Ernest Hardy

The War Zone

Ernest Hardy
Photo by John CliffordIN RIDE WITH THE DEVIL, DIRECTOR ANG LEE WANTS TO bring a complex perspective to the intertwined issues of honor, loyalty and race as they played out during the Civil War. To that end, he spends the first two-thirds of the film tracking the exploits of a......
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No More Rain

Ernest Hardy
ANGIE STONEBlack Diamond (Arista) Angie Stone‘s Black Diamond, a ’70s-style black-femme opus that just happened to appear at the tail end of the ‘90s, is one of this year’s best albums for a number of reasons, one of them being the gaps it fills in. At its center is a......

Animating the Century

Ernest Hardy
Early on in the Japanese animated film Princess Mononoke, a monk soaked in street-hustler wiliness admonishes the young warrior Ashitaka with the observation that “These days, there are angry ghosts all around us, dead from wars sickness. You say you‘re under a curse? So what? So’s the whole world.” Mired......

In Sync

Ernest Hardy
Tucker Harding -- a scotch-chugging,chain-smoking writer of hard-boiled fiction and ballsy news reportage -- is actually named Violet. A pretty woman who’s chipped away almost all vestiges of era-etiquette for her gender (her tale kicks off in 1953), she dresses in tailored suits, has both a glamorous girlfriend and a......

Darkness Audible

Ernest Hardy
Photo by Sheryl Nields "YOU EVER HAD LOVE SO GOOD . . . IT MAKE YOU WANNA buy a house?" Me'Shell Ndegéocello asks the sold-out crowd at the Roxy. Her face, crinkled in mock bewilderment, glows across the tiny stage. The band, vamping an ass-grabbing groove, has just segued out......
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Good Friday

Ernest Hardy
When her band, Strangefruit, broke up last year, L.A.-based singer and sax player Ngozi Inyama retreated from music altogether. She didn’t even listen to the radio. The frustration of almost landing a couple of label deals, then watching them fall through, and the strain of having amassed a cult following......

A Boy's Own War Story

Ernest Hardy
THE MUSLIM TEENAGERS IN ZIAD DOUEIRI'S WEST Beirut can expertly identify the various military planes that fly high overhead. They laughingly take part in the political protests that swell through the streets, parroting the adults' heated chants without fully comprehending or caring about the meaning of the words. And when......

Like a Virgin

Ernest Hardy
TODD HAYNES' VELVET GOLDMINE WAS AN INTELLECTUAL'S fevered love letter to his youth, to the era -- the glam '70s -- that shaped his politics, aesthetic and world-view. It was an art-house celebration of queerness as construct; the actual sweat and messiness of sex were telegraphed in long shots, lusty......
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Soul Catchers

Ernest Hardy
Photo by Kate SwanONE OF THE BEST R&B PERFORMANCES OF THIS decade was all but lost in a blur of hoochie outfits, hooker hair and sexpot posturing. Mariah Carey's radio-single "Breakdown," from 1997's Butterfly album, took the signature elements of new-millennium R&B -- breathy vocals, rap-star cameo, lyrics about heartbreak......

The Secret Sharer

Ernest Hardy
IT'S A COMMON WAY FOR WRITERS TO PASS THE time: Spot a face in the crowd and draft a story to go with it. Sketch in the person's background, create an occupation, map out his or her day's itinerary. The whole process can unfold in the time it takes to......