Beauty Break: Born on New Year's Day

No "showbiz history" today but, as with Christmas, how strange would it be to have your birthday fall directly on a holiday. Some of you know out there. Do tell in the comments. It must be especially weird to be a New Year's Day baby since people pack so much importance on to this day as a fresh start. And here comes a long a baby with a literal fresh start on everyone's collective fresh start day. 

Here are a dozen showbiz beauties born on this day...

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Boyz n the Hood Turns 25

Lynn Lee revisits the John Singleton classic on its 25th anniversary.

Four young boys walk along a railroad track, idly chatting but in search of something specific.  They find what they’re looking for: a dead body.  A group of older boys arrives and harasses them.  The most pugnacious of the younger group fights back in a way that foreshadows his destiny as an adult.

Stand by Me?  No, Boyz n the Hood, which opened in theaters 25 years ago today.  And the parallels are no mere coincidence. Writer and drector John Singleton was intentionally referencing the earlier Rob Reiner film – perhaps as much for the differences as the similarities between the two narratives of boyhood and the cultural spaces they occupy...

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Review: The Perfect Guy

Tim here. I have a fun game: describe the plot of The Perfect Guy to somebody. Better yet, see how much of the plot they can guess just from the title: Leah (Sanaa Lathan) is dating this really swell guy Dave (Morris Chestnut), but he absolutely refuses to commit, so she dumps him. Mere seconds later, or so it seems, she's met-cute with an even sweller guy, Carter (Michael Ealy) one who's so handsome that the whole movie seems to melt whenever he flashes his smoldering eyes and quiet smile, and who impresses the ever-loving hell out of her friends and family without even the smallest effort. He is, you might go so far as to say, the Perfect Guy.

Ah, but he has a violent streak, and when he takes it out on some hapless shmuck in front of our heroine, she decides to get out while the getting's good. And this turns the Perfect Guy into a Perfect Psychopath, and there will be much anguish and suffering, and much brow-furrowing from the wise but helpless cop (Holt McCallany) who wishes that the system wasn't so rigged against women in trouble, but is personally powerless to do anything but suggest in elliptical terms how she can take the law into her own hands.

So far, so clichéd, but that's not the game.

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'The Best Man Holiday' a Fascinating Portrait in Black Cinema

Glenn here. I get the sense that I am not meant to have much of an opinion on The Best Man Holiday. I suspect that even to the filmmakers it was meant to do little more than make audiences feel good (as well as a little sad – oh gawd, the tears!!) and make money while not rocking the boat. And yet I come to this 14-years-later sequel to Malcolm D. Lee’s original The Best Man (1999) and find it one of the year’s most fascinating films in terms of the evolution of black cinema and filmmaking in general.

 

Oh sure, it’s a perfectly adequate movie. It’s certainly never truly great. There’s quite a bit of stuff here that makes no sense (two deus ex machinas in the span of ten minutes is a bit much), and I’m dubious about some of its politics in regards to female sexuality. It’s also too long. On that same day I had watched What’s Love Got To Do With It? for the next Team Experience poll and that one, a biopic about the life of Tina freakin’ Turner, was shorter than The Best Man Holiday! Nevertheless, by the end credits I had laughed, I had cried, and I felt like I’d revisited old friends that left me with a smile on my face. Even if as a gay, white, Australian, Hollywood probably doesn't think I should have any interest in it. [more]

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