When you see Charlie, I want him to be GQ”. But, once you do that, it’s really a nice little ride. Da 5 Bloods First Cow The A.V. AVC: And on top of all that, it’s also a great tribute to Chadwick Boseman, with his character “Stormin’” Norman. Emma Alexandra Byrne. IWJ: When I came to New York, I started hanging around The Actors Studio, and a woman came to me and she said, “You know, Paul Newman is doing a reading at his apartment. of my career. “I see ghosts,” Paul says at one agonized point, and though the ghost he sees is Norman, the real specter in the room is the war itself. There’s also commentary on just how White these movies were, with people like Chuck Norris and Sylvester Stallone achieving mythic glory while blithely erasing the fact that 32% of the soldiers in the jungle were Black. Or is that just an in-joke, of sorts? What has it meant for you and your career? Yes, the tapestry portrays a simple scene, yet upon closer inspection, one realizes that its threads have been woven with complexity. You and Delroy Lindo have known each other for quite some time. I mean, I think any actor would love to be a part of something like that, and I was just fortunate enough to be there. The gold itself is just as big a MacGuffin, except here it’s also a deus ex machina of sorts, pulling out of the ether a note of hopeful uplift that ties the fictional story to a much-desired, reality-based outcome that’s almost too good to believe but wonderful to behold. It just wouldn’t work. was a classic Nintendo game too. IWJ: That show kept me afloat, to be quite honest! I can’t wait to tell my friends—after all the stuff I’ve done—we’re talking about A Christmas Carol. (Oddly enough, Lee’s penchant for wonderfully crazy monikers for his characters is relegated to Reno’s; French speakers will benefit from a great visual play on “Desroche” later in the film.) AVC: You were just in Netflix’s History Of Swear Words; they wanted to talk about the history of the word “shit”—who else were they going to call? We loved the family dynamic, all of the great Tom Selleck looks and lines, the energy and sass from Donnie Wahlberg, etc. You know, that is war—that is what a lot of these soldiers were going through. You know, you can just tell by the manner, just the way they approach the character, deliver lines, and things like that, like, “This person is really solid.” It makes you wake up in a way, as an actor working with that person. And here I am! He said, “Oh, that’s right, that’s right! for strong violence, grisly images and pervasive language. This director knows the power of captivating an audience so he can goad them into sticking around for his message. And that’s what you want! VIDEO October 30. We’ve sold more than I ever thought. Stormin’ Norman also puts the trunk of gold bars they discover in a downed CIA plane into context—he sees it as much deserved reparations, a repurposing of funds that were originally slated for Vietnamese people who provided information to the U.S. That gold can’t leave Vietnam in its current condition, so outside forces are necessary to assist. “Da 5 Bloods” jumps back and forth, though not too many times, between the Bloods’ tours of duty and the present day. And that’s I told them what my ideas were—when people see me, I want them to see Charlie. In that moment, when [Agent Flood] finds stuff in the couch, he said, “You should do that!” And I said, “No, no, no, I was thinking about doing something else.” He said, “No, I think you should do that.” So I did. Think about it: You’re going to do the History Of Swear Words and not put me in there? Well, with the guy saying, “Sheeeeeeeeet!,” and the gondola driver going the wrong way, it never happened. What’s your take on the movie’s worldview? They just hate everything that I’m doing.” It’s that insecurity of every actor, you know? He’s anti-immigrant and, in what is no doubt a troll on the director’s part, Paul voted for the man an on-screen caption refers to as “President Fake Bone Spurs.” Paul even says “there were atrocities on both sides!” As far as trolling goes, however, Lee is playing the long game here. Looking back, that was a big day for me, because I didn’t realize that it would start this relationship over the next 20 years—it went from film to film to film, you know? Club: Nearly two decades old, The Wire is still seen as a pinnacle of storytelling on television. Enter challenges, watch videos, and take part in our annual vote to decide the best film, TV show and game of the year. A shot of him just shooting the shit with an Afro pick rising up from the back of his head carries enough unapologetic Blackness to power a nuclear reactor of revolution. [Laughs.] So when we went back to it, it was like, “Yeah, it’s been a while, but we’re just sort of picking up where we left off!” So making that adjustment was not too bad. I knew Clarke Peters, and Clarke Peters knows me—we’ve worked together over the years, on many projects. While we did spend a good deal of time highlighting Lindo’s stellar work in Da 5 Bloods during his episode of Collider Connected, there was just no holding back; I … They had the idea because A Christmas Carol was a thing that they did there every year, so they decided they were going to film it. You were Doc in Punch-Out! IWJ: Yes, you can still get a bobblehead! Each season typically has 22 episodes, but due to production being halted during the COVID-19 pandemic, episode 19 served as the de facto season 10 finale. And it was a bit much, you know, but I have learned to live with it. But I couldn’t imagine being in that type of a situation. And then I did it later in that film, and the rest is history. What’s that journey been like for you? And I thought, “Well, look, they’re not going to cast me as this guy.” I mean, it didn’t make sense, you know? I mean, you know, it’s not about the size of the part. It’s like, no matter how old you get, you’re always thinking doom at some point. AVC: In improv it always helps to have good sparring partners, good support. They just kept hiring me, and I kept showing up! Between these two bookends is a heist movie of sorts, albeit one with far more on its mind than its plot details would suggest. A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or basic glyph. The Awardist Podcast Episodes // March 29, 2021. In lesser hands, the occasional messiness of the script by Lee, his fellow Oscar winning “BlacKkKlansman” scribe Kevin Wilmott, and Danny Bilson and Paul De Meo might result in a film weakened by its occasional predictability. Maybe Netflix just had too many legitimate awards contenders this year or maybe it just came out too early in 2020, but Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” seems to have gotten unjustly lost in the shuffle and it’s unclear why. But what we were especially drawn to were the family meals - all of which were blatantly Catholic. See the latest Netflix Originals and Moviefone's selection of must-watch films. I heard people saying —I saw it in Amsterdam on the other side of the tracks, written in like graffiti with a guy who looked like Fat Albert. The A.V. David wears a Morehouse shirt throughout his jungle trek and it’s more than just a shout-out to the director’s alma mater. IWJ: I mean, when I look back on it, you start to see the little small nuggets, these little clues that something was not quite right. Paul would rather do business with anyone else, but this is the hand they’re dealt, so the Bloods choose to play it. AVC: And Rosamund Pike does an incredible job anchoring the movie, while also being its antagonist, in a way. It was just something I did because a lot of people back home did that. Judas and the Black Messiah Charlese Antoinette Jones. In a perfect casting move, Stormin’ Norman is played by Black Panther himself, Chadwick Boseman. We just thought, “Well, that’s okay—that’s just Chadwick being Chadwick.” When I heard that he had died, when he had passed away, I was like, “Oh, I get it now. So we were all very delighted and happy. Every time you saw Willie Brown, he was just GQ clean. There was such a bond, and there were times when you just sort of had to hold on to one another because we were just [out there] with the mosquitoes and the flies and the heat and the the hours and the dirt. As in films like “Inside Man” and “BlacKkKlansman,” Lee unabashedly quotes his influences—he knows that you know what he’s doing, and he milks that for as much mileage as he can. And that’s when I said, “Okay, something’s got to change here.”. So you go in and you just do it, and sometimes that’s good because you’ve just got to be as honest as you possibly can to whatever it is you’re doing. IWJ: I’m no longer the judge here! They might start finding some footage from high school since! His breakthrough came in the form of The Wire’s State Senator Clay Davis—a memorably smooth-talking shyster in a series full of them—which he’s followed with recurring roles on Rubicon, Veep, and across the Law & Order franchise (“I think I’ve done more [episodes] than anybody I’ve ever met!”). To be blunt, I can’t speak enough [about Spike Lee], but he’s always been a fan of my work and has always put me in films and things, so I appreciate that. So I went back and I go into the room, and Martin Scorsese says, “What do I know you from? Odie "Odienator" Henderson has spent over 33 years working in Information Technology. From Spike Lee's Da 5 Bloods being overlooked to Regina King's directorial debut in One Night in Miami, here are the biggest Oscar nomination snubs of 2021. And you’re always hoping for the best; you just want to go in and do your job. And he was great as far as coming into the circle and everything like that. I didn’t say, “Well, gee, Marty, I have never done a movie before hardly.” But I got cast in Goodfellas—that’s how all of that happened. But a man is so much more than the sum of his “sheeeeeeeeeits,” and Isiah Whitlock Jr. has proven himself a reliable and versatile actor over the past three decades. And, as Judge Lomax, how—just based on the law—how you can unwittingly contribute to do this. AVC: The nostalgia factor was probably at play, considering Punch-Out!! But he said, “I think we’re going to have to shut down for a couple of weeks.” And I remember saying, “God, a couple of weeks, really? Paul hates the French, the Vietnamese, hell, everybody practically. 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