Mr. Brown Versus

Of all the complaints I would've expected to hear from people about the live-action adaptation of Disney's Beauty & the Beast , questions about its star flaunting her sexuality was at the bottom of the list. Sadly, that's where we are, as two items are taking center stage ahead of the March 17th wide-release of the classic story of bestiality between a young woman and a hairy beast that makes John Holmes look more attractive by comparison. Jokes aside, the first part, where star and eternal crush of mine Emma Watson posed nearly topless for Vanity Fair, leading to questioning whether or not she's a hypocrite for posing half-nude while promoting feminism. The photo in question, lensed by British shutterbug Tim Walker and styled by  Vanity Fair  fashion and style director Jessica Diehl, features Watson in a cape, sheer shirt and lace skirt from Burberry's February collection. It has sparked debate on social media about whether or not the image, which casts Wat...

Here are just a few personal thoughts about the list of nominees for the 89th annual Academy Awards ceremony I'd thought I'd share (the full list of nominees can be found here ). * Amazing What a Hashtag Can Do: It shouldn't come as a surprise that three movies - Hidden Figures , Fences  &  Moonlight  - all centered on African-American leads which do a terrific job telling stories about the black experience in America have now been nominated for Best Picture today. All three deserved the praise and accolades they have been showered with, but let's also acknowledge that the Academy would have been slaughtered by the press and by Twitter if they went a third straight year with a lineup that was all lily white, and rightfully so. Hell, I think Twitter would be screaming bloody murder had Moonlight  not made the cut for Picture, along with its writer/director Barry Jenkins if he wasn't nominated for Director. * Oh, Amy....: I'm ecstatic to see the sci-fi dra...

Sometimes, in order to move on and forward, you have to look back and reflect. All this month and the next, thanks to January & February being the dumping grounds for terrible movies, I will be doing exactly that. There's dozens of stuff I've missed out on during the holiday rush, from Award-fare, to mainstream blockbusters everything in between, as well as my list for both the best and worst of 2016 and the Oscar race coming to its inevitable conclusion. I'd also love to announce that I'm now a registered contributor for Write Out of L.A., the home of my film friend across the pond, Mr. Robin Write. If you haven't gotten to read his pieces on his site, please do. There is a good chance that I won't start reviewing new material until March, but that doesn't mean that (hopefully) I won't be writing. There's still my segment of The Netflix Files I need to revive from the doldrums as well as my editorials about current events, which I feel (and fe...

I'd like to contrast two videos which talk about how John Oliver criticized Green Party candidate Jill Stein's platform on last week's Last Week Tonight  segment on 3rd party candidates, and if you haven't watched the segment, I highly suggest that you do in order to understand the arguments both folks are saying. ( watch here ). The main arguments that Mike from The Humanist Report and current whipping boy for this site Jimmy Dore are making is that Oliver's piece was shameless propaganda to make the audience vote for Hillary Clinton in the upcoming election. Now while I disagree with both gentlemen about how to take Oliver's skit, I'm highlighting how both guys go about deconstructing the British comedian's claims. The first video from the host of THR breaks it down point by point and explains why he has this opinion. Again, I may not agree with the overall viewpoint, but I enjoyed watching his take because the host didn't resort to acting like...

If I have one plea to ask of my fellow liberals, it's this: please, please -- regardless of what happens with the election, don't make comedian Jimmy Dore the spokesperson for the blue cause. In case you don't know who he is, here's a brief recap : Dore is what you get when you combine Glenn Beck's wing-nutty bullshit ideas and theories, mixed with Bill Maher's smug, sometimes condescending demeanor, if you removed his ability to make an audience laugh. Lately he's been the voice for disgruntled and disillusioned Bernie Sanders supporters who believe the choice between Republican nominee Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is a vote for the same-old establishment politics that have screwed over the middle class and enriched the top 1% and that Bernie Sanders was the only candidate that could break the spell of business as usual with a political revolution. Dore's argument boils down to the following: the Democratic establishment needs...

*  Bad people can still make fine art. I love Michael Jackson's music while acknowledging that he was a man who had serious demons that were never exercised over the course of his life. I'm just getting into the works of writer-director Woody Allen and I think his movies are just incredible from what little I've seen, yet I do think he's definitely a pervert at best and a messed up child-fucker at worst with the allegations that he molested his own daughter, Dylan, during his widespread split with actress Mia Farrow in '92. Johnny Depp, in spite of taking paycheck roles since he rose to superstar status with the  Pirates of the Caribbean  movies as Capt. Jack Sparrow, I still think he's one of our generation's finest actors, and he's a woman-beating piece of shit (allegedly). People who make exemplary art shouldn't be punished just because they're a shitty human being, nor should they be driven out of the Oscar race, which is what is happening t...

Editor's note: the point of this post is not to target Bernie Sanders supporters. My intention is to talk about an experience I had with one person in particular and convey that I'm not a fan of his "agree with me or you're not a real liberal!" style of radio/podcasting. From the website Dictionary.com: obnoxious: adjective 1. highly   objectionable   or   offensive;   odious: obnoxious   behavior . 2. annoying   or   objectionable   due   to   being   a   showoff   or   attracting   undue at tention   to   oneself: an   obnoxious   little   brat . 3. Archaic.   exposed   or   liable   to   harm,   evil,   or   anything   objectionable. 4. Obsolete.   liable   to   punishment   or   censure;   reprehensible. I love watching The Young Turks on You Tube. I try to catch ...

This will be a new segment where I muse about anything and everything: current events, movies, personal issues, etc. It gets me writing more, which (I hope) will get me back into the creative mood, and perhaps gets you, dear reader, thinking as well. So, without further ado..... I want to say the Colin Kapernick should be is a non-issue because it is is right as an American to not stand for the National Anthem (even though I find it disrespectful, IMO), but I understand his reluctance and the reason why he has chosen to protest. In my lifetime, I have never been pulled over by the police. I haven't been stopped and frisked by police officers, and I haven't been harassed by local law enforcement. But I cannot deny this is a common occurrence in the black community; that I am more likely to be stopped by police officers than a white male; that I am more likely to be placed under arrest because of my skin color; that we've seen an alarming increase of young black, un...

Yeah, yeah, it's been two months since I've done any  sort of review for my blog. Unfortunately, life throws you a wicked curveball from time to time.  Mark Watney being stranded on a godforsaken desert planet with limited resources and almost no chance of a rescue team being sent to bring him home was his. War Machine facing paralysis after a brutal slugfest with his fellow Avengers was his. Pat Solitiano Jr. leaning to control and manage his bipolar disorder was his A run in with hypertension, a failing kidney and high blood pressure is mine. That's one hell of a curveball, wouldn't you say? As frightened as I am of doing dialysis three times a day, learning to adjust to a new low-sodium diet, resisting the temptation to scarf down french fries, hamburgers, hot dogs, etc buffalo wings, etc, and worrying about my body, I come to a few realizations: My parents, as freaked out as they were about my situation, told me that I would get through this. M...

I'm about to do something I never thought I would do: I'm going to (somewhat) defend Jeffrey Wells. Given all the things I've said about the man on this site and through social media, I'm just as surprised that I'm coming to this douchebag's defense on anything , but I do need to step in here. Last week, the "spiritual successor" to the 2008 hit monster movie, Cloverfield , was released in the form of 10 Cloverfield Lane , which has become a hit with critics and did fairly well at the box office (given that Disney's animated feature Zootopia  is still making a killing domestically and overseas), doing $25.2 million over the weekend on a $15 million budget. Of the many things Mr. Wells has said, from wanting to kick a child with down syndrome out of a theater, to making nasty, sexist comments about a woman's shape , going after the dickhead for simply not liking an actress in a movie for x,y and z reasons isn't one of them. @M_...

For good or bad, for better or for worse, director J.J. Abrams loves taking Sgt. Dignam's theory on federal agents and applying it to...well, everyone else in the film world: casual moviegoers, fans, critics, movie news sites; hell, probably even with family and friends who aren't involved in Abrams' group-knit circle for whatever movie he's making. In the case of Star Wars: The Force Awakens , I didn't think for a moment the filmmaker would have been able to keep such a tight lid on the project; I thought after the flack he took for his handling of the John Harrison character ( spoiler alert: it's really Khan) in Star Trek Into Darkness , the man would not play that game with the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and let leak some hints about what's in store for audiences. Up until the world premier in Los Angles tonight? Nothing. Nada. The big goose egg. Zilch. We haven't seen one review of The Force Awakens , despite the norm that a film like this would ...

I didn't care much for Paul Schrader's erotic drama The Canyons , but I did enjoy the performance of adult film star James Deen as Christian. He's this charismatic and charming guy who has it all - a career financing indie pictures, a lovely girlfriend (Lindsay Lohan, also doing good work in this movie), and a sex life that most men only dream of having. And yet, as we go further into he story, we discover that it's all a mask to hide his controlling, abusive and borderline sado-masochistic tendencies. It's a surprising and solid piece of acting as this seemingly suave guy slowly being unraveled until we encounter the real Christian. In a scary twist of irony, the performance by Deen now rings all too true with his character's unraveling, as the famed porn actor has now been accused of sexual assault and rape this past few weeks. James Deen held me down and fucked me while I said no, stop, used my safeword. I just can't nod and smile when people bring ...

And so, the Oscar race has officially begun, with the Nation Board of Review's annual best of list, applauding and honoring the creme de la creme in film for 2015. I definitely didn't expect to see films like Sicario  and Straight Outta Compton  to be on their list of the 10 best movies of the year, so big brownie points to them for their inclusion. Drew Goddard winning Best Adapted Screenplay was a shock, and well-deserved for taking the source material and creating a funny, exciting script where Matt Damon "has to science the shit" out of being stuck on an unforgiving planet like Mars after being marooned by mistake by his fellow astronauts. I think The Martian  is easily Ridley Scott's best and most enjoyable film in years (yes, I'm taking into account that I liked Prometheus ) , and it's fun to see the director this playful, though I think Damon winning Best Actor and Scott taking Best Director is a bit of a stretch. But then came the pick for Bes...

For the next week and a half, chances are ya'll won't hear much of me and I won't be watching many new fall releases. I'm going on a cruse ship to the Dominican Republic, and in a few hours, I board a flight to Miami overnight to get there. So, if you're wondering about the silence, that'll be why. Even movie nerds, like yours truly, need a vacation every now and then.  See ya'll in 10+ days time!

In October of 2012, I heard Adele's contribution to the latest 007 picture  Skyfall , and I thought the title track of the same name would go on to win the Oscar for Best Original Song, which tuned out to be spot on. So far, I have a perfect 1-1 track record in predicting what will win the Academy Award in music, so I'm going to make another accurate prediction: not only will the theme song to this new James Bond film, Spectre , will not only miss a Best Original Song nomination, but it will also go down as one of the worst 007 tracks in the franchise's storied history. I hate to do this, because, in general, I do think Sam Smith is a very good singer-songwriter. I love that he goes for a mix of soul, lush melodies and emphasis on production value. I think tracks like "Stay With Me" & "Not The Only One" are solid pop tunes. The problem is that his soft falsetto voice does not mix with the theme of a Bond song; and furthermore, the track comes off...

I think we can all agree that just about the most annoying thing one can do in a theater (next to talking non-stop) is whipping out the smartphone and begin Tweeting, playing games, or checking your email. It's bloody obnoxious and it detracts from the movie-watching experience, but don't tell that to Paramount Pictures, who are going to allow moviegoers to be inconsiderate jackasses and fiddle with their phones whilst watching Terminator: Genisys . I wish I were making this up. “This is a true breakthrough for the movie industry. Video games are a multi-billion dollar industry, and merging that with the movies in a way that’s interactive, fun and truly memorable is a very exciting proposition for an industry seeking to innovate. This breakthrough may be equally exciting for the video game industry. The movies offer the very best in screen and sound while providing audiences with a first of its kind, collective, in-person gaming experience.” I'm sorry, but " A tr...

First, I want to start off by saying that I really enjoyed watching Mad Max: Fury Road  during the Memorial Day holiday. Before entering George Miller's dystopian car chase through a barren wasteland, I had not seen the original Mad Max films, so I was coming in as a newbie and therefore, judged the film on its own merits. The image of a man hanging from the front of a moving vehicle, playing an electric guitar that spits fucking fire is an image that will stay with me as long as I'm a fan of the medium. The cinematography by John Seale, who had come out of retirement to help make this movie, is breathtaking from first frame to last. The technical aspects of the film - Visual Effects, Sound Mixing and Editing, etc. - are all first-rate, and are worthy of celebration come Awards season. It's almost something of a revelation to watch female characters contribute to the story and to the main protagonists, rather than be the traditional damsels in distress who only serve as res...

Allow me to switch gears for a minute and turn my attention to small screen. The 3rd season of Netflix's immensely popular House of Cards  is now streaming, and it's wicked fun to see America's favorite amoral scumbag, Frank Underwood, return, along with his wife, Claire, who is just as Machiavellian as he is. However, not everyone feels the same way, which is fine and is their right, but when you see something so astronomically stupid as to why something (in this case a show) is awful, you just have to address it. Frank Underwood disapproves...severely. Enter the fine folks at News Busters , a conservative media watchdog exposing "liberal media bias" wherever it exists, or simply just simply gin up fake bullshit/outrage because complaining about Obama and every other media outlet not named Fox News gets repetitive real quick. But in the interest of being fair (and hopefully avoiding being on the site's shit list), let's hear why they're so ou...

With Awards Season now in our rear view mirror, I'm spending today and tomorrow putting a capper on 2014 with my thoughts on this year's Oscar telecast, and (finally) releasing my picks for the best of the year. Sunday night was the 87th annual Academy Awards telecast, and if I could sum it up in a word it would be the following: tedious.  The Oscar telecast has always been a chore to sit through as the viewer has to endure the most boring aspects of the program - the awards for the technicals (Cinematography, Visual Effects, Sound Editing & Mixing, Makeup, etc.), the films no one has bothered to watch (Documentary Feature & Short Subject, Live Action & Animated Short), the "In Memorial" segment, but the dull & yawn-inducing aspects of said broadcast can be tolerable as long as there's a host with solid material. As someone who enjoys the less-than compelling aspects of the yearly telecast, as stated earlier, was a bloody chore for me to sit throug...

Last October, I wrote a letter to Jeffrey Wells about his posts, and how I was afraid that, for all of the controversial, inflammatory and sometimes nasty and mean-spirited posts, he was simply writing them to be controversial and inflammatory, to get more hits on his site and to more people talking about himself. Over the past few days, I got his answer. And it wasn't pretty.  First, there was him talking about Patricia Arquette attending the Santa Barbra International Film Festival. What did he have to say? Arquette explained to a  Telegraph  interviewer  a year ago that “ you don’t have to buy your mate’s fidelity by looking a certain way …if you’re really in it for the long haul, ten pounds isn’t going to make — shouldn’t make — a world of difference.” I don’t know how to put this gently but nobody in the world welcomes a mate putting on weight… no one . Plus the 46 year-old Arquette has gained a bit more than ten pounds since her performances in...