Page 16 - Florida Sentinel 9-24-19

Entertainment
Francis Ford Coppola Rights
The Metropolitan Opera Will Have Its First Opera By A Black Composer In Its 136-Year History
A Wrong By Restoring Black
Scenes To The Cotton Club
“Film’s too long. Too many black stories. Too much tap dancing. Too many musi- cal numbers.”
Francis Ford Coppola, now 80, recalls these com- plaints from 35 years ago with an expression like pain from an old war wound. As the De- cember 1984 release date of The Cotton Club drew nearer, Coppola was tired, fed up, and ready to be done with it. “Those were the notes I got on how to make it better,” the filmmaker told Vanity Fair in an exclusive interview. “And that’s what I tried to do.”
He has always regretted it. Now the director of The God- father and Apocalypse Now, who once only wanted to be free from this troubled gang- land musical drama, has spent the past two years plan- ning to set things right.
Coppola spent roughly half a million dollars of his own money to restore the ele- ments he felt pressured to cut from the film’s original the-
Maurice Hines and Gre- gory Hines in The Cotton Club.
atrical release. The result is The Cotton Club Encore, which adds 24 minutes and deletes 13 from the original cut, to refocus attention on the African American per- formers who made the real- life Jazz Age nightclub an oasis of song and dance dur- ing a desperate time in Amer- ican history.
This week, Lionsgate an- nounced that it is releasing the Encore version on Octo- ber 11, with a premiere at the New York Film Festival on October 5.
The Metropolitan Opera is about to make history.
According to The New York Times, the Met will host its first opera by a Black com- poser in its 136-year history. The opera, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, is composed by jazz trumpeter Terence Blan- chard. The opera is based on New York Times opinion columnist Charles Blow's memoir of the same name. The opera's libretto was writ- ten by writer/director Kasi Lemmons.
Blanchard explained his family connection to opera.
Rihanna Reportedly Readying Two New Albums Under Sony
RIHANNA
Rolling Stone published a huge report about Rihanna’s forthcoming dancehall album. In it, one of the producers low- key confirmed Rih’s plans to release two different records (the other being a pop album).
“Their whole thing was, ‘Yo, we’re gonna make this [album] real dancehall, [real] Caribbean,’” says the pro- ducer.
Rih is reportedly moving to Sony for the dual album re- lease.
The producer adds: “Ri- hanna knows she hasn’t had a hit as big as Umbrella [which was released in 2007] in a while, and is determined to change that with this album.”
TERENCE BLANCHARD
"I wish my father was alive," he said. "He was an avid opera fanatic."
This won't be the Met's only opera this year focusing
on the African-American ex- perience. The opera season will begin Monday with a new production of Porgy and Bess. What makes Porgy and Bess different than Fire Shut Up in My Bones is that the former was created by George and Ira Gershwin, based on the 1925 novel by DuBose Hey- ward, all white men. Coinci- dentally, the director of this new production of Porgy and Bess is James Robinson, the same person who directed the premiere of Fire Shut Up in My Bones at the Opera The- ater of St. Louis in June.
J. Cole Says He's Done
With Features Post Gang
Starr's ‘Family & Loyalty’
DJ Premier caused an uproar earlier this week when he alluded to having new Gang Starr material on the horizon.
Sure enough, the tenured producer followed up with a new Gang Starr track on Friday (September 20) called “Family & Loyalty” featuring unreleased Guru vocals and new lyrics from J. Cole.
Despite the track’s positive reception, Cole says it will be the last time he hops on any- body else’s tracks.
“This is a honor to be on this song,” he wrote on Twit- ter. “NEW Gang Starr. This
J. COLE
is the last feature you’ll hear from me. Thank you to every- body I got to work with during this run. @REALD- JPREMIER This song a clas- sic, thank you. RIP GURU.”
PAGE 16 FLORIDA SENTINEL BULLETIN PUBLISHED EVERY TUESDAY AND FRIDAY TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2019