Looking Back On One Of The Highlights of Summer of '14: The Essence Festival

As is the case every year, summer has flown by. It’s hard to believe the last day of summer and the official start of fall is just days away.

The following is a look back at one of the highlights of my summer: attending the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans over Fourth of July weekend with my good friends Mary and Renee. The highlight was Prince’s performance at the Superdome on the Fourth.

Prince and the current configuration of his New Power Generation band, an all-female lineup known as 3rdEyeGirl, delivered a greatest-hits show that touched on many eras of his nearly 40-year career.

Fan favorites like “Take Me With U,” “Kiss” and “U Got the Look” mixed with a few rarities like “Sometimes It Snows in April” and “Party Man” from the Batman soundtrack and cover versions such as Janet’s “What Have You Done For Me Lately.”

Surprisingly, there were no guest appearances from previous band members or collaborators. Prince performed Sheila E.’s “The Glamorous Life,” but the famous singer/percussionist wasn’t in the house, and The Time’s “Jungle Love,” but Morris Day was nowhere to be seen.

And for fans who were hoping for a one-night-only reunion of The Revolution, considering this is the 30^th anniversary of Purple Rain, there was no such luck. (Read my review of Purple Rain: The Complete soundtrack at this link: http://chrisbournea.blogspot.com/2014/08/prince-to-release-new-music-purple-rain_27.html)

It would have been equally cool to have an appearance from an early band member such as Andre Cymone or an original NPG member such as Rosie Gaines adding vocals to “Diamonds and Pearls,” which Prince didn’t perform.

A selfie in the Superdome just before Prince took the stage.
Yes, I wore purple, as many in the audience of 90,000 did.

The same night that Prince took to the main stage, R&B diva Stephanie Mills was performing in one of the smaller lounges at the Superdome. It would have been really cool to see her join him for a duet of “How Come u Don’t Call me Anymore,” which she covered in the ‘80s.

Overall, Prince’s Essence set was a crowd-pleasing show that was a good intro to his catalog for younger concertgoers and nostalgic for longtime fans.

Before Prince took the stage, rising neo-soul star Janelle Monae warmed up the audience. With her funky sound and unique style, Monae is a throwback to Prince’s ‘80s heyday. She could have easily been one of the Minneapolis genius’ protegees signed to his Paisley Park records as part of his deal with Warner Bros.

Monae closed her set with her rendition of Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” which she performed during the tribute to His Royal Badness when he received a lifetime achievement honor at the BET Awards in 2010. Prince wowed the crowd by coming out and playing guitar on “Let’s Go Crazy,” and later opened his own set with the classic from the Purple Rain soundtrack.

An added treat to the Independence Day night of the Essence Festival was that veteran producer and guitar hero Nile Rodgers and Chic took the stage just before Prince.

Rodgers got the Superdome crowd on its feet with hits spanning his amazing four-decade career, from the ‘70s disco era up to the present with his Grammy-winning production on cutting-edge dance group Daft Punk’s “Get Lucky.”

A cellphone pic I took of Nile Rodgers photographing

 the Superdome crowd before starting his set.

 

 

Rodgers took the crowd down memory lane, even bringing out Sister Sledge member Kathy Sledge to sing “We Are Family,” which, of course, turned into a sing-along among the 90,000 packed into the Superdome.

'The Blue Diner' Offers A Refreshing Cinematic Feast

The drama The Blue Diner is a beautifully made indie movie that combines English and Spanish dialogue.

The story centers on a young woman of Puerto Rican heritage named Elena, capably played by Lisa Vidal. After some kind of head trauma, the bilingual Elena loses the ability to speak Spanish. When her immigrant mother and neighbors speak in her native language, she just stares at them, befuddled.

But a twist to the story is that whenever Elena experiences passionate emotions - fear, anger, love - her Spanish returns. 

The Blue Diner shows a close-knit yet complex relationship between Elena and her mother, played by talented veteran actress Miriam Colon. There is also an intriguing love triangle between Elena, her white American boss (Jack Mulcahy) at the funeral home where she works and a Latino bohemian artist (José Yenque) whose painting mysteriously appears in a museum where her mother works right around the time when Elena loses her Spanish.
 

Watch The Blue Diner trailer at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdd0HBvAr8o

 

Written, produced and directed by Natatcha Estébanez and Jan Egleson, The Blue Diner was released in 2001 and aired on HBO. The movie is refreshing in that it portrays a story with Latino characters that involves no violence, drugs or other stereotypes.

The performances are naturalistic and engaging. And the story is set in Boston, which is an interesting departure from the usual urban settings of New York or Los Angeles.

 

The only complaint I have is that the subtitles on the DVD are inconsistent. I'm trying to learn Spanish, so I wanted either English subtitles so that I could learn the meaning of the Spanish dialogue, or Spanish subtitles so that I could see visually what Spanish words were being spoken. But Spanish subtitles appeared in some scenes and not in others, for some odd reason.

 

Other than that, I would highly recommend checking out The Blue Diner. Not only should there be more movies made like this that present realistic, three-dimensional characters, movies like The Blue Diner should also reach a wider audience.

AN INTERESTING SIDE NOTE: According to Wikipedia, The Blue Diner got made because filmmaker Jan Egleson was able to acquire excess film stock from the '97 blockbuster Titanic.

A lot of small, character-driven indie flicks get made in this by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of way. To use a well-worn cliché, where there's a will, there's a way...

I Wasn't A Michael Jackson Fan Growing Up, But 'This Is It' Won Me Over

This confession may get me beaten up by an angry mob donning white gloves and surgical masks, but I wasn't much of a Michael Jackson fan growing up. 

Actually, I should rephrase that. No, I'm not back pedaling like the King of Pop doing his famous Moonwalk. I'm just clarifying that I was a fan of some of Michael's music, but I didn't really get his whole persona. 

 

Being a Generation Xer, I was a preteen when Thriller took the universe by storm back in 1983. But the first time I saw the iconic video for the title track, I was genuinely scared.

And not the good kind of scared you get when anticipating that first big drop on a rollercoaster ride. I mean the kind of creeped-out scared you get when watching a really eerie horror movie that gives you nightmares.

But I did enjoy many of Michael's other music videos and songs: "The Way You Make Me Feel," "Jam," Remember the Time," "You Rock My World," just to name a few. And I was a huge fan of Michael's baby sister Janet, especially in her funky Control and Rhythm Nation incarnation in the late '80s and early '90s.

But I just never really understood all the hoopla about Michael as a performer. I could sort of take him or leave him.

So back in October 2009 when some friends of mine who are devoted Michael fans planned a group outing to an opening-night screening of This Is It, the documentary that chronicles rehearsals leading up to what was to be Michael's last live show, I went along just to be sociable and out of curiosity. I wouldn't have rushed out to see This Is It of my own accord.

Watch highlights from the This Is It documentary at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_SLU3m6uCA

After seeing the documentary on the big screen, I was once again underwhelmed by the hype and didn't really see what everyone was raving about.

However, I recently picked up the This Is It DVD specifically to watch the bonus material. As someone who has staged a theatrical production myself (a play I wrote and produced; details at http://www.springtimeofourlives.com), I'm always interested in the behind-the-scenes workings of how shows come together.

I must say that hearing insider commentary from This Is It director Kenny Ortega and the other choreographers, dancers, singers and musicians who worked closely with Michael has given me a whole new appreciation for him as an artist. It's clear that he was a creative force of nature whose distinctive music and dancing has influenced scores of performers for generations to come.

 

Timor Steffens, one of the This Is It backup dancers, said it best: 

 

"When I came to this rehearsal and saw how Michael danced in real life, I started to doubt myself, like what I was doing is actually not dancing. It's isolated movements on rhythm. ... Dancing is a feeling that you have.

"And when I started to rehearse with Michael Jackson, if you look closely at what Michael Jackson's really doing and you listen to the music, he is an instrument of music.

 

"And if you were deaf, you could not hear music, you look at him, you will see the music play in his body. That just changed my whole point of view on dance, my whole point of view on life."

Before watching the This Is It bonus material, I had an impression of the show as some garish, over-the-top spectacle. But after seeing how much hard work and artistry went into putting the show together, I think it would have been a great treat for Michael's fans and a good primer to win over those of us who were skeptical.

Although This Is It never made it to the London stage due to Michael's untimely death on June 25, 2009, I'm glad I got to see Cirque du Soleil's production of Michael Jackson: Immortal when it came to Value City Arena in my city, Columbus, Ohio, in April 2013. 

Immortal seems to have incorporated many of the elements of Michael's This Is It show, and I can honestly say that Immortal is one of the best productions I've ever seen. It really captures Michael's essence and has many of the fantastical, magical elements of his performance style.

There's no doubt in my mind now that Michael Jackson's artistic legacy will live on forever.

Is It Progress When A Non-White Director Wins An Oscar For An All-White Movie? Yes And No.

I just watched the Oscar-nominated 2013 movie Gravity on DVD. The movie depicts outer space with eye-popping visuals, and I can only imagine what it was like watching such an awesome spectacle in an IMAX theater.

Sandra Bullock and George Clooney turn in very realistic performances as American astronauts stranded in space after debris from a Russian shuttle disaster destroys their spacecraft. Gravity keeps you riveted to the screen, wondering just how and if these sympathetic characters will make it home or become floating space junk like in Star Wars.

SPOILER ALERT: I really liked the closing scene of Gravity, when Sandra Bullock's character crash-lands back on Earth with a big, dramatic splash in the ocean. She slowly crawls out of the water onto a sandy beach - clearly a metaphor for the origins of life on Earth when the first creatures supposedly slinked out of the primordial soup.

Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón deservedly won an Oscar for directing - the first Latino to do so. He not only directed Gravity, he wrote it as well, along with his son, Jonas. It's great that Cuarón is bringing along the next generation.  

So a director of "color" winning an Oscar for a movie with an all-white cast proves that Hollywood really is colorblind, right? The fact that a filmmaker can be judged on the merits of his work and not on his race or cultural background is progress, right? Yes and no.

On the one hand, it's great that "minority" directors are getting more opportunities to direct big-budget, mainstream studio pictures, regardless of race. Cuarón winning the Oscar for Gravity can be considered an important milestone, just as Katherine Bigelow winning the Oscar for The Hurt Locker in 2010 was a significant step forward.

In Bigelow's case, she was the first woman to win the directing Oscar. And it was especially considered progress since she won for a movie about war, not a weepy drama or a similar "woman's" picture.

On the other hand, if "minority" and female directors are just going to be hired hands on big-budget, studio pictures who simply execute the technical aspects of directing a movie, then that really isn't progress. That's an "anyone can do it" mindset that doesn't really advance the cause of increasing diversity behind the camera.

That "colorblind" mindset will simply keep in place the glass ceiling that only lets a few lucky, talented exceptions seep through the cracks every now and then.

Cuarón certainly isn't the first "minority" to direct a movie with a predominantly white cast. Oscar-winning African-American actor and director Forest Whitaker (Lee Daniels' The Butler) did it nearly 15 years ago with another Sandra Bullock movie, Hope Floats.

And African-American director Antoine Fuqua is an A-list director who helms blockbusters with multiracial casts, such as 2013's Olympus Has Fallen and 2001's Training Day. The latter resulted in Denzel Washington becoming the first African-American man to win a Best Actor Academy Award.

It isn't fair that "minorities" and women have to bear the burden of carrying the fate of their entire race or gender on their shoulders. But hopefully directors of color and women who have breakthrough successes will use their clout and power in Hollywood to help others break through as well.

I'd love to know what other movie buffs think about this issue...

Movie Version of Terry McMillan's 'Dollar' Worth Was Worth My Money

Back in 2000, I was working a second job cleaning offices and would listen to books on tape (they were actual cassettes at the time) to keep myself entertained while I performed menial tasks such as scrubbing toilets, sweeping floors, dusting desktops, etc.

One of the books I listened to back then during my night job was Terry McMillan's A Day Late and a Dollar Short. I remember the book portraying the everyday struggles of a black family, going back and forth from the first-person perspective of several different characters .

Whoopi Goldberg and Ving Rhames play the matriarch and patriarch

            of a family in crisis in A Day Late and a Dollar Short.

Watch clips of the movie at the following link: http://www.mylifetime.com/movies/a-day-late-and-a-dollar-short

When I recently visited my neighborhood video store (yes, I still go to a bricks-and-mortar video store) and saw the movie version of A Day Late and a Dollar Short on one of the racks, I picked it up. I was curious to see how a movie would capture the numerous plot twists of the family saga.

A Day Late and a Dollar Short was actually a television movie that aired on Lifetime this spring. The movie stars Whoopi Goldberg as the matriarch of a loving yet conflicted clan that also includes Ving Rhames as her estranged husband and as their adult children, Mekhi Phifer (Soul Food), Tichina Arnold (Everybody Hates Chris), Kimberly Elise (For Colored Girls) and Anika Noni Rose (Dreamgirls).

The story has many of the melodramatic elements that viewers have come to expect from Lifetime movies, all rolled into one: life-threatening illness, infidelity, broken homes, child abuse, feuding siblings, addiction, etc.

Overall, it's great to see a movie that depicts African Americans as neither saintly and perfect nor completely dysfunctional - in other words, a three-dimensional portrayal. McMillan has a knack for telling stories that accurately convey the full range of middle-class black life.

For example, Tichina Arnold's character is a package courier by day and runs a Laundromat on the side. Rose is a popular television chef who can afford to have her own gardener (who also romances her). But the only brother in the family, Phifer, is a borderline deadbeat dad who has to move back home because of run-ins with the law.

For a few dollars I spent renting the DVD, A Day Late and a Dollar Short was worth the money.

All Jokes Journal - Sept. 10

I did a phone interview this evening with comedian Mike Bonner for the book I'm co-authoring with Raymond Lambert about All Jokes Aside, the groundbreaking comedy club Raymond operated in the '90s.

All Jokes Aside originally opened in Chicago in '91, but Mike was the emcee of the Detroit location that opened a few years later. Being from rough and tumble Motor City, I wasn't sure if Mike would open up to me. But he was incredibly easy to talk to and the conversation flowed.

One of the coolest things Mike shared with me was that comedians who got their start at All Jokes Aside could pull crowds even before they were big names. For example, audiences would flock to see the relatively unknown Mike Epps, who went on to gain fame in the Friday movies with Ice Cube and Chris Tucker as well as the Resident Evil sci-fi/action movies.

There's a lot of history in the All Jokes Aside story, and I look forward to discovering even more.

All Jokes Journal - Sept. 9

I spoke on the phone this evening with Raymond Lambert, who I'm co-authoring a book about All Jokes Aside, the Chicago comedy club he and business partner James Alexander operated in the '90s. The club is the subject of the documentary Phunny Business, currently airing on Showtime (click this link to watch the trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNdgchZ_C3I)

We're getting down to the wire and need to turn the manuscript in to the publisher, Agate Publishing, early next month, which means we're really going to have to hustle.

Steve Harvey got his start in broadcasting in '91 during a Chicago

radio appearance to promote his show at All Jokes Aside.

This morning, thumbing through the transcripts for Phunny Business, I read the interview Raymond did with Steve Harvey. It was so interesting learning how Steve's first appearance on Chicago's Doug Banks Radio Show launched Steve's career in broadcasting. And it all happened through a fluke.

Steve was only supposed to be on Banks' show for a "hot minute" to promote his appearance at All Jokes in '91, but Steve started improvising and basically took over the show for the rest of the morning. The show invited him back several times and he eventually landed a permanent spot on the air.

And the rest is comedy history...