Currently browsing category

Movies

Powerful Jazz Film “Bolden” Paints a Greater Socio-Political Story

Bolden Film Plants Seed of Real-Life Jazz Creator’s Mythology and Harvests a Stark Reflection of the Dark Side of America’s Soul
by A. Scott Galloway
 
Jazz music is America’s greatest homegrown art contribution to the world. Like anything that comes out of this country, its inventor paid a dear price for having just enough so-called freedom to create it. Jazz’s creator is a cornet player out of New Orleans named Buddy Bolden. A new film by first time director Dan Pritzker entitled “Bolden” places the fiery musician front and center in what is not so much a biopic – since very little is known about the man – but a plunge into Reconstruction America of the 1890s time period in which he taught Gospel music to dance amidst the bitter realities of post-slavery America.
 

Sade | “Flower of the Universe” (From Disney’s ‘A Wrinkle In Time’)


 
Sade
“Flower of the Universe (from Disney’s ‘A Wrinkle in Time’)”
(Sony)

 
A Record Reflection by A. Scott Galloway
 
Sade peeks over the horizon like a sunrise with a special offering to the soundtrack of the Disney film “A Wrinkle in Time” with the dreamy “Flower of the Universe” – the band’s first studio recording since the Soldier of Love CD in 2010. Mellow as a Zen mantra, the piece recalls past floating and ambient Sade gems such as “I Never Thought I’d See the Day” and “Like a Tattoo.”

“Miles Ahead” Lags Bars of Beats Behind

“Miles Ahead”: Where Mercury Meets The Milky Way
Movie Musings by A. Scott Galloway
 
For Miles Davis whose artistic and personal essence was “no compromise” at fortissimo, the hybrid fictional movie “Miles Ahead” undeservedly smacks of way too much of it. Actor Don Cheadle, making his directorial debut here, gives a performance of bravura voodoo as the iconic, forward-marching musician. Yet he and co-screenwriter Steve Baigleman created a convoluted maze of a story in which to contextualize it – dually necessitated by Cheadle’s choice to play between the lines as opposed to the melody as written…and Hollywood’s infuriating insistence on giving even the boldest of real life black men a white knight.
 
Photo 1 (3)
Cheadle as Davis

An Inside Appreciation of Martial Arts Master Jim Kelly

Reflections of Jim Kelly within a Black Belt Prism Circa `74
by Kweli Pitt-Bey


In the summer of 1974, I moved to Los Angeles from Roanoke, Virginia with my mother Judith and my little sister Lori.  At age 11, I was quite upset that I’d be missing my close friends and family.  One thing that helped me to cope was that I’d be moving to the fabled Golden State: sunny Southern California with its legendary swimming pools, palm trees and movie stars.  Deeper still, my mother promised she would look into getting me into Jim Kelly’s renowned and respected Black Belt Jones Karate Studio on Crenshaw Blvd.  That was something I could really sink my hope’s teeth into. 

Jim Kelly PHOTO 1

For Love of Liberty Soundtrack | Various Artists

For the love of Liberty Soundtrack
 
Various Artists | For Love of Liberty Soundtrack
by Peggy Oliver
 

Filmmaker Frank Martin has been responsible for some of Hollywood’s finest moments including the life of legendary John Huston – The Man, The Movies, The Maverick and a forty year television retrospective of Walt Disney: The Wonderful World of Disney: Forty Years of Television Magic. But Martin may have topped himself by reaching back to an important yet somehow forsaken part of American history.

Hide