Between The World And Me creates a tapestry of history and art from Ta-Nehisi Coates’ words

With his critically acclaimed nonfiction work, Between The World And Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates laid himself bare. Writing the book as a letter to his then 15-year-old son, Coates unearthed memories from his boyhood in West Baltimore, then moved to his son’s birth and into the present day. Between The World And Me was published in 2015, just before Trump gave new life to the United States’ rotten core. In the years since, social media and the ubiquity of cameraphones has amplified Black death in the media. Police brutality, unyielding anti-Blackness, and an exhausting presidential election cycle have dominated our day-to-day lives. With history at his back and the events of his own Black life embedded in his memory, the journalist could not have predicted our current state when he first published his manuscript. Still, the author ended up pretty spot-on. Coates was brutally realistic about Black life, even then. In HBO’s film adaptation of the New York Times best-seller, his words echo across the screen, burrowing into our past and leaving hints about the future of Black America and this country.

Continue reading at The A.V. Club.

'Concrete Cowboy' is Warm, but not Quite Riveting

Cowboys are deeply embedded in American popular culture. After all, the Western genre dominated Hollywood box offices for years. Films like Once Upon A Time in the West and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly have become the standard for idyllic versions of the heroic cattle-header. Though his legacy stretches from the streets of South Central LA to North Philadelphia, the Black cowboy has been erased from the history books. However, with his coming-age-story, Concrete Cowboy, first-time feature filmmaker Ricky Staub is unveiling an underworld often overlooked while highlighting a young teen’s fragile road to manhood. 

Based on Greg Neri’s novel, Ghetto Cowboy — Concrete Cowboy follows Cole (a gripping Caleb McLaughlin), a teen boy living in Detroit with his single mother. Terrified for her son’s life and out of options following yet another school expulsion, Cole’s mother packs his clothing in garbage bags and drives the near 600 miles from Detroit to Philly. 

Continue reading at Showbiz Cheatsheet.