Wednesday January 12, 2000       One of my chief regrets of the
previous year was that I wasn't able to get to as many of last
August's Urbanworld Film Festival screenings as I would have
liked. Still, the few films I did see at that annual Manhattan-
based showcase of African American and Latino movies were enough
to convince me that there are sexy, smart and fresh movies by
minority filmmakers that, with enough promotion and attention,
could find an audience.  Sign Up For Traffic Text Alerts
     Last I checked, those films were still wandering the
wilderness in search of distributors. Meanwhile, "Next Friday"
gets green-lighted, packaged and shipped into the multiplexes in
a relative heartbeat.      Somebody please remind me that this
is supposed to be a golden age for movies.      In cold-blooded,
capitalistic terms, "Next Friday's" existence makes perfect
sense. It is a follow-up, after all, to the surprise hit (at
least in video) "Friday" (1995), which served as a breakthrough
for its director, F. Gary