Spike Lee Latest Celebrity News & Gossip

Spike Lee has called out the critical response to Do The Right Thing upon its release in 1989, criticising the perception that the film would “incite Black people to riot”.Lee spoke of the press reaction to his third film while attending the Toronto Film Festival on Sunday (September 10), where he received the Ebert Director Award. The award recognises filmmakers who have “exemplified greatness in their careers”, and is named after the late film critic Roger Ebert, whom Lee said “was very crucial to my career” during his acceptance speech.“[Ebert] got behind me when those motherfuckers in the press were saying that Do the Right Thing was going to incite black people to riot,” Lee said as he accepted the award from the reviewer’s wife, Chaz Ebert.

The stars stepped out for the 2023 TIFF Tribute Gala & Awards during the Toronto Film Festival over the weekend!

Over the weekend, iconic director Spike Lee was at the Toronto International Film Festival to accept the Ebert Director Award, which is given out at TIFF’s Tribute Awards. And as you might expect from someone like Lee, who is not prone to biting his tongue, the opportunity to accept an award named after Roger Ebert allowed for the filmmaker to recall a pivotal moment in his career that was greatly affected by the legendary film critic.

Spike Lee blasted critics who suggested that “Do The Right Thing” would spark riots when it opened in 1989, while honoring one of the reviewers who came to the film’s defense. The remarks came as Lee received the Ebert Director Award, named for the late film critic Roger Ebert, at the Toronto International Film Festival Tribute Awards on Sunday. “Your husband got behind me when those mother f–kers in the press were saying that ‘Do the Right Thing’ was going to incite Black people to riot,” Lee said, as he accepted his prize from Chaz Ebert, the late critic’s wife.

Coco Gauff won her first Grand Slam title in front of so many celebrity onlookers!

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic In Cord Jefferson’s idea-dense “American Fiction,” no one wants to publish literary professor Thelonious Ellison’s latest novel. Thelonious — or “Monk” to his friends — has delivered a modern reworking of Aeschylus’ “The Persians” (hardly bestseller material to begin with), but all the industry can see is the color of his skin.

Diane Garrett Ellen Kuras is having a full-circle moment. The celebrated cinematographer, who has worked for directors including Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee and Michel Gondry, wanted to be a politically minded filmmaker like Costa-Gavras when she was starting out, but found herself primarily working behind the camera for many years. With “Lee,” a Toronto premiere starring Kate Winslet as famed World War II photographer Lee Miller, she is finally making her debut as a feature film director.

Variety’s exclusive report on the doc’s trailer. “I really wanted to get it made.

The Sopranos star Michael Imperioli has revealed that he met with a witch to help get Summer Of Sam made.Speaking in the documentary Ghosts of the Chelsea Hotel, the actor explained how he took supernatural steps to get the 1999 crime-thriller — which he co-wrote with Spike Lee and Victor Colicchio — through development.“I really wanted to get it made. So I met somebody who was living here [in the Chelsea Hotel] who was a witch, who said he could help me get it made, but it wasn’t going to happen the way I thought it would.“I was very ambitious at the time and wanted to get that made, so (I) resorted to tapping into otherworldly means to get it through the studio system.”Imperioli also had a cameo in the film, which is based on the real-life serial killer David Berkowitz (also known as the Son of Sam), who operated in New York in 1977.

Ethan Shanfeld Michael Imperioli says he took supernatural steps to help him materialize his 1999 movie “Summer of Sam.” The “Sopranos” and “White Lotus” actor was living at the Chelsea Hotel at the time and, in a new documentary about the notoriously haunted locale, recalls meeting with a witch in order to push the crime thriller “through the studio system” in Hollywood. “I had just begun writing ‘Summer of Sam’ with Victor Colicchio — we wrote that script together,” Imperioli says in an exclusive clip from “Ghosts of the Chelsea Hotel.” “I really wanted to get it made. So I met somebody who was living here who was a witch, who said she could help me get it made, but it wasn’t going to happen the way I thought it would.

Emma Watson is checking out some tennis!

Brent Lang Executive Editor Rachel Allen has joined Bleecker Street as senior vice president of publicity. She begins her job at the indie studio this week after more than a decade in the public relations industry, including a five year stint at Cinetic Media, where she served as a director of publicity and led campaigns from festival launch to theatrical release and through awards season.

Re-releases reliably dot the theatrical calendar and this week have a standout. Oldboy, the 2004 Cannes prize-winner, re-released by Neon on its 20th anniversary restored and remastered, grossed $235k on Wednesday and $150k Thursday — for a total cume $385k on 250 screens heading into the weekend.

Talking Heads bandmates David Byrne, Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, and Jerry Harrison will make a public appearance together next month in Toronto for the first time since their 2002 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.

TIFF must be the place.

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Talking Heads were one of the most important and influential acts to emerge from the 1970s, yet the bandmembers’ relations since their split around a decade later have not been the most harmonious. The group has reunited just once — when they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002 — and frontman/main songwriter David Byrne has been on the receiving end of a long string of critical comments from former bandmates Chris Frantz and Tina Weymouth, who say that he deprived them of due credit and other opportunities and was generally unpleasant to work with.

TIFF continues to build out its speaker lineup despite the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes barring a number of participants from this year’s 48th edition.

TIFF is honouring big talent.

Oscar winning filmmakers Pedro Almodóvar and Spike Lee are getting feted at this year’s TIFF Tribute Awards.

It’s still unclear if a large contingent of actors will make their way to all the fall festivals this year due to the SAG strike, but the Toronto International Film Festival is confidently moving forward with its annual Tribute Awards. Recently added to the annual TIFF programming mix, the Tribute Awards honor not just actors (Michelle Yeoh was a recipient in 2022), but writers (who also may not be at TIFF due to their own strike), directors (who are available after a deal with the AMPTP), and other film industry contributors.

Clayton Davis Senior Awards Editor Legendary filmmakers Pedro Almodóvar and Spike Lee are the first honorees announced for this year’s TIFF Tribute Awards. Almodóvar, who won the Oscar for original screenplay for “Talk to Her” (2002), will receive the Jeff Skoll Award in Impact Media presented by Participant, which recognizes leadership in creating a union between social impact and cinema.

Jaden Thompson The inaugural Hudson Film Festival in Hudson, NY will premiere the 20th anniversary remastered edition of Park Chan-wook’s classic film “Oldboy” this August. In partnership with Neon, the premiere will be in advance of the film’s theatrical re-release on Aug.

Samuel L. Jackson has opened up about his 1992 feud with Spike Lee, admitting it took more than 20 years to rebuild their relationship.In a wide-ranging interview with Vulture, Jackson revealed that he and the director fell out over Malcolm X salary dispute, which ultimately led to Jackson turning down the role of Baines in the historical drama.

Samuel L. Jackson is glad to be pals again with frequent collaborator Spike Lee.The Marvel actor, 74, began feuding with the Oscar-winning filmmaker, 66, back in 1992 after they had a fight over Jackson’s salary for the epic “Malcolm X.”The “Pulp Fiction” star was actually set to star as Baines — a character that Albert Hall was later cast in — for Lee’s drama about the civil rights activist.Jackson got candid about how his dispute with the “BlacKkKlansman” director came about in a recent chat with Vulture.“I actually read with most of the people who auditioned for ‘Malcolm X.’ But it was still down to that Spike Lee scale-plus-10 salary thing,” Jackson said, referring to the system created by the Screen Actors Guild that allows 10% of an actor’s paycheck to go to their agent.

Michael Nordine author There’s no shortage of great movies about baseball, but there is a severe lack of films about the Negro leagues. The fifth inning of Ken Burns’ expansive “Baseball” covers them with admirable reverence, but feature-length projects — whether narrative or documentary — are vanishingly rare. “The League” is therefore something close to required viewing for devotees of our national pastime just by virtue of its existence, so it comes as a relief that Sam Pollard’s documentary (exec produced by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson) is also quite good on the merits. Given his résumé, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. Pollard’s prior work as director includes “MLK/FBI” and “Citizen Ashe,” and he’s also edited several Spike Lee joints; in addition to a Peabody Award and career achievement prize from the International Documentary Association, he shared an Oscar nomination with Lee for 1997’s “4 Little Girls” about the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing.

Naman Ramachandran Actor and producer Jonathan Lipnicki has joined production, post-production and distribution company Buffalo 8 as an executive producer. Lipnicki made a mark with his performance alongside Tom Cruise in “Jerry Maguire,” before becoming the lead in the family franchise “Stuart Little.” He will soon be seen in the upcoming TBS show “The Joe Schmo Show,” Peter Pardini’s film “Man Goes on Rant” and Britt Robertson-led film “The Re-Education of Molly Singer.” Lipnicki will play a key role in packaging and project development within Buffalo 8’s EP services division, identifying storytelling opportunities and bringing together top-tier talent based on his extensive relationships spanning Hollywood studio films through to the independent sector.

This story about Giancarlo Esposito and “The Mandalorian” first ran in the drama issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.Giancarlo Esposito knows villains.The actor, whose career began in the early 1980’s (yes, that was him in a jail cell with Eddie Murphy in “Trading Places”), has always flitted between television and movie roles—he has appeared in movies by Jim Jarmusch, Wayne Wang, Spike Lee and Bong Joon-ho. And he has a particular specialty when it comes to playing characters with a, let’s say, loose moral compass.Esposito is probably best known for his role as mannered drug kingpin Gustavo Fring on “Breaking Bad” and the prequel series “Better Call Saul.” He entered “Star Wars” lore in Season 1 of “The Mandalorian” as Moff Gideon, an Imperial zealot who returned in Season 3 to terrorize the titular hero (Pedro Pascal) and enact his evil plan, which involved creepy clones of himself.

Nick Holdsworth The Lions are keeping up with the times. As it turns 70, the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, casts a brighter spotlight on diversity, equity and inclusion — all of which are needed to stay competitive and successful in a fast-changing world. The event, unfolding in the South of France on June 19-23, began in the 1950s as a showcase for television and cinema advertising. Today it embraces the wide range of industries and platforms where marketing, branding, advertising and creative messaging live, from small screens to cinemas, billboards to streamers.

your best friend?Obviously, celebrities love to be complimented. And even if they pretend they don’t care, they care. (Unless they’re Sean Penn in which case, they really don’t care).

In hindsight, it’s quite amazing that anyone could watch Adrienne Shelly’s final film as a director and see it as anything but a movie. It was a good one, a simple story about a small-town woman who falls pregnant by her abusive lover and complicates matters by having an affair with her gynecologist. Starring Keri Russell, the film was funny, romantic, frankly feminist and pulled no punches when it needed to, and its modest success of the box office made it all the more tragic that Shelly, murdered in her own apartment by a construction worker in 2006, would never make another.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Ruth Carter doesn’t need the prefix “costume designer” in front of her name; she is a household name. Carter made Oscar history when she became the first Black woman ever to win two Oscars,thanks to her work on the “Black Panther” films. With credits that include “Selma,” “Malcolm X,” “Coming 2 America” and being Spike Lee’s go-to, Carter has stories to tell.

Barry Newman, best known for starring in the action-thriller “Vanishing Point”, has died. He was 92.

The American Cinematheque said Monday that Oscar, Emmy and Tony winner Helen Mirren will receive the 2023 American Cinematheque Award, which will be bestowed November 4 at the Beverly Hilton during the nonprofit organization’s annual gala tribute.

Helen Mirren is to receive this year's American Cinematheque Award. Representatives for the American Cinematheque organisation announced on Monday that The Queen star would receive the honour at their annual awards gala on 4 November. "Helen Mirren has won the Oscar, Tony and Emmy triple crown of acting, and is an unparalleled icon among actors," American Cinematheque board chair Rick Nicita said of the award recipient in a statement, reports Deadline.

and, as well as a long string of memorable film character, has died. He was 79.The veteran character actor's son, Mike Beasley, confirmed the news on Tuesday with a heartbreaking post on Facebook, paying tribute to his late father.«Man...you know this is a part of life...but that doesn't make it any easier,» Mike wrote. «I lost my best friend today.

Bob Dylan and Aretha Franklin and was the father of Spike Lee, has died aged 94.The musician died at his Brooklyn home yesterday (May 24), according to a publicist for Spike Lee, confirmed to The New York Times.