Editor James Norris has joined London post company Nomad, also becoming a partner at the shop.
A self-taught, natural editor, Norris started out running for the likes of Working Title, Partizan and Tomboy Films. He then moved to the Whitehouse as an assistant where he refined his craft and rose through the ranks to become an editor.
Over the last 15 years he’s worked across commercials, music videos, features and television. He edited IKEA’s “Fly Robot Fly” campaign, Asda’s “Get Possessed,” and has recently cut a new piece of work for Nike. Working within television and film, he also cut an episode of the BAFTA-nominated drama Our World War and feature film We Are Monster.
Norris said, “I was attracted to Nomad for their vision for the future and their dedication to the craft of editing. They have a wonderful history but are also so forward thinking and want to create new, exciting things. The New York and LA offices have seen incredible success over the last few years and now there’s Tokyo and London too.”
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