Van Peebles

Reluctantly -- and after much soul-searching -- I took my two boys to see "Panther," Melvin and Mario Van Peebles' fictionalized account of the birth of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense in 1966.The movie has whipped up a storm of controversy since it opened last Wednesday, in part because it portrays the Panthers as idealistic young heroes, while police in Oakland, Calif. and the FBI are shown as murderous thugs."So, what'd you think?" I asked after the movie."It was great," said the 10-year-old.

Despite the hopes of some observers, ''Boyz N the Hood'' was bypassed at the Oscars. ''Silence of the Lambs'' swept up the gold. It had already swept a lot more at the box office, which brings up a question:Where were all those folks who beat up on Spike Lee, Warrington Hudlin and Mario Van Peebles over the violence and abusive relationships in their movies when young black Americans were lining up to see ''Silence''?Anthony Hopkins created a surpassingly evil Hannibal Lecter, and he justly won Best Actor.

Celebrate Black History Month at the Urban Film Series Tour's Film and Discussion Series in Washington on Wednesday through Feb. 11. More than 20 urban-themed feature films, short films and young-adult films, including The Tenants, starring Snoop Dogg (pictured at right) and Dylan McDermott, will be screened at the festival, which is presented by Next Generation Awareness Foundation. The event also features panel discussions, poetry readings, book signings and more. Guests scheduled to appear include filmmaker Melvin Van Peebles, musician Roy Ayers, actress Yvette Freeman, actor Joseph Marcel and NBA player and poet Etan Thomas.

Gilbert Moses, 52, an award-winning director and co-founder of a pioneering black theater company, died Friday of multiple myeloma in New York. He won an Obie award for his production of 1969's "Slave Ship" by Imamu Baraka. He directed Melvin Van Peebles' "Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death" and Ed Bullins' "Taking of Miss Janie," which the New York Drama Critics Circle named in 1975 as best new American play of the season. He co-founded the Free Southern Theater, which toured the South in the 1960s with such plays as "In White America" and "Waiting for Godot."

You don't have to be a football fan, and you don't have to have seen "Brian's Song," the milestone 1970 TV drama about the life and death of the Chicago Bears' Brian Piccolo, to know how CBS' Tuesday night movie comes out.Nor should that stop you from tuning in "Triumph of the Heart: The Ricky Bell Story" (9 p.m., Channel 11) for a triumph of a TV tear-jerker.In 1977, University of Southern California running back Ricky Bell was the Tampa Bay Buccaneers' first-round draft pick. He became the sixth-leading rusher in the NFL in 1979 -- the same year he led the Bucs to their first playoff appearance.

LOS ANGELES -- Some film critics and youth counselors say "New Jack City," a film about urban gang violence that touched off fights at movie theaters around the country a week ago, exploits the anger and suppressed violence of young people in inner cities.Both Warner Brothers, which released the film, and its director and star, Melvin Van Peebles, defended the film, saying it carried an anti-drug, anti-violence message. The movie, also starring Wesley Snipes, is based on the true story of the rise and fall of a drug dealer in Harlem.

In "Solo," the Terminator joins the Magnificent Seven.A movie so purloined from other movies it has almost no single moment of original life, this odd hybrid follows as an experimental super android infantryman joins forces with a guerrilla-besieged Central American village and, faster than you can say "Yul Brynner," has the villagers outfighting the boys with the AK-47s and the Che T-shirts.Mario Van Peebles is the best thing in the picture as the title character. With his head shaven (nice conceit: When the android is given a choice of faces during construction, he picks Michael Jordan's)

POP MUSICLots of band for the buckThese days, what passes for rock-and-roll idealism often amounts to little more than guys in $300 snakeskin boots prattling on about how they're worried about the environment. Thankfully there are still a few bands left that are as committed to their ideals as Fugazi. Adamantly anti-commercial and fiercely independent, Fugazi is one of the few bands around that genuinely cares less about money than about its music and its fans. That's why the group likes to play benefits like tomorrow's Maryland For Choice benefit at Steelworkers Hall in Dundalk, why it insists that tickets be kept affordable ($5 for this show)

There is a scene in the CBS miniseries "Mama Flora's Family" that features Flora Palmer (Cicely Tyson) at age 69 walking into a Tennessee coffee shop, attempting to integrate its lunch counter.As the scene started to unfold, my first thought was that I'd been here before. And I had, with Tyson as Miss Jane Pittman integrating a water fountain in the acclaimed 1974 made-for-TV movie, "The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman."And the model for Pittman, according to director John Korty, was Rosa Parks refusing to give up her seat on a bus.You might think that's bad: television just recycling the same stories over and over, seemingly with no new ideas.

The final day of MFF 2008 starts with one of the festival's most delightful traditions, a Sunday-morning silent film with accompaniment by the three-piece Alloy Orchestra. Underworld (11:30 a.m., Charles Theatre 1) is a 1927 gangster flick from Austrian-born Josef von Sternberg, who would go on to achieve his greatest fame as the director-of-choice for Marlene Dietrich. This film, starring George Bancroft (as Bull), Evelyn Brent (as Feathers) and Clive Brook (as Rolls Royce), is filled with the requisite turf battles, conflicting loyalties and two-timing molls that would come to characterize the great Warner Bros.