Word: newton
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Mario Van Peebles demurs: "The kids don't see this movie as a call to arms but as a call to consciousness." In this Molotov cocktail of fact and fancy, the party's founders, Huey Newton (Marcus Chong) and Bobby Seale (Courtney B. Vance), are two streetwise dreamers from Oakland, California, who live their slogan: "Power to the People." They arm themselves and talk instructive trash to the pig cops-but within the letter of the law. They also serve food to kids and educate them in Afro awareness...
...that Panther is fiction; some of those who were there see it as flawed fact. "In part, Mario and his father have done a very good job of showing our history," says David Hilliard, former Panther chief of staff. "But the characterization of Bobby Seale being dominant over Huey Newton is certainly a reversal of history. Unfortunately, most of the people in the party leadership who could have helped are on my project." Hilliard, you see, is working with Seale on their own film for Warner Bros. These days Panther adversaries don't have shootouts, they have rival development deals...
...lots of close-ups of manly jawlines, as if every sailor were posing to be sculpted like the U.S. Presidents onto Mount Rushmore. When in doubt, director Tony Scott (Top Gun, Days of Thunder) lets loose a spray of water, sparks and sweat-the signature flourish of this Helmut Newton of movie machismo...
...people were both walkers and volunteers. Starting at 7 a.m., they spread over a course stretched 20 miles from the Boston Common out to Newton and then back along the Cambridge side of the Charles River...
...Panthers are not anti-white, but anti-oppression. In a scene that refers directly to Spike Lee's "Malcolm X," a couple of young white students ask Newton if they can help with the Party. Unlike Malcolm X, who dismissed a similarly well-meaning white student with a brusque "No," Newton takes the time to explain kindly to the students that it is important for Blacks to do this for themselves...