When I woke up this morning I was missing a friend. Daniel Robert Epstein passed away last night at only 31 years old. And although you may not know it, you lost somebody too – Dan was one of the best interviewers I have ever had the pleasure to know, and he was branching out, … Continue reading
We’ll know by the time the grosses for Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer are announced this weekend whether or not The Silver Surfer is going to get his own spin-off movie, but the folks at Fox are feeling very confident at the moment; according to the LA Times they’ve hired J Michael Straczynski … Continue reading
Currently on TV, there are three different regularly-televised showcases for black comedians. On HBO, Diddy’s Bad Boys of Comedy supposedly spotlights up-and-coming talent with an edgy twist. On Starz, Martin Lawrence’s 1st Amendment Stand Up does….roughly the same thing. And finally, and most embarrassingly, BET’s Comic View pretends to do the same, but in fact … Continue reading
With Ice Cube and Tyler Perry as the loudest voices of the moment, the state of mainstream black filmmaking is so rancid that any new venture is likely to be met with either open arms of joy or deep suspicion. (Spike can’t carry an entire culture on his shoulders, though I know he tries, and … Continue reading
I’m no Oscar prognosticator, but yesterday I saw what I consider to be the first performance that is a lock for a Best Actress nomination – Angelina Jolie in A Mighty Heart. Sure, there are dozens upon dozens of Oscar-bait movies waiting to burst out of the gate this fall, but the actresses in those … Continue reading
You gotta give William Hurt credit. While he’s always worked with a Samuel L. Jackson-esque frequency, he’s been able to dip into virtually every genre in both film and television, and even direct-to-DVD, without skipping a beat or leaving any sort of career-damaging stains despite having starred in a number of outright bombs/failures (e.g. Michael, … Continue reading
Somehow, I missed out on Soul Calibur 3. I think it was because after I realized how badly I sucked at number 2, my shame intervened and kept me from seeing any news about the series. Apparently, Mr. Shame has fallen asleep on the job, though, because I have managed to become aware of a … Continue reading
What the hell happened to the African-American filmmaking renaissance? In the 1980s, there was Spike Lee, Charles Burnett, Wendell B. Harris Jr., Robert Townsend and Charles Lane. A few years later, Carl Franklin, The Hughes Brothers, Mario Van Peebles, John Singleton and Rusty Cundieff got into the mix. Then, late in the 1990s, there was … Continue reading
The United States is finally getting Danny Boyle’s sci-fi odyssey, Sunshine, in theaters on July 20th (the movie came out in the UK and Australia earlier this year). We’ve been excitedly following the film ever since Boyle mentioned it to me during an interview about his film Millions, and we’re proud to bring you this … Continue reading
Only a deeply pathetic creature would brag about scooping Variety on Rachel Weisz being cast in Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones, so I’ll just pretend I didn’t bring it up last Saturday in my cockamamie new column (after sitting on it for two weeks). Since I was more than a little wrong about Warner Brothers … Continue reading