Thandie Newton

CHICAGO – Horror writers and directors have been afraid of the dark since the start of the genre. Sadly, that fear of blackness has never translated to film as successfully as one would hope. There’s an inherent problem in watching a movie about darkness in that it can never make that fear fully real unless it goes to complete black screen. The latest entry in this flawed subgenre is Brad Anderson’s “Vanishing on 7th Street,” a minor work from a major director.

CHICAGO – Tyler Perry must have a bit of internal conflict. On one hand, he gets critically slammed for films that display little creative effort at all like “Madea Goes to Jail” or “Why Did I Get Married Too?” but those movies make money. Then he tries to do something clearly considered artistic with his adaptation of Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf,” now truncated to simply “For Colored Girls” and recently available on Blu-ray and DVD, and it makes less than most of the films he’s directed.

Rating: 2.5/5.0

CHICAGO – Ntozake Shange’s choreopoem “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf” was a landmark event in 1974, giving voice to a segment of society rarely seen on the stage. It took 34 years for a filmmaker to tackle this remarkable work in film form and Tyler Perry’s “For Colored Girls” retains some of the inherent power of it source and features some strong performances in the process but never finds the narrative cohesion needed to translate it to modern movie audiences.

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From left to right: Anika Noni Rose (as Yasmine), Kerry Washington (as Kelly), Janet Jackson (as Jo), Kimberly Elise (as Crystal), Phylicia Rashad (as Gilda), Loretta Devine (as Juanita), Tessa Thompson (as Nyla) and Thandie Newton (as Tangie).

CHICAGO – This 19-image slideshow contains all of the official press images for the highly-anticipated “For Colored Girls,” starring Janet Jackson, Loretta Devine, Michael Ealy, Kimberly Elise, Omari Hardwick, Hill Harper, Thandie Newton, Phylicia Rashad, Anika Noni Rose, Tessa Thompson, Kerry Washington, and Whoopi Goldberg. The film was written and directed by Tyler Perry. It will be released on November 5th, 2010.

CHICAGO – The expansive and intuitive prose poetry of Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf” comes to life in Tyler Perry’s film adaptation “For Colored Girls.” Thandie Newton portrays Tangie (color Orange) and saturates the character with a precise truth.

Blu-Ray Rating: 4.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Has one star ever had such an assault on their demographic as Vin Diesel is having in April 2009? He’s the star of two original video games (“Wheelman,” “The Chronicles of Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena”), a blockbuster movie (“Fast & Furious”), and has two catalog titles in “Pitch Black” and “The Chronicles of Riddick” hitting Blu-Ray. And all of it happens in the span of two weeks.

Blu-Ray Rating: 3.5/5.0

CHICAGO – What happened to Oliver Stone? Despite strong performances by Josh Brolin, James Cromwell, and Elizabeth Banks, “W.” is one of the most inert, middle-of-the-road movies that this once-controversial auteur has ever made, helped on the home market by an excellent Blu-Ray release but still a little “eh” as a film.

CHICAGO – In our latest edition of HollywoodChicago.com Hookup: Film, we have 70 admit-two passes to the Chicago screening of “RocknRolla,” which stars Gerard Butler, Thandie Newton, Tom Wilkinson, Jeremy Piven, Gemma Arterton and Mark Strong.

CHICAGO – Simon Pegg (the British cult hero of “Shaun of the Dead” and “Hot Fuzz”) was welcomed to a Chicago hotel where his press event was taking place with personalized water bottles that sported his face.