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Forest Whittaker – Fruitvale Station
Posted in Soul Brother's Trailers
Tagged film, Forest Whittaker, Fruitvale Station, movie, Oscar Grant
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Fruitvale Station
Forest Whitaker’s Significant Productions and Ryan Coogler brings us the true story of Oscar Grant. This along with “The Butler” coming in August are my top must see films this year. This opens TODAY!Fruitvale Station stars Michael B. Jordan, Melonie Diaz, and Octavia Spencer. Take a look at the interview with Forest Whitaker and the article by Julianne Hing following this post.
5 Reasons You Should See “Fruitvale Station”
By Tonya Pendleton
“Fruitvale Station” is not just the name of the movie, it’s the actual Bay Area Transit Station (BART) where the murder of 22-year-old Oscar Grant took place on New Year’s Day 2009. Grant was heading home to Oakland after a night of partying in San Francisco when a scuffle on the train led transit police to respond. What happened next, recorded by riders on the stopped train, shocked witnesses and the entire Bay Area. While Grant’s killer, a BART office was tried and convicted, he ultimately served just two years.
African-American director Ryan Coogler, 27, also a Bay Area resident, was one of the people stunned by Grant’s murder and his film details the last day in Grant’s life. It’s a nuanced, lean portrait of an imperfect man striving to do better, whose future was denied by an unnecessary application of deadly force. The film has received accolades including the Grand Jury and Audience Awards at the Sundance Film Festival and the “Prize of the Future” award at the Cannes Film Festival.
“Fruitvale Station” opened in limited release last week, but expands to theaters nationwide this weekend. Here are five reasons you should make it part of your weekend plans.
1. RYAN COOGLER
Like John Singleton and Spike Lee before him, Coogler has made an impressive first feature that has Hollywood hailing him the next big thing. He’s just signed on to direct “Creed” the seventh film in the “Rocky” series and apparently not to continue along the cheesy path of the last few. Jordan is also attached which means that the two will continue their already fertile creative partnership. Black directors are still much too rare in Hollywood and if this new crop of auteurs like Coogler and Ava Duvernay are what’s next, we’re very happy.
Read More 5 Reasons You Should See “Fruitvale Station” | Black America Web.
AT&T pays to put its name on Dallas Cowboys stadium
The logo of the Dallas Cowboys. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
By Jim Barthold
Inevitably some pundit will say that the Dallas Cowboys “phoned it in” this year when the team has an inevitably lackluster game. That line will have added meaning now that the mega-stadium in which the NFL team plays has been renamed AT&T (NYSE: T) Stadium.
The stadium cost $1.2 billion to build and, according to team owner Jerry Jones, should be “more familiar than the White House.” AT&T probably hopes so: The carrier is shelling out between $17 million and $19 million a year to have its name on the Dallas palace. With that contribution comes the opportunity to have AT&T’s name and logo pasted inside and outside the stadium.
Which is probably a good thing if the Cowboys once again become America’s team; if Romo’s legions flounder, however, the story could have a less happy ending.
via AT&T pays to put its name on Dallas Cowboys stadium – FierceTelecom.
Posted in News from the Soul Brother
Tagged AT&T, Cowboys Stadium, Dallas Cowboys, Jerry Jones, National Football League, NFL
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Plans for 50th Anniversary of MLK’s March on Washington Revamped After Zimmerman Acquittal
MLK Memorial (Photo credit: Lane 4 Imaging)
By Paul Lewis
Plans to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech are being redrawn in the wake of an angry reaction over the decision to acquit George Zimmerman over the shooting of Trayvon Martin, and a recent decision by the supreme court to strike down key sections of a law that protects black voters.
Senior figures in the civil rights movement have told the Guardian that fast-escalating resentment over the treatment of black Americans will result in larger-than-expected crowds descending on Washington next month for the commemorations off King’s famous address.
Zimmerman’s acquittal and the supreme court ruling on the Voting Rights Act have fuelled a renewed debate over race relations in the US and reinvigorated the civil rights movement. In Washington on Friday, Barack Obama delivered a surprisingly bold speech about the issue.
On Saturday, vigils organise by the veteran civil rights campaigner Al Sharpton will be held across the US to protest against the acquittal of Zimmerman, who shot 17-year-old Martin as he returned home armed with nothing more than a bag of Skittles and a drink from a convenience store.
But the King commemorations in August are likely to be even more pointed. Many believe the Zimmerman case, as well as the recent supreme court ruling on the Voting Rights Act, have demonstrated in stark terms how far America is from realising the dream articulated by King on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.
Does George Zimmerman’s car hero story add up?
George Zimmerman (Photo credit: ChrisWaldeck)
By Alex Seitz-Wald
It seemed stranger than fiction, as even his lawyer acknowledged, that George Zimmerman’s first appearance just days after he was acquitted for the killing of Trayvon Martin would be to rescue a nice family of four from their overturned SUV. But that’s what reportedly happened on July 17, leading his defenders to call him a hero and some critics to claim the event was a hoax aimed at boosting his popularity.
It does seem like an odd coincidence: Zimmerman just happened to be on the scene of the crash at the right moment, and happened to have a fire extinguisher with him to put out the flaming car. And now the family he saved abruptly canceled the press conference they had planned to thank Zimmerman. It’s all too much to believe for the Zimmerman Rescue Truthers, who emerged immediately after the news broke.
“Even if we had a videotape of the accident, they would still say it was made up. So you can’t really respond to people who just don’t want to listen to the truth,” Zimmerman defense attorney Mark O’Mara told CNN. “The idea that this was made up — it’s just the same people who refuse to accept the jury’s verdict, just want to be angry, just want to hate George Zimmerman, are still going to hate him.”
He’s probably right. As we’ve noted, conspiracy theories are basically impossible to stamp out. And in this case, the circumstances are just too weird, and the potential public relations benefit for Zimmerman — and thus the perceived incentive to stage the scene — too obvious to explain away for those who are upset about the verdict. Fox News, whose opinion hosts have pretty openly sided with Zimmerman, reported that at an NAACP meeting, “there was a lot — a lot — of skepticism, people saying they don’t believe a word of this.”
Read More Does George Zimmerman’s car hero story add up? – Salon.com.
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