Black Stuntmen’s Association Said Freedom Fighter William Robison Deserves Recognition Before the Civil Rights and Black Lives Matter movements, an African-American stagecoach driver for Wells Fargo risked life and limb to defend his people. Former slave William Robison was a miner, pioneer and freedom fighter who worked to desegregate California schools and was part of the 1856 state Convention of Colored Citizens that used petitions to allow blacks to testify in court. He even joined an armed gang that freed a group of illegally apprehended slaves in San Joaquin County, Calif, according to Wells Fargo. Besides his work in advancing civil rights, Robison’s day job was driving a Wells Fargo stagecoach between Stockton, Calif. and the Nevada gold mines. He drove the six-horse stagecoach for 40 years before retiring in 1895. The Black Stuntmen’s Association spent the last two years lobbying Wells Fargo to commemorate Robison with a commercial featuring an African-American stagecoach driver – even submitting a script – but they said the multi-national corporation has given them the runaround, association president Willie Harris told BOSSIP. “We tried to get Wells Fargo to let us do the commercial, and use a black in their commercial. They refused,” said Harris, 73, who helped create the Black Stuntmen’s Association in 1967 to challenge racism in Hollywood. “Why can’t you do a commercial with a black stagecoach driver? What’s wrong with letting a black kid know about their history?” When the black stuntmen’s group told Wells Fargo that it had members who could drive a “six-up” or a six horse stagecoach, Harris said Wells Fargo execs told him they only do a few commercials each year and could not accept unsolicited ideas. Wells Fargo can obviously advertise in any way that it wants, but it could use the goodwill after it’s $175 million settlement with the U.S. Justice Department over its unfair lending practices to African-Americans and Latinos. Wells Fargo spokeswoman Valerie Williams told BOSSIP that although they’re not pursuing the black stuntmen’s proposal, they’ve honored Robison in their corporate history book, “Since 1852,” and Robeson’s story appears on their blog and in the company’s exhibit at the San Francisco museum. Williams said that the company is committed to sharing African-American’s stories from the past to the present, and supported the film “Red Tails,” about the Tuskegee Airmen as well as a nationwide black history tour. Nevertheless, Harris said Robison deserves to be recognized with his own commercial. “That’s why I’m not gonna let Wells Fargo off the hook,” he said.
George Lucas Makes An Impact With Red Tails George Lucas is all the way down with the brown… George Lucas believes his big-budget movie “Red Tails” about the famed Tuskegee Airmen moved the ball forward for films starring or created by African-Americans in Hollywood, but didn’t change the game. “It had an affect on a lot of kids and adults. Now it’s the one thing that everyone comes up to me and says ‘thank you’ for. I’m proud of that,” he told us at the Fostering a Legacy benefit Saturday evening in East Hampton for singer Ne-Yo’s Compound Foundation, which supports kids in foster care. Lucas, who has three adopted children, was honored at the benefit for his positive impact on young adults. The movie, which took Lucas more than 20 years to bring to theaters and was produced with $58 million of his own money, raked in $50 million at theaters, surpassing Hollywood’s expectations. “We didn’t get to a point when they said, ‘Oh let’s just do black movies.’ But every time you poke ’em, it makes an effect.” said Lucas, who attended the benefit with girlfriend Mellody Hobson. The director announced his retirement earlier this year to focus on making smaller “hobby films,” but told us it will also leave more time for Hobson. Awww, how sweet. Are y’all feelin them as a couple? Source
There are instances when reviewing intentions would be so much easier than reviewing actual movies, and Red Tails, which was directed by first-timer Anthony Hemingway but conceived, shaped and willed into being by George Lucas, is one of them. Red Tails is – or is intended to be – a rousing comic-book adventure based loosely on real-life events: The picture follows a group of Tuskegee Airmen as they shoot down German fighter planes and blow munitions transport trains to smithereens. In between missions, they fight more personal battles, against insidious racism and bigotry. It’s a great idea to make a movie, in 2012, about the Tuskegee Airmen, who broke ground as the U.S. military’s first African American aviators: They represent a chapter in history that’s been underexplored, certainly in the world of movies. But it’s a shame the idea had to come from George Lucas, whose enthusiasm for his subject translates mostly into a peculiar strain of inept awkwardness. Even if Red Tails becomes a hit – and it just might – it still represents a missed opportunity for greatness. Red Tails focuses chiefly on two fictional pilots, Marty “Easy” Julian (Nate Parker) and Joe “Lightning” Little (David Oyelowo), both members of the Air Corp.’s 332 nd Fighter Group stationed in Italy, guys with very different styles but bound by years of friendship. Easy follows all the rules, rarely straying from the straight-and-narrow (though he does, as it turns out, have his own demons to fight); Lightning is the hotdogger who’ll go out of his way to shoot down that random Nazi, even when it means going against orders. He also has the kind of confident swagger that earns him the love of a pretty Italian girl, Sofia (Daniela Ruah); he’s so charming and well-mannered that even Sofia’s old-world mama approves of him. The cast of characters milling, and flying, around Lightning and Easy include Ray “Junior” Gannon (Tristan Wilds), who wants nothing more than to be a fighter pilot even after an injury compromises him, and David “Deke” Watkins (Marcus T. Paulk), the only truly religious pilot in the gang, who keeps a holy card emblazoned with the figure of the deity he refers to as “Black Jesus” close by at all times. In the air, these pilots show a desire to fight hard for their country, and they’ve got the skills to do so. But military brass doesn’t get it – in their eyes, the Tuskegee pilots are inferior and are thus relegated to routine assignments, flying in rickety old junkers. But Colonel A.J. Bullard (Terrence Howard) pulls off a minor miracle, getting a plum assignment for his boys. That pleases pipe-smoking Major Emanuelle Stance (Cuba Gooding Jr.) to no end – his men have been champing at the bit for a chance like this, and at last they’ll have the chance to prove what they’re made of. The problem isn’t that Red Tails paints its story, and its characters, in brilliant, admittedly corny comic-book colors. (The script, filled with dialogue along the lines of “Germans! Let’s get ’em!”, is by John Ridley and Aaron McGruder.) The approach could have worked, particularly when you’ve got a cast of actors as charismatic as these. Gooding and Howard, both known quantities, are perfectly serviceable here – Howard, in particular, makes even the most stilted dialogue sing, thanks to his silky purr. But even the lesser-known performers here, like the British actor Oyelowo, have some astonishing moments of grace – it’s frustrating to watch them working so hard in a picture that can’t, in the end, do them justice. Because there’s just no way around it: Red Tails is, for the most part, simply a clumsy piece of work, one that revels in ’40s comic-book style without managing to capture any of the emotional resonance of comic-book style. There’s no dramatic rhythm or flow to Red Tails . A terrible thing might happen to a character, only to be rapidly erased by this or that handy distraction. It’s as if Lucas were simply afraid of human feeling, any kind of human feeling, even the kind you often find in comic books. The movie has touches of comedy that, for reasons that are almost impossible to fathom, don’t come off as comic. At one point a white character tells one of the pilots that under cover of night, he’ll be safe from the Nazis: “At least they won’t see you in the dark.” The line should be a joke – it is, in fact, a marvelous if obvious joke – but it falls flat, almost as if Lucas and/or Hemingway (it’s hard to tell who’s at the steering wheel here, though we can safely put most of our money on the former) suffered from a failure of nerve and decided to neutralize it. The picture is full of clunker moments like that, instances where the initial impulse may have been good but the execution is nothing but blundering and inelegant. This is Hemingway’s first film, though he has previously directed episodes of Treme, The Wire, and CSI: NY . If he has a distinctive style, it’s impossible to identify it in Red Tails. The handprints all over the movie clearly belong to Lucas. That’s especially true in the technically impressive dogfighting sequences, which are the best reason to see Red Tails . Watching those planes swoop and skim through the air, sometimes flying in ballet-like formation, at others approximating a chaotic streetfight, is the greatest pleasure the movie offers. That’s not surprising when you consider that Lucas, the eternal, wide-eyed naïf among his generation of filmmakers, presented an early cut of Star Wars with old-movie dogfight footage substituting for the space-combat effects he’d fill in later. Yet not even these glorious, effusive sequences are nearly enough to carry the picture, and in some ways, they do it a disservice. Red Tails is a project that has been dear to Lucas’ heart for years. According to a profile of Lucas in the New York Times Magazine , the filmmaker first commissioned the script in the early 1990s, and although 20th Century Fox is distributing the picture, Lucas is footing all the bills himself. Lucas has admitted that with Red Tails he’s using the comic-book approach to lure a younger audience; he wants them to engage with the story of the Tuskegee Airmen, and his intentions are noble. If only his passion had translated into a more graceful movie, one that didn’t squander the considerable gifts of its cast. In the end Red Tails is mostly about the coolness of flying. Its heart is in the clouds, instead of with the men at the controls. Follow Stephanie Zacharek on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
‘Sometimes it seems more important to me than other times,’ Del Rey told MTV News before her ‘Saturday Night Live’ debut. By James Montgomery Lana Del Rey performs “Video Games” on “SNL” on Saturday Photo: NBC Lana Del Rey’s “Saturday Night Live” performance was divisive, to say the very least, as she seemed to battle nerves (and some rather shaky vocal moments), circumstances that only gave more ammunition to her critics. Of course, to be fair, given her rather meteoric rise to the mainstream, Del Rey hasn’t exactly had a ton of time to develop her stage presence, though, as previous television appearances — like this “Later Live … with Jools Holland” performance from October — prove, she’s certainly capable of much more than she showcased on “SNL” (at least vocally). Still, Del Rey will be the first to admit that she’s yet to truly be at ease when it comes to performing on television. In fact, she finds the entire process to be, well, a little off-putting, as she told MTV News last week. “I find it weird … sometimes. [It] depends on the day,” Del Rey said. “You know, like, [it] depends on what’s going on with my family and everyone around me. If I have other things to think about, or I’m trying to get things done for somebody else, and I’m not in my own way, then … I’m like, ‘This doesn’t really matter.’ Sometimes it seems more important to me than other times, I don’t know.” And though, at the time, she couldn’t have predicted how her “SNL” performance would turn out — she said she wasn’t even sure which songs she’d be singing — Del Rey said that, no matter what happened, and despite how weird she may find the entire TV experience, she’s just trying to enjoy the ride. “Things are cool. They always will be, whether the music goes good or not,” she said. “Like, I consider being able to sing a luxury, it doesn’t run my life, it’s not my main focus. I love it, I feel grateful. I’m honored to be on ‘SNL’ I’m happy to be here, but if I didn’t have it, I’d be happy too.” What did you think of Lana Del Rey’s “SNL” debut? Share your thoughts on our Facebook page. Related Videos MTV News Extended Play: Lana Del Rey Related Artists Lana Del Rey
Director has wanted to bring story of Tuskegee Airmen to big screen for nearly 25 years. By Kevin P. Sullivan Terrence Howard Photo: MTV News George Lucas made a name for himself in the late ’70s and ’80s with “Star Wars” and “Indiana Jones,” but for nearly 25 years, the director tried to bring one story to the big screen, a movie he wasn’t able to make until now. After decades in development, “Red Tails,” Lucas’ tale of the Tuskegee Airmen, will finally hit theaters. The story of Lucas’ battle to get “Red Tails” in front of the camera only added to the significance of the story for many of the cast and crew. Terrence Howard plays Col. A.J. Bullard, one of the commanders of the Tuskegee Airmen, America’s first African-American air regimen. The actor told MTV News that Lucas’ passion set the tone for the entire project. “Well, he has complete control of the Force. As far as I understand it, he invented the Force,” Howard said. “It’s quite a moving inertia associated with it. You believe in him, and when he says something, he follows it all the way through.” According to Howard, having such a strong backing force changed the way the actors approached the film and their roles. “It gives us a great deal of encouragement walking into the roles,” he said. “We know that we’re going to be 100 percent supported.” Like any Lucas project, “Red Tails” comes with the technical wizardry that made the man a legend. “When you look at the final project and you look at these fight scenarios, you can’t believe that it’s not real,” Howard said. “It looks tangible, and it’s wonderful to be able to say ‘George Lucas manned this, created this vessel that Anthony Hemingway was able to direct.’ We become moving parts of this incredible armada.” Do you plan to see ‘Red Tails’ in theaters? Let us know in the comments! Check out everything we’ve got on “Red Tails.” For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com . Related Videos MTV Rough Cut: Red Tails
Via The Playlist , here’s your chance to finally weigh in on seven minutes of the George Lucas-produced, Anthony Hemingway-directed Tuskegee Airmen biopic Red Tails . The film opens Jan. 20, but your jaw drops effective immediately. Here: Jen and I will go first (Lucas quote via USA Today ): Your turn:
The troubled, George Lucas-produced historical action drama Red Tails finally has a release date: January 20, 2012. Lucasfilm announced the news this morning; it comes more than 20 years after Lucas first hatched his tale of the legendary Tuskegee Airmen and a little more than a year after Lucas ordered significant reshoots on director Anthony Hemingway’s film. Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard star.
Just hours after George Lucas and Lucasfilm announced a release date for the long, long, long in development Tuskegee Airmen action-drama Red Tails , the first trailer has debuted online. “We count our victories by the bombers we get to their targets, by the husbands we return to their wives, by the fathers we give back to their children,” says a very determined Terrence Howard at a crucial moment in the very determined two-minute clip. Sounds heroic, Terry! But how does Red Tails compare to the 1995 HBO film, The Tuskegee Airmen ?
