The Racialicious Entertainment Roundup 1.12-18.13

By Arturo R. García, Kendra James, and Joseph Lamour

Samuel L. Jackson (l) and Quentin Tarantino. Photo via Film Buff Online.

Golden Globe Awards: I didn’t enjoy my Django Unchained viewing experience. Just putting that out there before I admit that, while I generally find Quentin Tarantino to be in extremely poor taste, I think he’s a great screenwriter. Reading his screenplays for Pulp Fiction and Jackie Brown (two movies I don’t actually enjoy watching) were a much-needed respite in the first film class I took in high school. While I haven’t read the screenplay for Django yet, I don’t doubt it’s any less well written than his others and, for that reason, I didn’t have any problem with him winning the Golden Globe for Best Original Screenplay last week …

… until he went backstage and pulled a Typical Tarantino, dropping the N-word 30 seconds into his press conference much to the discomfort of every other sensible person in the room.

Mr. Jackson, come get your boy.–KJ

Google Ditches The ‘Make Me Asian’ App: Good news on the tech front–an app enabling users to look “Asian” has been taken out of the Google Play store, thanks in large part to online activism: a petition on Change.org drew more than 8,000 signatures and the #makemeracist hashtag gained traction on Twitter.

“I am deeply thankful to those who realized the danger of these stereotypes entering the mainstream and spoke out against this app,” said Peter Chin, the pastor who put together the petition. “But I am also appreciative of Google, who listened to our concerns and acted accordingly.”–AG

Deception: The second high-profile drama to feature a female African American lead (after Scandal) premiered on NBC on January 7th–but I honestly never heard about it ’til now, which is a bad sign. Also a bad sign: the fact that one would cast the (admittedly, gorgeous) family of Vivian Bowers, the rich and famous heiress and murder victim, and only allow Victor Garber to react to the death on-camera.

Meagan Good and her impeccable hair situation play Joanna Locasto, Vivian’s best friend and now undercover investigator. The cast’s acting seems to be more on-point in the second episode, so let’s hope Good can help Kerry Washington and Taraji P. Henson usher in a new casting way of life. Good had a lengthy arc on Californication, where she played a hip-hop hook songstress and seductress (try and say that three times fast), so I like seeing her in a different light. I always get nervous about shows like this because, unless the murder is solved at the end of this season, it’s going to play like The Red Herring Show until it gets cancelled. Even though it was eventually un-cancelled, look what happened to The Killing…and how boring it ended up being.–JL

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