clutchmag:

First Look: Idris Elba as Nelson Mandela

One of the most fascinating, complex, revered figures of our generation, Nelson Mandela has a life…

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thesmithian:

…up to 200,000 people angry with high costs and poor public services took to the streets. Protesters in Rio de Janeiro burned cars and looted buildings as police attempted to disperse them with teargas and rubber bullets. Aerial images showed thousands of people attempting to storm the congress building in Brasilia. The rallies…are some of the biggest ever seen in the country…

more.

It can…measure your pulse to see how the show is causing you to react. And, it can do all this in a room completely in the dark…For advertisers, this sort of information creates entirely new possibilities…They’ll know exactly the gender, geographic location, and age demographic of every eyeball…

Can’t blame #NSA for this one.

thesmithian:

Lionsgate has acquired screen rights to…Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, Devil In The Grove: Thurgood Marshall, The Groveland Boys, And The Dawn Of A New America, by Gilbert King…Set in 1949, with Florida’s…orange industry as a backdrop, as citrus barons got rich on the backs of…Jim Crow labor, the novel tells the all-too-familiar story of four young black men falsely accused of raping a 17-year-old white girl, and the NAACP’s legal team’s attempts to free them. It was a case that would bring an…attorney by the name of Thurgood Marshall into the…fray…

more.

Well dear readers, I have been watching a lot of documentaries lately (the product of waiting to go back to work) so I thought I would share the one’s I have seen and my thoughts with you. However, the list alone is a multi-page word document (when I commit, I commit; Oops) so I will start with the list of African American specific documentaries and go from there:

4 Little Girls (1997)

A Man Named Pearl (2006)

A Question of Color (1992)

A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs & Freedom (1996)

African American Lives (2006)

African American Lives 2 (2008)

All of Us: Protecting Black Women Against AIDS (2009)

America Beyond the Color Line (2005)

BaadAssss Cinema: A Bold Look at 70s Blaxploitation Films (2002)

Banished (2006)

Bastards of the Party (2005)

Between Black and White (1994)

Black American Conservatism: An Exploration of Ideas (1992)

Black Is – Black Ain’t: A Personal Journey Through Black Identity (1995)

Black Like Who? (1997)

Black on Black (1968)

Blacking Up: Hip Hop’s Remix of Race and Identity (2010)

Breaking the Huddle (2008)

Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin (2002)

By River, By Rail (1998)

Chester Himes: A Rage in Harlem (2009)

Chisholm ’72: Unbought & Unbossed (2004)Citizen King (2004)

COINTELPRO: The FBI’s War on Black America (2009)

Color Adjustment (1991)

Crisis in Levittown (1957)

Dorothy Dandridge: An American Beauty (2003)

Ethnic Notions (1986)

Eyes on the Prize Series (1987)

• Awakenings, 1954-1956
• Fighting Back, 1957-1962
• Ain’t Scared of Your Jails, 1960-1961
• No Easy Walk 1962-1966
• Mississippi, Is This America, 1962-1964
• Bridge to Freedom, 1965
• The Time Has Come, 1964-1965
• Two Societies, 1965-1968
• Power! 1967-1968
• The Promised Land, 1967-1968
• Ain’t Gonna Shuffle No More, 1964-1972
• A Nation of Law?, 1967-1968
• The Keys to the Kingdom, 1974-1980
• Back to the Movement, 1979-mid 1980s

Fannie Lou Hamer: Voting Rights Activists (2009)

Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans (2008)

Freedom Riders (2009)

Good Hair (2009)

Goodbye Uncle Tom (1971)

Half Past Autumn: The Life and Work of Gordon Parks (2000)

Hoop Dreams (1994)

It’s a Damn Shame: Homosexuality in Hop-Hop (2006)

Jazz (2001)

Just Black?: Multi-Racial Identity (1992)

Ku Klux Klan: A Secret History (1998)

Lady Day Sings the Blues (2005)

Malcolm X: Make It Plain (1994)

Midnight Ramble: Oscar Micheaux and the Story of Race Movies (1994)

The N Word: Divided We Stand (2006)

Passin’ It On: the Black Panthers’ Search for Justice (2006)

Prom Night in Mississippi (2009)

Racism in America: Small Town 1950s Case Study

Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man, Celebrated Writer (2009)

Reconstruction: The Second Civil War (2004)

Roads to Memphis: the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. (2010)

Scottsboro: An American Tragedy (2005)

Secret Daughter (1996)

Sisters of Selma: Bearing Witness for Change (2007)

Slavery and the Making of America (2004)

Slavery by Another Name (2012)

Soul Food Junkies (2012)

Soundtrack for a Revolution (2009)

Strange Fruit (2002)

The Abolitionists (2013)

The Black List: Volume 1 (2008)

The Black List: Volume 2 (2009)

The Black List: Volume 3

The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975 (2011)

The Black Press: Soldiers Without Swords (1998)

The Black Wall Street

The Central Park Five (2013)

The Darker Side of Black (1996)

The Language You Cry In (1998)

The Loving Story (2011)

The Massachusetts 54th Colored Infantry (1991)

The Mirror Lied (1999)

The Murder of Emmett Till (2003)

The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow (2004)

The Two Nations of Black America (2008)

Two Dollars and A Dream (1989)

Unchained Memories: Readings From the Slave Narratives (2003)

Underground Railroad: the William Still Story (2012)

Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2005)

Wattstax (1973)

We Shall Overcome (1988)

When the Levies Broke (2006)

With All Deliberate Speed (2005)

(via racialicious)

Après “Man of Steel” #superman #manofsteel #summer2013 #washingtondc #citylife (at Uptown Tap House)

sonofbaldwin:

Six years ago, I had a deal with Lifetime Television to develop my bestselling novel, The Dirty Girls Social Club, as a TV series. It soon became clear that the relationship wasn’t going to work, when two executives insisted that my pilot outline “wasn’t Latin enough,” because it told of middle class, educated American women who happened to be Latina.

‘This reads as if it were about me and my friends,’ complained one executive in disgust.

I didn’t know how to respond, so I asked her what she’d prefer.

‘Why don’t we make the girls debating whether or not to date men in prison? I know that’s what Latinas talk about, just like it’s what black women talk about.’

And y’all keep saying that it’s all “just entertainment” and not meant to be a negative political or social statement.

(H/T Rebecca Theodore-Vachon)

davidkendall:

In light of the deletion of bohemea’s tumblr, thought it might be interesting to note a couple of things about the “fair use doctrine” that is an exception to the copyright laws, which the new bosses (and the old powers that be) may start trying to pummel us with.

An excerpt from here:

One of the rights accorded to the owner of copyright is the right to reproduce or to authorize others to reproduce the work in copies or phonorecords. This right is subject to certain limitations found in sections 107 through 118 of the copyright law (title 17, U. S. Code). One of the more important limitations is the doctrine of “fair use.” The doctrine of fair use has developed through a substantial number of court decisions over the years and has been codified in section 107 of the copyright law.

Section 107 contains a list of the various purposes for which the reproduction of a particular work may be considered fair, such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research. Section 107 also sets out four factors to be considered in determining whether or not a particular use is fair.

1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes
2. The nature of the copyrighted work
3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole
4. The effect of the use upon the potential market for, or value of, the copyrighted work

The distinction between what is fair use and what is infringement in a particular case will not always be clear or easily defined. There is no specific number of words, lines, or notes that may safely be taken without permission. Acknowledging the source of the copyrighted material does not substitute for obtaining permission.

An interesting article here, and here’s a legal guide for bloggers dealing with some copyright questions.

I’m not speaking for anyone else, or advising anyone else, but I think that, at the very least, I’m going to post a comment or criticism on any thing I post or reblog from now on; after all, fair commentary or criticism appears to be an exception to any claim of copyright infringement.

By the way, this is an educational, non-profit post, made purely to inform and enlighten, containing excerpts from other sources solely to illustrate the points made.

(image source; it’s an awesome image)

loveandjealousy:

A self-portrait made by an artist with alzheimer’s.

this is so sad

(via play-the-game)