Five Shows I'll be Watching This Fall

 

1. The Irrational

2. Found

3. All Rise

4.So Help Me Todd

5.Will Trent.

Honorable Mention-Abbott Elementary.

I know that's actually six....Forgive me!

Thank You Oscars (For Saving Black History Month!)

 Regina King has come a long way from the sitcom "227"  Baby girl is not only acting, but directing..She's won an Emmy, a Golden Globe and now an Oscar..

 Thirty Years in the Game and they finally gave Spike his long overdue Oscar for "Black Klansman" (He should have gotten Oscars for "Malcolm X" and "Do The Right Thing"

This is the second Oscar for relative new comer, Mahershala Ali....He won for best supporting actor for "Greenbook" and last year he won Best supporting Actor for "Moonlight" , that's two years in a row and both years...His films won Movie of the Year! Quite an accomplishment. That puts him up there with Denzel Washington and Sidney Poitier, both two time Oscar winners...

So it wasn't Oscars so white last night...It was Oscars saving Black History Month...

Congratulations Jordan Peele

I didn't watch the Oscars or Academy Awards last night...One reason was....I haven't seen (or heard of) any of the major pictures that was nominated...Maybe I can count that to old age...and okay, I did see one..Jordan Peele of Key and Peele 's masterpiece "GET OUT!"

Jordan Peele just made history. The first-time director of Get Out just became the first Black nominee to ever win the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.

Jordan Peele is just the fourth person of color to be nominated in that category. Suzanne de Passe was the first (for Lady Sings the Blues in 1972), followed by Spike Lee in 1989 (for Do The Right Thing), and John Singleton in 1991, for Boyz n the Hood. I honestly thought that Spike Lee and John Singleton won for those categories...Guess I was mistaken..I haven't half watched the Academy Awards since I was a teenager..  You get tired of being angry of feeling snubbed after awhile.

The crowd inside the Dolby Theatre, clearly aware of the significance of Jordan Peele's win, gave one of the most enthusiastic reactions of the night as Peele, clearly emotional, went up to accept his award.

“This means so much to me," he said. "I stopped writing this movie about twenty times because I thought it wasn't going to work. I thought it was impossible. I thought no one would ever make this movie. But I kept coming back to it because I knew that if people let me make this movie then people would heart, and see it. I want to dedicate this to everyone who raised my voice, and let me make this movie."
As expected, Twitter ,Facebook and social media  also went wild in its praise, with celebrities like Chrissy Teigen and Zendaya chiming in alongside fans.

Very Happy for him....Let's pray that next next Ryan Coogler  and what appears to be the largest grossing picture of this year, BLACK PANTHER are there for the awards!~

Saturday 7- Seven Movies You Must See

1.Hidden Figures

2. Fences

3.Moonlight

4.Loving

5. Birth Of A Nation

 6.The Fits

7.GET OUT (Not released as of this writing, but coming in February)

Honorable Mention....

Southside With You

Oscar Blues, Part 2

So the Question becomes...Can the Oscars solve it's race problem? Well...Has it ever tried to??


The Oscars made big news last week, but certainly not the way they intended.

When the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences revealed its picks for the year's best performances on Jan. 14, no Black or Latino actors were nominated for the second consecutive year.

What's more, acclaimed films with diverse casts including Straight Outta Compton, Creed, and Beasts of No Nation were shut out of the Best Picture category, and the nominations those films did receive went either to white screenwriters (for Compton) or to a white star (Sylvester Stallone for Creed).

As the hashtag #OscarsSoWhite began trending, just as it did last year, ceremony host Chris Rock joked in a Twitter promo that he was thrilled to be hosting "The White BET Awards."

Then it got serious. Spike Lee, who was honored at the Academy's Governors Awards months ago, and Jada Pinkett Smith announced they were boycotting this year's Oscars and encouraged others to join them. Rock began facing pressure to resign as host in protest.

Each day, more high-profile figures are lending their voices to the chorus calling for change. "For 20 opportunities to celebrate actors of color, actresses of color, to be missed last year is one thing," said David Oyelowo, who starred as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in the Oscar-nominated Selma, at an event on Jan. 18. "For that to happen again this year is unforgivable." I agree, but as I said yesterday...This is nothing new.

Although Academy president Cheryl Boone Isaacs (who has described herself as "heartbroken and frustrated" over the situation) has taken steps to make the Oscar telecast more inclusive -- e.g., recruiting Reginald Hudlin (Django Unchained), who's African-American, to co-produce the ceremony -- only the Academy members can select the nominees. And that's where the problem lies.

A 2012 Los Angeles Times study found that the roughly 6,000-member Academy is nearly 94 percent Caucasian and 77 percent male, with a median age of 62. Invitations to join the elite organization are typically limited to high-ranking professionals who are nominated by at least two peers; once admitted, membership is for life. Since Boone Isaacs was hired in 2013, the organization has added more members than usual, including many women and minorities, and she affirmed her commitment to that mission, vowing in a statement, "In the coming days and weeks we will conduct a review of our membership recruitment in order to bring about much-needed diversity in our 2016 class and beyond." For many, progress can't come soon enough. "If we keep adding women and minorities at the rate we do, how long will it take? A hundred years?" asks one actress Academy member. "We can't wait that long."

This is the white boys club....I'm just speaking plain...62 year old White guys who vote each other in and come from a certain class are ,let's be honest here ,not likely to go see Straight Outta Compton, Creed, and Beasts of No Nation . ..And even if they did..they're not going to appreciate it the same way a younger minority audience might.

They may go to see the Butler because it's filled with well known stars, both Black and White and it still will get no love....

So how does the Academy fix its broken system? How does Oscar solve it's race problem??

DIVERSIFY MEMBERSHIP

Should the Academy add 1,000 new members? Should it admit only people of color for the next five years? That may seem extreme, but there's no question that young, diverse talent would shift the kinds of stories and performances Oscar celebrates. "I do think has to do with recruitment," says one Academy governor. "I don't think everyone is aware of who's out there making good movies, minority or not."

I would appreciate more women at this point...It's still the White BOYS club..Very few women....

REEXAMINE VOTING-

To determine the Best Picture nominees, members select five films in order of preference. That voting is weighted, meaning that first-place votes matter more than third-place ones. Some believe Compton received votes, just not enough in first or second place. Others speculate that voters never watched the N.W.A biopic. "I think the older members didn't think it was a movie for them," says one member. Adds another: "I haven't seen every movie. Who has that kind of time? Especially when you've got to watch Making a Murderer." The Academy might want to determine Best Picture the way it does Best Foreign Language Film: A diverse committee would choose the nominees and then members could only vote if they had seen all the films.

CONSIDER OUSTERS

Should someone be an active member of the Academy if he hasn't worked in 25 years? Perhaps it's time to allow only those people currently working, or mentoring young talent, to vote. It might help prevent conventional sensibilities from becoming entrenched. "Change is coming," says an Academy member. "It'll probably get more messy before it gets better ..." but that's fine...Change is often messy.

Oscar Blues

You might be surprised at my position on the proposed boycot of this years Oscars by Black Actors and Actresses...

I'm not with it...

But not for reasons Stacy Dash and white racists may think...

I'm just..what is the point? This is not news...The Oscars have been #so white for years now..with a few exceptions when they tossed us a few bones....

How many Latinos have won Oscars? For that matter how many Native Americans or Asians?

You see my point?

As I explained to a friend on Facebook yesterday...I used to watch them and get mad.....I was angry in 1972 when neither Diana Ross ,nor Cicely Tyson won ...I was so mad that by the time I was 18 ,I stopped watching and didn't watch again until the year Lou Gossett Jr. won best supporting actor for Officer and a Gentleman....I was 26 by then...They had gotten better handing out statutes to Denzel,Cuba,Whoopi, Halle,Morgan Freeman,Jennifer Hudson and a few others, and then for the past two years it's been a BLACKOUT...pun intended....I won't be watching this year either!

I can find better things to do with my free time...

I am so over the Oscars....And so should a lot of Black people...I am just tired ,Tired of needing White America for verification of my self worth...

For Stacey Dash and the white racists who say..."Well we don't get mad when White people don't win NAACP IMAGE Awards or BET awards..."which I found funny ,just think of something...Historically Black Colleges and Universities, NAACP Image Awards, BET Awards, Latin Grammys...et al...None of this would be necessary if we truly lived in a color blind society , a post racial society where everybody was recognized and rewarded equally....but we don't...We never have...

Up until 1950....Practically every movie that went through Holywood was 99 percent all white casts...And the only Black people you saw was maids and butlers and if they had speaking parts...It was comic relief...

The explosion of Black cinema in the 70's ..though admittedly cheesy went over most white people(with the exception of Quentin Tarrantino)'s heads....Still there were a few gems...Sounder, Lady Sings the Blues..Nothin But a Man, Watermelon Man , Sweet Sweetback's Badass song..Shaft that were all but ignored by Oscar...

Black people should have been boycotting back then when we were really being ignored....

People are up in the air now...but this is longgggg overdue...

The past two years in a row..There have been no Black nominees for anything...Why is anyone surprised?? Nothing new here...

I'll speak on this some more..

(TO BE CONTINUED)

Powerful Statements At The Oscars

The Struggle is Universal...The Struggle goes on!

Me And The Oscars

 

Back in the 70's when I was young and if you can believe it ,more militant than I am today...I used to watch the Oscars with my family...This was back when no black people got nominated for anything...
I was always furious and always vowed to never watch them again...Well I might boycott them this year too.

And for the same reason.....All of the Acting nominees are white...Not one Black or Latino nominee...
In 2011, the 20 nominees also were entirely white. Before that, one has to go back to 1998 for an all-white acting group.

The all-white nominees list comes at time when Hollywood is fielding criticism for not doing enough to promote diversity in filmmaking. And just last month, Sony Pictures co-chairman Amy Pascal and producer Scott Rudin were apologizing for leaked emails that appeared to be racially insensitive. Rudin was nominated this morning for producing best picture nominee The Grand Budapest Hotel.

Rev. Al Sharpton -- who formed a Hollywood diversity committee in response to the leaked emails -- has already reacted angrily to the nominees list: “The lack of diversity in today’s Oscar nominations is appalling ... With all of the talent in Selma and other Black movies this year, it is hard to believe that we have less diversity in the nominations today than in recent history." Sharpton added, "The movie industry is like the Rocky Mountains, the higher you get, the whiter it gets."

 The Oscar acting nominations are typically a reflection, in some part, of the best roles of the year available to actors and actresses, which makes 2015's lineup troubling.

The two writing categories also were dominated by white men. Not a single woman was nominated in either category. Though the Academy doesn't reveal a breakdown of its membership, a 2012 report by the Los Angeles Times found that of the nearly 6,000 members, 94% are white, 77% are male and 86% are age 50 or older. Last year, actress Lupita Nyong'o took home the best supporting actress Oscar for the film 12 Years a Slave, which featured a mostly black cast and also won the best picture statuette.

But this year’s Oscar nominees, including the best picture heat, has a decidedly racially homogenous feel, with the exception of Selma, which was nominated for the top prize -

 But Selma Director, Ava DuVernay, a Black woman was overlooked in the best director category, which was all male, with Mexican director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu representing the lone example of diversity. Despite its strong reviews -- Selma has a 99% rating with critics on RottenTomatoes -- and epic scope, the film only received one other nomination: best original song. If DuVernay had been nominated in the director category, she would have been the first black female director ever recognized. In response to the nominations, DuVernay offered a diplomatic tone: "Happy Birthday, Dr. King. An Oscar gift for you. To SELMA cast and crew led by our miracle David Oyelowo! To Common + [John] Legend! Kudos! March on!" - 

I used to do that a lot when I was younger...Put a good spin on every situation regardless...but today I'm reminded of yet another thing my mother told me..

"Sometimes you just have to see the world for what it is."

And the Oscars this year don't seem any different from 1972....

I think I'll boycott them...See you at the NAACP Image awards..

Keith's Music Spotlight

Mary J. is back with her new single from her current release the "London Sessions."  It's called Therapy and it's my mantra for the coming year...Check it out...

Makes My Head Explode

Let me first say that I am no fan of North Korean Strongman, Kim Jong Un....I hear the little dictator is a tyrant....But I am also no fan of American filmakers at Sony who released the film-"The Interview"...A comedy in which two half wits are hired by the CIA to murder him....

Can you imagine how we Americans would react if say the Soviets or the Chinese or any country made a movie in which an American Head of State (other than Barack Obama) was murdered...Even in jest?

This is the height of American Arrogance....

And as a result...Even though it hasn't been proven...It appears Sony's corporate website was hacked and a lot of embarrassing emails were released to the public which has the corporation and it's execs apologizing on top of each other...

It has me laughing my ass off...Serves them right...

In case you've been living under a rock or more concerned about Bill Cosby's mis-adventures...Here is basically what happened..

When Sony Pictures began casting last year for a new comedy to be called “The Interview,” early scripts included the assassination of a fictionalized North Korean ruler. It was not until auditions began that actors learned that the movie would portray something much more brazen: the violent killing of the actual leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-un.

Sony’s executives now say they knew that basing a film on the assassination of a living national leader — even a ruthless dictator — had inherent risks. But the studio seems to have gotten much more than it bargained for by bankrolling what it hoped would be an edgy comedy.

 

The still very-much-alive Mr. Kim, the leader of an isolated and unpredictable nuclear-armed nation, appears not to have been amused when the premise of the comedy became clear. North Korea branded the $40 million film, to be released on Dec. 25, “an act of war” and vowed a “resolute and merciless response.”

 

Then, last month, hackers unleashed one of the most punishing cyberattacks on a major corporation in recent memory, pilfering private emails, detailed summaries of executive salaries, and even digital copies of several unreleased Sony films that they posted online. It remains a mystery who was responsible.

 

Suspicion has fallen on Mr. Kim’s Bureau 121, an elite cyberunit, or patriotic hackers. But experts say pro-North Korea messages left behind could be a ruse to cover the hackers’ real tracks.

 

What is clear is that by deciding to go ahead with the film, Sony stumbled into a geopolitical mess complete with all the elements of a Hollywood thriller: international intrigue, once imperious, now humiliated, film executives, strong-willed leading men and highly sophisticated cyberattackers.

 

The studio’s first miscalculation, film experts say, was in venturing beyond where big-budget moviemakers dared to go in the past.

 

“The gory killing of a sitting foreign leader is new territory for a big studio movie,” said Jeanine Basinger, a professor of film studies at Wesleyan University.

 

From early on, “The Interview” seemed to pit the sensibilities of filmmakers in the United States, where the portly North Korean leader with the cherubic looks has been a target of easy humor, against those of Sony executives in Japan, where he is reviled but taken deadly seriously.

 

While many Americans seem to see North Korea as too distant to keep them awake at night, many Japanese see it as a very visible threat. Until three decades ago, North Korean agents occasionally snatched people off beaches in neighboring Japan to serve as Japanese-language teachers, and long-range North Korean rockets on test runs still fly ominously over Japan’s main islands.

 

Disturbed by North Korean threats at a time when his company was already struggling, Sony’s Japanese chief executive, Kazuo Hirai, broke with what Sony executives say was a 25-year tradition. He intervened in the decision making of his company’s usually autonomous Hollywood studio, Sony Pictures Entertainment.

 

According to hacked emails published by other media and interviews with people briefed on the matter, he insisted over the summer that a scene in which Mr. Kim’s head explodes when hit by a tank shell be toned down to remove images of flaming hair and chunks of skull.

 

In the emails, he also asked that even the less bloody shot not be shown outside the United States. A final decision on how the assassination scene will be rendered in overseas release has not been made, a person briefed on the film’s international roll out said Sunday.

 

Hollywood films have mocked North Korea and its leaders before. In 2004, “Team America: World Police,” a feature film made with puppets, portrayed Kim Jong-il, the father of the current leader, as a lonely but sadistic despot who eventually turned into a cockroach.

 

But with “The Interview,” from the casting calls onward, Sony studio executives in the United States seemed aware that they were treading into a sensitive new area.

 

“In the original version of the script that I got, it wasn’t Kim Jong-un,” Randall Park, who was cast in the role, told bloggers invited to the Vancouver set last year. “But I was told right before my audition that it was going to be Kim Jong-un.”

 

Whether the switch reflected a possible alternate creative direction, or was the result of an effort to keep an incendiary element of the movie quiet, is unclear.

 

A Sony spokesman declined to comment. But some in the film industry said the film’s co-directors, Evan Goldberg and the actor Seth Rogen, were trying to push creative boundaries, and that Sony allowed them to do so in part to keep them from going to a rival studio.

 

“That was always the whole point,” said one agent familiar with “The Interview” from its earliest stages, speaking on the condition of anonymity to preserve ties to Sony. “Buried inside that comedy is a really sharp geopolitical satire.”

In the movie, two American journalists are recruited by the C.I.A. to kill the North Korean leader.

 

Experts on North Korean society said that it would not be much of a surprise if the country was behind the hacking, which it appeared to delight in even as it denied involvement.

 

“In Korean culture, there is a real need to protect your leader’s dignity,” said Toshimitsu Shigemura, an expert on North Korea at Waseda University in Tokyo who believes that North Korea probably had at least an indirect hand in Sony’s hacking woes. “The North Korean leader’s subordinates were probably desperate to make some sort of gesture, in order to both prove their loyalty and to save their own skins.”

 

(Mr. Kim, after all, had his own uncle executed in a struggle for power and is reported to maintain an extensive network of brutal gulags for those who displease him.)

 

The hacked emails that have been published paint a picture of a corporation torn between trying to be respectful of artistic license, while also trying to prevent the film from being too inflammatory.

 

After pressure from Mr. Hirai, the emails show, Amy Pascal, co-chairwoman of Sony Pictures, repeatedly pressed Mr. Rogen to soften “The Interview’s” climactic assassination scene.

 

“You have to appreciate the fact that we haven’t just dictated to you what it had to be,” Ms. Pascal wrote in September to Mr. Rogen. “Given that I have never gotten one note on anything from our parent company in the entire 25 years that I have worked for them.”

 

According to the emails and a person briefed on the matter, Mr. Hirai inserted himself into the film’s editing after North Korean officials, apparently having seen promotional materials last summer, called the film “an act of war.” In one email, Mr. Hirai approves a newly altered assassination shot that had “no face melting, less fire in the hair, fewer embers on the face and the head explosion has been considerably obscured by the fire.”

 

At one point in the tug of war over the script, Mr. Rogen weighed in with an angry email to Ms. Pascal. “This is now a story of Americans changing their movie to make North Koreans happy,” he wrote. “That is a very damning story.”

 

How about if they had done the movie at all...or made it a fictionalized movie?  That would have seemed like the right thing to do...And I wonder if in all this posturing to be edgy if they would have made a movie about Vladmir Putin....Who we DO TAKE VERY SERIOUSLY...being murdered???? I wonder...

 

Other published emails and interviews show Michael Lynton, chief executive of Sony Pictures, stepping in to distance “The Interview” from its Japanese owner after North Korea’s initial blowback last June. In particular, Mr. Lynton pushed staff members to remove the word “Sony” from promotional materials, including billboards and trailers, and from the end credit crawl.

 

Sony also decided not to release the R-rated film in Asia, but executives at the studio said the decision had been made largely because crudely irreverent humor does not translate easily, particularly in the more culturally conservative societies in the region. Still, the studio was aware that the raw geopolitical content would make booking the film even more difficult, according to Sony executives interviewed in recent days who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the nature of the discussion.

 

Some analysts speculated that Sony might have been pressured to tone down the film by the Japanese government, which is in delicate negotiations with the North to discover the fate of more than a dozen Japanese abducted by North Korean agents in the 1970s and 1980s. However, many say the Sony chief executive intervened because he was alarmed by the very public — and possibly private — threats being hurled by the Kim regime.

 

“Such threats against a specific company by a sovereign state were so shocking and unusual that it is natural for the top to want to get involved,” said Tomoichiro Kubota, an analyst at Matsui Securities in Tokyo who specializes in Sony.

 

In the end, the Sony edits might not have had the desired effect. Although they did not specifically mention “The Interview,” the hackers demand that Sony not release what they call “the movie of terrorism.”

 

I hate to say this...but I agree with them....I remember sitting in the theatre with my wife watching the preview of this movie and shaking my head....

 

"They can not be serious..." I thought...

 

Unfortunately...They were.

Not A Good Time To Be Cosby

It truly is not a good time to be Bill Cosby......

 Was it only a generation ago that Bill Cosby played the role of America's Dad, with a No. 1-rated family sitcom, a runaway best-seller about fatherhood and a lucrative ad career built around his Everyman image.

His legacy as a pioneering African-American entertainer seemed secure. Early success as a stand-up comic was followed by a starring role in "I Spy," the 1960s TV hit. In the 1980s, he starred as Dr. Heathcliff Huxtable in "The Cosby Show," one of the first sitcoms centered on an affluent African-American family.

Now, his career stands threatened by allegations of sexual misconduct — with media companies running away from the man they once embraced in a hurry..

The scandal will "certainly shoulder its way into" the way  Mr. Cosby is remembered, even after his death, said Martin Kaplan, professor at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

"Obits traditionally have a 'who' sentence at the start," Martin Kaplan added. "Until now, his would have been: 'Bill Cosby, who ...' followed by something about the Huxtables and being America's Dad. Now I think that sentence will continue with ... this sad, sordid history now unfolding."

The onetime father figure is battling claims that he sexually assaulted women, including aspiring actresses looking to break into showbiz. The alleged victims who have recently stepped forward include former model Janice Dickinson, whose rape claim was vigorously denied by a Cosby attorney this week.

The escalating crisis of image forced NBC officials on Wednesday to scrap plans to develop a Cosby comedy pilot in which he would have played the grandfather in an extended family.

"We can confirm that the Cosby project is no longer in development," said a person with knowledge of the situation who was not authorized to speak publicly. By Wednesday afternoon, the cable network TV Land announced it was pulling episodes of "The Cosby Show" from its channel indefinitely.

Those actions followed an interview with Dickinson that aired Tuesday on "Entertainment Tonight" that prompted Netflix to back out of a special in honor of the comedian. "At this time we are postponing the launch of the new stand-up special 'Bill Cosby 77,' " a Netflix spokesman said in a statement.

The program, taped on the performer's 77th birthday, had been scheduled to premiere Nov. 28. The statement neither gave a reason for the postponement nor specified whether it would be rescheduled.

Meanwhile, a coalition of civil rights and women's groups on Wednesday called on the Treasure Island resort in Las Vegas to postpone an upcoming appearance by Cosby pending an investigation of his alleged victims' claims.

Although these allegations have only recently gained national attention, they date back decades...I had heard whispers about this before...But I'm not hearing whispers now..It's LOUD!

In 2005, Temple University staffer Andrea Constand sued Mr. Cosby, claiming he drugged and groped her during a visit the year before to his Philadelphia home. During that case, 13 other women came forward with similar stories and were prepared to testify, according to published reports. But her lawyers reached an out-of-court settlement with Cosby in 2006; the terms were not disclosed. The scandal died down so much that it was not mentioned in Mark Whitaker's biography of Cosby published earlier this year. "There were no definitive court findings," Whitaker explained to the Huffington Post.

Further back, in 1997, a woman named Autumn Jackson who claimed to be Cosby's biological child was convicted of trying to extort millions of dollars from the entertainer. Cosby admitted to a relationship with Jackson's mother but denied paternity.

The accusations returned to the spotlight last month after a routine by stand-up comedian Hannibal Buress made fun of Cosby's fatherly image in light of the allegations of sexual misconduct.

Hanibal Buress' stand up routine, captured on a jerky smartphone camera, quickly ricocheted around the Internet. It went "viral as they say and America once again was OUTRAGED!!  I tell you it seems like we are outraged about something or someone every week... It proved the match that lighted the fuse. On Nov. 13, The Washington Post published a first-person piece by Arizona artist Barbara Bowman in which she claimed that Mr. Cosby had drugged and repeatedly raped her in 1985, when she was a 17-year-old aspiring actress.

My thing is this...These women have been silent for all these years..Now some comedian, who few people ever heard of outside of serious comedy groupies tells a joke...a joke he has been telling for months and all of a sudden ALL of these women suddenly remember Mr. Cosby assaulted them in 1972, 1977, 1982 ,1985 et al...I'm just saying...True or not...It does make you wonder or at least it should....Most of these cases were settled out of court(meaning somebody took some cash for their silence...) and are so old he can't be prosecuted for them even if he is in fact guilty....Again..If you weren't there, you don't know..Only Mr. Cosby and the girls know for sure....We should remember...These are just accusations...I can accuse somebody of doing anything....With no concrete proof or action it means nothing...

A lot of us forget that....We just join in with the crowd and hope to GOd...Nobody discovers the skelaton bones in our own closets and puts it on the internet!

Racism In 140 Charactors

 See That? The screenshot above?  This cowardly troll probably thought she or he was being humorous...probably had no idea that he or she was being offensive and just a little bit racially insensitive or RACIST in their little idea of a joke...

They probably felt safe in their anonymous state in writing this...because it's listed under "People Magazine"..and not under their name...The reason why they wrote it and used "People Magazine"  as the byline is because whoever wrote this wouldn't dare say this in front of a Black male or female....They wouldn't dare...

Just a few days ago...a writer at the New York Times ,who did use her real name by the way made the condescending statement that Shonda Rhimes use of actress,Viola Davis in the starring role of her new series, ''How To Get Away With Murder" on ABC...was a departure from the use of classically beautiful actresses like Kerry Washington of Scandal of Halle Berry...

One of my friends asked me if this really was a racial issue and if I considered Viola Davis "classically beautiful"?  I refused to answer....What does it matter? Does anyone ask if say Meryl Streep, (who I love ,just for the record) is more "Classically beautiful" then say Cybil Sheppard?  Does anyone ask if say Stana Katic who plays Detective Kate Becket on Castle is more "Classically beautiful than say, Debra Messing?
Do they?  Then why do it with Viola Davis and Kerry Washington?....Why pit two beautiful in their own way actresses against one another...???What does it matter anyway?  This reeks of both racism and sexism...But ,maybe I'm being too sensitive.

Why would the person from People Magazine expect Viola Davis to recite lines she said in the movie -"The Help" when she's done more than that???...When she's played a lawyer on Law and Order and Law and Order Special Victims unit many times before?

WHY? (I'll wait!)

Maybe I'm a bit racially sensitive now of days with all that is going on....I don't know...but I'm getting tired of all that has been going on for the past eight years...The blatant disrespect of this president that goes beyond political disagreements., the shooting with seeming impunity of young black men, while white men with guns defy the government at a ranch and not a shot is fired, not an arrest is made....While a white mass murderer shot up a movie theatre and was armed, yet captured unharmed....Yet a black kid who may have shoplifted some cigars, but was unarmed and killed no one was shot dead in the streets of Ferguson...

You see...Can you blame me if I'm just a little bit racially sensitive right now to all of this?...... 

During a Thursday appearance on The View, Viola Davis fired back at the New York Times writer who recently said she was “less classically beautiful.” Last week, in an article that received plenty of backlash, Times writer Alessandra Stanley not only critiqued Davis’ looks but also referred to Shonda Rhimes as an angry black woman.

In response to that article, the Times’ public editor, Margaret Sullivan, said it was “astonishingly tone-deaf and out of touch.” Sullivan also noted, “The readers and commentators are correct to protest this story.” She continued, “Intended to be in praise of Ms. Rhimes, it delivered that message in a condescending way.” Thank You.

Viola Davis, who didn’t publicly address the comments until yesterday, explained on the show how she felt about them and what made her take on the role in Shondra Rhimes’ How to Get Away With Murder:

"I’m glad that Shonda Rhimes saw me and said “Why not?” That’s what makes her a visionary. That’s what makes her iconic. I think that beauty is subjective. I’ve heard that statement [less classically beautiful] my entire life. Being a dark-skinned black woman, you heard it from the womb. And “classically not beautiful” is a fancy term for saying ugly. And denouncing you. And erasing you. Now ... it worked when I was younger. It no longer works for me now. It’s about teaching a culture how to treat you. Because at the end of the day, you define you."

Good for you Viola.....And to the racist and juvenile trolls who tweet.....Black twitter is coming for you...

Keith's Music Spotlight

I have to admit...I haven't listened to Hip Hop in a minute, but while checking out the OKPLAYER website yesterday,I happened to come across this new track by Kendrick Lamar...The West Coast Rapper that everybody is saying is the best out there right now...

If this single is an example...Then I have to say...They're right...He's living up to the hype... Did you guys love that Isley Brother's sample?('Who's That Lady?)

Keith's Music Spotlight

George Tandy, Jr. is an American R&B-soul singer-songwriter. His debut single, "March", was released in 2013 and peaked on the Billboard R&B charts the following year.

I wrote another blog post about him earlier this year I think....Then he released this song "Jaded" and the lyrics just spoke to me...I've been through this before...That's what I like about music....Lyrics that speak to me, that speak to my existence...either past or present....I'm done with the hip hop fantasy world of money,fancy cars and hot chicks...Give me something real that speaks to my soul....

That is of course...the essence of soul music isn't it?

Keith's Music Spotlight

I honestly have to say that the minute I first heard this song on the radio...It totally blew me away....Believe me ,that is not something that I say about a lot of the music that is released today...

The lyrics got me...and the singer got me...I didn't realize the male singer on this duet was white....Until I heard the name...

Sam Smith!

I've been hearing about this guy all summer long on Facebook and Twitter...Sam Smith, Sam Smith,Sam Smith!!! A white boy from England who can really blow...

It's not that I didn't believe it...There have been quite a few...but not like this guy....And when I heard this duet with the Queen of Hip Hop Soul, Mary J. Blige...(On her upcoming CD and digital download-"The London Sessions." ) I just had to stand up and take note...Don't take my word for it...Listen for yourself...

I Did Not Write This....(But What if I had? )

I'm going to share this article I read in today's Huffington Post... Let me first say that I did not write this...This article was written by a white woman and surprisingly..She wrote things that me and a lot of my friends have talked about in private ,but never written or said aloud...

Perhaps I'm glad she beat me to the punch...Not that I wouldn't have written this sooner or later..but she wrote this today-

From Blogger Olivia Cole(A white female)-

I'm tired of seeing white people on the silver screen.
First, let me note that I am white. I am a white woman who goes to the theater to see probably a dozen films (if not more) in a given year, a white woman who readily consumes TV shows and series and often blogs/tweets about them. I love film. I love what Hollywood could be, but I must say that I don't love what it is, and that is a machine generating story after story in which the audience is asked to root for a white (usually male) hero over and over and over (and over) again. I'm tired. I'm tired of directors pretending that white actors are the default and that people of color are a distraction when it comes to filmmaking. I'm tired of black women in Hollywood being relegated to roles of slaves and "the help" over and over again. I'm tired of films convincing themselves that they are taking on something fresh and new, the likes of which the world has never seen, but in actuality adhering to tired tropes and stereotypes.

One example that comes to mind is Avatar, a "groundbreaking" film about aliens and humanity, which, underneath it all, is the same old White Savior story. But more recently is Lucy, the film starring Scarlett Johansson in which a woman named Lucy evolves and is able to use 100 percent of her brain's capacity after she unwittingly ingests a massive amount of drugs.

Lucy is about what humankind could be -- it's about possibilities. As Lucy's brainpower grows stronger and the volume of knowledge she is able to access increases, she delivers monologues about how little humans understand about death, existence, and the universe, mediating on time and history. The film likes to think of itself as reimagining everything that we think we know about humanity, and presents to us their vision of what the most evolved woman on earth looks like:
A blonde white woman.

See, I just can't get right with that.

You see, I was an anthropology major in high school and by the time I was 16 I'd learned all about Lucy (Australopithecus), the collection of bones found in Hadar and thought to have lived 3.2 million years ago, one of the oldest hominids we know of.

Lucy the film doesn't try to hide how cute they thought they were being by naming the supreme evolved being in their film "Lucy" -- they show an ape-like creature crouched by a stream to illustrate just how far human beings have come, and say as much in the opening lines, depicting vast cities built up to show our progress. The original Lucy was not really an ape, though. She had small skull capacity like apes, but her skeleton shows she was bipedal and walked upright like humans. Hadar, by the way, is in the Awash Valley of Ethiopia.

So I guess what's sticking in my craw is the assertion that while human life originated in Africa -- a detail the film neatly skims over, placing the ape-like Lucy that Johansson sees in North America -- somehow the way we imagine the most evolved human being is blonde and white. Even more, when Lucy gets surges of knowledge in the film, her eyes flash brightly blue. Because blue eyes, we all know, are the universal symbol of superiority, right?

How is it that in a film whose premise rests on the idea of reimagining the past, present and future, we still end up with a blonde white woman with flashing blue eyes as the stand-in for what personifies evolution and supremely fulfilled human potential? At one point the Ape-like Lucy and Evolved Lucy meet face-to-face as Evolved Lucy does a bit of time-traveling. Their fingers touch, and we see them deliberately posed to mimic the famous Creation of Adam painting, and in that moment I saw what I suppose we were supposed to see: humanity at its beginning, and then humanity at its end, at its most perfect. Blonde, white and blue-eyed.

I can't accept that. I can't accept that there was only one black woman in the entire film, who delivered one line and who we never saw again. I can't accept that the bad guys were Asian and that although in China, Lucy's roommate says, "I mean, who speaks Chinese? I don't speak Chinese!" I can't accept that in Hercules, which I also saw this weekend, there were no people of color except for Dwayne Johnson himself and his mixed-race wife, whose skin was almost alabaster. I can't accept that she got maybe two lines and was then murdered. I can't accept that the "primitive tribe" in Hercules consisted of dark-haired men painted heavily, blackish green, to give their skin (head-to-toe) a darker appearance, so the audience could easily differentiate between good and bad guys by the white vs. dark skin.

I can't accept that during the previews, Exodus: Gods and Kings, a story about Moses leading the Israelite slaves out of Egypt, where not a single person of color is represented, casts Sigourney Weaver and Joel Edgerton to play Egyptians. I can't accept that in the preview for Kingsman: The Secret Service, which takes place in London, features a cast of white boys and not a single person of Indian descent, which make up the largest non-white ethnic group in London.

I can't accept that in stories about the end of the world and the apocalypse, that somehow only white people survive. I can't accept that while my daily life is filled with black and brown women, they are completely absent, erased, when I look at a TV or movie screen.

I can't accept that. And I can't accept that when we think about the potential of humankind and what our brains are capable of doing and thinking and feeling, that people of color would be absent from that imagining. I can't accept that. And I won't.

I'm tired of seeing people that look like me crowding screens both big and small: I am not what the world looks like. Hollywood, stop whitewashing characters. Give us more films like this year's Annie. I'm no Lucy -- like everyone else I'm only using a tiny amount of my brain's capacity. But you don't need to be a superhuman logic-machine to see that Hollywood has a major problem with depicting people of color, and it's time to actually reimagine what the world can and should be.
--
Thank You Olivia Cole for saying some of the things I have been saying since I was 14 in one way or another, when I would get so angry at the Oscars and Emmys...Thank you for saying what I would have said eventually!

Michael Jackson's Xscape

Listening and grooving to Michael Jackson's latest release- "Xscape" on the way to work....While his first posthumous release-'Michael" was a bit of a disapointment...

 

This music here is a glimpse of the Micheal Jackson album I was waiting for after "Thriller" and" Bad" that he failed to deliver...

 

Except for "Love Never Felt so Good" which was recorded in 1983...Most of these songs here were recorded in between "Bad" and "Dangerous"....

 

Stand out songs are "Chicago" , "Loving You", "Place With No Name" and "Do you know where your children are?" (Wish he could have chosen a different name for that song, but it rocks just the same..)  

 

Good stuff here.... I said back in 2009, before his untimely death that MJ had one more great album like "Thriller" in him...and here is a glimpse of what might have been.

 

 

 

A Tale of Jay and Bee and Solonge

Of course...Everybody was talking about that video!  Come on...You been living under a rock?? You know, the one where Beyonce's baby sister, Solonge attacked Jay-Z, Beyonce's husband on the elevator....You must have seen it...
Yes...That video.... It even made the national news yesterday and CNN.

Since there is no audio and it actually happened a week ago...Nobody knows what this was all about or what sparked Solonge's rage at her brother in law..Though there was much speculation...Jay Z allegedly
said something to her that she took the wrong way...She allegedly was drunk and high and flew off the handle, there were allegations of her being angry at Jay-Z for cheating on her sister, et al....

Truth is...We don't know....And because the Carters are notoriously private...We will never really know and that's okay with me...We all have our family drama and our crazy moments...  I am just amused how the Twitter and Facebook folks just make up scenarios and it gets passed around as truth when there is no audio and the only people other than the Carters who REALLY know what this was about will probably never tell anybody..Then again...Everybody has their price!!

Amazing how little it takes to distract the average American!

And The Oscar Goes To.....

I must admit that of all of the award shows on television at the present time....The Oscars still get my adreneline pumping....I sit sit in front of the television like the fan boy that I am and wait with baited breath for someone in a tux and or a gown to announce ....''And the Oscar goes to......"

I was angry when Diana Ross didn't get it for "Lady Sings the Blues" in 1972...Angry still when Dianne Carroll didn't get it for Claudine and when year after year talented African American and Latino performers and movies were ignored by the Oscars...with the exception of Butterfly Mcqueen who won 20 years before I was born and Mr. Sidney Poitier who won win I was six years old and not yet watching the Oscars or anything that wasn't produced by Walt Disney or Hanna-Barbera.

Then in the late 80's something happened....It started with Lou Gossett and went on to include, Whoopi Goldberg, Denzel Washington, Cuba Gooding Jr. , Morgan Freeman, Forrest Whitaker, Jamie Foxx,Jennifer Hudson, Halle Berry and now includes the beautiful Lupita Nyong'o...We started winning Oscars....

Not only did she win...but the Brother who adapted the screenplay,John Ridley won for best adapted screenplay...(12 years a Slave)captured a statue too!

I'm happy that they won and I'm ecstatic that 12 Years a Slave , a movie directed by Steve Mcqueen....(Not the late action movie star, but Black British Director) won for movie of the year....

So I'll close by asking this.....Enough with the slave movies Hollywood....I know I should be grateful for the big wins last night and I truly am...But I'd like to see a moving picture about Black survivors, Black Heroes...Black people who win in the present day....Not see Black victims anymore...Hollywood likes to congratulate itself ever so often when a "Black" film like the" Help" or "Misisisippi Burning" or "12 Years a Slave" wins big...but how about "The Butler"...a piece of contemporary history and extroidinary film that got completely overlooked by Oscar???

I'm just saying...Oscar...you're getting better...but the room for improvemant is never filled!

Spike Lee Goes Left

I've been a fan of Spike Lee since his first film-"She's Gotta Have it"... Unlike a lot of people...I continue to follow his films....Sink or swim...It's a shame he can't get a budget from a major studio....I support him 100 percent in what he's doing and I'm so glad he stood up to this condescending hater!