How ‘The Perfect Find’ Director Numa Perrier Honored and Updated Tia Williams’ Book At the Same Time
Netflix’s “The Perfect Find” director Numa Perrier collected generational references in her film adaptation of Tia Williams’ novel.
The story follows Jenna Jones (Gabrielle Union) and Eric Combs (Keith Powers) who gravitate toward each other despite a substantial age gap and the fact that Eric is the son of Jenna’s boss Darcy (Gina Torres).
The two pair up for a creative project for Darzine, Darcy’s fashion magazine. The project, which eventually becomes “The Perfect Find” highlights fashions inspired by Black starlets of Hollywood’s past. Jenna and Eric also bond over their love for old Hollywood — like Nina Mae McKinney, who pops up throughout the film with clips from “Hallelujah!,” a Greta Garbo clip from “The Flesh and Devil” and Spike Lee’s “School Daze,” featured at a drive-in movie date.
Perrier explained the process behind making references to classic Black Hollywood, first during Jenna’s swap meet browsing,...
The story follows Jenna Jones (Gabrielle Union) and Eric Combs (Keith Powers) who gravitate toward each other despite a substantial age gap and the fact that Eric is the son of Jenna’s boss Darcy (Gina Torres).
The two pair up for a creative project for Darzine, Darcy’s fashion magazine. The project, which eventually becomes “The Perfect Find” highlights fashions inspired by Black starlets of Hollywood’s past. Jenna and Eric also bond over their love for old Hollywood — like Nina Mae McKinney, who pops up throughout the film with clips from “Hallelujah!,” a Greta Garbo clip from “The Flesh and Devil” and Spike Lee’s “School Daze,” featured at a drive-in movie date.
Perrier explained the process behind making references to classic Black Hollywood, first during Jenna’s swap meet browsing,...
- 7/20/2023
- by Dessi Gomez
- The Wrap
Netflix’s new rom-com “The Perfect Find” isn’t short on great music. The original film stars Gabrielle Union and Keith Powers as Jenna Jones and Eric Combs as well as Gina Torres, who plays Darcy Hale. Jenna’s journey back into fashion comes at a price — begging her old nemesis for a job at her fashion magazine Darzine. Jenna also puts herself back out there for love, and she finds a real connection with Eric — until she realizes he’s Darcy’s son.
The film adaptation of Tia Williams’ novel contains a great soundtrack of music by Black artists. The soundtrack complements references to Nina Mae McKinney, Aretha Franklin and more, and strides between older hits from past decades and modern singles that are popular in the present day to capture the full spectrum of art.
Here are all the songs in Netflix’s “The Perfect Find”:
Also...
The film adaptation of Tia Williams’ novel contains a great soundtrack of music by Black artists. The soundtrack complements references to Nina Mae McKinney, Aretha Franklin and more, and strides between older hits from past decades and modern singles that are popular in the present day to capture the full spectrum of art.
Here are all the songs in Netflix’s “The Perfect Find”:
Also...
- 6/23/2023
- by Dessi Gomez
- The Wrap
Boldness defines Numa Perrier’s soapy romantic comedy The Perfect Find. Characters make unbelievable decisions in the name of love. Grand proclamations are yelled from across parks and outside apartment buildings. Everyone’s dressed in the most maximalist attire: loud prints, geometrically striking jewelry, intense hairstyles. It all seems rather unbelievable until you remember the ridiculousness is part of the fun.
Like any good romantic comedy, The Perfect Find constructs a world into which you can escape. Jenna (Gabrielle Union) is a 40-something (the ambiguity of her age is significant to the plot) fashion editor who has spent the last year recovering from a devastating public breakup. Her 10-year relationship with Brian (D.B. Woodside), an equally ambitious careerist, crashed profoundly after Jenna sought clarity about their future. To escape the tabloid frenzy, Jenna moves back in with her parents.
Perrier economically reviews this backstory in the film’s opening credits,...
Like any good romantic comedy, The Perfect Find constructs a world into which you can escape. Jenna (Gabrielle Union) is a 40-something (the ambiguity of her age is significant to the plot) fashion editor who has spent the last year recovering from a devastating public breakup. Her 10-year relationship with Brian (D.B. Woodside), an equally ambitious careerist, crashed profoundly after Jenna sought clarity about their future. To escape the tabloid frenzy, Jenna moves back in with her parents.
Perrier economically reviews this backstory in the film’s opening credits,...
- 6/22/2023
- by Lovia Gyarkye
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
‘The Perfect Find’ Review: Gabrielle Union and Keith Powers Charm in Fashion-Forward Netflix Swooner
Fashionista Jenna Jones (Gabrielle Union) took quite the tumble from her position in New York’s world of style. In “The Perfect Find” — Netflix’s visually vibrant, cinema-loving, if not quite perfect, rom-com — her professional and romantic plummet is documented in opening credits that cleverly use an animated collage to relate her story.
So, when we meet Jenna in person ,she’s without a job, and her man (D.B. Woodside) of 10 years has moved on … or so it seems. The 40-year-old is sporting baggy sweats, and not because she’s headed to the gym. She’s been living in her parents’ home licking her wounds, for a year, when her mother calls her out on it. The scene between mother (Janet Hubert) and grown-ass daughter is amusing and promising. As are the musical and visual choices director Numa Perrier makes that evoke Old Hollywood in a film with characters decidedly not Old Hollywood.
So, when we meet Jenna in person ,she’s without a job, and her man (D.B. Woodside) of 10 years has moved on … or so it seems. The 40-year-old is sporting baggy sweats, and not because she’s headed to the gym. She’s been living in her parents’ home licking her wounds, for a year, when her mother calls her out on it. The scene between mother (Janet Hubert) and grown-ass daughter is amusing and promising. As are the musical and visual choices director Numa Perrier makes that evoke Old Hollywood in a film with characters decidedly not Old Hollywood.
- 6/20/2023
- by Lisa Kennedy
- Variety Film + TV
The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures is celebrating 73 years of Black film artistry with the new exhibit titled Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971.
Curated by the Academy Museum’s Doris Berger and Rhea Combs of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, the first-of-its-kind exhibition features seven galleries exploring Black representation in film, from portraits of icons like Ruby Dee and Nina Mae McKinney to home videos of the Nicholas Brothers and Cab Calloway.
“It’s really exciting for us to be able to help expand the conversation around American cinema, essentially, by bringing forward these important contributions by Black filmmakers as well as performers and other artisans and technicians,” Combs tells Variety.
Since 2017, Berger and Combs have been acquiring a vast collection of costumes, scripts, drawings and other historical materials for “Regeneration” by digging through multiple archives at the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library and even traveling to Berlin and Paris.
Curated by the Academy Museum’s Doris Berger and Rhea Combs of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, the first-of-its-kind exhibition features seven galleries exploring Black representation in film, from portraits of icons like Ruby Dee and Nina Mae McKinney to home videos of the Nicholas Brothers and Cab Calloway.
“It’s really exciting for us to be able to help expand the conversation around American cinema, essentially, by bringing forward these important contributions by Black filmmakers as well as performers and other artisans and technicians,” Combs tells Variety.
Since 2017, Berger and Combs have been acquiring a vast collection of costumes, scripts, drawings and other historical materials for “Regeneration” by digging through multiple archives at the Academy’s Margaret Herrick Library and even traveling to Berlin and Paris.
- 8/19/2022
- by Michaela Zee
- Variety Film + TV
In today’s parlance, Nina Mae McKinney, a performer of incomparable magnetism and impressive versatility, would be called “Black famous.” Although she burst onto the silver screen in a landmark feature, MGM’s Hallelujah, mainstream stardom eluded her. Hallelujah was one of the first studio pictures with an all-Black cast, and its director, King Vidor, was a leading filmmaker in the nascent industry. McKinney was lauded as the first Black movie star, and it seemed the sky was the limit for this triple-threat actor, singer and dancer. But with no Black filmmakers in its studio system, Hollywood had no particular compulsion ...
- 11/11/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
In today’s parlance, Nina Mae McKinney, a performer of incomparable magnetism and impressive versatility, would be called “Black famous.” Although she burst onto the silver screen in a landmark feature, MGM’s Hallelujah, mainstream stardom eluded her. Hallelujah was one of the first studio pictures with an all-Black cast, and its director, King Vidor, was a leading filmmaker in the nascent industry. McKinney was lauded as the first Black movie star, and it seemed the sky was the limit for this triple-threat actor, singer and dancer. But with no Black filmmakers in its studio system, Hollywood had no particular compulsion ...
- 11/11/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
A retrospective of Nina Mae McKinney films running Nov. 10 to Nov. 30 at New York’s Film Forum will provide viewers with glimpses of the multihyphenate whose barrier-breaking career, like so many other early cinema Black artists, has been largely forgotten.
Five of the nearly 20 films the actress turned out in as many years will be shown, as well as two shorts (Pie Pie Blackbird and Black Network) that the South Carolina native made with the Nicholas Brothers, the famous Black dancing team.
Nina Mae McKinney: Hollywood’s First Black Movie Star opens with the premiere of a 35mm restoration print of ...
Five of the nearly 20 films the actress turned out in as many years will be shown, as well as two shorts (Pie Pie Blackbird and Black Network) that the South Carolina native made with the Nicholas Brothers, the famous Black dancing team.
Nina Mae McKinney: Hollywood’s First Black Movie Star opens with the premiere of a 35mm restoration print of ...
- 11/10/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Movie News
A retrospective of Nina Mae McKinney films running Nov. 10 to Nov. 30 at New York’s Film Forum will provide viewers with glimpses of the multihyphenate whose barrier-breaking career, like so many other early cinema Black artists, has been largely forgotten.
Five of the nearly 20 films the actress turned out in as many years will be shown, as well as two shorts (Pie Pie Blackbird and Black Network) that the South Carolina native made with the Nicholas Brothers, the famous Black dancing team.
Nina Mae McKinney: Hollywood’s First Black Movie Star opens with the premiere of a 35mm restoration print of ...
Five of the nearly 20 films the actress turned out in as many years will be shown, as well as two shorts (Pie Pie Blackbird and Black Network) that the South Carolina native made with the Nicholas Brothers, the famous Black dancing team.
Nina Mae McKinney: Hollywood’s First Black Movie Star opens with the premiere of a 35mm restoration print of ...
- 11/10/2021
- The Hollywood Reporter - Film + TV
Coming to Film Forum in New York City is “Black Women,” a 70-film screening series that spotlights 81 years – 1920 to 2001 – of trailblazing African American actresses in American movies.
Scheduled to run from January 17 to February 13, the series is curated by film historian and professor Donald Bogle, author of six books concerning blacks in film and television, including the groundbreaking “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films” (1973).
“Last year, Bruce Goldstein, the repertory programmer at Film Forum, asked me if there was something I was interested in doing, and this was a topic that I had been thinking about, because I recently updated my book on the subject, ‘Brown Sugar,’ which dealt with African American women in entertainment from the early years of the late 19th century to the present,” said Bogle. “That’s really the way it came about, and it just developed from there.
Scheduled to run from January 17 to February 13, the series is curated by film historian and professor Donald Bogle, author of six books concerning blacks in film and television, including the groundbreaking “Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies, and Bucks: An Interpretive History of Blacks in American Films” (1973).
“Last year, Bruce Goldstein, the repertory programmer at Film Forum, asked me if there was something I was interested in doing, and this was a topic that I had been thinking about, because I recently updated my book on the subject, ‘Brown Sugar,’ which dealt with African American women in entertainment from the early years of the late 19th century to the present,” said Bogle. “That’s really the way it came about, and it just developed from there.
- 1/17/2020
- by Tambay Obenson
- Indiewire
Jeanne Crain: Lighthearted movies vs. real life tragedies (photo: Madeleine Carroll and Jeanne Crain in ‘The Fan’) (See also: "Jeanne Crain: From ‘Pinky’ Inanity to ‘Margie’ Magic.") Unlike her characters in Margie, Home in Indiana, State Fair, Centennial Summer, The Fan, and Cheaper by the Dozen (and its sequel, Belles on Their Toes), or even in the more complex A Letter to Three Wives and People Will Talk, Jeanne Crain didn’t find a romantic Happy Ending in real life. In the mid-’50s, Crain accused her husband, former minor actor Paul Brooks aka Paul Brinkman, of infidelity, of living off her earnings, and of brutally beating her. The couple reportedly were never divorced because of their Catholic faith. (And at least in the ’60s, unlike the humanistic, progressive-thinking Margie, Crain was a “conservative” Republican who supported Richard Nixon.) In the early ’90s, she lost two of her...
- 8/26/2013
- by Andre Soares
- Alt Film Guide
In 1920s Hollywood, films were silent, flappers were the rage, and the major movie goddesses of the day were white... with one notable exception: Nina Mae McKinney. The outrageously gorgeous, exceedingly talented triple threat set hearts racing as the saucy star of 1929's "Hallelujah!," the first all-Black film musical. On the strength of that scorching-hot performance alone, movie magazines and critics began calling her "Black Garbo..."...
- 10/6/2010
- Essence
King Vidor’s 1929 film, Hallelujah, the first all-black feature to be made by a major movie studio at the time, will screen this afternoon, at MoMA theatres, here in New York City at 1:30Pm. So, here’s your chance to see it on the big screen, if you haven’t had the opportunity.
The film, headlined by Nina Mae McKinney, Daniel L. Haynes, and William E. Fountaine was King Vidor’s first sound film, for which he was nominated for a Best Director Oscar.
The film comes with a disclaimer, of course, a reminder that it’s a product of its time, reflecting some of the prejudices that were the norm, as stereotypes abound; however, it’s not without resonant images, having an almost documentary-like quality to it. It’s also noteworthy for Vidor’s sincere attempts to depict black plantation life, counter to prior films in which whites...
The film, headlined by Nina Mae McKinney, Daniel L. Haynes, and William E. Fountaine was King Vidor’s first sound film, for which he was nominated for a Best Director Oscar.
The film comes with a disclaimer, of course, a reminder that it’s a product of its time, reflecting some of the prejudices that were the norm, as stereotypes abound; however, it’s not without resonant images, having an almost documentary-like quality to it. It’s also noteworthy for Vidor’s sincere attempts to depict black plantation life, counter to prior films in which whites...
- 6/17/2010
- by Tambay
- ShadowAndAct
In my quest to figure out good Xmas and Kwanzaa gifts for my people this year, I realized we always recommend movies, DVD’s and VODs, but I’ve seldom read about good books here on S&A. So, I’ve compile a great list for of Black cinephile-based books for the filmgoing audience. Some you’re definitely familiar with, others maybe not, but nonetheless here it is:
Donald Bogle’s books
I’ve been reading Bogle’s books for 20 years now, so considering I’m just on the precipice of my (eek!) mid-30’s, that’s saying a lot of the amount of Black film knowledge that he’s imparted to the masses for decades.
Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks
Arguably Bogle’s greatest, if not simply his best known book, “Toms…” is the definitive study of American Black film images going back to the beginning with Birth of...
Donald Bogle’s books
I’ve been reading Bogle’s books for 20 years now, so considering I’m just on the precipice of my (eek!) mid-30’s, that’s saying a lot of the amount of Black film knowledge that he’s imparted to the masses for decades.
Toms, Coons, Mulattoes, Mammies & Bucks
Arguably Bogle’s greatest, if not simply his best known book, “Toms…” is the definitive study of American Black film images going back to the beginning with Birth of...
- 12/19/2009
- by Curtis the Media Man
- ShadowAndAct
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