good hair...
i saw chris rock's 'good hair.' i saw it with my mom and my aunt, both of whom have hair. in fact, all of the women in the theater had hair and many of them seemed very invested in what chris had to say about the subject.i saw the film in a small, old style theater; pre-megaplex. the screen was about the size of a nice plasma. this made things a bit more intimate than i like, but when in rome...the theater filled with small groups of women and a handful of couples. initially, outside of being black, there wasn't any specific com

the mist...
one of the things that i like to do on lazy weekend days is watch old movies. i especially like when there's a film on that it seems like i should have seen and sometimes, in certain company, i will let people assume that i've watched; for example, "silkwood."today, my early matinee included the last hour of "cocoon" - genius and "gorillas in the mist."i recall that i avoided seeing "gorillas..." on purpose. the whole white woman, going to africa and saving the gorillas thing might have been too much for me at the time.i decided that this was the day. so i leaned back into my sofa, ready to watch sigourney work her magic in the jungle.within the fir

an irene cara moment...
in a touring production of 'the wiz.'here she is starring in 'busted up.' how did i miss this? by the way...if you're reading this on facebook, i don't think video, or pics show up in their feed. go to the original post on ham

the original...
i woke up from my nap today to find martin sheen dishing out raw emotion in the 1986 tv movie "samaritan: the mitch snyder story."cicely tyson co-starred. she was an old homeless woman. the makeup was horrible. cicely doesn't look that old now and it's 23 years later. it got me thinking though...the makeup and hair departments jack cicely up quite often.anyhoo...what really caught my eye, was the recognizable character actor standing around in most of the scenes. i know his face, but i've never known his name. as i looked at him today, i realized that he was the original michael clarke duncan.i couldn't think of what else he'd been in right of

the ill professors: District 9 & Race
“The African-American Influence in Film” was the name of a panel that I participated in at this year’s Mid-Atlantic Black Film Festival. I wasn’t exactly sure where that topic would lead the discussion. How would the moderator frame the conversation? We never really did address the African-American influence, but as in most discussions about blacks in film, the conversation turned to money and power. Money and power. One of the films that was mentioned during the panel was “District 9.” I hadn’t seen it yet. There was this idea of ownership of ghetto themes. It was if the film had a responsibility as a social co