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Entertainment Entrepreneurs: Meet KAI SOREMEKUN Print E-mail
Written by Scott Katz   
Tuesday, 23 February 2010 01:54

The advent of the Internet and the availability of high tech photographic equipment and software at affordable prices have created an explosion of creative content across the virtual landscape.  In addition to our ongoing series spotlighting independent producers of film and theater, we at US Townhall wanted to recognize some of the best of what we're calling "Entertainment Entrepreneurs" those creative individuals who choose to work outside the traditional corporate studio system in order to create and develop their own projects that they can bring to life in a vision wholly their own, undiluted by Hollywood committees and focus groups.

 

Kai Soremekun, creator and star of CHICK (Image © 2010 Studio 33 & Kai Soremekun. Used by permission.)

 

We introduce to you Kai Soremekun, an established actress living in Hollywood who has decided to chart her own course and create her first ongoing web series, simply entitled ChickChick follows the journey of Lisa, played by Ms. Soremekun, a person much like you or anyone you could know: bright, funny, insecure, determined, complex, contradictory, and hopeful.  However, Lisa has one tiny little quirk that sets her apart from the average boy or girl next door:

She wants to become a superhero.

And, fashioning a costume for herself and naming herself Fantastica, she sets out to do just that.

As the series creator herself puts it, Chick "uses the superhero as a metaphor for exploring human potential."  Can Lisa be successful in her pursuit?  Will she give up and just go back to her philandering boyfriend?  And what are the underlying root causes of Lisa's desire to pursue such a seemingly off-kilter goal?

Read the no-holds-barred interview below to gain more insight into both Chick's creator, Kai Soremekun, and her character, Lisa.  After which, we're sure you'll catch the chickspirit and want to follow Kai's ongoing project, the innovative new web series, Chick.

 

ABOUT KAI SOREMEKUN 

USTOWNHALL:  Tell us about your background: where were you born, and where did you grow up?
KAI SOREMEKUN:  I was born in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and moved to Toronto when I was 6 months old where I grew up until I moved to New York to pursue dancing and acting.

 

USTH:  When did you develop an interest in acting and performing?
KS:  My mom is a nurse and my dad a doctor so I prepped myself through high school to follow in my parents' footsteps and go to medical school.  But I struggled with math and physics and hated it even though I was smart enough to do well at it if I put my mind to it.  Then it hit me that I didn't really want to be a doctor; I was doing it to please my father.  So I took a year off after I graduated from high school to figure out what I really wanted to do.  This kind of freaked my parents out because they feared I wouldn't go back to school and get a degree after my hiatus.  But I felt it made more sense to figure out what I wanted to do than waste my parents' money doing something I may not follow through with.  I had been taking dance classes for a couple of years at this point and really loved it.  I explored that even though as a performer I was often terrified.  At the time, I worked at a performing arts center called the O'Keefe Center as a concession stand employee.  Posted in the Artists' Entrance was a notice about auditions coming up for entrance into a performing arts academy in New York called the American Musical and Dramatic Academy.  So, on a whim and to push myself, I decided to audition.  I sang "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music, and I was pretty bad.  But despite this, they invited me to attend the school.  I had also been accepted into Simon Frasier University in British Columbia.  So it was a moment of truth...University or Performing Arts Academy?  I was having a hard time letting go of the belief that you have to go to University in order to make something of yourself.  My mom was the deciding factor.  She told me I should go to New York because if I didn't I would always wonder what if?  And so, I went to New York, attended AMDA for two years, and have never looked back.

Last Updated on Friday, 05 March 2010 05:23
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BLACK HISTORY MONTH: Before Rosa Parks, There Was Lizzie Jennings Print E-mail
Written by William Joseph Reynolds for ustownhall.com and Scott Katz   
Monday, 08 February 2010 20:02

Americans are all familiar with the story of Rosa Parks, who, on Thursday, December 1, 1955, refused to yield her seat on a bus to a white passenger.  Similar acts of civil disobedience had taken place prior to that including Irene Morgan in 1944, Sarah Louise Keys in 1953, and young Claudette Colvin earlier in 1955 on the very same bus system as Rosa Parks.

But, did you know that a full century before Rosa Parks' courageous stand, another black woman took a similar stand when she was ejected from a privately owned streetcar in downtown Manhattan on the corner of Pearl and Chatham streets?  Elizabeth "Lizzie" Jennings brought a civil suit against the streetcar company and was represented by a future president.  Her attorney successfully argued the case that was the beginning of the desegregation of public transportation in New York City. 

Last Updated on Friday, 05 March 2010 05:31
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82nd Annual ACADEMY AWARDS Winners - Complete list PDF Print E-mail
Written by US Townhall staff   
Monday, 08 March 2010 01:13

Here is the complete list of Academy Award winners from the 82nd Annual ceremony held on Sunday, March 7, 2010.  In all, 24 awards were handed out in a star-studded parade of excess that lasted over three-and-a-half hours.

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin served as dual hosts and did a fantastic job.  They had great chemistry, and we're sure a film starring the two of them together would be a big hit.  However, in spite of the Academy trying to improve television ratings by including a wider variety of nominees for Best Picture, the overall affair, while entertaining, proved to be one of the least suspenseful Oscar telecasts ever.

All of the actors that industry pundits had predicted to win did win: Sandra Bullock, Jeff Bridges, Mo'Nique, and Christoph Waltz.

The Best Picture winner was equally as predictable.  While some thought that James Cameron's record-breaking Avatar would take home the big prize, it was obvious to us in the run-up to the awards that The Hurt Locker would stage an "upset." It's just the kind of movie that Hollywood loves to award, while a scifi spectacle like Avatar is decidedly not.  To those who thought Avatar was a shoo-in: have you learned nothing from ET: The Extra Terrestrial ?

 

 

The tally of multiple award winners is as follows:

The Hurt Locker - 6 Oscars including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay
Avatar - 3 Oscars including Best Visual Effects
Crazy Heart - 2 Oscars including Best Actor
Precious - 2 Oscars including Best Supporting Actress
Up - 2 Oscars including Best Animated Feature

 

MAIN AWARDS

BEST PICTURE: The Hurt Locker
Other Nominees: Avatar, The Blind Side, District 9, An Education, Inglourious Basterds, Precious, A Serious Man, Up, Up in the Air

BEST DIRECTOR: Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker)
Other Nominees: James Cameron (Avatar), Quentin Tarantino (Inglourious Basterds), Lee Daniels (Precious), Jason Reitman (Up in the Air)

BEST ACTRESS: Sandra Bullock (The Blind Side)
Other Nominees:
Helen Mirren (The Last Station), Carey Mulligan (An Education), Gabourey Sidibe (Precious), Meryl Streep (Julie & Julia)

BEST ACTOR: Jeff Bridges (Crazy Heart)
Other Nominees:
George Clooney (Up in the Air), Colin Firth (A Single Man), Morgan Freeman (Invictus), Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Mo'Nique (Precious)
Other Nominees:
Penelope Cruz (Nine), Vera Farmiga (Up in the Air), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Crazy Heart), Anna Kendrick (Up in the Air)

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR: Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds)
Other Nominees: Matt Damon (Invictus), Woody Harrelson (The Messenger), Christopher Plummer (The Last Station), Stanley Tucci (The Lovely Bones)

 

Last Updated on Wednesday, 10 March 2010 03:41
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THEATER: The Bronx Opera Premieres Mahler's DIE DREI PINTOS Print E-mail
Written by Scott Katz   
Tuesday, 12 January 2010 14:45

As part of our continuing series spotlighting New York's independent theatre scene, we attended the January 9 opening night performance of the Bronx Opera's Die drei Pintos, a comic opera by Gustav Mahler, who finished the project begun by Carl Maria von Weber in the early 1800s.  Mahler's completed opera premiered at the Neues Stadttheater in Lipzig, Germany on January 20, 1888.  Almost exactly 122 years later, the Bronx Opera debuts their English-language version of this rarely seen opera -- only the third time in history being performed in the United States and the first time being done in New York.

The Bronx Opera's version of Die drei Pintos, featuring a fresh translation by Associate Artistic Director, Benjamin Spearman, is a frothy, fun mix of opportunistic con men, stolen identity, starcrossed lovers, and a man who is impersonated not once, but twice during the course of the story with each of his imposters being more preferable to the original.

 

(l-r) Michael O'Hearn (as Don Pinto), Eapen Leubner (as Don Gaston), Jeremy Moore (as Ambrosio) (Photo © Aquarius Enterprises 2010. All Rights Reserved)
Last Updated on Monday, 17 May 2010 23:24
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Agnes Nixon: The Guiding Light Exit Interview
Written by Scott Katz   
Tuesday, 20 October 2009 12:59

Agnes Nixon (Photo © 2009 Aquarius Enterprises. All Rights Reserved.)In the annals of daytime dramatic programming, perhaps no single person is more well known and representative of the genre than the woman with whom we had the greatest pleasure in interviewing last week: none other than Agnes Nixon.

Although she is recognized as the creator of two-thirds of ABC's current soap opera lineup, having originated both One Life to Live in 1968 and All My Children in 1970, her career as a writer of provocative dramatic serials extends much further back all the way to the late 1940s where she was mentored by none other than the creator of the soap opera herself, Irna Phillips.

When Ms. Phillips left as head writer of Guiding Light in 1958 to focus more on her new hit, As the World Turns, she left the show in the capable hands of Agnes Nixon, who began to incorporate what would become one of the hallmarks of her writing style: crafting stories that were both entertaining and educational. 

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