Author Archives: Patrice Bowman

This is the first post in Patrice Bowman’s new WKND BLOG series “Blogging While Black,” which will feature Patrice’s reflections—from the wry to the optimistic—on the experience of being Black at Yale.   I entered the Ezra Stiles dining hall and saw, to my lower left, a flyer advertising the annual “Black History Month Dinner.” »

Whenever I see people clad in stuffy, period costumes, I expect to see one of two scenarios: either one populated by neurotic characters with repression leaking out of their ears or one of those Oscar Wilde-esque works filled with irreverence towards morals and pun-ishing (sorry!) dialogue. The Dramat’s production of “In the Next Room or the vibrator play” by Sarah Ruhl is an entertaining and, somehow, emotionally sincere combination of both, although it comes across as too light.

Lincoln and “Lincoln” by Scott Stern I was that guy — or, at least, I wanted to be. In the theater. After the movie. The one who walked out going, “They all looked so accurate. Especially Edwin Stanton! And Salmon P. Chase. And did you notice how Lincoln’s body was slanted at the very end? »

And then a monsoon, an earthquake and a plague happen. Yet not a single catastrophe is named after a character from “Finding Nemo.”

What is “the river don’t flow by itself no more”? It consists of a continuous stream of stories from different people who — for better or for worse — interact with an unspecified part of the Mexican-American border.

Cinephiles place movies on that high pedestal we call Art. But some films utilize less highfalutin gimmicks to wrangle in more audience members.

When I’m actually able to watch television, I watch the news about 30 percent of the time.

“Silver Linings Playbook,” from off-Hollywood-center director David O. Russell, revels in its depictions of how life snaps between cringing and laughter.

Although I can do without gratuitous sex scenes in my flicks, I congratulate “The Sessions,” an independent film by Ben Lewin, for attempting to do what many mainstream Hollywood pictures don’t do: approach sexual relations with the mature understanding of the emotional resonance the act has.

“Mad Men” is a nice show and all, but I’ve been wanting to learn about 1960s advertising without womanizing, boozing and blackfacing interrupting my experience. This past week at Yale, I was in luck. Posters across campus featuring dapper fellows in black suits and cheeky women in yellow dresses invited me to attend a screening »

Even after the Rep. Todd Akins debacle, I wasn’t too embarrassed to call myself a pro-lifer. A safe pro-lifer; “I don’t believe in abortion except if it’ll harm the mother.” Okay, that may not be accurate. What about rape, illegitimate or not legitimate? How trustworthy were adoptions and foster care? And what about mothers who, »

There are movies that take you from point A to point B and there are those that take you from Point XG5 to Point GDT. Between these two walks Alejandro Jodorowsky’s “Santa Sangre”; while it takes overly-long, difficult, trippy detours, you’ll see that the trip’s destination is more familiar than you thought. Fenix (Axel Jodorowsky, »