The Smithian

...Janet MacLachlan and...James McEachin worked on [the Rockford Files] in parts that were about character, not race...Rita Moreno elevated the heroic call girl stereotype in her recurring role...Maybe one reason is that the decision makers on “Rockford” reflected life, as well. Behind the camera, actor-director Ivan Dixon directed a chunk of episodes, and African American actor-producer Chas. Floyd Johnson was a longtime part of the production team. It all seemed no big deal in the Rockford/Garner world, one that was written, it can be noted, not only by David Chase, who obviously learned lessons he would later bring to “The Sopranos,” but also by Juanita Bartlett, who wrote many of the show’s best episodes and was story consultant.

...the staggering diversity gap that still exists in the entertainment industry.

“We honor Spike Lee for his...unwavering courage in using film to challenge conventional thinking, and for the passion for justice he feels in his soul...”

Film execs...credit Dr. Dolby with developing sophisticated technologies that enabled directors...to endow sound with the same emotional intensity as pictures.

...then, along came Spike Lee, whose debut feature launched not only a renaissance in black filmmaking but also begat the indie film scene...

Bong Joon-ho‘s Snowpiercer opened in the director’s native South Korea last week...It has broken box-office records at home and is...well-reviewed across the board. But...the film has yet to announce a U.S. opening date. Now we know what the holdup is...Harvey Weinstein reportedly has plans to chop up Snowpiercer, reducing its running time by about 20 minutes...It’s because in his opinion...Midwesterners..."[his] aim is to make sure the film ‘will be understood by audiences in Iowa… and Oklahoma’”...The cuts will remove much of the character work to make the film play more like a traditional action movie...voiceovers will be added to the beginning and end of the film.

Director Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan [of] Fruitvale Station, are in talks to direct/star in Creed...a spin-off from...Rocky. It will follow the grandson of Apollo Creed, famously played in the Rocky films by Carl Weathers. Sylvester Stallone would return to reprise his role, which would have him mentoring the aspiring boxer.

Wadjda director Haifaa al Mansour talks...about being the first Saudi Arabian woman to make a feature film. Mansour directed parts of the film from a van in order to adhere to restrictions on men and women working together.

Robert Rodriguez has teamed with Univision to launch the El Rey Network, which will feature action and genre programming aimed at the Latino audience.

...mix of bad luck, athletics, [a] Japanese director, and...a 16th century bad boy Italian painter led him to a career as one of Hollywood’s premiere action film directors.

...director Stephen Fung bends the past every which way as he ventures into the Victorian-futurist genre known as steampunk.

...the reimagining of Heathcliff, that “dark-skinned” “gipsy”...as a black man...Brontë’s Heathcliff was repeatedly evoked as “dark,” and culled from the slums of Liverpool (a port fraught with immigrants). But in movies and theater, he has always manifested as white, from Laurence Olivier to Tom Hardy. Brontë may not have intended Heathcliff to have been a full-on African—which in the 1700s meant being a slave—but Arnold’s coup turns the old story around, from a wicked love-lost tragedy into a crisis of a society suffering the guilt and ghosts of slavery.

In recreating Steel Magnolias with an all-black cast, director Kenny Leon...underestimated the one thing that made a character like Shelby work...