VIA Empire:

Religious leaders could learn a lot from Sister Act: A Divine Musical Comedy at the London Palladium. The last act sees a chorus of nuns dressed in robes entirely covered in silver sequins dancing around the stage Saturday Night Fever-style, before forming a chorus line (!) for some high-kicks. Spotlights drench them, a giant silver plated statue of the Virgin Mary rotates behind them and disco lights flash through the stained glass windows that line the stage. The effect is literally dazzling – Empire’s theatregoing companion had to avert her eyes – and demonstrates one thing conclusively: if religion were actually like this, no one would miss church on Sunday*.

But how good, we hear you cry, was the musical itself? Was it as divine as advertised? Well, it’s at least saintly. The show takes its inspiration from the 1992 Whoopi Goldberg film of the same name (Goldberg is a producer of the musical) and follows a nightclub chanteuse forced to hide out from her gangster boyfriend after witnessing a murder. The police place her in the last place anyone would look, a convent, and there she butts heads with the conservative Mother Superior before learning to fit in by reformulating the nuns’ choir. It’s a film I have a guilty love of, because a) you can take the girl out of Catholic school but apparently you can’t take Catholic school out of the girl and b) the music – Motown girl group classics repurposed as hymns – is terrific.

So how does the musical compare? Well, there have been a few changes. It’s now a period piece set in 1978, with the Motown numbers (not available due to rights issues) replaced by a funky new selection by Alan “The Little Mermaid AND Little Shop of Horrors” Menken. The music, for the most part, is pretty groovy: Take Me To Heaven has a rollicking, ballsy disco thrust to it; Raise Your Voice starts slow but raises the rafters by the end, and there’s even a quick ballad in The Life I Never Led. The big final number, Sister Act, is victim to some overstretched lyrics that squish in the title of the piece, but the whole lot keeps the toes tapping, and has welcome echoes of Little Shop of Horrors and Menken’s Disney work which fans will enjoy, as well as homaging Abba, the Bee Gees and the rest.

The cast, too, are pretty great. Patina Miller as Dolores Van Cartier has a powerful set of pipes on her, and if she’s a broader and more agressive character than Goldberg’s was, well, that’s OK. Sheila Hancock is excellent as Mother Superior, sharing some vocal similarities with Maggie Smith’s original turn but also singing well when called upon to do so – and betraying some impressive comic timing with most of the show’s best lines. Julia Sutton’s Sister Mary Lazarus is also a scene-stealer, followed closely by Claire Greenway’s Sister Mary Patrick (apparently channelling Kathy Najimy) and Katie Rowley Jones’ Sister Mary Robert.

To find out more about Sister Act from the screen to the stage, please click here!

My new crush, Nicole Beharie (Habana Outpost, remember?!), sat down with The Urban Daily to talk about her role in American Violet – in select theaters today. While doing the interview, she dropped dime about maybe lacing up the thigh high boots, donning something leather and coming to my, err, I mean society’s rescue.

With that in mind, be sure to check out our review of American Violet [click here to read and listen] and check out these casting decisions if Marvel or DC Comics ever decide to put together a black female superhero summer blockbuster movie.

Still need saving? Check out our Black Superheroes gallery by clicking here! To see all the Black Super-heroines check out this video here!

Whoopi Goldberg, co-host of daytime talk show The View, is coming to Michael Phelps’ defense. Goldberg offered her own admission: “I have smoked weed,” on Monday’s episode. Goldberg added, “That doesn’t surprise me that he’s smoking pot at a party… Pot is one of those things kids do try.”

The widely circulated photo of Phelps hitting a bong was one of the show’s “hot topics” on Feb. 2. While Goldberg and Joy Behar supported Phelps’ marijuana use, Elizabeth Hasselbeck and Sheri Shepherd contended he’s guilty of shirking his responsibility of being a role model, and Barbara Walters stayed fairly neutral, as reported by Celebstoner.com.

“He’s being paid to be a spokesperson for companies,” Goldberg went on. “That’s different than being someone’s role model… He’s being asked to be perfect – he’s not being paid for that. That’s not his job.” Rather than attend high school, Goldberg got into drugs at a young age and became addicted to heroin. “Junkies never know they have to stop and I don’t know now how I did,” she has said. “All the people who stopped me are dead now. I’m the living legacy of this group of talented, wonderful dope fiends who cleaned me up and made a lasting impression.”

On Perez Hilton, word has been given that Phelps is suspended by USA Swimming for three months for this incident.

Check out the episode below:

Do you think that with all the performance enhancing cases that Phelps got a slap on the wrist? Or should the issue be legalized? Speak on it in the comments section!

It was another banner day at “The View” on Monday, as the co-hosts welcomed – or rather tolerated – conservative author Ann Coulter for a discussion about her book “Guilty: Liberal ‘Victims’ And Their Assault On America.” [View clip below.]

In the segment before Coulter was introduced, co-host Barbara Walters read a passage that accused famous bi-racial personalities such as President-elect Barack Obama, Alicia Keys and Halle Berry of “race-bait[ing] their way to success.”

Coulter writes in the book:

“Even grifters know that to be embraced by the cool people in America, you must claim to be a victim, preferably abused by religious fundamentalists.

In a related phenomenon, various half-black celebrities insist on representing themselves simply as “black” — the better to race-bait their way to success.

Actress Halle Berry, singer Alicia Keys and matinee idol Barack Obama were all abandoned by their black fathers and raised by their white mothers. But instead of seeing themselves as half-white, they prefer to see the glass half-black. They all choose to identify with the fathers who ditched them, while insulting the women who struggled to raise them.

In 2002, Berry engaged in wild race-baiting to win her Oscar and then ate up most of the awards show with an interminable acceptance speech claiming that her award was “so much bigger than me.” People who say “it’s bigger than me” always mean it’s just about them. During the 2008 campaign, Barack Obama repeatedly said the exact same thing: “This election is bigger than me.” Would they be able to pawn off their personal victories as transformative events for the nation if they were not claiming to be doing it for the blacks?”

Maya Rudolph’s return guest spot and Kenan Thompson’s role in a digital short were the lone African American appearances on Saturday Night Live over the weekend – other than musical guest Kanye West.

New York’s African American governor David Patterson was played by Fred Armisen, a cast member of Venezuelan, German and Japanese heritage who also plays President-elect Barack Obama.

Of the 90 or so actors to grace the SNL stage since its 1975 premiere, only eight have been African-American. And that’s an issue for The View co-host Sherri Shepherd.

In an AOL interview, she points out that there aren’t even enough African-Americans for a proper skit of her ABC daytime show. While Thompson portrays co-host Whoopi Goldberg, Shepherd’s character is simply left out of the sketch.

“Couldn’t they have gotten Maya Rudolph to play me?” Shepherd asked. “She is so awesome! They need more black people in their cast!”

“I agree with her,” Baron Vaughn, a black comic, told the New York Daily News. Diversity “doesn’t seem to be something that interests them.”

“Plenty of black people that I know have been on ‘SNL,’ and they haven’t been utilized to the best of their abilities. As much as I love Fred Armisen, there needs to be someone who can do a better Barack [Obama],” Vaughn added.

Harlan Halper, co-owner of Comix comedy club, told the Daily News: “Fred has done an admirable job, but they should try to address this issue with renewed diversity by looking for comedians who would play the role of Barack, but go way beyond that.”

A spokesperson for SNL said: “Casting is an ongoing process at the show. We are constantly looking for new people. We’ve been auditioning every couple of months or so, and we’ve seen numerous African-American performers and continue to look.”

Whoopi Goldberg, Tyra Banks, Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry appear on Entertainment Weekly’s 25 Smartest People in TV, a list of small-screen titans who are driving today’s sharpest shows and deals.

Goldberg and her co-hosts on “The View” were listed at No. 25.5 for “juicing their ratings by pumping up their political banter.” During election week, “The View” reached No. 1 in total daytime viewers for the first time in 12 seasons.

Banks, 35, ranked No. 23 on the list. EW noted, “She’s still in the running towards becoming America’s next top TV mogul. Her talk show (moving from syndication to The CW next fall) has the youngest median age in daytime, and ‘America’s Next Top Model,’ which just completed its 11th cycle, remains The CW’s highest-rated series. (Spin-off ‘Operation Fabulous’ launches next year.) Now the Emmy winner is developing other reality projects that fit the Banks ‘brand,’ like ABC’s upcoming ‘True Beauty,’ and she recently branched into film with the direct-to-DVD tween drama ‘The Clique.’”

Winfrey came in 6th on the tally because “her talk show still rules daytime, her first foray into reality (’Oprah’s Big Give’) averaged 11.6 million viewers, and she’ll launch her own network — appropriately named OWN — in 2009,” said EW. “Her production company, Harpo, responsible for daytime hits ‘Dr. Phil’ and ‘Rachael Ray,’ will debut a new series next fall with Oprah staple Dr. Mehmet Oz. All this and she was funny on 30 Rock (’Sweater capes!’).”

Atlanta-based mogul Perry ranked 4th for proving that “one need not exist within the borders of Hollywood to become an industry heavyweight. Through his Tyler Perry Studios, he created and produced ‘Tyler Perry’s House of Payne’ — and persuaded TBS to buy 90 additional episodes in 2006 after a 10-show run earned major ratings. Then in August, he struck a deal with the cable net to produce a new sitcom, ‘Meet the Browns,’ based on his hit play and movie. The biggest sign of his growing success? This fall, Perry ditched his 70,000-square-foot studio for a twice-the-size production complex in Atlanta, which includes five soundstages and a backlot.”

Seth MacFarlane, the executive producer of “Family Guy,” “American Dad” and the forthcoming “The Cleveland Show,” topped the list. EW noted: “The apple-faced prankster secured a full-season order for a ‘Guy’ spin-off called ‘The Cleveland Show,’ and he still manages to find time to shoot his Cavalcade of Cartoon Comedy Web shorts (and animated ads) for a separate deal with Google. With Guy reruns airing approximately 20 hours a week on various networks, it’s no wonder MacFarlane is now the highest-paid writer in TV.

If the rumors are true, the lead single is “Chocolate High” featuring fellow dirty backpacker, Musiq Soulchild

As with most India.Arie singles, “Chocolate High” is no doubt a love song, but it also has those thematic under tones of how much she loves being a black woman in love with a black man– ala “Brown Skin.”

[CLICK HERE TO LISTEN TO "CHOCOLATE HIGH"]

Since the release of Testimony Vol. 1 in ‘06, India has appeared on Broadway in the Whoopi Goldberg produced revival of Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf.”

She’s also signed long time collaborator Anthony David as the first artist on her new label Soulbird Music.

So what do you think? Anybody out there feeling her new joint “Chocolate High?”