Too Long, Too Much Talking...So Much Potential

I've been covering the Independent Black Film Festival this week and yesterday was day two.

Admittedly, I don't know how the previous two years have gone, but so far I've been only partially satisfied with the films I've seen. Two shorts really got to me on Sunday and since then I haven't found any one work that has truly engaged me. However, buried under a mountain of excess dialogue, bad sound and stilted, flat staging I did witness the genesis of what should be great stories. Am I being fecicious? No.

Of what I saw (and thanks to a Professor from Howard for helping me open my eyes a little wider and to look deeper) some of the pieces were intuitively shot, edited and acted. When it happens once it's an accident. When it happens twice it's coincidence. When it happens three times it's potential.

I'll have to come back to this topic. But, I think we definitely have to consider not only the business of making films here, but the community aspect as well. Everyone has a story to tell and they each should have the opportunity to not only tell it, but to tell it well.

WIF/A: 6 - Atlantic Station Regal Cinema: 0

Reflecting on WIF/A's and WIFTI's Short Film Showcase:
(Orginally appeared on the cinemATL blog March 9th, 2006)

Let me get this out of the way. Whoever Atlantic Station Regal outsourced their A/V services to did a sh*tty job. Half way through A Place Called Home the DVD froze. That would be just the first of several glitches that added at least 45 minutes to the showcase's total running time.

At the cocktail reception afterwards, the Regal manager did give us free passes and graciously credited Sherry Richardson for single handedly keeping the showcase on track. Unfortunately, as the audience, we didn't know that it wasn't WIF/A who wasn't prepared. And since we only found that out after the showcase was over, first timers to a WIF/A event, who skipped the reception, are most likely now wandering the streets of Atlanta with a decidedly false impression about how WIF/A does things. (Let's not fail to mention that I got the notion that Fox Sports Grill was none to happy the reception started an hour late.)

However, who really cares when the shorts themselves were so damn strong. In particular, the 6 local shorts were beyond impressive. They were so moving semi-loyal readers, I've avowed to dial back my bitching and moaning about quality films coming out of the "A" from a 9 to an 8. Unfortunately, I've got to make my total quota, so I'm raising my B&M about why aren't more women behind the camera from a 7 to a right out 10. At sixteen percent, it's appalling that there are so few women writers, directors and producers working behind the scenes.

Starting with Charity Harvey's The Memory of History and ending with Raquel Asturias's Sharing Our Souls, these Women are the collectors of who we are. Their cameras aren't tools they're an extension of themselves. Mechanical appendages that organically allow them to be observers of the intimate and the minute.

Whether it's an oral and pictorial history of Herren's restaurant, a mockumentary about being a "video vixen" or a fairytale about our willingness to destroy the present to recreate a past that no longer exists, these are personal stories. Unflinching stories. Stories that we should be grateful have been added to our collective memory.

Sandra M. Yee's Hoo Hoo - Losing Mother Tongue probably encompasses what these film do best. In the opening frame, we're introduced to Yee's grandmother. Fierce, energetic, witty and willing to scold anyone within earshot, she's a character that you immediately gravitate to. Just as we're beginning to know her, we learn that a month after Yee started the documentary, her grandmother suffered a heart attack and died two days later. It's a sobering moment that only makes you grasp the previous six minutes ever more tightly.

As a part of celeberating International Women's Day, last night's films are a reminder that we must always be actively pursuing memory and creating memory. That we all need to be collectors of who we are.

Madea: Black Men In Hiding

When I get a chance this is what I'll rant about. Right now I've got to send off my submission for the Perfect Pitch (deadline is tomorrow), actually do some work for the job, hopefully get some cinemATL work done and then head off to see the Vagina Monologues tonite.

Coming Soon

Already I'm behind. The goal was to keep this updated every other day. Guess I'll have to shoot for something more manageable.

If you're wondering why I don't I update it now, it's because it's 2 in the morning. I should be in bed, which I'm doing...right...about....

Why Does Anne Coulter Hate the Oscars?

In all my 33 years living on this miraculous blue ball floating through space and time, I've only held a grudge against one Conservative. Although I consider myself a liberal, I don't feel any need to bash the other side for their ideas and their initiatives--debate yes, bash no. Except for one conservative commentator in particular.

Shrill, spiteful and willing to distort the truth to no end, Anne Coulter gets under my skin like no other person alive today. And if you think this is an anti woman thang, even Michelle Malkin doesn't set me off like Anne Coulter can. Coulter exudes an aura so dark she might as well take to dressing in black robes and carrying a gigantic scythe.

Doing little to dial back her hateful rhetoric, she has long since given up reworking the facts and just jumps right into generating a steady stream of hyperbole laden rants that don't just border on the ludicrous, they are the ludicrous.

Just read her 2006 "Oscar predictions." Anne Coulter's Oscar Predictions

Did you read it? Go back and read it dumbass, the rest of this rant will not be as entertaining if you haven't read the Wicked Witch of the Right's column first.

Okay, you're not going to read it first. As I don't have time to cajole you into doing shit in the proper order I'll give you a pass. This time.

In impeccable Coulter logic, she makes an assertion, links it to something completely and totally irrelevant (How in the hell do you link al-Zarqawi and Brokeback Mountain--well, maybe she has a point. He did try to fuck over the U.S. and now the U.S. wants to return the favor, so maybe she isn't that far off) and then continues on as if the average person won't notice the flaws. Here, she starts with the twin claims that Hollywood only green-lights "politically correct" movies and won't release the attendance numbers for Brokeback Mountain. Apparently, it's some Gay Hollywood conspiracy.

Here's a series of questions:

• When's the last time Hollywood released attendance numbers for any film? Even Titanic, the one film you figure a studio would want to brag about attendance never used attendance numbers. But why would you when throwing around six zeros (a million) isn't as impressive as being able to throw around 12 zeros (a billion)? Would I prefer to be rocking six or 12? Duh!
• Why isn't the yardstick of gross box-office numbers used for all films in theatrical release an adequate measure of success?
• If measuring attendance was important, wouldn't Broadway use attendance figures more often? Oh wait, like Hollywood, Broadway is in the money making business. Why else, like U.S. car makers and airlines, would theaters and producers tenaciously fight the unions over pay and benefits?

Ironically, Coulter's claim about a conspiracy of manipulation resembles the one's made in the 90's about Black films. The most prominent being the accusation that theaters were ringing up Malcolm X under other films to give those films a boost and to sabotage Malcolm's success.

It was a dubious claim when one considers that Hollywood, like the Mob is notorious for issuing out vicious payback. Warner Bros. would have pulled prints and held back prominent releases if they thought theaters were fucking with their money. As I've already stated, Hollywood is ultimately about measuring success in monetary terms. Selling tickets to rival films means that money is going to fill the coffers of rival studios. Contrary to belief, few folks, no matter how racist, are willing to give up millions.

Now let's assume that Coulter maybe right about this politically correct conspiracy, let's see the top 20 Box-office films for 2005. Let us parse it for any PC leanings. [list pulled from boxofficereport.com]

1. Revenge of the Sith - $380.26 m
2. Harry Potter 4 - $288.73 m
3. The Chronicles of Narnia - $288.19 m
4. War of the Worlds * - $234.28 m
5. King Kong - $216.68 m
6. Wedding Crashers - $209.22 m
7. Charlie & the Chocolate Factory - $206.46 m
8. Batman Begins - $205.34 m
9. Madagascar * - $193.14 m
10. Mr. & Mrs. Smith - $186.34 m
11. Hitch - $177.58 m
12. The Longest Yard * - $158.12 m
13. Fantastic Four - $154.70 m
14. Chicken Little - $134.64 m
15. Robots - $128.20 m
16. Walk the Line - $117.48 m
17. The Pacifier - $113.01 m
18. Fun with Dick & Jane * - $110.33 m
19. The 40 Year-Old Virgin - $109.24 m
20. Flightplan - $89.71 m

Found any political correctness yet? Me neither. Found any overtly pro-homosexual polemically tinted filmmaking? Hmmm, does C-3pO count?

Maybe a big ape having the hots for a blonde goes under the bestiality banner and you know how we liberals are an anything goes kind of people.

Of course, I can't understand how we let Narnia, an overt allegory of the Christ story written by a popular Christian thinker, make it to the screens. Damn you Disney! You had us eating out of your hands with your Gay friendly agenda. And then you betray us liberals by making Narnia!

Hitch does feature Will Smith (black) , Eva Mendes (hispanic) and Kevin James (white yes, but also fat, sensitive and wears glasses). However, it's so pro heterosexual I was disgusted. The tingly feeling Mendes was giving me in my pants almost forced me to walk out of the theater. Will what happened? You were soooo gay in Six Degrees of Seperation. In fact, fuck Wedding Crashers and 40-year-old Virgin too for glamorizing heterosexual marriages and couplings.

I know I shouldn't let Coulter get me so riled. But damnit, you're giving folks like my momma (A Conservative Black Republican) a bad name. My momma isn't a shrill, hateful woman. She's a woman that loves chocolate (Fernbank exhibit here we come) and tells funny stories about the addicts she's worked with for the last several years (is addiction humor politically correct, hell no, but it's still funny damnit). She's the woman who taught me the joy of reading. It is possible to be a CR without the rancorous commentary.

So please people. Stop feeding the blonde beast. Don't allow her to continue to live under the delusion that what she's doing is disseminating well thought out analysis.

Cataloguing and dialoguing

I've started this here blog for the express purpose of having a place to express my thoughts and ideas. While I'll be also blogging over at the cinemATL site, I want this one to be a mix of the personal as well the public.

Hopefully what I have to say will be funny, insightful and informative, for you as well as for me.