Now that Sarah, Lori, Karman, Dara and Jill have made video blogging the Hot New Thing at AfterEllen.com, I broke down and gave in. Yes, I, too have gotten myself a camcorder and slapdashedly taught myself how to cobble edit together a video blog, co-hosted by me and my friend Sarah Pecora (who was also on my panel rating the Top 15 Hottest Butches), talking aimlessly (and hopefully, a bit humorously) about a subject we hold near and dear to our hearts: people like us of color in entertainment!

Sarah (left) and Malinda (right) explain themselves

Since this is our first video blog, please bear with us while we goof around with the technical details and learn how to light ourselves properly (yes, I see the huge shadow looming behind Sarah's head — oops!). We also do not yet have a name for our vlog, but we do have a suggestion for what we'd like to call it, and we hope you'll contribute your ideas, too.

For our inaugural episode, we offer you a wrap-up of some of the women of color we saw in TV and film this summer, namely: … continue reading

Lori and I stumbled across BBC America's fantastic drama series Jekyll a few weekends ago when we were surfing our On Demand channels, and by the end of the first episode, we were hooked. The six-episode first season, which went out with a bang this past weekend, is a suspense thriller with an excellent cast and an old story that somehow comes across fresh. James Nesbitt is brilliant and believable as both Tom Jackman and his alter ego Mr. Hyde, the lesbian private detectives drive the plot forward and provide some necessary comic relief, and Michelle Ryan, who did not impress us in the Bionic Woman pilot, nails her role as Tom's mysterious assistant/nurse perfectly here.

But the one who really impressed me the most was Gina Bellman as Tom's wife Claire. I'd only ever seen Bellman previously on the very funny British comedy Coupling, playing the fairly limited, over-the-top and occasionally annoying role of narcissistic bisexual Jane.

Beyond thinking "Hey, that's that actress who played the bi chick on Coupling," I didn't pay much attention to Bellman in the first few episodes of Jekyll, because Claire's role was initially fairly small and mostly limited to wondering why her husband kept disappearing for days at a time. But once she discovered his secret in episode three, Claire suddenly started to get interesting, and in episode four, it was like "forget Tom's alter ego, who is this other Gina Bellman?" … continue reading