Welcome to the Playlist, a new feature here at Diva Dirt looking at the latest music and music-related news! From wrestling Divas to musical ones, this week as we look at the triumphant chart success of Leona Lewis and Danity Kane! Fitting, as this is Diva Dirt after all!

Following in the footsteps of Whitney Houston and Destiny’s Child, divas in their own right – say hello to the new class! Leona Lewis and Danity Kane both made headlines, #1’s and history this week as they topped the single and album charts, respectively.

The Great British Invasion
As someone that’s been on this girl’s bandwagon for nearly two years, I’m happy to report that Leona Lewis made (even more) history this week as she became the first British female to top the US Billboard Hot 100 in 20 years! The songstress from Hackney, East London (that’s in the UK for some of you out there) has had whirlwind, worldwide success since winning The X Factor (the British equivalent to American Idol) in 2006. Leona topped the Hot 100 with the smash-hit single, “Bleeding Love” which was last year crowned the biggest selling single of 2007 in the UK and held the #1 spot here for 7 weeks. The British diva’s accolades don’t stop there, she also had the biggest selling single of 2006 in the UK with a cover of Kelly Clarkson’s “A Moment Like This.” Her debut album, “Spirit” was also dubbed the biggest selling debut in British history. Oh and not to mention, this girl has one hell of a set of lungs on her!

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Welcome to the Box Office! In this weekly feature, I’ll look at each week’s wide releases, summarize their plots (i.e. pasting from imdb.com), and give my opinion of whether or not they’re worth your 8 dollars (or whatever godawful price they’re charging these days). This week has several new releases, with the majority of them seeming to target the younger crowd:

“21” – starring Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, and Kate Bosworth
Plot summary – “21” is the fact-based story about six MIT students who were trained to become experts in card counting and subsequently took Vegas casinos for millions in winnings.
My take – I quite liked Sturgess in “The Other Boleyn Girl” (Poor George!) and somewhat in “Across the Universe” (I loved the music and stylistic elements – I just didn’t buy the love story for a second.) As for Spacey (aka Lex Luthor in “Superman Returns”), he’s excellent in most of what he does, so I’ll trust that he is at least decent in his role as the ringleader of the students. Kate Bosworth (Oh look, another “Superman Returns” alumni!), has never been a great actress to me, but I trust she holds her own in the film. The casino story has been done to death as of late, but the element of college students in a sort of non-school sponsored “heist club” helps differentiate it a bit.

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