Friday

Friday the festival started to get crunked up. All the celebrities came into town and all of the big movies were being shown at the Regal Theaters. We went over to check out "Pandora’s Box", it was good hot and sexy like "Eyes Wide Shut" minus most of the weirdness. Check out a review here. After the movie they had a little press conference and got feedback from the audience, which was all positive. We caught up with Monica Calhoun ("The Best Man" and "Player’s Club"), who was actually in three movies there ("Pandora’s Box", "Civil Brand", and "Final Breakdown"), for an interview. We also interview Michael Jai White ("Spawn"), and Crystal Wilson ("Player’s Club"). We also caught up with N’Bushe Wright ("Dead Presidents" and "Blade"); she was starring in "Civil Brand" and gave us a very good and lengthy interview. We didn’t get to check it out, but most of the big stars seemed to have come to see Eric La Salle’s movie "Crazy as Hell", which actually got picked up for distribution at the festival. At his movie screening we saw Delroy Lindo, Robert Townsend and Chris Tucker. As we were leaving we got Sean Baker ("VIP" and "Living Single"), to give us an interview. The "Actor’s Boot Camp" workshop also kicked off and by all accounts it was off the hook. Bill Duke ("Deep Cover", "Predator") was the instructor and he locked the door and started the workshop at 8:30am. I’m told the class was very intense and Mr. Duke was able to bring out the emotion in the actors making good performances outstanding.