‘Great time to be actor of color’

Pretty good storyline in ‘Emoji’

NEW YORK, July 29, (Agencies): Jessica Williams says it’s a great time to be an actress of color, and applauds Netflix for leading the way in promoting diversity.

Williams, who cut her teeth as a correspondent on “The Daily Show,” takes on her first starring role in the streaming network’s original film, “The Incredible Jessica James.”

The actress feels Netflix helped shape stories about people of color, citing original programming like “Master of None” and “Orange is the New Black” that are able to “showcase people of color in an amazing way.”

While inclusion continues to improve, especially on Netflix, Williams says the struggle for racial equality is far from over.

“I think it’s a difficult time in some ways to be a person of color, and I think the same for actors of color, but I also think it’s a great a time. Because I think now ... there’s so much more room, I think, for us to be seen, and there’s room for us to create our own stories,” Williams said.

Williams feels great pride that she’s part of movement toward greater diversity on screen, calling it something that makes her heart warm and sing. She said she remains mindful of the actresses who paved the way.

“It’s like so many black actresses that came before me and my generation. They came before and they did not necessarily have this opportunity that I feel like I have now, and so I’m really grateful for that, and I really do think it’s a really great time to be an actress that is black, in a way,” she said.

But that doesn’t make shifting gears from a comedy news show to a feature film an easy choice. Williams certainly felt some trepidation with the move.

“I was really nervous because this movie does have comedy in it. It also has a lot of heart, and some sweet moments. So I was worried whether I would be able to portray that or not. But I had a lot of fun doing it, and I found out that I could,” she said.

Written and directed by Jim Strouse — who previously directed Williams in his 2015 film, “People Places Things” — the story was written with Williams in mind. Her desire was to correctly depict the “life of a modern, young black woman,” and took it a

intended here,” Sklar told the AP. (AP)

NEW YORK:

The widow of late Linkin step further by also taking on the role as an executive producer.

“Just in case I had things to say creatively,” Williams said.

Strouse called Williams a comedy ninja and the right actress to portray the ever-changing nature of romantic relationships.

Relationship

“I remember when a relationship goes astray or whatever, you break up, you don’t talk and in like maybe months down the road you have coffee,” he said. “Now it’s like, you ghost and maybe a couple months down the road you start liking each other’s photos again. It’s a weird time.” He called the dynamic interesting, then with a knowing smile said, “I don’t know if it’s healthy.”

As for her previous gig, Williams has the distinction of being the youngest correspondent hired for “The Daily Show.” Now she’s hoping to join the list of the show’s alumni who have moved on to bigger and better things.

“To be mentioned among people like Samantha Bee or Hassan Minaj and Steve Carrell and Steve Colbert is insane,” she said. “It’s, it’s very surreal and I think — I packed up everything to move and be on the ‘Daily Show’ and I was nervous because I was 22. I was, umm, I had a lot of big shoes to fill working with Jon Stewart. I felt like in the beginning I had a lot to prove, and it’s really an honor to be among those people.”

If you’re going to build an animated film around a concept that’s dumb, flat, goofy, and obvious, and maybe a tad corrupt in its cartoon-to-toy-box opportunism, then you could probably do worse than the idea behind “The Emoji Movie.” On the one hand, it has the feeling of scraping — as in, we’ve had Trolls, Smurfs, and LEGO, now here come the funny-faced “expressive” ideograms on your smartphone. What’s next: “Automated Siri Voice When You’re Put On Hold: The Movie”?

Yet let’s come out and admit that the notion of a digitally animated feature that brings emojis to life does have its hokey-irresistible side. It goes right back to the feeling you had the first time you ever used an emoji — not ironically, but because you saw that it was tapping your inner child in a way that was kind of

Park singer Chester Bennington says she’s feeling the love from the rocker’s fans but she’s also feeling the loss.

Talinda Bennington said in a statement cool, especially when you realized that yes, you do have your favorites (personally, I lean on Sun With Face, Cowboy Hat Face, and Spaghetti). Any cynicism I might have had about “The Emoji Movie” was knocked away months ago by the film’s very funny trailer, which featured Steven Wright as the morosely indifferent, slightly constipated voice of Mel Meh. That trailer suggested that a seemingly obvious movie might be throwing you curveballs.

The bad news is that “The Emoji Movie” really is meh. There have been worse ideas, but in this case

The main character, it turns out, is the son of Mel Meh — a junior grouch-face named Gene (voiced by T.J. Miller), who is getting ready to make his debut in the bustling workplace of emojis. They all live in Textopolis, a city that’s embedded in the phone belonging to Alex (Jake T. Austin), a high-school freshman who keeps texting Addie (Tati Gabrielle), the girl he’s got a crush on. Each day, every emoji — Crying Face, Heart Eyes, Slice of Pizza — takes his or her place in a vast wall of cubes, which resembles a giant version of the tic-tactoe board on “Hollywood Squares.” When one of them gets chosen for a text, his or her image is scanned, and all they have to do is sit there and be there adorable symbolic selves.

But Gene can’t do that. On his first day, he messes up, looking not so much like a Meh as like a Picasso who’s been in a bar fight. He gets branded a malfunction, and Smiler (Maya Rudolph), the corporate boss with a heart as cold as her grin is big, wants to see him literally deleted. Gene’s problem is that he isn’t a Meh. He’s got every face — every feeling — inside him. He’s like a Divergent who excels in every possible way, which in the one-emotion-per-icon world of Textopolis marks him as an unclassifiable noncomformist freak.

That sounds like a pretty good storyline, but the trouble with “The Emoji Movie” begins with Gene. He’s supposed to be a pinwheel of faces and emotions (you could almost imagine him as a digital version of the Genie in “Aladdin”), but as conceived by director Tony Leondis, and voiced by the comedian T.J. Miller (in an oddly unvaried performance), he’s the opposite of Meh — he should have been called Blandly Enthusiastic.

late Thursday she wants “to let my community and the fans worldwide know that we feel your love. We feel your loss as well.”

Chester Bennington hanged himself from a bedroom door in his home near Los Angeles last week. His death was ruled a suicide.

“One week ago, I lost my soulmate and my children lost their hero — their Daddy. We had a fairytale life and now it has turned into some sick Shakespearean tragedy. How do I move on? How do I pick up my shattered soul?” Talinda Bennington wrote. “The only answer I know is to raise our babies with every ounce of love I have left.” (AP)

LOS ANGELES:

Leonard Landy, best known for his work as one of the Little Rascals on “Our Gang,” died Wednesday. He was 84.

Often recognized for his freckled face and big ears, Landy appeared in 21 “Our Gang” comedy shorts, debuting in “Feed ‘Em and Weep” in 1938 and culminating with “Fightin’ Fools” in 1941.

“Our Gang,” a series of comedy short films about a group of poor neighborhood children and their adventures, began in 1922 as a series of silent shorts and they were created with sound in 1929. Landy was known for watching the action with an occasional one liner. (RTRS)