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"What you fix to do today, man?" Amazon Studios has released the first official trailer for the new Spike Lee joint, titled Pass Over, an adaptation of Antoinette Nwandu's stage play. This isn't so much of a movie, Lee has instead decide to film the play as a performance piece, and release it on Amazon that way. Nwandu's Pass Over is a fresh, "provocative riff" on Waiting for Godot, about two boys standing on a Chicago street corner. "As they dream of their promised land, a stranger wanders into their space with his own agenda and derails their plans. Emotional and lyrical, Pass Over crafts everyday profanities into poetic and humorous riffs, exposing the unquestionable human spirit of young men stuck in a cycle just looking for a way out." Starring Blake DeLong, Ryan Hallahan, Jon Michael Hill, Julian Parker. This looks quite brilliant. Here's the official trailer (+ poster) for Spike Lee's Pass Over,...

Once again, Spike Lee has found an innovative theatrical production and brought it to blistering cinematic life. Antoinette Nwandu’s Pass Over, produced in 2017 by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, combines Waiting for Godot, Biblical lore, and contemporary American race issues into a story that’s at turns funny, suspenseful, and bizarre. Lead characters Moses (Jon Michael Hill) and Kitch (Julian Parker) are waiting not for someone to come but for the time they’ll be able to leave the corner of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and 64th Street and make it to “the promised land.” In the meantime, they shoot the shit, duck periodic gunfire, and have a strange encounter with a suspiciously polite, seersucker-suited white interloper (Ryan Hallahan).

The strong religiosity in African American communities has historically infused their activist rhetoric with Biblical allusion, especially to the Book of Exodus and its story of the Jews escaping slavery.