Page 128 - Small Axe News Today

Naomi Ackie to play Whitney Houston Naomi Ackie set to play Whitney Houston DIRECTOR STELLA Meghie has said it took a ‘exhaustive search’ to find someone with the presence to be able to play the role of Whitney Houston in Sony’s biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody. Naomi is the real deal and I can’t imagine a better choice for this iconic role Clive Davis, Producer Variety this week that BAFTA-winning Naomi Ackie (End of the F***ing World, Small Axe) is in final negotiations to portra...

The Year of Great Reckoning A round-up of cinemas trials and tribulations, and some small victories, in 2020 published : 16 Dec 2020 at 04:00 12 The Scala theatre − Bangkoks last standalone cinema − held a three-day Final Touch Of Memory event to bid farewell to film lovers. Photo: Pattarapong​ chatpattarasill​ For filmgoers, it was a year of mortal dread. The screen went dark, like a coffin nailed shut, and is still like that in many places. Faith in cinem...

Clash virtually meets Scorcher in his living room at the height of the UK’s second national lockdown. We’ve been told that no subjects are off-limits for this interview, and the North London MC, record producer and actor is particularly keen to share his thoughts on today’s pressing issues. A week earlier, he’d appeared in Mangrove, the first film in Steve McQueen’s stellar new BBC series Small Axe, which retells historic true stories of the struggles faced by Black Br...

Dave Benett/Getty Images; Photofest Stella Meghie will direct I Wanna Dance With Somebody for Sonys TriStar label, with backing from the Whitney Houston estate and music producer Clive Davis. After a worldwide search, Naomi Ackie has been chosen to play iconic performer Whitney Houston in the biopic  The British actress, who had a pivotal role in  Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker, is in negotiations for the feature from Sony and its TriStar division, which has set the movie for a Thanksgiving 20...

Mangrove Nine: justice in the dock To complement a Steve McQueen Small Axe film, an online account of the momentous trial can now be viewed, writes Bronwen Weatherby Ian Macdonald, Altheia Jones-LeCointe and Selma James in How the Mangrove Nine Won A FIRST-HAND account of the momentous court case that saw nine black men and women exonerate themselves despite the full force of the Met Police being against them is now available to watch online. How the Mangrove Nine Won was launched the day after...

Image zoom The best TV shows throw the best parties. Holiday dinners, nights out on various towns, long-awaited proms, weddings for sitcom love interests, another Sterling Cooper office bash where everyone passes out under somebody else’s desk, that time  Insecure went to Coachella . A great party makes effective comedy or drama, so many plans going wrong in a funny way or a terrible way. There is a narrative structure. Things get louder, things get quieter. Night falls, maybe the sun rise...

The Hollywood Reporter, which reports that Ackie was chosen for the role after a worldwide search. “We spent the better part of the last year in an exhaustive search for an actress who could embody Whitney Houston,” said the biopic’sdirector,Stella Meghie ( The Photograph). “Naomi Ackie impressed us at every stage of the process. I was moved by her ability to capture the stage presence of a global icon while bringing humanity to her interior life.” The piece also confirms that, unlike...

OK, so I snuck in one doc. Whether Spike Lees thrillingly immersive record of this sui generis theatrical concert is the best film of 2020 is open to debate. What I can say with absolute certainty is that the hyper-kinetic hymn to community and connection in a politically divided, environmentally ailing world is by far the most therapeutic time I had at a movie in this trying year of isolation and anxiety. Byrnes show was already something special on Broadway, with the silver-topped, professori...

Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock is Sight & Sound’s Best Film of the Year McQueen tops the poll for second time following his first win for Hunger in 2008, while McQueen’s Mangrove also appears in the poll at number 13 WINNER: Best film of the year SIGHT AND SOUND, the BFI’s international film magazine, announced last week that Steve McQueen’s Lovers Rock, part of the director’s five-film Small Axe anthology, has been chosen as the Best Film of the Year. These films...

“Education was the simplest of Steve McQueen’s Small Axe collection and possibly the most effective. McQueen evoked the look and feel of 1970s Britain with smoking headmasters and Roobarb on TV at teatime wonderfully. An eloquent and beautifully performed end to the anthology.” “This capper to an extraordinary run of work is the definition of a small axe, making its point with a tidy economy and focused just on a single oak-felling at hand. I was often reminded of Alan Clarke’s work f...