1. Everything you need to know about BLACK SNAKE MOAN
Visual Review
Everything you need to know about BLACK SNAKE MOAN
…and how it relates to you and the world around you.
Includes info on the actors, director, with news, reviews, and photos.
visual review by david bruce visualhollywood.com

2. MOVIES CONTAIN THE ESSENCE OF BEING HUMAN
SHORT SYNOPSIS
When Rae, a wild child (and former victim of sexual abuse) wakes up after a night of partying, she finds herself in the home of Lazarus, a former blues player. Rae is attached to a 20-foot chain held by the well-intentioned Lazarus who intends to "cure" her of her nymphomania.

3. CINEMATIC ART HAS TRANSFORMING POWER
KEY ACTORS
Christina Ricci as Rae is a Golden Globe and Emmy Award-nominated American actress.
Samuel L Jackson as Lazarus is an Academy Award-nominated American actor.
Justin Timberlake an as Ronnie is a pop-singer, and actor. He came to fame as the frontman of pop boy band 'N Sync.

4. PRODUCER Stephanie Allain
OUR ARTISTS ARE OUR LIBERATORS
KEY TALENT
PRODUCER Stephanie Allain
She also served as producer of Something New (2006) , Hustle & Flow (2005), Good Boy! (2003) and Biker Boyz (2003).
THE DIRECTOR Craig Brewer also the screenwriter. His 2005 movie Hustle & Flow won the Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival.
PRODUCER John Singleton
is the youngest person ever nominated for Best Director at the 1991 Academy Awards for "Boyz N the Hood".

5. Christina Ricci ARTIST HIGHLIGHT
It was a critic for the Bergen Record who discovered Ricci at age eight in a school play . She became involved in the movie business doing several commercials until she finally got her big screen debut in Richard Benjamin's Mermaids (1990). The following year, she starred as the morbidly precocious Wednesday Addams in the hit film adaptation of The Addams Family. The role would help to establish Ricci as an actress known for playing dark, unconventional characters. Her next project was the box office hit Casper, and she has since become a top box office draw.
ACTORS ARE LIBERATORS IN MASQUERADE

6. Samuel L. Jackson ARTIST HIGHLIGHT
He is an Academy Award-nominated American actor. Jackson came to fame in the early 1990s, after a series of well-reviewed performances, and has since become a major film star and cultural icon, having appeared in a large number of high-grossing films. He is currently working on nine films that will debut between 2007 and 2008.
Jackson has noted that he chooses roles that have an "interesting character inside of a story", and that in his roles he wants to do "things [he] saw as a kid and wanted to do and now have an opportunity to do".
Actors help us: laugh, be happy, cry, get angry, and even think. Can there be any better gifts?

7. Craig Brewer DIRECTOR HIGHLIGHT
FILMMAKERS ARE REVOLUTIONARIES POSING AS ENTERTAINERS
DIRECTOR HIGHLIGHT
Craig Brewer
Brewer was mostly unknown before Hustle & Flow and his first film, The Poor & the Hungry (2000), was produced using a $20,000 inheritance. Hustle & Flow was financed by filmmaker John Singleton, who mortgaged his house to pay for the film. Brewer's subsequent project, Black Snake Moan, began filming in September Like Hustle & Flow, Black Snake Moan was filmed in Memphis, Tennessee. Production completed on Black Snake Moan in October 2005 and it will be released in A new film, Maggie Lynn, is currently in production.

8. EXTENDED SYNOPSIS
STORIES ARE TRANSFORMING
There was a time when Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson) played the blues; a time he got Bojo's Juke Joint shakin' back in the day. Now he lives them. Bitter and broken from a cheating wife and a shattered marriage, Lazarus' soul is lost in spent dreams and betrayal's contempt.
Samuel L. Jackson

9. EXTENDED SYNOPSIS
ALL KIDS ARE BORN ARTISTS. WHAT IS NATURAL IS ESSENTIAL.
Everything was one got-the-blues day after another until one day he was taking out the trash. He saw something that would change everything…
Of course with a name like “Lazarus” - ya gotta know resurrection is just around the corner.

10. STORIES EMBODY THE ESSENCE BEING HUMAN
EXTENDED SYNOPSIS
Christina Ricci
A ‘Rae’ of sunshine enters Lazarus’ bluesy life in the form of Rae (Christina Ricci). Half naked and beaten unconscious, Rae is left for dead on the side of the road when Lazarus discovers her. She is in the need of a Lazarus-type of resurrection.

11. Note the crucified position: a literal sacrificed lamb.
CINEMATIC STORY TELLING IS A PROFOUNDLY HUMANIZING ENDEAVOR
EXTENDED SYNOPSIS
Note the crucified position: a literal sacrificed lamb.
The God-fearing, middle-aged black man quickly learns that the young white woman he's nursing back to health is none other than the town tramp from the small Tennessee town where they live.
Cinematic pun: Taking out the old trash he returns with new ‘trash.’

12. EXTENDED SYNOPSIS
She had hopes on Ronnie (Timberlake), but unfortunately for her, he ships off for boot camp.
Refusing to know her in the biblical sense, Lazarus decides to cure Rae of her wicked ways – and vent some unresolved male vengeance of his own. He chains her to his radiator, justifying his unorthodox methods with quoted scripture. Preacher R.L. (Cothran) intervenes, but it is Lazarus and Rae who redeem themselves. Unleashing Rae emotionally, Lazarus unchains his heart, finding love again in Angela (Merkerson). By saving Rae, he frees himself.

13. The film’s title is derived from an old blues song
LIFE CONNECTIONS
The film’s title is derived from an old blues song
That Black Snake Moan Blind Lemon Jefferson (circa June 1926, Chicago)
I - I ain't got no mama now (x2) She told me late last night, "You don't need no mama no how“ Mmm, mmm, black snake crawlin' in my room (x2) Some pretty mama better come and get this black snake soon Ohh-oh, that must have been a bed bug, baby a chinch can't bite that hard (x2) Ask my sugar for fifty cents, she said "Lemon, ain't a child in the yard“ Mama, that's all right, mama that's all right for you (x2) Mama, that's all right, most seen all you do Mmm, mmm, what's the matter now? Mmm, mmm, honey what's the matter now? Sugar, what's the matter, don't like no black snake no how Mmm, mmm, wonder where my black snake gone? (x2) Black snake mama done run my darlin' home
‘Blind’ Lemon Jefferson (1893–1929) was an influential blues singer and guitarist from Texas. He was one of the most popular blues singers of the 1920s.
As created beings we bear the hallmark of the creative character of god. To neglect ‘hearing’ the creative artistic voice is deafness to god.

14. 80% RAVE REVIEWS FOR BLACK SNAKE MOAN
THE FREE SPEECH DISCUSSION OF THE ARTS IS THE MARK OF A FREE SOCIETY
CRITICAL OPINION
80% RAVE REVIEWS FOR BLACK SNAKE MOAN
Christina Ricci wows opposite Samuel L. Jackson and Justin Timberlake in the exhilarating "Black Snake Moan.“
-- Andrew O'Hehir Salon.com
(Christina Ricci’s) Rae is Eros unplugged, unquenchable, inexhaustible. Fascinating, scary and entirely debauched, Rae is the sort of female creature who has been seen onscreen many times before, but rarely, or perhaps never, so bluntly portrayed in a Hollywood studio film. --Todd McCarthy Variety
White trash, the town tramp, good Negroes and the healing power of the blues are among the cliches in this agitated Southern melodrama… It's a movie in which the leads shamelessly overplay the melodrama. --Kirk Honeycutt Hollywood Reporter

15. BLACK SNAKE MOAN Visual Hollywood Review
BY DAVID BRUCE A very sensuous cinematic story about the perplexing condition of the human heart and the healing power of music and passionate friendship. Christina Ricci will long be remembered for her portrayal of a woman out to find redemption and salvation through sexual behavior that is ultimately destructive. In fact, this is the beginning point of the film as she lies beaten and near death on the roadside.
Samuel L. Jackson is her redeemer. Actually, they become each other’s path to healing from past relationships that continues to cripple both of them. She was abused as a child and he suffers from the heartbreak of a cheating ex-wife. The two are connected powerfully (as the chain holding Rae symbolizes). The chain also underscores the needed quest to be free from all that binds. Here is the true meaning of the blues in its most raw form.
ART IS THE LANGUAGE OF LIBERATION

16. FINDING TRUTH IN BLACK SNAKE MOAN
Applicable to both Lazarus and Rae is this from Sri Madhava: “Freedom, then, lies only in our innate human capacity to choose between different sorts of bondage, bondage to desire or self esteem, or bondage to the light that lightens all our lives.”
Even though Lazarus and Rae have chosen far from perfect paths to find redemption, it is Thomas Troward who reminds us: “Our repeated failure to fully act as we would wish must not discourage us. It is the sincere intention that is the essential thing, and this will in time release us from the bondage of habits which at present seem almost insuperable.”
“Screenwriter-director Craig Brewer likes to make films about how music can heal people.” - Kirk Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter
This from W. Somerset Maugham who wrote 'Of Human Bondage’ in 1915, fits the Rae character exactly: “ It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded.”
VisualHollywood.com
Society is only as free as its arts. Art is the voice of human freedom.

17. TRIVIA AND NEWS
— The title of the film derives from the Blind Lemon Jefferson song recorded in — Previews for the film got widespread release before screenings of Jackson's recently released film, Snakes on a Plane. — The song featured in early trailers for the film was "When the Lights Go Out" from the album Rubber Factory by the Black Keys. — The screening at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival received major buzz.

18. WHY MOVIES ARE SO IMPORTANT
To restrict creativity is to restrict the very nature of the Creator
WHY MOVIES ARE SO IMPORTANT
"The meaning of life is the most urgent of questions" --Albert Camus (Existentialist thinker).
In “Movies and the Meaning of Life” author Kimberly Blessing points out that movies can help us reflect on five of life’s most important questions:
1) What is reality and how can I know it?
2) How can I find my true identity?
3) What the significance of my interactions with others?
4) What’s the point of my life?
5) How ought I to live my life?
The idea behind Visual Hollywood is that Movies can and must play an essential role helping us explore the meaning of our existence and our life together. No other quest is more necessary or important. Movies are powerful. Movies bring personal meaning, and can contribute to a peaceful world. Cinematic story telling can be a transforming event.
Visual Hollywood takes an existential approach to life. We celebrate with human freedom. We use movies and the arts as a means of understanding the human condition and our collective relation to the world around us.
Our basic quest is:
1. To know what it means to be human in the world.
2. The pursuit of human freedom.

19. visual review by visualhollywood.com
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