When I wrote about the trailer of “Django Unchained” last week I didn’t know that the slave genre may soon replace the servant movie as the next Black thing. Okay, I am being facetious but when read earlier this week that the great actress Alfre Woodard was joining a production called “12 Years A Slave” it did make me wonder. While this new flick is not going to be like Foxx’s latest where the slave (or should I say ex-slave) has the power and the one-liners, it is interesting that Brad Pitt’s production company is adapting it from the autobiography of Solomon Northrup written in 1853. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the movie will be about a free man who is kidnapped and placed into slavery and subjected to cruelty by several slave owners. Sigh. Just Sigh. I find this whole subject matter tiring whether it’s true or not.
But then there’s Chiwetel Ejiofor. Swoon. He’s going to play Northrup and he knows how to take a bite of a role. So I am conflicted because Chiwetel is a reason for me to go to the theater. However, I am not looking forward to seeing some slavemaster violate a sister in the name of entertainment—-even if is the uber talented Michael Fassbinder. Steve McQueen, the Black Brit director is taking on this project and coincidentally was the same guy who brought us “Shame” (and Fassbinder’s controversal nudity). So I have no expectation that he’s going to soft pedal this true story. But as I consider whether I want to sit through this movie it first needs to get made so I will have at least a year to decide and ponder the talents of Chiwetel.
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