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Best Black Movies of the 21st Century

Existentially true

George_Washington_Film Rotten Tomatoes came up with the 100 Best Black Movies of the 21st Century. They “defined Black films as those that centered on African American stories and African American characters, or – as in the case of Black Panther – were made by Black filmmakers and were embraced by African American audiences.” I could have split the list in half, but there are more films I saw in the upper half (23) than the lower half (7). So here’s #100-#31 today, and the Top 30 another time.

#100 – #96 Saw none of these. I wanted to see Drumline but didn’t. Ghost Dog seemed too dark. Yes, I know 2000 is the 20th century; it’s not my list.
#95 Dreamgirls (2006). I enjoyed chunks of it, but not throughout.
#94 GET ON UP (2014) – a biopic starring Chadwick Boseman as singer James Brown I had intended to see.

#93 George Washington (2000) – I went to see it based on Roger Ebert’s glowing review, and it did not disappoint. Yes, as another critic pointed out, it was “visual poetry.
#92 MARSHALL (2017) a biopic starring Chadwick Boseman as Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall I had intended to see.
#91 RAY (2004) a biopic starring Jamie Foxx as singer Ray Charles I had intended to see. I saw bits and pieces on TV.

Jackie Robinson

#90 Love and Basketball (2000) – I recall enjoying the story of a young “couple navigates the tricky paths of romance and athletics.” Also, in retrospect, it reminds me of my niece Rebecca and her husband Rico.
#89 Barbershop (2002) – I saw this on commercial TV. Existentially true.
#88 – #86 – saw none of these. I only know of Hustle and Flow because of the music.
#85 42 (2013). A biopic starring Chadwick Boseman as baseball player Jackie Robinson I DID see.

#84 – #81 – saw none, though I thought to see Chi-Raq for Spike Lee’s direction, and American Gangster for Denzel.
#80 Monster’s Ball (2002) – I remember thinking it was very good, especially Halle Berry’s performance, but depressing.
#79 MIDDLE OF NOWHERE (2012) #78 BAD BOYS FOR LIFE (2020) – the premise of some movies just don’t interest me; Bad Boys is one.
#77 Akeelah and the Bee. It’s very sweet. BTW, while I was a good speller, I would be terrible at spelling bees.

#76 – #73 – I’m quite fond of Nina Simone’s music (#75 WHAT HAPPENED, MISS SIMONE? (2015). The trailer to #74 Queen and Slim (2019) was intriguing but maybe too real.
#72 The Princess and the Frog (2009) – this may have been the first movie I took my daughter to in a theater. Unfortunately, she was five, and afraid of certain elements. She’s seen it since and she’s fine. I liked it more than I thought I would.

#71 PRESENTING PRINCESS SHAW (2016) through #47 DAVE CHAPPELLE’S BLOCK PARTY (2006) – I saw NONE of these, save for #60 STANDING IN THE SHADOWS OF MOTOWN (2002). The other ones about music – #68 MISS SHARON JONES! (2016); and #52 MILES DAVIS: BIRTH OF THE COOL (2019) were of interest, and I almost went to see #54 WHITNEY (2018). I REALLY wish I had seen #48 DEAR WHITE PEOPLE (2014). But I steered clear of #51 DETROIT (2017), which seemed far too real, just from the trailer.

Bryan Stevenson

#46 Just Mercy (2020). On those lists of black films that white people should see, this film often shows up. Yet some list-makers dismiss it because it took place in the past and in the South, as though it somehow doesn’t count. I’m mystified by that.
#45 CREED II (2018) #44 GOOD HAIR (2009) – I REALLY wanted to see Good Hair, because the issue of black females’ hair has been an issue much of my life.

#43 STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON (2015) – I really had intended to see this when it was in theaters, but it didn’t happen.
#42 SUPPORT THE GIRLS (2018) #41 IT COMES AT NIGHT (2017) #40 LUCE (2019) – Luce was intriguing, but it didn’t stay long enough in theaters.
#39 DJANGO UNCHAINED (2012) – I made the deliberate decision not to see this Tarantino film, which I discussed here.
#38-#33 I never got around to see Precious.

#32 Step (2017) – I did see this, maybe on TV. Inspiring.
#31 13TH (2016). In the summer of 2019, my daughter compelled me to watch 13th. She’d already watched it a half dozen times at that point, and more subsequently. It is one of those films on most everyone’s lists of black films to see. I’ve recommended it myself.

Me, mentioned in newspapers

three-car collision

Roger singing, Trinity AME Zion Church, age 6

After I did a meme that included the number of times I was on TV, I decided to look when I was mentioned in newspapers. I have this Newspapers.com account, which I initially got for genealogical research. So I get to research me.

I decided to limit the search to the Binghamton Press and Sun-Bulletin from 1953 to 1976. There are some hits from other people named Roger Green. Searching the Albany papers will be much more difficult because there was a state legislator with my name who was often mentioned.

Sat, 17 Dec 1960 – City Protestant Churches to Hail Nativity. I would be singing Little Drummer Boy at Trinity AME Zion Church.
Sat, 16 Dec 1961 -Area Protestants to Celebrate Glorious Nativity. I would have a solo at Trinity AMEZ.
[I was still a boy soprano then.]

Sat, 7 Feb 1970 – City Schools will mark Negro week. A number of students, including my sister Leslie and me, would be reading the works of black poets at an assembly the following Friday at Binghamton Central High School.
Sat, 3 Apr 1970 – King Memorial in City Tomorrow. “Eulogy and benediction will be given by Roger Green.”
{I was moving away from the desire to become a pastor by then.]

Mon, 23 Feb 1970 – Green Family Life Harmonious. I wrote about this HERE.

14 Sep 1970 M-E Girl leads Albany panel. Governor’s Council on Children and Youth; I represented Binghamton Central HS. [The first time I ever flew in an airplane was a little thing with about a dozen seats, flying from Binghamton to Albany in a thunderstorm! The return flight was calmer.]

The accident

23 Jun 1972 – two identical posts titled Hospitals. “CHARLES JOSEPH, 37, of Endicott, and ROGER GREEN, 19, 29 Ackley Ave., Johnson City, fair condition, Ideal Hospital. Injuries not immediately available, after a three-car collision in Endicott.

“Endicott police said that Green was a passenger in a car driven by Joseph. The Joseph car was stopped in the westbound lane of North Street at McKinley Avenue when it was struck in the rear by a car driven by Dorothea…, 41, Endwell, they said.
The impact forced the Joseph car into a car driven by Robert Smith, 24, which was stopped in front of it.

“They said Joseph was taken to the hospital with head and neck injuries, Green was taken with shoulder and jaw injuries, and Smith, who was not admitted, was treated for a neck injury.”

[I hitchhiked to work. Charlie picked me up because he recognized me as my father’s son. In hospital for a day and a half, followed by six weeks of physical therapy.]

3 May 1975 ‘The Boys’ BHares Homosexuality. (Review of Boys in the Band at the Roberson Center.) “Bernard (Roger Green) is the black faggot of the play, the ‘African Queen’ as he’s referred to at one point, and later as the “queen of spades.” His role, too, jells only in the second act. It is minor, but as painful as the others.”

[After reading that, no wonder one of my grade school classmates thought I was gay before she was corrected by another one of my old friends.]

I might have missed some articles, but I didn’t want to look through over 20,000 records.

Off topic

My blog provider’s host machine went down on the afternoon of July 4. It took over 24 for them to restore data and web services. But MY site took another message from me and an additional four hours. The trick was that I was supposed to give a presentation ABOUT MY BLOG and its content about race on the morning of July 5, while my blog was still down. I muddled through. Thanks to my kind audience.

“As my provider noted, “We understand how important your online presence is to you, and we apologize that in this case, we weren’t able to meet the high standards for service you’ve come to expect from us… To help prevent this type of event from happening in the future, we will be doing a full internal investigation of this issue, working to thoroughly determine the root cause and the scope of its impact.

“Thank you for your patience, we greatly appreciate it!” I wasn’t all that patient, but what can you do? Watch three MCIU movies so I wouldn’t keep checking my site every 10 minutes.

The “good death” of Carl Reiner

Denny O’Neil, David Mazzucchelli, and me

**It appears that Carl Reiner had a good death on June 29. The 98-year-old was productive and vital until the very end.**

This is very clear as I was watching If You’re Not In the Obit, Eat Breakfast, the 2017 documentary for which Reiner was nominated for an Emmy. I caught it on July 3.

He “tracks down several nonagenarians [and older] to show how the twilight years can be rewarding.” The participants included Fyvush Finkel, who died before the release; the recently deceased Kirk Douglas; Betty White; Dick Van Dyke, with his much younger wife Arlene; Norman Lear; and naturally, his friend of 70 years, Mel Brooks. Here’s the preview.

I’m pleased to note that my daughter has watched all five seasons of The Dick Van Dyke Show, which Carl Reiner created, and which I love. Of course, he played the irritable TV star, Alan Brady, as well as the budding English anti-existentialist Yale Sampson, and several other annoying characters.

Not like his characters

But as Mark Evanier noted: “Carl Reiner was the friendliest, most talented person in show business… He was a guy I admired not just for his fine work as a writer, producer, director, and performer but for just the way he was as a person. Every time I was around him, he was an absolute delight – funny, engaging, willing to talk with anyone about anything. He was just what you’d want an idol to be. He was a role model for how to be truly successful and sane in show business.”

Yes, Carl Reiner was an actor (Ocean’s 11 franchise, Hot in Cleveland) and director (Oh, God; The Jerk; All of Me). But mostly he was a writer, going back to 1950s television, with Sid Caesar and Dinah Shore. He co-wrote and directed Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid (1982) and The Man with Two Brains (1983).

I had wished he would have been selected for the Kennedy Center Honors, like his friends Mel Brooks had been in 2009 and Norman Lear in 2017. It may be that he was underappreciated as the straight man, such as the interviewer of Brooks’ 2000 Year Old Man.

Other recent deaths of note

Dennis O’Neil, who died June 11, was a comic writer who I admired greatly. His Green Lantern/Green Arrow with Neal Adams made the book relevant. He also did work on Iron Man and The Amazing Spider-Man.

Somewhere in my possession is a photo of O’Neil, David Mazzucchelli, Augustus Manly (Matt at the time), me, and a fifth person at the comic book store FantaCo in Albany. Denny and David were working on Daredevil at the time, so this had to be 1984 or 1985. He was quite pleasant, but I might have been a bit awestruck.

Hugh Downs, who passed away on July 1, was a constant presence in my television watching the last third of the 20th century. He hosted the game show Concentration (1958-1968), which BTW I was very bad at. Downs also co-hosted The Today Show (1962-1971).

With Barbara Walters, he co-hosted the news show 20/20 from 1978 until his retirement in 1999. In 1984, “he was certified by the Guinness World Records as holding the record for the greatest number of hours on network commercial television (15,188 hours).”

The reference to the “good death”, incidentally, comes from Paul McCartney explaining the song The End of the End from his 2007 album Memory Almost Full.

Ringo Starr, Beatle, is 80

Tanglewood in June 2021

Ringo Starr has been mentioned at least a couple hundred times in this blog. Unsurprising, given my unabashed affection for the Beatles. And I see that, 50 years after the band broke up, the Beatles and Ringo generate a lot of comments online.

Questions such as whether he is a good drummer. “Dave Grohl, frontman of Foo Fighters and former drummer of the legendary grunge band Nirvana, said about him: ‘Define ‘best drummer in the world’. Is it someone that’s technically proficient? Or is it someone that sits in the song with their own feel? Ringo was the king of feel.'”

Of course, he was picked to replace Pete Best. Ringo himself said his best drumming for the Beatles was on Rain.

The Beatle also known as Richard Starkey had his particular brand of charisma. The other Beatles insisted he was the best actor in their first movie, A Hard Day’s Night. The storyline of the second film, Help!, was centered around him.

Ringo still tours with his All-Starr band. I have never seen him play, though the tour has been in my neck of the woods a few times. In fact, he was supposed to have been at Tanglewood last month, but that program was postponed a year.

Ringo was scheduled to play with Steve Lukather (Toto guitarist), Colin Hay (Men at Work singer), Gregg Rolie (Santana keyboardist), Warren Ham (vocals/sax/flute), Gregg Bissonette (drums), and Hamish Stuart (Average White Band bass/guitar/vocals),

Previously…

Back in 2018, I wrote about his country album Beaucoups of Blues, which I think is pretty darn good. Unfortunately, many of the links are not working. So check out the album here or here.

In 2016, I discussed Ringo’s “peace and love” initiative, and how we should still do it, even if we’re not sure it’s working.

In 2011, I noted that, around Ringo’s birthday, I play Beatles cover albums. And I have a lot of them.

Finally, back in 2010, I listed my favorite songs by Ringo Starr. Many of the links no longer worked, but I’ve replaced them.

Happy 80th birthday, Ringo. Peace and love to all of us.

Comic book creator John Byrne is 70

FantaCo Chronicles

Back in my FantaCo days, John Byrne saved my bacon. Twice.

For those of you who are not comic book fans, Byrne is a British-born writer and artist of superhero comics. Notably, he had a stellar run with Chris Claremont that made the X-Men the most popular title in the Marvel Universe starting in the late 1970s. He’s worked on many Marvel titles and a few from DC, as you can see here. In 1981, Byrne took over the writing and drawing of Marvel’s first superhero group, the Fantastic Four.

When I worked at FantaCo, we created a series of magazines about Marvel characters. The first was the X-Men Chronicles in 1981, which I edited, with a cover by former X-Men artist Dave Cockrum, It turned out to be monumentally successful, with a print run of 50,000.

The next two were to cover the Fantastic Four, edited by me, and Daredevil, compiled by Mitch Cohn, in early 1982. I no longer know how we did it, but we were able to get several name artists and writers to participate in our project.

Wait, Tom Skulan, publisher and store owner, remembers that several came directly from other artists who had done work for us “who felt that their friends would appreciate the high rates we were paying.” Mitch, in particular, often pumped creators for other phone numbers.

We DID have an impressive Rolodex. (Hey, kids: a Rolodex is “a rotating file device used to store business contact information. Its name is a portmanteau of the words rolling and index.” I have my red one SOMEWHERE, I think.)

Problem solver

John Byrne agreed not only to do the front cover of the Fantastic Four Chronicles but the centerspread. He also wrote A Personal Reflection re: the FF. We needed to print the front and back covers of the Fantastic Four and Daredevil Chronicles “two-up”, i.e., at the same time.

The problem is that I didn’t have the back cover from prominent artist George Perez. What to do, what to do?

Finally, I called Byrne, who suggested using his front cover as the back cover as well. No charge. Eventually, the Perez cover showed and we used it as the inside back cover. It bumped a piece by local artist Joe Fludd, who was/is a big Perez fan. George, BTW, did the cover for the Avengers Chronicle, edited by Mitch.

I’m working on the Spider-Man Chronicles. Spider-Man was my favorite character. Mitch got Frank Miller, who had done the Daredevil Chronicles cover, to agree to do the same for Spidey. Then, at the last moment, Miller called and pulled out! I have everything else finished.

In desperation, I call John Byrne. Can he whip up SOMETHING? And quickly? I swear that four days later, the cover arrives in the mail. And it’s great! The book schedule is saved.

I haven’t kept up with Byrne since I largely gave up reading comics in the mid-1990s. I know that he and his X-Men collaborator Chris Claremont were entered into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2015. But thanks, John Byrne. And happy natal day.