Writer mostly boring with hesitation producing part of clock

EXCLUSIVE : Oscar nominee Cynthia Erivo ( Harriet ) will lead cast alongside Being The Ricardos and Arrested Development star Alia Shawkat in Anthony Chen’s ( Ilo Ilo ) English-language debut Drift . The film reunites Call Me By Your Name producers Emilie Georges and Peter Spears and exec producer Naima Abed. Spears won the Best Picture Oscar last year for Chloé Zhao’s Nomadland . Drift follows a young Liberian refugee named Jacqueline (Erivo) who has barely escaped her war-torn country to a Greek island. She offers massages to tourists in exchange for one or two euros to battle her hunger, while her daily struggle for survival keeps the memories that haunt her at bay. She meets an unmoored tour guide (Shawkat) and the two become close as they each find hope in the other. Ibrahima Ba, who has a supporting role in Cannes 2022 title Father & Soldier , is also among cast. Filming is currently underway in Greece on the under-the-radar … [Read more...] about Cynthia Erivo & Alia Shawkat Lead Anthony Chen’s ‘Drift’ For ‘Call Me By Your Name’ & ‘Nomadland’ Producers — Cannes

‘D ear heavenly Father,” someone is saying to the silent room, “please give us the ability to touch this crowd.” All thirty-six members of D’Angelo ‘s touring band and crew are stuffed into his dressing room, hands linked, heads bowed in a large prayer circle. “And when our ability fails, Lord. Please. Take over.” The room answers with a loud “ mm-hmm. “ Prayer ends, and the entire group collapses into a giant moving hug, all yelling at once in a joyous din – “ Soultronic force! My re-deeeeem-er !” It seems they’re gearing up for some high-energy smash-mouth football. Or a musical mission. As the scrum disperses, D’Angelo turns to you and slaps you five. And nearly breaks your hand. D, as they call him, gives pounds with injurious intent – stiff-handed smacks that make a firecracker pop and then meld into a tight clamp, a finger snap, two fist bumps and another clamp, or some such combination. The more he likes you, the more he uses the strength in his bulky shoulders and … [Read more...] about D’Angelo Is Holding Your Hand

W hen Steven Soderbergh began work on The Knick – his gritty, historical medical series for Cinemax, set in New York City in 1900 – he enjoyed replicating the era’s look, fashion and stomach-churning surgical practices. But one of the few things that was far too ghastly to replicate was the music. “Oh, it was horrible,” he says with a laugh. “Aesthetically, it’s a really cool period, but the music was absolutely boring and not interesting. Ragtime had just started – and there’s a tiny bit of that in the background of some scenes – but other than that, there was nothing good.” So the director turned to the only person he thought could give The Knick a unique sound: his frequent collaborator, Cliff Martinez. As the director filmed the show, he had been using shimmery EDM flourishes that Martinez had written for the 2012 teensploitation flick Spring Breakers and some of the composer’s wiry synth lines from his own 2011 pandemic disaster film, Contagion , as temporary … [Read more...] about Blood Brothers: Inside the Music of ‘The Knick’

There are few contemporary working artists who maintain a more idiosyncratic release schedule than D’Angelo . He’s famous for tinkering and revising his music, eating up years and hundreds of reels of analog tape on his way to an eventual album. It took him 14 years to follow up 2000’s smash hit Voodoo with his most recent album, Black Messiah . In that time, three U.S. presidents occupied the White House, Facebook was invented, and D’Angelo released precisely zero songs. So it was a surprise when a new D’Angelo track titled “ May I? Stand Unshaken” quietly appeared on YouTube recently. Even more startling: In many of the bootleg clips D’Angelo’s new song soundtracks footage from the wildly popular video game Red Dead Redemption 2 . That’s because the only way listeners can legitimately get their hands on “May I? Stand Unshaken,” which has not been officially released yet, is by buying a copy of the game. “Even RCA [D’Angelo’s label] had no idea we were … [Read more...] about D’Angelo F-cking Loves Playing ‘Red Dead Redemption 2’

D ‘Angelo is a morning person, of sorts. When he’s working in the studio, as was often the case in the 14-year interregnum between 2000’s Voodoo and 2014’s Black Messiah, he quits his all-night recording sessions just in time to greet each day’s sunrise. “I’m definitely on the night shift,” he says, drawing deep on one of a series of Newport cigarettes, not long after midnight in the midtown Manhattan studio where he recorded much of Black Messiah. He’s wearing a denim shirt unbuttoned over a white undershirt, dark jeans and leather boots. Dog tags bearing the names of his three children hang from a chain around his neck. He looks weary, though he woke up not long ago. It’s his first interview since he released one of the most universally acclaimed albums in years, an album that seemed as if it might never come out at all. D’Angelo could well be the most singular, visionary star to emerge from R&B since Prince. His music, stuffed with live instrumentation and harmonic … [Read more...] about The Second Coming of D’Angelo

Executive Producer and star Emmy Rossum dons the blond wig and hot pink for new limited series, Angelyne . Angelyne’s larger-than-life persona covered billboards around the city of angels and catapulted her to cult status in the ’80s. Rossum gathered hundreds of hours of footage and images of Angelyne to study her mannerisms and voice to tell the story. As a lover of etymology, she bore her depiction of one of Los Angeles ’ most mysterious icons from the name. “I had a way of breaking down her name for myself that I never actually told anybody that’s like a secret prayer I would tell myself before we rolled. When I broke down her name I got, ‘At a fork in the road, I’m reborn a messenger of God,'” she said. “I truly believe that the character of Angelyne represents something that people needed in Los Angeles which was a a bright pink light, a beacon of hope, a sense of mystery and magic, someone that could bring you joy in a barren concrete wasteland of dreams. And I really … [Read more...] about ‘The Breakdown’ With Emmy Rossum

Netflix has given buzzy half-hour newcomer Heartstopper , from See-Saw Films, a two-season pickup. Multi-season renewals are rare at the streamer, and the one for Heartstopper is a testament to the coming-of-age romantic comedy-drama checking all the boxes as a Netflix success story. The streamer famously bases its renewal decisions on analyzing shows’ cost vs. performance. Developed and produced out of the U.K., Heartstopper, which Alice Oseman adapted from her graphic novel, has been an OK performer, spending three weeks in Netflix’s weekly global Top 10 rankings of English-language series since its April 22 debut, peaking at No. 5. (It has reached the Netflix Top Ten list in 54 countries.) But the modestly-budgeted British series, featuring young up-and-coming lead cast as well as Olivia Colman as a guest star and Stephe Fry as voiceover, has had a lightning-in-a-bottle outsized cultural impact. It is one of Netflix’s best-reviewed series with 100% on Rotten … [Read more...] about ‘Heartstopper’ Renewed For Seasons 2 & 3 By Netflix

Soulja Boy ‘s voice is breaking up. He apologizes, the culprit is his house — it’s in the hills and possesses less than optimal reception — rapper problems. He’s already let his 5 million-plus followers on Twitter know that we’re going to talk: “Whoa I got rolling stone and Forbes requesting a interview oh shit.” A couple of hours later he’ll let the same followers know he finished said interview with Rolling Stone ; he didn’t tweet about his Forbes interview, so I don’t think I’ll get scooped on this story. It’s the kind of hyper-documentation DeAndre Cortez Way has been practicing for over a decade, in part because he pioneered it. Soulja wants more. His latest plan to get more is called SouljaGames, and it’s arrived in time for the holidays. On his website , the 28-year-old entrepreneur is selling a plethora of electronics including the SouljaWatch, SouljaPods, SouljaPhone and SouljaHeadphones. None of that is too out of the ordinary; off-brand electronics are available … [Read more...] about Soulja Boy Wants to Take Over the Gaming Industry One Console at a Time