We were duped too. A video thought to be linked to Kanye West's Cruel Winter release is, in fact, not his. Director Austin Christianson, who has worked with Wiz Khalifa and Rihanna, said the trailer was made outside of the artist's G.O.O.D. Music or his label, Def Jam.
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It's been a Cruel Fall so far in the Northeast, but Kanye West is already looking ahead to Winter. The rapper has followed up his Cruel Summer mix tape with a Cruel Winter short. The film, directed by Austin Christianson for West's production Donda shows bare trees and trembling branches with other ghoulish accoutrement.
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Say what you will about Michael Jackson. He was the self-anointed King of Pop, but legions of fans around the world were his willing subjects for decades, crossing generations. So there is at least a reasonable in-house audience just itching for more about the moon-walker and Spike Lee is just the man to deliver. Lee and Jackson were friends in life and the filmmaker, whose Red Hook Summer opens next month, is working on a documentary tied to the 25th anniversary of the release of Jackson's Bad album.
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Also in Thursday morning's briefs: Bill Clinton heads to Monaco for celebrity fundraising, Obama is criticized for helping Kathryn Bigelow's latest film on Osama bin Laden, and a pair of fan-friendly sites team up for ticket initiative.
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Among the many stream of consciousness topics Kanye West brain-dumped in his epic Twitter session Wednesday night -- his professional frustrations, his fashion aspirations, his new design company aimed at picking up where Steve Jobs left off -- was a brief mention of one curious film project in particular. "I was just discussing becoming the creative director for the Jetson [sic] movie and..." Wait, WHAT? The Jetsons, as in the long-gestating live-action Jetsons movie? And Kanye would have a hand in making this happen? Mr. West, you've got my attention now.
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What do you get when you combine Jay-Z, Kanye West, pyrotechnics and an Otis Redding sample? Apparently, the new Spike Jonze-directed music video for "Otis," a track off of Jay-Z and Kanye West's collaborative album Watch the Throne inspired by Redding's "Try a Little Tenderness." Click through to take a look at the explosive fun and keep an eye out for a cameo by 30 Minutes or Less star Aziz Ansari.
NBA All-Star Weekend took Hollywood by storm in more ways than one, introducing Kobe Bryant as the latest athlete to turn actor. Well, sorta: The Kobe-starring short film The Black Mamba, directed by Robert Rodriguez, is a meta, self-aware bit of Nike product placement that envisions Bryant as a grindhouse-style action hero who must contend with the likes of Danny Trejo, Bruce Willis, and Kanye West to defend... a pair of shoes. Watch it after the jump.
It's time to face facts: Justin Bieber is the future. You may have resisted his viral ascent to YouTube glory, or rebuffed those confection-like hit singles as they attempted to infect your brain, but this week, as his biopic-rockumentary Never Say Never hits screens nationwide -- yes, documenting all 16 drama-filled years of this pop icon's life -- we will all fall prey to the epidemic of adorbs. Here's why you should just sit back and succumb to the Bieber Fever.
Having proved his facility bringing pop entertainment to a young, plugged-in audience with successes both theatrical (Step Up 2 & 3) and digital (The LXD), 31-year-old director Jon M. Chu was in many ways the perfect choice to helm a biopic of YouTube sensation-turned-pop phenom Justin Bieber. The resulting film, Never Say Never, is a generation-defining concert doc filled with rare peeks into the life of the 16-year-old performer. It's also got slo-mo hair tosses and shirtless scenes. Bieber Nation, prepare thyself.
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