Cinema Experts

“After six hours of being blind, you lose the sense of how a person is physically. It was amazing to hear the little buzzing voices all around you.”
Foxx was born Eric Marlon Bishop in Dallas, Texas, the son of Louise Annette Talley Dixon and Darrell Bishop, who sometimes worked as a stockbroker and changed his name to Shahid Abdula after converting to Islam. Shortly after his birth, Foxx was adopted and raised by his mother's adoptive parents, Esther Marie, a domestic worker and nursery operator, and Mark Talley, a yard worker. He has had little contact with his birth parents, who were not part of his upbringing. Foxx was raised in the black quarter of Terrell, at the time a racially segregated community. He had a strict Baptist upbringing. He has frequently cited his adoptive grandmother's influence on his life. Foxx changed his name while doing stand up once he found out that female comedians were often called first to perform. He felt Jamie Foxx was an ambiguous enough name to disallow any biases. His last name was chosen as a tribute to Redd Foxx.
After a small part on the TV series Roc, Foxx joined the cast of In Living Color in 1991. Here he won over viewers with many unusual characters and impressions, which included: ugly girl Wanda; fictitious boxer Carl "The Tooth" Williams; and The Dirty Dozens champion T-Dog Jenkins. His impersonation of Garrett Morris would eventually find him starring against the former Saturday Night Live cast member in his sitcom, The Jamie Foxx Show.
His first dramatic role came in Oliver Stone's 1999 film Any Given Sunday, where Foxx played a heavy-partying football player. He was cast in the role in part because of his background as a football player. He has since evolved into a respected dramatic actor. Following Any Given Sunday, Foxx was featured as taxi driver Max Durocher in the film Collateral alongside Tom Cruise, for which he received outstanding reviews and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His real standout performance, however, was his portrayal of Ray Charles in the biopic Ray (2004), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Foxx was only the second male, and the first African American, in history to receive two acting Oscar nominations in the same year for two different movies, Collateral and Ray. The only other male actor to achieve this was Al Pacino. In 2005, Foxx was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
In 2005-06 Foxx appeared in three more movies: Jarhead, Miami Vice, and Dreamgirls which were hits at the box office and lifted Foxx even higher as a bankable star in Hollywood.
In September 2007, Foxx was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. He said, upon receiving the honor, "[it was] One of the most amazing days of my life".
Foxx is also a Grammy-nominated singer and accomplished musician. He started playing piano at a young age, and later took classical piano lessons while attending college. In 1994, Foxx released an album (on the FOX record label) entitled Peep This. In 2001, he hosted the MTV Video Music Awards.
His music career went into a higher gear when, in 2004, he was featured on rapper Twista's song, "Slow Jamz", which also featured Kanye West. The song reached number one on the US Billboard Hot 100 Singles chart, as well as number three on the UK singles chart. Foxx's second collaboration with Kanye West, "Gold Digger", in which he sang the "I Got a Woman" Ray Charles-influenced hook, went straight to #1 on the Billboard Top 100, and remained there for 10 weeks straight. In 2005, Foxx was featured on the hit single "Georgia" by Atlanta rappers Ludacris and Field Mob. The song sampled Ray Charles' hit "Georgia on My Mind". Unpredictable is Jamie Foxx's second studio release. It sold over 598,000 copies in its first week but reached the U.S. number one spot in its 2nd week.
After debuting in the first week at number two, Unpredictable rose to the top of the Billboard pop album chart, with 2nd-week sales of 200,000 copies in the United States. The album also charted in the UK top 10 album chart, peaking at number nine. It has since been certified Platinum. Foxx became the fourth artist to have won an Academy Award for acting and to have achieved a number-one record album in the US. (The other three to accomplish this feat were Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, and Barbra Streisand.) At the 2006 BET Awards, Foxx won two awards: Best Duet/ Collaboration with Kanye West for "Gold Digger" and Video of the Year for the same video. Kanye's video tied with Mary J. Blige's (Be Without You) for Video of the year. On December 8, 2006, Foxx also received four Grammy nominations.

“Always remember your promise to me. Never let nobody or nothing turn you into no cripple.”
It is sad that Ray Charles had passed away shortly after filming for Ray had ended. He did, however, approve the script itself with comfort that the filmmakers really understood his life. The film could have been made years ago, but if it had, it would probably not be as outstanding and breathtaking as this version, simply because nobody besides Jamie Foxx could portray the singer so convincingly. He is the reason that this film works. Whether it is Ray's walking, talking, or even smiling, Foxx covers every detail and sinks into Ray's persona.
The film is not entirely structured as any traditional biographical film. Instead of starting with the events of Ray's childhood, we see him at age 18 as he heads off to Seattle to start his career as a musician. The childhood scenes, especially those related to witnessing his younger brother accidentally drown and the guilt that follows, appear throughout the film as flashbacks. This is an effective method of telling the story, because it is these memories that continue to haunt him as an adult. It would be a major factor in his downhill spiral towards heroin addiction. The childhood scenes also document Ray's blindness from glaucoma and him going off to a school for the blind.
The story in Ray mainly takes place from 1948 to 1965 with one more scene set in 1979. One can easily agree that he was a real musical sensation, and the film nicely shows the record deals made and the friendships with band members along with the problems he had: drug addiction and extramarital affairs. It is an honest look at how Ray Charles had lived. The ups and downs he experienced are effectively presented on screen that one can easily feel Ray's emotions as if we were there with him. What we also see is how it all influences the music he performs.
Jamie Foxx is not the only cast member who deserves credit. I honestly think that every single member of the cast, whether in a major or minor role, has done a great job. Every character, including Ray's mother, his wife Della Bea, the record executives, and the women whom Ray had affairs with, is vivid and full of personality. Kudos especially go to C.J. Sanders, whose role as Ray as a child is both heartbreaking and memorable. This, along with the way the story is told, makes the film shine.The biopic does not cover the last 40 years of Ray's life, but there is no need to. Those last four decades are all years of joy and success. It is the story of the years before that matters since this is when Ray triumphs over his problems. Taylor Hackford and everyone else involved in the making of Ray have done a great job with it. The result is a movie that is a masterpiece and wonderful tribute to the late Ray Charles… 10/10

“A story: A man fires a rifle for many years, and he goes to war. And afterward he turns the rifle in at the armory, and he believes he's finished with the rifle. But no matter what else he might do with his hands, love a woman, build a house, change his son's diaper; his hands remember the rifle.”
The first thing that may surprise audiences is that this is not necessarily an anti-war piece. Mendes and screenwriter William Broyles, Jr. have been careful not to make this film narrow in view. Instead, by focusing on the psychological turmoil of one soldier, Anthony Swofford (Jake Gyllenhaal), Jarhead is able to speak specifically about this man's experience and how it relates to those around him.
Mendes drenches the screen with sights and sounds that literally envelope us in the horrors of warfare. These explosions of vision and noise are counterbalanced, however, with scenes of great sadness and warmth. One scene that comes quickly to mind is a boot camp drill where the young soldiers are crawling under barbed wire--the sound design is such that we hear every character screaming or grunting as the gunshots zoom overhead. But then, the scene changes. An event occurs that allows Mendes to silence all of the violence and machismo of war. Amongst the hysteria of the scene, one of the soldiers freaks out and a gunshot is discharged. Mendes lets the camera witness this as if it hadn't expected it to occur. The characters are in shock, and so is the audience. It's just one of many powerful moments where Mendes changes from loud, visceral warfare to quiet, poignant moments.
Not that there's much warfare here. In fact, the lack of warfare becomes a theme for this film. Peter Sarsgaard, in a great performance, reaches his breaking point during the final third of the film, and it's a riveting moment where the lack of warfare has finally made him explode. His performance is very strong throughout, but it is not until the second half of the film when he finally gets the chance to break loose.
Jamie Foxx surprised me here. His character is so well-conceived, and works wonderfully as the counterpoint to the Gyllenhaal character. Foxx plays his scenes confidently, but also with touches of gravitas that, even in Ray, we haven't seen before. The scene that we get a glimpse of at the end of the trailer is wonderful in its fullness, and helps Mendes' film give us a well-rounded opinion of Swofford's opinions on the war. Foxx is by turns hilarious and profound.
And then there was Jake Gyllenhaal. Wow. This is an incredible performance. Watch for a dozen scenes where he literally explodes off the screen, but how he also juggles the quieter moments with great aplomb. What makes Swofford an intriguing character is that he doesn't always get our sympathy; or, for that matter, want our sympathy. He is scarred by war and his family and the life he left behind, and he is just looking for a way to get out of the sand and the sexual dysfunction of war and the lack of gunfire. Gyllenhaal captivates our attention from his very first glimpse, and his voice-over performance laces the film with irony and melancholy. He is a great physical presence in the film as well. I could cite more than a few dynamic scenes that he performs masterfully in, but I'll just mention one. Swofford points a rifle at a fellow soldier after a failed night watch, and then turns the rifle on himself, asking the fellow soldier to discard a round into his mouth. It's an indescribably painful scene to watch, but it's also an example of Gyllenhaal's brave and honest portrayal of this bruised man.
Some people have begun to write about this film as lacking structure or story, and in saying that I'm afraid they may have missed the point. This is a story about ambiguity of self, about dislocation, about ambivalence to war and love, about sexual frustration. In these terms, I think Mendes & Co. have found the perfect way to cinematically allow us to experience the same sort of blank complexity that Swofford must have felt.
As Swof's friend Troy says at one point, "Fuck politics. We're here. All the rest is bullshit". Which is all the movie is about, really. This is what happened. Take it or leave it. 9/10