An article in trade publication Deadline argued that white actors were now at a disadvantage compared to ethnic minority peers. That’s complete nonsense! Hollywood remains light years behind the ethnographic makeup of the US and industry leaders have, for years, used a variety of different excuses to hide their money-hungry, “safe” and downright racist decisions in casting actors of color for film and television roles.
Read MoreThree decades ago, the highest honor at the Academy Awards was given to a movie about a white passenger learning to love her black chauffeur. In 2019, the same award was given to a film about a white chauffeur learning to love his black passenger. We look at Hollywood’s obsession with fantasies of racial reconciliation.
Read MoreAmerican Spy, an excitingly sharp debut novel by the talented newcomer Lauren Wilkinson.
Spanning three decades and leapfrogging from New York to the Caribbean to the West African nation of Burkina Faso, this literary thriller leads us into unfamiliar territory. It portrays a little known slice of American interventionism and it shows us the workings of the intelligence community through the eyes of an African-American woman.
Read MoreWhen depictions of Virginia politicians in blackface surfaced this month, the New Yorkercontributor Teju Cole was unsurprised. “A white man of a certain age in the U.S.,” he reflects, “is found to have done something racist in his past; So any photograph of a man in blackface—or in any other offensive image—always indicates that “there’s a lot more where that came from.”
Read MoreAllegations have circled Robert Kelly for decades; Activist, filmmaker and writer Dream Hampton executive produced Surviving R. Kelly, a six-part docuseries focusing on Kelly's alleged victims and their family members. Hampton describes an "ecosystem" that has supported and enabled Kelly over the years — at the expense of black women.
Read MoreSpike Lee, possibly on the cusp of his first Oscar win for Best Director provides history and insight into his journey and origin as a filmmaker.
Read MoreA long-standing complaint of black fans of fantasy is that authors can imagine dwarves and elves and orcs, but not black characters. That was one origin point of Marlon James’s “Dark Star” trilogy, which he describes as “an African ‘Game of Thrones.’
Read MoreListened to this interview and saw the movie, which are a great 1-2 punch! Adam McKay provides great insight into what moved him to create this film and how he put it together. I suggest you listen to this interview as an appropriate appetizer to watching the movie!
Hamilton creator Lin-Manuel Miranda put former president Barack Obama in the booth for the remix to one of the songs from the hit Broadway play.
Read MoreShe spoke with Terry Gross about floating in the sky as Poppins, singing for Stephen Sondheim in 'Into the Woods,' and her audition for 'The Devil Wears Prada.'
Read More"In recent years, some scientists have begun to ask, can stories serve as a kind of brain scan? If a plot twist works by exploiting our biases and mental shortcuts, can observing the mechanics of a good story reveal something important about the contours of the mind?"
Read MoreAfro-Latin celebrities discuss their experiences in the entertainment industry.
Read MoreA black teenager sees a friend killed by a white police officer. That's the storyline of the new film "The Hate U Give." The director and young activists tell their stories.
People you know are getting paid to push products on social media. We’ll look at the rise of nano-influencers.
Read MoreCan you put a price on commercial success? Why don’t actresses talk more about how much they’re worth? And how can we all use our power to empower each other?
Read MoreAn excellent analysis of not only the brilliant writing of Batman Begins, but a very informative lesson in screenwriting structure.
Read More“I always say that if I were not a celebrity, I’d be invisible” said Viola Davis as she sat across from NPR’s Audie Cornish.
Freddie Mercury was one of the biggest musicians in the world in the 1970s and ’80s, but one person could still boss him around: Mary Austin, his one-time fiancée.
Read More“The Hate U Give,” “Blindspotting,” “Monsters and Men” and “Black Panther” … common dependence on the tropes of superhero stories and revenge fantasies, whether explicit or in disguise, suggests the difficulty of making reality-based cinema out of the history we’re currently living through.
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