Usain Bolt: A Showman in search of the Right Show. Michael A. D. Edwards

If you were
A pure bolt of
Fire
Cutting the skies
I'd touch you risking
My life
Not because I'm
brave or
Strong
But because I'm
Fascinated by what the
Outcome
will be
-Nikki Giovanni, Fascinations

He can't run forever.

We knew that.

And yet, that knowledge of the certitude of Usain Bolt's ultimate departure from competitive athletics has hardly dimmed the fascination with him and his exploits.

From Beijing to London and Oslo and back to Kingston, Bolt has blazed a fiery trail of invincibility and irresistibility that has drawn and continues to draw millions into his large, radiant aura.

But, with only one more "big ticket" track meet awaiting him by his own admission - the 2017 London World Championships - and the mild taint of scandal (largely manufactured, if we're honest) lingering from his post- glory hijinks in Rio, Bolt is undoubtedly at the proverbial cross roads.

He will no longer have the stadia of the world at his disposal in the manner which he was used to, striding in like a Colossus, with arms raised, finger pressed to lips and the sundry physical and verbal gestures that have in no small part built his now undisputed legend

He may well have the attention of even larger corporate sponsors than he has at present (the Nike rumours persist), and its almost even money that scripts are being fashioned and scrutinized for the Hollywood-type biopic.

But not even such an epic is truly the right vessel to contain an individual of Bolt's record-setting stature. He's not national hero material, as some are proclaiming. But he has unquestionably contributed to the raising of Jamaica's profile globally, and he's done it with great aplomb and - sexcapades notwithstanding - a certain casual wholesomeness that, in drugs-plagued track and field, has lifted the profile of the sport like no other athlete of the era has been able to do. Adoration for him crosses geographic and generational boundaries.

Bolt then, is a born showman in search of a new show.

But not just any show. A figure such as the world has never before seen needs a correspondingly creative format. Not for the gangly and gregarious giant the deceptively easy grab of the analyst's chair; neither the circus-like itinerary of exhibition meets and special appearances.

Bolt himself is prime time, made for the reality series format like no other athlete before him. He needs to carefully consider his posts competitive future, not least because the money, contrary to popular assumption, isn't finite.

The post-Rio scandal will dissipate, but in its wake, he and his handlers must delicately balance the desire to keep him accessible and the very real need to keep him relevant and relatively wholesome; we know he's no angel, but to be perceived ad a mere Playboy would eventually tarnish his legendary status and hurt his income opportunities.

So what then should be Bolt's main focus post-running? Certainly not seeking a place in the first team at his beloved Manchester United. Nor pursuing his proclaimed first love of cricket.

No, Bolt must now be actively engaged in the search for his successor. He must scour the nation and use his money - and others' - in developing sports facilities nationwide. And not just in track and field. Bolt must put his enthusiasm for sports to work in unearthing the next generation of Jamaican sporting talent, and also to bring the world along for the ride: media, prospective investors, Government officials and well-wishers. He will not only visit schools and community centres, but boardrooms and political assemblies here and abroad, making the case and having fun while doing it as only he can.

Can we do it? The truth is, history affirms it, the future demands, and his legacy is definitely in search of it.

He must, and we must, even if only to see the outcome.

Film: RIP Garry Marhsall, the guy who made Julia Roberts a star, dies at 81

Famed director and producer Garry Marshall has died. He was 81 years old.

Marshall, who created some of the most popular 1970's TV shows -- including "Mork and Mindy" and "Happy Days," and directed hit films like "Pretty Woman" and "The Princess Diaries" -- died yesterdayin a Burbank hospital, his publicist Michelle Bega confirmed.

Marshall passed away from complications of pneumonia following a stroke at a hospital, Bega said in a statement Tuesday.

The Hollywood legend directed, produced and starred in films and TV shows since the late 1950's.

He directed 18 films, including big screen hits like "Beaches," "Overboard," "Runaway Bride," "Valentine's Day" and 1990's "Pretty Woman," which made a star of Julia Roberts and gave Richard Gere his first hit in years.

Showbiz: Green fields, pretty flowers and glasses of Prosecco, How Viola Davis made history

I did want to mark the fact that it was the first African-American to win in the Lead Actress category,” the “How to Get Away With Murder” star tells Ellen DeGeneres during her first post-awards appearance

Viola Davis not only won an Emmy on Sunday, she may have won the Emmys.

The history-making “How to Get Away With Murder” actress was a guest on the Thursday episode of “Ellen” — her first public appearance since taking home the Outstanding Lead Actress Trophy.

Davis, who became the first Black actress to win in the category, told Ellen DeGeneres that she “sort of” prepared her victory speech.

“I did want to mark the fact that it was the first African-American to win in the Lead Actress category,” she said. “I love that Harriet Tubman quote, I thought it was so progressive and I started it, and my husband said afterwards: ‘V, I didn’t know where you were going with that. I really didn’t. When you were saying those white women with their arms stretched out over the line I was like what is she doing?'”

“I was too for a minute,” DeGeneres quipped.

At the beginning of her emotional speech, the Shondaland star quoted the 19th-century abolitionist and humanitarian.

“‘In my mind, I see a line,'” Davis said. “‘And over that line I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me to get over that line but I can’t seem to get there no how. I can’t seem to get over that line.’ That was Harriet Tubman in the 1800s.”

“The only thing that separates women of color from everyone else is opportunity,” Davis continued her terrific speech.

Back on “Ellen,” Davis admitted that she had a few glasses of prosecco before the show. That probably helped loosen the whole thing up a bit.

Scoring Bolivar

Alberto Arvelo entrusted the film score for “The Liberator,” Venezuela’s Oscar entry, to a young composer who’d never before written music for film — but it was a pretty safe gamble on the part of the director, because the first-timer happened to be Gustavo Dudamel, the musical director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic and one of the most vital and exciting figures in the world of classical music.

His presence at screenings and events certainly helped raise the profile of the epic film, in which actor Edgar Ramirez plays the South American revolutionary Simon Bolivar. And when the nine-film foreign-language shortlist was announced on Dec. 19, “The Liberator” was perhaps the most surprising to make the cut – as well as a movie that qualifies Dudamel in the Best Original Score category, too.

Both native Venezuelans, Dudamel and Arvelo had been close friends for more than a dozen years, and the maestro originally came to “The Liberator” as a musical advisor. “My wife was pregnant and we were expecting the baby soon, so I cleared my calendar for a month,” he told TheWrap. “I was there with the family, but at the same time I had a piano and I was reading the script. So I started writing a few little things.

“I played him some things and said, ‘I’ll give you these ideas, and then you can talk to somebody who can write the score,’” he added with a laugh. “And he said, ‘No, you are the composer.’”

All of those initial themes, he said, ended up in the score, which he completed from hotel rooms on the road a year later, while touring the United States with the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra. The Bolivar orchestra, a former youth orchestra that Dudamel has been conducting since he was a teenager, recorded the score.

“When you are coming from my world, where you are used to interpreting all of the great composers, you see the genius of the orchestration and the power of the phrase,” said Dudamel. “But you have to be very careful what you give to a movie. You should bring a color, an atmosphere—but if the music becomes a main character, it is too much.

“I might come from the world of Wagner and Mahler and big orchestrations, and I started out writing full symphonic things. But in the end what I wrote was very simple.”

from TheWrap.com

Amazing Film Fact: Al Pacino and Martin Scorcese have Never worked together....until now

Pacino

Scorcese

Al Pacino has great news for all Scorsese fans: The Irishman film is still alive and kicking!
Scorsese, who’s currently up to his neck in upcoming projects, including Silence, is apparently still moving forward with The Irishman—despite moving at a glacial pace—according to Pacino, who will star in the film. (This will be Pacino’s first time working with the director.)
He even added that Bobby Cannavale has joined the cast, which already includes Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci.
The Irishman, based on Charles Brandt’s book I heard You Paint Houses, is about Frank “The Irishman” Sheeran, a real-life mob hitman believed to have committed more than 25 murders, including Jimmy Hoffa’s.
Waiting a little longer for this film is a small price to pay to see the Scorsese, De Niro, Joe Pesci trifecta back in action.

-from COMPLEX

Rumours of Doom were greatly exaggerated

Well, amid the gloomy reviews of the just ended summer movie season, it turns out that overall, things reeeeeallly weren't too bad for Hollywood after all, as this report from the Atlantic Monthly attests.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/why-sequels-will-never-die-hollywoods-summer-of-flops-was-actually-its-best-year-ever/279352/

Hamilton is "Hollywood's Watch"

From Elvis wearing the famed Ventura model in "Blue Hawaii" through to "2001: A Space Odyssey" and this year's "Abduction" watchmaker Hamilton has seen its products featured in more than 400 films, a more venerable career than many human Hollywood stars.

this feature, from International Watch, interviews Hamilton chief Sylvain Dolla, on the occasion of the company's "Behind The Camera" awards.

http://iwmagazine.com/2012/03/07/behind-the-scenes/

Go For It (2011) - Trailer (HD)

"Because people keep going to see them"
That answer, actually given by the actor Van Johnson (unknown to today's movie goers) to the question of why so many lousy movies get made, applies in part to the dance movie genre.There is something also genetically built in that leads hordes of young people to flock theatres to see this or that crew or individual striving  - always against seemingly insurmountable odds - to establish themselves within some circle.

With Go For It, that circle is Chicago's Latina hip-hop scene, an admittedly obscure phenomenon in the urban dance cosmos, and one which holds a certain level of fascination, if only for moments at a time. Into that matrix, writer-director Carmen Marron   throws some all too familiar dysfunctional family and female bonding stories.

Carmen (the wispy but fiery Aimee Garcia) is the troubled talent at the heart of this melodrama. Falling behind and getting into trouble in school, she nonetheless attracts the patrician attention of schoolteacher Frank martin (Al Bandiero), who's dealing with issues of his own. Gina, her BFF, sounding board and co-worker at a local grocery, is also grappling, none too successfully, with a physically abusive boyfriend and a junkie mother. Of course, every dance movie needs a love story, and Marron makes this one interracial; a well-off white boy (Derrick Denicola) takes a shine to Carmen and eventually succeeds in getting her to reciprocate.

Sounds like a basic dance melodrama mix. With Go For It though, the whole is woefully less than the sum of the parts. Apart from Bandiero as the teacher and Gina Rodriguez as Gina, few of the actors really bring anything fresh or dynamic to their portrayals. Its left to the dance scenes, done in the old "battle" style of hip-hop to carry the film's momentum, but these scenes, while occasionally visually arresting, are simply not enough to justify the investment of one's time.

Perhaps Marron should have gone the documentary route. The glimpse into a hitherto largely unseen or unnoticed world is worthy, but tied to this tired melodrama formula, is weighed down. She should forget the Hollywood model and really "go for it."

Way Better Heard Than Seen....The Green Hornet Trailer HD - 2011 (ad free)

....unless of course, one is referring to the dialogue, floating like driftwood through this pointless cesspool of a film. If you're referring to the soundtrack, that's a different matter, but only just.

Thos remake is proof that, in Hollywood especially, its not cool to let things stay unresolved for too long. After 20 years in development hell (Including director and cast changes), the producers have waded into the property's long history (all the way back to the 1936 radio broadcast) and have slashed and patched a once charmingly idiosyncratic vigilante series beyond recognition - or relevance.

If you're still somehow interested in the story at this stage, here's the short version: party-boy and billionaire heir (of an independent newspaper company - yah!) is slowly but inexorably drawn to "seek some purpose for his life after his dad's untimely passing. He teams up with coffee-making classical music aficionado and mechanical genius Kato, first as reluctant do-gooders, then as scheming "double-players, ie they do bad stuff to let the real bad guys think that they're the bad guys (I kid you not).

Armed with a car better armed and equipped than this nation's entire armed forces, they set out on the "quest for justice, earning the ire of the city's reigning kingpin, Chudnofsky, (Christoph Waltz). Oh yeah, they throw in Cameron Diaz as a PA/researcher, just so us guys might have something worthwhile looking at.

As Kato, Jay Chou not only dishonours the memory of Bruce Lee (yes, we're that serious about it) but also confirms his own precipitous fall from the lofty heights of Zhang Yimou's "Curse of the Golden Flower". As the managing editor at the paper and the "voice of reason and wisdom" Edward James Olmos is almost a caricature of his "Miami Vice" police lieutenant.  Rogen is simply Rogen, meaning its hard to stand him for more than a few seconds at a time without accompanying action.

The one minor joy (soundtrack aside) in all this mess is Waltz, who rips into the slim pickings of the villain's role with the ferocity of  an underfed wolf in captivity. The rest is pure mayhem, corny homosexual and heterosexual jibes and effects, including the lousiest 3-D I've seen since the technology made its debut.

With a mere dozen days elapsed for 2011, "Hornet" is in pole position for the year's worst movie, but....you never know.

Paul "Lunatic" Campbell and Oliver 'Fly The Gate' in new feature pic

The Hollywood premiere for the feature film ³Out The Gate² has been officially announced for January 13th, 2011 at the
Royal Theatre in Los Angeles.  The stars of the film are scheduled to attend the red carpet event. Limited seats will be available to the public. Special Q & A session with cast and directors will follow the screening.

The urban action/drama stars Paul Campbell (Shottas, First Sunday, Dancehall
Queen), Oliver Samuels (Oliver at Large, The Mighty Quinn), Shelli Boone
(Holla), and reggae dancehall artist Everton E-Dee Dennis. Directed by The
Village Brothers, a directing duo that consists of R. Steven Johnson and
Qmillion in their first joint effort.

The motion picture tells the story of Everton, (Everton Dennis) who after a
turn of unfortunate events, leaves his home of Jamaica to try and make it in
the music business in America. Struggles and perseverance lead to love and
success, but it is all threatened when the Don of LA (Paul Campbell) wants
his dues. The urban action/drama is also booked for showings at Laemmle¹s
Sunset 5 in West Hollywood on January Friday 14th, and Saturday 15th.

The independently financed film was produced by Far I Films under a SAG
Indie agreement, and was shot on location in Clarendon, Jamaica and Los
Angeles. Exclusive engagements are currently being planned for Jamaica, New
York, Toronto, Miami and London.

The energetic reggae and hip-hop soundtrack to the musically driven picture
features new and previously recorded music from artists the likes of Beenie
Man, Jadakiss, Turbulence, Styles P, Mr Lexx, and more. Qmillion, who has
contributed music to many studio pictures including Center Stage 2, The
Sweetest Thing, White Men Cant Jump, and The Five Heartbeats, composed the
film¹s score.

The film's trailer, show times, and more info are available at
www.outthegatemovie.com.