EUR Film Review: For Colored Girls

 

*Ntozake Shange’s For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf made a big splash when it debuted on Broadway back in the Seventies.

The emotionally-draining “choreopoem” was essentially a series of soul-baring monologues plumbing the depths of the African-American female psyche on sensitive subjects ranging from sexuality to spirituality.

Performed by a nameless cast of seven troubled women, this hybrid of drama and poetry met with critical acclaim, although it particularly resonated with sisters.

Ms. Shange subsequently wrote the screenplay for a made-for-TV version of her opus which aired on PBS’ American Playhouse in 1982. And she also appeared in the movie version opposite Alfre Woodard, Sophie Okenedo and Lynn Whitfield.

The unenviable challenge of adapting her much-beloved production to the big screen has now fallen to Tyler Perry, a man who proves himself up to the challenge. He ostensibly began by abbreviating the original’s cumbersome, grammatically-challenged name, which only makes sense, since it had been coined back during a more loquacious era when wordy was fashionable not only in terms of movie titles (Dr. Strangelove: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb) but in advertising slogans (“Vicks’ Nyquil: The nighttime, sniffling, sneezing, coughing, aching, stuffy head fever so you can rest medicine”) as well.

Next, the inventive Perry fleshed out the lead roles, while adding a number of support characters to the ensemble and updating some themes (ala AIDS and the down-low) as concessions to 21st Century cultural sensibilities. More importantly, however, he has preserved the source material’s relentlessly-harrowing tone.

Loyal Tyler Perry fans will appreciate how his enhanced plotline emulates that of his ever-popular morality plays, except for those trademark touches of humor. The stellar cast assembled to execute his vision includes Janet Jackson, Thandie Newton, Kelly Washington, Loretta Devine, Kimberly Elise, Phylicia Rashad, Macy Gray, Anika Noni Rose and Whoopi Goldberg.

The story is set in a seedy, Harlem tenement inhabited by several of the protagonists. Each, we learn, is already deeply enmeshed in some sort of family dysfunction, from promiscuous bartender Tangie (Newton) who brings home a different stud every night, to her pregnant, teenage sister (Tessa Thompson) in urgent need of an abortion, to their clueless mother (Goldberg), a hoarder caught in the clutches a religious cult. Just across the hall, lives the apartment building’s relatively-composed manager (Rashad) whose self-assured manner might be a mask.

On the floor below, we find Crystal (Elise) being battered by the unemployed, alcoholic boyfriend (Michael Ealy) she refuses to marry yet can’t summon up the gumption to dump. Then there’s Juanita (Devine), a free clinic nurse who counsels others about relationships, but remains in denial about the abysmal state of her own. Naïve dance instructor Yasmine (Rose) comes to regret accepting a date from a flirtatious stranger (Khalil Kain) she meets on the street.

More upscale, but no less troubled are Kelly (Washington), a social worker worried about how her police officer husband (Hill Harper) will react to the news that she can’t conceive. Last but not least, there’s Jo (Jackson), a famous fashion magazine editor, whose closet-gay beau (Omari Hardwick) has been using her for a beard. .

Eventually, all of the assorted melodramas serendipitously merge and resolve themselves satisfactorily right on cue for a typically-preachy, Perry denouement during which our heroines take turns expressing their resolve to rise above their overwhelming personal challenges. A fresh interpretation of For Colored Girls which puts to rest the question of whether that black feminist classic was too dated to be adapted to the screen.

All that was missing was a pistol-packing granny in drag, chirrun!

Excellent (3.5 stars) Rated for sexuality, profanity and disturbing violence including rape. Running time: 120 minutes Studio: Lionsgate Films

Certain eras in time are marked by certain mental stimuli. In our minds the sights, sounds and vibes of the past can become more vivid than they ever were when recalled from the present.

Our memories are funny that way. When viewing the screening copy of “Unsung: Miki Howard” my memory went to a place of junior high school angst. A moment nearly 25 years in the past when I first heard Miki Howard flashed into my mind. I saw her singing on “Soul Train” and the voice, the lips, the cheek bones … wow! A 12 year old boy in Trenton, NJ was smitten with by a chocolate angel.

Yes, that’s how I remember it, but after watching Howard tell her story on TV One’s “Unsung” I realized this heavenly body went through hell on earth. Now her story is finally being told.

“It was humbling, purging in fact. The chance to just get it all out,” Miki says when asked of her initial emotional response to the show. “People say so many different things. And I’m just hopeful that now people will get a chance to know and understand why things went certain ways and why I may have behaved a certain way. People are critical and ridicule you for things and they don’t even know what’s going on.”

This “Unsung” episode (which airs tonight at 10pm Eastern on TV One) is, like most of the others, a self-contained work of art that is designed to frame the life of a tragic genius. Miki’s genuine pain is apparent throughout the show, but she tells EURweb.com’s Lee Bailey that she is over the old pains now.

“I am a happy, wonderfully enthusiastic woman,” said Howard. “I’m in transit with life still, I am still passionate about singing, I love it. I am thrilled to look at my children, see that they’re all grown up and doing well for themselves. I mean what else is there?”

In watching the drama filled  show, and listening to the testimony of her loved ones, the impact all of the turmoil had on Howard’s family was apparent. It seems to resonate deepest with her son Brandon, who is seen giving an emotional testimony and stating his disdain for those he feels have wronged his mother.

“Of course he’s not healed,” said 49-year-old Howard. “That was traumatic for my children and myself, but that’s not his problem. He’s healing, but those are not his problems. Those are my problems. My children are grown people and are doing their own thing now. It was especially traumatic for him because he’s in show business, he’s a producer. He’s worked with a lot of people and he’s been around. He’s heard people say awful things (about me) when they didn’t know he was my son. It was more devastating for him, but he’s good.”

Miki Howard’s towering vocals are a testament to growing up in a musical household. She is the offspring of Josephine Howard, of the gospel group the Caravans, and Clay Graham of the Pilgrim Jubilees. Both her mother and father were gospel mainstays, and her sister could hold her own as well. Though Howard credits God with her emotional resurrection, here’s what she had to say when asked whether she would consider singing gospel.

“I do gospel! Gospel is your life. I don’t separate my life and church. I grew up in that situation where people lived one way and preached another,” said Howard. “Well, I’m not perfect and I’m not going to be perfect unless God gives me some super-duper blessing that makes me perfect. I feel like all my songs are gospel, they are true. You can apply them to God, you can apply them to your love life, you can apply them to yourself. The truth is the truth. Your values, your morals, your spirituality. You should live by that and not just preach it. I’m not that person that’s going to sing ‘I’m going up yonder’ because I don’t know. I don’t know where I’m going. I don’t think I’m going to hell, but then again my beliefs are different than a lot of people. I have studied the Bible, have studied people, have studied my sins, and my behaviors. I’ve learned what God and myself can live with because that’s our personal relationship. So, I do sing gospel in my mind and in my heart. The Bible doesn’t only talk about your spiritual needs. It talks about your physical needs, the needs of your heart, and things like that. When you constantly call yourself a spiritual being, and you’re not a spiritual being, you’re going to fall short. Everybody talking ’bout ‘I’m not of the flesh, I’m not of the flesh’. Well, I’m of the flesh!”

Part 0f Howard’s story is having grown up in a household where homosexuality was being practiced. This subject was far more taboo in the 60s than it is today. Couple that with the fact that her mother was a lesbian gospel singer and one can begin to understand why she may be torn about her relationship with gospel music. But she’s not only shunning singing “for the Lord,” she’s shunning performing secular concerts as well. She tells Lee that she would much rather be doing something on television.

“Promoters are very unkind these days, they don’t have a lot of money, people are just don’t have a lot of money to spend on going to concerts and things like that. And I’m certainly not in the public eye like I used to be. So, that’s just not my druthers. So I want to bring the audience to me instead of going to the audience. I love TV. I understand it and that’s what I really want to do right now.”

She told s2smagazine.com that her TV show is currently in development, and it’s based around her relationship with her sisters played by Kelita Smith and Bernadette Stanis.

And just how confident is Howard in her chances at landing a television deal?

“Honey, they’re as good as anybody else’s. Shoot, you keep looking out for me and tell me how good my chances are.”

In watching the “Unsung” episode it became apparent that Miki Howard craved love. As beautiful as she was as a young woman, she reminded Mr. Bailey that she was pretty naïve back then when it came to men.

“You’ve known me since I was 16, 17 years old, Lee. You had your cassette player way back then,” said Howard. “Most people, at that age, are out going on dates and they’re learning about men and boys and things like that. I was learning about singing, I was learning the music business and I didn’t have the opportunity to learn the things that you should learn. I lost my mom at 18 years old and the show says it was later, but it was 18. She put me out by the time I was 16. So, there was no parent to tell me. Besides that I grew up in a completely gay environment. So, I had no idea about men. I knew nothing! When I tell you nothing, I mean nothing. I just put them on a pedestal and held them in high esteem, whether they deserved it or not. That’s not a good thing, so I had to learn the hard way that you don’t cast your pearls among swine. There are men that are swine and, most likely, they’re the first ones that come up. When you don’t have a lot of time and you don’t have a lot of knowledge you kind of go with the first Joe. ‘Hey you like me, you love me? Ok, let’s do this!’ I didn’t go to the movies, smooch in a theater or fondle in the backseat of a car. I didn’t do any of those things that teenagers are supposed to do in learning about your sexuality. So, in all of my 20s and early 30s I made serious mistakes with men.”

Howard was discovered by Augie Johnson of the group Side Effect. She sang vocals on some of their greatest hits. Though Augie’s testimony on “Unsung” paints one picture, Miki tells EURweb.com of a slightly different one.

“Augie Johnson,” said Howard as if making a grand announcement. “He held on to me until I was 25 and he wasn’t righteous in terms of being a man, but he was a fanstatic mentor in terms of show business.”

Even though she and Johnson ended up having two kids together, he wouldn’t marry her. However, Miki credits him for showing her the ropes of the industry, but still feels he took advantage of her. Despite that she says she holds no grudges.

“Doesn’t everybody take advantage of people that don’t know anything and they have the upper hand? Even if you don’t mean to, sometimes you just do,” said Howard. “I don’t want to put anything bad on anybody. We all pay the same wages, the wages of sin are death. I’m still here, I got two great kids out of the relationship with Augie, a great career and it was not anybody’s fault. It just happened!”

Eventually Howard did get married to a guy named Eddie Phelps and boy was that ever a wrong move. It was such a bad situation that she completely blocked a lot of it out of her mind. But in speaking with the producers of Unsung, a lot of the ugly memories came flooding back.

“They asked me things I forgot had happened. When I was married to this guy we used to have horrible fights and they reminded me that he tried to hang me.”

There are some things we couldn’t mention for the sake of space, but let’s just say Gerald Levert played a prominent role in her career, her life, and her recovery from the abyss of drug abuse.

“He gave me more life with his death,” Miki said. “He always wanted me to stay in the game and it just made me want to be better and not disappoint him.”

“Unsung” featuring Miki Howard airs tonight, November 1, at 10pm Eastern on TV One

Janet Talks About Her Body, Childhood, Relationships, and Lady Gaga

*Janet Jackson has been flexing her muscles lately … not her actual muscles, but her ability to transform from singer to actress to storyteller. Her latest movie with Tyler Perry, “For Colored Girls,” is bound to be a classic for her and she is also working on releasing her upcoming book “True You.” She also recently shared with the world another side of herself.

The sexy dance pioneer opened up on ABC Radio about all those things everyone wants to know about – her body, childhood, and relationships.

She didn’t mention, however, much about the passing of her late brother Michael.

On why she wrote “True You:”

“Everyone wanted to know about the weight loss, the weight gain – how do I do it … It’s just talking about my routine, my workout regimen, my nutrition. I wanted to talk about it.”

On revisiting her childhood body image issues:

“I was actually doing ‘Good Times,’ and on our first day of shooting they bound my chest because they thought my breasts were too big. I got the part when I was 10, we started shooting when I was 11 – I was developing early. It made me feel that the way that I am, it’s not good enough. That’s why I decided to call [the book] ‘True You.’”

On loneliness:

“I’ve been married twice, I’ve been divorced twice. Even when you have someone with you 24/7, and still feeling alone – when I look back on it, it’s really, really sad. And I did a lot of that in my younger years.”

On recording a new album:

“I’ve been thinking about going back in the studio and just taking my time and playing around with it – next year.”

On Lady Gaga:

“I adore her. One of the things that I love about her, it seemed like, for a moment, melody had left music. And I feel like she understands that a great deal. I just enjoy watching her. She takes me back a lot of times to the Grace Jones days. Where it’s – I don’t mean this in a bad way at all – it’s over the top but it’s over the top fun. It’s different from everyone else that’s out there, so I enjoy watching her and listening to her music.

Doug E. Fresh Opens Eating Spot in Harlem

*Doug E. Fresh is one of those names that definitely goes down in history and is still making history.

While the veteran rapper has made quite a name for himself over the 25-years he’s been in the game, he is still making headlines in new ways.

The now 44 year-old artist has returned to his hometown, Harlem, and opened up a new restaurant on 132nd and Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard called “Doug E’s.”

“Really even in this whole Obama initiative, and everything that’s going on with the economy, the only way to jump start it is we have to give each other opportunity. That’s the only way to make it work,” says Fresh, whose real name is Douglas E. Davis.

His new spot will create new jobs for neighborhood teens after school, while customers get to sit down to some good ol’ soul food (including chicken, fish and waffles) and even Caribbean cuisine.

“I understand the kid that, you know, he needs some money because he gotta get back and forth to school,” says Fresh.

He further explained that he used to be one of those kids on the block.

Mr. Fresh is busy and his wife is seeing him through. The couple also has a recording studio around the corner and is planning to put up a comedy club.

While he’s doing big things, Fresh is still just one of the homies.

“I could still walk the street. I don’t have to have no massive security. I mean if I’m in the street, it’s so serious here, people come up to me, ‘Yo man, you want me to walk with you up the block?” says Fresh.

Ron Isley to Release New Album and Talks About T.I.’s Sentence

*The world of music cannot but respect the work and opinions of veteran artists like Ron Isley. The R&B trendsetter is getting ready to release another hot album entitled “Mr. I.”

The project, which is bound to be popular, is scheduled to hit stores Nov. 30. This will be his first release since his federal prison time for tax evasion charges.

Despite his recent hang up and disappearing act, Isley will be receiving a lifetime achievement award at the Soul Train Awards on Nov. 10. The show will air on BET and Centric Nov. 28.

The legend spoke with Singersroom about his anticipated award.

“Being black that was the only thing. It was real but it was the only thing,” Ron tells Singersroom. “You couldn’t get on TV cause TV wasn’t showing nothing else. So Soul Train was one of the ways to show your people what you were doing. I’m glad about Soul Train and that it last this long. Like I said it was the only thing for black people.”

On the upcoming album, fans are bound to hear the voices of Aretha Franklin, Lauren Hill, Tank, and even T.I.

“Man I was stunned,” Ron says about T.I. going back to prison. “We are all friends and the hope was that he got past this. He got 11 months…he may not have to do 11 months…you know but we didn’t want him to do any time.”