Greg Tate, the towering cultural critic and author (as well as musician), was awarded a posthumous Pulitzer Prize on Monday, May 6.
Tate was given one of the Pulitzer’s “Special Citation” awards, with the organization writing on X, formerly Twitter, “Congratulations to the family, friends, colleagues and fans who bore witness to the inimitable literary/artistic magic of the late Greg Tate.”
A blurb on the Pulitzer Prize website specifically commended Tate’s singular writing, noting the way his “language — cribbed from literature, academia, popular culture and hip-hop — was as...
Tate was given one of the Pulitzer’s “Special Citation” awards, with the organization writing on X, formerly Twitter, “Congratulations to the family, friends, colleagues and fans who bore witness to the inimitable literary/artistic magic of the late Greg Tate.”
A blurb on the Pulitzer Prize website specifically commended Tate’s singular writing, noting the way his “language — cribbed from literature, academia, popular culture and hip-hop — was as...
- 5/6/2024
- by Jon Blistein
- Rollingstone.com
Film critic Justin Chang won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for criticism on Monday for varied and “richly evocative” work that telegraphs how Americans see movies now.
The New Yorker‘s current film critic won the prize on Monday for his 2023 work at the Los Angeles Times, where he worked until early 2024. Other nominees in the category included novelist and essayist Zadie Smith, who was nominated for her New York Review of Books review of the 2022 film Tar, and The New Yorker‘s theater critic Vinson Cunningham for a number of reviews that evinced “a formidable knowledge of the stage and the mechanics of performance along with canny observations on the human condition.”
During the 2024 ceremony, the late cultural critic Greg Tate — who wrote for The Village Voice and Rolling Stone — also received a special citation for his work. “His language, cribbed from literature, academia, popular culture and hip-hop was as...
The New Yorker‘s current film critic won the prize on Monday for his 2023 work at the Los Angeles Times, where he worked until early 2024. Other nominees in the category included novelist and essayist Zadie Smith, who was nominated for her New York Review of Books review of the 2022 film Tar, and The New Yorker‘s theater critic Vinson Cunningham for a number of reviews that evinced “a formidable knowledge of the stage and the mechanics of performance along with canny observations on the human condition.”
During the 2024 ceremony, the late cultural critic Greg Tate — who wrote for The Village Voice and Rolling Stone — also received a special citation for his work. “His language, cribbed from literature, academia, popular culture and hip-hop was as...
- 5/6/2024
- by Katie Kilkenny
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Primary Trust, Eboni Booth’s play that was given an Off Broadway staging by Roundabout Theatre Company last summer, won the 2024 Pulitzer Prize for Drama today.
The play was described by the Pulitzer board as “A simple and elegantly crafted story of an emotionally damaged man who finds a new job, new friends and a new sense of worth, illustrating how small acts of kindness can change a person’s life and enrich an entire community.”
The critically acclaimed play follows Kenneth, a 38-year-old bookstore worker who, in the words of Roundabout’s synopsis, “spends his evenings sipping mai tais at the local tiki bar. When he’s suddenly laid off, Kenneth finally begins to face a world he’s long avoided – with transformative and even comical results.”
“This is the story of friendship,” Kenneth says in the play. “Of how I got a new job. A story of love and balance and time.
The play was described by the Pulitzer board as “A simple and elegantly crafted story of an emotionally damaged man who finds a new job, new friends and a new sense of worth, illustrating how small acts of kindness can change a person’s life and enrich an entire community.”
The critically acclaimed play follows Kenneth, a 38-year-old bookstore worker who, in the words of Roundabout’s synopsis, “spends his evenings sipping mai tais at the local tiki bar. When he’s suddenly laid off, Kenneth finally begins to face a world he’s long avoided – with transformative and even comical results.”
“This is the story of friendship,” Kenneth says in the play. “Of how I got a new job. A story of love and balance and time.
- 5/6/2024
- by Greg Evans
- Deadline Film + TV
The New Yorker’s Justin Chang won a Pulitzer Prize for his movie criticism during his tenure at the Los Angeles Times.
Chang also is the former film critic for Variety. The judges recognized Chang for his “richly evocative and genre-spanning film criticism that reflects on the contemporary moviegoing experience.”
The New York Times, Reuters, the New Yorker and The Washington Post were among the multiple winners.
A special citation also was given to the journalists covering the war in Gaza. The Times’ prizes included one for its international reporting of the Hamas attack on Israel and the war in Gaza.
A special citation also was awarded to Greg Tate, the late writer and critic. “His aesthetic innovations and intellectual originality, particularly in his pioneering hip hop criticism, continue to influence subsequent generations, particularly writers and critics of color.”
The New York Times won prizes for investigative reporting, international reporting and feature writing.
Chang also is the former film critic for Variety. The judges recognized Chang for his “richly evocative and genre-spanning film criticism that reflects on the contemporary moviegoing experience.”
The New York Times, Reuters, the New Yorker and The Washington Post were among the multiple winners.
A special citation also was given to the journalists covering the war in Gaza. The Times’ prizes included one for its international reporting of the Hamas attack on Israel and the war in Gaza.
A special citation also was awarded to Greg Tate, the late writer and critic. “His aesthetic innovations and intellectual originality, particularly in his pioneering hip hop criticism, continue to influence subsequent generations, particularly writers and critics of color.”
The New York Times won prizes for investigative reporting, international reporting and feature writing.
- 5/6/2024
- by Ted Johnson
- Deadline Film + TV
Almost immediately after its founding in 1955, the Village Voice became the most raucous, irreverent and important alternative newspaper in America. At one point the Voice was the most read weekly in the country, serving as Andy Warhol put it “the entire liberal thinking world.” In her excellent new book The Freaks Came Out to Write: The Definitive History of the Village Voice, the Radical Paper That Changed American Culture, Voice veteran Tricia Romano has compiled an oral history of the seminal alt-weekly. Romano’s book is a vital and wildly...
- 3/2/2024
- by Tricia Romano
- Rollingstone.com
The year was 1992. Not yet a multibillion-dollar industry, hip-hop was still considered an emerging cultural movement hailing from New York City's most disenfranchised borough: the Bronx. However, it had spread across the East and West coasts and specific pockets of the US, speaking intimately to Black and brown communities as both an outlet to address socioeconomic issues and a form of entertainment provided by rappers, DJs, dancers, and visual artists.
Related: All Hail the Queens: Honoring Women in Hip-Hop, 50 Years Later
While mainstream magazines like Billboard and Rolling Stone were in no rush to prominently feature hip-hop acts, publications such as Right On!, Word Up!, and Hip-Hop Connection centered them, filling a growing void in print media. The rap-centered Source would later enter the media landscape in 1991, too. But there was one magazine that was prematurely underestimated yet paved the way for hip-hop culture to prominently sit on newsstands.
Vibe,...
Related: All Hail the Queens: Honoring Women in Hip-Hop, 50 Years Later
While mainstream magazines like Billboard and Rolling Stone were in no rush to prominently feature hip-hop acts, publications such as Right On!, Word Up!, and Hip-Hop Connection centered them, filling a growing void in print media. The rap-centered Source would later enter the media landscape in 1991, too. But there was one magazine that was prematurely underestimated yet paved the way for hip-hop culture to prominently sit on newsstands.
Vibe,...
- 8/7/2023
- by Janel Martinez
- Popsugar.com
What a year for music—any of my top half-dozen or so could have been Number One some other year. But these are my faves, with pop idols, guitar bangers, rap poets, disco visionaries. All these albums keep giving up new surprises for me. The double-digit years are always pivotal for music—’66, ’77, ’88, ’99 were four of the coolest music years ever. (’11 and ’55 were bangers, too. Y2K wasn’t so hot, but at least it had a kick-ass Madonna album.) 2022 felt more like Neil Young’s 22 than Taylor Swift’s, but...
- 12/22/2022
- by Rob Sheffield
- Rollingstone.com
He was our first Black movie star, in a certain, classical sense of that term. Other Black actors had appeared in popular Hollywood movies, had even gone so far as to win an Academy Award for their work before Sidney Poitier made it big (just one person — Hattie McDaniel — and just one time, in 1939, but still). And other Black image-makers had labored in other corners of the industry, working behind and in front of the camera some time before Poitier made his way to the United States from the Bahamas...
- 9/23/2022
- by K. Austin Collins
- Rollingstone.com
No one is better at telling Sidney Poitier’s story than Sidney Poitier himself.
The brilliance of Reginald Hudlin’s documentary for Apple TV+ is that it lets him do just that. An incredibly gifted storyteller, Poitier, who died at age 94 in January 2022, opens “Sidney” by saying in voiceover, “I was not expected to live.”
Of course we know that Poitier, who was born two months premature, his life hanging by a thread, did live, and lived exceptionally well, touching so many other lives with his groundbreaking Hollywood career. Having him tell his own story, largely via edited footage and voiceover from seven hours of interviews the film’s producer Oprah Winfrey conducted with Poitier in 2012, allows “Sidney” to be about the man, not just his milestones.
Many of the stories Poitier relates he’s told before in his books, especially his great 2000 memoir “The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography.
The brilliance of Reginald Hudlin’s documentary for Apple TV+ is that it lets him do just that. An incredibly gifted storyteller, Poitier, who died at age 94 in January 2022, opens “Sidney” by saying in voiceover, “I was not expected to live.”
Of course we know that Poitier, who was born two months premature, his life hanging by a thread, did live, and lived exceptionally well, touching so many other lives with his groundbreaking Hollywood career. Having him tell his own story, largely via edited footage and voiceover from seven hours of interviews the film’s producer Oprah Winfrey conducted with Poitier in 2012, allows “Sidney” to be about the man, not just his milestones.
Many of the stories Poitier relates he’s told before in his books, especially his great 2000 memoir “The Measure of a Man: A Spiritual Autobiography.
- 9/23/2022
- by Christian Blauvelt
- Indiewire
Click here to read the full article.
Reginald Hudlin’s documentary about Sidney Poitier should be considered the beginning, not the end, of appraising the prolific actor’s career. Sidney, which premiered at TIFF and streams on Apple TV+ starting Sept. 23, crafts the kind of hagiographic portrait audiences have come to accept — even desire — of famous figures.
This serviceable primer chronologically recounts Poitier’s legacy, from his birth in 1927 to his death in January 2022. Early on, we learn that life was not guaranteed for the actor. He was born two months premature and many people, including his mother’s midwife, predicted an imminent death. The morning after Poitier’s birth, his father procured a shoebox in which to bury the infant. But Poitier’s mother possessed an enduring faith: She visited a soothsayer who told her not to worry about her son’s survival. Not only would Poitier live, but...
Reginald Hudlin’s documentary about Sidney Poitier should be considered the beginning, not the end, of appraising the prolific actor’s career. Sidney, which premiered at TIFF and streams on Apple TV+ starting Sept. 23, crafts the kind of hagiographic portrait audiences have come to accept — even desire — of famous figures.
This serviceable primer chronologically recounts Poitier’s legacy, from his birth in 1927 to his death in January 2022. Early on, we learn that life was not guaranteed for the actor. He was born two months premature and many people, including his mother’s midwife, predicted an imminent death. The morning after Poitier’s birth, his father procured a shoebox in which to bury the infant. But Poitier’s mother possessed an enduring faith: She visited a soothsayer who told her not to worry about her son’s survival. Not only would Poitier live, but...
- 9/23/2022
- by Lovia Gyarkye
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
Click here to read the full article.
“I just saw what I saw,” an elder Sidney Poitier says in an interview reflecting on his early childhood in the Bahamas, when he’d never seen a mirror — or water coming through an indoor faucet — in the new Apple TV+ documentary Sidney. Out Friday on the platform, the Reginald Hudlin-directed, Oprah Winfrey-produced retrospective exists not only as a summary of Poitier’s singular career in Hollywood as an actor and filmmake,r but also as the first public memorial for the trailblazing visionary who died in January at age 94.
The youngest son of two principled tomato farmers who a soothsayer (rightly) predicted would touch all corners of the world at the time of his premature birth, Poitier would go on to top summits; in 1963, he won the best actor Academy Award for Lilies of the Field, the first Black actor...
“I just saw what I saw,” an elder Sidney Poitier says in an interview reflecting on his early childhood in the Bahamas, when he’d never seen a mirror — or water coming through an indoor faucet — in the new Apple TV+ documentary Sidney. Out Friday on the platform, the Reginald Hudlin-directed, Oprah Winfrey-produced retrospective exists not only as a summary of Poitier’s singular career in Hollywood as an actor and filmmake,r but also as the first public memorial for the trailblazing visionary who died in January at age 94.
The youngest son of two principled tomato farmers who a soothsayer (rightly) predicted would touch all corners of the world at the time of his premature birth, Poitier would go on to top summits; in 1963, he won the best actor Academy Award for Lilies of the Field, the first Black actor...
- 9/22/2022
- by Evan Nicole Brown
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
A look back at a 1983 Jean-Michel Basquiat interview forced me to once again consider Toni Morrison's reverberating words. In "Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and Literary Imagination," she argued that "a real or fabricated Africanist presence was crucial to their sense of Americanness." "Their," in this case, meant white literary authors. She posited that they distinguished themselves as a cohesive entity, while their identity and work hinged on the existence of a Black population kept in the shadows - historical integrity be damned.
Morrison's argument can be extended to the world of visual art and, more specifically, to Basquiat's presence in NYC's "neo-expressionist" art movement of the late '70s and early '80s. A year after his 1988 death, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was offered Basquiat's work, and the organization declined. Then-Head Curator Ann Temkin contended that his paintings were not marketable. Temkin later admitted, "I didn't recognize it as great,...
Morrison's argument can be extended to the world of visual art and, more specifically, to Basquiat's presence in NYC's "neo-expressionist" art movement of the late '70s and early '80s. A year after his 1988 death, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) was offered Basquiat's work, and the organization declined. Then-Head Curator Ann Temkin contended that his paintings were not marketable. Temkin later admitted, "I didn't recognize it as great,...
- 2/15/2022
- by marjua estevez
- Popsugar.com
Get in touch to send in cinephile news and discoveries. For daily updates follow us @NotebookMUBI.NEWSAbove: Drive My Car (2021)List-making season has fully started. Film Comment released both the top twenty films as well as the top twenty undistributed films of the year, and IndieWire published the results of a massive poll of 187 critics. Vulture's critics have each written about their top tens, and Drive My Car tops both Barack Obama and Screen Slate's annual list. Screen Slate has also included individual ballots from "contributors, friends, critics, and filmmakers," which gave Paul Schrader the opportunity to rank The Card Counter as his pick for the best film of the year. Due to a nationwide lockdown in the Netherlands, the International Film Festival Rotterdam will be taking place online, cancelling its previous plans for an in-person event. There are two weeks left to submit to the Sundance Film Festival's 2022 Native Lab,...
- 12/22/2021
- MUBI
“Hip-hop is ancestor worship,” Greg Tate wrote in The Village Voice in the fall of 1988. He always chronicled music with that fiercely worshipful spirit of sacred ritual. Reading Tate was a revelation, then or now, because he was a writer who celebrated all kinds of music, from every era — an Afrofuturist rebel without a pause. That’s why the news of his death hits so hard today. To sum up his voice, you have to go back to the words he wrote about Chaka Khan back in 1992: “She is...
- 12/7/2021
- by Rob Sheffield
- Rollingstone.com
Greg Tate, one of the most incisive, insightful, and influential cultural critics of the past 35 years, has died. His publisher Duke University Press confirmed the author’s death to Rolling Stone, though a cause of death was not confirmed.
“Hard to explain the impact that Flyboy in the Buttermilk had on a whole generation of young writers and critics who read every page of it like scripture,” The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb wrote on Twitter, aptly summing up the effect that Tate’s iconic 1992 essay collection had on the world.
“Hard to explain the impact that Flyboy in the Buttermilk had on a whole generation of young writers and critics who read every page of it like scripture,” The New Yorker’s Jelani Cobb wrote on Twitter, aptly summing up the effect that Tate’s iconic 1992 essay collection had on the world.
- 12/7/2021
- by Hank Shteamer
- Rollingstone.com
Bill Traylor was born into slavery on a Benton, Alabama cotton plantation in 1853, but he died 96 years later as an artist then forgotten by history not far away in Montgomery in 1949. , and “Bill Traylor: Chasing Ghosts” effectively manages to do so in a punchy 70 minutes filled with a mix of clever, theatrical flourishes that don’t eclipse the artist himself. The film offers an insightful window into the jagged wonder of the bracingly modernist drawings he etched onto scraps of cardboard in his late 80s, when he was at the end of his life, looking back on days on the plantation, and on a lifetime spanning the eras of slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow segregation.
Why was Traylor mostly omitted from history for so long? The framework of American Black art in the mid-20th century, this documentary argues, didn’t exist in any robust way. But “Chasing Ghosts” isn...
Why was Traylor mostly omitted from history for so long? The framework of American Black art in the mid-20th century, this documentary argues, didn’t exist in any robust way. But “Chasing Ghosts” isn...
- 4/16/2021
- by Ryan Lattanzio
- Indiewire
An epic 15-disc box set featuring the films of Federico Fellini isn’t the only release arriving on The Criterion Collection this November. Following Roma and Marriage Story, they will also be adding another Netflix title to their library: Martin Scorsese’s mob epic The Irishman. Featuring a brand-new documentary on the making of the film, a video essay by critic Farran Smith Nehme, and program on the visual effects, and more, it looks like an essential pick-up even if you already have a Netflix subscription.
Also among the November lineup is Norman Jewison’s delightful romantic drama Moonstruck, featuring interviews with the cast and crew, an audio commentary from 1998 with Cher, Jewison, and John Patrick Shanley, and more. Claudia Weill’s landmark indie drama Girlfriends is also coming to Criterion, with interviews featuring the cast and crew, short films by Weill, and more. Lastly, Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai...
Also among the November lineup is Norman Jewison’s delightful romantic drama Moonstruck, featuring interviews with the cast and crew, an audio commentary from 1998 with Cher, Jewison, and John Patrick Shanley, and more. Claudia Weill’s landmark indie drama Girlfriends is also coming to Criterion, with interviews featuring the cast and crew, short films by Weill, and more. Lastly, Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai...
- 8/18/2020
- by Leonard Pearce
- The Film Stage
For our most comprehensive year-end feature, we’re providing a cumulative look at The Film Stage’s favorite films of 2018. We’ve asked our contributors to compile ten-best lists with five honorable mentions–those personal lists will be shared in the coming days–and, after tallying the votes, a top 50 has been assembled.
It should be noted that, unlike our previous year-end features, we placed no requirement on a selection being a U.S theatrical release, so you may see some repeats from last year and a few we’ll certainly be discussing more during the next twelve months. So, without further ado, check out our rundown of 2018 below, our ongoing year-end coverage here (including where to stream many of the below picks), and return in the coming weeks as we look towards 2019.
50. Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)
For over two decades the filmmaker Jia Zhangke has, through his movies,...
It should be noted that, unlike our previous year-end features, we placed no requirement on a selection being a U.S theatrical release, so you may see some repeats from last year and a few we’ll certainly be discussing more during the next twelve months. So, without further ado, check out our rundown of 2018 below, our ongoing year-end coverage here (including where to stream many of the below picks), and return in the coming weeks as we look towards 2019.
50. Ash is Purest White (Jia Zhangke)
For over two decades the filmmaker Jia Zhangke has, through his movies,...
- 12/21/2018
- by The Film Stage
- The Film Stage
March 8-10, Harvard Film Archive will present a series of films and conversation with British/Ghanaian experimental filmmaker John Akomfrah and and his partner and producer, Lina Gopaul. Hfa will screen five films over the three-day event, including The Last Angel of History, Memory 451, his 1986 debut film Handsworth Songs, Peripeteia, and his 2013 Sundance documentary on intellectual Stuart Hall, The Stuart Hall Project. Says Hfa, "Akomfrah has become a cinematic counterpart to such commentators of and contributors to the culture of the Black diaspora as Stuart Hall, Paul Gilroy, Greg Tate and Henry Louis Gates. In doing so, he has continued to mine the...
- 2/24/2014
- by Jai Tiggett
- ShadowAndAct
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