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Showing posts from February, 2010

I have a problem with "Precious"

I saw "Precious," the movie about the obese, illiterate, pregnant (by her for the second time) teenager's road to humanity, a few weeks ago. The story is harsh (see more below), the acting for the most part is brutally realistic, the racism is overwhelming, and maybe - just maybe - there is a positive point to be made. By the way, yes, I said "the racism." Let me start with the story itself, so I can get this out of the way: if it were a similar story dealing with beautiful white women set in a trashy South, it would have been aired on the Lifetime Movie channel (all-women-in-distress-all-the-time). Maybe it's a sign of our stereotypical cultural reality that a movie about fat black women (or Jewish women, too) probably wouldn't be touched by LTM; I don't know. Mo'nique may have given the performance of her life, but rather than find her credible, I couldn't lose the image of Faye Dunaway as Joan Crawford beating up on her daughter. The read