Skip to main content

Jackky Bhagnani returns to acting after six years with Independence Day anthem 'Tere Rang Mein': "I wanted the street credibility and respect of Gen Z"

Jackky Bhagnani has returned to acting after a six-year gap with the Independence Day anthem 'Tere Rang Mein,' released under his music label Jjust Music. The actor-producer said the song offered him an opportunity to return to the screen with a project that was personally meaningful to him. Bhagnani described himself as a patriot and said the nature of the song played an important role in his decision to face the camera again. “I am a patriot by heart. It’s been quite some time since I faced the camera. So, I thought the best way to come back is with the right cause,” Bhagnani said. The actor's return comes after several years of focusing primarily on film production. According to Bhagnani, stepping away from acting was a conscious decision as he worked behind the scenes and became more involved in producing films. Jackky Bhagnani on focusing on film production Bhagnani said his experience as a producer made him rethink the way he wanted to approach his acting career. He ...
Post a Comment

Sing Sing review – Colman Domingo is larger than life in big-hearted prison musical

Inspired by a project that uses the arts for rehabilitation, this is an uplifting, energetic film – but Domingo’s showy performance is a little out of place

There’s charm, energy and optimism in this big-hearted film, inspired by the Rehabilitation Through the Arts project that teaches theatre skills to US prisoners. The movie’s genesis is an Esquire magazine article from 2005 about an ensemble fantasy-comedy musical performed by inmates of Sing Sing maximum security facility in New York state. The movie invites us to hear the words in the title as joyful imperatives. It is performed largely by genuine former inmates playing themselves, featuring rehearsal scenes interspersed with variously tense or moving private conversations. There is a resemblance to Alan Parker’s Fame, to which the film playfully alludes, although the proceedings are evidently too serious to allow for the more obvious comparison with Max Bialystock’s song Prisoners of Love at the end of The Producers.

Everything here is so uplifting that it seems churlish to find fault. But however rousing and admirably intended, there is something surreal and out of place in the characterisation of its leading role, which is dominatingly and fascinatingly played by the excellent Colman Domingo, whose many awards include the London critics’ circle prize for innovation named after the late Derek Malcolm. Domingo plays John “Divine G” Whitfield, an inmate who was in real life a visionary and inspirational driving force behind the Rehabilitation Through the Arts programme and wrote many plays for it. The real Divine G has a cameo, while the group’s star player, a serious tough guy who was transformed by his encounter with Shakespeare, is Clarence “Divine Eye” Maclin, here playing himself and doing so very capably. Most of the other roles also are played by former prisoners, but the group’s director, Brent Buell, is played by Paul Raci (known for the 2019 film Sound of Metal, in which he was the deafness-therapy counsellor being tough on Riz Ahmed).

Continue reading...

from Film | The Guardian https://ift.tt/fgEYbdm
via IFTTT
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Miracle Club review – Maggie Smith can’t save this rocky road trip to Lourdes

Laura Linney is upstaged by older co-stars Smith and Kathy Bates in this sentimental tale about a group of Dublin women who go on a spiritual journey together Who’s up for a golden-hued heartwarmer set in 60s Ireland starring Kathy Bates and Maggie Smith about women with secret fears and dreams going on a church trip to Lourdes and finally finding the real miracle is their new compassion for each other? The answer to this question could well have been … me. I have a liking for a gentle tale and there is nothing necessarily wrong with, just occasionally, showing Ireland and the church of this period with something other than outrage and horror. But The Miracle Club does not at any time, to use a discredited metaphor, throw away its crutches and walk. And it’s painful to note that this is largely because of the way film can’t convincingly use that estimable actor Laura Linney in a central role. She is upstaged by the older, fruitier performances and doesn’t hold her own with a more seri...
Post a Comment
Read more

Omen (Augure) review – Baloji offers secrets and sorcery in Congolese homecoming

Musician and film-maker’s story about a Belgian-Congolese man who takes his white wife to DRC to meet the family is complex, risky and bold Congolese-born rapper, musician and film-maker Baloji (né Serge Baloji Tshiani) was a prizewinner at Cannes last year with this feature directing debut: a dynamic, teemingly populated, multistranded and tonally elusive picture which I initially thought would benefit from comparisons with Jordan Peele’s horror classic Get Out. In fact, it’s more complicated than that. Koffi (Marc Zinga) is a Congolese man living in Belgium and married to a white woman, Alice (Lucie Debay). They are about to have twins and Koffi feels that he cannot put it off any further: whatever his family will think, the couple must journey back to the Democratic Republic of the Congo to let them see Alice and let them get used to the idea. It particularly means propitiating his fiercely conservative mother Mujila (Yves-Marina Gnahoua). He takes care to shave off his westernis...
Post a Comment
Read more

Jackky Bhagnani returns to acting after six years with Independence Day anthem 'Tere Rang Mein': "I wanted the street credibility and respect of Gen Z"

Jackky Bhagnani has returned to acting after a six-year gap with the Independence Day anthem 'Tere Rang Mein,' released under his music label Jjust Music. The actor-producer said the song offered him an opportunity to return to the screen with a project that was personally meaningful to him. Bhagnani described himself as a patriot and said the nature of the song played an important role in his decision to face the camera again. “I am a patriot by heart. It’s been quite some time since I faced the camera. So, I thought the best way to come back is with the right cause,” Bhagnani said. The actor's return comes after several years of focusing primarily on film production. According to Bhagnani, stepping away from acting was a conscious decision as he worked behind the scenes and became more involved in producing films. Jackky Bhagnani on focusing on film production Bhagnani said his experience as a producer made him rethink the way he wanted to approach his acting career. He ...
Post a Comment
Read more