Tag Archives: naacp image awards

Eagle Initiative Competition Axed

Official Press Release

The Eagles Initiative was launched in May 2010 as an independent offshoot of the Eagle Awards to find and promote new creators in a worldwide talent search. With many industry professionals graciously agreeing to donate their time to judge a shortlist of twelve entries to form three prize winners, and with Stan Lee as its patron, it was a bold experiment.

“Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, I have had to reluctantly cancel this years Eagles Initiative competition due to low turnout,” announced organiser Barry Renshaw. “Though many entries were of a very high standard, there were not enough submissions to make the competition viable. It’s a decision that is bitterly disappointing to me and everyone involved, especially after the amount of time and effort put into it, but considering the poor response it was the only option.”

Renshaw has stated that “all registration fees are being refunded and as per the guidelines, all submissions remain creator owned and of course will not be published by the Initiative.” Entrants have already been informed.

While admitting to be “personally gutted” by the cancellation, Renshaw added “we will be looking at developing smaller more localised projects in the future. We still believe a proactive and progressive approach to finding and developing new talent is important and the Eagles Initiative will pursue that mandate in the future. In the meantime I want to take this opportunity to personally thank all the industry professionals for offering their time for free to be a competition judge, and for lending their support to what I still believe to be a unique opportunity for undiscovered talent.”

Idris Elba Talks Thor and Racists


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Actor Idris Elba made news when he was cast in the role of Heimdall in the upcoming Marvel Comics movie Thor, but that news wasn’t positive.  Some white supremacists got up in arms over a black man being cast as a Norse god.  In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter the actor blasted the critics and racists who had an issue with the casting.  The actor had this to say:

We have a man [Thor] who has a flying hammer and wears horns on his head. And yet me being an actor of African descent playing a Norse god is unbelievable? I mean, Cleopatra was played by Elizabeth Taylor, and Gandhi was played by Ben Kingsley.

Bleeding Cool gave some other examples of minority roles including Noah Ringer playing Aang in The Last Airbender. Zhang Ziyi and Michelle Yeoh were in Memoirs of a Geisha and Reece Shearsmith as Papa Lazarou.  I’ll also throw in C. Thomas Howell in Soul Man and since it’s on tv while I write this, Eddie Murphy in Coming to America.

The majority of the article is focused on roles for black actors and came on the heals of the NAACP Image Awards.

Idris Elba in Thor