Doubt

Posted on April 7, 2009 at 8:00 am

Before movies, there were plays, and before plays there were stories told around the campfire. One of the deepest human impulses is the need to tell our stories in part because of the way they help us make sense of the world. Stories have a beginning, a middle and an end and stories have a purpose. Extraneous details are excluded and everything we are told is there to help us understand. The power of stories is that they provide something life cannot — certainty and a sense of control.

“Doubt” is a story that turns this upside down. The title refers not just to the question of proof of the ugly allegation at the heart of the story but to our own need for certainty and understanding in a world that is ambiguous and contradictory.

It takes place in 1964, a transitional moment just after the assassination of John F. Kennedy and in the middle of the Vatican II Ecumenical Council that would bring great change to the practice of Catholicism. We smile now as school principal Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) , comes down firmly against ball point pens and “Frosty the Snowman” because we know how small those incursions on tradition are in comparison to the upheavals of the late 1960’s. Sister Aloysius wears the heavy, formal religious habit modeled after Italian mourning garb of the 19th century, with a black bonnet enclosing her head so completely it might as well be blinders.

Sister Aloysius, named for the patron saint of youth, knows about mortal sins far more serious than pens and secular Christmas songs. She thinks, no, she knows that one of the most horrifying has been committed in her school. She knows, without a doubt, that the priest, Father Flynn (Philip Seymour Hoffman) has behaved inappropriately with a student. And he is not just any student; he is the first black child to enroll in the school.

Sister Aloysius is certain, but we are not, and the most compelling aspect of the movie, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play, is the way that it keeps us from any kind of certainty. Every time you think you’ve made up your mind who is right, another scene challenges you assumptions. By the time the boy’s mother (Viola Davis, in one of the most mesmerizing performances of the year) gives her point of view, the movie becomes something of a Rubik’s cube, twisting not just facts but values in both directions at once. Like life.

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Based on a play Drama

Spinning Into Butter

Posted on March 26, 2009 at 2:45 pm

Lowest Recommended Age:	Middle School
MPAA Rating:	Rated R for language
Profanity:	Very strong language including racial epithets
Alcohol/ Drugs:	Drinking and smoking
Violence/ Scariness:	Some violence
Diversity Issues:	A theme of the movie
Date Released to Theaters:	March 27, 2009

The best of intentions and a welcome willingness to engage on the touchiest issues is not enough to keep this movie from feeling more like a seminar than a story. It betrays its origins as a play, still talky and static. But its ideas are so provocative and its approach so sincere and constructive that it is worth a look.

Sarah Jessica Parker, far away from designer duds and trying to look serious and a little mousy, plays Sarah Daniels, the dean of a small liberal arts college with a genteel, Vermont campus. Some anonymous racist attacks are leveled at a new black student and there is disagreement within the faculty and administration about how to handle it. They schedules a campus-wide meeting, but the students are not invited to speak. A local news reporter (Mykelti Williamson) wants to cover the story but the administration is furious. In the middle of all of this is Sarah, who wants to explore the issue in a substantive and constructive way and acknowledges that she has some internal conflicts she is not proud of.

The title comes from the classic children’s story Little Black Sambo, now considered unacceptably racist. In that story, the tigers chase each other so fast that they spin into butter. Here, the way that the issue is addressed — or sidestepped — leads to a similar result, with everyone racing to avoid responsibility. Out of the best of intentions, at the beginning of the film, Sarah asks a student (the always-superb Victor Rasuk) to change his racial classification from NYrican to Puerto Rican to qualify for a scholarship. It is a good lead-in to a series of discussions, confrontations, and missed communications about America’s most sensitive and least-often honestly discussed issue. The best thing about this movie will be the conversations it inspires on the way home.

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Based on a play Drama Movies -- format

Black Stars and Box Office

Posted on October 24, 2008 at 10:00 am

Two thoughtful and provocative articles bookend one of most challenging questions in American culture — the role of race at the collision point of art and commerce. In The Washington Post, Neely Tucker writes about Stars on the Field but Shared Glory on Film — the way that biopics about African-American sports stars always seem to end up being about the relationship of the athletes to their white mentor/competitors. The classic Brian’s Song
was based on the memoir of Gale Sayers. But the movie pushed him to the sidelines — even the title was a reference to his teammate, Brian Piccolo, and the impact his death had on Sayers. The current release, The Express, like many films ostensibly about minority characters, spends as much or more time on a white character (the coach played by Dennis Quaid).

In the Washington Post, Tucker talks about the evolution of the minority in sports movie:

By the 1990s, the prevailing idea on screen about black athletes was mostly downbeat. It was about exploitation of vulnerable young black men to play for rich white colleges or pro teams; it was about white corruption and greed. There was a steady stream of these: “Above the Rim,” “Blue Chips,” “He Got Game” and the superb documentary “Hoop Dreams.”

But the interracial harmony story line began percolating in “The Hurricane,” in 1999, which featured an embittered black athlete and criminal turning toward the light. And in 2000 came Disney’s “Remember the Titans.”

It starred Denzel Washington as Boone at T.C. Williams High, taking over and integrating the team in 1971. In real life, the team played other integrated teams and roared to an undefeated, rarely-scored-upon state title. In the film, they play against all-white teams and Washington’s character withstands racist referees, school boosters and team mutinies to win the championship on a last-second, miracle play.

After “Titans,” which took in $115 million at the U.S. box office, more studios adopted the same formula: Revisit the civil rights era through a feel-good sports epic, based on a true story. Have some clearly identified white racists, some good white folks and a black hero, who is possessed of a greater morality, patience and ability. Show the whites helping in key moments, either with bureaucracy or running interference against racists. In the final reel, have the white and black main characters as close friends.

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Commentary

Why is TV So White? (Entertainment Weekly)

Posted on June 22, 2008 at 2:00 pm

Entertainment Weekly has a very important article that asks a very important question. Why is it that the only minority character to anchor a new series is Cleveland Brown — an animated character voiced by a white guy?
The show is a Family Guy spin-off called “The Cleveland Show.”
After a period of making a public effort to focus on diversity in their casting — kickstarted by an NAACP outcry over the white TV landscape in 1999 — the networks have clearly started to lose that focus, and not just when it comes to African-Americans. Today the current prime-time lineup, including fall’s 14 new scripted shows, is looking alarmingly pale. According to an Entertainment Weekly study of scripted-programming casts for the upcoming fall 2008 season, each of the five major broadcast networks is whiter than the Caucasian percentage (66.2 percent) of the United States population, as per the 2007 census estimate. And all of the networks are representing considerably lower than the Latino population percentage of 15.2 percent, with The CW — whose only lead Latina star, JoAnna Garcia, will be playing a white character named Megan Smith on Surviving the Filthy Rich — registering just 3.8 percent. After the quiet and unceremonious departure this winter of eight-season hit Girlfriends (the No. 15 show in all prime time among African-American audiences), The CW’s black comedy block (inherited from predecessor UPN) has shrunk to just two sitcoms: critical darling Everybody Hates Chris (No. 29 among African-Americans) and The Game (No. 7 among African-Americans), which have both been relegated to the dead zone known as Friday nights this fall.
***
“Grey’s Anatomy” creator Shonda Rhimes sees progress in her diverse cast and those of other established hits — namely Lost and Heroes. But she still cites room for improvement: ”Do I want to see any more shows where someone has a sassy black friend? No, because I’m nobody’s sassy black friend. I just want to see shows in which people get to be people and that look like the world we live in. The world is changing, and television will have to follow.” True enough: It feels downright regressive to have to point out that minorities can be stars too, at a time when Will Smith continues to dominate box offices, Oprah is the most powerful woman on television, and Barack Obama is running for the ultimate leading role (you know, of the free world).
The article ends on a note of hope:
olor-blind casting is something teen-focused networks seem to have down pat: Nary a show has passed through ABC Family or The N without an interracial coupling or a naturally integrated cast. (ABC Family’s Greek even has an interracial gay couple.) Those networks’ execs say it’s a simple matter of economics, that their Gen-Y viewers accept — nay, expect and demand — such a reflection of their multi-cultural lives. ”They’re completely color-blind,” ABC Family president Paul Lee says of younger viewers. ”We’ve done a lot of things wrong as a nation, but we’ve clearly done something right here. They embrace other cultures.”

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Television