Queen Latifah as Bessie Smith in HBO biopic- first look at trailer and poster

Thought you guys would be interested in this trailer and poster for an HBO biopic about Bessie Smith staring Queen Latifah.

Queen Latifah as 'Bessie': Get a First Look at a New Trailer and Official Poster

https://www.yahoo.com/tv/queen-latifah-bessie-poster-trailer-queen-latifah-116052797095.html





It looks quite promising, particularly with Latifah in the lead role.

It premiers on May 18th at 8 PM (EST) on HBO.

 

she's fabulous...looking forward to see her in the role.

 

She (Queen Latifah) released a couple of Jazz albums (The Dana Owens Album, and Trav'lin' Light). I have and really enjoyed The Dana Owens Album and I assume Trav'lin' Light is just as good.

 

I've been a fan of her acting for quite some time. Yes they were.

 

Bessie Smith was at her peak in her 30's and was just 43 when she died.

Queen Latifah is 45 years old.

Good luck with that.

 

Finding about about this movie actually reminded me that I wanted to get a Bessie Smith compilation in my collection soon. Hopefully it will introduce more people to her music, too!

 

i don't think she needs any luck. She has both the acting and singing chops to pull this off nicely.

I highly doubt that anyone watching this is going to be saying "Well yeah, she acted and sang well, but dammit she's 10 years too old to be playing Bessie Smith! I just can't buy her in this role because of that!".

Except perhaps for very anal-retentive people.

 

Well, my wife and I both LOVE Queen Latifah so we'll be sure to check this one out!

 

I actually can't think of anyone better than her to be playing the part in terms of having the ability to both act and sing (oh and manage to look enough like her, too)

I really don't think it matters that she isn't exactly within what Bessie's age-range was at the time the movie takes place. She's close enough and it's more important that she can act and sing well to carry the part (which she can).

I don't even have HBO and I want to see this movie. I assume it will get a DVD/Blu-Ray release down the line.

 

Looks promising!

 

Charles Lindbergh was 25 when he made his famous trans-Atlantic flight. Jimmy Stewart was 49 when he played him in Spirit Of St. Louis. No big deal.

 

Yeah, but in the same film the infamous Lindbergh Baby was portrayed by a 35 year-old.

 

Nice feature today on the CBS News Sunday Morning: the Queen as "The Empress of the Blues". The "paper bag test"...wow!

 

Just watched it. I found it underwhelming.

 

Latifah was 22 years younger when I recommended her to Richard Zanuck for the lead. In this desecration of Bessie Smith, Latifah does a fine job with the music, but the script is about as bad as they come. Choppy and historically inaccurate, it completely fails to capture the essence of Bessie's persona, and is equally off the mark as far as the other characters are concerned. While the blame has to go to the writer/director, Dee Rees, serious fault also lies with the HBO production team and Latifah herself.

This is such a bad production that it almost makes "Lady Sings the Blues" palatable....well, almost. Suzanne De Passe, who was the major writer on that film 43 years ago, called me a few years back and told me that Motown wanted to do a Bessie Smith biopic. Showing no enthusiasm, I pointed out that I had see what they did "to" Billie Holiday. "I know what you mean, she said, "but we don't do that anymore."

When HBO gave me a private viewing of "Bessie", they were waiting as I emerged from the screening theater. I told them that it reminded me of an interview I once did with Benny Goodman wherein I asked how he felt about "The Benny Goodman Story." His reply was unexpected, but understandable. "I'm afraid that's one move with which I can't identify."

If you like to see 112 minutes of predictable fragments played out by stereotypical characters, watch this film. Otherwise, read Bessie's story and listen to her own recordings. I am not suggesting that you read my book—any 2 or 3" column in a respectable encyclopedia will do the trick.

 

A fair assessment, IMO.

 

I'm disappointed that the movie is apparently so bad. I was going to get it on DVD to check it out but I guess I'll take a pass on it and just buy a Bessie CD instead.

 

Money better spent.

 

I was quite disappointed as well, and the success of Boardwalk Empire had allowed my hopes to rise too high. I often hoped to see the character of Bessie Smith make an appearance on that show.

Despite some notable exceptions, biopics are very hard to get right. Most seem to stem from a fan wanting to see the story made, sometimes to dispel popular misconceptions, rather than because anyone sees a clear story that needs to be told. Then the accuracy/storytelling trade-off has to be dealt with. In the end, most biopics are, as with Bessie, usually nothing more than a string of vignettes based (with varying degrees of accuracy) on someone's life; what they are almost always NOT are stories with clear beginnings, middles and ends; a screenplay about a fictional black singer in the 1920s would avoid all the trappings of Bessie.

Ultimately, this is what fails the movie: why exactly was it made? What story did HBO felt needed to be told? Let's face it: the body of Bessie Smith fans, of which I am certainly a member, is not large enough to be a revenue-generating market worth targeting. Nor is there a sizable market of people who nostalgically miss the 1920s. The character of Bessie Smith is one that has to be introduced to the general audience (much more so than Ray, Amadeus, or a host of other familiar name-titled biopic subjects), but what is not introduced is the reason for doing so. I'm left with the feeling that the onus for telling her story here is 'let's blow the minds of anyone who think black women in the 1920s were submissive and sexually prudish.' Either that or the movie was just an excuse for the soundtrack.

There are basically two kinds of vignettes. First, basic biographic incidents: character introductions and explanations of their roles in Smith's life, the scenes that, if not introduced, would make later scenes confusing. This generally includes how Smith met Rainey, her mentoring of Smith, Gee's introducing himself, etc. Later scenes with these people would be hard to follow if they hadn't been properly introduced. Second are the scenes that aim to cast Smith in modern light. Surely, NOBODY who knew the story would doubt that the KKK scene would be in the film. A film made in the 20s, or in the 50s during her music's revival, would certainly not have shown it (or would serve to discredit her as uppity if they did). To be fair, any biopic of any era highlights the aspects more relevant to the current audience than to those of the subject's time, but the episodic screenplay here fails to give such scenes any context. To be sure, the KKK scene is a story worth telling, but without integration into a coherent narrative, it's only a 'look at this amazing thing she did (which, because it's a biopic, may or nor be accurate)' scene. Similar are the scenes showing Smith with women. It would be wrong for the film to avoid showing her bisexuality, but instead of that being a strand running through the movie, it's a dedicated scene that has little purpose other than to convey that Smith had sex with women. Scenes that couldn't be shown then but can be shown today MUST be shown today; making the audience feel good about how far society has come outweighs narrative considerations.

The most annoying attempt to interject storytelling here (rather than letting the story tell itself which would have been far wiser) was the recurring childhood flashback. The 'debilitating backstory' is a tired convention and only ever existed in the first place as a quick gimmick to give the illusion of character depth. The terrible memory rises to consciousness like an on-off switch rather than being integrated into the persona. Something the character sees, often a child as here, triggers a reverie in the middle of a conversation until one of the characters has to call his name several times to bring him back to reality. Seriously, who does this in real life? I found it particularly reminiscent of the Ray biopic; it was tired then too, but at least there it had a payoff at the end.

Those are my main problems with the film. There are a few minor ones. I found the interspersal of 20s slang distracting. I suspect the film's research into the language of the day was done solely by looking at Smith's lyrics. Maybe it's my over familiarity with the music, but each "demonstratin'" or 'turn your damper down' took me out of the story and into my living room.

I may need to watch it again before I can decide whether or not that distracts me more than the fact that she was singing with drummers...

 

I thought the James Brown biopic was pretty good. How accurate it is I don't know but it seemed well made and I had few criticisms. Good biopics can be made. No amount of nudity even, could save this Bessie Smith mess, IMO.

 

There are definitely some good biopics. I mentioned 'notable exceptions' above. I'm just saying that it's a hard genre to get right, which messy Bessie obviously didn't.

 

I believe you are correct.

 

I watched it this weekend. I concur with the previous reviews. I thought Latifah did a great a job with the vocals which I think is the best part of the movie. The screenplay was a let down though. At the end of the movie I was left with the feeling that I didn't really get to know Bessie Smith through the movie.

I'm pretty lenient when it comes to movies and can generally put up with a lot. During this one, I pulled out my phone and played Candy Crush. If you have nothing else going on and are in an agreeable mood, give it a look, otherwise, save your cash.

A missed opportunity.