Article 1
From Fresh Prince to Saint Smith
Will Smith has gone from getting jiggy with it to being the chosen one - in every single film. What's he after, sainthood, asks Steve Rose.
Why doesn't Will Smith just come out with it and admit he's really the Messiah? He's too shrewd to say it out loud, of course, but he's been hinting at it for some time in his movies. In his latest, Seven Pounds, he stops just short of pulling out a crown of thorns and humming I Am The Resurrection, but the entire movie is one gigantic nudge towards Smith's increasingly Jesus-like quality. He plays an enigmatic but undeniably very earnest fellow - ostensibly working for the IRS - who seeks out seven strangers who have fallen upon desperately hard times. Upon them, he selflessly bestows a reward that will put their lives back on the right track, at great sacrifice to himself. Who is this modern-day martyr? Why is he doing this? The mystery doesn't actually have a mystical solution, just a calculatedly poignant one, but still, the passion of the Smith is in no doubt.
Looking back, he's been doing this for some time. In recent times he's been drawn to roles that squarely distinguish him as The Special One, but show us he's suffering with it too. In Hancock he was the only superhero on Earth (well, just about) and it made him lonely, miserable and alcoholic. In I Am Legend he was the only surviving person on the planet (well, just about) and again, lonely with his special status. We had to feel his pain; there was nobody else's pain to feel. In The Pursuit Of Happyness, directed by Seven Pounds' Gabriele Muccino, he was the salt of the earth, the common man, suffering the hard knocks of life on the bottom rung of the ladder - but not just any common man. Oh no, Smith's common man pulls himself up by his bootstraps, 'cos he's actually special.
Even his detractors would have to admit, Smith is irritatingly good at everything: acting, singing, dancing, even rapping. He's a solid, $100m-a-picture proposition. He can do comedy, romance, action, serious drama. He's a great dad, husband, friend; he's probably brilliant at grouting.
In the early "Slick Willy" stages of Smith's career, he went out of his way to impress his talents upon everyone on the planet. It was all about "look at me. I'm the greatest!" (Oh yes, let's not forget he played Muhammad Ali). But this new, mature Smith seems to be more saying, "I have transcended your earthly concerns. I exist on a solitary higher plane, just one step below God, and maybe Gandhi." It wouldn't surprise me if he announced he was retiring from acting and taking a post as Barack Obama's chief advisor on hydrogen power, or going off to start a new religion, or something. It's all getting rather tiresome. Come on, Will! What happened to just getting jiggy with it?
If Smith really is that lonely at the top, perhaps it's time he was taken down a rung. He could always emulate his Seven Pounds character for real, and give up all his wealth to support his needy compatriots, but that seems unlikely. Perhaps he could just refresh his box-office appeal by returning to the real source of his power: Bring on Bad Boys III!
Article 2
Smith finds box office Happyness
Will Smith once again proved his box office credentials as his new comedy, The Pursuit of Happyness, took the No 1 spot in the US with a haul of $27m (£13.8m) at the weekend.
The father-son tale, in which Smith stars with his own son, Jaden Christopher Syre Smith, beat off competition from Tolkien-lite fantasy Eragon and an adaptation of the much loved children's classic Charlotte's Web for the top spot.
Eragon, a special effects-laden tale of dragons and elves aimed at those with withdrawal symptoms for the Christmas openings of Peter Jackson's films, opened in second place with $23.45m. Charlotte's Web, however, managed only a disappointing $12m for third place, despite featuring the vocal talents of Julia Roberts, Robert Redford and Oprah Winfrey to animate the beloved children's tale of a pig, Wilbur, who takes advice from a spider on how to avoid the dinner table.
The top five was rounded out by two previously released movies, the animated adventure Happy Feet, about an outcast penguin, and romantic comedy The Holiday, both taking just over $8m. It was a poor weekend for Apocalypto, Mel Gibson's Mayan language tale, which fell from first to sixth place, taking $7.7m in its second week.
Analysts said Smith's success proved that the actor remains a powerful force at the box office, no matter what genre of film he appears in. Happyness, the story of a struggling dad who becomes homeless along with his young son, followed the likes of Independence Day and I, Robot to No 1. "Audiences around the world love him," said Rory Bruer, head of distribution at Sony, which produced Smith hits Men in Black and Hitch. "Everyone who sees Will Smith or meets Will Smith feels like he could be their best friend," Bruer said. "He has that type of charisma that resonates throughout whatever room he's in."
It seems that Hollywood has failed to produce an obvious festive blockbuster this year. Overall box office was down 8% on the same weekend in 2005, when King Kong and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe were in first and second place.
Article 3
It's who's behind the screen that matters
It's not who's on the screen that matters - but who's behind it
When you turn on the television, do you want to see a mirror, a window, or a vision of how life should be? Wait a second, that sounds like a teaser for Changing Rooms. What I mean is, what do we expect from TV, and are our expectations too contradictory?
The question arises from a few lines written by the veteran broadcaster, Ludovic Kennedy, at the end of a book review about the BBC in the Oldie magazine. Apropos of not very much, Ludo suddenly makes the - some would say ludicrous - observation that there are too many black faces on the Beeb.
"I am all in favour of black advancement," he states, "but there's now hardly a TV, pub, police station, soap, vox pop or ad without rather more than its fair share of black participation."
Leaving aside the obvious problem with that sentence (what does he mean "hardly a TV"?), the gist of it is that black people - by which he means non-white people - are over-represented on screen. Kennedy quotes the Office of National Statistics figure of all ethnic minority groups together making up just 7.5% of the nation's population.
Perhaps he has been meticulously counting and found that black and Asian people now make up 8% of the BBC's output. My heart shrinks at the mere contemplation of this kind of quota system.
From where I sit, in the borough of Brent, with its majority non-white population, the BBC is a long way from reflecting the racial mix of contemporary urban life. And I imagine that EastEnders does not speak directly to too many Bangladeshis living in Newham.
But then no one really wants TV, and in particular the BBC, to mirror life as it actually is. The commentator Yasmin Alibhai-Brown ripped into "bigoted" Kennedy and the Oldie, which she dismissed as "a repository for blimpish fogeys who cannot bear to watch the irresistible and dazzling transformation of the media." I'd like to catch that programme myself, but she didn't mention which side it was on.
Kennedy would have reasonable grounds for complaint if he were to argue that there was a gross under-representation of blimpish fogeys in TV drama, indeed a conspicuous under-representation of old people in general. To this group, you could add fat people, ugly people, disabled people - none of them get much of a look-in.
Then, of course, there are the ways in which the minority groups that are represented are, as it were, represented. For example, if the aim was an accurate depiction of reality then one in six actors in prison dramas would be black, and white actors would struggle to land the part of a street mugger.
No doubt some readers will think that such a crass observation does nothing but reinforce negative racial stereotypes. Perhaps, but the point is that in other media such provocative social realism doesn't appear to be a problem. Take music, for example. The lyrics of rap and reggae are filled with violence, avarice and sexual braggadocio. Yet they are often praised by liberal critics, as well as consumers, for the honesty with which they portray "life on the streets".
So, television is different, and the BBC is more different still. Everyone from the government to the Catholic church is on its case about how unfairly it represents them. And if that was not enough, Alibhai-Brown has joined in too. "The BBC will still not see me as an equivalent of, say Peter Hitchens, or Jonathan Freedland," she claims.
One reason why the BBC may not see Alibhai-Brown as an equivalent of that pair could be that it does not rate her as their equal as a writer and thinker. Another explanation is that the BBC is racist and/or sexist. A third option is that the BBC is racist and sexist, and that Alibhai-Brown is not that good. Who can say?
Greg Dyke famously declared that the BBC was "hideously white". It has undoubtedly become less hideously white under his control, but that's down to cosmetic work rather than major internal surgery. Jon Snow, the Channel 4 newscaster, recently noted that when black and Asian trainees enter the newsroom, they are quickly encouraged to become reporters, where they can be seen by the viewers.
At the moment we have the increasing presentation of non-whites, but not necessarily their proper representation. While it is of symbolic importance that licence payers are reflected on screen in all their myriad colours, shapes and wheelchair-friendly sizes, it is more vital that this process takes place behind the screen, where the power lies. Only then can it be said that TV, which went colour over three decades ago, will have finally stopped broadcasting in black and white.
Until such time, we must look for the egalitarian spirit wherever we can find it. And where better to start than The Crouches? The new black sitcom has been derided as "embarrassing" and "clueless" (Alibhai-Brown) and "unadulterated rubbish" (Darcus Howe). In other words, a non-discriminatory success story - for in these respects, it is just the same as white sitcoms.
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