A deeply affecting film about a remarkable Houstonian who's also a proud New Orleanian

My student has become my teacher. Darius Clark Monroe, the young filmmaker I first met when he was enrolled in my class at University of Houston, and who went on to study with Spike Lee at NYU, demonstrated great promise with his acclaimed autobiographical documentary Evolution of a Criminal. Now he has taken the first step toward fulfilling that promise with this deeply affecting 13-minute portrait of Dr. Mtangulizi Sanyika, a remarkable Houstonian who also happens to be a proud New Orleanian. Titled Two Cities, it's part of a six-part Time Inc. documentary series -- New Orleans, Here & Now -- that celebrates different facets of my hometown 10 years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. After seeing Monroe's contribution, I'm eager to view the entire omnibus -- and, yes, maybe take another look at another amazing film directed by one of Monroe's other proud teachers.

Death doesn't take a holiday

Every year, it seems to me, editors and writers in print and digital outlets want to complete their year-end wrap-ups a little earlier. In fact, I’m pretty sure there were Thanksgiving leftovers still relatively fresh in my refrigerator when Entertainment Weekly released its “Late Greats” cover-story tribute to showbiz luminaries who shuffled off this mortal coil in 2009.

But here’s the thing: Over the years, I have noticed that, during the last week of every December, long after the year-end wrap-ups are complete, another notable or two (or three or four) will join the Choir Invisible. And, unfortunately, these folks tend to get penalized for their untimely departures. For openers: When the bad news is broken on cable news networks, they get tributes only from B- and C-list talking heads, because the A-listers are on holiday. For much the same reason, the newspaper and magazine obits are scanty, because only second- and third-stringers – many of them too young to fully appreciate many older notables -- are still on the job.

(Maybe this is why, when Philippe Noiret died on Thanksgiving Day in 2006, my respectful tribute to the great French actor attracted more readers to this blog than almost anything else I've ever posted, before or since.)

Worse, the late celebrities leave this world too late to be included prominently in the really cool year-end newspaper, magazine and website tributes. And, really, they’re disqualified from being honored in wraps for the following year. As a result of their underpublicized departures – well, I have only anecdotal evidence to support this theory, but I suspect that, in many cases, the general public isn’t actually aware that an individual has died until the dead person pops up in one of the montages at the Emmys and Oscars.

Consider these dates of departure, chosen at random during a cursory riff through Wikipedia: Dean Martin, Dec. 25, 1995. Eartha Kitt, Dec. 25, 2008. (Hell, for that matter, Charlie Chaplin, Dec. 25, 1977.) Jason Robards, Dec. 26, 2000. Alan Bates, Dec. 27, 2003. Hal Ashby, Dec. 27, 1988. Sam Peckinpah, Dec. 28, 1984. Jerry Orbach and Susan Sontag, Dec. 28, 2004. Andrei Tarkovsky, Dec. 29, 1986. (OK, I realize that’s a bit of a reach, but still…) Lew Ayres, Dec. 30, 1996. Rick Nelson, Dec. 31, 1985. Donald Westlake, Dec. 31, 2008.

And now think about this: The odds are very good that, between now and 11:59 p.m., Dec. 31, at least one more significant showbiz figure will check out. And will not get the send-off he or she deserves.

Stay of execution?

Folo.com blogger Dylan Stableford reports that recent staff layoffs -- repeat, may -- help "a magazine that roughly every single person I’ve talked to in the last two months thought was going to be shuttered: Entertainment Weekly." Just how bad are things at the Time Inc. publication? Stableford writes: "Through September, EW is down 19 percent in ad pages --double the industry's 9.5 percent slide -- according to the Publishers Information Bureau, and down 7 percent in single copy sales during the first half of 2008, according to ABC's Fas-Fax. " Scary stuff, kids. First Premiere, and now...

The future of movies: Less kid stuff?

Entertainment Weekly's Mark Harris has several pithy things to say about so-called "niche " audiences in his "Final Cut" column. But this, IMHO, is the money quote:

"Here's a genuinely surprising piece of news about the summer of 2008: In a season expressly designed to appeal to the hordes of kids who are out of school, two of the kiddiest movies so far, Speed Racer and Prince Caspian, have fizzled. And next summer, and for several summers to come, there'll be fewer kids going to the movies, because there'll be fewer kids, period. Apparently (this is the U.S. Census talking), we had a mini-baby boom between about 1981 and 1995. And then came a dip — a substantial dip — in the kid population. In other words, that mammoth group of youngsters that has reliably fueled movie grosses for almost 15 years is now looking less kidlike: They're between 13 and 27. And getting older. And looking for movies that appeal to them. And they're really not going to like being called a niche."

The Ultimate Hottie

Entertainment Weekly wants you -- yes, you! -- to choose the Ultimate Female Hottie from a lineup of 25 nominees who have come to prominence during the past decade or so. I, for one, would like to express my deep dismay that a 21st century magazine would sponsor a competition that is so egregiously sexist and degrading to women.... Aw, hell, who am I trying to kid? Salma Hayek (above) gets my vote.

"I hate these movies. I won't see these movies."

In the latest issue of Entertainment Weekly, in a provocative mini-essay that, alas, isn’t posted on the magazine’s website (yet), critic Lisa Schwarzbaum explains why she was more than happy to turn the chore of reviewing Captivity over to fellow EW scribe Owen Gleiberman:

“It’s quite simple: I hate these movies. I won’t see these movies. Never saw Saw or its sequels, never will. I’m not impressed with the ‘quality’ of the gore or the ‘wit’ of the filmmaking. I’m not enjoyably scared; I’m horrified, and not in the way horror fans get off, groaning and screaming with pack-mentality excitement. Instead, my horror is one of disturbance and anger: Who makes this vile crap? What is remotely defensible about a movie like Captivity, in which a woman is abducted and tortured for the sake of ticket sales? Nothing, that’s what. While moviegoers can vote with their wallets, I vote with my computer keyboard. Or rather, the silence of the keys, as I stay away from stuff I have no stomach for seeing, even on the job.”