What IS a BLACK Movie? 50 Most Influential Black Films of All Time

[CrimsonTide4]

This is from E! Online and briefly touches on the love scenes of our Black actors and actresses.

Can't a Brother Get Some Love?

I hope I'm not ruining anything when I tell you there's no full-frontal nudity in Full Frontal.

No compromising shots of Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt, Catherine Keener or even Blair Underwood. Actually, David Duchovny comes closest to exposing himself...but you'll just have to see for yourself. I can tell you that after screening it last week, I was giddy for the rest of the day, because it's simply so unusual: Steven Soderbergh's Full Frontal is a smart movie about the movies.

Afterward, I couldn't shake one of Frontal's most salient observations about black actors in Hollywood. Underwood plays an actor being interviewed by Roberts about being a black actor in L.A. The role wasn't originally written that way.

"It was not written black," Underwood says. "Steven said feel free--write down notes, ideas, things you want to say, statements you want to make. The ideas that were on paper, they felt too realistic, too heavy-handed for this kind of comedy."

So, Underwood turned to former Yale professor D Knowledge (Derrick Gilbert) to help him compose a poem/rap that would encompass the history of the black experience on film--notable for its lack of lovin'. It's a showstopper.

An excerpt:

It's the American way, Wesley.
Be cute, and still save the world.
Yes we will, Will.
Go from boy in the 'hood to Man of Honor.
Show 'em the money now, Cuba.
Give 'em funnies like Chris Rock or Tucker or just cool.
He be anybody like Denzel. But wait.
He ain't even really getting no lovin'.
Like Sidney before him and whoever after him, romancin' and
dancin' with a Maurice passion ain't in the script's equation.
But can even Mr. Washington briefly be seen kissing a
Pretty Woman underneath a Pelican Moon?

"Even though it indicts the film industry, it comes from a very human place," says Knowledge, now at the University of Michigan. "You can't even see Danny Glover kiss his wife, while Mel Gibson hooks up with whoever. Can't a brother get some love?"

You'd think a brother could, in this movie at least, which is why I wanted to ask Soderbergh, at Frontal's premiere, how he could include such a poem, then later, when Underwood gets the chance to bump uglies with his lover, Keener, choose to shoot them hazy and from a distance--they are, frankly, two amorphous forms who could be any race or sex.

I would have asked, movie fans, but Soderbergh's chauffeured Town Car stopped at the theater's front door instead of the press line. So, I guess we'll never know.

Also from E! Online:
Another Mystery, Man: Austin Powers, as played by Mike Myers has shagged every one of his birds, from Elizabeth Hurley to Heather Graham, but why doesn't he touch Foxxy Cleopatra (Beyoncé Knowles) in the dark in Goldmember? Strange, huh?