A day after taking the stand in the murder case against William Balfour – and breaking down when a photo of her mom was presented – Jennifer Hudson couldn’t handle being in the same room with the man accused of killing her relatives. Witnesses tell TMZ Hudson excused herself from the legal proceedings when prosecutors pulled out crime scene photos of Jennifer’s seven-year old nephew Julian, who was allegedly shot by Balfour in a fit of rage. He is also on trial for murdering Hudson’s mother and brother. David Otunga , Jennifer’s fiance and the father of her son, remained inside the courtroom after Hudson departed and, insiders say, jotted down notes about the crime scene. Our hearts and thoughts go out to Jennifer and her family.
I didn’t want to believe that this was a real video, but damn it is. Once upon a time, Steve Francis was one of the most explosive and prolific point guards in the NBA. A short time after his career has come to an end, Steve Francis is rapping (terribly) and making Murder Inc. tribute videos… Continue
Characters in horror movies get to be forgiven a few featherbrained actions for the sake of suspense. Why go into the creepy basement after you’ve realized the lights aren’t working? Why visit the decrepit mansion in the middle of nowhere after everyone’s warned you off? Why stick around the haunted house long after a rational person would have fled to a motel at least two states away? (The upcoming Cabin in the Woods provides a clever, clever twist on this type of behavior.) Why? Because it’s scary. But even by the most lenient of genre standards, the behavior of the characters in David Brooks’s ATM is ludicrous enough to make anyone grind his or her teeth in frustration. Its trio of unlucky coworkers winding up a night out are trapped and menaced by a dude in a coat . He’s a big guy, but still — he’s not even carrying a chainsaw or axe or other murder-y implement to start, and it’s three against one. The film is built around one long standoff over the small hours of a frigid Midwestern night during which the man keeps his freezing and ever more desperate victims at bay inside a strip-mall ATM booth while we howl at the screen “Just walk out the door! The guy doesn’t look very fast!” The number of contrivances needed to extend this situation for as long as it plays out pile up until you pray for a twist that reveals the whole thing to be some extensive practical joke, excusing the silliness of everything, after which they all go to Denny’s for pancakes. Spoilers: There is no such twist. David (Brian Geraghty), the film’s protagonist, works at a finance firm where he spends his day apologizing helplessly to clients whose 401(k)s he hasn’t been able to save and failing to ask out his crush Emily (Alice Eve). He’s lured into sticking around for the office Christmas party by his obnoxious coworker Corey ( The Wackness ‘s Josh Peck), who informs him that Emily’s leaving for a new job and that David’s got one more evening to make his move. After a few false starts, David actually does, and he has arranged to give her a ride back to her place when Corey drunkenly insists on getting dropped off too. While cockblocking his way home, Corey bullies David into agreeing to stop for pizza, and then realizes he also needs to get cash. The three pull into a quiet parking lot with a pair of ATM machines inside a glass enclosure, and after they all end up taking refuge inside while Corey figures out his card isn’t working, they turn to go and see an ominous figure standing in the parking lot watching them, face obscured by a fur-trimmed hood. It’s a promising opening, between Corey’s charming/annoying advantage-taking, David’s passivity and Emily’s efforts to project receptiveness at her oblivious would-be suitor — these seem like actual characters, not just devices to enable the mechanics of a concept. And the claustrophobia of the main location, the way its florescent-lit everydayness becomes a barely adequate sanctuary from this mysterious threat (whoever the guy is, the three figure, he appears not to have a bank card that will get him through the security swiper) has cinematic appeal. But any tension the film has created dissipates quickly, around the time the trio watches their assailant casually smash another passerby’s head onto the pavement, and decide they should withdraw as much money as they can to try to pay the guy off. He’s just brutally murdered someone in front of them without provocation, and they offer him $500 and some earrings in exchange for walking away? At that point, has he not made it very clear he’s either crazy or has already made the decision to kill everyone there? ATM has an idea, but it’s not one that can sustain a whole feature (this is director Brooks’s first, from a screenplay by Chris Sparling, writer of the similarly minimal Buried ). Its minimalism raises all the wrong kinds of questions — not about why this is happening to these three people, a topic they fruitlessly debate as they try to wait out the night, but why a security guard would pull up a few dozen yards away from a group of people screaming for help in the middle of a freezing night, get out of his car and blithely ask if they’re OK. Or why no one brought a cell phone. Or why Emily seems to be there just to beg the two men not to go outside and not to leave her unprotected (“You can’t leave me in here!”). Or why they would ever take their eyes off their attacker for a second. In order to keep its situation going, the film has its characters act increasingly foolish, right down to the ridiculousness of its last reveal, the biggest, most nonsensical contrivance of them all. ATM shows an initial flicker of intelligence, which makes its spiral into absurdity all the more disappointing. Like late-night-drunk pizza, this is something you’d be better off skipping in favor of just eating some cereal at home. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
‘I was too young to understand everything in it, but I understood everything in it,’ Cease tells MTV News of 1994 track. By Rob Markman, with reporting by Sway Calloway Notorious B.I.G. Photo: Bad Boy The Notorious B.I.G. had plenty of hit singles, like “Big Poppa” and “Hypnotize,” but more often than not, his album cuts were just as memorable. He may have only given fans two albums before he died on March 9, 1997, but Biggie crafted a catalog that is still celebrated 15 years after his death . Songs like “Gimme the Loot” and “Ten Crack Commandments” resonated with fans without music videos or radio play. Till this day, one of Lil’ Cease’s favorite B.I.G. songs is “Everyday Struggle,” from Big’s 1994 debut, Ready to Die. “I’m sure I was about 13,14,” Cease said, recalling his age when his friend first tracked the record. “I was too young to understand everything in it, but I understood everything in it.” On” Everyday Struggle,” the Notorious B.I.G. rapped with a hustler’s remorse. Rather than brag about his crack sales, like rappers often do, Big painted a picture of the downside of the street life. He rhymed about his mother’s disappointment with his lifestyle, the murder of his close friend “Two Techs” and horrific dope-fiend binges. “I don’t wanna live no mo’/ Sometimes I hear death knockin’ at my front door/ I’m living every day like a hustle, another drug to juggle/ Another day, another struggle,” he rapped on the hook. “Just that right there was our story. I was out there 11, 12 years old trying to do that, trying to hustle, trying to get out there and make money,” Cease said. Lil’ Cease estimates that Biggie was 19 years old when he recorded “Everyday Struggle”; to be able to paint such a vivid picture at such a young age was a rarity. “Just the music, the beat, the production and then the way Big was rhymin’ — me knowing Big was only 19 years old when he was writin’ all that stuff,” he said. “I watched Puffy listen to it, I watched [Hot 97 DJ] Mister Cee and [former Source magazine editor] Matty C and ’em listen to it. They was lookin’ at Big like he was a robot. “It just made me feel proud because I was actually a part of that,” Cease said. Join MTV News as we celebrate the Notorious B.I.G.’s life on the 15th anniversary of his death. From now through Sunday, we’ll be rolling out exclusive and commemorative content from Biggie’s closest friends, collaborators and biggest fans. To join the conversation on Twitter, hit @MTVRapFix using the hashtag #biggie15. Related Videos Remembering Notorious B.I.G. Related Artists Notorious B.I.G. Lil’ Cease
In Seeking Justice , a man whose wife is assaulted and raped makes a deal with a mysterious vigilante organization that exacts revenge on his behalf but demands from him a favor to be named later. If you’re thinking that sounds like something that will turn out to be a bargain he regrets, you are correct! And if it also sounds like the kind of disposable movie you’ll not catch the title of but will happily half pay attention to on cable some day, well, you’d be right on that account too, though this film has a cast peculiarly heavy on name actors for something getting a minor release. Nicolas Cage plays the husband in question, a New Orleans teacher named Will Gerard, and January Jones (perpetually bored and disdainful) is his wife Laura. Guy Pearce is the head of the unnamed group, Harold Perrineau and Jennifer Carpenter are the couple’s friends. Roger Donaldson, of The Recruit, Species, Cocktail and others, directs this thriller, which goes from adequate to ludicrous but is only ever compelling enough to serve as audiovisual wallpaper while you’re focused on something else. Some of the film’s limpness is due to the fact that Cage plays Will in a minor weird key as opposed to one of his major ones — there are no fits of operatic oddness. At this point in his career, Cage doesn’t seem capable of playing normal, only varying degrees of strange, and having him take on the role of an everyman in over his head is a futile endeavor — he already appears much nuttier than any conspiracy posse Seeking Justice can come up with. (Even the way he jogs looks just a little off.) The one it does present is so powerful you’d think it wouldn’t need to bother with its complicated recruiting structure, which offers a daisy-chain, Strangers on a Train- type process. The man who kills Laura’s rapist is doing so as payment for the avenging of the murder of his wife three months earlier. He knows the crime that was committed by the person he’s been sent to execute, but otherwise has no connection to him. Will receives the necklace that was stolen from his wife during the attack and knows the deed is done. Six months later, the two are putting their lives back together, though Laura is still anxious about making sure the doors are locked and is learning how to shoot a gun and Will is — dramatic music queue! — receiving a call instructing him to a meeting where he’s going to have to fulfill his end of the bargain. He’s handed a letter to mail, but later is instructed to open it instead — inside, he discovers photos of a woman and her two girls he’s told to follow and observe at the zoo. The second half of his deal involves his killing someone, a man (Jason Davis) he’s told is named Leon Walczak and is a pedophile. They give him a time and place and direct him as to the best way to make it look like an accident, but he doesn’t want to do it, he’s not a murderer, he made a mistake, and so on and so on. They threaten Laura, he cries foul but finds himself there at the appointed time and place trying to warn his intended victim, which doesn’t go well. And then Leon Walczak turns out to not be as described by Simon at all, and Will tumbles headlong into trouble. Seeking Justice is set in New Orleans, and there’s something potentially interesting to be found in the idea of a vigilante organization in a city in recovery that’s struggled with more crime than it has necessarily had the resources to deal with. “I got into this because I was sick of seeing this city rot,” a character explains, saying that he’s chosen to be active where “most good citizens are just along for the ride.” But the film has nothing intelligent to say about taking the law into your own hands. The organization, which uses the code phrase “the hungry rabbit jumps” (no one snickers when saying this or makes a “crow flies at midnight” crack, so you know they’re for real), is large, so large that every other man Will runs into seems to have a connection to it; it’s also operated in cells, one of which Simon heads up. The group seems needlessly fond of signaling by having someone buy an arranged candy at an arranged location or sneak into a classroom to write a number on a whiteboard instead of just calling, but why have a mysterious organization if you’re not going to take the opportunity to act mysterious? Despite their resources and the fact that they seem to know everything before it happens, they’re stymied by Will once he learns to get in touch with his inner tough guy (and doesn’t even need a fiery skull head to do so). The vigilantes make criminals answer for what they’ve done, but who will do the same for the vigilantes? In Seeking Justice , there’s no urgency to the question. Follow Alison Willmore on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
‘He’s a bit of a wiseass, and he thinks he’s above them all,’ Neal McDonough tells MTV News about playing the bleach-blond big bad on the show. By Josh Wigler Neal McDonough on “Justified” Photo: FX ” Justified ” lawman Raylan Givens has faced no shortage of memorable nemeses in his days as a Lexington, Kentucky-based U.S. marshal: hoodlums with “four kidneys,” an “apple pie”-brewing and weed-slinging mama crime boss, not to mention the born again and born again and born again Boyd Crowder. But Robert Quarles? In a sea of backwoods Kentucky killers and thieves, this bleach-blond mobster may very well take the cake. Television veteran and “Captain America” actor Neal McDonough has graced the FX drama “Justified” with his formidable presence for the show’s currently airing third season, and viewers are better off for it — even if deputy Givens, the modern-day cowboy played by lead actor and producer Timothy Olyphant , is ruing the day that McDonough’s Quarles first set foot in Harlan County. “It’s like two great chess players in the same room,” McDonough told MTV News about this season’s ongoing battle between Quarles and Givens. “We both learn about each other. We’ve done our background checks on each other. So we both know we’re worthy opponents — but when we get in front of each other, it’s pretty awesome, because we’re on the opposite sides of the spectrum, but there’s a respect level for what each of us does. We’re both really good at what we do. But there’s also that ultimate disrespect from both of us: ‘Don’t think you’re going to beat me. I’ll let you dance with me for a while, but I’m going to crush you.’ ” Quarles has already dished out some crushing blows. In just eight episodes, the Detroit mobster has dropped by Raylan’s home unannounced, executed the deputy’s ex-wife’s ex-husband (it’s complicated), framed Raylan for the murder and set him up as a dirty cop. None of that mentions Quarles’ other atrocities, such as fatally shooting a businessman and his secretary mainly to prove a point, as well as brutally torturing a prisoner while simultaneously fielding a phone call from his very young son. What kind of monster can commit such crimes, you ask? According to McDonough, a very funny one. “He has a bit of a sense of humor,” said McDonough, who has played other villains with significantly fewer wisecracks to their names, including those in “Walking Tall” and “Street Fighter.” “This one, Quarles, his tongue is firmly in cheek in a lot of scenes. He’s a bit of a wiseass, and he thinks he’s above them all. To play that, and then have him unravel, trying to keep that veneer up, is what makes it really fun for me to play.” Indeed, the walls are closing in on Quarles. Raylan Givens is not his only obstacle: Quarles is now completely cut off from the Detroit crime syndicate he once worked for, and is starting to abuse the illicit pain pills he’s been pushing in Harlan County. “He’s a lot like me in a lot of ways: a businessman, but family first,” McDonough said of his character. “But Quarles gets addicted not just to the rush of power, but worse, to OxyContin. We all know how bad that gets when you’re hooked on junk like that.” Just how bad will Quarles’ addiction get? The actor teased, “The only thing I’ve asked of [‘Justified’ executive producer and show-runner] Graham Yost is that by episode 10 or 11, I’d like to be naked and hopped up on my own stuff. He goes, ‘Already thought of that, trust me!’ ” “Justified” marks the third collaboration between McDonough and Yost, having previously worked together on “Boomtown” and “Band of Brothers.” In fact, Quarles was written specifically with McDonough in mind, said the actor, who added that he would happily work with Yost on any project, anytime, anywhere. “If Graham Yost called me and said, ‘I have a three-minute infomercial to shoot in Bulgaria, are you in?’ I’d say, ‘Yes, what time is the flight?’ ” he said. “Graham tells me what to do and I do it. He gives me the juiciest stuff I can imagine as an actor.” The juicy stuff isn’t always cruel and unusual, either. McDonough teased an upcoming scene that shows a “beautifully altruistic” side of Quarles that he described as one of his top moments of the season. “There’s one scene in particular where a young boy comes into my trailer threatening to kill me,” said McDonough. “How I disarm him, not just physically but emotionally … it was maybe my favorite scene of the year. It’s just simple, emotional, truthful acting. Graham lobbed it in the air for me and I hit it out of the ballyard for him.” In short, to say that Quarles is an astounding addition to the “Justified” rogues’ gallery would be a tremendous understatement — and given where the character is headed in the back half of season three, it appears that we haven’t seen anything yet. “The first half of the season was great,” McDonough said. “But the second half … the second half is money. It’s fantastic for me as an actor.” Freshly renewed for a fourth season, “Justified” airs on Tuesdays at 10 p.m. ET on FX.
Police are investigating the murder of a man who was apparently shot in front of Rick Ross ‘ house in Miami. According to TMZ : Law enforcement sources tell us … Ross was NOT home at the time of the shooting and at this point in the investigation, he’s not considered a suspect. Investigators, however, do want to know if the man had a relationship with Rick Ross and plan on questioning him on that matter. After all, it was his property. No official comment from Rick Ross. Source: TMZ Hood Rich Radio Premiers On Hot 107.9 With DJ Khaled, Rick Ross & T.I. [EXCLUSIVE AUDIO] D. Wade Parties Hard With Lebron, Rick Ross, & T.I. For His Big 3-0
Maybe you’re the kind of person who wakes up in the morning and says, “What can I learn today about the psychological effects of blood feuds in contemporary Albania?” But I doubt it. Who even thinks about these things, or cares about them? The strange miracle of Joshua Marston’s modest, well-constructed drama The Forgiveness of Blood — which really is about blood feuds in contemporary Albania — is that once you’ve watched it, you might find that you actually do care. It’s the kind of movie that makes the world feel like a smaller place, suggesting that the similarities connecting us across continents and cultures are more resonant than the things that divide us. The Forgiveness of Blood is set in northern Albania — it was also filmed there, using local, nonprofessional actors. Eighteen-year-old Nik (Tristan Halilaj) is a senior in high school, with his eye on the prettiest classmate and ambitions to open his own Internet café. But one day his father, Mark (Refet Abazi), becomes involved in a land dispute: Mark makes a living for himself and his family by delivering bread to local homes and businesses — his mode of transport is a horse-drawn cart — and he habitually takes a shortcut across land that used to belong to his grandfather. The current owners take umbrage, and an altercation breaks out in which one of them is stabbed to death; implicated in the murder, Mark immediately goes into hiding. But according to codes of law that have been in place for centuries, the aggrieved family is entitled to take the life of a male from the aggressor’s family. Nik is forced into a kind of house arrest, along with his younger brother and two sisters. But because the female members of the household aren’t in danger, Nik’s younger sister, Rudina (Sindi Laçej), must leave school and temporarily take over her father’s business, just to keep the family afloat. This is a vivid, tough little story that enfolds lots of dramatic subthreads: Nik and Rudina live, as most of us do, in a world of cell phones and satellite TV, yet they find themselves bound by antiquated rules of conduct. Nik is just learning his way around the adult world — he preens in front of the mirror, Tony Manero-style, hoping to look good for the girl he’s set his sights on — only to be imprisoned at home, as if grounded by an especially strict parent. It’s a particularly painful kind of cultural emasculation, and he lashes out. And Rudina, a bright girl who seems to enjoy school (it’s hinted that she may have a future outside this rather restrictive community), suddenly has to play the role of the male breadwinner. She’d rather go shoe-shopping with her friends, of course, but the point is that her very sex both protects her and makes her life harder: Her life is of lesser value under the arcane rules governing the blood feud, which means that when the males in her family are compromised, she has to step up to the plate and act like a man. She seems to have the worst of both worlds. Marston’s gift as a filmmaker — he also co-wrote the script with Albanian screenwriter Andamion Murataj — is that he makes us care about these characters without forcing us to eat the knobby, dirt-encrusted root vegetables of cross-cultural awareness. You know what I’m talking about: The world of independent filmmaking is full of movies designed to congratulate well-informed, literate liberals on how well-informed and literate they are — we watch as peasants and otherwise “compromised” people, who live in countries outside North America (or even the poorer communities within it), suffer through their daily lives. Then we’re allowed to pat ourselves on the back for allowing our eyes to be opened to their plight. Marston doesn’t play that game here, and he didn’t play it in his first feature, Maria Full of Grace , either: That picture told the story of a young Colombian woman who becomes a drug mule to raise money for her family. The picture could have been a pile-up of the most tense horrors imaginable, but Marston has the rare gift of knowing when to ease up on the clutch: He focuses on individuals, on their faces and their feelings, sometimes at the expense of your garden-variety dramatic buildup. His movies have their own kind of narrative intensity, but they’re not thrillers masquerading as human-interest stories. With Marston, the interest is all human. That’s especially true in The Forgiveness of Blood . In the movie’s early moments, when I saw that horse-drawn bread cart rambling across a scrubby-yet-beautiful semi-rural landscape, I groaned. Was this going to be one of those good-for-you movies that’s pure punishment to watch? The picture does have its unnerving moments, points at which you find yourself inside the head of a particular character and you’re not sure you want to be there. But Marston doesn’t overreach dramatically. Mostly, he simply trusts the faces of his actors: Halilaj’s Nik has a gawky-charming teen-scarecrow look — he’s all long limbs and awkward pauses, particularly when he’s in the presence of that pretty classmate. And even though Rudina isn’t really the movie’s main character, as Laçej plays her, she’s its quiet, somber soul. Rudina observes the proceedings around her with resigned exasperation: Just when her life should be moving forward, it’s being pulled backward through hundreds of years of tradition. That tension is gentle but potent, and it’s what keeps The Forgiveness of Blood coursing along. By the end, you’ll care more about Albanian blood feuds than you ever thought you could. Follow S.T. VanAirsdale on Twitter . Follow Movieline on Twitter .
In the 47 years since the murder of Civil Rights leader and human rights activist Malcolm X on this date, much has been made of the legacy of one of the most effective orators of all time. Malcolm X’s resonant timbre of a voice coupled with impassioned pleas for African-American justice made him one of the most significant social figures of all time… Continue
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