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Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody is a movie directed by Kasi Lemmons starring Naomi Ackie.

Today we saw this biopic about the always great Whitney Houston… according to some, the singer deserved something better than this; and for others… a good chance to remember her always.

A tribute to the singer born in Newark.

About the Movie Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody

Another biopic? Unfortunately, yes. This genre calls for more respect for the biography than a more developed introspection of the characters and frequently settles for composing works that revolve around more or less famous fragments and lose out (almost always) in the general balance, forcing respecto ver creation.

Many are born as failures.

With all our respects (totally) for the singer, we are of the opinion that this is a movie that although it is faithful to the biography, does not manage to transmit...

Whitney Houston was born in Newark, NJ on August 9, 1963.

About Whitney Houston Los Angeles – Mar 25: Whitney Houston arrives at the {Title} at Morton’S on March 25, 2001 in West Hollywood, CA. Depositphotos

She was the daughter of gospel singer Cissy Houston and John Houston.

Her 1985 debut album, titled “Whitney Houston,” went platinum, selling more than a million copies in the United States alone.

She has sold over 200 million albums and singles worldwide throughout her career.

She is one of the most awarded female artists of all time and has won six Grammy Awards and two Emmy Awards.

She was the first artist to have seven consecutive singles hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

Houston starred in “The Bodyguard” in 1992 which won her an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Actress in a Motion Picture and a Blockbuster Entertainment Award for Favorite Female Movie Actress – Drama.

She performed a rendition...

Heading into the 2023 Grammy Awards Sunday night, Beyoncé was our odds-on favorite to win Album of the Year for her critically acclaimed disc “Renaissance.” The evening’s host, Trevor Noah, even gushed over her awards supremacy throughout the evening, at some points making Queen B herself look a bit uncomfortable. She did take home four trophies, making her the biggest Grammy winner of all time with 33, but lost the night’s biggest prize to Harry Styles‘ “Harry’s House.”

It was a ceremony filled with surprises — Lizzo took down Adele and Styles to win Record of the Year for her smash “About Damn Time.” Perhaps nobody was more shocked on the night than Bonnie Raitt, who won Song of the Year for “Just Like That.” Had Beyoncé won Album of the Year, she would have become just the fourth Black woman to achieve this feat, and the first in 24 years.

The 65th Annual Grammy Awards are set to be telecast live, February 5, on CBS, with Beyonce leading the way with nine nominations for her critically acclaimed album, “Renaissance.” While many consider Queen B the clear frontrunner to take the evening’s top prize, Album of the Year, it is worth examining the terrible track record the Grammy Awards have had with women of color.

As main album artists, Black women make up around 10 percent of all Album of the Year nominees in the 64-year history of music’s most prestigious event. Of those nominees, only three women were able to pull off a win (less than five-percent of all winners). So while Beyonce may be leading on our Gold Derby racetrack, I can’t help but wonder if we’ll see a repeat of her 2017 loss for “Lemonade,” where she was heavily favored but still lost to Adele (“25”).

See Grammys R&b predictions,...

Naomi Ackie in Tristar pictures I Wanna Dance With Somebody As the head of Arista Records from 1974 to 2000, Clive Davis worked with a lot of the world’s most popular musical artists. But there were few that he worked with as closely as he did with Whitney Houston. As both a boss and a mentor, Davis honed her talent and sent her career soaring into the stratosphere, making Houston one of the artists who defined the 1980s. Along the way, he got to know her better than most other people did — her highs and lows, her personal life, the issues that troubled her — and he says that the new biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody is about as accurate a telling of Houston’s story that you can get. (Click on the media bar below to hear Clive Davis) https://www.hollywoodoutbreak.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Clive_davis_I_Wanna_.mp...

Naomi Ackie’s greatest challenge of all? Transforming into the “Greatest Love of All” singer Whitney Houston.

BAFTA award winner Ackie stars as the late icon for musical biopic “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” in theaters December 21. The film, written by Oscar-nominated “Bohemian Rhapsody” screenwriter Anthony McCarten and directed by Kasi Lemmons, charts Houston’s life and legacy, starting with her groundbreaking record deal with Clive Davis, played by Stanley Tucci.

“My dream: Sing what I want to sing, be who I want to be,” Ackie as Houston says in the trailer. While Houston is criticized for not being “Black enough” and her tumultuous marriage to Bobby Brown (Ashton Sanders) makes headlines, the biopic focuses on her early days as a New Jersey choir girl who became the bestselling and most awarded recording artist of all time. The “no-holds-barred portrait” gives a never-before-seen look at Houston’s “complicated and multi-faceted” career.

Naomi Ackie hits the high notes as Whitney Houston in the first trailer for I Wanna Dance With Somebody, a dramatized biopic about the life of the late singer. The clip showcases Houston getting her start onstage and her subsequent rise to fame.

Along with Ackie, the cast includes Ashton Sanders as Bobby Brown, Stanley Tucci as Clive Davis, Clarke Peters as John Houston, Whitney’s father, and Tamara Tunie as Cissy Houston, Whitney’s mother. The film was directed by Kasi Lemmons and written by Anthony McCarten.

An official synopsis has not been released,...

After the success of “Venom: Let There Be Carnage” and “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” this past fall, Sony Pictures CEO Tom Rothman announced at CinemaCon on Monday night that new sequels for both franchises have been greenlit.

“Venom 3” film comes after “Let There Be Carnage” grossed 502 million in theaters worldwide without the help of a release in China, while Tom Hardy also had a mid-credits cameo in “Spider-Man: No Way Home” teasing the future of Marvel’s symbiote antihero.

“Ghostbusters: Afterlife” had a more modest box office run but still did well domestically with 129.3 million grossed in North America and 197.3 million worldwide. The upcoming sequel was described as “the next chapter in the original ‘Ghostbusters’ universe,” after a post-credits scene in “Afterlife” in which original Ghostbuster Winston Zeddermore, played by Ernie Hudson, teased a possible reunion with his teammates.

But the announcement comes after “Ghostbusters” star Bill Murray had production on his latest film,...

Whitney Houston may have passed away more than nine and a half years ago, but a new documentary on the multi-octave singer is hoping to keep her memory alive, while promising to reveal new “intimate details” about one of the most iconic performers of all time.

Superstar: Whitney Houston is a new ABC special from the producers behind 20/20, and arrives on the heels of what would have been the late singer’s 58th birthday on August 9th. The one-hour special kicks off ABC’s new Superstar series, which the...

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There’s really nothing like a good music documentary. Rivaled only by maybe true crime and movie documentaries, music-based films are great because they show the story behind the stories of our favorite artists, songs, bands, and record labels.

When you love documentaries the best place to find them all together is a streaming platform. Netflix reigns supreme, but there are a lot of other options out there at a cheaper price. From Hulu to Amazon Prime, HBO Max, Showtime, and Paramount+, you can enjoy tens of thousands of movies and TV series from your TV, phone, and other streaming devices for under $20 a month. Hulu is the most affordable option out of...

Seed&Spark announced Thursday that it is ending its proprietary subscription streaming service later this month as it shifts its distribution focus to new impact-driven initiatives. Seed&Spark’s library will next be heading to IndieFlix in a pair of moves executives say will strengthen both companies in a media landscape increasingly driven by corporate heavyweights. The Seed&Spark titles will join a 4,300-strong IndieFlix library that includes everything from “Sid and Nancy” to festival-favorite shorts and “Bonanza.”

Seed&Spark’s streaming platform allowed filmmakers to submit their work directly; accepted projects enjoyed a 50-50 revenue split. About 100 creators, representing about 200 titles, opted to have their titles transferred to IndieFlix. Similarly, IndieFlix allows filmmakers to submit their work directly to the platform for consideration. They’re paid based on a model that pools subscription revenue and pays filmmakers on a minutes-watched rate.

“With the Seed&Spark library, my goal is to...

It still might be a little while before we’re able to go back to the movies again. Thankfully, with its list of new releases for February 2021, Amazon Prime is bringing the theater home. The movies are the real appeal this month.

Amazon’s offerings are highlighted by two original films of note. The first is Bliss, which premieres on Feb. 5. This will star Owen Wilson and Salma Hayek as a couple experiencing some intimacy issues. Presumably this is all just a tune up for when Wilson dons a mustache in Disney+’s Loki later in May. The other film is the sci-fi rom-com The Map of Tiny Perfect Things on Feb. 12.

Other library movies include Antz, Moulin Rouge, The Prestige, The Village, and Dazed and Confused, all of which arrive on Feb. 1. Sonic the Hedgehog is set to arrive later on Feb. 18.

Amazon is premiering only one new original series this month.

Jodie Foster, Benedict Cumberbatch, and Tahar Rahim star in the new trailer for The Mauritanian, which is based on the true story of Guantánamo detainee Mohamedou Ould Slahi. The film is set to arrive on February 19th, 2021.

Rahim stars as Slahi, who spent 14 years in Guantánamo, suspected of being connected to the September 11th attacks, although never charged (Slahi is from Mauritania, a country in Northwest Africa, which is where the film gets its title). While detained, Slahi was subjected to extensive torture and extreme interrogation techniques, which he recounted in his 2015 memoir,...

Exclusive: Quiver Entertainment, an offshoot of eOne executive Berry Meyerowitz and onetime Lionsgate Films president Jeff Sackman’s Quiver Distribution, has acquired the rights to Kew Media Distribution’s library of 1,000 titles.

Kew Media Distribution went bust in February and administrator Fti Consulting has overseen the sale of its catalog, within which it included the international rights to shows including hit BBC drama Line Of Duty and the HBO/Channel 4 Michael Jackson documentary Leaving Neverland.

Nearly 40 companies expressed an interest in acquiring the library, which Fti then whittled down to nine potential buyers. It entered into exclusive talks with Quiver Entertainment after March 27. The financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

The sale has been far from straightforward. Prior to Kew Media Distribution going bust, a number of producers took action to terminate their contracts with the company after it failed to pay them royalties they were owed.

The Whitney Houston estate is moving forward with an official biopic about the late singer tentatively titled I Wanna Dance With Somebody.

In a statement, producers described the film as “a joyous, emotional and heart-breaking celebration of the life and music of the greatest female R&b pop vocalist of all time, tracking her journey from obscurity to musical superstardom. While being very frank about the price that super-stardom exacted, it will be both the rich and complex saga of the search for the perfect marriage between song and singer and audience,...

Exclusive: Netflix is terminating all licensing arrangements it has in place with Kew Media Distribution, including for hit British drama Line Of Duty, after talks with the collapsed company’s administrator broke down.

Deadline understands that Netflix has the rights to stream a number of Kew Media Distribution titles in various territories and made administrator Fti Consulting a financial offer to maintain these licenses.

More from Deadline'The Society': Olivia Nikkanen Upped To Series Regular For Season 2 Of Netflix Ya DramaDr. Anthony Fauci Says Coronavirus Cure Claims By Netflix's 'Pandemic' Doctor Is "Old Concept"Moviegoers Highly Likely To Return To Theaters Upon Reopening, But More Than Half Will Wait A Bit, Study Suggests

Netflix insisted that the majority of its payment to Fti be passed on to the producers of the titles in question, which in the case of Line Of Duty would have been ITV Studios-owned World Productions.

Exclusive: Two of the UK’s best-known documentary makers, Dan Reed and Nick Broomfield, are locked in an increasingly ugly dispute with the collapsed Kew Media Group over the international rights to their biggest films.

Kew Media Group’s sales house, Kew Media Distribution, represented Reed’s Leaving Neverland — HBO and Channel 4’s Emmy-winning film on historic sexual abuse allegations against Michael Jackson — as well as a catalog of 30 Broomfield documentaries, including his BBC and Showtime film Whitney: Can I Be Me.

More from DeadlineTCB Media Rights Greenlights 'Hitler's Supercars' Documentary, Secures Channel 4 Sale'Texas Flip N Move' Producer Essential Media Exits The Collapsed Kew Media GroupKew Media: How The Production Group Behind 'The Inventor' & 'Dance Moms' Collapsed After One Acquisition Too Many

The Canadian production and distribution empire crumbled in February and administrator Fti Consulting was called in to sell off the company’s assets, including Kew Media Distribution’s library of content.

Last year, Kim Tae-Yeon — better known by her stage mononym Taeyeon — released her second studio album, Purpose, featuring the title song Spark. The album’s critical reception was generally positive, topping charts around the world, and selling over 165,000 copies in Korea, over 3,000 copies in Japan, and over 107,000 copies in China. Now, Taeyeon is releasing a repackaging of that album. Not only will the repackaging be unique from its predecessor, but it comes with three new songs including the repackaged album’s title song, Dear Me. A positive message about loving one’s self The repackaged album of Purpose officially was released on Wednesday, […]...

“Love is not a victory march,” Leonard Cohen sang in one of the many verses of his signature song “Hallelujah” — and Nick Broomfield’s haunting documentary “Marianne & Leonard: Words of Love,” which premiered on Sunday at the Sundance Film Festival, is a lovely illustration of the twists and turns of a complicated relationship that produced some of the gifted songwriter’s most indelible songs.

The Marianne of the title is Marianne Ihlen, a young Norwegian woman who Cohen met in the early ’60s on the Greek isle of Hydra, where artists of all stripes washed up to enjoy an idyllic life where, says one friend of Marianne’s, “there was so much freedom that people went too far with it.”

Leonard was a poet and novelist, Marianne a young mother with a rocky marriage. He thought she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen; she didn’t agree,...

Attorneys for Bobby Brown and the estate of Bobbi Kristina Brown have filed suit in a New York court over the documentary “Whitney: Can I Be Me,” alleging that Showtime, the BBC and several other defendants violated their rights by improperly using footage from the production of the 2005 reality series “Being Bobby Brown.”

Brown’s lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court’s New York southern district, asks for $2 million from defendants Passion Pictures, Tracey Baker-Simmons, Wanda Shelley, B2 Entertainment and Simmons Shelley Entertainment, as well as Showtime and the BBC.

The suit claims that Brown and his late daughter appear in the documentary for more than 30 minutes despite never having signed releases for the footage. Contracts or releases they did sign for the filming of the lone season of Bravo’s “Being Bobby Brown” in 2005 didn’t carry over for any other usage, the claim maintains.

“The footage was...

“Black-ish” with an upper-case B is an African-American sitcom loved by both black and white viewers. But “black-ish” with a lower-case b doesn’t always fly with African-Americans when it comes to their tunes.

In both forms, the word refers to a lack of black cred, whether it’s for talking too white, acting too white, or being too white, accusations Drake haters have hurled at the rapper since he hit the hip hop scene. Some in the African-American community criticize him for making music that’s as much pop as hip hop and promoting a soft image. In other words, he’s not “black” enough.

Still, Drake is arguably the most successful rap star of the past five years. On June 29, his fifth studio album “Scorpion” set a Spotify record for the highest number of global streams in a single day. Over the course of the sprawling 25-track double album,...

Kevin Macdonald’s probing documentary about Whitney Houston tries to unearth the factors behind the star’s dramatic decline

‘There’s several times the devil tried to get me; but he never gets me…” Since her death in a Beverly Hills bathtub in 2012, the singer Whitney Houston has been the subject of a slew of articles, books, TV shows and (more recently) films, poring over the details of her spectacular rise and fall. Last year, Nick Broomfield’s unauthorised yet surprisingly sympathetic film Whitney: Can I Be Me used revealing backstage footage from a 90s tour to paint a portrait of an exhausted performer torn between identities – sexual, racial and commercial.

Now, Kevin Macdonald, whose impressive directorial CV includes Touching the Void and Marley, enters the fray with an authorised documentary, produced with the assistance of the Houston family and estate, unlocking a wealth of interviews and archive material. Having...

There was something uniquely American about Whitney Houston’s career. Through her non-threatening music and pristine persona, she occupied a place in the country’s consciousness few other black figures had reached before her.

The white mainstream was eager to embrace her, while African Americans concurrently doubted her understanding of their struggles. Yet she often acted as a bridge between the two, as was beautifully exemplified in her emblematic rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the 1991 Super Bowl.

Such is one of many conflicting notions that plagued her unparalleled rise to stardom, her troubled private life, and ultimately her untimely death on Feb. 11, 2012. Serving as both a tribute to her privileged voice — for which she’s been dubbed the “best American singer in the last 50 years” — and a thorough examination of the many intimate battles she fought as a result of overwhelming fame and substance abuse, Kevin Macdonald’s documentary...

Sunshine and the World Cup set to wreak havoc at UK cinemas… again.

Universal’s The First Purge, the fourth installement in Blumhouse’s Purge horror franchise, opened on Wednesday (July 4), at 486 sites in the UK.

The release was day-and-date with its Independence Day holiday opening in the Us where it garnered $9.3m in the first 24 hours.

Universal is hoping to snag the top two spots at the UK weekend box office with Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom still going strong. But with warm weather forecast and the English football team kicking off in the World Cup on Saturday afternoon, cinema-going...

Our morbid fascination with rise and fall narratives is entrenched in the culture and all-too-common tragic stories about stardom and pop figures practically beg for cross-examined relitigation. The sad tale of pop R&B icon Whitney Houston is no different and the cultural mourning is still being processed through film and TV. Houston’s story has already yielded 2015’s TV movie “Whitney” and one documentary, “Whitney: Can I Be Me,” made all of just one year ago.

Showtime’s expansive 2018 Emmy Fyc mailer will soon be arriving on the doorsteps of the TV academy membership. While the premium network previously shipped three series-specific mailers back in April for drama series “The Chi,” comedy series “Smilf” and limited series “Twin Peaks,” they’ve now sent out a fourth mailer featuring all of their eligible Emmy submissions. See photos above and below.

See Emmys 2018 exclusive: Showtime categories for ‘Patrick Melrose,’ ‘Smilf,’ ‘Twin Peaks’ and more

Included is recent Emmy winner “Shameless,” two-time champ for Best Comedy Stunts and four-time nominee for William H. Macy as Best Comedy Actor. Former Best Drama Series winner “Homeland” (2012) is also back in action after concluding its seventh season last month. Look for Emmy favorite Claire Danes and repeat nominee Mandy Patinkin to be major players again in the acting categories, along with Lesli Linka Glatter for directing the drama series.

More shows to...

A breathtaking bombshell lies at the heart of Kevin Macdonald’s documentary, which is all the more poignant for its detachment

Oh Whitney, will we ever get over you? Film-makers aren’t yet close to doing so: newly premiered at Cannes, Kevin Macdonald’s polished and rather stoic documentary is the second in the space of a year to map the crushingly sad trajectory of Whitney Houston’s blazing star burnout, which, as we all glumly remember, ended in a Beverly Hills bathtub six years ago. The forcefully acted, Oscar-grabbing biopic can’t be far off.

As Macdonald’s film hits the long latter portion of its rise-and-fall narrative – raking over facts we already know, images of ruin we’ve already seen, and heading inexorably to an anatomy of her death that Nick Broomfield’s scrappier documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me took us through last year – I felt my...

“Whitney” is the second documentary about the life and death of Whitney Houston to come along in a year, and it’s also the second one that’s entrancingly well-done. Here’s the thing about Whitney Houston: She was so incandescent that if you sat through nine documentaries about her, you’d probably experience, each time, what I did during the early scenes of “Whitney” — the hope that somehow, this time, the beautiful enraptured young singer in front of you will find a way to defeat her demons, that they won’t drag her down, that the story will turn out different.

Because surely, it’s one of the most tragic — and, its way, inexplicable — downfalls in the history of American show business. Cocaine addiction, of course, is an insidious monster, but Houston, even after rehab, kept returning to it, as if she wanted to destroy herself. To see her life story is always,...

Why Bloodlight and Bami bucks the cliched trend that’s haunted films about Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse

Related: Grace Jones and giant confetti cannons: the 20 biggest festival moments of 2017

The tragic downfall of a celebrity ingenue: a trusted, market-friendly formula for the big screen, especially where female recording artists are concerned. Documentaries about female stars tend to tread a similar narrative, involving a reductive look at personal histories, where the film-maker is less interested in the idea of accomplished musicians than of girls who supposedly dreamed too big and self-destructed through addiction and failed relationships. With this mythologising, you might say that Amy Winehouse (Asif Kapadia’s Amy), Whitney Houston (Nick Broomfield’s Whitney: Can I Be Me), Nina Simone ( Liz Garbus and Hal Tulchin’s What Happened Miss Simone?) and Janis Joplin (Amy Berg’s Janis: Little Girl Blue) have been made more alike in death than in life.

Bobbi Kristina Brown will get the biopic treatment this fall, a little over a year after Whitney Houston's only daughter died from a combination of drowning and drug intoxication at the age of 22.

The TV movie, simply titled Bobbi Kristina, will air on TV One in October, and will star Stuck in the Middle actress Joy Rovaris as Brown, Nadji Jeter as her boyfriend, Nick Gordon, and Vivica A. Fox as her aunt Pat Houston.

In a trailer that dropped Monday, Rovaris-as-Brown looks at times distraught as she cries on a bed,...

Since her tragic death on Feb. 11, 2012, two questions have persisted: Who was the real Whitney Houston? And who, if anyone, could have saved her? It’s these two queries that the controversial new documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me sets out to answer.

The film, by documentarians Nick Broomfield and Rudi Dolezal (the latter documented the superstar throughout her legendary career), premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival on Wednesday night.

Complete with never-before-seen backstage footage and revealing new interviews with family, friends and entourage-members, it portrays Houston to be as endlessly troubled as she was talented, asserting that her personal battles with image,...

Showtime's Whitney: Can I Be Me Confirms Some Rumors, but Breaks No New Ground...

Whitney: Can I Be Me debuts this Friday on Showtime. Chris Feil takes a look at the icon's biggest soundtrack...

The Bodyguard doesn’t deserve its iconic mega-selling soundtrack. Granted, most of us have never pretended that that the film was even a whiff as good as all that glorious vocal dexterity Whitney Houston lays into her six tracks. But rest assured: the movie itself is even worse than you remember.

Among its many sins, the most egregious is how it ignores its own musical assets. The Bodyguard exists in a world where you can enter someone’s home and just happen upon an extended dance sequence being shot for a music video - but it also presents a world where that isn’t anywhere near as fun as it sounds. It spends the first act under the illusion that we give a crap about five or six things more...

One year ago, veteran documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield realized that something was wrong. He was about three months into postproduction on Whitney: Can I Be Me, his new documentary on the life and death of Whitney Houston – and sitting in his editing room, he found himself "in complete despair." In its rough state, the movie was primarily a compendium of experts and talking heads opining about the singer's influence and legacy – a "journalistic report" as Broomfield calls it. But, he notes, "I wasn't feeling my heart moved by the story.

Showtime has shifted the premiere date of its Whitney Houston documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me, moving it up a day to Friday, August 25 at 9 Pm. It originally was scheduled to bow August 26, but that’s the now-settled date for the Floyd Mayweather Jr-Conor McGregor fight that will air on Showtime PPV live from Las Vegas. The pay network last spring unveiled the documentary about the complicated life and career of the late singer Houston, co-helmed by Kurt & Courtney…...

This month for Pride Month we're looking at four documentaries that tackle Lgbtiq themes. This week it is Whitney: Can I Be Me, the latest in a long line of musical documentaries.

There is no need to introduce Whitney Houston; we all know her and her songs. I also have no doubt that people reading this know her story of soaring talent and troubled downfall due to drugs. Hers was an arc that is rooted in the blueprint of great cinematic tragedies, a story that we have seen play out plenty of times before (in life as well as in in the movies), that it would be easy to roll our eyes at how cliched it was if it weren’t so painfully true.

If it feels somewhat curious then that director Nick Broomfield has turned his documentary eye to her story then that’s because it is. Unlike his...

'Despicable Me 3'..

Universal/Illumination Entertainment.s Despicable Me 3 was an emphatic No. 1 at Australian cinemas last weekend, easily beating Sony.s bawdy buddy comedy Rough Night.

Illustrating the challenges facing Australian and other small independent films, director Pete Gleeson.s confronting observational documentary Hotel Coolgardie struggled to find audiences.

None of the other limited new releases including The Promise, Punjab comedy Super Singh and documentaries Whitney: Can I Be Me? and Risk made an impression.

The top 20 titles collected $17.4 million, up by 1.9 per cent over the previous weekend, according to Numero.

Co-directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda and featuring the voices of Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig and Trey Parker, Despicable Me 3 rang up a terrific $5.9 million on 456 screens, 20 per cent bigger than the second edition's debut and the third best in June for an animated title behind Toy Story 3 and Finding Dory.

Warner...

'Despicable Me 3'..

Universal/Illumination Entertainment.s Despicable Me 3 was an emphatic No. 1 at Australian cinemas last weekend, easily beating Sony.s bawdy buddy comedy Rough Night.

Illustrating the challenges facing Australian and other small independent films, director Pete Gleeson.s confronting observational documentary Hotel Coolgardie struggled to find audiences.

None of the other limited new releases including The Promise, Punjab comedy Super Singh and documentaries Whitney: Can I Be Me? and Risk made an impression.

The top 20 titles collected $17.4 million, up by 1.9 per cent over the previous weekend, according to Numero.

Co-directed by Pierre Coffin and Kyle Balda and featuring the voices of Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig and Trey Parker, Despicable Me 3 rang up a terrific $5.8 million on 286 screens.

Warner Bros. superhit Wonder Woman fell by 41 per cent in its third weekend but fetched a hearty $3.3 million on 292, propelling its total to $20.4 million.

Lionsgate/Roadshow...

The Hamptons International Film Festival's SummerDocs series is set to return for its ninth year.

Five documentary films will be screened from July 8-Aug. 26, with each screening followed by discussions with filmmakers and subjects led by Hiff co-chairman Alec Baldwin and Hiff artistic director David Nugent.

The films in this year's lineup include Nobody Speak: Trials of the Free Press, Trophy, Take Every Wave: The Life of Laird Hamilton, Whitney: Can I Be Me? and Icarus. Post-screening discussions will be held with, respectively, directors Brian Knappenberger, Christina Clusiau and Shaul Schwarz, Rory Kennedy, Nick Broomfield and Bryan Fogel. Hamilton...

Author: Lily Taylor

Whitney: Can I Be Me is a moving documentary by Nick Broomfield and Rudi Dolezal tracking the inspiring career but tragic life of the wonderfully talented Whitney Houston. Through the talking heads of friends and family interviews, and the fascinating fly-on-the-wall style footage, this film explores the intense scrutiny placed on Houston, from her young and humble gospel beginnings to the height of her legendary career, and whether these pressures may have been the cause of her isolated and devastating death.

This documentary is made under the impression that the audience is already familiar with the headlines of Whitney’s life – her struggle with addiction, the troubling legal issues with her family, her abusive relationship with Bobby Brown and the tragic death of her daughter, Bobbi Kristina, shortly after Whitney’s own death by drug overdose in 2012. Regardless if you’re a Whitney Houston fan or not,...

Author: Greg Wetherall

Nick Broomfield is not a man to rest on his laurels. With a prolific career spanning over 40 years and with a trademark, self-reflexive approach to documentary filmmaking, he has long been a champion of the format in its purest of interpretations.

In a break from his traditional style, his latest work, Whitney: Can I Be Me, is a telling of the Whitney Houston story – from her bright beginnings to her sad end – through the utilisation of never-seen-before footage and talking head testimony from many of the main players, movers and shakers in and around her life.

Speaking to HeyUGuys, Broomfield was quick to dispel any perceived similarities between Houston and the dearly departed British chanteuse Amy Winehouse. He also spoke of his determination to help re-establish Whitney’s standing as an artist and why he couldn’t make a film on Donald Trump.

Watch the full interview below…...

"Success doesn't change you, fame does." Showtime has debuted the first official trailer for a documentary titled Whitney: Can I Be Me, telling the full story of singer/actress Whitney Houston's extraordinary life and tragic death. The doc premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year, and will be released by Showtime later this summer. Houston is the only artist to chart seven consecutive #1 Billboard Hot 100 songs, and she released seven studio albums and two soundtrack albums over the course of her singing career. She was found dead in her bathtub inside of her guest room at a hotel in Los Angeles in 2012. This trailer is a good sell, ending with the claim that she died of a broken heart. This looks like it's worth a watch. Here's the official trailer for Nick Broomfield & Rudi Dolezal's doc Whitney: Can I Be Me, from YouTube: By the time...

A new and highly emotional trailer for Whitney: Can I Be Me, a documentary about the life of late pop icon Whitney Houston, was released today. The documentary that is said to be an intimate portrait of Whitney leads into the trailer with a single voice saying: "There will always only be one Whitney Houston, and all you can say is 'drug addict'? Come on. Please." Behind-the-scenes clips, performance footage and interview excerpts are woven together as people talk about the seven-time Grammy winner. Various people who knew the late singer say things like, "Her favorite saying was 'Can I be me?" and "Her rise to fame just took the wind out of her." Another person said,...

They say Whitney Houston had the voice of an angel. A cousin of Dionne Warwick, she grew up singing in her church choir. She was beautiful, with a smile that could light up a room. Which is why, when she died in 2012, this monumental diva’s fall struck a chord with the entire world. Like so many legends before her, she died of a drug overdose that was a long time coming. Houston had been using for years, but what drove her over the edge remained a mystery to most of the world — until now.

Through interviews with friends and employees (most of her friends were employees), “Whitney: Can I Be Me” filmmakers Nick Broomfield and Rudi Dolezal take a strong stand, connecting the dots between a number of pivotal moments in Houston’s life that led to her heartbreaking decline. Namely: Her controlling parents, the night she was booed...

Keep up with the always-hopping film festival world with our weekly Film Festival Roundup column. Check out last week’s Roundup right here.

Lineup Announcements

– Exclusive: Jcc Manhattan’s 5th Annual Israel Film Center Festival announced its complete line-up of feature films from acclaimed Israeli filmmakers. The festival, which highlights Israel’s latest groundbreaking cinema and also features conversations among industry creative, runs June 8 – 13, 2017 with two pre-festival previews on May 21, and May 23, at Jcc Manhattan, 334 Amsterdam Avenue at 76th Street.

Highlights of this year’s film line-up include the New York premieres of Meni Yaish’s “Our Father,” Erez Tadmor’s “Home Port,” Roee Florentin’s “Mr. Predictable,” and a special preview of “Aida’s Secrets,” set to open in theaters in the fall. Most films included in this year’s slate are New York premieres.

This year’s festival includes popular films coming out of Israel’s industry. “Most...

Whitney Houston‘s long-rumored secret romance with her best friend and assistant Robyn Crawford has been detailed in the new documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me, which had its world premiere on Wednesday at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Among never-before-seen footage taken throughout the legendary singer’s tumultuous life both on stage and behind the scenes, the film offers a sensitive, trenchant examination of the star’s relationship with Crawford, long a topic of innuendo.

While it appears Crawford herself was not directly involved with the new documentary, the work features new and archival in-depth interviews from family members, friends...

Long before her death in 2012 at age 48, Whitney Houston had become a cultural icon as recognized for her personal downfall as her success. The dazzling yet tender new documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me — which is receiving its world premiere on April 26 at the Tribeca Film Festival — reconciles both her tragic spiral and her astonishing talent. Co-directed by veteran documentarians Nick Broomfield (Kurt & Courtney) and Rudi Dolezal (Freddie Mercury, The Untold Story), the film combines spectacular, sing-your-heart-out concert footage of Houston with intimate private videos of the singer and testimonials from those who knew her.

The result is an experience that,...

"I enjoy doing what I do ... but there’s a lot of it that’s not fun,” a young Whitney Houston confides in the new documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me. The pop superstar’s discontent detailed in the film, which premieres Apr. 26 at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, forecasts the tragic fall that led to her death in 2012.

No stranger to controversy, filmmaker Nick Broomfield (Kurt & Courtney, Biggie & Tupac) did not receive the blessing of the Houston estate for the project. Using previously unseen footage (made by co-director Rudi Dolezal) about Houston’s 1999...

Exclusive: Dogwoof nabs Nick Broomfield feature set to premiere at Tribeca next month.

Whitney Houston documentary Whitney: Can I Be Me has been picked up by UK documentary specialists Dogwoof for release in early summer 2017.

Co-directed by Nick Broomfield and Rudi Dolezal, the film is set to have its world premiere at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival next month.

Featuring new footage and live recordings, the documentary chronicles the life of American pop princess Houston, one of the best-selling artists of all time, who died suddenly at the age of 48 in 2012.

Alongside her glittering music career, she also had roles in films including The Bodyguard and The Preacher’s Wife.

Dogwoof struck the deal with Us outfit Content Media, which is representing world sales.

Broomfield’s Lafayette Films produced the feature with Marc Hoeferlin. Executive producers were John Battsek, Shani Hinton, Charles Finch, Ben Silverman and Patrick Holland.

Us TV network Showtime holds North American distribution...

The Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival on Tuesday unveiled its full lineup for this year's edition, to feature 230 films from 58 countries, of which 48 percent will be directed by women.

North America's largest documentary festival will open with a world premiere of Lana Slezik's debut feature documentary, Bee Nation, a film about an indigenous spelling bee. Other docs to unspool in Toronto this year include a world premiere for Pre-Crime, Matthais Heeder and Monika Hielscher's film about algorithms used to predict future crimes; Nick Broomfield's 'Whitney: Can I Be Me,' to debut at Tribeca; Matthew Heineman's City...