Spike Lee to film ‘Strange’ musical
July 7, 2008
From Variety:
Spike Lee will film the Broadway tuner “Passing Strange.”
Helmer will shoot three perfs — two with auds and one without — of the critically lauded but sales-challenged musical, according to online reports that surfaced over the holiday weekend.
The show’s producers, who are said to be the backers of the video recording, would reportedly aim to air the edited result on a cable net.
A rep for the production confirmed only that the filming would take place, with further details to be confirmed at an announcement skedded for Wednesday.
The well-reviewed semiautobiographical rock tuner by musician Stew, with music co-written with Heidi Rodewald, earned seven Tony noms and took home one for Stew’s book.
Spike Lee takes on ‘Time Traveler’
June 18, 2008
Spike Lee will co-write and direct “Time Traveler,” a feature adaptation of a memoir by Ronald Mallett, one of the nation’s first African-Americans to earn a Ph.D in theoretical physics.
Lee acquired “Time Traveler: A Scientist’s Personal Mission to Make Time Travel a Reality” with his own money and has set up the project through his Forty Acres & A Mule Filmworks banner.
Mallett, who wrote the book with Bruce Henderson, recounts his rise from poverty to a distinguished academic and scientific career, and it lays out the technical specs for what Mallett envisions as a workable time machine. Developing a time machine became an obsession for Mallett from the age of 10 after his father’s death. His goal was to travel back in time to save his father.
Lee called “Time Traveler” a “fantastic story on many levels (and) also a father and son saga of loss and love.”
- from Variety
Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna Trailer
June 15, 2008
Clint VS Spike III
June 9, 2008
The acrimonious feud between two of Hollywood’s best-known film directors reached a new level of name-calling and accusation at the weekend as Spike Lee invoked America’s bitter legacy of slavery in response to Clint Eastwood’s comments to the Guardian on Friday.
Responding to Lee’s criticism of his second world war films for ignoring black soldiers, Eastwood said America’s most influential black director, should “shut his face”.
But after the remarks were reported around the world, Lee hit back, reminding the older man that they were not “on a plantation”.
- From UK
Spike Lee Strikes Back: Clint’s ‘an Angry Old Man’
June 6, 2008
After Eastwood told him to “shut his face” and stop criticizing him about not including African-Americans in his 2006 Iwo Jima movies, “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima,” Lee’s lashing out.
“First of all, the man is not my father and we’re not on a plantation either,” he told ABCNEWS.com. “He’s a great director. He makes his films, I make my films. The thing about it though, I didn’t personally attack him. And a comment like ‘a guy like that should shut his face’ — come on Clint, come on. He sounds like an angry old man right there.”
- From ABCNews
Clint Eastwood to Spike Lee: “Shut your face”
June 6, 2008
Clint Eastwood has advised rival film director Spike Lee to “shut his face” after the African-American complained about the racial make-up of Eastwood’s films.
In an interview with the Guardian published today, Eastwood rejected Lee’s complaint that he had failed to include a single African-American soldier in his films Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, both about the 1945 battle for the Japanese island.
In typically outspoken language, Eastwood justified his choice of actors, saying that those black troops who did take part in the battle as part of a munitions company didn’t raise the flag. The battle is known by the image of US marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi.
“The story is Flags of Our Fathers, the famous flag-raising picture, and they didn’t do that. If I go ahead and put an African-American actor in there, people’d go: ‘This guy’s lost his mind.’ I mean, it’s not accurate.” Referring to Lee, he added: “A guy like him should shut his face.”
- From Huffpost
Spike Lee, Nokia team for cell phone pic
April 28, 2008
Filmmaker Spike Lee has linked up with Nokia to direct a movie made with cell phone footage from everyday people in what he calls the democratization of film.
The film by Nokia Productions will consist of three acts. An “assignment” for each act will be announced online and people will then have four weeks to produce their submission.
“You are seeing first hand the democratization of film,” Lee said in a statement on Thursday. “Aspiring filmmakers no longer have to go to film school to make great work. With a simple mobile phone, almost anyone can now become a filmmaker.”
Via THR