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The International Business of hair

All for the sake of beauty: Great Lengths hair extensions featured on MTV Fabulous Life  http://youtu.be/pYF7Flx7iwY How does a deeply spiritual offering from Indias poor become a must-have accessory in the salons of Europe? As fashion and faith collide, religious sacrifice is fuelling a multi-billion dollar industry. http://youtu.be/TGigLa23vuA Every year millions of Hindus shave their […]

INTRODUCING DOROTHY DANDRIDGE

http://youtu.be/7eOg8o6M-58

a television film directed by Martha Coolidge. Filmed over a span of a few weeks in early 1998, the film was aired in the United States on August 21, 1999. The original music score was composed by Elmer Bernstein. The film is marketed with the tagline: “Right woman. Right place. Wrong time.” 2000 Black Reel Awards 2000 Directors Guild of America 2000 Emmy Awards 2000 Golden Globes 2000 Image Awards 2000 Screen Actors Guild Awards.
She was everything America wanted a movie star to be…except white Actress, dancer, singer. Here was a woman with talent, beauty and ambition. Dorothy Dandridge owed it to herself to make it to the top. And make it, she would. An acclaimed stage performer, Dorothy still struggled with the challenge of her color, in a time that wouldn’t let some stars in by the front door. Yet against the odds she beat out many more famous rivals for the role of “Carmen Jones”, becoming the first black woman ever nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Marriages and affairs would break her heart, but her heart was strong. Seductive and easily seduced, she was born to be a star – with all the glory and all the pain of being loved, abused, cheated, glorified, undermined and undefeated. Here was a woman who wouldn’t wait in the wings. Halle Berry stars as Dorothy Dandrige.

Halle Berry Wins Best Actress TV Movie – Golden Globes 2000

http://youtu.be/6xNp37oWEiM

Seth Green and Claudia Schiffer present the Best Actress in a Mini Series or TV Movie award to Halle Berry for her role in “Introducing Dorothy Dandridge.” She dedicates the award to Dorothy Dandridge and thanks the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, HBO, the producers, her mother, and many others.

Forest Whitaker winning Best Actor

http://youtu.be/4-fGCHGTaGE

Reese Witherspoon presenting the Best Actor Oscar® to Forest Whitaker for his performance in “The Last King of Scotland” -the 79th Annual Academy Awards® in 2007.

One of my favorite links: Space weather

One of my favorite links: Space weather

One of my favorite links

News and information about meteor showers, solar flares, auroras, and near-Earth asteroids

Space elevator to the moon for tourist

Space elevator to the moon for tourist

Space elevator to the moon for tourist

If you have already visited the entire globe, then this maybe your next step. 

Space 'lift' could take tourists into orbit within 40 years

Break Away Civilization – Interesting theory & interview by Richard Dolan

Break Away Civilization –  Interesting theory & interview by Richard Dolan

Break Away Civilization – Interesting theory & interview by Richard Dolan

If this were true, then I envy our space explorers 😉 BTW I love this Photo one of my top Favorites. 

Paula Patton

Paula Patton

She is African and German American or Dutch    Paula’s family lived across the street from the 20th Century Fox lot when she was growing up and she was a fan of films from her earliest years. Her mother, who also appreciated good films, was a schoolteacher, and her father was a lawyer. Study film at […]

Rita Hayworth aka Margarita Carmen Cansino

Rita Hayworth aka Margarita Carmen Cansino

Before                                        and                          After   Spanish dancer Eduardo Cansino‘s daughter Margarita trained as a dancer from early childhood. At age 12, mature-looking Rita joined Eduardo’s stage […]

Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams

Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams

Spanning sixty years, this deliciously entertaining history uncovers the audacious manner in which many blacks made a place for themselves in an industry that originally had no place for them. Through interviews and the personal recollections of Hollywood luminaries, Bogle pieces together a remarkable history that remains largely obscure to this day. We discover that […]

Salma Hayek aka Salma Valgarma Hayek-Jimenez

Salma Hayek aka Salma Valgarma Hayek-Jimenez

Is of Spanish and Lebanese descent, and fluent in Arabic, Spanish, Portugese and English. Studied international relations & drama at college in Mexico City. Father was born in Lebanon and came to Mexico to start a small business where he met her mother. Her Lebanese-Mexican father was a rich businessman and her mother was an […]

Flash Dance actress Jennifer Beals

Flash Dance actress Jennifer Beals

She is African-American and Irish Jennifer Sue Beals was born in Chicago on December 19, 1963 as the second child of Jeanne Anderson and Alfred Beals. Her mother, an Irish-Catholic retired elementary schoolteacher, still lives in Chicago. Her African-American father owned a grocery store on the South Side of Chicago where she spent the first […]

the business of being born

the business of being born

Better to give birth to your baby at the hospital…or in your home? Co-producer/star Ricki Lake initiated the filming of this eye-opening documentary–during which director Abby Epstein happened to become pregnant–to contrast the experiences of women who deliver their children in a hospital environment with those who complete their pregnancies at home with the assistance […]

Brave New World

Brave New World

  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3536993421073315692 In a future society based on pleasure without moral worries, love is prohibited but casual sex, now called ‘engaging’, is strongly encouraged. Everyone is kept happy with a legal drug, soma. People are hatched and cloned on conveyor belts to meet the requirements of five different social classes, from ruling Alphas to robot-like […]

African Tribal Dance

African Tribal Dance

From the movie “Coming to America”.   Choreography by Paula Abdul Her father (Harry Abdul) is of Sephardic Jewish background from Syria. Her mother is also Jewish and was born in Canada. Her parents have lived in Syria, Brazil, and Canada – and this varied background has contributed to incredibly different stories in the press […]

Slowing Aging

The human life span may soon be doubled. Some scientists are honing in on a genetic switch to turn off ageing. Others have discovered a hormone which is already producing startling results in the over fifties.

Micaela Reis

Micaela Reis

Angolan and Portuguese ancestry   http://youtu.be/inAoK4Qq8gk http://youtu.be/tSKXJWQ-bp4 the beauty pageant titleholder who was a Top 10 finalist at Miss Universe 2007 and placed first runner-up to Miss World 2007, becoming Miss World Africa. She was the highest placed Miss Angola at both Miss Universe and Miss Worldbefore the win of Leila Lopes in Miss Universe 2011 She was also named Miss World Continental Queen of […]

The Josephine Baker Story

The Josephine Baker Story

Legendary black American stage performer who took pre-World War II Europe by storm but found constant racial harassment in her homeland.

Biography of the African-American who became a major performer in the Paris cabarets of the 1920’s and 1930’s. The film follows her life beginning as a struggling performer in 1917 St. Louis, her frustrations leading to her move to France, and follows to her death in 1975.

Today in historyJune 3rd1906… dancer, singer and actress Freda Josephine McDonald (aka Josephine Baker), who gained fame in ParisFrance, thanks to her “risque” cabaret and musical hall performances, was born in St. LouisMissouri.

While Ms Baker did perform on screen in a number of films – Siren of the Tropics (1927), Zouzou (1934) andPrincesse Tam Tam (1935), notably – she’s probably more universally recognized for her vaudeville stage musical acts which helped her become maybe the first international black female celebrity.

She was also politically active, making contributions to the Civil Rights Movement here in the United States, and assisted the French Resistance during World War II, becoming the first American-born woman to receive the French military honor, the Croix de guerre.

She died on April 12th1975 at age 68.

Since then, there’s really been only 1 true attempt to tell her story on film – the 1991HBO movie, The Josephine Baker Story, which starred Lynn Whitfield as Baker. Whitfield would go on to win an Emmy Award for her performance!

Actress & Singer: Dorothy Dandridge As Carmen Jones

Actress & Singer: Dorothy Dandridge As Carmen Jones

In 1943, Oscar Hammerstein Jr. took Georges Bizet’s opera Carmen, rewrote the lyrics, changed the characters from 19th century Spaniards to World War II-era African-Americans, switched the locale to a Southern military base, and the result was Carmen Jones. Dorothy Dandridge stars as Carmen Jones, tempestuous employee of a parachute factory. Harry Belafonte plays Joe (originally José), a young military officer engaged to marry virginal Cindy Lou (Olga James). When Carmen gets into a fight with another girl, she is placed under arrest and put in Joe’s charge. Succumbing to her attractiveness, Joe accompanies Carmen to her old neighborhood, where, after killing a sergeant sent to retrieve him, he deserts the army. Carmen tries to be faithful, but fortune-telling Frankie (Pearl Bailey) warns her that she and her soldier are doomed. Enter Joe Adams in the role of boxer Husky Miller (a play on Carmen’s bullfighter Escamillo), who sweeps Carmen off her feet, ultimately with tragic consequences. Alhough both Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte were singers, their opera voices were dubbed in by LeVern Hutcherson and Marilyn Horne.