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Pho3nix Child to Album Release Show
Local rapper Pho3nix Child—also known as Cassandra Houston—is welcoming a new project into the world this Saturday, Aug. 28 at The Urban Lounge.
Candyman, Vacation Friends, He's All That and more
Ailey ***
It’s not always easy coming up with a framework for exploring a great artist’s life, but director Jamila Wignot gets a great framing structure: Watching other artists influenced by the master explore his legacy. The subject is the late dancer/choreographer Alvin Ailey, founder of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and pioneer in bringing both Black themes and Black faces to contemporary American dance at a time when both were few and far between.
CODA ***
It’s much easier to forgive formulaic material in a movie when the story it’s serving is otherwise so committed to honest emotion and specificity. Writer/director Siân Heder, adapting a 2014 French film, follows high-school senior Ruby (Emilia Jones), a hearing child of deaf adults (hence the acronym that gives the film its title).
The Suicide Squad, Annette, Nine Days, Vivo and more
All the Streets Are Silent ***
There’s an entire sub-genre of documentary filmmaking that could be called “Holy Crap, We’ve Got an Amazing Treasure Trove of Archival Footage, So What If It Feels a Bit Shapeless.” Director Jeremy Elkin takes advantage of the resources at his disposal to explore the intersection between skate culture and hip hop culture in New York circa 1987-1997, most of those resources consisting of video footage shot by Eli Gesner as he circulated through both of those worlds. Many of the surviving principals appear on screen to provide context as well, including folks like Fab 5 Freddy, actor Rosario Dawson and many of the skater stars, as they describe the rise of hip hop-centric clubs like Mars, the influential after-hours radio show hosted by DJ Stretch Armstrong and Def Jam Records’ Bobbito Garcia, and the launch of the skate-gear empires Zoo York and Supreme.
