Tyler Perry Launches 34th Street Films posted on Sep 24, 2008

Tyler Perry has formed 34th Street Films, the L.A.-based a production arm of his Atlanta-based Tyler Perry Studios that will focus on projects written and directed by outside talent.

Matt Moore, former exec VP of production at Jinks/Cohen, will head the division; Poppy Hanks and Amber Rasberry join him. The trio will work from a Los Angeles office and report to Perry's HQ in Atlanta.

In July, Perry signed a three-year, first-look pact with Lionsgate Films, the studio that has released every Perry film. The deal requires writer-director-producer-actor Perry to deliver at least three films over the life of the contract. Lionsgate will retain a first-look position with 34th Street films as well.

indieWIRE PROFILE | "Medicine For Melancholy" Director Barry Jenkins

by Eugene Hernandez (September 14, 2008)

"We stopped seeking validation and just went out and made the movie," filmmaker Barry Jenkins explained last week in Toronto, sitting down to chat a bit about his first feature "Medicine For Melancholy." A Toronto International Film Festival Discovery section title, the acclaimed fest circuit film, acquired over the summer by IFC Films, is launching IFP's Independent Film Week on Monday in Manhattan after winning the audience award at theSan Francisco International Film Festival and hitting a number of other fests. A low-budget indie feature set in San Francisco, the film follows two people during the 24 hours after they meet and hook up. It's about, in Jenkins' words, "the naivete of the morning after. Trying to forge an emotional connection from a physical act."

"The movie kind of spun out of my first functional, interracial relationship," Jenkins elaborated, reflecting on the movie on a day last week when he spent hours talking to the press. As the young folks at the center of his story -- Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and Jo (Tracey Heggins) -- get to know each other better the morning after, they ponder Bay Area gentrification, talk class politics, and butt heads over race in a way that feels quite timely. In short, they expose and judge each others identities in ways evolve naturally.

"It's really about economics, it's about status, class," Barry Jenkins added, elaborating his own "post-race" point of view. "I think the movie is really about getting to that point." He spent three weeks writing the script for a film that was inspired, in part, by Claire Denis' 2002 film, "Friday Night" (Vendredi Soir). But, "I am not Claire Denis!" he cautioned. "It could be set in Chicago or New York," he added, but in setting it in San Francisco, he uses the film as a way to explore the city and two of its residents at a particular moment.

A scene from Barry Jenkins' "Medicine for Melancholy." Photo provided by SXSW

"I would love for other filmmakers to be inspired by our film," Jenkins said, reflecting on the fact that "Medicine for Melancholy" would kick-off the IFP events this week. He was inspired by the work of the so-called Mumblecorefilmmakers, namelyChris Wells and Joe Swanberg and their 2006 film, "LOL." After befriending Wells at theTelluride Film Festival, where Jenkins is still an annual staffer, Jenkins admitted that he was rather floored when Wells told him that he and Swanberg had gone and made a low-budget feature.

"I went to film school, I thought I was a decent filmmaker, I just couldn't make films -- nobody would give me the money or the time or the access," elaborated Jenkins, an '03 graduate of Florida State. Fed up with with trying to find the cash to make his own films, Jenkins decided to take the D.I.Y. approach pursued by Wells and Swanberg. Which essentially lead him to the festival home base for the so-called Mumblecore set, Austin's SXSW Film Festival. IFC came knocking after catching up with the film this Spring, tipped by filmmaker (and IFC staffer) Chris Wells.

Now repped by CAA and recently named to Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces in Independent Film, like other emerging filmmakers Jenkins is hoping to work with a larger palette in the future. "I don't think there is a single filmmaker that I've met on the circuit who doesn't want access to better tools," Jenkins added, "All we could afford to do was two people walking and talking."

Movie Tells Story of First Black Heisman Winner

Half a Century After His Tragic Death, Syracuse's Ernie Davis Makes the Big Screen

By MATT GELB

SYRACUSE, N.Y., Sept. 11, 2008—

The 1961 Heisman Trophy sits alone in a glass case in the middle of the hallway that separates the exercise room from the cafeteria and auditorium in the Syracuse University football wing at Manley Field House.

It serves as a constant reminder of the legacy of Ernie Davis. And the success Syracuse once tasted.

Davis died tragically after becoming the first African-American to win the annual award recognizing college football's most outstanding player. His inspirational story hits the big screen October 10 when "The Express" debuts in theaters around the country.

The movie is a major coup for the university. Syracuse athletic director Daryl Gross was directly involved with preliminary discussions with Universal Studios and helped launch the making of "The Express." He successfully lobbied for Friday's worldwide premiere at the Landmark Theatre in Syracuse instead of Hollywood.

In Need of a Boost

School officials hope that all the attention will serve as an inspiration and public relations boost to a struggling Syracuse team, which lost its season opener 30-10 at Northwestern University and started 0-1 for the fifth straight season.

"There's a sense of urgency for not just us as players, but I think our community, too," senior wide receiver Bruce Williams said. "We don't want this thing to die down. We really want this thing to turn around very soon."

The Syracuse program is in a drastically different state than when Davis led the school to its only national championship in 1959, and even four years ago when the Orange won a share of the Big East title.

But the football team has since lost its prominence, even on its own campus, where attendance is at a 20-year low.

"We haven't been successful with winning in the past few years," senior running back Curtis Brinkley said. "I feel like everybody needs to make a statement."

The opening weeks of the season coincide with the Sept. 12 movie premiere.

The following day, a ranked and heavily favored Penn State team comes to the Carrier Dome to renew a once bitter rivalry. The two schools haven't played one another in 18 years, but met every season except one from 1922 to 1990.

Davis Story Needs Telling

As for Davis' story, it simply needs to be told, athletic director Gross said. After an illustrious collegiate career at Syracuse, Davis succumbed to leukemia on May 18, 1963, at age 23, before he could start his professional career.

The movie title is a play on "Elimira Express," as the running back was called in college. He went to high school in Elmira, N.Y., before going on to win the second-closest vote in Heisman history and the only SU student to earn the award.

The Orange football team watched a private screening last week before the season's devastating home-opening loss to the Universitry of Akron (Ohio), 42-28.

"I'm excited for the movie and to watch," defensive tackle Arthur Jones said. "It's really going to create attention to this program."

Gary Fleder directed the movie, which stars Rob Brown as Ernie Davis and Dennis Quaid as legendary SU coach Ben Schwartzwalder. It debuts in theaters nationally Oct. 3.

Even during the darkest days of Syracuse football, Gross sees the movie as a huge boost to the program.

"It's priceless. Totally priceless," Gross told The Daily Orange recently. "You can count on two hands the number of schools that have had their university in a world motion picture like us. You think about 'Rudy,' 'Glory Road,' 'We Are Marshall.' I saw the movie. It is Syracuse. It's about Syracuse. It's just an amazing, extraordinary, priceless piece of art that the world's going to get to see."

Hollywood Comes to Syracuse

The events on the day of the premiere will bring a taste of Hollywood to the city of Syracuse. Former SU and NFL football stars Jim Brown and Floyd Littleplan to attend the festivities, along with other members of the 1959 national title team, actors from the movie and other prominent alumni.

During halftime of the Penn State game, the school will unveil a statue of Davis in a special ceremony featuring the 1959 players and the actors. The statue will eventually sit in the university's main quad.

And while Syracuse players and coaches are optimistic that the program can turn the corner, even after the deflating first loss, the team's recent performance stands is in stark contrast to the glory days.

"It's really important to get things moving in the right direction," team player Jones, a junior, said. "Coach has told us, 'Just believe.'"

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Miracle at St. Anna
: TIFF press conference diaries Posted: September 07, 2008, 3:03 PM by Mark Medley

The best part of a press conference featuring Spike Lee is you know you’re not leaving the room without a notepad full of quotes. And so it was Sunday morning at the presser for Miracle at St. Anna, his new World War Two epic that chronicles the experiences of the African-American soldiers that comprised the 92nd Division – called the Buffalo Soldiers. Though he started off slowly, Lee rounded into peak form as the hour progressed. The way Lee lectured the room full of journalists it sometimes felt like we were in his classroom at NYU, where he teaches film.

It was, he said, a miracle this film got made. After the success of his last feature, 2006’s Inside Man, he figured it would be easier to secure the funding for his next picture. No luck.

“If you’re not doing a comic book or some TV show made into a movie, it’s hard to get stuff made,” said Lee, wearing a white Barack Obama t-shirt and a crucifix around his neck. “I was very frustrated with Hollywood. And I said ‘F**k it’ and flew to Italy.”

There, he secured the finance thanks to his two Italian producers Roberto Cicutto and Luigi Musini.

“I really believe in miracles now,” said Lee. “This film is a testament to that.”

The film may surprise long-time Lee fans whom may not peg the American director as the type to direct a sprawling war epic (with a good chunk of the dialogue in Italian and German.) Then again, the bank heist drama Inside Man wasn’t typical Lee fare, either.

The movie is an adaptation of James McBride’s novel of the same name. McBride recalled how he was inspired by the sometimes-drunken tales of his Uncle Henry.

“As a kid, I never paid any attention to those stories. They were just old war stories,” said McBride. “But when I grew older and became a writer, I became interested in some of the things he talked about.”

He interviewed two to three dozen veterans of the 92nd Division, and even moved his family to Italy to study the language and further research what Italians went through during the war.

“James McBride wrote a novel that, for an actor, that is a blessing,” said Laz Alonso, who co-stars as Corporal Hector Negron. “If every script I got came accompanied with a book in that detail it would make our jobs so much easier. You could literally see, taste, smell, the period.”

The film co-stars Derek Luke, Michael Ealy, and Omar Benson Miller, and is peppered with cameos by previous Lee collaborators.

Lee just met some of the surviving Buffalo Soldiers while filming a segment for the film’s DVD release. He hopes his film spreads their story to a wider audience.

“They have not gotten their due,” said Lee, getting more animated as he spoke. “And now most of them are dead. It is not a mistake that this film begins with John Wayne and The Longest Day. This is the Hollywood bullshit mythology that excludes plenty of people. You look at John Wayne. What does John Wayne represent? In a World War Two film John Wayne is kicking Nazi ass, in the Pacific he’s kicking Japanese ass, and in the western he’s killing the savage Indians….This film is a rebuttal to the same Hollywood bullshit mythology that demeans other people. And we have to change this shit. We have to change it. We continue putting out these lies again and again and young people growing up have no idea that this stuff even happened.”

There are many different stories, he said, and he hoped this film would spark other untold stories about the war.

“That’s why this whole thing is tied in with Obama,” Lee continued, “because these guys fought not knowing there will be a black president, but they were hoping some day, some day American would deliver on its promise for life, liberty for all American citizens….That’s my tirade for the day.”

The room broke into applause. Prof. Lee didn’t say whether there would be an exam.

Derek Luke in 'Miracle at St. Anna'

The Spike Lee film revolves around four African American Buffalo Soldiers trapped behind enemy lines.

September 7, 2008

ACTOR Derek Luke complains with ultra-mock seriousness that making Spike Lee's World War II drama, "Miracle at St. Anna," set for release Sept. 26, was like being in the real military.

"You never get a chance to go back to your trailer," says Luke, who knows he'll come up dry in this fishing trip for sympathy. Luke, who plays the key role of 2nd Staff Sgt. Aubrey Stamps in the movie, has nothing but admiration when he talks about Lee. "He shoots three or four or five cameras at the same time. He makes sure he gets every actor's reaction."

"Miracle at St. Anna," adapted by James McBride from his novel, revolves around four African American Buffalo Soldiers of the all-black 92nd Infantry Division who find themselves trapped behind enemy lines in a small Tuscan village after one of the men risks his life to save a young Italian boy.

Though he worked long days and weeks in Italy on the film, Luke ("Antwone Fisher") says it was a huge honor to be directed by Lee, especially since he got his big break as an actor in "Fisher," which was directed by Denzel Washington, thereby linking him to Lee in a six-degrees-of-separation sort of way. "Denzel has made more movies with Spike than anybody he's worked with. Denzel and Spike are like Bonnie and Clyde."

Lee, he says, "seems like a guy who likes rehearsal. But once you get the rhythm for the rehearsal and a rhythm for the word, then he allows you to improv if, in fact, it fits. If it doesn't fit, you'll hear it quickly."