Sorry for the lackadaisical posting schedule, y'all. Ol Ty's in the midst of his holidayin' so I'm just a little distracted. Anyway, I did want to give y'all a heads up to a new flick coming up called 'Stomp The Yard'. I caught the trailer a couple weeks ago and it looks pretty good though if you look closely enough the story seems suspiciously similar to that other historically black college jammy jam, Drumline that came out four years ago...
If y'all recall Drumline featured young buck Nick Cannon as a high school drumming prodigy who is recruited by fictional black college Atlanta A&T to be in the school's marching band. For my readers from the other 'sides', south side college marching bands are a world apart from their north side college counterparts. While north side college bands are about field formations and traditional school fight songs and just considered half time entertainment, south side college marching bands normally tend to be the 'the show' at football games and feature off the hook dancing by the band members themselves. Check out Drumline if you haven't seen it already to get a flavor for the difference.
Stomp The Yard focuses on another unique aspect of black college life - the south side fraternity tradition of 'Steppin' where fraternity members put together intricately choregraphed dance routines done either acapella to chants or put to the hottest tracks out at that time. This joint takes place at the fictional south side college Truth University and gives an inside look at both pledging south side frats as well as how big steppin' is in the whole fraternity scene. You know the choregraphy in this joint is tight since Darrin Henson is in the movie. Y'all shortys will remember ol boy from his days on Showtime's Soul Food when he was playin' Lem the reformed street thug. He's always been a choregrapher as well as an actor even helping that whack a$$ N'Sync buff up their dance moves.
Of course a black movie wouldn't be complete without an appearance by black movie staple Megan Good. Seems she's making a move to break Tamala Jones' record for number of black movie appearances in a career. Based on the trailer, Megan is back to doing what she does best - doin' that pouty thing, doin' that doe eyed look thing, doin' that cut top, look at my breasts thing. Y'all know what I'm talking about. Didn't we just see that act in Waist Deep? Hmmmm.... Not that I'm complainin' or anything but sometimes if you keep that ruckus up you can get pegged as one dimensional and end up only gettin' cast in black movi...hey, wait a minute!
Anyway, this joint drops January 12, 2006 and stars Columbus Short. I'm not too up on this brother but he seems to do a bit of TV work and also appeared in that other dance movie joint, You Got Served (which also, coincidently, featured Megan Good). I also spotted young buck Chris Brown in this joint who plays Columbus' younger brother, a fellow street dancer who gets got, an incident which leads a troubled Columbus to Truth University and the new world of black frats and steppin'.
Should be another Saturday night, jammy jam popcorn flick and since ol Ty knows a little bit about steppin' (big shout out to my GE Nupes holdin' down the yard at non-fictional Tuskegee University) I'll have to check it out just to give my technical opinion on the actual factuals on screen. However as the Nupes do their steppin' with canes (which I didn't see in the trailer), of course the choregraphy is simplified to represent the remedial moves the other frats perpetrate as steppin'. To be clear, ol Ty was doin' those type of moves as a biddy bop homeboy every time Mama Malone dropped a hair brush on his butt for excessive clownin'. I'm not hatin', I'm just statin', y'all.Peace@Least,
Tyrone
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