All posts by Ben Daité

Steven Spielberg presents Obama ‘movie’

By Ben Daité | April 28, 2013 | Film, News | No comments

President Barack Obama poked fun at himself and his adversaries at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington.

He tickled his audience – who included actors Kevin Spacey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Claire Danes and South Korean singer Psy.

The president ended his speech playing a taped piece with Hollywood director Steven Spielberg who did a spoof claiming his new project would be a movie on the president called “Obama” starring Daniel Day-Lewis.

Mr Obama then appeared acting as if he were Day-Lewis preparing for the role.

Why She Can’t Resist and the Wrath of God – Temptation, by Tyler Perry

By Ben Daité | March 31, 2013 | Film, Reviews | No comments

Temptations_Tyler_Perry

Written and directed by Tyler Perry; director of photography, Alexander Gruszynski; edited by Maysie Hoy; music by Aaron Zigman; production design by Eloise C. Stammerjohn; costumes by Johnetta Boone; produced by Mr. Perry, Paul Hall and Ozzie Areu; released by Lionsgate. Running time: 1 hour 51 minutes.

WITH: Jurnee Smollett-Bell (Judith), Lance Gross (Brice), Kim Kardashian (Ava), Vanessa Williams (Janice), Robbie Jones (Harley), Renée Taylor (Ms. Waco Chapman), Ella Joyce (Sarah) and Brandy Norwood (Melinda).

The movie ‘polymath’ Tyler Perry has stepped up to the pulpit in his new Temptation. This film is perhaps Tyler Perry’s biggest stamp on his belief in conservative marriage and family structure.

There’s no doubt that Tyler Perry’s work has long proclaimed religion, thrusting Christian principles at the center of most of his films and triumphantly upholding those value systems in his movies.

But perhaps never have those biases been entrenched more so than in this floppy fable he has under his eloquent erudition decided single-handedly to call, “Temptation: Confessions of a Marriage Counselor.”

America’s Forgotten Black Cowboys of the Old West

By Ben Daité | March 22, 2013 | Film, Reviews | 1 Comment

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Quentin Tarantino’s Oscar-winning Western, Django Unchained, is one of relatively few Hollywood films depicting a black cowboy. In reality there were many, some of whose stories were borrowed for films starring white actors.

The most common image of the cowboy is a gun-toting, boot-wearing, white man – like John Wayne, or Clint Eastwood.

But the Hollywood portrayal of the Wild West is a whitewashed version of the reality. It is thought, by very conservative estimates, that about a quarter of all cowboys were black.

Like many people, Jim Austin – a college-educated, 45-year-old businessman – who hadn’t heard about the black presence in the Old West was flabbergasted at the truth.

‘Lincoln 2012′ – The Ugly Paternalistic Lies

By Ben Daité | January 12, 2013 | Film, Reviews | 1 Comment

lincolnposter

In many ways I am glad that this misfit of a film is devoid of any entertainment value. Hence, I am not afraid it will dilute the memory of the many slaves who fought and died for freedom either on their own or with white folks who believed in the common humanity of man.

I am sure that not many outside the circles of the Lincoln Fan Club would give a rat’s ass about this film. It is boring, soporific and goodness if you didn’t believe vampires existed, see this set in 1868 – the cold absence of sunlight might just change your mind.

vamlincoln Lincoln is an idealism of the history behind the abolition movement. And if this romanticism is done in order to feed into the energy of the larger framework of civil rights for Gays, Women and other Minority groups today, then I can perhaps comprehend the goal.

However, I fail to understand all of its other intentions.

Django Unchained – The Black, The Beautiful & Ev’thing Ugly

By Ben Daité | December 27, 2012 | Film, Reviews | 4 Comments

*** NO SPOILERS ***

djangounchained

American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors [Were] Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them.

Spike Lee (on VibeTV)

To which Prof. Michael Eric Dyson of Georgetown University & MSNBC responds (paraphrased):

Can’t be judging my book before you’ve read it.

This film on slavery in America is going down as a classic, whether you like it or not, and Spike Lee would have had something to do with it; because he came out and bashed it in his oftentimes bleeding emotions.

Quentin Tarantino may be ‘toying with Spike’s emotions’ but whether they are real or not, I hope it is not due to a reluctance to accept Tarantino, a white man, as a apt director of this mix of Blaxploitation and the Pastafied Western genre.

‘Life of Pi’ – A Scintillating Enchantment

By Ben Daité | December 8, 2012 | Film, News, Reviews | 1 Comment

Ang Lee wants to honor Yann Martel’s tone in the prize-winning 2001 novel, “Life of Pi,” as well as his narrative strategy, but perhaps filmmakers should stop using India as a source of higher spirituality — it’s a genteel form of exploitation and one that’s increasingly misleading. Where is the surging, high-tech, entrepreneurial narrative of the past twenty years?

Rachard Brody - The New Yorker

Welcome to Pi’s Ark! and soon enough Pi and a four hundred and fifty pound Bengal Tiger – a digital beast – are the only passengers aboard a safety boat in the middle of the South Pacific Ocean.

Pi’s family owned a zoo and had decided to move with some of the animals from India to Canada. But a storm wrecks the old Japanese freighter carrying them. The animals are washed out of the hold and flail around in the tumultuous seas. Pi falls into a lifeboat, and popping out from beneath a canvas covering, a tiger who owing to a clerical error, would be called Richard Parker.

Alex Cross, 2012 – Should You Stay Home?

By Ben Daité | November 7, 2012 | Film, Reviews | No comments

A homicide detective, played by Tyler Perry, is pushed to the brink of his moral and physical limits in Alex Cross. He tangles with a ferociously skilled serial killer who specializes in torture and pain.

Alex Cross is a film that is loosely based on James Patterson’s 12th novel, Cross, featuring the PhD-totting forensic psychologist. It seems to have missed the mark with most critics, however. For me, it has managed to seize quite an astonishing 4.8/10 rating on IMDB as of today – whichever way you look at it.

But indeed, “watching Tyler Perry strain his way through Alex Cross”, says Peter Debruge of Variety, was painful to behold. “The cross-dressing Madea seemed out of his depth playing the hard-boiled detective made famous by Morgan Freeman in Along Came a Spider and Kiss the Girls.”

Flight, 2012 – A Futile Exercise In Story Telling

By Ben Daité | November 3, 2012 | Film, Reviews | 1 Comment

FLIGHT – though simply a glib exercise in story telling, Hollywood is managing to make lots of money, chiefly because Denzel Washington has somehow become the cash cow in many of these releases. Having made more than $8 M in a day and half, Flight is set to rake in enough money to sail clear of its budget by the weekend.

But, it is not the money that bothers me; it is the applause in the theater when the credits rolled in. I thought it was a non-story, unfortunately some thought quite the opposite.

When it comes to the cinema nowadays, it is difficult to get some audiences to be abhorred by Hollywood’s trick of a film, when their very entertainment and night-out depend upon their not thinking they wasted their money.

Skyfall, 2012 – A Bulldog Of A British Movie

By Ben Daité | October 15, 2012 | Film, Reviews | No comments

*** BBC Review ***

Some critics have hailed it the best Bond ever. I couldn’t agree more. The latest James Bond film, Skyfall, is sizzling with a scintillating affair between 007, Bourne (not Legacy), Spooks and Home Alone.

This rendition of Bond is an awesome British bulldog of a movie – as one critic rightfully labels it – is a full blown triumph for Sam Mendes and the franchise and will go down as one of the best Bonds in recent memory.

Starring Daniel Craig in his third outing as 007 (and Javier Bardem, the villain Silva in Skyfall), the 23rd film in the franchise has been directed by Oscar winner Sam Mendes; who happens to have directed one of my greatest films ever, Revolutionary Road.

The Inglorious Documentary – 2016: Obama’s America – By Dinesh D’Souza.

By Ben Daité | September 30, 2012 | Film, Reviews | No comments

Prior to 2016, Forbes magazine – one time, a respected nonpartisan business magazine – in their October 2010 cover story went where no one had yet dared to go by asserting that Barack Obama was not only a foreigner; he was governing as a foreigner, with a foreigner’s agenda.

Even conservative business readers of Forbes were astonished by the lengthy article by the right-wing commentator Dinesh D’Souza (the co-director of 2016), who seriously argued that Obama’s political agenda had been shaped by Barack Hussein Obama, Sr. – a so called politically radical Muslim.

Obviously, D’Souza doesn’t know anything about the Kenyan politician and economist: a man who left Barack Obama when he was only two, and whom Obama saw only one other time in his life – when he was but ten. Dinesh D’Souza himself has never talked to Obama Sr. nor has he engaged Obama, Jr. in any conversation. How could he claim he knows the two?

The Future Of Sci-Fi – As Space Ambitions Shrink In Scale

By Ben Daité | September 10, 2012 | Film, Filmmaking, News | No comments

*** A BBC Review ***

Films suggest that our future is full of fantastically large spacecraft in galaxies far, far away. But the reality is that our ambitions in space are small – and seemingly getting smaller – says Quentin Cooper.

Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is.

Spaceships are really big too.

The first few lines, as you probably recognised, are from Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The other line about spaceships? That’s from pretty much every other off-world sci-fi movie of the last few decades. But it’s beginning to look like – at least for the foreseeable future – it’s wrong.

It’s tempting to blame the error on something that happened a long time ago in a cinema far, far away – the overwhelming opening shot of the first Star Wars film. That’s first as in the first one made and the first good one in the finished sequence. After the backstory has crawled by, Princess Leia’s (fairly sizeable) spaceship zips across the screen. Then behind it, with the speakers shaking the seats, comes the Imperial Star Destroyer which takes a full 12 seconds to rumble over our point of view. Twelve seconds – we’re into a whole new galactic scale of bigness.

[Podcast] Village Square Live’s Nollywood and Black Hollywood

By Ben Daité | September 8, 2012 | Africa, Nollywood, Reviews | No comments

Village Square Live hope to bridge the gap between the motherland, Africa, and her descendants in the Diaspora. Their approach is open minded and hope that people of African descent will one day merge, artistically, to tell their powerful and inspirational stories to an anxious viewing audiences everywhere.

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