Entertainment

EventsThe Latest

Highlights From BET Honors 2016

by Staff
written by Staff

The BET Honors 2016 was simply extraordinary! This year’s award show was out of this world with a soul stirring tribute from Ledisi to Natalie Cole and a tribute to Maurice White from Earth, Wind and Fire taking us down memory lane and on our feet dancing and singing. I already knew the show would be everything because the red carpet was lit! Eddie Levert talked Pattie Pies and his tribute to her as she received the Musical Art Award while I talked Dennis Basso, Paris Fashion Week and Chanel with Gizelle Bryant and Monica Brown. Gabby Sidibe had us in stiches as we had our #blackgirlmagic moment blowing kisses at the press and inviting us into her photos. As we were waiting to see if any last minute stars would Grace the carpet our host Arsenio Hall sprinted through on his way to the stage but ran back and jumped in photos with us declaring “This is Black Excellence.”

As part of BET’s commitment to the community, the Network made a limited number of tickets to “THE BET HONORS” available for private sale to invited guests with all proceeds benefiting My Brother’s Keeper Alliance. Launched in 2015, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance was created to help eliminate gaps in opportunity and achievement for boys and young men of color. Executive Producers of the network telecast are as follows: Stephen Hill, Connie Orlando and Lynne Harris Taylor from BET; and Jesse Collins from Jesse Collins Entertainment.
0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Film

Exclusive: Director Bong Joon Ho Talks New Film ‘Snowpiercer’

by Sade Graham
written by Sade Graham

Director Bong Joon Ho’s new film “Snowpiercer,” hits theaters today on June 27, 2014 and Examiner.com had the opportunity to see the film at a special screening at MoMA. Seventeen years after the Earth has frozen over with the last of humanity confined to a train, a hero emerges to take down the destructive world order put forth where classism is the key to keeping the train alive. Deemed the Steven Spielberg of this generation, Director Bong Joon Ho is infectious in his first English speaking film.

After years of ill-treatment of the tail end passengers, a final revolt is carried out aboard the locomotive in order to overthrow the conductor who resides at the head. In a fight to the finish between the powerless vs. power, lives are sacrificed for the greater good of mankind. And while traveling the different sections of the 20 car train – Snowpiercer, things begin to become clearer as to why a balance of chaos vs. order, anxiety vs. happiness, and the rich vs. the poor must remain in order for the human race to prevail. With distribution in over 150 countries, the film has finally made its official U.S. debut today.

Knockturnal.com did get the chance to exchange words with the creator and writer of the film Bong Joon Ho and Kelly Masterson. Read our exclusive interviews below:

Bong Joon Ho is the Director/Creator. We spoke with him via an interpreter.

Q: What were the themes in the French Graphic Novel, “Le Transperceneige” that inspired you to create “Snowpiercer”?

The original concept of the graphic novel that it takes all inside of a train, that was exciting. And then of course, inside the train are humans, the last survivors of mankind. I was driven by their struggles.

Q: “Snowpiercer” being your 1st English Speaking film, what was it like getting such a great cast together?

I feel very fortunate. Having actors like John Hurt who jumped on board very early on, even before there was a script, helped to really build and assemble a great cast. And having such esteemed actors who other actors also respect, helped to gain the interest in the project, and made it easier to put the it all together.

Q: How does it feel to be at the receiving end of all the success that has followed since first premiering the film? 

In the movie, the train circles the world and it takes one year to make one revolution, and similarly, the film opened in Korea, then we took it to France, Germany, Italy and Japan, and it took almost a year to get to this point to be finally releasing the film in the US; especially to be here at this moment tonight is a real honor. This is my 307 interview for “Snowpiercer.” (laughs)

Kelly Masterson wrote the screenplay.

Q: How did this collaboration between you and Bong Joon Ho come about?

It was like a stroke of lightning. I never met him, he never met me, he picked up the phone and called me. He’d seen a movie that I’d written that he liked and thought I was the right guy, that was as simple as it was. I knew his work and jumped at the opportunity to work with him.

Q: Explain the process of putting it all together.

It was really very simple and very un-Hollywood. So he called me, we met in LA, we spent a couple days talking about it, I went home and wrote a draft, we would talk every Monday. After like 10 weeks, we had a script and that’s the script he shot. That never happens {laughs}. And the other thing that’s so strange was that I never spoke to anyone else except Bong Joon Ho, no producers, no stars, no money people, nothing, just talking to the creator. He had a clear vision of what he wanted, and my job was to help him create the characters and tell the story that he wanted to tell.

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Film

On the Scene: A Special Screening of the ‘Whitey Bulger’ Documentary

by Sade Graham
written by Sade Graham

On Tuesday, June 17, 2014 at the Dolby 88 Theater in New York City, theknockturnal.com attended a very special screening. The stories of notorious gangsters have long been a fascination to the general public. We love the entertainment their lives bring to the TV screen, while at the same time hate them for the heinous crimes that they commit.

Magnolia Pictures, CNN Films, RadicalMedia's

Magnolia Pictures, CNN Films, RadicalMedia’s

American Documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger keenly details the 25 year tenure of legendary Boston crime boss James “Whitey” Bulger, the Irish Godfather and his refutable relationship with the FBI in his latest film “Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger,” who up until his capture in 2011, placed second behind Osama Bin Laden on America’s Most Wanted List. The question of innocence was never a question, but whether or not he violated the gangster code by becoming a rat was to be determined. Berlinger and Bulger Defense Attorney Hank Brennan joined in on the screening of the film.

The film chronicles the family members of some of Bulger’s victims as they prepare after 30 years to finally face him at his June 2013 trial, while also examining the probable corrupt dealings of specific Federal Agents whom in essence enabled Bulger to reign terror in Boston during the 1970s-mid 1980s. The known leader of the Winter Hill Gang, Bulger was a vicious thug never afraid to get his hands dirty, a man who carried out his own hits at times, but never received so much as a parking ticket. Attempts to shut down his operation would go unsuccessful due to him being somehow tipped off on various occasions, implicating certain law enforcement agents, therefore opening conversation in regards to an FBI cover-up, and furthermore creating the storyline behind this telling film.

An Oscar-nominated Berlinger stated, “I don’t profess to know if he was an informant, but I think the conventional wisdom that he was an informant and that all of his bad activities were the fault of one bad rogue agent and his supervisor is very difficult to believe. If he was an informant, there was a lot of irregularities.”

In a Tuscon, Arizona prison where he will spend the rest of his days for the 31 out of 32 counts, and 11 out of 19 murders of which he was convicted of, Bulger stands firm in his statements saying he was never paid for any services for being an Informant, he was in fact the one paying off folks. Yes, he is a murderer, a drug dealer, a bank robber, a loanshark, all these bad things, but never can you call him a Rat. With the key members of his team already detained and sentenced from in the late 90s, it would take 16 years after that to finally catch up with him.

These 107 minutes of real life events sheds bright lights on the crooked world of our legal system blatantly caught in the act of aiding the bad guys; something that has been known to occur for years. In theaters June 27, it’s a must see if you ask me.

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
FilmTV

HBO Hosts New York Premiere of its Documentary ‘The Case Against 8’

by Sade Graham
written by Sade Graham

Yesterday on May 28, 2014, TheKnockturnal.com was on the scene at the New York premiere of HBO’s latest documentary “The Case Against 8” at the Time Warner Center Screening Room. Five years in the making, the film takes a riveting inside look at the groundbreaking Supreme Court case that overturned Proposition 8, California’s ban on same-sex marriage.

With exclusive behind-the-scenes footage of both the powerhouse legal team of David Boies and Ted Olson and the four plaintiffs in the suit, the documentary is a powerful emotional account of the journey that took the fight for marriage equality all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Read our exclusive red carpet interviews below:

Director Ryan White

Q: What was the intension going in to keep this story interesting on camera?

A: We filmed 600 hours of footage over the course of five years, as legal nerds and people who became really entrenched in the lives of the plaintiffs, Kris and Sandy and Paul and Jeff, we thought most of those minutes were really interesting in the end. It was a really big challenge in the editing room to distill a massive five year legal drama into an hour and fifty minutes that makes sense to a non-legal audience at the same time keeping the legal audience happy as well. Going in and out of the personal lives of the plaintiffs while keeping the legal story compelling was the goal.

Q: Now that Prop 8 is out, what are your hopes for the film?

A: The end of the film is very bitter-sweet, we followed Kris and Sandy, Jeff and Paul for five years, and their families as well. So it’s incredibly celebratory to see them reach their fairytale ending after 5 years of trials and tribulations. But the film ends bittersweet with gay marriage still being illegal in 33 states. We hope the film can be an inspiration to the people in those states to start a conversation. We want people to get to know the Plaintiffs in our film and maybe rethink their stance on the issue.

Plaintiffs Kris Perry and Sandy Krier

Q: Can you explain the feeling of being a part of this gripping time of modern history.

A: It feels really important to be a part of group of people that could accomplish something like what we did. The lawyers and the team behind them were all extraordinary and trusting. We weren’t just talking to a judge, we were talking to all of America about why marriage equality matters so that if we did lose, we could maybe open the eyes of other people in America.

Q: After five years, besides your personal gain of being able to marry the one you love, what was your bigger picture of it all?

A: We learned to be disciplined and clear about what we were really in it for which was to repeal Proposition 8. We’ve been able to bring our personal story into the bigger story about how harmful a law is to exclude a group of people based on a characteristic that cannot be changed. We wanted to be a part of that history where things would be corrected.

The film will be in select theaters Friday, June 6 and premieres Monday, June 23 on HBO.

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
FilmLifestyle

Katie Couric Hosts New York Screening of her Documentary ‘Fed Up’

by Sade Graham
written by Sade Graham

World-renowned journalist, executive producer and narrator, Katie Couric together with Stephanie Soechtig (director) and Laurie David (executive producer) all attended the New York premiere of their new documentary “Fed Up” on May 6, 2014. They brought many influencers to the MoMA. The evening was presented by Aloha.

It’s been almost 30 years since the obesity epidemic started in this country, and if Americans continue on this path, we may just eat ourselves to death. “Fed Up” is more than just a film, but a movement with a powerful message. The film goes beyond the conversation of the effects of fast food, but weighs heavily in on the actual miscreants behind the contagion, and how the food industry has knowingly used these secret weapons to manipulate what we eat for private profit and special interests.

Ninety-two minutes of video diaries, interviews and some undisclosed legislative doctrines was enough to enlist a brilliant army, and remove every sugary, starched, and processed food item out of your pantry. Sugar is equated to a drug six times more addictive than cocaine, a poison to the liver, and a major ingredient to most American food regimens. We have been bamboozled, misled, taken for complete imbeciles. The film says that instead of strategizing on how to handle issues overseas, we ought to be planning the war against our own food industry right here in the US.

With kids as a target, this generation of Americans will face more sicknesses and die younger than our parents, while the food industry just gets richer and richer. There is a whole business behind the fattening of America, even down to the marketing of diet products, the funding of food health research programs by these corporations, and a product placement system in line to entice further bad eating behaviors.

Notables who attended last night’s screening included Jodi Applegate, Jon Cryer, Yaya Dacosta, Claire Danes, Shep Gordon, Adrien Grenier, Dorothy Hamilton, Bridget Moynahan, Arizona Muse, Norah O’Donnell, Suze Orman, Chuck Scarborough, Mary Alice Stephenson, Susan Ungaro and Naomi Wolf. Afterwards guests headed to Venus over Manhattan for a sugar free supper. The menu was inspired by Laurie David’s cookbook entitled “The Family Cooks.”

Catering was done by Mary Giuliani Catering & Events. Light bites included chicken sausage with caramelized onions on cheesy grit cakes, black bean burgers topped with guacamole with wweet potato fries, miso-glazed black cod lettuce wraps, whole grain quesadillas with crunchy cabbage, quinoa cakes with green Goddess aioli, salmon cakes with cucumber yogurt sauce, kale sesame seed salad summer rolls and for dessert guests enjoyed mini oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and mini almond cake.

In theaters this Friday May 9, “Fed Up” is an important source to uncovering the facts surrounding our food intake. Tell a friend to tell a friend until the truth is bigger than this widespread.

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Film

On the Scene: ‘Walking With The Enemy’ New York Premiere

by Sade Graham
written by Sade Graham

The Dolby 88 Theatre in Midtown Manhattan was a packed house Monday, March 31, 2014 with a room filled with quite a few noteworthy individuals for a special screening of Liberty Studios’ “Walking With The Enemy.” When your entire world is ripped away from you, there’s only a few routes left to take – it’s kill or be killed, and save your people while you’re at it.

Liberty Studios

Liberty Studios

Based on the true depiction of Hungarian Pinchas Rosenbaum during the Nazi occupation of the second World War; Elek Cohen (Jonas Armstrong) escapes a Hungarian Labor Camp only to find that the Nazi’s had captured his family and then set out for their unfortunate recovery. With nothing else left to live for, he risks his all for the safety of thousands of Jewish people whose government had been overthrown by the Germans with the help of the Arrow Cross Hungarian Nazi party in 1944.

Director Mark Schmidt is monumental with his story-telling tactics as he shared his admiration for this particular Holocaust hero through film. One of many out of the books driven by courage, suspense, love and sacrifice from start to finish. This man inspired some of his comrades to pose as Nazi soldiers where they helped save countless of lives from the ghastly fate of the camps. Without giving too much of the story away, as it debuts in theaters on April 25, be sure to bring a pack of Kleenex along with you when you see it!

Last night, TheKnockturnal.com spoke with Director Mark Schmidt and actors Jonas Armstrong and Simon Kunz at the after-party at Circo. Read our exclusive interviews below.

Mark Schmidt (Director)

Q: How did you discover this particular hero amongst all the stories of the Holocaust?

Well I came across the story first on a general search of Jewish heroes and his name was in there. I later found his story in some old books and started researching further, and thought it was a story that should get out to the world. Here was a young man who didn’t have an army or government backing him and he just did the right the on his own. He could have hidden away during the war, but he chose to put his life on the line and did the best he could.

Q: What was the process like when trying to put together the pieces of creating this remarkable story?

Well it was a lot of work. It took a while with working with different screenwriters and so on. And, we kind of got the story the way I felt it should be. And then searched around the world for locations, got some great actors from Great Britain and a few from the US, actors from all over. We were so lucky. And I’ll tell you, Sir Ben Kingsley was such a professional, nice gentlemen, he worked so hard. Even when his time on the set was up, he was willing to help out with the other actors. Such a true professional, we were really honored to have him in the film.

 

Jonas Armstrong plays Elek Cohen.

Q: What were some of the passions that helped to create the necessary emotions for your role in the film?

I just try to think about how I would even begin to comprehend how those people would have been feeling in those circumstances. What I tried to do was think about my own family, and I would just imagined my younger sister for instance, who I am very close to being taken away, imagining her going through atrocities and those sort of things, and that would sort of get the emotion in me going. Sometimes when I watch, I thought was I giving too much because it has to be on this sort of level constantly, but then I think it was required for the role, you know.

Q: I often hear about actors locking themselves away for periods of time in order prepare for a role, what were some of your methods while preparing?

I did as much background reading as I could around the Nazi’s and the War which I knew quite a bit about anyway, and I spent a lot of time in Budapest with a previous job, spending almost three years there for a series, so I knew the lay of the land as it were. And, I went back there on my time off to revisit, I found the Glass House and stuff like that, and I just did as much reading as I could to submerse myself in it, I didn’t lock myself away in a hotel room trying to come up with a sort of accent, but we had to do a lot of work on dialect and speaking German. I had to have two different dialects, English with a Hungarian accent, and then also speak English with a German accent; that aspect was quite fun actually.

 

Simon Kunz plays Jozsef Juhasz.
Q: How do you go about choosing your roles?

You can only really go on the written word, which is all you get as an actor. The first thing you see is the word and the story. And I know this what every actor says but it’s kind of true. You want to tell a good story. I like the idea of when I look at a script and I tell myself, “I can’t do that”, and then I go out and make myself do it. That’s the buzz for me, to get scared by it. That’s always a good sign. Every job you take on should be a challenge.

Q: With other films out there similar to this one, the telling of how the Nazi’s became to be, taking the lives of thousands of Jewish people during that time, how would you describe your feelings of this film its main character?

It’s an extraordinary story. And it’s basically true, I mean, there were some dramatizations here and there. There’s almost too much story for the film. This guy actually did this stuff, out of sheer balls just kind of went and took people out of death’s jaws and saved them. By all accounts, he was a fascinating guy. People who knew him said, “yeah, he was a great guy, but he was mad”. He just didn’t care, he had everything taken away, and for a guy like that, what does it matter? It’s admirable. And as an audience member you think, “could I do that”. You know we are so lucky, we are blessed that most of us have lived in an age where we have not been asked to go to war, we have not been asked to do anything like this, although it’s going on around the world now. Not many people would know about this guy, and how this actually happened, its an important story that needed to be told. A story of extraordinary courage.

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
FilmSports

On the Scene at a Screening of the EPIX Original Documentary ‘The Current’

by Sade Graham
written by Sade Graham
current

Bethany Hamilton (Left) & Mallory Weggemann (Right)

Yesterday on March 5, theknockturnal.com was on the scene for a New York special screening of the EPIX original documentary “The Current” part of the ReelAbilities: NY Disabilities Film Festival and co- hosted by The JCC in Manhattan at the Times Center in New York City.

The film followed seven brave souls as they were tested by the ocean waters of: Bimini (Bahamas), Cozumel (Mexico), and Kauai (Hawaii) where they heroically swam with sharks and dolphins, went scuba diving, and surfed the waves of beautiful Hawaii. While keeping true to their driving principles of looking past their obvious limitations, all of which have made them each heroines in their own right, these great men and women have managed to make the impossible possible contrary to the naysayers. “Soul Surfer” Bethany Hamilton and Paralympic Gold Medalist Mallory Weggemann were in attendance at the screening and participated in a Q&A.

Check out our exclusive interviews below:

Bethany Hamilton

As one of the featured athletes in the film, what are some of your hopes for viewers to take away?

You can overcome anything you put your mind to. Having a faith in God was vital for my progression throughout my circumstance. My fear of not getting back into the water was bigger than my fear of coming in contact with another shark. And I try to see the positive out of all things.

As inspirational as your story is, what were some of the strengths you pulled from of your other cast mates?

We (Bethany and husband Adam) were specifically inspired by the love shared between Grant and Shawna, and how they stuck it out together after his accident.

How did you and your husband first meet?

We met through mutual friends and just got to know each other gradually. We didn’t know much of each other prior to meeting. On our first date, we jumped off of a 40 foot cliff.

 

Mallory Weggemann

Can you tell me about your connection to the water, and how the whole idea of “healing waters” relates to you?

When I was paralyzed in Jan. of 2008, two months before my 19th birthday, I thought my days of swimming were over. Being a competitive swimmer since the age of 7, the water was second nature to me, and it has always been my safe haven, but when I was paralyzed I thought it was taken away. But in April of 2008, 4 months later, I realized that it wasn’t, I got back in the pool, and swimming was like having my home back, it taught me so much about life as far as dedication, determination, and about life’s challenges and overcoming them. I’m free, I can do anything and everything that I want. When I’m in a pool, I’m not in a wheelchair. I’m free.

What led you to get back into the water?

Getting back into the water was actually kind of serendipitous. I had just gotten out of the hospital and was at my parents’ house. My sister saw a newspaper article for the Paralympic tryouts for the Beijing games being held about 30 minutes away from my house. I never heard of the Paralympics before then and didn’t know what to expect. They wanted to take me to check it out. I really didn’t want to, but my family could be really pushy (in a good-supportive way) so I went, that was on a Saturday. I left the pool, and then on Monday, I got back in the pool for the first time and literally fell in love.

What do you hope people take away from the film?

One of the biggest things that I always talk about is that everybody has a disability. Mine is physical, it could be mental, emotional, financial, spiritual, nonetheless, we all struggle with stuff every single day. And, yes the movie is about showcasing amazing abilities within the disability population, but it’s about more than that. It’s just about life, and it’s about all of us realizing that disabilities are universal and we all have it. And if we can all understand, the appreciation, respect, and graciousness we can have towards one another I think it’s just astronomical and it forces all of us to look internally and think what’s holding me back in my life, and then addressing that and pushing past it. That’s my biggest hope. It could be the smallest of things, but in your life the biggest of things, and just finding out those things and ways to challenge yourself.

“The Current” premieres on EPIX on Wednesday, March 12 at 8pm ET.

0 comments
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail
Newer Posts
Older Posts