The results of the 2017 board of directors elections for the Cinema Audio Society have been announced. The board represents a cross-section of experienced production and postproduction sound professionals. The CAS officers are: re-elected incumbent president Mark Ulano, CAS, and re-elected incumbent treasurer Peter Damski, CAS. The terms for VP Phillip W. Palmer, CAS, and secretary David J. Bondelevitch, CAS, were not up for election.
The incumbent CAS board of directors (Production) that were re-elected are: Peter Devlin, CAS, Edward J. Greene, CAS, Lee Orloff, CAS, Lisa Pinero, CAS, and Jeffrey Wexler, CAS. Incumbent board members (Postproduction) who were reelected are Bob Bronow, CAS, Karol Urban, CAS, and Steve Venezia, CAS, and they will be joined by newly elected board member Mathew Waters, CAS, who will be taking the seat of outgoing board member Deb Adair, CAS, who did not run for reelection. Continuing to serve as their terms were not up for reelection are: for Production Willie Burton, CAS, and Glen Trew, CAS, and for Postproduction Tom Fleischman, CAS, Tomlinson Holman, CAS, Sherry Klein, CAS, and Mary Jo Lang, CAS.
The new Board was installed at the 53rd Annual CAS Awards that were held earlier this year.
Review: Malcolm Washington Makes His Feature Directing Debut With “The Piano Lesson”
An heirloom piano takes on immense significance for one family in 1936 Pittsburgh in August Wilson's "The Piano Lesson." Generational ties also permeate the film adaptation, in which Malcolm Washington follows in his father Denzel Washington's footsteps in helping to bring the entirety of The Pittsburgh Cycle — a series of 10 plays — to the screen.
Malcolm Washington did not start from scratch in his accomplished feature filmmaking debut. He enlisted much of the cast from the recent Broadway revival with Samuel L. Jackson (Doaker Charles), his brother, John David Washington (Boy Willie), Ray Fisher (Lymon) and Michael Potts (Whining Boy). Berniece, played by Danielle Brooks in the play, is now beautifully portrayed by Danielle Deadwyler. With such rich material and a cast for whom it's second nature, it would be hard, one imagines, to go wrong. Jackson's own history with the play goes back to its original run in 1987 when he was Boy Willie.
It's not the simplest thing to make a play feel cinematic, but Malcolm Washington was up to the task. His film opens up the world of the Charles family beyond the living room. In fact, this adaptation, which Washington co-wrote with "Mudbound" screenwriter Virgil Williams, goes beyond Wilson's text and shows us the past and the origins of the intricately engraved piano that's central to all the fuss. It even opens on a big, action-filled set piece in 1911, during which the piano is stolen from a white family's home. Another fleshes out Doaker's monologue in which he explains to the uninitiated, Fisher's Lymon, and the audience, the tortured history of the thing. While it might have been nice to keep the camera on Jackson, such a great, grounding presence throughout, the good news is that he really makes... Read More