2007's Disappointments in Film & Music
This year I eagerly anticipated a lot from my favorite entertainers. Maybe my expectations were too high but I'm left feeling unsatisfied.
American Gangster
+Denzel Washington stood but one foot away from me as he processed to the stage for Morehouse College's commencement ceremony this past May. I had been as close a few years back one early weekday afternoon on Fifth Avenue here in New York but it was just as thrilling. So upon the release of American Gangster, I hit a quiet downtown theater with my friend writer/filmmaker Courtney Young and walked out screwfaced. All that big named director and those big named actors managed with all those weighty topics was a wafer thin picture. Scenes of subjections but no fucking subjectivity. Nicky Barnes was straight caricature (That's what you get for hiring Cuba Gooding, Jr.), Frank Lucas was hollow and stone faced and Huey Lucas' behavior was inexplicable as was that of all of Lucas' country kinfolk. You go from farming in the rural south to supervising butt naked women cutting up heroin with no questions asked? As to the depiction of Black female bodies, in noted distinction from non-Black female bodies, brought to my attention by Courtney and memoirist and professor Ferentz Lafargue, it was disheartening but par for the course. All in all, this movie was a waste of resources and further proof that Black interiority is of no interest to the studio system.
Talk to Me
+I adore Don Cheadle. I really do. But this based-on-a-true-story film couldn't have been more cliché. It wasn't Cheadle's fault. I blame director Kasi Lemmons who seemed entirely ill equipped to tell this story. It's a paint by numbers comedy with a conscience until she runs out of time and just starts splashing paint everywhere in a failed show at depth. The jump in time from Petey Greene's heyday to his funeral was jolting and inexplicable and demonstrated filmmaking ineptness of the highest order. You see, I don't just want to see Back people on the screen but Black people come to life. So I have to knock Lemmons and screenwriters Rick Famuyiwa (of Brown Sugar fame) and Michael Genet's hustle.
Funk This, Chaka Khan
+Chaka boasts a singular voice, but doesn't do much with it here. I know, post-Rufus she's had something of an uneven catalog but I'm inclined to think her iconicity has made her lazy. There is little original material here and although she's capable on the covers-I'm thinking "Castles Made of Sand"-there's nothing to trumpet. And where in Jesus' name is the funk! There are Chaka Khan songs that bring me such immeasurable joy that it's alarming to now feel so unmoved.
The Real Thing, Jill Scott
+I don't like this Jill Scott album and it's not just that she's angry or carnal, it's just that's all I can hear. I wasn't expecting another Who is Jill Scott: that opus covered every emotion from lust to loss to liveliness and beyond. I didn't just not dislike anything on that record. I loved EVERYTHING. So then came Beautifully Human, which swept me off my feet with "Golden", a gospel flavored anthem of unacculturated entitlement, then kind of dropped the ball with all that talk of scallions and celery. Still, I had "Golden" and it was good. I can't champion one song on The Real Thing. Journalist Joshua Alston told me it deserves a few more listens. I'll give Jilly from Philly that much but I'm not promising anything.
Graduation, Kanye West
+I am battling Kanye fatigue so I couldn't bear giving this album but 2 full listens. It was completely disinteresting, in part 'cause Kanye, as is his habit, just reconfigured songs/verses that had long been out in the public domain (e.g. "Home", which I really liked with John Legend). This is not a bad album by far and might make my top 10 but it wasn't outstanding and it feels temporal.
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