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Warning: Spoilers ahead for Saturday Night.

Jason Reitman's new Saturday Night movie features several classic songs as well as an innovative original score by Jon Batiste. Saturday Night has one of the most stacked ensemble casts of 2024, including plenty of young star actors such as Gabriel Labelle (The Fablemans), Rachel Sennott (Bottoms), Dylan O'Brien (The Maze Runner), and Emmy winners (The Americans), Nicholas Braun (Succession), and Lamorne Morris (Fargo). Oscar winner J.K. Simmons (Whiplash) and 4-time Oscar nominee Willem Dafoe (Poor Things) round out the talented ensemble in Saturday Night. Batiste also portrays legendary musician Billy Preston in the film.

Saturday Night opened in theaters on October 11, 2024, after it premiered at the 51st Telluride Film Festival on August 31, 2024. The biographical comedy-drama premiered with a Certified Fresh Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer (critic) score of 80% and an impressive Popcornmeter (audience) score of 92%. The film chronicles the true story events in the 90 minutes...

The Paris 2024 Olympics were clearly saving the best for last — no, not the big finals in basketball, soccer, volleyball, or even the modern pentathlon. We’re talking about the official debut of Breaking (or breakdancing), which bowed with the women’s competition on Friday, Aug. 9.

After an introduction provided by the 2024 Olympics’ Number One correspondent, Snoop Dogg, B-girls from around the world hit the Olympic stage to duke it out on the dancefloor (the men’s competition will be held tomorrow, Aug. 10). A lot of anticipation has been building for...

Just one week after winning the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature, “Summer of Soul” producers Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, Joseph Patel, Robert Fyvolent and David Dinerstein have now claimed the Grammy Award for Best Music Film. The Searchlight Pictures/Hulu doc chronicles the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival via footage and performances that had been locked away in a basement for five decades. See the full list of Grammys winners.

Accepting the Grammy on Sunday night, producer Robert Fyvolent declared in his acceptance speech, “In case it’s not obvious, I’m one of the white guys. I’ll say, in the words of Ray Barretto, it’s time to come together before it’s too god damn late.” (Watch the video above.) He was referencing a controversial joke made by Oscar presenter Chris Rock the previous week, who said the award went to Questlove and “four white guys”; producer Joseph Patel is South Asian.

A few tracks into the soundtrack of Questlove’s music-fest documentary, an emcee introduces the next performer, David Ruffin. A year after being bounced out of the Temptations, the notoriously troubled Ruffin already sounds nostalgic: “I’d like to go back to the olden days,” he says, with a glimmer of humor, as his backup band starts into the Temps’ “My Girl.”

Only five years had passed since that hit had conquered the world, but as Ruffin himself may have gleaned, Black music had grown exponentially in that short time.

The big Summer holiday weekend is finally upon us, so it’s getaway time. Ah, but what if you’re still a bit leery of travel, what with that “variant’ sweeping through several states? Well, there’s always the movies, though that loud, dim-witted auto-atrocity is still taking up a lot of multiplex space. This new release offers another type of getaway, one of location and time. It can be a bit confusing, but this feature is somehow old and new. And we won’t need Doc Brown’s DeLorean to immerse ourselves in the ozone of long ago NYC, 52 years ago to be exact. That sizzling Summer was the time of the Harlem Cultural Festival, spread out over several Sundays. Iconic pop culture entertainers performed before delighted audiences for free. Unfortunately, another music fest, about a hundred miles away in upstate New York, got all the media attention. Luckily it was all recorded,...

The legendary punk god joins us to talk about movies he finds unforgettable. Special appearance by his cat, Moon Unit.

Show Notes: Movies Referenced In This Episode

Tapeheads (1988)

Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979) – Eli Roth’s trailer commentary

A Face In The Crowd (1957) – Josh Olson’s trailer commentary, Glenn Erickson’s Blu-ray review

Meet John Doe (1941)

Bob Roberts (1992)

Bachelor Party (1984)

Dangerously Close (1986)

Videodrome (1983) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary

F/X (1986)

Hot Rods To Hell (1967)

Riot On Sunset Strip (1967)

While The City Sleeps (1956) – Glenn Erickson’s trailer commentary

Leaving Las Vegas (1995)

It’s A Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) – John Landis’s trailer commentary

Spider-Man (2002)

The Killing (1956) – Michael Lehmann’s trailer commentary

Serpent’s Egg (1977)

The Thin Man (1934)

Meet Nero Wolfe (1936)

The Hidden Eye (1945)

Eyes In The Night (1942)

Sudden Impact (1983) – Alan Spencer’s trailer commentary

Red Dawn (1984)

Warlock (1989)

The Dead Zone (1983) – Mick Garris’s trailer commentary

Secret Honor (1984)

The Player (1992) – Allan Arkush’s trailer commentary,...

Johnny Pacheco, the salsa music pioneer who co-founded Fania Records, has died. He was 85. The label announced hiss death Monday afternoon on Instagram.

“He was much more than a musician, bandleader, writer, arranger and producer, he was a visionary,” the Instagram post read. “His music will live on eternally and we are forever grateful to have been part of his wonderful journey.”

The Dominican Republic newspaper Diario Libre reported that multi-instrumentalist Pacheco, who popularized the term “salsa” for the genre, died after being hospitalized with pneumonia.

Pacheco teamed with Jerry Masucci to found Fania Records in 1964. Since its creation, the record label helped propel like likes of Celia Cruz, Larry Harlow, Ray Barretto, Bobby Valentin and others into stardom. The multi-instrumentalist Pacheco also was a nine-time Grammy nominee, racking up noms for categories including Best Tropical Latin Performance and Best Latin Recording.

Born Juan Azarías Pacheco Knipping on March 25, 1935 in Santiago de los Caballeros,...

Premiering tonight at the semi-virtual Sundance Film Festival, Summer Of Soul is both an exhilarating and chastising experience.

Unearthing a cultural sarcophagus of 1969 Black America, the dexterous directorial debut about 1969’s Harlem Cultural Festival by Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson is full of triumphal performances from some of the greatest musicians of that era and any other.

This is living hidden history that you need to hear and know, as Gladys Knight says in the documentary: “It wasn’t just about the music.”

Completed during the Covid-19 crisis, the nearly two-hour Summer of Soul moves through time and memory with sit-down interviews with people who were in the 300,000 strong crowd or up on-stage. Yet, like a previous Sundance opening night documentary, 2015’s What Happened Miss Simone? (which actually contains about 30-seconds of the 1969 footage), the brutal reality of how much of the oppression and...

A pulsating panorama of “Black, beautiful, proud” people, “Summer of Soul,” is . But this one, which marks the directorial debut of The Roots drummer Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, comes with a most unfortunate history: Its film reels were buried in a basement for 50 years, largely unseen, until now.

The “Questlove Jawn,” as it’s introduced in opening credits, covers the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, aka “The Black Woodstock.” The name stuck over the years not only because the concerts coincided with that other big rock festival upstate. The idea for the event flowered from the ashes of the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr and Malcolm X, as well as the Civil Rights movement, and was created to celebrate African-American music, culture and politics, and to promote Black pride and unity.

It wasn’t the first time. The initial Harlem Cultural Festival took place in 1967, when a thirtysomething Harlemite singer named...

Exclusive: Concord’s Film & TV unit has teamed with Pose and Vikings executive producer Sherry Marsh of Marsh Entertainment as well as Jane the Virgin executive producer Jorge Granier of Aquarius Pictures and Sergio Pizzolante (Nicky Jam: El Ganador) to develop a scripted film and/or television project about the history of Fania Records, the label that popularized salsa music. Concord’s Sophia Dilley and Fania’s Bruce McIntosh will co-developing the project and serving as executive producers.

Founded by Johnny Pacheco and Jerry Masucci, New York-based Fania Records is considered by many to be “the Motown of Latin Music.” It flourished from the late 1960s to the mid-’80s, becoming highly influential both musically and culturally. The label spread the sound of salsa music from the clubs of New York City to the rest of the world and became a revered global brand in the process.

Fania created...