‘David Byrne’s American Utopia’ Film Review: Byrne and Spike Lee Burn Down the House With Style

Andreas Wiseman, Jake Kanter The London Film Festival’s Screen Talks and events program will include speakers Riz Ahmed, Letitia Wright, Michel Franco, Miranda July, Tsai Ming-liang, Christian Petzold, David Byrne and artist Es Devlin, who will each talk about their most recent work.

HBO is teaming up with Rock the Vote— and enlisting talent including Spike Lee, Samantha Bee and Jay Ellis— to encourage Americans to share why they're voting in the 2020 fall elections.

Spike Lee’s concert film adaptation of David Byrne’s American Utopia has been released.Lee’s movie, which is set to premiere on HBO on October 17, was filmed during Byrne’s Broadway residency that ran from October 2019 to February 2020.Byrne’s American Utopia featured the musician speaking with the audience about the state of America and also included performances of songs from throughout his career, going back to his first Talking Heads record through to his 2018 ‘American Utopia’ solo

The movie that opened the Toronto International Film Festival earlier this month just got a new trailer.

Tom Grater International Film ReporterEXCLUSIVE: Universal Pictures Content Group is set to land international rights to Spike Lee’s David Byrne’s American Utopia following the film playing opening night at this year’s TIFF.HBO has domestic rights to the project, which is a filmed version of the acclaimed Broadway show, and is set to release stateside on October 17.Universal PCG is now tying up a deal for all international rights and is eyeing a roll out from November.

The world needs something to lift its spirits. 2020 has been rough, to say the least, with a global pandemic leaving so many people tragically dead, political turmoil in governments around the world, and civil unrest as systemic racism becomes headline news.

David Byrne has shared a new edition of his online magazine Reasons To Be Cheerful, which focuses on tackling division within society.The new series We Are Not Divided tells the stories of places and institutions that are succeeding in overcoming division.

columnist for the Village Voice and the New York Daily News, a guest on NPR and Charlie Rose’s show, a jazz drummer, a founder of what became Jazz at Lincoln Center and mentor to Wynton Marsalis and many younger writers and musicians, an aficionado of baseball and American folklore and scourge of Toni Morrison, Spike Lee and Amira Baraka among others.At home, he read, wrote and listened to music.

Despite the countless technological innovations in the 36 years since the release of Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense, that iconoclastic time capsule of a 1983 Talking Heads show is still considered by many to be the greatest rock concert film ever made.

Spike Lee and David Byrne aren’t an obvious pairing. While the former’s oeuvre, for the most part, features unflinching stories about Black life in America, the latter became a hero to white college-educated teens everywhere.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film CriticWhen you watch the filmed version of a show like “Hamilton” or “Springsteen on Broadway,” it can feel like the next best thing to being there. But Spike Lee’s playful and entrancing big-screen version of David Byrne’s “American Utopia” is better than the next best thing — it feels more like a whole new thing.Byrne’s spiky and exuberant 21st-century rock-concert-on-Broadway jamboree, which opened at New York’s Hudson Theatre on Oct.

If there ever was a year for the Toronto Film Festival to open with a musical pep talk for Americans, surely 2020 is it. American Utopia, the concert film of David Byrne’s 2019 Broadway show, directed by Spike Lee, provides a spark of optimism in the era of COVID-19 and civil unrest.

coronavirus pandemic, with a programme of 58 films from around the world — 50 of which will be premiering online.Steve McQueen’s Mangrove will be opening the festival, and the new film from God’s Own Country director Francis Lee Ammonite will be the closing night gala.Further films that are set to premiere include Spike Lee’s filmed take on David Byrne‘s smash-hit Broadway show American Utopia, as well as Miranda July’s new film Kajillionaire and Josephine Decker’s Shirley Jackson

blackface in a 1984 promotional video.The 68-year-old musician has made a statement on social media referring to the 1984 Stop Making Sense concert film, which features Byrne portraying different characters interviewing himself.Byrne tweeted: “Recently a journalist pointed out something I did in a promo video skit in 1984 for the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense.

David Byrne is acknowledging it was a mistake doing a Blackface bit in a performance in 1984.

David Byrne is the latest star to apologize for previously wearing blackface. In the 1980s, to promote the Talking Heads concert film "Stop Making Sense," the musician appeared in a promo video in which he interviewed himself about his work in the form of various characters.

Related: Chris Frantz: 'If you knew David Byrne, you would not be jealous of him' “Recently a journalist pointed out something I did in a promo video skit in 1984 for the Talking Heads concert film Stop Making Sense,” he tweeted.