"Produced and directed by emerging filmmaker, Celia Fox, and based on her original screenplay, "Days of Wrath" is positioned to be the next urban drama to reach blockbuster status."
"The ensemble cast includes Wilmer Valderrama, in a groundbreaking performance, Jeffery Dean Morgan, Laurence Fishburne, Jessie Garcia, Ana Claudia Talancon, Taye Diggs, Amber Valletta, Lupe Ontiveros, David Banner, Rick Ross, Faizon Love, Kurupt, Slim Thug, Brandon T. Jackson and Melyssa Ford (as never seen before)! "
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fox Searchlight has cast rapper Jamal Woolard, aka Gravy, in the role of Biggie Smalls for the upcoming biopic Notorious.
In addition: "Derek Luke, Angela Bassett and Anthony Mackie also have been cast in the movie, Searchlight said. Luke will play Biggie record producer Sean "Diddy" Combs, who offscreen is an exec producer on the film. Mackie will play rival rapper Tupac Shakur, while Bassett will play Biggie's mother Voletta Wallace..."
"The movie -- directed by George Tillman Jr. and produced by Huntsman, J. Paul Huntsman. Voletta Wallace, Wayne Barrow, Mark Pitts, Bob Teitel and Trish Hofmann -- goes into production this month and is set for release in January."
That's the kind of role that can really help or hurt a performer's career but is much better for an actor than a rapper.
"We are looking for young males and females ages 18-30, or at least look this young, who resemble and can portray the following: Rappers, Thugs, HOT girls, crackheads, Big Beefy Security/Bouncer types, Basketball players, students. We also need lookalikes for Puffy, Jay Z, Mary J Blige, former Mayor David Dinkins, Busta Rhymes, Craig Mack, DJ Mister Cee, DJ Enuff, Faith Evans, Total, Charlie Baltimore."
Though this year's SXSW Music Festival should be chockfull of hip hop, the Film Festival seems to have only a couple of related films but they're both world premieres.
Nerdcore Rising, directed by Negin Farsad, focuses on the "sociological phenomenon" of nerdcore hip hop.
Beautiful Losers, with trailer on the home page, is only somewhat related from what I can tell though it sounds like a cool documentary.
The Beautiful Losers press release mentions hip hop but I think that's the Shephard Fairey connection about which I remain unconvinced. The DIY element seems more to the point than the "losers" label, especially given that folks like Fairey and Mike Mills would be considered winners in most people's eyes.
On a side note: Matt So Surreal, who's now part of the SXSW crew, remembers his first SXSW.
Step Up 2 The Streets opened this weekend bringing in the second highest box office take with almost $20 million to Jumper's $27+ million. But Step Up 2 The Streets outperformed Jumper in individual theaters by grossing on average $20 more per theater.
According to Wooohah.com, Step Up 2 The Streets' success surprised the heck out of industry watchers with projections of $10 to 12 million for a movie made on a direct-to-DVD budget.
Disney built a strong online presence with a lot of engagement for Step Up 2 The Streets and they also did some nice things previously with the original Step Up.
I know ProHipHop readers are super-excited about the Valentine's Day premier of Step Up 2 The Streets!!!
This should be a fun dance movie and probably a great date movie as long as you're not too hung up on plot details and so forth. It's all about hotties in motion.
Bottom line: Hating on dance crazes is a waste of time!
BlacKout - Starring and Produced by Jeffrey Wright
BET will offer the tv premier of BlacKout, "The Explosive Story of a Forgotten New York Neighborhood During the Largest Power Failure in American History", on February 1st followed by the DVD release from BET Home Entertainment on February 5th.
Prodigy & Jeffrey Wright Still Shot from BlacKout
Lots of great actors in this flick but this is ProHipHop so, look, it's Prodigy! Yay!
MUSIC VIDEOS: 1. Madvillain "Accordion" PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED 2. Madvillain "Monkey Suite" 3. MED "Push" 4. Stones Throw Singers "Rain Of Earth" 5. Gary Wilson "Gary's in the Park" 6. Aloe Blacc "Busking" 7. James Pants "Do a Couple of Things" 8. Oh No ft. J.Dilla and Roc C "Move" 9. Baron Zen "At The Mall" 10. Roc C ft. Aloe Blacc "My Life" 11. Lootpack "Crate Diggin'" 12. Quasimoto "Bullysh*t" 13. J Dilla "Nothing Like This" 14. Madlib "Take It Back"
BONUS FEATURES: J Dilla 2003 Interview Quasimoto(?) Live in S.F. Jaylib Live at Conga Room Charizma & PB Wolf "Studio Time 92" The Funky 16 Corners Rehearsal "Move" Behind The Scenes
I rarely conduct interviews, due to time rather than interest, but I interviewed Bone Crusher a while back to get a response to the question of why one would do a show like Celebrity Fit Club that's associated in the minds of many with celebrity has-beens.
I came away from the interview convinced that Bone Crusher had a smart take on the situation and was honestly using his appearance as an opportunity for personal growth.
I'm happy to see that he didn't stop with his Season 4 win but has taken his involvement to the next level with the upcoming February 12th release of Battle of the Bulge including a guest appearance by Celebrity Fit Club's Dr. Ian Smith.
Product Description from Amazon: In Battle of the Bulge, Bone Crusher (VH1's Celebrity Fit Club Winner) leads plus-size viewers through a complete workout that they can do while in a seated or standing position. It includes a 20-minute workout, a 40 minute workout, a modified couch workout, and a modified bed workout, which is designed for people who have limited range of movement. No equipment is needed.
So Bone Crusher is focusing on what I believe is an underserved market in the weight loss/exercise scene, those people in such bad shape that most exercise videos leave them behind.
Though folks are a bit quick to say,"that's hip hop", when someone works hard [hustling] or speaks honestly [keeping it real], even though those things are not at all unique to hip hop, I think Bone Crusher is a great example of a hip hop figure who's taken his personal challenges and turned them into a money-making opportunity that can inspire others and that's certainly part of the spirit of hip hop.
And he didn't have to release a "Ghetto Exercise" dvd to do it.
Hip hop film and tv industry news from WoooHah.com:
Snoop Dogg's "Fatherhood" TV show an early ratings success and Snoop's movie about his Youth Football League called "Coach Snoop" is back in the works.
Update on 50 Cent's book turned movie "The Ski Mask Way".
I haven't done much with American Gangster, the movie, though I've been meaning to do a roundup. But maybe posting an American Gangster widget will help fill in the gap.
I don't want to get into glamorizing Nicky Barnes but he does occupy a unique place in business history and there's some biz talk in this trailer and all sorts of rappers worship him so here we go.
Plus Damon Dash is one of the producers and Hi-Tek is providing the music. Mr. Untouchable is due October 26th.
Status Ain't Hood has an interesting review of an early screening of American Gangster that considers it as a rap movie due both to Jay-Z's sudden attachment to the project and to a variety of elements within the movie itself. It works well as a review theme but also speaks to the incredible power of Jay-Z.
Mr. Top Blogger has news of an upcoming Jay-Z album and threatens to post a new track tomorrow.
Apparently it's to be called American Gangster which is indeed the name of a new movie about Harlem crime boss Frank Lucas starring Denzel Washington with such notable participants as Idris Elba, RZA, T.I. and Common. Fab Five Freddy is listed as a Consulting Producer.
Skid Row, a documentary about homelessness on LA's Skid Row starring Pras, opened in NY, DC and LA on Friday. LA Downtown News has an interview with Pras regarding the project in which he spent 9 days and nights on Skid Row:
Basically, the situation was "a fish out of water," like if something was to happen to any one of us and somehow you ended up on Skid Row, what would it look like, that reality? What are the requirements to get a room in a shelter, how are you going to survive, where are you going to sleep, what are the politics, can you get yourself out of the situation? This documentary is not propaganda. It's not saying the governor is to blame, the mayor or the police. It's about a situation, homelessness, and that it's a condition, not a disease. And these are the different stories.
Anybody have more information on this documentary? It was posted on YouTube 5 months ago but I can't find anything on it and am pressed for time.
It's kind of a nostalgia thing for me. Outside of hip hop, this was the last big period of New York's cultural dominance in the alternative and experimental arts and I was watching it closely from a distance cause I chose to stay in North Carolina rather than heading for the East Village in the early 80s.
I would seriously regret that choice if we hadn't had so much fun in NC at the time followed by a move to San Francisco in 1989 where I caught one of the last big waves of that city's counter culture. That's not entirely gone but San Francisco was severely decimated by the tech boom's effect on rent in the late 90s for both grassroots organizations and low income artists and activists like myself.
Tupac Revelation, a documentary on the murder of Tupac Shakur directed by Richard Bond with the help of former Tupac bodyguard Frank Alexander, is due out on DVD in September.
50 Cent is allegedly reportedly appearing in Righteous Kill with Robert de Niro and Al Pacino.
Fabolous is set to appear in Only The Hood Dies Young, a movie produced by Karl Lagerfeld and directed by Robert Yasim Wright that starts shooting in October.
Frederator Films announces plans for The Seven Deadly Sins, an animated hip hop feature that has already signed Don King for voiceover talent.
Respond to Sound IIdebuted this weekend in Hollywood followed by screenings in New York at the VIBE Urbanworld Film Festival: The documentary features commentary from various voices in the Hip Hop community such as the legendary KRS-ONE, The Black Eyed Peas, The Pharcyde and many others. Audiences will have the chance view rarely seen footage from dance legends such as Sammy Davis Jr., The Nicholas Brothers, Sandman Sims and James Brown.
I'm pretty up on a lot of those older dancers and can only assume they discussed Peg Leg Bates in Part I since I didn't see any clips of him in this trailer. If not, I suggest checking for Peg Leg at your next opportunity.
Big Boi takes a big step into the mainstream with Who's Your Caddy?: When a rap mogul from Atlanta tries to join a conservative country club in the Carolinas he runs into fierce opposition from the board President - but it's nothing that he and his entourage can't handle.
I don't have many details on Ghostride the Whip, a new documentary on the hyphy movement directed by DJ Vlad and executive produced by Peter Spirer.
But do check the trailer for Adisa Banjoko's potentially damaging revelations.
Note to Vlad: Next time, put the director's name on the trailer, especially since you're the director.
Spirer is also currently in postproduction on Notorious B.I.G. Bigger Than Life, due out in August, for which he gets writing, producing and directing credits.
Taalam Acey drops a stunning spoken word piece that ties together business and recent hip hop controversies quite well with the line and theme, "there's a market for n*ggas." The video is an excerpt from the documentary What Black Men Think.
The promo is all I've seen and I was impressed by the way it drew me in, using Byron Hurt's comfortably intelligent presence and upbeat music, and quickly revealed what I assume are some of the key points in the documentary in a convincing manner. In addition to the fact that it's quite timely, given the current wide ranging discussions regarding the state of hip hop, it's also a good example of a promo that draws one into a highly nuanced, difficult topic in a manner that one imagines is not intimidating to the average viewer.
Money For Nothing: Behind the Business of Pop Music
By contrast, the trailer for Money For Nothing: Behind the Business of Pop Music starts off with someone who may well be a noted academic but, in any case, is obviously an academic with a style and tone that sets up one for a boring hour or two of "insight" into pop music.
Not having seen either of the documentaries, I can't address how well the promos give one a sense of the overall film, but it seems clear that the first is a successful marketing device and the second is not.
However, that analysis would be based on the assumption that the target market for these products is the general public who has to get caught right away or they're moving on. But that's not the market for these documentaries, at least, not in DVD form.
Check the pricing for institutional copies vs. individual copies and the way that information is presented on the Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes page and you'll see that only institutional pricing is initially listed, at $295 for colleges and universities and $150 for high schools and nonprofits, and that one has to click through for individual home use pricing. In addition, a special number is available for educators to call to get a discount if they are paying for this documentary out of their own pockets, though the discounted educator version will likely be more expensive than the home use version.
What this pricing information and approach reveal is that these documentaries on DVD are being marketed to an educational audience. In fact, the older Money For Nothing: Behind the Business of Pop Music DVD does not even offer an individual option and neither of the DVD's are available on Amazon.
So schools, libraries [which they don't list] and youth-oriented nonprofits are the most likely target market. However, that includes individual educators who pay out of their own pocket for materials, which is an extremely large group.
To some degree, I read the placement of the academic at the beginning of the Money For Nothing promo as a legitimating device, signaling that pop music can be taken as a serious topic for discussion and that the documentary itself will have some kind of research based integrity.
However, while a PhD might impress someone in acquisitions, a public high school teacher may actually be turned off because she knows her audience isn't going to sit still for a talking academic head and she might actually have issues with PhD's since they often represent power figures who are out of touch with what's happening on the ground.
By contrast, the Hip-Hop promo would speak directly to an educator who wants to reach kids. The lively intelligence demonstrated by both Byron and the editing of footage and ideas addresses the need to reach a youthful audience while still covering one's intellectual bases.
Unfortunately, the DVD won't be usable by high school educators for the following reason, it's not the "clean" PBS version, it's the unedited documentary with all the nastiness included. That means it's totally off-limits to the majority of educators and youth workers in the U.S. working with underage populations.
That's kind of disappointing because the promo for Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats & Rhymes suggests that this doc could lead to a lot of interesting discussions among teenagers but it will have to wait till they're in college.
For a final note of comparison, though I think the Hip-Hop promo wins out overall, breaking things down is a reminder that niche markets often undermine assumptions built on reaching a mass audience. For example, if I compared these two promos as vehicles to reach audiences that might see documentaries in theaters, I would consider Money For Nothing an abject failure.
Or, to sum it up Do You!!! style, "Know Your Audience".
The day we've long been waiting for is about to arrive. Tournament of Dreams, starring the toothpick chewing Jayceon Taylor [at least he stars on the cover], releases on DVD, April 24th!
The documentary film Hip Hop Project, executive produced by Bruce Willis and Queen Latifah, opens in theaters May 11th.
From the synopsis:
The Hip Hop Project is the compelling story of Kazi, a formerly
homeless teenager who inspired a group of New York City teens to
transform their life stories into powerful works of art, using hip hop
as a vehicle for self-development and personal discovery.
Still Photo of Kazi from Hip Hop Project
More from the synopsis:
Kazi challenges these young people to write music about real issues affecting their lives as they strive to overcome daunting obstacles to produce a collaborative album. Russell Simmons, hip hop mogul and long-time supporter of the project, partners with Bruce Willis to donate a recording studio to the Hip Hop Project. After four years of collaboration, the group produces a powerful and thought-provoking CD filled with moving personal narratives and sharp social commentary. In contrast to all of the negative attention focused on hip hop and rap music, this is a story of hope, healing and the realization of dreams.
Inspired by Kazi’s work, 100% of the net profits from this film are being donated to organizations working with youth.
A variety of promotional downloads from wallpapers to IM icons are available at the official site.
QD3 Entertainment was started by Jones, son of the famous music impresario and television executive Quincy Jones, as a documentary production company in 2002. Since then, the company has grown from a home video business to a multiplatform entertainment entity.
Lynne gives a brief overview of the company's activities, from the documentary Tupac Shakur: Thug Angel to the Beef series to their new website, and shares a bit about Paul A. Campbell, President and COO of QD3 Entertainment:
Before joining QD3 in 2006, Campbell spent four years at Microsoft Corporation as the director of business development, where he was responsible for the company's digital media strategy and partnerships with major media companies. He worked closely with MTV Networks on the launch of their Overdrive broadband platform and Urge, MTVN's digital music subscription service. Campbell also created and managed the strategic alliance between Academy award-winning director James Cameron and Microsoft as well as partnering with the American Film Institute on a number of initiatives.
Confessions of a Thug, a hip hop movie newly released on DVD, has made the cover of Billboard. That's a good thing but this most recent announcement, as well as earlier announcements, prominently promote this movie as a "Jay-Z Inspired Hip-Hop Musical."
Now the first time I saw that in the headline, sometime last year, it really caught my interest as it was intended to do. However, Jay-Z turns out to be more of a personal inspiration for the filmmaker rather than someone who actually had anything to do with the movie.
So technically it's correct but it works as a kind of a bait and switch maneuver that left me uninterested in this film. What I'm realizing from checking the trailers at the official site is that it probably isn't a musical either, i.e. folks aren't breaking into song and dance in the midst of dramatic situations. I get the impression there's a lot of rap music in the movie but that doesn't make it a hip hop musical.
I find the whole approach rather unfortunate since the initial hooks are a bit deceptive. I'm not saying that these folks are intending to deceive but I am saying that they've chosen a relatively common pr route that tries to catch attention by connecting a product to someone or something that ultimately has little to do with one's experience of that thing.
It also makes me wonder what they mean by being "featured" on the cover of Billboard, just to show you where this approach tends to take me, turning a victory for the filmmakers into a question mark.
Update: Daron Fordham [Writer/Director/Star of Confessions Of A Thug] responded:
Jay-Z made "Streets Is Watchin" a long-form 60 min. music video in 1998. It was sort of like musical. It did OK but I was very fascinated by it and I figured with the right approach and an increase in dramatic action that the concept could really take off. Fast forward to today. Confessions Of A Thug is definitely a hip-hop musical. There is action a
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