NEWS
January 30, 2009
Coraline : (Focus Features) The makers of A Nightmare Before Christmas tell an animated story of a young girl who walks through a secret door in her new home and discovers an alternate version of her life. With the voices of Dakota Fanning and Teri Hatcher. He's Just Not That Into You: (New Line Cinema) The lives of desperate Baltimore singles intersect in a loose adaptation of the popular self-help book. With Jennifer Aniston and Drew Barrymore. The Pink Panther Deux : (Columbia Pictures)
NEWS
By Michael Sragow | January 16, 2009
The star of Notorious, Jamal Woolard, who plays the straight-out-of-Brooklyn rap giant Christopher Wallace - known as Biggie Smalls, Big Poppa, the Notorious B.I.G. or just plain Biggie - possesses a marvelously malleable presence. He's as ominous as Mike Tyson and as lovable as Fat Albert. He's perfect for the fact-based story of Biggie Smalls, shot down at age 24 in 1997, because Woolard can make the rapper's evasiveness as well as his brutal honesty seem charismatic and attractive. Sometimes his friends can't penetrate to his core because he loses himself in deep emotion, as when he discovers that his super-strict yet loving mom (Angela Bassett)
NEWS
January 9, 2009
last call BOLT *** 1/2 ( 3 1/2 STARS) Disney proved there's life in the Mouse House yet with this ode to a dog who thinks he's a superhero and the girl who loves him just for being a dog. The movie has been packing them in at theaters showcasing it in digital 3-D, but its essential and considerable joy comes from watching Bolt, a TV action star who mistakes his fantasy adventures for reality, learn, finally, how to act like a dog. Chris Kaltenbach ...
NEWS
By Gadi Dechter | May 10, 2008
St. Mary's City -- Nezia Munezero and her 10-member family spent years running from one East African refugee camp to another, staying one step ahead of death in a world torn by ethnic warfare and genocide. In 2002, they were resettled in Baltimore. At age 16 and with no knowledge of English, she enrolled at the now-shuttered Southwestern High School and lived in a grim neighborhood beset by urban crime. It was a stepping-stone to a better life, but also another place to flee. "Students at Southwestern weren't friendly toward immigrants," said Munezero, 22, a slight woman with a lilting accent.
NEWS
By JENNIFER CHOI | January 3, 2008
Rams Head Live will host a performance by the Wu-Tang Clan on Wednesday. The notorious New York hip-hop group, which had been on a six-year hiatus, is on tour to promote its new album, The 8 Diagrams. Doors open at 7 p.m. The group performs at 9 p.m. Rams Head Live is at 20 Market Place. Tickets are $49.50. Call 410-244-1131 or go to ramsheadlive.com.
NEWS
October 15, 2007
The proliferation of gangs in American cities has led to calls for new federal laws and tougher penalties to stem gang violence. Locking up more gang members may deplete their ranks, but only until the next teenager becomes the newest recruit. It's the wrong approach to the real solution, which is keeping youngsters from joining a gang in the first place. We question the need for new laws because there are few crimes unique to gangs. Their members - no matter their colors - murder, steal, sell drugs, extort money, beat up rivals and intimidate witnesses.
NEWS
By Brooke Hauser | October 9, 2007
NEW YORK -- When it comes to playing Biggie on the big screen, size matters. Take it from De'Andre Neal, a 6-foot-3, 315- pound bouncer with fingers as thick as Twix bars. The Brooklyn native was one of more than 100 hopefuls who turned out this past weekend for an open casting call on a soundstage in Manhattan's meat-packing district, trying to fill the size-13 shoes of Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. Notorious B.I.G., in Notorious, a new biopic about the slain rapper. "Seriously, I saw people who shouldn't even be here," said Neal, 29, his voice so deep it could give you the bends.
NEWS
By New York Times News Service | December 29, 2006
GALWAY, Ireland -- As an unsupervised young chief trader in Singapore in 1995, Nicholas W. Leeson lost $1.3 billion in frenzied trades in Japanese stock futures and bonds, destroying his employer, the 233-year-old Barings Bank, which had Queen Elizabeth II as a customer. Now, Leeson, having served four years in prison and survived a bout with colon cancer, has managed to turn those money-losing bets into a money-making enterprise - warning bankers of their continuing vulnerability to rogue traders.
NEWS
By LEONARD PITTS JR. | June 4, 2006
WASHINGTON -- No transcript is known to survive, but it is reasonable to assume that when a mob of white men lynched a black man named Sam Hose, cut off his fingers, ears and genitals and skinned his face in 1899, they used the N-word. Similarly, though there's no recording of the attack, it's likely that when a pregnant black woman named Mary Turner had her fetus slashed out of her, then was stomped to death by a white mob in 1918, the N-word was there. By contrast with Mr. Hose and Ms. Turner, 23-year-old Glenn Moore got off easy.
NEWS
By DAVID ZURAWIK | April 2, 2006
Television's newest genre may be the celebrity-abuse sitcom. Kirstie Alley was the first to mock herself in her own show. Then Farrah Fawcett did it. And now Tori Spelling is doing it, too. With each new show, in which B-list celebrities grasp at stardom by making fun of themselves on camera, the amount of humiliation heaped upon them grows. SO NOTORIOUS / / makes its premiere at 10 tonight on VH1.