Credit: Curtis Sabir/WENN

From EurWeb

“Girl Rising,” filmmaker Richard E. Robbins’ film about nine girls in different developing countries who dream of attending school, has been picked up by Regal Cinemas for a week-long engagement in theaters this month.

“Scandal” star Kerry Washington and singer Alicia Keys are among the narrators of the documentary, which will premiere in 150 theaters on April 19 via Regal Entertainment Group.

“Girl Rising” was previously being showcased in cities nationwide via Gathr, a new demand-based theatrical-distribution platform in which fans committed to buying enough movie tickets to secure a screening.

Read more at EurWeb.com.

AP Photo/Charles Dharapak

Power couples in entertainment and the political arena today aren’t just enjoying their celebrity status, here are some who have ventured out to successful side hustles. They are not only in the news for their heart-to-heart connection, or their shock and awe shenanigans,  but also for their dual business dealings. Love, respect, passion, and decent earnings — sounds like a recipe for a pretty good relationship.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel is not impressed by her BlackBerry. (Note: That’s not a Z10.) Photo by: Julian Stratenschulte/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

Nearly two months after unveiling their new devices at a big star-studded event, the new BlackBerry Z10 device is finally on sale. But only at AT&T stores.

The phone is $199. But only with a two-year contract.

The BlackBerry Z10 will be available for Verizon and T-Mobile customers… next week.

We give BlackBerry credit: No matter what anyone says, they will not go gentle into that good night. CEO Heins Thorsten is still talking smack and crowing about how good his phones are. They’re putting up a fight, working to reinforce its “position” in the crowded and cutthroat smartphone marketplace.

“BlackBerry’s position still is very much like its old position, in that the device is still aimed at the connected professional, or what Heins calls ‘the hyperconnected multitasker.’,” writes ABC News. Indeed, you still hear stories about people who absolutely adore the QWERTY keyboard on the BlackBerry. And ABC News says the Z10 is a good phone.

But unfortunately, BlackBerry has a number of problems. The first is the “out of sight, out of mind” mentality; the company’s market share has dropped, a lot of apps aren’t available on the BlackBerry, and with all the chatter about Android, Samsung Galaxy, iPhone, HTC, etc, few people are paying much attention to BlackBerry. Without attention, you can’t drive sales.

Another problem is timing. The new Samsung Galaxy was just introduced and a new iPhone is likely on the way.

And finally, the BlackBerry brand is not perceived as an innovative one anymore. Although Thorsten is quick to call out Apple for being old, few people can pinpoint anything new that BlackBerry has done in a long while. In fact, the thing that their devices are best known for — the aforementioned QWERTY keyboard — is even older. And the attempt to add a little celebrity sparkle to the brand via Alicia Keys seems to have fallen flat. I can’t think of anything that I’ve heard about the partnership since it was announced.

So BlackBerry has a steep mountain to climb and there are some who are already counting the company out entirely. Any thoughts? Please take to the comments.

That’s better.

Source: YouTube.com

For those of you who used to think you could have a career as a successful, recording artist. You might thank your lucky stars that that dream didn’t pan out. Because these singers, musicians and the crews helping them put in some work! A while back, we posted the video for Alicia Keys’ song, “Brand New Me,” one of the singles from her new album Girl on Fire . Now, she’s showing us all the work that went into producing the very personal song. In this behind the scenes video of her shooting her “Brand New Me” video we watch Alicia Keys come in at 5 in the morning, talk about the importance of her hair and how people reacted to her cutting her hair, her juicing diet and the work she puts in to complete the project.

Check out the letter Alicia wrote explaining the meaning of the song and how it relates to her personal experiences on the next page. 

Source: WENN

Oprah’s Master Class will be kicking off its third season Sunday, March 3rd with 14-time Grammy Award-winning singer, Alicia Keys. According to the show’s website, during the special Alicia will be discussing lessons that she has learned over the years about pursuing her passions, motherhood and marriage.

During a 30-second preview of the season premiere, the “Girl On Fire” singer can be heard describing the troubled Harlem neighborhood that she grew up in and her swift rise to fame.

“Literally, I was running from pimps and prostitutes, to boom- I was on the Oprah show.”

It also appears that she will touch on some of the shady dealings of the music industry and her negative experiences with them.

“You’re meeting people who are lying to you to get whatever they want out of you,” said the newly appointed global creative director of Blackberry during the clip.

She seems to be tackling some family demons during the upcoming episode as well.

“I realize that the only person that gets hurt from all of this anger is me,” she says of what appears to be familial drama.

The episode will premiere on the OWN network this Sunday at 10/9 c. While most appear to be completely over hearing about her relationship with Swizz Beatz, viewers may find the story of her childhood and rise to fame particularly interesting.

Watch the preview on the next page. Will you be checking out Alicia on Oprah’s Master Class this Sunday?

Alicia Keys performing during halftime at this weekend’s All-Star Game. AP Photo/Eric Gay

Just earlier this month, the tech industry was all abuzz with the news that Alicia Keys had been tapped by BlackBerry to serve as the company’s global creative director. But it seems the partnership hasn’t yielded the boost or excitement the company was hoping for.

On the surface it seems like it was looking up for the sagging BlackBerry. Besides the flurry of activity surrounding Keys’ appointment, the company debuted its new BlackBerry 10 smartphones, which are due in the U.S. in mid-March.

But reports Forbes, “sales have dramatically underperformed previous estimates, mainly because of supply constraints and limited support from carriers.” It appears the company is having trouble competing with a host of new Android and Window phones, and possibly a new iPhone expected in the first half of 2013, according to Canaccord’s analysts.”

The BlackBerry 10 phones are so bad that, as Forbes reveals, RIM has revised its sales estimates for the new Z10s downward. They’re now expected to move only 300,000 in the February quarter, down from a previous estimate of 1.75 million units.

Limited supply is one of a few problems BlackBerry is facing, capping the company’s capacity to sell BlackBerry 10 products, reports Forbes. But it isn’t alone in this problem. Apple faced this problem with several of their iPhone models, being unable to make enough phones to meet the demand.

While this has been a problem for BlackBerry in the past, with the new the Z10s and Q10s the demand is low, due in part to pricing. “BlackBerry’s new smartphones cost about the same as their major competitors Apple and Samsung’s competing models after taking into account carrier subsidies,” says Forbes.

Not only are consumers lukewarm to the new models, carriers also are unenthusiastic. According to the magazine, Sprint will only be launching the Q10, while T-Mobile will only commercialize the touch screen-only Z10. Verizon Wireless and AT&T, the two largest U.S. providers, will carry both models.

So what role is Alicia Keys meant to play in all of this? Marketing had better get on this fast in order to leverage Keys’ popularity to generate some sort of something for the brand.

Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter Alicia Keys paid a visit to the Wendy Show recently, where she chatted it up with the “Queen of All Media” about meeting husband Swizz Beatz as a teen, her hubby professing his love for her by getting her face tattooed on his arm and raising little Egypt. Check out some of what she had to say.

On meeting Swizz in high school:

“We met like when I was sixteen and he was seventeen. And a friend of ours went to his high school and was like ‘Oh, you gotta meet Swizz,’ and she was like ‘Alicia is about to blow up,’ and ‘Swizz is doing his thing. And maybe one day y’all can work together.’ And that was how we met.”

On falling in love:

“It was so crazy because we’ve obviously known each other for so long, been friends for so long and been in the same industry for so long, but we never thought it was like that. And he’s actually a little too ostentatious for my taste. Like he will wear not one, but sixteen chains. And he can’t drive like a regular car, but it has to be the most craziest car of all time. So I was kind of like ‘Mmm, I don’t know.’ I think what happened was, he really got me when I saw how far his mind went. He’s really, really intelligent and knows so many interesting things… He really loves to live life and he showed me how to live life in a beautiful way.”

On Egypt and Blue Ivy playdates:

“We do bring our children to the studio. So we’ll get together and meet there and like hang out and the kids will hang out. I think actually Egypt kissed Blue and I don’t think Jay liked it very much. He called my husband and was like ‘Um, watch your son.’”

On Swizz’s tattoo of her:

“It’s of my face and he hid it. It’s so beautiful and he mixed it with some of his favorite artists. It’s like this beautiful rendering and it’s so pretty. That’s one of my favorite gifts he’s ever given me.”

Check out a video of Alicia’s full interview on the next page.

AP Photo/Eric Gay

Were you checking out the NBA All-Star Game last night? If you were, then you know that aside from the game, everybody was talking about Alicia Keys and her performance during the halftime show. Of course, it didn’t have all the hype behind it as a Beyoncé at the Super Bowl, but she was crunk nonetheless. The 10-minute show was something we hadn’t seen from her before, as Keys left from behind her piano to dance around with her background dancers in leather pants and a crop top. Though in Houston, she opened her performance with “Empire State of Mind,” and no one in the crowd had any problem with that, jamming to the beloved song and singing the chorus as though she was saying, “Baby I’m from H-toooooooown!” Loved it!

And then things got a bit interesting…I guess you could say. Keys of course pulled out “Girl on Fire,” but flipped the script on everybody by trying to make it into a reggae version (check the dance moves and all the colors). It definitely was a bit easier to sing for her (as the usual high notes in that song can be a struggle), and a bit easier to groove to, but the dance moves by everyone involved we could have lived without, especially those by Keys herself. But she eventually got back behind the computer to do “No One,” another crowd favorite. There were some vocal struggles with that one in the beginning, as I think her voice was getting tired after five minutes of jumping around and singing. But she pulled it together to do one final song, “New Day” off of her Girl on Fire album, which was actually a lot of fun to watch. The song is growing on me more and more and it definitely helped to close out the performance with some energy, because let’s be honest, this wasn’t the most amped halftime show, but then again, neither was the actual game itself (snore fest).

In the end, I don’t think it was all that bad. There were just some moments when you could tell her voice was really straining, and that made things a little awkward. And you know how we already feel about “Girl on Fire.” But what do you think? Were you feeling last night’s halftime performance? Check it out and let us know below!

Will.i.am and Johan Jervoe, VP of sales and marketing at Intel. Photo by Jon Furniss/Invision for Intel/AP Images

BlackBerry continues to spiral into the abyss of electronics past. Desperate to escape the Narnia of cassette tapes and floppy disks that exists in the back of our closets, the wireless devices company turned to one woman… Alicia Keys? News of the pop singer’s new gig as creative director of the company formerly know as RIM was met with head scratches and punchlines.

It’s not that we don’t want to see Alicia be great, despite her refusal to let “Girl on Fire” die. This announcement just doesn’t seem as special, or make as much sense, as the company’s press release would like us to believe.

Brands’ work with celebrities used to be simpler. They cut the check; the famous person holds their product and speaks their praises. Now brands don’t just want a campaign, they want to give the celeb an office too. Brand partnerships are all the rage. Celebs are getting titles business school graduates would kill for like “chief creative officer” and “chief innovator.”

How Did We Get Here?

Ad Age has an idea of why companies are so keen to jump on a trend that’s already feeling overdone:

Styling celebrities as ambassadors is an attempt to position the tie-up as more authentic at a time when consumers have become more cynical about endorsements. “There’s a greater authenticity that comes with having a celebrity influencing the business so that it’s not just a face on the brand. … Everyone knows what a brand endorsement is. You can pay a celebrity to say anything.

Some companies get it right. Budweiser’s partnership with Jay-Z seemed odd at first, but who better to breathe new life into the brand’s then-defunct music festival than the reigning king of mainstream hip hop? P. Diddy’s work with Ciroc was a more obvious pairing. His playboy lifestyle legitimized the liquor brand.

When Right Goes Wrong

How can music producer Will.i.am really innovate in the multinational semiconductor chip market for Intel? Lady Gaga is stylish, but Polaroid may have benefited more from working with someone who creates amazing images rather than inspires them. And what about the king of this trend, Key’s husband Swizz Beatz? What have Monster, Lotus, Reebok, and Mega-Upload gained from his involvement?

If companies are going to spend the money to hire celebrities, they should treat them like any other applicant and make sure they possess relevant experience that adds value to the brand. Customers are savvy enough to see the motives behind these partnerships. Just like a desperate girl in the club, businesses resorting to shallow tactics in their thirst for the limelight will just turn people off.

Hype should be the side effect of your decisions, not the goal. Providing a genuinely valuable service or product is still the key success. No one cares who the creative director is as long as the product’s good. If the product’s good, and the creative director happens to be a pop culture icon, well that’s hype worth believing in.

—

C. Cleveland is a freelance writer and content strategist in New York City, perfecting living the fierce life at The Red Read. She is at your service on Twitter (@CleveInTheCity) and Facebook (/MyReadIsRed). 

In fifth grade, there was a scandal, so big, it rocked the school, community and maybe even the township. I remember hearing the adults gossiping about it, long before it was officially confirmed. I’d catch fragments of sentences being whispered between mothers. “Yeah, he just left her.” “Of course he’s going to have to resign.” “A mess!” Just a week or two later I found out what they meant. Our principal, in an unprecedented move, came on the television system which we used for morning and afternoon announcements, to tell us, the students, that he was resigning. He didn’t go into details, he just said that he’d really enjoyed his tenure as principal and that he would miss us kids and the colleagues he’d worked with over the years. Though, I hadn’t put all of the pieces together, I knew that his announcement had something to do with all the whispers.

When I got back home, I finally just asked my mom what had happened. She told me that our principal was divorcing his wife. Well, that was a bit of a let down. Divorce was nothing new. My grandparents were divorced. People’s parents got divorced everyday. Little did I know, it wouldn’t be long before the complete story unraveled. No more than three months after our principal announced his resignation, rumors and then facts of his upcoming nuptials starting swirling about. This principal wasn’t just marrying anybody. He was marrying one of the teachers at the school. And not just any teacher, he was marrying the teacher who taught his six year old daughter.

Like the adults had said, it was indeed a hot mess. Even us kids knew that in order for him to divorce and remarry so quickly, he would have had to have been at least flirting and most likely screwing his daughter’s teacher. It wasn’t a cutesy, clean love story. It was inappropriate and untidy. I’m sure there were times when it was certainly hurtful to the ex wife and her daughter. And for the rest of us, it was salacious. I remember hearing women talk about how their upcoming marriage would never last. The women were certain that our ex principal was going to do to the teacher just what he’d done to his ex wife. As a kid it sounded plausible and as an adult, it was a sentiment or a phenomena I’d seen and heard reflected over and over again. Eventually, I adopted it as my own.

But today, I don’t know how accurate that saying really is. Today, I know a little bit more about human nature and why marriages fall apart in the first place. Maybe the principal and his first wife got married too young and didn’t know themselves, much less each other. Maybe she, his ex wife, belittled him at home. Maybe their sex life started to suffer and his eyes started to wander. Who knows, it could have been a multitude of things. But what I do know is that over a decade later, my former principal and the teacher are still together. They have five kids now and judging from Facebook, which is admittedly not always the most accurate barometer, they seem to be happy together.

This story came to mind last night as I was on Jozen Cummings’ dating and relationship blog, Until I Get Married. In a video post, a woman who had cheated on her boyfriend with her current fiancé, wondered how she should go about apologizing to her ex. In his response to her, though he acknowledged that she was hella wrong for cheating, he also stated that her infidelity eventually brought the type of love she wanted into her life.

Hmm. Interesting. I guess it’s kind of like Alicia Keys and Swizz Beatz or Olivia Pope and Fitzgerald Grant. By now we know that sometimes love doesn’t come in a nice, neat prepackaged box. Sometimes you get the box that’s already been ripped open by another, banged up by the postage man and pissed on my a stray dog or two. But it’s still love, the most universal, the most powerful force in the universe. I mean God Himself defines Himself as love. Now, I’m not arguing anybody run out here and take someone’ else’s husband; in fact I’d argue that when the initial stages of flirting start, you run like hell in the other direction. What I’m asking is if your beginnings are a little rough, arguably immoral, does that mean your relationship or your karma is doomed to fail? Will it be a “sins of the father” type situation where the offspring produced from the union end up suffering because of their parents’ indiscretions? Or can a not so good thing be turned into something great, with no lingering consequences. I’m not sure, so I’m asking you.

What do you think? When you fall in love in the midst of shady circumstances, can your union still work?