Browsing: Other Arts

Hollywood is abuzz about the success of “Girls Trip.” The bawdy comedy starring Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, and breakout star Tiffany Haddish is the first movie written by, produced by, directed by, and starring African-Americans to earn more than $100 million at the box office. The success of “Girls Trip” should be celebrated. However, the film’s historic achievement also highlights the limitations faced by Black women in Hollywood. Tinseltown still has a considerable amount of work to do to create a space where Black women’s stories can be told. A movie or television show begins with a…

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Public broadcaster PBS will premiere a new documentary next month about the life and art of Chinese-American artist and Bambi production designer Tyrus Wong, who passed away last year at the age of 106. The film, directed by Pamela Tom, first premiered on the festival circuit in fall 2015. It uses interviews with Wong, his family, colleagues, and admirers, as well as movie clips and archival footage, to trace his remarkable story from a farming village in the Guangdong Province of China to Hollywood and beyond. Besides developing the gentle atmospheric beauty of the Disney classic Bambi (1942), Wong worked…

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Chicago filmmakers will have just 48 hours to write, direct and edit original films this weekend as part of the 13th Chicago 48 Hour Film Project. The 48 Hour Film Project (48HFP) is an international film festival that pushes filmmakers to create a short film from start to finish over the course of two days. There are 48 Hour Film Projects in over 130 cities across six continents throughout the year. The winning film from each city has the opportunity to compete in the Filmapalooza international competition, which will be hosted in Paris in 2018. The top 12 films coming…

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One of the world’s most famous living artists is headed to New York City this fall, and he’s bringing a massive public art project with him. Ai Weiwei, the prolific Chinese artist and activist famously profiled in the documentary “Never Sorry,” is behind the ambitious “Good Fences Make Good Neighbors” project set to take over NYC this October. Commissioned by the Public Art Fund, the five-borough exhibition will involve over 300 locations and hundreds of individual artworks, turning the sprawling city into an unconventional canvas for his collage-like experiment. According to a statement announcing the project’s specific locations on Tuesday, Ai’s…

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Chemmeen, the 1965 Malayalam-language movie needs no introduction to any Keralite. This movie-adaptation of Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai’s eponymous novel is a Malayalam cinema classic that weaves the story of the tragic romance between Karuthamma (the daughter of a Dalit Hindu) and Pareekkutty (a Muslim trader), set in a tiny fishing village in coastal Kerala. An article in The Hindu, published on Chemmeen’s 50th anniversary in 2015, describes the eternal and ethereal beauty of this jewel in Malayalam cinema’s crown. An excerpt: “Set against the vast expanse of the sea, the narrative of Chemmeen offered immense visual possibilities, which the cinematographer…

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Fans of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show are wondering these days where Trevor Noah is! We have learned that he is in Cape Town. Here is what Channel24  writes about his whereabouts: Cape Town – Charlize Theron and Trevor Noah are back in their home country and making a difference while they’re here. Trevor landed in SA more than a week ago to perform stand-up shows in Johannesburg and Durban respectively. It is not known when Atomic Blonde actress, Charlize arrived however she was spotted going for a walk with her mom Gerda along the Sea Point Promenade on Sunday. (Read more…

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Hundreds of thousands of theater-goers will flock to Broadway this year to escape the reality of Donald Trump’s presidency and its never-ending onslaught of foibles, fabrications and faux pas. That is, after all, what live theater is for: a temporary respite from our neuroses, a chance to be suspended, in fiction, in real time. Michael Moore, though, is betting on just the opposite. With his new Trump-centric one-man show, The Terms of My Surrender, the documentarian and liberal firebrand is taking on the president seven days a week, using his powers of pomp and provocation to inspire in audiences the…

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The first and last time I ever saw Stephen Bannon was last May at the Cannes Film Festival, where his film Clinton Cash was screening for overseas buyers. The documentary, a strategically timed takedown of Hillary Clinton centring on her alleged ethical lapses and dubious financial dealings, was based on Peter Schweizer’s 2015 book of the same name. While I interviewed Schweizer in an empty ballroom of a Croisette hotel, Bannon – who wrote and produced Clinton Cash – paced outside, occasionally stealing a furtive glance our way through an open door. I was familiar with Bannon’s work as a…

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Czech master filmmaker Karel Zeman draws liberally from literary and cinematic history to create his sumptuous and whimsical fantasy adventure The Fabulous Baron Munchausen, made with his signature flair. The Fabulous Baron Munchausen begins with a virtuoso sequence in which the evolution of flight is traversed by the frame accelerating up towards the stars. Along the way it passes a variety of aeronautical animals and contraptions, both real and imagined, rendered in stop-motion animation. From a final aeroplane, the camera continues into space. Almost a decade before man’s first steps on the moon, Zeman imagines footprints in the dust. In…

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Actress and producer Susan Sarandon will receive the honorary Maverick Award, according to a press release issued by the Woodstock Film Festival on Monday. In addition to celebrating Sarandon’s film career during the October award ceremony, the Woodstock Film Festival will be screening “Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story,” a film Sarandon headed up as executive producer. “I’m thrilled to receive the Maverick Award for this year’s Woodstock Film Festival,” Sarandon said in the press release. “Mavericks forge their own path and move through life by taking chances, and it’s an honor to be added to the Woodstock Film Festival’s catalog…

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