Just the sound of the title, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, as it rolls off the tongue, promises some kind of lusty commitment to a life of defiance, like we’re in for a wild ride in a convertible careening out of control.
In all my years reporting on cinema, I have never seen 8.5 minutes of footage that has sparked a global call to action, as we’ve witnessed with the killing of George Floyd in Minnesota.
After all that has been said about Mssrs. Biden and Trump and how they differ from soup to nuts, in that order, the one thing they shared as candidates and men was being old, part of a generation that is leaving the stage, gracefully or otherwise. And which is devoutly being anticipated by younger generations—as we saw from the primaries through the general election.
R&B, ROCK & GOSPEL legend Little Richard left us this year. You can spend some time listening to him or even looking at him on film. There’s a wonderful scene in Get On Up, director Tate Taylor’s 2014 biopic of James Brown, as played by Chadwick Boseman, when Brown crosses the orbit of this live wire, Little Richard, somewhere down South.
Tribeca continues to be this blast of energy radiating from the downtown media hub on Varick Street, including the Regal multiplex in Battery Park through the SVA Theatre on W. 23rd up through some events at the Beacon on the UWS.
Rolling Thunder Revue’s subtitle is A Bob Dylan Story, told by Scorsese with a little help from his friends at Netflix, which helped Scorsese and collaborators find restore to vibrancy footage of Dylan’s 1975 tour of small venues in mostly small towns across America beginning at Plymouth Rock.
DeNiro, Pesci, Keitel, Pacino. Old home week for the Mob in Martin Scorsese's much awaited The Irishman
