Liberty, justice, freedom for all all of these presumed catchphrases that get bandied around this time of year take on new and tragically ironic meaning this Independence Day.
“Small Engine Repair,” written and directed by John Pollano is a gem on many different levels. Almost episodic in nature, the seemingly divergent storylines…
Kemp Powers, the history-making screenwriter behind two of 2020âs most celebrated films, is his own competition.
âOne Night in Miami,â a dramatization of the real-life gathering of four Black icons â Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, Sam Cooke and Jim Brown at the Hampton House in 1964 â was adapted from Powersâ award-winning play of the same name.
Powers also wrote and co-directed Pixarâs âSoul,â the story of a middle school band teacher tasked with mentoring an unborn soul in order to get a second chance at life after falling to his death on his way from getting a dream gig as a jazz musician. He is the first Black director in Pixar history.
Writer Kemp Powers and star Leslie Odom Jr. explain the decision to turn a lost Sam Cooke performance into one of the film's most resonant, hopeful moments.
British actor Kingsley Ben-Adir thought he was destined to never appear in
One Night in Miami.
The film, on Amazon Prime Video from Friday, is a work of fiction based on a real-life meeting
between four stalwarts of the black community – Sam Cooke, Malcolm X, Jim Brown and Cassius Clay (Muhammad Ali) – in a hotel room on February 25, 1964.
The first time Ben-Adir, 33, tried to land a part was long before the idea came about to readapt writer
Kemp Powers’s play, which imagines what these towering figures would have said to each other, into a movie. Ben-Adir auditioned to play Sam Cooke when