Posts tagged Nelsan Ellis
Get On Up “Loud and Proud”
Aug 14th
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
GET ON UP is the story of James Brown, known at various times in his life and career as The Hardest Working Man in Show Business, The Godfather of Soul, or as he preferred to be called by strangers and even friends, “Mr. Brown.”
Brown is played remarkably by Chadwick Boseman, expect him to be nominated for an Academy Award in 2015, and don’t be surprised if he wins one for Best Actor.
TIME magazine said that “From 1958 to 1986, [Brown] landed 116 singles on BILLBOARD’s Hot 100 singles chart, and their irresistible grooves have since been sampled on about 4,000 songs.”
Mick Jagger is one of the producers of the film, and he has said that he copied a lot of Brown’s moves for his performances from what Brown did so remarkably on stage.
Incidentally, one of the most interesting scenes in the movie is when Brown and the Rolling Stones appeared together during a performance and Brown’s manager, played by Dan Aykroyd, tells Brown that the Stones will be has-beens within a year.
When Brown walks off stage after his performance, he passes Jagger, who has been watching Brown from the wings, and Brown says, “Welcome to America.”
The movie jumps around in time to show Brown’s life as a little boy being abused by his father and abandoned by his mother to how he developed an interest in music to how he formed his first singing group, The Famous Flames, with his lifelong friend Bobby Byrd to his many brushes with the law and many relationships with women, but mostly to his many performances of his most famous songs in various performances in various locations around the world.
The editing is almost surreal when it cuts between performances of the same song at different times and locations.
We see how Brown overcame the rules that had already been written in the music business and how they mistreated Black performers, we see how Brown broke away from the Famous Flames and became his own star performer, and we see how Brown mistreated his own band and those around him who loved him.
But most of all, we see outstanding performances that earned him the right to be called “The Hardest Working Man in Show Business.”
GET ON UP can bring tears to your eyes.
Get On Up – Movie Trailer
Aug 1st
In his follow-up to the four-time Academy Award (R)-nominated blockbuster The Help, Tate Taylor directs 42’s Chadwick Boseman as James Brown in Get on Up. Based on the incredible life story of the Godfather of Soul, the film will give a fearless look inside the music, moves and moods of Brown, taking audiences on the journey from his impoverished childhood to his evolution into one of the most influential figures of the 20th century. Boseman is joined in the drama by Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Nelsan Ellis, Lennie James, Tika Sumpter, Jill Scott and Dan Aykroyd.
“Secretariat” Greatest Racehorse That Ever Lived
Oct 14th
“Greatest Racehorse That Ever Lived”
“Hotshots” looks at a movie!
SECRETARIAT is based on a real-life racehorse, a real-life person, and a real-life series of events, and even though everyone in the audience already knows the ending going in, the movie is still an uplifting and inspirational experience to see.
After all, it isn’t just little girls who love horses and who love good stories about horses, right?
The movie begins in 1969 in Denver, and we meet a housewife and her family. She is Penny Chenery, played by Diane Lane, and she receives a phone call that her mother has died.
The whole family drives to Virginia for the funeral, where we learn that Penny’s father has been ill for some time and the horse farm he owns has been losing money “hand over fist.”
Penny sends her family back home to Denver, and she stays behind to help out on the farm and try to make it solvent again.
She fires the horse trainer, because he has been cheating the farm, and she tracks down Lucien Laurin, a French Canadian who has been trying to retire and who is played wonderfully by John Malkovich.
Penny offers Lucien the job of being her horse trainer, but he turns her down, saying that he doesn’t even follow racing anymore.
However, when Penny tells him that the farm is about to acquire a newborn foal that was sired by Bold Ruler, a famous racehorse, Lucien says, “Call me when she drops her foal.”
Of course, you can guess the rest, which, as they say, is history, and in this case is actually true, although some minor details have been altered or omitted in order to make the movie tighter, more exciting, and even better.
The Triple Crown is Thoroughbred horseracing’s greatest achievement, which is unofficially awarded a horse that wins the three most prestigious races in one season, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes.
Before Secretariat did so in 1973, no horse had won the Triple Crown since Citation won it in 1948, 25 years earlier, and Secretariat still owns the best winning time in two of those races, a remarkable achievement for a horse whose sire had a reputation for speed, but not for stamina.
SECRETARIAT is a marvelous film about a horse that is still known as the greatest racehorse that ever lived.
I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”
