Things To Watch

1. The new Wiz Jhalifa mixtape is dope. He's one to really watch.



You should cop it.

2. A lot of you know Thomas Fraser, who has been a friend of The Message as well as a member of our old sketch group, Cleo's Apartment. He's got a new video out:



3. Tyler Perry NEVER disappoints. His trailer for the sequel to Why Did I get Married, entitled WHY DID I GET MARRIED, TOO? is out.

(by the way, does that title make grammatical sense? would it EVER be said?)

The great thing is, he has taken a complete left turn for the sequel. Do yourself a favor and watch the trailer below...and be...amazed...



Um...good God.

"If You Play The Shit That They Like..."

(quick! What movie is the above line from? What album co-opted it in its intro?)

One of our readers wrote:

"I'm still mad Great Debaters didn't do well at the box office"

People, look...the only movies that make money nowadays are movies that are exciting, hilarious or a chick flick. Period.

(And of course...kid stuff makes HUGE dollars, but we all know that and it's not worth bringing in for this discussion.)

I know we, and I'm guilty of this too, like to give great examples of quality black films that don't make as much as the more coonish or exploitative fare, but the bottom line is, Americans of all races wanna (a) be scared/excited (b) laugh their ass off or (c) have done to them whatever it is that chick flicks do.

So the reason The Great Debaters did poorly was because, at its core, it was boring. So was Akeelah and the Bee.

These are great films about great subject. But they're sleepy time, or as Diallo says, if you go to a movie and fall asleep...that's called editing.

Akeelah is not attacked by bees and has to fight for her survival of a crazy bee-infested island. Now THAT movie, would have made some money.

No one wants to spend their hard-earned money after week of working a job they hate...to be enlightened and challenged for two hours. They wanna be entertained. This shit is called show-"business" not show-"edu-tainment". If you wanna make a lot of money in this industry, you need to understand that.

Look at the big performers this year (via box office mojo):

1. Transformers: Revenge of the Stupidity (exciting)
   
2. Harry Potter and some more Magic stuff (exciting/kids.)
   
3. Up (kids)
   
4. The Hangover (funny)
   
5. Star Trek (exciting)
   
6. Monsters v. Aliens (exciting/kids)
   
7. Ice Age (kids)
   
8. X-Men: Wolverine is Incoherent (exciting though pretty damned stupid)
   
9. Night at the Museum: Ben Stiller's PayCheck (funny/kids/exciting)
   
10. The Proposal (chick flick)
    

So...the moral of the story is:

(a) people don't wanna have to think after work, they wanna be entertained. period.

(b) therefore: black filmmakers who wanna make some MONEY* with black films better make an action movie, a comedy or a chick flick.

(c) CLEARLY I need to be writing kids movies, holy shit I'd be rich.

To all my black filmmakers, stop making enlightening bullshit!

Instead, make something where a karate master has to fight another dude on an alien planet... with a flame-thrower on his back... all the while a robot is hunting them both...Call it FLAMEBOTS!


FLAMEBOTS ARE COMING!

You can laugh all you want, the guy or girl who writes that script is gonna get paid. And getting paid is the whole way to stay in a position to be creative. You see how this all works?

OR...keep writing that opus you're working on that won't make any money.*

---

* I have a feature script that I love to death that won't make a penny if it's ever made. I'm still going to make the movie because I love the story and it's about Chicago on the south side...but at least I have no illusions that the film will make any money...but it might win some festivals which ain't too shabby.

Barney and the Crapification of Music

I'm glad Google notified me.



Happy anniversary Sesame Street. Forty years is a long time.

I've expressed my gratitude to the Children's Television Network before for shaping my musical tastes. Today I stumbled across this vid featuring a legend (and no, it's not a young Tatiyana Ali).



The video is long but it did get me thinking...


Barney f--ked the game up.




I haven't run the regression models or done any in depth analysis but something tells me there's a tie between the rise of Barney and the increased crappy-ness of the music industry. Think about it. Barney launched in the late '80s, early '90s. At that point, a cute dinosaur started to become the entertainment centerpiece of a number of kids' lives. Why did he become popular? Hell if I know but for argument's sake, I'll simply say the general happiness of the show was appealing. Remember, that time period in which the show launched was glum, in large part. A stock market crash, Panamanian invasion, Persian Gulf War I, crack, AIDS, Kurt Cobain and so on. I can imagine a stressed out parent plopping their kid in front of the TV that, unlike the '70s and early 80s, has a multitude of channels but a lower percentage of programming made with young kids in mind (Nick Jr. wasn't in existence yet).

All of a sudden, a happy-go-lucky dino and his pals appear on the tube with a veneer of clean wholesomeness taking place in a typical suburban backyard. That's a lot more appealing than a bunch of folks hanging out on a city street talking to a cranky-ass monster in a trash can and an ambiguously gay duo living in a basement.


We see ya B & E.

So all seemed fine and good, right? Wrong.

Please review the Herbie Hancock video and then the Barney. Talk about devolution. There was a sense of boundary pushing (showing kids a computer illustrating soundwaves) in the Street clip that I'm not seeing in what I'd say was a representative sample of Barney. Jacking the "This Old Man" beat? C'mon, dude. But then again, it isn't that far a stretch from that to this or this.

And wouldn't you know it, around the time Barney was launching and gaining popularity, the Soulja Boys of the world were being born and persumably watching. Their initial introduction to music was essentially low-creativity knockoffs of nursery rhymes, which begs the question to be asked, how the hell can you make an even more simplistic version of an already simplistic song?

Well, Barney found the way and we're all worse off for it.


The only Purple One is from Minnesota.

And what say you?

I Will Never Get Tired Of This (p. 4)

Two Hype Brothers And A Dog



I first heard it in the summer of 1990. I was in Dade County with my cousins and there was this new channel called THE BOX.

Against My Better Angels

They're making this into a full length feature;

Shenehneh and Wanda


I wanna have some socio-cultural reasons why this sucks. But it'll probably be funny as hell.

---

ps - still preachin' at work.

Go See Black Dynamite

Black Dynamite is the best movie of 2009.

1. they didn't set out to parody a blaxsploitation film, they set out to make one. The attention to detail they showed in the execution of this movie is unbelievable. I've seen a million blax films and this movie hit all the tropes perfectly: too many story lines, a song sequence in the middle that's way too specific, pointless sex, machismo, and a long assed inscrutable plot twist at the end.

2. the acting in the movie is award quality. you can tell that Michael Jai White and his team really did the hell out of some homework. most people won't appreciate the small touches of the performance, but I recognized that these guys watched a ton of films and set a high bar for themselves.

3. a movie like this could be so easy to mess up, but nothing feels sloppy. everything in it feels pored over and deliberate. I mean EVERYTHING from the cinematography, to the casting to the shot selection to the choice of angles and coverage...like everything feels like someone put a whole lot of thought into it. the movie isn't just funny, it's intelligent.

4. it's funny as hell all the way through. and very quotable. college kids across America are currently saying Black Dynamite quotes to each other. that's a very good thing. I remember when my boys and I saw Something About Mary and Pulp Fiction in college. We spoke the language of those films for months.

the ONLY negative I have is...

5. there's too many cameos/stunt casting. the stunt casting has a negative effect because it's the first time it feels like the filmmakers are "winking" at you that they know they're making a funny film. everything else is played for authenticity, but when minor celebs start showing up in character it becomes farcical and a distraction.

go see it.

A job well done.

----

PS1 - a quick point about Michael Jackson's This Is It.

I liked it, didn't love it. the best parts are when Michael is talking. the songs I've heard a million times and didn't need to hear them again.

I've NEVER seen Michael explaining the value of letting a performance "sizzle" before bringing in the music. That kind of stuff was compelling and I wanted so much more. But that's only 20% of the film...

PS2 - My movies of the year are

1. Black Dynamite
2. Star Trek
3. 500 Days of Summer
4. Inglorious Basterds

Congratulations, ANTHONY FOXX

Another surprise on last Tuesday was the election of a Democrat for mayor in Charlotte, North Carolina, their first Dem mayor in over two decades.

On top of that, the majority white city elected a black guy mayor.


He seems like a very good guy. Check out his ad above.