The Program 20 Years Later

This is probably one of the most underrated sports films of the last 20-25 years. I loved it when I first saw it 10 years ago and it continues to be one of my favorites.

"The Program" is a film about a fictional college football team and the challenges and obstacles they must overcome during the course of a season. That's really just the icing on the cake however. Over the course of the film we get a view to varying degrees of the men who makeup the squad. There's the alcoholic quarterback. The freshman running-back trying to supplant the senior in the starting lineup. The fierce linebacker who trash talks the opponent to psych himself up during the game before it eventually costs him. And finally, there's the coach played by James Caan who is fighting to keep it all together.

2Pac - Changes (1998)

One of the best to ever to do it.

Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff Making History at PBS

Though it may come as a surprise to some, nightly news broadcasts across the major networks in the United States are still largely a man's world. That's why it's refreshing and good to see Gwen Ifill and Judy Woodruff becoming the first women co-anchors for a nightly news show when they make their debut tonight on PBS.

Ifill and Woodruff will become the regular co-hosts of the PBS program "NewsHour." They are both veteran journalists who have definitely paid their dues over the years. For more, you can check out this Associated Press article.

Photo by The Associated Press

Barry Jenkins on Being A Black Filmmaker

"I’m a black filmmaker. I must be. When I think of characters, or rather, when characters come to me — as the best ones do, outside of conscious thought — overwhelmingly they are black. And when I introduce these characters and films into the production framework of this industry, the funding and distribution “restrictions” I’m met with as a result of those characters’ blackness would remind me, if it weren't clear already, that I am indeed black."

The above quote comes from the NY Times piece 20 Directors to Watch in which the Times profiled 20 filmmakers who are making their voices heard. Barry Jenkins directed the 2008 film "Medicine for Melancholy," which centers around a young couple who spend a day with each other in San Francisco. It's a film that I highly recommend. The piece also features Dee Rees, who directed the 2011 highly regarded film "Pariah."

Ryan Coogler Speaks On His Sundance Institute Journey

Writer and director Ryan Coogler, who directed the critically acclaimed "Fruitvale Station," speaks on the impact that attending the Sundance Film Insititute Labs had not only on his career, but his life.