Five Questions

An un-Common man: Oscar winner forges a new musical path; reveals his favorite rappers

It's been quite a year for Common.

After spending more than two decades making music, the hip hop artist won the 2015 Academy Award for Best Original Song for "Glory" from the film Selma. During the telecast, he performed a moving rendition of it with John Legend, who also received an Oscar for the song. Common also co-starred in the film.

The multi-talented star visited Houston for the final Tanqueray Trunk Show on Saturday — ending the event's six-city tour — where he spoke about entrepreneurship and performed in front of a frenzied local crowd at The Astorian.

Prior to his appearance at the event, CultureMap stopped in for an interview with the Chicago-born rap sensation.

CultureMap: How has your life changed since winning an Oscar?

Common: Really, a lot more people know who I am. Some people who never had an idea of who Common was now feel connected to me as an artist, as an actor or as a musician — really as a musician. I spoke at my lawyer's daughter's school, for fifth grade, to a lot of kids who never knew who Common was, but now they do. I spoke in their class, they were talking about African American history, and when I came in, they already knew who I was. It's just awareness more than anything, that has changed.

As far as me, I'm looking to do more creative things and I feel like I want to keep growing.

CM: Do you have plans to focus more on your acting career?

C: I plan to focus on both aspects of art, because I love acting and I love creating music. I love just coming up with ideas, but acting and music are my two favorite things to do artistically in life. So, I wouldn't want to neglect either one. There's times that I can be more enthused to do one or the other, and that's just natural for me, and maybe natural for a lot of artists. I am doing some new film projects, but I'm also like "We need some new beats, let's go." I'm excited about both.

CM: What kind of path is your music taking you on right now?

C: See, I want my music to be part of something bigger than just the music aspect, meaning I would like for my music to have a visual to it. Not video, but something like a play or a short film. Maybe the music itself is based around a certain theme for me to keep it interesting. When I do albums, I gotta be passionate about it, I gotta be interested, because I love hip hop culture, I love writing. I find things that make me interested to create and that's one of the things I'm looking for my music to be, to have another story to it that has something to do with film or theater.

CM: Are there any projects outside of film and music that you're working on?

C: Well, I'm here for this Tanqueray Trunk Show and I'm having a great time being able to be here and tour and talk about entrepreneurship, talk about people really pursuing their goals, because one of my biggest things is to inspire and encourage. So this is a project that I've been supporting and have been a part of.

I have my Common Ground Foundation, which is something I'm really passionate about because seeing young people have a chance is important to me. I'm also producing a television show that I'll be starring in, but that won't happen until the fall. Those are some of the immediate projects and visions and things that I'm doing.

CM: Are there any up-and-coming artists you're really excited about right now?

C: I wouldn't call them up-and-coming but some artists that I like that are doing great work are Kendrick Lamar, and I love what Kanye (West) does. I like (Chicago hip hop artists) Lil Herb and Lil Bibby. Those are most of the artists that I really like right now.

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Movie Review

Meta-comedy remake Anaconda coils itself into an unfunny mess

Photo by Matt Grace

Jack Black and Paul Rudd in Anaconda.

In Hollywood’s never-ending quest to take advantage of existing intellectual property, seemingly no older movie is off limits, even if the original was not well-regarded. That’s certainly the case with 1997’s Anaconda, which is best known for being a lesser entry on the filmography of Ice Cube and Jennifer Lopez, as well as some horrendous accent work by Jon Voight.

The idea behind the new meta-sequel Anaconda is arguably a good one. Four friends — Doug (Jack Black), Griff (Paul Rudd), Claire (Thandiwe Newton), and Kenny (Steve Zahn) — who made homemade movies when they were teenagers decide to remake Anaconda on a shoestring budget. Egged on by Griff, an actor who can’t catch a break, the four of them pull together enough money to fly down to Brazil, hire a boat, and film a script written by Doug.

Naturally, almost nothing goes as planned in the Amazon, including losing their trained snake and running headlong into a criminal enterprise. Soon enough, everything else takes second place to the presence of a giant anaconda that is stalking them and anyone else who crosses its path.

Written and directed by Tom Gormican, with help from co-writer Kevin Etten, the film is designed to be an outrageous comedy peppered with laugh-out-loud moments that cover up the fact that there’s really no story. That would be all well and good … if anything the film had to offer was truly funny. Only a few scenes elicit any honest laughter, and so instead the audience is fed half-baked jokes, a story with no focus, and actors who ham it up to get any kind of reaction.

The biggest problem is that the meta-ness of the film goes too far. None of the core four characters possess any interesting traits, and their blandness is transferred over to the actors playing them. And so even as they face some harrowing situations or ones that could be funny, it’s difficult to care about anything they do since the filmmakers never make the basic effort of making the audience care about them.

It’s weird to say in a movie called Anaconda, but it becomes much too focused on the snake in the second half of the film. If the goal is to be a straight-up comedy, then everything up to and including the snake attacks should be serving that objective. But most of the time the attacks are either random or moments when the characters are already scared, and so any humor that could be mined all but disappears.

Black and Rudd are comedy all-stars who can typically be counted on to elevate even subpar material. That’s not the case here, as each only scores on a few occasions, with Black’s physicality being the funniest thing in the movie. Newton is not a good fit with this type of movie, and she isn’t done any favors by some seriously bad wigs. Zahn used to be the go-to guy for funny sidekicks, but he brings little to the table in this role.

Any attempt at rebooting/remaking an old piece of IP should make a concerted effort to differentiate itself from the original, and in that way, the new Anaconda succeeds. Unfortunately, that’s its only success, as the filmmakers can never find the right balance to turn it into the bawdy comedy they seemed to want.

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Anaconda is now playing in theaters.

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