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FILM/TV BITS: Tyra Banks bans airbrushing; Tyler Perry’s hot-selling DVDs; South Africa soap tackles AIDS.
*Tyra Banks has made an announcement. According to Sky News, the supermodel has made it known that she will no longer tolerate digital enhancements and editorial retouches to her image when she appears in magazines layouts. Her rep said: “Modeling is an unreal business, but Tyra wants to make it more real. She always tried to get heavier women to take part in ‘America’s Next Top Model’ - although the industry continues to reject them and the few that get through are magically transformed into waifs by magazines.”
*Banks’ rumored boyfriend, Tyler Perry, is making another mint in the DVD realm with sales of his latest releases: “Madea’s Family Reunion” and the stage productions of “Madea Goes to Jail” and “Why Did I Get Married.” All three Lionsgate titles, released June 27, have combined for sales of of 3.6 million units, which also placed the discs in the Top 10. “Madea’s Family Reunion” alone sold over two million units in the U.S. during its first week in stores. “To every one of you that passed the bootleggers and went to legitimate stores and bought the videos, I just want to say thank you,” Perry said in an e-mail newsletter. “Because you did that, I am able to stay in business.” Perry’s five previously-released catalog stage plays also benefited from the interest in the new DVDs, as sales of “Diary of a Mad Black Woman, “Madea's Class Reunion,” “Meet the Browns,” “I Can Do Bad All By Myself” and “Madea's Family Reunion” jumped more than 500 percent from the prior week, selling more than 150,000 units.
*In a first for South Africa’s television soap operas, a character’s current HIV virus will develop full-blown AIDS. Nandipha Matabane, a character on the daytime drama "Isidingo," has been kidnapped, raped and had her baby lost in a bomb blast throughout her fictional life. Eventually, she was diagnosed with HIV before launching a glamorous new career as a television host. In hopes of breaking the stigma that surrounds the disease, producers have decided to give Nandipha the deadly virus. "There is a sense in many ways AIDS has gone off the boil in its public profile and how seriously people take it," Greig Coetzee, head writer for the series, told Reuters. "People either ignore it, or have a fatalistic approach. We want to show that people can live with AIDS and manage it, even if they are sick."
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