Disney’s live-action Moana fails to make a splash at box office with underwhelming opening

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Latest film in franchise takes just $43m in North America and $95m globally, against a $250m budget The Walt Disney Company’s live-action remake of Moana may be the No 1 movie at the North American box office but it did not make a big splash in its first weekend in theaters. The movie, which cost a reported $250m (£187m, A$360m) to produce, earned just $43m from ticket sales in the US and Canada, according to studio estimates on Sunday. Continue reading... from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/BfcMaGS via IFTTT
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‘It has become a sort of silver bullet’: why are rap lyrics being put on trial?

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In compelling documentary As We Speak, a controversial legal practice that uses rap lyrics to secure convictions is explored

In September 2001, McKinley Phipps Jr, also known as the rapper Mac, was sentenced to 30 years in prison for manslaughter. It had been a year and a half since gunfire erupted outside a club where he was slated to perform in Slidell, Louisiana, resulting in the death of 19-year-old Barron Victor Jr. Phipps, then 22, maintained his innocence, and the case against him was weak – there was no gun linking him to the crime, several witnesses recanted their testimony and another person confessed to pulling the trigger. And yet, prosecutors had their trump card: Mac, a former New Orleans rap prodigy who began releasing music at the age of 13, had rapped about murder.

“Murder, murder, kill, kill”, Phipps recites in As We Speak: Rap Music on Trial, a new documentary on the criminalization of rap lyrics. Prosecutors spliced that line with one from a different song – “Pull the trigger, put a bullet in your head” – to create the portrait of a killer; Mac’s art was the evidence that DNA, solid confessions, or a missing weapon couldn’t provide. An all-white jury bought it. Phipps served over 21 years in prison before being granted clemency in 2021.

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