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TV / Film

Cadillac Records is as Flat as a Vinyl LP

Source: All About Jazz
December 5, 2008

Trite musical biopic feels like soundtrack album in search of a movie Adrien Brody portrays Polish immigrant Leonard Chess, whose Chess Records nurtured the careers of Muddy Waters and others. Cadillac Records tells the story of Chess and his company. Beyonce stars as Etta James and Jeffrey Wright plays Muddy Waters in this story of the rise of Chess Records and its founder Leonard Chess (Adrien Brody). While it tells the story of an exciting period in American ...

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TV / Film

Cadillac Records Got Their Musical Mojo Working

Source: Michael Ricci
December 5, 2008

In Cadillac Records, Darnell Martins rollicking and insightful celebration of Chicago blues in its hectic golden age, Jeffrey Wright plays the singer and guitarist Muddy Waters.

This feat is made even more impressive and interesting when you reflect that in the same movie season Mr. Wright has portrayed another notable real-life African-American, the former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in Oliver Stones W. The man is equally credible as a statesman and a bluesman. If thats not range, what ...

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TV / Film

Clint Eastwood's Grand Torino

Source: All About Jazz
December 5, 2008

At 78, perhaps the only actor in the history of American cinema to convincingly kick the butt of a guy 60 years his junior, the hard-headed, snarly mouthed Clint Eastwood of the 1970s comes growling back to life in Gran Torino.

Centered on a cantankerous curmudgeon who can fairly be described as Archie Bunker fully loaded (with beer and guns), the actor-director's second release of the season is his most stripped-down, unadorned picture in many a year, even as it ...

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TV / Film

Sundance 2009: Films in Competition

Source: Michael Ricci
December 4, 2008

Sundance Film Festival in Park City Utah is reeving up. Here is a list of this years films in competition.

DOCUMENTARY COMPETITION This year's 16 films were selected from 879 submissions. Each film is a world premiere.

The films screening in Documentary Competition are:

Art & Copy (Director: Doug Pray; Screenwriter: Timothy J. Sexton)Rare interviews with the most influential advertising creative minds of our age illustrate the wide-reaching effect advertising and creativity have on modern culture. ...

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TV / Film

Fantasia: The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Source: All About Jazz
December 4, 2008

If it wasn't for “The Sorcerer's Apprentice", the feature Fantasia would never have been made. The fairy tale was made into a poem by Goethe and into a concert piece by Paul Dukas.

Fantasia is a 1940 animated film produced by Walt Disney, an experiment in animation and music, consisting of classical music presented against the backdrop of animation and featuring no dialogue, only spoken introductions by Deems Taylor before each cartoon, as well as during the intermission segment.

The ...

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TV / Film

The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics

Source: All About Jazz
December 3, 2008

The short speaks volumes on the nature of jazz. “The Dot and the Line: A Romance in Lower Mathematics" was awarded the Academy Award for Animated Short Film in 1965. It is based on the book by Norton Juster published two years earlier, a budding romance between a dot and an initially unyieldingly straight line.

The trigonometric love story has a third person (love triangle) involved - a rather unruly squiggle - with the dot attracted by the ...

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TV / Film

Prop 8: The Musicial

Source: All About Jazz
December 3, 2008

Prop 8: The Musical All-Star Hollywood Cast Makes Video Mocking Gay Marriage Opponents

Playbill News: Conceived and written by Hairspray Tony winner Marc Shaiman, the three-minute video was directed and staged by Adam Shankman, who helmed the “Hairspray" movie musical. The video also boasts an array of theatre and stage stars: The “California Gays and The People That Love Them" are played by Jordan Ballard, Margaret Cho, Barrett Foa, J.B. Ghuman, John Hill, Andy Richter, Maya Rudolph, Rashad Naylor and ...

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TV / Film