SUMMER OF SOUL (...OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED) | NO SUDDEN MOVE
Pop Culture Weekly Round-Up 02/07/2021
Hello Everyone. In this week’s newsletter, I’m sharing some thoughts on two movies that are great and you guys should totally check them out. SUMMER OF SOUL and NO SUDDEN MOVE are amazing and both will be available on streaming services on Friday, July 2. There’s also a playlist of five songs I enjoyed this week.
SUMMER OF SOUL (...OR, WHEN THE REVOLUTION COULD NOT BE TELEVISED)
The Harlem Cultural Festival took place the same summer as the famed Woodstock festival and boasted an attendance on par with that concert 100 miles away. Over 300,000 people attended, yet it received virtually no coverage from the mainstream media. The 40 hours of never-seen-before footage has remained in storage for the past 50 years, keeping this incredible event in America's history lost - until now.
Questlove's documentary is both a concert film and a testament to the power of music. SUMMER OF SOUL puts the music in perspective by explaining the anti-war mood and racial tension of the time. As well as how this uniquely African-American effort was mostly overlooked in 1969 while Woodstock drew all the media attention. The concert was organized, over six summer weekends in Harlem’s Marcus Garvey Park by Caribbean singer Tony Lawrence and filmed, with plans for a broadcast special, with a multi-camera crew by television veteran Hal Tulchin. Which spent a good chunk of his life trying to get people to watch this footage.
The concert performances are breathtaking, and the discussions and Interviews with various individuals are inspiring. My favorite part was watching some of the artists who performed watch their own footage and react to it.
SUMMER OF SOUL stands on its own as a celebration of Black history and culture. But hopefully, it will also help spread awareness of the concert's significance and present it in its appropriate historical context. It is incredible that such an important festival could almost be lost to history like this.
NO SUDDEN MOVE
A group of criminals is brought together under mysterious circumstances and have to work together to uncover what’s really going on when their simple job goes completely sideways.
Steven Soderbergh’s suspenseful and twisty new thriller is a bit over-complicated but a good time regardless. The ensemble cast, with Don Cheadle, Benicio Del Toro, Ray Liotta, Amy Seimetz, Julia Fox, Jon Hamm, Brendan Fraser, David Harbour, and a cameo from Matt Damon is impressive and everyone is used perfectly.
NO SUDDEN MOVE is set in Detroit, in 1954, and it follows Don Cheadle & Benicio Del Toro characters who are hired for a small-scale crime with much more consequences than they were expecting. The movie presents the city's ambient racism and racial tensions, as well as the motor industry's arrogant indifference to its impact on the environment. The storyline is a tangle of narratives and personalities, schemes, deceptions, and backstories that are all overlapping and intertwined.
NO SUDDEN MOVE is a thoroughly enjoyable crime thriller and Soderbourgh fans will like it.
Top 5 songs
These were the 5 songs on my heavy rotation this week. You can listen to them on Spotify and YouTube.
1 - Arrested Youth feat. Mark Hoppus - Find My Own Way
2 - Against The Current feat. guardin - again&again
3 - Beabadoobee - Cologne
4 - Charlotte Sands - Bad Day
5 - Florrie - Street Lights