Top Ten Movie Events of 2009 10. BLACK FILM – OF ONE TYPE OR ANOTHER – IS BACK Looking back, weirdly enough, the first good year for black films in a long time. Some were by black filmmakers, some were just about black people, some were elaborate metaphors on race….
No Comments + Read MoreMy Favorite Websites of 2009 10. HUFFINGTON POST Invaluable during the election. 9. BYRON CRAWFORD Hilarious and honest. 8. THE MESSAGE Funny and smart. 7. GOSSIP JACKER My new favorite in this category. 6. KANYE WEST: BLOG Always on the next shit. What’s his new site gonna be? 5. OSBORNE…
No Comments + Read MoreThe Top Ten Events in Television for 2009 10. THE GOOD WIFE I kept hearing about it, and man, it’s worthy of the hype. Beautifully written, shot, and performed. Not what I thought I would be into, but I am. 9. HBO Larry David found a way to have…
No Comments + Read MoreThe Top Ten Sex-Related Events of 2009 This whole list owes a great debt to the guys at US VS. THEM, who cover this material with much cleverness. 10. BARACK OBAMA Thanks for becoming a sex symbol, so smart black guys can then ask sisters swooning over him “but would…
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The African American martial arts star of the 1970s gets a DVD set devoted to his impressive skills.
By Steve Ryfle January 10, 2010
Before Jackie Chan and Jet Li, before Chuck Norris, Jean Claude van Damme and Steven Seagal, Jim Kelly earned his place in the pantheon of martial arts heroes fighting alongside Bruce Lee in 1973’s "Enter the Dragon." With his lightning-quick fists and feet, cocksure attitude and repertoire of quotable one-liners, the Afro-sporting, chisel-chested Kelly was as cool and flashy as Lee was fast and lethal.
Nearly four decades on, Kelly has become a certified cult film legend — the 2009 blaxploitation spoof "Black Dynamite" contained more than one homage to his movies — though his Hollywood career was all too brief.
This week, Warner Home Video will release its Urban Action Collection, featuring three of Kelly’s classic films on DVD for the first time: 1974’s "Black Belt Jones" and "Three the Hard Way" and 1976’s "Hot Potato." A fourth entry in the set, 1974’s "Black Samson," stars Rockne Tarkington, the actor who was originally set to play Kelly’s groundbreaking role in "Enter the Dragon."
The collection and a new wave of public appearances are going a long way toward helping Kelly reclaim his legacy as Hollywood’s first African American fighting film icon.
"I broke down the color barrier — I was the first black martial artist to become a movie star," said Kelly, 63, the owner and director of a tennis club in the San Diego area. "It’s amazing to see how many people still remember that, because I haven’t really done much, in terms of movies, in a long time."
No Comments + Read MoreShe gives me hope for the future.
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No Comments + Read MoreMy episode of Better Off Ted appeared on January 1, 2010 on ABC:
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When we thought we had buried such offensive terms as mulatto, quadroon and octoroon and the skin-hue bigotry that spawned them, here comes the senior senator from Nevada. In holding “light skin” and the absence of a “Negro dialect” as necessary qualifications for Senator Barack Obama to run successfully for president in 2008, Senator Harry Reid of Nevada offered up a rank insult to his colleague from Illinois. Senator Reid has rightly apologized to President Obama, but doesn’t seem to have contemplated how hurtful his words might be to those millions of African Americans who are not “light-skinned.” One wonders if he had seen the First Lady and her mother at the time of his remarks.
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No Comments + Read MoreFamily stories passed from one generation to another are sometimes the only way that one generation of a family becomes real and tangible to succeeding generations. In our family, the prime storyteller was my grandfather. He would always respond to the request, "Tell me a story." To my child’s mind, he told great stories, stories I in turn, many years later, told my children. Sometimes they listened , mostly they filed the information away into some mental file called "momma’s stories." One day when my daughter was in sixth grade….."momma’s stories" became real. She came flying in from school with a question…….
"Did my grandmother really shoot up a Ku Klux Klan meeting?"
"Where did you hear that?"
"From Liz (a kid on the next street whose family came from my home town in the Big Sandy Valley)."
"No, my mother did not shoot up a Klan meeting.."
"Liz’s mother said her mother told her….."
"Her mother has the story a little mixed up but that’s probably not her fault….
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