by Dino-Ray Ramos | Deadline Hollywood In his feature film debut The Burial of Kojo, Blitz Bazawule tells a story of two brothers through the gaze of a gifted girl who travels between gorgeous lands that exist in life and death. It’s not your ordinary narrative film,...
by Jordan Simon | Shadow and Act Us, Jordan Peele’s follow up to Get Out, has been the subject of huge critical and commercial acclaim. The film grossed a staggering $70 million in its opening weekend, making it the second-biggest opening of the year...
By Will Thorne | Variety When New York & Company approached Gabrielle Union to be their new brand ambassador and the face of her own clothing line, the actress reacted with “disbelief.” “We are not supposed to be getting those offers, I’m not supposed to be having...
by Malik Adán | Shadow and Act Artist. Producer. Director. Writer. Mother. Sister. Community Builder. When Shadow And Act caught up with Numa Perrier in Austin at South By Southwest, these were just a few of the hats we covered. By all accounts, she’s a busy woman....
Charlize Theron and Michael B. Jordan start talking before the cameras are even rolling. They are exchanging secrets about how they both disappear into character, undergoing dramatic physical — and emotional — transformations. That’s certainly been the case this year...
I just read this article by Brooke Obie on Shadow and Act that was posted on December 14, 2018. I didn’t post it here because it’s really long, but if you are wondering what the Green Book controversy is about, you MUST read it....
by Shadow and Act Shadow and Act has a special Valentine’s Day present for their readers: They put together a video documenting 120 years of #BlackLove. Set to the score of Barry Jenkins’ If Beale Street Could Talk by Nicholas Brittell, it starts...
Mahershala Ali (“Green Book”) and John David Washington (“BlacKkKlansman”) have catapulted into the awards season conversation with two searing films about race in America. Both movies are based on true stories. Ali, who won the supporting actor Oscar in 2017 for...
Melissa McCarthy is best known for creating outsize comedic characters, but this year she took on a dramatic role in “Can You Ever Forgive Me?,” Marielle Heller’s story of a forger desperately holding onto her place in a gentrifying New York. It’s a turn that’s...
by Anita Busch | Deadline Hollywood It was 10 years in the making, but a feature documentary about Sly and The Family Stone and their impact on the development of funk, soul, rock, and psychedelic music is on its way. Dance to the Streaming Music, from Winter State...
by Monique Jones | Shadow and Act It’s the end of the year, and it’s time to take a look at 2018’s best films. This was actually quite a hard list to put together, since there were a ton of great films, ranging from documentaries to foreign films to...
by Ava DuVernay | Time Magazine In Black Panther, Queen Ramonda looks upon her son T’Challa and delivers a proclamation: “It is your time.” Millions upon millions of moviegoers around the world have proclaimed the same to the film’s mastermind, Ryan Coogler. We gaze...
Viggo Mortensen (“Green Book”) and Chadwick Boseman (“Black Panther”) believe their films have more in common than meets the eye. Mortensen plays a racist driver in a drama set in the segregated South, while Boseman dons a vibranium suit in the Marvel tentpole as...
by Dino-Ray Ramos | Deadline Hollywood Filmmaker Akin Omotoso’s latest film Vaya first premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2016 to critical praise and continued to make its rounds around the festival circuit and earned him the Africa Movie Academy...
by Monique Jones | Shadow and Act If you’re tired of Halloween celebrations that are all pumpkins, candy and costumes over the truly spooky, these 13 Black horror films will put the fear back into your holiday. 1. Blacula Every Black horror film binge should...
by Jordan Simon | Shadow and Act With Halloween approaching, now is a great time to remind what kinds of costumes are inappropriate and downright unacceptable. In the words of Dear White People’s Sam Logan, a list of acceptable costumes includes “pirates,...
The Cosby Prison Sentence: Working While Black by Yasmin Shiraz | Black TV Film Crew Today I heard a colleague rejoice, celebrate, pump her fists, give a high five, do everything but dance in the end zone when she heard that Bill Cosby had been sentenced to three to...
…Pay Parity, Licking Arsenio, and Why Emmys and Oscars Are Overrated By Debra Birnbaum | Variety “More work! More work, and more sleep.”’ That’s what on Tiffany Haddish’s agenda for the rest of 2018, which has already been a tear for the comedian. She’s been on...
By Cynthia Littleton | Variety Prolific producer Will Packer has set up a TV, digital and branded content production venture with Discovery Communications and Universal Pictures. As part of the deal, Will Packer Media will have a first-look programming pact with OWN,...
by Monique Jones | Shadow and Act Set production on the Kasi Lemmons-directed Harriet has started, prompting new criticisms of Cynthia Erivo, who has been cast as Harriet Tubman. According to Deadline, the film will focus on Tubman’s life, including her time as...
Olivia Munn and Keegan-Michael Key teach you Japanese and Detroit slang words. Olivia and Keegan-Michael star in The Predator, out in theaters September...
‘Farming’ director and star Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, along with co-stars Kate Beckinsale, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Damson Idris, visit IMDb at Toronto. READ...
from Variety Variety is pleased to announce its annual list of 10 Actors to Watch, an honor the publication has bestowed since 1998. Past honorees include many future Oscar winners and nominees, such as Mahershala Ali, Timothée Chalamet, Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer,...
By Daniel Holloway | Variety Atop the coffee table inside the house where Jordan Peele’s Monkeypaw Prods. lives sit some very on-brand periodicals — titles like Heavy Metal, Fangoria and Rod Serling’s Twilight Zone Magazine. The Twilight Zone issue is a gem. It not...
By Erin Nyren and Christi Carras | Variety “Black Panther” actor Sterling K. Brown is torn about the Academy Awards’ new popular film category. At an FYC event for “This Is Us” at Paramount Studios, Brown, who played N’Jobu in the Marvel blockbuster, told Variety his...
By Kristopher Tapley | Variety Nearly a decade ago, the controversial best-picture snub of superhero hit “The Dark Knight” sparked the motion picture Academy to action. In an attempt to stoke the Oscar odds for populist cinema and to be more inclusive, the...
…Women and Minorities Aren’t Getting Better Movie Roles (Study) By Brent Lang | Variety Time’s Up and #MeToo is dominating the talk in Hollywood, and not an awards show nor a red carpet interview seems to take place these days without filmmakers and actors being...
By Daniel Holloway | Variety Netflix will not be streaming a controversial documentary about Louis Farrakhan. A company spokesperson on Tuesday said that reports that the streaming service would add the documentary “My Life’s Journey Through Music” next month were the...
Venezia 75 Competition An international competition comprising a maximum of 20 feature-length films, presented as world premieres. (There are 21 this year) The Mountain, dir: Rick Alverson Doubles Vies, dir: Olivier Assayas The Sisters Brothers, dir: Jacques Audiard...
By Maane Khatchatourian | Variety The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences has invited a record number of new members, extending invites to 928 people. The Academy topped last year’s record of 774 new members. It invited 683 members in 2016 and 322 in 2015,...
by David Robb | Deadline Hollywood Saying that discrimination is “still rampant” in the film industry, the DGA today released its second report on Feature Film Diversity, which found that only 9.7% of live-action American films with box office takes of at least...
John Legend knew Tiffany Haddish was destined for stardom the minute he saw her act at a comedy club. “I told [my wife] Chrissy [Teigen], ‘I feel like she’s gonna be famous,’” Legend said. Legend and Haddish were among the stars who sat down to chat for Variety...
ESPN News Services Jack Johnson, the first black man to become world heavyweight champion, was posthumously pardoned Thursday by President Donald Trump for a 1913 conviction for violating the Mann Act. Trump had said in April that he was considering the pardon after...
Cannes Day 2: Coogler, Black Cinema And Cannes I shared a moment yesterday on my Instagram story feed. It showed me in shock as filmmaker Ryan Coogler, his wife and the Cannes Film Festival Assistant assigned to them, casually walk right by me inside the world famous...
Exclusive: Samuel L Jackson InterviewAt 69, Samuel L Jackson is looking good. He’s softly spoken for the most part, with a voice that’s instantly recognizable. He’s also, of course, one of the biggest movie stars on earth. But it’s been a long...
Erika Alexander Talks About Her New Production Company And How It’s Expanding The Definition Of Diversity InclusionIt was thirty years in the making. “I always felt since I started in the business that there weren’t enough roles for black people,...
Lena Waithe On ‘Ready Player One’ And Getting To Talk About ‘The Color Purple’ With Steven SpielbergLena Waithe is like your laid-back homie. That’s why portraying Aech in : So, : Oooh, which one did I like… I liked the samurai who...
from Shadow and Act Black Panther is a game-changer for the film industry. In a recent viral thread on Twitter, actor and playwright, Dylan Marron reintroduced a video series he produced a few years ago called Every Little Word. The series runs through major films and...
by Dino-Ray Ramos | Deadline Hollywood Talking about race, comedy, and storytelling first thing in the morning is quite a way to kick things off. On day 2 of SXSW, socio-political comedian & United Shades of America host W. Kamau Bell, activist &...
…Is Unlike Any Other Marvel Movie By Brent Lang and Ricardo Lopez | Variety When SuCh Charles, a 32-year-old singer and songwriter from Denver, saw a trailer for “Black Panther,” she was moved to organize an event to bring together Denver’s black community. She...
by Mike Fleming Jr | Deadline Hollywood To make his directorial debut on an adaptation of Yardie, the 1992 Victor Headley novel about the collision of Jamaican culture in London, Idris Elba put into it many of the pieces of his life and career. The career spans his...
Get Out star Daniel Kaluuya finds his face on billboards on Sunset Boulevard, but his focus is set on telling stories with meaning and truth Patrick Shanley | Hollywood Reporter Since the release of Jordan Peele’s racial satire Get Out, the face of Daniel Kaluuya —...
Tambay Obenson | Shadow and Act Film directors are still overwhelmingly white and male, according to a University of Southern California’s Annenberg Inclusion Initiative report published Thursday, January 5, 2018. Titled Inclusion in the Director’s Chair, the new year...
Bert Ashe | Shadow and Act It’s not a position anyone can apply for. The appointment comes by black cultural acclimation, and the holder—Mr. Denzel Washington—will be in that position until someone somehow becomes more beloved than he is. The spot is valuable, no...
by Mike Fleming Jr | Deadline Hollywood Today, Entertainment Studios has broadened its awards season release of Hostiles, the Scott Cooper-directed Western that stars Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike and Wes Studi. It is the biggest prestige film play so far for...
Tambay Obenson | Shadow and Act When asked about the future of his hit BBC series Luther 2 years ago, at what was supposed to be its end, star of the popular crime drama Idris Elba said the following during a press conference: “I’m far from done....
Timothee Chalamet (“Call Me By Your Name”) and Daniel Kaluuya (“Get Out”) sat down for a chat for Variety’s “Actors on Actors,” where they talked about their movies’ pivotal scenes, on-screen chemistry, and...
Variety and PBS SoCal KOCE’s Emmy Award-winning show “Variety Studio: Actors on Actors,” presented by Google Home, is approaching its seventh season, bringing together some of the biggest stars for conversations about their perspectives on their latest works....
Dino-Ray Ramos | Deadline Hollywood During the Q&A portion of the closing keynote conversation with Dee Rees at the Film Independent Forum, an aspiring filmmaker stepped up to the microphone and, through tears, expressed gratitude to the acclaimed director for...
Dino-Ray Ramos | Deadline Hollywood When the teaser trailers for Jordan Peele’s Get Out first came out, question marks hovered over its mysterious plot points. Fortunately, keeping the narrative about the stylized take on the victimization of black people and “the...
Aramide A. Tinubu | Shadow & Act Robinne Lee won’t wait for someone to hand her an opportunity. Instead, she’s created a space for herself. The veteran actress, writer, and producer is demanding to be heard. It’s early morning in Los Angeles, and Lee is...
AARP The Magazine | Oct/Nov 2017 At 14, he played a sailor in Apocalypse Now. At 37, he was Zen-spouting Morpheus in The Matrix. Now Laurence Fishburne, 56, is showing his funny side. A hit as the granddad on TV’s Black-ish, he joins Steve Carell and Bryan Cranston in...
Aramide A Tinubu | Shadow and Act Tracy Oliver knew that she had something special when she and Black-ish creator Kenya Barris finished the script for Girls Trip. “I’m not shocked,” she explained to me referring to the massive success of the film. “I knew what...
Nadine Matthews | Shadow and Act Deon Taylor wrote his first feature film on the team bus going back and forth from his basketball games in Germany. He hadn’t been going to school for film or screenwriting when he did…at least not formally. It was the nineties...
Jenelle Riley | Variety Every summer movie season has its share of big-name vehicles and star turns from recognizable faces. But this year, several actors delivered outstanding performances that hint at exciting futures. Probably no one more than Gal Gadot, who became...
Dave McNary | Variety Morgan Freeman has been named the 54th recipient of the SAG Life Achievement award for career achievement and humanitarian accomplishment. Freeman will be presented the accolade at the 24th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards on Jan. 21 at the...
Tambay Obenson | Shadow and Act If only because we’ve previously tackled current events (even when not film or TV-related) on Shadow & Act, a number of readers have emailed me asking if I (or any S&A writers) plan to address last weekend’s...
By Nick Vivarelli | Variety ROME — Darren Aronofsky’s horror thriller “Mother!” and new films by George Clooney and Guillermo del Toro will world premiere at the 74th Venice Film Festival, along with hotly anticipated titles from directors such as France’s Abdellatif...
…and what he’s calling an incredible time in cinema by Trey Mangum| Shadow and Act After a series of delays, the film adaption of Stephen King’s The Dark Tower, starring Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey, hits theaters this weekend. Elba stars as...
by Owen Gleiberman | Variety Do white filmmakers have the right to make a movie like “Detroit”? The moral right, that is? Set during the Detroit riots of 1967, the movie tells an essential true story about the brutalization of African-Americans. The fact that the...
by Blavity | Shadow and Act I used to hate horror films. Maybe because I get a little nauseous around blood or maybe because I don’t like raising my already high blood pressure, but it wasn’t until recently that I understood why I was so terrified. I hated them...
by Daniel Holloway | Variety This story first appeared in the July 19, 2017 issue of Variety. When “Luke Cage” exec producer Cheo Hodari Coker declared at his show’s San Diego Comic-Con panel last year, “The world is ready for a bulletproof black man,” the crowd...
from Shadow and Act Event: 2017 Capital City Black Film Festival Date: August 17-20, 2017 Location: Austin, TX The Capital City Black Film Festival (CCBFF) – celebrating its 5th anniversary showing the best in indie black cinema – today announced that...
Kaley Cuoco (“The Big Bang Theory”) and Anthony Anderson (“Black-ish”) discuss their broadcast comedies and how their shows have paved the way for other...
Brit Marling (“The OA”) and Issa Rae (“Insecure”) discuss auditioning, being typecast, and choosing their own paths, during Variety’s “Actors on Actors...
Friends Thandie Newton (“Westworld”) and Oprah Winfrey (“The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks”) discuss their HBO series and reminisce about shooting “Beloved”...
Sterling K. Brown (“This Is Us,” “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story”) brought Pamela Adlon (“Better Things”) to tears during their “Actors on Actors” conversation, in which they also discussed their best...
from Shadow and Act In the video below, actor Michael Kenneth Williams headlines the new “Question Your Answers” brand campaign from The Atlantic, in which he plays different versions of himself, interrogating himself about whether, as a black actor, he’s being...
Shadow and Act | Sergio Mims Watch the 1984 Kathleen Collins interview from Milestone Film & Video below: There’s no need to tell you that there have always been independent black filmmakers, long before Spike Lee burst upon the scene in the mid-1980’s; too many...
from ScreenRant | by Emily Donn If there is one thing Guardians of the Galaxy did not lack for, it was lovable and funny characters. From the opening moments, where Star-Lord danced to Redbones’ Come and Get Your Love it was clear that this movie would not have...
from Shadow and Act | Tambay Obenson Watch the 40-minute interview with Jason Blum, which actually happened just before “Get Out” opened in USA theaters I watched the below awesome interview with Jason Blum (head of Blumhouse Productions, the company behind the...
Sam Jack talks Trump, his truth on American racism & the Difference between Hollywood and British Black actors with Hot97’s Ebro Darden and Laura Stylez.
Event: 2017 Tribeca Film Festival Date: April 19 – 30, 2017 Location: New York, NY TFF announced the feature films that will screen within the following programs: Competition, including US Narrative, Documentary, and International Narrative categories;...
from Shadow and Act | Tambay Obenson When it comes to pure horror filmmaking, “black stories” are still woefully under-represented unfortunately, even though it’s a genre whose supernatural or uncanny aspects and narrative structure, lends itself extremely well to...
Shadow and Act | Sergio Mims Filmmaker Mariette Monpierre’s touching and beautiful feature film debut, “Elza,” screens at the Pan African Film Festival tomorrow night, Saturday, February 11 at 7:00p, and again on Monday February 13 at 6:10p. Read Vanessa Martinez’s...
from Shadow and Act | Tambay Obenson Updating this list as I do once a year (I forgot to do it last year; so there was a lot to research and catch up on) to keep you all up-to-date on where each project stands going into the new year, including 18 new additions… There...
by Patrick Shanley | The Hollywood Reporter In 1989, Billy Dee Williams starred as Gotham City district attorney Harvey Dent in director Tim Burton’s seminal Batman. The plan, as legend goes, was for Williams to return in subsequent Caped Crusader sequels as the...
Q&A with David Oyelowo. Moderated by Jenelle Riley, Variety. A UNITED KINGDOM is the true story of the forbidden love of King Seretse Khama of Botswana (David Oyelowo) and Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), a white woman from London, which caused an international...
Career retrospective with current SAG Award Nominee Octavia Spencer. Moderated by Jenelle Riley, Variety. Octavia Spencer currently stars in Hidden Figures. Additional film credits include: Fruitvale Station, Paradise, Smashed, Seven Pounds, Coach Carter, Bad Santa,...
Q&A with Independent Spirit Award nominee Edwina Findley Dickerson of FREE IN DEED. Moderated by John Alan Simon. Nominated for 4 Film Independent Spirit Awards: John Cassavetes Award, Best Cinematography, Best Male Lead (David Harewood), Best Supporting Female...
In 1991, director Mira Nair made Mississippi Masala, a romantic drama with an international twist starring a young Denzel Washington, hot off his first acting Oscar win for Glory. Twenty-five years later, the Indian-born Nair (Queen of Katwe), 59, sat next to...
from Deadline Hollywood It may have taken 10 years to do it, but Don Cheadle is actually grateful for the extra time he had to hone his unique vision for Miles Ahead, the film about Miles Davis he wrote, produced, directed and stars in. Sony Pictures Classics brought...
Conversations career retrospective with Mahershala Ali. Moderated by Jenelle Riley of Variety. Mahershala Ali is fast becoming one of the freshest and most in-demand faces in Hollywood with his extraordinarily diverse skill set and wide-ranging background in film,...
by Tambay Obenson | Shadow and Act Launched at New York University (NYU) in 1996, the Black Genius series was conceived by author Walter Mosley, Manthia Diawara (Director of the Institute of Afro-American Affairs at NYU) and writer, film scholar and emeritus NYU...
from Shadow & Act | Tambay Obenson The late Sam Greenlee (author of “The Spook Who Sat By The Door”), who died in May 2014, was never one to mince words, especially when it came to dishing on the state of what we call “black cinema,” and the film industry overall....
from Shadow & Act The above 2-minute homage to black actresses was produced as part of British Film Institute’s (BFI) ongoing Black Star project – an exhaustive program and the UK’s largest ever season of film and television dedicated to celebrating the range,...
Actor Danny Glover talks to broadcaster Samira Ahmed about his career, growing up in San Francisco and working with Mel Gibson. Glover also discusses the influence of his mother and grandmother on his life and how his acting developed in films such as The Colour...
