Before BLINDSPOTTING TV Series (2021) premiering at 2021 Tribeca Film Fest, there was … BLINDSPOTTING (2018), the movie.
While on probation, a man begins to re-evaluate his relationship with his volatile best friend.
Director: Carlos López Estrada
Writers: Rafael Casal, Daveed Diggs
Stars: Daveed Diggs, Rafael Casal, Janina Gavankar, Jasmine Cephas Jones.
SLATE Review (2018)
Caveat Lector: This is not a review. It’s a preview!
BLINDSPOTTING (2018) was written and produced and starring Daveed Diggs and Rafael Casal. It’s a comedy drama, that means you could be laughing one moment and cringing the next. I luv these kind of genre with their overlaps of the dimensions of the human condition. This one deals with race and racism. Carlos López Estrada directs while Janina Gavankar, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Ethan Embry, Tisha Campbell-Martin, Utkarsh Ambudkar, and Wayne Knight also star. The story line: A parolee (Black)with three days left on his sentence witnesses a police shooting that threatens to ruin a lifelong friendship.
Casal and Diggs, childhood friends in real-life, wrote the screenplay in the mid-2000s, initially about the Oakland, CA, their home town that they felt was serially misrepresented in film. Sort of like the Bronx. BLINDSPOTTING (2018) premiered January 18, 2018 at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. It got recognition at the 34th Independent Spirit Awards where Diggs was nominated for Best Male Lead and López Estrada for a Directors Guild of America Award nomination for Outstanding Directing – First-Time Feature Film. This WORD preview was written using Wikipedia and other sources.
Premiering at TFF 2021. With Helen Hunt, Jasmine Cephas Jones, Atticus Woodward, Margo Hall. BLINDSPOTTING (2021) picks up six months after the film and centers on Ashley, in pursuit of middle-class life in Oakland. Uh oh, Miles, her significant other of 12 years as well as father of their son, is suddenly incarcerated, throwing her into perplexing, chaotic and comedic existential crisis: She must move in with Miles’ mother and half-sister.
BS (2021) has strong cast of Black and Latinx series regulars, including Emmy Award Winner Jasmine Cephas Jones (#freerayshawn, Hamilton), Benjamin Earl Turner (recording artist), Atticus Woodward (“Shameless”), Jaylen Barron (“Free Reign”), Candace Nicholas-Lippman (“Good Trouble”) and Academy Award-winning actress Helen Hunt (“Mad About You,” Twister). Rafael Casal (Bad Education, “The Good Lord Bird”) reprises his role as “Miles.”
Series co-created by the film’s co-writers, Rafael Casal and Daveed Diggs (Snowpiercer, The Good Lord Bird, Soul), also as executive producers with Jess Wu Calder (One Night in Miami, Little Monsters, Blindspotting) and Keith Calder (One Night in Miami, Little Monsters, Blindspotting), their co-producers on the film. The series fosters inclusiveness behind the camera too as the writer’s room and directors are predominantly people of color, female and from The Bay, allowing for authenticity in the way the characters and stories are represented. So says Starz.
Click here for an Tribeca Film Fest BLINDSPOTTING (2021) link.
Gregg W. Morris can be reached at gregghc@comcas.net, profgreggwmorris@gmail.com