American Gangster

Ellsworth "Bumpy" Johnson, a disciplined and intelligent black gangster, runs much of Harlem and imparts his wisdom onto his former driver turned right hand man, Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington). When Johnson dies of a heart attack in 1968, the power vacuum attracts many who seek a piece of the pie. Frank dislikes the new, flashy gangsters and decides to take control. To gain money and power, he travels to Southeast Asia, and strikes a deal with a Chinese (Kuomintang) general who supplies him with pure heroin, which Frank then transports back to America.

Frank’s unique drug supply enables him to sell potent drugs (“Blue Magic” heroin) at cheap prices. He quickly makes a fortune and buys several nightclubs and apartments. He travels back to his North Carolina home and buys his humble mother a large house. His six brothers are enlisted as his lieutenants in the NYC drug trade – forming “The Country Boys,” who work together to traffic and sell dope on Harlem streets. During his rise, Frank meets and falls in love with Eva, a Puerto Rican beauty queen. Through his discipline, organization, and will to kill those in his way, Frank quickly rises to the top of the Harlem drug and crime scene.

Meanwhile, Jewish Essex County, New Jersey detective Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe) is juggling a failing marriage, his late-night law school classes and his police career. When Richie and his partner discover $1 million in unmarked bills in a car, Richie resists temptation and turns the money in. His rare honest ways make him a hated member of the force, while his rampant womanizing leads his wife to seek a divorce and custody of their son. Richie catches a break when he’s put in charge of a newly-created task force to stop drug trafficking in New Jersey and New York City. He handpicks honest cops and gets to work.

Frank’s success selling drugs, naturally, draws unwanted attention. He must make deals with the Italian mafia and fend off corrupt NYC detectives such as Det. Trupo (Josh Brolin) who extort and threaten him. Unidentified assassins try to kill Frank’s wife, further destabilizing him and worsening his unsteady marriage. Richie catches another break when his men witness one of Frank’s top soldiers shooting a woman. They use the soldier’s bad predicament to get him to wear a wire. The wire allows Richie and his task force to discover when a plane carrying drugs is landing.

When the plane lands, Richie and his men follow the drugs into Harlem’s projects and obtain a warrant. A huge group of police and detectives attack the drug apartments en masse and a large shootout occurs. Many of Frank’s drug men are killed and others are arrested. Frank himself is at church when the bust goes down, but he is arrested after the service ends. Frank and Richie finally meet, and Frank’s attempts to bully and bribe Richie are unsuccessful.

With no other options, Frank decides to rat out numerous other criminals, including his and Richie’s common enemies: corrupt NYC detectives. Numerous corrupt cops are arrested; Det. Trupo kills himself to avoid arrest. Richie, who has passed the Bar Exam, is so impressed by Frank’s confessions that he decides to act as Frank’s new defense attorney. Because of his cooperation, Frank receives a relatively light sentence: 15 years. At the film’s end, he steps out of jail onto the street, but no supporters are around to cheer or even meet him. He enters a new life, alone.

SCARFACE

In July 1980, Cuban hitman Tony Montana (Al Pacino) claims political asylum in Florida in the United States after departing Cuba in the Mariel boatlift of 1980. At first Montana is held at a detention camp called 'Freedomtown' with other Cubans. To be released and given a green card Montana and his best friend Manny Ray (Steven Bauer) kill a former aide to Fidel Castro who has tortured to death the brother of a wealthy politically connected car dealer, Frank Lopez, who is also heavily involved in the cocaine trade. After getting their cards Montana and his friend Manny are set up to work at a corner sandwich shop when a Lopez henchman, Omar Suarez (F. Murray Abraham), offers Tony and Manny a job unloading marijuana.

Tony insults Omar by turning down the job so Omar sets him up to pick up a sample of coke from a colombian dealer, Hector. Tony, Manny, and two other Marielitos in his crew, Angel Fernández (Pepe Serna), and Chi Chi (Angel Salazar) then set out to meet Hector (Al Israel) at a seedy motel on the beach. The meeting does not go smoothly, as Tony grows irritated with Hector, who is slow to give him the cocaine in exchange for money. Suddenly, Montana and Angel are double-crossed in a rip off move by the Colombian. To convince Tony to give over the cash, Angel is dismembered in a shower stall with a chainsaw by Hector. After Angel is dead, Montana, about to suffer the same fate, is saved by Chi Chi and Manny who arrive in the nick of time to gun down Hector's henchmen in the hotel's room. Hector escapes but Tony vengefully confronts him in the street and shoots him dead in the middle of Ocean Drive, the now famous Miami South Beach boulevard. Tony and his crew then get away with both the coke and the money before the police arrive. Montana then impresses the money's owner, López (Robert Loggia), with not only the return of his cash but with a gift of the coke, a prize from the botched rip off. Frank immediately hires Tony's crew into his criminal hierarchy. But during this initial get together Tony also meets Lopez's lady, the blonde and beautiful Elvira Hancock (Michelle Pfeiffer), who will eventually become the source of tension between the two men. Thus, Montana begins his rise through the ranks of the Miami cocaine underworld.

While on business in Bolivia to help Omar set up a new distribution deal for Lopez, Montana, feeling that Frank is "soft," begins to show his defiance to López's authority when he negotiates a deal with Alejandro Sosa (Paul Shenar), the ruthless and powerful Bolivian drug lord. Sosa finds out that Omar is an informant during the trip and has him murdered to show Tony his intolerance for disloyalty. Upon his return to Florida Tony gets into trouble with Frank over the deal, who accuses him of "stealing" it. Montana then leaves López to strikes out on his own. This allows him to seek out Elvira to whom he makes an unexpected marriage proposal. Lopez is none too happy and decides to take out Tony.

But his move to assassinate Tony fails as two hitmen, hired by Lopez to kill Tony at the Babylon Club, cannot get it done. A vengeful Montana decides to take over Frank's business. That same night he and Manny kill both Frank and the cop on his payroll, Miami Chief of Narcotics Mel Bernstein, who had already shaken down Tony for a hefty monthly payment and airline tickets to London. His problems apparently solved, Tony begins a profitable relationship with Sosa, marries Elvira, buys a new mansion, and sets his sister Gina (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio) up in business with her own beauty salon.

But as Montana's business grows, so does his cocaine addiction and paranoia. It is the beginning of the end. His wife, now hopelessly addicted herself, becomes distant. His banker informs him that he will be charging higher fees for washing the increasing flow of drug money. After Manny convinces him that he has a way to save money on the laundering of the coke cash, Montana is arrested in a sting operation by Manny's contact, an undercover cop. He is charged with tax evasion.

Sosa, not wanting to lose his main distributor, steps in to intervene by offering Tony a way out of going to prison. He introduces Montana to his cocaine "board of directors" a group that includes Bolivia's military chief and a mysterious American, known only as being "from Washington." We assume he is a CIA officer because Sosa guarantees that the IRS will not be able to send Tony to jail. In exchange, Montana must assist in the assassination of a journalist attempting to expose Sosa, his partners, and the ongoing corruption in the Bolivian government. Montana agrees but later has second thoughts backs when the journalist, now in New York to expose the cartel at the UN, unexpectedly picks up his wife and children. Tony, saying that the team was only supposed to kill the journalist, instead then shoots the assassin to prevent the journalist's family from being killed. Thus he seals his fate with Sosa.

Returning to Miami, Tony discovers that both his sister Gina and right-hand man Manny have disappeared. Tony has long harbored an apparent unnatural obsession for his sister and is overly protective of her for reasons that he may not understand himself. After getting Gina's address from his mother, who doesn't know who lives there, Tony goes to the house. Manny unexpectedly opens the door. Tony then sees Gina in a night gown at the top of the stairs. Enraged that another man has obviously slept with his sister, Tony kills Manny. Hysterically, Gina reveals that they had just been married. Tony has Gina taken back to his mansion where all hell is about to break loose.

In revenge for the missed opportunity to kill the journalist, who has now exposed him to the world as a drug lord, Sosa sends an assassination team to Montana's mansion to kill him. Sitting at his desk snorting from an enormous pile of cocaine, Tony realizes and regrets what he has done to his best friend. Suddenly Gina enters his office armed with a pistol to confront him with the truth about his feelings for her. She now realizes that Tony loves her in an unnatural way and demands, at gun point, that he make love to her. She begins to shoot at him while demanding he take her. A Sosa assassin hiding on the balcony, thinking Gina is shooting at him, leaps in and riddles her with bullets. Tony, enraged, throws the man off the balcony and kills him.

As his men are being killed in a gunfight inside the mansion, Tony kneels over Gina's dead body and begs forgiveness. With the assassins just outside his door, he then arms himself with an M16 assault rifle and an M203 grenade launcher, shouts the often imitated quote "Say hello to my little friend!" and single-handedly takes on Sosa's men, who by now have killed all of Tony's crew. Though extremely high on cocaine and able to take dozens of bullets, he is eventually killed when Sosa's chief assassin shoots him from behind with a shotgun.


Production and controversy
Scarface was directed by Brian De Palma, produced by Martin Bregman, and written by now famed director Oliver Stone while he battled a cocaine addiction. Stone consulted the Miami police and the Drug Enforcement Agency while writing the film, incorporating many true crimes into the film, including using crime scene photos to inspire the infamous chainsaw scene. Stone also admitted in an interview, first featured on the Collector's Edition DVD release, that he took the character's last name from his favorite football player at the time - Joe Montana of the San Francisco 49ers thus explaining why Tony does not have a traditionally Hispanic surname.

The film was originally to be filmed in Florida but it received criticism from the Cuban community, which objected to the film's representation of Cubans as drug dealers. Also, leaders in the Cuban community wanted additions to the script which would have made Tony a Castro spy and depict subsequent Anti-Castro activity against him in Miami as part of the movie's plot. After protracted negotiations over the script, the producers ultimately refused to give in to their demands, saying that the film was about cocaine and not the politics of Castro's Cuba. In order to ensure the safety of the crew and to avoid confrontations, with the exception being obvious exterior shots, the movie was filmed in and around Los Angeles.

When the film was submitted to the MPAA, it was rated X for its extreme violence and graphic language, with the chainsaw scene the primary object of concern. DePalma cut the film twice, but it still received an X-rating. After the film was rejected for the third time, DePalma, with the help from a panel of experts including real narcotics officers, told the MPAA that the violence in DePalma's film was an accurate portrayal of real-life drug dealers and that the film should be released with its violence intact to show viewers how violent the drug trade was. With a third vote of 18 to 2 in favor of an "R," the MPAA agreed. But DePalma, who felt that the differences between the two "clean" cuts he put together were insignificant, arranged to have the uncut version released to theatres with an R-rating.

The word "fuck" was used 207 times in the film.


Critical reception
Scarface held its premiere on December 1st, 1983 in New York City where it was initially greeted with mixed reaction. Among those in attendance were the film's two stars; Al Pacino and Steven Bauer as well as Burt and Diane Lane, Melanie Griffith, Raquel Welch, Joan Collins, her then-boyfriend Peter Holm and Eddie Murphy among others. According to AMC's "DVD TV: Much More Movie" airing: Cher loved it; Lucille Ball, who came with her family, hated it because of the graphic violence and language; Dustin Hoffman was said to have fallen asleep; writers Kurt Vonnegut and John Irving were among those who were said to have walked out in disgust after the notorious "chainsaw" scene. At the middle of the film, Martin Scorsese turned behind to Steven Bauer and told him "You guys are great - but be prepared, because they're going to hate it in Hollywood. . . because it's about them". Scarface, upon its first release, drew controversy regarding the violence and graphic language in the film, and received many negative reviews from movie critics. Despite this, the film grossed $65 million worldwideand has since gathered a large cult following. On the 2 Disc Special Edition, director Brian De Palma said that the film was well received by only one notable critic, Vincent Canby of The New York Times. However, Roger Ebert rated it four stars out of four in his 1983 review and he later added it to his "great movies" list

City of God

Taking place over the course of a decade, City of God tells the story of Cidade de Deus (Portuguese for City of God), a lower class quarter west of Rio de Janeiro. Told from the viewpoint of a boy named Rocket who grows up there as a fishmonger's son, demonstrates the desperation and violence inherent in the slums. Based on a real story, the movie depicts drug abuse, violent crime, and a boy's struggle to free himself from the slums' grasp.

The movie begins cinematically depicting chickens being prepared for a meal. A chicken escapes and as an armed gang chases after it bumps into Rocket who believes that the gang wants to kill him. The movie then flashes back ten years earlier, to tell the story of how he got himself into that position.

Three "hoodlums", "The Tender Trio", one being Rocket's brother, Goose, are terrorizing local businesses with armed holdups. In Robin Hood fashion they split part of the loot with the citizens of City of God and are protected by them. Li'l Dice is a hanger-on who convinces them to hold up a motel and rob its occupants. Li'l Dice, serving as lookout, fires a warning shot, then proceeds to slaughter the inhabitants of the motel. The massacre brings on the attention of the police forcing the three to quit their criminal ways. Each meets an untimely end, except one who decides to join the church. Goose, Rocket's brother, is slain by Li'l Dice after robbing the younger boy and his friend Benny who have been hiding out and committing crimes themselves.

Fast forward a number of years and Li'l Dice now calls himself, Li'l Zé, and along with his childhood friend Benny establish a drug empire by eliminating all of the competition except for a drug dealer named Carrot. Meanwhile, Rocket has become a part of the "Groovies" a hippie like group of youth that enjoy smoking pot. He begins his photography career shooting his friends, especially one girl that he is infatuated with, but who is dating another boy.

A relative peace has come over City of God under the reign of Li'l Zé who plans to eliminate his last rival, Carrot against the judgment of his best friend Benny, who is keeping the peace. At one point, his best friend and partner in crime Benny has decided to become a "playboy" and the "coolest guy in City of God". Eventually, along with the girl that he has wooed away from Rocket, he decides to leave the criminal life behind to live on a farm. However, he is gunned down at his going away party by former drug dealer, Blackie, who is actually aiming for Li'l Zé. Benny was the only thing keeping Li'l Ze from taking over Carrot's business, so now Carrot is in danger.

Li'l Zé humiliates a peace loving man Knockout Ned at the party and afterwards rapes his girlfriend and kills Ned's uncle and younger brother. Ned turns violent and sides with Carrot and after killing one of his men and starts a war between the two rival factions. The ensuing war creates a "Vietnam" of City of God. Jealous of Ned's notoriety in the newspapers, Li'l Zé has Rocket take photos of himself and his gang which are unbeknown to Rocket published in the daily paper. Rocket then mistakenly fears for his life believing that Li'l Zé will want to kill him for it. In actuality, he is pleased with his newfound fame.

Coming full circle, a gunfight ensues between the two gangs and Rocket is caught in the middle after being startled by Li'l Zé's request that he take a picture of the gang which had been chasing the chicken at the beginning of the film. Ned is killed by a boy who has infiltrated his gang to avenge his father who Ned killed during a bank robbery. Li'l Zé and Carrot are captured by the police. Rocket then captures on film the police shaking Li'l Zé down for money and releasing him.

The story ends with Li'l Zé being killed by a group of his own young gang members who stroll off listing people to kill and Rocket gets famous off of the photograph of Li'l Ze shot up with bullets.

Stomp the Yard

Stomp the Yard is a 2007 drama film produced by Rainforest Films and released through Sony Pictures' Screen Gems division on January 12, 2007. Directed by Sylvain White, Stomp the Yard centers around DJ Williams, a college student at a fictional historically Black university who pledges to join a fictional Greek-letter fraternity. The film's central conflict involves DJ's fraternity competing in various stepping competitions against a rival fraternity from the same school. The film's script was written by Robert Adetuyi, working from an original draft by Gregory Ramon Anderson. The film was originally titled Steppin', but to avoid confusion over the 2006 film Step Up, the title was changed.

The film stars Columbus Short, Meagan Good, Darrin Henson, Brian White, Laz Alonso, and Valerie Pettiford, with Harry Lennix and, in their film debuts, R&B singers Ne-Yo and Chris Brown. Stomp the Yard was filmed in Atlanta, Georgia on the campuses of Morris Brown College, Morehouse College and Clark Atlanta University, and in the MAK Historic District of Decatur, Georgia.

DJ Williams (Columbus Short) is a krump dancer in inner-city Los Angeles. He and his younger brother Duron (Chris Brown) compete in local dance competitions as members of a team known as the "Goon Squad". Primarily due to one final dynamic step from Duron, the Goon Squad win a cash-prize battle held one night at an underground krumping competition, and the losing home team responds by ambushing DJ and his teammates after the show. A fight breaks out, and the leader of the rival shoots Duron and kills him.

Arrested for assault, DJ is subsequently sent by his mother to live with his aunt Jackie (Valerie Pettiford) and uncle Nate (Harry J. Lennix) in Atlanta, Georgia, where he is to attend historically black Truth University. Nate, the physical plant director at Truth, aims to teach DJ responsibility, and puts the boy to work doing maintenance as part of a work-study program.

While waiting in the line to register for classes, DJ meets a fellow student named April Palmer (Meagan Good), whom he is immediately attracted to. After registration, he moves into his dorm room, where he meets his new roommate Rich Brown (Ne-Yo). Rich takes DJ to a stepping competition on the green between the Truth chapters of rival fraternities Theta Nu Theta and Mu Gamma Xi. The Mu Gamma Xi team, seven-time national stepping champions, easily steals the show until DJ sees April across the way and runs right through the Gammas' step line in an attempt to speak to her. A fight nearly breaks out between the freshman and the Gamma steppers, whose best stepper Grant (Darrin Henson) is April's boyfriend.

That night, Rich and his friends go out to a local club called the Phoenix and invite DJ along. DJ takes to the dance floor, hoping to impress April and upstage Grant and the Gammas, all of whom are also in attendance. Despite the animosity between DJ and Grant, the Gammas recognize DJ's skills as a dancer, and the Gamma chapter's president Zeke (Laz Alonso) invites DJ to pledge for Mu Gamma Xi. DJ turns down both Zeke's offer as well as an offer from the Theta Nu Theta chapter's leader Sylvester (Brian White).

After learning that April is a student history tutor, DJ signs himself up for tutoring so that he can spend time with her. The two slowly begin a friendship, and DJ takes April out to dinner. During their date, April discusses the importance of black fraternities and sororities with the clueless DJ, and tells him to visit Heritage Hall on the campus' Greek Row. At Heritage Hall the next day, DJ learns about the significant number of African-American historical figures and celebrities who were members of various Greek-letter organizations, and decides to pledge for the Theta chapter along with Rich and their friend Noel (Jermaine Williams). April eventually leaves Grant for DJ, angering her father, Dr. Palmer (Allan Louis), the school's dean and a Gamma brother himself.

After "crossing over" to become official Theta members, DJ, Rich, and Noel join the Thetas' step team. Dismissing their traditional step moves as old-fashioned, DJ teaches his frat brothers a few of his old krumping moves. DJ does not notice that, while he is practicing a few of his brother's old dance moves, one of the Gammas is secretly videotaping him so that their team can learn DJ's steps.

Sly disapproves of DJ's attempts to modernize the Thetas' steps, and challenges DJ to a battle at the Phoenix between his line brothers and DJ's; the new moves against the old. DJ's line brothers lose the competition due to DJ's show-boating, although Sly agrees to let DJ teach the team some new moves as a compromise.

A few of the Gammas' run a background check on DJ, and learn about his criminal past. This information is forwarded to Dr. Palmer, who has the school's Ethics Committee suspend DJ for the remainder of the year, preventing him from stepping at the nationals. Dr. Palmer later offers to reinstate DJ, with the provision that he stop seeing April, an offer DJ refuses. When April learns from her father why DJ has been suspended, she confronts DJ and learns first-hand the story behind his arrest. DJ's aunt Jackie, an old girlfriend of Dr. Palmer's, intervenes and confronts the dean herself.

The final round of the nationals stepping competition ends in a tie between the Thetas and the Gammas, and each team is required to choose a dancer for a head-to-head competition. The Gammas have secretly recorded DJ's practices, and choose Grant, who has learned all of DJ's steps, as their dancer. However, DJ, reinstated thanks to his aunt's help, shows up in time to be chosen as the Thetas' dancer. Going first, Grant does DJ's exact routine from the tape. After Grant finishes, DJ matches Grant move for move, tossing in something the Gammas didn't get on tape: the move Duron performed to win his last competition with the Goon Squad.

The Theta Nu Theta team is declared the winners of the competition, and DJ is mobbed by his frat brothers as April runs out to kiss him. The scene is captured in a still black and white photo, which is added to the wall at Heritage Hall.

Take the Lead

Take the Lead is a movie starring Antonio Banderas, Rob Brown, Alfre Woodard, Dante Basco, Marcus T. Paulk, Jenna Dewan, Lauren Collins and also features America's Next Top Model's third-season runner-up, Yaya DaCosta. The film was released in mainstream cinema on April 7, 2006. It was filmed in Toronto, and at a number of local schools, including UTS.

Rock, the film's underdog protagonist, arrives at a school dance with a water-damaged ticket and is denied entrance by Mr. Temple (John Ortiz) and Principal James (Alfre Woodard). Rock leaves and encounters some thugs, who lead him to vandalize Principal James's car. Pierre Dulaine (Antonio Banderas), a classical dance instructor, catches Rock in the act, but Rock runs away before Pierre can question him further.

The next morning at the school, Pierre waits to see the principal as Mr. Temple discusses the detention program with Principal James. Pierre explains to the principal that he was a witness to the vandalism on her car, and eventually offers to take over Mr. Temple's detention shift, to which Principal James agrees, although she is sure that he will not last more than a day.

Pierre is led to the basement where the students who have earned detention for the remainder of the year, including Rock, are kept. His first class is disastrous due to the uncooperative personalities of the students, all of whom scoff at his efforts to teach them classical dance.

The next morning Pierre returns, much to the surprise of Principal James who later explains that Rock’s brother was involved with a gang war, and one of the casualties was a brother of LaRhette, who had refused to dance with Rock the day before. Later in detention, Rock has forged a doctor’s note excusing him from dancing.

At Pierre's dance studio, Caitlin is a student who is under pressure to learn to dance because her cotillion is fast approaching. Pierre invites Morgan, a highly trained but haughty student, to his detention session for a demonstration of the tango, which inspires the detention students to be more willing to learn. Caitlin decides to join the detention students for dance class and practices with Monster, another student struggling to learn.

Rock, who still refuses to dance, makes it clear to Pierre that he attends detention not to dance, but to be able to graduate. Later he is fired from his job for being late. He goes home and confronts his parents, who have been unable to provide him food since Rock's brother's death. His ailing father kicks him out of the house and he finds a new albeit dangerous job with some street thugs.

LaRhette, whose mother is a prostitute, cares for her younger siblings while her mother works. One night, LaRhette runs out of the apartment and to the school after one of her mother's clients attempts to rape her. She practices her dancing in the basement, and runs into Rock. They fight and are caught by security. Principle James wants to suspend LaRhette and Rock, but instead agrees to give them extra detention hours with Pierre at 7 AM each day. Pierre tells the class about a dance competition which he wishes them to enter, and this is further inspiration for the detention students to learn.

The detention basement is flooded, so Pierre takes the detention students to his dance studio to practice. They are confronted by Morgan and some of Pierre's other students. The detention students are further disenchanted by the skills of Pierre's students as well as the $200 entrance fee for the contest. However, Pierre manages to provide funds for the detention students to enter.

Caitlin is unable to enter in the competition, as her cotillion is the same night, to Monster's disappointment. The two still practice together. LaRhette and Rock will compete in waltz, and Ramos and Danjou learn to share Sasha during practice.

Mr. Temple complains about the supposed waste of resources on the dance program. He brings Pierre to a meeting with the parents' association, but Pierre convinces them to keep the dance program going.

On the night of the contest, Rock has to work. He is told that he must shoot anyone who approaches the theft operation. He shoots the sprinkler system instead, setting off the alarm and causing the thugs to run away.

At the cotillion, Caitlin makes her grand entrance down the staircase and dances with Monster, surprising her mother. After they dance they make their way to the dance competition.

LaRhette is disappointed that Rock has not arrived at the competition, where a $5000 prize is at stake. Sasha, Danjou, and Ramos perform an impressive three-person tango but are disqualified for it. Surprisingly, Morgan calls it a tie and gives Sasha her trophy.

Principal James, thrilled with the success of the program, insists on making the program permanent and expanding it to more schools. Rock arrives at the last minute to dance the waltz with LaRhette, whom he kisses at the end of the waltz.

Juice

DrumLine

While Morris Brown is a real and prestigious college in Atlanta, there is no real Atlanta A&T. The filming was done at Clark University in Atlanta and at Morris Brown. The performers (aside from those from Morris Brown) were recruited from high school and university bands all over the Atlanta and Metro Atlanta area. High school band director Don Roberts was recruited to turn the performers into real, convincing bands.


One of the bands performing at the "BET southern classic" is Clark Atlanta University, whose campus is used as the setting for Atlanta A&T University in the movie.


One of the bands performing in the "BET Southern Classic" was Grambling State University's Tiger Marching Band in Grambling, Louisiana, home of the legendary Coach Eddie Robinson.


The fraternity featured throughout the film is Kappa Kappa Psi, the national honorary band fraternity. The actual Kappa Kappa Psi flag, colors, and symbols, and customary shouts and chants are used in the film. Symbols and letters for their sister organization, Tau Beta Sigma, the national honorary band sorority, can also be seen throughout the film.

You Got Served

You Got Served is a 2004 film written and directed by Chris Stokes, manager of its stars, recording artist Marques Houston and the members of boy band B2K. The plot concerns a group of friends, participating in a breakdancing crew, who take part in a street dancing competition. It was released by Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems division on January 30, 2004, during the Super Bowl XXXVIII weekend and was produced by Billy Pollina. It was the most-seen movie during the Super Bowl weekend with $16 million USD grossed in its first week, a record until late 2005; the movie went on to gross over $40 Million USD, but has ultimately been featured on numerous "worst movies" lists, including the IMDB's "Bottom 100" list since its release. It was filmed in Los Angeles, California from May 1 - June 25, 2003. Despite poor reviews, the film's choreographers, Dave Scott, Shane Sparks, and Robert James Hoffman III earned a prestigious American Choreography Award in 2004 for "Outstanding Achievement in Choreography - Feature Film",and the film was also nominated for Best Dance Sequence at the 2004 MTV Movie Awards. According to Sparks, a sequel, Backdown, is scheduled to start shooting in July 2007.

There has been some attempt to break the titular expression into the mainstream. The expression "you got served" has been used to describe someone or something that has either lost badly or been humiliated (or possibly both). Also, "to be served" is legalese for facing litigation, i.e. being officially warned that the process is pending against you (see Service of process); or, a reference to serving food, or one's head on a platter. The key concept is that to be "served" is against one's will - to be given something that is undesirable.

David (Omarion) and Elgin (Marques Houston) lead a promising hip-hop/streetdancing/breakdancing crew in Southern California, who participate in street dancing battles produced by a local club owner (Steve Harvey). All is well, until Sonny, a member of the crew, expresses dissatisfaction over the subordinate role the other members of the crew play.

When David and Elgin are challenged by "some rich kids out of Orange County" for five thousand dollars, they think it's easy money. They deal drugs for Emerald (a local drug lord) to cover their half, never dreaming they would lose the battle.

When Sonny (Young Rome) sells them out by going to the other side ("Wade's crew"), he teaches his new companions moves from the David and Elgin group, and in the battle they are badly defeated. Wade, crowing over his success, delivers the titular line, "You're just mad... 'cause tonight you suckas got served!"

Meanwhile, David and Liyah (Jennifer Freeman), Elgin's sister, are falling in love. At a restaurant, Liyah turns off David's cell phone immediately before Elgin attempts to call him to say that Emerald has given them a job earlier than expected. David fails to show up for the job, and Elgin is beaten and robbed.

Consequently, Elgin gets very angry at David for attempting to "hook up with his sister when he should have been taking care of business," and is also annoyed at his sister for "acting like a ho". Elgin is also worried, since he owes Emerald money to cover for the loss of his goods.

Each split up and form their own crew, but neither is as good as the original. They learn about the "Big Bounce," a $50,000 dance competition purportedly sponsored by MTV which will provide the winning crew the opportunity to perform in a Lil' Kim video. Elgin sees this as a good way to pay back Emerald.

Attempts to bring Elgin and David together, particularly by Liyah, are fruitless, and twice they nearly come to blows and have to be separated. One of the younger members of the crew dies prior to the competition; while all are saddened it is not enough to bring the warring enemies back together yet.

At the "Big Bounce" competition, Elgin's crew beats David's crew in semifinals, and then ties the finals against Wade's crew. Lil' Kim, guest referee, on advice from Harvey's character, declares a playoff competition, "straight hood," with no rules, even allowing other people to join the battling crews.

This proves the catalyst for Elgin's feud with David to end (though only after prodding by crew members and threats of forfeiting the competition to Wade), and together they defeat Wade's crew in a mesmerizing final battle using advanced powermoves of professional breakdancers like air flares, flares, split mills, and runners. They shout the "You Got Served" line in retaliation to Wade after he claims the battle settled nothing. The partisan crowd, elated, begins chanting "Served! Served! Served! Served!" getting louder and faster. Elgin accepts David's relationship with Liyah at picture's end.

187 code meurtre

The screenplay for "187" (which is the California state penal code for murder) came to the attention of Icon Productions, the production company founded by Mel Gibson and Bruce Davey, when screenwriter Scott Yagemann saw Steve McEveety's credit in "The Man Without A Face." Yagemann wondered if this McEveety was the same one against whom he swam competitively as a youngster. He called the Icon offices and reacquainted himself with McEveety, who was indeed Yagemann's one-time competitor. McEveety connected with the idea of the story for "187," which was fueled by Yagemann's years as a substitute teacher with the Los Angeles public school system. "When we met up again," recalls McEveety, "Scott started talking about what he had done for a living and how frustrating it was teaching, and that was really what he wanted to write about."
The script was inspired by events that happened to Yagemann during his time as a teacher. "I had a kid threaten to kill me. I later found out that he had stabbed a teaching assistant the semester before, and I was never told anything about this kid," recalls Yagemann. Yagemann discovered that teachers must personally research every student's file to check for any violent history; the information is not forwarded to them as a matter of courtesy or safety. He notes, "The title is blunt, just numbers, the code for murder. It's impersonal and I think that's just what happens to some of those kids in the system. Their individuality, their personality, is just erased. And everything just becomes numbers to them."

McEveety presented the script to Icon President and C.E.O. Bruce Davey and Mel Gibson, Davey's partner and co-founder of Icon Productions. "Icon and Warner Bros. shared the vision that this story needs to be told," comments Davey.

When Director Kevin Reynolds, who had helmed such action-adventure movies as "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves" and "Waterworld," read the script for "187," he was struck by "a ring of truth. When I met with Icon, I said to Mel, Bruce and Steve that it looked like a teacher wrote the script. And they told me that one did." Reynolds, following the physical demands of his previous projects, was eager to direct a more intimate film, bristling with intensity.

"The last few projects I had done were big, logistically monster pictures and I was getting tired of that. I wanted to do something that was dramatic and more of a performance piece," says the director.

Recalls Davey, "I think that Kevin was looking for a change of diet from the action genre, looking for something more contained, more character-driven, and he identified with the material and wanted to do it."

McEveety concurs, "Kevin had a passion for this material. Once we signed him, he worked with Scott and constructed a whole vision for the film that expanded on the script."

Once Reynolds was brought on board, the filmmakers began their search for an actor to play Trevor Garfield, the passionate teacher backed into a corner by the hostile circumstances confronting him in an inner-city classroom.

You talkin' to me ? - Martin Scorsese

Gangs of New York - Martin Scorsese - Interview

INGRID SISCHY: What attracted you to the story told in your new film. Gangs of New York?

MARTIN SCORSESE: At around the age of seven or eight I became aware of an older history to the Manhattan neighborhood I grew up in, Little Italy, as well as the surrounding areas of the Lower East Side and downtown all the way to Wall Street and what is now TriBeCa. Though my neighborhood was then an Italian-American area, there were indications to a young person that it hadn't always been. The nearby cathedral was the old St. Patrick's, and the nuns at the St. Patrick's elementary school, which I was going to, were from Ireland. As I grew up, I began to hear stories of old New York. My father told me stories from the 1920s and teens, but he knew others from way back beyond that. As I got older I started to do research on the church--I did term papers in high school about it, that sort of thing--and I began to understand about the conflicts between the Irish immigrants and the nativists [groups, political and otherwise, who were against immigration, like] the Know-Nothings. And looking at American history, I became fascinated by New York history, especially the period before the Civil War. Very little was available to younger people about that time in the 1950s and '60s.

IS: What is the precise time frame in which your film takes place?

MS: There's a prologue in 1846, but the majority of the film takes place from 1862 to 1863.

IS: So we're in New York during the Civil War.

MS: Yeah, at the turning point of the war. By the end of the film the main characters play out their conflict against the backdrop of the whole city erupting in what we now call the Draft Riots. That was in the summer of 1863.

IS: The Draft Riots took place in response to the fact that if you were rich enough you could buy your way out of being inducted by the Union army, right?

MS: Yes. By slipping the army 300 dollars or paying for a substitute. In effect, the immigrants were getting off boats, becoming citizens, and suddenly going into the army.

IS: So within all this brew there were the gang wars of lower Manhattan? And thus your film.

MS: Yes. The gang wars were politically motivated. The nativists didn't want immigration, they wanted, as they say, "America for Americans"--which were the English and Dutch stock, the Protestants. These people had fought for the country and wanted to keep it their own. The Irish immigration [which was primarily Catholic] was the first real test of what America would become, before the Statue of Liberty, the huddled masses. ... I don't think the founding fathers had in mind, really, that there would be such an influx of immigration from all over the world, which would become the complexion of America. In any event, [the 1860s] was a period where other cultures and other religions [than the nativists'] were resisted. That's the backdrop of the movie. Also, New York State was part of the Union, but not many people agreed with the Union and Lincoln, so the conflict between North and South was played out in New York in many different ways--riots, economic problems. Against this turmoil of what the country is supp osed to be, or what the country will become after the Civil War, whichever side wins, we set in motion a traditional tribal story of a young boy [Amsterdam Vallon, played by Leonardo DiCaprio] avenging his father's death [at the hands of Bill the Butcher, played by Daniel Day-Lewis].

IS: It is impossible to listen to you talk about tribalism and this movie and not think about the contemporary parallels to world history and New York history of the past year or so. Not that life then and now is the same, but-

MS:--Yes, exactly. That's the point. The more I worked on the film the more I realized that the situation we are in now, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, puts the world in a dangerous place. Really, with the collapse of any great power in history, societies are reduced to a kind of tribalism. For example, to a certain extent, the collapse of the Ottoman Empire caused World War I.

The film plays out all the struggles and hardships and suffering and tribalism of a particular period in the 19th century. Ultimately the city as we know it is created, but that doesn't mean it stays that way. Cities rise and fall, but they rise up again. Very often we find that such struggling and violence are futile. People want to live with their individual rights. Everybody has the right to be free, and one person shouldn't infringe upon another person's freedom--that's what the struggle in the movie is about.

IS: Considering what's going on in the world, the idea you just raised. "People want to live," would seem to be a largely Western belief, wouldn't it? Interestingly, you were making this movie against the contemporary backdrop of culture wars that are making heroes out of suicide bombers--people who don't want to live.

MS: They're dying for a cause. And [during the Civil War] the North and South were fighting for causes. The nativists and the Irish were fighting for the right to live and the right to live together, but they were dying for it, too. If people believe in something strongly enough they're going to die for it, and that's a major problem in the world today. In the film--as in today's world--religion is used in a militant way.

IS: What would you say is the difference between then and now?

MS: It seems that the concept of America being open to immigrants, different cultures, different races, different religions, is now somewhat accepted. That does not mean that every immigrant group that now comes to America--usually playing itself out in New York--doesn't have its conflicts to overcome to become part of the system. The first generation usually struggles just to make ends meet, but the second generation finds itself going to school and taking advantage of the system. That's what makes this country so great, what makes this experiment in democracy so interesting. It's never finished; it's always in the works.

IS: You're a lifetime New Yorker. but you made much of Gangs of New York in Rome--what was that like?

MS: One of the main reasons the film hadn't been made over the years is the amount of money it would've cost to build these sets in America. Dante Ferretti [a production designer who often collaborates with Scorsese] was able to work out a deal with Cinecitta [Studios, on Rome's outskirts], and the craftsmanship and artistry of the Italians are so renowned that we felt totally comfortable.

IS: Did Dante design the weapons used throughout the film, too?

MS: Along with Dennis Parrish, our prop consultant. We had pictures of old weapons, and a number of people improvised ideas, and we would make them up on the spot.

IS: Are they all historically accurate?

MS: Some were invented. In gladiator fights, for example, there were four or five different styles to fight with, according to the gladiator's proficiency with a certain weapon. So we figured if you were in a tribal society living in caves below the city, you would make your own.

IS: We wanted to highlight some of these weapons--many of them homemade--in our piece on the movie. Somehow they symbolize something about history, and the impulse to violence when survival is the issue. What are the alternatives, one wants to ask? And, of course, understanding history is one way to change it, which is, I guess, why you're so interested in history. Your film sounds as if it takes all these issues on.

MS: Ultimately this tribal story plays out in microcosm what's being played out in the macrocosm: the war and the formation of the country. The 20th century was arguably the most violent in human history, but the most violent century in American history was the 19th. Poor people, political parties, and gangs would demonstrate, and there was violence constantly. Constantly. They stood on their soapboxes and screamed and yelled and had confrontations and fights. People were fighting not only in New York--though it was the hottest--but also in urban centers like Boston, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. When the Draft Riots started, everyone thought it was just your average riot, but it immediately turned into a race riot, and it lasted four days and nights, which the end of our film is played out against.

Audrey Hepburn

Born Audrey Kathleen Ruston in Ixelles/Elsene, a municipality in Brussels, Belgium, she was the only child of the Englishman Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston and his second wife, the former Baroness Ella van Heemstra, a Dutch aristocrat who was a daughter of a former governor of Dutch Guiana. The future actress's father later appended the surname of his maternal grandmother Kathleen Hepburn to the family's, and her surname became Hepburn-Ruston. She had two half-brothers, Jonkheer Arnoud Robert Alexander "Alex" Quarles van Ufford and Jonkheer Ian Edgar Bruce Quarles van Ufford, by her mother's first marriage to a Dutch nobleman, Jonkheer Hendrik Gustaaf Adolf Quarles van Ufford. She was a descendant of King Edward III of England and Scottish consort James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, from whom Katharine Hepburn may have also descended.

Hepburn's father's job with a British insurance company meant that the family travelled often between Brussels, England, and The Netherlands. From 1935 to 1938, Hepburn attended a private academy for girls in Kent. In 1935, her parents divorced and her father, a Nazi sympathizer, left the family. She later called this the most traumatic moment of her life. Years later, she located him in Dublin through the Red Cross. She stayed in contact with him and supported him financially until his death. In 1939, her mother moved her and her two half-brothers to their grandfather's home in Arnhem, Netherlands. Ella believed the Netherlands would be safe from German attack. Hepburn attended the Arnhem Conservatory from 1939 to 1945 where she trained in ballet, along with the standard school curriculum.

In 1940, the Nazis invaded Arnhem. During the war, Hepburn adopted the pseudonym Edda van Heemstra, modifying her mother's documents, because an "English-sounding" name was considered dangerous. This was never her legal name. The name Edda was a version of her mother's name, Ella.

By 1944, Hepburn had become a proficient ballerina. She secretly danced for groups of people to collect money for the underground movement. She later said, "the best audience I ever had made not a single sound at the end of my performance."

After the landing of the Allied Forces on D-Day, things grew worse under the German occupiers. During the Dutch famine over the winter of 1944, the Germans confiscated the Dutch people's limited food and fuel supply for themselves. Without heat in their homes or food to eat, people starved and froze to death in the streets. Hepburn and many others resorted to making flour out of tulip bulbs to bake cakes and biscuits. Arnhem was devastated during allied bombing raids that were part of Operation Market-Garden. Hepburn's uncle and a cousin of her mother's were shot in front of Hepburn for being part of the Resistance. Hepburn's half-brother Ian van Ufford spent time in a German labor camp. Suffering from malnutrition, Hepburn developed acute anemia, respiratory problems, and edema--a swelling of the limbs.

In 1991, Hepburn said, "I have memories. More than once I was at the station seeing trainloads of Jews being transported, seeing all these faces over the top of the wagon. I remember, very sharply, one little boy standing with his parents on the platform, very pale, very blond, wearing a coat that was much too big for him, and he stepped on to the train. I was a child observing a child."

Hepburn also noted the similarities between her and Anne Frank. "I was exactly the same age as Anne Frank. We were both 10 when war broke out and 15 when the war finished. I was given the book in Dutch, in galley form, in 1946 by a friend. I read it … and it destroyed me. It does this to many people when they first read it but I was not reading it as a book, as printed pages. This was my life. I didn't know what I was going to read. I've never been the same again, it affected me so deeply."

"We saw reprisals. We saw young men put against the wall and shot and they'd close the street and then open it and you could pass by again. If you read the diary, I've marked one place where she says, 'Five hostages shot today'. That was the day my uncle was shot. And in this child's words I was reading about what was inside me and is still there. It was a catharsis for me. This child who was locked up in four walls had written a full report of everything I'd experienced and felt."

These times were not all bad and she was able to enjoy some of her childhood. Again drawing parallels to Anne Frank's life, Hepburn said, "This spirit of survival is so strong in Anne Frank's words. One minute she says, 'I'm so depressed.' The next she is longing to ride a bicycle. She is certainly a symbol of the child in very difficult circumstances, which is what I devote all my time to. She transcends her death."

One way in which Audrey Hepburn passed the time was by drawing. Some of her childhood artwork can be seen today.

When the country was liberated by allied forces, United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration trucks followed. Hepburn said in an interview that she ate an entire can of condensed milk and then got sick from one of her first relief meals because she put too much sugar in her oatmeal. This experience is what led her to become involved in UNICEF late in life

Best of Style Wars

Must own : Style Wars (DVD)

Style Wars is an early documentary on hip hop culture, made by Tony Silver and Henry Chalfant, made in New York City in the early 1980s. The film has an emphasis on graffiti, although breakdancing and rapping are covered to a lesser extent. The film was originally aired on PBS television in 1983, and was subsequently shown in several film festivals to much acclaim, including the Vancouver Film Festival. Style Wars shows both the young artists struggling to express themselves through their art, and their points of view on the subject of graffiti, as well as the views of then New York City Mayor Ed Koch, one-armed graffiti writer Case/Kase 2, graffiti writer Skeme and his mother, graffiti "villain" Cap, now deceased graffiti writer Dondi, Seen and Shy 147, graffiti documentarian (and director of the film) Henry Chalfant, world renowned breakdancer Crazy Legs, police officers, art critics, subway maintenance workers, as well as several "people on the street". Style Wars gives a remarkable view into the graffiti subculture (as well as urban New York City life in the 1980s), documents the embryonic stages of New York City Hip Hop, and shows that its members were a racially and ethnically diverse group of creative young artists.