Who’s Going To Star In Quentin Tarantino’s Black Western? Shadow and Act | Cinema of the African Diaspora

God, I would do anything to be cast in this. As far as who should be cast as Django, my top choice is Anthony Mackie. He's the right age for what I imagine this movie is going for, and a part like this would make him a household name.

Popcorn Fiction.com: Better Than Hollywood

Ever since I was a child, I've read books as though they were movies in my head.  Meaning, I cast them, imagine the cinematography, figure out which angle each shot would be at, line delivery for each actor, etc.  About 6 months ago, I subscribed to Popcorn Fiction, a website that publishes short stories written by the site editor's fellow Hollywood screenwriters.  Since a lot of the stories are written like movies (and are the proper length of a movie, unlike the novels that I usually have to turn into a cable miniseries or short-run TV show), my reading process is made much easier.

I think that without the pressure of trying to get a story turned into a movie, a lot of these writers have revamped their creative juices, because so many of these stores are the types of original ideas that I hope get turned into movies, instead of the refried crap that Hollywood has been churning out lately.

The most recent one, "DMT" by Leslie Bohem, is one of my favorites.  I might love this one, "The Lacerations" by Nick Antosca, slightly more, however.

Documentary: "Food Matters"

A "New" Approach to Health from Jamie Simko on Vimeo.

Spike Lee's Sequel to "When the Levees Broke" Finished

If God is Willing and the Creek Don't Rise is the title of Spike Lee's sequel to When the Levees Broke, which is probably my favorite documentary ever.  According to Shadow and Act it should debut late in the summer (I would imagine sometime in August), presumably on HBO.  There are some gorgeous pics on this local photographer's blog, where he states:

Spike vowed to do a follow-up to the story five years after the disaster, and true to his word, he and his crew have spent the last couple of months filming around the Gulf Coast, interviewing displaced New Orleanians as well as those who have returned home, following the Saints’ victory march to the Super Bowl and the resultant high that the city is still coasting on…He has also probed into the rise of the charter school movement in New Orleans and the state of the reconstruction efforts in the Lower Ninth Ward and elsewhere.

That's exactly what I would have wanted a 5 years later follow up to be about.  I can't wait!

Spill.com Review of "Daybreakers"

I said that I was looking forward to this, and here's a review of it by the guys at Spill.com.


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Spill.com Review of "Sherlock Holmes"

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When I was a teenager I had a massive crush on Robert Downey Jr.  Uh, I guess I have a thing for good looking, funny, completely fucked up men.

Documentary Short - "A Day Without Mines"

This is a short film that I found on Shadow and Act. It's about the beginnings of an organization that's trying to take children in Sierra Leone out of the diamond mines and into the classrooms.

Spill.com Review of "Avatar"

Hmmm. I wasn't really interested in seeing this, but I might check out a matinee. I find it interesting that if you look at the movies that Hollywood makes, you get the obvious message that colonialism is bad. The general populace absorbs and agrees with it. Yet, it's happening right now and no one will say it's bad until 40 years from now.


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Tomorrow!

I did not know that this was coming out tomorrow. Busy weekend shaping up...
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'Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans' wins over New Orleans Film Festival crowd | New Orleans Movies - - NOLA.com

I got to see this on Saturday, and this movie is crazy. I thought some of the fantasy sequences mentioned in this article were a little too long, but it definitely entertained, and I'll be adding some of Herzog's other films to my queue.

http://www.nola.com/movies/index.ssf/2009/10/bad_lieutenant.html
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Shadow and Act - Tyler Perry Announces "Dream Cast" for "For Colored Girls..."

I have no idea why it took me so long to post this.  It bugs me, for many reasons, that Tyler Perry is adapting and directing this film.  He may think that women are the most awesomest awesome ever, but he doesn't understand us, as evidenced in pretty much all of his films.  Also, Hollywood?   I get that he's the only Black director making you money right now, but that's because you only fund bullshit done by has-been comedians.  There are more.  Find them.  Fund them.  Please?

Breaking! Tyler Perry Announces “Dream Cast” For Adaptation Of “For Colored Girls…” & Talks About Film’s Content!

Anyway, this list of his dream cast just highlights his hackary.  This list is basically a combination of some extremely talented actresses, a few prominent older women who may or may not have acting experience, Halle Berry (because she's the most famous, prettiest Black woman ever, right?), and three famous singers who have very little acting experience.  Why not look for a few unknowns to boost to stardom?  His movies tend to be such spectacles, just chock full of every Black name he can find, and more and more often he's casting singers in parts that could be played by actresses who have honed their talents for years, if not decades.

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New Orleans Film Festival - I Can Barely Contain Myself

I'm excited!  How excited?  So excited that I went to the website and made a calender of all of the movies that I want to see.

So excited that I figured out how to take a screenshot just so I could show you the schedule, since the calender isn't embeddable (hint hint, NOFF).  So damn excited that I'm volunteering for 6 shifts so I can get 6 free movie passes (and other goodies), because while I do actually have the money this year to enjoy the movies that I want to see the most, why the hell not see a bunch for free?  Whoooo!!!

News Briefs: Target Takes Food Stamps, A SDT Star is Born, 1 Day a Week Trash Pick-up, Sweet Valley High Movie, FEMA Trailer Suit Loss

Target is now accepting food stamps. Finally. You know, seeing as they are Walmart's biggest competitor, you'd think that the second Walmart started accepting food stamps, they would have done the same.

Sidney D. Torres and his business will star in a new reality show on TLC based around SDT, him, and his family.   Well, at least TLC does realer reality than, say, VH1.

Stacey Head thinks that twice-a-week trash pick-up is a luxury that New Orleans can't afford.  Um, I'm pretty sure that everywhere else that I've lived has had twice-a-week pick-up, and I don't really see how it is a luxury.  This city already has a critter problem, and in some neighborhoods it appears that twice-a-week pick-up is not often enough, so I really hope that this is not a suggestion that gains traction.  If it were easier (or free) to recycle then yeah; now that I've started recycling I only have to take my trash out once-a-week.  But there are people less fortunate than I who can't even afford $10 a month - or have way too many family members to be able to keep their recycling for two weeks at a time.

In movie news that hearkens back my days as an angry teenager (that only read about happy teenagers), Diablo Cody will be adapting the Sweet Valley High book series for the big screen.  I'm never a fan of anything that is too popular, so I'm a little annoyed that Ms. Cody is the hip new writer that everyone wants to write or adapt x y and z, but she may be able to take the saccharine out of SVH for today's more cynical audiences.  I never made it through the whole series, but I recall my favorite plotline being the evil twins that looked exactly like blond-haired, blue-eyed Elizabeth and Jessica except they had gray eyes and black hair.  Yeah, I'd like SVH to be a less "High School Musical", more Heathers.

And the first FEMA trailer lawsuit has been lost.  I wonder if it would have been better to choose a case a little more cut and dry.  I mean, how do you prove that your kid's asthma got worse due to the trailer, instead of naturally?  I know there must be people out there who were perfectly healthy before moving into the FEMA trailers, and got extremely sick afterwards. 

News Briefs: Crumbling Levees in Algiers, True Blood Beverage, Free Amazon Downloads, Racism in Schools, Police Monitor Resigns, Trailer Trials Begin

The levee in Algiers is crumbling, but the Army Corps of Engineers is saying that this is totally not a problem.

B-positive for me, please.

Free music!!!!!!!  Get it while you can!

NOLA Film Fest Line-up.  They're showing Precious!  Can't wait, and I'll actually have money this year.

How should teachers discuss racist attitudes towards each other and students?

I didn't even know about this, and already this dude's resigning.

First FEMA trailer trial is about to begin.

I think most of these links came from New Orleans Ladder.  I keep forgetting to note where this info comes from, if it's not something I discovered myself.  That's what happens when you leave a hundred tabs open for several days in Firefox, you end up with no idea where any of it came from.

News Briefs: Treme Writers Signing, Netflix Streams Oz, Campus Rape Crisis, Modern Slavery in New Orleans, Vampire Film Festival

Oooh, oooh, oooh!  Some of the writers of Treme are doing a book signing at Octavia Books next Wednesday at 6pm.  I'll definitely be there, rain or shine.

On October 3rd, Netflix will stream The Wizard of Oz for free for everyone, including those without Netflix accounts.

This great article is about how colleges need to greatly improve how they deal with rape on campus, because at this point it's a crisis and how the onus is always put on young women to behave perfectly so they don't "get themselves raped".  I never heard about anyone getting raped on campus in my 4 years at Cornell, but I'm sure that hundreds were at a school that big with a high female population.  It's all swept under the rug...

When I was an organizer my organization spoke to a lot of immigrant workers who'd been lured to New Orleans with promises of big money, only to be treated like slaves; working long hours with little or no pay, their work visas being sold from one company to another when their work was finished at the first one, etc.  This article is a good summary of what was going on.  Now that there is less destructive and more constructive work going on here, I think many of them have been able to escape and work as day laborers.  But who knows about all of them?

The organization that I'm working for, The Phoenix of New Orleans, is collaborating with the Vampire Film Festival's first voyage in New Orleans, the perfect city for it.  It's really coming together, I'm pretty excited about it.

Trailer-Maafa 21

Trailer-Maafa 21

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News Briefs: Mercy Killings, Motivated Reasoning, The Cleansing of New Orleans, Katrina Anniversary Events, Bad Flood Pumps, Bad Plastics, Gulf Restoration Task Force, Mayor Odds, Katrina's Dead, Truth About Katrina, Montgomery Film Festival

This article talks about the lessons that need to be learned from the mercy killings that took place in the days just after Katrina.

Motivated reasoning is to blame for why some morons people believe whatever the people in the TV tell them.

Some douchebaggery on how Katrina "cleansed New Orleans" of the human parasites, i.e. Black people, from some right-wing asshole I've never heard of.

More Katrina Anniversary events.

Surprise, surprise, the flood pumps are not reliable.

Check the plastics in your fridge, ASAP.

Obama is creating a Gulf Restoration Task Force to deal with wetlands erosion.

More analysis of the upcoming 2010 Mayoral Election.

This article talks about a study of the deaths during Katrina.  This one is another death index, that takes into account reasons other than the immediate Hurricane that killed people.  I met a lot of people who were getting  sick from the stress and depression of living after Katrina.

This article is an older one that lays out what really happened during Katrina.

If I had known about this, I would've gone.

News Briefs: Theatre Overhaul at Canal Place, Green Goddess, Katrina Anniversary Events, Black Dynamite

In two weeks, Landmark Theaters will no longer be housed at Canal Place.  It'll be replaced by Southern Theaters, which will start major renovations shortly.

A new restaurant, The Green Goddess, has opened up at 307 Exchange Alley in the French Quarter.  I downloaded their lunch and dinner menus and am curious about how a lot of the foods taste.  I'll definitely check it out and report my findings!

Here's a list of some of the events going on for the 4th anniversary of Katrina.

In movie news, Black Dynamite is finally getting a fall release after playing the festivals.   If I remember correctly, my second post here was about this movie.  Ooops, no, it was my third post.  Sony has taken the red band trailer off of YouTube, so here's the green band.

News Briefs: Louisiana Film Museum, NO-style Cooking School, DC Metro News, L9 and NO East Police Districts, Bill Now Cat 4, Free Katrina Doc

Opening September 1st, the Louisiana Film Museum will be located on the Riverwalk at Julia Street, in a section of the Southern Food and Beverage Museum.

This fall a New Orleans style cooking school will open in the Riverwalk Marketplace on Level C.

In news probably only important to me, the Metro in Washington DC will be expanding cell phone service by adding underground equipment so providers other than Verizon will get signals.  This service will start October 16th.  This seems a little unnecessary (do people get signals on the NY subways?), but it's a luxury I'll enjoy when I'm visiting my mom in the future.

I actually agree with Riley when he says that the Lower 9th Ward and New Orleans East need their own police districts.  Both are very isolated, and NO East is huge enough to be it's own city.

Hurricane Bill is a bad motherfucker, but he seems to be heading northward further into the Atlantic (um, sorry Bermuda).

There's a new Katrina documentary called "Survival, Strength, Starting Over" that will be screening for free tomorrow at Canal Place at 7pm and Sunday at Celebration Church in Arabi.

From The Black Snob: When is Black "Black" Redux

I didn't catch her first discussion of this topic, but I'm glad I read this one. This in particular stood out and made me think:

My mother used to tell me that some black people still don't realize that they are free. That was often the problem I ran into. I realized I was free to go wherever I wanted, live however I wanted and befriend whomever I wanted...Unfortunately, a lot of the people I met were still in the box. They were not thinking as free people. They still saw the world in places they could and could not go. I was told I couldn't trust my best friend because she was white. I was told my love of sushi was abnormal...

This has been my struggle my whole life. If you look at my profile pic, I'm clearly Black. But when I open my mouth my voice and manner of speech doesn't match what some people think a Black girl should sound like. My thing is, I don't believe in those boxes that a lot of Black people put themselves in. I don't talk like a white girl, I talk like someone who learned how to read when she was 4 and spent the next 20 years reading over 1,000 books and absorbing every bit of knowledge that she could comprehend.

And so I spent most of my K-12 life as an outsider with few friends, all of whom were also outsiders who were different in some way from what Black people were "supposed to be". It wasn't until college that I met other Black people like me, who had white friends and watched "white" movies and listened to "white" music and read books about "white" things, without thinking of these things as abnormal or traitorous because they weren't trying to be white, they were exorcising their freedom to do whatever the fuck they wanted to without it being analyzed. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely Black people out there who wish they were white and try to imitate, but you're not going to be able to tell who they are by looking at their Ipod or their Netflix queue.

I hate, hate, hate, being put in a box. As if it isn't bad enough that some white people put Blacks into stereotypical boxes, we do it to ourselves, too, and it's at the point where I think that it affects how young Black people mold their entire lives. Leave that shit behind in high school! We're free now, but we're still slaves in our own minds, and I think that it's killing us.

Some boxes I don't fit in:

I don't read urban lit because it's a terribly written glorification of a life that most are struggling to escape. Instead, I read damn near anything that sounds interesting, no matter who writes it, which is why I have 2 main Amazon wish lists that have more than 100 books each in them just waiting to be devoured.

I listen to an eclectic mix of music that includes a little bit of everything but instrumental music, because I need to be able to sing off-key to whatever I listen to, and I'm shying away from rap and hip hop because I'm less able to ignore it's hatred of Black women.

The high majority of movies that I watch are by white writers, directors, and feature white actors. This is mainly because most of the movies produced are like this, but also because, well, frankly, most of the Black movies that Hollywood chooses to produce and promote suck donkey balls. There are some indies, like A Good Day to be Black and Sexy and others that I plan to watch, and some classics that are queued up that I'll be reviewing, and the occasional wonder that comes out and no one sees like The Great Debators, but overall? Suckville. I'm sure the good stuff is the stuff we never see, but Black Hollywood needs to form a collective and make some good movies that aren't romantic comedies, because I hate romantic comedies, even if they involve pretty Black people. Also? Can't stand that Tyler Perry shit, and he's the only director consistently hiring Blacktors and Blacktresses every year.

I date inter (and intra) racially. I've always liked men of all races; with most people, it usually depends on the people they spend most of their day with. When I was in elementary and middle schools, both mostly Black and Latino, I liked mostly Black guys. High school was high majority white, so I had crushes on white guys (who didn't know I existed). College was a grab bag; a white partner in acting class, an Indian TA, a Argentinean cutie, several Black guys, a couple of other Latinos...basically men of all races may apply, and I'm likely to date someone who I'm working with or, if I manage to create some sort of social life, someone who I'm friends with. I think that a genuine connection is something that is hard to come by nowadays, so why should I ignore a possible connection with someone of a different race because of what others will think?

My thoughts on interracial friendships are the same. Last year I had the experience of forcing a friendship with a Black woman (Smokey) where there wasn't really an instant connection, because we were doing hard work together that would have been much easier if we were close. Even though I care for her and believe that we're friends now, it wasn't real then for either of us. We don't have a lot in common. On the flip side, I started working with a white woman my age a couple of months ago and there was an instant friendship connection; when I start running my mouth about all sorts of random stuff (Like race! Without banging my head against a wall!), it means that I like you. Friend!

Basically, my goal in life is to die happy with the life that I've led. Not satisfied. I mean I'm-so-happy-take-me-Lord-there's-nothing-more-for-me-to-do-on-this-Earth happy. My own mother hasn't been able to keep me from making decisions that I think will lead to this happiness, so nobody's close minded box is going to keep me from it either.