Movie and Book Review

I finished The Autobiography of Jane Pittman. I can't believe such a short book took me so long to read. After a while it got to be more like assigned reading; it was difficult to pick it up. The premise of the book is that a writer knew a 110-year old woman who had lived through 7 years of slavery and then through the reconstruction, Jim Crow and was getting involved the civil rights movement. Had she been a real person, I would love to have known her and her story.

My biggest...actually, only problem with the book, what made it so difficult to read was that it's written as if Miss Jane wrote it and her speech is very colloquial. She's got paragraph after paragraph with no pronouns or other identifying nouns. I spent half the time trying to figure out who was talking, who they were talking about and then even if they were talking about a person or a town. It wasn't that I didn't understand the meaning of words, but the broken up English was hard to follow. Also, the lack of a timeline. I never knew when it was that events were taking place.

All in all, it was a pretty good book with a disappointing ending. What a schizophrenic review.

A few weeks ago Mom was rifling through some old papers and came up with this little tiny blue one with the names of a few movies on it. She said someone had recommended that she watch them. On the list was a movie called The Second Chance and another called Gospel.

The review at Plugged In says that Second Chance is about racism, but I disagree. I think the movie is about getting out of your comfy chair and helping people. Tossing money at problems is rarely the correct fix. I really liked this movie and even Del liked it and that's saying something!!

Gospel was depressing. Although this is supposed to be a story about a prodigal son who comes home and turns his life over to Jesus, I just don't see that. I see a story about a man who changes singing venues. I'd like to know how realistic this movie is. Del did not watch it with us but has said he would to give us his own review. I have a lot more to say about this movie but this is not the venue for me to voice it so I'll stop with...it's worth it to watch.

Then Del had the audacity to send me to Blockbuster. I just don't do well with picking out movies. I won't pick up anything that has "some sensuality" in it...period. And I'm not really into mindless action flicks. I usually just resort to my tried and true favorites when I want to watch a movie.

So anyway, I go to Blockbuster all by myself. I didn't even have Anna. Amazing. My eye and interest is caught by A Raisin in the Sun and Not Easily Broken. I don't know why, but that's what I came home with. Oh and Way of War, but we'll just pretend I didn't get that one. Sshhhhh. Del actually laughed at me when I walked in the door with these movies. LOL. I'm terrible at picking out movies. I think I did pretty well though.

The more I thought about Not Easily Broken the more I thought I had heard about this movie before. Then I saw "A TDJakes Film" at the bottom remembered that Terry had mentioned a TD Jakes movie before and when I checked out the post, this was the movie. It was fascinating to see what Terry was talking about in her review. I liked the movie, but once again, time and forum leave me with "let's talk about it later." It's telling that the married couple in this film are Dave Johnson and Clarice Clark.

A Raisin in the Sun. Go get it, watch it. I *really* liked this movie. I didn't feel it was a "black movie." It was simply a story about a family and they happened to be black. Except for Sean "P Diddy" Combs I though everyone's performance was stellar. Go get it, watch it. I'd like to hear what you like about it.