Fred Williamson

Vonetta McGee dies at 65; film actress during 1970s blaxploitation era

2010-07-15 00:00:00

Vonetta McGee, an actress whose big-screen heyday during the blaxploitation era of the 1970s included leading roles in "Blacula" and "Shaft in Africa," has died. She was 65. McGee died Friday at a hospital in Berkeley after experiencing cardiac arrest...

'Retribution' offers revelation

2012-09-12 20:55:00

OPENING FRIDAY �Resident Evil: Retribution �Poor Milla Jovovich, still fighting zombies. The wildly successful film franchise adaptation returns in its highly anticipated fifth installment, “Resident Evil: Retribution”, written and...

Finding work as role players

2011-08-06 00:00:00

Upon learning of Bubba Smith's death at age 66 this week, football fans may have remembered him as one of most fearsome defensive players of the 1960s, a stalwart in college at Michigan State and a key player in leading the Baltimore Colts to a victory in...

Full Tilt Boogie

1998-07-30 00:00:00

Friday July 31, 1998 ��Sarah Kelly's "Full Tilt Boogie" amiably chronicles the 10-week shoot in 1995 of "From Dusk to Dawn," that lurid, amusing and entirely forgettable vampire picture directed by Robert Rodriguez from an early script by his...

Neo-Soul

2002-06-04 00:00:00

HOLLYWOOD -- Bring in da noise! Bring in da funk! Bring in Bootsy and Superfly, too. Blaxploitation characters, themes and fashions are alive again in American pop culture. Images and sounds of the '70s urban scene are now flashing across big and...

Movie review, 'The Independent'

2002-04-25 00:00:00

Sometimes a movie should stick to a single key or a single shtick. Director/co-writer Stephen Kessler's "The Independent," which pretends to tell the story of fictitious Morty Fineman (Jerry Stiller), an insanely prolific indie schlock producer and...

Original Gangstas

1996-05-13 00:00:00

Saturday May 11, 1996 ��"Original Gangstas" rounds up the stars of those "blaxploitation" pictures of the early '70s--Fred Williamson, Jim Brown, Pam Grier, Richard Roundtree and Ron O'Neal--and drops them down in the derelict steel-mill town of Gary,...

Fred "The Hammer" Williamson, who played in the Super Bowl as a Kansas City Chiefs defensive back, upheld his heavy-duty image with a screen career that included a role in "Original Gangstas," featuring Pam Grier.

2012-10-10 02:29:00