World Food Programme to Host Google+ Hangout on Hunger Crisis. The World Food Programme (WFP), the food aid arm of the United Nations and the world's largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide, will host a Google+ Hangout from the front lines of the Sahel Crisis today at 3:00 p.m. EDT (12 p.m. PDT) to answer questions and raise awareness.
Denise Brown, WFP's Niger country director, will host the Hangout, joined by CNN anchor Jim Clancy and several journalists and bloggers from around the world. The event will stream live on WFP’s YouTube channel and viewers are invited to submit questions on WFP’s Google+ page or via Twitter by using the hashtag #food4sahel. "We chose Google+ for this event because it offered an easy way to bring our staff in places like the Sahel together with bloggers, journalists and ultimately supporters," Brown told Mashable. WFP has launched an emergency operation to bring food assistance to more than 10 million people in Niger, Senegal, Gambia, Mauritania, Mali, Burkina Faso, Chad and Cameroon. What Movies Are Getting the Most Online Buzz? Mashable's mRank is presented by the Samsung Galaxy Note, a smarter phone for a smarter world.
Check it out here, follow @SamsungMobileUS or join the conversation via #benoteworthy on Twitter. Mashable's mRank leaderboards track the most buzzed-about movies across the social web. mRank's technology analyzes a particular term — in this case movie titles or words associated with a certain title — and creates a leaderboard based on how how often that film is mentioned on Facebook and Twitter and discussed on blogs. We have leaderboards for a bevy of events and topics, from TV to music, and you'll see more pop up for events like the Olympics and the NFL draft.
Now that the summer movie season is about to kick off, we wanted to take a closer look at the movie leaderboard to see what flicks are garnering the most social conversation. Not surprisingly, The Hunger Games has been holding strong — both online and at the box office. mRank presented by Samsung. Box office report: 'Think Like a Man' halts the 'Hunger Games' train with $33 mil. It had to happen. After four weeks of dominance, The Hunger Games finally didn’t finish first at the box office.
Instead, the relationship comedy Think Like a Man took the crown as it debuted to an impressive $33 million this weekend. Based on comedian Steve Harvey’s bestselling advice book Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, the PG-13 film performed much better than expected. (Although I predicted the movie would win the weekend, I thought it would do so with a moderate $19 million.) Think Like a Man was produced for just $13 million by Sony-owned Screen Gems, which was also behind two other pictures that premiered at No. 1 this year: The Vow and Underworld Awakening. The effort clearly paid off.
GET MORE EW: Subscribe to the magazine for only 33¢ an issue! Image Credit: Alan Markfield In second was the PG-13 romance The Lucky One with $22.8 million. It’s also a solid showing for author Nicholas Sparks — the only Sparks adaptation that opened stronger was 2010′s Dear John ($30.5 million). Race, Representation, & Reactions to The Hunger Games. Last week Andrew, Michael S., Will S., Katrin, and Tom Megginson all brought our attention to some of the racist tweets that appeared after the premiere of The Hunger Games. Apparently some viewers were shocked to find that some of their favorite characters from the books were played by African American actors (and some critics seem to have felt that Jennifer Lawrence didn’t look starved enough for her role).
Buzzfeed and Jezebel posted some examples of the response to the African American characters: In fact, Suzanne Collins did include descriptions that would seem to clue a reader in that they’re not supposed to assume that every character in the book is Caucasian (cropped from Buzzfeed): But of course, the apparent lack of reading comprehension of many fans of the book is rather beside the point by now. I think the best discussion of the implications of the Hunger Games tweets comes from Anna Holmes, whose take was posted by The New Yorker.
Hunger Games: Black Characters Upset Fans. Moses Robinson/Getty Images The newly released Hunger Games movie had a fantastic opening weekend -- except when it came to the reactions of fans who had a real problem with the fact that some of the characters were black. Oliver Starr from Pearltrees speaks to #NewhouseSM4 · lynessamarie. Oliver Starr from Pearltrees speaks to #NewhouseSM4 · lynessamarie. The Hunger Games.