Results tagged “spikelee”

                     

Yesterday, Michael Jackson fans gathered in Prospect Park to celebrate Michael Jackson's 51st birthday, in a celebration thrown by Spike Lee. The party, moved from Fort Greene Park to the much larger Prospect Park, attracted thousands of people who braved the initially dreary weather for a day of music and fun and writer-director Lee told them, "I'm like everybody else - somebody who loved his talent. We're here to celebrate Michael Jackson."

The Michael Jackson birthday celebration in Brooklyn that was accused on the New York Times blogs as being "Spike and Marty’s big ego trip" just got bigger—eighteen times bigger. The event in honor of what would have been the singer's 51st birthday is being thrown next weekend by filmmaker Spike Lee and was originally set to be a block party taking place at Fort Greene Park. But now it has been moved to the much roomier Prospect Park after the city became involved when concerns arose over the celebration's growing publicity. The event that the Post uncomfortably refers to as "JACKOFEST" will now take place next Saturday at noon in Nethermead at the center of Prospect Park, with organizers saying they expect a crowd that could reach over 10,000. A Parks official succinctly told the Brooklyn Paper, “There were concerns about the size of the event.” This month also marks the fifteenth anniversary of the HIStory teaser video being shot in Budapest—maybe it's time for an update to Prospect's James S.T. Stranahan Statue.

Plans for Michael Jackson's burial have finally been set for August 29th, the same day the King of Pop entered the world, and would have been celebrating his 51st birthday. While the private ceremony takes place at 10 a.m. on the West Coast (in the Great Mausoleum at Glendale Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California), the East Coast will be celebrating his life in a different way.

There was a futile rush-ticket line stretching halfway down the block outside the Director's Guild Theatre on 57th Street last night for the New York premiere of Spike Lee's Passing Strange, which documents the critically acclaimed rock musical using a concert-doc aesthetic not unlike Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense. Tickets to the extremely sold-out Tribeca Film Festival screening were exclusively offered to American Express Cardmembers, but Passing Strange fans shut out last night will at least be able to see it on TV; in a post-show discussion last night, Lee revealed that the film will be broadcast on PBS's Great Performances series, and he added that a theatrical distribution may be in the works. (There is also a second and final screening tonight as part of TFF.)

Yesterday afternoon, film director Spike Lee joined the Reverend Al Sharpton and hundreds of others to protest the NY Post's decision to run an editorial cartoon featuring a dead chimp killed by police. Lee said of the paper, "Shut it down... It's not just black folks. It's an insult to everybody."

The Tony, OBIE and Drama Desk-award winning rock musical Passing Strange will close June 20th after a six month run on Broadway, during which time the show failed to translate massive critical acclaim into box office profits. Attendance hovered around 50% capacity for most of the run, and producers’ hopes for a post-Tonys boost were dashed when Latino musical In the Heights dominated the awards.

At 8:30PM (following a half-hour red carpet special), the 80th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will begin, finally putting an end to the "There Will Be Oscar" or "Oscar Country for Old Men" type headlines.

Now we know why there are still people heading to The Garden. There aren't any Knicks’ fans left, they are all paid actors. At least that’s the conclusion one could draw from a story in the New York Press. It turns out that the people in the "fan ads" (like the one pictured above), are mostly paid actors and their stories are made up for the commercials. The surprising thing is that apparently the Knicks didn’t know this.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama made a campaign swing into our neighborhood yesterday, drawing a crowd of thousands to Yanitelli Center at St. Peter's College, and as well as supporters to a fund-raiser in Midtown last night. At St. Peter's, He told the audience, "I'm not running because of long-held ambitions. I'm running because of what Dr. (Martin Luther) King called the 'fierce urgency of now.'"

In November, Charlie Rose sat down with rapper and entrepreneur Jay-Z. The musician is originally from Brooklyn and late in the interview Rose queries about the expected success of the Nets once they move to Kings County. Jay-Z is very enthusiastic about the potential of the team and the virtues of the borough, as he prefaces every statement about Brooklyn with the words "we" and "ours." It is unintentionally comedic then when Rose immediately follows up with the question "And where do you live now?" The answer is a terse "In Manhattan, uh." The exchange begins around 48 minutes and 45 seconds into the interview and a quick transcript is available at the Atlantic Yards Report site here. It reminded us of the first time that we heard that director Spike Lee had moved to the Upper East Side.

November marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the Tawana Brawley affair--an incident that inflamed racial relations in New York and across the country after a teenage girl alleged that she had been sexually assaulted and abused by police. The ensuing media circus thrust Rev. Al Sharpton into the limelight and established his bona fides as a community spokesman. It also tarnished the reputations of the people she accused of raping her and, later...

A day after the NY Post served up a Thanksgiving day front page cover of Knicks president and coach Isiah Thomas as a turkey, the embattled Thomas proclaimed he would stay in his job, saying, "I don't foresee there being any changes this year." Which the Post calls "LOAD OF BULL?" But really, if there's one thing that the Post and Daily News must have been thankful for, it's having such a spectacularly poorly managed...

It's been five years since Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell) was murdered in his Queens studio, and though some people have recently started piping up about who may have pulled the trigger - no suspect has been named. Moving forward -- his friends, family and fellow musicians have begun to get closure in other ways. Mizell's widow, Terri, started the Jam Master Jay Foundation for Music -- a non-profit that provides funding and resources to...

EVENT: Tonight, as part of the recurring Upstairs at the Square event, Nellie McKay plays tunes from her latest, Obligatory Villager and host Katherine Lanpher talks with author and filmmaker Antonio Monda. Monda's new book Do You Believe? Conversations on God and Religion will hit shelves soon -- and tonight he'll relay the discussions he had about religion with folks like Spike Lee and David Lynch. 7pm // Barnes & Noble [33 E 17th St]...

From yesterday evening to dawn this morning, the ethereal September 11-light installation Tribute in Light beamed into the skies from its downtown perch. Designed by artists Julian LaVerdiere and Paul Myoda, architects John Bennett and Gustavo Bonevardi of PROUN Space Studio, architect Richard Nash Gould, and lighting designer Paul Marantz and produced by the Municipal Art Society and Creative Time, the lights were first seen in March 2002 for a month and then became part of the September 11 anniversary fabric, shining from dusk till dawn.

A look at some noteworthy television this week:

(718) 230-0221

Blender has a list of 100 Days That Changed Music, and not surprisingly a good amount of them took place in New York. Here are a few, see any missing?

With lines of potential customers snaking around the block, New York's Apple Stores on Fifth Avenue and in SoHo opened their doors at 6PM for the launch of the iPhone, the unbelievably hyped multi-functioning personal accessory.

In advance of an official press conference at The Palace Theater today, The Times and The Post have reported that Spike Lee will be make his Broadway debut next spring with the 1951 play Stalag 17; a dramedy about camaraderie and betrayal between American airmen stuck in a German P.O.W camp (later made into a film by Billy Wilder.) Sources say that Clive Owen will once again be Spike’s inside man on the project. (Though Mark Wahlberg is also in the running.)

You may be familiar with James Sanders' book Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies, which celebrated New York City's role in movies and is a must for any fan of New York, architecture, or film. But even if you haven't, you get a chance to experience it in beyond the pages: Starting tomorrow, Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall will be the setting for a Celluloid Skyline exhibit. There will be huge "scenic backing" paintings from old films, film footage, artifacts, displays and more that will show NYC's role in production and as a "mythic city" of the movies. Here's a description:

[The exhibit] will also carry visitors into the dream city of the movies, through “immersive” elements that allow visitors to feel as if they are actually inhabiting the various environments of the filmic city – streets, skyscrapers, rooftops, theaters, waterfronts, interiors – allowing viewers to come away with a greater understanding not only of the moviemaking process, but of the urban character, texture and significance of the real city.

Continue reading "Celluloid Skyline at Grand Central Tomrorow"

This morning, NBC News President Steve Capus appeared on the Today show to discuss the immediate ending of radio shock jock Don Imus's MSNBC simulcast. Per TVNewser, Capus said:

There's no question that his program has had provocative conversation and interesting conversation, deep conversation with thought leaders and political leaders through the years. But it's also had the other element. At some point you have to say 'enough is enough.' This went so far over the line that it was time.

Yes, it appeared that Dwight Howard committed a goaltending violation on Stephon Marbury’s subsequent drive, but Nelson came down and hit another 3, part of the 10-2 run the Magic used to seal the game.

Don't you just love that feeling of "discovering" a new artist that no one else knows about yet? The New Directors/New Films festival curated by the Film Society at Lincoln Center and the Museum of Modern Art's Film department have been keeping New Yorkers ahead of the cinema curve for 35 years now with their annual series. In the past they've showcased such newbies as Chantal Akerman, Pedro Almodóvar, Héctor Babenco, Terence Davies, Guillermo del Toro, Atom Egoyan, Nicole Holofcener, Spike Lee, Richard Linklater, Sally Potter, John Sayles, Steven Spielberg, Tom Tykwer and Wim Wenders, so you know picking at random from even just one of the 26 films in the series could yield a new favorite .

The Daily News reported that Field was working without a contract at WWOR.

Looks like Spike Lee called dibs on directing the James Brown biopic. The biography was authorized by Brown before his passing and Lee will rewrite the draft (that's already gone through several rewrites) by Jezz and John Henry Butterworth. The film may be in production as early as fall/winter 2007.

Rumor has it that Spike Lee is taking a class at Columbia this fall. Ivy Leak says he may be at a Tuesday/Thursday night class in Hamilton, and BWOG thinks he could be taking a Literature Humanities, "brushing up on his dead white men." Oh, we suppose Spike couldn't be content reading David Denby's Great Books, which is about Columbia's humanities classes - or attending a class at his alma mater, NYU (is he still on sabbatical from the graduate film program?). Maybe Spike is researching the college life for a new movie!

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