There's a movie called PRECIOUS coming out

it has Mariah Carey in it -- she looks great.

Lady knows how to be in a movie with an amazing title!

I kept hoping that girl would eventually pull out a semiautomatic weapon and mow down her oppressors but I guess that's asking a lot from a tyler perry/oprah winfrey joint

Is this the movie that Mo'Nique win a bunch of awards at Sundance for?

Yes, it was called Push but they changed the name because of that stupid Dakota Fanning and what his face from the Fantastic Four movie.

sick79 (22 minutes ago)
Reply

I gotta watch this movie... precious movie

Yes, it was called Push but they changed the name because of that stupid Dakota Fanning and what his face from the Fantastic Four movie.

― Hatfail of Hollow (Nicole), Wednesday, May 13, 2009 6:14 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

This is based on a book by a woman named Sapphire. The book is excellent. When I was in college I helped bring Sapphire to campus for a reading. We hosted a dinner with her prior to the talk and I got to hang out with her. She was fierce and awesome. I highly recommend the book. It's an easy but disturbingly beautiful read.

wow that's cool. i'm really excited.

this preview has made me cry twice already. look, i never said i wasn't a sap.

The whole story is completely heartbreaking.

I'm just glad it's no longer called Push: Based on the Novel by Sapphire, cuz that shit's dumber than Bram Stoker's Dracula.

this preview has made me cry twice already. look, i never said i wasn't a sap.
2x

I am afraid to even watch the preview, that's how much of a sap I am.

I haven't watched it because having read the book at least 5 times I can only imagine what the preview would be like. This is not to say I won't see it. I will someday when I can watch it at home alone and in the dark with a big box of tissues by my side.

A few months ago a clip of the scene with Precious and her teacher (?) where Precious was crying was released and it was so fucking heartbreaking. I barely cry at movies, let alone clips of movies on Youtube. Despite the involvement of Tyler Perry (although I'm guessing it's one of those "Tyler Perry Presents" marketing bullshit things) it looks quite good.

I wish you hadn't mentioned that TP is involved.

Yeah, she's a teacher (reading/writing iirc). The whole story is based on people Sapphire met/experiences she had while taught in Harlem.

while "she" taught at schools/community centers in Harlem, rather

A few months ago a clip of the scene with Precious and her teacher (?) where Precious was crying was released and it was so fucking heartbreaking. I barely cry at movies, let alone clips of movies on Youtube. Despite the involvement of Tyler Perry (although I'm guessing it's one of those "Tyler Perry Presents" marketing bullshit things) it looks quite good.

― lil waynes babymama (musically), Thursday, 14 May 2009 20:38 (33 minutes ago) Permalink

the crying just seemed so honest, that it really shook me

http://www.pomeranianplace.com/images/pom-pubdomain-lg.jpg

did this get re-shot since TP & big O jumped on board? idk i recall seeing scenes around the time of sundance and getting the vibe there was no uplifting/redeeming ending & it was going to be a v hard commercial sell

I am anticipating this movie!! Don't want to wait til November

kgridep (3 weeks ago)

I SMELL OSCAR!

what does it smell like

wowgold

what does it smell like

― permanent response lopp (harbl), Sunday, August 9, 2009 11:24 PM (22 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

please nobody go there

heh

Lee Daniels’s film “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” about an abused teenage girl in Harlem, won the Cadillac People’s Choice Award at the Toronto Film Festival on Saturday. The film had already taken home a grand jury prize at the Sundance Film Festival in January. “Precious,” which counts Oprah Winfrey among its executive producers, will be shown at the New York Film Festival next month and is scheduled to open in theaters in November.

i know i'm so excited

atlbych (2 minutes ago) Show Hide 0 Marked as spam Reply

OMG THiS MOViE GONE MAKE ALOT OF MONEY iCNT WAiT TiLL THiS MOViE RELEASE (NOV.6th] iTS GONE BE SO GOOD.

“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,”

I thought they got rid of this godawful title.

i hate that title too

Yeah, it sucks. I'm still so excited for this btw.

this will be one of those good movies i never see because it seems massively depressing

I don't care how bad/good this movie is. I just want Mo'Nique to win the Oscar. Let's start a campaign now. Who's with me?

s1ock did you get to see this? I didn't.

http://images.allmoviephoto.com/2006_Shadowboxer/2006_shadowboxer_002.jpg

shadowboxer is ridiculous ~

doh - http://images.allmoviephoto.com/2006_Shadowboxer/2006_shadowboxer_002.jpg

ok swear to god that is cuba gooding and ellen degeneres

haha 1/2

cuba is basically naked the entire movie w/ 1 expression on his face~
stephen dorff is some kind of ganster who shoots ppl cuz they are talking 2 loudly while he is boning girls on his pool table~

doesn't look like my kind of movie but i still wanna see it? precious, that is

really want to see it.

listened to fresh air interview, v intrigued now.

The NY Times Mag profile of the director -- a shilling douchebag but with the socially aware middlebrow-gay agenda in his quiver -- made me glad Tyler Perry is staying in the closet.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/magazine/25precious-t.html

The book is a really quick read and worth it for those planning on seeing this imo.

yeah i think i will read first.

this is a great movie, bar one kinda cringey "nice white lady" scene - as draining and harrowing as you've read but what makes it for me is how great the much-needed scenes of levity are - the wisecracking banter of the girls in precious's class. i feel too much of the press so far has focused on the bleakness rather than the hope and humour.

how's Mariah?

http://www.pomeranianplace.com/images/pom-pubdomain-lg.jpg

"you shutup, and you let him abuse your daughter"

i liked the opener to the anthony lane review:

Please make sure, when you buy a ticket for “Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” to pronounce the title in full. I know you will. There was a plan to call it “Push,” until another movie got there first. But why not call the new one “Precious,” and leave it at that? After all, Deborah Kerr didn’t star in “The Innocents: Based on the Novella ‘The Turn of the Screw’ by Henry James,” and Dustin Hoffman didn’t star in “Rain Man: Based on the Overwhelming Desire to Win an Academy Award by Dustin Hoffman,” so why the change in rubric?

lol

okay that's hilarious

did sapphire make them do that

Not sure why it's in the movie at all, but sort of loved the scene of sweaty Mo'Nique in a bad wig dancing around her dumpy living room to "Was That All It Was."

i thought maybe they did the title bc if ppl say mariah carey and precious they'd think it was a sequel to glitter or something.

kinda grossed out by mariah carey saying she drank the ugly juice to look frumpy for the film (btw when i first saw the trailer i didn't even recognize her and i thought, "damn who is that?")

lol

like she actually looks maybe more distinctive without her perpetual makeover, she looks pretty good

i wish the mariah part was played by anna deavere smith

like, the trailer makes me think of a poor man's her

As anyone who ever rides the NYC subway would figure out, the title includes the book name because the book is a cultural phenom: can't really blame the producers for wanting to capitalize on that (or at least have people realize the connection, since "Push" wouldn't be used). It wasn't at Sapphire's insistence.

Are you sure? It sounds like the kind of title only a writer's agent could love.

it's Lee Daniels being "humble"

"Love is the Message." Now here, have a literacy trophy.

first thing this made me think of was "o so this is what percival everett was taking the piss out of"

In the grand tradition of Mahogany, Precious bites off more than it can chew. And in its way, it orders the universe into Good and Evil as absolutely as The Twilight Saga: New Moon. But I've never found anything inherently unproductive in either approach. That these disenfranchised voices are represented at all is miracle enough, even if we catch so many of them on the fly. My only serious concern is that even after Mo'Nique takes the statue (and maybe Gabourey Sidibe as well?), will there be films for her to tackle that are more challenging than Soul Plane (which she totally owned but that's beside point)?

this movie needed more mariah imo.

Don't all movies?

yeah it was an ok movie but mariah was prob one of the best parts in my humble opinion

i checked out some excerpts of the book and it looks painfully bad. people actually liked this?? i cannot imagine reading about "down sinder" and a rapist "fahver" for 200 pages.

http://i48.tinypic.com/2d8kxfa.png

It's not painfully bad. In fact, it's quite good although that may be more for the subject matter and story then for for the actual writing. Anyway, the majority of the book is not written in that way. There is a shift at the end and the narrator changes when Precious starts writing her life story. It's definitely not everyone's cup of tea but it's also definitely not "painfully bad".

That said, I should probably add that I haven't read it since shortly after it first came out so I might feel differently if I did so today.

Wait I think I just made that up. There may not be a shift in narration after all. Either way it didn't bother me at the time but, like I said, I'm not sure how I'd feel about it today.

this movie needed more mariah imo.

― tehresa, Saturday, 28 November 2009 06:37 (11 hours ago)

love u

it was quite good, tho, IMHO.

As anyone who ever rides the NYC subway would figure out, the title includes the book name because the book is a cultural phenom: can't really blame the producers for wanting to capitalize on that (or at least have people realize the connection, since "Push" wouldn't be used). It wasn't at Sapphire's insistence.

― paulhw, Sunday, November 22, 2009 11:18 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Are you sure? It sounds like the kind of title only a writer's agent could love.

― caek, Sunday, November 22, 2009 11:35 AM Bookmark

I can vouch for what paulhw is saying - book was a HUGE cult hit in the black community especially among women. Knew a bunch of girls in high school who were really into this book.

i also didn't think mo'nique was that great until the v end - powerful scene, no doubt, but the rest of the movie she kinda sucked (and not in the good way).

i feel like a good movie producer thing to do would have been to combine the teacher and social worker characters to make more of a powerful dramatic statement or at least give 1 actress a meaty role instead of 2 so-so roles, but i guess it's more realistic to think you'd have 2 mediocre ppl in your life than 1 strong force.

Why exactly did she "kinda suck?"

i just didn't think her acting or characterization worked that well and came off more sitcom angry black woman in most of the scenes. exceptions are the scene when precious brought babby home and the social worker scene, but those scenes were also relied pretty heavily on shock value.

The other day I was walking down bootleg row in downtown brooklyn and there was this barker yelling "Precious Precious Precious 2012 Precious, Precious Precious Ninja Assassin Precious Is This It Precious"

xpost
I appreciate your opinion but I know of no sitcom angry black woman who's acted/acts like Mary does. I found her downright terrifying, esp. in the scene where she's acting for the social worker.

Wait - who is Mary? Confused.

mary is the mom's name i think

(mo)

ahhh OK thank you :D

Thought he as talking about an actress named Mary etc.

uh, i said the social worker scene was an exception!

PRE-E-E-E-SHUS...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_XQD60snT1rA/SQkz6Rq8awI/AAAAAAAAAME/jCJB1fWP_JE/s320-R/JameGumb.jpg

The performances across the board here are the exception.

Only Lenny Kravitz really doesn't do much for me. Daniels may not know how to direct men.

i listened to an interview with him where he said his whole directing technique was to basically have mental breakdowns/therapy sessions with his actors and tell them all about himself so they know everything and there is *trust* and then on set he can just 'gently guide them' and they will *know* what he wants so yeah, i can see a dude like kravitz being a little unresponsive to that.... also is it not creepy that an adult male is taking an interest in an underage patient? i mean i know he wasn't doing anything malicious but it seemed a bit odd...

uh, i said the social worker scene was an exception!

(uh) Not sure where this is coming from but I heard you loud and clear the first time (!).

The performances across the board here are the exception.

OTM and very well put.

um, it was in response to this:

xpost
I appreciate your opinion but I know of no sitcom angry black woman who's acted/acts like Mary does. I found her downright terrifying, esp. in the scene where she's acting for the social worker.

The other social worker. The one who comes to her house. The one she acts for.

i think that's what she means

you're just saying you thought most of monique's scenes were great, and tehresa thought this was one of the few

:-) there, all cleared up

Aw but I wanted another two-letter interjection beginning with "u."

don't be an ass

Oh you know I'm kidding. Much love. xoxo

uh

;-)

So one person in the entire world doesn't think Mo'Nique knocked it out of the park, Kevin. You can rest assured her performance will spend the entire rest of our natural lives being rated.

"The novel mixes poems by Precious with sexually extreme scenes, like those in which she is forced to perform oral sex on her mother."

Holy cannoli, this was not obvious in the movie.

I mean, I kind of thought that was what was happening, but... yeh, I decided to pretend it wasn't.

i was glad they didn't show it

What about the Precious' names. Do you think they were intentional references to Silence of the Lambs? (Clareece and Precious)

this occurred to me when someone said, 'hello, clarice.'

haha me too

Holy cannoli, this was not obvious in the movie.

Yeah, I was pretty sure that's what was going to happen.

it was pretty obvious. her mom was masturbating and goes like "hey precious, come help mommy out"

...

Least. Uplifting. Uplifty. Movie. Ever.

Yes. It crossed my mind when the mother was masturbating and she called Precious and Precious said something like "I hate when she does this." But I let it go b/c I had enough to deal with without that.

Re Lenny Kravitz - I didn't know that was him (as the nurse) and I thought Whoa, he's hottt. I was surprised when I learned that it was him b/c normally I think he's really unappealing.

me too!

SPOILER
SPOILER
SPOILER

.
.
.
.
.
.

i was at a meeting w/a couple of folks and we were talking movies (we had earlier talked a little about this film, which i said i hadn't seen.) and i was talking to one of the two about inglourious basterds and we talked about the scene in the theater at the end, and the other guy was like, "wait, i haven't seen it!" and after i said to forget everything i'd said, he paused for a few seconds and then said, "PRECIOUS HAS AIDS."

I think this and the Road will make for a good family holiday moviegoing season

i was glad they didn't show it

Right. But then I wonder why Daniels felt compelled to show the scene with the father in very gruesome and upsetting detail.

guessing because it was gruesome and upsetting

(I haven't seen the movie yet and it's likely I never will)

But more so than the scene with the mother would have been? Less? I honestly don't know.

this looks unbearable

i saw this movie over the weekend. not sure why, probably because i am a teacher :-/
it's not nearly as bad as people who dread it think it would be, and it's not nearly as good as other people (oprah) think it is BUT
the anguish olympics have a clear winner.

also i thought the teacher was WAY too pretty/poised and found it hard to believe that she and her partner would sit around in their jammies sipping on wine while they were trying to figure out where precious was going to live with her newborn.

yes! that part did seem very unrealistic. i mean, the idea that they're boozing it up in front of a kid for whom they're supposed to be setting a good example... sigh.

it's like, part of it can't be fantasy and the other part be gritty. (not talking about the fantasy sequences, but the corny beautiful poised lesbian each one teach one ABE teacher vs anguish olympics)

i would have liked it better if the teacher had only provided partial salvation instead of the "write for your life" bs that is in every urban teaching movie ever

lolz that's terrible writing advice. most people's lives are pretty boring

ugh yeah i hated that part! "write." wtf

xpost

no way, la lech is otm
xpost

? i was agreeing with her!

confusing thread

i think it's a typical form of lazy advice w/r/t writing that a lot of lazy teachers seem to give, and it takes a genius to make mundane daily travails seem worth reading. the greatest novels and screenplays are not "what you know." i feel like the first time i heard the phrase "write what you know" was in screenwriting courses, and students would repeat that shit like it was scripture; unfortunately what everyone "knew" was writing scripts about (insert hometown) and the plots were always some ripoff of reservoir dogs.

sorry harbl the xpost was to shakey

to clarify -- it wasn't "write your life" it was "writing in this JOURNAL will save your life" and guess what
it won't

her life was not even remotely saved by writing in that journal. it helped her, but getting her GED is just the beginning. i guess i was interested in the relationship that the mother had to public aid and precious's inevitable relationship with public aid, and precious's obvious mixed feelings about it but they didn't really go into that. for instance, why did she steal her file from the case worker (mariah)? what good was that going to do her?

it wasn't about writing for other people though. it was more like writing will solve all your problems. everyone knew the writing was bad because she was close to illiterate
yeah xpost

s

ah. sorry for the confusion

she said she read the file though, it said she was going to get "workfare." some stuff did seem like it would make more sense in the book though.

I don't think the point of telling Precious to write was to harness the next great found-art novel. The end result was to get Precious to cry in her big scene, not because her writing would offer any major insight.

has anyone read the novel?

ENBB did

"It's not your fault, precious."

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_om7CVMlWaDY/SS4O7W9AWpI/AAAAAAAABYw/ourShfjPnHo/s320/good_will_hunting.jpg

ok -- i haven't read the book. i got the impression that she was stealing the folder because she didn't want to rely on welfare like her mother did, that she had a very one dimensional conception of what public aid is/does for people. (ie allows them to sit around and watch tv/smoke/abuse their children/eat pigs feet) ultimately, this could be her downfall (an unwillingness to ask for the help she clearly needs) and that would have been interesting and perhaps more realistic.

what were we supposed to think as she ambles down the sidewalk with abdul and "mongo" -- that yaaaay the sun is shining? that things are gonna be ok? they're not gonna be ok unless she is willing to accept a lot more help. and i wondered if stealing the folder was an indication of her rejection of that help. i dunno.

oh i thought she was stealing it because she didn't trust the social worker and the whole system and wanted to know what they were trying to do to her. i didn't read the book either but she talked with her classmates about what was in the file later. the whole thing was, imo, trying to show she's smarter and more perceptive than you would expect of someone who can't read, which was a little lol to me. i didn't get the impression she didn't want help but i dunno. maybe you're right.
the ending was the most ugh-oprah part of the movie

yeah the folder led her to figure out that to do all the work she needed to under their requirements, she'd only be able to be with her kids one day a week. but lech is also right... the ending is pretty misleading. an hiv positive woman under 18 with 2 children and very little support system is not quite the happy ending they try to make it.

i heard an interview where someone mentioned her taking her kids and standing up to her mom, saying she didn't want her mother to be part of her life, etc., as this big triumph but that's not quite how i see it.

yeah i know! that made me uncomfortable because i think the gruesomeness etc. lulls people into the sense that the whole thing is so realistic and then the end is this big fake thing

"The novel mixes poems by Precious with sexually extreme scenes, like those in which she is forced to perform oral sex on her mother."

is precious hot, sounds like this movie could make me get my bone on

it depends what u like

oh yeah -- they were trying to have her be a home health care worker or something? i remember that.

i don't mean to belittle precious's skills, but i also have a hard time believing she would be able to intelligently parse the contents of her file. her fellow classmates were right when they said that she needs to keep educating herself, go to a community college, get a certificate or a 2 year degree, (and not go work as a caretaker for less than minimum wage) but like i said -- she is at the beginning of a long and arduous journey and to paint it all gonna be a bright sunshiney day is farcical.

yeah i know! that made me uncomfortable because i think the gruesomeness etc. lulls people into the sense that the whole thing is so realistic and then the end is this big fake thing
exactly -- you can't have it both ways

i loved the scene where the random white kid is all of a sudden in precious' class and he's like "well, incest is where you get sexually abused by someone in your family, but insects is like a roach or a bug"

right - it seemed weird that the teacher was the one saying 'hey maybe the best thing for you AND the kids is for them not to be with you right now' but the social worker, who should know more, was all 'you and your kids 4eva <3 here have some sugar-laden soda'
xposts

surm i think random white kid was a girl

ha i thought it was a boy too!

oh maybe, i thought it was a butch, alternative girl for the alternative school.

yeah i thought she was possibly a dropout addict like esperanza or whatever her name was

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0767233/

clearly abigail savage is the real jt leroy

i wonder how many people watching this movie think its based on a true story? i know i thought that for a long time when i heard about it coming out.

that's why i feel like it should be criticized a little more strongly for offering several absurdly unrealistic messages and truly exhausted stock characters (the teacher/savior, the cruel mother, the clueless bureaucrat) -- it's fiction! they could have done a lot more with "speaking the truth" about people who don't usually get to have their stories told to such a large audience. even if it's more depressing, it makes for a more complex version of "the truth", which i imagine is what the producers were after when they made this movie.

i guess i just wanted it to be a little more ambiguous with RIGHT VS WRONG, like life is.

maybe it has been -- i don't read a lot of movie reviews

has anyone posted this?

http://www.nypress.com/article-20554-pride-precious.html

xpost i don't either. i wasn't so harsh about it at first because i don't expect much in the way of complexity. most of the problems are pretty much what i anticipated tbh :(

i felt cheated bc the trailer was really moving, but the movie was not so much.

I am going to lol at Armond White until the day I die, I think.

"i guess i just wanted it to be a little more ambiguous with RIGHT VS WRONG, like life is."

in real life precious would have been taken in by a white family and ended up playing in the n.f.l.

Dan OTM re: Armond

altho I am glad someone else liked Palindromes besides me, even if it Armond White

in real life precious would have been taken in by a white family and ended up playing in the n.f.l.
a white family led by a sassy southern woman who doesn't let ANYONE tell HER what to do

played by John Travolta in drag

robin williams as "the case worker"

he's already done teacher, nanny, and psychologist, now it's time to branch out into social work

has anyone read the novel?

― jØrdån (omar little), Monday, 30 November 2009 19:46 (1 hour ago) Permalink

ENBB did

― harbl, Monday, 30 November 2009 19:47 (1 hour ago) Permalink

Yeah but, like I said yesterday, this was probably the year or the year after the book came out. I loved it at the time but I was also 18 or 19. I was working for my favorite professor at the time and helped organize a reading with the author and got to have dinner with her. She was pretty interesting. I could be wrong but I believe it was the first book she wrote.

The Precious slam should be annotated with this one: http://www.nypress.com/article-20604-the-blind-side.html

haha armond ownes

armond you psycho

Related to:oprahpreciousblacktylerperrywinfreyleedanielsitsmoniquelennykravitzrapedmolestedbeatensexfried chickenpigs feetbirthnationkkkku klux klanhalleberrymonstersballincestmariahcareypedophilia

I'm all for a reevaluation of Sandra Bullock, but calling The Thing Called Love "superb" and While You Were Sleeping and Crash examples of "movies that could be better" suggests that Armmond wants to score more political points at Precious' expense.

Not since The Birth of a Nation has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as Precious

armond going for broke

when someone makes the claim that todd solondz has a much more subtle and sensitive examination of taboos you are deep in it

palindromes was pretty bad

Crash is a movie that could be better because it certainly could not be worse.

At work so haven't read whole thread but just saw this:

i wonder how many people watching this movie think its based on a true story? i know i thought that for a long time when i heard about it coming out.

― scott seward, Monday, November 30, 2009 3:25 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

iirc it's not a true story but the events/characters were based on the people (and their stories) who Sapphire met while teaching reading and writing in NYC.

Still have not seen btw.

this movie looks fucking ridiculous. my students liked it.

kind of get the feeling it's the sort of movie i walk out on

Yeah I thought it was one of those 'Child Called It' true-story type memoirs until just reading Erica's comment now.

I can't argue against people walking out of this one. It is pretty ridic and I think most of the reasons I like it aren't exactly socially responsible reasons.

what were we supposed to think as she ambles down the sidewalk with abdul and "mongo" -- that yaaaay the sun is shining? that things are gonna be ok? they're not gonna be ok unless she is willing to accept a lot more help. and i wondered if stealing the folder was an indication of her rejection of that help. i dunno.

― figgy pudding (La Lechera), Monday, November 30, 2009 1:51 PM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I didn't come away with any feeling that things were destined to be OK at all. The movie as a whole could have been more ambiguous and nuanced (e.g., the "Nice White Light-Skinned Lady" teacher) but I found the end on the optimistic side of open-ended. This impression is due to my thinking that after all she's been through, there's no way things are ever going to be anything even remotely resembling "OK" for Precious.

Yeah, you'd have to have walked in during the last minute only to think the movie's ending was a happy one or that things won't continue to get worse for Precious until she dies.

I imagine that she doesn't necessarily die on the street afflicted with advanced dementia at age 20. But the best I imagine is her working and poor, struggling to raise her kids. I guess it sucks that I find that somehow an uplifting possibility.

At least she didn't wind up being part of a human centipede, which is really all any of us have the right to wish for in this life.

haha, um...

So a group at the youth center I work at is going to be reading the book and then seeing the movie and I'm going to be one of the facilitators. Most of these girls come from backgrounds full of poverty and violence and are extremely disengaged. I'm really interested in hearing what they think of the book and movie. Should be pretty interesting.

ooh, that sounds like an intense experience.

Right? I was sort of surprised that they're doing this with this particular group but am interested in seeing how it goes.

"Kevin Bacon titillated pedophilia "

I didn't loathe much of this, but it kind of melted away after a half-hour. The details were unpersuasive. (I did like the "insect/incest"-type exchanges.)

i dunno if this has been mentioned but the new paperback is confusing; it appears to be called "Precious:based on the novel "Push" by Sapphire" by Sapphire now

Ishmael Reed is upset:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/05/opinion/05reed.html

Have you read the paper's letters page in the last few days? The exchange between readers and Reed has been...heated. Even Lee Daniels responded.

Among black men and women, there is widespread revulsion and anger over the Oscar-nominated film about an illiterate, obese black teenager who has two children by her father.

FWIW i don't think this is true. It may be true of the correspondence from those who are NYT readers, which is what this new paragraph leads on from. There are a number of questionable leaps like this in Reed's article (for instance using Daniels' common sense statement that the oscar nom would "bring even more “middle-class white Americans” to his film" as evidence that that is who the film is for).

Even a lot of ppl who found this film incredibly moving are simultaneously pretty fed-up in general at seemingly constant portrayals of victimization or "black pathology", as Reed says. So it's true to say it's controversial, and I have some sympathy with his position on this.

I haven't seen Precious yet, but i understand that is no prerequisite for comment around here.

widespread revulsion

Dr. Zvookius

so is this one of those movies that makes you feel like a puppy being housetrained, like there's some effluvia over there and now I'm gonna rub your face in it until you feel bad about yourself?

think I'll go see 'Air Doll' instead

so is this one of those movies that makes you feel like a puppy being housetrained, like there's some effluvia over there and now I'm gonna rub your face in it until you feel bad about yourself?

It rubs KFC original recipe thighs in your face.

I really like this movie. But god damn I had a hard time understanding her mumbling. I didn't have any subtitling so had to resort to spoken dialogue all the time. But anyway this was heartbreaking.

Was that really Lenny Kravitz? Didn't recognize him at all. Only knew from watching the credits afterwards.

Watching Precious now....the rape scene is filmed like a Michael Jackson film.

name one.

Captain EO.

This was terrible -- Gabourney herself could have done a better job behind the camera. Very surprised that Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz gave the two most credible performances.

You honestly believe those two gave better performances than Mo'nique? That's insane to me. Her statue was about the only thing the Oscar voters have gotten right in a number of years.

In that they're in the movie the least, I can see how they'd come out looking the best, given.

gabby was very good. i liked this movie, a lot, given that it wasn't as sappy as it could've been, and overall, smartly put-together.

You honestly believe those two gave better performances than Mo'nique?

Yep. I didn't believe a word of Mo'nique's until her final monologue. The masturbation scene was good.

the Pennies From Heaven-type interpolations SO clumsy.

OK I just watched this and it wasn't very good (no real surprise) but my god Mo'nique was amazing. I believed her throughout but she was phenomenal in the final scene. Also I kept thinking the male nurse looked familiar but couldn't place him. Didn't realize it was Kravitz until just now.

this was pretty unbearable. like an incredibly nihilistic Dangerous Minds.

So, unbearable in an interesting way and not in a poorly-done way?

the Pennies from Heaven/Walter Mitty stuff + classroom scenes felt really poorly done and ridiculous. everything else seemed to be designed to be as harrowing as possible but I didn't find that particularly interesting (my wife was kinda traumatized by all the infant mistreatment). Ishmael Reed otm upthread overall, I think.

Mariah trying hard to make everyone forget about Glitter was interesting.