Netflix previews ‘Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom’
Netflix previews ‘Ma Rainey’ and Boseman’s final performance
The film showcases Chadwick Boseman’s final performance opposite Viola Davis’ powerhouse blues singer.
Football rules nationally, Dodgers in Los Angeles
NEW YORK » The Los Angeles Dodgers played for their season Sunday night on Fox, the seventh game of the National League Championship Series. Win and go to the World Series, lose and go home.
At the same time, the Los Angeles Rams played a regular season game on NBC against the San Francisco 49ers, a loss that dropped the Rams to a 4-2 record.
There’s no question which game meant more. But for a national audience, the football game was watched by 12.6 million people, while 9.7 million tuned in to see the Dodgers complete a memorable comeback against the Atlanta Braves.
Television’s other big competition last week was Thursday’s dueling town halls with President Donald Trump on NBC and Democratic opponent Joe Biden on ABC.
In an upset — since the former reality TV star president has always had drawing power — Biden won, 14.2 million viewers to 13.5 million.
Concert to mark Tom Petty’s 70th birthday
LOS ANGELES » Tom Petty’s peers and admirers will celebrate what would’ve been the late rock icon’s 70th birthday with a star-studded virtual festival on Friday.
Set to stream on Petty’s website and on Amazon Music’s Twitch channel, “Tom Petty’s 70th Birthday Bash” will feature performances and appearances by Stevie Nicks, Beck, Adam Sandler, Brandi Carlile, Chris Stapleton, Eddie Vedder, the Foo Fighters, Jackson Browne, Margo Price and Post Malone, among many others. Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench, both of Petty’s long-running band the Heartbreakers, are set to perform as well.
The show, which organizers said will also include previously unseen live footage from Petty and the Heartbreakers, is scheduled to begin at 7 p.m.
NEW YORK » Netflix this week previewed George C. Wolfe’s August Wilson adaptation “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” showcasing Chadwick Boseman’s final performance opposite Viola Davis’ powerhouse blues singer.
The film, shot last year, was already one of the year’s most anticipated, coming as the next chapter in Denzel Washington’s ongoing project to turn Wilson’s plays into films, following 2016’s Oscar-winning “Fences.” But since the unexpected death in August of the 43-year-old Boseman from colon cancer, “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” has taken on a elegiac aura. Boseman’s performance has been said to be among the finest of his career, and the scenes previewed only reinforced that notion.
Set in Chicago 1927, Davis stars as Ma Rainey, a fiery singer known as the “Mother of the Blues.” Boseman plays Levee, an ambitious trumpeter aiming to launch himself with his own updated versions of Ma Rainey’s songs.
“Levee got to be Levee!” exclaims Boseman, as Levee, in a passionate monologue. “And he don’t need nobody messing with him about the white man, ‘cause you don’t know nothing about me. You don’t know Levee. You don’t know nothing about what blood I got! What kind of heart I got beating here!”
The event, presented by video conference, included a band, in masks, performing music from the film scored by Branford Marsalis. Netflix, which will debut it Dec. 18 on the streaming service, is expected to push “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom” for Academy Awards consideration, particularly Davis and Boseman. (Wilson, himself, was the last person to receive a posthumous Oscar nomination in 2016, 11 year after his death, for the “Fences” script.)
Wolfe said Boseman “put his entire being into the part.” Davis described Boseman as unusually egoless. At the time of filming, Boseman was coming off the massive success of “Avengers: Endgame” and “Black Panther.”
Davis, who won an Oscar for her performance in “Fences” and a Tony for the play’s 2010 Broadway revival, plays Ma Rainey as a commanding, hip-swinging diva she said she modeled after her aunt.