Antwone Fisher: DVD comes out on 5/20

[CrimsonTide4]

I saw it tonight with my mom in Cleveland where part of the film was shot.

A good film but they focused a lot more on his present than his past. However it was positive to see a BLACK man who had a troubled past but did not let that keep him down.

Yall Derek Luke is a CUTIE!!! His chemistry with Denzel was marvelous.

I recommend the film but once I finish reading the book, I will most likely recommend the book more. Mama said book was better.

[Ideal08]

Originally posted by CrimsonTide4
Yall Derek Luke is a CUTIE!!!

HE IS FIIIIIIIIIINE!!!!! Lawd, he's fine. The lips. He's fine. I ain't never seen nothin' look like that in Cleveland. Whew!!!

Anywho, I really enjoyed the movie. I heard that there are a lot of differences in the book. But it was good nonetheless. I give it two thumbs up! Now, I can't wait to read the book.

[AKA2D '91]

I haven't seen it yet. I was in Houston earlier this week and on Christmas day, my sister, mom, and I think we are going to see the film. NOTTTTTTT! How is it that with ALL of the cinemas in Houston, they are only showing the film in 3 cinemas. Okay, that may not be a big deal, but it is a HUGE deal when the 3 cinemas where it is being shown aren't near sister's area! Yet, any other film can be shown in ALL cinemas throughout the city.

Sounds like sabatoge to me. The fewer theaters, the fewer dollars. Remember Waiting to Exhale?

I guess, I'll see it here before I go back to work.

[librasoul22]

Originally posted by AKA2D '91
I haven't seen it yet. I was in Houston earlier this week and on Christmas day, my sister, mom, and I think we are going to see the film. NOTTTTTTT! How is it that with ALL of the cinemas in Houston, they are only showing the film in 3 cinemas. Okay, that may not be a big deal, but it is a HUGE deal when the 3 cinemas where it is being shown aren't near sister's area! Yet, any other film can be shown in ALL cinemas throughout the city.

Sounds like sabatoge to me. The fewer theaters, the fewer dollars. Remember Waiting to Exhale?

I guess, I'll see it here before I go back to work.

It is NOT being shown at the AMC's here. And those are the biggest money makers as far as theatres go.

They did this with Love and Basketball here.

How could they not see this as a guaranteed profit??

Denzel + something military (SHOULD) = $$.

[CrimsonTide4]

I THINK after I saw it at a Magic Johnson/Wizard Kelly theater in Cleveland that it was supposed to open nationally on NYE -- go figure. I don't know. Sorry to all the homies who have not seen it.

It is playing @ AMC Concord Mills here.

OK I just looked @ another theater in Gastonia and it opens there on 1/1/03 -- this is the most random movie opening EVER!!

[AKA2D '91]

Chile...I looked in the local paper after I posted yesterday, why is it that it is only being shown in ONE theater in the area? And YES, it is wayyyyyyy out of the way!

Isn't there supposed to be this "angry" scene? I saw Denzel on this show last night. Denzel said he probably should have gotten ole boy to become more "angry". Maybe the powers that be at the thearters are afraid of this rage?

(Okay, I'm grasping for an answer to this BS.)

[stardusttwin]

The movie is scheduled to open at select theatres nationwide - just enough for it to be in contention for Academy Award nominations for the year 2002 - it is scheduled to open nationwide January 1st (originally it was announced December 25th when Denzel was on Oprah - then it was pushed back). This is (has been) done a lot with movies and isn't a "black" thing...the studios wait until the end of the year to open these movies in just enough studios to be eligible for nominations and then have the movie in the theatre nationwide still making records when the members are actually voting. Another movie that is on many reviewers top ten lists for the year although it was just released is "Chicago" (if you haven't heard Queen Latifah was nominated for Golden Globes Best Supporting Actress).

BTW - I can't discuss why Denzel says he should have let Antwone get more angry without giving it away - however IMO there isn't any scene that would justify censorship.

So be patient - if it hasn't reached your city yet it will be worth the wait. And bring tissues. By the end the entire studio was sniffling, white, black, young and old!!

[NUPE4LIFE]

I must admit, this movie touched a side of me (SENSITIVE) I didn't even know I had. Go figure! I think that this movie is a must see. I mean how often do we get intelligent black films like this. For every Antwone Fisher, there are a million Fridays and Booty Calls. GO SEE THIS FILM, PEOPLE!

[SweetestDiva]

Okay. So I wake up on the morning of January 1st excited. I just KNOW I'ma see Antwone Fisher that night, so I decide to check the paper for the times. Amazingly, it's not listed so I decide to call the theater. I sit through fifteen minutes of movie listings - NO ANTWONE FISHER. I call the other theater. NO ANTWONE FISHER. Can you tell yet that I HAVE NOT SEEN THIS MOVIE YET? I wish they would quit teasing me with the commercials if I can't even see it!!

[Gina1201]

I am completely pissed with the movie theaters here where I live. I know the film is only going to be shown in one theater and it's not going to come out here until Friday, if then.

[Kisha]

Excellent movie!

I was truly impressed by the work of Denzel and all the actors.

This is definitely one I have to add to my collection.

Please support the film.

[CrimsonTide4]

Umm MAYBE this Friday according to my TV just now.

This is really wrecking havoc on the movie's PERFORMANCE in terms of ratings.

This movie deserves an NAACP Image Award.

[CrimsonTide4]

MEET 'ANTWONE FISHER'S' JOY BRYANT: Actress almost cussed Denzel out.
by Kenya M. Yarbrough

Joy Bryant
(Jan. 10, 2003) Bronx native Joy Bryant is true to her name. The up-and-coming actress has found joy in a new talent and loves every minute of it, thanks mostly in part to her recent project – “Antwone Fisher.”
While this is her meaty role in a feature film, Bryant is recognizable.

She made her on-screen debut opposite Beyonce Knowles in the MTV flick “Carmen: A Hip Hopera.” She then snagged a small role in the Eddie Murphy and Robert DeNiro comedy “Showtime.”

But before getting bit by the acting bug, Bryant was a Yale student-turned -successful fashion model with a Victoria Secrets catalog cover under her belt.

Now, Bryant stars in “Antwone Fisher,” where she plays Cheryl, the title character’s love interest in the Denzel Washington-directed film. Not a bad feat for someone fairly new in the game. It was so fantastic, Bryant could hardly believe it herself.

“I had just finished the third audition with Denzel, and I went back to my friend’s house,” she said, describing how she learned she got the part. “I was feeling a bit bummed out and then the cell phone rings – and my character’s name is Cheryl – and the man on the line said, ‘Hi, is Cheryl there?’ I said, ‘You have the wrong number.’ And he said, ‘Is this Joy? This is Denzel.’ I thought, ‘This ain’t Denzel.’ He almost got cussed out,” she laughed.

Fortunately before she could give Washington the “who the hell is this," the film’s producer and casting director jumped on the line to convince her it was truly the Academy Award-winning actor welcoming her aboard on the film.

As many fans expect, Bryant said that working with Washington was a great learning experience and an awesome opportunity. The starlet told us that although “Antwone Fisher” was his first time directing, everyone on the set felt like he knew what he was doing.

“I felt totally confident with him. I learned so much from him,” she said. “The theme of the whole shoot was ‘less is more.’ He asked for subtlety, honesty, and said, ‘Don’t act, just be.’ Those are the things that he just kept pushing,” she described.

Bryant admits that those simple words helped her a lot in addition to Washington’s advice to really study her character. She found it very important to learn and read into her the role because she felt she wasn’t much like her character at all.

“[Cheryl] had to be approachable to [Antwone],” she explained. “Cheryl had to be this understanding, very cool and gentle person. I, personally, have a lot of fire – Antwone wouldn’t feel comfortable approaching me. That was really difficult because I had to be aggressive, but not too aggressive. I had to change my rhythm and bring out that side of me. That quiet side. I just focused on that.”

Even more so, Bryant said she actually relates more the title character than her own. She, like Antwone Fisher, was not raised by her parents and doesn’t know her father very well. Fisher grew up in the foster system and never knew his father.

“I relate more to Antwone’s character than Cheryl. I know many people who have been in foster care, people who have been abused. My own personal [relationship] with my father is nothing like Cheryl’s. I don’t even really know my dad,” she said.

With that, Bryant says she’s prepared for any new relatives who might come out of the woodwork thanks to her newfound success, but she’s not bitter. She said she’ll deal with them delicately.

“I don’t hold any grudges, I made peace with everything. It’d be interesting to hear why things are they way they are though,” she admitted.

Bryant said she’ll cross that bridge when she comes to it. In the meantime, she is moving on and in fact just wrapped up her next movie, “Honey,” where she co-stars with Jessica Alba and Mekhi Phifer.

“Antwone Fisher” is currently in theaters nationwide. “Honey,” described as a modern, urban “Flashdance,” is in post production and expected in theaters later this year.

[CrimsonTide4]

Published in the 1/13/03 USA Today.

For Fisher, sudden fame comes with a high price
By Deirdre Donahue, USA TODAY

WASHINGTON — Antwone Fisher's story sounds like something dreamed up by a screenwriter.

Antwone Fisher wrote the screenplay to the film of his life.
By H. Darr Beiser, USA TODAY

Two months on the job as a security guard at Sony Pictures Studios in Los Angeles, the 11-year Navy veteran asked his supervisor for some vacation. Raised in an outwardly religious but internally deviant foster family headed by a preacher and his wife, Fisher gets the opportunity to spend Thanksgiving in Cleveland with relatives of his father he has never met. Edward Elkins was shot to death two months before Fisher was born to a 17-year-old girl. She gave him up because she could not care for him. Although she tried sporadically to keep in touch, she later lost contact.

As a grown man, Fisher met her: a toothless weeping woman who had born five children and put all of them in foster care. "There was no magnetic field" between mother and son, says Fisher. "She had never wiped my nose." And Mrs. Pickett, his foster mother for 12 years? She was "nuts," he says. And brutal, routinely beating Fisher and her other foster children.

Flash forward to January 2003. Encouraged by producer Todd Bla, Fisher, now 43, has written the screenplay to the film of his life, Antwone Fisher, which now is in theaters. Denzel Washington chooses it as his directing debut. (Washington also plays Fisher's naval psychiatrist.) Fisher also uses his life story to write a best-selling 369-page autobiography, Finding Fish (with Mim Eichler Rivas), now in paperback (Harper, $7.50). Last Christmas Eve, he published a book of poetry, Who Will Cry for the Little Boy? (Morrow, $9.95). That same month, Fisher returned to Cleveland and gave some of the caring teachers, principals, social workers and old friends, as well as children in foster care, a chance to see where a desperately lonely, dyslexic, sexually abused, homeless foster kid ended up.

Monday, Fisher looks like a star at a fancy Georgetown hotel: broad-shouldered, large-eyed, extremely fit. (In Finding Fish, he describes how the Navy changed him with the travel, the discipline, the pride he felt putting on his uniform and winning medals.) But the man from the Midwest hasn't gone Hollywood blasé: Within minutes of the interview's start, he has whipped out photos of his two young daughters, Indigo and Azure, and a well-worn snapshot from his wedding to his wife, LaNette. (The female lead in the movie is a composite of a variety of women from Fisher's life. The film is described as "inspired" by Fisher's life with fictional elements and characters. In Finding Fish, Fisher notes that he changed some names and circumstances.)

Fisher wrote Fish after the screenplay in part because it gave him "lots of freedom." With a movie, "You have to move the story forward." Although he was on the set every day, he left when scenes of sexual abuse by a woman neighbor in her 20s were filmed. (Fisher was three years old.)

But Fisher stresses that people, even in terrible situations, need to remember, "life is long."


**post pic later, work has disabled right clicking. **

[CrimsonTide4]

Antwone Fisher DVD comes out on DVD next Tuesday.