Monday, February 7, 2005

NOW THAT WOULD HAVE BEEN AN OSCAR-WORTHY PERFORMANCE: USA Today has a look at how black actors like Will Smith in Hitch and Ice Cube in Are We There Yet? are getting roles that in the past might have gone to white actors. While I think that is a somewhat dubious trend, there is one interesting nugget in the story:
But the real breakthrough for Hollywood's black actors came quietly on Jan. 21.

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."
Even with that feat occurring in the box-office hell that is January, it's a noteworthy feat nonetheless.

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 through
They're starring in major films that only a few years ago would likely have gone to white stars
And 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.

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