Archive for the ‘film and arts’ Category

Lottery Ticket [Film Review]

Laughs Galore as Lotto-Winner Tries to Keep Low Profile in the ‘Hood

Kevin Carson (Bow Wow) wasn’t even thinking about buying a lottery ticket that fateful Friday the jackpot had reached $370 million, even though folks on the long line were already talking about how they planned to spend the money on everything from a Versace suit to a mail order bride.  After all, he considered Lotto a diabolical scheme designed “to keep poor people poor by selling them false dreams.”

But then a couple of events transpire which you might call divine intervention. First, his grandmother (Loretta Devine) asks him to play the numbers that had come to her when Jesus appeared to her in a dream. Then, he’s fired on the spot when recently-paroled Lorenzo (Gbenga Akinnagbe) raises a ruckus at Foot Locker under the mistaken belief that Kevin was the snitch who put him behind bars.

Unexpectedly unemployed, Kevin impulsively decides to buy himself a lottery ticket, too, when he stops at the local bodega to get his grandma’s. And that evening he gets the shock of his life while watching the drawing on TV when all of his numbers pop up one after the other.

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Ms. Typed:Stop Sabotaging Your Relationships and Find Dating Success

Ms. Typed:
Stop Sabotaging Your Relationships and Find Dating Success

by Michelle Callahan, Ph.D.
Three Rivers Press
Paperback, $13.99
256 pages
ISBN: 978-0-307-40801-3

“If you can’t seem t figure out why you are always having problems with the men you’re dating, consider the possibility that you’ve been mistyped… When you have been mistyped, every man you date seems like Mr. Wrong. He’s married, he’s got a girlfriend, he’s a workaholic, he’s a deadbeat, he’s a player, he’s a mama’s boy. You keep running into the same type of man… over and over because you’ve taken on a counterproductive dating personality that attracts that type…
If you know in your heart that you’re one type of woman, but you somehow feel stuck acting like the wrong type of woman, I am here to help… This book provides the tools you need to transform yourself into the type of woman you want to be, and therefore discover your true personality.
-- Excerpted from the Introduction (pgs. 3-5)

Every time I think I’m taking a break from reviewing the relationship advice genre, up pops another how-to which piques my interest. Ms. Typed comes courtesy of love guru Michelle Callahan, aka Dr. Michelle, whom you might recognize from her myriad TV appearances as a guest on everything from Oprah to Tyra Banks to The Today Show to Rachel Ray to Showbiz Tonight to ABC’s Primetime.

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Wanda Sykes Cast As Miss Hannigan In Annie

Wanda

Since the cancellation of her talk show, Wanda Sykes has turned her attention to the theater to stay busy.

The comedian will spend this holiday season in Pennsylvania playing the villainous Miss Hannigan in a stage production of Annie, reports Broadway.com.

The holiday run will play from November 23 through January 16 at Media Theatre for the Performing Arts.

Bow Wow Co-Star In New ‘Madea’ Film

Bow Wow

Bow Wow is riding this acting thing as he's just been cast in Tyler Perry’s next film, “Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family.”

Adapted from his stage play, Bow Wow and the lovely Loretta Divine will co-star alongside one another as a son and mother pair, while Old Spice hunk, Isaiah Mustafa, will be the brother-in-law Devine who attempts shares some life changing information, but seems to keep getting interrupted.

The movie will be out in theaters on April 22 of next year.

Hair Power – Skin Revolution [Book Review]

Hair Power - Skin Revolution:
A Collection of Poems and Personal Essays

by Black and Mixed-Race Women
Edited by Nicole Moore
Troubadour Publishing Ltd.
The New Press
Paperback, $19.95
214 pages, Illustrated
ISBN: 978-184876-393-7

Hair Power - Skin Revolution:A Collection of Poems and Personal Essays

“I can honestly say I have a passion for language… I enjoy writing and editing, and I write every day… The purpose of this collection is to offer the creative expressions of 48 black and mixed-race women writers whose voices are among those defining this new era of contemporary black British literature... The writers offer empowering, encouraging and creative ways of understanding and relating to the themes of hair and skin.

The personal essay genre is more than 400 years-old and is one of my favourite ways to express honesty, the past, expansions of the self, and much more. It certainly should be celebrated.”

Excerpted from the Introduction (pgs. xi-xiv)

Judging by the inspirational poems and essays contained in this anthology, sisters over in England are enthusiastically embracing their natural hair and skin tones. That’s assuming these female contributors to be a representative sample of black and bi-racial Brits, as they are generally quite comfortable with how they look, as opposed to devoting a lot of time to trying to measure up to a Caucasian standard of beauty. Not that this mindset always came very easily. For Hair Power Skin Revolution is filled with plenty of heartfelt testimonials about arriving at self-liberation only after having tried a rigorous regimen of hair relaxers and/or skin lighteners.

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We Need to Talk [Film Review]

Sisters Make Most of Opportunity to Reflect on Relationships in Latest Documentary from Janks Morton

Janks Morton is an award-winning documentary filmmaker known for poignant, tough-love documentaries about

We Need To Talk

African-American males like What Black Men Think and Men to Boys. Now, as the father of an 11 year-old girl poised on the brink of blossoming into a beautiful, but possibly vulnerable young woman, he was inspired to make sisters the subject of his latest offering. So, this go-round, he traveled to the Southside of Chicago where he interviewed ten female survivors of the battle-of-the-sexes about their relationships with their dads during their formative years and also with their boyfriends when they first started dating.

Exhibiting an uncanny knack for both eliciting emotional responses and capturing African-American pulchritude on camera, Janks posed a series of probing questions in his trademark fashion. The telling, and frequently tearful responses of each, whether Kenisha Byrd, Stephanie Brewer, Anika Jackson, Trudy Martin, Carla O’Neil, Conchita Jamison, Jaime Gill, Soneika O’Neil, Rhonda Benson or Donna Watkins, generally revealed a wounded soul profoundly affected by a dysfunctional, early family life, often the product of an absentee father.

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