But the real breakthrough for Hollywood's black actors came quietly on Jan. 21.Even with that feat occurring in the box-office hell that is January, it's a noteworthy feat nonetheless.
That weekend, Ice Cube's road trip comedy Are We There Yet? opened against Assault on Precinct 13, a thriller starring Laurence Fishburne and Ethan Hawke.
"That's the first weekend I can remember when the only two big-studio movies you had opening starred primarily black actors," says Tom Sherak, co-founder of Revolution Studios, which produced Yet.
When Yet knocked off Coach Carter as the No. 1 film that weekend, it also marked the first time that black-led movies claimed three of the top six spots at theaters, according to box office tracking firm BoxOfficeMojo.com."
The story also ties into the fact that an unprecedented 20% of the best acting nominations went to black actors this year. Amusingly, though, the story is teased on the paper's main page with a picture of Jamie Foxx holding up a trophy he got for his star turn in Ray with the following blurb:
Black actors break throughAnd I finally got around to seeing Ray this weekend in the second-rate, second-run theater, and while Foxx is unbelievable in the title role and justly deserves the praise he's getting (he was also excellent in Collateral, which I really enjoyed up until Foxx has to go into the club and pretend to be Tom Cruise's character), the movie itself is a little slow and cliched, playing like a musical (the "Hit the Road, Jack" scene) than a biopic. I give Foxx the edge over Eastwood in a battle between Hollywood's liberal guilt vs. its guilt over never rewarding Eastwood for his acting.
They're starring in major films that only a few years ago would likely have gone to white stars
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