The 2012 MTV VMA

  Red Carpet Beauties

Katy Perry


Nicky Minaj


Rihanna


Rihanna's look for her stage performance same night.

Amber Rose shows off her Baby bump.

Keisha...looking Gorgeous


Zoe Saldana

Alicia keys

Kat Graham

Ne- yo

Genevieve Nnaji: Africa’s Screen Idol!

 Few years ago, ten out of twelve African graduates settled for “white collar” jobs but that has changed. With time, Africa’s young and creative heads are shifting away from what used to be the conventional order, and challenging themselves with initiatives that had little or no appreciation a decade ago.

In a quick yet steady growth to the top, Nigeria’s entertainment industry has grown into a modern day screamer. The successes chalked over the years are as assuring as the quantum of revenue raked in by its subjects yearly.

Filmmaking, one of the country’s strategic units of economic growth continue to take an upward fine-tuning – putting food on the table of millions of households.

Not only has Nigeria’s entertainment industry fed its own people; across Africa, their homemade movies, is a major source of employment to hundreds of entrepreneurs.

Thanks to an early positioning, it has grown to become a force that cannot be done away with. Today, the Nigerian film industry, widely known as “Nollywood”, is the second largest in the world by volume.

Genevieve Nnaji, one of the early day saints who got this whole craze off to a start, is about the industry’s most respected and appreciated female act. Across Africa and even in more rooted and hard-to-break-through territories like the United States of America and Europe, the level of appreciation that greets her, is refreshingly awesome.

 Nnaji, who at an early stage in her acting career defined what would later go on to be accepted as polished drama, took the industry by storm about two decades ago, when nobody really paid attention.

Gradually taking up roles in low and virtually non-existent budget movies, it was just a matter of time that she would explode into the big material that she is made of today. Role after the other, she proved her worth and managed to catch the eye of some notable producers who gave her subsequent roles in Unbreakable, Dangerous Sister, Not Man Enough, and Church Business among other titles.

Still a local idol after few scripts, it was the 2002 movie “Sharon Stone”, which got her a wider appeal – making her an instant hit in countries like Ghana, Cameroon, Liberia, and Kenya among other African countries.

And the widespread recognition came at a time when Nollywood had made a successful crossover into unfamiliar territories and was getting a lot of positive reviews.

Soon, she blew up. She’s been splendid thus far.

Nnaji, 33, (May 3, 1979), who was brought up in a middle-class environment in Lagos, the commercial capital of Nigeria, earned her first screen appearance in the television series “Ripples” as a teen actress.
A few television commercials also followed. She made her debut mainstream screen appearance at the age of 19 in the movie “Most Wanted”.

Her subsequent movies included “Last Party”, “Mark of the Beast”, and “Ijele”, which till date, remains one of her all-time classics
.
A multiple award winner at home and abroad, Nnaji is one of Nigeria’s most decorated celebrities in terms of brand endorsements, defending and projecting everything from cars, and toiletries. In June this year, she became a Range Rover Evoque Ambassador.

In 2009, she became the first Nigerian actress to be profiled on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

This, together with other achievements, has translated into exciting deals for her, as she continues to act in very challenging and well-packaged movies that has shot her stock up.

Tango with Me, (believed to have been shot on a 326,000-pound budget), is the latest of high quality movies she’s recently starred in.

Directed by Mahmood Ali-Balogun , industry stakeholders expect that the melodrama would achieve commercial success and would go beyond just the usual and conventional VCD and DVD-driven distribution channel, and opt for an aggressive roll out plan that would encourage appearance at film festivals, cinema releases and viewing openings that has the potential of bringing in watchers who aren’t necessarily Nigerians or Africans.

 

Nnaji, a mother of one, also acted and excelled in The Mirror Boy; a film that tells the “uplifting story of a young teenage African British boy who is taken back to the land of his mother’s birth, but then gets mysteriously lost in a foreboding forest; and embarks on a magical journey that teaches him about himself and the mystery of the father he has never seen”.

Shot in The Gambia and England, the well-packaged fantasy adventure drama, written and directed by Obi Emelonye, received three nominations at last year’s African Movie Academy Awards.

It is fair to credit Nnaji for taking Nollywood to greater heights but part of that praise should also go to the industry for creating the platform for young and talented people, to nurture their talents.

But does the Nigerian film industry hold a lot of promise such that the likes of Nnaji can continue to have a cushion they can always lean on for growth and skills enhancement?.


Phil Hoad of the Guardian thinks there is hope for the future. In an August 21, 2012, blog he suggested that:
“There’s certainly plenty of other evidence to suggest that it is moving on to a more established, professional footing: more film-makers shooting on film, not video; an increasing degree of international crossovers, like Jeta Amata's Hollywood star-laden Niger-delta thriller Black November, Holly-Nolly co-production Doctor Bello, and the forthcoming Nigerian-UK adaptation of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel Half of a Yellow Sun; the slick looking streaming-video library iROKOtv – supported by US money – giving ready access to Nollywood’s bottomless bargain-bin of titles



 bestunhatchedmodels.blogspot.com

So much for an amicable split

Seal accuses Heidi Klum of cheating on him with her bodyguard:

So much for that amicable split. After it was reported on Friday that Heidi Klum was dating her bodyguard of four years, Martin Kristen, her soon-to-be ex-husband Seal had a very bitter response for the mother of his four children. "To be quite honest, if there is going to be somebody else in their lives, I'd much rather it was a familiar face,” the “Kiss From a Rose”singer told TMZ as he made his way through an airport on Saturday. “I guess the only thing I would have preferred is that … I guess I didn't expect any better from him, I would have preferred Heidi show a little bit more class and at least wait until we separated first before deciding to fornicate with the help, as it were,” he adds, insinuating that the relationship began before he and Klum announced their split in January. “But I guess you now all have the answer that you've been looking for the past seven months."

According to reports, the “Project Runway” host has been dating Kristen, who she was spotted getting cozy with during a family day at the beach in Sardinia, Italy, this week with her parents and four children just feet away. In one photo, Klum and Kristen are seated side by side on a rock and it looks like she is taking a pic of them on her phone, while in another, he has his arm around her as she smiles. “It's complicated," a friend of Klum tells people. "Their relationship is hard to define."

The former Victoria’s Secret Angel has been growing closer to Kristen ever since she separated from Seal in January. Despite Seal's new cheating claims, Klum, 39, has said the breakup came as a surprise to her and she has reportedly been seeking comfort with her long-time pal during the “difficult time,” adds the People source. "Her inner circle of people she trusts is getting smaller and smaller and he is her No. 1 confidante."

Klum is going to need all the support she can get from Kristen. Reader On reports that the divorce between her and Seal is starting to get a little nasty -- and that's apparent judging from his outburst on Friday. In addition to fighting over money – the $70 million model insists she and her less-successful ex had no joint assets, which he denies – they’re also going back and forth over their four children: Leni, 8, Henry, 6, Johan, 5, and Lou, 2. She wants primary physical custody, but Seal believes they should share it 50-50.

By Kathleen Perricone