People have the power... well some do, anyway

More charity songs. War Child actually has a whole album--this is the first video I've seen. It's a remake of Patti Smith's "People Have the Power." Now... if I was going to produce a remake of this song, I'd go in the direction of making it musically even rock-ier, rather than poppier. This is tinny sounding. But the video is cute... the kids are just too darn tootin' cute-in'. And at least at the end they say what they're doing with the money.

Lyrically the song is simple, but I think it's nice to be optimistic once in awhile. Very much in the "Imagine" vein, and appropriate to the subject matter.

I believe everything we dream
can come to pass through our union
we can turn the world around
we can turn the earth's revolution



Here's the original song.

A FriendPaul Favourite Song - beeoootiful

Bill Cosby: The Chicken Heart

My grandfather had this album, and this was one of our favourite skits. "And I'd start smearing that Jell-o..."





And this one:



And this one:

Oscar

Many years ago, when Rolling Stone was a real magazine and not crap-o-la, I read an article about the lack of recognition of African-Americans at the Oscars. I hadn't watched the Oscars that year so I didn't know that Spike Lee's Malcolm X had lost out for best actor and best film to Al Pacino and The Scent of a Woman. I was shocked--shocked!--as I sat in my chair at the Dorval library. The Oscars always give prizes to *epics* and Malcolm X fell firmly in the epic tradition.

I can't say I was a big Oscar fan before reading that article, but I became even less of one after. Cinematic Hollywood must be the most out of date, out of the loop, backwards entertainment industry in the US. Ridiculously so. Ridiculously behind its own public.

And I guess, according to this article, very little has changed since I read the article 14 years ago: [this is in re. Mo'Nique's acceptance speech]

In the 70 years between McDaniel's and Mo'Nique's wins, only three other black actresses -- Whoopi Goldberg, Halle Berry and Jennifer Hudson -- have taken home Oscars. Just one of those was for a leading role, and if you guessed that went to the only thin, light-skinned, button-nosed, biracial one of the bunch, you get a gold star. Four black men have won best actor -- three of those in the last 10 years -- and four have won best supporting. So that's 13 acting awards out of 328. In 82 years. This year also saw the second African-American to be nominated for best director and the first ever African-American screenwriter to win. In 82 years. Welcome to post-racial America.

...

Consider the shocked reaction of umpteen reporters upon learning that the movie's star, Gabourey Sidibe, is nothing like Precious -- that she was, in fact, acting. Consider the clip they chose to show last night that featured Sidibe stealing a bucket of fried chicken, for crying out loud. Consider that four of the best picture nominees were widely criticized for their treatment of race -- "Precious" for all of the above; "District 9" for its arguably sketchy handling of an apartheid allegory and undeniably degrading depiction of human black Africans; "The Blind Side" and "Avatar" for being yet more iterations of a tired and condescending "white savior" narrative. That's not to say those films were wholly without merit or even necessarily undeserving of the praise, but when four of the year's most beloved movies contain problematic racial tropes, it's a bit premature to congratulate the Academy or ourselves for having come so far in the last 82 years. [from Salon]