Tag: August Wilson


Giving Voice

January 26th, 2021 — 4:42am

Giving Voice – nf
*****

This is a documentary film released in 2020, which pays tribute to the late, revered playwright, August Wilson and to the devoted talented young students who compete in a yearly national acting competition. The film follows the lives of six such students from all over the country as they prepared their monologue and vie to be the finalist in the August Wilson competition, which will take place on Broadway in New York City. The audience gets a meaningful insight into how the words of this great playwright resonate with these young actors who were chosen among a thousand entries. Not only does the film give us a glimpse into the lives of each of these talented young finalists, but we are also able to appreciate the relevancy of Wilson’s words to the contemporary black experience in America. We found the performances of these young people to be riveting. It was complemented by appearances by Denzel Washington, Viola Davis, and Gerardo Navarro. There was also an opportunity to see and appreciate the late great playwright, August Wilson in archival footage, being interviewed and also giving a graduation speech. The words of Wilson remain quite relevant today and seeing these young people enthusiastically embrace them was a wonderful cinematic experience. Kudos of course of the director Fernando Villena and Jamie Stern and also to Viola Davis, John Legend, and several other executive producers.

Comment » | 5 Stars, Documentary

Fences

December 15th, 2016 — 9:45pm

screen-shot-2016-12-14-at-11-09-35-pm*****

Fences-sp

August Wilson is a Pulitzer Prize winning playwright who died in 2005 at the age of 60. He originally wrote Fences for the stage. Wilson had an unusual propensity for capturing accent and dialogue in all his plays. In 1987, James Earl Jones starred in Fences on the Broadway stage where it won a Tony Award. It was more recently recreated on Broadway and received critical acclaim starring Denzel Washington, Viola Davis and much of the same cast that now appears in this movie. August Wilson wrote the screenplay for this movie, but died before it could be brought to fruition as a movie. It was Denzel Washington who persisted and connected with Scott Rudin to produce this movie which he directed and co-starred with Viola Davis, and were joined by some of the other actors who played their parts on the stage.

As is characteristic of Wilson, the dialogue in this film is breathtaking. It wonderfully captures the life circumstances, the dilemmas and the character of so many people living in this setting. In this situation, it is a struggling, mostly black people in a poor but proud Pittsburg neighborhood in the 1950s. It is no easy task to not only capture the dialogue and nuances of the written word, but to also project the character of these individuals. There is no doubt in our minds that Denzel Washington and Viola Davis should be nominated for Oscars for their work in this movie. The cast of veteran stage and movie actors who played a close family friend (Jovan Adepo) as well as  family members  were Mykelti Williamson, Stephen Henderson, Russell Hornsby and Saniyya Sidney. They were all superb. The movie is 135 minutes long, but the story and setting will envelope you and you will be caught up in this wonderful intense and poignant production. (2016)

 

 

Comment » | 5 Stars, Drama

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