Live Music: Reggae Sumfest "gets Common"

Organizers of the Reggae Sumfest Music Festival recently announced Oscar and Grammy-winner, rapper/actor Common has been added to perform at its 20th staging at the summer music festival taking place from July 12-18 in Montego Bay.

"We are elated to have a performer of the magnitude of Common on the Reggae Sumfest stage. He is a versatile artiste, and undoubtedly he will add something very special that our audience will be able to appreciate. He has a unique and vibrant style that will excite patrons," explained executive director of Summerfest Productions, Johnny Gourzong.

The artiste comes as the first announced international act billed to take the stage at its Catherine Hall home on International Night 1 (July 17).

Common recently received an Academy Award win for the song Glory, a collaboration with singer John Legend which was featured in the film Selma, directed by Ava DuVernay and starring David Oyelowo and Oprah Winfrey.

In addition to "Selma" his screen credits include "Smokin' Aces" "American Gangster" "Just Wright" and "happy Feet Two"

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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

Playing Politicos: Ed Harris lands McCain role

Veteran actor Ed Harris has recently been cast as John McCain in the upcoming HBO original film, "Game Change." The movie, adapted from a book about the contentious 2008 US presidential election, will make Harris the first major Hollywood actor to portray the Arizona senator. Opinions on physical resemblance aside, it's hard to deny that Harris has the film cred to play a man who went from five years of captivity in Vietnam to elder politician and perennial presidential hopeful.

Playing famous Americans is familiar territory for Harris. His portrayal of space pioneer and bona fide hero John Glenn in 1983's "The Right Stuff" perfectly captured a pivotal chapter in American history. The fact that Harris is a dead-ringer for Glenn didn't hurt either.

Despite playing American heroes like Glenn, as well as NASA flight director Gene Kranz in "Apollo 13," Harris has a disarmingly believable dark side too. He's long been one of Hollywood's reliable steely-eyed tough guys, a persona he first put on display in 1980's "Borderline." The gritty film starred Charles Bronson as a border patrol agent charged with tracking down Harris's character, a smuggler who murders Bronson's fellow agent.

"Borderline" marked the first big role for Harris, and while it was neither a critical nor box office success, his portrayal of the cold-blooded villain made an impression on audiences. Harris would go on to play much deeper characters. Just look back on 1989's "Jacknife," in which Harris played a troubled Vietnam vet.

While alcoholic Vietnam veterans arguably became stock characters in Hollywood, Harris's portrayal of Dave in "Jacknife" is honest and emotionally gripping. As Harris's vet drowns himself in alcohol, unable to move on with his life after the death of a friend, he transforms a potential stereotype into a powerful, memorable character.

There's something about Harris's worn face that makes him able to bring a special authenticity to the screen. That authenticity works whether he's playing a Vietnam veteran or famed painter Jackson Pollock in 2000's "Pollock," as well as a poet dying of AIDS in the 2002 drama "The Hours." Both films had Harris demonstrating his nuance with performances as eclectic artists. The enigmatic Christof, creator of "The Truman Show," could also be counted among the artists Harris has portrayed.

John McCain may not be an artist, but Harris has the ideal screen presence to portray the senator. Harris has proven that he can pull off McCain's steely demeanor without making him seem like a one-dimensional caricature. Although Julianne Moore is likely to generate buzz as Sarah Palin, look for Harris to steal the show.

Hopkins as Hitchcock

Oscar winner Anthony Hopkins says he hopes play the legendary filmmaker on screen and has been attached to such a project for four years.

The 73-year-old actor says Hitchcock was "a very interesting man, very strange guy, very dark man." Hopkins says that 50 years ago he saw a film about the making of "Psycho" that stuck with him as "the most frightening film I have ever seen."

He says British director Sacha Gervasi is set to direct the Hitchcock film.

Hopkins says he's hopeful that the project comes to fruition, adding that, in Hollywood today, "you just turn it over and go with whatever happens if you are lucky."

Hopkins' latest film is "The Rite," which opens Friday. He won the best-actor Oscar for 1991's "Silence of the Lambs."