By MCN Editor editor@moviecitynews.com

Russell Simmons Creates “All Def Movie Awards”

[PR] ALL DEF DIGITAL TO HOLD FIRST-EVER ALL DEF MOVIE AWARDS HOSTED BY TONY ROCK AT TCL CHINESE 6 THEATRES ON FEB 24
(February 10, 2016) — All Def Digital, the fastest growing video programming brand in hip hop and youth culture, is hosting the first-ever All Def Movie Awards just days before the Oscars, at the World Famous TCL Chinese 6 Theatres. The live event will be held on February 24 and hosted by Tony Rock.
Awards will be recognized by members of the All Def Academy, who today announced the following films will compete for Best Picture of 2015:
BEASTS OF NO NATION
CHI-RAQ
CONCUSSION
CREED
DOPE
STRAIGHT OUTTA COMPTON
Members of the public can vote for two categories in the All Def Movie Awards (Best Picture and Most Quoted Movie) online at http://bit.ly/AllDefMA through midnight on February 23rd.
Other awards will honor Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director as well as Best Bad Muh Fucka and other often overlooked categories, such as Best Helpful White Person and Best Black Survivor in a Movie.
The All Def Movie Awards, which will be held just yards from the Academy Awards stage, will feature a Black Carpet for celebrity presenters, arrivals and VIP guests. The show will also feature a special live musical performance, and a consistent stream of video content before, during and after the show on all of ADD’s social channels, including Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat and Periscope.
“If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself,” said Tony Rock.  “With that in mind I have teamed up (I guess I didn’t do it myself) with ADD to bring you the ‘All inclusive’, All Def Movie Awards. We’ll honor the entire movie making process. Great acting, mediocre acting as well as horrible acting. Soundtracks. Wardrobes. Maybe even craft services (the best part of the set). This is the award show Hollywood has been waiting for.”
Added Russell Simmons, founder and chairman of All Def Digital, “I don’t expect a 90-year-old Academy member to see Straight Outta Compton or vote for it.  I’m  more concerned that in 2016 there continues to be a stunning lack of diversity in the studios, in the green light process, in the decisions of what films and television series get made, and what actors get chosen. This needs to be addressed institutionally. The All Def Movie Awards are not the Black Oscars, but they could be. This will be a fun, entertaining and hopefully thought provoking celebration of the uncelebrated.”
The All Def Movie Awards will be programmed as part of  All Def Comedy Live, which has become the hottest live weekly comedy showcase in stand-up today. HBO is currently developing a series around the weekly event, which routinely draws celebrities and the best new, emerging and established artists working America’s comedy stages.
Admission is by invitation only, but a select number of seats will be reserved for fans by lottery.
Tony Rock serves as host and master of ceremonies for All Def Comedy Live as well as the newly revamped legendary talent competition Apollo Live. Rock has appeared in box office hits and television series such asHitch, Think Like a Man, “Everybody Hates Chris,” and  “Real Househusbands of Hollywood,” among other shows and films. He has also been seen as a headlining act on two nationwide comedy tours: “The Standing Ovation Comedy Tour” and his own “Rock The Mic Comedy Tour”

 

All Def Digital (ADD) is the leading multi-platform media company for millennials focusing on urban youth culture through premium video programming across comedy, music, lifestyle and topical and timely social commentary. The company nurtures new, emerging and established artists and produces and incubates a broad spectrum of original content through an efficient and transformative media model leveraged across social video platforms, traditional and premium television and motion-picture development, live events, and its own record label in partnership with Universal Music Group. ADD also includes a curated, invite-only  network of talent—from social video stars to traditional writers and stand-up comics, from poets to hip hop recording artists. The company partners with global brands to create immersive and authentic social content experiences with unique talent voices. ADD is among the most subscribed-to and watched digital networks for urban comedy and music. The company is based in Los Angeles, California, with offices in New York. Its investors include Nu Horizons, Greycroft Partners, e.ventures and Advancit Capital.
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2 Responses to “Russell Simmons Creates “All Def Movie Awards””

  1. Jaye Walton says:

    This is great. However, two wrongs don’t make a right. Instead of segregating ourselves let’s be inclusive. Show them how it’s done, how we’d like to be treated.

    Include white people who have stared in our movies in a respectful way. Instead of “Most Helpful White Person”. Maybe a category like, “Diverse Performances in a Black Subject Matter Movie”, would be better (and you are right the first few times it needs to be retroactive…..don’t forget Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Robert Dinero etc.). The people you selected are all deserving. Don’t forget “A Bronx Tale” (I’m from the Boogie Down). Also, the movie Black & White with Kevin Costner was so movingly realistic it made me cry.

    In the future include everyone. Latinos, Japanese, African/Lagos, Bollywood and anyone else that makes movies which include Black actors and non-white actors. Thanks to Netflix I watch movies from all around the world, some of them are very good.

    Thank you Russell for trying to give our people who work in the Hollywood industry their props, build a bridge, bring people together and to be an example to the Old Hollywood industry.

  2. Jaye Walton says:

    Excuse me. I should have said Asian movies. The last drama series I watched just happened to be from Japan. Had Japan on the mind. I love and welcome everyone.

Quote Unquotesee all »

It shows how out of it I was in trying to be in it, acknowledging that I was out of it to myself, and then thinking, “Okay, how do I stop being out of it? Well, I get some legitimate illogical narrative ideas” — some novel, you know?

So I decided on three writers that I might be able to option their material and get some producer, or myself as producer, and then get some writer to do a screenplay on it, and maybe make a movie.

And so the three projects were “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep,” “Naked Lunch” and a collection of Bukowski. Which, in 1975, forget it — I mean, that was nuts. Hollywood would not touch any of that, but I was looking for something commercial, and I thought that all of these things were coming.

There would be no Blade Runner if there was no Ray Bradbury. I couldn’t find Philip K. Dick. His agent didn’t even know where he was. And so I gave up.

I was walking down the street and I ran into Bradbury — he directed a play that I was going to do as an actor, so we know each other, but he yelled “hi” — and I’d forgot who he was.

So at my girlfriend Barbara Hershey’s urging — I was with her at that moment — she said, “Talk to him! That guy really wants to talk to you,” and I said “No, fuck him,” and keep walking.

But then I did, and then I realized who it was, and I thought, “Wait, he’s in that realm, maybe he knows Philip K. Dick.” I said, “You know a guy named—” “Yeah, sure — you want his phone number?”

My friend paid my rent for a year while I wrote, because it turned out we couldn’t get a writer. My friends kept on me about, well, if you can’t get a writer, then you write.”
~ Hampton Fancher

“That was the most disappointing thing to me in how this thing was played. Is that I’m on the phone with you now, after all that’s been said, and the fundamental distinction between what James is dealing with in these other cases is not actually brought to the fore. The fundamental difference is that James Franco didn’t seek to use his position to have sex with anyone. There’s not a case of that. He wasn’t using his position or status to try to solicit a sexual favor from anyone. If he had — if that were what the accusation involved — the show would not have gone on. We would have folded up shop and we would have not completed the show. Because then it would have been the same as Harvey Weinstein, or Les Moonves, or any of these cases that are fundamental to this new paradigm. Did you not notice that? Why did you not notice that? Is that not something notable to say, journalistically? Because nobody could find the voice to say it. I’m not just being rhetorical. Why is it that you and the other critics, none of you could find the voice to say, “You know, it’s not this, it’s that”? Because — let me go on and speak further to this. If you go back to the L.A. Times piece, that’s what it lacked. That’s what they were not able to deliver. The one example in the five that involved an issue of a sexual act was between James and a woman he was dating, who he was not working with. There was no professional dynamic in any capacity.

~ David Simon