Study Predicts That It Would Take Black Families 228 Years To Catch Up With White Wealth Today A new study predicts that in the future , the wage gap between White Americans and Minorities continues to grow larger as opposed to getting better– and it would take 228 years for black families to acquire the wealth of white families today. Via The Nation If current economic trends continue, the average black household will need 228 years to accumulate as much wealth as their white counterparts hold today. For the average Latino family, it will take 84 years. Absent significant policy interventions, or a seismic change in the American economy, people of color will never close the gap. Those are the key findings of a new study of the racial wealth-gap released this week by the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and the Corporation For Economic Development (CFED). They looked at trends in household wealth from 1983 to 2013—a 30-year period that captured the rise of Reaganomics, expanded international trade and two major financial crashes fueled by bubbles in the tech sector and housing prices. The authors found that the average wealth of white households increased by 84 percent during those three decades, three times the gains African-American families saw and 1.2 times the rate of growth for Latino families. To put that in perspective, the wealthiest Americans—members of the Forbes 400 list—saw their net worths increase by 736 percent during that period, on average. If those trends persist for another 30 years, the average white family’s net worth will grow by $18,000 per year, but black and Hispanic households would only see theirs grow by $750 and $2,250 per year, respectively. Check out this visualization of what this study means courtesy of IPS . Thoughts?
Kenya Moore Denies Ordering Black Wives Matters Posters Kenya Moore says she’s innocent . That’s a first… Via Jet Mag reports: We all know that Kenya Moore gives good villain on Real Housewives of Atlanta. But a rep for the beauty-queen-turned-reality star tells JET that Moore has absolutely nothing to do with offensive posters co-opting the Black Lives Matter slogan for the clearly tacky campaign being discussed on sites including Bossip and Reality Tea. Bravo also distanced itself from this messy business. A rep for Moore responds to allegations that Moore hired the graphics company behind this slander: “I am not sure where this story surfaced from, but it is a lie and Ms. Moore had nothing to do with those posters. She has nothing but respect for RHOA and Bravo and would never disparage the show.” Kenya did a lie about having a boyfriend for an entire season, can you really believe her?? Reality Tea
Hey Everyone! This is my cover of Justin Bieber’s original song “Be Alright” off his album “Believe”. I wanted to cover one of my favorite Justin Bieber songs, and i chose this one! I had so much fun shooting this music video. I had the pleasure in working with Alessandra DeMartino, Dimitre, Iliev, Ryan Oakes and Alexandra Nyman. I feel as though I put an effective team together and created a great product. For more information about Blaise Delfino, visit the following links!! Blaise Delfino on Twitter: twitter.com Website: blaisedelfinomusic.com Facebook on.fb.me Instagram: instagram.com Biographies Of The Crew ———————————— Alessandra DeMartino currently attends Gettysburg College and is studying Theatre, Film, and English. She is from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and has been in many theatre productions. For more information on Alessandra DeMartino, visit and subscribe to her YouTube Channel By clicking here: bit.ly Dimitre Iliev currently attends East Stroudsburg University and is studying Media, Communication & Technology. He has worked on set for several live television productions. For these live events, he has handled duties such as Producer, Technical Director, Graphics Designer, and Camera Operator. Fore more information about Dimitre Iliev, visit his website at: dimitreiliev.com Ryan Oakes is originally from Milford, Pennsylvania. He is studying Media communications at East Stroudsburg University and will graduate in May 2014. Ryan has … http://www.youtube.com/v/anau-YAAkno?version=3&f=videos&app=youtube_gdata Go here to see the original: “Be Alright” Justin Bieber Cover By: Blaise Delfino
LEGO has released the trailer for LEGO Batman : The Movie — DC Super Heroes Unite , the feature-length version of the video game sequel that will be released in 2013 on Blu-Ray, DVD and via digital download, that’s based on the toy building-block adaptation of the comic. That’s four levels of franchising away from the source material, which means we’re more than halfway to Kevin Bacon . But despite sounding like the Inception of marketing, the movie looks great. Here are six reasons why: 1. It actually looks funny. The LEGO video game franchise, which has also adapted the Indiana Jones , Star Wars and Harry Potter universes, produces the equivalent of Mel Brooks parody movies for button mashers. While these games are never particularly inspired, they’re not blatant cash-ins either. Each is stuffed with genuine love for the source material and loaded with obscure collectibles and knowing in-jokes for fans, such as the scene in the above trailer where the Flash catches a boomerang with a look of contempt in his eyes that says, Really? You’re actually attempting to stop the Fastest Man Alive with a spinning chunk of wood? An unexpected explosion reveals the Penguin, in full tuxedo costume, playing with fish in the bath, and when Harley Quinn declares something to be a riddle a certain green-clad Batman villain plaintively wails “Hey, that’s my line!” The Bat-Signal even becomes a visual joke when Superman throws Bats into the sky. The toy setting establishes a light-hearted attitude, and the trailer indicates that the movie will take full advantage of that. 2. It’s A Justice League Movie Assembling the Justice League for the big screen has been a cinematic dream for decades. Marvel took five movies to get ready for their equivalent, assembling The Avengers to multi-billion dollar success. With DC planning to release its Justice League movie in the summer of 2015 (when Avengers 2 debuts), the LEGO movie offersoffers skips straight to the action, treating fans to an ensemble cast. 3. Restraint All LEGO movies rely on the gimmick that things break apart and have to be reassembled. Luckily even LEGO knows that now, and it seems to be showing some restraint with the premise instead of turning the whole movie into a computer-generated building demo. The central plot of the film is Lex Luthor inventing the “Deconstructor”, a device which can breakdown anything into its component parts. You wouldn’t think a genius would be required to figure out such a task in a LEGO world, but apparently it was. Thankfully, although there are bound to be a few spectacular dismantlings in the movie (and, I’m betting, at least one blurred scene of the Flash reassembling something with super speed), the trailer indicates that there’s more to the movie than that. Besides, there’s no topping the scene in the Star Wars short Revenge of the Brick in which Obi Wan Kenobi uses the Force to break up his own fighter so that it can evade enemy missiles. 4. Perfect Graphics One advantage of depicting computer-generated plastic blocks and other geometric shapes is that the current technology is well-suited to the task. With these basics covered, more of the animation budget can be spent on interesting design and exciting special effects instead of weeks spent attempting to get human hair to look better than painted plastic. In this movie, that’s what it’s supposed to look like. 5. Imagination The trailer isn’t just true to the toys, it’s true to the function of toys — playing! At one point during an air-and-sea chase involving Batman and the Joke, the Caped Crusader dips one of the Batplane’s wings into water to generate a wave that grounds the Joker-boat. If that doesn’t sound like a scenario that a kid would create with his LEGO toys, then you don’t have kids. Or LEGO. 6. Batman Always Wins Batman’s whole deal is succeeding in any situation — even conversion to other media (something other comic characters famously have trouble with.) The Batman Begins trilogy has been one of the blockbuster successes of the decade, Arkham Asylum made him the first hero to have a good video game in this console generation, then Arkham City showed he could do it again — bigger, and better — whenever he wanted. The question is whether he can also be king of the blocks. Luke McKinney loves the real world, but only because it has movies and video games in it. He responds to every tweet. Follow Luke McKinney on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
The Game’s Bond. James Bond. Which means that you will be Bored. Majorly Bored. Agent 007 should be perfect video game character. “Kicking ass with the latest fun gadgets” is his actual job description. So it’s a shame that almost every Bond game sucks. Not even Blofeld got to betray Bond this many times and come back to do it again. The funny thing is that Bond has even played video games himself. In Never Say Never Again, he plays Domination against villainous SPECTRE agent Maximillian Largo. Each round costs thousands of dollars and issues powerful electric shocks, making it a great analogy for the Bond video games that civillians get to play: expensive and painful. Domination is not nearly as much fun to play as it sounds. It has holographic 3D graphics and is based on satellite laser weapons and nuclear warheads, but Largo explains that it’s just a simple target game: shoot the things when they light up. That’s less gameplay than Minesweeper. It’s also badly designed, because it’s a crosshair shooting game controlled by a joystick. Which, if you’ve played twitch-shooters, is like trying to control a scalpel while riding a unicycle. And it’s still better than most real world Bond games. Why are they so bad? Because Bond might be perfect for great games, but he’s also so incredibly famous that he can sell shit ones. The Bond license has been shoved onto everything from text adventures to a side-scrolling “bouncing car getting blown up by spaceships and scuba divers” simulator. I’m not exaggerating. Rare Ltd finally realized Bond’s potential in 1997 when Eon Productions smartly licensed GoldenEye t o a studio that actually knew how to make good games. The resulting product wasn’t merely good — it was one of the most important console shooters of all time, because it proved that console shooters could actually be good, which they weren’t until GoldenEye . One of the most successful N64 games ever made, GoldenEye combined accurate shooting with an unbelievably faithful rendition of the movie. (The split-screen multiplayer mode remains one of the fondest gaming memories for an entire generation You didn’t just recognize parts of the movie in the video game, you recognized parts of the video game when you re-watched the movie. Rare understood that by printing “007” on the cover of a regular action game meant being smarter, sharper and simply better than everything else with guns in it. And it succeeded. The game was stuffed with love for the franchise. Not only was it an incredible recreation of the titular movie, but bonus levels brought in Moonraker lasers, Jaws, the Golden Gun and Baron Samedi. It was originally meant to be the best multiplayer ever made, with a mode where four players could each be a different Bond — Moore, Connery, Dalton, and Brosnan. But, as further proof that the lawyers of the world are sucking the fun out of life, this mode was removed from the final game. A wide range of cheat options extended playability. Unfortunately Rare really did understand the nature of James Bond — which is why they moved on to the next mission without looking back. It turned down the chance to make Tomorrow Never Dies , instead building the spiritual sequel of shooting excellence in 2000 with Perfect Dark . Stuffed with stylish shooting and cunning gadgetry, it would have made the perfect 007 game. But Rare was so good it didn’t need the license to succeed. From that point on, almost all Bond games were shooters, but they never mattered. Where Rare had been the elite double-oh agent, the others were an army of uniformed minions wildly spraying machine gun fire and missing the point. They took bog-standard gun games and put some Bond sprites on top. There was less passion and spark than a morgue during a power outage (except there are people who would actually enjoy that). As the games got more desperate they tried to replicate Goldeneye’ s success, the results were more disastrous than Dr. Frankenstein’s attempts to replicate life. GoldenEye: Rogue Agent literally put GoldenEye in the title of a totally unrelated shooter. The 2010 GoldenEye 007 remake rewrote the original with Daniel Craig, improved graphics, and blew more than that compressed air pellet Bond used to kill Dr Kananga. You just can’t re-skin something from 13 years ago and expect it to be impressive. The remake was aimed at exactly no one: retro fans were aghast at the altered level structure and models, while contemporary fans were turned off by the incredibly unimaginative level layout and zombie-grade enemy intelligence. Like all Bond technology, the original GoldenEye game was revolutionary at the time but almost unusable now. A true Bond game needs to be smarter, sharper, simply better at being Bond than everything else on the market, and we finally have the technology to make that happen. In the old days every shooter was the same game with different sprites. Now we can build entire game mechanics around the character. Batman’s Arkham City is the greatest character game ever made — everything from the graphics to the combat system flows perfectly from the character. Get it right and you’re unstoppable, but even one mistake and you’re in deep trouble. The Hitman series proves that we can build interesting worlds with multiple paths to reach our goal. Bond isn’t an Arnold Schwarzenegger shooting machine. Games which set him up against an endless wave of enemies don’t even know who he is. Bond is the elite. Bond is the best. The original GoldenEye understood that, offering amazing unlocks for not only completing the level, but doing it at maximum difficulty in record time. A Bond game should be a razor-sharp shooter in a sophisticated world. We don’t need another automatic-fire grinding chore like Gears of War . We don’t want another hallway shooter, where we run down pre-set pathways and the most amazing cut-scene — with helicopters crashing through skyways as we parachute to safety — are just glorified loading screens. All we did was “Press A to jump.” That’s less gameplay than an elevator and with the exact same function. Think Mirror’s Edge meets The Club with multiple paths and an upgrade system. Every level is a speed run with a score multiplier for combo shooting and avoiding damage, designed for replayability as you learn your trade. You can blast your way through a building of enemies for an “Agent” rating or rappel down the side snap-shotting guards as it collapses to earn “00”. Because you’re the one who worked out how to collapse it. Because you’re Bond. Improved scores earn “Q points”, unlocking new gadgets, each of which works on each level in different ways, and you have to choose which you bring on each mission. Think grappling hooks, glass-shattering sonics, vehicle remote control, each providing fun options in levels and new ones in old ones. Think of Hitman , where the very first mission can be completed in a few seconds if you return with later gear. Imagine replaying old levels to beat your high score (and earn more equipment), optimizing your strategies, trying out new things. Imagine working out how to beat your enemy in then fastest, coolest way possible, then realize that you’re not just controlling Bond: You’re playing as him. Luke McKinney loves the real world, but only because it has movies and video games in it. He responds to every tweet. Follow Luke McKinney on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
There’s a peculiar kind of pleasure to be found in watching Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, in 21 Jump Street , horsing around and generally acting like doofuses for our amusement. As rookie cops assigned to patrol — by bicycle — a city park, they’re more than ready to prove their tough-guy status: When they spot a bunch of biker guys experiencing the joys of cannabis beneath a tree, they strut toward the gang in their shorts and bike helmets, but not before flipping their kickstands down with a mighty thwack . Later, Hill says a fervent prayer in the Catholic church that serves as headquarters for the undercover unit to which the duo has been assigned, its sign outside reading, in mistranslated Korean, “Aroma of Christ Church.” Hill kneels in front of the crucifix, beginning his urgent plea with the words, “Hey, Korean Jesus…” That irreverent riff captures the tone of the whole picture — it’s a ramshackle thing, a goof on the idea that anyone might actually care about a movie based on an old TV show, or that anyone might actually care about a movie at all. For the first half, at least, 21 Jump Street gives us reason to care. In recent years, the mania for turning old TV shows into movies has waned — a good thing, particularly given the ungodly mess known as The Green Hornet . Still, movies inspired by TV shows are coming back with a tiny vengeance — we have Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows , to name just one, to look forward to later this spring. And for now, 21 Jump Street is a small puff of fresh air simply because it’s not, like umpteen other releases coming down the pike, based on a comic-book series. Instead, its inspiration is a show that made its debut on the then-fledgling Fox Network in 1987 (and also helped launch the career of Johnny Depp, long before he became buried under Burton’s makeup or obscured by pirate-y facial hair), although this 21 Jump Street has its own distinct, goofy flavor. The movie opens in 2005, when Schmidt (Hill) and Jenko (Tatum) are still high school students. Schmidt is the smart, shlubby, unpopular one — he’s an Eminem nut with a crop of bottle-blond hair, which could be sort of cool if his braces didn’t ruin the whole effect. Jenko is the dumb, sleepy-eyed jock with lank, shaggy hair. When the school principal informs him that he can’t go to the prom and that it’s “time to pay the piper,” he squints at her dimly and murmurs, “I should pay who?” Fast-forward a few years, and these two have become first police academy buddies (Jenko, recognizing he could use some help in the smarts department, latches onto Schmidt) and then rookie officers. After botching that aforementioned pot bust, the two are reassigned to an undercover unit — headed by a hard-ass, and very funny, Ice Cube — in which their job is to pose as teenagers and find the source of a drug that’s sweeping the local high school. 21 Jump Street is at its best when directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller — the guys behind the much-loved 2009 Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs — just let Hill and Tatum run with the patent ridiculousness of the setup. (The script is by Michael Bacall, from a story by Bacall and Hill.) Hill is reasonably funny and relaxed here; even when he’s playing the loser-sadsack, he radiates more confidence than he has in the past, instead of just relying on shtick. He still has that unassuming, “Who, me?” demeanor, but he’s more fully in control of it than ever before. And Tatum, who has already proved to be a marvelous dramatic actor even in throwaway pictures like Dear John (he also recently starred in the megahit The Vow ), has the kind of comic timing that’s deceptively laid-back and sharp at the same time. His Jenko comes off as an easygoing galoot, which makes the idiot-savant observations he comes up with that much funnier. Schmidt, upon his return to high school, notes that all the things that made him uncool in his own high-school days (caring about the environment, being tolerant) have now become hip. Jenko agrees, and he doesn’t like it, looking for a place to lay the blame: “I know the cause. It’s Glee ,” he says definitively, like a Sherlock Holmes who’s spent too much time parked in front of the tube. Together Hill and Tatum are so much fun to watch that it’s disappointing when the story around them becomes overly cluttered and convoluted. To say 21 Jump Street loses the plot isn’t quite accurate: It’s a pretty loose-limbed affair from the get-go. But Lord and Miller insist on turning it into an action film, complete with elaborate car chases and shootouts that betray the spirit of silliness they laid out at the beginning. 21 Jump Street falters when it becomes too ambitious. Its finest moments — as when Schmidt and Jenko sternly forbid a bratty kid from feeding ducks in the park, which causes him to immediately (what else?) feed the ducks — are the ones that feel unplanned and tossed-off. In those moments, 21 Jump Street shows a kind of wayward, pigeon-toed brilliance. Maybe that particular brand of half-assed genius is too evanescent to survive a whole movie. Then again, half an ass is better than none. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
This week at SXSW Movieline caught up with director Gareth Evans, whose Indonesian martial arts actioner The Raid: Redemption is set to knock your socks off later this month courtesy of Sony Classics. (Haven’t heard of the martial arts form silat? You will, come March 23.) With his film steadily collecting kudos left and right, Evans is already thinking ahead to his Raid sequel (working title: Berandal ), and an insane, dangerous-sounding four-on-one car fight he plans on working into the mix. First up, though, is the U.S. remake currently in the works at Screen Gems. The original film worked with the unique (and relatively new to most audiences) martial arts form silat , employed dynamically in a fairly basic setup: A SWAT team trapped inside a tenement building locked down by a vicious gangster must fight their way out. The American remake will build on the elements of The Raid , with Evans on hand as executive producer and Raid stars/fight choreographers Iko Uwais (who plays hero Rama) and Yayan Ruhian (who steals scenes as the sadistic Mad Dog) working on the remake’s fight choreography. “There will be elements of silat in there, which is kind of cool because there’s a respect for the original,” Evans said. “And I’m curious because the thing is yes, silat is an Indonesian martial art, but it’s practiced all over the world. There are schools of silat in London, there are schools of silat in America, there are schools of silat in France, and they have international championships as well. So there are a lot of people that know silat around the world, so it’s not a far-fetched idea that someone in America could know silat, the same way that it’s not far-fetched for a guy in America to know kung fu or muy thai.” While screenwriter Brad Inglesby has been recruited to script the remake, a director has yet to be found. Whoever it is, Evans isn’t worried about passing the reins to another filmmaker’s vision. “For me it’s like this: the storyline and the central concept is streamlined,” he explained. “It’s a very straightforward action film. So there’s room for improvement, and I think that director, whoever it is, has to be given the kind of creative freedom to push it in whatever direction he wants to push it and not have somebody standing over his shoulder saying, ‘You can’t do this, or you can’t do that.’ I think it should be that person’s decision.” After his Raid promotional tour is done, Evans will turn to pre-production on the sequel, with plans to begin filming next January. But how do you follow a film that’s already packed with non-stop, relentless, wall-to-wall, inventive action? “By going in a slightly different direction,” he teased. “If I try to replicate and copy it’ll fall on its ass, so I want to do something kind of different. We’re going to take the story out now and go onto the streets. So everything that was scary about that building and about that boss is small fry compared to the gangs we meet in the sequel — now we meet the people who let him have that building. And we expand the world out, we explore certain characters that were kind of hinted at in this but not expanded upon, and we ramp up some of the set pieces as well.” Evans’s Raid films will always retain their focus on silat, only showcased within different environments. Like, for example, the limited confines of a moving automobile. “We’ll have one fight scene,” Evans said, “a four-on-one fight inside of a car, and Iko’s going to be kicking people out through the windows, and it’s going to be nuts. What we’re doing now is we have to figure out how to shoot that without killing anyone. “Once we get that sorted,” he continued with a laugh, “then we’ll start shooting that.” Read more from SXSW here . Follow Jen Yamato on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
I’m not quite sold on Clive Owen as Ernest Hemingway, Nicole Kidman as his war-correspondent third wife, Martha Gellhorn, or the sumptuous look of director Philip Kaufman’s take on war-torn WWII-era Europe, but here’s your first look at the May “epic motion picture event” Hemingway & Gellhorn . It immediately calls to mind Kaufman’s Henry & June , what with the tempestuous mid-century literary marriage and famous faces playing historical figures — David Straithairn as John Dos Passos! Lars Ulrich as Dutch documentarian Joris Ivens?? — but the trailer never lets you forget you’re watching Big Time Movie Stars, which is kind of the problem. Thoughts? [ HBO ]
Remember the snoozy, clip-art-looking ad campaign for the low-budget Atlas Shrugged Part I ? Those days are over, if the producers — and maybe you or any designers you know — have anything to say about it : ART DIRECTOR Full-time position working on the Atlas Shrugged Movie Marketing team (may work remotely). Must be proficient in Photoshop and Illustrator and posses depth of knowledge in Web related Graphics and design. HTML, CSS, and Usability huge pluses. Experience with Adobe Premiere helpful. Responsibilities to include evolving the foundational Atlas brand, creating collateral and assets for print & web. DO NOT send resume. Not very Objectivist of them! Oh, and there’s a paid internship opening, too, for the enterprising youngster with the best “brief 3 paragraph essay answering the question ‘Who is Ayn Rand?'” In any case, please disregard that two more new jobs were just created on Obama’s watch. Thanks! [ Atlas Shrugged Blog ]
Adobe confirmed via a blog post that the much-awaited Flash 11 and Air 3 will be available for download at 9pm Pacific, or 12AM New York time. The new Adobe Flash 11 and Air have improvements, apparently, and the biggest of course is the graphics rendering improvement courtesy of Stage 3D. Broadcasting platform : YouTube Source : Latest entertainment & tech news from the Pop Herald |… Discovery Date : 03/10/2011 06:55 Number of articles : 2
