By Jonathan Landrum Jr., Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --It's a big week for Ruth E. Carter, who on Sunday could become the first African-American to win an Academy Award for costume design through her Afro-futuristic wardrobes in "Black Panther." But before that show, Carter will receive a career achievement award Tuesday at the 21st annual Costume Designers Guild Awards.
She talked about her early years with Spike Lee and her favorite "Black Panther" costumes during a recent interview.
WHERE IT ALL STARTED
Carter still possesses her sketches from her college days at Hampton University and during an internship with the Santa Fe Opera.
She spent countless hours drawing all sorts of characters, honing her craft in her dorm room and small studio in Los Angeles a few years after college. One sketch she keeps handy is of a unisex dancer sporting red and gray tights.
"I was so excited about the idea of costume design and how it intersects with art. I really wanted to draw the characters out. I spent a lot of time in my dorm room or once I came out to L.A. in my semi-studio at my drafting table," said Carter, who graduated from Hampton in 1982.
In her early days, Carter delved into a script and drew characters before knowing the person who would play the role. She did that in her first-ever film, Spike Lee's "School Daze."
"My process at the beginning was to go head on into the script and draw out the characters and make them funny," said Carter, speaking with sketches from a cross-section of her lifetime work laid out on a table.
Carter had numerous sketches including Chicken George from "ROOTS," a zoot suit drawing of Malcolm X and a boxing promoter named Sultan from the "The Great White Hype."
"This is what I do, this is what I love," she said.
CARTER'S FAVORITE COSTUME
Carter has created costumes of memorable characters from Denzel Washington's Malcom X in "Malcolm X," Spike Lee's Mookie in "Do the Right Thing" and Forest Whitaker's Cecil Gaines in "The Butler."
But she said her favorite costumes came from "Black Panther," particularly the Dora Milaje, a team of women elite warriors who protected the kingdom of Wakanda. She said the layered wardrobes of the all-female special forces were "impactful" and "powerful."
"I was very inspired when we did these illustrations," said Carter, who worked with six illustrators on the superhero Marvel film. She typically works with one.
"You know, it's quite imaginative. Because we had to work in so many different ways and so fast, I'm really proud of these because we were able to create a look and a world in a short amount of time."
PAYIN' IT FORWARD
Even though Carter paved her own way as a costume designer, she never had a problem uplifting others.
That's the mindset she particularly had while working with Spike Lee. She said the mission at Lee's production company, 40 Acres and a Mule, was to positively "push the Afro future and African diaspora."
"We considered ourselves positive role models in the film industry," she said. "There were always internships at 40 Acres and a Mule where we were teaching younger people who didn't have an inroad to the film industry, exposing so many people to the industry including myself. Because of that, I give back as much as I can."
Google Opens Its Defense In Antitrust Case Alleging Monopoly Over Online Ad Technology
Google opened its defense against allegations that it holds an illegal monopoly on online advertising technology Friday with witness testimony saying the industry is vastly more complex and competitive than portrayed by the federal government.
"The industry has been exceptionally fluid over the last 18 years," said Scott Sheffer, a vice president for global partnerships at Google, the company's first witness at its antitrust trial in federal court in Alexandria.
The Justice Department and a coalition of states contend that Google built and maintained an illegal monopoly over the technology that facilitates the buying and selling of online ads seen by consumers.
Google counters that the government's case improperly focuses on a narrow type of online ads โ essentially the rectangular ones that appear on the top and on the right-hand side of a webpage. In its opening statement, Google's lawyers said the Supreme Court has warned judges against taking action when dealing with rapidly emerging technology like what Sheffer described because of the risk of error or unintended consequences.
Google says defining the market so narrowly ignores the competition it faces from social media companies, Amazon, streaming TV providers and others who offer advertisers the means to reach online consumers.
Justice Department lawyers called witnesses to testify for two weeks before resting their case Friday afternoon, detailing the ways that automated ad exchanges conduct auctions in a matter of milliseconds to determine which ads are placed in front of which consumers and how much they cost.
The department contends the auctions are finessed in subtle ways that benefit Google to the exclusion of would-be competitors and in ways that prevent... Read More