Movies
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Pixar Animator Frank Abney Speaks on His Short Film Canvas and the Importance of Black Voices in Animation
I love animation. I especially love when the strikingly beautiful images and the folks who create those images look like me. Enter Frank Abney, a writer-director who also works as an animator at Pixar Animation Studios. His work has been featured on Coco, Incredibles 2, the upcoming Toy Story 4, and much more. It was…
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A Thinkpiece About Thinkpieces About Us
*Spoiler Alert: This article may contain details and plot points about the film Us. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, why the hell did you click on this article? Once upon a time, in my 11th-grade literature class, the teacher separated students into groups and handed out poems. We were given 30 minutes to…
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10 True Facts About the Various Armchair Analyses of Jordan Peele's Us
This past weekend, Jordan Peele’s Us hit theaters, and it looks like we all went to see it. This is great for his bottom line and shows that after 2017’s Get Out, Peele is not experiencing a sophomore slump. Thing is, this movie is polarizing as fuck. One stroll through the social media shows you…
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Us Broke a Big Box Office Record—Consider It the Umpteenth Reminder that Black Narratives Are Marketable
The movie that had one of the best marketing campaigns known to man (shout-out to the scissors and fan art, just to name a couple), was helmed by a man debuting a highly anticipated follow-up to his first feature (a huge hit!), and dominated every social media feed for the past few months since its…
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Watch: Sundance Darling The Last Black Man in San Francisco Trailer Is a Must-See
Perhaps no other city in America is as synonymous with gentrification as San Francisco. In 1970, around 96,000 black people lived in the city—about 13 percent of the San Francisco’s total population, according to the Census (h/t Huffington Post). In that past 40 years, that percentage has been halved. Now, as real estate prices and the…
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Here's Why Winston Duke is Wearing a 'Howard' Sweatshirt In Us
At 6 feet 5 inches, Winston Duke already stands out as the gentle giant who has to get brolic in Jordan Peele’s new nightmare Us. But the real star is what he’s wearing throughout the film—a sweatshirt with the word “Howard” emblazoned across it. This fact was not lost on the campus of Howard University,…
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Getting To Know Us: Yes, Jordan Peele Has a Doppelgänger. Can You Guess Who It Is?
Jordan Peele, Lupita Nyong’o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseph, and Evan Alex are promoting this little movie named, Us. You may have heard of it? *wink* That’s right, the Wilsons and the man who created them decided to join The Root for some press shenanigans—and good times were had by all. So, we decided to…
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Okurrt! Cardi B to Make Feature Film Debut in Savvy Stripper Flick, Hustlers
All a bad bitch needs is money… from any and all avenues. Film is the next medium for Cardi B to conquer as she has now been cast in the upcoming flick Hustlers! Per Deadline: Writer-director Lorene Scafaria’s (The Meddler) movie, inspired by a 2016 New York Magazine article, follows a crew of savvy former…
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Black Love, Actually: Issa Rae and Lakeith Stanfield to Star in Romantic Drama The Photograph
I love a good intertwining story. I love when you take a group of strangers who’d otherwise never connect with each other and somehow connect them. Tears (happy or sad) ensue! It’s why I love content like This Is Us, Love Actually, and The Holiday. This love doesn’t apply to Crash. Anyway. According to IMDb,…