Most of the time, my mom or my aunts or my sister did my hair. But the occasions where my dad tried to comb my hair are amongst the most memorable. The struggle was real, and so was the love. Daddy haircare has an extra special place in my heart because of those memories. And… read all

As any Child of the 80’s can attest, Annie, the 1982 film starring Albert Finney as “Daddy” Warbucks, Carol Burnett as Miss Hannigan, and Aileen Quinn as the irrepressible orphan title character herself, was a seminal film of our youth. Annie is one of those movies so hard wired into pop culture history that even if… read all

This week, I was invited to a special, press only screening of one of the most highly anticipated movies of the holiday season. The Hunger Games was one of the most popular book series of the decade, and the first film of the trilogy was one of the biggest movies of 2011. I got sucked… read all

  How amazing is Ava DuVernay? In the dazzling span of her film career, she’s blazed a trail and changed the game. She was the first African-American woman to win the Best Director Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, for her film Middle Of Nowhere. Her first feature film, I Will Follow was critically acclaimed… read all

  Because I grew up in Trinidad, I didn’t grow up reading American literature. It was pretty much all British and Caribbean lit until I moved to America and started doing college literature classes. Naturally The Great Gatsby was an early essential, and from the first time I read it I had strong feelings about it. I… read all

From the moment I saw the trailer for The Great Gatsby, I was dazzled. I said to my husband, “I HAVE to see this.” I couldn’t possibly have guessed that when the time came to have the special screening in Chicago, I’d be asked to be a special co-host for a screening and afterparty at… read all

When I read it in college, I fell in love with the lavish lifestyle F. Scott Fitzgerald so vividly illustrated in his literary classic, The Great Gatsby. The book is set in the ostentatious 1920’s and inspired by real people and places Fitzgerald hobnobbed with – even today, the mansion that inspired Jay Gatsby’s, is… read all

Just as with the weather, there are seasons in cinema. There’s awards show season in the fall and beginning of winter. There are the winter doldrums in January, where the terrible movies the studio wants everyone to forget about come to the theaters out of obligation (for example, Movie 43). There’s summer blockbuster season. And… read all

Let me begin this review with something of a disclaimer – I am a Quentin Tarantino fan. I’ve seen Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction, True Romance and both parts of Kill Bill, From Dusk Till Dawn and Jackie Brown and Death Proof and Ingloruious Basterds. I’ve seen them all, many of them multiple times. So… read all

When I think back on the earliest songs I knew and my earliest childhood memories, Bob Marley is there as the soundtrack. In my mind’s eye, I can remember seeing news footage of his funeral on Panorama, Trinidad’s national news program when I was a kid. Of course, I was only three. This may be… read all