IMAGE FROM THE WEST AFRICAN FILM ‘MAMA WATI’
None of this is in any order of importance. This is a stream of conscious list for the era of streaming and short attention spans.
Didn’t finish as many books as I would have liked due to work in 2023, but did complete and enjoy Colson Whitehead’s Crook Manifesto, All the Sinners Bleed by S.A. Crosby (both crime centered novels with social commentary), and big biography’s of two very different figures ( Jonathan Eig’s King and Stacey Robinson’s Tupac Shakur.)
Don’t watch a lot of series but made my way through Loki (Disney), the brilliant Succession (HBO), the docu series Telemarketers (HBO), Get Gotti (Netflix), Arnold (Netflix), and the short films Wes Anderson made based on Roald Dahl’s stories (Netflix). Thought the Wham! doc (Netflix) was delightful and was pleased to see Invisible Beauty about the fashion legend Bethann Hardison completed.
Movies I made sure I watched in theaters (and justified the trip): Killers of the Flower Moon, Oppenheimer, John Wick 4, The Equalizer 3, Blue Beetle, The Killer, Silent Night and Poor Things. Special shout out to the lovely little indie, Freemont, about an Persian immigrant woman in the Bay Area, that I caught one night at the IFC Center was a throwback to ‘90s small is beautiful cinema. And to Mami Wata, an artful West African film shot in glorious black & white about a female deity.
JOHN BOYEGA AND JAMIE FOXX IN ‘THEY CLONED TYRONE’
Movies I streamed and wish I’d seen on the big screen: They Cloned Tyrone, Burial (both of which feature primo Jamie Foxx performances), Blackberry (how they made this work is amazing), The Holdovers (an anti-Magic Negro movie), The Persian Version, Fair Play. Extra special shout out Beau Is Afraid for existing at all.
I was at the taping of Chris Rock’s Outrage special in Baltimore, so I can’t speak on how people at home experienced it, but it was intense to be in the room as Chris comedically unpacked his demons for a global audience. Not an evening I’ll ever forget.
Hoping, dear readers, you get a moment to check out some of the projects I worked on in 2023: I directed Say Hey, Willie Mays (HBO) and Thriller 40 (Paramount Plus), and executive produced Dear Mama (FX) and Black Life: Untold Stories (CBC).