Elijah Wood has been making a lot of eccentric indie films in the years since he starred in the blockbuster “The Lord of the Rings” movies. The extreme horror comedy “Come to Daddy” is his wackiest one so far—and it’s definitely not family-friendly entertainment. This review of “Come to Daddy” won’t contain any spoilers, but people should be warned that this movie is not for those who are easily offended or disturbed by bloody physical violence.
And what might be more unsettling to some people is that “Come to Daddy” has such a gleefully twisted sense of humor that people might find themselves laughing (with a degree of guilt) at some of the absurd things that are said in the movie’s torture scenes. Other people will not want to stick around for the rest of this deliberately nauseating ride; they might be so repulsed that they’ll stop watching the movie before it ends. (I saw plenty of both reactions at the screening I attended. I stayed until the bitter end.)
In “Come to Daddy,” Wood plays the emotionally stunted Norval, a recovering alcoholic and only child still living with his mother, who raised him as a single parent. Norval’s dad left the family when Norval was barely old enough to remember him. So when Norval gets a letter from his estranged father inviting Norval to visit him at his home, he goes out of curiosity and for a possible chance to reconnect with his father. Norval’s father lives in a secluded house near a body of water—it’s a familiar horror-movie device foreshadowing that things are not going to go well with this visit.
Needless to say, there are many twists and turns to the plot where secrets are revealed and people commit heinous acts on each other. “Come to Daddy,” the directorial debut of Ant Timpson, was written by Toby Harvard, who infuses the screenplay with so many over-the-top quips and dialogue, that the movie is not meant to be taken seriously as “torture porn.” This is the kind of movie where a sleazy criminal, after inflicting a lot of bloody mayhem, suddenly declares, “I’m outta here like Vladimir!” If John Waters directed a “Saw” movie, it would have a similar sensibility to “Come to Daddy.” As the central character, Wood carries the film with a campy touch, as Norval starts off with wide-eyed cluelessness until his family visit turns into a nightmare.
How much of a gross-out experience is the violence in “Come to Daddy”? Here’s a partial list of the extreme acts of torture that are in the movie, which isn’t content to show the usual barbarity that’s in a horror flick: Someone is stabbed with an excrement-covered pen. A man is slashed numerous times in the genital area. Someone’s head is covered in Saran wrap and then clubbed repeatedly. Someone’s mouth gets horizontally impaled by an arrow.
And here’s an example of the very dark humor in “Come to Daddy.” Someone who’s been kidnapped explains to another character how his captor gave him a choice of drinking his semen or having his ear cut off—and he chose to have his ear cut off because he was hungry and needed something to eat. The person who hears this story replies that the choice should have been to drink the semen because it contains a lot of protein.
You get the idea. And you might feel like taking a shower after seeing this movie.
UPDATE: Saban Films will release “Come to Daddy” in select U.S. cinemas, digital and VOD on February 7, 2020.
Nancy Grace (Photo by Aaron Poole/E! Entertainment)
Debra Newell (Photo by Charles Sykes/Bravo)
Keith Morrison (Photo by Michael Loccisano/NBC)
Dennis Murphy and Josh Mankiewicz (Photo by Michael Loccisano/NBC)
Andrea Canning (Photo by Michael Loccisano/NBC)
Kelly Siegler (Photo by Kurt Iswarienko/Oxygen)
Tonya Rider (Photo by Kurt Iswarienko/Oxygen)
Steve Spingola (Photo by Kurt Iswarienko/Oxygen)
The third annual CrimeCon for fans of true-crime stories is set to take place at the Hilton Riverside in New Orleans from June 6 to June 9, 2019.
The guest speakers include:
Nancy Grace: Oxygen host; founder of Crime Online; former prosecutor; author; former HLN and Court TV host
Maureen Maher: correspondent for “48 Hours”
Josh Mankiewicz: correspondent for “Dateline NBC”
Keith Morrison: correspondent for “Dateline NBC”
Andrea Canning: correspondent for “Dateline NBC”
Dennis Murphy: correspondent for “Dateline NBC”
Kelly Siegler: former prosecutor; star of “Cold Justice”
Tonya Rider: detective at Toledo Police Department; co-star of “Cold Justice”
Steve Spingola: former detective; co-star of “Cold Justice”
Paul Holes: former forensics investigator; star of “The DNA of Murder With Paul Holes”
Matt Gutman: chief national correspondent for ABC News
Dr. Henry Lee: forensic scientist
Christopher Darden: defense attorney; former OJ. Simpson prosecutor
Tom Lange: former LAPD detective in O.J. Simpson criminal case
Debra Newell and daughter Terra Newell: survivors of violent con artist John Meehan, also known as “Dirty John”
Matt Murphy: Orange County (California) senior deputy district attorney
Rodie Sanchez: former homicide detective; former star of “Killing Fields”
Jan Broberg: kidnapping/abuse survivor; star of the documentary film “Abducted in Plain Sight”
Skye Borgman: director of the documentary film “Abducted in Plain Sight”
Leslie Rule: daughter of the late author Ann Rule
Several of the guest speakers will be doing meet-and-greet sessions with CrimeCon attendees.
True-crime network Oxygen (which is owned by NBCUniversal) has signed as the event’s presenting sponsor, which explains the prominent presence of Oxygen stars Grace, Siegler, Rider, Spingola and Holes, as well as several correspondents from NBCUniversal’s “Dateline NBC.”
In addition to panels about famous crime cases (such as O.J. Simpson, John Meehan aka “Dirty John,” NXIVM, Richard “The Iceman” Kuklinski, New York City’s “Cannibal Cop,” Adnan Syed, Daryl Pinkins and Roosevelt Glenn), CrimeCon will be a highly interactive event, with a courtroom experience with attendee participation, a K-9 search demonstration and a forensics demonstration.
CrimeCon, produced by Red Seat Ventures, is a rival to IDCon, an annual one-day convention in New York City for fans of Investigation Discovery (ID), the true-crime network that debuted in 2008 from Discovery Networks.
Here are the main difference between the two events:
CrimeCon takes place over three days and has programming from various media outlets, whereas IDCon is one day only and focuses only on programming from one network: Investigation Discovery.
CrimeCon takes place in a different city every year, while IDCon is in New York City.
The cost of CrimeCon is much higher per day and is a much larger event. CrimeCon’s 2018 admission prices range from $229-$1,199, not including the cost of on-site meals. IDCon has one admission price, which includes on-site lunch. IDCon’s admission price for 2019 was $75. IDCon moved to a larger venue in 2019 and is expected to have about 600 attendees. CrimeCon has not yet released its attendance figures.
There’s a whole lot of daddy issues going on in “Noah Land,” a Turkish movie about family, death and religious conflict. The movie centers on Ibrahim (played by Haluk Bilginer), a senior citizen with a terminal illness, and Ömer (played by Ali Atay), who is Ibrahim’s son. Ibrahim’s dying wish is to be buried underneath a tree that he says he planted as a boy. The problem is that land where the tree was planted has become a holy site called the “Noah Tree.” The locals in the community don’t believe Ibrahim’s claim that he planted the tree. The villagers think the tree was planted by the biblical figure Noah after the Great Flood, so it would be sacrilegious to dig up the area surrounding the tree.
Regardless of who planted the tree, Ibrahim claims that his family still owns the land, so he has a right to be buried there. But the family had moved away more than 45 years ago, and there are no records to prove that the family legally owns the land. Ibrahim enlists Ömer to help him in his fight to be buried under the tree, and Ömer finds himself in heated conflicts with people who might go to extremes to protect the land.
Ömer is fraught with other emotional conflicts, because Ömer is still seething with resentment over his love/hate relationship with Ibrahim. The way Ömer remembers it, Ibrahim was often an absentee father when Ömer was growing up, and when Ibrahim was around to raise Ömer, he was overly critical of his son. Now that Ibrahim is asking for Ömer’s help in his last days before he dies, Ömer wants to be a good son, but he can’t help but feel that he’s being used by his father for selfish reasons.
And there are other daddy issues, because Ömer’s estranged wife (played by Hande Doğandemir) is pregnant, and he’s feeling anxiety about how he will be involved in his child’s life. Ömer fears that he might turn into an absentee father himself, so he makes an attempt to get back together with his wife, but she refuses, and says she wants to go through with their divorce. Ömer’s failed marriage and impending fatherhood have forced to him look at himself and his shortcomings—and he doesn’t like what he sees because he might be more like his father than he cares to admit. And he must ask himself, “Who is the real enemy?” Is it the community, his father, or is it himself?
Essentially, Ömer has to decide how far he’s willing to go to help his father, and how much he’s willing to forgive him for any real wrongdoings. Father and son spend quite a few scenes bickering back and forth, and they confront some of the issues from their past. “Noah Land” director Cenk Erturk, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, does an admirable job of portraying the messiness of complicated family issues.
Ömer is also realistically written as a flawed human being who’s having a hard time coping with what’s going on in his life—he’s often ill-tempered, petty, and understandably stressed out because he’s lost his wife and is about to lose his father. But all the arguing in the movie becomes a tad repetitive, and it’s dragged out for too long. “Noah Land” could have used some more editing to weed out some scenes that serve a redundant purpose and to tighten the suspense. The cast members, especially Atay, do a fine job in their roles. Some viewers might have a problem with the movie’s ending, but the actions taken at the conclusion of the film are authentic to the characters involved.
There have been countless movies made about different crimes, but “The Gasoline Thieves” is probably the first dramatic film that you’ll see about a crime that is starting to get national attention in Mexico: thieves trespassing on land with Pemex pipelines, stealing gasoline from the pipes, and selling the gasoline on the black market. This riveting first feature-length film from director Edgar Nito takes a look at the crime from the perspective of a teenage boy named Lalo (played by Eduardo Bando), who gets involved with a local group of gasoline thieves and finds out that that he is in way over his head.
Even though the characters in “The Gasoline Thieves” are fictional, they are all entirely believable, and Nito has written them as characters with the sort of quiet desperation of people yearning for a better life. Lalo is actually a good kid, who loves and respects his single mother, who lives with him in a ramshackle building. He also has a crush on a fellow student named Ana (played by Regina Reynoso), whom he hopes to impress enough to convince her to be his girlfriend.
Like many people who turn to a life of crime, Lalo is struggling financially, and he is desperate for cash. He plans to steal temporarily just so he can get enough money to help his mother and have enough cash left over to woo Ana with dates and gifts. As a gift for Ana, he has his eye on the latest cell phone that he won’t be able to afford unless he can come up with the cash quickly.
Joining Lalo in the thieving activities is Rulo (played by Pedro Joaquin), a tough older teen who has less of a conscience than Lalo does. Unlike Lalo, Rulo is more comfortable with being a criminal, and there’s the sense that Rulo is in “thug life” for the long haul. Leading the group of local gasoline thieves is Don Gil (played by Fernando Becerril), a senior citizen who acts almost like a grandfather to Lalo when Lalo is recruited to steal gasoline.
Much of the movie shows Lalo and his accomplices working together as a coordinated team to commit the thefts. Lalo essentially begins to live a secret double life—harmless student by day, reckless thief at night. He also makes tentative steps to get Ana to show interest in dating him. Ana plays it coy by keeping him in the “friend zone” while still flirting with him.
Meanwhile, the local police are investigating the gasoline thefts and are starting to close in on the gang. When Lalo finally reaches a decision about when he’s going to quit being a criminal, it has a ripple effect that spreads almost as quickly as a fire accelerated by gasoline. “The Gasoline Thieves” director Nito (who co-wrote the movie’s screenplay) has a flair for ramping up the suspense in key moments, whether through well-placed camera angles or how he weaves Carlo Ayhllón’s gripping score into each scene. The results are a haunting story that will make viewers wonder how many anonymous gasoline thieves are out there in real life who are like Lalo—fooling themselves into thinking it’s a harmless crime, and finding out the hard way that it’s not so easy to quit.
The world’s top eco-scientists have warned that how we treat life in our oceans and other large bodies of water will largely determine the state of the environment in the coming decades. And right now, the environment is in serious trouble, according to Captain Paul Watson, an early member of Greenpeace who has dedicated his life to protecting wildlife in the oceans. Watson, who is a native of Canada, claims he was one of the co-founders of Greenpeace, but that claim has been disputed by some of the group’s early members. The documentary “Watson” is the first in-depth look at this pioneering environmentalist, whose passion for his work has come at a high price to his safety, freedom and personal life.
Told in chronological order, “Watson” begins with an examination into his lonely childhood, which he says was damaged by his cold and abusive father. Watson’s emotional escape from his unhappy home life was in his love for animals, which he inherited from his nurturing mother. As a teenager, he discovered his love of being out on the water as a sailor. He came of age as a self-described hippie in the late 1960s, in the era of protests against the establishment, which was an ideal setting for Watson to take his combined interests of animal rights and environmental activism to become a part of Greenpeace with other like-minded disrupters.
At first, Watson found his work with Greenpeace satisfying, as the group members went around the world, risking their lives to prevent illegal fishing and poaching at sea. Greenpeace was also one of the first environmental groups to successfully decrease the practice of killing baby seals for their fur. (Sensitive viewers be warned: This film has a lot of graphic and bloody footage of animals being killed.)
But when Watson clashed with other Greenpeace leaders on how to deal with their opponents (Watson was less inclined to negotiate with the opposition), he was ousted from Greenpeace and left to pick up the pieces and continue on his own. Watson parting ways with Greenpeace turned out to be a blessing in disguise for him, as he went on to form Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, a group that made its mark by taking radical measures, such as blocking boats engaged in illegal fishing, diligently getting people arrested for crimes against animals and the environment, and saving the lives of literally thousands of animals. (The footage of Watson and his colleagues carrying baby seals to safety can melt even the coldest of hearts.)
“Watson” has plenty of compelling Greenpeace and Sea Shepherd footage that is used to effectively augment the stories that he tells in his sit-down interviews shown in the film. With only the fraction of funding that Greenpeace has, Sea Shepherd has established a reputation of being a scrappy group of crimefighters at sea. As Watson emphasizes in the film, Sea Shepherd only goes after those who are committing illegal acts. Killing whales for sport or shark finning (killing a shark by removing its fin to later sell the fin at a high price) are among the heinous activities that are explicitly shown in “Watson” as a shocking wake-up call to people who don’t know how this unnecessary cruelty to animals is having dire consequences for our environment.
However, as “Watson” points out, when sea animals are killed for food, and there are gigantic food industries that rely on what can be fished from the ocean, it’s much harder for Sea Shepherd to attain some of their goals. Not surprisingly, Watson and Sea Shepherd have become the targeted enemies of certain governments, and Watson’s legal troubles are unflinchingly documented in this film.
Watson doesn’t try to portray himself as a hero, as he freely admits that his workaholic ways have taken tolls on his personal life—he has three failed marriages, and he admits that he essentially missed out on raising his now-adult daughter. Watson’s legal problems have prevented him from being at sea like he used to in previous decades, but being literally grounded has allowed him to be become a family man to his current wife Yana (whom he married in 2015) and their young son. “Watson” was skillfully directed by Lesley Chilcott, a co-producer of the Oscar-winning 2006 environmental film “An Inconvenient Truth.” That movie, as well as Netflix’s excellent 2017 documentary “Chasing Coral,” would make an excellent companion piece to “Watson,” which gives a very personal look into one of the warriors at the forefront of trying to save our environment.
UPDATE: Participant Media and Terra Mater Factual Studios will release “Watson” in New York City on November 8, 2019. Animal Planet will have the TV premiere of “Watson” on December 22, 2019.
The challenge of doing a documentary film about a high-profile scandal that’s already been covered in countless news stories is that the film really has to deliver something new and extraordinary in order to stand out from all the other stories. “At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal,” although well-researched, doesn’t report anything new and surprising in its chronicle of the 2016 scandal that exposed Dr. Larry Nassar’s sexual abuse of hundreds of patients (many of them were underage female gymnasts) and various institutions’ cover-up and enabling of Nassar’s illegal acts, which spanned more than 20 years. (Nassar has now been stripped of his medical license. In 2017 and 2018, he received numerous prison sentences that will ensure that he will die in prison.) However, the lack of a newsworthy breakthrough in the documentary doesn’t make the film’s emotional impact any less powerful.
“At the Heart of Gold” doesn’t have new interviews with the most famous people involved in the scandal, such as abuse survivors/Olympic gold medalists Aly Raisman, Simone Biles, Gabby Douglas and McKayla Maroney. The documentary also doesn’t interview any of the chief villains in the story, such as Nassar (whose manufactured “nice guy” image fooled people for years) or the officials at USA Gymnastics and Michigan State University (where Nassar also worked), who are accused of actively covering up Nassar’s sexual abuse after the crimes were reported to them. Many of these officials have lost their jobs and are involved in their own legal cases where they are facing criminal prosecution and/or civil lawsuits because of the Nassar scandal.
People interviewed for “At the Heart of Gold” are several abuse survivors—including Trinea Gonczar, Dominique Moceanu, Amanda Thomashow, Morgan McCaul—as well as a few of the survivors’ family members, plaintiff attorney Mick Grewal, Nassar attorney Shannon Smith, judge Rosemarie Aquilina, gymnastics professionals and journalists who covered the story. News reports have already revealed that Nassar’s sexual abuse, which he usually tricked his victims into believing was medical therapy, shockingly occurred on many occasions while the victims’ parents were in the same room, where they believed Nassar had been giving a routine physical exam. However, most of the abuse happened when Nassar was alone with a victim. In many cases, the abuse escalated from fondling to sexual intercourse.
As heinous as Nassar’s actions were, the documentary reiterates that the people who ignored the victims’ complaints and allowed Nassar to get away with committing sexual abuse for decades are just as responsible for these crimes. John Geddert (former USA Gymnastics coach)* and Kathie Klages (former Michigan State University gymnastics coach) are repeatedly singled out in the documentary as two of the most evil enablers of Nassar. As the #MeToo movement raises awareness of how to fight sexual abusers, “At the Heart of Gold” also takes a microscope to the culture that allows people to commit these crimes. The movie serves as a warning that sexual predators are particularly enabled in industries where children are being pushed to achieve fame and glory and are frequently left alone with powerful adults in the industry who are not their parents.
The documentary does an excellent job of also pointing to the abusive treatment that many aspiring Olympic gymnasts receive early on in their training, which almost always begins when they are underage children. The gymnasts are essentially brainwashed into believing that they will be kicked out of a program if they complain about or report any illegal or inappropriate behavior from an authority figure who can derail someone’s Olympic dreams. Gymnasts are also taught not to complain about injuries (those who complain are often punished), and gymnasts are sometimes forced to perform with serious injuries, such as fractured bones.
Béla and Márta Károlyi—the husband-and-wife duo who trained Olympic gold-medalist gymnasts such as Nadia Comăneci, Mary Lou Retton and Kerri Strug—are portrayed as two of the chief perpetrators of this vicious mentality. The Károlyis, who used to be USA Gymnastics coaches, are not interviewed in “At the Heart of Gold,” but they have been sued for knowing about Nassar’s abuse when it was happening at the Károlyi Ranch, the couple’s remote training facility near Hunstville, Texas, that closed in 2018. (Béla retired from gymnastics coaching in 1997, while Márta retired in 2016.)
Some of the people interviewed in “At the Heart of Gold” give disturbing descriptions of the Károlyi Ranch as being a cult-like compound where communication was cut off from the outside world, and the Karolyis were treated like gods who could be merciless in their punishment. Michigan Radio/NPR Radio’s 2018 podcast “Believed” takes a more in-depth look at the Nassar scandal, but “At the Heart of Gold” makes a worthy companion piece for those who want to get the story in a documentary film.
HBO will premiere “At the Heart of Gold: Inside the USA Gymnastics Scandal” on May 3, 2019.
*UPDATE: John Geddert committed suicide on February 25, 2021, the same day that he was indicted on 24 counts of abuse-related crimes, including human trafficking and sexual assault.
In his 2007 documentary “For the Bible Tells Me So,” director Daniel Karslake examined how right-wing conservatives use the Bible to discriminate against the LGBTQ community. Karslake’s documentary “For They Know Now What They Do” takes a more personal approach by spotlighting conservative Christian parents and how they handled finding out that one of their children is LGBTQ. It’s an emotionally charged film that will bring tears to most viewers’ eyes, no matter what you think about LGBTQ issues.
The four sets of parents are Linda and Rob Robertson from suburban Seattle; Dave and Sally McBride from Wilmington, Delaware; Victor Baez Sr. and Annette Febo from Orlando, Florida; and Coleen and Harold Porcher from Montclair, New Jersey.
The Robertsons have the most heartbreaking story to tell about their son Ryan, who came out as gay when he was a teenager. The revelation caused the parents to send Ryan to a “gay conversion” center, and they cut off contact with one of Ryan’s beloved uncles just because the uncle is gay. These actions had long-lasting negative effects on the family, and how the Robertsons are coping with it is sobering and unforgettable.
The McBrides, who have three children, also had to come to grips with finding out that not all of their children are heterosexual. Their eldest son is gay, and their youngest child came out as a transgender woman while she was a senior at American University, where she was president of a fraternity. That youngest child is Sarah McBride, who has since become a political activist, and she experienced a major tragedy not long after she started her new life as a trans woman.
Coleen and Harold Porcher thought that the biggest obstacle their only child had to face was being biracial. (Coleen is black, and Harold is white.) But as the Porcher parents discovered when the child reached puberty, the girl they thought they were raising came out to them as a boy, and told them that he wanted to live his life as a male.
Baez and Febo, who are from Puerto Rico, found out that their son Victor Jr. is gay after he had been kicked out of his grandmother’s home, where he had been living at the time. Up until Victor Jr.’s grandmother had discovered his secret, he had been living a closeted life and was afraid of being disowned by his family if he came out as gay. Not long after coming out of the closet, Victor Jr.’s life took a tragic turn in 2016, when he became a survivor of the Pulse nightclub massacre that killed some people who were close to him.
Through interviews with the straight and LGBTQ members of all of these families, “For They Know Not What They Do” has emotionally powerful and sometimes shocking testimonials from those who know firsthand how coming out can be painful for many families but doesn’t have to be destructive. Clergy people such as Reverend Dr. Jacqui Lewis, an ally of the LGBTQ community, are also interviewed for the movie, which gives an optimistic view of how homophobic family members can best learn to accept a family member who is LGBTQ.
Although the movie does an excellent job of weaving these families’ stories together in a cohesive manner, the documentary might get criticism for leaving out stories of other people in LGBTQ community, such as people whose parents never accepted their sexual identity. Cisgender females who are lesbian or bisexual are also not included in the movie’s stories told from the children’s perspectives. Those omissions don’t take away from the movie’s intended message that even the most hardcore bigots can change when love triumphs over fear and hate.
UPDATE: First Run Features will release “For They Know Not What They Do” in select U.S. virtual cinemas on June 12, 2020. The movie’s release on digital, VOD and DVD is on June 15, 2020.
T-Pain at the 2019 iHeartRadio Music Awards at the Microsoft Theater in Los Angeles on March 14, 2019. (Photo by Frank Micelotta/Fox/PictureGroup)
The following is a press release from Fox:
As previously announced, Vanessa and Nick Lachey return to host the event taking place inside Grand Sierra Resort and Casino’s (GSR) Grand Theatre, located in Reno Tahoe. Season One winner of FOX’s THE MASKED SINGER and Cinematic Music Group’s T-Pain will take the Miss USA stage to perform during the two-hour special programming event and, along with his hosting duties, the show will include a very special performance from Nick Lachey. The 2019 MISS USA® airs Thursday, May 2 (8:00-10:00 PM ET live/PT tape-delayed) on FOX.
Supermodel and pageant expert Lu Sierra returns as a competition insider to provide analysis and commentary throughout the live telecast.
Additionally, the MISS USA® selection committee will be comprised of an all-female panel that will help select the winner, while overseeing both the preliminary and final rounds. This new format has allowed the selection committee to understand what each contestant wants to pursue both personally and professionally.
The women who will determine the next Miss USA include:
Hillary Schieve: Entrepreneur and Mayor, City of Reno, NV.
Ukonwa Ojo: Former Chief Marketing Officer of COVERGIRL, recognized with over 50 honors and awards, including Business Insider’s Most Innovative CMOs list, Marketing Magazine’s Power 100 List and Financial Time’s Upstanding Top 100 Ethnic-Minority Executives.
Amy Palmer: Founder and CEO, PowerwomenTV; Emmy-nominated TV host, Chief Content Officer and Executive Producer
Nicole Feld: Executive Vice President of Feld Entertainment, the worldwide leader in producing and presenting live family entertainment experiences.
Kim Kaupe: CEO and co-founder of The Superfan Company, hailed as a Top 30 Startup to Watch by Entrepreneur; named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30, Advertising Age’s 40 Under 40 and Inc.’s35 Under 35 list.
Pat Smith: Entrepreneur, philanthropist and Miss Virginia USA 1994.
Demi-Leigh Nel-Peters: Miss Universe 2017 of South Africa; IMG Model; founder of women’s empowerment program, “Unbreakable.”
Denise Quinones: Miss Universe 2001 of Puerto Rico, actress, singer and pageant expert.
Women representing all 50 states and the District of Columbia will compete for the opportunity of becoming the next Miss USA. The FOX broadcast concludes with Miss USA 2018 Sarah Rose Summers crowning her successor. To learn more about this year’s contestants, please visit: www.missusa.com/contestants.
The legendary Apollo Theater in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood has been around since 1934, and there is now finally a definitive documentary film about the venue’s legacy and lasting impact on culture. “The Apollo,” directed by Roger Ross Williams, skillfully manages the enormous task of taking all of the Apollo’s rich and complicated history and making it into a cohesive and fascinating story. The movie begins and ends with the Apollo’s 2018 world premiere of the stage adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates’ “Between the World and Me,” his 2015 award-winning non-fiction book about what it means to be a black person in America. Angela Bassett and Common were among the entertainers who starred in the production.
The Apollo—which became a U.S. and New York City landmark in 1983—has hosted numerous actors, dancers, comedians and other entertainers, but the music artists are the ones who shine the brightest in the documentary. The archival footage in the film is breathtaking to watch, as it’s a thrilling reminder that virtually all of the most influential black entertainers from the 1930s onward have performed at the Apollo. The list reads like a who’s who of black culture: Louis Armstrong, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Gladys Knight, and every major star who’s been on Motown Records, including Stevie Wonder, Smokey Robinson, the Supremes, the Temptations, the Four Tops, Michael Jackson and the Jackson 5. Frank Schiffman, the original owner of the Apollo, is described as a ruthless businessman who saw the Apollo as an opportunity to provide an important showcase for black artists, beginning when these artists were shut out of “whites only” establishments. People of all races have performed at the Apollo, but this documentary focuses on black entertainers, in keeping with the Apollo’s original intention to be a venue primarily to showcase black talent.
Anyone familiar with the Apollo already knows about its famous “Amateur Night” talent contest (which was the brainchild of longtime Apollo emcee Ralph Cooper), but the documentary gives some insight into what you might not know: Cooper kept extensive notes (many of which are shown in the movie) on each performer from “Amateur Night,” as well as the established artists who graced the stage of the Apollo. The documentary includes footage of several “Amateur Nights” over the years (including a 13-year-old Lauryn Hill’s first Apollo performance in 1987, when she was booed on stage while singing the Jackson 5’s “Who’s Loving You”), as well as more recent behind-the-scenes and on-stage footage of aspiring entertainers. Several people in the documentary note that the Apollo audience is notoriously hard to please, so getting a standing ovation from the crowd is a badge of honor for any entertainer. The TV show “Showtime at the Apollo” (formerly known as “It’s Showtime at the Apollo”) is the long-running series that has highlights from the Apollo’s “Amateur Night.”
Jamie Foxx, who is interviewed in the film, also noted that many black comedians felt at home at the Apollo because they could be their uncensored selves and not have to worry about watering down their stand-up acts. The documentary includes footage of comedians such as Foxx, Richard Pryor, Moms Mabley, Chris Rock and Dick Gregory. Singer/actress Leslie Uggams, who began performing at the Apollo at the age of 9, shares some fond backstage memories in the documentary. She remembered that Ella Fitzgerald was always offering people food backstage, while Dinah Washington would generously dole out $100 bills to performers who were down on their luck.
The documentary also shows that the Apollo, much like black culture in America, is a story of resilience in the face of difficult obstacles. The Apollo’s relatively small capacity of about 1,500 people made it increasingly difficult for the venue to stay in business, and it temporarily closed in 1976, after filing for bankruptcy. Even when Inner City Broadcasting chief Percy Sutton bought the Apollo in 1983, making him the Apollo’s first black owner, the business still found it difficult to make a profit. In 1991, the state of New York bought the Apollo, which is now run by the non-profit Apollo Theater Foundation.
Even though the Apollo has long been considered a prestigious venue for black artists, it’s also a place that took risks and booked entertainers who were embroiled in controversy. Pharrell Williams and Doug E. Fresh give interviews in the documentary about how the Apollo was one of the first major venues in the United States to offer a major stage platform for hip-hop artists, including those such as Public Enemy and N.W.A, who would frequently speak out against the police in their songs. The Apollo also booked Billie Holiday at a time when her song “Strange Fruit” was considered offensive to many Southern people. Bobby Schiffman, Frank Schiffman’s son who inherited the Apollo until the venue filed for bankruptcy and closed in 1976, tells a story in the documentary about Eartha Kitt being afraid for her life to perform at the Apollo in 1960, because she had recently married a white man, and had been getting death threats from white and black people. But she won over the crowd, and Schiffman said it turned out to be one of her best performances, as well as a lesson for the Apollo that great entertainment on stage could triumph over any controversy going on outside the venue.
That’s not to say that the Apollo has been unaffected by social and political events. The documentary also puts everything into historical context, from the Apollo’s earliest years in the era of legal segregation, to the civil rights movements of the 1960s, to the rise of “black power” ideology in the 1970s to the influence of hip-hop culture in the 1980s and beyond. The message of the movie is that whatever has been an important historical touchstone for African-Americans from the 1930s and beyond—whether it was the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. or Shirley Chisholm running for president of the United States or the Black Lives Matter movement—the Apollo’s audiences and the entertainment on stage have been affected. The documentary also points out that the Apollo is also one of the first places that people go to for memorials when black icons die. The documentary includes footage of Apollo memorials after the deaths of Brown, Franklin, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson and Prince.
Even with all the superstar entertainers who have graced the stage at the Apollo, one guest remains a special favorite: Barack Obama, who became the first sitting U.S. president to do an on-stage presentation at the Apollo. The documentary includes footage of that 2012 appearance, as well as of Obama backstage. If you visit the Apollo, longtime Apollo tour guide Billy Mitchell—also known as Mr. Apollo—might show you the wall of autographs that include Obama’s signature and those of many other celebrities. (There’s footage of Mitchell giving a tour in the documentary too.)
“The Apollo” is an expertly told story that does justice to the Apollo and the people who made the venue great. The only downside is that the movie will eventually become outdated as future legends will make their own history by performing on the Apollo stage. Until there’s a sequel or updated film, this documentary will stand as the most comprehensive visual story about the Apollo.
UPDATE: HBO will premiere “The Apollo” on November 6, 2019.
Hot on the heels of the worldwide box office hit “Shazam!,” star Zachary Levi will host the “2019 MTV Movie & TV Awards” on Monday, June 17th at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California.
Levi currently can be seen toplining David F. Sandberg’s blockbuster superhero feature film “Shazam!” from Warner Bros. Pictures/New Line Cinema.
No stranger to superhero films, Levi has also appeared as Fandral in “Thor: The Dark World.” He was previously best known for starring as Chuck Bartowski in the popular television series “Chuck” and, most recently, as Benjamin in the Emmy(R) and Golden Globe(R) award-winning series “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” for which he took home a SAG(R) Award for “Best Ensemble in a Comedy Series.”
Levi follows in the footsteps of previous MTV Movie & TV Hosts, including Tiffany Haddish, Adam Devine, Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, Amy Schumer, Conan O’Brien, Rebel Wilson, Russell Brand, Jason Sudeikis and Andy Samberg, among others.
The 2019 categories and nominees will be announced in the coming weeks.
Official sponsors of the 2019 “MTV Movie & TV Awards” include M&M’S(R), MTN DEW(R) and Taco Bell(R).
For additional information, please visit MTVAwards.mtv.com and follow @MTVAwards and @MTV on social media. #MTVAwards
Joel Gallen of Tenth Planet Productions will serve as Executive Producer with MTV’s Amy Doyle, Wendy Plaut and Vanessa Whitewolf for the 2019 “MTV Movie & TV Awards.” Rick Austin will also serve as Executive Producer. Joseph Buoye and Alicia Portugal are Executives in Charge of Production. Amani Duncan and Lisa Lauricella are Executives in Charge of Music.
About MTV
MTV is the leading global youth media brand in 180 countries, reaching 450 million households in nearly 30 different languages across every platform. A unit of Viacom Inc. (NASDAQ: VIAB, VIA), MTV operations span cable and mobile networks, live events, theatrical films and MTV Studios.
About Zachary Levi
Zachary Levi has proven himself to be a triple threat – he is an accomplished actor, singer, and dancer which was displayed with his Tony- nominated performance for “Best Leading Actor in a Musical” in the critically-praised Broadway production, “She Loves Me.” Levi currently can be seen toplining David F. Sandberg’s blockbuster superhero film, “Shazam!” from Warner Bros. Pictures/ New Line Cinema. Levi recently took home a SAG Award for “Best Ensemble in a Comedy Series” for his recurring role for season two of Amazon Studios’ Emmy winning series, “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” The first season of the show won six Primetime Emmys, two Golden Globes, as well as a Peabody Award and two Critics’ Choice Awards. The second season won one Golden Globe, three Screen Actor Guild Awards, one PGA Award, two Broadcast Film Critics Association Awards, one Critics Choice TV Award, and TV Program of the Year at the AFI Awards. Additional previous film credits include “Thor: The Dark World”; “Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel”; and “Tangled.” The song “I See the Light,” written for “Tangled” (performed by Levi and Mandy Moore) was nominated that year for an Oscar and Golden Globe for “Best Original Song”. The pair performed the duet at the 83rd Annual Academy Awards ceremony. “I See the Light” also won the Grammy Award for “Best Song Written for Visual Media” at the 54th Grammy Awards. Levi is best known for his fan favorite performance as Chuck Bartowski in the hit NBC series, “Chuck.” Other previous TV credits include: the Netflix mini-series “Alias Grace” and “Heroes Reborn.”
