I Know Who Killed Me

Here, we gather to mourn the career of Lindsay Lohan. Okay, it's not that serious, just another case of a teen celebrity gone wild. First Paris and now Lindsay.

The difference is that Lindsay actually has talent, if you scrape away all the tales of wild partying, scandolous tongue-wrestling and more with boys and drunken driving.

That talent is evident in I Know Who Killed Me, where Lohan gives just a glimpse of what she can do as an actor.

Too bad it's only a glimpse, for the movie is a complete mess. Even the trailers couldn't quite hide the movie's sheer crappiness.

Lohan plays Aubrey, a studious, no-sex-having girl intent on becoming a famous writer. We see her tapping away on her keyboard and reading her work to her bemused classmates. In the small town she lives in, a girl has gone missing. Soon, the girl's body is found, causing the town folks to fear that a serial killer is on the loose.

Aubrey soon becomes the next victim. After a football game, she's abducted and tortured. She later wakes up in a hospital, missing part of her leg and part of her arm.

Here's the kicker, though: Aubrey claims to be Dakota, confusing her parents and the investigators. And Dakota isn't Little Miss Sunshine. She's a stripper whose mother was a crackhead and who now spends her nights swiveling up and down a pole and doing naughty Monica Lewinsky-like things with cigarettes.

And she loves sex, which makes Aubrey's boyfriend more than happy, as we all see in what has to be the most unintentionally hilarious sex scene to come out this year.

Aubrey/Dakota eventually sets out to find out who kidnapped her in what turns out to be a by-the-books thriller we've seen too many times before.

And the twist (there always has to be a twist in these things) is out-of-the-world absurb and so silly that you're tempted to scream at the screen, "Really? Pu-Leeze."

Lohan, however, does manage to give a decent performance as she essentially plays two people. And if the plot had been better written, this could have been a good B-movie, something tantalizing but instantly forgettable.

Instead, it is only mildly interesting for the mere fact that Lohan is, oohh, playing a stripper who manages not to take all of her clothes off. To those guys whose sole purpose in life was to see Lohan naked, this is not the movie for you.

And it really isn't much of a movie for anyone.

So, in the end, my advice to Lohan, beyond sounding like Jane Fonda and telling her to stop partying so much, is to please pick better scripts. You're not Paris. You have talent. You deserve better. Really.

Sicko: Just Plain Sick

You either love Michael Moore or you hate him. He's a big man, both literally and figuratively, who doesn't operate in areas of gray. Being subtle is not in his nature.

Anyone who has seen Bowling for Columbine or Fahrenheit 911 knows that.

And his latest documentary, Sicko, is no different.

This time, Moore takes on America's health care system with his own bombastic sense of injustice.

Yet, this film is more effective than his others. For one, Moore isn't seen that much in the film, until the last truly over-the-top half-hour.

But a huge chunk of the movie is just about ordinary folks struggling against a confusing and profit-hungry health-care system. One man cuts the tops of his ring finger and his middle finger off and has a doctor tell him it will be a lot cheaper to put the ring finger back on than the middle finger.

We meet one couple forced to live in their daughter's storage room after medical bills causes them to lose their home.

We see a medical insurance reviewer talk about a health-insurance company that rewards those who deny claims.

And we see how better the health care systems in other industrialized countries are. You go in, the doctors treat you and you pay nothing. France, Britain, Canada and Cuba.

Moore is simply amazed, and we are as well. To Moore, other countries put a higher premium on providing health care than our own country.

In America, the premium is on making as much money as you can, and screw the little guy.

What compells you to watch is the fact that Moore, for the most part, keeps his mouth closed. He lets real people tell their stories. And many of them are heart-breaking and outrageous, the kind of stories that make you want to stomp out of the theaters and march on Washington.

The debate on health care is a complex one, but Moore,with even doses of humor and anger, boils it down to one simple question: Why can't arguably the greatest country in the world do a better job of providing health care?

It's a good question. What is Moore's answer? Well, it seems to be that we should be more like Canada, France, Britain and other countries that provide free health care.

But of course, that health care isn't exactly free. The health care is paid for through much higher taxes.

And I suspect that things aren't as tranquil as Moore makes it appear in the movie. He doesn't really explore some of the problems those health care systems have. He gives the impression of a utopia in many of those places, and I doubt that's the case.

What you can't argue with and what Moore makes abundantly clear is that the health-care system in the United States is broken. Nearly 50 million Americans have no health insurance, and the ones who do have to go through a maze of complicated rules about what can be covered and what can't be covered. Employers are increasing co-pays, meaning people are having to pay more for their health care out of their own pockets. And lord help you if you happen to have a pre-existing condition or even the sympton of one that you forget to tell your health insurance about.

There has to be a better way, and while you can quibble with Moore on the cure, you can't dispute the diagnosis: the health-care system is just plain sick.

More Than Meets The Eye

When I was a kid and still believed in Santa Claus, I asked one year for a Transformer, one of those cool toys that turned from car to robot and back again. This was the 1980s, and I, like many other kids, was enthralled by Optimus Prime, Megatron and the whole Autobot/Decepticon drama.

I guess I was a good boy because that Christmas, my wish was granted. I had a small yellow sports car that doubled as a mean fighting robot.

More than 20 years later, Michael Bay, king of attention-span-shortening action movies such as Bad Boys, The Rock and Armageddon, brings us Transformers.

Sam, played by Shia Lebouf, is a nerdy kid trying to get the hot girl. He pays $4,000 for a rusty-looking Camaro that seems to love schlocky pop music. Boy, do his eyes pop wide open when he finds out that his car is actually an alien robot named Bumblebee.

And he has a few friends named Jazz, Ratchett and Ironhide. And let's not forget Mr. Massive Truck, otherwise known as Optimus Prime.

For those who didn't grow up on the Transformers, here's the deal. The Autobots and the Decepticons once lived on this planet far, far, way far away called Cybertron. Megatron, the baddie here, decided to be a real pain and cause all this war and suffering. Oh, and there's this Cube thing that could ruin a planet or two if it got in the wrong hands. Well, the Cube ends up on earth, and the Transformers follow.

Bay has never been an artsy director. He goes for the big bangs and the quick-cutting to pump things up, and sometimes it works and oftentimes, it gives the viewer a headache.

He does tone it down some, and Lebouf is just a likable actor who pulls off funny one-liners as he deals with a weird car and a beautiful girl all at the same time.

But for all the anticpation and anxiety Transformers have had about a live-action movie, this movie is simply okay. I wasn't blown away at all and I felt a bit of numbness from all the over-the-top action.

Plus, the dialogue that the Transformers are given is just atrocious. As a friend of mine pointed out, Optimus Prime wouldn't say "My bad," as he does at one point in the movie.

As I sat for the two-hour-plus movie, I kept wanting more than what I was seeing on the screen. Some magic, the kind of magic you can't get out of throwing CGI effects here and there.

This, unfortunately, comes close to the predictable, empty and way-too commercial summer blockbusters we've grown accustomed. Product-placement becomes more important than logical plot lines and character development.

And that's a shame. One of my favorite cartoons deserved better.

Yippee-ki-yay

John McClane was the tough-talking, authority-ignoring, pain-in-the-ass New Jersey cop with the estranged wife in 1988's Diehard, an action movie that sets the standards for all action movies that followed.

As played by Willis, McClane was just a regular guy, never one to be the hero, but who manned up and got the job done anyhow. He was no muscle-bound machine-like superhero like the ones Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Swartzneggar played. He was scared out of his mind and flawed and bloodied, a man caught in an impossible situation. Maybe we couldn't relate to all the bullets flying, but we could relate and root for McClane. He had soul.

And he still does, as evidenced by Live Free or Die Hard. Sequels, by and large, suck, never living up to the spirit of the original. But this one comes awfully close.

It helps that McClane's luck hasn't changed much. His marriage is over, he still clashes with authority, and he and his now-grown daughter don't quite get along.

He's back in New Jersey, spying on his daughter and her not-quite-respectful date, when he's called to pick up a hacker named Matthew Farrell, played by Justin Long. Before long, McClane is shooting and cursing as things blow up around him, and Farrell is running after him.

Turns out a former Homeland Security employer Thomas Gabriel is still upset that his warnings about security problems went ignored. All he got for his troubles was his reputation ripped to shreds. Best thing he can do, he figures, is shut down the country's whole electronic infrastructure, knocking out cell phones, traffic lights, computers, the whole nine yards.

McClane, of course, has to stop him, and he's the perfect guy. He hates cell phones.

Len Wiseman, director of those weird Underworld movies starring his wife, Kate Beckinsale, punches up the action with eye-popping action sequences, like the one where a car flies through the air and slices through a helicopter. And the nice thing is he doesn't use a lot of fancy CGI effects. This is old-school, and it's cool.

I wish the dialogue was better, but what's there is pretty good. Long is a likable actor and he gets plenty of funny lines. Willis, at 52, still makes a believable action star, even if all the action isn't quite believable (yeah, the thing about the car slicing through the helicopter. Don't think that would happen in real life).

But this is an action movie. You have to suspend disbelief and just go for the ride.

And Live Free or Die Hard is one of the best rides out this summer.

Mika Brzezinski of MNSBC rips Paris report

Okay, maybe poor Mika went a little overboard, all with paper shredding and playing with a lighter. But aren't we all just a little cazy over Paris. She spends three weeks in jail and we're outraged, just outraged, about her whining, her celebrity, her outrageous actions, her hard-to-believe repentence.
Who cares? We care because Paris entertains us, allows us to laugh at somebody else, to feel a bit superior. We snark and wonder how she could be so famous for essentially being dumb, blonde and rich. We snark and we're outraged at such a circumstance.
The truth is, however, that we made her who she is. We decided that we had to pay attention. So, really, are we outraged at her or at ourselves for playing a part in creating the Paris we so adore and abhor at the same time.

1408

I remember the first time I was truly scared. It was after watching The Exorcist II: The Heretic. Seeing all those locusts swirling around Linda Blair, while this eerie music played in the background, freaked me out. And though it may sound nonsensical, I somehow equated that music with the theme from Flashdance, the one that goes "She's a maniac, maniac..."
Years later, I've come to realize what everyone else knew: The Exorcist II: The Heretic was awful and stupid and could only make sense if you were drunk, really drunk.
It takes much to scare me or freak me out. See, I get a thrill out of watching gorefests and get a kick out of a nice horror flick.
But not too many movies these days leave you with the creepy chill in your bones after you walk out of the theater.
Then there's 1408, a crisply-told tale of sheer terror. Based on a Stephen King short story, the movie tells the story of Mike Enslin, a debunker of ghost tales who recently lost his daughter. He gets a post card about 1408, a room at The Dublin, a hotel in New York. He goes to check it out, despite the protests of the general manager, played ably by Samuel L. Jackson.
Enslin, played by John Cusack, is a morose, sarcastic fellow, not given to easy scares. But then the alarm clock starts ticking off 60 minutes, and his hand gets slammed by the window, and he starts seeing ghostly figures jump out of the window.
Pretty soon, his skepticism dissipates and is replaced by screams and crying and just plain panic.
Mikael Hafstrom, who directed the sleazy and forgettable Derailed, keeps the scares coming, all the while mixing in the backstory of Enslin's masked grief.
That's not difficult, considering Stephen King wrote the story. King has never neglected his characters, making them authentically human. You actually care whether they live or die.
The scares weren't get-under-the-seat kind of scares. They were the kind that sink in deep long after the movie is over.
I might just have to make sure that the next hotel I stay in doesn't have a 1408. You never know.

Killing Me Softly

Heather Graham. Joseph Fiennes. How could you go wrong?

Really wrong, as I found out when I watched Killing Me Softly. It is a shame but sometimes good actors find themselves in horrid movies.

In this one, Graham plays a young American working as a website designer in London. She has a good life with a boyfriend who adores her. But apparently he doesn't adore her enough, for after one look at Adam, a celebrity mountain climber played by Fiennes, she's at his pad having wild, furious and freakish sex with the guy. And she can't get enough, spending her lunch break with Adam.

At times, you think this is trying for the depth of Unfaithful, a much-better movie starring Diane Lane as a woman who has a torrid affair with a stranger. Really, this is just an excuse to see Graham naked a bunch of times.

Then the movie starts becoming a male version of Fatal Attraction, with Fiennes as the obsessed lover.

Luckily, no rabbits are cooked.

They might as well have been, as silly as this movie becomes. And of course, there's a maddeningly nutjob of a twist at the end involving family secrets.

By this time, even with two good actors, you just throw up your hands. What a waste of talent.

Bug

Ashley Judd is one fearless actress.

That's the only good thing that comes out of Bug, a nutty, conspiracy-obsessed wack-job of a movie directed by William Friedkin, whose last hit was the horrific The Exorcist more than 30 years ago.

Bug is about bugs. But it's not a horror movie. This is more of a pschological study of two lovebirds driven to pure madness.

Judd plays Agnes, a waitress at a lesbian bar in town who has been literally beat down by life. Her son disappeared almost 10 years ago, and her ex-husband, played by Harry Connick Jr., terrorizes her. Agnes numbs her pain with booze and cocaine in a seedy motel room.

A bright spot of hope comes in the form of Peter, played by Michael Shannon, a quiet, unassuming man introduced to her by one of her friends.

Agnes and Peter inexplicably become lovers, and soon after, Peter reveals himself to be certifiably looney, a victim of nonsensical conspiracy theories about the government implanting bugs, aphids to be exact, in his bloodstream.

Agnes, so desperate to be loved, believes him and gets sucked into Peter's paranoia, eventually covering her motel room in alumninum foil and scratching her skin bloody.

Believe it or not, this mess of a movie was based on a play by Tracy Letts. Hopefully, this plays better on the stage because on the screen, the plot falls flat.

As Agnes and Peter dive deeper into madness, the movie becomes laughable. This is a love story, strange as it may seem.

But we have no room for compassion here. Peter spins convoluted conspiracy theories so unhinged that we stop caring about what he's trying to say. And we stop caring why Agnes is stupid enough to fall for his raving, bug-eyed (sorry, couldn't resist) rants.

The only saving grace in this movie is Ashley Judd. She strips herself naked, both literally and emotionally. She is Agnes, desperately in love with a nutcase. And you believe that love, no matter how illogical it is, no matter what depraved depths her love goes.

It is a courageous move for Judd, an actress who has shown in most of her roles an intelligence and a willingness to just go there.

But a performance can't save this movie. It is too weird, too wacky, too freaky, to even care when the credits roll.

28 Weeks Later

28 Weeks Later, the sequel to 28 Days Later, is just as horrific as the first, full of red-eyed raging zombies spewing blood and chomping on human flesh. Exactly what you expect from a zombie movie, right?

And so much more.

In the tradition of George Romero, this film is really a documentation of what happens when a civilization devolves into madness, when powerful men lose all sense of proportion on how to use their power. Zombies aren't the ones we're frightened of. It's the humans.

The movie picks up 28 weeks after the first movie ended. The zombies have starved themsevles to death, and the rage virus seems to have gone away. A U.S.-led NATO team arrives in Britain and sets up a quarantine for the survivors.

Don, played by Robert Carlyle, is one of them. At the movie's adrenaline-pulsing beginning, Don turns out to be a coward, leaving behind his wife and others to die. He's soon reunited with his two children, who happened to have been out of the country when the rage virus broke out.

All seems good. But this is a zombie movie, so the mushy happy-moments turn into nasty, flesh-eating moments. The virus returns, and Don pays for his cowardice in unexpected ways.

In what some might liken as a commentary on the ongoing Iraq War, the military reacts to the virus outbreak in ways similar to dropping a bomb when a bullet would have sufficed.

There's havoc and chaos and lots of blood. Humans become targets. Right and wrong blur. And civilization collapse.

We are jump in our seats at those fast-moving zombies, and the shaky-camera technique is effective in putting us right where the action is, though it's a bit overused.

But the true terror is in seeing what happens when order vanishes and bullets become indiscriminate in whose skin they pierce.

This is about life not mattering as much anymore. It's about becoming numb to suffering because you're too busy saving your own neck. It's about what happens when violence begets violence and the room for compassion shrinks.

This is not a perfect movie. The first had more oomph. The characters felt more real, especially the one played by Cillian Murphy.

Yet, this, like the first one, while not terribly deep, leaves you with a chill in your bones that doesn't come just from the sight of really scary zombies. It comes from seeing man's inhumanity to his fellow man.

Spiderman 3

Sequels are tricky, particularly when you're talking about the second sequel in a blockbuster franchise such as Spiderman.

I mean, can there be any art to such a money machine? Well, Sam Raimi, who has helmed the first two Spidey adventures, seems to think so.

Here, in Spiderman 3, is a delicate balance between art and commerce, between heartwarming story and eyes-dazzling special effects.

At the heart of the last two Spiderman movies is Peter Parker, played by Tobey Mcguire. Parker is the nerdy kid in high school who got picked on all time. That is until he gets bit by a radioactive spider and starts climbing the walls and swinging in skin-tight suits. The first film captured how a scrawny little kid becomes a hero.

The second film was how he balanced being Spidey and being Petey. And this latest film, well, it's all about Parker growing up and becoming a man.

When the film starts, Peter has it good. He has the girl, Mary Jane Watson, played by Kirsten Dunst. He has a good job and everyone loves Spidey. He has swagger. He's confident.

Of course, not everyone likes Spidey, including his former best friend, Harry Osborne, who believes Peter killed his father, i.e. the Green Goblin. And there's Venom and Sandman. Plus, there's Peter, who becomes his worst enemy after some icky black stuff gets on him and brings out his aggressive, jerky side.

As with most sequels, the special effects are bigger and better than ever, but Raimi makes sure things don't go overboard. Raimi also is juggling a lot of balls in the air, and unfortunately, the movie suffers a bit for it.

Venom, Sandman, the Green Goblin -- there's too many villains. It would be nice to have Spidey fight just one villain, as he did in Spiderman 2, with Doc Ock.

No, he has to fight three. And he has to battle himself.

Somehow, though, Raimi manages to keep reign over things for most of the movie, and the humanity of Peter Parker isn't ignored in the grand sweep of the movie. You feel his struggle. You root for Peter and Mary Jane to work things out. See, this movie is all about forgiveness and redemption and finding the hero in yourself.

It's just prettied up by all the fancy action sequences and web-swinging. There's a story here and not just a thin plot disguised by cool special effects.

Even at more than two hours, the movie breezes by almost effortlessly. My only advice to Raimi is for him to resist the temptation to make another sequel.

Just ignore that little black substance in Hollywood that's called greed.

Grindhouse

I wanted to see it again.

That's what I thought immediately after seeing Grindhouse, a three-hour ode to gushing blood, gratuitous nudity and eye-popping action. Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino co-directed.

They wanted to give homage to the movies they grew up watching, those double-features that circulated through theaters so much that the film was scratchy and reels of the film, the parts that contained much of the sex, ended up missing.

Rodriguez directs Planet Terror, a silly rambunctious romp about zombies and a hot go-go dancer, played by the sexy Rose McGowan, with a machine gun for a leg. Freddy Rodriguez is the gun-slinging hero, El Wray. And from the first frame to the last, the screen is splashed with either zombies chewing on flesh or our heroes blasting them away with bloody gusto. This movie is not for the faint of heart.

It's a virtual rollercoaster ride of rollicking action where logic, plot and dialogue matter little. This is simply pure stupid fun.

And it sets everything up for Quentin Tarantino's feature, Death Proof. Kurt Russell is Stuntman Mike (yes, he's a stuntman), a psychotic who has death-proofed his car, meaning he can crash into anything and won't get killed. The people he rams his car into aren't so lucky. Nor are the people who are unfortunate to ride with him.

As in all Tarantino movies, there's a lot of talk. Lots of talk between women, very strong and sexual women who don't take crap from anyone.

One thing Tarantino has always prided himself on is his ability to write dialogue. He has reason to pride himself. Anyone who has seen Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs or Jackie Brown knows that the best part of those films is the cool interaction between characters. He uses dialogue as a way to reveal character and just to have people say cool things. The characters become, in a sense, real.

And he's just flat-out funny.

Lucky for us that the dialogue is also leading somewhere. And that somewhere happens to be out on the road for one of the most thrilling car chases of all time. Tracie Thoms, alone, is worth seeing this movie. She gets the best lines. And she plays a far-different character than the last time we saw her on the big screen, as the lawyer in the movie adaptation of the play, Rent.

This time, she's balls-to-the-walls tough.

Russell is good as well, cool and smooth, giving a performance reminiscent of his infamous Snake Plissken role in Escape from New York.

And the ending was the most satisfying one I have seen in quite a long time. I walked out of the theater pumped. It was a true movie experience, the kind any action junkie craves.

I wanted to see it again.

Pride

You have seen this before, dozens of times before. It is a well-worn movie formula, this tale of young knuckleheads whipped into shape by a hard-driving but caring coach. You know the story so well you can almost see that slow-motion climax when the struggling basketball/football/whatever sport you want team comes from behind and wins the championship.
Cheers go up, girlfriends hug their boyfriends and maybe, the coach sheds a tear. And then the credits roll.
So when you go see Pride, expect nothing different. Except for the fact that the action happens in the water instead of out on the field.
What lulls you into this mostly by-the-books movie is Terrence Howard's portrayal of Jim Ellis, the real-life coach who started a swim team at a Pennsylvania recreation center that was about to be torn down.
Howard, as he has shown in so many other roles, has an undeniable charisma and presence on screen. He's hard to ignore.
As the movie starts, Ellis is struggling to find a job. His attempts to teach at a prep school fail, and he ends up cleaning up Marcus Foster Recreation Center, which the city has deemed unfit to remain open. Outside, young men shoot hoops, and when those hoops come down, Ellis invites them to swim in the pool inside.
Slowly, he transforms them from clowns to serious swimmers, and in the process, teaches them about responsibility and yes, pride.
All of this could conceivably become corny and cliched and downright mushy, if it weren't for Howard's performance. He brings some dark shadings to a character that could have easily been way too saintly. He shares a comfortable chemistry with Kimberly Elise, who shines as a councilwoman who initially supports tearing down the center.
And Bernie Mac brings a softness to his portrayal as the hard-edged maintenance man.
There's more depth in this movie than you would expect. And unlike other movies, the emotion doesn't seem contrived. The tears that come feel well-earned.
You have seen this before, but this time, you don't mind seeing it again.

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?

Oscar Night

Predictions are always tricky and none are trickier than figuring out who's going home with the golden statue.
Nominations are all over the place, and the picture with the most nominations, Dreamgirls, didn't even get a best picture nod.
Here are my predictions, though slightly ill-informed since I didn't see all of the movies nominated this year.
Some, of course, are easy. Helen Mirren is going to win best actress. Jennifer Hudson is going to win best supporting actress. And hardly anyone would argue that they don't deserve the accolades they've gotten.
I haven't seen The Queen but I have seen Helen Mirren's work in other movies and she is good. She embodies completely every role she takes on, and from I have heard, she does no different in The Queen.
Hudson was great as Effie White in Dreamgirls. She not only tackles that gut-busting anthem "And I Am Telling You," with the same power that Jennifer Holiday had when she sang it more than 20 years ago on Broadway. Hudson brings both a sassiness and vulnerablility to White's downward turn over the course of the movie.
Eddie Murphy will get best supporting actor. I wasn't blown away by his performance but he did bring a pathos to James "Thunder" Early that went beyond a simplistic James Brown impersonation. He dug deep. Let's hope Oscar voters forgive him for the literally bloated Norbit that just came out.
As for best actor, some say Peter O'Toole, giving him the award he should have gotten years ago. But I'll say Forest Whitaker. He captured all the complexities of Ugandan dictator Idi Amin. Whitaker was able to create a full-drawn character and make him breathe and seem real. Any other actor might have played over the top and turned Amin into a caricature. Whitaker makes him human.
The best picture and best director are harder to call this year. I love The Departed. Gritty with a twisted sense of humor. It was Martin Scorsese at his best and he deserves to win best director.
I'm predicting Babel will win best picture. Sad to say that I haven't seen Babel nor Clint Eastwood's Letters from Iwo Jima. But I'd bet on Babel -- essentially this year's Crash.
And Mr. Dirty Harry, a fine director, has certainly by this time won enough awards, as grand achievement as his two movies about World War II was.
Well, there you go. Love 'em or leave 'em, those are my picks.

Daddy's Little Girls

There's no secret to Tyler Perry's success. His formula is simple, and people who go see his films know what to expect: Broad comedy, gut-wrenching drama and gospel-soaked happy endings.
His latest film, Daddy's Little Girls, is no different.
Idris Elba, best known for his role as Stringer Bell in The Wire, plays Monte, a mechanic struggling to fulfill his dreams and raise his three daughters.
It's not long before his path crosses that of Julia, played by the oh-so fine Gabrielle Union, who is a high-powered, ambitious attorney. She works hard and is frustrated with the fact that she can't seem to find a good man.
Monte becomes her driver, and their relationship, as typical in most romantic comedies, has a really rough beginning. But soon, Julia finds herself pulled into Monte's increasing drama with Jennifer, his children's mother, an unbelievably cruel witch played by Tasha Smith. And before you know, Monte is in family court fighting for custody with Julia as his pro-bono attorney.
Jennifer wants full custody of the children with her drug-dealer boyfriend, Joseph.
In Tyler Perry's world, the good people are really good and the bad people are really, truly evil. But Perry isn't necessarily interested in sophisticated art. He wants to entertain.
And in that, he is a true genius.
Union and Elba have a nice chemistry and bring depth to characters that might have been tired cliches with less-talented actors. Louis Gossett Jr. also elevates often trite material as Willie, the owner of the auto shop where Monte works.
The performances are so good you almost can look past the many script problems the film has. Only after you leave the theater do you start poking the large plot holes in the script. Here's just one example: Julia finds out a secret about Monte's past that proves critical in the custody battle. Yet, if Julia is Monte's attorney, surely, she would have done enough homework on Monte's past that she wouldn't get blindsided in court.
And the happy ending, the one where Monte and Julia are reunited and Monte gets his kids back, just doesn't wash.
Yet, the movie works because it has heart and the message that Perry is trying to send is a good one. It's about taking back one's community; it's about having faith when things seem bleak; it's about changing the negative perceptions of black men.
It's about celebrating parents who do their very best to raise their children.
Perry does what he does best -- he makes you laugh and makes you think at the same time.

Notes on a Scandal

Friendship is a tricky thing, especially when one is based on manipulation, deceit and utter desperation. That's the case in Notes on a Scandal.
Judi Dench plays Barbara Covett, a sad, lonely teacher who writes pithy observations in her diary and pines for love and companionship.
Soon, she meets Sheba, played by Cate Blanchett, the new art teacher at the school. At first, Barbara finds her frumpy and snobby but eventually becomes consumed with infatuation.
Sheba is in a passionless marriage, stuck in the routine of taking care of her children, one of whom has down syndrome. She longs for more and she finds it in one of her promising art students, Steven Connelly.
She begins a torrid affair with Steven, and Barbara finds out and uses that information against Sheba.
Barbara discovers the very thing that will keep Sheba close: the promise of friendship tinged with the threat of revealing a secret. It is a tension that drives the movie, as Barbara digs her needy claws into every aspect of Sheba's life, demanding Sheba's attention at even the most inopportune times.
Dench is a masterful actress, a hard-to-ignore presence in every scene, playing Barbara as a woman obsessed only because she feels trapped by her loneliness.
And Blanchett does well in the awfully hard role of a woman who risks her marriage and her career to have sex with a teenager. Yet, Blanchett makes Sheba utterly human, and you see the desperation and sadness she has that her life hasn't turned out quite the way she would have dreamed.
The chemistry between Dench and Blanchett is electric in every scene, and it is that electricity that keeps the audience invested in the movie, even when things go a little over the top at the end.
The word that kept coming to mind to describe this movie is delicious. Yummy. Delectable. The movie isn't all that deep. Instead, it is a sweet, sweet treat, down to the very last taste.

The Last King of Scotland

Idi Amin was a monster, evil incarnate, the Ugandan ruler responsible for the deaths of 300,000 of his own people during his horrific reign in the 1970s.
Amin is also human. That humanity oozes out of the powerful performance of Golden Globe winner Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland.
The movie, based on the novel of the same name, centers on the odd relationship between Amin and Dr. Nicholas Garrigan, a Scot who arrives in Uganda looking for adventure.
He gets more than what he bargains for when Amin, after a chance encounter, hires Garrigan as his personal doctor.
As played by Whitaker, Amin swings from childlike charm to paranoid delusion. He is a man who sees enemies all around and embraces Garrigan as one of the few he can trust.
Garrigan finds himself lulled into the heady early days of Amin's regime, and we experience with him what it must have felt like to see the optimism and joy found in an independent African nation.
But slowly, the veil falls away, and Garrigan begins to see the cracks in Amin's empire and the bloody mess of Amin's madness.
Whitaker grabs hold of all the complexities that made up Amin's psyche. He scares and fascinates at the same time.
James McAvoy's portrayal of Garrigan is good, showing a naive, reckless young man blinded by the pleasures of being close to such power.
But this is Whitaker's movie, a terrifying tour-de-force full of heart. Never has evil looked so good.

Freedom Writers

I rolled my eyes the first time I saw the preview for Freedom Writers, the new movie starring Hilary Swank.
This is just a retread of Dangerous Minds, which starred Michelle Pfieffer and featured that song by Coolio that jacked a sample from Stevie Wonder, I thought. Oh, god, must we once again see another movie about some white saint of a teacher who goes into the inner-city and saves all the poor black, Latino and Asian kids.
But this movie, though predictable, does manage to avoid many of the cliches and add some freshness to a tired concept.
The film takes place just after the L.A. riots in the 1990s. Swank is Erin Gruwell, an idealistic young teacher just starting out. She is put in charge of one of the roughest group of students at the school. On her first day, she's dressed in a red dress with pearls, a look that doesn't impress the students.
Time, however, changes everything, and soon, she fully engages the students by making them write journals about their experiences.
Through the journals, we hear the students' voices. We get to know them beyond the simple stereotypes often thrashed about in such movies. They become fully-realized human beings.
That gives the movie depth. Not much depth but some is better than nothing.
And that depth helps propel the movie through the predictability that still creeps in, the will-she-leave-or-won't-she-leave theatrics in the last half of the movie.
April Lee Hernandez, who plays Eva, gives a heart-wrenching performance as a student in a gang who must make a choice, one that may alienate her from her family. She alone makes the movie worth watching.
Swank thankfully portrays Erin as a complex human being. Her incredible dedication to her students hurts her marriage. She has a wonderful scene with Patrick Dempsy (otherwise known as Dr. McDreamy) as her husband. It feels real and raw and helps cut away all the saintliness of Swank's character.
So yes, this is like Dangerous Minds, but in so many ways, it isn't.