I’ve crossed over into total film dweeb sta­tus. Not a film geek, mind you; I haven’t paid close atten­tion to what’s new and note­wor­thy since I left the video store, and even less since I left TLA alto­geth­er [it’s been almost a year already: wow] so when I read Ous­mane Sem­bene’s obit­u­ary a week and a half ago, I could­n’t believe I’d nev­er seen any­thing by him, hav­ing hunt­ed and pecked at films and film­mak­ers occu­py­ing more or less the same polit­i­cal and aes­thet­ic orbit he did. Pon­tecor­vo and Cos­ta-Gavras, but not Sem­bene? Now it seems absurd.

So what did I do? Like any obit­u­ary vul­ture, I swooped into my Net­flix queue and jumped his land­mark film Black Girl to the top. Sem­bene tells the sto­ry of a Sene­galese girl turned au pair who trav­els with her employ­ers back to France to care for the chil­dren. Sem­bene uses neo­re­al­ist and New Wave tech­niques to illus­trate the divide between the new­ly inde­pen­dent Sene­galese and expa­tri­ate French who lived and worked there. Dioun­na’s jour­ney “back” to her inher­it­ed Father­land comes at the price of her iden­ti­ty and her dig­ni­ty, nei­ther of which she can live with­out. It’s a crush­ing indict­ment of what is owed by inter­na­tion­al pow­ers to the coun­tries they exploit once they’ve “grant­ed” independence.

Read more at Sens­es of Cin­e­ma.

Lil’ Wayne’s Da Drought 3 mix­tape got on my radar yes­ter­day morn­ing. Last night it made it’s way into my top ten list. I know, I know: mea cul­pa, mea cul­pa, mea max­i­ma cul­pa. Maybe it’s this year’s Fish­scale or Hell Hath No Fury. Call me a tokenist, but I don’t think I’m alone in think­ing that hiphop is dry­ing up. Hell, Ryan Dom­bal’s review of Weezy’s mix­tape says as much [and so do sev­er­al oth­er crit­ics] and I’m inclined to agree.

Now that I’m lis­ten­ing to pret­ty much every­thing that comes down the pike as far as major label releas­es go, it’s a desert. I’m look­ing for that oasis, but I’ll take an oil well in a pinch.

But don’t take my word for it. Dis­cov­er it your­self.

The first wave of reviews are in from all the usu­al sus­pects. [I’d link to David Pogue’s iPhone video diary, but it crashed on me and I sus­pect it’ll be doing that for a lit­tle while at least. Here’s Walt Moss­berg’s video instead.] It’s not sur­pris­ing that every­one loves the iPhone with few reser­va­tions, most notably that the inter­net con­nec­tion is dogged­ly slow when wi-fi is unavail­able. On that note, I can’t wait until AT&T total­ly sinks this oth­er­wise amaz­ing prod­uct with their hor­ri­ble ser­vice. [You’ve changed your name, but we still know who you are!]

I’ll be doing on-the-spot inter­views with folks wait­ing out­side the AT&T store on 16th this Fri­day start­ing in the ear­ly morn­ing for a video seg­ment at Com­cast, just to see if any­one can artic­u­late a ratio­nale for buy­ing a $600 cell­phone that Apple will prob­a­bly update [read: improve dra­mat­i­cal­ly] in less than 6 months. [I wish I could link to that video, which is only avail­able to high-speed inter­net sub­scribers, alas.]

• If you haven’t already seen Jon­estown, a doc­u­men­tary film about the Jon­estown mas­sacre, please do. Not only does it shed light on Jim Jones’ shad­owy world of deceit and con­trol, but it also gives evi­dence as to why folks would’ve been freaked out by social­ist utopi­ans. Of course, freaked out above and beyond the mas­sive Red para­noia that already held the coun­try in its grip. See also: Janet Reno and the Branch Davidians.
• Fiery Fur­naces. Thurs­day night. After catch­ing their last show where they played as a post-hard­core unit with Jason Loewen­stein, I was reluc­tant to head out for this one. But they’re play­ing the North Star, so I can only hope the show will be woe­ful­ly under­at­tend­ed. They’re sup­posed to be play­ing new mate­r­i­al that will appear on their new album due this fall. So now my three favorite indie bands are releas­ing albums in the same year? Deci­sions, decisions.

“At sev­en­teen I ran away from home. I think every decent per­son should run away from home.”

M remind­ed me what a Fritz Lang nut I am. I’ve seen the Mabuse pic­tures, Metrop­o­lis of course and a few of his Amer­i­can pro­duc­tions, but M real­ly is some­thing else. Peter Lor­re’s per­for­mance alone — so expres­sive, so anguished, so enrap­tured — is unlike any­thing you’d ever see on Law & Order: SVU or Date­line or any oth­er fear-mon­ger­ing info­tain­ment. Hor­ri­fy­ing, yet strange­ly sym­pa­thet­ic, Lang presents a film that presents, as he says in his inter­view with William Fried­kin, a “social evil,” with­out delv­ing into an argu­ment over right or wrong.