A Good Day To Be Black & Sexy + Diary Of A Tired Black Man (Magnolia DVD)

 

Picture: C+     Sound: C+     Extras: C+     Films: C+

 

 

The Black New Wave is long over, but there are still African American filmmakers are out there and there are not enough getting a chance to be heard.  Magnolia has issued two very interesting, decent feature films from that perspective: A Good Day To Be Black & Sexy and Diary Of A Tired Black Man.  Sexy is an anthology of interesting and not really related stories about relationships that have their moments and are uneven as a whole, yet often interesting separate.  Director Dennis Dortich limits the nudity and sex to get the issues and the very ideas and existence of the relationships that are usually all African American.

 

We do not get enough anthologies of any kind outside of Horror and it was refreshing how ambitious this was, even though more could have been made of some segments, it is not bad and worth a look.  The more serious and slyly spoofy Diary is somewhat successful in showing the Black Male point of view in relationships as a counter to a wave and even cycle of “Black Man Bashing” films that have gone usually unanswered directly for a long time.

 

It too can be lopsided in the other direction, but you have to enjoy a film that is obviously going after Tyler Perry and Whitney Houston and Waiting To Exhale simply because those films put so much of the burden on Black Men that the only way they could make the world better and women happy by being nice to women and always treating them like they are perfect by being perfect.  It is classy revenge at best and as bad in parts at worse.  Sexy is better at handling relationships, but Diary has its moments.

 

The anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1 image on both are not great, but not bad, with motion blur in both cases, but also some stylistic choices that do not hurt.  A segment of Sexy is 1.33 X 1 block-style video.  The Dolby Digital 5.1 mix on Sexy is a little better than the Dolby 2.0 Stereo, but not wildly so, while Diary is only Dolby 2.0 Stereo and also not badly recorded.  They both have budget limits and you can hear that in the sound.  Extras on Sexy include auditions, deleted scenes, a stage version of the Reciprocity segment and a behind the scenes featurette, while Diary includes a Director’s Audio Commentary track, curse-free audio track, thoughts by those who have seen the film and extended scenes.

 

 

-   Nicholas Sheffo