As someone who doesn’t play or follow competitive sports, I’m far from the target audience of Air. On its face, I couldn’t care less about a period piece on the deliberations of the C Suite of Nike Inc. and its struggle to capture a bit more market share from its rivals, Adidas and Converse, in the glass-towered oligopoly of athletic footwear. And yet by the end of Ben … [Read more...]
Oscars, woke: Nominations feature record diversity
It wasn’t that long ago that the Oscar nominations were a blanket of white — #OscarsSoWhite in 2015 and 2016 — an embarrassment to the Motion Picture Academy and a poor reflection on the increasingly diverse array of quality films produced by Hollywood. Well, what a difference a few years make. When the 2021 Oscar nominations were announced Monday morning — much later than … [Read more...]
Weekend arts picks: Dec. 19-20, 2020
Film: Playwright August Wilson began his chronicle of the African-American experience throughout the 20th century, one decade at a time, with 1984’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, a fictional look at the so-called “Mother of the Blues” in a tension-filled recording session at a Chicago race label in 1927. Now director George C. Wolfe has brought the tale to the screen, with a pair … [Read more...]
Film in 2016: The year’s 10 best
Whether it was because of the commotion over last year’s all-white Oscar nominations or simply a coincidence of the pipeline, this year’s top film crop has several entries with racial themes and likely African-American nominees in the performance categories. Here, in descending order of quality – as judged by my highly subjective opinion – are the best of 2016: … [Read more...]
2016-17 Season Preview: Film (winter)
With a winter season that includes a Marvel Comics flick and a couple of science fiction yarns, the summer still seems to be with us. Still, if the past is any indication, the Oscar winners are embedded somewhere in the list below. Can you find them? The Birth of a Nation (Oct. 7) – The sensation of this year’s Sundance Festival is this biopic of slave/preacher/rebel Nat … [Read more...]