(PNS reporting from TOKYO) Japanese character actor Bad Badtz-Maru will star as a gang-banging, tagging Chicano in a new animated feature called Angry Bird O.G., PNS confirmed on Sunday.
This could be a comeback role for 20-year-old Badtz-Maru (バッドばつ丸). The spiky-haired method actor has found little work since playing the mascot at the 2006 FIBA World Championship of Basketball here.
Frank Lucero could get more Hollywood gigs if he could just act more Mexican!
If you grew up in the 80’s and 90’s, you remember the film Colors. It spawned a lot of headlines about violence at movie theaters and the spread of Los Angeles-style gang wars. The Guardian Angels even protested the flick and left a toilet bowl outside of Sean Penn’s home as an “award.” They also strapped makeshift coffins to the roofs of their cars.
The film had this weird mystique. Colors introduced suburban kids (and their parents) to a whole new world – one they would spend the next decade imitating. Long gone were the fierce but safe dance-offs in Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo – in Colors, Turbo and Ozone would have simply blown the heads off of Electro-Rock’s crew with a 12-gauge shotgun.
Mas…Everything you wanted to know about ‘Colors’ but were afraid to ask
(PNS reporting from HOLLYWOOD) Newcomer John Gomez stars as The John Gomez Show premieres Sunday night, the latest sitcom starring a Latino that is destined to join the long line of Latino TV shows that suck.
John and his sweet, sexy wife Lisa are a happily-married couple with two children. Daughter Rosie is just turning the corner to teenager, and son Sam is a precocious — oh, forget about the plot line, it promises to simply suck big time.
“It’s a formula for failure,” declared Hispanic TV audiences everywhere.
“I will watch it no matter how bad it is. Juan Gomez is one of our own, even though he is the unfunniest Latino on the planet,” said Latina inactivist Vera Tellez.
Mas…Unfunny ‘Latino’ sitcom debuts Sunday, people will watch anyhow
I disagree with Dennis Leoni.
In the POCHO article, he says this: “One more time, what do we need to do? BUILD OUR OWN MARKETPLACE!”
Here’s my take: It won’t work. It simply will not work. Why? Because the so-called “Latino” experience cannot be compared to the African-American experience in the United States. The “Latino” experience is different for each of us.
Latinos are culturally diverse. Yawn. Haven’t we heard this a million times already? Yet, it probably hasn’t really sunk in. A Mexican-American story will be different from a Puerto-Rican story, a Dominican story, a Colombian story, etc. It will also be different from a Mexican immigrant story, a Nuyorican story, an Ecuadorian/Irish story. Assimilation changes who we are. Migration changes who we are.
Mas…Latinos in Hollywood? First of all, who are these so-called ‘Latinos?’
(PNS reporting from HOLLYWOOD) Television producer Marc Cherry is developing a new series called Desperate Tontos, which is about four white actors donning even whiter makeup to play Native Americans. The series is seen as a comeback attempt following Cherry’s floundering Devious Maids series, which was a disastrous attempt to portray Latinas.
Cherry admits Maids took him a little out of his comfort zone as a writer. “I’m a white guy, and I should write what I know,” said Cherry. “And what I know is how to be a white man pimping other people’s cultures.”
Mas…Breaking: ‘Devious Maids’ producer preps ‘Desperate Tontos’
Okay, time for a reality check.
Despicable Me 2 made $59.5 million in its first two days of release. Do any of you seriously believe that Universal gives a flying fuck if Latinos are upset over the negative stereotyping of a Latino character ?
As my good friend Bob Eisele likes to say, “Here’s the situation…” THEY DON’T CARE. Please allow me to repeat that… THEY DON’T CARE.
We Latinos can yell, scream, jump up and down, stand on our heads, do somersaults and they still won’t care. The movie is on track to make hundreds of millions of dollars for Universal.
Year before last, Ron Meyer, the head of Universal Studios, spoke at a NALIP luncheon and told us to our faces that Universal doesn’t make Latino-themed or Latino-starred movies because Latinos don’t go to see them. And you know what? He’s right. Latinos are almost 40% of the all important opening day box office. Unfortunately, Latinos go to see Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Transformers, Star Trek, Star Wars, Iron Man, Batman, Spiderman, anything but Latino-themed movies. What’s the solution?
Mas…Attention: It’s time to get real about Latino movie projects
It’s Ray’s Podcast — from the Ciudad of Brotherly Love.
Mas…POCHO Jefe-in-Chief Lalo Alcaraz explains himself (audio)
(PNS reporting from HOLLYWOOD) Hoping to capitalize on the Devious Maids buzz, Fox will jump on the stereotypical Latino programming bandwagon with a new entry this fall called Foxy Farmworkers.
The show will follow a quirky group of “young, single and ready-to-mingle” Mexican farmworkers as they make their way from the impoverished US-Mexico border to fields in Washington, Oregon, Montana, Michigan.
Between backbreaking 14-16 hour days in the sun and working in the fields, the young men manage to get themselves into a world of trouble chasing after petite, white women in the towns they pass through, breaking hearts along the way.
(PNS reporting from HOLLYWOOD) Animal Planet Latino will be premiering a new “documentary” series that has stirred the waters of controversy.
The new cable show, Devious Mermaids, will explore the lives of five captured Latina mermaids who live in a giant tank on display at a Florida aquatic park set in the fictional town of Orlando.
Critics of the show are disturbed by what they call misleading and unrealistic portrayal of Latinas.
They also are assailing creator Marc Cherry, charging that as a middle-aged landlubber, he is insensitive when it comes to interpreting the experience of Latina mermaids.
Mas…Animal Planet Latino launches controversial show ‘Devious Mermaids’
(PNS reporting from LONDON) Downton Abbey executive producer Gareth Neame said today that newcomer Gary Coleman’s addition to the British show “will bring interesting twists to the drama.” The cute-as-a-button actor has most recently been seen in various American sitcoms and reality programs.
His Downton character, Arnold Jackson, is described as “a charming and charismatic” young man. The long-awaited addition marks the first time Downton has had an adorable black character.
Mas…PBS ‘Downton Abbey’ series adds first adorable black character
(PNS reporting from HOLLYWOOD) The creators of the miniseries The Bible and the History Channel are denying reports that the character Satan intentionally resembles President Barack Obama.
Producers Mark Burnett and Roma Downey dismissed what they called “ridiculous” reports that their mini-series cast the ultimate villain with an actor looked like the President.
“This is utter nonsense. The actor who played Satan, Mehdi Ouzaani, is a highly acclaimed Moroccan actor,” they said in a statement released today.
“He has previously played parts in several Biblical epics– including dark-skinned Kenyan socialist Marxist dictators, and other Satanic characters long before Barack Obama was elected as our treasonous, drone-launching Black Panther President.”
Mas…History Channel asserts that Obama Satan portrayal is ‘unbiased’
So, since the last time I wrote about the lack of racial diversity on The Walking Dead a lot of shit happened.
For starters, I got a shout out in La Cucaracha from POCHO Jefe-in-Chief Lalo Alcaraz.
There was a lot of buzz online about my story and I received a few encouraging tweets from actors and editors on the show. I patted myself on the back and thought “Maybe I can get a spot on AMC’s show about the show, The Talking Dead.”
Wrong.
The most surprising thing to happen after I wrote that story was that the executive producer of the show, Glen Mazzara, left the show! Or he was fired. Believe whatever version you want but he’s no longer producing the show and that made me feel…odd.
Mas…¿Se habla zombie? ¡Chale! More of the same on ‘The Walking Dead’
(PNS reporting from HOLLYWOOD)
Something was missing on last night’s already barely diverse Oscars show:
Latina actress and icon Lupe Ontiveros was outrageously not included in the In Memoriam segment of the 2013 Oscars telecast, nor in the Oscars Web Gallery.
The veteran actress, who passed away in July, was missing from the annual segment when Hollywood’s own are remembered, if for only three seconds.
This reporter reached out to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences and spoke with longtime Academy member, film producer Irving Oldenwhyte.
Oldenwhyte was incredulous when I brought up the fact that Lupe Ontiveros was excluded. “Why would we put her in that segment? That’s for people in the talkies!” said Oldenwhyte.
When informed that Lupe Ontiveros had acted in dozens of films, including Selena, El Norte, As Good As It Gets, The Goonies and many more, including countless TV series, Oldenwhyte remained astonished. “She’s an actress? I thought she was a maid.”
Mas…Oscars: ‘Lupe Ontiveros not included? We thought she was a maid!’
(PNS reporting from NEW YORK CITY) HBO’s mega hit Girls is getting a spin-off — a Latina version called Chicas.
“We woke up and smelled the cafecito,” producer Elizabeth Ferris told a press conference here this morning, “and the pan dulce.”
“The success of Girls is indisputable and we want to be able to bring that success to the Latino community,” Ferris said. “I don’t know if any Latinos actually watch Girls, but everyone is into the ‘Latino thing’ these days, so why not Chicas?”
Based on the POCHO story “The Talking Dead: No Habla Zombie” by S.J. Rivera.
The Walking Dead is a great television series. It has captured that attention of the nation with a human drama centered around less-than-human storylines. But it is not without its own flaws, one of which is the lack of racial diversity on the show.
One of the people I follow on Twitter is Glen Mazzara, the executive producer and one of the writers for The Walking Dead. His Twitter feed usually consists of promos for the show but the other day he posted a link to an article in Slate that criticized the show for only allowing one black guy at a time among the living. The Tweet ? “One Black Guy at a Time.”
The article noted that the show’s only black female character, Michonne, was not allowed to use words to settle conflicts – she always resorts to the sword. Rick, the show’s main character, has used reason to get out of a bad situation on more than one occasion. Why does the black chick always have to be pissed off, silent and bloodthirsty?
Another day in Hollywood, another casting call. Getting a good part is hard enough without the racial stereotyping and White Casting. (NSFW language.)
(PNS reporting from HOLLYWOOD) Following the warm reception to the upcoming César Chávez biopic, producers in Hollywood have mounted an international effort to produce the “most extensive Chicano film in history.”
The production not only features an all-star cast from the United States and Latin America but also includes both factual and fictitious events in Chicano history.
“The idea is to jam pack as much history, culture and entertainment into two hours of film so that young Chicanos don’t have to read any books to learn about who they are,” said the project’s director, Pedro Almodóvar.
“In fact, if possible we are going to try to make the two hours into an hour-and-a-half, because our target audience has no attention span.”
Mas…Hollywood Spaniards, Puerto Ricans plan ‘ultimate’ Chicano film
