The film was written by Susan McMartin and directed by Bruce Beresford (Driving Miss Daisy) is set in Los Angeles and spans the 1970s to the late '80s. The titular character — Henry Joseph Church — is played by Eddie Murphy in what has been billed as his triumphal dramatic turn. Mr. Church, as he is called, is a domestic cook, which makes the film fair game. (In fact, the film’s original title, when it was written by McMartin 10 years ago, was Cook.)
It’s a rhythm well-known to generations of Black cooks for whom institutional racism had made most other modes of employ unattainable.

At the behest of the late lover, for whom Mr. Church was also a cook, Mr. Church shows up at the Brody’s modest abode, turns the radio to jazz, and dons an apron for this nice white family. He makes things like fluffy pancakes with fruit salad, grilled pork chops, and grits for breakfast. When Charlie returns from school, there are tall icebox cakes awaiting her and Mr. Church at the counter, all smiles, just so happy that little Charlie enjoys his work. He is resolutely deferential, referring to Ms. Brody as "ma’am" and sagaciously parries her early attempts to get him to leave. Charlie, a spritely little girl, took a nasty dislike to Mr. Church early on, but his excellence at making French toast is rivaled only by his great forbearance of the young girl. And eventually his steadfastness, dogged loyalty, and inexhaustible selflessness converts Charlie.

Marie Brody dies. Mr. Church is sad. "Even his weeping is graceful," notes Charlotte. Mr. Church pays for Charlotte’s education at Boston University, with savings incurred by Marie Brody’s couponing. While at school, Charlotte becomes pregnant out of wedlock. Mr. Church offers her his house to live in, and later becomes a co-caretaker of the child, Isabel.

What does he do at night? He plays piano at a jazz club called Jelly’s and, when he’s not serving food, often returns home staggeringly drunk engaged in imaginary conversation with his abusive pastor father. But these moments of sadness are, he says, private. Charlotte is to remain blissfully unaware, though she nobleness obligingly yearns to help him. "I wanted to let him know he could tell me," she says. Evidently it does not occur to her that perhaps he doesn’t want to.

Throughout his years of servitude, Mr. Church provides all the meals, rising before the rest of the house to prepare breakfast, running out during the day to buy groceries, and returning home to cook dinner. It is a rhythm well-known and familiar to the generations of Black cooks and maids for whom institutional racism had made most other modes of employ unattainable. But not Mr. Church. He could have been anything he wanted to be.

Towards the end of the film, Mr. Church dies.He had an enlarged heart.

More insidiously, the character of Mr. Church represents a reconstruction of the mammy stereotype, the trope of a smiling Black domestic who lives to serve his or her white employer. One wishes one could not see a through-line from the grinning blackface mammies in D.W. Griffith’s 1915 work of racist propaganda Birth of a Nation, but this movie proves that the thread of this emollient little fiction is still being spun, with an almost unbroken continuity.

 
Collateral Beauty Story:
Hit by a personal tragedy, a successful advertising executive withdraws from professional life and writes letters to the universe. When the universe starts replying, he begins to realise that beauty may be found in some rather dark places.

Collateral Beauty Review:
Resident poet-philosopher of a New York advertising firm, Howard (Will Smith) tells his employees the three magic things that effect every human being on an emotional level are love, time and death. He urges them to think of those when hawking products to the public, as his senior associates Whit (Edward Norton), Claire (Kate Winslet) and Simon (Michael Peña) look on, smiling warmly at his wisdom. Cut to three years later, Howard is an emotional wreck, after the death of his six-year old daughter. He withdraws inwards, and as his ad firm borders on the brink of a collapse, he writes letters to the universe addressing them to love, time and death. 
 In a bid to have Howard relinquish his toxic hold over the company, his three associates play a trick on him. They hire actors to become the three concepts to meet Howard and freak him out so he can be declared mentally unstable, thus saving the company. Enter Amy (Keira Knightley) as love, Raffi (Jacob Lattimore) as time and Bridgette (Helen Mirren) as death.

‘Collateral Beauty’ is a tearjerker heavy on emotions. But at times, it gets a little overbearing and even the dry humour employed makes the suffering feel endless. You hope that when the three actors enter Howard's life, there would be some comic relief. But philosophy flies thick and fast, from minor characters as well. Redemption for viewers is in the form of the unlikely relationships that develop between Amy and Whit, Raffi and Claire and Bridgette and Simon. Seeing that thread unravel through the film is a joy to watch. Their conversations play out like revelations through crisp dialogue.

The message being – when you accept your losses you can move beyond suffering and pain, down a path of redemption which is a thing of beauty. However, the play on the term ‘collateral damage’ fails to hit home as the movie takes a long-winded route to get there.

 
The Walt Disney Company’s U.S. television arm will create shows for Snap Inc’s Snapchat, Disney announced on Wednesday, in Snapchat's latest deal with a major U.S. media company.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Snap, which is preparing for next year's initial public offering, has signed a variety of advertising and content agreements this year with Viacom, Comcast’s NBCUniversal and Time Warner Inc’s Turner Broadcasting System Inc.
Media companies such as Disney partner with Snapchat in an effort to reach the type of younger viewers the social media company targets, which increasingly eschew traditional television. The two had previously worked together for a special Live Stories, a Snapchat feature that curates user-submitted photos and videos tied to a specific event, around ABC’s broadcast of the Academy Awards in February.
Unlike in Snapchat's other deals with media companies, where any ad sales responsibilities would be shared across both companies, Disney will control and sell all advertising for the shows it produces for Snapchat.
The agreement with the Disney-ABC Television Group, which includes the ABC broadcast network and cable channel Freeform, begins in January with a series around ABC’s popular “The Bachelor” franchise. The recap series, “Watch Party: The Bachelor” will debut Jan. 3, a day after the ABC show begins its 21st season.
Future shows base“Earlier this year, we worked closely with Snap on a very successful The Oscars Live Story and we look forward to building on that relationship and providing Snapchat’s mobile-centric users with a unique, immersive experience around our shows and brands,” Disney-ABC Television executive John Frelinghuysen said in a statement.d on other Disney-ABC properties will roll out on Snapchat later.

 

Fifteen grammys and six studio albums into her career, Alicia Keys still has not cracked the formula for hit song 

"I just don't know how to do that -- I just don't! And I've tried!" the singer said ahead of a performance at New York's Apollo Theater.

"I've been like, 'Okay, I'm going to take those same chords that I did before, but I am going to play them differently, which is going to make me write something different,' and it just doesn't arrive because you are trying."

Instead, every new track is a fresh start. Where she typically writes alone at her piano, for her latest album, "Here," Keys decided to collaborate with a team, gathering "a hub of interesting, creative people."."Put all of us in a room together and give us nothing but space, an opportunity, and all of a sudden boom! When you write a great song, you don't know how you got there." 

 Regardless of who else is involved, Keys stresses that genuine feeling is at the core of any good song. Musically, she strives for a striking tension between the bassline, the melody, and the way the song is sung that ends in a feeling of relief. Lyrically, it's about channeling emotions. 

 "Songwriting comes from an emotion. It comes from a feeling. It comes from something you can't contain, something that makes you cry, something that makes you laugh, something that you can't describe because it is like a stone in your chest," she says. "It's some kind of emotion, and it provokes you to find the words."