Reign Over Me

The first shot of Adam Sandler in Reign Over Me is of him breezing through the streets of New York on a scooter, his grizzled face frozen in childlike wonderment and his Bob Dylan-like gray hair seemingly undisturbed by the wind.
Sandler plays Charlie Fineman, a former dentist reduced to an almost autistic state of grief over the loss of his wife and three children in the Sept. 11 attack.
One day, his college roommate, Alan Johnson, played here by the always wonderful Don Cheadle, bumps into him on the street, but Charlie doesn't recognize him.
Alan's a dentist with a loving wife and two adorable daughters. His life appears perfect, but Alan is bored and longs for the freedom he sees in Charlie's carefree existence.
Alan slowly becomes a part of Charlie's life, and the movie is about the connection two people have and how they help bring each other back to life.
This is Sandler's stab at being a serious actor, after years of comedies.
And the risk almost pays off. Sandler makes Charlie endearing and charismatic and funny. And the direction from Mike Binder helps Sandler or the film from becoming too maudlin.
Yet, there's still a one-noteness about Sandler's acting. Either he's telling dirty jokes or he's throwing a temper tantrum.
Unlike Robin Williams or other comedians-turned-actors, Sandler can't get the nuances; he only finds the extremes, making his performances a bit over the top.
What does make Sandler's performance work is the underlying sweetness he finds in the most hard-to-like characters he plays. That comes shining through here.
It is what makes him consistently watchable here, as Charlie slowly, slowly gets back in touch with his soul.

Hip-Hop Is Dead

Hip-Hop Is Dead, or so says Nas on his latest CD. And it seems many agree with him.
Rap sales slid 21 percent from 2005 to 2006, according to a recent Associated Press story. But this is beyond just rap sales or just criticism from old folks who don't like what their sons and daughter and nieces and nephews listen to.
I admit that my ears shut down and my eyes glazed over whenever I heard the likes of Stanley Crouch or the late C. Dolores Tucker decry the misogny and violence in mainstream rap music. I would retort that that they needed to listen to A Tribe Called Quest or C.L. Smooth and Pete Rock or Public Enemy. They needed to listen to the totality of hip-hop and not just rip one small segment of it.
But back then there was some semblance of balance in the music, but my 34-year-old ears don't detect that same balance today.
This isn't a new argument. Rap music reflects the society it thrives in, and our society loves sex and violence. It loves to degrade and objectify women. We were never as high-brow as we would like ourselves to be; we always loved to dwell, for a time, in the gutter.
But though I am far from becoming a Stanley Crouch, I find myself nodding my head more to his arguments and less to the rap I listen to on the radio. I can say to myself all I want to that there's more to hip-hop than Lil' Jon, Ying Yang Twins and Nelly. We have Talib Kweli, Mos Def, The Roots and Common.
Yeah, that's nice to say and nice to believe, but the fact is that Nelly sells and Mos Def doesn't. Ain't no club playing Little Brother. We would rather hear Yung Joc.
When I turn on BET, I see too much booty-shaking. I see too much tough-guy "I've been shot 9 times" talk. Too much money flying around and too much icy watches being displayed.
That's all our young people see or hear. That's all I hear when I turn on the radio.
And I can't pretend that it doesn't affect me. Curses flow too easily out of my mouth these days because when I review a CD, all I hear half the time are curses. I fight constantly to maintain a humanistic view of women against the barrage of music videos that show nothing but jiggling flesh.
I figure that if all of this stuff is affecting me, then it most definitely is affecting people who aren't oftentimes exposed to Lupe Fiascos of the world.
I am torn, and I think many people feel the same way. We both love and hate the music that we sweated to on dance floors. We reminisce about what drew us to hip-hop and cringe at where hip-hop is.
We hold tight to our old-school rap and come close to sounding like our mothers and fathers who used to tell us to shut that crap off when we were young. We don't want to be like those old fogies who just hate whatever the young people love.
But there are times when I feel like I am becoming that. I fear for the day when I might just give up all hope in hip-hop, declare it dead just like Nas.
I'm not there yet, though. Mos Def said hip-hop is us. If hip-hop dies, then we die. And we have to choose to live.
The first step in that choice is recognizing the awfully negative direction hip-hop seems to be going. We don't have to be Stanley Crouch, forever trashing the art form. We also don't have to be Russell Simmons, who turns a blind eye to hip-hop's problems.
What we do have to have is a honest dialogue. We have to talk about the violence, the sex and the misogny in the music and what kind of effect it has on us and our children.
We have to take it upon ourselves to resurrect hip-hop, to let it live, not only for us but for our childrens' children.

Oscar: The Week After

So Alan Arkin, who played the dirty old grandfather in Little Miss Sunshine, won best supporting actor.
It was a nice surprise. Okay, maybe it wasn't a nice surprise for Eddie Murphy. Some say that Murphy putting out the awful Norbit doomed his chances. Who knows? Maybe it just wasn't his time. What I do hope is that his loss doesn't prompt Murphy from going after more challenging fare. His performance in Dreamgirls proved that he is capable of much more than what he puts out.
There were no surprise when Jennifer Hudson and Forest Whitaker won best supporting actress and best actor, respectively.
J. Hud was gracious and humble and thanked God a lot. I wish her all the success in the world, but the reality is that she has a mighty hill to climb not to be typecast for Effie White-like roles from now on. Hers was such a breakout, powerhouse role that many directors might not be able to see her in anything else.
Forest Whitaker, by far, gave the most heartfelt speech of the night. He comes across as a gentle man that it is a testamont to his acting abilities that he credibly portrayed such a frightening dictator as Idi Amin.
He deserved that award for what I would call a couragious performance, one that sought to find the humanity in a monster.
The highlight of the night, of course, had to have been the long-begged for win by Martin Scorsese for The Departed. He should have napped the award years ago for much better films than The Departed, which also won best picture. A colleague of mine said the movie was really just about a bunch of thugs.
And to a point, I agree. There's really nothing deep about The Departed. It's a cat-and-mouse thriller, with tough-guy dialogue and bloody violence. The performances by Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg and Leonardo DiCaprio make this film work.
The time was just right to honor the guy, and I'm glad he finally won some recognition for his years of hard work.
Now, the next cat who needs to win an Oscar is Spike Lee. Anybody out there listening?