deerstalker

https://blackgirlnerds.com/review-queen-bees-keeps-a-serious-subject-light/

Queen Bees, currently in theaters and on demand, is a humorous, light-hearted look at aging out of living alone.

And before someone says, “That will never happen to me,” Bees looks at that aspect through the eyes of Helen, a widow and grandmother played by Oscar winner Ellen Burnstyn. Life is going pretty smoothly for Helen. Her husband has been gone long enough for her to be used to living in their home by herself. Her beloved grandson (Matthew Barnes) visits often and is very sweet to her, and she has her routines. However, when Helen starts forgetting things and one particular time leads to a major disaster, she’s faced with moving temporarily to a dreaded retirement home. And as they say, hijinks ensue. 

Directed by Michael Lembeck, the film features a cast of veteran actors: Ann-Margret, James Caan, Loretta Devine, Jane Curtin, and Christopher Lloyd. Lembeck, who grew up in Hollywood and worked as an actor before turning to directing, squeezes just enough quirkiness out of his scenes without going full-tilt. By spotlighting the small things, he shows an age-old truth: people take the personality traits they’ve learned everywhere they go, even if those traits appear strange to others. 

Curtin (Janet), Ann-Margret (Margot) and Devine (Sally) all do a decent job as the cliquish, mean girl Queen Bees that Burstyn encounters at the home. While Curtin’s bad-mannered, mean-faced Janet isn’t far from some of the characters she’s known for (such as in 3rd Rock from the Sun or any number of SNL skits), the solid portrayal creates just enough tension to make the story interesting.

Initially Ann-Margret’s sexy take on the much married Margot imagines what her earlier onscreen sex-kitten characters would be like as seniors. Yet, her scenes with Lloyd are reminders that the Golden Globe winner can switch it up really well. 

Devine brings her trademark sweet auntie positiveness to the role of Sally, a Bee with a heart who shares an easy chemistry with Burstyn in a story arc that eventually reveals the tragedy under her sunny facade. 

Burstyn is the titular role here and doesn’t really miss a beat in showing that older women are smart and have many identities — from wife and partner — to parent, grandparent, neighbor, friend, and a still-desirable woman. 

Caan (Dan) is a retired widower who wants nothing more than to romance Burstyn’s Helen. Caan underplays in scenes with Burstyn, a good call that makes his love interest role somehow better. As Caan plays him, Dan is a man who knows he’s attracted to Helen and gently but firmly pursues her without guile, something that is not needed after people grow older.

Emmy-winning character actor Lloyd, still remembered by generations for Back to the Future films, departs from his usual roles to play a flirty senior with a secret. However, Lloyd and Ann-Margret do not have enough scenes together, perhaps due to sharp edits. Whatever the reason, there was more to mine there.

Rounding out the cast are Elizabeth Mitchell (Lost) as Helen’s stressed daughter Laura, French Stewart as the frazzled retirement home manager, and comic Alec Mapa as the laid-back masseuse, Lito. 

Although presented as a light comedy, Queen Bees is a story about the serious business of the latter part of human lives. It touches on what moving into a retirement home can mean for some; giving up control of one’s life or having to be in a place to live out the time before death with far less privacy. 

The question is should these issues be given a comedic touch? Or should films about this subject go deeper? For example, what happens when seniors can’t afford to go to a beautiful place like Queen Bees’s characters live in?

The flip side of the retirement home story was recently told in Netflix’s melodramatic dark comedy, I Care a Lot, in which a scammer (Rosamund Pike) took advantage of loopholes in senior care and housing. 

Also, as mentioned, some scenes are choppy, leaving parts of the story not fleshed out. Backstories are also lacking. Why not more of Lloyd and Ann-Margret? Why not more about Sally’s problem? We don’t know enough about why Helen’s daughter is so determined to get her into the retirement home, and the resolution is too neatly tied up in the last minutes of the film. 

Fortunately, for those of us who think about what we will do when that day comes, the film is based on a true story of a family member of the film’s producer, Harrison Powell.  The real-life story has a happy ending, just like in Queen Bees, which will not win any awards but is easily digestible and won’t leave any aftertaste. 

On a scale of one to five, Queen Bees is a three. 

http://www.afronerd.com/2021/06/lupin-netflix-returns-va-tech-murder.html

 

Dear (and loyal) Afronerd Radio listeners, we are gathered here today (every Sunday at 6 p.m. eastern) to get through this thing called "The Grindhouse!"   Check out a new episode courtesy of the BTalk 100 platform.  Listen to your favorite AFROnerdists wax prolific about the following issues: the very popular French heist series, Lupin, returns to Netflix this weekend;  yet another tragic murder-death-kill story centered on a promising VA Tech linebacker charged with second-degree murder but the circumstances come with a twist; another Netflix series released this weekend, Trese, places a much-needed spotlight on Filipino culture, mythology, horror, and animation;  

 

Yet again, a time-honored classic song (17 years!) is revisited analyzed under the PC microscope, and deemed improper by today's standards.....Black Twitter puts Destiny Child and their R&B romance standard, "Cater 2 U" on trial for promoting too much (black) female submission to (equally, black) men; famed nerd detective, Velma Dinkley from the Scooby-Doo animated franchise canon gets an Asian race bent makeover and Scooby purists are none too happy; Marvel's Heroes Reborn series continues to (not so vaguely) interpret DC IPs with an interesting take on the Power Princess character, the Wonder Woman analogue; Lastly, if time permits, perhaps Dburt will get a chance to muse about the current state of crypto finance.

Call us LIVE at 508-645-0100. AFTER CLICKING ON THE HIGHLIGHTED LINK, GO DIRECTLY TO AFRONERD RADIO!!! 

Also, Afronerd Radio's podcast format can be heard via BTalk 100 Pandora, Spotify and,  IHeartRadio....more formats to follow!        

https://www.essence.com/love/lauren-and-cameron-book/

Loading the player… By Victoria Uwumarogie ·June 12, 2021June 11, 2021

From the moment people were introduced to Lauren Speed and Cameron Hamilton‘s love story on the dating reality series and Netflix hit Love Is Blind, they were all in. They were one of the few pairs on the show that many genuinely rooted for, and people have continued doing so since the show ended its first season last spring.

Their romance was broadcast right before the pandemic brought life as we know it to a screeching halt. More than a year later, we talked about life after the cameras went away and the newlywed phase ended, and the couple shared that as the world changed, they too had to change and also overcame some stumbling blocks.

“It has definitely been an adjustment,” Lauren tells ESSENCE of love after reality TV. They’ve welcomed a dog, become business partners trying to balance a working relationship with a romantic one and are approaching almost three years of marriage (they were married a year and a half at the time the show debuted).

“Honestly, it’s been amazing. It’s been as close to bliss as bliss can get, but I say that to say that it’s not without struggle,” she says. “We’re still human. All relationships go through ups and downs and trials and tribulations, but we’re continuing to grow.”

They’re also continuing to do have some major experiences as a couple. They’ve written a book called Leap of Faith: Finding Love The Modern Way, coming out on Tuesday, June 15. It’s about how they made the life-changing decision to join Love Is Blind, what it was like getting through filming while falling in love, and how it’s been navigating married life. It’s not all sunshine and rainbows. The couple wasn’t afraid to be honest about the obstacles they faced, similar to what many dealt with in the last year and change. But they also dealt with things that were very unique to their relationship and experiences. The racial reckoning that came after the murder of George Floyd, for instance, forced them to have some very real conversations as an interracial couple.

“We had some difficult times more so for me just processing everything and me being in a state of fighting shutting down, not just to him but to the whole world in general,” she says of trying to heal during a rocky summer 2020. “It was a point, which I talk about in the book, where Cameron and I had a really tough conversation one day. I wouldn’t say I was holding it in just because he was my white husband. I was holding it in because it was something I would usually process by myself anyway. He caught me balled up in the corner one day crying my eyeballs out. That forced us to have a conversation about how I was really feeling about everything.”

“My first thought was what is the best thing for me to do to support my wife? And I think I resolved that first of all it would be to listen to her and what she would want to talk about it or say about it, if she wanted to talk about it,” Cameron says. “To ask what I could do for her personally but also recognizing that like she said, she had to heal from it so she didn’t really have the energy to at times share everything. So I reflected back on what would be best for me to do. In addition to trying to helping her, I felt that trying to be more educated as a white person, having a platform to speak about what’s going on in this country, not just back then in June but what’s been going on and persists, and talking to other white people about what we can possibly do to be allies.”

They also dealt with and still deal with pressure. That has come in the form of fans who idealize their relationship and even each party as examples of the happiness they, themselves can possibly obtain. It can be a lot for the pair. And then there are those who want them to take their relationship to the next level — ASAP.

“People every day pressure us about having a baby. ‘When are we going to have a baby?’ That sort of thing,” he says. “It’s unfortunate because I know other couples are met with that same sort of pressure and there’s couples out there that can’t get pregnant or don’t want to. We’ve talked about wanting to have kids on our own timeline. It can be tough to just reorient the focus back to just us versus what everyone else has to say.”

And then there was the feeling they had to overcome that they were constantly being watched. That came from being followed by cameras for 16-hour days for weeks when they filmed their show.

“I actually dealt with nightmares after we stopped filming,” she says. “I think [it was] the difference between going from everything being so loud with the cameras and the crew and then just kind of shutting all that off and in an instant, waking up the next day and being married and living with my now husband and so many different changes.”

She dreamt she was being recorded, and when she was awake, had “phantom mic syndrome.” That is where she would be mid-conversation and then pat her chest to make sure she didn’t have a mic on recording her. Cameron had subtle paranoia and kept his guard up while filming the show, thinking he would be set up for some drama. Once the show ended, that fed into his feelings of being followed and filmed. It may sound like an odd experience, but that’s because it’s a transition the couple says people don’t think about and that participants don’t discuss when they stop doing reality TV. It’s certainly been a part of their journey and something they wanted to shed light on in their book.

But they say another big purpose in releasing Leap of Faith is to give encouragement to their followers and supporters who’ve asked for advice. Something for those who have seen the couple find love after they trusted in the unorthodox choice to seek it through a social experiment on television. Not being afraid to go the unconventional route or do the daring, whether for love, career and more, is the overall message they want to share and it’s one that has benefited them.

“Love is a journey and so is life. There are so many times where we have moments to take these leaps of faith that can really change the trajectory of our lives,” she says. “This book was really about us sharing the things that we kind of came across on our journey that really helped us.”

Cameron adds, “The goal when we were writing it was in part to tell our story of how we came to be, but we really want to give the reader the sense of how they can take their own leaps of faith in life and how they can have that confidence to trust their own intuition when people are saying ‘This is a crazy idea’ to start your own business or to go on a reality show. Whatever it is.”

Check out our full conversation with Lauren and Cameron above and check out Leap of Faith upon its release on June 15.

TOPICS:  cameron hamilton Lauren and Cameron lauren speed love is blind

The post ‘People Every Day Pressure Us About Having A Baby’: Lauren Speed And Cameron Hamilton On Life Since ‘Love Is Blind’ appeared first on Essence.

http://www.afronerd.com/2021/06/black-music-month-hbcus-increase.html

 

It's like a jungle sometimes, fellow AFROnerdists!  Welcome to the latest edition of Afronerd Radio's The Mid Week in Review cyber-broadcast, airing every Wednesday at 8 p.m. eastern on BTalk 100. The topics du jour this (mid) week are as follows: thoughts about the concept of Black Music Month and how the culture treats and or curates the African American (and diasporic) contributions of music performers-past and present; an offshoot of the BMM discussion, entails a piece from Ultimateclassicrock.com highlighting overlooked songs from the late Minneapolis music icon, Prince music catalog; recent reports are affirming an uptick in enrollment to HBCUs; the scion of the current POTUS (President Joe Biden), Hunter Biden has some "splaining" to do for purportedly using the infamous n-word in recently released texts with his attorney; the highly anticipated Disney+ Loki series was released today and we give you our first impressions of episode one;  rumor has it that actor, Tenoch Huerta has been cast as Namor Mckenzie in the forthcoming Black Panther 2-Wakanda Forever MCU film; Dburt checked out the new Disney+ short, Us Again wishing it was a longer, fully fleshed out film (or series); 

Screenrant.com interviewed filmmaker, Todd Thompson concerning his Woman in Motion: Nichelle Nichols, Star Trek and the Remaking of NASA documentary; 

Zack Snyder hints that he would consider an anime to film translation of Dragon Ball Z, if given the opportunity during an interview with Tyrone Magnus; is the Blue Beetle film now destined for HBO Max?  And is that a good thing? Lastly, thoughts about the new Boom Studios comic series, Basilisk. 

Call us LIVE at 508-645-0100. AFTER CLICKING ON THE HIGHLIGHTED LINK, GO DIRECTLY TO AFRONERD RADIO!!! 

Also, Afronerd Radio's podcast format can be heard via BTalk 100 Pandora, Spotify and,  IHeartRadio....more formats to follow!