Black Nativity (film)
''Black Nativity'' is a 2013 American musical drama film written and directed by Kasi Lemmons, based on Langston Hughes' 1961 play of the same name. The film stars an ensemble cast, featuring Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett, Tyrese Gibson, Jennifer Hudson, Mary J. Blige, Jacob Latimore, Vondie Curtis-Hall, and rapper Nas. It was released in the United States on November 27, 2013, by Fox Searchlight Pictures. Plot After his mother, Naima, is evicted from their Baltimore apartment, teenage Langston is sent to spend the holidays with his estranged grandparents in New York City. He talks to a man called Isaiah on the bus ("Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child"). When Langston arrives in the city, he just misses his grandparents and, shortly after, is robbed of his possessions. Entering a hotel to get directions to his grandparents' place, Langston is accused of trying to take a wallet and is quickly taken in by the police. While in the holding cell, he meets a man who makes fun o ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Kasi Lemmons
Kasi Lemmons (; born Karen Lemmons, February 24, 1959) is an American film director, screenwriter, and actress. She made her directorial debut with ''Eve's Bayou'' (1997), followed by ''The Caveman's Valentine'' (2001), ''Talk to Me (2007 film), Talk to Me'' (2007), ''Black Nativity (film), Black Nativity'' (2013), ''Harriet (film), Harriet'' (2019), and ''Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody'' (2022). She also directed the Netflix limited series ''Self Made (miniseries), Self Made'' (2020), and an episode of American Broadcasting Company, ABC's ''Women of the Movement'' (2022). She is also known as an actress having started her career with roles in commercials with McDonald's and Levi's. She made her film debut in Spike Lee's ''School Daze'' (1988). She continued acting in ''Vampire's Kiss'' (1989), ''The Silence of the Lambs (film), The Silence of the Lambs'' (1991), and ''Candyman (1992 film), Candyman'' (1992). She was described by film scholar Wheeler Winston Dixon a ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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AFI Catalog Of Feature Films
The ''AFI Catalog of Feature Films'', also known as the ''AFI Catalog'', is an ongoing project by the American Film Institute (AFI) to catalog all commercially-made and theatrically exhibited American motion pictures from the birth of cinema in 1893 to the present. It began as a series of hardcover books known as ''The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures'', and subsequently became an exclusively online film database. Each entry in the catalog typically includes the film's title, physical description, production and distribution companies, production and release dates, cast and production credits, a plot summary, song titles, and notes on the film's history. The films are indexed by personal credits, production and distribution companies, year of release, and major and minor plot subjects. To qualify for the "Feature Films" volumes, a film must have been commercially produced either on American soil or by an American company. In accordance with the Internatio ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sometimes I Feel Like A Motherless Child
"Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child", also "Motherless Child", is a traditional spiritual. It dates back to the era of slavery in the United States. An early performance of the song was in the 1870s by the Fisk Jubilee Singers. "Blue Gene" Tyranny, "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" article ''AllMusic'' Commonly heard during the Civil rights movement in the United States, it has many variations and has been recorded widely. Description The song is an expression of pain and despair as the singer compares their hopelessness to that of a child who has been torn from its parents. Under one interpretation, the repetition of the word "sometimes" offers a measure of hope, as it suggests that at least "sometimes" the singer ''does not'' feel like a motherless child."Sweet Chariot: the story of the spirituals" ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New York City
New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive with a respective county. The city is the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the United States by both population and urban area. New York is a global center of finance and commerce, culture, technology, entertainment and media, academics, and scientific output, the arts and fashion, and, as home to the headquarters of the United Nations, international diplomacy. With an estimated population in 2024 of 8,478,072 distributed over , the city is the most densely populated major city in the United States. New York City has more than double the population of Los Angeles, the nation's second-most populous city. [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Baltimore
Baltimore is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland. With a population of 585,708 at the 2020 census and estimated at 568,271 in 2024, it is the 30th-most populous U.S. city. The Baltimore metropolitan area is the 20th-largest metropolitan area in the country at 2.84 million residents. The city is also part of the Washington–Baltimore combined statistical area, which had a population of 9.97 million in 2020. Baltimore was designated as an independent city by the Constitution of Maryland in 1851. Though not located under the jurisdiction of any county in the state, it forms part of the central Maryland region together with the surrounding county that shares its name. The land that is present-day Baltimore was used as hunting ground by Paleo-Indians. In the early 1600s, the Susquehannock began to hunt there. People from the Province of Maryland established the Port of Baltimore in 1706 to support the tobacco trade with Europe and established the Town ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Vondie Curtis-Hall
Vondie Curtis-Hall (born September 30, 1950) is an American actor, film director, and television director. As an actor, he is known for his role as Dr. Dennis Hancock on the CBS medical drama '' Chicago Hope'' created by David E. Kelley and as Ben Urich in the Marvel Cinematic Universe TV series '' Daredevil''. He wrote and directed the cult film '' Gridlock'd''. Early life Curtis-Hall was born in Detroit, Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ..., the son of Angeline, a nurse, and Curtis Hall, a construction company owner. Designer Kevan Hall is the brother of Vondie. They also have a sister, Sherrie. All of them attended Presentation Our Lady of Victory grade school in Detroit where they were taught by the Oblate Sisters of Providence, the first and oldes ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ensemble Cast
In a dramatic production, an ensemble cast is one that comprises many principal actors and performers who are typically assigned roughly equal amounts of screen time.Random House: ensemble acting Linked 2013-07-17 Structure In contrast to the popular model, which gives precedence to a sole protagonist, an ensemble cast leans more towards a sense of "collectivity and community". Cinema Ensemble casts in film were introduced as early as September 1916, with D. W. Griffith's silent epic film '' Intolerance'', featuring four separate though parallel plots. The film follows the lives of several characters over hundreds of years, across different cultures and time periods. The unification of different plot lines and character arcs is a key characteristic of ensemble casting in film; whether it is a location, event, or an overarching theme that ties the film and characters together. Films that feature ensembles tend to emphasize the interconnectivity of the characters, even when the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Drama Film
In film and television, drama is a category or genre of narrative fiction (or semi-fiction) intended to be more serious than humorous in tone. The drama of this kind is usually qualified with additional terms that specify its particular super-genre, macro-genre, or micro-genre, such as soap opera, police crime drama, political drama, legal drama, historical drama, domestic drama, teen drama, and comedy drama (dramedy). These terms tend to indicate a particular setting or subject matter, or they combine a drama's otherwise serious tone with elements that encourage a broader range of moods. To these ends, a primary element in a drama is the occurrence of conflict—emotional, social, or otherwise—and its resolution in the course of the storyline. All forms of cinema or television that involve fictional stories are forms of drama in the broader sense if their storytelling is achieved by means of actors who represent ( mimesis) characters. In this broader sense, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Musical Film
Musical film is a film genre in which songs by the Character (arts), characters are interwoven into the narrative, sometimes accompanied by dancing. The songs usually advance the plot or develop the film's characters, but in some cases, they serve merely as breaks in the storyline, often as elaborate "production numbers". The musical film was a natural development of the musical theater, stage musical after the emergence of sound film technology. Typically, the biggest difference between film and stage musicals is the use of lavish background scenery and locations that would be impractical in a theater. Musical films characteristically contain elements reminiscent of theater; performers often treat their song and dance numbers as if a live audience were watching. In a sense, the viewer becomes the diegesis, diegetic audience, as the performer looks directly into the camera and performs to it. With the Sound film, advent of sound in the late 1920s, musicals gained popularity with ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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IMDb
IMDb, historically known as the Internet Movie Database, is an online database of information related to films, television series, podcasts, home videos, video games, and streaming content online – including cast, production crew and biographies, plot summaries, trivia, ratings, and fan and critical reviews. IMDb began as a fan-operated movie database on the Usenet group "rec.arts.movies" in 1990, and moved to the Web in 1993. Since 1998, it has been owned and operated by IMDb.com, Inc., a subsidiary of Amazon. The site's message boards were disabled in February 2017. , IMDb was the 51st most visited website on the Internet, as ranked by Semrush. the database contained some million titles (including television episodes), million person records, and 83 million registered users. Features User profile pages show a user's registration date and, optionally, their personal ratings of titles. Since 2015, "badges" can be added showing a count of contributions. These badges rang ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Box Office Mojo
Box Office Mojo is an American website that tracks box-office revenue in a systematic, algorithmic way. The site was founded in 1998 by Brandon Gray, and was bought in 2008 by IMDb, which itself is owned by Amazon. History Brandon Gray began the site on August 7, 1998, making forecasts of the top-10 highest-grossing films in the United States for the following weekend. To compare his forecasts to the actual results, he started posting the weekend grosses and wrote a regular column with box-office analysis. In 1999, he started to post the Friday daily box-office grosses, sourced from Exhibitor Relations, so that they were publicly available online on Saturdays and posted the Sunday weekend estimates on Sundays. Along with the weekend grosses, he was publishing the daily grosses, release schedules and other charts, such as all-time charts, international box office charts, genre charts, and actor and director charts. The site gradually expanded to include weekend charts goin ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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British Board Of Film Classification
The British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) is a non-governmental organization, non-governmental organisation founded by the British film industry in 1912 and responsible for the national classification and censorship of films exhibited at cinemas and video works (such as television programmes, Trailer (promotion), trailers, adverts, public information/campaigning films, menus, bonus content, etc.) released on physical media within the United Kingdom. It has a statutory requirement to classify all video works released on VHS, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, Blu-ray (including Blu-ray 3D, 3D and Ultra HD Blu-ray, 4K UHD formats), and, to a lesser extent, some video games under the Video Recordings Act 1984. The BBFC was also the designated regulator for the UK age-verification, UK age-verification scheme, which was abandoned before being implemented. History and overview The BBFC was established in 1912 as the British Board of Film Censors, under the aegis of the Incorporated Associa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |