"Get Rich or Die Tryin'" pulled from Pittsburgh theater after shooting

HOMESTEAD, Pa.

50 Cent said he was saddened by the fatal shooting at a theater where his movie "Get Rich or Die Tryin'" was playing.

Copyright 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

1) Mac and Me
2) Out of Africa
3) MAtrix Reloaded

etc

Get Rich of Die Tryin: Wednesday, November 9, 2005
8 Mile: Friday, November 8, 2002
Menace II Society: Friday, May 28, 1993
South Central: Friday, September 18, 1992
Juice: Friday, January 17, 1992
Boyz in the Hood: Friday, July 12, 1991
New Jack City: Friday, March 8, 1991

Harry Potter, too.

Reknowned urban films, as you can see.

same with LOTR! even our ned attended the tuesday night shotgunning of all three flicks!

Early wednes. . . oh wait.

So basically it might possibly be true that some local theatres are doing this (though on what psychological basis they're doing this on is beyond me) but it's not any known quantity or officially sanctioned thing. Films all open on Friday, with virtually no exception besides holiday weekends.

And people get all upset about the injustice of certain movies opening on Wednesdays.

xpost otm and film threads bring out teh best of 'em.

I wanted to go see 50's movie on wed. but work's been too busy. and I can't go this weekend as I have relatives in town then we have Dave Chapelle tickets on Sunday. Yes, I'm a racist idiot.

xpost

You could argue that kids hear this, see him living the good life now and interpret that one way to stardom is through suffering and conquering thug life. Kids already surrounded by drugs and violence are definitely more susceptible to this interpretation.

that's an xpost

http://community.middlebury.edu/~mcab/Images/godfather.jpg

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B0009VRSIC.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg

the trailer for the game sure is something.

I don't really think that tactic is going to do you many favors, Sam, FWIW. Yes, I'm sure that you aren't lying about your local cinema doing this, but like I said this is not a widespread or any kind of official phenomenon. It's your local cinema owner being a racist, and to take the "sorry if it's news" to those of us lucky enough, I guess, to live in cities where people don't come up with such cockamamy schemes to "stop shootings" (??? I still don't get this anyway) is really not right. This is not a widespread phenomenon you're talking about (I mean, think about it--tv is national now, everyone has access to movie trailers, the same all over America, people KNOW a movie is supposed to come out on Friday and not the following Wednesday, this seems like it'd just cause a lot of problems and headaches and, if enough theatres WERE doing this, the studios would go batshit on them), and it's unfortunate that it is happening in your town.

No, "Urban" movies (aka black movies) always open in the middle of the week. This is b/c of a multi-death gang shooting during something like "New Jack City" years ago.
-- Miss Misery

"There was a lot of preparation done for this film after Paramount's research told us that it was drawing a primarily young male crowd," Reid said. "We had taken all the precautions possible to limit any possibility of violence, but I'm skeptical that the film itself incited it. I think it was more an issue where the wrong people came into contact with each other."

do you think they "prepared" for the opening of Lords of Dogtown or Friday Night Lights?

xpost to gear

Why open a movie midweek? Well . . .
Sunday, November 06, 2005
SHAWN LEVY

This week's releases allow us to take a look at one of the least pleasant aspects of the Hollywood racket: the midweek opening of films with African American themes.

"Get Rich or Die Tryin'," a sort-of biopic about rapper 50 Cent, will have its nationwide opening Wednesday, even though everybody knows that the weekend is the busiest moviegoing period. It's common during the holiday or summer seasons to have films open in midweek slots. But the kids are all in school this week, and "Get Rich" is nobody's idea of a blockbuster in the making, so why the Wednesday opening?

Well, it's rather disturbing, but the answer is a kind of institutional racism in the movie business.

It began about 14 years ago with the premiere of "New Jack City," which was accompanied by violence in some theaters around the nation. Since then, studios and exhibitors have tried to mitigate the effect of any such potential outbursts by opening films that might draw young black audiences on days when the multiplex is less likely to be filled with, ahem, innocent bystanders. Get the bad element in and out of the theater on Wednesday and Thursday, the thinking seems to go, and you don't have to worry so much about the weekend being disrupted. It's not something the business is very proud of, but, trust me, it happens.

If this sounds conspiratorial to you, I ask you to explain the opening dates of such films as the epic "Malcolm X," the crime story "Set It Off" or the snappy girlfriends comedy "Beauty Shop." All were released outside of the summer and Christmas seasons; all were made by black filmmakers and, presumably, for mostly black audiences; all opened on Wednesdays.

The release of "Malcolm X" in November 1992 was even more controversial. Act III Theaters, which then operated most of the city's moviehouses, refused Warner Bros.' request that the film be booked into its Lloyd Center-area theaters, the closest screens to the traditional African American community of Northeast Portland. The film opened instead at Cinema 21, and Act III found itself having to explain a pattern of booking black-themed films outside the area where most black teens would most easily be able to go see them.

The city of Pittsburgh removed all sidewalks from within its limits after a man was shot to death on a streetcorner Wednesday night.

Police say Jabari Mathis, 30, of Wilkinsburg, Pa., was shot at 11:06 pm. and died later at an area hospital.

Gerlad Barger of the West Homestead Police Department said four people were involved in the shooting but that there were no suspects. Local police plan to increase patrols in parking lots, driveways, and other sidewalk-like paved items.

Pittsburg mayor Tom Murphy said the incident occurred while most of the city's residents were in their homes or apartments.

It is not clear whether the individuals involved in the shooting had recently been using a sidewalk, but Murphy acknowledged that they were not in a car, and presumably were not using the street itself.

While the city of Pittsburgh will remove all sidewalks until the investigation is completed, the construction company originally contracted to law the conrete will continue to take on other projects.

"There was a lot of preparation done for these sidewalks after other cities informed us that people tend to hang out on them, loitering and talking and whatnot," said Murphy. "We had taken all the precautions possible to limit any possibility of violence, but I"m skeptical that the sidewalk itself incited it. I think it was more an issue where the wrong people were walking on the same side of the street, and ran into one another."

A concrete industry spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Other exhibitors are watching the situation but will continue to approve of the use of sidewalks.

"We are closely monitoring these events and the reactions of pedestrians in our cities, but as of today we have no incidents," Greg Dunn, spokesperson for the American Mayoral Conference, the country's national mayoral association, said Thursday. Regal would not comment on the pedestrian accommodations of member mayors, but sources said mayors had allowed the installation fo sidewalks in just 96 cities, though concrete specialists and city-planning experts had recommended a significantly higher number.

Officials in Dallas, Texas reported that a couple of fistfights had broken out on its sidewalks, but it did not consider that unusual. Reno, Nevada reported no incidents on its sidewalks.

"We regret this tragic incident, but we have to remind our pedestrians that violence on sidewalks is extremely rare," said John Fithian, president of the National Association of City Planners. "We've had 1.5 billion people walk on sidewalks in each of the past three years, and there were only a handful of violent incidents. Though very unfortunate, this type of incident is very rare on sidewalks. At this time we don't know if there is any association of this particular incident in connection with the sidewalk that was being walked on. We'll let the police do their investigation."

The four-foot-square gray-slab sidewalk, made of specially formulated and machine-poured concrete blends, was installed in 1974.

Above the Rim: Wednesday, March 23, 1995*
Friday: Wednesday, April 26, 1995*
Dead Presidents: Wednesday, October 4, 1995
Next Friday: Wednesday, January 12, 2000

*not Easter weekend

that list should speak for itself.

You know, I heard "In Da Club" again recently and the rapping he does on that (whihc I always found uninspiried and boring) sounds like fucking flowetic genius compared to every single he's released since.

Dude is SERIOUSLY terrible. I cannot fathom why people like him or are interested in him beyond the grimy crime story and the abs.

http://www.hforhealth.com/editorial/Sept2004/images/six-pack-w-red-tint.jpg

For all the fact-checkers here please note that outside of big cities theaters seem to manage to open movies whenever the hell they feel like it, run them for exactly as long as they want, and whatever else. I dunno if the expansion of chain megaplex distribution has changed that all that much; they're probably way more beholden to central-corporate schedules and distribution deals and such, but still, they "serve" their "communities."

What's annoying is when there's some idea that the film inspires or generates violence (as opposed to usually, in the case of something like this, just attracting audiences that might contain folks who'd fight each other on the sidewalk, if they crossed paths -- it's like a party with open invitations, someone might fight). And what's annoying is if they really do that with, like, Beauty Shop. I mean, what kind of violence are they expecting there, someone's gonna yank someone else's weave? Wasn't that practically a white-people movie?

xpost oh WAY TO GO killjoy

fixed.

you mean like in Gary or that one town in southern Michigan where they had that race riot a summer or two ago?

probably true about Whiting, Indiana, though.

hence me telling Ms. Salon.com that I'm perfectly sure that in her area this might very well be occuring despite the fact that that IS technically illegal (early starting, I mean--late starting, well whatever, just annoying). It's not a particularly wide spread phenomenon anymore thanks to--ta da--the proliferation of giant chains kicking out all the dolla theatres etc.

But no, continue all y'all pretending I'm not saying shit or I'm saying shit that is different from the words that actually came outta my mouth, it's cool. I'm gonna go back to posting mafia dons at Jess.

what?

Dude is SERIOUSLY terrible. I cannot fathom why people like him or are interested in him beyond the grimy crime story and the abs

I love that album (get rich) but haven't liked any of his others. The newest is a snoozefest and the ones he made pre-jaw-bullet just don't sound as interesting. I like the drawl he has now.

Get Rich is nearly perfect from beginning to end (w/the exception of lame 21 questions). Some of the G-Unit stuff's okay but most of it's like D12 - boring cronyism.

His abs on the cover of Massacre are truly frightening though. There had to be some photoshop embellishment going on there.

http://www.cinemarts.com/itemimages/item_988_1.jpg

Yeah that's crazy talk.

I like The Massacre a lot but that new song blows. I have no interest in seeing this movie as I doubt 50 Cent has more facial expressions than Lurch.

Actually, it looks like more a 4 pack there. Is it possible that 50's getting a little bit of a belly?

50's actually really funny and charming in interviews. I'm curious to see how his acting is.

huh, i feel like i've seen huge newspaper ads and billboards all over the place for it.

I still don't believe that head belongs to that body. The neckline is shady!

actually that's really crap PS. it just looks like the tripled his chin and scribbled all over with a sharpie.

TOM PETTY GOT SNIPED BY FIDDY OMG HS!

WHERE'S MAGNET???

But I also loved hustle&flow and 8 Mile so my opinion probably wouldn't pass muster with most of ILx's critics.

Amber Andrews, 13, got to Brookdale Center at 10 a.m. Saturday with one thing on her mind -- seeing the rapidly rising R & B boy band B5 give a free concert. After waiting for more than three hours, Andrews and approximately 2,500 people, mostly girls between 10 and 17, finally got their wish.

But just as B5 finished its first song -- "You Got Me" -- and started the second, an enthusiastic fan jumped on the stage. Within seconds, the crowd surged forward and onto the stage, sparking what one witness called "total chaos."

Witnesses and law enforcement officials said several girls were stepped on, the band was whisked to safety, and the Brooklyn Center mall was cleared and closed for more than two hours.

Four people were taken to North Memorial Medical Center in Robbinsdale where they were treated for minor injuries and released. Five others were treated at the scene.

Brooklyn Center police officials said no one was arrested.

"I was right in front," said Andrews of Minneapolis. "Girls were running on stage, security guards were throwing them off. The girls were tearing off [band members'] clothes."

It got so bad that shopkeepers near the stage area in the mall's Marshall Field's Court pulled young children who had been separated from their parents into the safety of their stores.

"Things were falling off the stage, girls were falling off the stage, girls started fighting. People were falling down and getting hurt," said Theresa Curtis, who works at a store in the mall. "We took a few girls into our store that were missing parents."

Asked if there was enough security at the event, Shelley Klaessy, the mall's marketing director, said more than 20 people were working the concert -- 10 mall security guards and at least 11 Radio Disney personnel.

"I think we pulled together the right amount," Klaessy said.

However, Rosalind Dillard, 27, of Minneapolis, who took her daughter Surae, 10, to the show, said, "I didn't think they had enough [security]. I didn't see a whole lot."

The concert was just the third show of B5's Jingle Jam tour, sponsored by Radio Disney. According to the Atlanta-based group's website, the five brothers who make up B5 have "clean lyrics, age-appropriate content and good, old-fashioned charm." The tour is scheduled to end Dec. 31 in Boston.

"It just seemed like a girl frenzy," said Christopher Taykalo, a spokesman for Radio Disney, 1440 AM in the Twin Cities.

The concert began at 1 p.m., with an opening performance by the group Everlife. The bands started their tour last weekend in Indianapolis.

Sarah Ross, a guitarist with Everlife, said the Indiana show "was pretty tense, but nothing like this. I think the crowd was really excited, and they connected with the guys when they got on stage."

B5 hit the stage about 1:30 p.m. The fans hit the stage minutes later.

Cherrelle Green Rivers, 13, of Minneapolis said she saw band members getting stepped on onstage, having their clothes ripped and even their jewelry snatched.

"I was worried about the boys," she said.

Tamy Johnson, who works at Twins Town, a men's clothing store near the stage, said: "A lot of girls rushed the stage and grabbed a boy [in the band]. He ran to the back. Another boy, he just ran. Security escorted some of the boys out the back."

She also saw a girl fall.

"A little girl hit her head on the floor because her foot was stuck between the stage and a speaker," Johnson said.

Police from 23 jurisdictions responded, including units from Brooklyn Center, Brooklyn Park, Blaine, Fridley, Minneapolis, Golden Valley and the Hennepin County Sheriff's Office. Witnesses said some police were wearing helmets, and some had police dogs.

Police immediately started clearing the mall. At about 4:15 p.m., Brookdale stores began reopening.

Precious McKinney, 12, of Minneapolis came to the concert with a friend and her mother. She was left stranded amid the pandemonium.

She said it would be the last concert she would attend.

Unless ...

"If it's Bow Wow," she said about the rapper who toured with B5 this summer. "Then I'll be there."

Where is the outrage?

This is correct.

By Armond White

Get Rich or Die Trying

Directed by Jim Sheridan

Rapper 50 Cent (Curtis Jackson) peddles the by-now boilerplate hip-hop fairy tale—or thug tale—that he once sold drugs, survived several gunshot wounds and then became a rap star. His movie debut, Get Rich or Die Trying (named after his multiplatinum 2003 debut album), adds clarity to his shtick. It certifies that Fitty himself is a drug. His poison is sold by Interscope Records, Paramount Pictures, MTV and corporate umbrella Viacom to hook the culture on the capitalist insensitivity and greed he personifies.

This thug tale is so rote (repeated by countless rap wannabes) that the movie is an almost fascinating demonstration of the way hip-hop's dullest cliches have captivated millions as the new rise-to-riches folklore. Kids obviously want to believe Fitty's self-infatuated fantasy, since it sells them the easy route to accomplishment (easy because it justifies the zero-thought impulses of vengeance and greed, which are distinct from justice and survival). But more shamefully, adults like director Jim Sheridan and screenwriter Terence Winter enjoy Fitty's fabrication and take part in spreading it, because it fulfills their own zero-thought impulses—such as white social guilt and guilty (indefensible) pleasure.

It's instructive to note that Irish native Sheridan has made Fitty's vanity project as a sequel to his 2003 film In America. That story of a young Irish family who illegally immigrate to New York fed off the hardiest bootstrap American legends, not a few of them perpetuated by hip-hop's highly syncopated tales of underdog ambition (Sheridan also featured the willed optimism of The Lovin Spoonful's "Do You Believe in Magic?"). In America, connected to previous Sheridan films such as My Left Foot, The Boxer and In the Name of the Father—tough fairy tales of Irish folk struggling against hardships that were either existential or just plain bigotry, oppression and their own damned melancholy. These were marvelous not simply for their palpable social concerns, but for Sheridan's humane sensitivity. Unfortunately, Get Rich or Die Trying has neither. (Ireland's best filmmaker, Neil Jordan, once told me how much he enjoyed the '90s hip-hop single "Mistadobalina" by Del the Funkee Homosapien. Jordan's totally marvelous and politically complex Breakfast on Pluto makes me wish it was he who scrutinized 50 Cent.)

Sheridan has turned himself into a cultural zombie, operating on hip-hop cliché and knee-jerk liberal indulgence. This movie is haunted by that horrible line from Alan Parker's bothersome hit The Commitments: "The Irish are the niggers of Europe." That's a rank form of political identification, but it's probably infectious for anyone who thinks his people are both unfairly treated and widely exoticized. This sentimentality might explain Sheridan's bad judgment. He probably relates to Fitty playing disadvantaged ghetto rat Marcus Greer as the flip side of Djimon Hounsou's displaced, HIV-positive African painter in In America. Hounsou's deeply humane alien beauty pulled off that film's Spielbergian conceit, but Fitty is too much a creature of hip-hop decadence and recognizable, real-life criminality to win one's assent to his noxious message. Not knowing the difference makes Sheridan seem a fool, or at the very least, a well-meaning racist.

A moviemaker who can detail the conflict of retribution and rebirth that was at the heart of Daniel Day-Lewis and Emily Watson's Irish-troubles love story in The Boxer should have been able to see through Fitty's bluster and question the way hip-hop, post–Dr. Dre (Fitty's sometime producer), has corrupted the African American human-rights struggle. Not doing so leaves Sheridan as unreliable on the American drug scourge as the trashy movies Sugar Hill and New Jack City (from which Winter's script borrows).

It isn't enough to say that Sheridan lacks firsthand knowledge of Fitty's experience; artists can intuit truth. But Sheridan fails because he accepts Fitty's rap legend ("It was time to go into the family business," Marcus defends his drug-dealing) without probing it. Sheridan denies himself the thoughtful ambivalence that complicates such Ernest Dickerson ghetto films as Juice and his fascinatingly lurid diptych Bones and Never Die Alone.

Looking at this film's hyperactive style, Sheridan seems enlivened by America's gangsta movie heritage—James Cagney's urban criminal exploits as interpreted by Fitty. (Cinematographer Declan Quinn's mobile camera pitches itself into Marcus' violent melees. Home-life scenes are packed with desperate faces, a romanticizing of poverty that suggests a hip-hop, poetic-realist version of Angela's Ashes but not Fitty's actual suburban roots.) This misjudgment seems based in Sheridan's empathy for dissatisfied young men like Fitty—yet he's stuck with the mandate to validate a guy who has the most tight-assed charisma of any star in pop.

While Depression audiences thrilled to Cagney's belligerent audacity, 50 Cent's audience responds to a retrograde style of nerve. As Marcus witnesses his drug-dealing mother's demise and suffers the near-hostile tolerance of the distant relatives he lives with, he uses hip-hop to voice his frustration. "Even when you were a little boy, I could never tell what you were thinking," says his grandmother (Viola Davis). And his girlfriend, Charlene (Joy Bryant, who evokes Eva Marie Saint's sweet yet anxious look in On the Waterfront), tells him, "Men hide their emotions; you bury yours." Somehow, hip-hop fans see and hear a provocative persona. Faking privation, Fitty flashes a spoiled child's smile—a sign of arrogant defiance. He's sneaky, perhaps, but he's not untutored, just maltutored, having ingested Tupac's bluster without thinking. He has a soft voice and big toothy grin but it's his lockjawed rapping style that is his signature. His stealthy and underanimated projection recalls Harlem rapper Mase. And though Fitty's narrow-slit eyes are a furtive contrast to his over-pumped body, they can imply a distinct hint of menace.

This tells us a lot about what today's culture likes in public figures—all of it crude. But it's wrong to blame this film's insufficiency on Fitty's lack of emotiveness; that's his trademark. The real problem is that Winter (a Sopranos hack) gives Marcus no emotional context. In the midst of Bill Duke's ludicrous Vito Corleone impersonation and Marcus' sketchy friendships (including another brilliant but delimited star turn by Terence Howard), the taciturn Fitty comes across as soulless, like Madonna.

Hip-hop's greatest rappers (Chuck D, Brad Johnson of the Geto Boys, Biggie, LL Cool J and sometimes Ice Cube) offered more than Fitty's insolent and profane insinuations. Their recordings deconstructed national politics and found new, personal identities through ingenious innovations of American language and rhythm. Fitty can ride a good beat (as "In Da Club" certainly proved), but he's a slug. And this movie romanticizes his nonsense without truthfully accounting for his cultural impact. Sheridan and Winter don't show the interesting part of Fitty's career, the CD-hustling and mixed-tape programming that semi-revolutionized the culture. Instead, they emphasize the gangsta myth as more important than the music.

Sheridan and Winter let Fitty play on trite sympathy for a kid who says, "I was looking for my father all my life. I realized I was lookin' for me." Their indulgence hits bottom in Marcus' post-gunshot recording session, when his girlfriend beams, "Your voice is better. It's got more pain in it." It's clear then that Sheridan can't tell the difference between pain and pathology. Had Sheridan held on to his humanity, artistry and honesty, this film would be retitled Get Rich AND Die Trying.

best sentence ever

Haunted by a line that doesn't exist.