes over the years, paving the way for countless other scenes to emerge. Ultimately, what began as a Dragon Ball-flavored knockoff of Yu-Gi-Oh: The Abridged Series—widely regarded as the first “Abridged” series on YouTube—took on a life of its own and spawned an entire fandom that helped keep Dragon Ball relevant during a spell when it wasn’t quite as entrenched in the cultural zeitgeist.
“I first discovered DBZA in 2008 while trying to find full episodes of DBZ on YouTube,” wrote one fan on the Team Four Star subreddit. “Ever since then it’s been consistently the best piece of entertainment on the internet for me. Kaiser, Lani, Taka, and the rest created something truly incredible, and they gave it to us for free. It was fun while it lasted, but it was always going to end, and at least it ended on such a high. From the bottom of my heart, I want to say thanks and good luck to the whole TFS team. Ignore the people throwing hate at you. The overwhelming majority of your fans support your decision and your right to make it.”
Article via Kotaku
Spike Lee is making a film version of David Byrne’s American Utopia
Good news, music fans: One of Broadway’s most high-profile recent hits is getting the cinematic treatment, at last. (And no, it’s not Hamilton. Keep your pants on, Francis, it’s coming.) Variety reports this week that David Byrne’s critically acclaimed career retrospective American Utopiais set to make the move to the big screens some time in the near future, courtesy of a little help from director Spike Lee. A wide-ranging tour through Byrne’s entire career—from his Talking Heads days up through the 2018 album of the same name—American Utopia has drawn rave reviews for its energetic presentation of some of the best music of the last several decades.
Byrne, of course, is no stranger to working with legendary directors, on account of the whole “co-responsible for one of the most beloved concert films of all time” thing. (It’s not for nothing that he compared American Utopia in interviews to the same energy he and the rest of Talking Heads once brought to the sessions that formed the spine of Stop Making Sense.) The original touring show of American Utopia was marked by, among other things, its minimalist set design, combined with the occasional striking visual or silhouette. It’ll be interesting to see what Lee does with it—although he’s filmed numerous comedy specials, music videos, and music documentaries over the years, including a whole series of docs and short films on Michael Jackson—it’s rare for him to go for a pure concert film. On the one hand, he’s got some pretty big shoes (suits?) to fill; on the other hand, he’s Spike Lee; this feels like something of a natural fit.
Article via AVClub
America’s Great Devide Part 1& 2 FRONTLINE
America’s Great Devide pt 1
America’s Great Devide Pt 2