lee daniels Tagged Articles at Cinematical
'Precious' Director Circles 'Selma' & Antoine Fuqua's Life of Crime
Filed under: Drama », Deals », Scripts », Comic/Superhero/Geek »
The men behind Precious and Shooter are going back in time, according to Variety:Having had wild success with Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire, Lee Daniels is itching to go historical for his next feature. He's in "advanced negotiations" to helm Selma, a big-buzz Civil Rights-era drama penned by Paul Webb (Lincoln). The film, which would team him with Slumdog Millionaire producer Christian Colson, focuses on the marches between Selma and Montgomery in 1965, which were the peak of the Civil Rights movement. This means that while prospects of a Martin Luther King Jr. film might be hazy, he will get some time here, one would assume -- he was one of the leaders drawn to the area where marches quickly turned to "Bloody Sunday" with force from local and state police.
And in a wholly different historic affair, it seems Antoine Fuqua and Spike Lee are getting ready for a pimp-n-ho crime spree. Fuqua will direct John Ridley's adaptation of the graphic novel Miss: Better Living Through Crime, with Lee executive producing. Set in 1900s New York, the project focuses on Sola and Slim, "a poor white girl who has learned to survive by hook or by crook since being expelled from the orphanage," and the "black pimp with an uncertain past, trying to keep one foot out of the grave." But, it's not as you might think -- the pair team up to become killers for hire.
Along with Jennifer Hudson as Winnie Mandella, it's refreshing to see a whole slew of projects in the works free of African-American crossdressers-for-laughs.
Discuss: What Will Everyone Else Think About 'Precious'?
Filed under: Drama », Independent », New Releases », Lionsgate Films », Box Office », Distribution », Movie Marketing »
Oprah is pushing both Precious and the book it's based on, Push by Sapphire, on her show, and I'm seriously curious to know what her audience will think about it. How many people will be able to watch a film told from the point of view of an illiterate high schooler who is raped by her father, physically (and, in the book, sexually) abused by her mother, hates herself for not being white, has given birth to one child with Down's Syndrome who's nicknamed Mongo (short for Mongoloid), and is pregnant for a second time with her father's child? Let's assume that Oprah's reach is strong enough and far enough to get her demographic to plunk down their eight to 12 dollars to see Precious – the Oprah Effect in full effect. (You can find out where and when Precious is playing near you on the official movie website.)
I'm not talking about critics and journalists or the people in big cities who like to participate in a friendly Oscar pool or want to be up on what was in the New York Times. They're already seeing the movie in droves; it made $1.8M in limited release its opening weekend. The latest numbers I could find on her demographic are from 2007, back when people were wondering if Oprah could help get a president elected. (Answer: Yes, she can.)
According to Nielsen via MSNBC, "Oprah's audience is predominantly female, white, and over the age of 55. Nationally 7.4 million people watch Oprah daily -- about 2.6% of American households. Four percent of American women (about 5.7 million) watch her daily, compared with 1.2% of men (1.7 million people). Overall, 2% of all 18- to 49-year-olds watch Oprah."
'Push' Shoved; 'Precious' is the New Title for Sundance Smash
Filed under: Drama », Independent », Awards », Sundance », Lionsgate Films », RumorMonger », Oscar Watch »
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.
Mo'nique & Lenny Kravitz to Star in Adaptation of Bestselling 'Push'
Filed under: Drama », Independent », Casting », Cinematical Indie »
Chubby teens are in this year (see Hairspray), and so are unwanted pregnancies (see Knocked Up, Waitress, and Juno). As an antidote to all that comedy, Variety reports that the bestselling novel Push -- about an overweight, HIV-positive Harlem girl who's pregnant as the result of incest -- will be made into a film next year.Not surprisingly, it will be an independent production, directed by Lee Daniels (pictured), whose recent film Shadowboxer was his directorial debut. Before that, he was producer on heavy fare like Monster's Ball and The Woodsman. So the guy isn't afraid of difficult subject matter. (The New York Times ran a fascinating story about him last July.)
The book was written by Ramona Lofton under the pseudonym Sapphire and was published in 1996. It tells of an African-American teen named Clareece "Precious" Jones whose miserable life starts to look up when a teacher takes an interest in her. Paula Patton (Idlewild, Deja Vu) will play the teacher; a newcomer named Gabourey Sidibe -- who auditioned among 300 other girls -- will play Precious. Mo'nique plays her wretched mother, and Lenny Kravitz plays a kindly nurse who helps Precious.
I haven't read Push, but the descriptions of its content are pretty harrowing. The girl is illiterate ... bullied by her mother ... she has HIV ... she's pregnant for the second time with her own father's child ... yikes. I have to assume there's some kind of redemption in the end...? A light at the end of the tunnel...? And if Daniels and the cast -- especially this newcomer Gabourey Sidibe -- can pull it off, it could be a powerful film.
Glitter won't stop Mariah
Filed under: Drama », Independent », Casting », Fandom », Newsstand », Cinematical Indie »
Despite the fact that Glitter
(not to mention her skanky wardrobe) has rendered Mariah Carey a
perpetual cinematic punchline, she's been hired to star in Tennessee, an indie drama from Lee
Daniels, the producer of Monster's Ball. While Daniels
claims to have been impressed by Carey's performance in a movie called WiseGirls, the hiring was also admittedly motivated by the massive
success of The Emancipation of Mimi (Carey's most recent album) so perhaps he's thinking more of ticket sales
than quality. In the film, to be directed by Aaron Woodley, Carey will play a mixed-race waitress (she "struggles with all sorts of issues because of" her ethnicity) who "sets off with two brothers to find their estranged father." The brothers are hoping to get their father reengaged with the family, specifically their younger brother, who is suffering from leukemia. How cool would it be if Mariah wears, like, big sweatshirts and baggy pants and acts her ass off? Yeah, not very likely. I know.
Kravitz, Mac into drama
Filed under: Drama », Music & Musicals », Casting », Deals », Newsstand »
Both Lenny
Kravitz and Bernie
Mac - two men not exactly known for their dramatic acting work - have recently signed on to play roles that they
hope will defy expectations. Mac will be joining Terrence Howard in
PDR,
the true-story-of-redemption swimming coach movie in which
he'll play a janitor. Together, the two characters successfully keep a rec center (presumably that's where the swimming
happens) open, and turn it into a "vital community center." I don't know about anyone else, but I feel
uplifted already.Kravitz, meanwhile, will be taking on a slightly darker role: he's agreed to star in a screen version of Ray Shell's forthcoming debut novel, Iced. In the movie, Kravitz will play a musician with a crack addiction (hopefully the second part of that is going to be a bigger stretch for him than the former); the story follows him over the course of his early career, as the impact of his drug use deepens. The film will be directed by Lee Daniels, whose short career has included production credits on Monster's Ball, The Woodsman, and Shadowboxer, his only other directorial effort.
Jeremy Renner Wants To Be An Avenger
Directors We Love: Jim Jarmusch
Indie Roundup: 'Sweetgrass,' 'Clarkworld,' 'Broken Embraces'
Shelf Life: Fight Club_thumbnail.jpg)
Watch: Famous 'Matrix' Scene Re-Created with LEGOs
_thumbnail.jpg)
