Anne Hathaway In A Beautiful Dress

Anne Hathaway Profile

Name: Anne Hathaway

Height: 5' 8"

Sex: F

Nationality: American

Birth Date: November 12, 1982

Birth Place: Brooklyn, New York, USA

Profession: Actress

Education: Millburn Highschool
Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N.Y. (major in English)

Relationship: Raffaello Follieri (property developer)

Father: Gerald Hathaway (attorney)

Mother: Kate McCauley (actress)

Brother: Tom Hathaway

Claim to fame: feature debut as the awkward teenager, Mia Thermopolis, in Disney's The Princess Diaries (2001)

Anne Hathaway Biography

Anne Jacqueline Hathaway (born November 12, 1982) is an American actress and singer. Hathaway made her acting debut in the 1999 television series Get Real, but her first prominent role was in Disney's family comedy The Princess Diaries (2001), which established her career. She continued to appear in family films over the next three years, and she had the lead roles in Ella Enchanted and The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement (both 2004). Hathaway wanted to break the "G-rated" image, and consequently, in 2005 she co-starred in the adult-themed Havoc and Brokeback Mountain, both requiring extensive nude scenes, as well as The Devil Wears Prada (2006), in which she starred opposite Meryl Streep. That film has become the highest-grossing film of her career. Becoming Jane, in which she stars as Jane Austen, was released in 2007.

Hathaway's acting style has been compared to that of Judy Garland and Audrey Hepburn, and she cites Hepburn as her favorite actress and Streep as her idol. People magazine named her one of 2001's breakthrough stars and in 2006 she was listed as one of the world's 50 Most Beautiful People.

Hathaway was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Gerald Hathaway, a lawyer, and Kate McCauley, an actress who inspired Hathaway to follow in her footsteps. She was named after the wife of playwright William Shakespeare. She has an older brother, Michael, and a younger brother, Thomas. Hathaway has mainly Irish and French ancestry, with more distant German and Native American roots. She was raised in the Catholic religion with what she considers "really strong values", and wanted to be a nun during her childhood. However, at fifteen, she decided not to become a nun after learning that her brother Michael was gay. Although she was raised as a Catholic, she felt that she could not be part of a religion that disapproved of her brother's sexual orientation.

Hathaway was raised in Millburn, New Jersey and graduated from Millburn High School where she was in many school plays. She spent several semesters studying at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York before transferring to New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study. She referred to her college enrollment as one of her best decisions because she enjoyed being with others who were trying to successfully "grow up". Hathaway was a member of the Barrow Group Theater Company's acting program and the first teenager admitted. She is a trained stage actress and has stated that she prefers appearing on stage to film roles.

Hathaway, a soprano, performed twice in 1998 with the All Eastern U.S. High School Honors Chorus at Carnegie Hall and has performed in plays at Seton Hall Prep in West Orange. Three days after performing at Carnegie Hall, she was cast in the short-lived 1999 television series Get Real.

Ali Landry At 18th Annual Night Of 100 Stars Gala In Beverly Hills

Name: Ali Landry

Height: 5' 8''

Sex: F

Nationality: American

Birth Date: July 21, 1973

Birth Place: Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, USA

Profession: actress, model

Education: Cecelia High School in Cecelia, Louisiana (graduated in 1991)
University of Southwestern Louisiana in Lafayette (majored in Mass Communications)

Husband/Wife: Alejandro Monteverde (director; married on April 8, 2006 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico), Mario Lopez (actor; born on October 10, 1973; engaged in Summer 2003; married on April 24, 2004; annulled on May 12, 2004)

Relationship: Stoney Case (hprofessional football player; quarterback for the Poenix Cardinals; no longer dating)

Daughter: Estela Monteverde (born on July 11, 2007; father: Alejandro Monteverde)

Claim to fame: as Miss USA (1996)

Ali Landry Biography

Ali Germaine Landry (born July 21, 1973) is a former Miss USA (1996), model and actress. She is recognized as the Doritos Girl from her popular 1998 Super Bowl commercial. In 1998, she was named by People magazine as one of 50 most beautiful people in the world.

Landry grew up in Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. This southern region of Louisiana is referred to as "Acadiana," the heart of Cajun country. Landry is of French (Cajun) and Spanish descent. . She graduated from Cecilia High School in 1991. She attended the University of Southwestern Louisiana (USL) (now University of Louisiana-Lafayette (ULL)) and was majoring in Mass Communications. She is a sister member of Kappa Delta Sorority.

Landry met actor/TV personality Mario Lopez when he emceed the 1998 Miss Teen USA pageant and she was a commentator. They were engaged during the summer of 2003 and married on April 24, 2004, but two weeks later she had the marriage annulled over alleged infidelities committed by Lopez during the relationship.

She married film director Alejandro Gomez Monteverde on April 8, 2006 in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Their daughter Estela Ines Monteverde was born on July 11, 2007.

Landry and her husband Alejandro Monteverde made the film Bella together. Bella was directed by Monteverde and was produced by their business partners Sean Wolfington, Eduardo Verastegui, Leo Severino, and Denise Pinckley. Monteverde and the filmmakers received honors for Bella from the Toronto Film Festival, the Smithsonian and the White House. The Smithsonian Latino Center honored Monteverde with their "Legacy Award."

The director of the Department of Citizenship also gave Monteverde the "American by Choice" award for Bella's positive contribution to Latino art and culture in the U.S.

President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush saw the film and invited Bella's director to sit with Laura Bush in her private box during the annual "State of the Union" speech in 2007.

On Lizz Wright's The Orchard

from Critical Noir @ Vibe.com

(Covering) Strange: Lizz Wright's The Orchard
by Mark Anthony Neal

Location, location, location, as in when Fred Moten theorizes about the tropes and aesthetics of escape and fugitivity that power certain black expressive cultures, it is always almost understood this also about a devotion or incarceration (take your pick) to place. Simply put, there's nothing never to escape to or escape from if without this fidelity to someplace, somewhere. So when Stuart Gorrell got to thinking about "Georgia on My Mind" it was the sister of Hoagy Carmichael (who wrote the music) and we'll accept that the feminine can be a metaphor for place, but when Ray Charles sings "Georgia on My Mind" it can never be nothing but place.

Lizz Wright's most recent recordings, Dreams Wide Awake and The Orchard, evoke the beauty of the pastoral south, which for African-Americans of southern heritage, animates the irony of loving (even aesthetically) the very Southern plantations that were the literal sites of our brutality; so desired because of that very beauty (amidst the betrayal) and the capacity of these places to generate a generational wealth that we hungered for. It's no surprise that many of the institutions in Black America have appropriated some aspects of the political economy of the plantation--including aesthetically--in order function as legible subjects in an American contexts. I can't help thinking about what's on Lizz Wright's mind.

In publicity photos, Wright often possesses a sly look of bemusement, like someone whose very being is linked to a fated incarceration to the images that propel her into a relative celebrity among jazz contemporary aficionados. Wright's smile--something like an offhanded joke played out only in her mind or an all too secret shiver in her coital region--is less about the boredom of doing yet another photo-shoot where Verve can exploit her own pastoral beauty (in direct opposition in the girlish android-noids found in contemporary R&B), but an artful act that itself represents an engagement (not a masking) of the full weight of having to be in this place.

Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com

Heidi Klum - 80th Annual Academy Awards

Heidi Klum Profile

Name: Heidi Klum

Height: 5' 9½''

Sex: F

Nationality: German

Birth Date: June 1, 1973

Birth Place: Bergische Gladbach, Germany

Profession: actress, model, perfume company owner

Husband/Wife: Seal (British; musician; born on February 19, 1963; engaged on
December 23, 2004; married on May 10, 2005), Ric Pipino (hairstylist; married in September 1997, in Stone Ridge, New York; separated in November 2002)

Relationship: Flavio Briatore (Reanult F1 Team owner; born on April 12 1950, in Verzuolo, Italy)

Father: Guenther (worked for a cosmetics company)

Mother: Erna (hairdresser)

Son: Johan Riley Fyodor Taiwo Samuel (born on November 22, 2006 weighing 8 pounds, 11 ounces), Henry Gunther Ademola Dashtu Samuel (born in September 12, 2005 in Los Angeles, California; weighed 8.9 lbs; measured 21 inches)

Daughter: Helene 'Leni' Klum (born on May 5, 2004; father: Flavio Briatore)

Claim to fame: Victoria's Secret supermodel

Heidi Klum Biography

Heidi Klum (pronounced [ˈklʊm]; born June 1, 1973) is a German supermodel, actress, TV presenter, fashion designer, television producer and singer. She is also the hostess of Project Runway and Germany's Next Topmodel, and is known for her modeling work with Victoria's Secret.

Klum was born in Bergisch Gladbach, North Rhine-Westphalia, West Germany. She was raised by her parents, Günther (a cosmetics company executive) and Erna (a hairdresser) According to Klum, "in 1991, my friend, Karin, persuaded me to fill out a magazine coupon: I enrolled for the national contest 'Model 92', with the chosen winners shown on Gottschalk, a top German television show, sort of similar to late night shows with David Letterman or Jay Leno in the United States." Out of 25,000 contestants, Klum was voted the winner on April 29, 1992 and was offered a modeling contract worth US$300,000. She accepted the contract a few months later after graduating from school and decided not to try for an apprentice position at a fashion design school.

Heidi Klum has been on the cover of most of the well-known fashion magazines, including Vogue Magazine, ELLE and Marie Claire. She became widely known after appearing on the cover of the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue and for her work with Victoria's Secret and gained popularity as part of Thomas Zeumer's Metropolitan Models. In addition to working with world class photographers on her Sports Illustrated shoots, she was the object/subject of Joanne Gair body painting works in the several edition ranging from 1999 to 2006. She wrote the foreword to Gair's most recent book of body paint work. She has been a spokesmodel for McDonald's, Braun, H & M, and Liz Claiborne, among others. She is currently the latest celebrity spokesmodel for Jordache. In addition to modeling, she has appeared in several TV shows, including Spin City, Sex and the City, and Yes, Dear. She had a role as an ill-tempered hair model in the movie Blow Dry, played a giantess in the movie Ella Enchanted and was cast as Ursula Andress in The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. She also had cameo appearances in The Devil Wears Prada and Perfect Stranger.

In July 2007, having earned an estimated $8 million in the previous 12 months, Klum was named by Forbes as third on the list of the World's 15 Top-Earning Supermodels.

Klum guest-starred on How I Met Your Mother (episode: "The Yips") on November 26, 2007 with her fellow Victoria's Secret supermodels (Adriana Lima, Selita Ebanks, Marisa Miller, Miranda Kerr and Alessandra Ambrosio).

Jennifer Garner - 80th Annual Academy Awards

Jennifer Garner Profile

Name: Jennifer Garner

Birth Name: Jennifer Anne Garner

Height: 5' 9"

Sex: F

Nationality: American

Birth Date: April 17, 1972

Birth Place: Houston, Texas, USA

Profession: actress

Education: George Washington High School in Charleston, WV
Denison University in Granville, OH.

Husband/Wife: Ben Affleck (actor; born on August 15, 1972; began dating in 2004; married on June 29, 2005 at the Parrot Cay resort in the Caribbean Islands), Scott Foley (actor; born on July 15, 1972; married on October 19, 2000; divorced on March 30, 2004)

Relationship: Michael Vartan (actor; born on November 27, 1968; costar on Alias; quietly dated 2003-2004 and were rarely seen in public)

Father: William John Garner (a former chemical engineer)

Mother: Patricia Ann English (a retired English teacher)

Sister: Melissa Garner Wiley (older), Susannah Garner Carpenter (younger)

Daughter: Violet Anne(born on December 1, 2005 at 6:26 in Los Angeles, California, father: Ben Affleck)

Claim to fame: as CIA agent Sydney Bristow on Alias

Jennifer Garner Biography

Jennifer Anne Garner (born April 17, 1972) is an Emmy-nominated and Golden Globe- and SAG Award-winning American actress. She is best known for her role as CIA agent Sydney Bristow on TV's Alias. In December 2007, Garner was named The Charleston Sunday Gazette-Mail's 2007 West Virginian of the Year "for her dedication, work ethic and unique role as role model and ambassador for West Virginia."

Garner was born in Houston, Texas, the daughter of Patricia Ann (née English), an English teacher from Oklahoma, and Billy Jack Garner, a chemical engineer who worked for Union Carbide in Texas. She is the middle child between two sisters, Melissa Garner Wylie (born 1969, resides in Boston, Massachusetts) and Susannah Kay Garner Carpenter (born January 24, 1975 in Texas, resides in Charleston, West Virginia). Her family is Methodist. At three years old, Garner began taking ballet lessons which she continued throughout her youth. Although she admitted that she loved dancing, she never had ambitions to become a classical ballerina. When she was four years old, her father's job with Union Carbide relocated her family to Princeton, West Virginia, then to Charleston, West Virginia, where Garner resided until her college years.

In 1990, Garner graduated from George Washington High School in Charleston, where she played the saxophone. She then enrolled at Denison University to study chemistry. Upon realizing that she enjoyed stage acting more than science, Garner changed her major to drama. While at Denison, Garner was initiated into the sorority Pi Beta Phi. Garner graduated from Denison in 1994 and continued her drama education at the National Theater Institute where she was trained by fight choreographer David Chandler, and told she was a natural in stage combat. Keen for immediate experience, she visited her friend, Clayton Kirlew, in New York City in 1995 and decided to take her chances in New York theatre.

In New York City, Garner earned $150 a week as an understudy in a play. She was then cast in her first television role, a part in the made-for-television movie, Zoya, based on the Danielle Steel novel. Her next acting jobs were in two short-lived television series, Significant Others and Time of Your Life, and a recurring role in the series Felicity. Garner appeared in the comedy Dude, Where's My Car?, playing Ashton Kutcher's girlfriend. In 2001, she appeared as a nurse in the big-budget epic Pearl Harbor, co-starring with Kate Beckinsale and Garner's future husband Ben Affleck.

Katherine Heigl - 80th Annual Academy Awards

Katherine Heigl Profile

Name: Katherine Heigl

Birth Name: Katherine Marie Heigl

Born: November 24, 1978, Washington, District of Columbia, USA

Height: 5' 9"

Nationality: American

Profession: Actress, Former Model

Education: Attend school in New England

Father: Paul Heigl (accountant)

Mother: Nancy Heigl (Heigl's manager)

Claim to fame: Costarred opposite Gerard Depardieu in the Hollywood remake of the French romantic comedy My Father the Hero (1994)

Katherine Heigl Biography

Katherine Marie Heigl (born November 24, 1978) is an Emmy-winning and Golden Globe-nominated American actress and former fashion model.

Heigl was born in Washington, D.C. to Paul Heigl, a financial executive/accountant, and Nancy, a personal manager. She has German and Irish ancestry and was raised a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She had a strict upbringing. She is the youngest of four children (in addition to siblings Meg (who is adopted), Jason and John (Holt) Heigl). Heigl lived in Virginia and then Denver before her family settled in Connecticut, where they moved into a large, old Victorian-style farmhouse in the wealthy town of New Canaan, where she spent most of her childhood.

In 1986, her 15-year-old older brother Jason died of injuries suffered in a car accident, after being thrown from the back of a pickup truck. When doctors determined he was brain-dead following an eight-hour operation, the family decided to donate his organs. The Heigl family was never in any doubt that Jason would have wanted his organs and tissues donated for transplant. Heigl is now a strong proponent of organ donation.

Fragments of a Feedback Loop

Greg Tate & Ahmir ?uestlove Thompson

Critical Noir: Generous Brilliance
By Mark Anthony Neal

***

What was apparent as Greg Tate and Arthur Jafa exchanged fragments of "feedback loops" long cultivated in the midnight hours of their friendship, is that they love and respect each other enough to challenge each other's thinking, but are secure enough in their own intellects to not feel threatened when one of them might get the cerebral upper hand--because even in those cases it raises the bar. Tate and Jafa's relationship highlights that genius for genius's sake matters little if not enveloped in a committed generosity. Understandably such generosity is difficult in an era where there is a marketplace for smart negroes--and certainly for those whose prose (if not ideas) play to certain mainstream notions of accessibility (i.e. Can an oblivious so-called white literate NPR listening public understand it?). Far too many of us I think, are unwilling to publically acknowledge when one of our peers produces something that really forces us to go back to the lab. All too often our measure of what matters is connected to cover story bylines and $2.00 a word gigs and our desire to protect our individual proximities to that kind of marketplace prestige. And this is not to suggest that Ellison, Murray, Painter, McKay, Tate, Jafa, and so many others did not have to create to live--but that ultimately it was the quality of the exchange of ideas that mattered more than a "mess of pottage."

Read the Full Essay at CRITICAL NOIR @ Vibe.com