Climbing Brokeback Mountain

Finally, I trudged up Brokeback Mountain and found I enjoyed the view.
The movie lives up to the hype. This is a film of small moments that build to emotional payoffs sprinkled throughout.
Ang Lee takes his time so you can invest in Ennis and Jack, watch as their relationship evolves over quiet mornings and cold nights in Brokeback Mountain, herding sheep.
And we see how one night of unexpected passion matures into a steel-like bond that endures their need to hide the truth of their love.
You see Ennis bowed down by pain the first time Jack leaves him, and you see his wife, played by Michelle Williams, whose bottled-up rage boils as she realizes that her husband's true love is not her.
The lush scenes of the two cowboys in Brokeback Mountain is laid out against the harsh confines of their lives with their wives and children.
And you see how their existence, where they can only steal a few weeks a year together, crushes them.
Brokeback Mountain, as critics have noted, is not self-righteous; it simply tells a story, one about two men who try to love each other in a world that does not accept them together.
This is a good movie, and to just call it a gay love story does no justice to it.

Oprah flogs James Frey

Don't make Oprah mad. James Frey didn't heed the advice. Today, he looked rather sheepish.
He should. He lied. And Oprah has every reason to be angry, embarrassed, whatever.
Like I said, don't make Oprah mad. I sure wouldn't.

The Downfall of Flavor Flav

Flavor Flav's clock-wearing mug, his gold-encrusted teeth blaring, saved Public Enemy from being too self-righteous. He was the fun that balanced Chuck D's baritone protestations against political corruption and racism.
That was then; this is now. Flavor Flav, desperate for money, stars in The Flavor of Love, a pathetic, low-down piece of crapola reality television show that features a dozen women vying for the hype man's attention.
This is his third show, after making his debut on The Surreal Life a couple of years back.
We see women cry, actually cry, because they might not have the chance to be the one for our man, Flavor Flav, a has-been who is far from handsome and who certainly doesn't have much money. Ah, the things people do for money.
Chuck D, your friend needs help, like now.

Why Straight Guys Don't Want to See Brokeback Mountain

No, I have not ventured to see Brokeback Mountain. I like to think of myself as enlightened and so I've said to myself that I won't see Brokeback Mountain because the movie has gotten too much hype. But maybe the reason is really this.
Guess I should just man up and see the movie, imagining Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger are really Jessica Alba and Halle Berry. Yep, I'm such a guy.

A Million Little "Fake" Pieces

The extent of James Frey's lies in his best-selling memoir, A Million Little Pieces, is astounding.
And the response from his publisher is, well, sad and predictable.
Then again, Random House is making money so why should the higher-ups care about the truth.
But I deal with truth every day as part of my profession. And while it might be hard to get to an objective truth in a memoir, I do expect that the central facts an author lays out in his memoir are substantially accurate.
Frey, by his own admission, made up most of what's in his book. He didn't embellish.
He lied. And he's being awarded by selling more books and having the chance to see his life story told on the big screen.
Thanks to Oprah, Frey has gotten national exposure, selling his fiction as testimony designed to inspire people struggling with their own alcohol and drug addictions.
I haven't read his book, and the latest revelations make it highly unlikely that I ever will. But from what I heard, Frey spins a great story.
Too bad it's not truth.

Hostel

The movie "Hostel" is gross. Not just gross but the squirm-in-your-seat gross, the kind of gross that has you either looking away or putting your hands over your eyes.
And I loved it.
This is what a good horror/slasher movie is supposed to do.
"Hostel" starts off as a "Porky's in Amsterdam" kind of movie. We have three guys backpacking in Europe, all looking to get smashed and laid.
And when a nerdy looking guy shows them pictures of beautiful naked women who can only be found in Slovakia, they hop a train and head for what they think will be nights of debauchery.
They do. For awhile, fun is had by all.
Then, as in movies like this, something goes horribly wrong. Toes are chopped off. Heads become detached from bodies. Drills go into flesh.
Nasty stuff.
Helming this is Eli Roth, who made the cult classic Cabin Fever a few years ago. I never thought much of "Cabin Fever," but Roth blesses this movie with gorgeous cinemotography, believable acting and teeth-clenching suspense.
"Hostel" is simply put an adrenaline rush. This is a good gory mess.

The Ho in Hip-Hop

Sexism in hip-hop is nothing new, but as this article makes clear, some rap artists have taken misogyny to rauchier and degrading lows.
Some question whether hip-hop, a cultural movement that began in the South Bronx more than three decades ago, should take the full blame for the depiction of women, black women in particular.
After all, take a quick look at the cultural landscape. Sex sells, and exploiting women has been refined into a sick kind of art. Witness Paris Hilton splaying her half-naked wet body to sell hamburgers.
Watch Jessica Simpson in a skimpy two-piece bathing suit prancing around in a country music video to promote that Dukes of Hazzard movie.
It ain't just hip-hop. But in many ways, it is. And as a black man, I wince when I watch the images of black women in too many rap videos and songs.
And I struggle to see black women as human beings when all I see in mainstream hip-hop are parts of women, a breast here, a butt cheek there. None of those parts speak.
And for me, that speaks volumes.

King Kong

King Kong is just a big, cuddly gorilla who might rip apart a dinosaur or two if you mess with his lady. Plus, he likes to slide around on ice and watch a sunset with his blonde-haired beauty.
At least that's the impression you get from watching Peter Jackson's three-hour epic.
The movie starts slow, but Jackson picks up speed once we get to the jungle and the dinosaurs and the big-footed hairy star of the show.
Jack Black, Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody all manage to shine in a movie that's much more concerned about a gorilla roaring and smashing and swinging his way around the jungle and later tossing cars and climing the Empire State Building in Manhattan.
For the most part, it's your all-too-typical Hollywood blockbuster with eye-popping special effects.
But as my English professor friend, who accompanied me, pointed out, there's more beneath the surface, and what you find is not pretty.
The 1933 version was chock-full of racial stereotyping, and though much has improved in this 2005 update, you can still find plenty to object to.
Let's start with the depiction of the natives. Eyes wide, chanting, dancing wildly, bearing misshapen teeth, they almost seem like apes, and for dark-skinned people, that's never a good thing.
That was the top of the list for my friend. It probably wasn't Jackson's intention but nevertheless my friend and I came away from that offended.
My friend also reminded me of the other racial implication when I asked her quite pointedly "Why the brotha have to die?" She wondered whether I meant the big brotha or the little brotha.
Yep, King Kong, when he first came out, was the black man-as-beast savaging the pure white woman. Jackson, thankfully, moves away from that and tries to imbue Kong with some complexity. So we have the scenes of him saving Ann Darrow, played here by Naomi Watts, numerous times and then of Darrow doing pratfalls and juggling balls in front of Kong, who sits there pounding his chest. And then we have scenes of him throwing violent temper tantrums. You wouldn't like Kong when he's angry. He might just chomp your head off.
And we have one character who's always seen reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, an interesting choice for such a movie given that book's own controversy over what some call its racist depiction of Africa.
Still, we end up caring about the big guy. We're sad when we see him chained up on Broadway, and we're happy when he breaks free.
But we all know how the story ends. He's atop the Empire State Building, swiping at planes as they pump bullets into him. And then he falls to his death as tears stream from Darrow's eyes. He sure did love that white girl.

Richard Pryor

Richard Pryor, who died Saturday, was profane. But he was profound, an artist who bared his life in all of its pain and found it rich with material.
He lived without apology, no matter that he freebased on cocaine and, in the process, set himself on fire, no matter he went through six wives, no matter that the latter part of his career bore little resemblance to his earlier genius.
The beauty of his comedy came not from his endless obscenities. Anybody can curse. What distinguished Pryor, what has influenced almost every person who considers himself or herself a comedian now, is that he surrounded those profanities with textured stories of his experiences, revealing a deeply flawed yet ultimately humane man, a black man struggling with a racist society, a man who from the very beginning had a problematic relationship with women.
These experiences all made Richard Pryor who he was. They informed his comedy, and Pryor's greatness came from his ability to translate his life into art and his unwillingness to compromise his voice.
To see that voice quietly silenced by the ravages of multiple sclerosis was hard; it seemed unfair.
But a legion of comedians such as Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock was birthed into being by Pryor. His legacy lies in them.
And though Pryor has slipped into a more peaceful existence, his comedy remains, just as rich now as it was then.
Richard Pryor, your life is calling.

The Source: The Death of a Hip-Hop Bible

Used to be The Source was the source. Used to be you couldn't say you knew what was going on in hip-hop culture without peeking into its pages.
Used to be The Source broadened the scope of what hip-hop was, daring to speak about the political and cultural issues that hip-hop heads dealt with, daring to look at the international impact of a movement many thought would last just a few years, daring, in a sense, to keep it real.
Today, all there is to The Source is "used to be."
This Village Voice story lays out the sordid drama. And here are all the sickening details of sexual harrassment.
Sad and shameful are the words that come to mind. They describe a magazine that once had a mission to explain and exlore hip-hop, to dig deep into the culture to find where it is now and where it would be going in the future.
But now, the magazine wallows in score-settling beefs amid severe financial miscues, its mission lost in egos and machismo.

Rent

Musicals are not often my preferred form of entertainment. The worst are contrived, people just bursting into song with wide and silly smiles on their faces.
And bits of Rent are contrived, but Jonathan Larson put so much heart and soul into the songs you can't help but get caught up in the whole experience.
Years ago, I saw the stage production, and I had my doubts that Chris Columbus of "Home Alone" fame could do the film justice.
But with six of the original cast members, the film works, even if the actors are too old to be playing 20-something artists struggling with poverty and AIDS in the East Village.
The movie, as the play, is set in 1989, where being gay and dying of AIDS were shocking. In 2005, AIDS isn't shocking anymore; it is depressingly routine. And in a culture where we have Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, homosexuality is not as taboo as it once was.
What makes Rent soar is sheer exuberance, a fervor for life that's damn near infectious.
In the midst of what's typically downer material is an urgent and bold declaration of carpe diem. No wonder Rent has garnered such cult status.
It celebrates youthful idealism, love of friends and the pursuit of dreams against harsh reality.
Who wouldn't love that?

The Last Dragon

As a child, I thought The Last Dragon, Berry Gordon's vision for a black Bruce Lee, was the bomb.
You had cool kung-fu moves by Taimak, El Debarge's song, "Rhythm of the Night" and the lovely, luscious Vanity.
Funny how snobby you get in your old age. Now, you see the stilted dialogue (though Sho'Nuff is still a hoot) and once your eyes adjust to Vanity's beauty, you realize just how untalented she was. Can't dance, can't sing, can't act. She just flutters her eyes alot and plays well the damsel in distress.
And the fight scenes? I wonder what I ever saw in them. Taimak has moves but the fights are poorly choreographed. Maybe The Matrix and Unleashed have spoiled me.
Of course, the movie also features many snippets of Bruce Lee and we see how this movie has no chance of being a fair comparison.
Still, the movie entertains. You have to just enjoy the silly ride.

50 Cent: The Non-Actor

Sheer curiosity pulled me into the movie theater to see 50 Cent's acting debut in his semi-autobiographical "Get Rich or Die Tryin'."
A shrewd move by 50 Cent was to surround himself by incredible talent. Jim Sheridan, acclaimed director of "My Left Foot" and "In America," helms this movie. Terrence Howard, fresh off a year of powerful performances in "Crash" and "Hustle & Flow," co-stars, and Bill Duke gives this movie some heft.
But the center of the movie is 50 Cent. And 50 Cent can't hold the center.
The muscle-bound rapper never exposes much except his rippling chest. His face is drained of emotion. He smiles at times, and in one pivotal scene, he cries.
Yet, 50 Cent's character Marcus seems distant. We don't understand his passion for rap because we don't see it. We don't see how the death of Marcus's mother affects him, how it influences how he lives his life.
Marcus's motivations remain a mystery. Considering this is 50 Cent's life, I can't question the authenticity of this movie.
But I do question 50 Cent's performance, in which his presence barely registers, where we never get beyond the surface of 50 Cent's life.
We hear enough of 50 Cent's life in his rhymes. We deserve something deeper to appear on the screen and we never get that.

Get Rich or Die Tryin'

50 Cent, a sly smirk creasing his face, is out heavily promoting his film, making sure to display his muscle-bound, tatooed chest and stoking controversy whenever he can.
Get Rich or Die Tryin' is the movie, ostesibly Curtis "50 Cent" Jackson's semi-autobiographical tale of his rise from crack dealer to platinum-selling rapper.
It opens this Wednesday. Whether I will see it remains to be seen.
For 50 Cent has made his name for being so gangsta, waxing nostalgic about his crack-dealing days and beefing with other rappers.
Ja Rule, Fat Joe, his protege The Game and even Kanye West are victims of his venom, all designed to increase record sales.
It's sickening, and one is left to wonder what redeeming quality his movie will have. What message will it send?
50 Cent has had a hard life, his mother a drug dealer who died when he was just a child. And a few years back, nine bullets pierced 50 Cent's flesh.
He is a walking miracle, his life a precious gift. But with that gift, 50 Cent gives little but tired gangsta tales with catchy hooks and hard-to-resist beats.
Curtis Jackson seems to liken himself to Tupac Shakur, the late 25-year-old rapper who died in 1996.
But Shakur he is not. For Shakur, flawed as he was, had more depth and substance in his rhymes than 50 Cent has ever had.
Never does it seem that 50 Cent really regrets the trajectory of his life. And worse, he relishes his conflicts with other rappers, for they "justify his thug" and help him sell more records.
The title of his movie, "Get Rich or Die Tryin'," sums up well his philosophy of life: materialism trumps morality. It trumps responsibility.
Life is never this black and white, this spiritually empty. Get Rich or Die Tryin'? Please. Life is worth more than 50 Cent.

BET: 25 Years

Tonight, I sit here watching BET's 25th Anniversary Celebration, and there is certainly much to celebrate.
Growing up, my family never had cable, so the only chance to see BET was at someone else's house, and most of what I saw was music videos.
As I got older, I began to appreciate the other aspects of BET, things such as Lead Story and Teen Summit. These were places where issues important to black people were discussed, and to see that was empowering.
So it is depressing for me to see how far BET has fallen over the years, to see shows such as Lead Story and Teen Summit and BET Nightly News fall by the wayside and replaced by videos and little original programming.
Yes, there is the reality that BET has to make money, and I sincerely hope that the leadership by Reginald Hudlin will turn things around.
Still, watching this celebration only reminds me of what BET used to be and the potential of what it could be.

Rosa Parks: 1913-2005

Rosa Parks stood by sitting. And by sitting, she demanded that her humanity be respected, that Jim Crow take a back seat.
Myth has sometimes obscured Rosa Parks, making her into an icon when she was simply a woman who made a choice that she would not abide being treated as less than an American citizen.
But she also was not simple, being that she was a black woman active in the NAACP, who agitated against segregation at a time when doing so was dangerous.
She looked fragile but contained within her a strength and integrity that helped inspire black people to fight against injustice.
I was born in 1972, years after she took her sitting stand on Dec. 1, 1955. By the time I took my first steps, Jim Crow had long been killed and buried, though remnants of racism still existed.
Even now, as a 33-year-old black man, I cannot quite grasp what it meant to be black in 1955, how dangerous it was then to just live. That to demand equal treatment could mean death for you and your family.
So Rosa Parks' singular act takes on greater meaning today. For the charged atmosphere of Jim Crow in which she lived no longer exists for me. Jim Crow is a moment in history, a memory vivid only to my parents and grandparents.
Her choice was not easy. It involved pain. It involved sacrifice. But she and others knew what they were doing was bigger than themselves. The right to have their humanity recognized and respected was important. And it remains important today.
My journey through life is made easier because of Rosa Parks and other black people who determined that the status quo was not and never would be good enough, who forced America to face the ugly truth of segregation.
For that, honor is due. May Rosa Parks' soul find eternal peace.

The Gospel

After the success of The Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Hollywood saw the dollar signs and we now have The Gospel.
For a movie produced and directed by the people who gave us the direct-to-video Trois, The Gospel is decent.
Mind you, I said decent, with lots of soul-stirring gospel music.
Whether this is a particularly well-made movie is another question, and the people I saw the movie with yesterday weren't impressed.
Boris Kodjoe, well-known for his role in Soul Food, plays David Taylor, a PK (preacher's kid, for those who don't know) who leaves the church after his mother's death and becomes a PG-rated version of R. Kelly. His father's illness brings him back home where he predictably becomes reconnected to his church. Idris Elba plays Charles Frank (though people keep calling him Frank), who has a wife who won't sleep with him and is posed to take over the church.
Taylor and Frank butt heads over the church's direction, and Taylor falls in love with a single mother played by cute American Idol loser Tamyra Gray, who many agreed did not look that cute in this movie.
Nona Gaye, Marvin Gaye's fine daughter, plays Frank's wife. She has one nice scene but for the most part she's a one-note player in this film. And the reason she won't sleep with her husband -- she can't have a baby -- just doesn't hold much holy water here.
The holes here are pretty big but they weren't big enough for me not to be entertained.
Omar Gooding, Cuba Gooding's younger brother, plays Taylor's manager and Gooding, by far, has the funniest lines. And seeing gospel artists such as Yolanda Adams and Fred Hammond was a special treat.
Still, one has to wonder about Hollywood. If the studios think folks are going to see any ole Christian movie, they're wrong.
Just slapping Gospel on the title of a movie doesn't make that movie immune from being crappy.

Batman Begins

I was lucky enough to rent a copy of Batman Begins from the local Blockbuster. And once again, the movie stands up, this after I have seen it multiple times at the movie theater.
I have an affection for Tim Burton's version but Christopher Nolan has done a masterful work in reimagining the Batman legend.
Bruce Wayne is the heart of this movie, and Nolan embraces all the dark, creepy mess of the Batman myth.
After all, anyone who dresses up as a bat clearly has issues. And Wayne has plenty of them, primarily being scared of bats and being angry over his parents' brutal death.
Batman, appropriately, is a good guy but scary as well.
The movie cuts too much during the fight scenes but incorporating the concept of the League of Shadows adds a bit of originality to a typical superhero movie.
Batman has gone a long way from the days of Adam West.

The Color Purple

As a child, I would watch the faces of my mother, aunt, cousin and grandmother become wet with tears watching The Color Purple. Certain parts always guaranteed eye-welling.
When Celie and Nettie are forced apart by Mister. When Shug returns to church singing and finally finds love from her long-estranged father. When Celie and Nettie, after decades apart, are finally brought together and Celie is reunited with her children.
Watching the movie recently, I'll admit I had a couple of gulps. After 20 years, the film adaptation of Alice Walker's most famous work is still a classic.
You see Whoopi Goldberg in her best dramatic performance, her transformation from a shy and abused girl into a strong, determined woman as affecting as ever.
Back in the 1980s, some criticized the movie for its depiction of black men. As a black man, I can see the critics' point.
But I also see a film that shows the strength of black women, their spirit triumphing over seemingly insurmountable odds, their ability to lean upon one another in hard times. And it also exposes the ugliness of sexism, how men brutalized women without regard.
Danny Glover's performance is remarkable not only in how mean he is shown to be but also in how graceful and moving his redemption is at the end.
More important than anything is how black people are the center of this movie, an achievement even more meaningful being that white director Steven Spielberg helmed the film.
Too often movies about black people end up being more about white people. Check Cry Freedom or Mississippi Burning. The Color Purple took place in a black world full of joy and pain, laughter and tears.
I still marvel, 20 years later, how good of a movie it is.

Domino

Domino is a head-scratching, eye-titillating, mind-numbing bitch-slap of a movie. But what else would one expect from Tony Scott?
Still, this may be one of Tony Scott's riskiest movies, one in which he slams images together and runs ripshod over narrative structure.
The movie is a beautifully realized mess of a movie, a homage to Domino Harvey's balls-to-the-wall mess of a life.
No fear, no regrets. Tony Scott seems to have plastered that message throughout the film, mixing raucous humor with almost gratuitous violence. And in the midst of all this craziness we find Ian Ziering and Brian Austin Smith from Beverly Hills 90210 playing themselves and Christopher Walken bringing his creepy brilliant persona to his role as a reality TV producer.
Somehow, it works. Not that the movie always makes sense. Not that you would for one minute believe that the events in the movie truly took place.
But Tony Scott isn't trying to make an biography of Domino Harvey's life. He's trying to embody her spirit. So that by the end, you feel as if you know Domino even if the movie fictionalizes her life.
Keira Knightley brings a tough girl charm to the title role, and Mickey Rourke shows that he has mastered his gritty shtick to near perfection as Domino's boss, Ed Mosbey.
This is a movie in which you just have to enjoy the rollercoaster, even if it might make you a little sick.