Don Cheadle – Spinning Platters

Black History Month Artist Series: Miles Davis

In celebration of Black History Month, we are running a series of short articles featuring influential black musicians.

His raspy voice, his intense and mercurial personality, and possibly, his personal tumult – all of these made Miles Davis “The Prince of Darkness” in the jazz scene. Davis had enormous influence on the world of jazz, and was at the forefront of at least six genres of jazz. He was the son of affluent parents, and his mother had a passion for music; she saw in her son a future blues pianist. Embracing the trumpet instead, though, he made it into Juilliard, then dropped out to replace Dizzie Gillespie in Charlie Parker’s band.

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Film Review: Miles Ahead

Cheadle is mesmerizing in his seemingly-effortless trading of cinematic duties for this thrilling tale.

If there is only one thing that you learn about jazz, it’s not the instruments that make it up, nor the time that it was most popular, or even the players that were significant in its creation. That one crucial thing is that jazz is an improvisational story being told in musical form; it has its own cast of unreliable narrators who are making up the tale as they go, each twist and turn more intriguing than the last. It is a palette for painting pictures where the hues and overall artistic movement could shift at the drop of a hat. Whether the story is based on the truth, or a marvelous work of fiction, is less important than the journey there, and the anecdotes told along the way are what add the most excitement to it all. It is, therefore, very appropriate to take an approach to creating a biopic about a jazz icon in a style that best reflects the character of the music — a feat undertaken spellbindingly by actor Don Cheadle, who both stars in and directs Miles Ahead, the 2016 tale of musical virtuoso Miles Davis.

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Film Feature: 2016 Sundance Film Festival Spotlights #1

Marking its closing with its annual awards ceremony, the 2016 Sundance Film Festival ended this past Saturday evening; you can see all the winners here.

For the second year in a row, I braved the Park City cold, snow, and the ubiquitous Los Angeles UGG-wearing throngs to bring you spotlights of a fraction of the films that played the Fest. With nearly 200 offerings, the Fest featured way more than this reviewer could see. While I sadly missed the big winner and much lauded The Birth of a Nation (you’ll have to stay tuned to Spinning Platters later in the year for a full review upon its wide release), I nevertheless managed to knock out a respectable 18 films in five days. Many of these may receive distribution deals (if they haven’t already), so you can study up now with these capsule reviews, which use our trademark Sundance Viewing Priority Level (VPL) Guide:

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Film Review: Iron Man 3

Robert Downey Jr. and his suit in 'Iron Man 3' — Robert Downey Jr. and his suit in Iron Man 3

Yes, that’s a somewhat dejected looking Tony Stark. Why the long face when his new movie has a shot at earning one billion dollars at the worldwide box office? Well, there IS something Tony can be sad about — with The Avengers 2, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, and likely a few more Marvel films on the horizon, this may be the last Iron Man installment for quite some time, if not ever. When Iron Man 3 takes advantage of that fact and pulls out all the stops, not including an unnecessarily complex plot and superfluous CGI, it’s a whole ton of explosive fun.

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