Monthly Archives: October 2009

It’s easy to say Good Hair is superficial, putting a shiny gloss on a serious issue — it certainly is fun. There are plenty of appearances from celebrities (no, not Oprah or Michelle; they’re not stupid), and the film’s narrative is centered around the glamorous and ridiculous Bronner Brothers show and convention in Atlanta. Good [...]

UPDATE: It should be noted Crocker’s appearance has changed significantly. Nobody is particularly interested in Chris Crocker anymore; maybe he’s been replaced by B. Scott. But I still think he’s fascinating, and kind of a smart performance artist. (I’m using “he” right now because it’s my understanding that’s the pronoun Chris still uses). In this [...]

I saw Precious Wednesday (it’s accomplished, bound for Oscar greatness), but I’ll hold off on film criticism and instead talk about what I think the film means, and what I think it does for black cinema, a field I’m still learning about, so I would love comments and suggestions. My thrust is simple: Precious is [...]

UPDATE: The New York Times has a piece about whether the movie is appropriate for children. After seeing Where the Wild Things Are two nights ago, I suspected I would awaken Friday morning to check Metacritic and see a big ol’ 80+ rating on the film from critics. Not so! Okay, it’s a 70. Well [...]

Many thanks to Racialicious for reposting this! When new technologies emerge a host of new companies tend to sprout up. Tons of independent radio stations catering to diverse interests existed before 1970s-style deregulation. Digital technology brought dozens of new channels to television; that same technology fostered numerous production companies making independent TV and films. Now [...]

UPDATE: Please see my Black Web Series page for a full and regularly updated list. ORIGINAL: So I did a little bit of reporting and found some web series featuring all or mostly black casts! The full story is up at The Root: “A small but growing number of filmmakers, producers and writers are looking [...]

Please comment on the original at SpliceToday! UPDATE: Greek made fun of another ABC show! On volunteering to deliver food to the elderly on Thanksgiving, Rebecca said to Casey: “I care about old people: I watch Desperate Housewives.” Burn again! UPDATE: Some information from The Hollywood Reporter offers some contradicting evidence, looking at the average [...]

UPDATE: For links to everything I’ve written on web series, visit the web series page. So my article in Businessweek on branded entertainment and the web series is finally out online! I’m just posting here to provide a bit more context, more than could make it into the article (below). The article focuses on MTV [...]

UPDATE: For updated web series info, click the web series page. What is a web series? To anyone in the industry right now, this post will be elementary. Apologies in advance. But I think for academics and maybe aspiring producers, this might be useful. I’ve had a bunch of hits on my old primer, but [...]

So Jezebel has done a riff on my article in Splice Today (“The Death of the Working Woman?”), and cited it again in another post this week! Thanks, Jezebel! To be honest, the article was not my finest work. I was merely reacting to some personal observations: there are a lot of productive, innovative and [...]