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Chicago – One of the greatest challenges of any actor is the portrayal of a person in history that is familiar to most of the culture. Orson Welles is such a man, and Jewell Wilson Bridges took on his persona in the new film “Voodoo MacBeth.” He plays Welles as the “Boy Genius” stage director, age 21 in 1936.

Rating: 3.5/5.0

Before the radio notoriety of “War of the Worlds” and the film “Citizen Kane,” there was the stage rendering of “Voodoo MacBeth.” Produced by John Houseman (Daniel Kuhlman) for the Federal Theatre Project as part of a Depression-era “New Deal” government program, it featured an all-black cast in Harlem performing Shakespeare’s MacBeth, including leading Broadway actor Rose McClendon (Inger Tudor). Houseman turned to 21-year-old Orson Welles (Bridges) to bring the production to life, and as director he creates a radical version set in a fictional Caribbean island, using voodoo instead of witchery to drive the famous narrative.

For some theater fans, the 1936 production of the “Voodoo Macbeth” (as it became commonly known) is the stuff of legend. Funded by the Federal Theater Project, which gave financial aid to the struggling theater community during the Great Depression, the “Voodoo Macbeth” starred a cast of black performers in an imaginative new staging of William Shakespeare’s so-called “Scottish Play,” set in Haiti in the early 1800s.

The show was a mammoth success, critically acclaimed and financially successful, and not for nothing, it was one of the more noteworthy early accomplishments of a 20-year-old thespian and director named Orson Welles.

While Welles’s theater days have been the subject of biopics before, with films like “Cradle Will Rock” and “Me and Orson Welles” dramatizing his imaginative stagings, the new film “Voodoo Macbeth” may be the first to properly depict this particular landmark production. It’s attractively filmed and, mostly, solidly performed,...

“Voodoo Macbeth” credits no fewer than 10 directors and eight screenwriters, all of them students of or recent graduates from the USC School of the Cinematic Arts. And arguably the most impressive thing about the USC-produced movie — a fanciful dramatization of Orson Welles’ historic 1936 New York production of “Macbeth” with an all-Black cast — is how smoothly it plays as all of one piece. To be sure, you might quibble about certain dramatic liberties the creatives have taken to embellish real-life events — or, in some cases, to completely rewrite history covered in Orson Welles biographies and documentaries. And yes, the film overall is more diverting than stirring. Still, there is a good deal more than novelty value going for this group effort.

Set during the Depression Era, “Voodoo Macbeth” begins with an introduction to the Negro Theatre Unit, an innovative federally funded offshoot of the Works Project Administration, and its two...

Exclusive: USC Originals has scored its first theatrical release, in association with Warner Bros., following Lightyear Entertainment’s acquisition of its film, Voodoo Macbeth. The company behind the Oscar-nominated Australian feature Tanna has slated the pic for release across the U.S. and Canada in October.

Based on a true story, Voodoo Macbeth follows a young Orson Welles (Jewell Wilson Bridges) and a group of committed artists as they set out to create what is now considered a landmark event in African-American theater history—the Negro Theatre Unit’s revolutionary 1936 production of Macbeth.

With Fdr’s New Deal providing funding for the Federal Theatre Project, director Rose McClendon (Inger Tudor) convinces co-director John Houseman (Daniel Kuhlman) to help her bring Shakespeare’s Macbeth to the Harlem community at the Lafayette Theater — with an all-Black cast. Well before Citizen Kane and War of the Worlds, they choose for their groundbreaking production...

There’s an acquired taste to the comedy of Tim Heidecker. The actor and comedian, primarily known for his work on the Adult Swim program Tim and Eric Awesome Show, has also ventured into films with efforts such as The Comedy. To call these items divisive would be an understatement. Now, this week brings a new work of his in Mister America, one that’s perhaps less bizarre than his other works, though no less strange. Unfortunately, while it may, on the surface, seem like his most accessible flick, it’s also his most toothless. Despite a committed effort on his part, very little clicks here. The movie is a mockumentary, poking fun at the political process, as well as certain modern day candidates. “Tim Heidecker” (played by Heidecker) is a slightly fictionalized version of the man, here a concert promoter, after beating a murder rap for selling lethal e-cigarettes...

Lemon opens with a title card disclaimer: “This film was photographed and recorded in its entirety in Los Angeles, California.” It’s clear why the setting is important. This isn’t Hollywood, home to celebrities and various success stories. This is L.A., and the amateurishness and desperation of locals looking to make it big is in the air. The film plays to the setting quite a bit. The city’s cultural diversity is explored as director-writer Janicza Bravo and writer-star Brett Gelman inject aspects of their own heritage (and possibly relationship? — the two are married in real life) into the film. Then there’s the heat, which turns the film’s aesthetic as deceivingly bright as its title fruit, and a constant over-reliance on cars that serves as a sort of inside joke for the inhabitants of the city, who become neutered without a means of transportation.

The first...

Vincent Sabella's dramatic feature film debut Elizabeth Blue will be having its World Premiere at the Hollywood Reel Indepedant Film Festival on the 16th of this month. It already has a leg up as it has already been selected as the Best Dramatic Feature for that festival. They work fast.    ScreenAnarchy is pleased to debut to you the trailer and poster for the film. Be sure to also read through all of the release information about Elizabeth Blue below as there is a very interesting back story to Sabella's film. Very interesting and very personal.    Elizabeth Blue, which stars Anna Schafer, Ryan Vincent, Christopher Ashman, Nicola Lambo, Inger Tudor, Kathleen Quinlan and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje centers on Elizabeth (Schafer) a young woman recently released from a mental hospital...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...

Vincent Sabella's dramatic feature film debut Elizabeth Blue will be having its World Premiere at the Hollywood Reel Indepedant Film Festival on the 16th of this month. It already has a leg up as it has already been selected as the Best Dramatic Feature for that festival. They work fast.    ScreenAnarchy is pleased to debut to you the trailer and poster for the film. Be sure to also read through all of the release information about Elizabeth Blue below as there is a very interesting back story to Sabella's film. Very interesting and very personal.    Elizabeth Blue, which stars Anna Schafer, Ryan Vincent, Christopher Ashman, Nicola Lambo, Inger Tudor, Kathleen Quinlan and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje centers on Elizabeth (Schafer) a young woman recently released...

[Read the whole post on screenanarchy.com...]...