(Originally published in the Portland Press Herald.)

“I’m not trying to say that I won’t ever see Black people on TV should some unaware group of people take ‘Soul!’ off. It’s just that I won’t see Black people creating, searching and acting instead of researching and reacting. There is no alternative to ‘Soul!’ — Ellis Haizlip

With seemingly endless and still-proliferating outlets on television right now, equal representation – with regards to non-whites, women, the LGBTQI community – still stinks.…

(Originally published in the Portland Press Herald.)

Answering an interviewer’s question about his infamous perfectionism, the late musician Frank Zappa once replied, “If you shoot anything lower than that, you’re going to come up with something sleazy.”

In actor and filmmaker Alex Winter’s truly outstanding documentary “Zappa," Frank Zappa’s life is portrayed as one long, unending battle against superficiality, commercialism and compromise, the three chief components of sleaze.

Winter (best known as Bill S. Preston, Esq. in the “Bill And…

“Forrest Gump,” the 1994 Best Picture Oscar winner, came out 20 years ago this week. In honor of the big anniversary, the film is receiving something equally huge: a celebratory, nationwide victory lap of screenings at IMAX theaters. Finally, you too can see Tom Hanks as he was meant to be seen: 40 feet high!

I’ll be anywhere else.

Look, it’s not that I hate “Forrest Gump.” Oh, wait, yes it is. I hate “Forrest Gump.” There, I said it,…

I’m a baseball fan. Sure, my 300-day-a-year wearing of various Red Sox jerseys may have clued in some of the swifter of you to that fact, but I’ll just come out and admit it anyway. I say this because I’d like to stress that my baseball fanniness has precious little to do with my enthusiasm for this movie which is, sure, about a young Dominican guy who comes to America because he is a, well, baseball player. Nope, this stunningly…