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Adidas Sued Over Missy Elliot Line
A lawsuit has been filed against German sporting goods maker Adidas-Salomon AG by an anti-domestic violence charity alleging its name and logo were used improperly on a line of clothing by rapper Missy Elliott.
In a lawsuit filed March 16 in federal court in Manhattan, the charity, Break the Cycle, is seeking $10 million from Adidas for use of its trademark, name or logo on more than 40 products in its Missy Elliott "Respect ME" clothing line without formal permission.
Elliott was a former spokesperson for the charity, which works to empower youth to end domestic violence through preventive education, free legal services, advocacy and support. The rapper, who has experienced domestic violence in her family, launched the clothing line in 2004 with plans to donate partial proceeds to Break the Cycle.
The lawsuit is the second legal action to be taken against s Missy’s "Respect ME" line. In February 2005, Queen Margrethe II of Denmark alleged that Elliott's logo, which the rapper/producer designed herself, too closely resembled the Royal monogram. Adidas ended up pulling the line in Denmark due to the threat of legal action from the royal household.
Gordon Parks, 93, a true renaissance man if there ever was one, died in New York City on Tuesday.
Parks, born into poverty in Fort Scott, Kansas, was a photojournalist for "Life" magazine for 20 years
before turning to film making in 1969. His initial Hollywood project, "The Learning Tree,"
was adapted from a novel he wrote about growing up poor and black in 1920s Kansas. He became the first black to write and direct a major studio production when Warner Bros. commissioned him to adapt his book to the big screen.
In 1989, the film was among the first 25 to be deemed culturally and historically significant and was
preserved in the US National Film Registry for future generations.
But as far as most people are concerned, it was the 1971 movie "Shaft" that brought him fame as a
director. Starring Richard Roundtree, "Shaft" also spawned a hit song, the Oscar winning "Theme From
Shaft" by Isaac Hayes. A remake of the film, in 2000, starred Samuel L. Jackson and was directed by John Singleton.
In a documentary for HBO called "Half Past Autumn: The Life and Works of Gordon Parks," he said the two "Shaft" films were hard to compare. "There was a lot of humanity in the first one that
was lacking in the second one," he said. "People probably want more violence now and so on."
During his time as the first black photographer for "Life," he covered everything from fashion to sport
but was best known for his photo essays on poverty and the civil rights movement.
Over the years, not only did he write volumes of poetry and fiction, he also became an accomplished
pianist and wrote a ballet about the life of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., titled
"Martin" which aired on the PBS.
Gordon Parks had been in failing health, according to his nephew, Charles Parks of Lawrence, Kansas.
Soul singer Isaac Hayes quits "South Park"
Veteran soul singer Isaac Hayes, voice of the libidinous character "Chef" on the satiric cable TV cartoon "South Park," said on Monday he was quitting the show, citing its "inappropriate ridicule" of religion.
"There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry toward religious beliefs ... begins," Hayes said in a statement.
Hayes, 63, a devoted follower of the Church of Scientology, did not mention a "South Park" episode that aired last fall poking fun at Scientology and some of its celebrity adherents, including actor Tom Cruise.
Rather, Hayes said the show's parody of religion is part of what he saw as a "growing insensitivity toward personal spiritual beliefs" in the media generally, including the recent controversy over cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammad.
The singer, who became the first black composer to win an Oscar for best song with his theme to the film "Shaft," said he formally asked to be released from his contract with "South Park," on the Comedy Central cable channel.
A spokesman for the Viacom Inc.-owned network said producers of the show and its creators, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, had agreed not to "enforce" Hayes' contract.
"Obviously, Matt and Trey are disappointed that he's not going to be part of the show, but they're not going to make him do something he doesn't want to do," the spokesman, Tony Fox, told Reuters.
However, he said Stone and Parker "feel that it's a bit disingenuous (for Hayes) to cite religious intolerance as a reason for him pulling out of the show" because the series has lampooned religion since its start, taking shots at Catholics, Jews, Muslims and Mormons, among others.
The series grew out of two short films by Parker and Stone, "Jesus vs. Frosty" and "The Spirit of Christmas," the latter featuring a martial-arts duel between Jesus and Santa Claus over the true meaning of Christmas.
"Their premise is as long as you can make fun of everybody, then everybody is a potential target," Fox said. "The minute you start pulling punches, then the show's reason for being sort of gets compromised."
The crudely animated cartoon, heading into its 10th season next week as one of Comedy Central's biggest hits, centers on the antics of four foul-mouthed fourth graders in the town of South Park, Colorado.
Hayes joined the show in 1997, supplying the baritone voice of Jerome "Chef" McElroy, the rotund school cafeteria cook whom the boys often seek out for advice.
In an episode last fall, one of the gang, Stan, scores so high on a Scientology test that church followers think he is the next L. Ron Hubbard, the late science-fiction writer who founded the religion. Hayes did not take part in that episode.
In an interview with Reuters late last year, Hayes talked about a foundation he formed to bring Scientology-based study techniques to disadvantaged inner-city schools, in partnership with fellow devotee Lisa Marie Presley.
"But it's not religious," he said then. "It's just something that people need."
Los Angeles - No one seems to be on the fence when it comes to opinions of Three 6 Mafia’s Oscar win for the “Hustle & Flow” track “It’s Hard Out Here For A Pimp” and their performance of the song during the Sunday’s Academy Award ceremony.
It’s viewed as either a proud example of how far hip hop has saturated the mainstream, or just another
representation of the Academy’s willingness to reward stereotypical depictions of African Americans in
cinema. The Washington Post rounded up folks whose thoughts fell in the latter category. Juaquin Jessup of Northwest Washington said the song and the performance Sunday reminds him of the blaxploitation era, when African Americans were portrayed as pimps and hos and gangsters.
"It was another example of how they pick the worst aspects of black life and reward that. There are more important things in our culture that need focus more than the hardships of a pimp," said Jessup, 51. "The only place many people see our culture is through movies and on television, and at the same time, this country is experiencing an influx of people coming over here from all over the world, and the only thing they see of black America through the media is . . . pimps and gangsters and all of that. It's always some low-down brother or some welfare mother." Deborah Veney Robinson of Silver Spring, MD had issues with the extras dressed as pimps and prostitutes during the performance.
"I have no problem with movies and songs being gritty," she told the paper, "but I have a problem
with something that falls just short of a minstrel show."
Erika Scott, a 17-year-old 11th grader at Maryland’s Largo High School, said the song’s win was
“surprising.” "Growing up where I live, you see, all the time, people who are wanna-be pimps and aspire to be pimps," she said. "Knowing that there is a song that tells the world about what goes on with people like that was surprising, and I was surprised that it won. It made me wonder what the world has come to."
Robinson, along with two friends, runs the blog "What Do You Know" with a regular feature that spotlights the achievements of African Americans in nontraditional areas. She, too, was concerned about the stereotypes in the song.
"It was a struggle for us because we wanted to root for the blacks, but the blacks were pimps and hos on the Oscars, so it was confounding," she told the Post.
"Image is everything, and we have to be so careful about the way we position ourselves in front of larger audiences." Meanwhile, the members of Three 6 Mafia have been in constant press-the-flesh mode since winning the award, and probably too busy to notice all of the drama surrounding their win.
The trio - Jordan Houston (Juicy J), Cedric Coleman (Crunchy Black) and Paul Beauregard (DJ Paul) -
performed and danced with Ellen Degeneres on her daily talk show, which taped Monday and aired Tuesday (March 7). They also attended a previously-scheduled meeting with MTV to discuss their planned reality show with the network. And yes, they brought their Oscars along with them on both occasions.
"I woke up and looked over from the hotel bed and expected that Oscar to be gone," group leader Juicy J told the Los Angeles Times. "I thought it all had been a dream. But the Oscar was sitting right there."
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