Note: This is not a review, but an essay based on the film’s marketing. UPDATE (12/7): Three weeks into its run, The Blind Side is still doing well and now beating New Moon in weekend grosses. ORIGINAL: Tambay Obenson over at Shadow and Act is asking what scores of cineastes have been asking over the [...]
Archive for November, 2009
“Blind Side” Success: What If Sandra Bullock Starred In “Precious”?
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 29th, 2009
“Drama Queenz” Returns With A Fierceness (And A Few Guest Stars!)
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 29th, 2009
The vast majority of original, independent web series never make it to season two. Producing season one takes so much time and money, when the millions of viewers never materialize, creators can’t bring themselves to invest more precious time and money. (At this point, I’d almost prefer most market themselves as “miniseries until proven otherwise”!) [...]
“Kindred,” A Spirited Web Series On A Mission
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 29th, 2009
Living Single and Girlfriends exist today in nostalgia, firmly in the annals of television history but only occasionally as a rerun on a niche network. Who are their children? Certainly cable networks have tried to pick up the torch by giving Jada Pinkett Smith, Jill Scott and Sherri Shepherd their own shows, each of which [...]
Posted in uncategorized 
Tags: black, gender, race, TV, web series, Web Series/Online Video 
No Comments »"V" From Fascists (1983) to Obama (2009)
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 24th, 2009
V airs its winter finale tonight before resuming episodes in March 2010. If you haven’t seen ABC’s V yet, I’ll spoil it for you: the Vs symbolize President Obama. Countless articles have spelled it out: io9, Chicago Tribune, BreitBart, and Entertainment Weekly, among many others, have already foregrounded the debate. It’s very obvious. In the [...]
B. Scott Reimagines Celebrity Online
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 23rd, 2009
You’d be hard-pressed to find a web personality more fascinating than the splendiferous, divine B. Scott. Ever since Madison Moore introduced me to the blogger and YouTuber a couple years ago, I’ve been ever more intrigued! Since then, B. Scott’s star has risen. His website has seen its traffic balloon (Compete, Quantcast) and his YouTube [...]
Posted in uncategorized Tags: Digital Culture/Industry, fame, race, sci-fi, TV, web series 10 Comments »“Sons of Anarchy” Proves Cable Deeper, More Provocative Than Broadcast
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 23rd, 2009
Originally posted at Ronebreak. Please comment there! The penultimate episode of Sons of Anarchy airs Tuesday at 10PM, with a 90-minute season finale the following week. You can catch up on episodes at Hulu or iTunes, or you can check Sidereel for more options. _______________________________________ It takes The Sopranos and adds neo-Nazis. It grafts onto [...]
“Buppies” Review: Drama With A Light Touch
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 21st, 2009
Check out other reviews at Thembi Ford, Shadow and Act. Thank you to Racialicious for reposting this! I’ve written and spoken a lot about Buppies for this blog and elsewhere, but that’s only because I think it’s a significant development within the history of original web shows. Buppies is upon us; the BET-distributed, CoverGirl-sponsored scripted [...]
New York Times, Myself on “Precious”
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 21st, 2009
The New York Times has a great little article out on the debate over Precious, over whether or not it’s a responsible representation of black people. Felicia Lee asked for my opinion, based on an essay written for this blog: Aymar Jean Christian, a doctoral student in communications at the University of Pennsylvania said he found [...]
Rethinking “Post-Racial”
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 20th, 2009
I’d originally planned to do reams and reams of reading on this, and an extensive literature review, but I’m so busy writing, curating, filming, editing and researching other things I won’t get to it for another year, and I don’t want to cite some theories and miss others. Eventually I will have to do a [...]
Academic Conferences: Presenting Post-Excitement
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 20th, 2009
So I found out yesterday I’ll be going to the SCMS — Society of Cinema and Media Studies — conference in Los Angeles next year. This is somewhat exciting news because it would be my first conference with a significant group of film and television scholars. Yay. But going to conference is sometimes fraught. Scholars [...]
My Interview with NPR /WBUR on Black Web Series
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 17th, 2009
Thank you to producer Kevin Sullivan and host Robin Young for granting me a chance to talk about Buppies, black web series and web series in general for their show Here and Now! And thank you to Aaliyah Williams, Buppies producer for doing the show and granting me an interview weeks ago. Click the photo [...]
“Precious” Isn’t the First Naughty Black Film
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 16th, 2009
Originally published at Splice Today. My first post about Precious here. Precious has arrived! For anyone following the film world, the push for Precious, at first titled Push, began months ago, in the beginning of the year. It has been a long haul. Some of us are tired. Now it is here and is bound for [...]
Ellen, the Academy, and Improving Media Criticism
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 15th, 2009
In the academy and in the humanities, we’re trained to be skeptics. It’s almost part of the job. When it comes to representation, the idea that what we see in the media is a reflection on the real world, the academy is still way behind the times, something I’ve written about before. Skepticism has turned [...]
Black Television on the Web Gets More Coverage
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 15th, 2009
The premiere of Buppies in two weeks seems to have captured a small bit of media attention! I’d like to think my article in The Root, probably the first on the issue, had a little something to do with it, and I’m glad to be researching a topic so fresh. (For my list of black [...]
List of Black Web Shows Up
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 13th, 2009
The Black Web Series Page Due to the tremendous response to my last post on black web series, I’ve created a page with a more visually appealing list of shows I hope to update regularly. I’ll start writing descriptions and short reviews of the shows on the page as well, so check back for more [...]
“Valemont” Wants Your Blood
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 10th, 2009
UPDATE (11/29): MTV screened Valemont today at 6PM and the series is in talks for a possible second season produced for television. ORIGINAL: I’ve been very busy with researching, freelancing, curating, etc. and really I haven’t had much time to sit down and enjoy any of the media I study. With that, instead of going [...]
Posted in uncategorized Tags: advertising, research, web series, Web Series/Online Video No Comments »The Web Series Market: Research, Stage One
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 7th, 2009
So at this point I’ve conducted around two dozen interviews with nearly thirty individuals working in the market for original (mostly scripted) web shows. It’s been fun! I still have much more to learn, but, being an academic, have already started writing. It’s what we do. Here is the first full paper I’ve written on [...]
“Ugly Betty” Inspires Michelle Obama?
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 7th, 2009
I don’t normally do fashion, but I love it when two of my favorite things come together! Michelle Obama wore a Moschino jacket while visiting the Department of Energy for the National Science Bowl. I noticed the jacket from the fourth episode of this season (the fourth, and, likely, last) of Ugly Betty (“The Wiener, [...]
The Rules and Meanings of Vlogging
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 5th, 2009
My first academic article has been published! The article, published in First Monday, titled, “Real Vlogs: The Rules and Meanings of Online Personal Videos,” looks at how users on YouTube talk about what vlogs are “real” or authentic, and “fake” or inauthentic. Here’s the abstract: This paper explores what the “rules” of vlogging (video blogging) are: the [...]
Posted in uncategorized Tags: Digital Culture/Industry, research, vlogging, Web Series/Online Video, youtube No Comments »“Chick” Gives Women (and Women of Color) a Story of Freedom, Empowerment
Posted by Aymar Jean Christian on November 3rd, 2009
More than three years into her relationship, Kai Soremekun had a knife before her, her boyfriend’s hand on the handle. The emotional abuse had gone too far, and she needed to get out. “I had such a low self-worth at that point,” Soremekun told me. “When I finally got out, I spent a lot of [...]
