Leggy Teens Fixed

For two months, a series of witty, satiric advertisements in the New York Daily Newshas spoofed OPA, Congress,New Yorkers, columnists. They cracked wide open the mossy traditionthat the annual $25,000,000 worth of newspaper amusement ads mustconsist of pictures of leggy girls, slambang adjectives, and must bekeyed lower than the customer's coin pocket.

leggy teens

Reviewed by: A Young Dancer: The Life of an Ailey Student Deborah Stevenson Gladstone, Valerie A Young Dancer: The Life of an Ailey Student; illus. with photographs by José Ivey. Ottaviano/Holt, 200948p ISBN 978-0-8050-8233-3$18.95 Ad Gr. 4-7 This photoessay follows thirteen-year-old Iman Bright, who has been attending the Ailey School of Dance since she was four years old. She takes classes in a variety of different dance styles, all the while preparing for the big annual dance performance; when she's not dancing, she's studying hard or practicing her violin. The text is fairly scattershot, shifting focus abruptly from paragraph to paragraph or sometimes even within a paragraph and omitting key details (how long does a dance class run, for instance?), and the narration is sometimes flat. There's still enough material to convey some key bits of information about life as a young [End Page 362] dancer (and it's a nice touch that Iman isn't sure yet if this is her life's work) and to add some factual context to the photographs, which are the real draw here. Ivey uses dance's inherent visual rhythm to good advantage in his images, with the rows of leggy girls in their burgundy leotards and pale pink tights (the colors worn by all in Iman's dance level at Ailey) lending the images a designerly elegance. The non-dance portraits are a more of a mixed bag (and the smoky background-page colors tend to dull their hues), but Iman's considerable natural charm lightens up the photos. While there's a fuller picture of life as a young dancer in Siegel's To Dance (BCCB 1/07) and even Nathan's Meet the Dancers (BCCB 5/08), readers looking to browse and imagine more than to immerse may find some enjoyable dabbling here in this contemporary successor to Krementz's classic A Very Young Dancer (BCCB 4/77). A closing author's note gives more information about the Ailey School and the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater.

Many factors contributed to the Insidioussuccess. The first installment was a leggy hit that created a large fanbase and the cast was back for the sequel. A PG-13 rating made it commercially-friendlyto younger teens who often look for something compelling to see duringthis back-to-school month. A Friday the 13th release date made sittingin that multiplex extra creepy and director James Wan was red hot comingoff of his last film The Conjuringwhich was a monster hit this summer opening to a similar $41.9M in July.It enjoyed terrific legs, strong word-of-mouth, and currently sits at $136Mdomestic and an amazing $271M worldwide.

Produced for a mere $5M, Chapter 2should shoot ahead of the $54M of its predecessor and become one of themost profitable wide releases of 2013. Studio research showed that theaudience was 52% male and 62% under 25 as teens made up a major component.The CinemaScore grade was a B+ which would be decent for most films, butis actually pretty good for the horror genre. TheConjuring scored a notch better with an A- while the year'ssecond biggest fright film, the January supernatural hit Mama,received a B-. With Insidious Chapter 2and last spring's Olympus Has Fallen,FilmDistrict has had a solid year beating out its peers at the box office.

A pair of leggy hits from August reached milestones this weekend. ForestWhitaker's The Butler crossed the $100Mmark on Sunday night. The Weinstein Co. release declined by 34% to $5.5Mspending its fifth frame in the top five and is now the distributor's fifthfilm to break the nine-digit domestic mark. The other four all went onto earn Oscar nominations for Best Picture - InglouriousBasterds, The King's Speech,Django Unchained, and SilverLinings Playbook. Meanwhile, the Warner Bros. sleeper hit We'rethe Millers became the first live-action film of 2013 to remainin 3,000+ theaters for six weeks. That marks exceptional staying powerespecially given how competitive the marketplace has been over the lastmonth. The pot smuggling comedy slipped 30% to $5.4M for $131.6M to dateand will soon become Jennifer Aniston's highest-grossing film in a leadrole.

KIERA Chaplin, granddaughter of Charlie Chaplin, has been named the spokesmodel for designer Maggie Norris. The leggy beauty celebrated her new gig Thursday at The Plumm wearing bizarre jewelry: a tribal band of skull heads encircling her left arm. 041b061a72