By Anne Brodie Netflix’s highly anticipated Marilyn Monroe film Blonde, based on Joyce Carol Oates’ fictional biography of Norma Jean Baker and Marilyn Monroe takes an alternate look at the superstar who died too young. Norma Jean’s ascent from poverty and abuse to one of the most famous women in the world next to Queen Elizabeth, whom she met, is… View Post
The sizzling chemistry between Joshua Boone and Solea Pfeiffer in Tyler Perry’s A Jazzman’s Blues is an oasis of love and hope in the 30s south. As Blacks are denied basic human rights, Bayou (Boone) and Leanne (Pfieffer) find love, pleasure, and comfort in their tortured secret romance. Leanne leaves to live a dangerous lie, while Bayou strikes out for… View Post
By Anne Brodie The much anticipated Netflix film Blonde, based on Joyce Carol Oates’ fictional take on Norma Jean Baker / Marilyn Monroe debuts Sept. 28. Oates’ novel is shocking, lurid, and sex-obsessed, as is Andrew Dominik’s nearly three-hour opus. It posits that Norma Jean was victimized from childhood to the end of her short life; an abusive, psychotic mother,… View Post
Documentarian Jason Loftus and artist /protester Daxiong pay a remarkable film tribute to the brave souls who carried out the 2002 hijacking of Chinese state TV to counter China’s crackdown on the spiritual practice of Falun Gong. Daxiong, a renowned commercial artist was arrested, but unlike his colleagues, some of whom died in police custody, he escaped and settled in… View Post
Tyler Perry’s A Jazzman’s Blues, while not a true story, is based on Black experiences in the racist American Southern USA not so very long ago. A conversation with the late playwright August Wilson inspired him to start writing this story, a remarkable, deeply moving achievement, the story of “star-crossed lovers” caught in society’s traps starring Broadway stars Joshua Boone… View Post
Brett Morgen’s brain melt of a documentary Moonage Daydream on the elusive David Bowie is like none other. The Bowie estate handed Morgen 5 million assets including never before seen footage, private concerts, interviews, and Bowie’s own words on his 54-year career, his troubled childhood, beliefs, artistic sensibility, and his legacy. It’s an outstanding achievement as a portrait of Bowie… View Post