by Guest Contributor J Chang, originally published at Init_MovingPictures
While it’s still relatively new news, I thought I’d tackle this brief article from Variety republishing the Screen Actor’s Guild annual diversity research. While the headline of the article reads “SAG stats: Diversity lags” and the byline mentions that minorities, seniors and women are underrepresented, the racial breakdown [...]

by Latoya Peterson
I was peacefully watching Mad Men when this madness peeked into my commercial break. At 00:59:

“Bingo. Asians. They pack light, travel efficiently, and have a thing for slip on shoes, god love ‘em.”
“That’s racist!”
“I’m like my mother. I stereotype – it’s faster.”
Cue eye roll at blatant “he’s so cool and un-PC” ploy.
Bonus [...]

By Special Correspondent Arturo R. García
Soledad O’Brien says she wants Latino In America to “start a conversation.” Unfortunately for viewers, the series’ message seems to be, what? Woe is us? Abandon ship? What did Brown ever do to you?
Grounded in depressing case studies and missed questions, the series’ first installment was less “Latinos In America” [...]

by Guest Contributor (and frequent commenter) J Chang, originally published at Init_MovingPictures

Ever since news of The Last Airbender’s casting broke, there’s been a lot of commotion in the Asian American community about casting and how it seems that Asians are losing to white people in playing Asian characters. Now, there are issues present in the [...]

by Latoya Peterson
Bringing up Tyler Perry tends to complicate conversations.  He is a polarizing figure, represented by his work, an entrepreneur who provides work for black actors often passed over by the Hollywood machine, yet who trades in what some would call limiting representations of blackness and/or stereotypes.  He is often touted as proof that [...]

by Guest Contributor Rebecca Linz

I was looking forward to “The Soloist” for two reasons: having played the violin all my life, I love those rare contemporary films that dare to explicitly appreciate classical music, but also because I am a sucker for based-on-a-true-story films.
The dynamic between the two protagonists (Jamie Foxx as Nathaniel Ayers, a [...]

by Guest Contributor Jehanzeb Dar, originally published at Muslim Reverie

If you’re having trouble trying to figure out what’s wrong with this newly revealed poster for Disney’s upcoming film, “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time,” it may help if I pointed out that the title character is played by Jake Gyllenhaal. In other words, the [...]

By Sexual Correspondent Andrea (AJ) Plaid and Guest Contributor Fiqah
Fiqah:All right, full disclosure. I loathe Birth of a Nation. L-O-A-T-H-E, my friends. In my short time on this planet, I have been forced to endure two (!) viewings of the flick–twice the Recommended Lifetime Limit for Black people. The last time I watched this film [...]

By Special Correspondent Arturo R. García

“It’s done in fun. I don’t know if it’s stereotypes — they are robots, by the way. These are the voice actors. This is kind of the direction they were taking the characters and we went with it.”
– Michael Bay, as quoted by the Associated Press
This argument is, of course, [...]

By Sexual Correspondent AJ Plaid and Guest Contibutor (and regular commenter) Fiqah

After re-reading some of the responses to the Ciara/Justin Timberlake post and extensively confabbing over brunches about it, we finally figured out that the greatest transgression Ciara committed wasn’t the BDSM imagery (though some wanted to switch the argument from that to “this is just [...]

By Special Correspondent Arturo R. García

Guillermo del Toro entered the geek radar with Blade II in 2002. Seven years later, the Guadalajara native has seen his stock rise even while he’s stuck to the realm of the fantastic, thanks to the success of the Hellboy series and Pan’s Labyrinth. This month, in an interview in [...]

by Guest Contributor Carly Kocurek, originally published at Sparklebliss

As is often the case when I find myself any place where cable is readily available. I stayed up entirely too late last night watching television, sucked into a movie I would have never deliberately viewed. Last night, the film in question was Bring It On: All [...]

By Guest Contributor slb, originally published at PostBourgie

We’ve made no secret of our belief that Hollywood is producing just a few too many paint-by-numbers Black biopics, and this week’s announcement of a whopping four black-themed biopics was just a case in point. According to Rotten Tomatoes’ Weekly Ketchup, all systems are go for an “official” [...]

by Guest Contributor Angry Asian Man, originally published at Angry Asian Man

I know I’ve previously mentioned the live-action Blood: The Last Vampire adaptation before, but I’ve neglected to mention the trailer, which has been making the rounds for a while. The movie, based on Hiroyuki Kitakubo 2000 cult hit anime of the same name, marks [...]

by Guest Contributor jbrotherlove, originally published at jbrotherlove
I haven’t been a very good cinephile lately. And by “not very good” I mean I haven’t attended any films in this year’s Atlanta Film Festival. In addition to being very busy at work in the past few weeks, I attribute the oversight to a combination of procrastination, [...]