(Akiit.com) Director Antoine Fuqua has been chasing the shadow of his biggest hit-to-date, Training Day, for almost a decade. After that breakout success, (for which Denzel Washington won a much-deserved Academy Award for best actor) Fuqua’s subsequent films have disappointed either commercially (King Arthur), critically (Shooter) or both (Tears of the Sun). With his latest, Brooklyn’s Finest (which opens Friday, March 5), Fuqua is finally back in his comfort zone–the police thriller–and although this work doesn’t come close to surpassing Denzel’s classic–it is at times a worthy successor.

Working off a script by first time writer Michael C. Martin, Fuqua weaves three stories of three veteran cops–one retiring (Richard Gere), one undercover (Don Cheadle) and another hopelessly corrupt (Ethan Hawke)–all based in Brooklyn. The common thread all three men share besides location is that while they are all inherently decent men they are also morally compromised and challenged in one way or another.

From the opening shot until the final frame–this film grabs you. It’s beautifully shot (on location in Brooklyn) and once they get going each one of the main storylines manages to really hold your interest and build in tension. Gere’s Eddie Duggan is lonely, suicidal and derided by his fellow officers as a “burnout“. He is forced to mentor unreliable rookie officers during his last week on the job. When all he wants is to be left alone, Gere’s character keeps being drawn back into perilous situations. Hawke’s Sal is struggling to make ends meet with a sick wife pregnant with twins and several other children to provide for. He finds himself stealing drug money to finance a new home. Finally there’s Don Cheadle who has taken on the alter-ego “Tango” and has gone deep undercover to help bring down a drug kingpin named Caz (played by Wesley Snipes) who has recently been released from prison. His eagerness to attain promotion within the police department has isolated him from not just his colleagues but from his family as well.

While the film is never boring, Fuqua takes a lot of time to set up his three protagonists. This is a good thing. He is aiming for the film to be a parable about flawed men forced to make difficult choices and there are a lot of religious overtones–from a darkly funny confessional scene featuring Hawke to a cameo from a black Jesus–but it’s the pulse pounding, cross-cutting suspense sequences that keep you on the edge of your seat.
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(Akiit.com) Slam Simpson and Dennis Rodman, if you must, but a black man in drag is no disgrace to black history.

Far be it from me to parse the motivations of the California schoolteachers who presented portraits of O.J. Simpson, Dennis Rodman and RuPaul during a Black History Month parade. Perhaps they were well-meaning, albeit misguided, in their efforts. Probably not. At any rate, there’s been (predictably) a great hue and cry from those charging that the contributions of black folks were being mocked.

I’d be the last person to defend O.J. (I’m convinced that he did it) or Dennis Rodman (clearly he’s got, shall we say, issues).

But I will, however, defend RuPaul, drag diva/author/singer/actor and host of Logo TV’s RuPaul’s Drag Race. Why lump him in the same category as a convicted felon and a fallen basketball star who’s pled no contest to domestic abuse? Sporting stilettos and a blond wig while possessing no small quantities of testosterone does not prevent one from qualifying for black hero status.

Drag does not equal disgrace.

The outcry over RuPaul’s inclusion in the Black History Month parade has a lot to do with the black community’s continued issues with homophobia and outdated notions of rigidly defined black masculinity. As The Root’s Natalie Hopkinson noted in her excellent dissection of the Sidney Poitier syndrome, our yearning for “positive imagery” means that, more often than not, we like to see our heroes wrapped in neatly inoffensive packages, superheroes “slaying racial stereotypes.” An Amazon armed with tucking panties, corsets and platinum lace-front wigs doesn’t fit neatly into our pre-assigned notions of race and gender.

“I’m not convinced this was an accident. Three white teachers pick Simpson, Rodman, and RuPaul … arguably the three worst picks for black personalities, for their Black History showcase? Not buying it … sounds like they’re smearing the whole practice of the history month,” wrote one Los Angeles Times reader.
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(Akiit.com) SAN ANTONIO (AP) — A moment on the lips, forever on the hips? A bad figure is hardly the worst of it. Eating a lot of fat, especially the kind that’s in cookies and pastries, can significantly raise the risk of stroke for women over 50, a large new study finds.

We already know that diets rich in fat, particularly artery-clogging trans fat, are bad for the heart and the waistline.

The new study is the largest to look at stroke risk in women and across all types of fat. It showed a clear trend: Those who ate the most fat had a 44 percent higher risk of the most common type of stroke compared to those who ate the least.

“It’s a tremendous increase that is potentially avoidable,” said Dr. Emil Matarese, stroke chief at St. Mary Medical Center in Langhorne, Penn. “What’s bad for the heart is bad for the brain.”

He reviewed but did not help conduct the research, which was presented Wednesday at an American Stroke Association conference. It involved 87,230 participants in the Women’s Health Initiative, a federally funded study best known for revealing health risks from taking hormone pills for menopause symptoms.

Before menopause, women traditionally have had less risk of stroke than similarly aged men, although this is changing as women increasingly battle obesity and other health problems.

After menopause, the risk rises and the gender advantage disappears, said Dr. Ka He, a nutrition specialist and senior author of the study from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

He and another researcher, Sirin Yaemsiri, wanted to see whether dietary fat affected the odds.

Participants in the study had filled out detailed surveys on their diets when they enrolled, at ages 50 to 79. Researchers put them into four groups based on how much fat they ate, and looked about seven years later to see how many had suffered a stroke caused by clogged blood vessels supplying the brain — the most common kind.

There were 288 strokes in the group of women who consumed the most fat each day (95 grams) versus 249 strokes in the group eating the least fat (25 grams), Yaemsiri told the conference.

After taking into account other factors that affect stroke risk — weight, race, smoking, exercise and use of alcohol, aspirin or hormone pills — researchers concluded that women who ate the most fat had a 44 percent greater risk of stroke.
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(Akiit.com) In perhaps a sign of these economically stressful times, the National Football League Players Association is clamoring for the restoration of a $123 million per-team, league-wide salary cap as the official start of the free-agent signing period dawns. Meanwhile football owners seem intent on standing idly by while costly concerns twist aimlessly in the wind.

This week officially marks the close of the league’s long-held labor agreement, assuring that for the first time since 1993 all 32 NFL teams will operate without a mandated salary cap. Essentially, that renders more than 200 players — franchise play-makers such as Julius Peppers, Carlos Dansby, Dunta Robinson, Darren Sharper and Darren Sproles, to name a few — free agents of one sort or another, open to procuring the very best deals for themselves offered for their vast and varied services.

On the surface, this would seem to suggest that the teams most willing to reinvest in fielding the very best teams possible are poised to make the most significant gains between this season and last.

But alas, theory and practice are not always joined at the hip. A key factor to remember is that owners opted out of the current collective bargaining agreement in 2008 based on a series of fundamental concerns. For instance, they argued that players’ 60 percent share of revenues was simply too steep for them to continue profitably slicing up all that cheddar.

If that was their stance then what might you expect it to be now, legitimate or not, in the midst of the great recession?
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(Akiit.com) President Barack Obama is quietly moving forward with a plan for black America. He’s just not talking about it.

It’s probably a good idea.

Obama has been criticized recently – particularly by commentator Tavis Smiley – for not speaking out directly on behalf of African-Americans and failing to specifically address the needs of the black community through a symbolic “black agenda.”

That’s nonsense.

Obama is the nation’s first black president, and, while he was elected with overwhelming support from African-Americans, he’s not a president just for black folks. Critics like Smiley won’t be able to strong arm Obama into publicly announcing some sort of black agenda. The president is resistant to bullying tactics, no matter who is doing the bullying.

Smiley appeared on “The Tom Joyner Morning Show” early last week and chastised black leaders, saying Obama had not been pressed hard enough in a White House meeting - one with Rev. Al Sharpton of the National Action Network, National Urban League’s Marc Morial and the NAACP’S Ben Jealous - to act in the interest of African-Americans.

Smiley said “a chorus of black leaders have started singing a new song,” - that the president doesn’t need a black agenda. He then announced that he would host an accountability forum in Chicago on March 20 entitled “We Count: The Black Agenda is the American Agenda.”

This is real-world politics. Those who feel Obama has not manned-up enough for black Americans reveal a lack of political maturity about how Washington works. Obama is still navigating his way through the rough-and-tumble politics on Capitol Hill, but he has learned this: Don’t telegraph every idea publicly. Just do it.

And so, Obama, through a number of federal agencies and aggressive policies, is actually creating a comprehensive blueprint for black America – it just doesn’t have a label. And does it really need one?

Here’s what’s important: The issues of concern to black Americans have been put on paper and sent to Congress. The mark of a committed politician is gauged in large part by a budget. Many lawmakers talk a good game, but often won’t fund their own proposals. Former President George W. Bush boasted repeatedly about his landmark idea, “No Child Left Behind.” But he forgot to pay for it.

Consider these budget highlights from the Obama administration.

- Education: Last week, Obama signed an executive order for historically black colleges and universities to strengthen the relationship between HBCUs and the federal government. Obama is also extending resources to HBCUs and their students, including $95 million in the 2011 budget and $850 million over 10 years, as well as increasing the Pell Grant maximum to nearly $6,000. Obama also announced at a recent event with Colin and Alma Powell an effort to combat the dropout crisis in America by investing $3.5 billion in underperforming schools. These resources will go into urban communities in some of the toughest schools, where the dropout rates are highest among African Americans.
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