In A Pryor Life: A Conversation With Richard Pryor Jr. The good, the bad - and the funny. And someone who has written a memoir about the most important person in his life, and a performer as well, his son Richard Pryor Jr. Along with the rocky road relationship with his famous father, while surviving sexual abuse, alcoholism and drug addiction. 

And, information shared with him during this conversation, about something he didn't know - his father Richard Pryor's radio show on our Pacifica network at KPFA back in the 70's, during a critical time in his life that saw the political reinvention of his comedy influenced by Malcom and the Panthers.

        Raymond Cruz (Wikimedia)

** "You know, any of your life experiences you can utilize. And I've been fortunate that I'm Chicano, so I've been able to inform characters with a cultural vibe that let's say, other actors can't bring to it - you really have to grow up around it to make it walk and talk."

Actor Raymond Cruz, Alias Tuco Salamanca Talks The Curse Of La LLorona, Breaking Bad. The Latino actor discusses his latest supernatural thriller touching on the Mexican folklore legend, and that also has something to do with betrayal by the Spanish colonial invaders. And, what accounts for the enduring popularity as well of Breaking Bad, featuring his breakout role and intense chemistry with Bryan Cranston.

          (Public Domain Pictures)           

** "The sonnests weren't published as a collection until 1609 - but like Bob Dylan bootleg recordings, there were many unauthorized versions that were circulating during Shakepeare's lifetime."

Poetry Corner: Mary Murphy and Jack Shalom pay tribute with sonnet readings, to Shakespeare on his 455th birthday this April 26th.

     The Shakespeare Club, Montreal 1847 (Wikimedia)

** "The series amounting to wealth porn - in an era in which inequality especially for black workers, continues to grow."

Bro On The Global Television Beat. Arts Express Paris Correspondent, Sorbonne Professor Dennis Broe, with his continuing coverage of what will be on television screens in the coming months. 

Plus...News Blasts: Julian Assange and freedom of the press, the US culture of disinformation, and Hollywood.

Arts Express: Dare To Be Different Radio

FLESH OUT REVIEW

Flesh Out conveys Italian director Michela Occchipinti's subdued yet raw dramatic portrait of women in Mauritania  - and one young woman in particular, Verida (Verida Beitta Ahmed Deiche) pressured into the prevailing family cultural practice of gavage - overeating and obesity for social acceptance - and to interest a prospective groom within the customary traditional marriages favoring rotund figures as the exclusive standard of female beauty. 

The film elicits both sadness and outrage, framed in the simultaneous, progressively resigned and rebellious inner life of the young protagonist. And what in particular works within this stinging, culturally comparative perspective, is the filmmaker's own conflicted personal point of view she brings to this oppressive reality, compared and contrasted with what originally inspired her to embark on this project - her own ambivalence about aging as a Western woman when looking in the mirror. And physical, psychological and social acceptance of herself as is, or not.

Prairie Miller