Notorious

Biggie Bigger than 3-D, Clint and Mall Cops

Notorious may have placed fourth overall at the box office this weekend, but that certainly doesn't tell the whole story. While Paul Blart and Gran Torino each played close to 3,000 screens and My Bloody Valentine 3-D was in 2,500 theaters, Notorious was on only 1,638 screens across the nation, or roughly half that of Mall Cop and Gran Torino and nearly a thousand fewer than Bloody Valentine. The $12,537 per screen average for Notorious beat the number one movie's per screen by more than $2,500.

Now this raises the question of whether Notorious will expand to more screens for next weekend. If nothing else, it cements the lasting popularity of the slain rapper more than a decade after his passing and increases the likelihood of more rapper biopics to come.

Considering the inescable parallels of their careers, the success of Notorious virtually guarantees the eventual Tupac movie. While Anthony Mackie was okay as the "Thug Life" B.I.G. foe, we think going the same unknown route is a better plan.

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Hip-Hop at the Movies

"I said a hip-hop, the hippie, the hippie to the hip-hip-hop, a you don't stop the rock it to the bang bang boogie, say up jumped the boogie to the rhythm of the boogie, the beat." Now after reading those lines you either think I've lost my mind or you started singing along with "Now what you hear is not a test!" The lyrics, of course, are from Sugarhill Gang's "Rapper's Delight," which took the music scene by storm and first brought rap music into the mainstream in 1979.

Now, 30 years later, rap is far from the fad everyone tried to dismiss it as. While disco, new wave and grunge have come and gone, hip-hop has flourished and become a viable popular music form. And over the years, the genre has moved beyond music and into movie theaters, starting with the classic Wild Style in 1983. This weekend sees the release of George Tillman Jr.'s anticipated biopic Notorious, so we thought the timing was perfect to take a look through the annals of Hip-Hop at the Movies.

• Fear of a Black Hat
• Wild Style
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Notorious Reviews

All over the map:

"...a luridly unapologetic trip through the violence, hunger, verbal bravado, and money fever of the hip-hop world, which it views as both liberating and destructive (often for the same reasons)."

-- Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

"A great rapper deserves a great biopic, but B.I.G. fans will have to settle for this merely passable one."

-- Nathan Rabin, Onion AV Club

"If there's something praiseworthy about Notorious, it's that it pulls off the remarkable, ignominious feat of making its deceased subject less likeable than one remembers."

-- Nick Schager, Slant Magazine

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Notorious Biopic Spurs Some Post-Mortem Parenting

Everybody who knew the infamous rap legend Biggie Smalls has some mixed feelings about his legacy as the story of his life gets ready to hit the big screen. None more so that his own mother Voletta Wallace, who was on set as a producer for Notorious and is played in the film by Angela Bassett. Although she thinks that it's a very good movie, the filming got her musing about how the "sweet, considerate, generous young man" she raised turned into a drug-dealing, gun-toting monster. She says:

"Do I love the monster? No. But I love my son. Love you don't change. My love is still here for my son. But his behavior? Thank God he's not here because I would slap the daylights out of him."

Also on set was her grandson, who is playing his father as a young man, and he has no doubt had a watchful eye out for his grandmother as well.

• Notorious
• Angela Bassett

Son to Play His Own Father in Notorious Biopic

12 year old Christopher Wallace Jr. talks to Interview magazine about what it feels like to play his own father as a boy in some scenes in the upcoming biopic Notorious. His father, the rapper known as Notorious B.I.G., was gunned down in 1997 at the age of 24 in a murder that has never been solved. The movie has, however, provided a chance for his son to get more in touch with a father he never got to know. Wallace Jr. says he definitely has plans to follow in his father's footsteps -- up to a point: "(I'll) probably (go into rap). But I want to go to college. And I want to graduate and study film."

Check out the new poster for the movie, which opens in theaters on January 16, 2009.

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Movie news: Gandolfini goes back to HBO, Biggie Smalls has a director, and Scorsese's Stones doc gets pushed

Actor James Gandolfini, aka Tony Soprano, is heading back to HBO. That's right, the man who defined the New Jersey mob (at least on TV) is doing a movie for the network that made him.

Gandolofini has signed on to play another controversial Jerseyite-- basketball/athletic gear marketing figure Sonny Vaccaro, who signed Michael Jordan's first million-dollar deal with Nike and launched the careers of LeBron James and Kobe Bryant with his summer camp to showcase up and coming high school talent. The drama ABCD camp will be written by David Aaron Cohen (Friday Night Lights)...

...Notorious, the biopic about the Biggie Smalls,which started a national open casting this weekend for its lead, has found its director. Longtime Biggie Smalls fan George Tillman Jr. (Men of Honor, Soul Food) will direct the script by Cheo Hodari Coker (the journalist who wrote B.I.G.'s biography) and Reggie Rock Blythewood. Hip-hop musician and mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs will produce...

...Martin Scorsese's Shine a Light, has been postposed until April. The concert film about The Rolling Stones was originally supposed to open next month, but Paramount is claiming it wants more time to properly coordinate marketing with Scorses and the Stones, who are curently on tour in Europe.

Source: Variety.

• Notorious
• ABCD Camp
• Shine a Light
• Martin Scorsese
• James Gandolfini
• George Tillman Jr.

Are you the next B.I.G.?

Casting is under way for Notorious, the biopic about the life and death of theNotorious B.I.G. The project, which is being produced by B.I.G.'s mother and his two former managers, is kicking the search for its B.I.G. into high gear.

Because they feel that finding an actor that can physically and emotionally represent the slain rapper is such a challenge, they are opening the casting to unknowns as well as professional actors. Says B.I.G.'s manager, "In the typical Hollywood world, no one came to mind outside of Forest Whitaker who could capture the essence entirely." Unfortunately, Whitaker is over 20 years older than B.I.G. was when he was killed.

Interested parties who feel they can capture the essence of B.I.G. are encouraged to submit audition videos starting 12AM PST tonight at www.biggiecasting.com.

Source: The Hollywood Reporter.

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