2005 Most Anticipated Movies

Rather than look back on 2004 I'd rather look ahead. Happy New Year folks. Enjoy.

Here is my list of the most anticipated movies of 2005.

Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith: The final installment to the trilogy. No happy ending in this one folks. There will be a lot of death and destruction to go around.

Batman Begins: Warner Bros. reboots the Dark Knight with Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith: Doug Liman serves us up some eye candy in the form of Brad Pitt and Angela Jolie. They play a pair of assassins who are married to each other but one doesn't know what the other one does for a living. They end up being each other's assignment.

Sin City: Robert Rodriguez brings Frank Miller's graphic novel to life. Here's the cast: Jessica Alba, Rosario Dawson, Elijah Wood, Bruce Willis, Benicio Del Toro, Michael Clarke Duncan, Josh Hartnett, Michael Madsen, Jaime King, Brittany Murphy, Clive Owen, Mickey Rourke. I don't think they have enough stars in this movie.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire: As Harry grows older the stories get darker.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: They blow up Earth in the first 10 minutes of the movie, and then things get funny after that.

Fantastic Four: Avi Arad and Tim Story bring Marvel's first family to life. They went with a younger cast this time around.

Be Cool: Chili Palmer leaves movies and goes into the music business in this follow up to Get Shorty.

The Ring 2: The story picks up six months after the horrifying events that terrorized Rachel Keller and her son Aidan in Seattle. To escape her haunting memories, Rachel takes Aidan and moves to the small coastal community of Astoria, Oregon, to start fresh. However, Rachel’s resolve quickly turns to dread when evidence at a local crime scene—including an unmarked videotape—seems eerily familiar. Rachel realizes that the vengeful Samara is back and more determined than ever to continue her relentless cycle of terror and death..

Ice Harvest: A dim lawyer attempts a Christmas Eve crime, hoping to swindle the local mob out of some money. But his partner, a strip club owner, might have different plans for the cash. directed by Harold Ramis.

Honorable mention: Spy Hunter - It's the Rock for goodness sakes. Come on you know you smell what he's cookin.

Fringe Thursday 12-30-04

Marvel's What If Series is making a comeback. Here are some titles that Marvel has decided to explore.

What If Aunt May Had Died Instead Of Uncle Ben


What If Dr Doom Had Become The Thing


What If General Ross Had Become The Hulk


What If Jessica Jones Had Joined The Avengers


What If Karen Page Had Lived


What If Magneto Had Formed The X-Men With Professor X


Speaking of Marvel Avi Arad is just too busy these days. Here are just a couple of films he's working on.

Iron Fist, The Black Widow, Deathlok, Sub-Mariner, The Hands of Shang-Chi, Iron Man, X-Men 3, Ghost Rider, Luke Cage, Fantastic Four, Man-Thing.

He's really trying to bring the Marvel Universe to life. Now only if I could introduce him to J. Michael Straczynski.

Hip Hop Wednesday 12-29-04

Over 30 and still relevant


DeLaSoul are over 30 years old. Can you believe they are 30 years old and still making hip hop?

Big ups to Panama Jackson for hitting the nail on the head.

I am over 30 and I still listen to hip hop. I always thought I would be more into jazz as I got older cause that's what I thought grown folks did. But turns out that is not the case. Granted I am disappointed by the state of the music but I still find myself looking for the artists that I can relate to. No one thirty years old is going to relate to Chingy and if you do there's something wrong with you. But if you're listening to artists like Mos Def or The Roots there's something you can still appreciate about hip hop. I use those two as prime examples but there are countless others out there who are still keeping the Spirit of 88' alive.

2004 Best and Worst Movies

Top Ten best



Garden State - A really good debut film for Zach Braff. Great script and good soundtrack. He won't get an Oscar nod but he deserves one. One of the best love stories I've seen since Lost in Translation.

Sideways - Real characters and good script. Paul Giamatti deserves an Oscar nod.

Kill Bill Vol. 2 - More talk less action. The result...What do you think it's QT fool.

Primer - You have to watch this movie at least three times before some things sink in.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - From the mind of Charlie Kaufman comes a new age love story. A good date movie.

Closer - I've got two words that describe this movie. Emotional Violence. This movie convinced me that Julia Roberts can act.

Hero - Visually stunning. Kickass action scenes.

The Incredibles - Best animated movie of the year.

Spartan - It's David Mamet. Need I say more?

Dogville - The most violent movie of the year. You will feel something after seeing this movie. Whether it be good or bad really depends on what you think of America.

Top Five Worst:

Torque - Icecube on a bike? Nah.
Twisted - I saw the ending coming a mile away..
Scooby-Doo 2 - Why lord why?
Van Helsing - Big budget, Big disappointment.
Troy - David Benioff left the Gods out of his screenplay. Big mistake.

Honorable Mentions: Spider-Man 2, Hellboy, The Punisher, Man on Fire, Dodgeball, Fahrenheit 9/11, METALLICA: Some Kind of Monster, Anchorman, Collateral, Ray, Shaun of the Dead, Infernal Affairs, Team America: World Police, Ocean's Twelve, The Motorcycle Diaries.

Oh sweet Amber

Ooh then she holds my hand
And I lie to get a smile
And she squeezes tighter
I still lie to get a smile

-Sweet Amber
by Metallica

Amber Frey has a book deal. It should be titled "How I banged a killer."

Is it me or is this just wrong. This woman slept with a married man who turned out to be a killer and now she's cashing in by writing a book? How much you want to bet that this book will be a best seller with the Walmart crew?

Ok she says she didn't know he was married and he probably lied to her. They met in November 20, 2002 but stopped seeing each other in January of 2003.

Frey's attorney says her book is a "story of courage in crisis" that "will inspire others who have been betrayed to fight back for truth and justice."

Heh.

More Red State Madness

Before I bid you guys a Happy X-Mas and a Merry New Year I wanted to leave you guys with a little RED STATE MADNESS.

Jacqueline Duty is suing Russell High School in Lexington, KY for damages resulting in the amount of $50,000. She was told to leave her prom because of her dress.

I think she should have been allowed to wear the dress to her prom. And I also think that if anyone was offended by her expression of her Southern heritage, they should feel free to point out to her that her ancestors lost the Civil War.

Her lawyer said Duty lost many scholarships because she was portrayed as a racist after the incident. Duty's mother added that her daughter graduated near the top of her class in May.

Good for her she graduated at the top of her class but here's the thing. If she was so smart she would understand that the confederate flag symbolizes an society that favored slavery and degredation of black people. That's sounds pretty racist to me.

She should have went to Cary Christian Academy.

William Jelani Cobb wrote a great article one what Cary Christian Academy is doing to history.

Happy Holiday's folks, drink em if ya got em.

Fringe Thursday 12/23/04

Here are a couple of movies that will be getting an American "touch up".


Oldboy is a film that has already been released in South Korea. It will be released in the States in 2005. The premise goes as follows:

An average man is kidnapped and imprisoned in a hotel room for 15 years without explanation. He then is released, equipped with money, a cellphone and expensive clothes. As he strives to explain his imprisonment and get his revenge, he soon finds out that not only his kidnapper has still plans for him, but that those plans will serve as the even worse finale to 15 years of imprisonment.

The premise alone is interesting to me. Based on what I've read on the web this is probably one of the most violent movies to come out of South Korea. Check out the trailer here.


Infernal Affairs was released last year by Miramax and will be remade by Martin Scorsese under the title The Departed. The movie will star Matt Damon and Leonardo DiCaprio. I got a chance to see the original last year and it was just incredible. The premise goes as follows:

The film follows the parallel lives a cop who secretly reports to ruthless Triad crime boss; and an undercover police officer who poses as a Triad member in the crime boss's gang. These two sleeper agents live underground for a decade before a series of mistakes clues in all the wrong people as to what's going on and each mole is ordered to root out the double agent--which in both cases happens to be themselves.

Check out the trailer here.

Hip Hop Wednesday 12/22/04

"What's beef? Beef is when you make your enemies start your Jeep, Beef is when you roll no less than thirty deep, Beef is when I see you, Guaranteed to be an ICU."

-Biggie Smalls

Donricardo Sebastian was shot over some beef in the parking lot of Barry’s nightclub in Rhode Island, on December 3rd 2004. This was the beginning of the end for Hip Hop night at Barry's Club. Police have been sent to Barry's at least 66 times on Thursdays alone, resulting in 30 arrests. Thursday is hip hop night.

The Warwick Board of Public Safety wants to ban Hip Hop and rap music events at Barry's Club. Hip-Hop seems to draw a very violent crowd. We're just not going to put up with it," said Michael F. Ryan, chairman of the Warwick Board of Public Safety.

Donricardo Sebastian has a criminal record going back to 1999 (for shooting someone), and he is a resident of Connecticut. According to the police the shooter is from Massachusetts, the shooter is still at large.

Is it really the music? Then what about what happened in Ohio last week? It wasn't hip hop music they were listening to when Dimebag Darrell got shot.

The ACLU has a problem with this situation . I guess their beef has something to do with free speech. This isn't really about the music, this about outsiders coming into this community and disrupting it. The people involved in the December 3rd incident were not from Rhode Island.

This isn't about the music as much as it is about club security. This should be more about the police keeping tabs on who comes into their jurisdiction and that means not just on Hip Hop night. Getting rid of Hip Hop night is a quick fix. Do these people think that if they ban these type of events it will stop people from coming in and acting the fool?

I understand that the people within this community want peace but censoring a certain type of music is not going to solve the problem.

Red State madness

Normally I would post a picture of Lisa Montgomery (36), but this woman is just too damn ugly and I just don't feel the need to do it.

If you haven't heard by now Lisa Montgomery is accused of strangling Bobbie Jo Stinnett (23) and cutting the fetus out of her womb. Recently she was caught in Kansas.

It's amazing that this all started on a message boards.

Revisionist History

There has been talk about about President Lincoln's sexuality.

C.A. Tripp has written a book. "The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln," In this new book, Tripp says early biographers of Lincoln, including Carl Sandburg, sensed Lincoln's homosexuality.

In the preface to the original multi-volume edition of his acclaimed 1926 biography, Sandburg wrote: "Month by month in stacks and bundles of fact and legend, I found invisible companionship that surprised me. Perhaps a few of these presences lurk and murmur in this book."

Sandburg also wrote that Lincoln and Joshua Speed had "streaks of lavender, spots soft as May violets." Mr. Tripp said that references to Lincoln possible homosexuality were cut in the 1954 abridged version of the biography. Mr. Tripp maintains that other writers, including Ida Tarbell and Margaret Leech, also found evidence of Lincoln homosexuality but shied away from defining it as such or omitted crucial details.

It is a known fact that Lincoln slept with a man by the name of Joshua Speed for four years. Lincoln and Speed wrote to each other for many years you can read some of their letters here. During frontier times men had to share beds. But come on folks FOUR YEARS? They couldn't find another bed during four years? Sounds fishy to me.

Thomas Jefferson fathered black children with a woman by the name of Sally Hemings but was still a slave owner. Hard concept to accept huh? For many years this was disputed but based on DNA evidence gathered in 1998 the claim was given some credence. The Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation issued a report in January 2000 concluding that there is a strong likelihood that Thomas Jefferson was the father of at least one and perhaps all the children of Sally Hemings.

In May 2002 the Monticello Association (descendants of Thomas Jefferson) voted to not admit descendants of Sally Hemings into their organization. The decision came after their careful review of all available information resulting in the conclusion that there was not sufficient evidence to prove Jefferson fathered Hemings' children.

Now keep in mind the decendants of Sally Hemings and President Jefferson's union fought for many years to be accepted into this club and in the end they got what they wanted sort of.

Fringe Thursday 12/16/04

Batman Begins comes out June 17, 2005 but you can see the new trailer here. The trailer looks good, it has a darker tone similar to the first two Tim Burton films.




Marvel Comics has just released "What If Classic Vol. 1 TPB." On sale now at Midtown Comics. For years I've been calling Marvel asking them to put this out in TPB (trade paperback) I'm glad all my phone calls to Marvel paid off.

Speaking of What If's AllHipHop.com has an interesting What If story What If Suge Knight never started Death Row records.

Hip Hop Wednesday 12/15/04

Allhiphop.com does some Q&A with Nelly

Loon leaves Bad Boy. Y'all remember Loon. Back in Feburary he got out on bail for attempted murder. But then the charges were dropped in September.

Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five get snubbed. By the Rock N Roll hall of fame. This kind of sucks if you ask me. I mean U2 is great in their own right but they are not the innovators that Grandmaster Flash & Co. are, just think about it Grandmaster Flash is credited with developing a series of techniques: "cutting" (moving between tracks exactly on the beat), "back-spinning" (manually turning records to repeat brief snippets of sound), and "phasing" (manipulating turntable speeds) — in short, creating the basic vocabulary which DJs continue to follow even today.

Maybe this is the reason why there should be two different Hall of Fame's. One for Hip Hop the other for Rock.

NAACP Where do we go from here?

In order to provide some perspective on Kweisi Mfume recent resignation from the NAACP I decided to provide some background history.

Combining the white philanthropic support that characterized Booker T. Washington's accommodationist organizations with the call for racial justice delivered by W. E. B. Du Bois's militant Niagara Movement, the NAACP forged a middle road of interracial cooperation.

The Niagara Movement was the pre-cursor to the NAACP

After the Niagara Movement disbanded in 1910.

Ida Wells-Barnett, W.E.B. DuBois, Henry Moscowitz, Mary White Ovington, Oswald Garrison Villiard, William English Walling led the "Call" to renew the struggle for civil and political liberty

The first president of the NAACP was a white man by the name of Moorfield Storey, a white constitutional lawyer and former president of the American Bar Association. The writer and diplomat James Weldon Johnson became the association's first black secretary in 1920. Louis T. Wright, a surgeon, was named the first black chairman of its board of directors in 1934.

And now we jump to 2004 and Kweisi Mfume stepping down as President of the NAACP. So where does the organization go from here?

Personally I feel the NAACP needs an over haul and a name change. The NAACP needs to make a lot of decisions as far as its direction is concerned. The NAACP must prove it's relevance to today's youth. There must be a bridge built between lower-income minorities and the middle-class. To quote Lester Kenyatta Spence "The NAACP is using mid 20th Century methods to deal with 21st Century problems."

Re: Preaching God, With Profanity

My colleague Nominal Me posted an article about Spirituality in Hip-Hop.

He should have consulted me on this topic before he singled out Kanye West. I would have informed him that spirituality has always been apart of hip hop going back as far artists like DMX, PM Dawn, Me Phi Me, KRS-One, Nas, Tupac, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony (remember the Crossroads).

Hip hop has always had a spiritual element to it check out these lyrics. And judge for yourself.



DMX - The Prayer IV

"Father God I am just learning how to pray, so bear with me First I thank you for the life of everyone that's here with me. Then I thank you for the love you give me, why? I don't know; I don't deserve it, and it hurts inside Many a nights I cried, and called your name out loud But didn't call you when I was doin good, I was too proud. And STILL you gave me love, I wasn't used to that, most of the people that gave me love, they ended up takin it back. That's somethin new to me, so I'm askin you for time to adjust. Let me make it there, I will be one you can trust What I stand for, I put my life on, I DO!
I guess what I'm askin is - show me how to stand for you.




Nas - Heaven

If Heaven was a mile away, And you could ride by the gates. Would you try to run inside when it opens would you try to die today? Would you pray louder finally believing His power? Even if you couldn't see, but you could feel would you still doubt him? How would you start acting?



Tupac - Only God can judge me

Oh my lord. Tell me what I'm livin' for
Everybodies droppin' Got me knockin' on heaven's door
And all my memories Of seeing brothas bleed
And everybody grieves. But still nobody sees. Recollect your thoughts. Don't get caught up in tha mix. Cause the media is full of dirty tricks. Only God can Judge me....

Those are just several examples.

Dirty Debi update.

The Tampa temptress "Dirty" Debi Lafave is using the insanity defense and pleading not guilty to the charge that she had sex with a 14 year old boy.

Star Banner's Rick Cundiff breaks it down perfectly in this article.

This was my favorite part:

"The boy, Kayan told investigators, “could be very arrogant and rude to me and to other students. He could be very annoying, but he is very intelligent.”

Just goes to show ya that women fall for that type no matter what age they are.

"Lafave and the boy got caught when the cousin's mother became suspicious about seeing the boy in Ocala with an unknown woman. She called the boy's mother, who complained to Temple Terrace police."

See this is why I don't involve family in my business cause family always tells and it always gets back to your mom.

21 Baltimore cops file lawsuit

21 current and former African-American Baltimore police officers have filed a federal class-action suit alleging discrimination in Baltimore, Maryland. The 21 officers allege the department condoned a hostile workplace, blocking black officers from promotion, providing uneven discipline and retaliating against officers who speak out against discrimination.

It's interesting that African-Americans have to still deal with this type of thing til this day.

If you want to ask this question to the acting police commissioner Leonard Hamm please feel free to call his office the number is:
410-396-2020.

While you are at it please feel free to ask him why they fired the black commissioner Kevin Clark?

Hip-Hop Wednesday 12/8/04

Queensbridge's own Street Disciple Nas has released a double album.


Some say it is not his best work but it is good. I've always felt that Nas as an artist never really reached his full potential. Instead he went mainstream and put out work that reinforced thug life all in the name of keeping it real. What people don't understand is that Escobar was a character and not who Nas really is. He's always had a positive element to his music hopefully this double album will deliever more of a message that takes us back to his debut Illmatic.




Also in other news Kanye West was nominated for 10 grammys. It seems as though Hip Hop music has reached a new height. Although while the genre has gotten a tad bit bloated like rock in the late eighties there are always bright spots. Kanye West is one of those rare MCs (note the use of the term MC and not rapper yes there is a difference) that takes the genre to a new level. Last year Outkast won album of the year with the Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. I wonder if Kanye West can pull it off. He's only up against: Ray Charles, Alicia Keys, Usher and Greenday. Stiff competition indeed.

Interracial couple harassment

Taye Diggs and his Tony award winning wife Idina Menzel have been getting harassed lately.

Diggs, 34, swapped vows with Menzel, 33, in January 2003. The native New Yorkers first met in 1996 when they costarred together in the Broadway smash Rent.

Authorities do not yet have a suspect, but it's believed that more than one person was responsible for the notes. Investigators are trying to trace the letters, which were postmarked from three different locations: New York City, Philadelphia and a town in Ohio.

This is the line that makes me think it's a black woman at the bottom of this:

Diggs, meanwhile, is in Canada shooting a movie.

Or maybe it's the people that were behind this.

Why does do interracial couples offend people? Afterall aren't we in the year 2004? It's not like getting married to person of another race is against the law.

The New Avengers

Marvel comics has decided to revamp the Avengers. Here's the new lineup: Captain America, Wolverine, Spiderman, Spiderwoman, Luke Cage, Sentry, Iron Man. And a mystery character to be announced.

New Avengers #1 is available at newsstands right now.

Congratulations TJ.

Sometimes in this life dreams come true. And if you're lucky you get to see it happen. Yesterday TJ Allard won job on "Good Day Live" to be a New York correspondent for the show.

Nominal Me has posted a more in depth interview with him on his blog.

Congrats TJ. You took this victory in stride with a humilty and dignity. We are all proud of you.