Monrovia Times

Liberia musical duo James K. Williams Jr. alias JB (The General with no star attached) and Samuel S. Mitchell alias Shining Man together known as Soul Fresh talked about why they always pays respect to the late DJ Summertime. According the KOLOQUA rappers DJ Summertime is the reason why 

Liberians are preparing to celebrate the Christmas in grand style, there comes another story and honor to celebrate nationally as a sovereign republic. Every now and then, a well determined Liberian takes the bold step of going out of their comfort zone to sacrifice, raise the Lonestar and Elevate our sovereignty in nationhood. 

The Next Movie Star acting competition in Nigeria ended over the weekend in grand style and pageantry. Representing Liberia in the competition this year was Esau Owusu Dahnsaw who performed magically and exceptionally well as he carted away three prestigious prizes for Liberia.

The Liberian Bassa son of the soil won the 3rd Runner-Up title, he also won The Most Photogenic Competitor title, and won the Mr. Game Changer title which came through a modeling challenge in the house of the Next Movie Star competition in Nigeria.

"The journey from Liberia to the Next Movie Star competition in Nigeria was not an easy one, but with God above and the talent HE has endowed on me, Liberia came out as the only contestant winning three titles of distinction," Esau said.

The last time a Liberian ever went that far in the yearly acting reality television show was in 2008 when Avenette Sirleaf,  alias Queen V won the competition. Since then, Liberia's performances ended in early evictions which was even experienced by John P. Smith who was evicted early in 2013 when he took the stand.

The Next movie Star reality television show seeks to discover and groom enthusiastic movie actors into formidable entertainers to reckon with internationally. The likes of Tonto Dikeh, Uti Nwachukwu,  Annie Idibia-the wife of 2Face Idibia are all products of the Competition who have gone on to loom larger than life in the entertainment industry globally.

This year's edition, the 11th, was tagged The Game Changer. According to statistics from the Producers, over 30 million Nigerians and other nationalities auditioned to enter the reality show, but only 18 made 

The show then commenced with 16 contestants who entered the house and tensely competed against all odds. The 3 persons representing Ghana were evicted as well as the 1 who represented Gambia. Liberia's Esau O. Dahnsaw stood tall and made it to the Grand Finals against 7 Nigerians.

Speaking about the finals, Esau said "It was a hectic one. If you see me now, you will know how tense it was because I lost so much weight while making sure to live up to the rudiments of the show as well as coping with the odd Nigerian dishes."

Among the eight finalists, Nigeria's Cynthia Shalom won the show, followed by Adetunji Adeoye as 1st Runner-Up,  Sandra Ifudu as 2nd Runner-Up and Liberia's Esau Owusu Dahnsaw as 3rd Runner-Up with distiction. 

Liberians,  we have a cause to celebrate and shower this young Liberian with love and appreciation for raising the bar and making our country proud. This is our perfect Christmas gift as a nation and people.

The 6th annual Miss Universe pageant came to an end on Sunday in Las Vegas, Nevada but not without some confusion.

Host Steve Harvey mistakenly crowned runner up Miss Colombia, Ariadna Gutierrez before realizing that Miss Philipines Pia Alonzo Wurtzbach was the actual winner of the 6th annual Miss Universe.

Miss Colombia, Ariadna Gutierrez walked around the stage, waving and smiling with the crown on her head. That's when Harvey realized he had read the cards wrong. 

“I will take responsibility for this,” said emcee Steve Harvey. “It was on the cards. It was my mistake...We feel so badly, but it’s still a great night.”

Miss Philippines was shocked as she realized she had actually won. They had her come forward, took the crown off Miss Colombia and then put it on Miss Philippines. 

After the incident, social media like twitter and facebook erupted with many tweeting and updating status of their reaction to the awkward blunder

Watch the whole video here. 

https://youtu.be/Z9aRmmWX5XI

The Force Awakens" has set a box office record with an estimated $57 million from Thursday night shows.

The movie, which began international rollout on Wednesday, has brought in a total of $72.7 million. That includes the United Kingdom, where it made an estimated $14.4 million in single day ever. With these figures, "The Force Awakens" is on course to exceed the record domestic opening of "Jurassic World," which debuted with $208.8 million in June. The film cost about $200 million to make, according to industry estimates.

Costumed, lightsaber-wielding fans from Jakarta to Paris lined up around blocks, to be among the first to see J.J. Abrams' seventh chapter in George Lucas's space saga arrived.  

A strong word of mouth will help "The Force Awakens" attract the kind of repeat viewings that made James Cameron's "Avatar" and "Titanic" the highest grossing films of all time. Whether "The Force Awakens" can come close to the global hauls of those films ($2.8 billion for "Avatar" and $2.2 billion for "Titanic") won't be clear for weeks

James Cameron is willing to admit more than a touch of performance anxiety the second time around.

His last film as a director, Avatar, scored nine Oscar nominations and grossed more than $2.7 billion around the globe – a record-setting amount of money that ushered in a new era of 3-D blockbusters.

But Avatar experienced a fairly torturous journey to screen, with studio bosses second-guessing Cameron’s technological demands, cost over-runs, and production delays. Its distributor, Twentieth Century Fox, almost backed out on a deal to make the movie at all.

Six years later, however, and Cameron is in the midst of ironing out the kinks on screenplays for second, third, and fourth installments ofAvatar. “I’m in the process of doing another pass through all three scripts right now,” Cameron told EW during a recent phone interview. “Just refining. That’s in parallel with the design process. The design process is very mature at this point. We’ve been designing for about a year and a half. All the characters, settings and creatures are all pretty much [set].”

So given that the hardest parts of research and development are already squared away, has the prospect of bringing a new installment to the screen gotten any easier this time around?

“No,” Cameron said, laughing. “Because you have to challenge yourself. Obviously, expectations are going to be very high on these films, especially on Avatar 2, to make sure it wasn’t just some big fluke the first time. So we’ve got to deliver. I’ve created a nice rod for my own back, so they say.”