Hudlin, Reginald

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    Film Crew Veteran, Injured in an Accident, Faults Amazon for His Pain

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    The visual effects supervisor, hurt in one of three recent accidents on Amazon film sets, has sued, but the company says it is not to blame.In March 2023, the producers of Amazon’s holiday movie “Candy Cane Lane,” starring Eddie Murphy, were determined to set a 15-foot fir aflame for a scene, according to court papers filed in a recent lawsuit.But the weather was not cooperating, the court documents say. Producers had already canceled the shoot on several occasions because of rain and winds.Yet, on this day, production would press forward amid winds gusting up to 30 miles per hour, the court papers say.One intense gust sent a tent on the set flying into Jon Farhat, a visual effects supervisor. In the lawsuit he filed last fall, Mr. Farhat said the tent speared him in the back and threw him into the air “as if he was caught in a tornado.” He landed on the ground, unconscious.A video animation created by Jon Farhat shows a simulation of how he says he was injured on the set of the film “Candy Cane Lane.”Jon FarhatCut to 15 months later, and Mr. Farhat, 66, is still primarily bedridden in his home, unable to sit, unable to stand for more than an hour. He broke five vertebrae and two ribs. An ambulance is required to transport him to medical appointments, he said. And his struggle to recover has been made all the more frustrating, he says, by what he describes as a jumble of workers’ compensation red tape that has left him dissatisfied with his doctors and his pain management plan.Share your experience on film and TV sets.If you have worked in film or TV production, we want to hear from you. We won’t publish any part of your response without following up with you first, verifying your information and hearing back from you. We won’t share your contact information outside our newsroom or use it for any reason other than to get in touch with you.

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      ‘Sidney’ Review: A Lovingly Assembled Career Portrait

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      Sidney Poitier is memorialized in this thorough, and thoroughly conventional, documentary.“Sidney,” a documentary about the actor and filmmaker Sidney Poitier, who died in January, is a compendium of hero worship. The director is Reginald Hudlin, but, in tone and temperament, this lovingly assembled encomium is peak Oprah Winfrey. As one of the film’s producers and a close friend of Poitier (whom she calls her “great Black hope”), Winfrey glows with emotional authenticity. Her breakdown at the end is unexpectedly moving, if not entirely unexpected.Oblivious to the film’s fire hose of adulation and thicket of talking heads, Poitier (speaking mainly in a 2012 interview with Winfrey) softly addresses the camera, unfailingly modest and supremely chill. Around him, Hudlin unrolls a life that, Poitier believed, fulfilled the predictions of the soothsayer his mother consulted when he was not expected to survive infancy. Having exchanged Bahamian poverty for Jim Crow-era America, barely literate, he claimed, and baffled by segregation, Poitier discovered that acting was therapy, a way to express the many personalities roiling inside him. (Much later, he would require many years of actual therapy in part to process his love affair with the gorgeous Diahann Carroll.)Painstakingly thorough, “Sidney” scans a career freighted with political and social significance, its litany of firsts — including the first Black leading man to win an Oscar for best actor; the first Black director to make a $100 million movie — no deterrence to those who would later accuse Poitier of subservience to the desires of white audiences. Spotlighting the courage of Poitier’s civil rights activism and the daring of his acting choices, Hudlin labors to convey their significance to Black Americans: The man who had grown up without ever seeing a mirror was now tasked with reflecting Black lives back to an audience avid for recognition.The inescapable impression is of a picture buckling beneath the weight of its subject’s achievements. Yet there are moments when the focus shifts and the movie shrugs off its hagiographic shackles: Lulu, the Scottish pop star, belting out the theme of “To Sir, With Love” (1967), her pipes barely corroded; the tart, mischievous interjections of interviewees like Denzel Washington and Spike Lee; and Poitier’s first wife, the admirable Juanita Brady, explaining how she gave her inexperienced spouse critical financial advice, even selling her mink coat to invest in “A Raisin in the Sun,” the 1959 stage play in which he starred.These interludes act like lemon juice squirted on heavy cream, brief reagents in a movie that, despite the meticulousness of its making, seems a peculiarly orthodox tribute to a revolutionary life.SidneyRated PG-13 for racial slurs. Running time: 1 hour 46 minutes. Watch on AppleTV+. More

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      ‘Safety’ Review: It Takes a University to Raise a Child

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      #masthead-section-label, #masthead-bar-one { display: none }The Best of 2020Best MoviesBest TV ShowsBest BooksBest TheaterBest AlbumsAdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main story‘Safety’ Review: It Takes a University to Raise a ChildThis Disney+ film isn’t your typical sports or adversity movie; it asks questions of what educational institutions owe to their community.Jay Reeves and Thaddeus J. Mixson II in “Safety.”Credit…Chuck Zlotnik/DisneyDec. 11, 2020, 9:00 a.m. ETSafetyDirected by Reginald HudlinBiography, Drama, SportPGFind TicketsWhen you purchase a ticket for an independently reviewed film through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.They say it takes a village to raise a child, but in “Safety,” it takes an entire university campus to do so. Overly sentimental traps line the plot of the film, streaming on Disney+. But it scores points for giving its lead characters complicated situations, emotional depth and political dimension.Based on a true story, the movie follows the Clemson University freshman football player Ray McElrathbey (Jay Reeves), affectionately called “Ray Ray” by his peers. The ambitious student athlete has a lot on his plate. When his mother (Amanda Warren) goes into addiction recovery, he’s forced to take care of his younger brother, Fahmarr (Thaddeus J. Mixson), housing him in the dorm. With this new task, Ray Ray’s ability to balance family, school, friends and athletics risks being toppled. That’s when his coaches and teammates step in.[embedded content]“Safety” is, for better, neither a strict sports movie nor a rigid tale of adversity. Banal time management scenes are enlivened by the director Reginald Hudlin’s fun camera swooping and rollicking tumbles as Ray’s life grows dizzyingly busy. Some of the earlier moments in the film, like when Fahmarr hides in increasingly ludicrous spots, have the humor of a heist comedy. And Hudlin intermittently blends in sharp visual gags.But the film’s touchdown is its sincere questioning of what colleges and universities owe to its students and, more broadly, the community around them. Hudlin transforms a film that would be, in lesser hands, a formulaic hardship-as-aesthetic drama, into an earnest examination of what community means on the field, in the classroom and in our society.SafetyRated PG. Running time: 1 hour 58 minutes. Watch on Disney+.AdvertisementContinue reading the main story More