Oscars
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She Got That Glow: How Zendaya Served Simply Stunning Glamour at the Oscars
We’re going to be honest about something: We don’t really know where Zendaya came from. I mean, we know she’s an Oakland, Calif., native, and a child model-turned-Disney starlet. We know she appeared on Dancing With the Stars before scoring the coveted role of M.J. in the latest installment of the Spider-Man franchise. We even…
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Common Has Secured the Bag and Now He Just Makes Dad Rap
Common is killing the game; or, in today’s parlance, Common has secured the bag. I’m almost 40 years old, which means that I grew up in the ’80s and ’90s listening to Common (née Lonnie Rashid Lynn Jr.) when he was rapping about watermelons and communism and asking to borrow a dollar. I still own…
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So … Will Hollywood Finally Learn This Lesson, or Nah?
When writer-director Jordan Peele won his Best Original Screenplay Oscar for 2017’s biggest hit, Get Out, I cheered. When cast members of 2018’s biggest hit so far, Marvel’s Black Panther, walked the red carpet at the 90th Academy Awards, I swooned. And when I looked out at the sea of (mostly) white people attending the…
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We Love Us: #BlackExcellence Met #BlackElegance at the 2018 Oscars
While there were no big upsets like last year’s last-minute turnover of the award for best picture, the Oscars also weren’t so white this year, as proved by the red carpet of the 90th Academy Awards Sunday night in Hollywood, Calif. Indeed, we made history Sunday night: Mary J. Blige was the first person in…
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Of Lions, Hunters and Heroes: Black Film, Black Stories and Black Realities
Tonight the Black Lives Matter Global Network took to the Oscars stage. Five years of building up black communities. Five years of experiencing police repression. Five years of centering black stories as the way we honor both the dead and the living. We took to the Oscar stage because Black Lives Matter refuses to stop…
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There Will Be No Time’s Up Dress Code at the Oscars, but #MeToo Is Still on People’s Minds
Make no mistake: Just because you don’t see a sea of diaphanous black gowns and sharp, black tuxes at the Oscars red carpet this Sunday doesn’t mean the Time’s Up movement didn’t show up. Unlike the Golden Globes, around which the Hollywood-backed initiative born out of the #MeToo movement was announced, there will be no…
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In the Spirit: Stars Celebrate at the Independent Spirit Awards
Tonight, cinephiles everywhere will gather in front of their television screens to watch the biggest stars and biggest films of the year vie for the biggest prizes in cinema at the 90th Academy Awards. (If you haven’t already, join The Glow Up Facebook group to participate in a live red-carpet roundup with us at 6:45…
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‘I Am Mirroring Women’: Viola Davis Gets Real in Porter Edit
It’s Oscar weekend 2018, so it’s no surprise that we’ve been seeing a lot of Viola Davis. The three-time Academy Award nominee, who won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for 2016’s Fences‚ is a regular on the awards circuit and is often called the “black Meryl Streep”—to which she rightly responds, “[then] pay me what…
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Mary J. Blige Is Probably Not Going to Win That Oscar, but She Has Already Won Enough (Still Hate You, Though, Kendu)
Call it cynicism spurred by decades of watching artists, actors and other public figures squirm to make the perfect “I just lost an award, but believe me, I’m very happy for the person who beat me!” face in a matter of seconds, but I don’t always believe people when they say it’s an honor to…
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Watch: Sterling K. Brown on the Success of Black Panther and His Next Career Moves
Who could forget this guy’s performance in Black Panther? Sterling K. Brown is killing everything he touches. He now intends to move forward into writing and directing his own projects as well. “The opportunity to produce, to direct—there’s something very exciting about that potentiality,” Brown says. “It scares the bejesus out of me because I’ve…