SXSW: The dystopian visions of Executive Order & Witch Hunt

By Abe Friedtanzer

 

It’s sadly not all that difficult to imagine our society slipping into dystopian territory, and while that might have seemed impossible here in America, recent events have suggested we’re not that far away from authoritarian misery. Cinema has long explored such inevitabilities, and it’s those “very near future” concepts that don’t look so different from what we know today that can be especially terrifying. They can also be insightful, strong pieces of filmmaking, and SXSW has two this year that are indeed frightening and thought-provoking...

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Review: One Night in Miami

by Matt St Clair

Regina King’s directorial debut One Night in Miami is a wonderful departure from the traditional biopic formula. Instead of focusing on key events from the lives of the famous, One Night in Miami  gives us a fictionalized, night-long conversation four iconic men might have been having at that exact moment in history. The titular night is February 25th, 1964, just after Cassius Clay’s boxing match with Sonny Liston and just before the famous athlete changed his name to Muhammad Ali.   

Malcolm X (Kingsley Ben-Adir), Cassius Clay (Eli Goree), musician Sam Cooke (Leslie Odom Jr.), and former NFL player Jim Brown (Aldis Hodge) gather together in a motel room to discuss the weight they carry as celebrities to help create social change through the Civil Rights Movement. Thanks to the lead actors, along with genius writing by Kemp Powers who adapted his own  play for the screen, we’re able to get a glimpse of the real people behind the iconic personas...

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Links: Being the Ricardos, Sex and the City Redux, and the Great Content Rush

• Apple will finance Ridley Scott's Napoleon epic Kitbag starring Joaquin Phoenix. (Bet you hundreds of millions of dollars that they change the title.) Ridley is such a workaholic. He is 83 and still attached to at least 6 upcoming projects as a director (not to mention his producing work) and completing work on his next epic The Last Kingdom and also has that HBO series Raised by Wolves currently running. That's a lot of energy for an octogenarian!
• Vogue Tilda talks about her career with playwright Jeremy O Harris 
• Deadline Nicole Kidman and Javier Bardem to play Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in Aaron Sorkin's Being the Ricardos. It takes place during the production of one episode of I Love Lucy. We love a tightly focused biopic. Yes, this is the same project that Cate Blanchett was once attached to (back in 2015). Do you think Nic & Javi look anything like these two?

More after the jump including Sex and the City revival and the Kennedy Center Honors...

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Showbiz History: 12 Years a Slave, Mama Rose, and More...

5 random things that happened on this day, January 4th, in history...

1853 New York born Solomon Northup regains his freedom after abduction and enslavery in 1841 in Washington DC. The abolitionist thankfully recorded his life story in the memoir 12 Years a Slave which became an instant best-seller. Over a century and a half later, the film version by the British auteur Steve McQueen deservedly won the 2013 Best Picture Oscar. 

1903 A horrific end to a story of animal cruelty and a shameful event in the then nascent film-industry, too. Topsy, a 27 or so year-old elephant, who was ripped from her family as a baby in Southeast Asia and never adjusted well to life in the America circus, is famously electrocuted in Coney Island...

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Showbiz History: Pal Joey, Taye Diggs, Maria Callas

5 random things that happened on this day, January 2nd, in history...

1788 Georgia becomes the fourth state in the modern US. We're counting on Georgians to save our democracy by giving the Democrats control of the Senate in 2021. Volunteer or donate to Reverend Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossof to make this happen. We just did again despite a frighteningly empty bank account.

1952 A revival of the Rodgers & Hart musical Pal Joey opens on Broadway...

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