Business…here’s something on the true sportsman of the year for 2006, Vince Young.
SSP…I’ll be on 610 Sports in Kansas City tonight with Matt Scott around 8 p.m. ET.
So I went with Moms and her friend to see “Dreamgirls” yesterday.  Outstanding flick, I must say.  I’m not the keenest on musicals, but I thoroughly enjoyed this one.  And not because Beyonce was in it.  Looked good, but not great.  At the very least, the mere sight of her wasn’t enough to justify the price of a ticket.
But two things were…
1.  The Scene.  If you know a lick about “Dreamgirls,” you know what I’m talking about–“And I Am Telling You.”  The way I see it, the way this movie would be received would have more to do with this scene than anything else.  It’s the defining moment of the play, the one that people like me–those who haven’t seen the original–know.  We know the words, we know the context, and we know that Jennifer Holiday killed it.  They had to get this scene right for us to even say that this movie was halfway decent, let alone good.
And Jennifer Hudson ripped it.  Absolutely ripped it.  Folks were clapping halfway thru.  At the damn movies!  I’m even hearing that, in some places, she received a standing ovation.  Can’t knock ’em for it.
Put it like this–the scene was boss to the point where Jennifer Holiday doesn’t seem nearly as crazy for her concern as to whether anyone’s going to remember her since she didn’t get a cameo or anything in the movie.  I’m not prepared to say that Hudson’s version was superior, but it is at least a peer to Holiday’s.  So yeah, Holiday’s got a reason to worry that she’ll be bumped to the background by this movie.  They took her scene and did it to death.
2.  My man JR said it best–this was the call that Eddie Murphy had been waiting YEARS to get.  There are times when I forget how incredibly talented he is, but this was a great reminder.  He was great singing, he was great playing the role of a self-indulgent performer, and he was great playing a downtrodden performer from yesteryear.  He was funny and poignant, showing range that we may have never seen from him and humor that we haven’t seen from him–short of being an animated voice–in a long, long time.
But here’s one for ya–Eddie Murphy is now 45 years old.  Evaluating his career is tricky, to say the least.  He did such amazing things when he was young that we couldn’t be anything but disappointed by his output for most of the ’90s.  But when he’s dead and gone and we look back on the collection of work he put together, I think we’ll be better able to give Eddie his props.  Maybe he should have done mroe, and maybe he should have had better taste in scripts.  But I remember something Jamie Foxx said–basically, he could only perform the scripts that were offered to him.
And really, what else was there for a black man in Hollywood to do in the ’90s other than the stuff Eddie got stuck with?  Did he get worse over time?  Or had he just reached his ceiling before he turned 35?  After his performance in “Dreamgirls,” I’m inclined to believe the ceiling was in full effect.