Listen to Pusha T’s rework of Melle Mel’s ‘White Lines’ for ‘Cocaine Bear’

Melle Mel has commented on the late DMX and 2Pac, saying that they were both “better actors than rappers”.The legend from Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five said in a recent interview with The Art Of Dialogue that in order to be a good rapper, you have to adopt a persona – and that’s the same factor is needed to be a good actor.He doubled down on his point, saying that some rap legends were better actors than they were lyricists.“I thought 2Pac was a better actor than he was a rapper,” he said of the late Californian known for his lead roles in cult classics Juice and Poetic Justice. “I thought he was a hell of an actor than a rapper.” He also commented on the late Yonkers-born DMX, who famously made his acting debut in Hype Williams-directed Belly alongside Nas.“I thought DMX was a better actor than he was a rapper,” said Mel.

Roy Trakin Depeche Mode, the pioneering ‘80s U.K. technopop band, has long had a strong following in Los Angeles — thanks to their exposure on local alternative stalwart KROQ — and now they’re proving a favorite of film and TV creative executives. The group, consisting of co-founders Martin Gore and vocalist Dave Gahan after the death of keyboardist Andrew Fletcher in May 2022, is on a roll following its 2020 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, where they were introduced by Charlize Theron, who called them “the soundtrack of my life.” Depeche Mode’s new Mute/Columbia Records album, “Memento Mori,” comes out March 24, their first since 2017’s “Spirit” and 15th overall, which will be followed by a year-long tour that launches March 23 in Sacramento and includes a show at L.A.’s Kia Forum on March 28 and four concluding area shows in December, two apiece at Kia and Crypto.com Arena. 

Cocaine Bear” has been getting rave reviews, raking in $8.65 million on its opening night, according to IMDB’s Box Office Mojo — but not everyone is so fond of the movie.Some “woke” viewers complained the new film is “encouraging drug use” and “not suitable for kids.”The movie — which is rated R for for bloody violence and gore, drug content and language throughout — is loosely based on a true story. In 1985, a bear was found dead in the Georgia woods after consuming a drug smuggler’s stash of cocaine that was dropped from a plane. “Cocaine Bear” shows the black bear surviving and becoming an addict willing to kill anyone who gets in her way. It follows an ensemble of locals, tourists, criminals and police offers who come together to try to survive the bear’s drug-fueled frenzy.One controversial scene in the movie shows 12-year-olds doing cocaine, which director Elizabeth Banks previously defended.

Zack Sharf Digital News Director The cocaine bear in Elizabeth Banks’ “Cocaine Bear” is an impressive feat of visual effects wizardry, but there was an actual person behind the 500-pound, drug-addicted beast. Meet Allan Henry, the motion capture performer who played the bear on set so that actors such as Keri Russell, Ray Liotta, and Alden Ehrenreich had something real to interact with during scenes. When Liotta fights the bear in the film’s third act, for instance, he was actually facing off with Henry on set. Henry is a motion capture veteran who already has experience playing animals thanks to his work on the “Planet of the Apes” trilogy. But the actor said said in an interview with /Film that “Cocaine Bear” was a different beast because the eponymous animal is not as humanistic as the apes in “Planet of the Apes.”

Cocaine Bear has everyone talking this weekend!

Refresh for latest…: Coming out of its second weekend, Disney/Marvel’s Ant-Man and The Wasp: Quantumania has grossed $363.6M globally. Of that, $167.3M is from domestic and $196.3M from the international box office.

“‘Nobody likes to watch people getting eaten by lions”

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter Universal’s horror-comedy “Cocaine Bear” blew past box office projections, earning an impressive $23 million from 3,534 North American theaters in its opening weekend. The blood-splattered animal adventure landed in second place on domestic charts behind Disney’s “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania,” which all but collapsed in its sophomore outing. “Ant-Man 3” managed to remain in first place given its huge $106 million opening, but the comic book installment is suffering from negative word-of-mouth. It added $32.2 million from 4,345 venues in its second weekend of release, marking a brutal 69% decline from its debut. Now, “Quantumania” holds the ignominious distinction as the biggest week-to-week drop in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, including “Black Widow” (which plunged 67.8% while debuting simultaneously on Disney Plus) and “Eternals” (which fell 62% after equally bad reviews). Globally, the movie has generated $364 million, including $167 million domestically and $196 million internationally.

There are some creative decisions that arrive like a bolt from the blue, a moment of divine inspiration from leftfield, and there are others where not doing that thing would simply be an act of negligence. If you're directing a film called Cocaine Bear it would be a crime to not at least put in a call to Pusha T.

according to IMDB’s Box Office Mojo.The comedy, which is directed by Elizabeth Banks, whom The Post said, “keeps the powder gags fresh throughout,” is loosely based on a true story of a black bear in Georgia that ate millions of dollars worth of lost cocaine. “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” which was in first place last week, creeped to second with an $8.3 million-dollar take.The plummet in sales for the superhero flick, which cost around $200 million to make, marks the worst-ever second-week drop for a Marvel film, according to Deadline.Remaining in third was “Avatar: The Way of Water” with $1.1 million in sales.

“Cocaine Bear” is barreling into theatres in a big way.

“Cocaine Bear,” now playing in theaters courtesy of Universal Pictures. Directed by Elizabeth Banks and penned by Jimmy Warden, the not-quite-true story concerns a black bear minding her own business who stumbles upon cocaine dropped from a drug-smuggling plane.

Arguably an early contender for the wildest movie of 2023, Elizabeth Banks‘ “Cocaine Bear” is based on the true story of a 175-pound Black Bear who overdosed on cocaine after ingesting the drug in 1985. While the bear did not kill anyone and died shortly after consuming cocaine, Banks and screenwriter Jimmy Warden fictionalize a story where the bear goes on a killing spree while massively high on cocaine.

Bear hits cinemas today (February 24) – and is expected to scare up a storm at the box office.Based on the 1985 story about an American Black Bear that ingested a duffle bag’s worth of coke, Cocaine Bear doesn’t stick to the facts. Instead of being found dead by police shortly after its drug binge, the furry beast goes on a murderous rampage, attacking anyone who gets in its way.

Stretching the phrase “inspired by true events” to its bare limits, Cocaine Bear (★★★☆☆) takes off from the stranger-than-fiction real-life tale of a Kentucky drug runner who, in 1985, dumped bundles of cocaine from a plane over Georgia, then perished trying to parachute after the drugs, a large, expensive portion of which were found and somehow consumed by a 500-lb. black bear deep in the Georgia woods.Anyone interested in the dead-serious facts of the case can grab a copy of Sally Denton’s comprehensive chronicle The Bluegrass Conspiracy, originally published in 1990.This movie, on the other hand, takes a bold leap off that plane with Thornton’s duffel bags full of brown paper-wrapped bricks of blow, and never looks back.Directed by Pitch Perfect mogul Elizabeth Banks, and scripted by Jimmy Warden, Cocaine Bear leaves no gruesome gag unturned, no outrageous one-liner untold, serving up the sort of anything-goes big-screen comedy that comes along rarely.Mid-rampage, the coke-fueled bear snorts a line off someone’s severed leg.

Owen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic The last time a movie was marketed with a this-sounds-so-wretchedly-over-the-top-not-to-mention-insane-it-could-almost-be-fun low/high concept, the results, to put it kindly, were mixed. “Snakes on a Plane,” which sounded like a title that Don Simpson scrawled in white powder on a table at 4:00 a.m., was a movie that wore its brain-deadness on both lapels. But 17 years ago, that title inspired mountains of online chatter, to the point that the filmmakers incorporated bits and pieces of the obsessive fan gabble into the movie, most famously the Samuel L. Jackson line, “I have had it with these mothefuckin’ snakes on this motherfuckin‘ plane!” The result was that “Snakes on a Plane” felt like the first piece of brazen Hollywood schlock that was crowdsourced. The audience went in thinking: It may be trash, but it’s our trash.   

“A bear did COCAINE!” screams a frazzled Eddie (Alden Ehrenreich), trying to explain a patently absurd concept like a rational person – and exposing the vast capacity for humor that lies between the two. “Cocaine Bear,” a film that really puts the high in high-concept comedy, contains promise and peril in its premise.

director Elizabeth Banks keeps the powder gags fresh throughout, as the mammal maims her way through a Southern forest preserve. The movie about blow never blows.Running time: 95 minutes. Rated R (bloody violence and gore, drug content and language throughout.) In theaters.The hysterical film is based on a true story in the loosest possible sense.

Cocaine Bear is a dark action-comedy film set in a small town in Georgia.READ MOREThe synopsis reads: “After ingesting a duffel bag full of cocaine, a 500 lb American black bear goes on a killing rampage in a small town of Georgia where a group of locals and tourists must join forces to survive the attack.”Directed and co-produced by Elizabeth Banks, Cocaine Bear features an ensemble cast that includes  Keri Russell, O’Shea Jackson Jr., Christian Convery, Alden Ehrenreich, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, Brooklynn Prince, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Kristofer Hivju, Hannah Hoekstra, Margo Martindale, and Ray Liotta in one of his final performances before his death in 2022.Oh, absolutely. According to the official website, Cocaine Bear is “inspired by the 1985 true story of a drug runner’s plane crash, missing cocaine, and the black bear that ate it.”Dubbed Pablo Eskobear (after “the king of cocaine” Pablo Escobar), the real life bear was a 150lb American black bear who was discovered on a hillside in Fannin County, Georgia next to a duffel bag and 40 half-consumed packs of cocaine.Well, rather than heading out “on a coke-fueled rampage for more blow and blood,” Pablo Eskobear overdosed on cocaine and was found dead on the scene.According to the Washington Post, an autopsy found the bear had around three to four grams of the drug in its blood stream. The narcotics investigators who made the discovery believe the drugs were ditched months earlier by trafficker Andrew Carter Thornton II who had planned to return.However, Thornton died after falling out of a plane in September 1985.