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ABC is bringing another musical to live televised life this November. The Wonderful World of Disney will present The Little Mermaid Live on November 5, and the cast looks absolutely amazing.

Auli’i Cravalho (the voice of Moana‘s Moana) will star as Ariel, with Queen Latifah co-starring as sea witch Ursula. Shaggy, a reggae and pop star, will play Sebastian. ABC released a first look at their set on Good Morning America.

JUST IN: “The Little Mermaid LIVE” is coming to ABC November 5th at 8pET.

Auli’i Cravalho, Queen Latifah and Shaggy will star in the production with a live studio audience. https://t.co/hOA4cZh95s

Here’s a first look of the rendering of the set! pic.twitter.com/NC8lF3vHBU

— Good Morning America (@GMA) August 5, 2019

Between this and the upcoming live-action Little Mermaid, we’re getting lots of content for one of the most popular Disney projects. The live musical will blend songs from the movie and the Broadway musical (which sounds an awful lot like the Broadway musical, which included songs from the film). The rest of the cast has not been announced, but hopefully this will turn out to be one of the more watchable televised musicals that have been performed recently.

Cravalho is a perfect Ariel, and Queen Latifah will absolutely knock it out of the park.

(image: Disney)

• E3 Expo accidentally leaks the personal information of journalists who attended the event. (via Kotaku)
• Ruby Rose talks about a scene in Batwoman that deals with “don’t ask, don’t tell.” (via Variety)
• Netflix cancels The OA after two seasons. (via The Hollywood Reporter)
• Beto O’Rourke calls the sitting president what he is. (vita Twitter)

“Jesus Christ, of course he’s racist!” – Beto O’Rourke, thinking up the bumper sticker every Democrat should be using. pic.twitter.com/KjDDXdq2st

— Tommy X-TrumpIsARacist-opher (@tommyxtopher) August 5, 2019

• Simon Pegg and Nick Frost are teaming up for an Amazon series. (via Tor.com)
• The New York Times apparently thinks there are good white supremacists, which is an oxymoron. (via Law and Crime)

It’s Monday again, Suevians. What did you see today?

“Members of the press, what the fuck?” Beto O’Rourke and all of us. pic.twitter.com/hJNSBsPUmA

— Tommy X-TrumpIsARacist-opher (@tommyxtopher) August 5, 2019

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HAMPTON, Va. (Reuters) – Four hundred years after the first ship carrying enslaved Africans arrived on the coast of Virginia, the descendants of one of the first black American families say race relations in the United States still have “a long way to go.”

The Tucker family, who trace their ancestry to the 1624 census of the then British colony of Virginia, has experienced every chapter of African-American history.

From captivity on ships to slavery on plantations, to the 1861-1865 U.S. Civil War waged over legal slavery, 20th century discrimination laws and lynchings, the civil rights struggle and to the Black Lives Matter movement, racial disparities course through life and politics in the United States.

Lakeika Davis and Kelly Preston-Davis, of Durham, North Carolina, visit the 1619 exhibit at the Hampton History Museum, commemorating the 400-year anniversary of the arrival of the first Africans on the coast of Virginia, in Hampton, Virginia, U.S., July 28, 2019. Picture taken July 28, 2019. REUTERS/Michael A. McCoy

“The race issues have always been here,” said Vincent Tucker, the president of the William Tucker 1624 Society who believes he is nine or 10 generations removed from William Tucker, born in Virginia in 1624 after his parents were transported from present-day Angola in 1619.

“We have a long way to go,” Tucker, 57, said.

Brenda Tucker, 77, another descendant of William who serves on the family society’s board, said she supported efforts by some Democratic lawmakers to have the federal government issue reparations to black Americans who were economically affected by slavery.

Shirley Petteaway, a descendent of William Tucker whose parents were brought from Angola on the first ship carrying enslaved Africans to Virginia in 1619, pays respects to a family member buried at the Tucker family cemetery in Hampton, Virginia, U.S., July 27, 2019. REUTERS/Michael A. McCoy

“Reparations, I think, would be very appropriate because we, as hard as we worked and continue to work, we were not able to establish businesses to grow other businesses in mass, and that’s what it’s going to take to grow our economic state,” she said.

Issuing reparations to all living people who are descendents of slaves or who have suffered racial discrimination has been estimated to cost trillions of dollars. The U.S. government has never approved reparations.

A flower lays on a grave in the Tucker family cemetery in Hampton, Virginia U.S., July 27, 2019, 400 years after William Tucker’s parents were brought from Angola on the first ship carrying enslaved Africans to Virginia in 1619. REUTERS/Michael A. McCoy

Some Democratic candidates seeking the party’s nomination to run against Republican President Donald Trump in the 2020 election support reparations for African Americans who for generations were held back by legal discrimination and general prejudice.

Trump, from his days as a New York businessman, in his 2016 election campaign and as president, has been criticized for making inflammatory statements that stoke racial tensions.

In July, Trump lashed out in Twitter posts against four minority Democratic first-term congresswomen and U.S. Representative Elijah Cummings, a black longtime civil rights activist. The statements, including saying the congresswomen should “go back” to the countries they came from, were widely viewed as racially divisive, underlining the extent to which those divisions have persisted through the centuries.

[RELATED: [WATCH] JOY REID BREAKS DOWN TOXIC POLITICS – THE BLACK ENTERPRISE INTERVIEW]

Brenda Tucker said she believed Trump fanned racial divisions through his rhetoric.

“As far as whether or not he’s fueling racism, he’s fueling it,” she told Reuters.

Trump has repeatedly denied that racial animus drove his comments, telling reporters last week, “I am the least racist person there is anywhere in the world.”

Verrandall Tucker and Brenda Tucker, descendants of William Tucker whose parents were brought from Angola on the first ship carrying enslaved Africans to Virginia in 1619, gather at the Tucker family cemetery in Hampton, Virginia, U.S., July 27, 2019. Picture taken July 27, 2019. REUTERS/Michael A. McCoy

Tucker spoke in front of her ancestors’ graves in a cemetery in Hampton, Virginia, less than a mile from the plantation where her ancestors were enslaved.

Some Tuckers have left Hampton over the years, but many have stayed, intent on preserving the family’s oral history.

“People can look at us and say, ‘Hey, they made it,” said Vincent Tucker. “‘They’re still making it.'”

(Reporting by Angela Moore; Writing by Gabriella Borter; Editing by Scott Malone and Grant McCool)

The following is a slightly altered cross-post, originally published on Lola By The Bay. Last weekend, I finally got to see a matinee performance of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning musical, Hamilton, at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco. While I usually tend to ignore anything in the mainstream media that gets really hyped up, Hamilton […]

AMC’s horror anthology series The Terror debuted in 2018 and quickly developed a cult following. The first season told the frosty isolated tale of Captain Sir John Franklin’s lost expedition to the Arctic in 1845, and its strong performances and moody tone earned the series rave reviews.

Now, the second season of the series is here with an all new horror tale set in California during WWII. The Terror: Infamy follows Chester Nakayama (Greek‘s Derek Mio) a Japanese American man who finds his family plagued by supernatural events while experiencing the real life horrors of America’s Japanese internment camps.

The series features an almost entirely Asian cast, which includes Shingo Usami (The Wolverine), Naoko Mori (Torchwood), and George Takei, who has written about his experiences in the camps as a boy. the series is led by showrunner and executive producer Alexander Woo (True Blood, Manhattan) and executive producer Max Borenstein (Godzilla: King of the Monsters).

Borenstein said of the season, “This season of The Terror uses as its setting one of the darkest, most horrific moments in our nation’s history … The Japanese-American internment is a blemish on the nation’s conscience — and one with dire resonance to current events.”

The featurette introduces us to the main characters as well as the mysteries that will unfold over the season. It’s an exciting glimpse at a unique series which promises a strong and effectively scary season of television.

The Terror: Infamy premiere August 12th on AMC.

(via /Film, image: AMC)

• Storm Reid and Maude Apatow discuss the wild first season of HBO’s Euphoria. (via Collider)
• Noelle Stevenson delves into the magic and relationships in season 3 of She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. (via CBR)
• Frederick Brennan, the founder of 8chan, thinks the site should be shut down. (via Deadline)
• The cast of The Good Place says goodbye as filming wraps on their fourth and final season.

Me as I said goodbye to Tahani forever, as I series wrapped on @nbcthegoodplace the most extraordinary experience of my life. Thanks for being the forking best @KenTremendous I owe you a kidney. pic.twitter.com/F4oKJNcL3D

— Jameela Jamil (@jameelajamil) August 3, 2019

• These It: Chapter Two posters will keep you up at night. (via /Film)
• The cast of Preacher on their balls-to-the-wall final season of the irreverent series. (via The Beat)
• It’s been a long weekend, enjoy these arctic weasels:

blessing your tl with arctic weasels because honestly just look at them pic.twitter.com/QqGvgV7tv6

— rohan (@ridersovrohan) August 2, 2019

What are you up to this Sunday, Sue Believers?

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