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Filmmaker and director Spike Lee has hit back at Chance the Rapper’s criticism of his new movie Chi-Raq, claiming that the rap star’s father works for the Mayor of Chicago and that his perspective is therefore skewed.

Last week, Chicago native Chance (real name Chancelor Bennett) made critical comments about Lee’s newly released film, calling it “exploitative and problematic” in an interview with The 405. However, in an interview on Thursday (December 10th) with MSNBC, the director said that his father, Ken Bennett was mayor Rahm Emanuel’s deputy chief of staff.

Spike Lee hit back at Chance The Rapper this week

Continue reading: Spike Lee Hits Back At Chance The Rapper's 'Chi-Raq' Criticism

Director Spike Lee has once again criticised Hollywood for its lack of diversity. The director made the comments during a 15-minute speech at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' seventh annual Governors Awards on Saturday night, where he received an honorary Oscar.

Spike Lee has once again criticised Hollywood.

"Everybody in here probably voted for Obama but when I go to offices, I see no black folks except for the brother man at the security who checks my name off the list as I go into the studio," Lee said.

Continue reading: Spike Lee Uses Governors Awards Speech To Criticise Hollywood

Pharrell Williams is to team up with director Spike Lee for the streaming version of his upcoming concert at the Apollo Theater on the 3rd June. The concert will be part of American Express Unstaged, a collaboration between YouTube and Vevo, the 14th instalment of a series in which performers and directors team up for a unique staged performance.

Pharrell Williams Is Teaming Up With Spike Lee For A Very Special Concert Experience.

"Pharrell and I have been friends for years," Mr. Lee said in an interview, "and we've talked about working together, and now it's coming to fruition and I'm happy about that - we both are." Of the very special New York venue, Lee added "I think it was a great choice [...] It's one of the great places for music in the world, when you think of all the people who've come across the stage."

Continue reading: Pharrell To Team Up With Spike Lee For Apollo Theater Debut

She's Gotta Have It, easily one of Spike Lee's best movies, is to be resurrected and adapted for the small screen after Showtime commissioned a pilot. Lee is on board as the show's director and writer, with the plan to overall the movie's plot, cast and characters for a contemporary audience.

Spike Lee Is On-Board For 'She's Gotta Have It'

Set in Brooklyn, the movie explores the story of a sexually liberated black female (Tracy Camilla Johns) and the three suitors who hope to win her over. As with many of Lee's movies, it contains themes concerning race, gender, gentrification and sexuality. It took Lee just 12 days to shoot, on a budget of $175,000.

Continue reading: One Of Spike Lee's Best Joints, 'She's Gotta Have It', To Get TV Series

Spike Lee wants you to listen to his views on Brooklyn, which he claims has been gentrified and taken over by hipsters and dog walkers. During his speech at the Pratt Institute, the millionaire film director laid into an audience member for ruining his rundown neighbourhood.

Spike Lee Doesn't Much Care for Brooklyn, Anymore

When the audience member suggested that there are positives to gentrification, Lee yelled, "Let me just kill you right now.Have you seen Fort Greene Park in the morning? It's like the m-----f-----g Westminster dog show."

Continue reading: Spike Lee Explodes At Brooklyn Hipsters, And Their Dogs

The big news from the weekend's box-office was The Hunger Games: Catching Fire reasserting its superiority with an impressive second week total of $74.5 million. That's a huge increase in the $58 million that the original film made in its second week. The Jennifer Lawrence-starring sequel as now taken an incredible $573 million worldwide and looks on-course to become the biggest grossing movie of the year

Josh Brolin in Oldboy

Though Catching Fire was the big winner at the box-office, it was Spike Lee's completely unnecessary remake of Chan-wood Park's 2003 classic Oldboy that made the headlines. The film - which cost $30 million to make - bombed with just $850,000 in takings from 583 theaters. The film has considerable draws in the form of Samuel L. Jackson and Josh Brolin, though the publicity tour was almost non-existent and reviews were terrible.

Continue reading: Hunger Games Rules, But 'Oldboy' Remake Could Be Biggest Flop Of 2013

American director Spike Lee has just seen the release of his latest project, 'Oldboy', a remake of the highly successful South Korean 2003 movie. The original is considered a cult classic, which was praised for its unpredictable plot and unnerving violence, so a remake with a westernised view could catch a cinemagoers attention.

Brolin as 'Joe Doucett' locked in a hotel room

The new version stars Josh Brolin as 'Joe Doucett', an advertising executive who has a messy personal life, the heavy drinker stumbles out of a bar one night and learns from a disgruntled ex-wife that he missed his daughter's 3rd birthday before passing out next to a shadowed figure.

Continue reading: 'Oldboy': A Remake Spike Lee Should Have Left Alone

Josh Brolin, Samuel L. Jackson and director Spike Lee team up for the upcoming psychological thriller Oldboy, which stars Brolin as an advertising executive, who gets kidnapped, imprisoned and has his life taken away from him. The film is a heavy exploration into human terror and coping, based on a 2003 Korean movie of the same name. When Joe Doucett finds himself in solitary confinement with little more than a bed at his disposal, this turns out to be only the beginning of his troubles. Joe is accused of the brutal murder of his ex-wife, with whom he has a daughter.

Brolin stars opposite Jackson in this intense thriller.

Now, twenty years later, he finds himself free, with a wad of cash and no idea who granted him his freedom or why. Once free, Joe has little to do outside of working out, searching for his daughter and trying to unravel the mystery of his captor or his subsequent release. But things are just about to get a whole lot more complicated and dangerous.

Continue reading: Josh Brolin Takes On Another Dark And Tortured Character In 'Oldboy' [Video + Pictures]

US film director Spike Lee has achieved his $1.25 million goal for his latest movie, on the crowd-funding website Kickstarter.

Tentatively titledThe Newest Hottest Spike Lee Joint, the movie is about "human beings who are addicted to blood. Funny, sexy and bloody.

Around 28 backers each paid $10,000 to sit next to Lee courtside at a New York Knicks basketball game. 

Continue reading: Spike Lee's 'Blood Addiction' Movie Raises $1.25 Million On Kickstarter

Spike Lee has a habit of doing things differently when it comes to making his movies, and when he announced his latest picture you could bet that it wasn't just going to be your average movie announcement. Lee is the latest movie-maker to use fan-funding site Kickstarter to get his next project on the road, asking generous fans for donations to get the follow-up to Red Hook Summer off the ground.

Lee is the latest filmmaker to resort to Kickstarter to fund his next movie

Lee set up his Kickstarter page earlier today (July 22), giving fans a one month period (until August 21) to empty their pockets and give generously so that the multi-millionaire can find the money to turn his next film into reality. The title for the film, for now only known as 'The Newest Hottest Spike Lee Joint,' hasn't been revealed, nor has any potential storyline, however at the beginning of his pledge Lee does promise that the film will be a must-see for "Human beings who are addicted to blood. Funny, sexy, and bloody (and it's not 'Blacula')."

Continue reading: Spike Lee Plans To Use Kickstarter To Fund Next Film

This week's big world premiere was in London for The World's End, where Simon Pegg and Nick Frost walked a blue carpet alongside costars Eddie Marsan, Paddy Considine and Rosamund Pike. The apocalyptic pub crawl comedy opens next week in Britain. The cast and crew talk to the press about it. As well as Simon Pegg And Nick Frost Discussing The Talents Of Edgar Wright.

Meanwhile in New York, stars turned out for a gala screening of the Sundance winner Fruitvale Station. Lead actor Michael B Jordan was joined on the red carpet by Cuba Gooding Jr, DJ Moss and his wife DJ Kiss, and Tony-winning actress Patina Miller. The true drama costars Octavia Spencer and opens in America this weekend. Watch the Cuba Goodling Jr video or the Brian d'Arcy James and DJ Mos video here.

Continue reading: A Week In Movies: The World's End Premieres, Mendes Returns To Bond, Oldboy Teases

Spike Lee’s version of the South Korean classic Oldboy, which was released in 2003, finally has a poster. This American remake – starring Josh Brolin, Elizabeth Olsen and Sharlto Copley – finally has a poster to whet the appetite of revenge-loving film goers.

The plot of Oldboy, which anyone who wants to see the film will already know, centres around Oh Dae-su, who is kidnapped and imprisoned on his daughters birthday. After years of confinement, he sets about finding his revenge, only to find out he’s still embroiled in a web of intrigue and lies.

Continue reading: Oldboy American Remake Starring Josh Brolin – First Poster Revealed

Josh Brolin and Diane Lane's divorce looks imminent after the pair split following eight years of marriage. The revered actors called it quits, with representatives telling Us Weekly, "Diane Lane and Josh Brolin have decided to end their marriage." The high profile couple married in 2004 though took a break shortly afterwards when Brolin was arrested for spousal battery, according to TMZ.com.

"It was a mutual decision. It is very amicable. It's not ugly, it's just over," a source told the Los Angeles Times of the breakdown of the marriage. The previously inseparable Brolin and Lane have kept up appearances on the red-carpet in recent years, constantly photographed together at premieres in Los Angeles and New York. It will be the second divorce for both, with Brolin, 45, previously married to the actress Alice Adair and Lane, 48, divorcing actor Christopher Lambert in 1994. 

News of the split comes as both stars continue to enjoy high profile roles in Hollywood. Oscar nominated Lane will next appear in the Superman movie Man of Steel, with Henry Cavill, before starring in crime-drama Every Single Thing with Dakota Fanning and Elizabeth Banks. Brolin, also an Oscar nominee, will next appear in Jason Reitman's Labor Day, starring multi-Academy Award winner Kate Winslet and Tobey Maguire. He's also signed on for Spike Lee's Oldboy and Sean Penn's Crazy For The Storm.

Continue reading: Josh Brolin And Diane Lane Divorce Imminent, But Movie Careers Look Bright

Pffft… Django Unchained director Quentin Tarantino clearly needs beef lessons. He has refused to engage in his public spat with Spike Lee any further.

Which, you know, shows a great deal of decorum and everything, but it’s a bit of a let-down for those of us sat at our laptops, munching on popcorn, still too lazy to get off our backsides after the festival break and desperate to live vicariously through other people’s drama, now, isn’t it?

Just to quickly update you on the content of this public war of words, Spike Lee caught wind of the fact that Django Unchained, which is set in the 1800s, uses the word n*gger and although he’s not seen the movie, he was quick to slate Tarantino and accuse him of racism. On Twitter, Lee wrote “American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them.” Tarantino has said today, though, that he would not “waste time” responding any further to the discussion, having already stated that the dialogue used was appropriate to the time that the movie is set. That beef is nowhere near cooked and it’s going in the bin, it seems.

Continue reading: Beef Lessons Required – Quentin Tarantino Won’t Waste Time On Spike Lee Spat

The movie director Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) has weighed into the Spike Lee vs Quentin Tarantino Django Unchained debate. Spike Lee called out Tarantino for using the word “n*gger” in the movie. Tarantino’s defence was that he was merely replicating the language that would have been used in the 1950s. Oh and Spike Lee hasn’t even watched the movie, but still felt the need to accuse Tarantino of being disrespectful.

Speaking at the Capri Hollywood Film Festival, Fuqua told the indiewire blog that Tarantino doesn’t have “a racist bone in his body” and called out Spike for dissing Quentin in public. “That's just not the way you do things," he said. "If you disagree with the way a colleague did something, call him up, invite him out for a coffee, talk about it. But don't do it publicly.” He also added that he felt the language used in the film was probably appropriate, in terms of historical accuracy: “[We're] supposed to find some truth in films, and if you set a film in the 1850s, you're going to hear the word 'n*gger,' because that's the way they spoke then, and you're going to discuss slavery because that was part of the reality. I want my kids to hear those kinds of words in the right context, so that they'll know that language is not OK."

So, to summarise Fuqua has publicly called out Spike Lee for publicly calling out Quentin Tarantino and neither one of them has actually watched Django Unchained.

Quentin Tarantino certainly doesn’t do things halfway. Weeks after its premiere, Tarantino’s Django Unchained is still making headlines.

Some praise it for its wit and humour in treating a difficult subject. Others (a lot of others) with director Spike Lee at the helm criticize the film for insulting the memory of black slaves by reducing the topic of slavery to something as trivial as a spaghetti western. In the end, those criticisms only meant that more people flocked to the theatres to see the controversial flick. The occasional racial slur featured in the film only added fuel to the fire, though, as Patch.com’s Brett Martin put it – it’s a a Quentin Tarantino movie – you have to expect it.

The unfortunate timing of Django’s release also meant that it got mixed in the media frenzy following the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. For a while, Django Unchained became one of the titles that critics of media violence cited over and over again. One thing seems certain though – with gore and blood galore, sharp dialogue and a star-studded cast, the film definitely isn’t forgettable, and all of the additional buzz around the violence it looks like Tarantino’s most recent success will keep generating hype and sales well into the new year.

Quentin Tarantino's new film, Django Unchained - a fictional exploration into slavery with a dark, comedic twist - came out on Christmas day. One person who won't have braved the winter cold to check it out is Spike Lee, who considers it "disrespectful".

Without saying much about the film, Lee managed to say everything he needed to, talking to Vibe.com. "I cant speak on it 'cause I'm not gonna see it," he explained. "All I'm going to say is that it's disrespectful to my ancestors. That's just me...I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody else." He then went onto Twitter to further explain his problems with the movie, saying, "American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western. It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them." The film's lead star, Jamie Foxx, spoke about Spike Lee and his penchant for saying it how it is. "You know Spike, he'll let you have it whether it's good, bad or ugly. And he said, 'I'm not going to say anything bad about this film. It looks like y'all are getting it,'" he confirmed.

One of the main criticisms of the film, has been the use of the 'N-Word,' which is prolific to say the least. This has been defended by many as a true depiction of the political and social climate of the time. Comic Sarah Silverstone stated her position to TMZ, saying, "Doesn't it take place like during slavery? Wouldn't it be odd if they didn't have that horrific word in it?" The comic added that Lee has "got a lot of mishegas with a lot of art. I think you can't really tell art what to do."

So it's Christmas Day, and you've eaten your own body weight in turkey. What better way to end the best day of the year than catching Quentin Tarantino's gruesome flick? Django Unchained's sort-of-Western is playing in theaters right this minute, so what the hell are you waiting for?

The film - which briefly held a perfect 100% score on Rotten Tomatoes - has received unanimously positive reviews. The Los Angeles Times said, "In "Django," Tarantino is a man unchained, creating his most articulate, intriguing, provoking, appalling, hilarious, exhilarating, scathing and downright entertaining film yet." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone echoed the praise, saying, "Tarantino lives to cross the line. Is Django Unchained too much? .It wouldn't be Tarantino otherwise."

However, not everyone is won over by the film, including filmmaker Spike Lee, who hasn't seen it, and will not see it anytime soon. Speaking to Vibe Magazine, Lee said, "I can't speak on it 'cause I'm not gonna see it. I'm going to say is that it's disrespectful to my ancestors. That's just me... I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody else." Much of the directors anger is directed squarely at the film's subject matter - slavery. "American Slavery Was Not A Sergio Leone Spaghetti Western.It Was A Holocaust. My Ancestors Are Slaves. Stolen From Africa. I Will Honor Them," he later added on Twitter. When one fan suggested the film was not to be taken too seriously, Lee responded, "Wrong.Birth Of A Nation Got Black Folks Lynced [sic]. Media Is Powerful. DON'T SLEEP. WAKE UP YO."

Continue reading: Christmas Day At The Movies: Why You Should See Django Unchained Today!

He’s been an outspoken critic of Quentin Tarantino in the past, and Spike Lee has one again spoken out over the director and his latest film Django Unchained, telling Vibe that he won’t be watching the film this Christmas, and suggesting that it lacks respect for black Americans.

The veteran director first found himself offended by Tarantino’s work back in 1997, finding Jackie Brown’s liberal use of the word n*gger to be distasteful. Fifteen years on and Lee doesn’t appear to think that Tarantino’s really changed. Asked about Django Unchained – which sees a black slave freed by a bounty hunter in exchange for helping him track down an enemy – Lee commented "I cant speak on it 'cause I'm not gonna see it. All I'm going to say is that it's disrespectful to my ancestors. That's just me...I'm not speaking on behalf of anybody else."

Lee wasn’t done there either; he took to Twitter and started a dialogue with his followers, writing: “American Slavery was not a Sergio Leone spaghetti western. It was a holocaust. My ancestors are slaves. Stolen from Africa. I will honor them.” Tarantino has always defended his films over issues that some feel have been insensitively handled, with his rebuttals ranging from reiterating the clear line between fact and fiction he seeks to maintain, or else insisting that his film’s scripts have always done their best to represent reality with candor and honesty.