get it real

Black Directors Look Beyond Their Niche
By GENE SEYMOUR
IT’S been 10 years since Spike Lee, entrepreneur, provocateur and role model for aspiring directors of color, declared in The New York Times that it was an era of unprecedented possibility for African-American filmmakers. At the tail end of the 1990s there was plenty of evidence backing Mr. Lee’s optimism.
Beginning in 1991, a year that had impressive debuts from disparate black directors like John Singleton (“Boyz N the Hood”), Carl Franklin (“One False Move”) and Julie Dash (“Daughters of the Dust”), it seemed as though each successive year yielded promising starts from African-American talents: Albert and Allen Hughes ( “Menace 2 Society,” 1993), Darnell Martin (“I Like it Like That,” 1994), F. Gary Gray (“Friday,” 1995), Kasi Lemmons (“Eve’s Bayou,” 1997) and Malcolm D. Lee (“The Best Man,” 1999).Varying degrees of critical acclaim and, most important, financial success came in the wake of these films, solidifying Hollywood’s consciousness of a lucrative African-American audience for films while promising a sweeping, solid and diversified presence of African-American talent in cinema for years to come.
But at the close of yet another decade, the promise still awaits fulfillment. Though some of the aforementioned directors have met or exceeded most of the critical expectations shown in their debuts, they have had mixed-to-sporadic success in getting their subsequent projects into theaters.
“All those people have done stunning, brilliant work,” said Warrington Hudlin, a producer (“House Party”) and co-founder of the Black Filmmaker Foundation. “But the appetite for and expectations of what sells for black filmmakers remains very narrow. It’s always been about what sells, which is as true for mainstream movies as it is for African-American movies.”
You could now literally count on one hand (using two fingers) the number of black directors who can get their projects made and distributed at a steady rate. One is Mr. Lee, whose 19th theatrical feature, the World War II story “Miracle at St. Anna” was released last fall, while the other is Tyler Perry, the Atlanta-based, one-man multimedia conglomerate whose latest blend of low comedy and moral uplift, “Madea Goes to Jail,” is set for release on Feb. 20.
Momentum for African-American cinema, it would seem, has been curtailed or at least stalled in part by studio executives’ preconceptions that black films are “niche product” with limited appeal. Yet at the same time black directors and producers still express optimism that they not only can continue to cultivate their black audiences but also can reach out further and wider to the mainstream, especially when contemplating Will Smith’s all-but-unchallenged supremacy as a box-office draw throughout the world as well as the impact of Barack Obama’s impending presidency.
Ms. Martin’s career trajectory in some ways reflects the erratic fortunes of the African-American filmmaker. Her smart, sexy romantic comedy, “I Like It Like That” won the 1994 New York Film Critics Circle award for best first film. And “Cadillac Records,” her musical history of Chess Records, the rhythm-and-blues label, was released last month to respectable reviews and box-office returns. But the intervening years were dominated by television work and one very frustrating film experience, “Prison Song,” which never went past the audience-testing stage in 2001.
Ms. Martin places much of the blame for her sporadic career in the feature-film business on the conflicts she had over the promotion of “I Like It Like That.” “They insisted on making me the poster child for the film, the ‘female Spike Lee,’ and I said, ‘Look, I don’t mind that. I’m proud to be a black woman director, and I want that out there.’ But we’d gotten some great reviews, and I felt that was what they should be leading with. If it had been a white director, they would have emphasized the reviews, but instead they were trying to get people to see it only because I was black.
“So I fought pretty hard over that. Actually it was more like a head-on collision. And I was told, ‘If you continue like this, you will never work again.’ And I thought, ‘That’s O.K., I paid off my student loans, what’re they going to take away from me?’ So I was getting known for being someone you couldn’t control.”
She also held on to a stubborn selectivity. “I was offered a lot of things that were about women of color, but I didn’t know yet how to make those things good. It was easier for me, at the time, to make things like, say, the pilot for ‘Oz,’ where the harder things were those that seemed like a more obvious fit, like ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God,’ ” she said, referring to her 2005 made-for-TV adaptation of the Zora Neale Hurston novel. “Loved the book, but it had been a challenge for me to make this inner story work.”
The one movie she was involved in during the 14-year break — “Prison Song,” a “hip-hop opera” with the rapper Q-Tip in 2001 — ended badly too, once again, in her view, a victim of pigeonholing.
Its fate was sealed, Ms. Martin recalls, when it was tested for audiences at the Magic Johnson Theaters in Los Angeles, which draws predominantly black audiences. “I told the studio, ‘If you test it there, it will go no further because it is an art film.’ Sure enough, the audiences didn’t get it; the movie never made it to wider distribution.”
The years of exile from the feature-film world, however, have had their benefits. The television work, Ms. Martin said, sharpened her directing chops and helped her mature. Life itself intervened too, helping her play the industry game. “Being a mother, I know now there are ways you can fight for things and get your way without being so overt about it.”
Life intervened as well for Gina Prince-Bythewood, who first achieved fame in 2000 with the romantic comedy “Love & Basketball” but did not direct another movie until 2008, “The Secret Life of Bees,” based on Sue Monk Kidd’s coming-of-age novel in which a white girl bonds with a trio of beekeeping African-American sisters in the 1960s.
“I had two boys, so that took some time, and then I helped produce my husband’s film,” she said, referring to the screenwriter Reggie Rock Bythewood’s 2003 film, “Biker Boyz.” “And I developed two different projects that didn’t go through, one of which was the adaptation of the Wally Lamb book, ‘I Know This Much Is True,’ and that was a shock when that didn’t come about.”
But some self-imposed pressures also weighed on Ms. Prince-Bythewood. Though the critical acclaim and box-office success of “Love & Basketball” brought many scripts her way, “you still felt that as a black director, you had to prove yourself even harder, no matter what people were saying about this great renaissance of black film.”
She is slightly more optimistic now in the afterglow of the success of “The Secret Life of Bees,” Which earned nearly $40 million. Except for Tyler Perry’s last, “The Family That Preys,” no film directed by an African-American has performed better at the box office in the past year.
“I’m getting scripts, probably not as many as you think,” she said. “But I’m now focused on writing and rewriting something that I was working on before ‘Secret Life of Bees’ came my way two years ago, and I know now that I can get my script read by everybody, and the doors will be opened wider.”
For that Ms. Prince-Bythewood can thank the true African-American powerbroker in the film world, one more powerful than Mr. Perry or Mr. Lee: a onetime rap-music performer and television sitcom star named Will Smith. He, along with his wife, the actress Jada-Pinkett Smith, and his African-American producing partner, James Lassiter, produced “The Secret Life of Bees.”
“Will Smith has already made a huge difference, and he’s really just begun,” said Bob Berney, a movie production and marketing analyst who once headed Picturehouse, the now-defunct independent film distributor (and consultant for “Cadillac Records”). “He now has the clout to green-light whatever he wants to make, and he has the power to pick and choose whomever he wants to direct.”
Though the success of movies like “The Secret Life of Bees” perpetually makes black filmmakers more hopeful about their prospects, African-American films still have barriers to break. “The biggest,” Mr. Berney said, “is outside the U.S. where the perception remains within the industry that the international audience for African-American product is close to zero. And yet when you consider the global popularity of hip-hop culture and by extension, black culture, you have to wonder whether this perception comes from outmoded thinking from international buyers who aren’t in tune with today’s audience.”
There are also those who wonder whether the paradigm for success for African-Americans in film has changed to the point where the very notion of “black-oriented product” needs revising.
“Twenty, even 10 years ago, the only way you could see actors like Denzel Washington or Cuba Gooding or even Will Smith was in an African-American movie,” said Zola Mashariki, senior vice-president for production at Fox Searchlight, which distributed “The Secret Life of Bees.” “Now you find that almost every mainstream movie has a black presence, whether in a big-budget action movie or even a comedy geared towards mass audiences.
“So to some extent, that’s a foregone conclusion. What this means for movies whose core target audience is black is that we have to give them something that they’re not getting in the mainstream, which are stories that reflect back their own direct experience, and I think that’s something Tyler Perry has done. This doesn’t mean you’re not hoping for some crossover success. You always want that. But you don’t want that core audience to feel left out, that the movie’s not speaking to their own lives.”
The “Obama factor” could have an impact too.
“I don’t think it means there’s necessarily going to be this flood of black films,” Ms. Prince-Bythewood said. “But I think it will help retrain audiences to be more open to different kinds of black experience. The fact that the most prominent family in America over the next four years will be a black family will help broaden the perception among nonblack audiences that they’re just like them in many cases. And this can only help in terms of crossover, which is something that needs to happen to take African-American film to the next step.”
Yet Ms. Prince-Bythewood and other black directors still temper such utopian thoughts. In hard times like these, struggling to transcend conventional boundaries can be a color-blind struggle. “You could get caught up by racism in Hollywood and everywhere else,” said Lee Daniels, a producer of “Monster’s Ball” and whose adaptation of Sapphire’s novel, “Push,” about the struggles of a Harlem teenager for self-respect, will have its premiere at the Sundance Film Festival this month. “But it’s as difficult for me as it is for white independent filmmakers to get stuff made. So it’s not about black or white, and the minute you wrap yourself up in these concepts, you’ve put yourself out of the running. I just look for material that’s truthful, and I have to believe that if I can identify with it, the audience will too.”

DANCE!!

First, Sadler’s Wells; Then, the World
By ROSLYN SULCAS
LONDON
IN September 2005, a year after Alistair Spalding was appointed artistic director and chief executive of Sadler’s Wells theater here, he was in his theater for a performance by the recently formed Forsythe Company. The audience response to William Forsythe’s work was more nonplussed than enthusiastic, and as the group around Mr. Spalding discussed this reaction during intermission, he remained silent. Then he said, “This is why we need to program more Forsythe.”
That counterintuitive thinking says much about Mr. Spalding, 51, a tall, fair man whose reticent manner belies his role in having transformed Sadler’s Wells into what may well be the most important dance house in the world.
When he took over in 2004, the theater was in debt, and its programming had suffered from years of changing and shaky direction. Mr. Spalding has turned matters around by taking risks, trusting his instincts and continually supporting and producing new work. This approach, the antithesis of the market-research-driven philosophy that motivates most American theaters, has met with both financial and popular success.
Mr. Spalding has a rare combination of talents and inclinations. He is a passionate dance lover ready to take on difficult and abstruse work, but he also has a nose for putting together unexpected combinations of artists in high-profile collaborations. He thinks that dance can encompass a broad range of forms (he started an annual hip-hop festival and regularly presents flamenco and tango) and knows a good money-making show when he sees one.
“What has made Sadler’s Wells stand out have been the more offbeat, innovative things,” Mr. Spalding said recently in his modest office, adorned with photographs of Pina Bausch and the Frankfurt Ballet.
“The theater is now financially stable,” he added, “but that’s not because we’ve been more prudent.”
Unlike most major European houses Sadler’s Wells — the latest in a line of theaters that began with Dick Sadler’s musick house in the 1680s — does not depend solely on government subsidies. The theater, which was the first home of the Royal Ballet (then called the Vic-Wells Ballet), receives about $3 million a year from Arts Council England, which distributes governmental money largely raised by the national lottery. But that is just 13 percent of Mr. Spalding’s $22 million budget for the 2008-9 season.
Since 2004 the theater has raised 70 percent of its income from ticket sales; the rest comes from fund-raising and hall rental. (Sadler’s Wells also makes about $750,000 a year at the Peacock Theater, which it rents from the London School of Economics to present more commercial shows in long runs.)
Mr. Spalding’s manner is so understated that it is easy to miss the force of his ambition. “Alistair is very mild-mannered and diplomatic on the surface,” said Debra Craine, the dance critic of The Times of London. “But actually he is ruthlessly effective. It’s just in the most appealing package imaginable.”
Much else about Mr. Spalding is not immediately apparent. He grew up in a working-class household in Hertfordshire with little exposure to the arts and left school at 16. He was a clerk in a legal office for some years before going to college, and he taught at elementary schools for six years before deciding to work in the arts. He found a job programming film, classical music and visual arts at a new theater in Crawley, northeast of London, and soon added dance to the mix.
“I realized it spoke to me more than anything else,” he said.
In 1994 he moved to the South Bank Center in London, where he attracted the notice of dance fans by introducing what he called “a lot of Belgian stuff” — Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker, Wim Vandekeybus, Alain Platel — and promoting young local choreographers like Jonathan Burrows, Wayne McGregor and Matthew Bourne.
Mr. Spalding was hired as Sadler’s Wells’s director of programming in 2000, and when the chief executive, Ian Albery, left two years later, he applied for the job. He didn’t get it. The board chose Jean-Luc Choplin, a former general manager of the Paris Opera Ballet with ambitious plans — producing a Robert Wilson piece, presenting Jessye Norman — and little heed for the cost. “Alistair sat tight under Jean-Luc and managed not to be sacked, which happened to almost everyone else,” said Val Bourne, the former director of Dance Umbrella. “I think that period really toughened him up.”
When Mr. Choplin (who now runs the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris) left 18 months later amid allegations of financial disaster, Mr. Spalding became interim artistic director. He was soon named permanent artistic director and chief executive, and he appointed associate artists: Akram Khan, the Ballet Boyz, Matthew Bourne, Jonzi D, Mr. McGregor and Russell Maliphant. “It was a drawn-in-the-sand moment,” Mr. Spalding said. “I wanted to change Sadler’s Wells from a place where work was presented to one where work was made, so I offered to commission their work and support them.”
The first two productions that emerged — Mr. Maliphant’s “Push” and Mr. Khan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, Antony Gormley and Nitin Sawhney’s “Zero Degrees” — were huge critical and public successes and eventually toured worldwide. “Alistair’s gift is that of allowing, of making space available, for people to do what they need to do,” said Mr. Gormley, an acclaimed sculptor who has since collaborated on another Sadler’s Wells project, “Sutra,” with Mr. Cherkaoui. “He supports the process as well as the product. So there can be an alchemy born of putting things together that haven’t been together before. There might even be explosions.”
Mr. Spalding has maintained his policy of commissioning work from the theater’s resident artists (Sylvie Guillem, Jasmin Vardimon and Christopher Wheeldon have been added to the list), but he continues to support less accessible artists he considers important. Last year he staged a two-week retrospective of almost every work by the conceptual choreographer Jérôme Bel; next month he is doing something similar for Xavier Le Roy. And in April and May he will present “Focus on Forsythe,” which brings six recent pieces by Mr. Forsythe to several stages, including the Turbine Hall at the Tate Modern.
Moving beyond Sadler’s Wells is part of Mr. Spalding’s plan for world domination. (If you say that quietly with a British accent, no one will notice until it has happened.)
He has a New York partner in City Center, which also supports Mr. Wheeldon’s Morphoses company and has presented “Zero Degrees” and “Push.” (Mr. Spalding, in turn, has imported City Center’s Fall for Dance concept.) Sadler’s Wells also has a three-year contract to program a monthlong spring season at the London Coliseum, which allows Mr. Spalding to present companies — like American Ballet Theater this year — in works too large for the Sadler’s Wells stage.
More recently he has established new partnerships with the Young Vic theater and the Roundhouse, a performing arts center where, in February, the choreographer Hofesh Shechter will present work in what Mr. Spalding describes as “a gig setting.”
This is the kind of tactic that has brought in a public described by Ms. Craine as “the hippest, youngest, smartest, sexiest audience for dance in London.” The down side, she added, is that Sadler’s Wells is now so powerful that other London dance spaces are struggling to find an identity.
In response Mr. Spalding said: “I think that if there is momentum on a large scale with Sadler’s Wells, that helps momentum in the field. My intention is not to take over but to push dance into the mainstream in this culture. I think you can only do that by knowing what you like and knowing deep in your heart that something is good, whatever is being said around it. Obviously you have to be able to say no. But in a way it’s more important to be able to say yes.”

a revolutionary film undertaking

CHE
Mark Feeney
January 11, 2009
Steven Soderbergh's new film, "Che," which opens Friday, has been nearly nine years in the making - or more than 40, if you date it to the execution in Bolivia of the film's title character, Che Guevara, in 1967, which made him an international icon. The Cuban revolutionary has figured in some two dozen movies and television shows, not to mention at least one Broadway musical ("Evita").
In Soderbergh's film, Benicio del Toro plays Che. Both men won Oscars for "Traffic," Soderbergh as best director and del Toro as best supporting actor. The first half of "Che" focuses on the Cuban revolution, with flash-forwards to Guevara's visit to New York, in 1964. The second half shows his ill-fated attempt at a Bolivian uprising. (The film was produced as two separate installments but will be shown locally as a single four-hour movie with a 15-minute intermission built in.)
Last week Soderbergh, 45, spoke about "Che," by telephone from New Orleans.
Q. Why Che? Why now?
A. We kind of got lucky with the timing, I must say. We started this in the year 2000 when there wasn't a script but just a desire on the part of [producer] Laura Bickford and Benicio to do this. I really didn't know when we began where this thing was going to end up. Because I really didn't know anything about him. I was a blank slate as far as Che was concerned. I knew who he was and that was about it.
Q. Why then were you drawn to it?
A. There was a sense of the right actor at the right time. And coming off of "Erin Brockovich," it seemed to make sense. It was the only time the project felt like that [laughs]. It stopped feeling like that almost immediately - in the sense of "Erin" being one of the most fun jobs I ever had, and this not being one of the most fun jobs I ever had.
Q. This really is an epic undertaking - not just the length of the film, but there are so many setups in it.
A. This kind of just turned into the sorcerer's apprentice at a certain point. I really had to pick arbitrary dates for things to keep it from turning into [a plague like] the Andromeda strain. Part of me will always feel that it's somewhat incomplete. Part of me will think we just should have gone and done a 10-hour miniseries.
Q. Over the years, there have been a lot of films about Che. Did you make a point of seeking them out or avoiding them?
A. No, I watched them. I saw the Andy Garcia movie. I saw the Omar Sharif movie. I saw "The Motorcycle Diaries," of course. And they were all very helpful. Even the Omar Sharif movie, which had some crazy, ridiculous stuff in it. Everyone has his own take on the guy.
Q. Why?
A. Because everyone, including me, has in the back of his mind some sort of unified-field theory of how to build the perfect society. All of us do. And this was his. It's not mine, but we're not making a movie about mine. Everyone relates to that idea. Che was totally uncompromising. He was young. He was beautiful. All the marketable elements are there for him to become that T-shirt. But at the core of it, I think, it's that wish for something better.
Q. Your approach is more of a mosaic than a standard portrait.
A. I actually did make that analogy to Peter Buchman, the writer, and Benicio. "I want to gather enough tiles to put together a mosaic to give you a sense of the shape of the guy." So I wasn't necessarily looking for big scenes that would pay off later maybe.
Q. This is a political film, obviously. "Traffic" was political. "Erin Brockovich," in certain respects, was political. You did the HBO series "K Street," about lobbyists. When Rick Lyman asked you to view a film with him for his New York Times interview series you chose "All the President's Men." What's the appeal of political movies for you?
A. They're tricky. The best ones find a balance between ideology and cinema so that you're pulled in by the ideas, but the story plays out like a movie. So one of the reasons I keep going back to "All the President's Men" is that it seemed to find that perfect balance. I think everyone involved on that film would tell you it's kind of accidental in a way. You surround yourself with the best people and see what happens.
In this case, I was trying to think of it as a movie rather than in terms of biography. I was more concerned with accurately depicting how he lived than with telling a story in the strict sense. Because the story to me was pretty defined already. Once you've decided which part of his life you're going to show, the story is dictated to you in that respect. You have to be careful, especially now, because certain kinds of films are really turning people off.
Q. Give an example.
A. The fact that nobody's been able to come up with a movie about Iraq that anybody wants to see.
Q. What would Fidel Castro make of the movie? Or do you even care what he thinks?
A. First, I have no idea. Second, I'd be very curious, if only on a practical level, because I hear that when he watches movies he stops them whenever he has a comment. So I'm wondering how long it would take him to get through this one. It would take days.
Q. Do you feel you know Che?
A. I know him enough to know he would hate me. I don't know if we could be in the same room. You have to remember that in his society I have no place. Literally. I think he would find me really, really frivolous.
Mark Feeney can be reached at mfeeney@globe.com.
© Copyright

but they're canadians

Racism:

What we say doesn't match what we do

surprising study found college students indifferent to overtly racist act
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON - Think you wouldn't tolerate a racist act? Think again, says a surprising experiment that exposed some college students to one and found indifference at best.
Here's the scene: Researchers in Toronto recruited 120 non-black York University students for what purported to be a psychology study.
A participant was directed to a room where two actors posing as fellow participants — one black, one white — waited. The black person said he needed to retrieve a cell phone and left, gently bumping the white person's leg on the way out. The white actor then did one of three things: Nothing. Said, "I hate when black people do that." Or used the N-word.
Then a researcher entered and said the "psychology study" was starting and that the student should pick one of the two others as a partner for the testing.
Half the participants just read about that scene, and half actually experienced it.
Those asked to predict their reaction to either comment said they'd be highly upset and wouldn't choose the white actor as their partner.
Not bothered by racism?Yet students who actually experienced the event didn't seem bothered by it — and nearly two-thirds chose the white actor as a partner, the researchers report Friday in the journal Science.
"It's like these nasty racist comments aren't having an effect," said York University psychology professor Kerry Kawakami, the lead author.
"It's important to remind people that just because a black man has been elected as president doesn't mean racism is no longer a problem or issue in the States," she added.
The study can't say why people reacted that way, although the researchers speculate that unconscious bias is at work. They have new experiments under way to see if maybe these witnesses suppress that they're upset to avoid confrontation.
"The failure of people to confront or do anything about racist comments is pretty widespread in the real world," said Indiana University psychologist Eliot R. Smith, who co-wrote a review of the experiment. "People may feel uncomfortable if someone makes a remark like this, but it's rare they will actually confront them."

new day, same niggers

Oscar Grant
was murdered on New Year’s Day by Officer Johannes Mehserle. Mr. Mehserle fatally shot Mr. Grant in the back after Mr. Grant and some friends were pulled from a train following a report of an altercation according to Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) spokesman Linton Johnson. Officer Mehserle stood over Mr. Grant and fired his weapon point blank at the man’s back. The group of young men had been celebrating the New Year at a waterfront tourist spot. They were heading home when police pulled them from the train car about two in the morning. In a video taken by a cell phone camera, Mr. Grant was seated on the ground with his back against the wall. He held up his hands, appearing to plead with police. Seconds later, the police put Mr. Grant face down on the ground. Mr. Grant appears to struggle. One of the officers kneels on the struggling man’s back as another officer stands, upholsters his gun, and fires a shot. Mr. Grant died seven hours later in hospital.
BART General Manager Dorothy Dugger said that the shooting is a tragic event in every respect for all involved. We recognize that the family and friends of Oscar Grant are in mourning, and we extend our condolences. BART officials said that Mr. Mehserle was devastated but is presumed innocent. It was also said that the various videos from the cell phones that are making the media rounds are inconclusive and that there is more to the story than what can be seen on the grainy images. BART officials contend that Mr. Mehserle may have been trying to determine whether the officer meant to draw his gun instead of his taser.
Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff said that his investigation will focus primarily on what led to the shooting. Mr. Orloff said that some homicides are lawful. According to Mr. Orloff, the part that needs dissecting is what, if anything, can be determined about the mental state of the actor, meaning the officer. It’s possible that the district attorney’s office could find no basis for criminal charges, the office could file involuntary manslaughter charges if Mr. Mehserle exercised gross negligence, voluntary manslaughter if Mr. Mehserle reasonably believed that he was acting in self-defense, or murder if the police officer acted with malice and forethought. There is an ongoing investigation to determine whether or not criminal charges should be filed against the police officer and this is going to take time.
But let’s be honest. Oscar Grant is just the latest example of overzealous police officers killing unarmed black men, in this example the black man was pleading not to be tasered, and being given the benefit of doubt. Mr. Mehserle is presumed innocent. The funny thing is, supposedly, Oscar Grant was presumed to be innocent as well. A lot of good the presumption of innocence did for him. He’s now dead. The public needs to give BART officials time to get to the bottom of what happened. A video of a police officer shooting a black man in the back is too inconclusive. How do we know the cop even pulled the trigger? How do we know a bullet actually came out the gun? How do we know Mr. Grant is dead? How do we know the video is really of actual events? There are far too many questions to make this an open and shut case.
Like most instances of black men who are the victims of police posses, any evidence of a crime is dismissed and downplayed. What can you expect? We saw a video of seven boot camp guards killing Martin Lee Anderson while the boot camp nurse looked on. The investigation into that crime came up inconclusive because fourteen year old Martin Anderson had a latent sickle cell trait. It took months for the coroner to come up with a less than plausible excuse as to why a baton across Mr. Anderson’s throat and ammonia tablets stuffed up his nose didn’t cause the boy’s death.
We watched the video of four police officers in New Orleans, Louisiana attack Robert Davis in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina. The police didn’t like Mr. Davis’ uppity attitude and decided to teach him a lesson. They attacked the retired school teacher and accused him of drunk and disorderly conduct, only to find out that Mr. Davis hadn’t had a drop of alcohol in years. The video didn’t show Mr. Davis acting drunk or disorderly. But the less than honorable judge Frank Marullo said that he didn’t even find it a close call. In Mr. Marullo’s opinion, the video evidence showed Mr. Davis struggling for several minutes while police tried to detain him. The entire event could have ended at any time if the man had put his hands behind his back. The judge never thought about how hard it is to put your hands behind your back when four police officers are holding them in front of you.
So the BART police investigators on this case know they have time on their side. They will do their best to delay their findings until the public anger dissipates and everybody moves on with their lives. They will wait until the public finds some other outrage that catches our collective attention. Then when we’re sufficiently distracted, they’ll release their statement that there was nothing criminal about Officer Mehserle’s behavior. The poor officer was just afraid for his life because the mean black man on the ground with his back to the officer was simply too black and menacing and too much of a target to be resisted. There was nothing wrong. Killing unarmed black men in America is nothing more than business as usual.

hamlet, more hamlet, yes?

Tennant returns

to star in the RSC’s Hamlet
by Lalayn Baluch
Actor David Tennant has returned to the Royal Shakespeare Company’s production of Hamlet following back surgery.
David Tennant (Hamlet) in Hamlet by The Royal Shakespeare Company at the Courtyard Theatre, Stratford upon Avon Photo: Tristram Kenton
The Doctor Who star was forced to pull out of the show in December just as it transferred to the West End’s Novello Theatre, due to a recurring back injury. Thousands of fans were left fearing that he would sit out the entire run.
His understudy Edward Bennett, who plays Laertes, stepped into the title role during previews of the production, and went on to receive rave reviews.
Tennant returned to the stage on Saturday - the final week of the run, which is due to finish on January 10 - and according to a statement by the RSC will also appear tonight.
An RSC spokesperson said: “David Tennant has made good progress following his recent back operation and began rehearsals on Friday in preparation for his return to the title role of Hamlet.
“He rehearsed again on Saturday and performed that evening. We will be assessing David’s return to each Hamlet performance on a day by day basis.”
Theatregoers are being told to check the RSC website from noon each day for an update for that evening’s performance.

at the bridge in avignon

for paige

På broen i Avignon
På broen i Avignonse de danser,

se de danserpå broen i Avignonse

de danser rundt i ring.

De kjekke herremenn danser
hitDe kjekke herremenn danser

ditPå broen i Avignonse de danser,

se de danserpå broen i Avignonse

de danser rundt i ring.

De vakre piker danser hit.

De vakre piker danser dit.

På broen i Avignonse de danser,

se de danserPå broen i Avignonse de danser rundt i ring.