The Year That Was: 2014 in Film

Check out ALL of the PDC end of year lists!

Review: Ava DuVernay's 'Selma'

Starring David Oyelowo

Review: Rob Marshall's 'Into The Woods'

Starring Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, and Anna Kendrick

Tim Burton's 'Big Eyes'

Starring Christoph Waltz and Amy Adams

Showing posts with label Miles Ahead. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Miles Ahead. Show all posts

Monday, July 7, 2014

Jazzy First Look at Don Cheadle as Miles Davis in 'Miles Ahead'




Crowd-sourced movies are a dime a dozen nowadays, and a glance at the pitches made by many of the filmmakers is that their film is a personal passion project. They all say it in different ways, but when Don Cheadle says it we know it to be true. For years (at least since '08) he's been developing a film on jazz icon Miles Davis, and with only three days left for the Indiegogo campaign to hit its $325K goal, Cheadle is pulling out all of the stops to drum up some more coin.

The first image from Miles Ahead features Cheadle as the flashy jazz superstar, and boy is it a striking shot. He even got the jheri curl exactly right. But it's appropriate for a film that promises to be anything but your typical biopic. Instead it centers on Davis as he and a Rolling Stone journalist plan a heist to steal back some recordings meant to reignite his career. Ewan McGregor and Keith Stanfield co-star, and Cheadle tells EW this project is purely his own and totally without studio input...

Cheadle: "This is an independently produced film. There is no studio element. We’re still in the process locking down all the financing so it was a component of funds needed to cover a gap , including my own personal money I’ve put into the movie and a consortium of others. It’s to cover what it takes to put together a period movie, that has to have different looks and ways you’re trying to authenticate the time period you’re dealing with. And the music rights—all of that stuff costs money. But it also felt like a good way to open him up back to the public and try to raise that awareness and use the social mediums to make this a social event. To make it social, like the music Miles talked about. It just made sense on multiple levels to do it this way."

So if you can, pitch a few coins Cheadle's way so Miles Ahead can begin production later this summer.

Sunday, June 22, 2014

Keith Stanfield Joins Don Cheadle's Miles Davis Film, 'Miles Ahead'


Last year's acclaimed foster care drama Short Term 12 turned out to be a treasure trove of breakout talent. While Brie Larson gets the majority of attention, and rightfully so, co-star Keith Stanfield has turned the attention he received into multiple opportunities on major projects. He'll be seen later this summer in The Purge: Anarchy, and recently shot a role in Ava Duvernay's MLK biopic, Selma. And now he's joining another biopic, coming aboard Miles Ahead, Don Cheadle's directorial debut on jazz legend Miles Davis.

Stanfield will play Junior, an edgy and impressionable trumpet player in the film, which Cheadle wrote, directed, and stars in alongside Ewan McGregor. But this isn't your typical biopic chronicling the musician's career. Instead, it focuses on a "few dangerous days in Davis’ life as the jazz icon (Cheadle) teams with a Rolling Stone journalist (McGregor) to hunt down a stolen recording intended to reignite his career."

This has been a passion project for Cheadle, throwing everything into developing the film for years. He's enlisted the help of Herbie Hancock to supervise the music, and right now Cheadle is running an Indiegogo campaign to raise more funds in time for production to begin next month. [TheWrap]