Posted in New Trailer Alerts!!, On The Radar

Weekly Trailer Alerts!!

It’s the first of the month and the first of the new year!! Great thing about film and television is that it never ends! So let’s not waste anytime and get right to these trailers, check them out below ⬇️:

Will Trent (Streaming on ABC January 3rd)

Season 2-Ginny & Georgia (Streaming on Netflix January 5th)

Season 2-BMF (Streaming on STARZ January 6th)

Final Season-Hunters (Streaming on Prime Video January 13th)

The Last of Us (Streaming on HBO Max January 15th)

When You Finish Saving the World (In theaters January 20th)

Extraordinary (Streaming on Hulu January 25th)

Posted in New Trailer Alerts!!, On The Radar

Weekly Trailer Alerts!!

Mixing it up for you this week! Plenty of options to choose from drama to horror with a splash of 80s nostalgia. Check them out below:

Surface (Streaming on Apple TV+ July 29th)

Paper Girls (Streaming on Amazon Prime July 29th)

Wedding Season (Streaming on Netflix August 4th)

Smile (In theaters September 30th)

See How They Run (In theaters September 30th)

Matilda (Streaming on Netflix December 2nd)

Posted in New Trailer Alerts!!, On The Radar

Weekly Trailer Alerts!!

Another week, another dollar, another trailer! Who doesn’t love getting something new to watch and put on your calendar every week! Check out this week’s new trailers below:

The Orville: New Horizons (Streaming on Hulu June 2nd)

Season 2-P-Valley (Streaming on STARZ June 3rd)

Hustle (Streaming on Netflix June 8th)

First Kill (Streaming on Netflix June 10th)

Season 4-Westworld (Streaming on HBO Max June 26th)

Avatar: The Way of Water (In theaters December 16th)

Posted in Feature Spotlight, Jaya's Pop Culture Minute-PCM, On The Radar

Jaya’s Pop Culture Minute (PCM)- “A Year in Review”

Not only do you get Dr. G’s 2021 Faves, but I had to make sure I gave you a bonus list! Check out Black Future Feminist Intern Jaya as she offers her two cents for 2021!!

Here is a list of my favorite things that came out and/or discovered for the first time this year. These are things that I discovered that really stuck with me through this crazy year. So for my final post of 2021 here are a few things that got me through this year and here’s to a new year!

My Favorite Albums:

  • Paul’s Boutique ~Beastie Boys
  • Midnight Marauders ~A Tribe Called Quest
  • Call Me If You Get Lost ~Tyler the Creator
  • Vs. ~Pearl Jam
  • There is Nothing Left To Lose ~Foo Fighters
  • Divine Feminine ~Mac Miller
  • Planet Her ~Doja Cat
  • Lately I Feel Everything ~Willow Smith
Photo by Jessica Lynn Lewis on Pexels.com

My Favorite Books:

  • Hamlet ~William Shakespeare
  • Flowers for Algernon ~Daniel Keyes
  • The Handmaid’s Tale ~Margaret Atwood
  • A Game of Thrones ~George R.R. Martin
  • The Song of Achilles ~Madeline Miller
Photo by Taryn Elliott on Pexels.com

My Favorite Movies:

  • Eternals (2021)
  • Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)
  • Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings (2021)
  • The Last Black Man in San Francisco (2019)
  • Sound of Metal (2019)
  • Little Miss Sunshine (2006)
  • The Truman Show (1998)
  • Fargo (1996)
  • Goodfellas (1990)
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko on Pexels.com

My Favorite TV Shows:

  • Invincible (Prime Video)
  • Squid Game (Netflix)
  • Arrested Development (Netflix)
  • Clickbait (Netflix)
  • The Falcon and The Winter Soldier (Disney+)
  • Hawkeye (Disney+)
  • Downton Abbey (Peacock)
  • Gotham (Netflix)
  • Cowboy Bebop [Anime] (Funimation)
Photo by John-Mark Smith on Pexels.com

Cheers to what is to come in 2022!!

Posted in A Professor's Thoughts..., On the Desk...

Thank You Issa Rae!!

The new season of Insecure has started and we are 2 episodes!! Let me tell you as someone who has been watching the show since DAY ONE, Issa rae and the show never ceases to amaze me!! So much so that I had to write down a few notes in the form of a ‘thank you’ note post expressing my appreciation!! I remember actually hearing about the show in 2016 while vacationing at Martha’s Vineyard and attending the annual MVAAFF. If nothing else I had planned to watched the series off the strength of Issa Rae’s previous web series “Awkward Black Girl” and the fact that it was a series about young Black professionals. With little to no expectations, like many others we just dived in. In the words of R&B singer Vivian Green, we were always riding an “emotional rollercoaster” 30 mins at a time when it came to this show.

It is not often that you find a show that tells so many stories and is so relatable that you have to step back and say “damn that’s really close to my life” or “I totally know that feeling!” Every season has created an on-going dialogue, surrounding everything from entrepreneurship to family planning (birth and death) to complex relationships/dating to self-preservation to job security to simply just believing in one’s self, all topics that will surely continue linger in the atmosphere even after the last and final episode. For me, Insecure is the Living Single of its time! As a professional, awkward, funny, driven Black woman seeing the various experiences of Black womanhood play out on-screen via the vision of a Black woman always gave me a sense of hope and promise.

And so I have to thank you for showing the many complex layers of relationships and friendship and that they are not perfect nor should we strive for them to be. To be honest in each of the four main Black female characters (Issa, Molly, Kelli, and Tiffany) I found a piece of myself in each character. That’s what makes being a Black woman so great!! Life truly is a learning process. You provided us another outlet that permits us to stumble, fail, get back up, find joy, be angry, and persevere!!

Black women friendships as personified in HBO’s Insecure

Thank you for normalizing therapy, particularly for Black women…The familiarity of each session was so very refreshing….this is so needed and necessary. The way therapy is showcased on this show is a great example of how it can be utilized in fiction but translate into reality.

Molly in a therapy session on ‘Insecure’ Season 2-Episode 2 “Hella Questions”

The fashion and hair…So versatile..Daring…Forward-thinking…Inspiring…I definitely picked up a few things and added them to my closet.

How about all the cameos….Syd, Sterling K. Brown, Lil Rel Howery, Kyla Pratt, Luke James, Kofi Siriboe, Jidenna, Hayley Kiyoko, Dawn Richard, Wendy Raquel Robinson, and many more…

I will always look at couches, Best Buy shirts, and Coachella very differently and I’m good with that!

New and improved vocabulary…words/concepts/phrases like ‘zaddy’, ‘ho-tation’, ‘Go for it, go for it, go! Ho for it, ho for it, ho!’, ‘work in progress’, ‘thug yoda’, and ‘we got y’all’ will always have a special place in the Black community.

Thank you for the location…location…location!!

Oh and I cannot forget the amazing soundtracks, my music game continues to level up thanks to this show!!

Official ‘Insecure’ Playlist from Spotify

Watching this show this show for me personally allowed me to have those moments of thinking about how to evaluate my life and actions. Lots of growth and self-reflection!! I definitely increased my intake of daily affirmations and learned to truly be honest with myself and others. About five years ago, Issa Rae made a statement to NPR that definitely resonated then and even more so now, “We don’t get to just have a show about regular Black people being basic.” Who would have thought basic, regular, and awkwardness were just the things we needed in life.

Once again my Sunday nights will never be the same after Insecure comes to a final close. Insecure will join such shows as Lovecraft Country, Power, and The Wire, as premium channels shows that were well worth the extra purchasing cost.

So when it is all said and done…Issa you switched up the tv landscape around how we CAN center Black people and culture in a variety of ways….And I thank you Issa Rae for making this contribution to the pop culture landscape!!

Flyer from Insecure-Season 1
Flyer from Insecure-Season 2
Flyer from Insecure-Season 3
Flyer from Insecure-Season 4
Flyer from Insecure-Season 5

Just a few of my thoughts…

~Dr. G