Page 8 The Skanner May 11, 2016
Arts & Entertainment
FILM REVIEW: ‘Captain America:
Civil War’ Clutttered, Over-
Ambitious Action-Adventure
‘Apprentice’ Winner Explains His
Opposition to Trump Candidacy
By Kam Williams
For The Skanner News
D
Avengers split into factions over whether or not they should abide by governmental regulations in
‘Captain America: Civil War’
By Kam Williams
For The Skanner News
A
fter overkill during an Avengers
mission gone horribly wrong in
Lagos, Nigeria exacts a terrible
toll in terms of collateral dam-
age, the U.S. Secretary of State (William
Hurt) calls the team of superheroes on
the carpet. He proceeds to chew them
out for behaving like vigilantes with
unchecked power, before suggesting
they agree to be supervised in the fu-
ture by a United Nations panel.
While a remorseful Iron Man (Robert
Downey, Jr.) is willing to submit to the
Anti-Hero Registration Act, Captain
America (Chris Evans) is much more
suspicious of these Sokovia Accords
ratified by 117 nations. Next thing you
know, the Avengers have split into fac-
tions over whether or not they should
abide by the governmental regulation.
What ensues is a visually-capti-
vating battle royal in which the al-
lies-turned-adversaries inexplicably
fight each other rather than resolve
their ethical differences civilly. What
does that tell you about whether they
might need to be reigned in?
Among those siding with Iron Man
are Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson),
War Machine (Don Cheadle), Black
Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Vision
(Paul Bettany) and Spider-Man (Tom
Holland), And Captain America’s free-
dom lovers include Winter Soldier (Se-
bastian Stan), Falcon (Anthony Mack-
ie), Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner), Scarlet
Witch (Elizabeth Olsen) and Ant Man
(Paul Rudd),
Fans of the franchise are certain to
delight in seeing so many of their fa-
vorite superheroes together in the
same episode. Regrettably, that is both
the primary strength and weakness of
this 13th installment in the Marvel Cin-
ematic Universe series. For co-direc-
tors Anthony and Joe Russo (“Captain
America: Winter Soldier”) have clut-
tered the screen by introducing and
then failing to develop over a score of
prominent characters, unless engaging
in combat counts.
Too bad they couldn’t come up with
anything more interesting for the shat-
tered, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. confeder-
acy to do besides battling each other.
Clocking in at two and a half hours,
even the eye-popping special f/x-tend
to gets a little tedious once the wow fac-
tor wears off.
An underwhelming exercise in sound
and fury strictly for brains on pause.
Fair H
Rated PG-13 for extended
sequences of violence,
action and mayhem
in English, German, Rus-
sian, Romanian and Hau-
sa with subtitles
Running time: 146 min-
utes
Distributor: Walt Disney
Pictures
r. Randal Pinkett has established
himself as an entrepreneur,
speaker, author and scholar, and
as a leading voice for his gener-
ation in business and technology. He
is the founder, chairman and CEO of
his fifth venture, BCT Partners, a mul-
timillion-dollar management consult-
ing and information technology solu-
tions firm headquartered in Newark,
NJ.
Dr. Pinkett has received numerous
awards for business and technology
excellence including the Information
Technology Senior Management Fo-
rum’s Beacon Award, the National
Society of Black Engineers’ Entrepre-
neur of the Year Award, and the Na-
tional Urban League’s Business Excel-
lence Award. He has been featured on
“
Apprentice.”
Raised
in
New
Jersey,
Dr. Pinkett is
a proud mem-
ber of Alpha
Phi Alpha Fra-
ternity,
and
attends First
Baptist Church
in Somerset,
NJ, where he
Dr. Randal Pinkett
resides. He is
happily mar-
ried to his wife, Zahara, and they are
the proud parents of their daughter
and two sons. Dr. Pinkett firmly be-
lieves that “for those to whom much is
given, much is expected,” so through-
out his endeavors, he places great em-
phasis on his desire to give back to the
community.
Recently, Dr. Pinkett and several
To people who keep wanting to dance around
the question of whether he’s racist, sexist or
xenophobic, let me suggest that he has a pat-
tern of this kind of behavior
nationally televised programs such as
The Today Show, Live with Kelly and
Michael, Nightline and CNN. In 2009,
he was named as a potential candidate
for Lieutenant Governor of New Jer-
sey.
Dr. Pinkett is the author of Campus
CEO: The Student Entrepreneur’s Guide
to Launching a Multimillion-Dollar
Business and No-Money Down CEO:
How to Start Your Dream Business with
Little or No Cash and co-author of Black
Faces in White Places: 10 Game-Chang-
ing Strategies to Achieve Success and
Find Greatness, which was named one
of the Best Black Nonfiction Books of
2010 by the Los Angeles Sentinel.
He holds five degrees, including a
B.S. in Electrical Engineering from
Rutgers University, where he com-
peted as a high jumper, long jumper
and captain of the men’s track and
field team; a M.S. in Computer Sci-
ence from the University of Oxford
in England; and a M.S. in Electrical
Engineering, MBA, and Ph.D. from
MIT. Most notably, he was the first
and only African American to receive
the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship at
Rutgers University and was the first,
African American winner of Donald
Trump’s reality television show, “The
other “Apprentice” alumni held a
press conference to voice their oppo-
sition to Donald Trump’s candidacy.
Here, Randal explains why he feels
Trump is unfit to be President.
Kam Williams: Hi Randal, thanks
for the time. How you been, bro?
Dr. Randal Pinkett: I’ve been bless-
ed, my brother, I’ve been blessed. How
are you?
KW: Great! How’s the family?
RP: Everybody’s well, my friend.
Thanks for asking. How’re things on
your end?
KW: Let’s get down to business. Five
years ago, Donald Trump pointed at
his picking you as the winner of “The
Apprentice” as proof that “He’s the
least racist person there is.” What
does it mean that you are now saying
he’s unfit to be president?
RP: I find his use of me as his de-
fense against allegations of racism as
not only absurd but as also misguid-
ed. Consider the history of our rela-
tionship, particularly my finale on
“The Apprentice” when I expressed
concerns then and, maybe my opin-
ion now, that his decision to ask me
to share the title was ei-
ther racially insensitive
or just straight racist. To
display that behavior to-
ward me, the only person
of color he’d ever hired
on the show, and to then
say I’m the evidence that
you’re not racist means
that your privilege has
so sufficiently blinded
you that you don’t see the
insidiousness of what
you did then or of what
you’re saying now.
KW: How do you feel
about his reaction to the
six of you, calling you
“failing wannabes?”
RP: [Laughs heartily]
His reaction was un-pres-
idential, petulant and
sophomoric.
Read the full interview at
TheSkanner.com