Category Archives: Entertainment
An Open Letter to Shonda Rhimes: Bring April’s Sexy Back
Dr. Kepner

    Dear Ms. Rhimes: Most of the time, I love you and you make me regret not sticking it…

9 of the Most Memorable Moments for Black Women in 2012

On this last day of 2012, I’m sharing the moments from throughout the year that are most memorable to me…

Handling Shade with Subtext: a lesson in writing and interracial dating

  As a writer, I love subtext, and Shonda Rhimes does it brilliantly. The genius behind “Grey’s Anatomy” and “Scandal”…

The Storyteller Makes the Difference

I haven’t seen the new film, “Lincoln,” yet (and with what may be a pinched nerve making it hard to…

Called to Love in Election 2012

“to be ‘feminist’ in any authentic sense of the term is to want for all people, female and male, liberation…

Nora Ephron: A tribute and a question
Nora Ephron I feel bad about my neck book cover

I was saddened to learn of writer Nora Ephron’s death just a few hours after I claimed her as one…

The Bachelor and American Inclusion (my post on ebony.com)

My first post on Ebony.com went live there on April 25. It starts: The recent class action lawsuit against ABC…

Movies aren’t miracles

I have long believed that film has the ability to change the world.  I wrote in my 2002 and 2004…

Paying respect to The Help
photo: my great-aunt in her day work uniform with the children she kept

  I’ve grown up attending wakes and funerals for people of my grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ generations.  At these sad memorials…

In Defense of The Help

UPDATE 8/29/2011: I’ve seen the movie—with my grandmother and other women of her generation who were ‘The Help’—and after a…

No more celebrity stories

“Is Marriage ‘In’ Again?” Since I just started reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, “Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage,” yesterday,…

Defining Oprah
Still from Oprah's Farewell Spectacular

  The Oprah Winfrey Show episode that serves as a defining moment for me is one I didn’t see, and…

Why black men should see Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom

If you’ve ever gone to a Tyler Perry play or movie and returned home feeling like you paid to see black men receive a collective slap in the face, this play is your answer. There’s no light-skinned, and/or blue-collar hero saving the abused woman from the evil dark-skinned and/or professional man. No choir will sing. There will be no weddings and no one will come to Jesus at the end.

Lady in Redbone Afropuff’s changes to “For Colored Girls”

Seven drastic changes that would make the film, “For Colored Girls,” (ahem) better. Yeah, I said it.

Context explains colored folks’ reactions to “For Colored Girls”

Is “For Colored Girls” offensive? Divisive? Poorly written? All of the above? Depends on the context. However, critiquing the film in the context of traditional film school storytelling rules explains why the movie generates such polarizing reactions.

A warning about the study of film and theatre

A warning to anyone considering a degree in filmmaking, directing, cinematography, screenwriting, playwriting, theater performance, or even film studies: Once you take these classes, you will never be able to look at film or theatre the same way again.

Black snobs and trained filmmakers may love Tyler Perry’s “For Colored Girls”
colored-girls-cast via rap-up.com

I want to see Tyler Perry’s, For Colored Girls. I want to see a Tyler Perry movie, and it makes me feel all weird on my snooty intellectual insides. I’ve never hated Perry for reaching out to a neglected audience. I’ve simply been annoyed that work so flawed received such popular acclaim.

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