Word: singletons
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Peebles' groundbreaking work lives on in the films of today's Black directors. John Singleton (Boyz-n-the Hood), Mario Van Peebles (son of Melvin and director of New Jack City) and Lee have all cited Van Peebles as an early influence...
...blacks and other Americans of color. They seldom saw themselves in newspaper comic strips, which were as segregated as the society whose goings-on they caricatured. Suddenly, however, the color barriers are falling down. As rap music goes mainstream and movies by black directors like Spike Lee and John Singleton become mass-audience hits, African-American cartoonists are tickling the public fancy in newspapers across the country...
...poised on a cruelly honed knife-edge. There are doubtless more opportunities than ever for bright, ambitious kids to escape the ghetto. But the chances of being wasted by random violence have also increased. In his remarkable debut film, BOYZ N THE HOOD (as in neighborhood), writer-director John Singleton, 23, maps gang-ridden South Central Los Angeles with a cartographer's cool realism. But what gives powerful resonance to his film -- whose opening was accompanied by shootings in theaters across the U.S. that left at least one dead and dozens wounded -- is his portrait of three young men struggling...
Equally precocious is John Singleton, 23, who was nine years old when he saw Star Wars and decided that he wanted to grow up to make movies. Growing up was the hard part. Drugs and violence were moving into South Central Los Angeles, where Singleton spent his boyhood, and the temptations were strong. "My parents didn't have a lot of money," he says. "I used to steal little stuff, like candy, toys and Players magazines, but I never got into anything too rough...
...dream of making movies helped keep him straight. "Somebody told me that the film business was controlled by screenplays," he says. "After I heard that, I knew I had to learn how to write, so I did." And well. Singleton won several writing awards at the film school of the University of Southern California. After his graduation, Columbia Pictures quickly signed him up for a three-year deal and gave him $7 million to direct Boyz N the Hood. Like his fellow young black directors, he knew what he wanted to do with the opportunity. "If you make a film...