"Miami Vice"

Guest Film Review by GERALD DUANE COLEMAN, of Milwaukee, WI.

Dear Readers:

Its hard keeping up with all these films, so sometimes we like to have a bit of help at the NetPaper. As in the past when I turned the black web portal news wire feed reins to my nephew Darryl for his insider perspective Katrita Blogs as part of his job as environmental manager for the port authority of Houston, and during the Dubai Ports deal controversy where he sent out an email on its real importance.

This time we have a review on "Miami Vice" by Milwaukee Wisconsin artiste Gerald Duane Coleman. We will be issuing our own take on the remake of the TV series by the same director Michael Mann next week.

Coleman sends out an occasional e-newsletter on his travels to Africa, the Caribbean, and Bahia Brazil, and their connection to current events. Here, he uses his travel experiences in his critique below of the regional globetrotting "Miami Vice" and its depictions of drug dealing based on Central and American connections through Miami, which has been called "the financial capital of South America."

We collect these send-outs as from other local people such as Michelle Allison, or MoBrwnSuga as her email name goes; Milwaukee Events emailer extraordinaire and doctoral candidate Donte McFadden; Delores Hollins; Leon Todd; Denise Crumble; Earl Wheatfall, Jr; Milwaukee's CyberMayor P. Thadison, webmaster of the award winning Milwaukee Black Online city site.

We repackage the emails and resend them out with attribution and bylines as part of our The Word NetPaper based here in Milwaukee, the pearl of the Great Lakes region.

------

This week also saw the passing of another member of the film world, and as in the past we have to take a few words to remark on their work:

In Memoriam: Bruno Kirby Passes

Bruno Kirby has died from complications of Leukemia from which he was recently diagnosed. He was 57 years old.

The character actor was a familiar face, if not a household name, after appearing in two 1990s blockbusters in his two films with Billy Crystal "City Slickers," and "When Harry Met Sally."

However, Kirby didn't appear in the sequel "CS2: Curley's Gold." He was replaced by "High School High" and "Great White Hope" boxing film actor and TV commercial submarine sandwich pitchman Jon Lovitz ( "Subway – Eat Fresh!" ) thereby making Lovitz into a sorta Poor Man's Bruno Kirby.

Kirby was also in the film "Good Morning Vietnam" with Forest Whitaker, opposite Robin Williams' Adrian Kronauer with Kirby as an uptight military broadcaster. "Donnie Brasco" saw him taking a departure from the comedy he did so well.

But his real cinema introduction was as the young Clemenza teaching Robert DeNiro as a young Vito Corleone the crime business in "The Godfather Part II."

Bruno Kirby brought laughter and enjoyment to millions with his skills. He will be missed. Requiescat In Pace --KJW.

--------

"Miami Vice"

Guest Cinema View by GERALD DUANE COLEMAN, Milwaukee, WI.

“My wife and I recently went to see the film "Miami Vice," and we liked it for lots of reasons. One big one was the glamour of drug cops/and criminals in the original television series -which was far from the broken lives, ruined neighborhoods, and Geo politics of real life drug money culture. Another reasons is my wife wanted to see this movie because Jamie Fox was in it. I am old school, and that was good enough for me.

“However, I was presently surprised. I found "Miami Vice" to be really a very good movie. Buddy movies are a regular staple now-a-days- or was ever thus, and are a longtime formula for the box office. And why not? They make 'em for people to buy a ticket.

So, you pair the hottest Black actor with one of the hottest White actors to draw in the money, and no surprise it comes in at number #1 its first weekend.

Number one, some voice coach got rid of Irish actor Colin Farrell's heavy Irish accent. Like "Brokeback Mountain" where one of the actors/cowboys was Australian, they had Colin Farrell talking like a "White-American-from-Florida. "

The last time I saw Farrell he was in "The New World," and one of the suitors of the young Indian woman in " Pocahontas." The young Peruvian woman who played Pocahontas was drop dead gorgeous for me, forget Colin Farrell!

I also heard he was a Hollywood Bad-Boy as he likes Black/and Latin prostitutes. Benjamin Franklin liked colonial prostitutes, so Farrell is in good company. And the White-actor-bad-boy image appeals to mainstream American women. It helps bring more money to the box office.

I liked the different races in the movie with Jamaicans, White-Nazi-hillbillies (twenty years ago the Aryan Brotherhood Nazi's would have been Hell's Angels/or some other biker group ). There were Columbians, Puerto Ricans, White cops, White-Russians, and African-Americans.

Oh yes, pretty Chinese women. And there are huge Asian populations in the Caribbean and South-America. The head Latin-drug King-Pin role of Archangel Jesus de Montoya is based on real characters like Pablo Escobar, Carlos Lieder, and Manuel Noriega.

The movie also shows the city of Miami police at odds with the DEA over the "who, what, where and when." And who gets the credit for drug busts. Sounds like that British bust of those Pakistanis last week in London for the airline bombing plot. Who will get the headlines and credit? Unless its like the New Orleans post Hurricane "Katrina" rescue it goes so badly that each group spends hours/and days pointing the finger at the other for mis-haps, and their readiness plans' uselessness.

Back in the marijuana-Jamaican Love Bird flights to Jamaica, I once saw a Chinese woman with so much cash on her person and in her luggage, that while the Customs people were closing in on her in Florida I pretended I didn't see what I saw. And the beat goes on.

From Haiti to Havana "Miami Vice" kept my attention to what I know to be kinda the truth and I even liked the glamour. Sometimes that Irish actor wore an African cowry shell around his Dublin-ass/County Cork neck. Nice subtle touch -- White-boy identifies with African accoutrements. He's so hip, or the writers are hip enough to make you believe. I did.

And somebody gave Colin Ferrell Rumba & Mambo lessons for this movie. White Irishmen cannot do African rhythm dances -- but then again he was an American Miami cop wasn't he? Oh I forgot that, my bad.

Farrell's Cuban Rumba was much better than Arnold Schwarzenegger's Tango in a movie I saw once ["True Lies" with Jamie Curtis] which looked like some kinda stiff Hitler parade march Ah-Nohld called dancing. He'll be back !

Most of all, the targeted drug ring employed sophisticated computer help, which I liked. And the police were always trying to stay with or ahead of the thugs to catch 'em or kill 'em. And how can you have religion, drugs, or Rock 'N Roll without sex?”

Well, you've got to see "Miami Vice." I was surprised at how good it was, and Jamie Foxx could become an American treasure. -- GERALD DUANE COLEMAN, Milwaukee, WI.

--------

Well, that's our Guest Cinema View of "Miami Vice." Do you have a critique of a fave film or video of which you feel strongly? Remember, Tupac's birthday is coming up, and there's a new film or documentary on him. Sounds like time for a retrospective. Why don't you write one?

Send them in, we don't hate. You can take some of this workload off our hands!