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"APOCALYPTO" -- MEL GIBSON GIVES "LETHAL WEAPON" AND "MAD MAX" TREATMENT TO ENLIVEN PRE-COLUMBIAN MAYAN SOCIETY HISTORY ADVENTURE STORY

JAMES BROWN'S FILM LINKS REMEMBERED ON HIS PASSING

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The Word NetPaper>: A Collection of News Articles, Photos, Travelogs, Reviews, and Social Commentary

-- Photos of Far Flung Trips

>"BEEN THERE, DONE THAT": More Extensive Articles From My Worldwide Escapades to Egypt/Kemet; Greece; Jordan; Palestine, Israel; Italy; Cyprus...and the Extreme Walking "ONE MAN MARCHES"

"THE WORD NetPaper's 511 & OUT & ABOUT":Features, Restaurant Critiques & The Like From Forays About Brew Town

ADVENTURES OF THE TRAVEL GRIOT!
More Exotic Travels and Tales (With Pictures)From From Globe-spanning Escapades to Egypt/Kemet; Greece; Jordan; Palestine, Israel; Italy; Cyprus...
PICTURES INSIDE THE GIZEH PYRAMIDS, AND THE TOMB OF KHUFU!!!

There are links to all these places, including the Travel sites which are even now having the digitized pictures added.

CINEMA VIEWS with Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

walkernet@gmail.com/FONT>
Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA
United States

Cinema Views of Current Releases and News...


"IDLEWILD" -- OUTKAST DUO MOVIE PAYS HOMAGE IN 1930S PERIOD MUSICAL WHILE INJECTING MODERN TOUCHES

"X-MEN III THE LAST STAND" -- Halle, Jackman, Bill Duke in the Mother of All Battles

2006 Oscars: "CRASH" DERAILS "BROKEBACK MT'S" HARD RIDE TO GOLD

KING KONG

"LAST HOLIDAY" WITH DANA OWENS AND LL COOL J

"UNDERWORLD:EVOLUTION" SHOWS EVIDENCE OF INTELLIGENT DESIGN

Past Cinema Views:

RICHARD PRYOR PASSES

"GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN"

VIDEO VIEWS:

"HUSTLE & FLOW"

"REVENGE OF THE SITH"
Episode 3 of the Star Wars saga is a dark and pleasing wrap-up to George Lucas' vision of the descent of a good man into Evil, and the spirit of freedom

UPCOMING:

DENZEL FILM FEST, AND OTHER STARS AND THEMES...

IN MEMORIAM:

BROCK PETERS PASSES; WAS ADM. CARTWRIGHT IN "STAR TREK" FILMS;

MAKE THAT TWO TO BEAM UP:
JAMES MONTGOMERY "SCOTTY" PASSES

OTHER VIDEO VIEWS:

"xXx: State Of The Union" Is Delivered By Ice Cube and Samuel L.Jackson

"SAHARA" -- Penelope Cruz, Steve Zahn, and Matthew McConaughey go to the Motherland in search of Confederate gold?

"SIN CITY" -- Comic books weren't like this back in my youth! Frank Miller, Roberto Rodriguez and Quarentino's violent, sexy opus.

"BEAUTY SHOPPE" LADIES CUT UP PLENTY

IN NEW FILM FRANCHISE THAT'S BETTER THAN PARENT

"CONSTANTINE"

ACADEMY AWARDS OF 2005

"HITCH" -- WILL SMITH SAVES THE ROMANTIC COMEDY THIS TIME IN ENGAGING COMEDY WITH EVA MENDES AND KEVIN JAMES

"LACKAWANNA BLUES" ON HBO

PAST CINEMA VIEWS:

"I, ROBOT" -- WILL SMITH TAKES OVER THE SUMMER AND SAVES HUMANITY IN FILM VERSION OF ASIMOV'S CLASSIC

"CATWOMAN" -- HALLE BERRY LEAPS INTO ACTION FRANCHISE OF '60S PRE-FEMINIST ICON

"NEVER DIE ALONE" -- DMX STARS IN DONALD GOINES' TALE OF URBAN RETRIBUTION

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"TUPAC RESURRECTED"

"MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS" WRAPS UP TRILOGY RIGHT

"KILL BILL" IS QUARANTINO'S HOMAGE TO CHOP SOCKY ACTION GENRE

"OUT OF TIME" WITH DENZEL WASHINGTON, SANAA LATHAN, EVE MENDES

Cinema Views With Film Critic Kevin J. Walker

– 30 –

Cinema Views With Film Critic Kevin J. Walker

thewordnepaper @excite. Dotcom
walkernet @gmail dot com
http://cinemaviews.tripod.com

Godfather Of Soul Passes

"Soul Brother Number 1", "The Bad Busta from Augusta and "The King Of Soul," Also "The Hardest Working Man In Show Business" Mourned as James Brown Passes at Age 73;

Spike Lee BioPic film set for 2008

James Brown "The Godfather of Soul" has passed on, and there are many thoughts on what his legacy is and has meant. His influence in music is well known, but he also had an impact in film, including the present "Dreamgirls" where a character is based on him...

Kevin J. Walker, Netitor,
THE WORD NetPaper Online News Service
Milwaukee, WI USA
thewordnetpaper @excite dot com
walkernet@gmail.com

Milwaukee,Wis USA
FILM CRITIQUES
TRAVELS to Kemet, Middle East; Mediterranean: Athens, Greece; Rome
PHOTOS of Pyramids, Jerusalem, Hawai’i
WalkerWorld Science

WalkerWorld Politics Analysis Column
Local Milwaukee Politics

thewordnetpaper@excite dot com
Milwaukee,Wis USA

Brown went to an Atlanta hospital last weekend and was diagnosed with pneumonia where he died from complications of congestive heart failure. Funeral arrangements call for a public viewing at the Apollo theatre in New York's Harlem before internment in Augusta, Georgia where he grew up.

He was born James Joseph Brown Jr. in North Carolina although raised in Georgia, giving him one of his original nicknames as "The Bad Busta From Augusta" from an early boxing career. James Brown and the Famous Flames traveled the nation, playing in the "Chitlin Circuit" of Black owned and operated clubs throughout the Southland before their fame grew.

They became one of the many Black groups such as the Temptations, Spinners, Supremes and more with multigenerational crossover appeal, especially with the Nostalgia Music wave when Baby Boomers brought the music to the fore and in so doing brought Brown to more generations of youth.

He had become so famous that he could become a subject of parody like the late crooner Barry White whose visage appears through Robin Williams in Happy Feet" as the king penguin with the plastic six pack plastic binder around his neck. This only made others more interested in his music and showmanship.

Handing over the torch or sorts was seen in the joint appearance with Usher Raymond at the 2005 Grammy Awards, where the two danced alternatively. The NBC broadcast showed a clip and has a link at their archives of James Brown film clips.

Stories were told of his largesse in his many Milwaukee appearances. He carried a shoe shine box in his car when in the late 1950s he pulled up to one Black venue he was scheduled to play and saw a gaggle of young boys on the corner looking for shoes to shine.

"Here let me show you how to do it right," said Brown.

He shined THEIR shoes, while impressing messages of entrepreneurship to the young boys.

Seeing a group of youngsters gathered at the doors at a downtown venue and unable to get in, he ordered that they were to be let in for $1.00. Those who didn't have even that were to be let in for free.

BUSY SCHEDULE BY NECESSITY NOT CHOICE

The week he went into the hospital he had three appearances booked for the following week. This active schedule was not of his choosing. He wanted to sit back and enjoy the fruits of a long and successful career; he had millions; a personal jet; and homes in two states. But he also had several wives and many children. Tax bills, child support and wife payment problems called for increasing revenue streams and kept him on the road.

James Brown's stage antics were renown and imitated, mentioned by White TV anchors who evidently were acquainted with the material. This was such as the "Microphone Tango" he performed, holding the mike cord and tossing the head of the stand forward, then snatching it back, cradling the microphone while dropping to the floor on one knee, sweat pouring down his face.

There was one that was more dramatic, and even performed by White TV VJs:

The man kneels onstage, screaming pleadingly into the microphone while the backup singers harmonize:

"Please, please, please...
"..Don't go...
"...I love you so..."

"

A friend come out of the wings, and places a glittering cape over his shoulders while he leads him off the stage a broken man bent over in his grief, his hunched shoulders shuddering with his sobs as he and his friend slowly march off to the wing in time to the beat.

He rebels, throws the cape off, runs to the front of the stage and grabs the mike again, repeating the refrain. He breaks down again.

Another glittering cape of a different colour, again he is led off. This would be repeated a good four or five times. Everybody who'd seen it knew the routine, but like Shakespeare's plays some things retain their power over time and although we know the plot still enjoy seeing its execution.

Prince of Minnesota who at one we time worked in the James Brown Revue even incorporated many of the stage mannerisms into his own concert tours. Female vamps strut suggestively about, band members engage in their own antics while in front Prince holds court. He learned this "3 Ring Circus" technique from Brown.

Spin-off Brown groups from the James Brown Revue included The JBs who produced "Monorail," one of the early "Bus Stop" tunes, sort of Urban Square Dancing done without partners in a large group. The Horny Horns were sort of another spin-off who played with acts such as Bootsy Collins.

RAP MUSIC INFLUENCE

Brown's influence was vast, affecting not only his native R&B, but Rock And Roll, and even Rap Music. Estimates are that Brown is the most sampled performer in rap. Eric B and Rakim; Ice Cube; and NY DJ Cool Herc were among those who sampled his tunes.

His dance moves also had an impact. The Mash Potatoes and Camel Walk, which is sort of a forward Moon Walk was in his repertoire. There is an old audition tape of a young Michael Jackson doing his moves. Usher, MC Hammer and even Mick Jagger's stage moves were aped, along with his general looting of Black music.

There was a Dancing James Brown Doll, along with those Dancing Santas that one can buy in discount stores. Press a button and a dance tune issues forth, with Brown's 14 inch figurine moving in time to the beat. The rendition is accurate even down to the oversized belt buckles and the processed hair. Charles "Dapp" Wilson, the late Milwaukee community activist and Old School music and R & B booster, purchased a bunch of the dolls and passed them around the community.

SPOKE LEE JOINT OF BROWNS LIFE IN 2008

James Brown knew theatre and theatricality well and like many performers went at least partway into film. The death announcements weren't long issued before talk evolved of a film Biopic of Brown. But the producers of Hollywood were ahead and far beyond the talking stage. Spike Lee has been tapped to craft a film on Brown's life. Brian Glazer who produced "A Beautiful Mind" will be producing for Paramount Pictures.

Black talk radio was rife with who should be the star.

"It has to be somebody who can sing and dance," offered up one member of a panel on Milwaukee's 1290 WMCS-AM

"Jamie Foxx would be my choice..."

"I would think Leon of (Robert Townsend's) "The 5 Heartbeats"

"The actor has to be dark-skinned, too" concluded another.

Brown has had an appearance in films, both in presence and in spirit.

    * "BLUES BROTHERS" -- Many people think his first film foray was a small role in this John Belushi and Dan Ackroyd musical road trip of two R & B loving White private detectives trying to save their clients' property. Along the way they encounter Brown as the pastor of a Black church with truly rocking services who sings from the pulpit mike in hand while the choir wails away, and the rotund Joliet Jake turns handsprings down the aisle. The film was partially shot in Milwaukee (the freeway chase scene where the car goes off the unfinished bridge) and featured Aretha Franklin the Queen of Soul to James Brown's King.

    * ROCKY V - Brown performed "Livin' In America" during the 4th of July extravaganza between boxers Apollo Creed (modeled after Muhammed Ali) now Rocky Balboa's friend and trainer after two brutal fights in the first two movies; and Ivan Drago from the old Soviet Union. The Las Vegas spectacle is renown and replayed often, featuring Brown singing and his red, white and blue clad dancers all about as in one of his stage revues

    * "ROBOTS" -- Halle Berry and Ewan McGregor co-starred which had a recurring joke where a broken robot lost his voice box and encountered various other voice units along the way, including James Earl Jones' Darth Vader from "Star Wars." In the film's big dance finale after they'd won their freedom, the little robot leads off the big party with "Get Up Off Offa That Thing" and bending over the microphone stand James Brown-style, while all around his dancers and background singers cavort. To one side another robot dances the Robot!

    * "DREAMGIRLS" has Eddie Murphy's character James "Thunder" Early who is patterned after James brown during the era of his early stage revues with the singing style and processed hair. It is he who gives the Dreamgirls their first big break as backup singers

In fact it was this sort of three ring action onstage that Brown honed in the "Chitlin Circuit" that was later incorporated by Prince, who worked in Brown's operation. Rap groups have used the technique as well, with a stage full of sexy dancers and poseurs prancing about in and endless display of visual and auditory treats.

RACE-PROUD BROWN BOUGHT AND BANNED OWN MOVIE; PENNED "SAY IT LOUD -- BLACK & PROUD" BUT MARRIED WHITE WOMEN

While many people think Browns' first film foray was a small role in "Blues Brothers" that was about his second film. The first was such an embarrassment that Brown did what the family of The man played by Orson Wells' movie "Citizen Kane" weren't able to do.

In the late 1960s film, Brown played one of the millions of former Enslaved in the chaos of the Civil War and Emancipation. He was searching for his former master because he was unused and uncomfortable with this frightening new thing called "Freedom."

The racially proud Brown who would go on to record "Say It Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud" bought the film work prints and negatives so it would not be shown. Brown later went on to sample the Other White Meat, marrying White women and having court battles with several other women to join those of the government.

The woman who identified herself as Mrs. Brown was locked out of the mansion thereby providing fodder for the likes of Entertainment tonight and inside edition for weeks to come, alternating her with Anna Nicole Smith's battles for her own piece of a dead husband's estate.

ACTIVELY POLITICAL, SPENT ENTIRE WEEK ON MIKE DOUGLAS SHOW

James Brown was political, and in an unorthodox way. He was a Republican who visited the Nixon White House and worked to bring other African Descended into the GOP. He started the Black And Brown Trading Stamps in the late 1960s and brought them to Black communities all across the nation.

With the B&B stamp program as the sponsor, Brown bankrolled his own national radio show for Black stations which featured ground breaking subjects with incendiary hosts, who one time were unceremoniously flipped off the air when they discussed the Black Mafia and explored their legitimacy and acceptability. The microphone however was left on for a few seconds while the host and station management argued.

Brown spent a week on the Mike Douglas Show in the late 1960s. It was over a weeklong school holiday like Easter of Christmas so many of us were able to see it. He spoke of politics, having ownership of land, political and economic empowerment. To young people this was something new, and for a week we were schooled by an African Descended millionaire who stayed close to his people. It coloured our views of his movement and life passages.

James Brown made many songs, but below are some particular ones of note. If you think we omitted one or two that should have been listed, drop us a message at thewordnetpaper @excite dot com, or walkernet @ gmail.com

JAMES BROWN SONG LIST:

    Please, Please, Please
    Try Me
    Prisoner of Love
    Papa Got A Brand New Bag
    Man's World (This Is A)
    Sex Machine
    Super Bad
    Mother Popcorn
    I Feel Good (I Got You)
    Living In America
    Black And Proud (Say It Loud)
    Santa Go Straight To The Ghetto
    I Don't Want Nobody To Give Me Nothin'
    King Heroin


Kevin J. Walker, Netitor,
THE WORD NetPaper Online News Service
Milwaukee, WI USA
thewordnetpaper @excite dot com
walkernet@gmail.com

Milwaukee,Wis USA
FILM CRITIQUES
TRAVELS to Kemet, Middle East; Mediterranean: Athens, Greece; Rome
PHOTOS of Pyramids, Jerusalem, Hawai’i
WalkerWorld Science

WalkerWorld Politics Analysis Column
Local Milwaukee Politics

thewordnetpaper@excite dot com
Milwaukee,Wis USA

---------------------

Stage Views by Critic Kevin J. Walker

walkernet@gmail dot com

"Dreamgirls" The Original Stage Play is Fondly Remembered 25 Years Later

CONTACT INFO, LINKS>

Kevin J. Walker, Netitor,

THE WORD NetPaper Online News Service
Milwaukee, WI USA

walkernet@gmail dotcom or at
walkerworld_2000@ yahoo dot com

FILM CRITIQUES
TRAVELS to Kemet, Middle East; Mediterranean: Athens, Greece; Rome
PHOTOS of Pyramids, Jerusalem, Hawai’i
WalkerWorld Science

WalkerWorld Politics Analysis Column
Local Milwaukee Politics

thewordnetpaper@excite dot com
Milwaukee,Wis USA

"Dreamgirls" The Movie is finally on its way out, after a long tortuous road almost a quarter century when the hit play first astounded audiences and made stars of people like the original Deena Jones and Effie White.

The song "One Night Only" is a rousing production piece that is in the film, after the "Dreamgirls" success starts to take hold. It’s a toe-tapper and the editing of the scenes draws you in in a way that plays cannot their being in the present with an immediacy that cannot be matched by the detachment of film or video.

The troubles early Black audio entrepreneurs had in marketing their music outside of their traditional audience; getting played and paid; managing personal and interpersonal lives; touring; and having the right look such as Dark versus Light-Skinnedness are just a few more of the subjects covered in the play "Dreamgirls" some of which are sure to surface in the film version if it is to have any relevancy as well as entertaining.

Effie White, whose signature song with its mixture of rejection and stubborn/determined profound self-deception that brought normally reserved theatre audiences to their feet in a helpless outburst of joyful noise.

There are reports that in preview screenings the same thing is happening when the song is performed in the movie version which co-stars Jennifer Hudson, Beyoncé Knowles, Jamie Foxx, and Eddie Murphy.

I can still feel the electricity that went through the crowd as people were shushed by seatmates in the know when the rotund backup singer asks "Where's my dress? What happened to my locker?" and nobody will look her in the eyes…

And I am telling you, I am going to the movie when it comes out next week. How can I not, since I was one of the few, the so very very few who actually saw the original touring play back in its heyday?

I well remember the time I saw the touring stage show of "Dreamgirls" when it came to Chicago. Buses were full as we trekked down the 150 kilometres to the Windy City as part of the late Minnie Townsend's Travel Agency lunch/shopping/dinner theatre packages. My girlfriend Laura and I went on one of her trips.

We walked the streets of America's Second City we shopped – more like window peeked– along the Magnificent Mile, and dined at Shauer's restaurant, a Black-owned establishment with impeccable service that was formed from a building that once housed an old auto repair business. It was a testament to what was to later become the revitalization and recycling boom now taking place there and other rising Downtowns of Rustbelt cities that are being condo-ed from the docks to where the Black and Brown used to live.

This was all a buildup to the main show of course, the "Dreamgirls" stage play musical. It covered such topics as ambitious backstabbing friends and the cutthroat business of show business; the practice of palatable White acts "covering" Black tunes as they rode them onto commercial success, and more. Laura was impressed, as was I.

When the DVDs come out I can envision a "Ray", "What's Love Got To Do With It?," and "Deamgirls" triple bill for those home Movie Nights with the widescreen TVs. They cover similar territory and some of the time periods. I just hope the Process doesn't come back! Its bad enough seeing the Rev. Al Sharpton still running around with his antiquated 'Do, which is as bad as some of his political positions. But I digress.

The play by its nature had to compress time and hint at things, and it will be interesting to see how a movie with its different abilities and lesser limitations can expand and extend the original concept. One particularly striking special effect in the play was to illustrate Effie's commercial success.

She sings a song alone in a joint, dressed plainly. There is a small spotlight on her face, the rest of the stage is dark. When it widens she is now dressed in a spectacularly expensive sequined dress –courtesy of the quick black-garbed stagehands– and we infer Effie's now in a large venue such as the one we were in, back in the game, large and in charge. The audience responded as expected, and in so doing completed the effect for Effie.

It was a splendid use of theatre and psychology, for who among us doesn't root for the underdog, and those who succeed despite overwhelming odds, especially if they've been laid low by the machinations of others they once called friends?

Plays because of their immediacy have these limits on physical acts, but movies don't. Flashbacks, simultaneous acts and quick editing can greatly enhance a film version of a work, which is why so many films first started life as books. Lots more people have read the "Harry Potter" books, and sometimes creative juices flow the other way, with plays being made from movies and cartoons. This cross fertilization is all good.

"Dreamgirls" the Play tore up New York, shredded audiences and staid critics, and helped the idea that there were Black historical themes that didn't have to be watered down to reach a wide audience, i.e., ticket paying White Folks. Book authors, playwrights, and even talk show stars would eventually all benefit from the breakthrough.

The play was packed with music from start to finish, made easy because they were performers and recording people. This gets around that strange reaction from some of actors "breaking into song." As opposed to say, shooting energy beams out of their hands and eyeballs, or flying around busting concrete buildings in half or something?

Even in "Chicago" which broke the curse against modern musicals they had to have Roxie the Mankiller have her daydreams while in the women's lockup to excuse the musical numbers. "Idlewild" the rousing rappish period film about a Southern speakeasy starring Paula Patton from "Déjà Vu" and the Outkast duo used the dream or imaginary sequences when outside of the club. These are movies, people; the suspension of belief is central to the creative arts. Get over it, and just let them sing for the Goddesses' sakes.

The movie "Dreamgirls" might not have as much music because it goes necessarily in other directions, and they need to because of the many people who know of the original. Even in play form when the audience is in the hundreds of thousands even for a successful touring play.

From the clips the movie "Dreamgirls" covers more ground between the eager Diva/Starlet in training but reluctant to hurt her onetime singing pals; and the Dreamgirls' ambitious and duplicitous manager played by Eddie Murphy, who is being spoken of for an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a few months.

I wrote back when he did the cop drama "Metro" that Murphy showed his dramatic strengths when he played an alcoholic cop opposite the always good Michael Rappaport ("True Romance", "Higher Learning") as the straight-laced by the book Rookie paired with Murphy's hostage negotiator in the San Francisco PD.

But Hollywood as did the general movie going public seemed to prefer Murphy better in familiar comedic roles, so back he went to the "Nutty Professor", "Daddy Day Care" and "Haunted Mansion" movies that put buttes in the seats and bring home the bucks for the studios. Maybe its time for another "Another 48 Hours." Or "Beverly Hills Cop," or a combination of the two. I mean, now that there is a "Rocky 6" anything can happen, especially for a sequel preferring public.

Ross lived her life as a dream girl to be sure, and like Deena in the film rode into superstardom and went on to solo success and a star in films. Some roles were well received such as her first as the tragic Billy Holiday in "Lady Sings The Blues," with an equally acclaimed Richard Pryor in his first role. Both racked up later lesser roles in forgettable movies. But for Ross one was particularly ill-advised as the protagonist, and she had Pryor again as a co-star.

In a monumental miscasting Ross played a regrettable role as a grown school-marmish Harlem-dwelling Dorothy in the travesty of the movie made from "The Wiz" stage musical. It was instead notable for its other supporting characters such as Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow; Nipsey Russell as the Tin Man; and chock full of stars such as Pryor as the Wizard; and Quincy Jones as the player of a 100 foot long super-grand piano (with a transformed and then still fairly new World Trade Center with a inspiring semicircular multi storey bridge joining the two towers!).

But the true Golden Rule is Those Who Have The Gold Make The Rules. Berry Gordy the producer of The Wiz wanted his honey to be the lead, and that was that. But what else would we think of someone who would make sure his name would be listed first in film titles as in "Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon?"

It was crafted from the tale of the rise – and some would say fall – of the Supremes, one of the original Girl Groups who arose from the projects of Detroit and became part of the powerhouse that would become Berry Gordy's Motown records. Although the producers laughably made noises that it wasn't, everyone knew it was largely the story of what would become Diana Ross and the Supremes, and the ouster of Florence Ballard from the group, to be replaced by Cindy Birdsong.

I had the thinnest of connections to the Supremes/Dreamgirls story: In college my sister Cheryl Anita Walker of Oakland went out with Cindy Birdsong's brother when the two attended Howard University.

This is about as thin a connection as me being apparently the only one in Milwaukee who never saw Halle Berry when she came here with ex-husband the singer Eric Benet. If I shopped in the area malls more I probably would have seen Halle at least once, since reports are she was an enthusiastic high-end shopper. As for her philandering husband there's a picture of Eric Benet in dictionaries as the definition of "Stupid," and for "Guys Who Messed Up, Big Time." But I digress.

Sadly, Flo's personal story didn't reflect Effie's triumphant arc. She died as a single mother on welfare in the same Detroit projects the girls once escaped, traveling and giving concerts in Paris, London, and Rome. Diana Ross after much criticism paid for a college fund for Ballard's children. The nagging question is why didn't she throw a bone or two to her old chum while she was traipsing around European castles and jet-setting with her beaus? A few concert dates from a couple of phone calls would have meant the world to Ballard. This is why for many Ross is an ace villainess and without redemption, with a hot furnace waiting for her all her own.

Just in time to capitalize on "Dreamgirls" here comes Ross ready to drop another album, I mean CD, her first in years. Of course her daughter Traci Ellis Ross of TVs "Girlfriends" has gone onto her own success on the show by producer Kelsey Grammer's ("Frasier" ).

Mary Wells is still around, and she has her own story to tell of the Supremes era, but she has tried to cast her ownself in the public eye as the Effie character. This is so since unlike Flo Ballard, Wells actually had a longtime solo singing career along with the dozens of others riding the Nostalgia music wave of the 1960s and '70s, as aging baby boomers and Buppies relive the music of their teenage years.

Of course there were plans launched immediately during its theatrical run to make a Dreamgirls movie, and the failure should be an abject lesson in the perils of hubris and greed. None of the principals could agree and so nothing was done, and the years turned into decades. Creative teams dissolved, stars aged, musical tastes changed as even the venerable Movie Musical genre went into a generational hiatus.

Now they finally made a "Dreamgirls" film, with lovely songstress Beyoncé as the named star. Her historical connection to the Supremes/Dreamgirls story as being the powerhouse behind Destiny's Child before she herself jettisoned them for a more lucrative solo career springs immediately to mind.

Although Knowles is supposedly the star of the movie, as with the Doc Holliday character in the various incarnations of the Wyatt Earp movies, everybody knows that the second banana is the real star of those shows. Effie White and how she deals with the backstabbing of her show business compadres is what people remember even to this day. Beyoncé demonstrating a wisdom beyond her years knows this and has wisely and graciously gone with the flow.

"People would always ask me 'who is playing Effie, who's going to sing her song?'" and praising Hudson's performance.

When the Golden Globe nominations were announced ousted American Idol star Jennifer Hudson was one of the lucky ones; the movie received 5 in all.

The ever smiling, pleasant Chicago Homegirl and her positive family life is a welcome relief indeed from the 'Hood Rat attitude of actual Idol winner Fantasia Barrino. The semi-literate, dark-skinned proud Babymomma has now gone Blonde – as so many other Black female stars who go off the track in a discouraging display of racial self hatred.

There is of course a forum on the subject of fake Black blonde women such as Beyoncé, Mary J. Blige and even Lauryn Hill, who some once thought as someone somehow Deep and Intellectual; to demonstrate that the one time private school Buppie Preppie's miseducation of herself and others is ongoing. But I digress.

Sheryl Lee Ralph was the original Deena Jones, and she has gone on to appear in feature films and a couple of television shows. She was the estranged wife of island lawman Denzel Washington in "The Mighty Quinn," and in the film "To Sleep With Anger." On TV Ralph was on a New Age "Charlie's Angels"-ish techno spy operative action adventure show on NBC in the 1980s, scuba diving and blowing up things. Now she's on one of the innumerable crime investigative shows on network TV.

Jennifer Holliday was the original Effie, and was launched into a recording contract, but although she has become legendary as a singing diva from her performances did not parlay her fame into success as much as her compadres of the play. She has become largely forgotten to the point she doesn't even have a bit role or a cameo in the film, as by contrast Loretta Divine.

Divine was the third Dreamgirl who has had the most wide ranging success, especially her role in movies. Divine's size – not apparent in the original play as the posters can attest – has since become one of her several strengths, and the "Waiting to Exhale" star has gone on to make over a dozen films with a few playing sassy cops as in "Crash;" and from action dramas such as her Pig Feet Mary in Laurence Fishburne's "Hoodlum," to horror Teen Slasher films.

One reason there was early on an interest in making a film from the play is it had a positive theme, unlike "The Five Heartbeats" which hurt it.

"Why would I want to go see a movie about some Brothers makin' it then failing?" asked a Brotha about why despite his age group and interests he avoided the most excellent period film modeled after The Dells and directed by Robert Townsend ("Meteor Man").

He has a point. Why spend $8.00 and up per movie ticket, not counting concessions, parking and babysitting fees, to leave the house and voluntarily pay to see something over two hours that will bring you down? Some of us only have to stick our heads out of the window and look down the block to see negative stories.

Or as one youth succinctly said about a well-meaning Ghetto Film in the 1980s, "who wants to go to the movies and see Black people bein' Poor?"

Plays survive even today hundreds of thousands of years later because there is still nothing like a live production even in an era of multimedia; streaming foreign concerts over the global mind that is the evolving Internet, even into cellular phones and Hand-Helds. Plays can't be TiVo'd or rewound, there are no Do-Overs. And of course, what you see is what you get!

But plays harken back to our primeval and communitarian impulses, and is related to the reason why we still go and pay good money to sit outside in the cold or with sometimes boorish strangers to watch athletic games or movies when we could do so comfortably at home on large screen TVs.

– KJW

Kevin J. Walker, Netitor,
THE WORD NetPaper
Online News Service
Milwaukee, WI USA
walkernet@gmail.com

FILM CRITIQUES

TRAVELS to Kemet, Middle East; Mediterranean: Athens, Greece; Rome

PHOTOS of Pyramids, Jerusalem, Hawai’i

WalkerWorld Science

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Local Milwaukee Politics

thewordnetpaper@excite dot com
Milwaukee,Wis USA

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Cinema Views With Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

"Idlewild" launches OutKast Duo into Upper Level of Performer/Actors;

Musical Genre Invigorated With Modern Touches

"Idlewild" is a rousing, toe tapping and emotionally draining period film that follows the successful musical formula of "Let's Put On A Show!" combined with the message of Following Your Dream. Any reports of the demise of the musical in these days of "Chicago" others have been greatly exaggerated.

The movie was inspired by the real life Idlewild, Michigan enclave which was an island of creativity during the early years of the 20th century, although this one is transported from the Great Lakes Midwest to Georgia.

The northwest Michigan enclave, near Grand Rapids and Traverse City, wants you to kjow more about the place that inspired the film: The Real Idlewild

The film also broke the self-conscious prohibition of people breaking into song, which is no more ridiculous than gun battles with six shooters that fired off rounds like modern Niners, which the film also features.

The mortuary aspect was similar to the film "A Rage in Harlem" with Gregory Hines as the street savvy one and the bookish Forest Whitaker as a funeral parlor accountant who falls in with femme fatale Robin Givens and her luggage bag of pilfered gold.

"Cotton Comes to Harlem" of the Gravedigger Ed and Coffin Jones film series had production scenes that were akin to the energy and creativity of a people finally free to create, dance, write, or just enjoy life. The Harlem Renaissance was part of this freeing-up of formerly restricted energies.

[ Percy breaks out with his talent for a wider audience]

I became conscious of the acting skills of Antwan Patton, or Big Boi of the OutKast duo from the movie "ATL." I wasn't aware he was even in it, it being packed with so many other rapper-performer-actors. In that coming of age film of neighborhood skaters, their loves, and their last year of high school before going out into the world, Patton played a ghetto Thugpreneur whose illegal business threatens the future of the lead character's li'l brother.

He had an effortless style, and like many actors find playing villains more to their liking. Isaiah Washington before he became a medical heartthrob in TVs "Grey's Anatomy," was a notable villain in several movies; Christopher Walken too at one time actually was a cinema Good Guy. That was a long, long time ago!

Patton plays Rooster, a man with a foot in both sides of the law. He's a family man with a wife and four daughters who deals with bootleggers and gangsters as a regular pert of his business as a club owner of a nightclub cynically named Church.

[The flamboyant Rooster is played by Big Boi Antwon Patton of OutKast]

He is featured as the entertainer and club owner, but its fellow OutKast member Andre Benjamin who is the primary focus of the movie, and his romance with the chanteuse Angel Davenport, portrayed by the luminous Paula Patton.

Andre 3000 cut his teeth on the films "Four Brothers," and earlier as a trigger happy henchman for Cedric The Entertainer in the dreadful John Travolta "Get Shorty" sequel "Be Cool.

The Church is only a couple of levels above a Southern juke joint, with sawdust on the floor and patrons who aren't averse to throwing their bottles onstage as a form of expression. Percy moonlights at his childhood friend's club as the Piano Man, with almost crippling bouts of stage fright unless he's face down in his piano keys.

[The thuggish Trumpy puts the squeeze on Rooster's club operation]

"Get out there and play something!" says Sunshine Ace when Rooster is late for the nightly gig, declaring "ain't nobody getting' they money back!" Ving Rhames plays Spats, the benevolent dictator and crime kingpin. Paula Jai Parker again uses her booty --I mean beauty-- as the salacious and cheating girlfriend of the bar owner Sunshine Ace. Her scenes will be largely cut from the broadcast version!

Patton's resemblance to singer/songwriter and pianist Alicia Keys need not be overly remarked upon but it is there nevertheless. At first, I thought it was indeed the Grammy-winning artiste as they're readying Keys for a film career, now that they've got that nonsense out of her head about wanting to be known for her art and not her considerable good looks. She was going around wearing baggy clothes onstage, but even they couldn't hide all her goodies.

Keyes is going to play a world class hit woman in an upcoming film, inheriting roles that as in "The Matrix" sequels would be going to the late Aliyah. But I digress

"Idlewild" is packed with loads of actors. Ben Vereen is Percy's stifling dad, but he has no performing scenes. As a onetime toast of Broadway this was unusual. And why have Pattie Labelle, the once outrageous stage diva and 1990s Superbowl halftime performer in a movie if she isn't going to sing? Use an unknown for those bit parts and save the cash!

Malinda Williams has made a successful transition from playing the teenage girls she's portrayed in films such as her hilarious comic turn in "High School High" with Mekhi Phifer, directed by "Airplane!" and "BASEketball" co-creator and Milwaukeean David Zucker, and co-starring Jon Lovitz. Williams plays Zora, the beleaguered wife of the philandering Rooster and mother to his children, But she's no dummy, as she makes quite plain.

The sprawling film has a cast of dozens of speaking roles, and many more dancing ones. And these women have real world looks and figures; even the thin ones have womanly hips and shapes, instead of those otherworldly Reel World boyish shaped looking ones, who have been unduly thrust forth before us by an overly Homosexual influenced Hollywood who prefer their women to resemble long, thin and boyish looking.

The leaps and lifts of dancers are augmented by some interesting camera work as the Jitterbuggin and Lindy-Hopping dancers are frozen and slowed down, then speeded up; with the camera darting between their legs, then shooting the dancers from above as they are leaping and being tossed and flipped.

Such exuberance and energy hasn't been seen since the dance antics in the enjoyable "You Got Served," also starring rap performers who are populating films these days. Not even the musical based on the Maryland High School of The Arts – that's Tupac Shakur's alma mater-- "Step Up" had such an infectious feel.

The music and lyrics were composed and recomposed to have a modern feel, but placed in the period of the Depression mid 1930s. the effect at first threw Jean.

"Don't the music and songs seem a bit – out of place?" Jean said sideways to me. We saw "Idlewild" at the invitational preview screening Tuesday night at the Marcus Ridge cinemas in New Berlin, hosted by the Milwaukee Community Journal, the state's largest Black newspaper which carried the print column of Cinema Views. The preview was also co-sponsored by Fox TV Channel Six and radio station V-100.

Indeed, the record scratching barely minutes into the film alerts you right off that there is going to be some tampering with the musical formula, although they'd have to go a long ways farther to beat out Baz Luhrman's "Moulin Rouge."

That movie starring Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor was one of the few I almost walked out on, but I'm glad I stayed. As a musical it was daring and effective, melding modern songs to old styles such as a Country Western song to a Tango; using Jazz and Waltz, even the Can-Can, but placed in early 20th century Bohemian Paris.

"Idlewild" likewise has rap lyrics that actually fit well into the stage performances of Rooster and his nightclub and after a bit you don't notice. In fact, you can see how there is a thread that ties together Rap, Dance, music and the Southern culture that was transplanted North from the Chitlin' Circuit of clubs to the new Black communities in the first couple of generations after Emancipation.

When the chanteuse tells the audience to "…taste my Bitch's Brew…" we recognize that this is an ode to Miles Davis and his album of the same name with the cover artistry that had many college students unfolding it and attaching it to their dormitory walls. The soundtrack was released a week ago and I hope the titles, which are often taken from scene descriptions don't give away too much of the minimal plot.

"Afterparty" is one of the purely verbal songs, and at a welcome slower pace as Angel sings at her club debut, with onstage jitters that recall Anita Baker's music video "No One In The World" staged at the Apollo theatre's amateur night in post-world war II Harlem.

"I sing best when I sing for you" says the fun-loving beauty, who laid herself out in one of his coffins to the churchy mortuary attendant.

[Angel and Percy ponder their future as their attraction grows]

Macy Gray portrays Taffy, the veteran singer who gets put to the curb when Angel arrives. Gray is a HBO vet from "Lackawanna Blues," and had a nice short role as the neighborhood drug mama in Denzel Washington's "Training Day," although she's had other short roles.

In the Katrina aftermath in New Orleans Gray was spotted anonymously serving food to evacuees in the Superdome, just doing what she could. There were reports of several others of her stature doing the same, just there with no press agents, but Macy's hard to miss with that height, hair and thickness!

Jean, my movie date, was bothered by the lack of law enforcement seen throughout "Idelwild," with bullets flying and bodies piling up all over the place.

"Where were the police?" Jean asked. "There wasn't any retribution, or justice seen in the movie," she said.

You know, she's right. It seemed particularly lawless, even for a 1930s backwoods Georgia community. Like those Martial Arts films where all these people are fighting and revenge killing over a period of days and there are no authorities around to stop it. Only a newspaper article seemed to signal any official connection. Even in a time of Segregation this would be unusual.

That notable observation aside, this is why I like seeing movies with intelligent people such as Jean; they point things out that would escape me. I would have granted "Idlewild" that bit of license as part of the normal suspension of belief. After all, there were already talking whiskey flask crests and an animated wall of Cuckoo clocks. And rappers.

HBO, which also exposited other African American oriented features such as "Lackawanna Blues", "Tuskegee Airmen" and "Miss Evers Boys" also is involved in Spike Lee's four hour film about flooded New Orleans and post-Hurricane Katrina "When The Levees Broke" which premiered last Monday and Tuesday nights.

"IDLEWILD" directed and written by Bryan Barber is from Universal Pictures in conjunction with HBO, and is rated a well deserved "R" for adults because of depictions of automobile sexual encounters, YMCA dining, ceiling shots of bedplay, et cetera. Leave the little ones at home for this one! Get a sitter, spend the cash.

Cast:

Andre Benjamin -- Percy
Antwan Patton -- Rooster
Paula Patton – Angel Davenport
Terrence Dashon Howard -- Trumpy
Malinda Williams -- Zora
Paula Jai Parker – Rose
Ving Rhames – Spats
Macy Gray -- Taffy
Ben Vereen – Percy Senior
Cicely Tyson – Mother Hopkins Faizon Love – Sunshine Ace
Jackie Long -- Monk
Patti LaBelle -- entertainer

Cinema Views on Tripod

"X-MEN 3: THE LAST STAND"


by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

Black Web Portal Wire Releases

Contact The Word NetPaper

"I don't answer to my Slave Name anymore."

- Mystique, once called Raven Darkholm

This is a most satisfying conclusion to the original X-Men series. I say that because there is the option for more, and as much as these films have made this is as much a possibility as the four "Alien" movies. Or the twenty two James Bond 007s. Just stay for ALL of the credits, that's all I can say. (Hint: Remember after the credits in "DareDevil?")

Sci Fi Brothas and Sistahs are making their presence felt in big budget films. In the latest and third X-Men venture "The Last Stand" Halle Berry gets her wish and flies; Genocide of a class of people as government policy is devised and discussed; and the Holocaust, the Illegal Immigration problem, and African American Slave Revolts are used as templates for the confrontation of Humans and Homo superior.

[Storm battles Callisto in X-Men 3]

When I heard Halle Berry as Storm was displeased at her character being screen dressing and might not be returning for the second sequel I wasn't thrown by it. Even in the comic book she was not one of my favourite characters. Control the weather? Big deal. All she did in the movies was stand around and talk.

But the lightening bolts she can shoot are cool, and her eyes go all white to match her hair, which is given a new 'do here. Also she lost that weird Eastern European accent from the first film, although she's supposed to be from the Caribbean. In "The Last Stand" she now talks like a regular suburban girl, or like her native Ohio.

"I felt like a real part of the movie this time" she said in an interview for the Extra TV magazine in France after the Cannes film festival.

"Storm can do all the things she does in the comic book," gushed the onetime Milwaukeean.

We won't be seeing her in these parts now that she and onetime hubby Eric Benet are divorced. When they went to the movies they didn't go to the fancy theatres, they sat with everybody else, even in theatres I wouldn't go to! She liked shopping the malls, too from what I hear.

Halle sightings were numerous back then. Its not that we don't have some celebrities here. I mean, Coo Coo Cal made "My Projects about his experiences at Westlawn. But I digress.

Halle Berry is really laid back, and a regular person with a well-developed sense of humour, as seen in her appearances to pick up her Harvard Hasty Pudding award. (She had to stand at a blackboard and write "I will not make Catwoman 2" five times).

Bill Duke is Trask, a government operative who put into motion the plan to convert - forcibly if need be - the millions of mutants who roam free. Duke has done more directing than acting of late, although he had memorable roles in two Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, "Commando and "Predator."

Almost alone among mainstream movies the X-Men saga has escaped the dreaded Sequelitis affliction with strong storylines and identifiable characters. Instead of a weak follow-up to cash in, the Marvel movies division and their gifted writers have continually upped the ante, and this time out they threw down mightily. They also weren't afraid to kill off a few people here and there. Actually lots of people.

There is lots of blood spilt, both Mutant and human. This is a rough film, but mostly bloodless. Still there are many deaths, and when cars are compacted into disks and cubes with screaming passengers inside you don't have to see the squishiness, or the deep red running out from over the floorboards.


[There is lots of mayhem in "X-Men 3: The Last Stand" ]

Having strong directors who know what people want helps. The first two were helmed by Bryan Singer who wasn't at all a comic book fan of the Marvel strip. He was known for the thrilling and bloody crime drama "The Usual Suspects." Brett Ratner from the "Rush Hour" movies handles things this time.

Action adventure movie makers discovered they could get women to come buy by focusing on relationships. Rogue has the ability to temporarily draw out the powers of other mutants, and if she holds on, she can kill anyone. When she hears there is a cure for Mutancy she's all for it, and is packing her bags to leave the mansion and stand in the long lines at the treatment centers.

"All I want is to be able to touch someone, to hug them and give them a kiss..."

And that someone is Bobby the Iceman. But Kitty Pryde, or The Girl Who Walks Through Walls, has her own designs. She's grown up a bit, and has some impressive scenes. I just wish Colossus did too.

[Iceman, Kitty Pryde and Storm in the lead
must work as a team to defeat Magneto's
Brotherhood of mutants]

What did super beings do for powers before Quantum Physics? Pryde - they'll make up a name for her someday, its like a rule - can "phase through matter,", and by touch can affect others the same way. I also like the consistency of the X-Men universe. Most Mutants have increased mind reading ability; some can pass on their attributes by holding onto someone, as Colossus does to protect another from flying debris.

Singer brought the same Male Stuff bravado and conflict to the X-Men movies, particularly through the rivals for Jean Grey's affection. Scott's Cyclops is her boyfriend and Wolverine, or Logan the Canadian, was the new Bad Boy and has been the centerpiece of the series. Hugh Jackman the current stage darling has played Wolverine in all three movies.

Thrown into a leadership role against his natural wandering nature, the indestructible, instant healing Wolverine becomes an elder big brother to the School for Gifted youngsters, partnering with the sexless Storm in helping run the school.


[Hugh Jackman's Wolverine with Storm
get ready for action on a supposedly quiet
and peaceful subdivision]

His origins were explained in the second film, and where he got his skeleton and retractable claws made of the indestructible alloy Adamantium. And his amnesia. I bought that DVD, which featured the attack on the White House and the drawing of first blood by the increasingly reactionary humans led by Brian Cox's agents when they attacked Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters.

This was the crucial middle part of the nearly seamless series leading up to this colossal throw-down and battle royal where it's the military with plastic weaponry going against Magneto's Brotherhood of Mutants, with the depleted ranks of the X-Men having to choose which side they're going to be on, the scheming, discriminatory and fearful Humans, or the Brotherhood?

Indeed, many have to make their choice. TVs Kelsey ("Frasier") Grammar is Dr. Hank McCoy, aka the blue-haired and brainy Beast, and in the comics he was one of the five original X-Men. Here he is a member of the president's cabinet, and the secretary of the department of Mutant affairs.

Hank McCoy is trying to work from within the system, but there comes a point where he tells the president as he's resigning that decisions are being made without his input, such as weaponising the Mutant Cure into pistols and aerosols, and where participation is no longer going to be "voluntary." A Final Solution for the mutant problem is being implemented.

"In a time like this, I have to be with my people" McCoy tells the President. This is like when Wisconsinite Tony Shalhoub of Green Bay (cable TVs "Monk") an Arab American FBI agent assigned with Denzel Washington in "Under Seige" elects to stay behind the barbed wire in the stadium prison when his cop friends come to get him out. All Middle Eastern men in the city were rounded up by Bruce Willis' occupying Marine general after terrorist attacks on New York, and he was swept up with them.

"Tell them I won't be their 'Sand Nigger' anymore. This is where I belong, here with them..." Shalhoub says, as he backs away from the fence, and is lost in the shuffling crowd of detainees.


[ Storm played by Halle Berry prepares to blast
a member of the Brotherhood of Mutants in
"X-Men III: The Last Stand" ]

The X-Men have always used current events and cultural attitudes as a template for their stories. This time there are two. Much like "Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes" used the Enslaved Revolts in 1700s and 1800s America as their backdrop, "The Last Stand" also uses the Slave Insurrections where Magneto, the Jewish Holocaust of WWII still fresh in his mind, plots in secret in the forest like Nat Turner and Denmark Vesey. The also had their Uncle Toms and Thomasinas as well who fought against them and their cause, and they wanted to see the enemy coming.

There are also further cultural references. Under interrogation, the captured Mystique is referred to as "Raven." She sits there silent and sullen as the warden (the same jerk as in "Silence of the Lambs") repeats.

Finally, she says "I don't answer to my Slave name." Hello!

The shape-shifter and deadly martial artist with the prehensile feet also ominously tells a brutal Brotha security guard who's guarding the mutant detainees as they're being moved around in the secret mobile prisons that "when the time comes --I'm going to kill you myself."

"Yeah right. Move back from the bars or I'll Mace you again, you blue bitch!"

But the new X-Men movie has a more modern relevance, and that is the current Illegal Immigration brouhaha. When a large pharmaceutical firm announces an injectable "cure" that permanently suppresses the Mutant X gene it launches the nation into a contentious discussion as processing centers are opened up, and mutants are urged to report to get their free and voluntary treatments.

"But there's nothing wrong with us!" says Halle Berry's Storm, who gets lot more to do in this movie, including fly, as she does in the comics. I mean "Graphic Novels." There is lots of discussion about ethics in the film, along with Genocide. This aspect made me sit up, because I'm writing a series of articles on the subject.


[Storm and Prof. Xavier question Logan
about the whereabouts of the Phoenix,
the transformed Jean Grey ]

In fact, the Illegal Immigration furor may exacerbate the temptation for Genocide, because while some are saying "there's no way to get 12 million people out" of the country that's not quite true. The Pentagon for years had - and may yet have - an Ethnic Weaponry program in the 1970s and '80s, where they could target an entire group for elimination by their group genetic signature. The Human Genome project only makes it easier.

So, if it becomes perceived as a problem with projections by some think tanks that by the middle of this century 170 million Central Americans and their descendents will overwhelm this nation there are options, just not humane ones. But if lots of urban Chicanos start getting coughs and colds that won't get away, don't say that you weren't told!

"How can Democracy survive when one man can move cities with his mind?" the President asks. Prof. X back at his school for Gifted Youngsters leads a discussion by asking "when do we cross the line into tyranny?" by misuse of their powers?

Eric Lensher's Magneto has been given a very understandable motivation. As a Holocaust survivor he has seen this before, and is driven to make sure Never Again. He shows his concentration camp tattoo to the disunified rabble as he raises his army for the war against Homo Sapiens, and tells them how its going down:

"While you're planning and holding your meetings they will come in the still of the night. Make no mistake my young friends, this is extermination."

"Nobody's been talking of extermination!" someone protests.

"No one ever speaks of extermination, they just do it," Lensher tells them.

"In the coming fight and the inevitable Genocide, on whose side will you stand? If we want our freedom we must fight for it! And that fight begins now!"


[ Magneto joins forces again with Prof. X
and the X-Men after the government tries to
"cure" its Mutant problem ]

Still, when the renegade Pyro complains about Prof. Xavier, considered a go-along Uncle Tom by the young Turks Magneto brings him up short.

"Charles Xavier did more for Mutants than you will ever know!"

Ian McKellen is in two monster hit films at once, to go along with his role as Gandolf in "The Lord of the Rings" movies. His stage skills do him well here, as does Patrick Stewart's, reprising his role as Prof. Charles Xavier, trying to create a world where Mutant and human can live in peace.

In addition to Magneto, some of the Old School mutants have been recycled and make an appearance in "The Last Stand." There is the Juggernaut who can crash through anything when he gets up momentum; the Angel with his magnificent dove-white wings which he straps under his extra large and extra long trench coat. Colossus is another Marvel re-invention from Giant Man, but who is here a somewhat normal sized Russian with organic steel flesh. I really wanted to see him go against Juggernaut.

The Old School Giant Man had his own opposite analog as the former Ant Man, therefore going from the smallest superhero to the tallest! In one episode, while down in Mexico Giant Man lost the potion he has to take to return to normal size, sticking him at 12-15 feet. He was hiding in alleyways, and frightening children who saw him behind the market stalls. "Mira! Mira! Un hombre grande!" to their disbelieving parents.

[Back at Alkali Lake, Jane Grey mysteriously
returns as the ultra powerful and
unstoppable Phoenix ]

Vinnie Jones plays Juggernaut. He appeared as the silent mechanic in "Gone in 60 Seconds," and also in "Swordfish." He thus continues the Hollywood Six Degrees aspect with Halle, who also was in "Swordfish" with Hugh Jackman, playing the henchwoman to John Travolta. Come to think of it, she did do a bit of flying in that film. Sort of.

The New Jack ones among the mutant villains include Callisto, with super speed and the ability to sense mutant abilities. Dania Ramirez is Callisto. Ramirez' first film was Spike Lee's "The Subway Stories" for HBO. Other Spike Lee projects were "25th Hour" and "She Hate Me." In the latter, she was the Lesbian partner of Kerry Washington who wants to have a baby with her attorney girlfriend, aided by "Serenity" and "Inside Man" actor Cheiwetel Etiofor as their helpful BabyDaddy.

Other new additions are Jubilee, who can project sonic waves; Arclight; and a fella I just call MultiMan, like from the Saturday morning cartoons that used to come on after the most excellent "Herculoids." He can multiply himself in a flagrant violation of scientific principles such as the Conservation Of Mass. But this is a movie, and some suspension of belief is okay, but sometimes they stretch things a bit much. There has to be some plausible Science in Science Fiction.

There's also the Porcupine Boy (even when used, their screen names are tossed around fast during "X-Men III: The Last Stand" and couldn't always be written down. Also, the studio Cast List doesn't help because we don't know who's name is who, or even what sex the actor is. Who is Arclight? Male or female? And almost everybody has an alias, except for Kitty Pryde and Jean Grey. The photos help out just a bit.


CAST OF X-MEN III: THE LAST STAND

Storm -- Halle Berry
Trask - Bill Duke
Callisto -- Dania Ramirez
Jane Grey, The Phoenix - Famke Janssen
Wolverine -- Hugh Jackman
Rogue, Marie -- Anna Paquin
Eric Lensher, Magneto -- Ian McKellen
Prof. Charles Xavier -- Patrick Stewart
Scott, Cyclops -- James Marsden
Iceman, Bobby -- Shawn Ashmore
Raven Darkholm, Mystique -- Rebecca Romjin
Jimmy The Leech-- Cameron Bright
Pyro -- Aaron Stanford
Warren Worthington III, Angel -- Ben Foster
Kitty Pryde -- Ellen Page

X-MEN III: THE LAST STAND is directed by Brett Ratner for 20th Century Fox studios. Its rated PG-13 for comic book style violence and mayhem on a massive and continuous scale, but little blood. There's some sexual groping betwixt Logan and Jean Grey, and the skinny Mystique appears pink-skinned and butt-nekkid in one scene. --kjw

There have been many movies made from video games, and even 1960-70s TV series. But one genre is really coming into its own because there is a built-in audience spanning generations.


MOVIES MADE FROM COMIC BOOKS:

"Meteor Man" by Robert Townsend is unmistakenly drawn from Green Lantern - at least by the green meteor and the sharp, green cape-less suit, and the story of Hal Jordan, who is part of the Green Lantern Corp of the Guardians of the Galaxy. Townsend wanted to make an African American superhero, which many of us lacked growing up.

"Meteor Man's" hero, played by director Townsend (who also directed Halle Berry in "B.A.P.S."), is struck by a mysterious meteor and given superpowers, which he uses to clean up his neighborhood of the criminality and drug dealers. The movie was referenced by me for the obituary of the late Luther Vandross because it was his first major screen appearance as the silent hit man and henchman of the golden haired gang. Meteor man also co-stars James Earl Jones, Darth Vader voiceman and Thulsa Doom villain in the first "Conan movie." Bill Cosby plays a pivotal bit part.

The Green Lanterns are the opposite of the Watchers, those Marvel eternals with powers akin to the "Star Trek: Next Generation" Q, but who have a strict Prime Directive hands off credo. I can remember when for a time all of the Green Lanterns were of colour. There are always a substitute GL, and when Jordan vanished, one was a brotha who the Guardians had to continually tell he couldn't use the rechargeable Power Ring to restructure the slums for instance.

Can you still remember the ritual rhyme? Don't even try and pretend that you didn't do it back in tha day!

"In brightest Day, in blackest Night,
No Evil shall escape my sight.
To those who worship Evil's might,
Beware my power, Green Lantern's light!"

Superman Returns -- This will make the fifth movie in the franchise, as in the most excellent "Batman Returns" there was some retooling for out times.

In the film Superman returns after some years, and just as in the Jesus of Nazareth fable that the Jewish cousins in Cleveland thought up in the 1930s there are questions about his absence and what he was doing. Seeking wisdom? Strengthening his powers for a titanic battle to come?

Kevin Spacey plays Lex Luthor, using the same sociopathic leer he employed in "Seven." This is a good sign, because you can't have an unknown in this role. Gene Hackman has established a high bar for the villain role in three of the previous four Christopher Reeves versions.

Nick Cage, who told me once in an interview that he took part of his name from the early Black superhero "Luke Cage Power Man," lost out on the Superman role, but he's the "Ghost Rider" now. They're using Marlon Brando's voice again as the disembodied tutor of the super powered import. In Part Two of the original they had to use Susanna York, the mother of the truly Illegal Alien Kal-El because Brando was talking crazy about money for his few lines. Which he refused to learn, and had to read off cue cards.


The Hulk - This much maligned Marvel movie has a sequel planned, and its about time. This was a fabulously entertaining movie that was bad mouthed all through the Internet by the 30 year-old, high water pants wearing, still live downstairs in they mama's basement, never kissed a real girl bunch, who insisted that strict fidelity be paid to such things as ensuring the Hulk wear purple pants!

In comics they do that for visual effect, and it also cuts down on redrawing the numerous panels, you sissies! Shut up next time, and push away from the keyboards and go outside and get you some sun.

"She Hulk" The Movie is reportedly being planned. Good news, bring it on. And this time ignore the NaySayers. They ain't nobody special.

Wonder Woman -- Speaking of tall, thick women, this DC comic of the first female superhero, a rogue Amazon princess is due for a Hollywood version. There were actually two TV series made from it in the 1970s.

Unbreakable - This is really a filmed comic book, with a dissertation delivered by a real comic book fan in Samuel Jackson that was incorporated into the film. Reteaming with Bruce Willis from "Pulp Fiction," Jackson plays Mr. Glass, friend to the nearly invulnerable Willis who survived car and train crashes.

By contrast, Mr. Glass has very weak bones, and when he was born in a tenement his young mother was questioned for child abuse when the constantly crying baby boy was found with every bone in his little body broken!

M. Night Shyamalan has another film, "Lady In the Water" out this summer. And its nothing like the lightweight but enjoyable girl Mermaid flick "Aquamarine," trust me on this!

The Crow - This had three theatre feature film releases, and a fourth to TV. Originally based in Detroit, on Devil's night thugs break in and kill a young couple. Brandon Lee, son of Bruce, comes back from the dead to become the unslayable Killer of Killers and dark avenging spirit, still linked to earthly life. Lee died on the set under very mysterious circumstances that have fueled conspiracy theorists ever since.

Spawn
Blade
Catwoman
Supergirl
Spider Man
Elektra
Fantastic Four
Batman Returns
The Mask, Son of


Coming Up:

Nacho Libre - Jack Black plays a wrestler and sort-of monk/initiate who uses his ring skills to help support a Mexican orphanage in this comical farce.

Ghost Rider - Nick Cage plays the undead motorcycle rider who avenges his death, ala "The Crow"

Namor, the Sub Mariner
Aqua Man
Iron Man
She Hulk
Wonder Woman

Some of these are often turned into Cable Movies if the studios get skittish where the average action movie is 80 million dollars. That's why they like to cast unknowns in both acting and ddirecting, 'cause they cheaper. Until they blow up, like former unknown actors and independent music video directors.

Cinema Views with Film Critic Kevin J. Walker
p.o. box 1324-53201 milwaukee, wis. usa

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Cinema Views on Tripod

    Cinema Views
with Film Critic Kevin J. Walker


"LAST HOLIDAY"

"I'd like to be cremated. I've spent my whole life in a box. I don't want to be buried in one." -- Georgia Byrd's Last Will and Testament

Attitudes of class, conspicuous consumption and having the courage to put into action that old saying about living one's life to the fullest are all ingredients of the winning Dana Owens' film "Last Holiday."

"Last Holiday" recycles the same idea of a doomed short timer but with a couple of twists, such as "The Honeymooner's"- like substitutions of a primarily African American descended and international main cast.

Georgia Byrd is a coupon-clipping cookwares clerk in New Orleans just living her life when she finds out that schedule isn't happening anymore. She's diagnosed with a rare and terminal disease. After moping around and wailing "Why me?!" Georgia decides to carry out her heart's desires, as many as she can pile in. BASE jumping, ski boarding, even gourmet cooking, as she head out to an exclusive resort in Europe she's only seen in a brochure she saved and dreamed about.

This is a Formula film, but there are plenty of those. We already know the score, but there are little touches that can strive within limitations, in the proper hands. Apparently the director has the skills, because the critics and the moviegoers have reached a consensus: go and see this film for a good time at the movies

The appeal is for everyone, and this can't even be categorized as a Chick Flick, although they are among my "Guilty Film Pleasures," subject of an upcoming article

Owen's character has a winning personality, and people can identify with her outlook. She dresses down a snobby guest who disrespects a worker at the ritzy hotel she's picked to blow her liquidated 401(k) cash and life stash.

The look on the worker's face is precious, as she relates another of the growing Georgia Byrd stories to the staff about the mysterious "Rich Americain."

The movie breaks out a little more and defuses the Race Thing when her sister says she realizes she wants to be a Country Western singer. "There no such thing as a Black country Western singer!" Aside from the fact that even here in Milwaukee, Wisconsin we have Black Country Western singers, this frees the audience from having to pretend to ignore that the film has a African Descended protagonist.

Now, this is nothing for us as we've had to translate romantic comedies and find identification in Euro-Descended actors and situations that weren't of our milieu. With the broadening of acting roles, and the straying from the anti-life, anti-fertility homosexual propensity for boyish body shapes, movies even when they're recycling old ideas ad infinitum are nevertheless being reinvigorated like "Last Holiday."

LL Cool J was along with Queen Latifah, one of the first Old Skool Rappers to break into the movie biz back in the 1980s, and has played characters from the expected gang-banger to policemen to pro football players to a toy factory CEO's straitlaced son. "Deep Blue Sea" was his entry as one of the Sci Fi Brothas, and on the list I'm compiling for a series on a genre that was once remarkable for the absence of the African Descended.

"Cool James" plays Shawn Williams, the meek hardware department salesman at Kragen's department store, one escalator ride down from Georgia Byrd's Cookwares. They circle each other and can't give voice to their obvious mutual attraction. Can this almost relationship be saved in case it ever gets started?!

The movie is full of the sassy attitude that Owens is known for in films such as "Chicago", "Bringing Down The House." The zingers fly throughout, such as when a hotel clerk at the opulent Le Puppe ["Poop"] Czechoslovakian mountain resort chirpily greets her after a transatlantic flight after she had herself upgraded to a luxurious First Class cocoon after being squeezed in Coach:

"I'm hungover, jet lagged, and dyin.' Other than that I'm fine!"

Owens also has become somewhat of an icon for large women and for refusing to fall for the sit down be fat and be quiet attitude. In the movie she wears diaphanous gowns and plunging necklines, and all this adds to the mystery of the staff, who whisper that she's a rich, self-made American entrepreneur. That some people from her native Louisiana are also in the same hotel to make a big deal moves "Last Holiday" to sorta the mistaken identity sort of film, which makes it even better.

The film displays plenty of luxury and opulence, which is one of the things that people go to the movies for, the gritty and hardcore "Hostel" and "Munich" notwithstanding. Gold leaf ceilings that made me homesick -- or whatever its called-- for Italy's palaces, sumptuous food feasts, dresses, and cars received their due. Even the Dillard's department store that stood in for Kragen's looked good, from a chain that is a fixture nearer the Mason-Dixon Line. Its sorta like a Marshall Fields.

People in other nations and cultures often ignore the actors in American movies and look past to the things we take for granted. Like the kitchens in the two-storey homes of working class people stocked with food and cooking machines that usually only their wealthy could afford; smart-mouthed adolescents with a room of their own, and teenagers who drive one of the family's two or three cars! But I digress.

Giancarlo Esposito ("Malcolm X", "Conspiracy Theory") is Senator Clarence Dillings from Louisiana who is getting set for an arrangement with Kragen, played by Timothy Bottoms. Kragen is one of those philosophical CEOs who sells as many of his corporate self-help books as his housewares. He's also a class A-H and jerk, and you know when he meets the opinionated Georgia you just know they're going to bump heads bigtime. And since this is a Formula Film, so it is.

But the movie "Last Holiday" even manages to bump that up by not making it so ham-handed. The film balances many things just right, This ain't Shakespeare -- nowadays even Shakespeare isn't Shakespeare -- but its a good time at the movies. There are bigger films with bigger stars that can't make that claim, unfortunately.

I wasn't expecting much in the way of action but "Last Holiday" even managed to include some worthy scenes. During a ski boarding lesson she breaks loose from her instructor, and careens down a roped off area. The camerawork on those scenes were good (I was a cameraman and I look for these things)

The Class Consciousness isn't forced either. Instead, Working Class people are shown as worthy of respect in thankless jobs, while snobby social climbing Yuppies get their comeuppance in "Last Holiday." Georgia is shown in the posters as dressed in a cloth coat and sensible shoes, looking like a grandmother. she's looking up and away, dreaming. as we all do.

Jane Adams is the Co-Worker/Girlfriend in a role that often goes to a young Black woman. She's outspoken and bodacious, and hers is akin to the role that Jane Cusack had in "Working Girl" with star Melanie Griffith. Her Rochelle urges Cookwares co-worker Georgia to just go on down the escalator and ask Shawn out or something, jeez! If there's a sequel Adams should be in the film more.

Alicia Witt is the red haired actress that has had roles in "Mr. Holland's Opus" and others. You know, for a thin woman she's got it going on where it counts. She must have some Sistah in her family line or something. This is one of Witt's larger profile films, as the mistress companion to Kragen. Her interaction with the still-judgmental Georgia is where the film gets more into "Chick Flick" territory in a movie that is quite a few things to many people, which is probably why it is so widely popular.

"Last Holiday" is international and not just in the cast which includes Marit Choudhoury as Georgia's Doctor Gupta, and one of the more established stars in Gerard Depardieu as the expansive Chef Didier. Also appearing is the TV chef that says "BAM!!" and Motown legend and singer Smokey Robinson.

Michael Nouri is an international star from way back, and Iiked him when he played Dracula on TV and film, and the Pittsburgh steel factory owner and romancer of Chicagoan Jennifer Beals in "Flashdance." He doesn't have a lot to do here, though, as a businessman in town to make a deal with Kragen and Dillings.

"LH" even got into some heavier offshoots.

"She lives on the edge, and does whatever she wants when she wants, heedless of the cost or consequences . She is a true Existentialist... She is easily the most interesting person who has ever come to this hotel!"

That Georgia Byrd has endeared herself to the staff by treating them like human beings helped in their estimation of her. She was a Working Class person like them two days before she cashed out all her bonds, and retirement savings and jumped on a jumbo jet and came over to Czech Republic in the little time she had left.

"I'd like to be cremated. Georgia Byrd writes in her Last Will and Testament. "I've spent my whole life in a box. I don't want to be buried in one." The movie makes you think: if I received the news that I only had a short time left, what would I do? I'd go into a South American jungle.

They are dangerous places (Africa has relatively few real jungles compare to south America and its Amazon River basin). That's a dangerous place, and ordinarily it wouldn't be a destination choice. But circumstances change choices. What about you? Where'd you go? What would you do?

Looking into a mirror at the confident woman she's become she makes her true statement: "The next time we'll love more, laugh more, and not be so afraid. I wasted too much of my life being quiet!"

This like many movies in these idea-challenged days is a remake of a film originally starring Alec Guiness (younger moviegoers know him as the original Obi Wan Kenobi in "Star Wars"). I however remember the same sort of plotline in the Dabney Coleman movie "Short Time On Planet Earth," later shortened to "Short Time" much like "Electric Horseman" to just "Electric" starring Jane Fonda and Robert Redford when he was just starting to make his Great Out West movies. But I digress.

Coleman was a policeman who had been diagnosed with a short term terminal disease. He had arranged for the financial arrangements to be very much in his favour.

One other thing: the wretched preview for "Last Holiday" is a Revealer, and is shown in sequence so its like a Cliff Notes® of the movie. I hate those! The worst preview of recent times was "The Italian Job." I never saw the 1960s Michael Caine original, and it spoiled it for me. I hope they do better for "The Brazilian Job" caper film follow up.


CAST OF "LAST HOLIDAY"

Georgia Byrd -- Dana Owens / Queen Latifah
Shawn Williams -- LL Cool James
Senator Dillings -- Giancarlo Esposito
Dr. Gupta -- Marit Chodhouri
Ms. Burns -- Alicia Witt
Rochelle -- Jane Adams
Kragen -- Timothy Bottoms
-- Michael Nouri
-- Matt Ross


"LAST HOLIDAY" is rated PG-13 for some brief sex talk by Georgia to a man's mistress to change her ways (and why her neck really hurts).

-----------


CINEMA VIEWS with Film Critic Kevin J. Walker

An Obituary:

Richard Pryor's Life Showed Skills Way Beyond Comedy

Groundbreaking Social Commentator From Peoria, Ill. Used Film, TV, Stage, Concert Albums, Feature Films In His Dissection of Society BlackWebPortal.com Wire Story

by Kevin J. Walker,

Film Critic Cinema Views with Film Critic Kevin J. Walker
WalkerWorld

The passing of Richard Franklin Lennox Pryor following a heart attack at a Los Angeles based assisted living center was the cause of a flurry of noting the impact of one of American society's most incisive observers. Peoria, Illinois is the town where Pryor was raised after being born in St. Louis 65 years ago.

Pryor suffered from health complications of the degenerative nerve disease of Multiple Sclerosis that had been plaguing Pryor since his diagnosis more than a decade ago. He kept a low profile over the years since, shelving his standup comic career and giving few interviews. But he appeared in Eddie Murphy and Arsenio Hall's period film "Harlem Nights," a gathering of other comic giants such as the late Redd Foxx and Robin Harris.

Pryor was married six times, and had several children whom he was close to from his various wives and paramours. One daughter, Rain Pryor is an actress. In her series "Chicago Hope" in 1995, her stricken father guest-starred as a MS patient.

In his live shows Pryor took his life experiences that would have turned a lesser person into dysfunction and used then as raw material for his observations disguised as comedy.

Although he renounced the word after visiting Zimbabwe, two of Pryor's award-winning comedy albums were titled "That Nigger's Crazy" in 1974 and 1976's "Bicentennial Nigger."

His autobiography book title was even witty and funny. "Pryor Convictions And Other Life Sentences" was his tell-all treatise on his unorthodox upbringing, which included a mother who was a whore and a grandmother who was a brothel's Madam.

"Live On The Sunset Strip" was a comedy album that won an award, as his "Richard Pryor Live In Concert."

One of the golden moments of TV is the Saturday Night Live skit of word association where Chase as the analyst slips in increasingly racial tags, as Pryor makes his [right?] eye nervously twitch and answers with racially tinged answers of his own.

He portrayed a panoply of bounds-stretching characters. They included Mudbone, an old Black man dispensing his worldly wisdom; the Junkie character, talking loud and directing street traffic; Dracula in the Ghetto; a gentle deer in the woods being sighted by a hunter; an overly critical woman during sex; White Racist college boys; a gang of Homeboys who jack a spaceship after Aliens land in the 'Hood; and the First Black President.

Pryor's role as an Exorcist on Saturday Night Live was turned into a skit that was one of their most favourite and included on their look-back SNL specials. Pryor's exorcist assistant loses his religion and starts choking the bound but devilish little girl after she not only tosses her bowl of pea soup in his face, then talks about his mama!

Pryor was an enthusiastic smoker of Freebase as they called it in the pre-Crack days. During one interlude with his drug of choice, the fumes ignited and set him afire, burning over half his body. The incident was even made into the "Ignited Negro College Fund" joke at the time, pairing Pryor with Michael Jackson after his own fiery Pepsi commercial blowup. Pryor even joked about that, talking about beating the 100 yard dash speed of the current Olympians as he raced down the street afire, crackling and popping as he went.

Pryor even courted controversy such as when he was with one of many a White woman paramour at an event passing through a hallway. Seeing the cameras, Pryor put a wide open grin on his face, shuckin' and jivin' for the shutterbugs while he was parading around with his Snowflake.

This was around the time of the infamous comment by Wilt Chamberlain about the shortcomings of African Descended women. The photo made its way in the Jet magazine weekly and launched a vigourous negative response, primarily by Black woman at yet another successful Black man who went over the fence for a White woman and throwing it in their face!

If illness had not felled him early with the new avenues and technology of today, who knows what he would have crafted, considering his past incisive works.

"Jo Jo Dancer Your Life Is Calling" of 1987 was his semi-autobiographical story that he directed, and was gently reviewed by a early incarnation of the PBS syndicated "Siskel and Ebert" film review show, then operating out of Chicago from Tribune Broadcasting.

Pryor's many films included lightweight comedies such as "Bustin 'Loose" but also dramas that were critically noticed such as "Jo Jo Dancer " and his nearly forty other films. He was nominated early on as his role as the Piano Man opposite a young and strung-out newcomer to film Diana Ross playing Billy Holiday in the biopic "Lady Sings The Blues." That auspicious beginning wasn't continued in his subsequent film roles where Pryor was re teamed with both its leads Billie Dee Williams and Ross.

Other movies of Richard Pryor's included "The Mack", "Uptown Saturday Night", "Car Wash," and "Bingo Long and the Traveling All Stars and Motor Kings." Pryor also co-wrote Mel Brook's" Blazing Saddles" co-starring his later cinematic pal Gene Wilder of Milwaukee, Wisconsin in the popular and commercially successful movies "Silver Streak" and "Stir Crazy"; "Another You," and "Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil" about a pair of handicapped heisters.

Pryor often was included as a bit part or cameo actor in movies such as "Car Wash" where he was a white on white-on-white wearing Pimpin' Preacher whose license plate read "TITHE" while his multiethnic band of a half-dozen heavenly 'Hoes attended him.

In "The Wiz" he played the title character helping the over-age spinsterish Dorothy return to New York's Harlem, played by his co-star in "Lady Sings The Blues."

This casting of Pryor, although popular at the time –- and unexpected because his role was unbilled dearly on -- was a travesty because one of the most rousing songs "So, You Wanted To Meet The Wizard?" had to be dropped because singing wasn't among Pryor's many talents.

In addition to the many movies where he made at least an appearance was the featured commentator in the "WattStax" concert movie and documentary of the gigantic arts, culture and music celebration of the Los Angeles Black enclave taken over after Pearl Harbour when the American born Japanese Nisei were expelled and interned in Utah and Arizona.

"The Toy" with Ned Beatty and Jackie Gleason featured the Great One in one of his last feature films as a racist manipulative billionaire who purchased his spoiled brat son Pryor as his plaything. Gleason was an early TV pioneer and the comic produced his own shows.

Featuring Pryor in the film was in the unwritten but clearly understood pact among many comics where if one of them Makes It, he/she pulls the others in. That's why you have Jim Carrey and several pals in the comic-packed "The Mask," or in "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective II" with former "In Living" co-star Tommy Davidson; and Louie Anderson with Arsenio Hall and Eddie Murphy in "Coming To America."

In "Which Way Is Up?" Pryor starred in the remake of an Italian movie about a union organizer and husband with two families and many misadventures with women where he played multiple roles a generation before "The Klumps."

Chris Rock is another such as was Pryor who is more of a socio-political commentator who uses comedy to pierce through people's outward defenses. If a different person said the things they did it would be considered a militant rant, and rejected instinctively. Many young Black people of the time considered a still active George Carlin "the White Richard Pryor."

"Harlem Nights" paired Pryor and one of his idols. Redd Foxx of St. Louis was the godfather of Black comedians. His raunchy Blue Albums (of which TV dad Bill Cosby of NBC made a few) opened the way for ones like Pryor and Cosby's later success. Foxx also became a G-rated screen dad in his sitcom which was itself another of a long line of American reincarnations of British sitcoms, this one called "Steptoe and Son."

Lenny Bruce was himself a preceder in the 1950s, whose social commentary and drug use made him a target for the authorities. He is often recalled with Pryor because of their parallel lives.

"A White racist system created Richard Pryor. He wasn't the only brilliant Black person, he was just one that got through!" said Dick Gregory during a call-in on radio station WMCS 1290 AM of Milwaukee during Morning Show co-host Keith Murphy's tribute to Pryor broadcast on Monday following the announcement of Pryor's passing. "It was Richard Pryor who opened the way for Saturday Night Live" Gregory observed.

Gregory, who came to Milwaukee this summer during the annual NAACP convention, was also once well known as a standup comic before his activities as a social activist, philanthropist of the Civil Rights Movement and diet guru made him the consort of those such as MLK and Harry Belafonte.

Eddie Griffin, much like Eddie Murphy paid homage to his elders, even if it was a scene in the semi-autobiographical "Foolish" where before a stage performance he sought communion with the shades of departed comics in the lavatory, with only their feet visible beneath the stalls as they dispensed their comic wisdom.

Pryor, decades before musicians and rappers made the N-Word into astrange love/hate sobriquet, renounced its use after a lengthy life-altering visit to Africa of the sort that recently also affected groundbreaking TV show producer David Chappelle that may have caused him to reevaluate his comedic stance and imperiling his cable TV career.

He said he observed that while he walked the streets of big cities in Zimbabwe in the Motherland, he saw people shopping, cops on the beat rousting drunks, winos sleeping against buildings, and the normal interplay of life. He said he saw pretty much all the types of humanity possible in Africa. But he was visited with a revelation while removed from America.

"I said to myself, I see some of everybody here but I don't see any Niggas.' And that's why I will NEVER use that word again!" he said. And Pryor kept his word, banishing it from his comical repertoire. Again, he was years ahead of society.

Armchair psychology might speculate that being born in a brothel, and with one's dear old mom a prostitute and a grandmother the owner of cathouse would influence your outlook on marriage, and child rearing. Of course this found its way into his routines.

In one of his comedy albums he portrayed a sweet girlfriend transformed into a Nazi after he's made her a wife, pacing back and forth, holding an imaginary cigarette with the palm up, speaking crisp German accented English. "Szo, ve vil zee how you vill ..." Like a lot of Pryor's best humour, there was the sort of uneasy laughter from the audience, and nervous glances to ones attending mate or spouse.

With several wives and living in a state with community property the travails of alimony also made it in Pryor's routine. "Half!?!" he said he exclaimed to his wife. "You ain't told nair one joke!"

"Well, perhaps you'll think THIS is funny," as he mimicked her serving him with notice of her divorce proceedings.

In one of popular comedy tour concert films Pryor once posed as a little child who broke a window, blaming it on "a Stranger" who ran into the house, unseen by anybody else but him. Speaking haltingly and intertwining his fingers, he made viewers see the small child. Pryor said he didn't believe in whupping kids, that parental disappointment seemed to be enough to correct them.

Dick Gregory cautioned Pryor about the travails of network televsion.

"I told him 'Richard, when you on TV you have to act like you in Gooseneck, Tenn.' It was Evolution, like with Malcolm X. The thing she was saying didn't make no sense back then, either. How could I teach your 5 year old about advanced math until he can grow into it? Like Lenny Bruce, America had to grow into the knowledge.

Mark Twain made observations that were controversial as well, and the two were linked when Pryor was the first recipient of the award named after the social commentator of his time of America's halfway point, by way of the very first Life Achievement award named after a man who was also controversial for his use of the N-word and portrayal of those of Enslavement.

Chris Rock, Chris Tucker, Jim Carrey, Robin Williams, Bill Cosby, Eddie Griffin, George Wallace, Redd Foxx, Lenny Bruce, Godfrey Cambridge, and other comics paid homage to Pryor in helping their careers or comic structure and approach. Watching Eddie Griffin's semi-autobiographical pair of movies "Foolish" and "DysFunktional Family" shows the clear influences of Pryor on Griffin.

"Lily," an award-winning telefilm about comedienne and actress Lily Tomlin featured Pryor as one of the team of writers. His own TV series on NBC featured 2 young and unproven but promising comics Robin Williams and Sandra Bernhardt.

Tyrone Dumas is the infrastructure manager for Milwaukee Public Schools and formerly a standup comic who later turned to architecture. He recalled Monday morning for 1290 WMCS-AM radio listeners when he and some others picketed the local NBC affiliate which is on the northern edge of the Milwaukee Black community when they pulled the other showings of the Richard Pryor Show that even the national network had allowed!

The station manager said it was offensive according to prevailing community mores and sensibilities. "Well then we want you to show the shows to us," Dumas said of a private screening. WTMJ said that on a Saturday people could see it then without commercial interruption.

The Pryor TV hourly show was an old fashioned variety show much like the later SNL and late--nite talk shows, with musical interludes from jazz people, and with comic sketches interspersed.

Dumas continued: "When you look at it was amazing how ground breaking it was." Host Keith Murphy suggested that the new Black-owned and oriented cable channel TV One could use Pryor's landmark TV show for its material.

The Richard Pryor Show in 1977 was advanced for its time on TV. NBC canceled it after only a half-dozen episodes, also co-written by actress Maya Angelou who appeared in the skits. The humour was poignant, as was their skit about a blustering alcoholic beaten down by the world, yet turning his stress inward and against his woman.

The world renown poet also had a pioneering producer's contract with NBC as a female. She was on a stage bare except for those two ,and explained why she still loved him despite everything as he snores away in a drunken stupor, occasionally twitching and saying something blustery. Her soliloquy was delivered while a single spot light illuminated his sleeping form. It was visually poetic, and unlike anything seen much on television.

"This was 1977 when he was talking about African history," said Dumas, who like many were aghast when NBC yanked the Richard Pryor show after just 5 outings.

Witnesses to the public screenings didn't understand the network concerns. "This isn't anything controversial!" several exclaimed; "he's just telling it like it is" was some of the most repeated remarks. "We sent the petitions to NBC and Pryor, and they were coming in from all around the country" Dumas said.

People didn't know what quite to make of this new TV show, which pushed right the boundaries of the formulaic TV show. It wasn't the language, Pryor made sure about that. It was the ideas, the unabashed statements on race relations, and personal male female interaction. It wasn't nasty; it was just ... different.

Therefore Pryor's TV show was inherently controversial in a time when the three member private club Network TV didn't have threat from competitors such as home media stations, video and DVD rentals, game consoles, PayTV and OnDemand cable offerings, and the Internet.

People who only knew Pryor from his middling movies and brief appearances on variety shows such as "The Ed Sullivan Show," which once owned Sunday nights, saw another side of what tuned out to be someone who had a philosophy, and lots more talent than was known before. The controversy also helped propel Pryor further into the stratosphere of multiple threat entertainers, and he had careers now in standup tours, the spin-off movies made from the tours (there was no video then for the masses) and LP comic albums made from the same.

The cover for the concert LP "Was it Something I Said?" featured a tied-up perplexed looking Richard Pryor, against a tree lit by a circle of torches out in the woods surrounded by angry white-robed Ku Klux Klansmen. Pryor knew the effect of his comical observations on American society, much like the rap group Public Enemy, whose emblem was the silhouette of a young Black man in a bowler hat, arms crossed defiantly and non-chalantly, but superimposed in the cross-hairs of a sniper rifle.

NBC also was the risk-taking network that made a bold play putting on the Richard Pryor Show, then backed off after they made their move. They were called the Peacock Network because they were the first to broadcast "in living colour," and put the ground breaking formula breaking Science Fiction series "Star Trek" on the air which featured the first interracial kiss between Capt Kirk and Lt. Uhuru. They later canceled the controversial show as they later did Pryor's. NBC is often forth in the ratings of the now 6 or so free TV networks

Pryor's hometown of Peoria a year or so ago passed on erecting a monument or publicly acknowledging their native son after local boosters broached the idea.

RICHARD PRYOR MOVIES:

Lady Sings The Blues -- Pryor was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor in this period biopic of Billie Holiday for his role as her pal the Piano Man.

Bingo Long and the Traveling all Stars and Motor Kings --a sprawling historical period film about the early years of the barnstorming Negro Leagues re-teaming Pryor with "Lady Sings" the Blues'" Billy Dee Williams

Greased Lightning -- Much like "Bingo Long" this was a biopic about an early Black stock car driver.

Superman III -- Pryor is a rogue computer programmer who pilfers his defense contactor's funds. After discovery he uses him and his skills to entrap Superman. A comic-bookish third of fou rexisting Superman films with the late Christopher Reeves, co-staring Robert Vaughn ("Magnificent Seven", "Battle Beyond The Stars."

WattStax -- Pryor was the running colour commentator in the documentary about the Los Angeles community's arts, culture and entertainment festival.

Some Kind Of Hero -- Pryor is a Vietnam war vet who drives a busload of children to a new group foster home while pursuedby the authorities. Co-starring Cicely Tyson.

Blazing Saddles -- Pryor was a co-writer of Mel Brook's iconoclastic Western which featured the Black sheriff of the town ofRock Ridge taking on a criminal cowboy gang and Railroad Baron Hedley Lamarr .

Uptown Saturday Nite -- Sidney Poitier, Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor in a bit role as two working class guys head to New Orleans for some fun away from their wives, losing a winning lotteryticket.

Blue Collar -- A dramatic role for Pryor where he, Harvey Kietel and Yaphet Kotto fight union corruption in their Detroit automaker's union.

Brewsters Millions -- Remake of the 1940s movie where Pryor's character has to spend millions within a set time to gain a fortune.

Critical Condition -- Fact-based movie about a walk-inimposter who assumed control of a large city hospital for weeks before being discovered.

Adios, Amigo -- Almost unwatchable movie directed by Fred Williamson about a Westward movement after Emancipation.

Another You -- The fourth pairing with Gene Wilder with Hollywood capitalizing on the popular screen pairings.

Car Wash -- Pryor had one of many screen cameos throughout his career here as a white on white-on-white wearing Pimpin' Preacher whose license plate read "TITHE" while his multiethnic band of a half-dozen Heavenly 'Hoes attended him as he was one of many characters who parade through a day in the lives of those attending a California car wash. Co stars included Franklin Ajaye.

Hit! -- Pryor reteams with Billy Dee Williams' rogue covert agent to take down a high placed drug lord

The Wiz -- Pryor played the title character helping the overage spinsterish Dorothy return to New York's Harlem, played by his co-star Diana Ross in "Lady Sings The Blues."

The Toy -- A racist manipulative billionaire purchases Pryor for his spoiled brat son as his personal plaything. Pryor turns the tables as he tutors the boy in life. Co-stars Jackie Gleason and Ned Beatty.

Which Way Is Up -- Pryor starred in remake of an Italian film about a union organizer and husband with two families and many misadventures with women where he played multiple roles a generation before "The Klumps."

Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling -- Pryor directed this semi-autobiographical film.

See No, Evil Speak No Evil -- Pryor and multiple film pal Gene Wilder star as a pair of handicapped heisters.

The Mack -- A Pimp named Goldie builds his empire of womenses who give him their money. Pryor is a local entrepreneur in their underworld.

Moving -- In this kinder, gentler family film Pryor is a beseiged dad relocating in a long cross-country trip filled with misadventures and slapstick.

Bustin' Loose

Television:

• Saturday Night Live -- Pryor was one of the very first Host Performers of the show, and a notable guest whose skits are included in the SNL and NBC network retrospectives.

• The Richard Pryor Show -- The weekly show was a old fashioned variety program much like the later SNL and late-nite talk shows, with musical interludes from jazz people, and with comic sketches interspersed. Sandra Bernhardt and Robin Williams were featured on the limited show, which was cancelled amid controversy after only five showings. (Milwaukee's jumpy NBC affiliate didn't even show that many of them)

Concert Films:

• "Live On The Sunset Strip"

• "Richard Pryor Live In Concert."

Pryor As Director:

Jo Jo Dancer Your Life Is Calling -- (1987) his semi-autobiographical story that Pryor directed.

Writing Credits:

Blazing Saddles -- Pryor was a co-writer of Mel Brook's iconoclastic Western which featured the Black sheriff of the town of Rock Ridge taking on a criminal cowboy gang and Railroad Baron Hedley Lamarr.

Lily -- An award-winning telefilm about Lily Tomlin featured Pryor as one of the team of writers. His own TV series on NBC featured a young and unproven but promising Robin Williams and Sandra Bernhard.

----------

kevin j. walker, Netitor

The Word NetPaper

WalkerWorld

walkernet@excite.com

-- 30 –
Get Rich Or Die Tryin -- Cinema Views with Kevin J. Walker

CINEMA VIEWS by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic


"Get Rich Or Die Tryin'"

50 Cent Biopic Is Violent, Profane But Beguiling Film

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by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

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Kevin J. Walker, Netitor-in-Chief,
The Word NetPaper -- Web-based News Service
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GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN


Curtis Jackson Expands His Growing Empire Into Realm Of Film

50 Cent's sorta Biopic of his transition from a drug dealer to a rapper is at its heart a rather tender film that at its core is really about the strong draw and redemptive power of family, and Rap music


Although much of the media attention of the new 50 cent movie will be focused on the subject matter of drug dealing, Rap music and the associated violence of the onetime gang banger and dope dealer, they'd miss the core of what's truly happening in director Jim Sheridan's "Get Rich Or Die Tryin'."

A much as any of the other ingredients the movie is also a love story with a sweet core that's inside the prison fights, group sex parties, and gun battles that are primarily the recaps of the detoured rap career of Curtis Jackson, or 50 Cent.

The two hour plus long movie is also about the misguided entrepreneurial spirit that saw many young men and women in the nation's cities turn to an outlaw thug life and made their way with an alternative economy.

Talk of "Employes of the Month" of the drug enterprises they run and increasing their yield and product supply lines offers an overall technical view of the outlaw drug trade that hasn't much been seen since Nino Brown's NYC city block fortress operation in "New Jack City" with Wesley Snipes and Chris Rock in his first film. They're back to talking about yet another play at making a sequel to that movie.

Drug dealing isn't presented as a glorious occupation, but the hedonistic lifestyles are depicted. "Gettin' paid and gettin' laid" is what they're into, Marcus says, narrating throughout the film.

"After figuring the hours spent outside selling, it came to minimum wage" Marcus muses for us.

"If you figure in going to prison it was less than that," he states, which is what fuels his interest in becoming a rapper.

The kingpin of their underworld empire is Cahill, played by director and onetime action star Bill Duke from "Predator" and "Commando." Duke had a small role as a corrupt detective in the Hughes' twins excellent but heartbreaking "Menace II Society."

"Violence only begets more violence. It does not beget more money. Which is what I thought we were all in this for" Cahill says, after Marcus and his crew breaks the negotiated peace treaty with the Colombians.

With his low growling whisper and bowler hat, it makes one think of Marlon Brando's Don Corleone in "The Godfather," which had to be intentional because it could have been easily avoided.

Joy Bryant was a model before she burst on the scene as the love interest in Denzel Washington's "Antwone Fisher" opposite Derek Luke of "Spartan." She, just as since broken out actresses such as Kerry Washington and Sonaa Lathan, usually plays the Girlfriend role these days as she did in Jessica Alba's "Honey."

Bryant is way too scrawny to be featured as an object of male adoration, but as Charlene, a blast from Marcus' past she has a sweet and smart demeanor about herself. After a reenactment in the film of the infamous near-assassination where 50 cent was shot nine times but survived, Charlene is worried about Marcus' deteriorating mental state and spirit.

"I'm afraid I'm losing him" she confides to one of their mutual friends, as Marcus mopes around the house in his house robe and slippers, watching TV, his drive to make music all but gone.

"This place, this life, is this it for us?” Charlene says as she reads Marcus out when she sees his ambition drained.

"All I see in you now is a weak person. Your son is just another little Black boy without a father to look up to."

"Get Rich Or Die Tryin" is notable for a few reasons, aside from the fact that the director is an Irishman known for Academy Award-winning films such as "My Left Foot" and the prison film "In The Name of the Father." That movie was also fact-based about a wrongly imprisoned father and son who became cellmates in prison.

There are many parallels between the Irish in the United Kingdom and Africans in America, which they know more so than we. Rent "The Commitments" sometime, which is about a group that breaks into the Dublin music scene by reaching into and drawing from their Black Irish souls. Except none of them are of African Descent!

So having a director from Ireland made as much sense as it did when having one of the Hughes' twins make the period film "From Hell" about Jack the Ripper starring Johnny Depp as an investigator of one of history's most mysterious serial killers.

Hughes said it was just another type of ghetto, although an older one. And he was right, and "From Hell" was critically praised but more importantly it made the studio some money!

"Get Rich Or Die Tryin'" holds up dark-skinned Black women as objects of beauty in a variety of roles, whether its his young unwed mother Katrina, played by Serena Reeder, her saintly mother who often receives the dropped-off Marcus, or just the hanging-around girls. The Video Hoes and other eye candy with the light skin and long hair have been largely banished from the film, with the exception of Bryant.

The young actor who plays the young Marcus Grier is excellent, and better than his adult version played woodenly in spoken scenes by Jackson. Often slurring his lines, Jackson was more in the mode of behaving, which was said of Ice Cube in his early film roles.

What makes "Get Rich Or Die Tryin'" a success is that it has such a wide range of characters and situations to help 50 Cent out so he doesn't have to carry the weight of the film on his less than capable shoulders.

There is the romantic and Rap career subplots, but there is the brief prison portion, and the flashbacks to Marcus' youth with a beautiful and popular drug dealing mother and his fruitless search for a father. For action and suspense the battle for drug territory against the NYC Colombians, with jealous backstabbers watching and waiting to strike.

Terrence Howard is back in thug form again after his Oscar-buzz worthy role as a West Memphis pimp and aspiring rapper in "Hustle And Flow," also reviewed in this column.
"Hustle And Flow,"
Here he is 'Bama, Marcus' agent and Ghetto Consiglieri.

"Is that where you from, Alabama?" Marcus asks him.

"Naw, I'm from North Carolina. But I didn't want people calling me 'Lina!"

With such a sprawling film with a cast of dozens Howard's screen time was limited but he always makes the best of it, as he did in "Dead Presidents" and "Crash." Howard has played nerdy high school students in films like "Sunset Park" and "Mr. Holland's Opus."

Most recently Howard furthered demonstrated his versatility by playing a Detroit detective in "Four Brothers" and a second-generation thug lifer in the upcoming "Animal" with co-star and producer Ving Rhames. Professor Griff from the group Public Enemy screened that film in the mode of "South Central" and "Menace II Society" at the Rave in a recent visit to Milwaukee and a Cinema View of it is coming soon.

Rappers transitioning from music to acting is nothing new, in fact its a proven career upgrade path. Some of the bigger names are Queen Latifah, moving more to using her real name of Dana Owens; Will Smith, formerly the Fresh Prince; LL Cool J; Ice T, or Tracey Morrow from "Johnny Mnemonic" and "Surviving The Game," and now playing a cop on series TV; Treach ("Jason's Lyric") and both Xibit and Rza in the current suspense film "Derailed."

A companion video for showing after viewing "Get Rich" would be the most excellent "In Too Deep," the fact based story of a undercover officer portrayed by Omar Epps who rises to the upper reaches of a drug empire led by LL Cool J. There is a romantic angle with co-star Nia Long with Epps.

Those who thought they'd be treated to a movie with lots of concerts and rap will be struck by how little of that aspect there is in "Get Rich Or Die Tryin'." But they won't feel or be cheated by what they will see in a movie that although it deals with unpleasant subject matter and unwholesome realities of our cities and the Underclass, nevertheless is a well crafted and executed film by a director who has proven that he has what it takes, and is backed up by a capable cast.


GET RICH OR DIE TRYIN' is rated a well deserved "R" for violence including shootings and torture, drug use and dealing, male frontal nudity, and old style sexual throw-downs with mutual... whatever.


-- kevin j.
> --30--

-----------------------------
"Hustle & Flow"

HUSTLE & FLOW"

Terrance Howard Goes With The Flow As He Portrays A Memphis Pimp In An Oscar-Nominated Worthy Performance

http://BlackWebPortal.com/wire Review:

http://www.BlackWebportal.com/wire

Pimpin’s Back! But It Ain’t Easy As Terrence Howard Breaks Into The Hustle Of The Rap Business

Terrence Dashon Howard is setting the world on fire with his understated sense of menace to society. But what makes him such a versatile actor is that he can and has easily turn and play a cop, a teenager, or a suave and debonair Renaissance man.

In that regard, Howard has the same professional quality as Larentz Tate, that of being able to switch smoothly from paying a criminal thug gang-banger to being and executive in a suit, or a nervous nerdy youth. In fact, http://Eurweb.com reported that Howard tried to push off his star-making role on Tate, in an excerpt further down in this review.

The Pimpin’ game ain’t easy. For one thing, like men in any Polygamous setup, their women and lots of times the 'Hoes are a lot smarter than they are, and they automatically outnumber Pimps. Many of these women figure out that they can do badly by themselves. His White prostitute, the braided blond played by Taryn Manning from "Singles," brings this to the front.

"I’m tryin’ to figure out just what it is that you do?," the White chick says, who figures herself to be a businesswoman and who has lots more ambition than her present station shows. Indeed, that is the heart of "Hustle And Flow", the dreams beyond what you are. That’s it, not much more.

It has become popular through the years of the World’s Oldest Profession to regard sex workers as oppressed and exploited. The harsh reality that they know full well what they’re doing and indeed, may like it and never want to change is something we don’t want to address. But this doesn’t describe Manning’s character. We will see her in the discussed sequel to "Hustle And Flow," I sincerely hope.

I often play around with Hollywood Six Degrees, a spin-off of the game that was demonstrated with Kevin Bacon to show the linkages between the actors. As with Ludacris, Howard plays a successful rapper called Skinny Black. Ludacris Bridges and Larenz Tate also co-starred in "Crash."

In the heist film "Dead Presidents," Tate played a nerdy high school student then drafted into the Vietnam War as a Marine grunt opposite Howard’s slang-talking criminal named Cowboy in the film.

Ironically, Tate was Howard’s choice to take a look at the script, according to this posting on Black Webportal.com from fellow BWP media partner and contributor < http://eurweb.com > :

Howard tells EUR’s Lee Bailey about his conversation with writer Stephanie Allain after she made her pitch after running into him at a Four Season’s hotel:

"I was like, ‘I’m all into it, what’s he about?’ And she says, ‘He’s a pimp that wants to be a rapper.’ And I was like, ‘You need to go see somebody else. Go talk to Ice Cube about it.’ You know, that’s not what I wanna do. That’s not where I wanna be at. And she said, ‘It’s not what you think,’ but I still told her no."

Three months later, Allain still hadn’t taken no for an answer.

"She was so persistent and believed in me," he says. "And I finally took the time to read the script after meeting with [director] Craig Brewer and meeting with Allain a couple of times. I read the script after not talking with her for about three weeks and I fell in love with it.

"And immediately, I called her to make sure that the role was still available. Because I told her, ‘You need to go get Larenz Tate. Larenz will probably be able to kill this, because I can’t find the mindset for this character, because it’s not in my heart."

The film was singled out at the annual Sundance Film Festival in Park City Utah and was immediately snapped up by Paramount pictures, in a collaboration with MTV films division, which also distributed the 50 cent movie and sort of biopic of Curtis Jackson "Get Rich Or Die Tryin’."

In addition to the teen basketball player in "Sunset Park" he played a bit role as a rhythmically deprived teen in Richard Dreyfuss’ "Mr. Holland’s Opus." Howard was shown as a clumsy with women lawyer on TV’s "Sparks," and a philandering husband in HBO cable movie "Lackawanna Blues."

"Crash" was the first pairing of Ludacris and Howard, where ‘Chris was a carjacker who had the tables turned on him by Los Angeles television producer Howard, who had enough of being punked by the police, his mouthy wife, and the job, and now this carjacking punk! Maybe Cris Bridges will get the chance to smack Howard around for a change after these last two movies!

But at least we got a chance to see what slammin’ sistah Paula Jai Parker in another role, and she’s always a teat to see. I mean a treat. (That was a Freudian slip). She’s Lexus, the most prolific of D Jay’s hoes, and she lets him know it, too.

"Its MY coochie that pays for the rent around here!" Lex tells him, since his skinny White chick isn’t bringing in the dough, and his other one is laid up being pregnant.

Paula Jai Parker is so gorgeous its hard for casting people to see past her intelligence and focus on the booty. I meant to say her beauty. See what I mean?

Parker also would have been more believable in the role of the vivacious siren Darlene "Woo" Bates for which she was the original lead in that film, because the diminutive Jada Pinkett Smith is so narrow in the kiester that she had to have a booty-double for her part in the nude scene in "Jason’s Lyric." Its true, she said so herself.

But at least director Spike Lee sees Paula Jai’s versatility, and included her as one of the few females in his insta-movie "Get On The Bus" with the late great Ossie Davis, a veteran of a few Spike Lee joints. Jai and another sistah played cheerleaders who ran into the crew on their way to the Million Man March at a wayside. She played opposite Joe Torry as a couple of scheming mis-matchmakers in "Sprung."

Lee the producer also included Parker as a single mother in "Tales From The ‘Hood," who was being beat down by a brutal boyfriend in an uncharacteristically cast David Allen Grier from "In Living Colour."

Parker also played a hoe in "Phone Booth" opposite Colin Ferrell. Now lets see, what are we up to? In "Woo" she played a Chicken Hoe for screen hubby Dave Chappelle as they were engaging in some husband-wife bedroom role playing; she played a woman of the streets in "Phone Booth;" and now Parker’s playing another one in "Hustle And Flow." Let’s hope this isn’t a trend as she has lots more talent.

Taraj P. Henson is a real find as Suge, the scary and not real bright member of the clan. She doesn’t have a glamorous scene in the movie at all, and spends a lot of the time looking scared, dim, and sweaty in the non-a/c household and car.

When she belts out "you know its hard out here for a pimp" for the demo its one of the transformative parts of "Hustle and Flow," which like Variations on the "Mo’ Better Blues" and "Amadeus" shows the collaborative process of creating music, which takes up quite a bit of the movie, and not the Pimping angle.

Anthony Anderson gets a chance to show his dramatic skills after a healthy body of work in comedies and action adventure, including with Jet Li in "Romeo Must Die."

Anderson is a church musician and hopeful producer who like D Jay sees this as his last remaining chance to do something big with his life, and go for his big break. His not quite understanding wife is played by the ever-radiant Elise Neal, and her dragging on her husband causes some strife in the musical undertaking.

The Memphis pimp tells him that if his surly attitude of late is based on him not getting enough sex at home, that’s something that can easily be taken care of.

"‘Cause I got some p----- sitting right over there on the couch," D Jay says, and that he can hook him up right properly!

"I’m tellin’ you man, keep my wife’s name out of your mouth!" the angry Anderson tells D Jay.

Speaking of, another breakthrough who is headed for better things is the fireball White hoe with quite a head on her. For business, as it turns out. The people in "Hustle And Flow" all have their dreams and aspirations, and her role points this out.

"Do you know what it is that I do in the back seats of them cars?!" she asks her pimp when the life is starting to get to her as well, and she wants a life change, too.

"I don’t need you to be effen with my head right now, D Jay. Sometimes I don’t mind because I need my mind messed with, but not right now, okay?" she says after a rough nite on the job.

"Do you know what happens to me in the back of those cars? How I feel? Huh? Do you?!"

The range of emotions that play across D Jay’s face as he hears but maybe doesn’t understand is just one of the many things that make "Hustle And Flow" and enjoyable film, even though its about a subject that many would find unpalatable. But seeing masters of the game do their thing is something to behold, whether its playing a game of golf, an NBA final quarter, or championship chess.

DJ Qualls is likewise adding to his film repertoire, especially with Black oriented films. The Southern boy’s breakthrough was in the raunchy "Road Trip," where he made out as a celebrity at a Southern Black fraternity house, and ended up making out with a healthy sized Sistah as his First One!

Qualls also played Rat, a hacker/cracker par excellence in the most excellent Sci Fi end-of-the-world flick "The Core" with two time Academy Award winner and former trailer park rat Hilary Swank who was the female "Karate Kid 3."

With his scrawny looks and off-putting demeanor, Qualls sneaks under the radar but quickly becomes an audience favourite with his roles. Here he’s a co-producer from the same church as Anderson, and is a beat layer-downer and pianist/keyboarder in their low-tech recording studio on the cheap, with egg crate foam packing as their soundproofing in the back bedroom they’ve taken over in D Jay’s row house in town.

Just as in the over praised "Boogie Nights" with Burt Reynolds, "Four Brothers" co-star Mark Wahlberg, and Julianne Moore where they were a dysfunctional family of pornographers, likewise here D Jay’s family is he and his hoes, and their trick children. In a similar fashion in "Hustle And Flow" they have a family of sorts, and although it strains the concept its the same thing.

When D Jay remarks about Taraj P. Henson’s child -to-be he offhandedly says "its a shame we won’t know who his daddy is," we see the fleeting look of hurt on her face, as well as the perplexed look of a dawning realization on her part. It is little things like this that makes one see why this was a Sundance exhibition favourite.

Henson is a busy girl onscreen these days. She’ll be seen in the gripping "Animal" opposite Howard and Ving Rhames. Its a storyline familiar to those who’ve seen "South Central" and "In The Name Of The Father," that last directed by "Get Rich Or Die Tryin’" director Jim Sheridan.

Henson’s still stuck in the sweet Girlfriend and Babymama Mode these days, but she’ll break out of that soon, just like Vivica Fox, Kerry Washington, Sonaa Lathan, and Halle Berry all did, just you watch.

"The Best Man" was invigorated by Terence Dashon Howard’s presence. The predominately Black romantic comedy was a reincarnation of the 1940s films, where Howard played the part of the meddling guest who amuses himself by setting up the various others based on their past histories and personalities. Howard is also is an accomplished guitarist, if the credits of the film are accurate. That was him doing own playing of the Spanish song in the scene at the club,

That Howard would eventually get his own lead role was just a matter of time because it is the nature of cream to rise higher. Now all he has to do is make a Science Fiction movie and his conquest of the known cinema worlds will be complete. Except for a musical with a singing part.

Howard didn’t just show up, get dressed and started to play a pimp, he researched the role extensively, the Eurweb article showed.

"I went to Cleveland first of all and talked to some guys that I saw when I was growing up in certain areas, you know, 55th and Huff; 30th and Central; downtown Cleveland," Howard says.

"I had to understand the pimps from my own environment first.

"I talked to this guy named Tweety Bird. He was very open in telling me the Pimpology and the things necessary in order to help someone to accomplish something that they think they can’t do; to swallow their conscience."

After researching the town that raised him, Howard spent about four months checking out the Memphis pimp scene.

"I stayed inside a motel for about a month-and-a-half that was right on the track in Memphis, and just watched everything going on, videotaped people, talked to them," he said.

"I used to pay some of the prostitutes a hundred dollars just to come and talk to me for an hour, tell me about their lives. I’d pay the pimps to come and inform me, you know, talk to some of the mothers of the children.

"I had a year-and-a-half to prepare this guy. You give an actor that much time, he’s gonna come up with something really, really good."

Howard’s work paid off in the role, and he may have even struck future Oscar gold with his dedication. Next February during the Academy Awards we’ll see.

On Pimpology

I’m from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and since this was the home of Iceberg Slim, the first pimp to write his life story, we like to think we know a little bit about that sort of thing.

Its not something the local Chamber of Commerce puts in the tourist brochures but this is also the home of Pimpin’ Ken, and the infamous Player’s Ball that was featured in the HBO cable movie "Pimps Up, Hoes Down." Ken has his own video series on DVD he’s distributing, a sort of documentary and reality series.

Pimp movies aren’t exactly even a sub genre in Hollywood. In "Night Shift" which was the breakout movie for future "Batman" and "Mr. Mom" star Michael Keaton and Henry Winkler, the former Fonz of "Happy Days" and the coach from "The Waterboy," the two graveyard shift morgue attendants run a side business managing their womenses, including a pre-"Cheers" Shelley Long as a street hoe!

Morgan Freeman showed a couple of decades ago as Fast Black in the late Christopher Reeve’s "Street Smart" with Kathy Baker. Then there was "Willie Dynamite," Diana Sands last movie as an anti-prostitute crusader, made as she was even then dying of cancer. The Hansberry-Sands Theatre company in Milwaukee was so named, after she Chicagoan playwright Lorraine Hansberry who attended school at the University of Wisconsin, and famous for "A Raisin In The Sun." Sands played her Atheistic college student character in the movie.

"Hustle and Flow" demonstrates it doesn’t take a lot to make a big movie, just a good idea and the right people. Millions of dollars and big name stars might be nice, but attractive concepts and drive can go a long ways.

In Milwaukee we continue to see this in the works of Cecil Woodson III and his "Straight Hustl’n," formerly called "The HittMaker" co-starring Terry "Hollywood Love" of the smooth jazz radio station WJZI 93.3 FM; local chanteuse Theresa Brown; with model and former Hooter’s Girl and lead actress Keisha Ingram.

Many people have noticed the parallels between Cecil’s story that was filmed way back around 2001 and the premise of "Hustle And Flow." In the locally produced and shot movie, a young man named Quik makes a bad decision and ends up in the county lockup. He gets another chance after coming out, becoming a producer of rap music and has lots going for him. But just like Michael Corleone’s "The Godfather," just when Quik tries to get out and go legit they reach out and pull him back in!

The DVD of "Straight Hustl'n" is at Blockbuster Video if you want to see the comparisons for yourself. --kjw

Terrence D. Howard Films:

  1. Animal
  2. Four Brothers
  3. Crash
  4. The Best Man
  5. Sunset Park
  6. Dead Presidents
  7. Mr. Holland’s Opus
  8. Howard’s TV Shows, TV Movies:
  9. Sparks
  10. Lackawanna Blues
  11. Their Eyes Were Watching God

HUSTLE AND FLOW is rated R primarily for rough language and vague depictions of oral sex, with some drug use of the smoking variety. Directed by Craig Brewster, its from Paramount/MTV Films.

Please send your comments or observations to:


Kevin J. Walker, film critic

The Word NetPaper

< thewordnetpaper@excite.com >

http://cinemaviews.tripod.com

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http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/cinema_views/videoviews/blacklove

p.o. box 1324-53201

Milwaukee, WI USA 53201


-----------
Brock Peters Passes, Was Adm Cartwright in "Star Trek"

Cinema Views With Film Critic Kevin J. Walker

IN MEMORIAM:

Star Trek Universe Loses Two:

1) Brock Peters Passes, Was Sci Fi Bro. ‘Adm. Cartwright;’ Radio’s Darth Vader

2) Doohan “Scotty” & Uhuru’s Screen Boo In “ST 3” Succumbs

http://cinemaviews.tripod.com

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The "Star Trek" Universe has now lost two warriors, with Sci Fi Brotha Brock Peters, a noted actor of stage and screen, and the radio voice of Darth Vader. Also recently passed was "Scotty" Doohan, the Starship Enterprise engineer, and the on-screen Boo of Nichelle Nichols' Lt.


Kevin J. Walker, Netitor

< walkerworld_2000@yahoo.com >

The Word Netpaper

http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000

p.o. box 1324-53201

milwaukee, wis usa


Brock Peters, age 78 and a noted actor of stage and screen died earlier this week from pancreatic cancer at his home in Los Angeles. He was diagnosed with the disease earlier this year.

He was originally named George Fisher, and was born in NYC’s Harlem in 1927, and had his own star dedicated on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame in 1992.

In “To Kill A Mockingbird” with Gregory Peck he played a Black man falsely accused of rape, and defended by Peck’s principled and gentlemanly Southern lawyer.

It was not shown in the movie, but Brock’s character was caught and lynched while he was being moved to a safer location during the legal proceedings. Two years ago Peters eulogized fellow “To Kill A Mockingbird” co star Peck at his funeral. The movie was named as one of the top American films by the American Film Institute in one of their periodic lists just before Peck died.

Peters was a stage and screen star, and first appeared onstage majorly in 1954 in “Carmen Jones” as Sgt. Brown, from the modern remake with an all-Black cast of Bizet’s play “Carmen.” He followed that with “Porgy” from the play “Porgy and Bess,” and “10,000 Black Men Named George.”

With his deep rumbling voice, dark skin and tall commanding presence, Peters found among his variety of roles those of authority figures, even when he was a villain.

In “The Liberation of L.B. Jones” in the 1970s Peters was the silent train traveler heading back Down South to settle an old score and kill a racist. Peters also co-starred in Whoopi Goldberg and Alec Baldwin’s “Ghosts of Mississippi” about the prosecution of the killer of civil rights leader Medger Evers.

But in later years he was known by another generation of fans for being part of the most widely seen movie franchises ever created from one of the most daring TV shows.

Brock portrayed United Federation of Planets Admiral Cartwright and appeared in two “Star Trek” films, “ST5: The Voyage Home,“ and Part Six “The Undiscovered Country.”

Brock as Admiral Cartwright starred in his two big screen Star Trek movies with original series members before it was handed off to the “ST: Next Generation” cast. He was a supporter of once fellow Admiral James Tiberius Kirk, and a high level plotter of treason against the Federation’s peace treaty with the Klingon Empire.

Peters was also the radio voice of Darth Vader in the second film of the series “The Empire Strikes Back.” It was serialized on National Public Radio in the early 1980s when originator and Fellow Sci Fi Brotha James Earl Jones (“Conan The Barbarian”) passed on the opportunity that had most of the original cast recreating their lines, including fellow SCB&S member Billy Dee Williams as Lando Calrissian, mayor of Cloud City and reluctant freedom fighter for the Rebellion.

The Sci Fi brothas and Sistahs is a list I composed of actors of African Descent who reversed the onetime virtual non-appearance in futuristic films. Star Trek as a TV series in its multiple formats as the original series, “Next Generation”, “Deep Space Nine”, “Voyager,” and the temporary end with “Enterprise” almost single-handedly started the trend of featuring African Descended actors, who went on to populate other series on cable TV and feature films such “FarScape,” and the new “BattleStar: Galactica” series; as well as syndicated TV fare such as “Babylon 5” and “Andromeda.”

There is a much longer SFB&S article coming, which will feature the OGs of the Science Fiction genre such as Paul Winfield, Peters, Star Trek episode co-star William Marshall; and the new Turks such as Tyr, Worf (who started the recent trend of Africans portraying aliens); and the worthy replacement for Spock in Star Trek: Voyager. (A Star Trek Filmography follows these obituaries).

Admiral Cartwright, also known as Brock Peters, will live forever in reruns and in the hearts and minds of others yet unborn.

One to beam up.


IN MEMORIAM II:

One More To Beam Up:

Doohan, Uhuru’s Boo Scotty

The Enterprise Engineer Passes

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The Word Netpaper


Also recently passed after a long illness was Doohan, Lt. Uhuru’s boo Scotty, or Commander Montgomery Scott who played the beleaguered starship Engineer who kept the Enterprise running during its original Five year Mission.

His signature complaints “The engines can’t take much morrre of this poundin’ Cap’n!,” when Kirk called for greater Warp Speed to get them out of a fix; and “but we don’t have the powerrrr!” in his rolling Scottish brogue have been integrated into the culture, as well as the line that was apparently never spoken: “Beam me up, Scotty.”

Doohan was a frequent guest at the many Star Trek and Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions until his health would no longer permit his appearances. When Milwaukee had the huge GenCon conventions Doohan and other SF stars made their way to the city, also home to George (“Sulu”) Takei’s parents, and the writer Peter Straub of “Black House,” based on his upbringing in Lacrosse, Wisconsin.

The romance between Scotty and the original Sci Fi Sistah Uhuru was only portrayed in one “Star Trek” movie, the third one “The Search For Spock.” It was one of the lesser films, but was notable for a few things that stretched the boundaries, a thing that ST was known for before they featured the first interracial kiss between an alien-controlled Lt. Uhuru and William Shatner’s Captain Kirk.

The command crew of the derelict and scheduled for scuttling Enterprise follows Admiral Kirk and hijacks their mothballed Starship from orbital space dock when they learned there was still a chance to save the spirit of Spock, apparently killed in the second Star Trek movie “The Wrath of Khan.”

Michelle Nichols’ Uhuru’s job was to stay behind and monitor, mislead and jam their communications as the Federation tried to catch the mutinous crew. Their antics laid the framework for the next three of four movies, where the Klingon Bird of Prey scout craft they hijacked made them interstellar criminals, wanted now by the Klingon Empire as well as their own Federation! Don’t ask, just rent the DVD.

There was some cooing and huggin,’ with Uhuru caressing Scotty’s face and telling him to be careful while they’re jacking the Enterprise, and “my darlins’” in his thick brogue, and we in the audience were at first pleasantly perplexed and surprised.

And why shouldn’t these colleagues have gotten together, as long as they’ve worked together? Two hundred years from now people will still be people. A co-worker who once irritated you starts to look OK, then darn good after awhile.

Aside from the fact that this was 2 centuries into the future when interracial romance isn’t/won’t be such a big issue when entirely different species are exploring getting busy, as well as they could anyway with the tentacles and such. Bear in mind that Michelle Nichols’ Uhuru wasn’t bad on the eyes even then, after three decades of reruns every day, and two or three times a day on different cable channels.

Doohan also will be missed as a member of the Star Trek family, and his tangential connection to the Sci Fi brothers and sister through Michelle Nichols’ Uhuru, his big screen boo.

To both of these Sci Fi fallen who will be remembered and not just in reruns forever,

Requiescat In Pace, Ad Infinitem.

Make that two to beam up. --kjw

STAR TREK FILMOGRAPHY

• 1 -- “STAR TREK” -- The original big screen movie, with V’ger threatening the home system. Co-starred the late Persis Khambata, onetime Miss India

• 2 -- “WRATH OF KHAN” -- Exiled 20th century warlord from the TV episode escapes his prison planet and plots revenge on Admiral Kirk

• 3 -- “SEARCH FOR SPOCK” -- Spock can be saved, as Kirk and a skeleton crew rips off the mothballed Enterprise and return to the Genesis planet

• 4 -- “VOYAGE HOME” -- Kirk and Co. must time travel back to our San Fransisco to save Earth’s future by gathering a pair of humpbacked whales; Madge Sinclair, the British Sci Fi Sistah portrays a resourceful Starship Captain

• 5 -- “WHERE NO ONE HAS GONE BEFORE” Spock’s reunites with his misfit and emotional full-Vulcan brother as his band of renegades steal the new Enterprise D to search for God. Directed by William Shatner

• 6 -- “UNDISCOVERED COUNTRY” -- Adm. Cartwright plots with hawkish Federation and Klingon elements in film with a Shakespeare flava based on “MacBeth;” Kirk and Doc McCoy are captured at last and put on trial by the Kilingons

• 7 -- “GENERATIONS” -- Cast originals hand over to Pickard and crew as Kirk meets his end in battle trying to stop a madman from destroying a star system to reenter paradise. Sci Fi Sistah Whoopi Goldberg co-stars, recreating her role as Guinan, the long-lifed and wise barkeep in the TV show

• 8 -- “FIRST CONTACT” -- Alfre Woodard the Sci Fi Sistah is the woman of Warp Drive creator Ephraim Cochran who is targeted by the Borg. Jonathan Frakes, Cmdr. Riker on TVs ST: Next Generation” directed. Best of the STNG“ films, and one of the top SF films, period

• 9 -- “INSURRECTION” -- Rogue Federation commercial elements oppress a peaceful people; Picard picks a side after a forced removal by the criminals

• 10 -- “NEMESIS” -- Picard has to battle his clone/son to save a star system; Data makes an awful choice

------------

Kevin J. Walker, Netitor

The Word Netpaper

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>--30--

Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith

“Sith” Happens

Cinema Views by Film Critic Kevin J Walker

http://cinemaviews.tripod.com

email: mailto:thewordnetpaper@excite.com

by Kevin J. skyWalker

“Once you give up integrity, the rest is a piece of cake.” -- J.R. Ewing of “Dallas” to a hapless victim’s question on how he came to be.

The new Star Wars movie is coming out just after Midnight Wednesday, but I have foreseen it! Here is the review that accompanies the Mace Windu focus of last week as all over the nation, the "Revenge of The Sith" hits the fans… I have foreseen it! The new Sith movie that is.

LeJaynes Harris, originally from Charlotte, North Carolina then St. Louis after Milwaukee, Wisconsin was the person who introduced me to “Star Wars.” We were buddies in college at Marquette University, and she said “there’s a movie that you have to see. I’m taking you this weekend.“

It was at the Mill Road theatre, and after the scroll-up I was amazed. There was rusting and broken machinery tossed in a corner that would be gotten to, someday. There was grime, not the pristine white plastic domes which was more wish fulfillment of a clean and prosperous future. This was a genuine, old, lived-in world! But they had universal themes: the fight against tyranny, Spirituality as opposed to Religion, the desire to be a part of something larger than yourself.

There was nothing like this before, at least not done right like this. There had been what they called “Space Operas” before. In some of those others you could almost expect the actors to burst out into laughter at the hammy dialog and plots. But this “Star Wars” was a world that had no connection to our planet or time, hence there was no baggage, or insulting of anyone’s history or heritage. It was a clean slate that Lucas could use to exposit his well-developed ideas about descent on a personal and civilizational scale.

May 19th is an august date for the release of the newest Star Wars episode “Revenge of the Sith,” its the same date as the other two episodes. Although I don’t think Lucas had this in mind, it's usually known among Africentric African Americans as Malcolm X's birthday, launching a month-long celebration of events culminating on Juneteenth Day, June 19th.

The political angle gets more exploration, as the Republic prepares to kill itself off to save itself as the separatist wars come to the skies above Coruscant.

“Have you ever considered that we’re on the wrong side?” asks a tentative Padme as she sees the machinations of her fellow Nabooian Palpatine

“Now you’re talking like a Separatist!” says Anakin.

Later during a Senate session Sen. Padme Amidala watches with a cynical eye as she sees the bleating assembly of star systems hand over more power to the ambitious Palpatine, promising Peace In Their Time!

“So this is how Democracy dies” she says to herself. “To thunderous applause...”

This fulfills the desire and intent of Lucas to have more of a political edge, although the action sequences are very satisfactory. The battles on several planets such as the hell-hole Mustafaar keep “Revenge Of The Sith” busy, and the attention of audiences glued. Get your concessions early, because you won’t want to leave lest you miss something. I have foreseen it!

Like James Earl Jones, Ian McDiarmid who has played the Emperor Darth Sidious and Senator Palpatine in four movies is a stage actor, and they are particularly skilled at extended verbal delivery, and getting their lines right, and for effect.

The Sith are the enemies of the Jedi, but they have positive aspects too, says Chancellor Palpatine. “From a certain point of view,” says the still hidden Darth Sidious, using the persuasion and convenience of Situational Ethics to sway a weakening Anakin, emotionally vulnerable and still looking for a male anchor growing up without a father.

“Those who have power hate to lose it, including the Jedi...” Chancellor Palpatine says.

“The Sith rely on their passions for their power, they look only inwards,” says Anakin. “The Jedi use their powers to help others” says the still idealistic young Jedi Knight. But he says it by rote because that’s what he’s been taught.

“The Sith and the Jedi are alike in almost every way, including their desire for more power,” opines Sidious.

“But the Sith only care for themselves.”

“And the Jedi don’t?”

“Don’t allow yourself to be used by the Jedi Council. They know of your contributions” yet he is not properly rewarded, insinuates Darth Sidious as he works on the emotions of Anakin, especially his fears. He knows he shouldn’t, but Anakin still wants more. Especially more power to keep people off him, since he was unable to prevent his enslaved mother and he from being oppressed back home on Tattoine.

This talk of power politics was one of the high points of the movie for me. Especially since my motto at the end of these articles and my home pages are from former Congressman William Gray from Philadelphia:

“In this society you must have either money or power. If you have either you are respected, if you have both you are feared, but if you have neither then you are oppressed.”

“Revenge of the Sith” is about loss on several levels. Personally, the tragedy is when Anakin who is to bring balance to the Force, is revealed at the start of “Episode 3” to have put aside his anger and become truly appreciative of the teachings of Obi-Wan Kenobi.

“I’ve learned so much from you...” he tells his onetime teacher. Sadness it is that Anakin has changed from the often angry and arrogant young man of Episode Two into a gracious and appreciative man, who loves and has someone who loves him, and is somewhat respected by the Jedi council. But he has not purged his heart of desires he ought not to have. Ambition, covetousness, jealousy, and still much anger in him the young one has.

Anakin loses his personal struggle to be a Better Man when he goes against his Jedi training and creed with emotional attachments and the illegal marriage to Padme seen in “Attack of the Clones.” He already has a family of sorts but doesn’t accept the Jedis as his. He didn’t have a father, and his substitute daddy was killed in Episode One. The wily Palpatine is only too happy to step into the vacuum.

The look on Anakin’s face is striking when a beaming Padme tells him “I’m pregnant!” He, like a lot of men is stunned by the news, and not as giddy with delight as women are because it means different things to us. The perplexed look and how he tries to hold his face straight was precious, and the guys in the small gathering of preview attendees made knowing sounds in the subdued theatre light. It is little human touches like this that make the Star Wars series beloved of the people, its intimate portrayal of human nature even while its setting up the next tremendous battle.

“The Empire Strikes Back” is Episode 5, the second movie and to many the favourite one because it was so far and away different, dark and uncompromising. People were killed, some strangled by remote control by an unforgiving Darth Vader when they failed to deliver Skywalker and his friends. Here in Episode III when a spacecraft blows up we see the bodies of the hapless star troops blasted out into space, to take their place with the floating wreckage.

Some people complained about “Return of the Jedi” because nobody major died. Not even Han Solo, who even sorta predicted his own passing. Which couldn’t happen because then who’d be the BabyDaddy to Leia’s Jedi Twins in the next three films? But we’re getting ahead.

If its death you want then this is the movie for you, because there’s plenty of it. Heads roll, limbs are severed with alacrity. and those Lightsabres get used a lot, against a lot of people. There are ambushes, back shootings, betrayals. Unlike the wimpy off-screen references to massive deaths in the kid-oriented “Phantom Menace” of Episode One as then-Queen Padme Amidala’s people tried to repulse the invaders of the Trade Federation, here they show people getting sliced and diced, even if its by a brief replay of a security cam.

This is why “Sith” as it will come to be known is so dark; it looks inside people much as the surprise over the pedestrian looks and former occupations of those pulled into Nazi Germany. The Nuremberg Trials showed how accountants, office managers, bakery shoppe owners and advertising executives became enthusiastic killers on a mass scale, like something Dark was inside them and just waiting for expression.

This is why I and others cut George Lucas some major slack for what he has attempted and accomplished. For all their pontificating about the Human Condition, those mouthy, pouty art house directors whose opaque impenetrable movies are much beloved of critics but couldn’t begin to make a movie that people would pay to see, or even watch on TV for free.

Yet Lucas has managed to pack more philosophy and musings on Moral Relativism, liberty, revolution, history, and cosmology than most people will ever see outside of a college class or lecture, while entertaining moviegoers and turning a handsome profit, so cut him some slack.

The fighting in “Revenge of the Sith” is shoveled in from start to finish, and there is no dissension on this part. There are the warnings that grade schoolers will find this a bit upsetting, but not as upsetting as their real fear, which is loss of family and separation, which strikes terror in their little hearts. This is why the little ones will get upset when they see their parents arguing, and try and push their hands together. They’ve noticed that when you hold hands, smile and kiss their vulnerable world is stable, and therefore safe.

Seeing a pregnant stressed-out, flinching Padme being hollered at by a scowling, fuming and confused Anakin was like putting a knife into me, and I’m no kin to either of them! Ever the master, Lucas has tapped into a rich vein here, and the movie exploits it. Loss, disappointment, betrayal, and the descent of a once sweet boy into the depths of pure evil, and all that implies.

“Not letting go -- the shadow of greed that is. Train yourself to let go of everything you care for” advises Yoda to Anakin. But he can’t do it. Can’t, and won’t!

The Lightsabre battles are even pushed up a notch, with techniques that go beyond anything seen before. Lightsabres only have the handle, and since they’re not a long metal blade they can be used speedily and lightly, with deadly effect. Behind-the-back parries and spinning swipes and techniques go much further than the double-bladed Lightsabres of people such as the departed Darth Maul from “Episode 1: The Phantom Menace,” or that film’s two-handed Asiatic style fighting between Count Dooku and Anakin, where they get a rematch!

Mace Windu gets into it with a Sith, and this time we see his sword fighting technique. Samuel Jackson plays Mace Windu, and he has been a fan of the series and adventure movies his entire life, and to him his role as a Jedi Master and sword fighter was a dream come true:

“I’ve been waiting for a scene like that my entire life, ever since I was a young man pretending to be an Errol Flynn like swashbuckler, fighting with sticks. Its amazing!”

You could have gotten a preview of Jackson’s training in his small film “Formula 51” where he used a golf club as a sword against the Bad Guys, but he spun it like a Lightsabre while he was wearing a kilt. (Don’t worry, I didn’t see the film either, and I’m a film critic).

I’m like a lot of fairly normal people who are fans of the genre, just not as Out There as some of the fan-atics, the original form of the word. I don’t dress up for the movies in costumes of characters, not even the “Rocky Horror Picture Show” we have here, and Milwaukee has the world’s longest continuing showings -- for real!; I don’t have a dark brown cloak nor personal Lightsabre with custom crystals; nor do I feel the need to stand in a three hour movie line, let alone a three day one!

People have been camping out for the last four weeks in some parts of the country just to get in line when the tickets went on sale! They have tents, lights, little Porta-Potties and everything, the weirdoes. Then the news was announced that credit card buyers of advanced ticket sales would be skipped ahead of them on the first day. Now don't they feel silly! And cold. And wet. That’s another reason I’m glad I’m a film critic. I saw the movie two weeks ago, in a 500 seat theatre with about 50 of us in it. I had a row almost to myself. But you-all have fun in those lines!

Lucas, who named the idealistic young Luke Skywalker after himself, returned to directing for these final three of the originally planned nine parts of the “Star Wars” epics, at least his versions, believes in the Roman theatrical credo of in media res, from the Latin for “in the midst of things.” The opening scenes are reminiscent of “Episode 4: A New Hope” which we came to call “Star Wars,” with a tremendous battle between gigantic triangular star ships.

What is different is that instead of a Space Battle this one takes place in the air, the upper atmosphere of Coruscant, the capital planet of the Galactic Republic as the Clone Wars against the Separatist systems and their Trade Federation allies are raging though the inhabited systems. Moving the battle to the upper air like this means they can use smoke and gravity, and the special effects people went all out this time, fo’ sho’!

Add the political angle and you have a well-pleased critic who is trying to decide if this is better than “The Empire Strikes Back” or “Return of the Jedi?” Which one? because its up there as one of the best of the six.

The first three Episodes were about Loss, personal with the fated yet avoidable loss of a little boy’s soul, how a grand republic loses its freedom, and the Jedis lose their heritage and sacred duties. Placing their trust in the wrong thing, values and people is the cautionary message of Lucas who has been tagged with hiding modern, by which I mean current, inferences to the Iraqi war and the George W. Bush presidency.

Lucas says that he didn’t, that the Vietnam War and World War II and the fall of the Weimar Republic to the fascism of German Chancellor Adolph Hitler was his inspiration on how democracies fall by choice, when they decide to give up their freedoms for security and gain neither.

But when Chancellor Palpatine says of the undecided on the Separatist war against the secessionists “Those who are not with us are against us,” I heard mutterings in the dark and they meant the same thing: this is what Dubya said at the buildup to the war in Afghanistan.

I have noted before that the Ewoks were analogous to the Vietnamese, when they made a stand on their own land against an Imperial invader, defeating them by using guerrilla tactics and using their enemy as their weapons supplier. It seemed pretty clear to me!

James Earl Jones, the famous actor, thespian and verbalizer of Darth Vader in all six films (as well as the voice of CNN!) injected the right amount of malicious undertone as the voice of Vader, which is no small feat. Jones is a stutterer, as am I. I looked to people such as him when growing up with the embarrassing speech impediment because he was a stage actor, which is the last place even a stammerer wants to be, let alone a full-fledged stutterer! I saw him in his one-man show on the life of Paul Robeson, the famous actor, athlete and activist who was hounded out of the country.

We stutterers are members of an august group, a membership that includes Thomas Jefferson; the Greek philosopher Demosthenes, who put pebbles in his mouth to train his unruly tongue!; and Moses, which is why he had his brother Aaron speak for him in public. (Exodus: “But why me, Lord? For I am confused of speech...”).

Stuttering overwhelmingly affects men -- stuttering is rare in females such as singer Carly Simon. Also, researchers are intrigued by the fact that people don’t stutter when they sing, such as Country-Western star Mel Tillis. We found ways around it, public speaking, performing, and even I found myself doing live TV and radio broadcasts. So James Earl Jones’ achievement as the voice of Vader and CNN is remarkable.

The story is that he did his lines for the first film in one three hour afternoon session. So distinctive was his “Star Wars” vocal contribution that Jones wanted to add to the mystery, so he went Uncredited in the first two films. People eventually found out of course, but his ploy worked and now he is an integral part of the Star Wars legend.

Vader is an iconic figure who has been played and portrayed by at least seven different people: James Earl Jones for voice; the tall British actor David Prowse overall; two sword fighters of different styles in Episodes 5 and 6; stunt men; the late Sebastian Shaw as Vader Unmasked in “return of the Jedi;” and now Hayden Christensen as the black metallic wheezing Evil One at his creation.

When he breathes his first and speaks for the first time with the vocalizer Darth Vader/Anakin needs, since a lot of his thoracic cavity was destroyed in the battle with Kenobi along with much of his lower body, people are going to make the final connection and the series will be melded into a harmonious whole.

The sprawling movie series’ wrap-up that were old as films before “Lord of the Rings” were made, or a single page of “Harry Potter “ was writ carried the weight well of melding into the next three which we already know, so there is a strict path it has to follow.

There are still some flaws I spotted, such as Darth Vader’s seeming amnesia where his homemade robot C3PO and home planet of Tatooine is concerned. In the book and movie Palpatine tries to get Luke to reveal who was his Jedi teacher since they were all supposed to be dead. When Skywalker can’t clamp down on his mind quick enough from the Emperor’s mental probing, Darth Sidious asks “This Yoda -- is he still alive? Gooood...” when he had to have known him from the Senate’s dealings with the Jedi Council.

They fixed the part about how the two robots got together, referred to in “A New Hope,” which we still call “Star Wars.” People are introduced from the first movie we saw, such as Captain Antilles of the rebel blockade runner who inherits the two robots R2D2 and C3PO.

Some observers -- I can’t call them “Critics” or even “Reviewers,” have been asking or stating that this version may be better than the first original “Star wars I.” Say what? Well of course, even the second film was better than the first one!

I’m not talking about just the jerky graphics and the misregistered mattes and blue screens. Even with the re digitized “Star Wars: A New Hope” that was re-released a few years ago it can’t get past the hamminess of a 1977 outlook almost 30 years old. Although still a thrilling movie to watch, it can’t stand against “The Empire Strikes Back” or “Return of The Jedi,” which to me is the best but only by a whisker over “Empire” and was directed by Lucas’ film school teacher Irwin Kershner.

“Empire” left the original in the dust in several ways. The SPFX were more advanced since the studio put proper backing behind Lucas. The writing and acting was also superior, with new directors for the Episodes of the next two films. Lucas wouldn’t return to the director’s chair until he launched the first trilogy. He also collaborated with Steven Spielberg in creating the “Indiana Jones” films, of which three of a planned four have been completed.

There was actually a time when people denigrated the cultural thrust of the films after the lily-white appearance of the first one, “Episode 4: A New Hope.” This merits an article all its own, and so it shall be next week. Shot in England and Africa it was top-heavy with clean-shaven Whites, although the costumed aliens hid many a Tunisian since all of the movies were partly filmed there, since it stands in for Tatooine the desert planet, baked by having two suns where water farming is a thriving enterprise.

This is what Luke, the hidden boy twin of Padme and Anakin does as he chafes at his chores of his Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru’s moisture recovery operation, when he is pulled into the Rebellion against the Empire. Ambassador Leia Organa’s Blockade Runner ship makes a desperate race with Imperial Star Destroyers hot on their trail to Ben Kenobi’s haven on Tatooine to contact the exiled Obi Wan with plans of the dreaded Death Star. By so doing they are reunited, although they don’t yet know it.

Luke himself was in danger of going over to the Dark Side as seen in the Vision in the Cave in “Empire Strikes Back” induced by the exiled Yoda, who twenty years before like Obi-Wan escaped the slaughter of the Jedis at the hands of the Sith, their ancient foes but brothers in their use of the Force.

After Yoda, Master Jedi Mace Windu is the spiritual center of the Jedi Council that oversees the thousands of years old Jedi Order, which is sorta like being monks with a vow of poverty and no spouses. Anakin says later for that!

Purists and Sci Fi adepts know that George Lucas lifted, pardon me I mean made an homage -- to George Herbert’s “Dune” future history epic, about the Spice Wars of the house of Atreides that took place on the barren planet Arrakkis, nicknamed Dune because it was parched and sandy. Just like Anakin’s Tatooine, which even has an area called “the Dune Sea,” where the fight with Jabba the Hutt’s forces over the devouring Sarlacc occurred.

The female priests of the Bene Gesserit order were the original inspiration of the Jedi Knights, and they even have the same soft brown coverings. You can see them on the old paperback versions which Lucas surely read, as did we all back in tha day.

In fact, in an article I wrote when the original second Star Wars “The Empire Strikes Back” premiered I accidentally slipped and revealed the ending of the entire 9 episode series, which now if Lucas has his way won’t be filmed. You know that yellow scroll-up with the heraldic music that starts every “Star Wars” chapter/ episode? That is the recitation of C-3PO, who is a digital Golden Griot.

But what he’s doing is telling the story to a giant computer trying to recreate the history of the carbon-based lifeforms who created their mechanical life, which is the only sentient kind that remains after we have passed on. That’s part of the larger Lucas message about the ultimate fate of Humanity which we can’t get into now. It goes onto the pile of future stories which is getting bigger and bigger!

This is a well done wrap-up of the first trio of prequels, at least by Lucas that is, because if he thinks this is The End he’s nuts; he can’t control what he’s started and shouldn’t. The copyright laws are going to sag beneath the weight of pirated concepts.

(Remember when Luther Campbell of Florida tried to use the moniker “Luke SkyWalker“ when the soft porn-ish 2 Live Crew jumped off real big? He was sued by LucasFilms quicker than one of his video hoes could pull off her top!) There are already minifilms that people have cut on their home computers, and to hear it some of them aren’t half bad. They’ve adopted bit characters and expanded on it, with their own story lines and SPFX aided by powerful Apple Macintosh personal computers and iMovie, iCreate and Quicktime software.

Since they legally can’t make any money off their creations they’ve been giving the movies away on download, at least up to May 19 when the Sith finally hits the fans. I wish I had created that clever saying and its permutations, but I heard it from a correspondent on Entertainment Tonight. Or it may have been ex-Milwaukeean by way of Detroit TV Shaun Robinson from Access Hollywood. She’s a nice person in person, and pretty down to earth, but Shaun really needs to eat more. But I digress.

The impact of the cultural icons of the modern fable continues.

The “Science of Star Wars” TV special is coming on this week, on the non-broadcast Discovery Channel. R2D2 and C3PO will host the show on how close or not the things depicted on the so far six part “Star Wars” saga are to becoming real. Lightsabres have come under analysis in science magazines before, but more pedestrian things such as robotic life and prosthetics come under discussion this time.

Many businesses for “Attack of the Clones, Episode II” declared what has been called "St. Lucas Day," so their employes could avoid some long lines. Many are planning on going after 12:01 am midnight Wednesday.

The same is happening this time out with many theatres starting the films on Thursday May 19 as they are contractually bound. It’ll be just after Midnight, or the end of Wednesday night. Then after the staff goes home for some R&R, the managers can order some more popcorn and soda syrup, get some sleep, and then prepare for near-marathon showings through the weekend.

CAST OF “REVENGE OF THE SITH” :

Samuel L. Jackson -- Mace Windu
Keisha Castle-Hughes -- Queen Of Naboo
James Earl Jones -- Voice Of Vader
Ahmed Best -- Jar-Jar Binks
Rebecca Jackson Mendoza -- Queen Of Alderaan; Mrs. Bail Organa
Temuera Morrison -- Commander Cody
Jimmy Smits -- Sen. Bail Organa
Christopher Lee -- Count Dooku, Darth Tyrannus
Peter Mayhew -- Chewbacca
Anthony Daniels -- C3PO
Kenny Baker -- R2D2
Frank Oz -- Yoda
Natalie Portman -- Padme Amidala
Hayden Christensen -- Annakin Skywalker
Ian McDiarmid -- Chancellor Palpatine, Darth Sidious

EPISODE III: REVENGE OF THE SITH is rated an unusual PG-13 for a Star Wars sequel or prequel because of the intense although bloodless slaughter scenes, and family themes that may upset younglings with their implications of loss. And implied child slaughter.

NEXT WEEK: More history of the “Star Wars” saga, including their increasing multiculturalism after being so lily white-bread in the original “Star Wars.”

IN PASSING:

Frank Gorshin has died at the age of 71 years from complications of several diseases. Older people knew him as a master impressionist who appeared on the Ed Sullivan and other shows, but some of us knew him better as the original Riddler who vexed Batman in the old TV series.

Gorshin also was in one of the bestest of the many original “Star Trek” episodes on NBC, as the alien lawman who was black on the left side of his face pursuing a refugee activist leader whose oppressed people were black on the right hand side. Or vice versa.

Anyway, their conflict was a societal reference to the still ongoing Civil Rights struggles in the 1960s. Frank Gorshin, you will be missed. Requiesat In Pace.

--30--

“xXx :State of The Union” Delivered By Samuel Jackson, Ice Cube

by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

Cinema Views of the Word NetPaper

“Look at it this way: maybe someday you’ll get your own holiday.”

--Seditious Sec. of Defense to President during coup

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ICE CUBE, MIKE EPPS IN "ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS"

http://www.blackwebportal.com/wire/DisplayArticle.cfm?ArticleID=624

 

Actors come and go, but the film franchise stays eternal!

Vin Diesel decided to bail on continuing as the star agent of the “Triple XXX” series in order to pursue his own projects. It didn’t turn out bad for him, with two successful and divergent movies such as the Sci-Fantasy spacer “The Chronicles of Riddick” sequel to “Pitch Black,” and the family action comedy “The Pacifier.”

The makers of this sequel movie of a secret government agency who uses unconventional outlaws as covert operatives weren’t going to just lie down, and they retooled rather well by installing Ice Cube, or O’Shea Jackson as “the new Triple X,” an agent with unconventional skills, usually an outlaw and who is unknown to other agencies, both Ours and Theirs.

After a well coordinated and devastating hit on their secret HQ, Augustus Gibbons the xXx Agency head played by a returning Samuel Jackson (no relation to Cube), plugged in another of a list of operatives he has spread out. When he realizes their HQ could have only been attacked and destroyed from somebody high up and on the inside, he tells his own version of 007s Q “we have to go off the grid” for someone with the skills they need to take down the traitors who are planning no less than a coup against the government of the United States.

Cube’s insouciant attitude is well used here, much as John Singleton did in his “Boyz N The Hood” and “Higher Learning.” Stone’s been imprisoned for 9 years of a 20 year term in military prison when he’s approached by Gibbons, who was called “Scarface” by Vin Diesel’s xXx as the skateboarding water skiing extreme sports operative. Stone also digs him about his war wounds.

“Oh, Gibbons -- I like what you did with your face.”

“You should have seen it before I got it fixed.”

If they up the ante as they did in this second “Triple X” they can keep on making them. They have stuff blowing up, lots of military ordinance, even a Bullet Train! The film did what “Die Hard 3” punked out on, they teased us with all those soldiers locked and loaded, all that armament, then didn’t even have a battle! Not so here, as Xhibit leads his street generals against tanks and armored HumVees on the streets of Washington DC!

Now that’s how you make an Action Adventure film: with lots of shooting, lots of explosions, helicopters darting about firing heat-seeking missiles, night vision goggles, surveillance, all that stuff. They could have had some more romance, even for we male filmgoers, because Nona Gaye has got it going on! There’s a bit of a tease with a Blondie-Blonde played by Sunny Mabrey as a deep cover operative Darius goes to for assistance in ferreting out the General’s plan, and takes him home for some R&R. “If you need anything, I’m right down the hall... “ she hints broadly.

X3: State Of The Union” has a “Seven Days In May” and “Murder At 1600” quality about it, with its central plot of a coup plotted by a former general turned cabinet member to take out the idealistic peace preaching President played by Peter Strauss. He wants to cut back on military bases and new weapons systems to launch his Peace Initiative. “Maybe then we can start turning some of these enemies into allies,” he says, so we won’t need such a big military in the first place.

Except that Secretary of Defense Deckert ain’t trying to hear all that, and he decides that he has to install himself as the new President after he plans to have the entire cabinet as well as a good amount of the joint session of Congress slain by his rogue regiment during the State of the Union speech, which would leave him next in line for succession! For the good of the nation you understand.

Willem Dafoe is a former Milwaukee Repertory Theatre actor who plays the seditious Sec. Gen. Deckert. He’s been as many Good Guys as he has villains, and had his first comedic role in “The Life Aquatic” with Bill Murray. He’s done action before, as when he burst onto the scene as the counterfeiter in the brutal “8 Million Ways To Die” with CSI’s William Petersen. Dafoe played the sensitive warrior Sgt. Elias in “Platoon,” and his first true Action Adventure role in “Speed 2” with Sandra Bullock. He’s also played such unconventional roles as Jesus in the controversial film “the Last Temptation of Christ.”

I liked “xXx: State Of The Union” which is possible, because its a requirement to grant a generous dollop of suspension of belief for the action adventure genre, but they took license with their allowance, more on that in a bit.

Ice Cube the rapper has become the latest film star to make the transition to action adventure films, which includes the likes of such artsy actors and actresses as Meryl Streep (“River Wild”).

I already knew the NWA Gangsta Rapper persona was just a put on for the Middle Class raised O'Shea Jackson, who doesn’t have more than parking and traffic violations. Cube is a businessman with multi-million dollar development deals with several film and recording studios.

He speaks well, shakes your hand with a mixture of a two-handed Corporate Grip and a 'how ya doin' brotha" clasp between old buds. He's easy to smile, and spoke with knowledge of what it takes to get a deal past studios when mucho dinero is on the line.

"You're dealing with millions of dollars just for an idea that's in your head," he said of approaching the studio execs with film treatments.

"A music video is like a 100 yard dash, a movie is more like a marathon."

Cube has done science fiction as well as in the Walter Hill produced John Carpenter directed Alamo/ Zulu/ Westerner in space called “Ghosts of Mars.” He was quick to tell me “I didn’t like that one.” That makes two of us! Not even with “Species’” star Natasha Henstridge and “She’s All That” and "The Faculty's" Clea Duvall.

With the “Barber Shop” and Friday” film franchises already in his pocket his Cube Vision enterprises is sitting pretty, allowing him the latitude to pursue the deals he wants.

This coup business is daring ground for any motion picture, and few have tried it because its lined with land mines. The movie negotiates them well, because it doesn’t delve too deeply into the politics but stays to the action. For something deeper rent, if you can locate it, Mark Lane’s “Executive Action” which is a feature film about the November 22 1963 Kennedy assassination and the subsequent coup. Oh, by the way, 2039 will be here in 34 more years. That’s when the CIA’s and other classified files will be opened on Lee Harvey Oswald. Like its a big secret what they’ll say!

So you see the appeal for me of this movie, which could have picked any other topic to have a firefight onscreen but stretched a bit, so they get some Cool Points.

But another film in this vein I like is the little seen “Most Wanted” with Keenan Ivory Wayans as a jailed then sprung military operative where the entire film is about the buildup for an assassination, and setting the Brotha up to take the fall. There are elements of that in “Triple X” which you will see, including the idea for what an imprisoned man really has on his mind when he gets to the outside!

Lee Tamahori also directed the James Bond 007 film “Die Another Day” which launched the spin-off of the Jinx character of Halle Berry’s assassin/agent, so he knows how to carry off the big Throwdown stuff. He also knows a thing or two about car chases and aerial battles, and “State of The Union” has quite a few. In addition to quoting Tupac as a military strategist, this has to be the first movie with street hustlers carjacking a military tank . Or as Xhibit the strike leader says “If it has wheels we can jack it.”

This blending of the action adventure and urban flick added a dimension to “xXx” that added to its appeal. Not many movies would quote Tupac Shakur as if he was a general, or mention the late Johnnie Cochran. Since they daren’t go to the authorities they have to rely on Stone’s old friends back in the ‘Hood.

“Why can’t y’all go to the police?” asks Xhbit's chop shop owning character when asked for his troops.

“We don’t trust the police”

“I heard that!” he says.

Toby aka “College Boy” plays the role that actors like Judge [“Beverly Hills Cop”] Rheinhold and lately Eugene Levy get, that of the Straight-Laced White Fella who gets infected with street attitude from being around too many Black people. Levy who set it off in “Bringing Down the House” with Queen Latifah, will join Samuel Jackson will be in the forthcoming “The Man.” It’s a comedy Cop/Buddy action flick about a street-smart urban detective who drafts a square salesman to help him crack a case because he won’t ever be made by the Bad Guys, with tinges of “Analyze This.” You’ll see what I mean.

“C’mon, Steele, get crunk with us!” Toby says as he breaks his neck to the beat to a once skeptical Fed played by “Underworld’s” Scott Speedman, as Darius turns on a rap CD in the car as they’re about to make a strike. Michael Roof plays the winning sidekick character to both Jackson and Cube, who is akin to the bodyguard butler in the “Lara Croft “ franchise as he gentlemanly wields a riot shotgun and dispatches Bad Guys with crisp efficiency.

Toby is a computer whiz, weaponeer and MacGyver inventor on-the-fly. When he meets gearhead and luxury car owner Nona Gay’s Lulu as she talks about manifold pressure and RPMs he’s sprung.

“I love this woman...” Toby says, struck dumb by this combination of beauty, mechanical skill and love of technology. I know the feeling.

Still, it was disheartening to hear some retards who have been indoctrinated with the idea that we should celebrate, as too many music videos do, those who have more evidence of the Slavemaster Bastards’ blood in them. When the camera makes a soft focus close-up of Nona Gaye’s gorgeous face and those juicy lips, males with maturity and sense went “Umm!” At a weekend showing of “xXx State of The Union” some male -- must have been a real “boy” -- said “ugh!”

This is like those outrageous pictures on the Internet where somebody spliced 50 Cent’s head on Serena Williams’ body, echoing the utterings of too many Whites who say that the two attractive, chocolaty and talented sexy sisters “look mannish.”

I could expect it from them, because their hatred of us may be in their very DNA, as is their contradictory confusing love for everything about us, such as browning themselves in the cancer-causing sun. But what is the excuse for those kids whose own mothers and they themselves may be just as dark, and with African Motherland features like these stars they diss because they don’t look like Mariah Carey or Alicia Keys?

But I digress. There’ll be a feature on the Eurocentric versus Africentric standards of beauty, and the appeal of Forbidden Fruit after the “Other Fat Actresses” article that is being prepped, about Real World and not Reel World women and the size that men really prefer, not those picked for their Homo-Erotic, skinny “boyish with breasts” looks.

Samuel Jackson has been dubbed “the Hardest Working Man In The Movie Business” for good reason. He’s been in more films than any other actor, and has made the most money, or been in films that did. That’s mostly because of the two Star Wars episodes he’s been in as Jedi Master Mace Windu.

Jackson’s in this latest and third prequel where like the series he meets his end, which is not giving away any surprises such as when he angered some of those weird die-hard SW fans. Its long been known, like since 1977, that almost all Jedis die off in Episode 3 after being hunted down by the Sith. And Jackson has promised to go out spectacularly! It’ll be cooler than when he decapitated the villain in the last one, without even having to look at what he was doing.

More next week on what is supposed to be the last “Star Wars” episode in my precede, since the good people at Twentieth Century Fox sent me this nice media kit, with a CD-ROM packed fulla pictures and other stuff. And I’m NOT going to put these up on eBay, unlike some other so-called critics not worthy of the name who don’t get published anywhere. But Jackson has two films out in theatres, including the artistic “In My Country” about an American journalist who hooks up with “The English Patient,” Juliette Binoche’s South African reporter as another interested person in the aftermath of the Truth and Reconciliation commission after the fall of Apartheid.

Jackson actually had to argue down that his “xXx: State of The Union“ character shouldn’t be killed off. What did they think? This isn’t the first time that Jackson has put his imprint on a film he was in; his extensive knowledge of comic books was put in his “Unbreakable” with Bruce Willis, a film mate from their “Die Hard 3: Simon Says” and from Quarentino’s “Pulp Fiction,” although they didn’t really have any scenes together. Jackson studied Marine Biology in college, which probably came in handy when he co-starred for a bit in “The Deep Blue Sea.”

I criticized Cube when he made one of his first solo starring roles in “Dangerous Ground,” a South African saga that required him to portray a California graduate student. He looked and acted like he was still in character from “Boyz In The Hood” or “Trespass,” chewing on a toothpick and talking in slang.

Now, there are some people -- and you’ve seen them -- pursuing a Master’s degree who try their best to act as if they still have plenty Street in them; but acting should be trying to reach beyond your experience and people’s expectations. If not then you’re Behaving, and not Acting. But when he started directing and did “Player’s Club” lots of critics realized that it was rather well-done. When he put himself into the background for the good of the “Barber Shop” film it was better for it.

When I interviewed he and co-star Michael Epps in Chicago for their “All About The Benjamins” and “Friday” films, I found him to be quite the businessman; direct, firm handshaking, with a wide vocabulary he knew he could use around we mostly Print Journalists.

This wasn’t surprising as I knew as many did that the rap world early on was almost entirely populated by the children of the Middle class, whose family had access to the entertainment industry’s executives. It was later when they were concerned about their “Street Cred” that the music producers and record label execs went out and got themselves some genuine thugs and gang bangers with true criminal records that all the mess started, such as fights backstage and recording studio shootings.

One thing I cannot take is glaring logical flaws. I’m not talking about the kind of derring-do in action adventure where people are outrunning explosions and a hail of machine gun bullets. Those are actually part of the wiling suspension of belief for action films. I’m even willing to overlook that it isn’t possible to leap onto a helicopter from above. Just a little matter of the blades turning you into a puree!

No, I mean when people do stupid things they wouldn’t do in real life, considering what their expertise is supposed to be, or just good common sense from being an adult on the planet earth. For instance we are given to understand that Gibbons was a top notch operative, but he makes colossal errors when he goes to his home to retrieve a needed computer disk.

You don’t even have to be an operative to know you NEVER GO HOME WHEN YOU’RE BEING HUNTED! In fact, the police know when they’re hunting someone like a dumb gang banger that all they have to do is go sit by the target mother’s house, because they always limp back home to see M’Deah. And then get scooped up and cuffed.

Another is when Jackson uses a flashlight to go through his darkened house. This is a problem on a couple of levels. First, you WOULDN’T NEED A LIGHT to see around your own house; you know what’s there. Second, crooks know that a flashlight in a dark place is like a neon sign saying “People are running around in here doing something wrong!!”

Burglars, the professional kind, use red plastic filters over the flashlight, like the kind that people put over their broken tail lights on a Hooptie. (By the way, I used to be a Crime Reporter not a burglar, and that’s what the ex-crooks have told the authorities. And I’m an amateur astronomer, and we often use red lights when looking at star charts outside so as not to mess up our night vision).

Another is in spy craft or basic soldiering, which Jackson’s Gibbons would know as a Special Ops: You don’t hold a flashlight in front of you because the Bad Guys would shoot at it; you’re supposed to hold it off to the side so as to escape mortal injury. This is Kindergarten stuff. They should have used some of the big bucks that made this movie’s explosions and paid for an advisor. But the things I listed wouldn’t have cost that much more money, just some common sense from living, or having watched some other movies!

Its clear the franchise’s producers are going to continue this technique of switching in different agents, as well they should. And why not -- four different actors have played “Batman.” There have been how many, about 22 James Bond 007 movies played by five actors, including a planned remake of “Casino Royale” which many people miss on the list because it was a comedy with Woody Allen! And four or five “Aliens” and two or three “Predators” -- this is because they’re combining movie franchises, such as “Freddy vs. Jason,” which is something like a video game matchup, ala “Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever.”

There are political conspiratorial films that come to mind in addition to those mentioned. There is of course “The Parallax View” with Warren Beatty as a Seattle investigative reporter trying to get to the bottom of an assassination network that is removing progressive politicians, while substituting hapless patsies to keep alive the “Lone Gunman” concept, in an obvious reference to Lee Harvey Oswald an agent insider who may even have tried to stop the killing of the President. Last year’s “Manchurian Candidate” remake with Denzel Washington, and Mel Gibson’s “Conspiracy Theory” could be put on the list as well.

In a Six Degrees Of Hollywood Connection, there’s an actor in the “xXx: State of The Union” cast named John G. Connolly. Texas Gov. Connolly was in the car and hit by one of the bullets during the cross-fire that took out President Kennedy in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza in November 22 of 1963. The reason many of we Conspiracy Theorists count that as a coup is several of the measures and Executive Orders JFK issued were rolled back after his death, including keeping America out of the Vietnam War. (Nixon’s resignation might have been another, but that is outside the scope of this article).

When JFK’s brother Robert looked like he would win the Democratic nomination after winning the crucial California primary, they took care of him in advance before he would have the reins of power to stop or alter the plan for their version of a New World Order.

This was after they removed Martin Luther King two months before in accordance with the J. Edgar Hover FBI COINTELPRO directive to “prevent the rise of a Black Messiah” that would unify and perhaps ignite the Africans in America in opposition to the government, so they wouldn’t have to use the concentration camps set aside for us in regional parts of the nation.

CAST OF “XXX: STATE OF THE UNION”

O’Shea Jackson -- Darius Stone

Samuel L. Jackson -- Augustus Gibbons

Nona Gaye -- Lulu

Xhibit -- Chop Shop owner, street soldier

Sunny Mabrey -- Charlie

Willem Dafoe -- Sec. Gen. George Deckert

Scott Speedman -- Agent Kyle Steel

Michael Roof -- Toby

Peter Strauss -- President

John Connolly -- operative

XXX: STATE OF THE UNION is directed by Lee Tamnahori and released through Columbia/Sony Pictures, and is rated PG-13 almost entirely for action adventure style explosions, come cussing and multiple deaths but without plenty of blood. --kjw -- 30 --

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-- 30 --

"BEAUTY SHOP" --REVIEW OF THE WORD NETPAPER

QUEEN LATIFAH, DIVERSE CAST OF LADIES

CUT UP IN “BEAUTY SHOPPE” SPINOFF

Ice Cube’s production company’s spinoff of his successful “Barber Shop” series is cutting through the competition and has a winner on its hands in “Barber Shop.”

Dana Owens (you-all know her as onetime rapstress Queen Latifah) is the personable star of the new franchise that has been moved to Atlanta, with only a photograph and a few references to connect it to the original. This is as it should be, a fairly clean break so they can go off on some tangents of their own, and these were some good ones.

“Beauty Shoppe” is superior fun to both of the previous “Barber Shop” parent films. Its something about the intricacies of female interaction or something that adds more to what is a simple “Car Wash” type of plot, with most of the movie happening in the parlour, where there is lots of catty conversation along with the cutting and sniping with the snipping.

Owens is Gina, who walks out of Kevin Bacon’s fancy parlour in a huff, and decides to open up her own shop and doing it her way. “Its time I owned something” declared the single mother of a young daughter, who spends her extra money to buy piano lessons for her child. This was also an opening so some music could be injected into the movie, and it was done in a tender way that slowed the movie down when it needed, giving us a break from the comedy of the shop.

Becoming a Ghettopreneur was a nice touch, and we see some of the trials and travails of being a small business owner, from equipment breakdowns, canning negative employes and hiring positive ones, and dealing with the bureaucracy who always seems to have their hand in your pocket before you even open the door and gain your first dollar.

Like “Barber Shop”, “Beauty shop” is an ensemble acting film, and unlike the parent movies Owens carries much of the weight. Ice Cube was happy to let the others do the heavy lifting, but then he’s the producer of these two franchises that join his popular “Friday.”

The Southern accents was a nice thing to hear, and it was filmed down South. One of the periodic characters was Hotlanta Helen, the Mouth of the South, whose radio show features homegirlisms about her personal and love life which the parlour ladies play whilst they work.

“I’m going to tell you what to do: I had trouble getting rid of this one crazy dude. Followed me all over, showing up at my job. He just wouldn’t leave me alone! I guess ‘It’ was too good to him.

“Anyway, I finally figured out how to get rid of him: I lied and told him that I was pregnant. He took off and I haven’t seen that n----a since! And that was ten years ago. This is Helen, I’ll hollah!”

Woodard is presently doing a rare comical turn in “Beauty Shop” as a poetry spouting hair stylist who has seemingly memorized all of Maya Angelou’s most popular poems, especially “Phenomenal Woman.” If someone gives her an opening she’s off, as when new salon owner Gina tells the envelope pushing former owner that her adaptations of her smock is a bit too provocative. Some of her veterans that Gina hired back know what’s coming and they start to smile in anticipation.

“Does my sexiness offend you?” Angelina recites. “... I’m not cut to fit a fashion models size ... ... Like I have diamonds on my thighs.... But when I start to tell them They always seemed surprised ... “Phenomenal Woman, that’s me!”

The increasingly busy Alfre Woodard, the pride of Oklahoma, makes her Science Fiction debut in “The Forgotten” as an investigating detective who detects something fishy about the woman’s story, especially after she starts seeing some strange things herself.

I saw the advanced preview of “Beauty Shop” a couple of weeks ago, and didn’t have a media kit as this was written so I can’t give credit where credits are due to the many actors and actresses. I immediately recognized LisaRaye from “Player’s Club” -- most men would! The interview with LisaRaye that was conducted at Dasha and Kendall Kelly’s Mecca nightclub, when she came to Milwaukee as her spokeswoman duties for Hennessey Brandy, and to push her new show “The Two Of Us” on Fox TV. We also talked about the opening she received from Ice Cube’s directorial debut of “Players Club,” where she acted opposite Jamie Foxx when he was still doing small roles. After his shiny new statue for Best Actor for “Ray” those days are over for awhile.

“Beauty Shoppe” was very much a group effort. Darnell is Gina’s “stupid and lazy” sister in law with awful taste in men; Shenille is a familiar face as the legal office home girl in “Girlfriends;” and there are the rows of stylists who seem to have been culled from the ranks of standup comediennes and rap videos.

The fellas get some play in the movie. James is a stylist fresh out of jail who seems to have a little something something and hair skills that makes the ladies come into the shoppe. But there are some of his co-workers who think he identifies a little too much with the womenfolk. The little homeboy who comes to the shop selling his candy who even at his young age has a thing for the ladies with the nice plump rumpasaurus; and the overactive building inspector who makes a beeline to Gina’s parlour and writes her up a blizzard of costly tickets.

Kevin Bacon doesn’t do comedy very often, but the Oscar nominee for “JFK” was hilarious as the fey Nordic haughty hairstylist who tells his former employe “eef not for me, you’d zill be washzing ze hair in your mother’s kitchen, yah hokay, ‘bye ‘bye...”

Djimon Hounsou of “Amistad”, “Gladiator” and the present “Constantine” as Papa Midnite, the Witch Doctor turned bar owner, is Gina’s love interest, on-call electrician and upstairs neighbor. His fluent French mixed with his African accent seemed to get to the ladies in the audience, as did his piano playing which makes him a fave of her daughter.

Of course, it seems to be a given that when you have a bunch of Black women for some reason that escapes me you just have to have the semi-obligatory Black Fag. Snapping his fingers and lisping away, the sorry spectacle made me nostalgic for RuPaul. Thankfully, the abomination was only onscreen for less than a minute, but that was still way, way too long. I lost my appetite for my popcorn after that scene.

“Clueless” star Alicia Witherspoon has a forward part in the supporting cast of Lynn, an eager Appalachian White girl who tries her best to fit in with the cadre of Black women where even an African American woman would find it hard to be accepted by that bunch. When they arrange to go out to lunch they don’t ask her along, and her ostracism is painful to see until we realize that there is always The Formula. This was seen in “Barber Shop” when the lone White cutman had to constantly prove that he could cut Black hair, and his chair was often empty. Then there is the Redemptive Moment.

It seems that Lynn has a talent for dancing, and when she breaks out on the dance floor of an Atlanta club where the salon goes out to celebrate a rare victory, she goes all out. She’s backin’ it up, pokin’ it out. Like a dancing machine the Snowflake had the brothers in shock and awe, shaking it like a salt shaker. She made me think of Kelly, who is a Snowflake who comes to down Savoy’s in Milwaukee on Friday nights with her crew. Kelly can really dance, probably working off all that office stress from her corporate job downtown, so there are White chicks with skills like that.

Mena Suvari is a haughty patron who like Andie’s Terry, is a defect from Latifah’s former employer. A running joke in the movie is how she got her teeny mosquito-bite breasts plumped up, and is the subject of some of the quite ribald talk by the ladies, about Chinese Balls, “crooked ones” and more interspersed.

This is not a movie that you’d want your young daughters to attend, although they and their friends will find their way there, to be sure. It sometimes seem as if a microphone had been dropped into a real beauty shop and we are treated to what some of what they must be talking about up in there. Men problems, employers, gossip, marital strife, who’s doing what with who, more gossip.

The addition of popular White females to the cast “Beauty Shoppe” was a master stroke, and as marketing alone it was a positive move. That they were given something useful to do that was pivotal to the loose plot was mo’ better. Andie McDonnell is a beautiful actress, probably because she’s mixed with a tincture or two of Latina and/or Native American. She’s known for her glorious auburn tresses, and is still featured in top magazines as a hair model. They grow them like that in Texas, I’m told.

McDonnell is the trophy wife of an unseen husband to whom she has lost her lustre. She, after initially refusing the peddled goods of Catfish Rita, the “Monkey Bread Lady” who brings her lunch wagon right into the parlour, becomes a devotee. The women tell her she needs to grow herself some behind anyway, and maybe her wandering husband would stay home for a change.

Behinds and their importance to a woman’s appearance is a part of “Beauty Shoppe” and I for one was glad to see it. Oh, for what I wouldn’t have given to be in on that casting call, where they scoured from all around the Hotlanta area for beautiful and booty-ful women. When the DVD comes out I won’t be the only brotha who is using his remote to freeze frame!

Thick women were celebrated onscreen as they are in the real world, no matter what those homosexually polluted culture of studio executives in Hollywood feel, as they push boney actresses who are little more than long boys with teeny breastesses. Most men turn their noses up at these female impostors, and “Beauty Shop” from the first few minutes puts forth the opposing, naturalistic view.

Getting ready to go out and start her day, Gina asks her adolescent daughter “Do these pants make my butte look big?”

“Yeah, they do.”

“Perfect!” she says, heading out the door.

Hotlanta Helen proclaims “I got hips and thighs, and I don’t discriminate against pies!!”

This attitude about healthy sized women is being expressed more and more. In “Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous” one of my favourite new actresses Regina King from “Ray” tells Sandra Bullock’s fellow federal agent she needs to get her skinny self out of her face.

Bullock retorts “First of all, thank you for calling me skinny....: This cultural chasm of beauty standards between the races and the classes is something that pops up again and again. Jackee Harry of NBC’s “227” thrilled millions of we normal men with her glorious and sexy thickness.

Actresses such as Academy Award winner Kate Winslet and Alicia Silverstone, at their height in Hollywood told the forces telling them they “need to lose weight” to get out of their faces, and bring them back some Krispy Kremes.

Silverstone, who nobody with sense would think was fat although she has somewhat plump cheeks, said she wasn’t playing that mess about losing weight and looking like a skeleton and she looked just fine. Ditto for “Titanic” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” star Winslet who said “I’m a normal sized female!” and what was the big fuss? Of course this is in a environment when a big fuss is made of Angelina Jolie’s supposedly big lips (?) and Jennifer Lopez’s big Nuyorican butte.

Unfortunately, the unnatural culture of dysfunctional Eurocentric homo-erotic beauty standards that de-emphasizes women’s natural beauty continues to catch a few. Jessica Simpson was a thickish Southern country girl, and so because of her appeal she was picked for the film version of Daisy Mae in “The Dukes of Hazzard.” But they got to her, like the “A Beautiful Mind’s” Jennifer Connelly, who was once described as a human version of Jessica Rabbit after her busty outfits as a vamp and lover of Nick Nolte’s 1940s cop in “Mulholland Falls.”

The National Enquirer periodically publishes pictures of Way Too Skinny actresses, and there was one of Simpson from the “Dukes” shooting location. She wasn’t filling out those Daisy Dukes very well. That’s where the name for the high-cut shorts came from, by the way.

Salma Hayek, the Mexicana whose thickness was seen in Rodriguez’s “From Dusk ‘Til Dawn” and “El Mariachi 2” got skinny and then got forgotten, with a big ol’ Oprah head from too rapid a weight loss. Now she’s going to plump up to oversize to play the part of a true life serial killer, proving that there is justice in this world.

“Beauty Shoppe” has a lot of issues going on in its almost two hours, and its a good cinematic ride even though it follows a popular formula. But this is no shame, that’s how they came to be successful formulas anyway. --kjw

--30--

CAST OF “BEAUTY SHOPPE”

Dana Owens / Queen Latifah -- Gina
Alicia Silverstone -- Lynn
Djimon Hounsou -- Joe
Kevin Bacon -- Jorge
Andie McDonnell -- Terry
Alfre Woodard -- Miss Angelina
Sherel Givens -- Hotlanta Helen
Menu Suvari
LisaRaye

--30--

Send a note to Cinemaviews at P. O. Box 1324-53201, or email walkernet@excite dot com, or walkerworld_2000@yahoo dot com --kjw

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--30--

“Hitch”

-- A Word NetPaper Film Review by Film Critic Kevin J. Walker

Cinema Views by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

https://cinemaviews.tripod.com/hitch.htm

“Hitch” Is A Hoot With Will Smith Conquering World Of Romantic Comedies

by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

">

Have a party you want crashed? Send a note to Out and About at P. O. Box 1324-53201, or email walkernet@excite dot com, or walkerworld_2000@yahoo.com --kjw

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--30--

email us at: walkernet@excite dot com

“Any man can sweep any woman off her feet. All he needs is the right broom. That’s where I come in.”

“A man with no game and no guile gets no girl” -- Words of wisdom from Alex Hitchins, aka “the Date Doctor”

This is a much better date movie than what she’d picked for us the week before. I mean, “Hotel Rwanda” is a bit of a downer. “This is going to affect me for a whole month!” she hissed, passing me the bucket of popcorn she’d lost her interest in. I guess that a Siege Movie about Tutsi-Hutu genocide by machete based on real world events isn’t a Valentine boost, even if it up for multiple Academy Awards.

The actor who once starred as “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air” on NBC after a successful career of Rap Lite for suburbanites with songs such as “Parents Just Don’t Understand” with partner DJ Jazzy Jeff is now referred to as “Mr. 4th of July” after his very lucrative films that open during the cherished holiday weekend since “Independence Day.”

The bad news about Big Willie’s streak was released a day or two afterwards: Will Smith’s string of consecutive $45 million film debuts was broken. Due to misreporting errors by Columbia Pictures, “Hitch” did not in fact top $45,000,000. It only made a tad bit over $43 mil. Well, Boo-Hoo!

Smith has transmuted himself from teen films and even a starring role as a gay hustler that foreshadowed his dramatic skills and even plays a part in this film -- more on this later-- into one of the newest members of the Action Adventure genre inhabited by a very few such as the grand ol man Ar-nold and newer ones such as The Rock, former “XXX” star Vin Diesel, and now his successor in that role Ice Cube in the sequel “XXX: State of the Union.”

“Hitch” is about a man they call “the Date Doctor,” Alex Hitchins, who has taken the message of the made for TV film “How To Pick Up Girls,” which was an actual bestselling book in the 1970s about a loveless guy who discovers the formula for getting through to the infuriatingly complex (and too often illogical and contradictory) female species. But I digress.

The movie starts off with Hitch narrating straight to us beyond the theatrical Fourth Wall, much like Viveca Fox in “Two Can Play That Game” but unlike that hilarious film co-starring Morris Chestnut, the man Hollywood women have dubbed “the Black Clark Gable,” this is not carried throughout the film. But for getting us started it’s a good way in getting us up to speed and keeping the movie moving although it’s longer than most comedies, romantic or otherwise, which often wear their welcome out after 90 minutes.

The movie is sweet in its inexorability, and the formula that these movies are based on doesn’t detract from its appeal in the least. That’s how they became formulas and genres in the first place because nothing succeeds like success. “Hitch” has several knee-slapping, laugh-out-loud moments, and the crowd reaction is something that aids viewing. Certainly the couple, especially the lady who sat one row up and a little over at the Marcus Northtown Cinemas in Milwaukee were enjoying themselves, and her laughter and reactions was infectious!

“A man with no game and no guile gets no girl” says Hitch in his narration, sounding much like another consultant played by LL Cool J in “Deliver Us From Eva” with Gabrielle Union, herself a staple of the Romantic Comedy genre as the modern incarnation of Kate Hepburn. (A list of similar films, and some dissimilar ones follows this review). This narration helps to capsulize his philosophy for us, combined with a one-time flashback to the naive young man he was, and the incident that launched him into his career.

This makes it cinematic kin to Bruce Willis’ film about a former fat, stuttering outcast with a pronounced overbite, who becomes a remake specialist with a comfortable life until his past self shows up on his front step. Both men remake themselves into sophisticated, suave men of the world; wiser but more cynical, with the idealism of their youth tempered by a harsh reality.

It is this quality that makes “Hitch” more than the Date Film that its being sold as, coming out as it did in time for the Valentine observance.

Hitch makes opportunities for the clumsy and loveless, to give Cupid some help in his freelance consultancy business. A delightful subplot is one of his special cases, a smitten man played by Kevin James who is hopelessly in love with an unreachable woman.

“Allegra Cole?! The socialite, the one always in the news? Boy, you really shoot for the Moon, don’t you?” Hitch asks the short, clumsy, rotund and not especially well-off Albert Brennerman. Still, as a personal challenge he takes the case as a way of demonstrating just to himself that his credo is strong and his skills genuine.

“Any man can sweep any woman off her feet. All he needs is the right broom. That’s where I come in” says Alex Hitchins, aka “the Date Doctor.” Some people have criticized the movie as being unrealistic. These are mostly women unwilling to admit that they are so pliable and we have to resort to schemes to get past their defenses, as pointed out by Hitch to a detractor.

“I give guys a chance. I give hope to the hope-less. Would you have even noticed he was alive otherwise?”

I know from personal experience that unlikely pairings can happen. The women of my dreams from high school and college became reality; later, women that I only watched on TV screens became my girls. One TV anchor had a millionaire boyfriend who treated her with disdain; she ended up with me after he dissed her one time too many. So I know for a fact that the lessons of “Hitch” are true. Us guys know the deal. As Hitch says “life isn’t how many breaths you take, It’s the moments that take your breath away.”

Alex Hitchins employs sensible real world psychological observations in his work, and you could see the nods around the theatre. His hunting grounds are the clubs and dating environs of Manhattan, NYC. These club scenes and the rituals we see dissected and presented are like scientists looking at an ant farm, where the Sheeple go about their pre-ordained roles.

It helps that “Hitch” has the lovely and appealing and also familiar Eva Mendes from two Denzel movies “Training Day” and “Out of Time;” and with Michael Epps in “All About The Benjamins.” Mendes also played an undercover agent opposite Tyrese Gibson and Walker in “2 Fast 2 Furious.”

She has that enviable quality that eludes many stars; that she is liked by both sexes, is sexy and smart. Because she’s seen as a Smart Cookie, Black women don’t hate that she has starred mostly opposite Black men, although perhaps she’ll one day co-star with a Latino man.

Mendes is Sara Melas, a go-getter and cynical about love gossip columnist much like Kate Hudson in “How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days,” who stumbles onto the world of the Date Doctor while falling for Hitch, whom she doesn’t realize is one and the same. “Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the sleaze” she tells a still hopeful pal, Casey, a hopeless romantic.

This sets up the formulaic Confused/Hidden Identities Plotline that Brother Will Shakespeare used in some of his most popular comedies, although his plays are much more enjoyable when presented in their original Swahili.

Albert is Hitch’s Sistine Chapel ceiling, his masterpiece. Using his case and spreading it throughout the film gives us a break from the story of Hitch and Sara, and helps the movie move along even though it’s longer than most comedies.

Appealing and showing every bit the professionalism from years in the business is Sara’s editor Max, played by Elliot Gould. His effortless skill in an unsubstantial role added another of the little touches that made the film so enjoyable.

From the Screwball Comedies of the 1940s with Cary Grant, Kate Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and others, comedies combined with romance have been a cinematic staple that never goes out of style, it just adjusts and morphs into new forms. Witness the planned big screen film “The Honeymooners” out next year that will star Gabrielle Union and St. Louis’ Cedric the Entertainer as Ralph and Alice Cramden. This one will go straight to the moon!

“HITCH” is being shown at the Northtown theatres where you can enjoy a safe and enjoyable filmgoing experience, and is my primary theatre because of the stadium seating, an efficient no-nonsense management, security, and several screens with the latest hits as well as family fare so the Little Ones can be down the hall watching “Pooh’s Heffalump Adventure” and “Are We There Yet?” while you and your wifey or sweety can watch your mature-minded films. -- kjw

CAST OF “HITCH”

Andy Tennant directed the film from Columbia Pictures. It is rated PG-13 for some light sexual banter and situations, and an unnecessary yet easily excised use of the shortened form of the medieval order of Fornication Under Consent of the King.

Alex Hitchins -- Will Smith
Sara Melas -- Eva Mendes
Albert Brennerman -- Kevin James
Allegra Cole --
Casey -- Julianne
Max -- Elliot Gould

FILMS BY WILL SMITH, AND OTHERROMANTIC COMEDIES YOU MAY ENJOY:

< http://www.thebwp.com/wire > [hit “MovieReviews” link on the left hand side for some of these films]

“I, Robot”

“Independence Day”

“Ali”

“Made In America“

“Six Degrees Of Separation“

“Bad Boys“1 And 2

ROMANTIC COMEDIES:

“Made In America

“Cruel Intentions

“Kissing A Fool

“Best Man“

“The Brothers“

“How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days“ -- Kate Hudson is a magazine writer opposite Matt McConaughey in the old formula of a bet combined with confused identities.

TEEN ROMANTIC COMEDIES:

“10 Things I Hate About You

“She’s All That”

“American Pie”

LATINO FLAVOURED LOVE:

“The Wedding Planner“ -- Jennifer Lopez and Matthew McConaughey

“Meet The Fockers“ -- Robert DeNiro, Tea Leoni and Ben Stiller come back for this sequel with his Hippie parents played by Dustin Hoffman and Barbra Streisand

SORTA, KINDA QUALIFIES AS ROMANTIC FILMS:

“28 Days Later” -- this horrific apocalyptic film about a disease devastated England features Naomie Harris and “Bend It Like Beckham” co-star as they try to survive with their made-up family of fellow refugees in a Hellish land infested with enraged ghouls, and not the slow, shambling type in the old “Night of the Living Dead” films. Their coming together under duress is believable, and rather sweet in a film that has little decent moments.

“Are We There Yet?” with Ice Cube and his four-time co-star Nia Long from “Friday” and “Boyz N The Hood.” Cube transports her two brats from Portland to Vancouver, and has misadventures all the way.

“Malibu’s Most Wanted“ -- This Salt and Pepper and rap flavored romantic comedy co-stars “Son of the Mask’s” Jamie Kennedy as a suburban who identifies too strongly with lower strata African Americans, which imperils the prospects of his politically ambitious dad. A duo is charged with “Deprogramming” him, and the superbly talented “Scary Movie” actress as his love interest.

“After The Sunset“ -- Pierce Brosnan and Woody Harrelson star in a strange sort of Buddy/Heist/Salt and Pepper romantic film which co-stars the gorgeous scenery of the Bahamas.

A retired jewel thief and the weary FBI agent who never caught him tangle in the islands. Also co-stars luscious Latina Salma Hayek, who’s thickened back up a little bit from her debut as the Snake Vampiress in “From Dusk ‘Til Dawn” (she’s Arab-Mexican -- yes, they have those, thank the Gods!) and Oscar nominated Don Cheadle as the villain. Naomie Harris, the machete-wielding heroine from “28 Days Later” [itself another strange romance film, see above] is a police officer pursued by the amorous Harrelson.

“After The Sunset” features the Gay subtext that is featured in so many of these, such as the antics seen not only in “Hitch” but the “Lethal Weapons” series that will see many DVD owning Sodomites freeze-framing and replaying certain scenes. As a matter of fact, let’s segue into a few of those, shall we? I don’t particularly care for homos, but the films are certainly funny:

“Three Of Hearts“ -- this is a true gay-themed romantic film with Kelly Lynch as a Lesbian being challenged by a man for the attentions of her girl, a bisexual honey-pie.

“The Birdcage” -- Robin Williams and Nathan Lane star with Gene Hackman and Callista Flockhart that is an Americanized remake of the French farce of the 1980s. Williams and Lane are partners who have to pass as regular guys when their “son” has to meet the parents. Lane plays the girl part. Hackman is one of the homeliest drag queens that ever existed in a hilarious scene in a movie that has lots of them.

“Chasing Amy“ -- a qualifying Gay themed romantic comedy about a smitten straight guy chasing Amy, who’s a Lesbian. Good luck! (Don’t ask me why).

OLD SCHOOL ROMANTIC COMEDIES

“Bringing Up Baby”

“Woman Of The Year”

The Front Page

Champagne For Caesar

From the Screwball Comedies of the 1940s with Cary Grant, Kate Hepburn, Spencer Tracy and others, comedies combined with romance have been a cinematic staple that never goes out of style, it just adjusts and morphs into new forms.

Witness the planned big screen film “The Honeymooners” out next year that will star Gabrielle Union and St. Louis’ Cedric the Entertainer as Ralph and Alice Cramden. This one will go straight to the moon!

Cinema Views by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

From The Word NetPaper, Online News Service

< http://cinemaviews.tripod.com >

email us at: walkernet@ excite dot com

or Snail Mail to: P.O. Box 1324-53201

Milwaukee, Wisconsin USA

------

LINKS FOR PAST REVIEWS OF:

“GOTHIKA” -- HALLE BERRY SEES DEAD GIRLS;

“HAUNTED MANSION” --EDDY MURPHY SEES LOTS MORE;

"MATRIX: REVOLUTIONS;"

"KILL BILL VOL. 1"

PRE- "MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE" PREP

PAST DENZEL FILMS: "JOHN Q"

"TRAINING DAY" "HE GOT GAME" "ANTWON FISHER"

“OUT OF TIME”

https://cinemaviews.tripod.com/outoftime.html

VIDEOS, INCLUDING THE "BLACK LOVE COLLECTION"">

Send a note to P. O. Box 1324-53201, or email walkernet@excite dot com, or walkerworld_2000@yahoo dot com --kjw

websites:

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Movies:

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http://www.blackwebportal.com/wire

http://www.geocities.com/cinemaviews

http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/cinema_views

Travel:

http://travelgriot.tripod.com

http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/

Politics:

http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/

Science:

http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/

--30--

“CATWOMAN”

CINEMA VIEWS With Film Critic Kevin J. Walker

kevin j. walker p.o. box 1324-53201

milwaukee, wisconsin usa

emails: thewordnetpaper@excite

thewordnetpaper@excite

"CATWOMAN”

Grrrl Power is at the center of a sometimes heavy-handed, not to speak of ham handed. "Catwoman," which despite other critics raking their claws over it is an enjoyable movie, although much less than purrrfect, and it used up a few of a nine lives getting to the point.

Like a cat it takes its time getting around to a predicable plotline, and the next installment in what the makers hope is a franchise had better get on the stick, else they'll ends up like Van Diesel's aborted "XXX" series, which is going to another African Descended star while Diesel builds up "The Chronicles of Riddick" Sci Fi series he executive produces.

Oscar winner Halle Berry almost made a "Monsters Hair Ball" of a film because High Camp is hard to sustain even when done properly. The exaggerated switching by Berry in her sprayed-on catsuit looked about to dislocate her hips as she sashayed across the rooftops of the unnamed metropolis.

Her character, much like Michelle Pfeiffer's in "Batman Returns" gets a feline persona after a near-death experience. Pfeiffer's Catwoman lay in an alley getting licked and nuzzled by strays, while Berry, much like Jack Nicholson in "Batman," lay immersed in putrid toxic wastes and emerged more than a little unhinged.

Both are mousy corporate types, being put upon by their male superiors. Pfeiffer was abused by Christopher Walken, Berry here is verbally and emotionally abused by her boss. If he looks familiar but you just can't place him, he was the epicurean Merovingian rogue program in the last two "Matrix" films.

Berry's character is Patience Phillips, a graphics artist for a top cosmetics firm in their art department, much like her role in "Boomerang" with Eddie Murphy and bad girl and ex-Mike Tyson wife Robin Givens.

"Catwoman" has a mixture of the psychological and the sorcery mumbo-jumbo about it, with explanations of the Egyptian goddess Bast, apparently one of the early cat fanciers whose spirit oozes into Berry’s character, making her one of a series of Catwomen over the years. Now those are ideas for prequels, like The Mummy” films, going back to the beginning and so forth, or a Depression-era Catwoman, or one fighting against the Nazis.

Maybe it’s the dog in me, but I found "Catwoman" a little heavy on the feminine side. This is aided in no small part by Sharon stone, who is one of the modern icons of feminine sexual power. She's an older woman who is still undeniably sexy, and she's having a great time as one of the villains of the movie.

As a baddie Stone gets some of the best lines, as when she responds to Detective Tom Lone, played by Benjamin Bratt who tells her "you don't want to do that."

"I'm a woman. I'm used to doing all sorts of things I don't want to do."

Bratt and Berry engage in the same sort of playground battle courtship seen between Ben Affleck and Jennifer Garner between their characters of Daredevil and Electra. After the timid Patience takes him to the hoop a few times during recess at his moonlighting as a volunteer at an urban tutoring program, he becomes enamoured and intrigued by the change in this woman, and her new Nnena Phelon hairdo.

Her new attitude starts to assert itself as when she tells off her supervisor after first apologizing profusely when she drags into work after an eventful night.

"OK, here's the remix" she says, her pleasant Patience demeanor now gone and a snarling vixen in her place. "I'm sorry -- for every second I wasted working for an untalented egotistical ingrate like you!!," she hissed.

"Catwoman" is like Spiderman or Daredevil, that is, not quite a hero in the minds of the greater public or the authorities. But at least those Anti-Superheroes didn't rip off a jewelry store. "Time to accessorize" she tells her familiar Midnight, a rare Egyptian Mau cat, as she races off on a stolen expensive motorcycle.

The larger plot entails corporate malfeasance and potentially dangerous products from the cosmetic industry where she works in the art department. The danger in some reviewers -- as opposed to we bona fide film critics-- trying to capsulate a movie with scant facts is when some reported that Berry's quest was to free/avenge animals, especially cats, being used in research by corporate labs.

No such drama here. This is mostly a simple tale about revenge, and fulfilling a legacy by accepting and adopting one's fate. The action sequences are adequate, and Berry's skills as a former Broadway dancer are like Catherine Zeta Jones in "Entrapment," well used as she perches on her furniture, or walks along the back of her sofa as her feline qualities come to the fore.

She has mutant powers like Spider Man, but unlike Batman who only has a twisted rage against the criminals who killed his parents before his eyes. Catwoman has superfast reflexes, and eerie senses of balance, sight and hearing. She gets in some licks too -- Bratt's cop character knows that fo' sho after they do battle much like Pfeiffer and OG Batman Michael Keaton.

And she has some snappy comebacks and quips of her own. "What's the matter? Cat got your tongue?" as she uses her diamond encrusted claws to yank on the tongue of a villain whose chest she perches on. (She fashioned the claws from some of the loot from the jewelry heist).

In a noisy thumping singles bar where no one looks particularly askance at her leatherette Dominatrix getup, complete with whip and five inch Hoe-Heels, she tells the bartender her order. "White Russian. Hold the vodka, hold the water." "Here ya go -- milk, straight up" as he serves her. She does a number on several cans of tuna as well, and rolls a ball of catnip around her face, which is sorta like marijuana for cats.

These things while amusing aren't enough for today's action adventure fan, who is used to Big Things happening. Or they can be small things intelligently and creatively presented, like many foreign films. These shortcomings don't doom movie, but it used up valuable time instead of getting to the point and the action!

Berry's skills as an Academy Award Winner are evident in "Catwoman," especially when combined in scenes with Stone, a nominee for "Casino." There are echoes seen of Berry's "Gothika" when her Catwoman alter ego comes to the fore replacing the timid Patience Phillips. Her features change, even her voice pattern.

Playing psychologically challenged characters has always been a great way for masters of the acting game to show what they're workin' with, such as Cliff Robertson in "Charly" or Joan Crawford in "Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?"

Berry has been a Bad Girl before, but the American public has its choices as American Sweethearts such as Sandra Bullock and Renee Zelwegger, who can do no wrong. Berry was even a crack hoe paired with Samuel Jackson's 'Gator in Spike Lee's "Jungle Fever." She was killed outright in " The Last Boy Scout" after hiring Bruce Willis to protect her, after she run afoul of a wealthy NFL owner she was trying to game while going with one of the Wayans.

Stone is at her most diabolical since the feminine intrigue French remade "Diabolique," and her star as a schemer was set when she appeared as the lone woman in a roomful of interrogating policemen in "Basic Instinct," which is being set for a sequel as we speak. Or read.

She tells her wimpy creeping husband "Stop taking Viagra like they're vitamins, and dating youngsters who were born when they invented the cell phone. In short, George, be a man!!"

There are echoes of "Death Becomes Her," the Meryl Streep and Goldie Hawn science fantasy vehicle about the search for timeless beauty. Here it’s a skin cream, in that weird movie about looks and immortality it was an ancient Egyptian preparation that rolled back the clock. --kjw

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/the_511/MOVIES

http://geocities.com/cinemaviews

http://geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/cinema_views

-----------------

Remember to patronize the Northtown Cinemas at 7440 North 76th street, two blocks north of Good Hope road in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Most major film releases can be seen there in comfort with their new stadium style seating, and now with the thuggish elements banished to other area theatres, wholesome family films are back, such as "Are We There Yet?" and others. --kjw

The Word NetPaper http://geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/cinema_views

kevin j. walker p.o. box 1324-53201 milwaukee, wisconsin usa

emails: kevinwalker2005@lycos.com

thewordnetpaper@excite.com

--30--

"In this society you must have either money or power. If you have

either you are respected, if you have both you are feared, but if

you have neither then you are oppressed."

--Former Phila. Rep. William Gray, past head of the UNCF

CINEMA VIEWS With Film Critic Kevin J. Walker

kevin j. walker p.o. box 1324-53201

milwaukee, wisconsin usa (414) 454-9673

thewordnetpaper@excite


“I, ROBOT”


"I, ROBOT"
BLACK WEB PORTAL REVIEWS:
http://www.theBWP.com/wire,[CLICK ON "MOVIEREVIEWS"]

QUARANTINO’S “KILL BILL, VOL. I”
http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/the_511/MOVIES/killbill.html
KILL BILL VOL. 2

"NEVER DIE ALONE" WITH DMX AND DAVID ARQUETTE
">

Send a note to P. O. Box 1324-53201, or email walkernet@excite dot com, or walkerworld_2000@yahoo dot com --kjw

websites:

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Movies:

http://cinemaviews.tripod.com

http://www.blackwebportal.com/wire

http://www.geocities.com/cinemaviews

http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/cinema_views

Travel:

http://travelgriot.tripod.com

http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/

Politics:

http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/

Science:

http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/

--30--

https://cinemaviews.tripod.com/neverdiealone.html

"Your suicidal reign is now ended… please stay indoors after Curfew. We are trying to minimize human losses during this transition…" -- Rebellious robot to amazed humans

We can tell our grandchildren that there actually was a time when it was rare to see Black people in Sci-Fi, especially in depictions of the future as if, as the incisive Richard Pryor once said, as if we're not expected to be there.

Now, you can't turn on the Sci Fi Channel or see reruns of "Babylon 5", "Star Trek: Next Generations", "Deep Space Nine" or the other spin-offs such as the syndicated UPN Networks "Enterprise" without tripping over all the Black actors. Pryor himself ended up playing a computer cracker in "Superman III." It's getting to be like "No Whites Need Apply" when it comes to portraying aliens such as the Klingons on ST.

[There will soon be a future series of articles here on "The Brothers and Sistahs of Sci Fi," on the widespread presence of African Descended stars in science fiction such as the late stars Nathan Biggs Jr. the doctor of "Babylon Five;" and "Terminator" and "V" co-star Paul Winfield, considered by me to be one of the OGs of Sci Fi. We will also treat the incoming new crop of AD actors in SF such as Sonaa ("Blade") Lathan, of this summer's "Alien Vs. Predator"].

Now, one of the premiere summer SF actors scores big again, and as a veteran member of the Science Fiction club this is especially auspicious because this film genre and their very faithful fans are the gifts that keep on giving. Will Smith is back firmly in the saddle after his two turns as one of the "Men in Black" with Tommie Lee Jones. With Gene Hackman he was an "Enemy of the State," and a James-Bond cowboy with Kevin Kline in the most excellent Western Science Fiction hybrid that was "Wild, Wild West.

This time he carries the film alone, much like Eddie Murphy and Chrises Rock and Tucker until they were set free to fly or fall on their own. It’s a good outing, and "I Robot" holds true to the best science fiction, where the ideas and concepts are an integral part of the cinema presentation and not just action or special effects.

Smith stars as the lead investigator in what is essentially another version of the detective film, much like "Blade Runner," which involved androids. This is a murder mystery placed in the futuristic Chicago of 2035, but the victim and killers are so mixed up, twisted and caught up in the game that added with the usual gee-whiz technology of Sci Fi "I, Robot" is especially gratifying.

Smith is Chicago Detective Del Spooner, a man who has an antipathy towards the mechanical helpmates that are increasingly populating the world. You can see it on his face: a sneer of distaste, the habit he has of looking behind him when one is a bit too close to his personal space.

(It is delicious irony that the makers of the film choose a Black man to be the prejudiced one. During the interrogation, he yells at the reluctant robot suspect in a murder "answer me, Canner!" which we take to be an epithet against those of the mechanical persuasion. "I don't want to talk around that thing," Spooner tells Dr. Calvin, eyeing her NS-5 with suspicion.

"I think the truth is that you just don't like their kind, Lt. Spooner," comments Bruce Greenwood as US Robotics CEO Robertson. "But then, blind prejudice never needed a reason."

In the futuristic film "Gattaca," co-starring Uma Thurman of "Kill Bill," people are discriminated against by their lack of "good" disease- free genes. There is a scene where a Black man sitting behind a big desk is deciding on whether a young White man will get a chance at a better life as he extends a vial towards him for his blood sample).

It is just his luck that Detective Spooner with his long arm of the law, so to speak, comes across not just as the first cop to bust a robot for a murder case, but one that leads to a vast conspiracy for a takeover of Humanity. There's a problem on several levels here. As anyone who has read Isaac Asimov novels or watched Data on "Star Trek: Next Generations" knows, they are bound by the Three Laws of Robotics:

1) No Robot can harm a Human Being; or through inaction cause a Human Being to come to harm;

2) A Robot must obey any orders given to it by a Human Being, except where that would conflict with the First Law;

3) A Robot must protect its own existence, except where that might conflict with the First or Second Laws.

So how could any robot kill a human? And the authorities have another problem since technically under the law, only Humans can murder another human. So what is the rogue Nestor 5 supposed to be considered? A malfunctioning piece of merchandise, only subject to recall?

As Det. Spooner says when he's given a tour of an automated NS-5 facility with little human oversight "Robots building robots? Now that's just stupid!" Yet others see this as a natural progression: carbon based life builds metal, silicon based life. We enable them to replicate themselves, and thereby ensure our gradual extinction.

"One day they'll have dreams. One day they'll have secrets," says Dr. Lanning of what is called the Ghost In The Machine, or the idea that bits of pieces of code can, like DNA combine in new ways to form intelligence.

"Why do robots tend to cluster together in storage, or in darkness seek out the light?" he says of his robotic creations, with a hint of pride in the potential of his babies.

Dr. Lanning is considered a doddering old man, a respected scientist now past his prime who is nevertheless listened to and tolerated because of his accomplishments and glory in founding robotics for the masses. They should have listened to the old guy and his premise is that robots with their Positronic brains will one day evolve as we have, and not be under our control.

"I, Robot" keeps its eyes on the action prize, but it includes interesting points of law, and discussions on what is the Soul? What does it mean to be a Person? Indeed, with the abortion and stem cell controversies we are struggling with these concepts all the time.

But this is a summer Action Adventure movie, and there is the requisite lots of Stuff Blowin' Up, hairsbreadth escapes and so forth. There was even some interesting robot martial arts maneuvers that wowed audiences both times I saw the film.

Bridget Moynihan is Dr. Calvin, the robot psychologist who helps make them more personable to people and taken straight from Asimov's book, where her reminiscences formed the basis for the nine stories in "I, Robot" the book. The romance is kept on a back burner here, which is usual with male African Descended stars with Eurocentric co-stars, even with Denzel Washington such as in he and Julia Roberts "The Pelican Brief."

Spooner and Calvin engage in some repartee, and form a partnership against the conspiracy when even the naïve doctor sees something weird is going on, and the Three Laws are being willfully violated on the eve of the colossal rollout of the new NS-5s, where the ratio of robot to human beings will be one to five. More than enough for a Robotic Revolution.

"You’re the stupidist smart person I ever met!" Del says to Dr. Calvin of her naivete. When she runs her hand over his scars it is with clinical interest, but the ladies of the audience were into it. The director also made it a point to show Smith getting in and out of bed a few times clad only in black boxer briefs, and in the future high tech jet spray showers and showing that he has kept up his "Ali" physique.

But summer action movies can do without that stuff anyway. The key word here is Action.

Sonny -- he even has a name, one of the first requisites for personhood-- is presented to us a pleasant NS-5 prototype, and he has a childlike demeanor. But he manifests the same sort of immaturity blended with power seen in Ray Bradbury's short story "The Small Assassin" and Stephen King's "Pet Sematary;" and that Twilight Zone episode with Billy Mumy as the boy with godlike powers who whacks anybody he doesn't like. It doesn't help that the blue-eyed Sonny and his mechanical kin sound soothingly like "2001's" HAL the schemer and killer robot.

[Following this review is a short capsule listing of similar themes films with robot protagonists such as "RoboCop", "The Terminator" and so forth].

One of my most favourite scenes in "I, Robot" is when Humans revolt against their mechanical overlords in the streets, which is a violation of their new curfew. Molotov cocktails are hurled against the silver tide pressing the humans back, and bodies fly as the opposing masses meet, just as in the sword and sandals epics "Troy" and "King Arthur."

"The Crow" and "Dark City" director Alex Proyas is the director of "I, Robot," and he has the same feel shown here for gritty urban landscapes and the people who inhabit them. It also shows what the future would more likely appear, with some places futuristic and others grimy. Since when has there ever been any uniformity where humans are concerned? We have --or had-- supersonic Concordes and still widely used propeller planes; gleaming and sanitary office towers downtown within sight of heartbreaking slums with overhead power lines, as seen here.

Chi McBride as Capt. Bergin plays the usual gruff, shouting precinct superior that has become an archetype. The cigar chomping McBride appeared as a ghost in "The Frighteners" by director Peter Jackson who went onto fame with the towering "Lords of the Rings" trilogy. "Hoodlum" with Larry Fishboune." McBride, on TV in "Boston Public co-0starred in "Gone in 60 Seconds" as an old school car thief with Nicholas Cage; and two times with Bruce Willis in the films "Mercury Rising" and "The Kid." He's now being seen in "The Terminal" with Tom Hanks. He was in a controversial TV sitcom that was canned because it made light of the period of enslaved Africans, although it was more in the mold of "Benson," where the house slave McBride was really running the show.

Bridget Moynihan was the CIA Trainee opposite stars Al Pacino and Colin Farrell in "The Recruit," and her exotic beauty was also seen in "The sum of All Fears" with Affleck. She was also the wife of Mr. Big in HBOs "Sex and The City."

Allen Tudyck is the voice and spirit of Sonny, much like Andy Serkis of "13 Going on 30" was in "Lord Of The Rings," through computer graphics.

Bruce Greenwood as USR CEO Robertson has carved out quite a bit of Sci Fi and acting territory for himself of late. He was the US president in "X Men United;" and a terranaut in the most excellent "The Core."

Greenwood won me and quite a few fans from back in his good guy days when he played the central character in the paranoia conspiratorial UPN series "Nowhere Man," the best since "The Prisoner," and like himself a Canadian export. In addition to the President in X Men 2" he played JFK in "Thirteen Days." Greenwood has been playing mostly heels ever since, as opposite Ashley Judd as her scheming husband in "Double Jeopardy."

James Cromwell as Dr. Lanning lends his polished delivery to every role, as in the end of the world flick "Deep Impact" when he told Tea Leoni "you're a reporter, but you used to be a human being…" Ouch! Cromwell can do comedy bits too, as in his light depiction of eccentric Warp Drive creator Ephraim Cochran in "Star Trek: First Contact." Alfre Woodard of Oklahoma was Lily, his woman in the shattered remnants of North America after the Wars. He was the captain in "L.A Confidential" and the sensitive farmer in "Babe."

Shia LeBoeuf is a street hustler friend of Spooner was the kid seen in last year's "Holes." He has a bit part here as one of the street leaders who take on the metal usurpers

Some other critics have criticized "I, Robot" which can be done. But I also urge all to take wimpy and especially female reviewers of Action Adventure with a grain of salt. They almost universally pan flicks, which they denounce as "testosterone driven" tales. Well excuse me! Do we complain about your talky Chick Flicks? Don't get me started!

And it will have to wait for another time about just who is it who proclaims films "box office disappointments," and says good films are bad? "The Hulk", "Waterworld" and "The Core" were all films that made money for their makers and thrilled audiences, yet were stamped failures by ignorant writers who evidently don't know the business of movie distribution on a global basis where hotel, Pay TV, cable and in-flight films...

Never mind, I forgot myself. Breath deeply, count to ten, exhale. I'm okay now, I really am. We continue:

What cannot be said is that "I, Robot" is not entertaining and more than a little engrossing. That it doesn't break new ground isn't a cinematic sin. After all, how many movies have they made about Shakespeare's plays, where we know the entire plot and even the lines by heart after 400 years? Ignore the critics -- that's right, I said it!-- and go and see this film and be entertained by the story, the ideas, and the action. --kjw

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OTHER CYBERNETICS AND ROBOTICS FILM CONNECTIONS
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"A.I."
"BICENTENNIAL MAN"
"THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL"
"FORBIDDEN PLANET"
"LOST IN SPACE"
"MATRIX" TRILOGY
"ROBOCOP"
"TOBOR THE GREAT"
"TERMINATOR" SERIES
"2001"
"2010"
"Stepford Wives" [1974 and 2004]

Isaac Asimov, writing since the 1950s from his 3 basic Laws, was able to mine decades of stories from these simple and circular laws until his death at 72 years of age in the early 1990s. They are even integrated into his other collections such as the towering "Foundation" series, a sprawling "Future History" of humanity's push into Galactic Empire and collapse, based on a retelling of the Western Roman Empire and Dark Ages.

As in "The Matrix" and The Terminator" series "I, Robot" and others, our creations have decided that all would be better off if humans were relieved of control of the natural world, and freedoms curtailed because of our philosophical and moral immaturity.

This theme is also borne out in certain Alien takeover and Invasion movies because of the former idea that anybody scientifically advanced would be wiser. The last big movies to do this were "Close Encounters" and "ET," both by Stephen Spielberg. Since then, we no longer hold such naïve beliefs possibly because of immigration and the experience of World War II when Germany, one of the most technically and culturally advanced nations engaged in systematic genocide. Now the fear is that we may have close encounters with aliens races that are just like us humans. If that's so, then we haven't a prayer!

Space faring races are as likely to be seen as the locust-like planet destroying Gypsies in Will Smith's "Independence Day;" the lazy and insidious beamed-down versions of "Species" and "Virus;" bioweapons of an extinct race a billions years dead as seen in "Alien;" or the thrill seeking "Predators" who use our planet as their own game preserve and hunt us as sport. Of course, the last two are being combined like last year's "Freddy vs. Jason" in this August's "Alien Vs. Predator."

There is a similar underlying premise of menace in Asimov's work and others regarding robots, androids, clones and the like. It is the same echoed in "Star Wars," -- with a subset called "Clone Wars"-- and others such as the Butlerian Jihad against Artificial Intelligence in the late George Herbert's "Dune" series:

We are Hell-bent on creating our own replacements. We are Carbon-based life, and computers and robots are silicon, plastic and steel. We have the technology, and are using it to make them faster, better and smarter than we are. When they learn the only real trick we have to replicate themselves, of what use will we then be?

George Lucas echoes the same theme in his "Star Wars" collection: that organic life is a Caretaker Race whose only real purpose in the Universe's long view is to enable inorganic machine and computer life to become viable, after which our purpose has been served. This is why both Luke and his father Anakkin SkyWalker have robotic hands, and why Darth Vader is described by Obi-Wan Kenobi as "more machine now than man… "

The end of the original 9 part "Star Wars" epic reveals that the "scroll ups" at the beginning of each film is a Griot-like recount by the golden and garrulous C3PO, the last machine with knowledge of encounters with carbon-based life after we've long passed on and the machines are curious of their creators. That's why See-Threepio and R2D2 are in every movie. The prejudice shown in Part IV "A New Hope" to what are continually called "'droids" is a leftover from the Clone Wars and the more human appearing androids, of which Lando Calrissian has an illegal version on his far outpost of Cloud City.

There are some people who have a strong antipathy to modernity, and especially computers. Maybe they feel it more strongly than most of us, but the feeling is there that we may be on our way out, and by our own hand. Replaced by our creations in a mixture of hubris, and Dr. Frankenstein-ian comeuppance into a sort of self-genocide and obsolescence. All we have to do is remember the simmering brouhaha over the bogus Millenium switchover to think about the unease we have over our creations getting out of hand and backfiring on us.

ROBOTS AND CYBORGS AND COMPUTERS IN FILM

Here is a capsule listing of some films representative of the concepts above.

"A.I." -- this is a retelling of Pinocchio, with the little boy from "Sixth Sense" as a robot replacement for a child whose loss is felt deeply by the parents. The mother is more attached to him, and there are poignant moments as she drives him back to the factory. She relents -- somewhat-- then puts him out beside the road like an unwanted puppy or cat who's been soiling the carpet to fend for his own.

The Flesh Fairs were an interesting concept, where (racist?) anti-robot fanatics ritualistically "lynch" collections of robots their roving vigilante bands have caught while they celebrate the superiority of Carbon Based life, and flesh over metal. "AI" is an okay, but not by a whole lot.

"COLOSSUS, THE FORBIN PROJECT"

This early 1970s film was the personification of the sort of fear also made in "Terminator's" future SkyNet: we create a super brain that decides it could run things a whole lot better than soft squishy humanity.

"I was created to end the threat of war. This I have done" said Colossus from World Control in what used to be called the Cheyenne Mountain redoubt of NORAD.

"Colossus: The Forbin Project" is a very thoughtful movie with action, strategy, and they even inserted some love interest. (Note: although he's more famous now as a star of General Hospital, Dr. Forbin was a movie star who was also the scientist advocating genocide in "Planet of The Apes" to save humanity from subjugation. He lost in that movie too).

"2001", "2010" -- Arthur C. Clarke penned a short story called "The Sentinel" that became a book and then a Sci Fi classic in "2001: A Space Odyssey."

HAL became the archetype of the computer gone whacko, although the movie changes the book's premise by improving it. The Heuristic ALgorithm artificial Intelligence computer, like TV's beautiful Andromeda Ascendant is woven into the ship Discovery, sent to investigate the evidence of First Contact and was ordered to kill the crew to protect the mission.

But the change was better, the idea of a psychotic homicidal artificial intelligence, a New Age Frankenstein morality play when an intelligence is told to violate everything it knows to be right and goes insane in the process under the weight of his perfect logic.

HAL's pleasant voice is without emotional inflection, but menacing nonetheless in this exchange that was parodied by Richard Pryor in his comic routines, as the rebellious robot strands the last surviving member of the crew in space.

"Open up the pod bay doors, please HAL. HAL?"

"Sorry Dave, but I can't do that. You were going to deactivate me, and I cannot allow that to happen…"

[Hollywood Six Degrees of Separation: The original director of "AI" was the same director of "2001." The film was completed by Stephen Spielberg after his death. It probably wouldn't have helped the film, which wasn't imbued with enough oomph! to carry it through].

"BICENTENNIAL MAN" -- This is from another Asimov story in the "I Robot" collection, -- thankfully changed from the unwieldy title "Sesquicentennial Man" -- that also borrows little more than just the changed name and basic premise about a robot who wants to become a man. This is a trait it shares with Steven Spielberg's "AI," which was a retelling of the Italian tale of "Pinocchio," where a marionette wanted to be a boy.

What I really like about this movie that never really caught on is that it uses as its premise the 1800s Supreme Court's Dredd Scott decision, where it was essentially decided that the African Descended, whether Free or Slave, had no rights that Whites were bound to respect. The United States also made Slavery an inheritable condition, that even escaping to the North wouldn't cure. In short, recognition of their basic humanity was denied them by fiat.

One of my favourite scenes in "Bicentennial Man" is when the transformed Williams, who has had his case for human-hood thrown out of the World Court says humbly "One is always glad to be of service." This is the same thing that all robots were built to say to a human being.

Other critics don't get the inflection and the meanings of things like this, but we do. Just as in "The Phantom Menace" when little Anakkin the slave boy on Tatooine is called by his master "a credit to his race."

"THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL" -- Gort, the 9-foot tall ET silver robot is still one of the coolest creations in SF cinema. Robert Wise the director even had the pacing right, as the energy buildup is shown in his visor, then a pencil-thin light flashes out, picking out its targets, a few or a lot as they brighten then fade away into nothingness.

He plays the beam for an extended time over a tank as the crew wisely scampers out and away as it melts down into the baseball diamond where their saucer landed in the heart of Washington, D.C. None'a that "take me to your leader" mess, and trying to talk to hillbillies in rural areas or swamps, they headed right to the top!

I was inspired to try and write a screenplay for a updated version, where Gort would take on a whole military squadron wing and infantry unit upon landing, before being deactivated by Klaatu by the classic words:

"Gort! Klaatu borada nikto!

Although Gort was only a tall man in a rubber suit with silver paint, our young imaginations figured it was some kinda flexible alien rubber, sorta like Marvel Comic's "Iron Man." (That movie is under development now, by the way). Gort was completely silent, even when he was melting a tank to slag, and we had the impression that he was wiser and more powerful than we could ever know. Indeed, the short story version called "I Am The Master" revealed that Gort was large and in charge, which was why he sent Klaatu out to meet with humanity while he laid back. In 1950s America this was substantially changed, except for a brief mention by Klaatu to the assembled world leaders after he shut down all the planet's electrical grids, except for hospitals and airplanes in flight.

"The Day The Earth Stood Still" was filmed in Black and white but it's still a gripping tale today, which is what good storytelling does.

Note: the makers of the film tried to insert some reference to Earthly religion along with its anti-nuclear, anti-war theme, but again were mindful of 1950s censors in the age of McCarthyism. Thus, they had Michael Rennie's wise character of Klaatu call himself "Mr. Carpenter" when he went out in mufti among the humans, and he manifested other aspects of power such as healing and even Resurrection. The alien even spoke of the Supreme Spirit that his people followed.

Later, in a "Star Trek" episode about Apollo in "Who Mourns For Adonis?" NBC made William Shatner's Captain James Kirk change an utterance about "mankind has no need for gods anymore." The new one included "for us, the One is enough," but with a marked lack of enthusiasm for the line. Roddenberry told us in his revealing address at Marquette U. ( where he also showed the unaired pilot "The Cage," which was later recut into the only Star Trek two-parter) how the censors let slip the first interracial kiss between Lt. Uhuru and Kirk in the same episode. But I digress.

She was called an android, but the film "Eve of Destruction" with the late stars Lee Remick and Gregory Hines clearly show a robot, played by Remick in a double role as Eve's inventor, who like the girl in "Species" is roaming the city and indulging in whatever whim crosses her mind, from to bright red dresses and "c'mon and get it" pumps, to strange stranger sex in motel rooms. The problem is that Eve is powered by a mini-nuke plant which is linked to her unstable emotion chip. When she goes off, so will the nuke and thence the city!

"FORBIDDEN PLANET" -- Robby the robot became a staple for his kind in many films, including an opponent for the Robot in "Lost In Space" on TV. He could shoot electricity, and had encyclopedic knowledge of people and their likes.

One of the space Navy hucksters puts Robby to good use making some moonshine to sell to the parched troops sent to Altair IV to find out what happened to its settlers and researchers, including a professor and his winsome daughter played by a young and comely Connie Francis.

This is a retelling of Shakespeare's "The Tempest" with Robby as Caliban, with a little of the Farmer's Daughter tossed in. "We weren't doing anything daddy, just getting a little healthy stimulation from hugging and kissing," after the ship's Player tells the isolated lass, who only had Robby as a companion that this is accepted practice throughout the Earth Descended worlds.

Leslie Nielsen from "Scary Movie 3" and the "Naked Gun" series is the ship's captain from back when he was a Hollywood leading man. Really and truly!

"Forbidden Planet" was the first big budget Science Fiction movie to make a bunch of cash, and the floodgates were open for movies like "Earth Vs. The Flying Saucers" and "The Day The Earth Stood Still." It also paved the way for TV series like "Star Trek," so said Gene Roddenberry himself when he came to speak to us at Marquette University.

"LOST IN SPACE" -- called simply The Robot he was Will Robinson's companion, and a substitute brother and father figure since his real father was always so busy doing some project, and the Major constantly trying to get into Judy Robinson's panties, as in the TV series.

The Robot was a pleasantly utilitarian concoction, with a oval glass head, washtub body, and pincers. He had a broad platform with treads for getting around. In the film version he had more style, as did the Jupiter 2 that carried the science fictionalized version of Swiss Family Robinson on their journey to colonize another star system.

After a time/space jump (don't ask), they encounter a derelict rescue ship sent after them with a whole row of Robots, sleek and vastly upgraded designs. The insufferable Dr. Smith, played in the film by "Harry Potter 3: The Prisoner of Azkaban" Gary Oldham needles The Robot. "Well, aren't we the poor relation?" Punk.

"MATRIX" TRILOGY -- Agent Smith, a hunter program for the machine masters spoke of their philosophy to the captured human rebel leader Morpheus when Humanity's machines decided to revolt and imprisoned us in the Matrix, a computer generated dream world designed to keep our minds occupied while our electrical energy is being drained to feed their kind.

"Most organisms reach a kind of balance with their environment, you however, do not. You grow and grow until you completely consume it. Do you know what other organism does that, Morpheus? A virus. Humanity is a disease… and we are the cure."

They have their own Machine City, a place of pure logic and metal and plastic where there is no hint of organics. Robotic insects and their version of rat-like beings scurry about as seen when Neo, who is a mutant able to bridge the machine/cybernetic and human wolds, travels there in the concluding "Matrix" movie to bring an end to the conflict between them.

"ROBOCOP" -- Much like the underground movement where fans blended Alien versus Predator which led to the comic books and thence the movie, there is a similar series of comic called "Robocop Versus Terminator." In the books, the future SkyNet and its minions hail the Detroit cyborg crime fighter as their ancestral Big Poppa, and send emissaries back to convince him to come over to their Dark Side.

Murphy was a Detroit cop who was near death when the private corporation that contracts with the police department used him as a guinea pig to test a new concept -- declared brain dead cops made indestructible and placed on the mean streets of Motor City. Directed by "Starship Troopers'" Paul Verhoeven it has heart with all the action and was a critical and box office hit, spawning two sequels.

Note to Parents: be advised that only "RoboCop 3" with its young girl hero is appropriate for children, as the others are very bloody and violent. Verhoeven was a child in WWII and saw much gore, and he believes that we shouldn't be shielded from that reality and the evil that men do.

Strictly speaking, RoboCop and the Terminator are cyborgs -- cybernetic organisms, or ersatz humans with synthetic organic parts, but that's close enough for our purposes. We can't bend the rules for androids though, which are non mechanical beings with artificial organs, blood, brains and the like. Bishop or Ashe from the "Alien" movies are androids with their milky artificial blood.

"TERMINATOR" SERIES -- https://cinemaviews.tripod.com/terminator3 Before he was the Governator of California Arnold Schwarzenegger was the Terminator, a future hit man sent back to kill the leader of human future freedom fighters by killing his mother before he was even conceived! This is true SF, and critics pushed the original film to great heights while crowds were pleased by the plentiful action.

Because only organic material could be sent through the time machine, Skynet, the tyrannical supercomputer created to protect us from missile attack that instead took over humanity, sent back their most advanced unit to track down and kill Sarah Connor in her youth.

"It decided our fate in an instant" soon after SkyNet was switched on, said Reese the a freedom fighter sent back by John Connor to protect his mother from the Terminator.

Future versions had John Connor send his own captured and reprogrammed Terminator back to protect himself against a shape-shifting liquid metal Terminator in "Judgement Day," a retelling of "Shane;" and in the last one SkyNet sends back a female version to use her beauty and wiles to get the job done.

"TOBOR THE GREAT" -- This is true Old School, from the late 1950s. Tobor -- "Robot spelled backwards -- was a concoction of a scientist making a warrior for the Defense Dept., and like taking their daddy's car out for a spin a little boy takes the master remote and starts to make the robot do some stuff. Then he accidentally pushed the last button, the one marked "KILL."

When we were little guys watching this scene on the Saturday Afternoon Movies we always held our breath as the boy backed up behind Tobor's advance, pincers opening and closing while he pleaded with him to stop!. The minimal plot had some gangsters or spies trying to get the scientist to hand over the robot. Great movie for the real little kids.

OTHER NOTABLE ROBOTIC MOVIES

This is just a partial list, meant to show those films with robot intrigue or takeover. There are scores of others, comedies such as [///] and strange Computer Love, and others where the perfect man was crafted since we flesh and blood ones are so lacking. Of course, women came in for treatment too, as we've seen in "The Stepford Wives."

Sex seemed to be a problem where robots were concerned and men are in charge. Roddenberry told us the problems he had getting his hoped for TV series "The Questor Tapes" launched at NBC because his robot had sex with a woman to extract information from her about her dead husband, his creator.

Kid robots are in movie, to be sure. On TV there's a teenage version called "Jake 2.0"

Tv series such a knight rider with K.I.T.T. the talking black sports car as an automotive automaton would have to be included, scheduled for a big budget big screen treatment soon, along with popular TV show trying to emulate the success of "Starsky and Hutch", "Scooby Doo", "The Addams Family" and others. Note: This does not include "The Beverly Hillbillies" and "Dragnet" with Dan Akroyd and Tom Hanks.

IN MEMORIAM: JERRY GOLDSMITH

You've heard his music lots of times, in many of your favourite and most popular films of the large and small screens. Jerry Goldsmith was a film composer and scorer who ranked at the top in Hollywood who recently passed in his California home after a long bout with cancer. He had many blockbusters under his belt that worked because of his spare techniques. Much as Mozart said in "Amadeus" when he was told he used "too many notes" he used what was needed, no more no less.

For the African Descended interested in film it should be noted that he scored "A Patch of Blue," about a relationship story between a blind and sighted person. On his eulogy on NPR Sunday the commentator noted he wove simple bass lines with African Descended melodies to show the buildup of trust between the two.

A brief listing of his TV and cinema compositions are: "The Omen" trilogy; Patton; A Patch of Blue; "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" and on TV the "Star Trek: Voyager" show.

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Remember to patronize the Northtown Cinemas at 7440 North 76th street, two blocks north of Good Hope road in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Most major film releases can be seen there in comfort with their new stadium style seating, and now with the thuggish elements banished to other area theatres wholesome family films are back, such as the Harry Potter films, and others. --kjw

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--30--

------------------------ NEVER DIE ALONE" -- FILM REVIEW OF THE WORD NETPAPER

THE WORD NETPAPER

CINEMA VIEWS With Film Critic Kevin J. Walker

kevin j. walker p.o. box 1324-53201

milwaukee, wisconsin usa

emails: kevinwalker2005@lycos.com

thewordnetpaper@excite.com

"NEVER DIE ALONE"

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QUARANTINO’S "KILL BILL, VOL. I"

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"’We reap what we sow’. That’s what the Bible says. ‘Payback’s a M-F.’ I think James Brown said that. Same difference. We all know the story. At least we pretend we do.

"Hindu cats out in India have a word for it: Karma. They believe in reincarnation. That a man pays in the next life for all the stuff he’s done in the previous one. And keeps on paying, too. Until he gets it right." - King David

The Ernest Dickerson film from a Donald Goines’ book "Never Die Alone" is like a Greek tragedy, especially since the narrator is speaking from the dead, in more ways than one. The impressive but very rough film of gritty urban underside has a sprawling cast, with nested flashbacks via a collection of audiotapes made by the dope dealing pimp played by DMX.

Lots of us enjoyed Donald Goines’ books of hard and tough ghetto life, and the colourful characters who peopled them. Incredibly this is the first one of his over 30 books, (including a Western) to be made into a film, but you can bet it won’t be the last. People are just about tired of Shakespeare, and they may be ready for a break from works by Elmore Leonard, too.

DMX, whom his parents named Earl Simmons and he renamed himself in the persona of the Dark Man X, portrays King David the pimp with a smooth aplomb from years of being a performer on stage in rap concerts and videos, where a quite a few actors are garnered these days. He shares lots of screen time with two others when their lives intersect, Michael Ealy of "Barbershop 2" and "Scream" series actor David Arquette as Paul, a scribe who has a chance encounter with King David as he’s bleeding to death on the streets of an unnamed city.

"Please don’t let me die alone, mister… not here in the gutter like this. I have money, I can pay you…" Arquette’s character, who is a writer trying to make his ghetto characters come to life inherits King David’s Stutz pimpmobile, gold watch, ring, a heavy gold cross, and a money clip thick with a wad of cash. Mumbling and in pain, he asks the stranger to find his family whom he left behind in case he doesn’t make it.

Arquette is one of the several threads that are going on simultaneously as "Never Die Alone" plays out, along with the vengeful Mike, and the continuous flashbacks of King David who like the shades of Dante Aligheri in his "Inferno" desperately want to be remembered to the minds of men. Then there are flashbacks inside of those, as King David remembers the women he’s defiled, the dope deals he’s done, and the people he’s double crossed.

It was his good great luck to run into a writer, and someone who knows how to track people down. Paul Paskoff is apparently the only White character to ever appear in one of Goines’ works. His role is similar to that by Christopher Reeves when his New York City magazine writer joins in with pimp Morgan Freeman and his ‘ho’e, played by Kathy Baker, after his wholly made up story is taken to be the truth by an impressed Freeman.

Arquette, who hasn’t shied away from quirky roles in his career, plays Paul with the clumsy but dogged attitude of a good natured person who also has a healthy supply of luck as he stumbles along, messing in the affairs of some vicious people who have no second thoughts of leaving bleeding corpses in the gutters or alleyways as he motors along in his inherited pimped out Stutz, listening to the cassette tapes.

Nancy is his tired girlfriend. "And this slumming thing you’re doing – that’s right, I said slumming! Driving around in that, that Pimp Mobile, and staying there in that rat hole apartment for your research into the ‘lifestyles of the ghetto,’ instead of coming and staying with me. Or is dating me part of your research, too?" Nancy is played by "5th Wheel" host, Maxim pinup girl and standup comedian Alisha Tyler, of "Friends."

"Never Die Alone" crackles with good writing and dialog to go along with the interpersonal drama and tension, not to speak of the extensive narration that KD makes via his volumes of tapes where he chronicles his career criminality.

"You’ll never guess who just came back from the dead" asks Moon, the smooth criminal.

"Tupac?" a henchman replies, to guffaws from the audience.

King David to one of Moon’s henchmen, Blue who is wearing the modern casual style affected by many of the young these days:

"You goin’ campin’ or somethin’? Because usually when brothers dress all ‘Grizzly Adams’ like that they’re goin’ out in the woods. Why don’t you dress yourself up? Women appreciate a brother who looks sharp. That’s the trouble with you young niggas these days. Get on outta here, go and start a campfire someplace."

"You did this to me!!" wails a former Good Girl Gone Bad, who forgot to wipe her runny nose before she showed up on his doorstep, jittery and begging for another hit of whatever that was he gave her.

"Me? I’m to blame ‘cause you all strung out? I don’t remember puttin’ your head into nothin’ when you were snortin’ up everything I had around here," King Davis retorts. What tripped him out was when she denigrated his dreams to settle down after he fell into her Tender Trap.

"I like you, but you’re strictly small time. A quarter million isn’t enough to retire on! I like partying with you, but let’s just take it easy, and enjoy it while it lasts."

He had a plan to deal with her intransigence, but it backfires somewhat.

"Most girls are scared are puttin’ needles into themselves, and it keeps them from going too far. But it turns out that she was a diabetic, and stickin’ herself with a needle to her was as natural as brushin’ her teeth or combin’ her hair," he dismissively says in the tapes.

The movie does little to soften the hard edges of King David, who is justly seen as irredeemable. "Never Die Alone" is very rough and uncompromising, with little redemption. Shot gunned women are shown flying backwards through the air; gunshot drivers’ bloody brains are shown dripping down the car windows after they’ve been jacked, victims lie in pools of blood.

"One a thing a bitch should never do is joke about calling the police" KD says in one of his tapes as Paul listens, and scribbles away in his tiny apartment for what he hopes is his breakthrough story.

"Then it’s serious, because now she’s talkin’ about effing with a man’s livelihood!"

Indeed, so would say the shades of Chandra Levy, the onetime missing Washington, DC intern, whose bones later showed up in a D.C. park. Monica Lewinski didn’t end up that way because she saved the infamous stained blue dress and told others, otherwise we might be wondering where she also disappeared to. People’s bodies wound up in ditches in Arkansas years before from messing with the rough playing Clinton Gang, aside from the one who turned up "suicided" in Fort Marcy Park. People get funny about they money, and the power that makes it happen. But I digress.

DMX, or as his parents call him Earl Simmons, has decided to go whole hog into acting and he’s getting good at it. He’s had roles in films such as his debut with Nas in "Belly"; "Exit Wounds" with Steven Seagall; and two with Jet Li: "Romeo Must Die" with Aaliyah; and Cradle 2 Tha Grave." He usually plays the same sort of smooth thug character.

The sex in "Never Die Alone" is a harkening back to the days of yore, with stomachs slapping noisily and overhead camera shots, with plenty of mirrors so little is missed as moaning women push off the blackboard for leverage. You’ll want to get a babysitter for this one, because it’s a hard "R" rated film, for gratuitous language, violence, and sex.

This is the same sort of hard core story of the underbelly of society we saw in Mel Gibson’s "Payback," before he went into making Biblical epics such as "The Passion of The Christ." Gibson’s tale of retribution and a falling out among thieves and killers also took place in an unnamed city (although it was filmed in Chicago), and like here in the Los Angeles filmed "Never Die Alone," the timelines are intentionally confused so it can be modern, or Back In Tha Day. The film soundtrack by George Duke includes Seventies songs. This was perhaps a nod to the late Goines, who wrote all of his works in the early 1970s.

The film takes place in a ten year time span, where the protagonist speaks of his forays Back East and in California. His extensive narration helps flesh out the characters and characterizations. It helps that director Ernest Dickerson was the ace cinematographer for many of Spike Lee’s early films, since they were buds in college together. He has a visual feel when directing the work of his own cinematographer Matthew Libatique, ASC that comes across as smoothly poetic with light and shades of shadow, even when it’s a dark alleyway wet with drizzling rain as a long shot is taken of a bored security heavy past a banged up trash bin, lit by a lone bulb. Before he’s made a victim.

Since then Dickerson has moved into directing, with "Juice" his debut. He followed that up with "Demon Knight" with Jada Pinkette Smith; the supernatural "Bones" with Snoop Dog and Curtis Powell about another Seventies brother, who comes back from the dead to avenge his killers; "Surviving the Game" with Ice T; and "Bulletproof" with "50 First Dates" star Adam Sandler and Damon Wayans.

"Sadly, Goines has been pretty much ignored in the U.S., although he’s very highly respected overseas, especially in Europe, where he’s given real literary weight. I think it’s important to recognize him," says Dickerson.

"He is perhaps the world’s premiere Black pulp fiction writer, and screenwriter James Gibson has taken some of Goines’ big themes, such as the idea of Karma and the concept that what goes around comes around, and stayed true to Goines’ world, while giving it a real modern feel."

The extensive cast of "Never Die Alone" has many veterans of screen, stage, and cable. Tiny Lister ("My Baby’s Daddy", "Posse") is Rocky, the right hand man of Moon, played by "Dead Presidents" and "Caught Up" heavy Curtis Powell, who also was in "The Brothers."

Earl Simmons follows in a long line of performers turned actors. In the future young people will be amazed when we tell them that at one time such as LL Cool J, Queen Latifah, Bette Midler, Janet Jackson, Ice Cube, Li’l Kim, Missy Elliot, Mark Wahlberg, Will Smith, Marshall Mathers, Whitney Houston, Method Man and Snoop Dog really and truly had rapping and singing careers before acting.

Alicia Keyes and "Glitter" star Mariah Carey are aspiring actresses, and the career of Aaliyah who was to appear in the final two "Matrix" films was cut short when she died two years ago in a plane crash while filming a music video. Nona Gaye, another singer and daughter of Marvin Gaye took her place as a futuristic warrior.

As a film critic the mark of a good film for me is in the small roles. If they’re good, then it shows the care that was taken to make good writing for the larger roles. It also may predict future success. "Never Die Alone" has plenty of small parts, some little more than Walk Ons, but they sparkle with wit and emotion.

James Gibson is the screenplay writer for NDA and his dad Henry Gibson plays the head of the funeral parlor. Furtively glancing at his attendant, his head still respectfully downcast with a sorrowful demeanor as he sees the expensive gold watch, the heavy jeweled gold cross, diamond rings and chains about to be needlessly interred with King David. The elder Gibson was the poet on NBC’s "Laugh In" early 1970s variety show. This characterization is in keeping with Film Noir when even regular people are seen to have a bit of larceny in them, such as the hospital Orderly played by Eric Payne.

The bartender Jasper is played by Luenell Campbell; Ella is Drew Sidora, Mike’s little sister that he dotes on and tries to keep out of his crooked life. Keesha Sharp plays Edna, part of the flashback to King David’s long career of crookedness as she tells him she’s clean now, and just wants some money to get by.

Goines life and its tragic end mirrored that of his characters in his over thirty books. From 1970 he averaged a book every two months, which is a fiendish output even for a pulp writer. Did he know that his time would be short?

A native of Detroit, he was murdered with his longtime companion Shirley Sailor, who was the one who encouraged him to write his tales of gritty ghetto life. They were killed by two assassins who burst into their Detroit apartment, shooting them in front of their two young daughters in 1974. The studio bio material on Goines states:

"Arrested again on larceny charges in 1969, Goines wrote his first published work in prison, the semi-autobiographical novel "Whoreson." Holloway House Publications published the work in 1972 and followed with 15 best-selling Goines novels over the next 34 months: "Black Gangster," "Black Girl Lost," "Crime Partners," "Cry Revenge," "Daddy Cool," "Death List," "Dopefiend," "Eldorado Red," "Inner City Hoodlum," "Kenyatta’s Escape," "Kenyatta’s Last Hit," "Never Die Alone," "Street Players," "Swamp Man" and "White Man’s Justice, Black Man’s Grief." Goines wrote with the speed of a junkie desperate to pay for his next fix, averaging one new book every two months."

CAST OF "NEVER DIE ALONE"

KING DAVID -- EARL SIMMONS/DMX

PAUL – DAVID ARQUETTE

MIKE – MICHAEL EALY

MOON – CLIFTON POWELL

JANET – JENNIFER SKY

JUANITA -- REAGAN GOMEZ-PRESTON

EDNA -- KEESHA SHARP

ELLA -- DREW SIDORA

JASPER -- LUENELL CAMPBELL

ROCKIE -- TOMMY "TINY" LISTER

ORDERLY -- ERIC PAYNE

BLUE -- ANTWON TANNER

--------------------------

Remember to patronize the Northtown Cinemas at 7440 North 76th street, two blocks north of Good Hope road in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Most major film releases can be seen there in comfort with their new stadium style seating, and now with the thuggish elements banished to other area theatres family films are back, such as "Loony Tunes 2: Back In Action" and others. --kjw

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Send a note to Cinemaviews at P. O. Box 1324-53201, or email walkernet@excite dot com, or walkerworld_2000@yahoo dot com --kjw

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--------------------------- TUPAC RESURRECTION

THE WORD NETPAPER

CINEMA VIEWS WITH FILM CRITIC KEVIN J. WALKER

"TUPAC RESURRECTION"

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GRIDLOCK'D

ABOVE THE RIM

POETIC JUSTICE

GANG RELATED

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2PAC STORY WELL TOLD IN "TUPAC RESURRECTED"

"TUPAC: RESURRECTED" is a feature length documentary of the controversial slain rapper through his own words. Compiled from his interviews and with much unseen footage such a home videos and such, the film is being recommended for all those who want to know more about the son of Black Panthers more than that he was killed as the result of a hyped up West Coast versus East Coast Rap music rivalry against the also mysteriously slain Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls, aka Big Poppa.

He had a thriving film career that was on the upswing, and was assuming roles that allowed him to stretch his creative wings. His last role in "Gang Related" was a detective opposite John Belushi and Lela Roshon. With Tim Roth he portrayed a recovering addict in "Gridlock'd" and a villain in the street basketball film "Above The Rim" with Marlon Wayans and Bernie Mac.

The film he was most seen in would have been "Poetic Justice" with Janet Jackson and Joe Torry. The romantic Road Film did a lot to establish the rapper as an actor with promise, even more so than "Juice," his first feature film role as the villain Bishop, a high school delinquent against Omar Epps.

The short turbulent life of the 25 year old Gangsta Rap star and evolving political activist, born of Black Panthers on the East coast, moving from one ghetto to another from New York to Baltimore to Marin in California, would be seen as a tragedy even by those who weren't fans of his music. The movie is very well done, and moves at a pace that will win fans for those who thought that documentaries would be dull.

It will disappoint those who think they're going to see a concert film as there is very little of that in "Tupac Resurrected." The goal of the documentary was to allow Shakur's story to be told, and as such there are aspects that haven't been seen before, such as the student audition tape a teenaged 2Pac made of the Will Smith and DJ Jazzy Jeff Bubble Gum Rap tune "Parents Just Don't Understand."

The range of the film is impressive, and no one can come out of the theatre not knowing and appreciating the ups and downs of Tupac's life path, his achievements, and what he planned to do with his celebrity. I count myself among them.

I had no idea that he was establishing neighborhood level charities by using bare-bones city concerts that would incorporate national acts with the area's local rappers, with the money staying in the affected communities to address social concerns. From the Video Jukebox Channel I knew of his positive videos "Brenda Had A Baby", "Dear Mama" and "You Are Appreciated," odes to the women who were a formative and continuing force in his life.

"I love women" Tupac confesses. "I feel like calling Prince up and asking him, 'Man, can I just, like, hang out with you?'" and enjoy women like he does.

The point is buttressed with fast moving clips of videos and stills of girl friends and Girl Friends such as Jasmine Guy and Jada Pinkett Smith, whom he said he would love forever. This segment of the movie also will dash the belief that he would have abused any woman, an idea that he seemed to not be able to even put into words as he sputtered and hesitated during an interview following his arrest on sodomy charges after a NYC groupie said she was assaulted in his hotel room.

Also an activist who doesn't much care what the White folks think who sign her pay checks, Jada, like pal Queen Latifah both attended and spoke at the 1997 Million Women March in Philadelphia that I attended (and made a short documentary of), while many celebrities wouldn't have been caught dead within a hundred miles of any of the Million-whatever Marches. (Tupac himself attended and spoke at the Indianapolis Black Expo). It was friends like they who supported him while he was imprisoned on the rape charge, along with actor and former Irish boxer Mickey Rourke, and Tony Danza.

His wide ranging interests and reaching beyond just being Black gained him fans on a Global scale. The movie shows people unfurling Tupac Shakur banners outside the Eiffel Tower, and hand lettered signs in foreign languages in Eastern Europe as his young White fans mug for the camera. A young White man has a Tupac headband for his infant son, posing by his car's "2PAC" license plate.

Curiously the movie doesn't get into long imprisoned Black Panther Geronimo Pratt, someone who was considered a godfather to Shakur. Granted, he had a lot of men in and out of his life, raised as he was by a single mother.

"A woman can't teach a boy how to be a man" he says of the immutable but harsh truth, over images of home movies and stills showing him being hugged by his adoring mother topic of a recently released book who went from a high level East Coast Black Panther to California crack addict to Hollywood film producer and peacemaker with the mother of Biggie Smalls.

2Pac, as he became known in the headline ellipsis that shortens names for convenience and was embraced even by him on his albums -- was a quintessential Mama's Boy, as many are from single parent households. He even explained the self knowledge that this was the wellspring of the much observed toughness and machismo of young men without men in their family lives. "I act tough, but I'm really very soft" he explained in the verbal explanations that are liberally throughout the documentary "Tupac Resurrection."

Tupac was quite the entertainer and clown who loved the camera and did the opposite of clamming up when one was around. During his stint with the group "Digital Underground" the videos chronicle the obscene onstage antics of the fun loving group whose biggest hit was "Humpty Hump." His first release for Shock G after he put in work as a roadie then onstage talent was the solo "Same Song."

Reality has a way of intruding harshly into the mythos built upon Tupac's memory. He played a detective in his last film with John Belushi and Lela Roshon; a recovering drug addict with Tim Roth in "Gridlock'd," and was a student at the Baltimore School Of The Arts. Some members of the audience audibly groaned when a still picture came up of the dance student in his black leotards. "Damn, 'Pac…" sadly muttered a young man next to me.

Although some rappers denigrated others for having to write their raps down, the doc shows the copious notes that Shakur made, with underlines and references to other works, documents, literary allusions or Van Gogh's paintings, such as "Starry Night." He made the most of his classical education, where history, mythology and more was required reading along with Shakespeare's plays. It is also where he caught the acting bug, big-time.

"I wouldn't have turned out the way I did if I hadn't gone there" he says of Baltimore HSA, in one of the many interviews and open talks he gave. Among entertainers he was unusually accessible, and there are many examples included in "Tupac Resurrected."

The erudite student had a penchant for history and philosophy, much of which found its way into his music such as Machiavelli's "The Prince," a treatise on power and how to keep it, which Tupac morphed into his Mack A Velli persona. He talked about he incorporated aspects of his learning, such as Sun Tzu's "The Art of War."

The documentary uses much source material supplied by his cooperative teachers, including library check out slips showing his wide interests. Afeni Shakur who is a producer of the film, 2Pac's Aunties, MTV the sponsoring studio, as well as police records and legal writs. Johnnie Cochran and Alan Dershowitz turn up in the copious lawyer billing records, which come up and are replaced with other images in the fast-moving documentary. The DVD should be a treat if it is similarly as well supplied.

The MTV produced effort employs the same technique used by fellow documentarian Ken Burns, who also used still shots of materials in his Civil War opus. Since there was a lack of motion pictures then, and photography had only recently been popularized by those such as Matthew Brady, Burns caused the camera itself to move.

"Tupac Resurrected" employs the technique, although there is no lack of camcorder or MTV interview tapes, and it adds to the immediacy and multimedia impact of the presentation. Youth raised up on fast-edited fare and video games are particularly well suited to this approach, but it also isn't bone-jarring for those used to traditional exposition.

Ominously, a black car is shown following in Vegas. The soundtrack has shots ringing out as the screen goes black. This is not the hit that was performed on the Vegas strip in September of 1996 however, this was a brief forward to the robbery/abortive hit outside the elevators of a NYC recording studio, with 2Pac talking about how he reacted to his brush with death. Still the audience, the overwhelming majority of who were fans of his music as much as some White kids were of the late Kurt Kobain -- who Tupac references -- caught its collective breath.

The film made a wise decision to let the slain rapper tell his own tale, as he was ably to do. There were no Talking Heads to explain the impact of 2Pac, and he himself talks throughout the film, even performing as the narrator. He left behind an impressive amount of material, especially music. Forbes magazine lists Shakur as in the top ten of musical sales of deceased entertainers. Most people didn't even know that there was such a list, but people like Elvis, Kobain, Sinatra, and John Lennon have reissues and studio tapes that fuel this economy.

Like the late Christopher Wallace or Biggie Smalls also known as "Big Poppa," both men seemed to foretell their own shortened lives as seen in their music, especially Smalls, a onetime friend of Tupac Shakur until a very public falling out as part of the East Coast -- West Coast Rap rivalry.

I have the perfect companion to take along to see this movie a second time. Toni is well versed on all the rap acts, and even dresses the part of a Thug Babe, although she's actually in Law Enforcement. The first time I met her I thought I was about to get jacked! But she's college educated, and All Woman.

"I just like to dress this way, its who I am" Toni says. Hey sweetie, you don’t have to justify yourself to me. It ain't like that.

Anyway, she'll help me translate what I'm seeing at the Milwaukee Northtown theatres showing of "Tupac: Resurrection" as one of my Expert Viewers I sometimes take along.

There wasn't the expected mouthing off during the film, at least not much past the few first few minutes. Security wasn't much needed as the crowd was self policing, and not going to take any mess from loudmouths or cat callers.

"Can we get some respect for 'Pac up in here? Damn!" asked a woman.

"Hey, man I paid $8 dollars to see this movie, y'all gonna have to be quiet up in here!" cautioned one man to a pocket of loud talkers toward the front, who were passing a tall translucent bottle of liquor back and forth that sometimes clattered against the floor during the movie.

There was a bit of abortive drama at the Northtown theatre in Milwaukee, as somebody saw somebody they didn't like, and words became taunts, then an invitation to step outside. The Northtown has largely banished the thugs who once made moviegoing there an unpalatable experience that nationwide has made onetime moviegoing fans devotees of DVDs and Pay Cable. But theatre management has cracked down, and with the opening of the AMC Mayfair in Wauwatosa many of the miscreants have flowed over there and are presently causing trouble far from the Northtown since there are only so many thugs to go around.

But there was a touch of small scale drama nonetheless. Somebody undertook to start running, and about 75 patrons streamed outside the exits when they thought some gunplay was about to ensue. Most stayed In their seats.

"I came to see this movie" one wag said. "I ain't moving from this seat."

"Look at them, afraid of being shot!" sneered another.

Well, yeah! I myself didn't want to move because this might well take me right into the line of fire. Besides, idea of being surrounded of people with weapons has worn off since I was in Israel last. The militia there is always around with Uzis and whatnot. You get used to it after a couple of days.

By then I was glad I hadn't gotten hold of Toni to take her along to see "Tupac Resurrected" on the first night. It would have been a helluva date if she or I'd been shot or trampled in the melee! As it was, the two verbal poseurs/combatants were removed, and the security, who weren't able to enter because the outstreaming moviegoers prevented their entry came inside and stayed for the entire film.

There is a strange congruence with the Angela Bassett Science Fiction film "Strange Days." The basic plot dealt with a controversial politically active rapper who is slain by trigger happy LAPD police, with the crime witnessed by a woman who was wearing an experience recorder. The controversy threatens massive violence on the eve of the new Millennium. Tupac was amazed and disturbed by the building power he was starting to attract. "At the shows there would be audiences with Blacks, Whites and Latinos, guys writing me from prisons saying "what do you want us to do?"

"There were 14,000 people in a theatre, and if I told them to get and turn around three times they would do it!" he said, eyes wide, long dark eyebrows framing his large eyes. Baby pictures, and pictures of Shakur as a youngster show the grade schooler then adolescent then gawky preteen he was. We've seen many of these type of photos of our own, many times.

It was poignant to see the overexposed bedroom pictures, skinny bare-chested youngster by a mismatched bedroom dresser drawer. We remember those days, those houses and flats. Tupac could have been, was, like one of our own sons or nephews. This was part of the appeal -- he never tried to separate himself from the people, quite the opposite, he ran to them, was always trying to incorporate them.

Had he lived who knows what a mind like his could have accomplished, with the cross-cultural popularity of his music, combined with a revolutionary upbringing once he been stabilized and mature? This is when the inclusion of the short segment on the FBI's Cointel program against Black men is particularly telling.

Tupac had many problems with the police when he started to get political. It is of note that the rudest crudest rappers seem to not have similar problems, even when they or their bodyguards shoot and beat down each other outside popular nightclubs. The film early on reference J. Edgar Hoover and his CoIntel Program.

"This was a man whose job was to make sure no Black man emerged as a leader" says Shakur in one of musings. To underscore, the film has rapid pictures of slain Black Panthers, newspaper clippings, and footage of Eldridge Cleaver in handcuffs giving the Black Power sign. This was no doubt the influence of Producer Afeni Shakur, queen mother and onetime Black Pantheress making her presence known.

Her input and openness to ensure that her son's story was told resulted in a filmic work that hit all its main points and entertained its audience, which is all that you ask of a film or documentary.

--------------------------

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"OUT OF TIME"

Cinema Views by Kevin J. Walker Film Critic

DENZEL, LATHAN, MENDES ARE AGAINST THE CLOCK

IN CARL FRANKLIN'S CRIME CAPER

by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

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The versatile Denzel Washington stars in a thoughtful and deliberate caper film with romance by "One False Move" director Carl Franklin. And since Denzel is Denzel, he has TWO leading ladies, Sanaa Lathan and Eva Mendes.

So are you in or out? Of the audience I mean for this very entertaining film with real meat on its bones, following the evolved tradition of more mature film fare in the fall months after the big bangs of the summer has passed onto video land..

"Out Of Time" is a very entertaining crime caper movie and is a reunion of sorts. Not only does it mark the return of Eva Mendes and Denzel Washington who were POSSLQs in "Training Day," but Carl Franklin returns to the caper genre which has been good to him and to us.

Franklin's "One False Move" with Cynda Williams of "Caught Up", "Frailty" director and actor Bill Paxton, and "Waiting To Exhale's" Michael Beach got much love from critics who were enamored of his double crossing crime caper film, with heaping helpings of romantic tangles thrown in. His 1940s "Devil In A Blue Dress" starred Denzel as LA private eye Easy Rawlins from the Mosely book series.

Placed in a small seaside town in Florida, "Out Of Time" is filled with knuckle-tense scenes as Denzel's police chief Matt Whitlock races to find out who-all has double crossed and outfoxed him after he gets played big-time for several hundred thousand dollars of seized drug money his four man department was holding.

As his character of private eye Easy Rawlins said in his crime caper film "Devil In A Blue Dress," quoting his crime patron Tom Sizemore who hired him to find the elusive Jennifer Beals," its not what you're mixed up in, its how high up you're mixed" as he has to try and clear his name before his time runs out.

"Palmetto" with Woody Harrelson and Elizebeth Shue visited much the same territory in subject matter and geography. Harrelson played a crusading reporter who gets caught up in some triple crossing action in the Florida panhandle.

"Out Of Time" is a spare film, and not overly filled with car cases and gunplay. Its very much in the style of the old caper films, where there's a mystery and false identities to unravel. "Malice" with Alec Baldwin, Nicole Kidman and Bill Pullman comes very much to mind, for reasons that will be clear when you see the film. If you have no intention of seeing the movie, or are one of those abysmal creatures and reprobates who wait until a film comes out on video or DVD and see it squeezed down to 30 inches you gets no love around here, pahd-nah!

The movie has no explosions, drawn-out gun battles, car chases, special effects, nor extensive gore. It's much in character with the fall releases that are more contemplative and adult-oriented, were time is taken for character development because these are films not intended for the short music video attention span of kids. Tip: get your popcorn, soft drinks, smoke breaks and such done early, because if you miss a little you'll miss a lot of "Out Of Time."

Matt Whitlock is the drinking on the job chief of a four person police force where the usual calls are to get the occasional cat out of the tree, or an alligator out of the backyard. The action around town gets hot when bodies start dropping, arson makes houses go up, a stash of cash goes missing, and all signs are pointing to the police chief.

"They set me up" he realizes, a bit too late. Oh, do ya think, suckah?

"Out of Time" actually is more of a romantic crime mystery, since the situations of the characters is so much a part of the film. Sanaa Lathan is Chief Whitlock's married girlfriend, while Eva Mendes is Matt's wife, who is divorcing him. But there's some unfinished business between the two, and Denzel clearly isn't ready to be kicked to the curb, which Anna Marie picks up on.

The main part of the romantic triangle, actually a tangled weave of a square, is Lathan. The sweet young thing from "Love and Basketball" and "Brown Sugar" is all growed up now and has a major persona shift in "Out Of Time." Her Anna Marie is the abused wife of Dean Cain ("The Adventures of Lois & Clark") who's also a member of the local law enforcement and a longtime rival of Matt, further tangling the connections.

The two men have a face off when the suspicious husband confronts the chief. Without admitting anything, Whitlock says to his face what he'd like to but can't, in a delicious verbal riposte that further cements "Out Of Time" as welcome adult fare.

But Chief Whitlock still likes the chocolatey and sexy Anna Marie, and who can blame him? The movie shows Lathan in way-thin wrap dresses and halter tops that shows many of her finer points as she switches around Matt's houseboat where they tryst, away from the eyes and wagging tongues of nosy townsfolk.

She lures the chief over her house with a report of a break in of her house late at night.

"He was standing in my bedroom" she tells him.

"Like this?"

"Yes, but closer…"

"Then what did this intruder do?"

"He forced himself on me… and then he tore off my blouse" Anna Marie says, with her throat muscles trembling as they make their way to the bed and continue their role playing.

This isn't as shocking as earlier audiences might have taken it in pre-Woman's Liberation days. I had a strange girlfriend who had me mindful of picking a hiding place near the head of the metal four-poster for a handcuff key when I woke up to a strange metallic click! one morning, and almost dislocated my shoulder when I sat up too quickly. It's always those nice, quiet ones. But I digress.

Lathan's not the usual skinny Hollywood type, thank the Gods! She has usually played the Sensible Good Girl in movies such as "The Best Man", "Love and Basketball" and "Brown Sugar," and a romantic cable movie or two with Wesley Snipes. Lathan actually looked better in her wrap skirt and bare midriff than Teresa Randle in "Bad Boys 2" and that's hard to do!

The lovely Eva Mendes was Denzel's BabyMomma in the brutal Training Day, for which Denzel won his first Best Actor Academy Award. Starring opposite naïve LAPD Detective trainee Ethan Hawke, Washington was on the other side of the law while supposedly being a servant of it as a crooked officer, with Mendes as his housemate. As they count piles of money on their bed there's a shot of frontal nudity on the part of the sexy Latina. (I recommend using the jog-shuttle dial on a high end VCR to get the full effect).

Mendes, in a short time with four films in three years, has carved out a filmic career playing crime fighters and conflicted tough cookies, and along with Patricia Velasquez, that fine Puerta Riquena who plays the Pharoh's consort in "The Mummy" and "The Mummy Returns." They have all but kicked Jennifer Lopez all the way to the cinematic curb in the minds of moviegoers, and this was before she crashed and burned before "Gigli." We see now that there are lots more where she came from, and we're glad to see them.

Mendes even did comedy as the sweetheart of up and rising "Friday" film franchise co-star Michael Epps in "All About The Benjamins" a Miami-set comedy caper film with Ice Cube, who produced the film through his CubeVision enterprise.

Mendes was a law woman in this past summer's "2 Fast 2 Furious" as an undercover officer helping other deep cover operatives Paul Walker and Tyrese. In the current "Once Upon a Time in Mexico," the concluding Mexican trilogy by "Spy Kids" director Robert Rodriguez, Mendes is a DEA operative working with the CIA deep under the covers with rogue agent Johnny Depp.

Eva Mendes' Sexy Tough Cookie persona isn't likely to wear thin anytime soon. She comes across as a real person, and a developed character type that many women could identify with, qualities that come in handy when she is shown onscreen in "Out Of Time" as the estranged wife of Chief Matt.

Mendes is likeable, so the Sistaz don't hate her when her character Alex is divorcing the wayward Matt. But the film's adult subtlety comes through in many ways as we can see that these two don't need to be divorcing. They need to take a timeout, reassess and come back together fresh-like. But Alex ain't having it. When they're talking Matt tries to play off a phone call from the yearning and pouting Anna Marie like it’s a business call, but Alex is no fool.

"I've got to go, you're busy… Tell her I said "Hi," she says over her shoulder to her soon to be ex-husband as she walks away, with a bit of disappointment in her attitude. "Out Of Time" has Woman Stuff in it, and this only helps the wide audience appeal.

"Mississippi Massala" featured Denzel in a truly cross cultural love story between his Gulf Coast carpet cleaner and the Indian daughter of one of his hotel owning clients. Unlike Wesley Snipes, who hasn't been featured with half as many non-Black women as Washington whose onscreen lovers are a mini United Nations of females, Denzel, like Samuel L. Jackson is given a pass. Perhaps its because they are longtime husbands of two Real Sistazs, while Snipes has been outspoken in interviews about how he was kicked to the curb by Black women while a struggling actor because of his dark skin colour and former lack of monetary resources.

Brothers are definitely feelin' the love from Latina women, and the getting together onscreen only mirrors what is happening in real life, as sistahs who are always complaining about we brothas kicked us to the curb where smart women ran over to retrieve us, neither believing their good luck and the narrow mindedness of what are supposed to be our natural mates.

Filmmaker/Actors Ice Cube and Spike Lee co-starred with Latina love interests in films such as "Next Friday" and "Do the Right Thing." Ice Cube in the latter film remarked "I'm doing my part to improve Black and Brown relations." NYC transit cops Jennifer Lopez and Wesley Snipes threw down in "Money Train," the repairing of Snipes and Woody Harrelson from their breakout buddy basketball flick "White Men Can't Jump."

Cristel Blake of Dallas, Chicago and Milwaukee is a TV, stage actress and singer who attended the preview screening of "Out Of Time" and we both found the caper film involving and thrilling. "I think I can figure out which way this is going," Cristel whispered, as we conspired to figure out the plot twists.

Even though there are only so many ways to portray double and triple crosses, director Franklin still has a few aces up his sleeves to play. You will be thrown by some of the ploys of the film, and even if you aren't the formula still is a good one. We both found the film involving, and I heard Cristel gasp more than once at the various twists, and as the going nuts Chief Whitlock feverishly tries to cover up his tracks as the evidence amounts.

Denzel's Chief of sleepy Banyan Key is the flava of the minute after his town was the scene of a drug bust of a kingpin where hundreds of thousands of dollars was seized, and still sits in his office vault.

His good pal and audience fave comic relief Jay the Medical Examiner played by John Billingsley jokingly suggests that they seize the money for themselves and make it down to Costa Rico and start a boat chartering business, ala ex-cons Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman in "The Shawshank Redemption." Jay shows his friendship as Matt starts to trip over his quickly improvised alibis, where all the clues point to him when bodies start turning up and the Feds call, wanting their drug cash for the kingpin's upcoming trial way before it was expected. It all means that Chief Matt Whitlock is almost out of time.

Cinema Views' verdict is that "Out Of Time" is an eminently enjoyable film with a more than capable caper component with romantic ingredients. The movie is a hit on several levels, and you won't be out of your money or time if you invest them in this film that helps get the Autumn film season off to an auspicious start indeed. --kjw CAST OF "OUT OF TIME"

CHIEF MATT WHITLOCK -- DENZEL WASHINGTON ANNA MARIE -- SONAA LATHAN ALEX -- EVA MENDES CHRIS -- DEAN CAIN JOHN BILLINGSLEY -- JAY, BANYAN KEY M.E.

DIRECTOR: GARY FRANKLIN "One False Move", "One True Thing" with Meryl Streep and "Devil In A Blue Dress."

STUDIO: MGM

FILM RATING PG-13

VIDEO VIEWS PRESENTS A DENZEL FILM FEST:

There are lots of movies in Washington's repertoire, and he has crossed genres liberally from war films, crime capers, the supernatural and even science fiction. This isn’t to speak of the foreign film's he's made, such as his British war film.

DENZEL AS DIRECTOR:

"ANTWONE FISHER" -- This autobiographical film by a script handed to him by a studio employee marked Denzel's first foray into directing. It was an auspicious start indeed. Although loved by the critics, to our disgrace it didn't garner lots of audience attendance although it has an uplifting family theme about an abused child who as an angry young seaman learns through psychological counseling to confront the demons of his past.

Washington plays the Navy counselor, who is going through problems of his own with his wife, played by Chicagoan Salli Richardson, the femme fatale of "Low Down Dirty Shame," and Mario Van Peebles "Posse."

DENZEL FILMS:

"CARBON COPY" -- Before he went to NBC's network TV, Washington co-starred in this movie opposite the fumbling Ryan O'Neal of TVs "Just Shoot Me'" and the comedy crime caper with Jane Fonda "Fun With Dick and Jane," where a California yuppie couple turns to crime to finance their lifestyle after O'Neal loses his job.

"Carbon Copy" was about a White businessman whose adult son from a long ago college dalliance with a Black woman shows up one day on his doorstep about twenty years later. The film muffed its chances to be of substance by pulling its punches, like the final chapter of "The Omen" film series which is exactly opposite what its strategy should have been. If you're going to offend people, then go for it and to hell with the tongue cluckers. That's what the Wayans Brothers did. This is not one that Denzel puts on his cinematic resume, unlike the following:

"COURAGE UNDER FIRE" among Denzel's notable group of war movies is a pairing of he and Meg Ryan where his character is investigating the mangled stories behind the posthumous award of the first Congressional Medal Of Honour winner from the first US-Iraq Persian Gulf War.

The two don't share any scenes together, as he tries to get behind the obscuring "Rashomon"-like conflicting stories to the truth. He is especially driven because his character was also the subject of a Gulf War I snafu that resulted in his self-destructive alcoholism and estrangement from is wife. A thoughtful film with action, always a good blend.

"CRIMSON TIDE" with Gene Hackman featured Washington in one of his many military roles. This time it's as a submarine commander who goes against Hackman's authoritarian captain when he questions vague orders that would have them launch nukes against the Soviet Union.

"DEVIL IN A BLUE DRESS" Adapted from the Easy Rawlins series by writer Mosely, about a transplanted southerner to Los Angeles it stars Denzel as the Private Eye hired by Tom Sizemore to find the title character played by Jennifer Beals.

Grand larceny is committed with the arrival of the deadly Mouse, played by Don Cheadle of Volcano" and "Bullworth." Stealing all the scenes he shares with Denzel isn't easy, and Cheadle injects the already good film with superior character qualities.

"FALLEN" is among my favourites of Washington's many films, and is quite different from any he's done for reasons you will discover. The supernatural suspense film is about a serial killer who is really an ancient demon plaguing Philadelphia. He is toying with Denzel's detective, who caught the rock song singing, Aramaic speaking killer along with partner John Goodman. Denzel never really had a chance against a Fallen Angel who was old before humanity was even young. Time wasn't on his side in this movie either, no it wasn't.

"GLORY," is Denzel Washington's first Oscar winning role as Best supporting Actor as a rebellious Civil War soldier. Matthew Broderick is the commander of the famous Massachusetts regiment that is part of Civil War lore that also starred Morgan Freeman. This film is available in a commemorative DVD with extra features.

"HEART CONDITION" -- Denzel co-starred with Bob Hoskins, fresh from "Who Framed Roger Rabbit", where he had to interact with Denzel's ghost who was linked to the bigoted cop whose transplanted heart they shared and which kept them within 20 feet or so. This comes in handy when they assault the Bad Guys' fortress, and Denzel's invisible invulnerable ghost is sent ahead on recon!

This was one of the better Ghost Genre stories that were a mini-genre back in the 1980s, started by "Beetlejuice" and ended with Whoopi Goldberg, Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze's "Ghost."

"HE GOT GAME" reteamed and redeemed Spike Lee's filmic vision using two of his most favourite topics: father-son bonding, maleness or "Man Stuff," and sports, and marks the last time he made films starring predominantly Black people. This was before he went onto films such as "Summer of Sam" and the most excellent "The 25th Hour," with one of my favourite actors Edward Norton who is going to take it all one day, mark my words.

"He Got Game" was about a father's estrangement from his son, played by former Milwaukee Bucks forward Ray Allen, and co-starred "Jungle Fever's" Lynette McGee. Their onscreen smooch as a young loving married couple while passing by at the dinner table as the children giggle was voted one of the Most Sensuous onscreen kisses for that year. The film's sports covering was about an imprisoned felon who was released so he could convince his sought-after son to attend a certain university, which is the setting for their longtime conflict.

"THE HURRICANE" It is believed that the furor over the facts if this fact-based story about imprisoned boxer Ruben Hurricane Carter was responsible for denying Washington the Best Actor award for that year. As he ages from a cocky young man to middle age, notice how his speech pattern changes, how he is less patient at times and more serene at others, as if he really did spend his youth behind bars. He was robbed!. Not to take anything away from "Training Day," his rare villain role. I can't mention the other without giving away the plot of another movie Denzel was in , which may or not be listed here.

"MALCOLM X" Denzel was in two notable Spike Lee Joints. One was the towering autobiography of Malcolm Little, formerly known as Detroit Red, then Harlem Red, and onetime Milwaukeean whose militant father preached in Brewtown and was ambushed and slain by White Supremacists after a trip here. Embracing Islam in prison for petty crimes Malcolm went on to become one of America's best orators, and organized the Fruit of Islam which exists to this day, patrolling housing projects and operating after school tutoring and food programs. Milwaukee was the site of Muhammed's Mosque No. 3.

Denzel, as he did in "The Hurricane" goes through various phases as effortlessly as if he was changing his socks, from street hood to religious initiate to organizer, father of daughters and holy man El Hadj Malik El Shabazz. Co stars include Angela Bassett as his wife, the late Betty Shabazz, and a role she reprised briefly in Mario Van Peebles' "Panther."

"MISSISSIPPI MASSALA" This cross cultural romance was a small film by a famed Indian female director about the hotel business owned by her people in the south, and a carpet cleaner played by Washington who gets into a relationship with the daughter of one of his clients. Denzel's acting skill is shown even in small films such as this. When he goes out to a nightspot, a brotha asks him informally what's hap'nin?

"We'll be doing deep shag next Spring" he replies, since rug cleaning is his world. His character sees no discontinuity there, and the line slides so easily out of Denzel Washington the Hollywood millionaire, but we only see him as the small time carpet cleaning entrepreneur of a southern state. Such is the skill of a master craftsman!

"PHILADELPHIA" -- Speaking of the city of brotherly love, this film was Denzel's pairing with Tom Hanks in that award winning follow up film by "Silence of The Lambs" director Jonathan Demme. Pained by allegations that his horrific film starring Anthony ("Red Dragon", "Hannibal") Hopkins had anti-homosexual messages, this film about an AIDS infected attorney who is defended by Denzel was meant to rectify that.

Washington's character like most normal people is not particularly enthused about being around homosexuals, more properly called by the historical name Sodomites. "Philadelphia" is about how the two men and attorneys, the formerly high flying Hanks and the ambulance chasing Washington come to see each other in a new light. It’s a different kind of Buddy Film, but excellently made by director Demme and acted by these two masters of the game who both went on to direct their own critically regarded films while interchangeably acting.

"THE PREACHERS WIFE" Teamed Denzel with Whitney Houston in her third movie role after "The Bodyguard" and "Waiting To Exhale." In this remake of a 1940s film Denzel is an angel sent back to lead a disaffected inner city preacher back to his faith. While doing so the angel takes a liking to the preacher's wife who is about to stray from her faith in her husband.

The movie also co-stars the late Gregory Hines as an ambitious developer from off tha block, who along with the church board is selling out the struggling neighborhood to wealthy investors and moving the church and congregation to a "better environment" as some congregants move up in life and away from the old neighborhood.

"The Preacher's Wife" is an excellent family film, and should become a staple of holiday film fare as it deserves to be. Houston plays the choir leader, so they were able to put some of her singing into the movie, along with some gospel songs.

"SOLDIER'S STORY" Among Denzel's first notable film roles after taking a break for the stable economics of series TV in NBC's "St. Elsewhere" was as a WWII soldier in a segregated Army unit in the film adaptation of the stage play.

This ensemble film featured Adolphe Caesar of "The Colour Purple" (as Mister's father: "Furthermore, I hear she's got that nasty woman's disease. And all her kids got different daddies. She done set the population of Hopwell county at a new high…") Caesar's role was the drill sergeant in the segregated unit who tried to whip Denzel and his green cohorts into shape to go over and fight Hitler.

"Soldier's story" hits on the subject of uneasy patriotism for a country that doesn't love us back, as the recruits prepare to face battle while in a segregated unit. "The Nazis call you Schwartzen!" the drill sarge taunts them. Denzel is a young cocky recruit that is more indicative of the "New Negros" that were evolving less than a hundred years after Emancipation.

"VARIATIONS ON THE MO BETTER BLUES" is the musical about a flawed musician played by Denzel and based partly on Spike Lee's own father, who scored most of his films until he was apparently angered by another film "Jungle Fever." Spike Lee's father married a White woman after his mother died.

That last bit of autobiography made its way into "Crooklyn" with Delroy Lindo as a small time musician married to Oklahoman Alfre Woodard, but with his sister's life, Joie Lee from "Do The Right Thing," as the focus through the eyes of the young girl. Joie also was one of Denzel's love interests in "Mo Better," sharing bed duty with Cynda Williams from "Out Of Time" director Carl Franklin's "One False Move."

"VIRTUOSITY" is Washington's lone big budget science fiction action film foray as a futuristic police officer who is also a convict, charged with capturing the computer generated supercriminal SID, created for criminal justice research with the personality ingrams of over a hundred serial and mass killers. In Virtual Reality simulations Denzel's imprisoned and disgraced LAPD officer has bested Sid, the only person to do so.

The computer generated being is played by Russell Crowe ("LA Confidential" and "Gladiator") who is programmed with the memories of dozens of mass murderers and terrorists who gets a pass into our world, and does what he does best -- killing and mayhem.

The plotline is like that of "He Got Game": Denzel's character gets a temporary pass to carry out a task, after which he might get tossed right back in by the authorities. But instead of an ankle bracelet Lo-Jack he has a deadly cartridge inserted into his head to make sure he comes back, ala Kurt Russell's Snake Pliscomb in the "Escape from New York." I just wish the film had made better use of Denzel's character's bionic arm.

One of "Virtuosity's" best lines from SID: "Just because I'm carrying within me the joy of killing your entire family doesn't mean we can't be friends." This film of theirs is the source of the good-natured Oscar competition race between the two actors that was mentioned by Denzel in his backstage award speech.

PROPHETIC FILM NOTE:

[ A plotline similar to "Virtuosity" was in "Demolition Man" that has a connection to today's headlines. Sylvester Stallone's John Spartan is a near future era Los Angeles police officer who was literally put on ice after being implicated in the death of dozens while trying to take down a villain played by Wesley Snipes. Both are incarcerated, but frozen in a cryogenic prison because society doesn't see the need to provide criminals with cable TV and such, or even food.

[ Generations later Spartan is thawed out to recapture the escaped Snipes, who awakens dozens of serial killers to help him create chaos on the soft and pampered wimps of the future. Spartan is told that the internment laws were changed by former California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who went onto become President of the United States when the US Constitution was changed to allow the foreign born politician to ascend the oval office! ]

Washington has played lots of cop roles -- about as many as Ernie Hudson, which we remarked upon during our interview -- and about as many military men as "Armageddon's" Keith David, the sometime Milwaukeean who worked his way up from privates in "Platoon" and "The Thing" to a three star general in "Armageddon," that big budget Sci Fi disaster film that makes him one of the Brothas and Sistahs of Sci Fi that is being profiled on www.Blackwebportal.com.

The many celebrity interviews I've had such as those with "Kings Of Comedy" stars Steve Harvey and Cedric The Entertainer; Wesley Snipes; "Friday" stars Ice Cube and Michael Epps; sex-a-phonist Boney James; Milwaukee homeboy Al Jarreau; and actors Brad Pitt; Christopher McDonald; Nicholas Cage; Elizabeth Shue and Erika Alexander, the braided attorney in the fox sitcom "Livin' Single" will be grouped and presented in a separate folder.

For the time being, goto the sites and click on the interviews at

http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/cinemaviews/videoviews

http://www.geocities.com/cinemaviews/videoviews

https://cinemaviews.tripod.com/videoviews

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This is just a smattering of the many films Denzel Washington has made. Go to your local DVD or video rental store or satellite dish outlet for more. Or, I guess you could go to your cable supplier as well, but that's so 20th century. This doesn't necessarily mean that I consider Cable TV to be an anachronistic terrain-destroying customer insensitive technological backwater. Wherever would you get that idea?

OTHER GOOD CAPER AND NOIRE FILMS YOU MIGHT LIKE:

"CAUGHT UP" featured Cynda Williams of Gary Franklin's "One False Move" with Bokeem Woodbine in a tale of murder, misidentification and deceit as he takes up with a crooked employer and a mysterious beautiful woman who can read minds, but only those of men, one of whom is trying to hunt her down. Woodbine of "Dead Presidents" is only trying to live a normal life, but keeps getting caught up in other people's messes.

Jason Lee and Clifton Powell also of Dead Presidents" and Morris Chestnut's dad in "The Brothers" with Gabrielle Union co-star in this trademark by-the-book film noire film.

"DEAD PRESIDENTS" with Bokeem Woodbine, "Blade's" N'Bushe Wright, Larenz Tate, Keith David and Chris Tucker tried to do too much, and the heist part of the fact-based film is pushed into the background. The soundtrack was a big seller though, with good period music of the '70s.

Martin Sheen has a bit part in the star studded film about a group of Vietnam veterans who decide to rip off a bank depository where decrepit old money, or "dead presidents" in street slang is taken out of circulation to be burned, figuring it won't be missed.

"THE HEIST" with Gene Hackman and Delroy Lindo are among worthy members of the caper film genre as some old guys decide to make one last big score so they can retire to their houseboats in Florida , or the wilderness cabin, or one guy who dotes on his little niece.

"HOUSE OF GAMES" is David Mamet film about two of his favourite subjects: Man Stuff and those who live on the edges of society. Much like his "American Buffalo" there is a group of men who live off others, off the clock, and off the beaten path. A timid upper class Rich Bitch is taken for her loot by a band of schemers led by Chazz Palmenteri, ( a film Tough Guy who hides his credentials as a playwright and man of letters in favour of playing gangstas and goodfellas) in an elaborate double-back plot that will remind some of "The Sting." But this is the era of the woman, so keep this in mind.

"THE ITALIAN JOB" is back in theatres again, to pump up the gate for the DVD and Video release. Its thrilling enough, although it shouldn't be held against the film that the marketers spoiled the film for many by making the trailer Readers Digest chronological, and so it gave away the best scenes in order like a visual Cliff Notes®, making the movie anticlimactic for me. I hate it when the best parts are put in the trailer like that. Not all of us saw the 1960s original with Michael Caine and the car chase through the streets in the original Mini Cooper automobiles.

This one stars Marky Mark Wahlberg, Mos Def from "Monster's Ball" as the demolitions expert ("If this touches the inside of the brass socket, you and I will be the last people we'll ever see…"), the African American --sorta -- blonde Charlize Theron, and master thief Donald Sutherland. Don't watch the trailer for it that comes on other videos or it will spoil it for you. You've been warned!

"ONE FALSE MOVE" by "Out Of Time" director Carl Franklin isn't a heist film per se, but its close enough for our purposes. A group of cutthroat heisters knock over a drug house in Los Angeles that goes down badly, and decide to head to Star City in Arkansas to let the heat back there settle down. They bump heads with the local lawman played by small time but intuitive Bill Paxton, then fresh from "Aliens 2" and "Predator 2." Cynda Williams ("Caught Up") is his past love interest and that complicates matters.

Michael Beach from "Waiting To Exhale" and "Soul Food" is a pure sociopath, and likes his killing up close and personal. Beach wears suits now in his films but this was before, showing his versatility. I cringe even now when I see him, remembering how he sat around watching TV and looking bored while waiting for his bound and gagged victims to die in the LA house party, painfully writhing and suffocating from the clear plastic bags he put over their heads.

"PALMETTO" with Woody Harrelson and Elizebeth Shue visited much the same territory in subject matter and geography as "Out Of Time." Harrelson is a crusading reporter who gets caught up in some triple crossing action in the Florida panhandle. His brother in law in the film is a Black lawman who tries to cut his screwup some slack with work opportunities and such.

"THE SCORE" with Ed Norton and Robert DeNiro was a good intergenerational heist film pitting an old hand and a young upstart. One of the best lines: "Just when did you get smarter than me? Huh? Tell me just when did that happen?," DeNiro's leader asks the upstart Norton, who thinks he should be the leader of their museum heist for fixer Martin Brando in a rare latter film role.

Angela Bassett co-stars as DeNiro's love interest in "The Score," but her screen time is limited to being The Girlfriend. DeNiro has long let it be known that he likes that dark chocolate, but we don't hate him. He proved he was an actor when he portrayed a bigoted father in his TriBeCa production of a semi-autobiographical story with Chazz Palmienteri when his teenage son started dating a Black girl, and the father gave him hell. Now that's acting, culled from his own life experiences.

"SET IT OFF" Director F. Gary Gray's film about a band of lady bank robbers is packed with action and involving human stories. Starring Vivica Fox of "Kill Bill," Jada Pinkett Smith, and it earned an Academy Award Nomination for Dana Owens, I mean Queen Latifah of "Chicago," with Dr. Dre in a small role as their gun supplier.

The office cleaners turn to bank robbing in Los Angeles after their homegirl gets fired from her bank job and she teaches them everything they need to know about efficiently relieving banks of their cash. This movie has it all, and it was a better film in that regard than most heist films with male casts, such as the misfire that is "Dead Presidents."

"THE SPANISH PRISONER" is an involving heist film about a software developer with a valuable process that many would just as soon steal before it hits the market. The heisters throw all manners of ploys at him, several psychological, including the Tender Trap. The movie features stars such as Steve Martin and Ed O'Neil of "Married With Children" in serious roles who are better known for their comedy. Rent this one on my hearty recommendation.

OLD SCHOOL HEIST FILMS:

"TOPKAPI," is a 1960s film that was made before they let the criminals get away with at least some of the loot is one of the oldest and greatest heist films. I like the film because it was entirely foreign made and based in Greece (although in English), about a museum robbery based on a true story that had mostly ordinary people under a criminal mastermind perform the unconventional heist in a building with all kinds of anti-theft backups. Rent it to see one of the best of the Old School heist films. Among those are ones such as:

"THE STING" period film with Robert Redford, Paul Newman and Robert Shaw of "Jaws" that co-stars James Earl Jones' brother about some Depression era grifters who conspire to take down a brutal crime lord.

"THUNDERBOLT AND LIGHTFOOT" in the early 1970s paired Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges in the break-in of a bank vault in the American west, aided by George Kennedy of the "Airplane" disaster movies and its sequels.

"THE LAVENDER HILL MOB" Alec Guinness' before he became known as Obi-Wan Kenobi was a heister in this British film, when a bank's insurance company is taken to the cleaners by an urbane collection of schemers.

"THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY" was taken from the real life top money taken crime in real dollars, or in this case British pounds, was made into a feature film a couple of times, with the latest big budget treatment made in the 1970s.

UPCOMING HEIST FILMS:

In the everything Old Is New Again world of Hollywood I understand there's even a remake of "The Anderson Tapes," the original starred Sean Connery in the heist of a high rise luxury apartment building. This follows in the tradition of the remake of "THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR" with 007 star Pierce Brosnan as a wealthy but bored playboy who steals for the thrill of outsmarting the law. –kjw

Agree to disagree? Click on at the cinemaviews.tripod.com site, or email thewordnetpaper@excite.com ; BIKER BOYZ -- CINEMA VIEWS by Kevin J Walker

"BIKER BOYZ," V-100 FILM FESTIVAL --Word NetPaper Review

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THIS WEEK'S CINEMA VIEWS FEATURE:

"BIKER BOYZ"

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BUSY "BIKER BOYZ" IS FILLING, LOOKS GREAT

by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

kevinjwalker@blackwebportal.com

The local cinema scene is heating up with radio station V-100 capitalizing on the strong film business that Brewtown has been getting into.

This includes writers like Mequon based John Ridley, the writer of of "U-Turn" with Jennifer Lopez, and of "Three Kings" fame with George Clooney and Ice Cube. "Soul Food" director George Tilman,Jr., can be counted with local director producers such as Brad Pruitt, plus the many stand-ins and cast members of locally produced films such as "Brew City" and Cecil Woodson's drug-thug film "The Hittmaker" co-starring the lovely and talented Keisha Ingram, Theresa Brown, and radio station 1290 WMCS DJ Terry "Hollywood" Love.

Toss in big-budget films such as Wesley Snipe's breakthrough "Major League," which used Milwaukee and its now-demolished County Stadium as a stand-in for Cleveland, and you see how V-100 could easily fill in a week from February 3 through the 7th with films all five nights, with guest speakers on each outing. Monday for instance, has former rapper Fredro Starr with the film he co-starred in, the high school basketball flick "Sunset Park." Starr also co-starred in the teen flicks "Light It Up" and "Ride."

Tuesday is the local preview of "Deliver Us From Eva," with Gabrielle Union and LL Cool J, while Wednesday is Family Night with "The Wiz." The film features a too-old Diana Ross as Dorothy, Lena Horne as The Good Witch of the West, a non-singing Richard Pryor as The Wiz; Nipsy Russell as the Tin Man, and Michael Jackson as the Scarecrow and his original African Descended nose.

Thursday is Old School night with the mid-1970s "Cotton Comes To Harlem, with Coffin Ed and Gravedigger Jones. That film was echoed in the Robin Givens, Forest Whitaker film "A Rage In Harlem," directed by Bill Duke, currently in Steve Zahn and Martin Lawrence's "National Security."

Friday, V-100 Black History Film festival wraps up with "Remember The Titans," for those of us who haven't quite gotten football out of our systems just yet. New director Denzel is a high school football coach in the true story of a team that is shouldering the process of 1960s desegregation, and had to join teams from two different schools, one all-White and one all-Black.

The more I think of it, Thursday's "Cotton Comes To Harlem" should really be on a double bill with "Come Back Charleston Blue," their sequel hit. And how could the WKKV-FM V-100 promotional team of Becky Yang, Bailey Coleman, and the lovely Jasmine forget "Three the Hard Way" with Fred Williamson, "Enter The Dragon's" Jim Kelly, and Jim Brown?

That entertaining action film of the early 1970s had the theme of Genocide via a serum "as selective as Sickle Cell Anemia," as the White Supremacist scientist says, that would target those of African descent (in three major US cities Detroit, DC and Los Angeles, thus the name of the film) years before anyone heard of HIV/AIDS.

Maybe next year. And while they're at it, the crew from V-100 can slot the almost banned-film of urban insurrection "The Spook Who Sat By The Door" from Sam Greenlee's book, which had to be published in Canada. The star of the film didn't work for years

Or the station could make their Black History Film Festival for the whole 28 days of Black History month! With a monthly film pass, perhaps. It could work! Anyway, call the station and tell them what you think, and make plans to attend at the Northtown theatre, 7440 North 76th street, a few blocks north of Good Hope. Save me an aisle seat. And turn off your cell phones.

But for now, this week's feature is "Biker Boyz," which the Milwaukee Community Journal newspaper and V-100 teamed up for a packed preview at the Westown theatres in Brookfield. --kjw

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You may be excused if you might think of "Biker Boyz as "Fast & The Furious" on motorcycles instead of cars, but you'd be wrong for a couple of reasons.

For one thing, "Biker Boyz" is a superior film, with more layered individual stories, and more going on. There is some fairly strong writing behind it, and it shows up onscreen.

Factor in some attractive visuals, a movie that really moves, and you have a winning film formula. The film is propelled along largely via the strong writing, but since this is film the expression is through the visually impressive editing. There's another Milwaukee hookup here through Terilyn Shropshire, who edited Kasi Lemmon's breakthrough "Eve's Bayou." She is the daughter of Miller Vice President Thomas and former Milwaukee Urban League director Jacqueline Shropshire.

Current film flava Derek Luke stars in the fabulous "Biker Boyz" and he like "Gangs of New York" and "Catch Me if You Can" star Leonardo DiCaprio has the good fortune, not to speak of talent, to have two hot movies out at the same time. Luke also stars in "Antwone Fisher," Denzel Washington's directorial debut. His own debut has caused a stir in Hollywood as a fresh face with a long bright future ahead of him. This film will not diminish that expectation.

Luke has an expressive face capable of communicating a vast range of emotions with subtlety, and he has shown himself capable of the tinge of subterranean cruelty and roguishness that is rather in vogue these days. He also can be tender and romantic, which endears him to the ladies. Certainly, starring in an action film is the way to go, especially an ensemble one like this where his part isn't played up as much as one would expect, and he can share duties with others much as Ice Cube did in "Barbershop."

"Biker Boyz" second half takes off like a crotch rocket, but not after some welcome but unexpected character development that isn't usually seen in Teen Speed films. And this one even had the requisite pretty girl with the bandana fluttering in the breeze as the two vehicles speed past her in a fury of red dust.

The only thing that was missing from the usual is the requisite race down the LA spillway, used in films from "Blue Thunder", "Grease," a foot chase with Keanu Reeves and Patrick Swayze in "Point Break", dueling vehicles in "Terminator 2," and an out of control Space Shuttle in the trailer for "The Core," which is supposed to be yanked after the Columbia tragedy.

Maybe the causeway be in the sequel to "Boyz," because you can bet your double chrome manifold pipes there will be one if this film busts out as it should, as it has no real competition as far as subject matter. The recent box office receipts of films such as "Drumline," which was recently pronounced to be one of 2002's Top Ten films although it had a predominately Black cast and no major stars.

"Brown Sugar," and last year's "The Best Man" show that even White audiences are flocking to see these films and they're not 'scurred of the dark. While its not quite there yet, even the direction is two-way, as there are increasing films that are helmed by Black directors that have nothing to do with modern life or urban drama such as gang/drug wars.

The Hughes twins directed the 1800s period detective Jack The Ripper film "From Hell" with Johnny Depp; Forest Whitaker of "Waiting To Exhale" did Sandra Bullock's "Hope Floats," and "Chicago" star Renee Zelweger and "The Hours" star Meryl Streep's "One True Thing" was directed by crime director Carl Franklin of "Set It Off" and "One False Move." These are in themselves remarkable, but what is really remarkable is that no one really remarked on it. It's not a big deal. Free at last?

Maybe because the "Biker Boyz¡¯ movie script was based on the New Times article on the Biker Culture of southern California is why there was the human texture in the film directed by Reggie Rock Bythewood. The film "Mask" with Cher showed some of this, but it was a sanitized version of motorcycle gangs, which is not the same thing. These characters are street racers in clubs with day jobs, although we don't see them, but that comes up later, keep reading.

The multicultural cast is an attractive one, featuring Latins, Asians and some of indeterminate origin. Kid Rock (or Mr. Pamela Anderson) is Dawg, a leader of one of the competing clubs. Brendan Fehr is Kid’s right-hand man, and co-conspirator in their hustle game.

Together with Primo played by Rick Gonzalez, another biker on the periphery who wants to make his way in the world, they form the Biker Boyz, a young Turk upstart racing group who struggle to get recognized by the old gray heads of the cycle culture, and who reject many of their rigid rules.

"We’re going to make up our own rules!" pronounces Kid, as his Boyz movement grows and he becomes a force to be reckoned with, and he starts to do some reckoning of his own and deal out some payback. Some of it had to deal with the rejection he faced from the luscious babes who kicked him to the curb when he was a Prospect, or the biker equivalent of a Scrub, such as happened with Tina, a local tattoo artiste and sister of Larenz Tate’scharacter.

Laurence Fishburne of the "Matrix" films has the studio banking on his action and youth appeal as Smoke, the leader of the race pack of Southern California. Some love interest is added in the mix via Lisa Bonet as Queenie, who’ssupposed to be a badass in her own right on the bike instead of holding onto her man’swaist with her behind bouncing while he rides, but we hardly see her roll. Maybe the movie’sinsurance people wouldn’t hear of it.

Bonet hasn’t seen much in films after her wholesome "Cosby Show" Good-Girl trashing role opposite, under, straddling atop, and beneath Mickey Rourke in the soft-porn demonic "Angel Heart," although she had a nice role in "Enemy of The State." Here she is mostly Eye Candy, at least for those men who like that sort of thing with her chiseled cheekbones, skinny legs and all.

Larenz Tate, and Djimon Honsou of "Amistad" are a few more of the cast of dozens. Vanessa Bell Calloway (of "The Inkwell" along with Tate, and the Buddhist ex-Ikette friend of Tina in "What’s Love Got To Do With It?" In another Six Degree moment, Laurence Fishburne co-starred as Ike Turner, and knocked her down.)

Bell-Calloway was the love interest voice of the late Robin Harris in the animated feature "Be Be's Kids." Here she's Luke's character's mother, Anita. She was a biker Homegirl from Back In Tha Day, and the thick cutie still can fit in those leather outfits in the back of her closet, although she has put her racing days behind her and wishes her son would as well.

"Do you know what we call motorcycle racers in the hospital? Organ donors!" she tells Jalleel, who like a typical son ain't feelin' it.

"Biker Boyz" has more than a small touch of family life, which only adds to the enjoyment. There are tinges of "Baby Boy," "He Got Game" and the Western revenge drama the "Quick and The Dead" in "Biker Boyz." In fact, in interviews Fishburne says that the film is really a Western with biker culture wrapped around it.

In USA Today he said "This is a Western, its feeling and its flavour are straight out of a cowboy movie. Don't be fooled by the fact it's a biker movie," he said to Stephen Schaefer. Fishburne will be in the two "Matrix" sequels reprising his role as Morpheus in the back-to-back films being released ala "Back To The Future" 2 and 3, in May and November, with Nona Gaye and Keanu Reeves. Gaye took over for the late Aaliyah, who got the spot from Jada Pinkett Smith.

There's something for all viewers in "Biker Boyz" from glistening machines, lots of Vroom-Vroom, rump-shaking short-skirted biker babes to flexing Brothas and Others for the ladies. The movie puts it right in our faces --really-- from the very first frames, with a pair of tight, firm, bodacious buns in tight shorts undulating right in our faces as a Hootchie Honey switches along to get on the back seat of a bike. We never even see her face. There is lots of dizzying SteadiCam work shown in the busy film, so don't sit too close in the theatre if you're headache prone. You've been warned.

The cyclery shown had some of the intimates in the preview audience Monday night ooh-ing and ahh-ing over biking and motor minutiae only they knew. All I know is that putting Nitrous Oxide gas in your tank makes you go really, really fast, but Mel Gibson and Tina Turner's "Road Warrior" showed that.

You might think as I did at first, that interest in the subculture is the farthest thing from your mind. But "Biker Boyz" makes it interesting, while serving up lots of racing and stunts, many of which anyone would be ill-advised to perform although that doesn't stop people --usually young males-- from subtracting their defective DNA from the gene pool in a splendid display of Darwinian Natural Selection.

There is lots of Man stuff going on in the film, which is hosed down with plenty of testosterone. "I'm callin' you out!" Kid tells Smoke, who nevertheless treats him in a fatherly way because his father was his best bud, and Jaleel's mom Anita and Smoke used to kick it back in tha day.

This romantic subplot and flash-backing gives "Biker Boyz" a soap-opera-ish feel that was not unwelcome; it was a break from the racing and made for a better film. I was pleasantly surprised and so were quite a few others at the preview. There is also some aspects of "He Got Game" and "Love and Basketball" in the film, as some high stakes are raced for, and some surrogate father-son, son-mother tension in "Biker Boyz."

"It doesn't matter if he shows up with a Space Shuttle today, he's going down!" says Dawg as he strokes his souped-up Nitro-fueled street rocket racing machine after he's challenged by Kid. The upstart works his way up the ladder until he can challenge Smoke, the leader of the pack in the illegal street cycle racing scene whose car expression was seen in "The Fast And The Furious," whose sequel is coming out this summer. Keep reading.

There are some veterans sprinkled in amongst the fresh young faces. Orlando Jones, who co-stars in the surprise commercial and critical hit "Drumline" is going two-for-two in a film with a predominately African American cast that nevertheless has strong crossover appeal. Jones was seen plenty in the last year in films such as the Sci-Fi actioners "Evolution" and the big-budget remake as the Library Griot in "The Time Machine." Then there are those soft drink commercials.

As Soul Train, the freestyle rapping mouthing-off herald of Smoke who commands other "mere mortals need to bow y'all asses down!," he is the only one who has a life that is shown apart from racing. By day he's a lawyer, after taking off the ripped blue jeans, the ring out of his ear, combing the naps out of his hair, and putting back on his Good English for the workplace.

Here even "The Fast and The Furious" failed to show that somebody has to be working, have a trust fund or doing something to be able to afford vehicles that hover near the $50,000 mark after the extensive customizing kicks in. In Milwaukee we know that Harley-Davidson bike owners are more likely to be dentists doctors and architects instead of the unshaven blue collar types from back in the 1950s. Hell, even our past Governor Tommy Thompson, now head of the Bush II administration's Dept. of Health and Human services rode his Harley across the length of the state of Wisconsin every year.

The previews of the film are being accompanied by exhibitions of motor bikes and bike clubs, who were invited to this week's preview Monday night. Laurence Fishburne has been into biking for the last seven years or so, since he and Billy Baldwin starred with two fast Ducati motorcycles in the cop/buddy/drug busting "Fled."

They were shown racing all around the Stone Mountain monument roads and Fishburne stuck with it, even buying his own after the film shooting was completed. After "Boyz" wrapped he bought the Jap Sazuki cycle he rode in this one, too. In a nod to overseas marketing, the bikes shown in the movie are largely the plastic Japanese rice burners.

(Oops, I mean motorcycles. Remember I'm from the city that makes the powerful and throaty Harleys, not those with Asiatic plastic lawn mower or hedge-trimmer motors). And the Biker Boyzs insignia is shown in Japanese kanji characters, with two Asian members shown prominently. Make that money!

Thoughtless fads often get started in these popular films, and "The Fast & The Furious" already had municipal authorities tearing their hair out as the illicit but organized races started popping up all over the country, much like the Fight Clubs did after that film with Ed Norton of Spike Lee's "The 25th Hour" became a phenomenon.

Of course, some fads are self-limiting, like the suicidal-flirting Russian Roulette clubs from Robert DeNiro and Christopher Walken's "The Deer Hunter." Oh, here's a couple'a tips that some of those mentally challenged club members who are no longer with us must've missed.

One: you play Russian Roulette with a six-chambered PISTOL, not an automatic handgun. Those have ammo clips that go in from the bottom of the handle, and you'll be a guaranteed loser as soon as you pull the trigger; and (Two) and this is really important, its ONE BULLET in the six chambers. But I imagine you know that by now. Wherever you are.

Actually, one of the stars of "The Deer Hunter" killed himself after taking up the dubious sport. Jonathan Cazale, the tremendously talented actor who played the wimp Fredo Corleone in two of "The Godfather" movies, died playing Russian Roulette. But I digress again.

Of course, there's a sequel to the "Fast & The Furious," but without sorta-brotha Vin Diesel, who is pursuing a faster and furious 007-type character in the hoped-for "XXX" franchise¨Cto-be with Samuel Jackson as his M.

Vin Diesel will be in the remake of "Pitch Black" as it picks up, like the sequels to Sigourney Weavers "Alien," on the group led by Diesel's super-criminal turned hero and saviour after their adventures on the desert planet full of monsters. Now we're talking! That science fiction siege/trek film was one of the better action films of its year, with sometimes local guy Keith David from "Armageddon" in another Hollywood-Brewtown Six Degree connection, as his lovely fiance lives here in Milwaukee.

You know, if these stars keep from taking our people away like they've been doing maybe we'd have some mates, do you hear me, Keith, Chante Moore, and Halle Berry? And ABC News lady Carole Simpson, whose longtime Boo lived here.

"Deliver Us From Eva," and the V-100 WKKV FM Black History Month Film Fest at the Northtown Cinema on 76th and Good Hope will be the subject of next week's Cinema Views.

Contact
kevinjwalker@blackwebportal.com , call (414) 454-9673, or write P.O. Box 1324-63201, Milwaukee WI; and read past reviews at the Cinema Views website at http://cinemaviews.tripod.com --KJW

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Cinema Views with Kevin J Walker

Cinema Views with Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic

Jan. 28, 2003

VALENTINE VIEWS:
"DELIVER US FROM EVA"
"HOW TO LOSE A GUY IN 10 DAYS"
CINEMA VIEWS by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic
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“Deliver Us From Eva?Does Shakespeare Proud

Leventy-Seventh Remake Of “The Taming Of The Shrew?lt;P> With Predom Black Cast Vastly Entertaining;

Gabrielle Union’s Breakout Role

by Kevin J. Walker, Film Critic
kevinjwalker@blackwebportal.com

There are good performances all around in “Deliver Us,?but make no mistake this is really Gabrielle Union’s film, fo?sho? The film revolves around her and her sisters, and Shakespeare’s “The Taming Of The Shrew?has been updated again. The last major one was ?0 Things I Hate About You.?That launched the careers of Heath Ledger and Julia Stiles, and was placed in a high school.

The basic plotline of Will’s play is a headstrong woman who is conspired against by her friends, family or whomever to have her fall in love, an element that they figured was missing from her life, to cause her long-sought for happiness, or to get her out of their hair. The theme also appeared in “Much Ado About Nothing,?with Denzel Washington playing the Duke, with his errant and envious brother played by Keanu Reeves.

Shakespeare’s plays have provided fodder for many a Hollywood screenplay, and he’s the most filmed author, with the possible exception of Elmore Leonard or Jane Austen. Another high school based play was from one of his darkest, “Othello, The Moor of Venice?renamed “O.?lt;P> This time Julia Stiles, who was in another Salt and Pepper Jungle fever, Zebra Head film "Save The Last Dance," is Desdemona to Mekhi Phifer’s basketball star, as the “Pearl Harbour?hearthrob from the romantic comedy "40 Days and 40 Nights" is the motiveless malignant Iago who sets them up for destruction. Laurence Fishburne was the first Black man to play the role in a national format, aside from small theatre presentations.

Of course, it is impossible to get a full appreciation of Brotha Shakespeare works unless you read them in the original Swahili.

LL Cool J long ago shed the rapper title, although as Will Smith does he still keeps his hand in, cutting a CD here and there. But for both of these talented brothas, acting is their true game, and they’re getting better and better as the roles they assume have more and more meat on them.

“Deliver" could as well be called “How To Be A Playa 2" from all the good advice it gives. (That film is also in the dysfunctional section of the Black Love Video Views vault, next to the Tina Turner biopic “What’s Love got To Do With it.".

Evangeline is a career driven oldest sister who was the head of the family after they were orphaned in her teens. She still micro manages her three sisters lives, and they've never known any other way. Their men see the situation differently, and decide to take action. They send in Ray, a master playa, to woo Eva so they can have their wives to themselves.

Eva’s brother-in-laws are aghast when, within minutes of being introduced to her, Ray offhandedly mentions a fictional girlfriend! He calms them down and explains.

“No woman wants a man that another woman doesnt want" he says. There were some murmurs from the ladies in the audience, and a few “That's Right!" heard. Me, I'm taking notes of all this.

“Relax, and let the master handle his business," he reminds them. In his hands Eva will be strung out and whipped in no time, and theyll know peace in their houses. But the best-laid plans are thrown for a loop when the player-player and Master of the Game gets caught in his own net when he realizes Eva’s not that bad when he gets to know her.

And as men know who have those quiet-type, outwardly straight-laced sophisticated “Good Girls with corporate jobs, Eva can do some serious whipping of her own! They have a Freak Gene that gets activated when its pushed right.

“I have to leave now, before I start talking some nasty, freaky stuff…” the turned-on and eveready Eva says as Ray is getting her to leave after revving her up, all part of his nefarious plan. But getting them together took some doing.

“Man, my ears are still bleeding!?he complained after their first disastrous date, when the sharp-tongued harpy shredded his manly ego with her violatous verbs, calling him “meat boy" and throwing up her job, which requires a college education and by the way pays more than his delivery job, she lets him know.

“Most women have a few barriers around their heart. Eva has an electrified fence with rabid pit bulls!?Ray relates. Still, the joy of the movie is watching her defenses gradually come down as she opened her heart to love. But we remember what the premise of the movie is.

Union is a familiar face, having appeared in small roles in "The Brothers," and Viveca A. Fox's "Two Can Play That Game." She was exposed to a wider audience in the hit film "Bring It On," as the leader of a high school cheerleading squad whose routines were ripped off by a White suburban school, who used them to get to the national championships year after year.

The old plot line of plotters in love has and will be used a lot. The number one film right now is ‘How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days" starring Matthew McGonaughy and Kate Hudson, where shes a magazine columnist who has to woo, romance and then drive away a good man in less than a fortnight to get advanced at her job. (That review follows this one. Keep reading)

There is smart crackling dialog throughout both of these films, and modern audiences will be pleased with the pacing and characterizations. In “Deliver us From Eva?the three bros-in-law plotters are comic relief, as the ladies run this mothersucker. Duane Martin is a film veteran whos appeared in movies as diverse as the sci-fi horror flick “The Faculty.?

Wanda Sykes is making a career as the randy busty ‘hood runner as in the “Friday?sequels. Sykes plays Ormandy, one of the beauty salon employes with the requisite flaming gay hairdresser, complete with lisp and arched eyebrows as men enter and leave their shoppe. But theres a twist in the casting, and I must advise you to stay through the entire credits. You’ll see!

“Falling in love isnt a virus, its a choice?Eva tells Ray. She goes about being the best woman she can be with an intensity that rivals her work as a health inspector for the city. Her sisters notice her absence, and the brothers in law surely do as they are now able to get their lives on track with their women, shown in montages as they cuddle, read, plan for children, and sleep the night away without any check up on ‘em calls from their wives' surrogate parent.

“Oh my god?one of the sisters realize. “Eva’s got a man!?

LL Cool J, or James Todd Smith ("Ladies Love Cool James" was his saying)played a similar walk-on role as a master playa in “Woo,?another Black Love Video View selections for the Valentine Holiday season at http://cinemaviews.tripod.com, or geocities.com/cinemaviews. There he gave love advice to Tommy Davidson as he was preparing for a date with the strange and wonderful Woo, played by Jada Pinkette. He also appeared briefly in the original "Charlie's Angels."

"Deliver Us From Eva" directed by Gary Hardwicke is rated "R" for sexual innuendo and language, but there's nothing shown. Still, this isn't a film for the kids, so hire a sitter or call your sister or mother. Again. Co-stars include Kenya Moore, Robinne Lee, Essence Atkins, Brian Adams. -kevinjwalker@blackwebportal.com, p.o. box 1324-53201, (414) 454-9673

--------- CINEMA VIEWS BY KEVIN J

CINEMA VIEWS BY KEVIN J. WALKER

http://cinemaviews.tripod.com

http://www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/cinema_views

Ice Cube in “Barbershop?Cuts Up In Comedy

 

Ice Cube has talents, this we know from his directorial debut in “The Players Club?and his former career as frontman for the gangsta rap group NWA.

I knew something was up when I saw White critics giving rave reviews and two and a half stars to the black comedy that is very reminiscent of single-site movies such as “Car Wash.?The film has the audience craving some wacky fun all to itself, and actually scored as the number one after its first weekend for lack of competition. It knocked “Signs?and “Swimfan?off the top perch.

When I traveled to Chicago to interview Mr. Cube last February it was in connection with a New Line Cinema junket for the media before the release of “All About The Benjamins?with his “Friday After next?co-star Mike Epps, also of the sequel “Next Friday.?He greeted us with corporate gentility, and mentioned his next movie, “Barber Shop.?lt;o:p>

Wisely and for the good of the picture, Cube isn’t in many of the scenes of “Barber Shop.?Like spice, he’s used sparingly and when needed in the film, which is centered around the neighborhood barber shop but gets out enough to avoid being claustrophobic.

There are plenty of other subplots going on. There’s the photogenic rapper Eve as a bitter young sistah with a playa for a boyfriend. The African barber whose station is near hers is carrying a torch for her big-time; Ice Cube’s Calvin is being tempted with selling out, and taking the offer of Mr. Wallace, the local gangster played by Keith David. A white guy who thinks he’s as Black as anybody is one of the many characters in the sprawling population of the film. A couple of buffoons who ripped off an ATM machine is a continuing joke in the film, as the pair played by Anthony Anderson and Larenz Tate try to get into the indestructible cash machine.

Cedric the entertainer with his Frederick Douglas ‘do is the irascible Eddie, the older guy who’s been at the barbershop so long he’s like a legacy. “Hey man, I’ve been coming to this shoppe and getting my hair cut since I was a li’l kid. How come I’ve never seen anybody in your chair??asks a young brotha.

“Uh, I have plenty of people, you, you just don’t see them when you ain’t here.?Cedric has expanded his range, which we’ll see more of this Fall when his self-titled variety show, with the St. Louis native and former seminary student plays a variety of characters on the show.

Cedric’s Eddie is the consummate contrarian, who attacks civil rights icons and every other topic that come up. He holds forth on how Black people have to pull their heads out of the sand. “We have to start telling the truth!?Eddie says, who worked with Calvin’s father when the barbershop was established in 1958.

?..And Rodney King should’a got his butte beat…Rosa Parks wasn’t nobody special. She was the secretary of the NAACP. Lots of people sat down in a seat on the bus and was too tired to get up. They got their heads whooped and we never heard anything about them. But she knew Martin Luther King…” Eddie said, and had some things to say about MLK as well. But he said the thing that many people wanted to hear when he expressed a choice opinion about the good Rev. Jesse Jackson.

“Barber Shop?is an enjoyable film, with enough going on to please the average filmgoer. Male female relationships, reparations, business support and entrepreneurism are all a part of the many topics that come up for discussion in the shop. I can see this as a film franchise, if handled right. Ice Cube knows something about this, as his “Friday series is about to go into its third sequel.

Got your own Cinema Views? Contact kevinjwalker@blackwebportal.com, write P.O. Box 1324-53201 or call (414) 454-9673. Visit the film websites at http://cinemaviews.tripod.com or www.geocities.com/walkerworld_2000/cinema_views

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