Oprah Winfrey Tagged Articles at Cinematical

A year ago, GQ published a feature article written by Devin Friedman called "Will You Be My Black Friend?" Having realized that he had only two black friends (much less than he had in his youth), Friedman whipped up an ad asking for black friends and threw it up on Craigslist. The article (a long but worthy read) dips into his self-deprecating thoughts on race, his social anxiety with black people, and thoughts on the friendship segregation alive in interpersonal relationships as he sets out to make new black friends. And now it's been picked up by Oprah.

The Hollywood Reporter posts that Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Films and Lionsgate are joining forces to develop Friedman's article into a feature film with Chris Rock starring. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that he's one of the people met on the journey, because Rock is definitely not a "white, married Manhattan journalist" on a "quixotic quest" for friendship diversity.

Currently, no writer or director is attached, but that'll surely come in due time. I mean, can the world refuse Oprah? It doesn't seem likely. Now ... how long will it be before marketers decide to start up a "gain a black friend/gain a white friend" website? And would it work?

There is no denying that Precious has got critics and audiences in a lather, with audiences at Sundance, Cannes, and TIFF lauding the harrowing adaptation of Sapphire's first novel. Mo'Nique's performance as Precious' horrendously abusive mother monster Mary has also gotten folks humming about an Oscar nomination for the comedian, who readily acknowledges the dark places she had to go for this role. She told Eric Kohn in an interview at last year's Sundance that she herself was sexually abused and "The person who molested me was a monster. So I had to go to that person, because I know what it was like for me. [Daniels] said action, and be that monster." And wow, what a monster she became; each scene she was in cut closer to the bone. I covered my eyes in at least one scene and left the screening room slack-jawed.

But Roger Friedman at the Hollywood Reporter writes that Mo'Nique skipped press for the film at Cannes, TIFF, and the New York Film Festival, and that her newest publicist of just two weeks quit. Friedman writes "that Mo'Nique has gotten herself a reputation for demanding money for showing up to promote Precious. It's a first in Oscar history."

Left to right: Colin Farrell on the red carpet, Oprah Winfrey greeting fans, unidentified running clock man.

Read fast -- we've got 48 hours of the Toronto International Film Festival to recap and you've only got 60 seconds!

Celeb Sightings. Viggo Mortensen decisively declared that he is not "quitting acting," he just doesn't have any films lined up for now. (He's next acting in a play in Spain.) He stars in the long-awaited The Road. Matt Damon called journalists "motherf******"" and "lazy," because of false reports last week that he'd died during a mountain hike in California. He is Steven Soderbergh's The Informant! (see below).

Colin Farrell reportedly grabbed a photographer by the back of the neck, to defend the honor of his sister on the red carpet; he's in Toronto for Triage. Oprah Winfrey attended in support of Precious, Lee Daniels' Sundance hit drama that opens soon, and spoke about her personal connection to the film.

Our Coverage. In A Serious Man, Joel and Ethan Coen have delivered a film that "speaks as much with its structure as it does with its dialog," says Monika Bartyzel, yet also manages to be "wildly funny." With The Informant!, starring Matt Damon and directed by Steven Soderbergh, you can expect "a seriously entertaining film ... about a seriously plain man," according to Scott Weinberg. Clive Owen shows a "familial heart underneath the macho exterior" in The Boys Are Back, Monika observes. Terry Gilliam's The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus features Heath Ledger's final performance, but, more to the point, "feels sort of like a favorite uncle just burst through the door, smiling and loaded with nifty presents," Scott writes, after confessing his unabashed love for Terry Gilliam.

A special moment with George Clooney, and more Internet confesions - after the jump!

Click the image below to view entire poster

Cinematical has just received this beautiful exclusive teaser poster for Disney's The Princess and the Frog, which marks the studio's triumphant return to 2D hand-drawn animation. Featuring the voices of Anika Noni Rose (as Princess Tiana), Oprah Winfrey, Keith David, Jim Cummings, John Goodman, Jenifer Lewis, Bruno Campos, Michael-Leon Wooley, Peter Bartlett and Terrence Howard, The Princess and the Frog is based on E.D. Baker's classic novel The Frog Princess, except this film -- written and directed by the filmmaking duo of John Musker and Ron Clements (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules) -- is set in New Orleans, stars a singing crocodile and features Disney's first African-American princess. Famed songwriter/composer Randy Newman (Toy Story, Monsters, Inc.) lent his familiar voice to the soundtrack, which I'm sure will carve out its special place alongside Disney's long list of memorable tracks.

The first trailer for The Princess and the Frog was also just released on Apple (watch it there or after the jump), and folks will have a chance to see the film when it hits theaters in New York and LA on November 25th before expanding wide on December 11th. Click the image below to view entire poster -- does this look like vintage Disney, or what?

Just a couple of weeks back, it seemed that only film bloggers could bring themselves to crack jokes about how Dakota Fanning's super-power sub-performer Push might get confused with the award-winning and far-from-fantasy Sundance title Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire -- and lo, most did.

Well, hopefully, they've gotten that out of their system, because attached today to the release of Tyler Perry's Madea Goes to Jail is a trailer that now refers to it as Precious: Based on a Novel by Sapphire, after the protagonist's preferred nickname.

Having not seen the film -- which our Eric D. Snider referred to as "unsettling and bleak," though "ultimately triumphant and hopeful" -- I can't help but think that the change not only avoids confusion with that other film's eventual DVD release (an admittedly unlikely scenario), but it adds a sense of the personal that was lacking before (having seen the trailer, which is not yet online, I still wouldn't know what "Push" referred to). Wouldn't you rather want to know who this Precious is exactly and what she's about?

Better yet, the very word itself lends a hint of the positive, which could very well make the difference between some Academy voter either picking it up or passing it over in their mounting pile of screeners in favor of something a bit more obvious like So The Holocaust Kinda Sucked.

Look who wants to fight Oprah over an illiterate, overweight African-American girl: Harvey Weinstein. Actually, Harvey isn't fighting Oprah Winfrey directly; The Weinstein Company (TWC) and Lionsgate filed lawsuits against each other yesterday, both claiming the right to distribute Sundance award-winner Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire, according to indieWIRE.

On the surface, this is patently absurd. We're not talking about a sure-fire box office smash, are we? The premise of Push (not to be confused, of course, with the super-powered action movie opening tomorrow) is so "unsettling and bleak that no one would blame you if you didn't want to see it:." That's how Eric D. Snider began his review from Sundance. Even with Oprah and Tyler Perry getting behind the release, Push sounds like a tough sell. So why is Harvey suing?

His lawyer claims it's because a deal was in place with sales agent Cinetic Media, who went "behind their backs" to make a better deal with Lionsgate. Cinetic says that a deal with TWC was not in place. Beyond the 'he said, she said' legal disagreements, David Poland commented: "Unlike Lionsgate, TWC is NOT a company with a strong history of releasing films for black audiences. On the other hand, they now have Tom Ortenberg, who was probably drooling at the opportunity to top Lionsgate with TWC's first real urban film."

One of the minor eyebrow-raisers at this year's Sundance Film Festival was that the fest ended without its most acclaimed film being picked up by a distributor. That would be Push: Based on a Novel by Sapphire (not to be confused with that Chris Evans/Dakota Fanning super-power thing coming out this week), the harrowing drama that won both the grand jury prize AND the audience award -- a rare feat. Would it languish in obscurity and go straight to DVD, despite its critical and popular acclaim?

No! It won't! And as usual, we have Oprah to thank. Her production company and Tyler Perry's company will help finance distribution of the film, which has been officially purchased by Lionsgate. Lionsgate tends to be frugal in its marketing (at least in comparison with the bigger studios), hence the need for partners. Plus, the film is a hard sell: It's about an obese, illiterate Harlem teen who's pregnant for the second time by her father and who lives with her abusive mother. It's not the usual Lionsgate product (i.e., a Saw sequel) and not the kind of thing that will have a $20 million opening weekend.

But Ms. Winfrey and Mr. Perry evidently recognize its value, and don't worry -- since the film is already done, it's too late for either of them to mess it up. (Had Perry made the film, surely he would have played the overweight teenage girl himself.)

My rave review for Cinematical can be found here. But if my word and the words of Oprah and Madea aren't enough to convince you, look at what Variety, Film School Rejects, IndieWire, and the New York Post said about it. Lionsgate hasn't said when they plan to release it, but I wouldn't be surprised if they wait until fall and give it a push for awards season.

Oprah Winfrey might be one of the most powerful women in the world, but one thing's for sure: the gal has no talent for spotting literary scams. Variety has reported that Herman Rosenblat's Oprah-endorsed Holocaust memoir, Angel at the Fence, has been pulled from publication by Berkley Books just weeks before the book was scheduled to hit the shelves. But that's not all -- plans for a $25 million film based on the book have been compromised following allegations by scholars, friends and family members that Rosenblat's tale was fabricated (New Republic has the whole story over at their website).

According to Rosenblat's tale, his family was forced into the Schlieben Labor Camp in Germany, where he supposedly met his "angel" -- a young Jewish girl who lived outside of the camp and met Rosenblat at the fence to give him apples and bread, and he never learned her name. After the war, he relocated to New York and on a double date finally met the young girl who had kept him alive during his time at the labor camp. The two eventually fell in love, and it was that love story that earned them the spot the Oprah show (twice!) where she referred to their tale as "the single greatest love story" she had encountered in her 22 years on the show. Oprah has since declined to comment on the current controversy.

During a Disney showcase in Los Angeles this afternoon, a few fairly big announcements were made -- most notably the fact that Cars 2 is being bumped up from 2012 to the summer of 2011. John Lasseter also announced a series of animated shorts related to the Cars franchise called Cars Toons, and those will air on the Disney Channel, as well as (possibly) screen theatrically. With Toy Story 3 arriving in 2010, this means Pixar will shovel out back-to-back sequels for the first time ever. Those Pixar fans seeking an original product will get one next year with Up.

Also during the showcase, it was announced that Oprah Winfrey has joined the voice cast of The Princess and the Frog, where she'll play Eudora, the mother of the main character Princess Tiana (Anika Noni Rose). Due out on Christmas Day in 2009, The Princess and the Frog returns Disney to their classic 2D animation and it follows a young girl who lives in the New Orleans French Quarter during the Jazz Age. Princess and the Frog also marks the first time Disney has featured an African American princess.

We'll update this post should more info come out ...

Here I was thinking that this whole movie into musical and then back into a movie trend had finally come to an end. How wrong I was. The MTV movie blog recently spoke with former American Idol winner Fantasia Barrino and according to her, Oprah Winfrey is planning to produce a big-budget movie musical of The Color Purple. The musical will use the Broadway adaptation of Spielberg's 1985 film as a blueprint and Barrino told MTV, "That's going to happen and I'm going to do it."

The original feature film was based on the novel by Alice Walker about the struggles of a young black woman in early 20th century America. The film was a big Oscar contender, but ending up losing most of the awards to the more 'colonial style' of Out of Africa. Just on a side note, it still kills me to this day that Whoopi Goldberg didn't win for her performance as Celie. Instead, she won for the vastly inferior romance, Ghost -- but I'm getting a little off topic.

The Broadway show premiered back in 2005, and Barrino took over the main role of Celie last April. Barrino is planning on taking some time off to work on her own music now that the run of the show has ended, but she won't stay gone long. Barrino tells MTV, "They're going to work with me. They don't have to [but] that's a favor, working with someone like Miss Oprah who's so talented and amazing - It's a blessing." It might be blessing for her, but I'm just not convinced that it's a great idea to begin with. How about you?