Twelve Years a Slave tells the true tale of Solomon Northrop, a freeman from New York who is drugged and betrayed and illegally sold into slavery in Louisiana of the 1850’s. There, stripped of his dignity and personhood, he endures the entire gobsmacking, nauseating gamut of white racism (from careless to sadistic), and survives, albeit…
Read moreAugust, Osage County
The Oklahoma of Tracy Lett’s August; Osage County is a total freakin’ wasteland. I’m not talking about the fertile, rolling farmlands stretching off across the plains in glorious golden technicolor summer sunshine. But instead, inside the chintzy over-stuffed patriarchal home of the Weston family, whose Dad has just killed himself. This singular event provides the…
Read moreAmazing Grace
When Amazing Grace – Michael Apted’s rich bio-pic of the political campaigner William Wilberforce – was released last year (to coincide with the bi-centennial of the end of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade) it came in for the usual braying criticism from the liberal media. The New York Times for instance, claimed that the movie “prettifies” the slave…
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