Last Thursday, love was in the air for Valentine's Day. I guess our wonderful host, Wanderer at Wandering Through the Shelves hasn't gotten it out of her system. This week's topic for Thursday Movie Picks is "Starring Real Life Couples." That's not a problem. However, it is Black History Month, and if I'm going to keep talking about love, I'm going to talk about Black love.
Jungle Fever
(1991)
Starring Ruby Dee & Ossie Davis
This Spike Lee joint is known for its depiction of an interracial relationship at a time when such a thing was still a hotly debated topic. In some circles they still are, but with one in just about every TV show, movie, and commercial, it's just not that big a deal these days. The other main storyline of the film deals with the main character's drug addicted brother, played with a fresh-off-the-pipe verisimilitude by Samuel L. Jackson. Other than getting high, he's most adept at conning his mother out of a few dollars at a time to keep his habit going. Mom is played by Ruby Dee. Dad is played by her real life husband, Ossie Davis. The iconic couple married in 1948 and remained together until Davis's death in 2005.
Ali
(2001)
Starring Will Smith & Jada Pinkett-Smith
Upon it's release, Michael Mann's biopic about boxing legend Muhammad Ali was polarizing, and suffered at the box-office as a result. Time has proven kind to the movie as the general consensus of it has been on an upswing. One thing about it that was almost always universally liked was the performance of Will Smith in the lead role. One of his co-stars was his real life, then of four years, Jada Pinkett-Smith. In the film, she plays Ali's first wife and star-crossed lover, Sonji Roi. The two provide some of the movie's best scenes, outside the ring, of course.
Brown Sugar
(2002)
Starring Boris Kodjoe & Nicole Ari Parker
I promise they are both in that pic. Anyhoo, this is a rom-com about a hip-hop magazine editor and a record lable A&R, neither of which are played by the couple in question. They actually play the people standing in the way of the main couple's happily ever after by each dating one of them. It's a fun, underrated movie. As for Kodjoe and Parker, they met and fell in love a couple years prior to this movie's release on the set of Showtime's Soul Food TV series. They married in 2005, are still together, and if I'm being honest, make one of the prettiest couples walking the face of planet Earth. |
| What Mrs. Dell & I see when we look in a mirror (even if no one else does). |
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