Esai Morales to Star in Sony Pictures’ “Superfly” Remake

Posted on January 30, 2018 by Tom Castaneda

Esai Morales’ career is soaring to new heights…

The 55-year-old Puerto Rican actor will star in the Director X-helmed Superfly remake from Sony Pictures, which will debut in theaters June 15.

Morales will portray play Adalberto.

The Alex Tse-penned script is based on the 1972 original blaxploitation crime drama, which followed an African American cocaine dealer who tries to secure one more deal before getting out of the business.

Morales joins a cast that includes Trevor Jackson, Jason Mitchell, Lex Scott Davis, Andrea Londo, Jacob Ming-Trent, Omar Chapparo, and Allen Maldonado.

Joel Silver is producing the film with rap star Future, who is also putting together the film’s soundtrack.

Morales, who currently stars on ABC’s How To Get Away With Murder, rose to acclaim in the Richie Valens biopic La Bamba. He’s also appeared in PBS’ American Family, Showtime’s Resurrection Blvd., NYPD Blue and Caprica.

Salma Hayek Earns Movies for Grownups Awards Nomination from AARP

Posted on January 18, 2018 by Tom Castaneda

Salma Hayek’s all grown up with reason to celebrate…

The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) has announced its nominees for the 17th Annual Movies for Grownups Awards, with the 51-year-old Mexican actress earning a nod.

Hayek is nominated in the Best Actress category for her performance in Miguel Arteta’s Beatriz at Dinner.

She’s nominated opposite Annette Bening (Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool), Judi Dench (Victoria & Abdul), Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and Meryl Streep (The Post).

Guillermo del Toro earned a nod in the Best Director category and one in the Best Screenwriter category for the 53-year-old Mexican filmmaker’s Golden Globe-winning drama The Shape of Water, which earned a nod for Best Picture/Best Movie for Grownups.

Meanwhile, Mexico’s Chavela, a film about the life of Mexican singer Chavela Vargas, who gained worldwide fame for her beauty and charm and her interpretation of traditional ranchera, earned a nomination in the Best Foreign Film category.

Winners will be honored at the annual awards at the Beverly Wilshire in Los Angeles on Monday, February 5 with Alan Cumming as host.

Co-produced by the Great Performances series, the awards will be broadcast for the first time on Friday, February 23 at 9:00 pm on PBS.

Here’s the complete list of nominees:

Best Picture/Best Movie for Grownups
Get Out, Lady Bird, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, The Shape of Water and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Best Actress
Annette Bening (Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool), Judi Dench (Victoria & Abdul), Salma Hayek (Beatriz at Dinner), Frances McDormand (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri) and Meryl Streep (The Post)

Best Actor
Steve Carell (Battle of the Sexes), Daniel Day-Lewis (Phantom Thread), Tom Hanks (The Post), Gary Oldman (Darkest Hour), Denzel Washington (Roman J. Israel, Esq.)

Best Supporting Actress
Holly Hunter (The Big Sick), Allison Janney (I, Tonya), Melissa Leo (Novitiate), Lesley Manville (Phantom Thread), Laurie Metcalf (Lady Bird)

Best Supporting Actor
Willem Dafoe (The Florida Project), Laurence Fishburne (Last Flag Flying), Woody Harrelson (Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri), Richard Jenkins (The Shape of Water), and Christopher Plummer (All the Money in the World)

Best Director
Kenneth Branagh (Murder on the Orient Express), Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water), Reginald Hudlin (Marshall), Ridley Scott (All the Money in the World) and Steven Spielberg (The Post)

Best Screenwriter
Guillermo del Toro (The Shape of Water), James Ivory (Call Me by Your Name), Anthony McCarten (Darkest Hour), Steven Rogers (I, Tonya), Aaron Sorkin (Molly’s Game)

Best Ensemble
Get Out, Girls Trip, Last Flag Flying, Mudbound, Murder on the Orient Express

Best Grownup Love Story
Breathe, Films Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, The Leisure Seeker, Our Souls at Night, The Greatest Showman

Best Intergenerational Film
The Big Sick, The Florida Project, Lady Bird, Marjorie Prime, Wonder

Best Time Capsule
Battle of the Sexes, Darkest Hour, Dunkirk, I, Tonya, The Post

Readers’ Choice Poll
Beauty and the Beast, Dunkirk, Get Out, Girls Trip, Last Flag Flying, Murder on the Orient Express, The Post, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Wonder, Wonder Woman

Best Documentary
Dolores, Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story, I Am Not Your Negro, Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold, Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo

Best Foreign Film
Chavela (Mexico), The Insult (Lebanon), Like Crazy (Italy), A Taxi Driver (South Korea), The Women’s Balcony (Israel)

Rodriguez to Voice Title Character in Netflix’s Animated Series “Carmen Sandiego”

Posted on April 19, 2017 by Tom Castaneda

Where in the world is Gina Rodriguez? Well, you’ll soon find out…

Netflix is developing an animated reboot of the once-popular children’s series Carmen Sandiego, with the 32-year-old Puerto Rican actress and Jane the Virgin star voicing the title character.

Produced by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the 20-episode Carmen Sandiego will feature a new crop of international capers, as well as a look into Carmen’s past to reveal who she is and why she became a super thief.

Finn Wolfhard (Stranger Things) will voice Player, Carmen’s chief accomplice and friend.

The character debuted in a 1980s computer game franchise Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego? and probably is best known for the Greg Lee-hosted game show that aired on PBS from 1991-95.

Before her breakout role on Jane the Virgin, Rodriguez, a Golden Globe winner for her performance on the CW series, previously appeared on television in Rizzoli & Isles, Longmire, The Bold and the Beautiful, The Mentalist and Happy Endings.

The Associated Press Names Miranda Its Entertainer of the Year

Posted on December 26, 2016 by Tom Castaneda

Lin-Manuel Miranda isn’t just the man of the hour… He’s the man of the last 8,000-plus hours.

The 36-year-old Puerto Rican actor, playwright, composer, rapper, and writer, bested Beyonce, Adele and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, among others, to earn the honor of The Associated Press Entertainer of the Year, voted by members of the news cooperative and AP entertainment reporters.

Best known for creating and starring in the Broadway musicals Hamilton and In the Heights. Miranda has had a banner year, winning a Pulitzer Prize and a pair of Tony Awards.

The Hamilton writer-composer also earned a Golden Globe nomination, won the Edward M. Kennedy Prize for Drama Inspired by American History, wrote music for a top movie, and inspired a best-selling book, a best-selling album of Hamilton covers and a popular PBS documentary.

“There’s been more than a little good luck in the year itself and the way it’s unfolded,” Miranda said after being told of the honor. “I continue to try to work on the things I’ve always wanted to work on and try to say yes to the opportunities that I’d kick myself forever if I didn’t jump at them.”

Miranda joins the list of previous AP Entertainer of the Year winners who in recent years have included Adele, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lawrence, Lady Gaga, Tina Fey and Betty White.

The animated Disney juggernaut Frozen captured the prize in 2014, and Star Wars won last year. (Miranda wrote one of the songs in The Force Awakens.)

When he hosted Saturday Night Live in October, he somewhat tongue-in-cheek acknowledged the rarity of having a theater composer as host, saying: “Most of you watching at home have no idea who I am.”

But that has definitely changed… Miranda was virtually everywhere in popular culture this year — stage, film, TV, music and politics — engaging on social media as he went. Like a lyric he wrote for Alexander Hamilton, it seemed at times that the non-stop Miranda was working as if he was “running out of time.”

Julio D. Diaz, of the Pensacola News Journal, said Miranda “made the whole world sing, dance and think. Coupled with using his prestige to become involved in important sociopolitical issues, there was no greater or more important presence in entertainment in 2016.”

Among the things Miranda did this year are asking the U.S. Congress to help dig Puerto Rico out of its debt crisis, getting an honorary doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania, performing at a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton on Broadway, lobbying to stop gun violence in America, and teaming up with Jennifer Lopez on the benefit single “Love Make the World Go Round.”

He and his musical Hamilton won 11 Tony Awards in June, but perhaps his deepest contribution that night was tearfully honoring those killed hours before at an Orlando nightclub with a beautiful sonnet: “Love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love, cannot be killed or swept aside,” he said. “Now fill the world with music, love and pride.”

He started the year onstage in the Broadway hit Hamilton (which in 2015 had won a Grammy and earned Miranda a MacArthur genius grant) and ended it with a Golden Globe nomination for writing the song “How Far I’ll Go” from Moana, which was on top of the box office for three weeks this month, earning $165 million.

“I’ve been jumping from thing to thing and what’s been thrilling is to see the projects that happen very quickly kind of exploding side-by-side with the projects I’ve been working on for years,” Miranda said.

Though theater fans have long cherished his fluency in both Stephen Sondheim and Tupac, Hamilton helped Miranda break into the mainstream in 2016. The groundbreaking, biographical hip-hop show tells the true story of an orphan immigrant from the Caribbean who rises to the highest ranks of American society, performed by a young African-American and Latino cast.

The cast went to the White House in March to perform songs from the show for the first family and to answer questions from school children. A version of the show opened in Chicago in October and a production is slated to land in California next year and in London soon.

Erin O’Neill of The Marietta Times said Miranda dominated entertainment news this year but, more importantly, “opened a dialogue about government, the founding of our country and the future of politics in America.”

There’s more Miranda to come in 2017, including filming Disney‘s Mary Poppins Returns with Emily Blunt (due out Christmas 2018) and an ambitious TV and film adaptation of the fantasy trilogy The Kingkiller Chronicle.

“I’m back in a planting mode after a harvest,” Miranda said, laughing.

PBS to Air Special on Late Hispanic Leader Willie Velasquez in October

Posted on June 26, 2016 by Tom Castaneda

Willie Velasquez’s memory will live on as part of a PBS special…

The public broadcaster has announced plans to air Willie Velasquez: Empowering the People in October.

The program centers on the late leader of the movement to increase political power among Hispanic Americans. He passed away of cancer in June 1998. He was 44.

With his rallying cry of “Su Voto es su Voz,” Velasquez started a grassroots movement that would change the nation’s political landscape and pave the way for the growing power of the Latino vote

Velasquez, a native of San Antonio, was a leader of La Raza Unida, a Hispanic-American political party that was active in the Southwest in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. In 1968 he led a farmworkers’ strike, along with Cesar Chavez, in south Texas. In 1981, he taught a course on Southwestern politics at Harvard University.

In 1974, Velasquez founded the Southwest Voter Registration and Education Project, the nation’s largest voter registration project aimed at the Hispanic community.

Under his guidance, a spokesman said, the project conducted voter registration drives in 200 cities and Indian reservations and conducted extensive polling.

”What we’re most proud of is that from 1974 when we started to 1987, the number of Hispanic elected officials in the U.S. grew from 1,566 to 3,038, an increase of 82 percent,” the spokesman said.

PBS will air Willie Velasquez: Empowering the People on October 3 from 10:30-11:30 pm ET.

PBS Offering Inside Look at Miranda’s Hit Broadway Musical “Hamilton”

Posted on June 26, 2016 by Tom Castaneda

PBS is offering a behind the scenes look at Lin-Manuel Miranda’s hit Broadway musical Hamilton.

The public broadcaster and television program distributor has officially unveiled its fall scheduling plans with this year’s PBS Arts Fall Festival kicking off with Great Performances’ Hamilton’s America in October.

“It gives us a fantastic opportunity to talk about the hottest show ever, on Broadway,” PBS’ chief programming executive and GM Beth Hoppe said of the musical that recently won 11 Tony Awards, including best musical.

PBS got access to the show’s creator, Miranda, and his colleagues for two years leading up to Hamilton’s Broadway debut.

“We were in a really wonderful position,” Hoppe told Deadline. “David Horne, exec producer of Great Performances has a great relationship with Lin, because he had done a documentary on his earlier show, In the Heights. Through that relationship, he is a Friend Of PBS,” she joked, of Miranda.

PBS will air Great Performances’ Hamilton’s America on October 21.

PBS to Air Ruiz’s “Kingdom of Shadows” Documentary in September

Posted on June 25, 2016 by Tom Castaneda

Bernardo Ruiz is taking America inside the the U.S.-Mexico drug war…

The Mexican American filmmaker, who previously directed and produced the documentary Reportero about attacks on the press in Mexico, will bring his latest documentary to PBS.

The public broadcaster has announced plans to air Ruiz’s Kingdom of Shadows as part of its acclaimed Point-of-View Documentary Films program.

In the film, directed and produced by Ruiz, takes an unflinching look at the hard choices and destructive consequences of the U.S.-Mexico drug war. Witness the human side of the conflict through the eyes of a U.S. drug enforcement agent, an activist nun in Mexico and a former Texas smuggler.

PBS will air POV Kingdom of Shadows on Monday, September 19 from 10:00 – 11:30 pm ET.

Cannavale to Appear in “Variety Studio: Actors on Actors” Series

Posted on April 2, 2016 by Tom Castaneda

Bobby Cannavale is ready to talk shop…

Variety and PBS SoCal have announced the line-up for the fourth installment of their awards season series “Variety Studio: Actors on Actors,” with the 45-year-old half-Cuban American actor making the final cut.

Available to stream on Variety.com, the new “Actors on Actors” season will feature one-on-one discussions between this year’s Emmy contenders.

Along with Cannavale, who stars in HBO’s Vinyl, this year’s conversations, which will be printed in the June 7 issue of Variety, will also include Aziz Ansari (“Master of None”), Rachel Bloom (“Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”), Emilia Clarke (“Game of Thrones”), Jamie Lee Curtis (“Scream Queens”), Kirsten Dunst (“Fargo”), Jay Duplass (“Transparent”), Billy Eichner (“Difficult People”), Sam Heughan (“Outlander”), Tom Hiddleston (“The Night Manager”), Felicity Huffman (“American Crime”), Lady Gaga (“American Horror Story”), Jennifer Lopez (“Shades of Blue”), Rob Lowe (“Grinder”), Rami Malek (“Mr. Robot”), Thomas Middleditch (“Silicon Valley”), Aaron Paul (“The Path”), Sarah Paulson (“American Crime Story”), Krysten Ritter (“Jessica Jones”), Tracee Ellis Ross (“Black-ish”), Patrick Stewart (“Blunt Talk”), John Travolta (“American Crime Story”), Courtney B. Vance (“American Crime Story”) and Kerry Washington (“Confirmation”).

“Variety is thrilled to cover the best actors on television in this season’s ‘Actors on Actors’ for PBS stations,” said Variety‘s executive TV editor Debra Birnbaum in a statement. “This season’s lineup includes actors from some of the top new television programs and showcases the wide diversity of roles for actors on broadcast, cable and streaming platforms.”

PBS SoCal will premiere the segment in two episodes, one on June 12 and the other on June 19.

“Through their craft, the actors interviewed on ‘Actors on Actors’ effortlessly spark our imaginations and take us to new places,” said PBS SoCal president and CEO Andy Russell in a statement. “Through this partnership with Variety we are pleased to enhance the experience of fans of great television – providing them greater insight into the people who bring them their favorite dramas, comedies and more.”

Blacc to Appear as a Musical Guest on the New Season of “Sesame Street”

Posted on November 26, 2015 by Tom Castaneda

Can you tell Aloe Blacc how to get, how to get to Sesame Street?

The 36-year-old Panamanian American singer-songwriter is set to guest star on the long-running educational program for its upcoming 46th season, which premieres in January and has been revamped for HBO.

Blacc is set to appear as a musical guest, performing the song “Everyday Hero.”

In addition to Blacc, this season’s musical guests on television’s most iconic street include Fifth Harmony, Gwen Stefani, Pharrell and Nick Jonas.

This season also promises a new set, new opening and closing songs and a new character named Nina.

It all begins on January 16 at 9:00 am ET on HBO. The new episodes also will air on PBS, although at a later date.

Here’s the full lineup of musical guests and their songs:

Gwen Stefani, “Be a Good Friend”
Pharrell, “B Is for Book”
Nick Jonas, “Check That Shape”
Fifth Harmony, “That’s Music”
Sara Bareilles, “Just Like Magic”
Ne-Yo, “You’ve Got a Body, So Move It!”
Aloe Blacc, “Everyday Hero”

Longoria Developing Drama Project “Casino” NBC with Carlos Portugal

Posted on October 20, 2015 by Tom Castaneda

Eva Longoria’s gamble is paying off…

The 40-year-old Mexican American actress, producer and activist’s production company UnbeliEVAble Entertainment has sold another project, the drama Casino, to NBC.

Written by East Los High co-creator Carlos Portugal, the project centers on the aftermath of a mogul’s mysterious death when his ambitious young widow and his illegitimate son have to join forces to save his famed casino, while circumstances surrounding his death come to light and threaten to take them both down.

Portugal executive produces with UnveliEVAble Entertainment’s Longoria and Ben Spector.

Universal Television, where the company is based, is the studio.

Casino stems out of efforts by the former Desperate Housewives star — who holds a master’s degree in Chicano studies — to bring Hispanic voices to television.

Born in Cuba, Portugal began his career at San Francisco PBS station KQED, where he produced the Emmy-winning documentary Frida Kahlo: Portrait of an Artist.

For the past three seasons, he has served as creator, showrunner, head writer and director of Hulu’s original drama series East Los High, directing 42 of the 48 produced episodes to date.

Before East Los High, Portugal worked on Tyler Perry’s Meet The Browns and House of Payne for TBS.

UnbeliEVAble has midseason NBC comedy series Hot & Bothered, starring Longoria, as well as three other broadcast projects in development: genre drama Zone of Silence at NBC with Blumhouse Productions and writer Rashad Raisani, comedy Bonita & Mechelle at NBC with Will Packer Prods and writer Kriss Turner Towner and a comedy at ABC with veteran comedy writer Bobby Bowman.

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