The above poster says it all doesn’t it?

A busy yet slow news day, if that makes any sense. So… how about a survey? 🙂

We’re just about halfway through the year, and the highest grossing “black film” (a film whose narrative centers on a the life of a black person or lives of black people) is… drum roll… of absolutely NO surprise to anyone, Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family, which raked in $53,319,665 at the box office.

The second highest grossing “black film” to date? Drum roll… Big Mommas: Like Father, Like Son, which pulled in $37,915,414. And what do the top 2 grossing “black films” of the year have in common? Figure it out!

But coming in at #3 is Jumping the Broom which totaled $37,295,394.

After that, nothing broke the $2 million mark. The Heart Specialist at $1,103,037; Mooz-lum made about $370,000, and so on…

Obviously, box office isn’t necessarily an indication of worth.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention some of the year’s black cinema highlights thus far: “Blackdance” (as in Sundance 2011, and the number and variety of black films that screened at the festival this year); Ava DuVernay and AFFRM; and I’ll even throw in Shadow And Act joining the indieWIRE Network in there. Why not? 🙂

But as this is meant to be a survey of you folks, I’m going to hand you the mic so you can dish and serve. cinema highlights of the year thus far for you? NOTE: not just black cinema highlights; you can talk about whatever got you want to; like, maybe your short list of the 5 best films you’ve seen so far this year (again, not just black films); news items that got you really excited about what’s coming (maybe casting and/or projects announced this year); or news items that completely ruined your life forever; for the techies, any film-related technology (hardware, software) that made you scream, whether with joy, or pain, etc, etc, etc…

Go!