Culturewatch

In Game Three of the Cleveland-Orlando NBA Eastern Conference Finals, with the Cavaliers trailing 77-70, announcer Doug Collins reached for an adequate descriptive term for Lebron James, and came up with: locomotive. On the very next play, James drove the middle and collided with Dwight Howard, Orlando’s all-league center, who has been described as “insanely … Read more

“Thank you, Doctor.” – Johnny Carson Tom Hale’s measured praise of First of the Year [http://www.democratiya.com/review.asp?reviews_id=257] ends up as a funeral oration for the paper. Not so fast. His review has a simple structure. First of the Month set out to be a (the?) new Partisan Review; between 9/11 and Iraq, it lost its way … Read more

Addressing the United States Congress in February 1990, newly-elected Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel said his “one great certainty” is that “consciousness precedes being, and not the other way around, as the Marxists claim.” It is this idea that is debated and ultimately upheld in Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll. Czechoslovakia’s Charter 77 movement and Velvet … Read more

“Are we still alive?” That’s the line incarnating the unexpectedly avant-garde challenge in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds. It’s when the film steps beyond the simple conventions of genre filmmaking—of being a movie about an invasion from Mars—and expresses our very contemporary concern with survival. Yes, this line speaks to post-9/11 consciousness. It gets … Read more

“Comprehension is not a requisite of cooperation.” – Cornel West making his Hollywood film debut in The Matrix Reloaded More people – including Black people – have seen The Matrix than have ever heard of Herman Sonny Blount. Blount was a pianist, composer, band leader and sci-fi visionary born in Birmingham, Alabama, almost a century … Read more

Now that hiphop culture has become the lingua franca of international media and business, it ironically keeps a class of Black Americans, especially youth, in isolation. That’s how hiphop preserves it source–the engine of its innovation and perpetuation and commerciality. This conclusion is unavoidable after perusing educational statistics or watching many of the current Dirty … Read more

A knowledgeable hiphop lover’s list of the best rap artists would not include Eminem, the 30-year-old white rapper (born Marshall Mathers III) from Detroit. Lacking Scarface’s sonority, Chuck D’s vision, Biggie’s fluency, L.L. Cool J’s flair, Slick Rick’s humor, Jay Z’s brilliance, Ice Cube’s astuteness, Rakim’s flow, Ice-T’s roguishness, Flavor Flav’s ingenuity, Snoop Dogg’s slyness, … Read more