2024 marks the 25th anniversary of George Lucas' mediocre mega-hit "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace." One cannot understate the enormity of this film's release back in 1999; there were news stories for months postulating its content and what its success levels might be. People camped out for weeks wanting to be the first to buy tickets. When the film's trailer was released, people would pay a full ticket price to watch it and then leave before the feature it preceded. Others would watch the trailer online, but in the days before streaming technology, this took several hours of dial-up-supported downloading.
One also cannot understate how disappointing the movie was. The story was dry and difficult to follow, involving with a trade route blockade, a treaty signing, and a wicked conspiracy with no known conclusion. The characters were either shrill or thin, delivering dull, ridiculous dialogue that felt out-of-place in...
One also cannot understate how disappointing the movie was. The story was dry and difficult to follow, involving with a trade route blockade, a treaty signing, and a wicked conspiracy with no known conclusion. The characters were either shrill or thin, delivering dull, ridiculous dialogue that felt out-of-place in...
- 2/12/2024
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
Comedian Katt Williams has reignited his feud with comic/actor Kevin Hart, rolling out some highly inflammatory comments on Shannon Sharpe’s Club Shay Shay YouTube show.
Hart has responded, calling the comments “sad,” but using the moment to tout his upcoming Netflix film.
Williams didn’t hold back on the Sharpe show.
“In 15 years in Hollywood, no one in Hollywood has a memory of going to a sold-out Kevin Hart show, there being a line for him, ever getting a standing ovation at any comedy club,” Williams said.
Later in the cast, Williams again took on Hart.
“For a five-year period, every single movie that Kevin Hart did was a movie that had been on my desk that all I had said was just, ‘Can we take some of this Stepin Fetchit shit out and then I can do it,'” said Williams.
“Like it don’t need to...
Hart has responded, calling the comments “sad,” but using the moment to tout his upcoming Netflix film.
Williams didn’t hold back on the Sharpe show.
“In 15 years in Hollywood, no one in Hollywood has a memory of going to a sold-out Kevin Hart show, there being a line for him, ever getting a standing ovation at any comedy club,” Williams said.
Later in the cast, Williams again took on Hart.
“For a five-year period, every single movie that Kevin Hart did was a movie that had been on my desk that all I had said was just, ‘Can we take some of this Stepin Fetchit shit out and then I can do it,'” said Williams.
“Like it don’t need to...
- 1/5/2024
- by Bruce Haring
- Deadline Film + TV
Here in L.A., it’s hard to know if someone is listening – let alone active listening. What’s active listening? I learned about it from watching The Bachelorette which my friend, Susie, introduced me to this past weekend.
Active listening is a method of listening that involves eye contact, not interrupting, not imposing opinions or solutions or judgments, just being present, staying focused and asking questions. Essentially, how humans used to interact before technology.
Here’s a situation that everyone can relate to. You’re having a pleasant meal with a friend. Suddenly, they reach for their phone which, naturally, is always within reach. What are they doing? It’s breaking news. Or they’re checking on something in real time. Or they’re ordering something on Amazon while you’re talking. This person is not an active listener. This person is a defective listener with no impulse control.
Active listening is a method of listening that involves eye contact, not interrupting, not imposing opinions or solutions or judgments, just being present, staying focused and asking questions. Essentially, how humans used to interact before technology.
Here’s a situation that everyone can relate to. You’re having a pleasant meal with a friend. Suddenly, they reach for their phone which, naturally, is always within reach. What are they doing? It’s breaking news. Or they’re checking on something in real time. Or they’re ordering something on Amazon while you’re talking. This person is not an active listener. This person is a defective listener with no impulse control.
- 7/8/2023
- by Ariel Leve
- The Wrap
Will Power’s Fetch Clay, Make Man is coming to Culver City thanks to LeBron James and Maverick Carter’s SpringHill Company and Center Theatre Group.
The play, focused on the unlikely friendship of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali and Hollywood icon Stepin Fetchit, will hit the stage at the Kirk Douglas Theatre from June 25-July 16 with Debbie Allen at the helm in her Ctg directorial debut. Opening night is set for June 25.
The story explores the bond that formed when the two met in the days leading up to one of Ali’s most anticipated fights, with one described as “a vibrant and audacious youth, the other a resentful and widely resented relic — each fighting to form their public personas and shape their legacies amidst the struggle of the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-1960s.”
Fetch Clay, Make Man has been produced in regional companies including the McCarter Theater,...
The play, focused on the unlikely friendship of legendary boxer Muhammad Ali and Hollywood icon Stepin Fetchit, will hit the stage at the Kirk Douglas Theatre from June 25-July 16 with Debbie Allen at the helm in her Ctg directorial debut. Opening night is set for June 25.
The story explores the bond that formed when the two met in the days leading up to one of Ali’s most anticipated fights, with one described as “a vibrant and audacious youth, the other a resentful and widely resented relic — each fighting to form their public personas and shape their legacies amidst the struggle of the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-1960s.”
Fetch Clay, Make Man has been produced in regional companies including the McCarter Theater,...
- 4/25/2023
- by Chris Gardner
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Those who were alive in 1999 will be able to recall the tremendous drama surrounding the release of George Lucas' "Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace." It was perhaps one of the most anticipated films of all time, with some audience members camping out on sidewalks for days, waiting to get tickets (a necessity in a time prior to internet ticket sales). Before streaming technology was widely available (YouTube didn't debut until 2005), people used their dial-up modems to download the "Phantom Menace" trailer, a practice that took the better part of a day. The film bow to respectful, if modest, applause from critics.
But very quickly, public perception turned sour. Many soon recognized that the script was clunky, the story wasn't terribly interesting, and the characters were flat, dray, and inhuman. Many pointed specifically to Jake Lloyd, who played the young Anakin Skywalker, as one of the central reasons the film didn't work.
But very quickly, public perception turned sour. Many soon recognized that the script was clunky, the story wasn't terribly interesting, and the characters were flat, dray, and inhuman. Many pointed specifically to Jake Lloyd, who played the young Anakin Skywalker, as one of the central reasons the film didn't work.
- 4/7/2023
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
Ahmed Best had to think long and hard about guest-starring in the latest episode of Disney+’s The Mandalorian, due to the “rollercoaster ride of emotions” he endured as the prequel film trilogy’s Jar Jar Binks.
A floppy-eared Gungan introduced in 1999’s Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, Jar Jar was met with some backlash — either framed as a blatant ploy by Lucasfilm to cater to kiddies, or criticized as a “Rastafarian Stepin Fetchit on platform hoofs” (as the Wall Street Journal put it back in the day). Regardless of the accuracy of such attacks, “Because of the backlash,...
A floppy-eared Gungan introduced in 1999’s Star Wars: Episode I — The Phantom Menace, Jar Jar was met with some backlash — either framed as a blatant ploy by Lucasfilm to cater to kiddies, or criticized as a “Rastafarian Stepin Fetchit on platform hoofs” (as the Wall Street Journal put it back in the day). Regardless of the accuracy of such attacks, “Because of the backlash,...
- 3/27/2023
- by Matt Webb Mitovich
- TVLine.com
When Sidney Poitier was honored as the first African American male to win a competitive acting Oscar in 1964 for his lead performance in “Lilies of the Field,” it had been 24 years since Hattie McDaniel became the Jackie Robinson of the Academy Awards with her breakthrough triumph in 1940 for “Gone With the Wind.” And it would be another 19 years before there was a third: Louis Gossett Jr.’s supporting actor victory in 1983 for “An Officer and a Gentleman.”
Wins for three performers of color in 43 years didn’t exactly represent a trend. But in the 39 years after that, there would be 19 more, including a pair of African American actors (Denzel Washington and Mahershala Ali) who won twice apiece. Poitier’s ’64 triumph proved as surprising as it was stirring, and undeniably political. Leading up to that historic event, his inscrutable countenance and the almost regal way he carried himself made Poitier a...
Wins for three performers of color in 43 years didn’t exactly represent a trend. But in the 39 years after that, there would be 19 more, including a pair of African American actors (Denzel Washington and Mahershala Ali) who won twice apiece. Poitier’s ’64 triumph proved as surprising as it was stirring, and undeniably political. Leading up to that historic event, his inscrutable countenance and the almost regal way he carried himself made Poitier a...
- 2/25/2023
- by Ray Richmond
- Gold Derby
Do decent people become real bastards when they acquire wealth?” For Hugh Quarshie, that’s the central question in the soapy new drama, Riches, in which he plays the CEO of a family-run Black haircare company. For reasons that quickly become clear, Quarshie doesn’t end up having much screen time – but his impact is felt throughout the entire show. Over six episodes, the debut season follows the Richards family as they figure out how to save their business from financial ruin.
Taking the role in Riches was not a difficult decision for Quarshie. Since his first professional credit in 1979, the 68-year-old’s career has ranged widely, from medical procedural Holby City to the title role in Othello for the RSC. Earlier this year, he was Bafta-nominated for best actor in Stephen, a miniseries about the aftermath of Stephen Lawrence’s murder. When he first spoke to Riches showrunner Abby Ajayi,...
Taking the role in Riches was not a difficult decision for Quarshie. Since his first professional credit in 1979, the 68-year-old’s career has ranged widely, from medical procedural Holby City to the title role in Othello for the RSC. Earlier this year, he was Bafta-nominated for best actor in Stephen, a miniseries about the aftermath of Stephen Lawrence’s murder. When he first spoke to Riches showrunner Abby Ajayi,...
- 12/22/2022
- by Nicole Vassell
- The Independent - TV
In “Is That Black Enough for You?!?,” Elvis Mitchell’s highly pleasurable and eye-opening movie-love documentary about the American Black cinema revolution of the late ’60s and ’70s, Billy Dee Williams, now 85 but still spry, tells a funny story about what it was like to play Louis McKay, the dapper love object and would-be savior of Billie Holiday in “Lady Sings the Blues.”
The year was 1972, and African-American audiences had rarely (if ever) been given the chance to gawk at a movie star of color who was not just this sexy but this showcased for his sexiness. Louis was like Clark Gable with a dash of Marvin Gaye; when he was on that promenade stairway, Williams says, with a chuckle, that he just about fell in love with himself. That’s how unprecedented the whole thing was. The actor recalls how the lighting was fussed over (we see a shot...
The year was 1972, and African-American audiences had rarely (if ever) been given the chance to gawk at a movie star of color who was not just this sexy but this showcased for his sexiness. Louis was like Clark Gable with a dash of Marvin Gaye; when he was on that promenade stairway, Williams says, with a chuckle, that he just about fell in love with himself. That’s how unprecedented the whole thing was. The actor recalls how the lighting was fussed over (we see a shot...
- 10/10/2022
- by Owen Gleiberman
- Variety Film + TV
The critical evolution of George Lucas' 1999 film "Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace" has been fascinating to behold. To this author's memory, no film — not even "Avengers: Endgame" — was more feverishly anticipated. The advertising machine kicked into overdrive. Using 1999-era dial-up internet, "Star Wars" enthusiasts would spend all day downloading the film's trailer, watching it at home, combing it for details, all before such activities became common hobbies and online cottage industries. Lucas' film may be seen as a fulcrum in geek culture. Fandom wouldn't be the same after. Fans camped outside of theaters for weeks, eschewing both work and bathing, hoping to be the first to get tickets. "The Phantom Menace" may have been the first instance of customers buying many tickets at one time, committing to seeing the film multiple times before they had even seen it once.
Then they saw it once.
It took a...
Then they saw it once.
It took a...
- 9/29/2022
- by Witney Seibold
- Slash Film
Sidney Poitier, whose dignity and self-assertion ushered in a new era in the depiction of African-Americans in Hollywood films as the civil rights movement was remaking America, has died, a spokesperson for the Bahamian Prime Minister confirmed to Variety. He was 94. Poitier was the oldest living winner of the best actor Oscar — just one distinction in a career full of distinctions.
“Our whole Bahamas grieves and extends our deepest condolences to his family. But even as we mourn, we celebrate the life of a great Bahamian, a cultural icon, an actor and film director, an entrepreneur, civil and human rights activist and, latterly, a diplomat,” said Phillip Davis, Prime Minister of the Bahamas in a statement. “We admire the man not just because of his colossal achievements, but also because of who he was. His strength of character, his willingness to stand up and be counted, and the way he...
“Our whole Bahamas grieves and extends our deepest condolences to his family. But even as we mourn, we celebrate the life of a great Bahamian, a cultural icon, an actor and film director, an entrepreneur, civil and human rights activist and, latterly, a diplomat,” said Phillip Davis, Prime Minister of the Bahamas in a statement. “We admire the man not just because of his colossal achievements, but also because of who he was. His strength of character, his willingness to stand up and be counted, and the way he...
- 1/7/2022
- by Rick Schultz
- Variety Film + TV
The Oscar spotlight is once again on Regina King, who won the Academy Award for supporting actress for 2018’s “If Beale Street Could Talk.” But this time around, it’s for her feature film directorial debut “One Night in Miami,” a drama set in 1964 that imagines a meeting in a hotel room with Muhammad Ali (then known as Cassius Clay), Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Sam Cooke after Ali’s title win over Sonny Liston. Amazon Studios is releasing the film in limited theaters on Christmas Day and will begin to stream the drama on Jan. 15.
All men are at a crossroads in their lives: Malcolm X is thinking of leaving the Black Muslims but not before he announces that Clay will become a Muslim; the famed football star Brown is looking to make a break into movies; and pop singer Cooke, who is slick and successful, but is worried about his career path.
All men are at a crossroads in their lives: Malcolm X is thinking of leaving the Black Muslims but not before he announces that Clay will become a Muslim; the famed football star Brown is looking to make a break into movies; and pop singer Cooke, who is slick and successful, but is worried about his career path.
- 11/29/2020
- by Susan King
- Gold Derby
Rhonda Fleming, star of the 1940s and ’50s who was dubbed the “Queen of Technicolor” and appeared in “Out of the Past” and “Spellbound,” died Wednesday in Santa Monica, Calif., according to her secretary Carla Sapon. She was 97.
Fleming appeared in more than 40 films and worked with directors such as Alfred Hitchcock on “Spellbound,” Jacques Tourneur on “Out of the Past” and Robert Siodmak on “The Spiral Staircase.”
Later in life, she became a philanthropist and supporter of numerous organizations fighting cancer, homelessness and child abuse.
Her starring roles include classics such as the 1948 musical fantasy “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” alongside Bing Crosby, 1957 Western “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” and the noir “Slightly Scarlet” alongside John Payne.
Her co-stars over the years included Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Burt Lancaster, Bob Hope, Rock Hudson and Ronald Reagan, with whom she made four films. Other notable roles included Fritz Lang...
Fleming appeared in more than 40 films and worked with directors such as Alfred Hitchcock on “Spellbound,” Jacques Tourneur on “Out of the Past” and Robert Siodmak on “The Spiral Staircase.”
Later in life, she became a philanthropist and supporter of numerous organizations fighting cancer, homelessness and child abuse.
Her starring roles include classics such as the 1948 musical fantasy “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court” alongside Bing Crosby, 1957 Western “Gunfight at the O.K. Corral” and the noir “Slightly Scarlet” alongside John Payne.
Her co-stars over the years included Kirk Douglas, Glenn Ford, Burt Lancaster, Bob Hope, Rock Hudson and Ronald Reagan, with whom she made four films. Other notable roles included Fritz Lang...
- 10/17/2020
- by Natalie Oganesyan
- Variety Film + TV
With readers turning to their home viewing options more than ever, this daily feature provides one new movie each day worth checking out on a major streaming platform.
Decades before Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” squashed box-office expectations en route to a Best Original Screenplay Oscar, Robert Townsend and Keenan Ivory Wayans struck a similar chord in 1987 with “Hollywood Shuffle,” a biting satire about the dearth of roles for black actors in Hollywood. Unlike “Get Out,” the approach to racial comedy in “Shuffle” is much more flagrant. However, it remains an essential piece of black Hollywood history that still has something to say about the industry today.
More from IndieWireStream of the Day: 'God's Own Country' Deserves to Be a 'Call Me by Your Name' SensationStream of the Day: People Have Been Watching 'Bicycle Thieves' the Wrong Way for Decades
The loosely autobiographical film follows aspiring...
Decades before Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” squashed box-office expectations en route to a Best Original Screenplay Oscar, Robert Townsend and Keenan Ivory Wayans struck a similar chord in 1987 with “Hollywood Shuffle,” a biting satire about the dearth of roles for black actors in Hollywood. Unlike “Get Out,” the approach to racial comedy in “Shuffle” is much more flagrant. However, it remains an essential piece of black Hollywood history that still has something to say about the industry today.
More from IndieWireStream of the Day: 'God's Own Country' Deserves to Be a 'Call Me by Your Name' SensationStream of the Day: People Have Been Watching 'Bicycle Thieves' the Wrong Way for Decades
The loosely autobiographical film follows aspiring...
- 4/23/2020
- by Tambay Obenson
- Indiewire
Bill Cosby’s publicist slammed Eddie Murphy’s “Saturday Night Live” opening monologue on Sunday evening. Andrew Wyatt shared his thoughts on Murphy’s joke about the incarcerated comedian via Cosby’s Instagram.
View this post on Instagram
Bill Cosby’s Publicist, Andrew Wyatt, responds to Eddie Murphy’s SNL Monologue: “Mr. Cosby became the first Black to win an Emmy for his role in I Spy and Mr. Cosby broke color barriers in the Entertainment Industry, so that Blacks like Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappell, Kevin Hart and et al., could have an opportunity to showcase their talents for many generations to come. It is sad that Mr. Murphy would take this glorious moment of returning to SNL and make disparaging remarks against Mr. Cosby. One would think that Mr. Murphy was given his freedom to leave the plantation, so that he could make his own decisions; but he decided...
View this post on Instagram
Bill Cosby’s Publicist, Andrew Wyatt, responds to Eddie Murphy’s SNL Monologue: “Mr. Cosby became the first Black to win an Emmy for his role in I Spy and Mr. Cosby broke color barriers in the Entertainment Industry, so that Blacks like Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappell, Kevin Hart and et al., could have an opportunity to showcase their talents for many generations to come. It is sad that Mr. Murphy would take this glorious moment of returning to SNL and make disparaging remarks against Mr. Cosby. One would think that Mr. Murphy was given his freedom to leave the plantation, so that he could make his own decisions; but he decided...
- 12/24/2019
- by LaTesha Harris
- Variety Film + TV
Eddie Murphy knocked it out of the park hosting this week’s Saturday Night Live. Making his first appearance in 35 years, expectations were sky-high. Some assumed that he would’ve gone a little soft over the years, with contemporary audiences more familiar with his work in the Shrek movies than his blistering early 80s stand-up specials. But he proved them all wrong, with the highlight being him bringing up his old rivalry with disgraced former icon and sex offender Bill Cosby.
The legend goes that Cosby called Murphy as he was beginning his ascent to the top with a complaint that his comedy was “too raunchy” and told him to tone it down. Proving that the best revenge is served ice cold, Murphy referenced this in his opening monologue, saying:
“But if you would have told me 30 years ago that I would be this boring, stay-at-home house dad and Bill Cosby would be in jail,...
The legend goes that Cosby called Murphy as he was beginning his ascent to the top with a complaint that his comedy was “too raunchy” and told him to tone it down. Proving that the best revenge is served ice cold, Murphy referenced this in his opening monologue, saying:
“But if you would have told me 30 years ago that I would be this boring, stay-at-home house dad and Bill Cosby would be in jail,...
- 12/23/2019
- by David James
- We Got This Covered
Bill Cosby’s spokesperson has described Eddie Murphy as a “Hollywood slave” over the “disparaging remarks” that Murphy made about Cosby in his return to “Saturday Night Live.”
In a lengthy statement to Instagram posted late Sunday, Cosby spokesperson Andrew Wyatt said it was Cosby who opened the doors for Murphy and other black men to do comedy, and that his client used comedy to unify rather than bring others down.
“Mr. Cosby broke color barriers in the Entertainment Industry, so that Blacks like Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappell (sic), Kevin Hart and et al., could have an opportunity to showcase their talents for many generations to come,” Wyatt said in his statement. “It is sad that Mr. Murphy would take this glorious moment of returning to SNL and make disparaging remarks against Mr. Cosby. One would think that Mr. Murphy was given his freedom to leave the plantation, so that...
In a lengthy statement to Instagram posted late Sunday, Cosby spokesperson Andrew Wyatt said it was Cosby who opened the doors for Murphy and other black men to do comedy, and that his client used comedy to unify rather than bring others down.
“Mr. Cosby broke color barriers in the Entertainment Industry, so that Blacks like Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappell (sic), Kevin Hart and et al., could have an opportunity to showcase their talents for many generations to come,” Wyatt said in his statement. “It is sad that Mr. Murphy would take this glorious moment of returning to SNL and make disparaging remarks against Mr. Cosby. One would think that Mr. Murphy was given his freedom to leave the plantation, so that...
- 12/23/2019
- by Brian Welk
- The Wrap
Eddie Murphy’s acclaimed return to “Saturday Night Live” over the weekend has generated a scathing response from Bill Cosby’s spokesperson, Andrew Wyatt. Murphy took some time during his monologue to rip into Cosby, who is currently serving a prison sentence for sexual assault. “If you would have told me 30 years ago that I would be this boring stay-at-home house dad and Bill Cosby would be in jail, even I wouldn’t have took that bet,” Murphy jokes as the “SNL” audience laughed.
Murphy followed up the Cosby joke by imitating Cliff Huxtable, the character the disgraced comedian made famous on “The Cosby Show.” Murphy said as Cliff Huxtable, “Who is America’s Dad now?”
In a statement posted to Cosby’s official social media accounts, spokesperson Wyatt slammed Murphy by writing, “Mr. Cosby broke color barriers in the Entertainment Industry, so that Blacks like Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle,...
Murphy followed up the Cosby joke by imitating Cliff Huxtable, the character the disgraced comedian made famous on “The Cosby Show.” Murphy said as Cliff Huxtable, “Who is America’s Dad now?”
In a statement posted to Cosby’s official social media accounts, spokesperson Wyatt slammed Murphy by writing, “Mr. Cosby broke color barriers in the Entertainment Industry, so that Blacks like Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappelle,...
- 12/23/2019
- by Zack Sharf
- Indiewire
Bill Cosby Rep Hits Back At Eddie Murphy Over ‘Saturday Night Live’ Dig, Calls Him “Hollywood Slave”
One of the top highlights from Eddie Murphy’s first hosting stint on Saturday Night Live in 35 years came in the opening monologue where he brought back his Bill Cosby impersonation while taking a shot at the disgraced comedian.
“If you told me 30 years ago that I’d be this boring stay-at-home house dad and Bill Cosby would be in jail, even I wouldn’t have took that bet,” Murphy said, adding in Cosby’s voice, “Who is America’s dad now?” (you can watch the monologue above).
Cosby’s team was not amused. On the official Instagram account of The Cosby Show star, now serving a 10-year sentence for sexual assault, his publicist Andrew Wyatt on Sunday night posted a strongly worded statement slamming Murphy.
“Mr. Cosby broke color barriers in the Entertainment Industry, so that Blacks like Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappell, Kevin Hart and et al., could have...
“If you told me 30 years ago that I’d be this boring stay-at-home house dad and Bill Cosby would be in jail, even I wouldn’t have took that bet,” Murphy said, adding in Cosby’s voice, “Who is America’s dad now?” (you can watch the monologue above).
Cosby’s team was not amused. On the official Instagram account of The Cosby Show star, now serving a 10-year sentence for sexual assault, his publicist Andrew Wyatt on Sunday night posted a strongly worded statement slamming Murphy.
“Mr. Cosby broke color barriers in the Entertainment Industry, so that Blacks like Eddie Murphy, Dave Chappell, Kevin Hart and et al., could have...
- 12/23/2019
- by Nellie Andreeva
- Deadline Film + TV
One of the first hints – an uneasy moment in a remarkable evening full of them – planted in Jeremy O. Harris’ Slave Play suggesting that all is not as it seems (and even what it seems isn’t entirely clear) comes shortly into the opening scenario. A black woman, dressed in Antebellum slave garb, and a white man, attired in the sort of short-hand plantation overseer costume we know from Roots and any number of similar period dramas, are in the midst of an encounter queasy with sexual overtones. No, not sexual. Rape overtones – the leering, bullwhip-toting man is using every bit of his inherent power to forecast what’s coming. The woman’s exaggerated patois – she pointedly says “massa,” not “master” – is loaded with a comic, fearful exaggeration that wouldn’t be out of keeping in an old Stepin Fetchit routine.
So that’s what seems to be happening, this enactment,...
So that’s what seems to be happening, this enactment,...
- 10/7/2019
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
In this engaging film, two innocent, smiling nuns hit the streets of Chicago in 1968 to ask its citizens how happy they are
The second film by what would grow into Chicago powerhouse outfit Kartemquin, this 1968 documentary curio has the fun conceit of sending two smiling nuns out into the Windy City to quiz citizens about their lives. Directors Gordon Quinn and Gerald Temaner were inspired by Jean Rouch’s 1960 cinéma vérité touchstone Chronicle of a Summer. “How much should we do?” wonders Sister Marie Arné as she and Sister Mary Campion gather themselves before setting forth. Her efforts to demarcate their interviewing are almost a manifesto statement for the rawness with which vérité’s American counterpart, Direct Cinema, sought to encounter daily reality.
“Are you happy?” is what the sisters settle on: a humdinger they put to people in the streets, outside shopping malls, in museum and art galleries, to working men,...
The second film by what would grow into Chicago powerhouse outfit Kartemquin, this 1968 documentary curio has the fun conceit of sending two smiling nuns out into the Windy City to quiz citizens about their lives. Directors Gordon Quinn and Gerald Temaner were inspired by Jean Rouch’s 1960 cinéma vérité touchstone Chronicle of a Summer. “How much should we do?” wonders Sister Marie Arné as she and Sister Mary Campion gather themselves before setting forth. Her efforts to demarcate their interviewing are almost a manifesto statement for the rawness with which vérité’s American counterpart, Direct Cinema, sought to encounter daily reality.
“Are you happy?” is what the sisters settle on: a humdinger they put to people in the streets, outside shopping malls, in museum and art galleries, to working men,...
- 5/22/2019
- by Phil Hoad
- The Guardian - Film News
By Andrew J. Rausch
Lq Jones is a legend. He’s been in some of the greatest American films ever made, and his extensive filmography (consisting of well over 100 films) features a virtual Who’s Who of American American cinema. He made his film debut in the 1955 Raoul Walsh war picture Battle Cry, credited with his birth name Justus E. McQueen. The character he played was a young private named...Lq Jones. Soon, at the behest of the studio, the young actor changed his name to that of the character, and the rest is history.
Lq Jones isn’t a household name, and that’s a shame, because it deserves to be. Among knowledgeable cineastes he’s seen as a god among men, a gifted and accomplished performer. He’s one of those character actors people instantly recognize, as he’s been in films with the likes of Elvis Presley,...
Lq Jones is a legend. He’s been in some of the greatest American films ever made, and his extensive filmography (consisting of well over 100 films) features a virtual Who’s Who of American American cinema. He made his film debut in the 1955 Raoul Walsh war picture Battle Cry, credited with his birth name Justus E. McQueen. The character he played was a young private named...Lq Jones. Soon, at the behest of the studio, the young actor changed his name to that of the character, and the rest is history.
Lq Jones isn’t a household name, and that’s a shame, because it deserves to be. Among knowledgeable cineastes he’s seen as a god among men, a gifted and accomplished performer. He’s one of those character actors people instantly recognize, as he’s been in films with the likes of Elvis Presley,...
- 2/28/2019
- by nospam@example.com (Cinema Retro)
- Cinemaretro.com
Howard Hawk's prelapsarian rom-com, Fig Leaves (1926)Along with the output of Universal, the films of Fox, before the merger with Twentieth Century, have long been among the more mysterious and hard-to-see products of Golden Age Hollywood. When TCM made Warners' pre-Codes readily available to American eyes, these competing studios' outputs remained shut in some vault, unrestored and unavailable. Well, the Museum of Modern Art has liberated some fantastic early Universal films, and now it's the turn of William Fox's lost masterworks to see the light of the projector beam once more in MoMA's "William Fox Presents: Restorations and Rediscoveries from the Fox Film Corporation," May 18 - June 5, 2018.The season showcases little-seen films by John Ford, F.W. Murnau, Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks and Frank Borzage, five of the starriest names on the studio's roster of directing talent, but also makes a case for genuinely obscure journeyman talents like Sidney Lanfield,...
- 5/17/2018
- MUBI
Casting Chris Brown as a controversial musician in black-ish‘s third season seemed like a natural fit, series creator Kenya Barris tells TVLine, but some of the reactions the episode garnered “saddened” the executive producer.
Brown played Rich Youngsta in a March installment that found Dre collaborating with the fictional rapper on an ad campaign that played heavily on black stereotypes. After some pushback from Ruby and Bow, and after watching Jack engage in some of Rich Youngsta’s less-than-ideal behavior, Dre revamped the ad.
“We wanted someone to play a troubled music star, which he was,” Barris says, adding...
Brown played Rich Youngsta in a March installment that found Dre collaborating with the fictional rapper on an ad campaign that played heavily on black stereotypes. After some pushback from Ruby and Bow, and after watching Jack engage in some of Rich Youngsta’s less-than-ideal behavior, Dre revamped the ad.
“We wanted someone to play a troubled music star, which he was,” Barris says, adding...
- 8/29/2017
- TVLine.com
A welcome blast of clear thought, Raoul Peck’s documentary represents the point of view and philosophy of James Baldwin, the writer and artist known best as a social critic of the Civil Rights movement. Allowing Baldwin to ‘speak’ thirty years after his passing sheds light and wisdom on the issue that hasn’t gone away.
I Am Not Your Negro
Blu-ray
Magnolia Home Entertainment
2016 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 94 min. / Street Date May 2, 2017 / 29.98
Starring: James Baldwin, Samuel L. Jackson (voice).
Cinematography: Henry Adebonojo, Bill Ross, Turner Ross
Film Editor: Alexandra Strauss
Original Music: Alexei Aigui
Written by Raoul Peck from writings by James Baldwin
Produced by Rémi Grellety, Hébert Peck, Raoul Peck
Directed by Raoul Peck
I Am Not Your Negro expresses the writings of an expert who has been gone for thirty years. Writer-director Raoul Peck had full access to all of Baldwin’s work, as well as choice film...
I Am Not Your Negro
Blu-ray
Magnolia Home Entertainment
2016 / Color / 1:85 widescreen / 94 min. / Street Date May 2, 2017 / 29.98
Starring: James Baldwin, Samuel L. Jackson (voice).
Cinematography: Henry Adebonojo, Bill Ross, Turner Ross
Film Editor: Alexandra Strauss
Original Music: Alexei Aigui
Written by Raoul Peck from writings by James Baldwin
Produced by Rémi Grellety, Hébert Peck, Raoul Peck
Directed by Raoul Peck
I Am Not Your Negro expresses the writings of an expert who has been gone for thirty years. Writer-director Raoul Peck had full access to all of Baldwin’s work, as well as choice film...
- 5/2/2017
- by Glenn Erickson
- Trailers from Hell
Chicago –The 53rd Chicago International Television Awards, a companion celebration to the Chicago International Television Festival – and presented by Cinema/Chicago, the organization who presents the Chicago International Film Festival – will take place Thursday, March 23rd, 2017, and will honor entertainment reporter Dean Richards, advertising guru Joe Sedelmeier and the newly-formed-but-already-influential Amazon Studios. The entire television festival will take place from March 21st to the 23rd at the AMC River East 21, and screenings are free and open to the public. Click here for a complete schedule and details.
The 2016 Awards, given in April of last year, were conferred through Michael Kutza, Artistic Director and Founder of the Chicago International Film Festival, and were “The Commitment to Excellence in Television Productions,” which was given to HBO; the “Career Achievement Award,” that went to actress Regina Taylor; the “Chicago Legend Award,” given to local ABC 7 Chicago broadcaster Janet Davies; and the “Chicago Award...
The 2016 Awards, given in April of last year, were conferred through Michael Kutza, Artistic Director and Founder of the Chicago International Film Festival, and were “The Commitment to Excellence in Television Productions,” which was given to HBO; the “Career Achievement Award,” that went to actress Regina Taylor; the “Chicago Legend Award,” given to local ABC 7 Chicago broadcaster Janet Davies; and the “Chicago Award...
- 3/20/2017
- by adam@hollywoodchicago.com (Adam Fendelman)
- HollywoodChicago.com
Nostalgia just ain’t what it used to be.
When the poster for American Graffiti (1973) asked the question “Where were you in ’62?” it was marketing a trend, spiked by the increasing popularity of the theatrical musical Grease, for audiences of a certain age to look backward to a time when life wasn’t ostensibly so complicated, when your life was still out there waiting to be lived, to a time when America hadn’t yet “lost its innocence.” The demarcation point for that alleged loss is often assigned to the upheaval of grief and national confusion experienced in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, so it was no accident that the setting for American Graffiti’s night of cruising, romancing and soul-searching was placed a little over a year before that cataclysmic event. The interesting thing about Graffiti was the aggressiveness with which that...
When the poster for American Graffiti (1973) asked the question “Where were you in ’62?” it was marketing a trend, spiked by the increasing popularity of the theatrical musical Grease, for audiences of a certain age to look backward to a time when life wasn’t ostensibly so complicated, when your life was still out there waiting to be lived, to a time when America hadn’t yet “lost its innocence.” The demarcation point for that alleged loss is often assigned to the upheaval of grief and national confusion experienced in the wake of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in November 1963, so it was no accident that the setting for American Graffiti’s night of cruising, romancing and soul-searching was placed a little over a year before that cataclysmic event. The interesting thing about Graffiti was the aggressiveness with which that...
- 2/13/2017
- by Dennis Cozzalio
- Trailers from Hell
The following essay was written by a participant in the 2016 New York Film Festival Critics Academy, a workshop for aspiring critics co-produced by IndieWire, the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Film Comment.
We exist in a world of cycles. Perhaps nowhere else in society are these cycles as prevalent as they are in the entertainment industry. When I grew up in the ‘90s, there were a plethora of black faces on the big and small screens. From Will Smith’s “Fresh Prince” to “Living Single” (aka the original “Sex and the City”), I could turn to any network television station to see myself, or the people closest to me, represented in some way on screen.
Though diverse programming was rich and plentiful in that first decade of my life, the second decade ushered in a near complete erasure of brown faces. While megastars like Will Smith and Denzel Washington...
We exist in a world of cycles. Perhaps nowhere else in society are these cycles as prevalent as they are in the entertainment industry. When I grew up in the ‘90s, there were a plethora of black faces on the big and small screens. From Will Smith’s “Fresh Prince” to “Living Single” (aka the original “Sex and the City”), I could turn to any network television station to see myself, or the people closest to me, represented in some way on screen.
Though diverse programming was rich and plentiful in that first decade of my life, the second decade ushered in a near complete erasure of brown faces. While megastars like Will Smith and Denzel Washington...
- 10/14/2016
- by Aramide A Tinubu
- Indiewire
Jar Jar Binks is character most of you will probably rather forget, I'm sure. Even before the release of "The Phantom Menace," the computer generated bumbling Gungan from the planet Naboo, drew much attention from the media and fans alike - although not the kind of attention his creators intended. While George Lucas said that he specifically put Jar Jar in the film to appeal to small children, the character was widely rejected and often ridiculed by people who felt that Jar Jar was a racial caricature. One of my favorite descriptions came from The Wall Street Journal, who called the character a "Rastafarian Stepin Fetchit on platform hoofs, crossed annoyingly...
- 4/30/2015
- by Tambay A. Obenson
- ShadowAndAct
Why most films of Hollywood's golden age chose to brush race issues under the carpet
I have to wonder what the motivation is for re-releasing Gone With The Wind just a couple months before 12 Years A Slave, its polar opposite among films dealing with the peculiar institution of American slavery. Are they looking to generate coattail ticket receipts from the controversy attending Steve McQueen's harrowing and violent epic? Do they think some retirement-home demographic of faded southern belles and elderly white racists will emerge, stooped and wrinkled, to reclaim it one last time?
Who knows? But it's interesting, now that a movie is on the market that lingers in detail on the pain, violence, sexual abuse, squalor and pure evil of slavery, to remind ourselves how they dealt with it in the Golden Age of Hollywood (also the Golden Age of Jim Crow). Of course, they typically dealt with...
I have to wonder what the motivation is for re-releasing Gone With The Wind just a couple months before 12 Years A Slave, its polar opposite among films dealing with the peculiar institution of American slavery. Are they looking to generate coattail ticket receipts from the controversy attending Steve McQueen's harrowing and violent epic? Do they think some retirement-home demographic of faded southern belles and elderly white racists will emerge, stooped and wrinkled, to reclaim it one last time?
Who knows? But it's interesting, now that a movie is on the market that lingers in detail on the pain, violence, sexual abuse, squalor and pure evil of slavery, to remind ourselves how they dealt with it in the Golden Age of Hollywood (also the Golden Age of Jim Crow). Of course, they typically dealt with...
- 11/18/2013
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
April 2nd at The Way Out Club will be a night of racism, sexism, homophobia, and perversion! It’s Super-8 Politically Incorrect Movie Madness where we’ll be showing a dozen films on Super-8 Sound Film (most in condensed format) guaranteed to offend the sensibilities of everyone in attendance. Prepare to be outraged!
We’re not out to insult or anger anyone with Super-8 Politically Incorrect Movie Madness but to show the ways Hollywood has presented a host of now-taboo topics over the past 80 years. We have two of the infamous censored Looney Tunes cartoons long-banned from broadcast due to their racial stereotyping: Jungle Jitters (1938) and All This And Rabbit Stew (1941) featuring Bugs Bunny hunted by a slow-witted Black hunter who sounds and looks like Stepin Fetchit. We’re showing two of the bizarre pre-code Baby Burlesque shorts: in Kid N’ Africa (1933) Shirley Temple is terrorized by cannibals played by...
We’re not out to insult or anger anyone with Super-8 Politically Incorrect Movie Madness but to show the ways Hollywood has presented a host of now-taboo topics over the past 80 years. We have two of the infamous censored Looney Tunes cartoons long-banned from broadcast due to their racial stereotyping: Jungle Jitters (1938) and All This And Rabbit Stew (1941) featuring Bugs Bunny hunted by a slow-witted Black hunter who sounds and looks like Stepin Fetchit. We’re showing two of the bizarre pre-code Baby Burlesque shorts: in Kid N’ Africa (1933) Shirley Temple is terrorized by cannibals played by...
- 3/18/2013
- by Tom Stockman
- WeAreMovieGeeks.com
Influential African Americans have attacked Quentin Tarantino's film for what they say is an inappropriate tone. Author and director Candace Allen explains why she disagrees
In the mid-1990s when my sister and I were nursing an A-list star's film project through what I came to term "Hollywood Nightmare No 1" and I, the writer, became daunted by the madness, my sister sought to steel my nerve by quoting sacred text from the La-la Land bible: "Remember, it ain't show art. It's show business."
As we consider the trajectory of Quentin Tarantino's much-anticipated Django Unchained this is a, if not the, salient thought to keep in mind. Irreverent, B-movie and grotesquerie devotee, n-word bandying, sometimes brilliant, usually outrageous, Tarantino directs his talents towards slavery. Cue the claque and all the usual suspects. From the film's announcement in early 2011, when copies of the 166-page Qt-annotated script first began to circulate in the film blogosphere,...
In the mid-1990s when my sister and I were nursing an A-list star's film project through what I came to term "Hollywood Nightmare No 1" and I, the writer, became daunted by the madness, my sister sought to steel my nerve by quoting sacred text from the La-la Land bible: "Remember, it ain't show art. It's show business."
As we consider the trajectory of Quentin Tarantino's much-anticipated Django Unchained this is a, if not the, salient thought to keep in mind. Irreverent, B-movie and grotesquerie devotee, n-word bandying, sometimes brilliant, usually outrageous, Tarantino directs his talents towards slavery. Cue the claque and all the usual suspects. From the film's announcement in early 2011, when copies of the 166-page Qt-annotated script first began to circulate in the film blogosphere,...
- 1/11/2013
- by Candace Allen
- The Guardian - Film News
There are few things in this world more warm and cozy than digging into a humanistic John Ford picture. Few things more downright entertaining. I’m inclined to call Ford my favorite filmmaker of all time, if I felt it necessary to make such distinctions. Steamboat Round the Bend was to be, for all intents and purposes, a minor Ford experience for me; a film one watches when they’ve run out of the “better” Ford and wanna see what else he made in between and around Stagecoach and The Searchers. Steamboat Round the Bend came four years prior to Stagecoach – the film inevitably referred to as more or less the starting point of Ford’s lucrative Western stint and, more egregious and wrongheadedly, when he started to get “good”. Not only had he made good films before Stagecoach, he’d made better films Than Stagecoach before Stagecoach. He’d...
- 1/5/2013
- by Chris Clark
- SoundOnSight
Tom Morris’s General Education, a tepid, well-meaning saga of high school woes, could be screened immediately on the Disney Channel with nary a cut, and that’s the problem. The whole enterprise lacks a soupcon of edginess, a modicum of wit, or an iota of originality.
Endlessly insipidity aside, the screenplay by Elliot Feld, Jaz Kalkat, and Morris was clearly pulled together for no other reason than the need for a bunch of buddies to start calling themselves “filmmakers” -- at least that’s how the super-clichéd, slightly offensive final product comes off. Well, you might not be offended if you don’t object to viewing a screaming queen of a pederastic college recruiter endlessly hitting on young men. Then there’s Charles (Skylan Brooks), an often barefooted, black thirteen-year old playing Stepin Fetchit to the film’s teen hero. No shoes? He runs faster that way. The young man does swim,...
Endlessly insipidity aside, the screenplay by Elliot Feld, Jaz Kalkat, and Morris was clearly pulled together for no other reason than the need for a bunch of buddies to start calling themselves “filmmakers” -- at least that’s how the super-clichéd, slightly offensive final product comes off. Well, you might not be offended if you don’t object to viewing a screaming queen of a pederastic college recruiter endlessly hitting on young men. Then there’s Charles (Skylan Brooks), an often barefooted, black thirteen-year old playing Stepin Fetchit to the film’s teen hero. No shoes? He runs faster that way. The young man does swim,...
- 8/19/2012
- by Brandon Judell
- www.culturecatch.com
The first time I saw him, he was striding toward me out of the burning Georgia sun, as helicopters landed behind him. His face was tanned a deep brown. He was wearing a combat helmet, an ammo belt, carrying a rifle, had a canteen on his hip, stood six feet four inches. He stuck out his hand and said, "John Wayne." That was not necessary.
Wayne died on June 11, 1979. Stomach cancer. "The Big C," he called it. He had lived for quite a while on one lung, and then the Big C came back. He was near death and he knew it when he walked out on stage at the 1979 Academy Awards to present Best Picture to "The Deer Hunter," a film he wouldn't have made. He looked frail, but he planted himself there and sounded like John Wayne.
John Wayne. When I was a kid, we said it as one word: Johnwayne.
Wayne died on June 11, 1979. Stomach cancer. "The Big C," he called it. He had lived for quite a while on one lung, and then the Big C came back. He was near death and he knew it when he walked out on stage at the 1979 Academy Awards to present Best Picture to "The Deer Hunter," a film he wouldn't have made. He looked frail, but he planted himself there and sounded like John Wayne.
John Wayne. When I was a kid, we said it as one word: Johnwayne.
- 5/28/2012
- by Roger Ebert
- blogs.suntimes.com/ebert
Part of a series by David Cairns on forgotten pre-Code films.
No Christmas movie is complete without the prospect of a suicidal plunge into icy waters... festive!
Yes, 1935 was the year after the Production Code came in. But these are the Daft Days, between Christmas and New Year, when nothing really matters. Besides, this is a film worth writing about, it has a seasonal hook, is full of early thirties atmosphere, social concerns, and a little suggestiveness, and anyway, it's a remarkable fact about pre-Code cinema that virtually none of them take any interest in Christmas.
They do, however, take a good bit of interest in the winter, since winter is something that has to be prepared for if it's to be survived. Thus comedy relief Vince Barnett in The Girl in 419 (1933) spends most of his scenes talking about the fur coat he's going to buy for his sweetie once he's saved enough money,...
No Christmas movie is complete without the prospect of a suicidal plunge into icy waters... festive!
Yes, 1935 was the year after the Production Code came in. But these are the Daft Days, between Christmas and New Year, when nothing really matters. Besides, this is a film worth writing about, it has a seasonal hook, is full of early thirties atmosphere, social concerns, and a little suggestiveness, and anyway, it's a remarkable fact about pre-Code cinema that virtually none of them take any interest in Christmas.
They do, however, take a good bit of interest in the winter, since winter is something that has to be prepared for if it's to be survived. Thus comedy relief Vince Barnett in The Girl in 419 (1933) spends most of his scenes talking about the fur coat he's going to buy for his sweetie once he's saved enough money,...
- 12/29/2011
- MUBI
David Alanson In his first major film role, David Alanson had to provide the comic relief, run for his life from a hungry horde of vampires, seduce a bi curious straight man and be half of a bickering gay couple in the horror comedy Bite Marks. Not exactly an easy role even for an experienced veteran actor, because the role requires so much of its actor. However, David Alanson managed to make it all appear rather effortless when this role had great potential to come across as forced. He brought an overall likability to his performance when the character had the potential to be unappealing. He managed to not only put his own stamp on the role, but to hold his own weight against gay character actor Windham Beacham. Right off the bat, with just one major film to date, David Alanson is showing promise. The question is, will he live up to that promise?...
- 6/27/2011
- by Big Daddy aka Brandon Sites
- Big Daddy Horror Reviews - Interviews
Getty Tyler Perry
Tyler Perry’s films have often courted controversy with their subject matter, but with few exceptions, Perry himself has stayed out of the fray, letting his work do the talking. Until now: At the Los Angeles press day for his latest, “Madea’s Big Happy Family,” Perry offered a sharp rejoinder to Spike Lee, who has frequently criticized his films for supposedly pandering to stereotypes.
“I’m so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee,” Perry said.
Tyler Perry’s films have often courted controversy with their subject matter, but with few exceptions, Perry himself has stayed out of the fray, letting his work do the talking. Until now: At the Los Angeles press day for his latest, “Madea’s Big Happy Family,” Perry offered a sharp rejoinder to Spike Lee, who has frequently criticized his films for supposedly pandering to stereotypes.
“I’m so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee,” Perry said.
- 4/20/2011
- by Todd Gilchrist
- Speakeasy/Wall Street Journal
After his electrifying performance as Blacula (1972), the great William Marshall was briefly considered a worthy successor to Christopher Lee's vampire king. A respected Shakespearean actor with an impressive theatre background, he was set to become a major horror star of the seventies, but like his fellow stage actor Robert Quarry, who achieved the same status as Count Yorga, his film career faded rapidly after the genre went through a radical re-think following the commercial success of The Exorcist (1973).
Marshall remained in New York to train in as an actor and director in Grand Opera and Shakespeare, although he had to support himself in a variety of jobs before making his professional stage debut. At 6ft 5inches, he was an impressively built, handsome, strong-featured actor with a booming bass baritone voice to match his towering presence. Not surprisingly, he quickly built up a formidable reputation as America's finest Shakespearean actor,...
Marshall remained in New York to train in as an actor and director in Grand Opera and Shakespeare, although he had to support himself in a variety of jobs before making his professional stage debut. At 6ft 5inches, he was an impressively built, handsome, strong-featured actor with a booming bass baritone voice to match his towering presence. Not surprisingly, he quickly built up a formidable reputation as America's finest Shakespearean actor,...
- 2/15/2011
- Shadowlocked
director Wendell B. Harris Jr.
As most of you know, Tambay and I are curators of an independent Black film series that has recently expanded into a five-day festival as well – ActNow: New Voices in Black Cinema.
The festival itself starts next Friday, February 4th and runs until Wednesday February 9th, and while we’re showing mostly new cinema the closing film is what we’ve dubbed one of the ‘New Black Classics’, a film most of you are intimately familiar with, Wendell B. Harris Jr.’s Chameleon Street (see Quadree’s ’09 fantastic writeup if you’re unfamiliar).
With most of our lineup, ActNow’s blogger Tanya St. Louis has interviewed the directors or producers of the films, and her first is with the esteemed Mr. Harris himself.
Please read it below and help spread the word about this important new film festival.
———————————————————————————————————————-
Wendell B. Harris Jr. is the...
As most of you know, Tambay and I are curators of an independent Black film series that has recently expanded into a five-day festival as well – ActNow: New Voices in Black Cinema.
The festival itself starts next Friday, February 4th and runs until Wednesday February 9th, and while we’re showing mostly new cinema the closing film is what we’ve dubbed one of the ‘New Black Classics’, a film most of you are intimately familiar with, Wendell B. Harris Jr.’s Chameleon Street (see Quadree’s ’09 fantastic writeup if you’re unfamiliar).
With most of our lineup, ActNow’s blogger Tanya St. Louis has interviewed the directors or producers of the films, and her first is with the esteemed Mr. Harris himself.
Please read it below and help spread the word about this important new film festival.
———————————————————————————————————————-
Wendell B. Harris Jr. is the...
- 1/29/2011
- by Curtis the Media Man
- ShadowAndAct
Ah, the Transformers franchise. A brainless, but relatively entertaining first film that suffered from Shia Leboof, who may well be one of the worst over-actors in Hollywood, and some goofy-assed writing. But there was some fun to be had in it. Not so much the second, Revenge Of The Fallen, which was inexcusably and unrelentingly atrocious. Literally every second of dialogue was absolutely brutal. Dustin eviscerated it in his review, and honestly? As a sci-fi nerd who unapologetically loves a lot of really shitty movies, I didn't think he was harsh enough. Revenge Of The Fallen was the closest I've come to seeing a literal shit show on screen.
Now, we've got Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, with a new teaser trailer and poster. The poster sucks, so let's get it out of the way first:
The trailer is... surprisingly effective.
Not great, but I didn't find myself constantly rolling my eyes,...
Now, we've got Transformers: Dark Of The Moon, with a new teaser trailer and poster. The poster sucks, so let's get it out of the way first:
The trailer is... surprisingly effective.
Not great, but I didn't find myself constantly rolling my eyes,...
- 12/9/2010
- by TK
Braveheart and Pearl Harbor writer-director Randall Wallace just can't resist distorting a true story for his own rightwing ends, reckons John Patterson
Give a true story to rightwing writer-director Randall Wallace and it will return worked into a state of transcendent ahistoricality, festooned with distortions, lies, strategic omissions, anachronistic insertions and cheesy climacterics.
As evidence I cite his screenplay for Braveheart, inspired by Wallace's Quiet Man-style visit to the land of his ancestors. By the time Braveheart was picking up Oscars for best picture and director, the good burghers of Stirling had to suffer a Wallace statue in the likeness of the movie's director-star, noted Jew-baiter and homophobe Mel Gibson, while the real William Wallace had been lost to history. (You want a proper Scottish historical epic? Try Peter Watkins's Culloden, made for about seven shillings in 1964.)
Gibson and Wallace seem intent on founding their own exclusive zone of absolute historical wrongness.
Give a true story to rightwing writer-director Randall Wallace and it will return worked into a state of transcendent ahistoricality, festooned with distortions, lies, strategic omissions, anachronistic insertions and cheesy climacterics.
As evidence I cite his screenplay for Braveheart, inspired by Wallace's Quiet Man-style visit to the land of his ancestors. By the time Braveheart was picking up Oscars for best picture and director, the good burghers of Stirling had to suffer a Wallace statue in the likeness of the movie's director-star, noted Jew-baiter and homophobe Mel Gibson, while the real William Wallace had been lost to history. (You want a proper Scottish historical epic? Try Peter Watkins's Culloden, made for about seven shillings in 1964.)
Gibson and Wallace seem intent on founding their own exclusive zone of absolute historical wrongness.
- 11/27/2010
- by John Patterson
- The Guardian - Film News
I never thought that I would be reporting good news about Transformers 3. Last week I reported that human suck magnet Jamie Kennedy was cast in the film, as well as that kid from Can't Buy Me Love. There's actually a surprising amount of solid acting pedigree in the movie -- Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, and the quite funny Ken Jeong as well. Of course, that means nothing because look what Michael Bay did to poor John Turturro -- reduced to being forced to run around in his underpants in the first one, and run around a giant pair of steel testicles in the second. Yeesh.
Anyway, the good news... or rather the less bad news, is that Skids and Mudflap, the horrifically derogatory and denigrating duo that I affectionately refer to as the Stepin Fetchit Twins, will not be returning. Bay received a substantial amount of backlash for the...
Anyway, the good news... or rather the less bad news, is that Skids and Mudflap, the horrifically derogatory and denigrating duo that I affectionately refer to as the Stepin Fetchit Twins, will not be returning. Bay received a substantial amount of backlash for the...
- 5/12/2010
- by TK
I actually never did see this, when it aired on Showtime in February. I’ll give it a look when it’s out on DVD, which will be tomorrow, April 27th.
Why We Laugh: Black Comedians on Black Comedy, directed by Robert Townsend, “traces the evolution of black comedy from the days of Stepin Fetchit to the present,” and features interviews with comedians including Bill Cosby, Chris Rock, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Steve Harvey, Katt Williams, and countless others. Pick up a copy on DVD Here.
Why We Laugh: Black Comedians on Black Comedy, directed by Robert Townsend, “traces the evolution of black comedy from the days of Stepin Fetchit to the present,” and features interviews with comedians including Bill Cosby, Chris Rock, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Steve Harvey, Katt Williams, and countless others. Pick up a copy on DVD Here.
- 4/26/2010
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
By Christopher Stipp
The Archives, Right Here
Check out my new column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on Twitter under the name: Stipp
Toy Story 3 Footage Preview
So, I was able to see the first 70 minutes of Toy Story 3 this week.
Watching the movie begin, hearing the reactions of the college students who literally grew up with this franchise, I was worried something wasn’t going to be right. That there was going to be something there on the screen I could no longer identify with a decade after Toy Story 2 debuted in the theaters. I was shocked that it’s been fifteen years since the first installment came out, the number 95 pasted on the runaway train in the opening sequence feeling like a tender callback to that time.
I was worried, fraught with nervousness that somehow I made the wrong choice...
The Archives, Right Here
Check out my new column, This Week In Trailers, at SlashFilm.com and follow me on Twitter under the name: Stipp
Toy Story 3 Footage Preview
So, I was able to see the first 70 minutes of Toy Story 3 this week.
Watching the movie begin, hearing the reactions of the college students who literally grew up with this franchise, I was worried something wasn’t going to be right. That there was going to be something there on the screen I could no longer identify with a decade after Toy Story 2 debuted in the theaters. I was shocked that it’s been fifteen years since the first installment came out, the number 95 pasted on the runaway train in the opening sequence feeling like a tender callback to that time.
I was worried, fraught with nervousness that somehow I made the wrong choice...
- 4/23/2010
- by Christopher Stipp
Showtime has acquired rights to Why We Laugh: Black Comedians on Black Comedy for a February 4th premiere on the channel.
Robert Townsend directed the documentary, which premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Why We Laugh “traces the evolution of black comedy from the days of Stepin Fetchit to the present,” and features interviews with comedians including Bill Cosby, Chris Rock, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Steve Harvey and Katt Williams.
Jeff Clanagan of Codeblack Entertainment and Richard Foos executive produced the project, with Darryl J. Littleton, who wrote the source material, Black Comedians on Black Comedy: How African-Americans Taught Us to Laugh.
Here’s its trailer:...
Robert Townsend directed the documentary, which premiered at last year’s Sundance Film Festival.
Why We Laugh “traces the evolution of black comedy from the days of Stepin Fetchit to the present,” and features interviews with comedians including Bill Cosby, Chris Rock, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Steve Harvey and Katt Williams.
Jeff Clanagan of Codeblack Entertainment and Richard Foos executive produced the project, with Darryl J. Littleton, who wrote the source material, Black Comedians on Black Comedy: How African-Americans Taught Us to Laugh.
Here’s its trailer:...
- 1/22/2010
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
In my quest to figure out good Xmas and Kwanzaa gifts for my people this year, I realized we always recommend movies, DVD’s and VODs, but I’ve seldom read about good books here on S&A. So, I’ve compile a great list for of Black cinephile-based books for the filmgoing audience. Some you’re definitely familiar with, others maybe not, but nonetheless here it is:
Donald Bogle’s books
I’ve been reading Bogle’s books for 20 years now, so considering I’m just on the precipice of my (eek!) mid-30’s, that’s saying a lot of the amount of Black film knowledge that he’s imparted to the masses for decades.
Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks
Arguably Bogle’s greatest, if not simply his best known book, “Toms…” is the definitive study of American Black film images going back to the beginning with Birth of...
Donald Bogle’s books
I’ve been reading Bogle’s books for 20 years now, so considering I’m just on the precipice of my (eek!) mid-30’s, that’s saying a lot of the amount of Black film knowledge that he’s imparted to the masses for decades.
Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks
Arguably Bogle’s greatest, if not simply his best known book, “Toms…” is the definitive study of American Black film images going back to the beginning with Birth of...
- 12/19/2009
- by Curtis the Media Man
- ShadowAndAct
The first time I saw him, he was striding toward me out of the burning Georgia sun, as helicopters landed behind him. His face was tanned a deep brown. He was wearing a combat helmet, an ammo belt, carrying a rifle, had a canteen on his hip, stood six feet four inches. He stuck out his hand and said, "John Wayne." That was not necessary.
John Wayne died 30 years ago on June 11. Stomach cancer. "The Big C," he called it. He had lived for quite a while on one lung, and then the Big C came back. He was near death and he knew it when he walked out on stage at the 1979 Academy Awards to present Best Picture to "The Deer Hunter," a film he wouldn't have made. He looked frail, but he planted himself there and sounded like John Wayne.
John Wayne. When I was a kid, we...
John Wayne died 30 years ago on June 11. Stomach cancer. "The Big C," he called it. He had lived for quite a while on one lung, and then the Big C came back. He was near death and he knew it when he walked out on stage at the 1979 Academy Awards to present Best Picture to "The Deer Hunter," a film he wouldn't have made. He looked frail, but he planted himself there and sounded like John Wayne.
John Wayne. When I was a kid, we...
- 6/11/2009
- by Roger Ebert
- blogs.suntimes.com/ebert
Have a question about gay male entertainment? Ask the Monkey! (Please include your city and state and/or country)
Q: I've been feeling Lost a lot lately, mostly because I'm completely enamored with one of their new characters, Daniel Faraday, played by a very unique actor, Jeremy Davies. Can you tell me anything gay about Jeremy Davies? Anything at all? - Lindsey, New York
A: Hmmm, well, I can tell you that Davies, who first made a splash in the terrific indie hit Spanking the Monkey (1994), has made a name for himself playing nervous losers and misfits, in movies such as Secretary (2002), Solaris (2002), The Locusts (1997), and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Some of these characters could, in a certain light, from a certain angle, by certain people, be read as “maybe, possibly gay.”
Davies also played a drama student in HBO’s TV production of The Laramie Project, about the murder of Matthew Shepard,...
Q: I've been feeling Lost a lot lately, mostly because I'm completely enamored with one of their new characters, Daniel Faraday, played by a very unique actor, Jeremy Davies. Can you tell me anything gay about Jeremy Davies? Anything at all? - Lindsey, New York
A: Hmmm, well, I can tell you that Davies, who first made a splash in the terrific indie hit Spanking the Monkey (1994), has made a name for himself playing nervous losers and misfits, in movies such as Secretary (2002), Solaris (2002), The Locusts (1997), and Saving Private Ryan (1998). Some of these characters could, in a certain light, from a certain angle, by certain people, be read as “maybe, possibly gay.”
Davies also played a drama student in HBO’s TV production of The Laramie Project, about the murder of Matthew Shepard,...
- 2/17/2009
- by dennis
- The Backlot
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