DJ Khaled To Drop Documentary “Father Of Asahd: The Album Experience” Exclusively On TIDAL Source: Epic Records / Epic Records Yesterday, TIDAL announced a series of member exclusives leading up to the release of DJ Khaled’s Father of Asahd . Starting with the “Father of Asahd: The Album Experience ” documentary on 5/17 and then a livestreamed CRWN interview with Elliott Wilson – TIDAL members will have a 360-degree view of the album. Source: Greg Doherty / Getty The trailer for Father of Asahd: The Album Experience documentary just dropped! You can find the full trailer, which features cameos from JAY-Z, Meek Mill, J.Balvin, Gunna, SZA and much more here ! Due to overwhelming demand, TIDAL and DJ Khaled are bringing his documentary, “ Father of Asahd: The Album Experience ” to the legendary Apollo theater on Tuesday, May 21! Don’t forget to subscribe and check it out!
Nobody is safe, it seems. After Drake and Lil Wayne both have their names tossed into scandal over the weekend following the ‘Surviving R Kelly’ Documentaries, now K Dot has to defend himself as well. Check this out. Via | HotNewHipHop The rapper had expressed support for the icon’s musical legacy. Lifetime’s Surviving R. Kelly has prompted a well-rounded conversation about sexual misconduct past the documentary’s main focus. Although the production revolved around those who either claim to have either been victimized by R. Kelly or to have witnessed him victimizing others, viewers are including other entertainers in their insights relating to rape culture. Kendrick Lamar , one of the current generation’s most “woke” artists, is being dragged once again for supporting R. Kelly’s music . In efforts to sustain R. Kelly’s musical legacy, and perhaps set a precedent of separating artists horrific behaviors from their art and avoiding lasting repercussions on their careers, Kendrick Lamar’s reps urged Spotify to retain the R&B icon’s music on its platform. They did so while threatening to pull his catalog from under their banner. Since Surviving R. Kelly has reignited society’s concern with how alleged predators are perceived, the sympathizers of the accused are also being scrutinized. READ MORE
Former POTUS Bill Clinton’s about to have his life put on the big screen… and HBO is set to give him the documentary treatment. According to The Hollywood Reporter : The premium cable network has teamed with Oscar winner Martin Scorsese, who will produce and direct the telepic with Clinton’s full cooperation. The film is set to explore the 42nd president’s perspectives on history, politics, culture and the world, both while he was in office and in the years since. Businessman, filmmaker and Democratic supporter Steve Bing will serve as a producer. “President Clinton is one of the most compelling figures of our time, whose worldview and perspective, combined with his uncommon intelligence, make him a singular voice on the world stage,” said HBO CEO Richard Plepler and programming president Michael Lombardo in a joint statement. “This documentary, under Marty’s gifted direction, creates a unique opportunity for the president to reflect on myriad issues that have consumed his attention and passion throughout both his presidency and postpresidency.” Added Scorsese: “A towering figure who remains a major voice in world issues, President Clinton continues to shape the political dialogue both here and around the world. Through intimate conversations, I hope to provide greater insight into this transcendent figure.” The political entry marks Scorsese’s fourth collaboration with HBO, following the documentaries Public Speaking (2010) and the Emmy-winning George Harrison: Living in the Material World (2011) and the drama series Boardwalk Empire, for which he won a directing Emmy. Will you watch? Images via tumblr
Break open the bubbly! Alfred Hitchock’s newly restored silent comedy, Champagne will get be streamed live and exclusively on the visual arts website The Space on Thursday at 7:30 p.m. Greenwich Mean Time (or 3:30 p.m. Eastern time). Champagne (1928) was Hitch’s eighth film as director and tells the story of a playgirl (Betty Balfour) living off the profits of her father’s champagne business, and her father’s plan to get rid of her fiance, who he suspects is a gold-digger. Father knows best! The restoration premiere of Champagne will be accompanied by a specially commissioned new score performed live by British Composers Award winner Mira Calix. and, according to The Space, the film will only be available to watch during the Sept. 27 live stream. In preparation for the premiere, Hitchcock fans can also watch four documentaries about the filmmaker that are available on demand at the site, including Hitchcock at the Picture Palace and Hitchcock’s Pleasure Garden, which is about his directorial debut. The Champagne is being offered as part of The Space’s BFI Beginnings showcase of first or early films by key British filmmakers including Ridley Scott and Ken Russell. Follow Frank DiGiacomo on Twitter. Follow Movieline on Twitter.
Jessica Chastain ‘s had an incredibly good run of prestige films in the brief span of time that she’s been in Hollywood: Take Shelter , Coriolanus , Tree of Life , The Help , and this summer’s Lawless have made quite the highlight reel. So it was inevitable that the starlet would pop up in a horror film sooner or later. Might as well be a spooky one like the Guillermo Del Toro -executive produced Mama , right? Well — spooky, silly, horror movies tend to be both of those things these days and Mama , from first time feature director Andres Muschietti (adapting his own short film), doesn’t look to be terribly groundbreaking. Lucas ( Game of Thrones ‘ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his girlfriend Annabel (Chastain) take in Lucas’s two young nieces, who are discovered living near-feral existences on their own in a desolate cabin in the woods for five years following their parents’ death. Adjusting to life with the adopted tykes isn’t so easy, though – Annabel begins to suspect that something sinister (“Mama!”) has followed them. And it probably doesn’t like seeing a new mommy tucking the kids in at night. Moody atmospherics, supernatural suspense, spider-crawling ghouls, Chastain with a black dye job and heavily-lined eyes at her very Gothiest… nothing seems all that original here. Despite Del Toro’s involvement and Chastain’s abilities, this is hitting theaters during the dumping grounds of January, so temper your expectations. Verdict: Looks like that Julia Roberts movie Stepmom , with ghosts. Meh. Mama is in theaters January 18. [Via Apple ]
Just a couple of days into the Toronto International Film Festival this year, a curious commonality was noticeable in a number of the documentaries that I screened – re-enactments. While I only managed to see just under half of the nearly 50 documentary features in the TIFF line-up , it was surprising to see the storytelling approach — where significant past events are recreated via actors and, sometimes, animation — relatively widely employed. While some notable non-fiction films have made effective use of the practice — such as The Imposter or The Thin Blue Line — re-enactments more often feel in line with television productions of the Unsolved Mysteries variety. They remain a controversial element of documentary making, potentially challenging a film’s authenticity by introducing an outside, fictional element. It’s significant that the practice of re-enactment is the singular focus of one of the festival’s most-discussed docs, The Act of Killing , making this challenging film an appropriate place to begin. Director Joshua Oppenheimer, together with Christine Cynn and other anonymous co-directors, turn Indonesian gangsters into would-be Hollywood stars. The former death-squad leaders, responsible for the massacre of more than a million undesirables in 1965-1966, gleefully go along with Oppenheimer’s unusual plan, re-enacting the techniques they used to torture and murder suspected Communists, from off-the-cuff demonstrations of the cleanest way to strangle a victim to more elaborate set pieces involving interrogations and the destruction of a village. Verisimilitude is not the intent here. Although these over-the-top re-enactments push the limits of documentary ethics, they also shed light on the outsized personalities of the main subjects and reveal their histories and character. This conflation of a horrific reality with stylized fantasy also challenges the viewer and the perpetrators and becomes an unexpected form of therapy for the latter group. Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God More literal examples of re-enactments are present in Alex Gibney’s Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God , the prolific Oscar-winner’s exploration of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests. Focused around a Milwaukee priest who abused countless boys at the deaf school he ran, the film features the American Sign Language testimony of a number of men, spoken aloud by the likes of Ethan Hawke and John Slattery, but not distractingly so. Despite the forcefulness of the now-grown victims’ anger, expressed via their demonstrative signing and reinforced by the actors’ delivery (itself a form of re-enactment), Gibney decides to go one step further, recreating key sequences from their stories: silent scenes in which the priest prowls through the dorms ready to pounce on a sleeping young boy, or abuses the sanctity of the confessional booth. These sequences lack in subtlety and while they don’t undermine the strength of the film as a whole, they seem entirely superfluous. [ Editor’s Note: Gibney talks about his reasons for using these re-enactment sequences in an upcoming Movieline interview. ] Even more conventional is the use of re-enactments in Janet Tobias’ N o Place On Earth , the story of Ukrainian Jews who spent nearly a year and half living, literally, in caves to avoid capture during World War II. The majority of the film consists of actors portraying the circumstances of their flight from persecution and the conditions of their underground existence. Still-living survivors offer commentary in intermittent talking-head sequences, but the intended weight of the film is in the re-enactments which at times break from simply illustrating the story to feature actual scripted sequences. In the process, No Place on Earth ventures a step too far into docudrama. Given that the film is a production of the History Channel, it will likely connect with TV viewers, but, personally, scenes with the survivors re-visiting their cave sanctuary late in the film carried far more emotional resonance than the recreations.
There’s good news and bad news from Warner Bros. about Gravity and Gangster Squad , two of its most anticipated fall releases. Which do you prefer first? The bad news? Why, of course! Via THR : Gravity , the upcoming thriller starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney as astronauts stranded at a space station, has been pushed to a 2013 release, studio Warner Bros. announced on Monday. The film from writer-director Alfonso Cuarón was originally scheduled to open on November 21, 2012, but is now marked only as being an “unscheduled 2013” release. An early test screening of a rough cut of Gravity earlier this month in Pasadena, CA., drew strong reactions , both for and against, in response to the still-unfinished film. Womp woooomp . But hey — chin up! After a spiffy new trailer prompted Warners to settle on a date for its fearsome-looking Gangster Squad , along comes word (via Box OFfice Mojo ) of the searing Ryan Gosling/Josh Brolin/Sean Penn crime drama Gangster Squad settling into the Sept. 7 frame. There it will do battle with the Henry Cavill/Bruce Willis thriller The Cold Light of Day , which I’d bet Summit Entertainment will relocate at some point in the not very distant future. Developing… [ THR , BOM ]
You don’t need to be a sports fan to have been touched by the 30 For 30 documentary series produced by ESPN, one of the few thriving outlets anywhere for nonfiction filmmaking and a patron of diverse directors from Oscar winners Barry Levinson, Alex Gibney and Barbara Kopple to legends Albert Maysles and Steve James to neophytes Ice Cube and Steve Nash. As such, today’s a good day for all of us, with ESPN announcing that it will continue 30 For 30 both on the network and online. Originally intended to celebrate ESPN’s 30th anniversary from late 2009 to the end of 2010, the series gained enough popularity to continue through 2011 and beyond; its most recent installment, Jose Morales’s 26 Years: The Dewey Bozella Story , premiered in March. Today, meanwhile, the NYT reports that the network has re-upped 30 For 30 for two years in conjunction with its sports-culture offshoot Grantland : “When we embarked on 30 for 30 , we always wondered if there would be 30 good stories,” said Connor Schell, vice president and executive producer of ESPN Films. “Now, I think all of us in this group believe that there is an infinite number of stories.” As the films roll out, they will be augmented on Grantland by podcasts, feature stories and oral histories. A short digital film — which will be unrelated to the longer ones — will make its debut each month on Grantland. Mr. Schell described the shorts as “visual editorials,” of five to nine minutes. “They’re meant to be interesting conversations with people who have a point of view about something or sports stories that don’t require a four-act treatment,” he said. The first short, Eric Drath’s Here Now , went online today and concerns the continuing odyssey of baseball’s exiled all-time hit king Pete Rose. Check it out , and mazel tov to all. [ NYT , Grantland ]
