Deepika Padukone [Wallpapers]

Deepika Padukone Profile

Name - Deepika Padukone

Birth name - Deepika Padukone

Birthdate - 1986

Birth location - Mangalore, India

Height - 5' 6 "

Profession - Actress, Model

Debut Film - Aishwarya (Kannada)

Father - Prakash Padukone (Famous Badminton player) Mother : Ujjala Padukone

Relationship - Nihar Pandya (Indian model and socialite)

Claim To Fame - Female Model of the Year and Fresh Face of the Year 2006, Appearance in 'Naam Hai Tera' music

Deepika Padukone Biography

Deepika Padukone, born 1986, is an Indian supermodel. She is also the daughter of former World badminton Champion Prakash Padukone.

Deepika apeared on the modelling scene, with appearances in print and television advertising campaigns for Liril soap, Close-Up toothpaste and Limca. She made her debut on the ramp in in 2003 in VOGUE INSTITUTE OF FASHION TECHNOLOGY BANGALORE, and immediately shot to prominence in the industry. She received many prestigious modelling offers, including brand ambassadorship of the Jewels of India, an annual jewellery exhibition.

At the fifth annual Kingfisher Fashion Awards, for Indian models and designers, she was awarded the title of Model of the Year. Shortly afterwards, she was chosen as one of the models for the Kingfisher Swimsuit Calendar for 2006, thus cementing her reputation as a supermodel.

It was expected that Deepika, like many successful models before her, would turn to acting in Bollywood. She seemed to be taking steps in that direction when she appeared in the music video for Aap Ka Suroor, a pop number from an independent album by popular Bollywood singer-composer Himesh Reshammiya.

However, Deepika recently announced that she would make her cinematic debut in a Kannada film, Aishwarya, directed by Indrajit Lankesh. The movie co-stars Upendra. She has also signed on a Hindi movie - Farah Khan's second directorial venture, Happy New Year, which is slated for an early 2007 release.

Eva Longoria Ruven Afandor Photo Shoot

Eva Longoria Profile

Name - Eva Longoria

Birth Name - Eva Jacqueline Longoria

Born - March 15, 1975, Corpus Christi, Texas, USA

Height - 5' 1"

Nationality - American

Profession - actress

Relationship - J.C. Chasez (member of NSYNC; born on August 8, 1976)

Father - Enrique Longoria Jr.

Mother - Ella Eva Mireles

Sister - Elizabeth Longoria, Emily Longoria and Esmeralda Longoria (all of the three are older)

Claim to fame - Her role as Gabrielle Solis in the ABC television series Desperate Housewives

Eva Longoria Parker Biography

Eva Longoria Parker (born March 15, 1975) is a Golden Globe Award-nominated American film and television actress. She plays Gabrielle Solis in the ABC television series Desperate Housewives. She has also become an internationally recognized model after appearing in several high-profile advertising campaigns and numerous men's magazines. Longoria is also known for her high profile relationship with French NBA guard Tony Parker, whom she married in 2007.

Longoria Parker was born in Corpus Christi, Texas, to Mexican-American Catholic parents, Enrique Longoria Jr. (born in Rachal, Brooks County, Texas) and Ella Eva Mireles (married in Falfurrias, Brooks County, Texas). She has three older sisters: Elizabeth Judina, Emily Jeannette, and Esmeralda Josephina. The family lived and worked on farmland that had been handed down to them from past generations, but they often had very little money; Enrique and Ella struggled for many years to give their children a decent upbringing. Eva showed viewers an introspect into the hardship she faced in her formative years growing up poor on The Oprah Winfrey Show in 2006; she took cameras on location to the family farm, and showed how spartan they were still living. Longoria admitted that things looked slightly better for them financially, only when she made it in show business.

A Peerless Genius: Thriller @ 25

A Peerless Genius: Thriller @ 25
by Mark Anthony Neal

Michael Jackson was fifteen years into a professional singing career when Thriller was released 25 years ago on November 30, 1982, but nearly a decade past his peak years as the boy lead singer of his family group, The Jackson Five. Not yet aged 25, Jackson could have easily become another child-star as cultural footnote—much like his temporal peer Donny Osmond was at the time. And indeed in the years between Jackson's star-turn as the Scarecrow in The Wiz (1978)—a Soulful adaptation of The Wizard of Oz—and the release of Thriller, Jackson worked hard to craft an image of an independently minded adult who, removed from the comforts of his family clan, the assembly-line logic of the Motown label and the overbearing influence of family patriarch Joe Jackson, was now in control of his life and, more importantly, his music. What may have begun as simply a stab at independence, eventually became a stab at history; Thriller remains the biggest selling recording in the history of the music industry.

Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Listen Again—On the Radio

WUNC's The State of Things with Frank Stasio
December 14, 2007

The names Lewis Taylor and Bill Tate might not mean much to you, but their contribution to pop music can teach us as much as any artist who’s ever topped the charts. Music scholars Eric Weisbard, Mark Anthony Neal and Holly George Warren, all contributors to Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music (Duke University Press/2007), join host Frank Stasio to reflect on the significance of forgotten stories in music history.

Listen Here

Denise Richards -- Mark Anderson Photo Shoot

Denise Richards Profile

Name - Denise Richards

Birth Name - Denise Lee Richards

Born - February 17, 1971, Downers Grove, Illinois, USA

Height - 5' 8"

Nationality - American

Profession - actress, model

Education - El Camino High School in Oceanside, California (graduated in 1989)

Relationship - Richie Sambora (dating since May 2006; split in March 2007), Patrick Muldoon (began dating in 1998)

Father - Irv Richards (former telephone-company employee)

Mother - Joni Richards

Claim to fame - as Carmen Ibanez in Starship Troopers (1997)

Denise Richards Biography

Denise Lee Richards (born February 17, 1971) is an American actress and former fashion model. She came to fame in the late 1990s, after a string of films that highlighted her sex appeal, including Starship Troopers, Wild Things and The World Is Not Enough.

Richards was born in Downers Grove, Illinois to Joni, a coffee shop owner, and Irv Richards, a telephone engineer, and she has one sister, named Michelle. She graduated from El Camino High School in 1989, Oceanside, California, where she was a cheerleader.

Before she was an actress, Richards was a fashion model. Richards spent the majority of the 1990s appearing in lower-budget films and TV shows like Saved by the Bell, television movies, and guest starring in episodes of several television shows. Her first starring role in a wide theatrical release was Starship Troopers in 1997, which was followed by her role in the moderately successful cult film Wild Things in 1998. Richards was subsequently cast as Dr. Christmas Jones in the James Bond film The World Is Not Enough (1999), which had a high box office gross and contributed to Richards' renown. In addition to her film work, Richards has made regular appearances in the situation comedies Spin City, Two and a Half Men, Friends and Seinfeld.

Celine Dion -- Photo Shoot Pics

Celine Dion Profile

Name: Celine Dion

Birth Name: Celine Marie Claudette Dion

Height: 5' 7"

Sex: F

Nationality: Canadian

Birth Date: March 30, 1968

Birth Place: Charlemagne, Quebec, Canada

Profession: musician

Husband/Wife: René Angelil (Celine Dion's manager; born on January 16, 1942;
married on December 17, 1994 in Montreal, Québec, Canada)

Father: Adhemar Dion

Mother: Therese Tanguay

Sister: Pauline, Manon, Linda, Ghislaine, Louise, Liette, Claudette, Clement,
Denise

Brother: Paul, Daniel, Jacques, Michel

Son: Rene-Charles Angelil (born on January 25, 2001 through in vitro fertilization in Florida)

Step son: Patrick Angelil

Claim to fame: The Single Where Does My Heart Beat Now (1991)

Celine Dion Biography

Céline Marie Claudette Dion, OC, OQ, (born March 30, 1968) is a Canadian singer and occasional songwriter and actress. Born to a large, impoverished family in Charlemagne, Québec, Dion emerged as a teen star in the French-speaking world after her manager and future husband René Angélil mortgaged his home to finance her first record. In 1990 she released the anglophone album Unison, establishing herself as a viable pop artist in North America and other English speaking areas of the world.

Dion first gained international recognition in the 1980s after she won both the 1982 Yamaha World Popular Song Festival and the 1988 Eurovision Song Contest. After a series of French albums in the early 1980s, she signed on to Sony Records in 1986. Under the guidance of her husband, she achieved worldwide success with several English and French albums, ending the decade as one of the most-successful artists in pop music. After releasing more than twenty-five albums over two decades, Dion announced a temporary retraction from entertainment in 1999 in order to start a family and spend time with her husband. She returned to the music scene in 2002, and a year later, she signed a four-year contract to perform nightly in a five-star theatrical show at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, Las Vegas.

Dion's music has been influenced by various genres, which range from pop, soul and rock to gospel to classical, and while her releases have often received mixed critical reception, she is renowned for her technically skilled and powerful vocals. In 2004, after accumulating record sales in excess of 175 million, she was presented with the Chopard Diamond Award from the World Music Awards show for becoming the "Best-selling Female Artist in the World." In April 2007 Sony BMG announced that Celine Dion had sold more than 200 million albums worldwide.

The youngest of fourteen children born to Adhémar Dion and Thérèse Tanguay, Céline Dion was raised a Roman Catholic in a poverty-stricken, but, by her own account, happy, home in Charlemagne. Music had always been a part of the family, as she grew up singing with her siblings in her parents' small piano bar called 'Le Vieux Baril.' From an early age Dion had dreamed of being a performer; In a 1994 interview with People magazine, she recalled, "I missed my family and my home, but I don't regret having lost my adolescence. I had one dream: I wanted to be a singer."

Wanted! Black Female Soul Singer

Fallen Star: The Black Female Soul Singer
by Jalylah Burrell

It is quite a disappointing time to be listening for good soul music. If soul singers don't have their eyes on pop, or hip hop, they're necrophilicly (trans)fixed on pastime paradises. And with Black radio, once a rather diverse platform for multigenerational Black musical expression, having died and been reborn wack, and post "Video Soul" music television uninterested, there aren't too many venues to get the word out about good soul music by Black artists. Christina, Joss, JoJo are doing just fine. (I can't say the same for Amy, whose substance abuse woes outweigh the commercial success her whiteness enabled.) As to the queen of hip hop soul and the princess of Dereon, their successes are unique and neither does much straight up soul. This has left me frustrated by the relatively low profiles, stalled careers, or critical indifference to some vital Black female voices on the major label soul scene. Here, I want to highlight two of my favorite under-appreciated Black female soul singers whose careers thus far, have been grossly underdeveloped.

Read the full essay at Hello Babar @ Vibe.com