The Dictator' lands somewhere between wan Mel Brooks and good Adam Sandler, whose 'You Don't Mess With the Zohan,' about an Israeli Special Forces soldier at a hair salon, manages to strike better contrasts with vaguely similar culture differences - it's a nuttier movie, too.

Sidney Poitier became a star in part by helping black and white Americans negotiate their new relationship in the post-Civil Rights era.

Sometimes a movie knows you're watching it. It knows how to hold and keep you, how, when it's over, to make you want it all over again.

If I like a movie, I'm definitely advocating for it, but it's not "you should see this" or "you shouldn't see this." I try to take a longer view about what the movie is doing and where it fits in the context of other things, in the way that certain good literary criticism tries to do the same thing.

The bravery of Stanley Kramer's 'Guess Who's Coming to Dinner' amounted to two Hollywood legends - Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy - telling the world that a black son-in-law is something they can live with, and so should you, especially if he looks like Sidney Poitier and has degrees.

I have a pretty good sense of when to express misgivings. And white critics are just as capable of pointing those things out and noticing them as people of color.

Computers are scary. Theyre nightmares to fix, lose our stuff, and, on occasion, they crash, producing the blue screen of death. Steve Jobs knew this. He knew that computers were bulky and hernia-inducing and Darth Vader black. He understood the value of declarative design.