NOTORIOUS

I thought it was preachy and melodramatic, which might've been O.K. had it not been tempered with so much hypocrisy sold as moral evolvement into "a man."

...Christopher calls his child's mother a bitch within earshot of his daughter, then tells her never to allow any man to call her that, to much thoughtful head-nodding and "mm-hmm's" in the audience.

I wanted to take a bath after that, it felt so gross...Seriously, people. What is WRONG WITH YOU?

So, to Biggie "They're all bitches except mine," and that made perfect moral sense to the people in the audience.

Even the preachiness was done wrong. It felt like a VH1 original movie, with BET values.

Jamal Woolard as Biggie, was the sole natural, in a sea of overacting!. The story itself, however, brought nothing new to the table. We already know all the behind the scenes stuff. There were no new revelations, here. Nothing made the making of this feel worth the effort.

I say, catch it on cable.

Now. I have a few rants I need to get off my chest.

I'll start with Angela. Bassett.

*sigh*

What in the world, happened to her? She's always been over-rated as an actor to me, but it seems like the older she gets, the more affected she gets. She plays EVERYTHING too broadly. It was to the point of making me feel like I'd wandered into a chitlin'-circuit play!

Angie, when it looks like you might permenantly injure your eyes and neck? "It's too much" is an understatement. PLEASE, for the love of your career, just.... take it down a few notches.

For those who are fans of hers, I do give her much props for having such a regal carriage and for turning down Monster's Ball, but I dare any fan to come here and name one movie, in which she didn't overract. Just name one subtle, nuanced, performance, people. I dare you.

My other rant is about this trailer, shown before the movie:



You know, I watched Laura Linney on Inside the Actor's Studio before I went to see this. I remember her saying she goes for scripts/movies that aren't "...written to be greenlit."

Obsessed was written to be greenlit. And worse yet, using a demographic that really doesn't need to be exploited any more than it already is, unashamedly using stereotypes saturated with very old racist and sexist beliefs.

It sickened me to hear all the young black women whoopping, hollaring, and telling their girlfriends that they couldn't wait to see this.

..Really, ladies?

It's Disclosure for the angry jealous black woman, and you can't wait for hollywood sell you MORE of the same sterotypical b.s. they've been inflicting upon you for decades?

REALLY?!

...The director's name is Steve Shill, no joke. And y'all wonder how BET lasted this long.

Coming back to Notorious for a second, I'd LOVE see some filmmaker honestly tackle all the esteem-damage black women have to go through, ultimately destroying the most vunerable, to the point of disrepair...



I could go off on a whole other tangent on why folks who think her music is sexually empowering are wrong... (It's the sexually-abused/discarded woman who's fierce in her assertion that she's nothing more than the best at sex as a defense mechanism, that's weakness not strength) but this post would be very long.

As I said, I didn't care for the film. I'm tired of thin characters, soap-opera stories, and TV-style film-making being given a pass because it's one of the few "black movies."
...We can do better, dammit.

PARENTS: Keep the kids away. Unless you want them to idolize this mess.

P.S. Want another reason why I blog about movies? Ebert and Roeper's replacements loved Notorious. *shudder*

P.P.S. The Wolverine trailer was quite nice. :)