10 h. ago Spike Lee’s Highest 2 Lowest rages against the new but leaves him looking too old

The film-maker’s ‘reinterpretation’ of the Kurosawa crime drama rails against AI, online media and new hip-hop but can’t find much new to say“We’re jazz musicians,” the director Spike Lee recently said of his working dynamic with Denzel Washington in Highest 2 Lowest, a new crime thriller that marks the fifth collaboration between the two Oscar winners. “We respect Julie Andrews singing My Favorite Things, but when John Coltrane did it, you know, or when Miles [Davis] did his standard of My Funny Valentine, it’s a different thing.”The metaphor is no throwaway. Since Lee’s breakout on to the cultural scene in the 1980s, the Atlanta-born, Brooklyn-made auteur has been at pains to style himself as an outgrowth of old school storytelling traditions even as critics tarred him as a new-school disrupter. From She’s Gotta Have It to Chi-Raq, Lee has made the extra effort to venerate the athletes, artists and thinkers who have shaped his distinctly analog worldview. Highest 2 Lowest was mean...

Politics

26 h. ago ESPN scraps Spike Lee’s Colin Kaepernick docuseries over ‘creative differences’

Oscar-winning director was tapped in 2022 to direct multi-part documentary about NFL star

Politics

35 h. ago Christy review – outstanding actors and Cork landmarks shine in a moving and funny Irish drama

Diarmuid Noyes and Danny Power play two brothers finding their feet after time in care in a social-realist film with heart and humourHere is a terrifically warm and involving Irish movie about two brothers from Cork’s northside; it is moving and funny, with plenty of affectionate shots of the iconic Knocknaheeny water tower looming futuristically over the skyline like a 70s spaceship or one of eastern Europe’s Soviet-era war memorials. Screenwriter Alan O’Gorman and first-time director and story co-creator Brendan Canty deliver a social-realist film with heart, featuring outstanding performances of sympathy and strength, developed from Canty’s 2019 short film of the same name. It’s tough, but capable of delicacy and succeeds in conveying something very difficult to achieve without sentimentality: love of your home town. You can come for the drama and stay for the cheeky hip-hop sequence over the closing credits, a final stretch of sweetness and fun that the movie has more than earne...

Events

43 h. ago Spike Lee is one of our greatest living directors – so why does no one care about his new film?

‘Highest 2 Lowest’ is a punchy thriller with one of the world’s biggest actors, Denzel Washington, as its lead. Lee hasn’t lost his touch, writes Xan Brooks, but the world is forcing him out to the margins again

Politics

3 d. ago ESPN drops Spike Lee’s docuseries on Colin Kaepernick, network and filmmaker say

Multi-part series on ex-NFL player who protested racial injustice will not continue over ‘creative differences’Director Spike Lee’s multi-part documentary series for ESPN Films about former NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who sparked a national debate when he protested racial injustice nearly a decade ago, will not be released, the filmmaker and ESPN said.“ESPN, Colin Kaepernick and Spike Lee have collectively decided to no longer proceed with this project as a result of certain creative differences,” ESPN said in a statement to Reuters on Saturday. “Despite not reaching finality, we appreciate all the hard work and collaboration that went into this film.” Continue reading...

Culture

2 w. ago Spike Lee, Adam McKay and over 2,000 writers decry Trump’s ‘un

Screenwriters from Writers Guild of America, also including David Simon and Celine Song, call out president’s ‘authoritarian assault’ on free speechMore than 2,300 members of the Writers Guild of America, including Spike Lee and Adam McKay, have signed an open letter decrying the actions of Donald Trump’s administration that represent “an unprecedented, authoritarian assault” on free speech.The letter, a combined effort from the WGA East and West branches, cites the US president’s “baseless lawsuits” against news organizations that have “published stories he does not like and leveraged them into payoffs”. It specifically references Paramount’s decision to pay Trump $16m to settle a “meritless lawsuit” about a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. The letter notes that Trump “retaliated against publications reporting factually on the White House and threatened broadcasters’ licenses”, and has repeatedly called for the cancellation of programs that criticize him. Continue reading...

Politics

2 w. ago ‘Everybody’s starved of affection’: Past Lives director Celine Song on the brutal dating scene and her realistic new romcom

The writer-director’s debut film earned critical acclaim and Oscar nods for its portrayal of loves lost and rekindled. Her follow-up stars Dakota Johnson, Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans in a romance about dating across the class divide‘Our financial literacy is so fucked,” says Celine Song. We’re having breakfast in Manhattan on a sunny Saturday in early July, a few weeks after her new film, Materialists, has opened in New York City. She’s wearing a charmingly ironic outfit: a T-shirt that says “HOWDY” and a baseball cap that says “Big” (she’s petite, 5ft 4in, for the record) – but she speaks with almost disarming earnestness.She’s frustrated, she tells me, that people have described one of the characters in her film, a private equity manager with a $12m apartment, as a “billionaire”. “If you’re a billionaire, your big apartment is not $12m!” she exclaims. “The average income of an American adult is $35,000. What that means is half of America makes less than $35,000. Three times that ...

Culture