Centric has been kicking it with 'Salt-N-Pepa' reruns, and...

i have definitely been a 3am glutton for all of the Salt, Pep and Spin' foolery. And now there's more!!

VH1 TV Shows Music Videos Celebrity Photos News & Gossip

(Like last night's trip to Atlantic City for Spin's gig? Good stuff.)

But in only a few short weeks, Sandra "Pepa" Denton is going to dominate her own series on "Let's Talk About Pep." It's set to be a small scale 'Tough Love', just for Pep, featuring her good friends Jacque Reid, Joumana Kidd, and .

The show is set to premiere Jan. 11th right after Fantasia Barrino (American Idol) premieres her own show on VH1, "Fantasia For Real."

Oh, yes! And Chilli, too (TLC's Rozonda Thomas).

Start gulping juice over at VH1.com. (All the sudden they got it in for the Black women-demo, eh? Wonder who caused that...[cough, RHoA, cough])

NENE SAID...(*guilty grin)

"I make Real Housewives of ATL", and you can add some itches so those under rocks can hear you.

Sorry. But I love it.

FEATURE PRESENTATION: Reading Pictures & Sounds in 2010

I came across The Drama Review (TDR) journal while I was in NYC in the garment district. It struck me, because on the cover is Paul Robeson, undoubtedly invested in the moment, surrounded by microphones, eyes intense and pointed fist raised mid-message.

The picture of Robeson is at a 1948 rally protesting the Mundt-Nixon bill. And it was this kind of performance—not Go Down Moses— that got Robeson blacklisted and called all manner of ‘Commie’ foolishness fo’sho, fo’t’real. TDR’s deal is to examine performance in its “social, economic and political contexts.”
And to echo Jay-Z: so necessary.

LOOOOOOOOVE IT!

So let me put things in a smidge of perspective this Christmas day: North American box offices hit a new high in 2009, banking a record $10bn [in Pharrell-ian currency]. And the first thing that comes to my mind is escape. The economy sucks, to keep it modest. Somehow, I anticipate ‘TARP’ entering our lexicon the way ‘Google’ has as a verb, noun, and adjective. And honestly, there’s a lot of grit building up between the superpowers of the world. Grit we will soon and surely feel. (not just in Kabul or Tehran or Islamabad or Pyongyang or…)

But movie houses are still packing ‘em in. We’re happy to dull the pain. Dissatisfied? Change the channel. Get ‘er On Demand. Go next door. Lull yourself to sleep with [insert network here]. Go ‘head an’ get high off of [insert sitcom/dramedy/reality show here]. By all means:

Entertain yourself to death!

But like Badu says on her “Master Teacher” track: you better ‘stay woke.’
Now is certainly the time—perhaps more than ever before—for us to master how we receive our entertainment. How do we read pictures? How do we read sounds?

Yes. I’m insinuating that apocalyptic things are happening.
I don’t mind saying it because they’ve happened before. But they happened at a time when we were much less connected, and much more impressed by the immediacy and emotional affectation of the moving images we saw.

As of 2009 (and well before), your friendly living room ‘idiot box’ and neighborhood cinema are not, as independent filmmaker Haile Gerima would say, benign sources of entertainment. Instead they are very much part and parcel to the propaganda of our times. And we would only be wise to read the message above the message; the commentary that lies within each and every 30-min. to an hour slice of television, the commentary that lies within each and every military spot run during shows geared toward ‘urban’ demographics during war time, and in every feature length and short presentation in a Magic Johnson Theater near you.

TV & movies is one heck of a drug [sic]. Available to the masses in bulk by only a few big time dealers. (NKOTB: NBCU-Comcast!)

Without the presence of critical storytellers who look like ‘we’—AND DON’T—and have experienced ‘we’ kind of stories from ‘we’ kind of perspectives—OR ARE AT LEAST CRITICAL ENOUGH TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE—there remains what David J. Leonard (Screens Fade to Black, 2006) calls “the rise of neo-liberalism and the hegemony of colorblind rhetoric,” which he believes has “infiltrated” people of color and independent storytelling to the point of “rendering analysis of the state and white supremacy as obsolete.”

Precious has become such a sensitive hit, in part, because of the critical acclamation it’s being ceded, and I’d daresay, because it presents a shadow of return to state accountability in the Black film—a notion H’W’D would love to say makes it a, somehow, less “universal” story. Yet, every storyteller in the game could take a cue from Lee Daniels and Sapphire and the whole cast and crew when it comes to chanting down Babylon to its face. Precious isn’t your typical 2000s Black film—where we neatly pull ourselves up by some invisible boot straps, cite kujichagulia, and toast in some ritzy downtown club where we get to be frou-frou, chic-chic Black. Because it is oh-so-trendy now, in case you hadn’t noticed. Instead, Precious gets a little uncomfortable in all the right places. What about a living wage? What about welfare today? What about the complicity of the State in creating the abuses we tend to think we’re above inflicting within communities of color since we got, like, BET and TVOne and Centric (ooh, and now a Black President)?

In the absence of storytellers who will say a manageable bit about hyper-surveillance (like in Boyz n the Hood) or provide a troubling view of gender roles and expectations (like Sweet Sweetback’s…) what is your entertainment NOT saying? Why? In the absence of such storytellers, what farce of an American Dream are you being sold in our sociopolitical climate? Who funds what you watch? Who doesn’t care what you don’t watch? What’s the message in the sum total of what you do watch?

You don’t need to answer.
Just treat this like your 0-101.
You’re welcome. A beautiful world, I'm tryna find.
Merry Christmas! ;-)

IT'S HERE!!!!!!! MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WELCOME TO...Grits, Grit, & Glitter!

What does that mean anyways?

It means fresh and new. Green. No. It’s not spring. But there’s a reason to get excited.

The Holidays bring rich thoughts and experiences with them. Tinsel is sparkling. Egg nog is in stores. Wrapping paper shimmers.

Poinsettias, glimmering lights and warm, glowing candles plus all the public displays of Technicolor without the Technicolor.

Thundersnows—at least on the east coast this year—leave sheets of glittering snow (and ice)…all around. The season is too beautiful for words (if you don’t think about the shoveling/slipping parts). That’s the Glitter.

Families will trek through airports, stuff themselves in Amtraks and Greyhounds the nation over trying to soothe those things only home can. Be it with some auntie’s sweet potato pie. Some mama’s macaroni & cheese. Some grandmother’s knowing. That’s the grits.

And whether life is kicking you in the pants right now or it isn’t yet, all this aesthetic overload is here to drown out your pity partying in the name of seasonal sales and holiday cheer. Nearly 16% Black and Brown unemployment or not (20-plus in Detroit), capitalisticexploitationofChristianbeliefs or not.

That’s the grit.

And that’s the reason I love the irony of ‘cinema’ (to sound o’fishull [sic] and random).
At its purest, it’s about the story. And at the heart of every story is conflict. No matter how great or small. At its simplest, it’s about beauty. Aesthetics. Beautiful pictures. Beautiful actors. Beautiful effects. Beautiful sounds. Beautiful struggles.

Cinema should come naturally to people of color.
Even so, we who have learned to eat stories and grow generations, self-medicate with them in song, verse, riddle, rhyme and prayer—we’re often hard-pressed to find that gift honored and reverenced in or by mainstream on any size screen. I don’t profess bytwenty8 to be that place. But I hope I’ll get you at least as provincially ravenous for people of color film/tv and so-called third cinema as I am.

Welcome to bytwenty8!
Hope you like yo’ gif’!!!!

ALMOST HERE!!!! in less than 12 hours...

GET EXCITED.

Dec 25th I'm all...

GRITS.

GRIT.

GLITTER.

The appetizer taste of bytwenty8's re-launch.

Jan 1st we're going beta.

This will be the place where Black cine gets its due. All Black & Brown. All the time. TV & Film. And someday stage.

classical film theory?

eat said {heart} out.

Fantasia’s Reality Show Proves There’s Another Career Option Besides Broadway For ‘Idol’ Alumni

Fantasia’s Reality Show Proves There’s Another Career Option Besides Broadway For ‘Idol’ Alumni

Senator Vitale to The Situation: Straighten Up and Fly the [flip] Right

So the New Jersey Italian American Legislative Caucus led by state Sen. Joseph F. Vitale is so over MTV's Jersey Shore.

Peep the letter he wrote to Phillipe Dauman, Viacom president and CEO, about Snooki n'nem.

Somehow I just don't think Viacom expected shade from this direction. Domino's Pizza and Dell have already pulled out as sponsors, and all I can see is that banned episode of Boondocks playing and re-playing in my head...

COM-UH-DEE!

ONLY 2 DAYS LEFT!! bananas...

GET EXCITED.

Dec 25th I'm all...

GRITS.

GRIT.

GLITTER.

The appetizer taste of bytwenty8's re-launch.

Jan 1st we're going beta.

This will be the place where Black cine gets its due. All Black & Brown. All the time. TV & Film. And someday stage.

classical film theory?

eat said {heart} out.

In the middle of 'Inside Man' on BET...a Snuggie!

I was so focused, and then the zebra-print snuggie and roof raising...

Bribery Scandal Exposed Within African American Film Critics Association

Bribery Scandal Exposed Within African American Film Critics Association

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Prez got jokes...Obama's Holiday Prank

Obama got jokes...

He quasi-prank-called outgoing Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine on WTOP as "Barry from DC".

Now you tell me what "Barry" he's posing as. DMV knows well. Dig it.
Obama really is that guy. you know what i mean?

3 days and counting!!

GET EXCITED.

Dec 25th I'm all...

GRITS.

GRIT.

GLITTER.

The appetizer taste of bytwenty8's re-launch.

Jan 1st we're going beta.

This will be the place where Black cine gets its due. All Black & Brown. All the time. TV & Film. And someday stage.

classical film theory?

eat said {heart} out.

because i do miss 'Girlfriends'...

...and in honor of the unfinished project dubbed the "Black 'Sex and the City'" (based on Helena Andrews' memoir, Bitch is the New Black, to be produced by Grey's EP Shonda Rhimes), I present 'Drool', co-starring Jill Marie Jones (Toni!!!!!!!):

Thanks, Shadow & Act! This sounds like...um...let's say Thelma & Louise times Little Miss Sunshine times Burn After Reading times The Nanny. Don't look for it in a theater, though...

Popularity doesn't matter for documentaries this Oscar season

...yeah right.

The Doc outlook in the Oscars' 2010 season.

I am a little biased here. But I really feel--bias aside--that 'tis the season (in particular, cuz it's always been the season...) to discuss redistribution of wealth.

Like, go-hard.

I've seen one really solid documentary critique of capitalism proper before (The Corporation, 2004), but perhaps Mike's visibility and the heavy rotation of our current 'financial crisis' will make "Capitalism: A Love Story" (Michael Moore) cut a little deeper.

Cuz if Bernie Sanders (I-VT) can almost discuss redistribution of wealth on 'Colbert', maybe we can talk about Huey P's theory of Intercommunalism. [go read To Die For the People].