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marv2
03-03-2016, 02:45 PM
Just as I predicted they would be when Zoe Saldana was given the lead role:

Nina Simone's family to Zoe Saldana: 'Take Nina's name out your mouth. For the rest of your life'


http://www.aol.com/article/2016/03/03/nina-simone-family-lashes-out-at-zoe-saldana/21322122/?icid=maing-grid7|main5|dl30|sec1_lnk2&pLid=-1231945510

Jerry Oz
03-03-2016, 04:07 PM
There is so much that is wrong with this project. I don't care who is playing her, I'd prefer they present something fact-based as opposed to what many see to be a "what if?" type of situational drama. The producers would have done better by making a drama based on Nina Simone as opposed to one about her. The perspective and details of the film are largely a fabrication and distortion of her life.
http://www.ninasimone.com/2014/07/dont-let-nina-be-misunderstood/

The problem with Zoe Saldana playing Nina Simoneby Miriam Petty


In May, the Nina Simone biopic Nina, starring Zoe Saldana and directed by Cynthia Mort, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival. But the director was unhappy with the version that debuted. Mort is suing the film’s British producers for allegedly cutting her out of the editing and decision-making process, in violation of her contract. Meanwhile, no date for a U.S. release has been set. All of this drama suggests that Nina is the bearer of some seriously bad karma.


Ever since on-set photographs of Saldana, made up as Simone, began circulating online last year, I have been convinced that the casting and staging of a light-skinned, straight-haired Dominican woman as a brown-skinned African-American woman with coarse, afro-textured hair is a representational flaw that poisons this entire film.


By putting Saldana in brownface, Afro wigs and prosthetic buck teeth, the producers of Nina have taken a conventionally lovely woman and made her ugly and grotesque, even as they have not made her look a damn thing like Simone. It is a choice that recalls the transformation of Charlize Theron into the serial killer Aileen Wuornos for the 2003 film Monster. Making Theron into a monster became a way to conjure and project collective feelings of fear and revulsion for a socially degraded subject: a serial-killing, lower-class, sex-working, white lesbian woman.


Similarly, in disfiguring Saldana, Nina’s filmmakers have turned the filmic Simone into a monstrous figure of black femininity—ironically, the very product of the white racist and sexist imagination that Simone so fervently challenged throughout her life. Simone’s Afrocentric style of dress, with elaborate earrings and headwraps, her hair often worn natural, in an Afro or cornrowed braids, was a defiant assertion of her pride and a celebration of her brand of black beauty. The song “Four Women,” one of Simone’s most famous, calls out various negative representations of black women: as bitter and angry, as beasts of burden, as sexual objects. Instead, the song celebrates black women—the first verse, for instance, is told in the voice of a woman whose story evokes the grueling lives of black women during slavery: “My skin is black/my arms are long/My hair is woolly/my back is strong/Strong enough to take the pain/inflicted again and again/ What do they call me?/My name is Aunt Sarah.” Writing Simone’s obituary in the Village Voice, Thulani Davis called “Four Women” “an anthem” for black women, “affirming our existence, our sanity, and our struggle to survive a culture which regards us as anti-feminine.”


My own reaction to the film’s distortion of Simone’s legacy, and the similar responses I heard from African-American friends, colleagues and commentators, made me more cognizant of how seriously black folk take the business of biopics. For people who feel their stories have not been told credibly or fully, the stakes of these narratives are high, especially when they tell the stories of people like Simone whose work transformed and elevated the racial consciousness of generations.


High expectations notwithstanding, Nina’s producers failed from the word “go.” Saldana’s casting is symptomatic of the racism and colorism that pervades Hollywood. Her “brown but not too brown” beauty allows Hollywood to be “diverse” without unsettling its white standard of beauty. Saldana’s aesthetic has great cache in this moment of celebrating “post-racial” multiculturalism, and it’s this currency that the film’s producers traded in on when they cast her in the role. Respect for Simone’s own aesthetic was apparently less of a priority.


In a 1977 meditation on historical films, the French director Jean Louis Comolli claimed that “the historical character, filmed, has at least two bodies, that of the [actual subject] and that of the actor who represents him for us. There are at least two bodies in competition, one body too much.” In the case of this film, we are confronted not only with one “body too much,” but two excess bodies “in competition” with that of the real Nina Simone. There is the body of the actor—Saldana—which is expected to draw an audience for the film. But there is also the ghoulish body that has been grafted onto Saldana, which mocks and subverts the critical cultural work of Simone.


I’ve said the movie may have bad karma; really, I suspect it may be cursed. In life, Nina Simone was a driven and exacting diva; in death one can only imagine what bolts of lightning her righteous spirit might hurl. The ghost of the woman who served up vengeful tunes like “Backlash Blues,” “Go to Hell” and “Mississippi Goddam” with relish and gusto is not a ghost to mess with.

thommg
03-03-2016, 06:40 PM
While I agree that Saldana was not the right choice to play Nina Simone, I don't buy the comparison to Charlize Theron playing Aileen Wornos. The finished product of that makeup [[and weight gain by Theron) was an almost identical look to the real Wornos. That is NOT what you get with Saldana, who does in no way resemble Nina Simone. She also doesn't inherently carry the strength of Simone and that strength is no where to be found in the photos circulating. The one question not answered yet is, what is the script like? I have not heard anything about the story that is being told in the film. Has anyone seen it that can speak to the problems inherent in the script and the real story of Ms. Simone?

reese
03-03-2016, 07:44 PM
While I agree that Saldana was not the right choice to play Nina Simone, I don't buy the comparison to Charlize Theron playing Aileen Wornos. The finished product of that makeup [[and weight gain by Theron) was an almost identical look to the real Wornos. That is NOT what you get with Saldana, who does in no way resemble Nina Simone. She also doesn't inherently carry the strength of Simone and that strength is no where to be found in the photos circulating. The one question not answered yet is, what is the script like? I have not heard anything about the story that is being told in the film. Has anyone seen it that can speak to the problems inherent in the script and the real story of Ms. Simone?

I went to the showing of a Nina documentary the other night and the director talked briefly about the upcoming Zoe Saldana movie.

If I understand correctly, the film is told from the point of view of a young man who Nina met while she had been hospitalized. She became very attached to him during her stay and upon her release, offered him a job as her assistant. While some think his motives were originally above board, and that he genuinely cared about Nina, he was also accused of taking advantage of her worsening health and mental state, and made it difficult for some of her friends to remain in contact with her.

The film is slated for release to theaters and vod on April 22nd.

thommg
03-03-2016, 09:33 PM
I went to the showing of a Nina documentary the other night and the director talked briefly about the upcoming Zoe Saldana movie.

If I understand correctly, the film is told from the point of view of a young man who Nina met while she had been hospitalized. She became very attached to him during her stay and upon her release, offered him a job as her assistant. While some think his motives were originally above board, and that he genuinely cared about Nina, he was also accused of taking advantage of her worsening health and mental state, and made it difficult for some of her friends to remain in contact with her. Perhaps I'll just stick with the documentary.

The film is slated for release to theaters and vod on April 22nd.

Thanks, Reese. It seems a typical "bio" trick to find someone who discovers someone late in life who then encourages that person to talk about their life. Usually it means that the filmmakers are trying to tell too much about a person and everything gets diluted. I think I would have preferred a movie that took a period of time in Ms. Simone's life and focused on that. There is so much in her life that I can't see a typical "bio" approach being a very good approach to her story. For me, it started wrong with the casting and this doesn't make it sound any better.

marv2
03-04-2016, 12:24 AM
While I agree that Saldana was not the right choice to play Nina Simone, I don't buy the comparison to Charlize Theron playing Aileen Wornos. The finished product of that makeup [[and weight gain by Theron) was an almost identical look to the real Wornos. That is NOT what you get with Saldana, who does in no way resemble Nina Simone. She also doesn't inherently carry the strength of Simone and that strength is no where to be found in the photos circulating. The one question not answered yet is, what is the script like? I have not heard anything about the story that is being told in the film. Has anyone seen it that can speak to the problems inherent in the script and the real story of Ms. Simone?

Back when they announced that they were casting for the film and Mary J. Blige's name was being tossed around, I said that if any one should play Nina, it should India Arie. When Saldana was announced as the one to do the role, I cried foul. I am glad to see that I am not alone.

Jerry Oz
03-04-2016, 10:41 AM
I think Jill Scott was considered as well. She may not be as good an actress but she'd be more believable than Saldana in heavy makeup, in my opinion.

mr_june
03-04-2016, 11:24 AM
Not heaping on Zoe but man it's hard for me to watch her on the Star Trek movies playing Uhura. I hate her in that role as all she does is run around worrying about and kissing on Spock. Worst character in the cast.

Her style of acting is also a negative to me. She has that "soulful" style of acting like Angela Basset that I find kinda annoying. Like Trump says, "Get here out otta here."

marv2
03-04-2016, 01:13 PM
I think Jill Scott was considered as well. She may not be as good an actress but she'd be more believable than Saldana in heavy makeup, in my opinion.

Saldana is in virtual black face! They even used a nose prosthetic to try to get her to look like Nina Simone. It is backfiring just like it will with the guy playing Michael Jackson in the U.K. upcoming film.

marv2
03-04-2016, 01:14 PM
Not heaping on Zoe but man it's hard for me to watch her on the Star Trek movies playing Uhura. I hate her in that role as all she does is run around worrying about and kissing on Spock. Worst character in the cast.

Her style of acting is also a negative to me. She has that "soulful" style of acting like Angela Basset that I find kinda annoying. Like Trump says, "Get here out otta here."

Mr. June! LOL!!!!!

arr&bee
03-04-2016, 03:57 PM
I would rather see[viola davis]as nina,about as bad as casting[diana ross]as billie holiday.

marv2
03-04-2016, 04:15 PM
I would rather see[viola davis]as nina,about as bad as casting[diana ross]as billie holiday.

See JAI you ain't right! LOL!!!!

thommg
03-08-2016, 01:26 PM
Marv, have you seen this? Interesting thoughts from India.Arie.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/indiaarie-perfectly-explains-why-nina-simone-casting-was-a-lost-opportunity_us_56dd943ce4b0000de4051f87?utm_hp_ref =black-voices&ir=Entertainment&

marv2
03-08-2016, 02:03 PM
Marv, have you seen this? Interesting thoughts from India.Arie.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/indiaarie-perfectly-explains-why-nina-simone-casting-was-a-lost-opportunity_us_56dd943ce4b0000de4051f87?utm_hp_ref =black-voices&ir=Entertainment&


No I hadn't. Checking it out now. Thank you!

glencro
04-02-2016, 01:20 PM
I'm late reading the India Arie article but she hit the nail on the head. She didn't come to mind but would have been perfect for the role. I remember when they were originally doing it with Mary J Blige which I still have not seen her ACT though I've seen her in movies

marv2
04-03-2016, 12:24 AM
I'm late reading the India Arie article but she hit the nail on the head. She didn't come to mind but would have been perfect for the role. I remember when they were originally doing it with Mary J Blige which I still have not seen her ACT though I've seen her in movies
I saw Mary J. play Betty Shabazz and she did a good job I thought.

splanky
04-03-2016, 05:19 AM
I saw Mary J. play Betty Shabazz and she did a good job I thought.

Yea, In the film Betty and Coretta which is on DVD. I haven't seen it yet but I expect to be getting
it within the next two weeks. As far as Zoe and Nina the family will have to just try to get
over it because the movie's already done. I too had my reservations about the casting but
hell, at least somebody took up the subject. The messed up thing to me about this is
though the film makers first said Zoe's lighter complexion didn't matter to the story, they
shot her in what is essentially blackface. WTF?...Of course though, I'll see it when it's available from the library, i.e. FREE...simply for the subject...Have to wonder why folks
keep one way or another messing up so many biopics about musical icons, especially black
ones. Dang! JB, Hendrix, more than once...I want to see the Miles Davis movie starring
Don Cheadle but I'm scared of throwing money away. And why the hell does every story
have to be told from some third party's "angle"?...