Posts Tagged ‘Venus Williams’

A year that began with Ava DuVernay claiming the first-ever win by a black woman of Sundance’s Best Director prize continues apace this month for the former film publicist. As she told AP entertainment writer Sandy Cohen, “I’m living my dream.”

DuVernay’s sophomore effort Middle of Nowhere has received Twitter seal of approval from Oprah Winfrey. Her previous, first effort was endorsed by Roger Ebert. With that kind of Chicago backing, it’s no surprise that DuVernay is already hard at work on her next project – a documentary about Venus Williams – and palns to make a movie a year. From Cohen’s profile piece:

There’s a massive congratulatory bouquet of orchids on the desk in her small office overlooking Van Nuys Boulevard… A magnum of Moet with a big gold bow on top sits on the floor…

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Fox Sports columnist Jason Whitlock is getting a lot of feedback this morning – both positive and negative – for a column entitled “Serena Deserves the Criticism.”

He’s not buying any of the excuses articulated by Williams and supporters regarding the Olympic gold medalist’s decision to celebrate at Wimbledon on Saturday with a dance popularized by Crip gang members. Whitlock thinks it was her crafty way of getting back at the All England Club:

A couple of years ago, the Queen visited Wimbledon for the first time in 33 years. Serena was the reigning Wimbledon champion. She practiced her curtsy in anticipation of playing in front of the Queen at Centre Court. Wimbledon placed Serena on Court 2 and let one of the fashionable white girls play Centre Court in front of the Queen…

I bet in a private moment Friday night or Saturday morning, Serena told her sister Venus, “I’m going to kick this $*%& ass and Crip Walk all over this crusty-ass place.”

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At the New York Times “Wheels” blog (a.k.a. The Nuts and Bolts of Whatever Moves You), contributor Tori Tellem has a fun rundown of the VIP party events that surrounded the November 17th-18th press preview days for the Los Angeles Auto Show. It’s not entirely A-list caliber stuff, but it’s still the kind of celeb smorgasbord that few other American cities can rival.

At the Lotus end of the show floor, the unholy trifecta of Sharon Stone, Billy Baldwin and KISS member Paul Stanley helped unveil sparkling new automotive offerings. Sorry to say, but if this were a movie, it would go straight to VOD. Other celebrations were a little more high-brow.

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We have totally neglected our LAT in 90 feature this summer, but we thought we’d make amends by writing all kind of glowing things about the paper’s Olympics blog which is, truly, damn cool. (Love the on-the-ground touches and particularly like reading Bill Plaschke‘s take on the racial controversy before we’d even heard about the controversy itself.)

But — bully for us — the paper beat us to it!

In a press release extolling the paper’s Olympics coverage, the paper’s PR machine let us know it’s on track to get 1 million pvs by the games’ end.

Congrats!

Press release follows:

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