News

Chloe Tai, Edward Parodi, Anisha Kasozi and Léo Teste take on new roles.

Film Constellation has promoted four staff to executive level, in a change to the leadership structure at the UK-based production, finance and sales firm.

Chloe Tai becomes director of marketing, general manager, with broadened management responsibilities and a focus on team leadership and corporate impact work. Based in London, Tai will report directly to Film Constellation founder and CEO Fabien Westerhoff, who is based in Amsterdam.

Tai joined Film Constellation in 2017 following a career in marketing at L’Oreal, and has since worked on international distribution campaigns for...

Carolina Liar will support Clarkson and the Fray on a summer tour.

By Gil Kaufman

Kelly Clarkson

Photo: Ethan Miller/ Getty Images

She lent her advice to the young singers on "The Voice" and racked up two wins at the recent Academy of Country Music Awards ceremony, but Kelly Clarkson is just getting started.

The singer will be hitting the road this summer on a co-headlining tour with the Fray on a tour that will also feature opening act Carolina Liar. The 30-plus date outing will kick off on July 21 in Ridgefield, Washington and wrap-up in Nashville on September 15. Clarkson will be touring in support of her album, Stronger, and the Fray are promoting their third effort, Scars & Stories.

Clarkson's fifth effort has been certified gold and spun off the hit singles "Mr. Know It All" and the title track, "Stronger (What Doesn't Kill You)," which mark her ninth and tenth top 10 hits.

MoviesOnline recently sat down with Michael Jackson’s musical director, Michael Bearden, to talk about his new film, Michael Jackson’s This Is It, which offers Jackson fans and music lovers worldwide a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the performer as he developed, created and rehearsed for his sold-out concerts that would have taken place beginning this past summer in London’s O2 Arena.

Bearden is an accomplished musical director/keyboardist/arranger/composer for a diverse range of musical superstars. He has performed and/or recorded with some of popular music’s giants including: Sting, Carlos Santana, Whitney Houston, Lionel Richie, Chaka Kahn, Patti Austin, James Ingrahm, Patti Labelle, Yoko Ono, George Benson, Natalie Cole, Yossou NDour, Boz Scaggs, Lenny Kravitz, Luther Vandross, Issac Hayes, Aaron Neville, Edie Brickell, Jon Bonjovi and legends Nancy Wilson, Queen, Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Liza Minelli, Elton John, Aretha Franklin, and Ray Charles and served...

By Edwin Pagán, for Latin Horror

Seems like 2009 is the year when our marketable Latina actresses are taking the plunge into the darker side of the industry's genre landscape. First we mentioned here [http://tinyurl.com/cs4set] that Salma Hayek is riding a leading role in Paul Weitz' Cirque Du Freak as the bearded lady of sideshow fame, now another venerable talent, Zoe Saldana (Vantage Point, The Terminal, Premium, Guess Who), is set to hone her cognitive powers in the haunted-house thriller, The Skeptic, which was written/helmed by Tennyson Bardwell (Dorian Blues) and hits theater in a limited run on May 1st at the IFC Center in New York and elsewhere. The film also stars Tim Daly, Tom Arnold, Andrea Roth, Edward Herrmann, Robert Prosky and Bruce Altman. The project marks Bardwell's second feature outing.

The suspense thriller follows a skeptical lawyer (Daly) who moves into a haunted mansion after the unexplained...

The funeral of a beloved elder aunt is the catalyst for a family's flat-footed soul searching in the ultra-earnest "Constellation". An accomplished cast that includes Billy Dee Williams, Lesley Ann Warren and Rae Dawn Chong struggles to elevate material that rarely gets deeper than a daytime soap, though it tries mightily. The theme of forbidden interracial love and its resonance through the generations could draw female viewers. But while the film, which opens today, is not without affecting moments, the preponderance of lifeless, stilted scenes will not generate positive word-of-mouth.

As the sophomore feature from screenwriter-director Jordan Walker-Pearlman, "Constellation" is a particular disappointment; his 2000 debut, "The Visit", was a potent and affecting drama that announced Hill Harper as a performer of no small talent. Harper delivers some of the best work in "Constellation", but the film remains an ungainly exploration of one family's emotional legacy.

The black Boxers gather in Huntsville, Ala., after the death of Carmel (Gabrielle Union), who 50 years earlier was in love with a white boy, Bear Korngold (Daniel Bess). In the midcentury Deep South, he hadn't the nerve to follow his heart and marry her. In the present day, played by David Clennon with clenched-jaw introspection, he is an unmarried gent who organizes Carmel's funeral.

Only her brother, Helms (Williams), knows that Carmel and Bear were at one time more than friends. Now a Paris-based artist -- the kind who knots a silk cravat around his neck -- Helms keeps an emotional distance from his two daughters, half-sisters Lucy Melissa De Sousa) and the flintier Rosa (Zoe Saldana). But he turns on the charm with their mothers (Warren and Chong, both of whom are good at showing their wary characters captivated despite themselves). Rosa, who was especially close to Carmel, must confront her lingering pain over a bad breakup with Errol (Harper). A womanizer and sensitive photographer, he shows up for the funeral eager to try again.

The story proceeds fitfully via flashbacks and excruciating psychologizing. Characters repeatedly explain their feelings in dully staged restaurant scenes, while Carmel's narration from death abounds in precious poetic language. With the exception of Harper, Saldana and Williams, the performers look uncomfortable, which is not surprising given the awkward exposition required of them.

In the rare -- and usually wordless -- moments when Walker-Pearlman takes his characters into unpredictable territory, mysterious and compelling things do happen, as when Williams' self-important lion wanders into a neighborhood barbecue and loses it. But otherwise heavy-handedness prevails, with the schmaltzy original score as unconvincing as the script. An over-reliance on song, from pop to Puccini to Ellington to hip-hop, doesn't compensate for what's lacking in the storytelling.

CONSTELLATION

Bigger Pictures

A CodeBlack Entertainment/DaWa Movies presentation in association with Starship and Encounter Studios

Credits:

Screenwriter-director: Jordan Walker-Pearlman

Producers: Shannon Murphy, Jordan Walker-Pearlman

Executive producers: Nancy Archuleta, Gabe Nieto, Morris Ruskin

Co-executive producer: Kristi Gamble

Director of photography: John Demps

Production designer: Liba Daniels

Music: Michael Bearden, Stefan Dickerson, Stanley A. Smith

Costume designer: Jeanette Guillermo

Editor: Alison Learned Wolf

Cast:

Carmel Boxer: Gabrielle Union

Errol: Hill Harper

Helms Boxer: Billy Dee Williams

Rosa: Zoe Saldana

Lucy: Melissa De Sousa

Nancy: Lesley Ann Warren

Jenita: Rae Dawn Chong

Bear: David Clennon

Celeste: Ever Carradine

Young Bear: Daniel Bess

Forrest Boxer: Clarence Williams III

Running time -- 96 minutes

MPAA rating: PG-13...

NEW YORK -- Zeze Gamboa's The Hero was named best feature at the ninth annual Urbanworld Film Festival in New York, which announced winners Monday in its feature, documentary, short film, screenplay and music video categories. The Hero, about a war vet who loses his prosthetic leg, brought together a film production team from Angola, Portugal and France. Best feature-length documentary went to Jonathan Hock's Through the Fire, which tells the story of young hoop dreamers, and best short docu went to Sasha Isaac-Young's Foster Stories. Best short was awarded to Enrique Arroyo's The Other American Dream, best music video went to Len Peterson's Keep on Moving, Andre Wiggins received the best screenplay prize for Holy Shyster, and the Audience Award winner was Jordan Walker-Pearlman's Constellation.

On the One, starring Patti LaBelle and Eartha Kitt, will close the 13th annual Pan African Film and Arts Festival, and Constellation, directed by Jordan Walker-Pearlman and starring Billy Dee Williams, Gabrielle Union and Hill Harper, will have its world premiere as the festival's centerpiece. Lackawanna Blues will open the fest, to be held Feb. 10-21. Other highlights include a special screening of MGM's Beauty Shop, starring Queen Latifah; Wolfe Video's Brother to Brother; and Lions Gate's Diary of a Mad Black Woman. The 12-day event, which will screen 150 films, will be at the Magic Johnson Theatres, 4020 Marlton Ave., Los Angeles; and the Baldwin Hills Crenshaw Plaza.