When Beyoncé took to the Coachella stage in 2018 it was a historical game-changer. Beyoncé was the first African-American female to headline the festival. Fans had waited a year for this performance and it was worth every second watching as Coachella became Beychella as Beyoncé gave a career-defining performance.
Whether you watched it or not, you knew about it and thanks to Netflix, you get to experience Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé in all its spectacular glory.
Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé opens as Beyonce takes to the stage, her sparkling cape adorned with sequins. She is dressed as Nefertiti. A Queen. Royalty. With over 100 dancers, singers, musicians and a drumline onstage, fans who have been waiting for this moment scream with sheer joy. The horn section plays Crazy In Love and it’s a breathtaking moment. It’s a moment of awe where you realize history and art combine for what is one of the greatest festival sets of all time. Make no mistake about it Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé technically and artistically redefines the concert film experience.
After a grand opening and a look at the slick choreography, we’re pulled in backstage to eight months earlier, when it started coming together – the marching bands, the dancing, and Beyonce herself as she starts to craft this spectacle.
There are no talking heads in Homecoming, rather a voiceover from Beyoncé as she walks us through the off-camera clips .
Cut to another performance – another one of her hits. The sound design is theatrically astounding. The drumline, the horn section, the marching band on the pyramid rafters beats in your soul.
The documentary gets intimate behind the scenes – we see personal moments as she gets an ultrasound during her pregnancy. In another, she talks about weighing 218lbs during labor, cut to rehearsal and a heartfelt moment talking about sacrifice.
It’s something as fans and admirers that we always take for granted, on stage, we’re watching these vibrant moments from performers and artists, screaming for more. We’re unaware.
“Choreography is about feeling,” Beyonce says, but she’s feeling that she just wants to be with her children. It’s a sacrifice that she reminds us of and she strikes. The authenticity of her struggle between performing and motherhood is a powerful one.
In Homecoming, Beyoncé tells a story. She tells a story of motherhood and artistry. She celebrates womanhood. She uses voiceover from Maya Angelou and Alice Walker. She pays great tribute to the historically black colleges and universities. She pays homage to African-American culture. It’s an important lesson, an important watch, her story will define this generation for years to come. The creation of this performance which goes down in history and forever changed Coachella has been documented for all to experience and IT IS an experience. IT IS a celebration.
It’s a moment to watch with sheer admiration, the dedication, the spectacular energy, the phenomenal choreography come to life in Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé. While many concert films keep us at bay, Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé pulls us in, intoxicating us with the electricity. It is a live performance and concert film that has raised the bar high.
All the hits from Girls, Crazy in Love, Formation, and Mi Gente are there. There’s the much-anticipated reunion with Destiny’s Child and a performance with husband Jay-Z. It’s a dream to watch as it transports the viewer into the heart of Beychella and the artist.
At one point, Beyoncé thanks the women who have opened the doors so she could stand at the top of her pyramid. It’s an ecstatic joy to watch this woman slay every second. We briefly hear the stories of some of the dancers and performers and what this means for them to perform on that festival stage.
History was made and thanks to Netflix, we go inside Beyoncé’s world and get to re-live Beychella.
Homecoming: A Film By Beyoncé is streaming now on Netflix https://www.netflix.com/homecoming
Photo credit: Netflix
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Peabody Award entertainment winners are in: google the result. Goddamn website won’t accept URL’s:
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The Peabody Board of Jurors revealed today nine Entertainment winners and a Children’s winner for programs released in 2018. The honorees include a children’s superhero saga focused on empathy; darkly comic immersions into the male and female killer mind; welcomed reformulations and expansions of stand up comedy and political entertainment shows; and expansive creativity in a show that might best be described as Afro-surrealism meets Parliament Funkadelic.
The board also named “Sesame Street” winner of an Institutional Award for 50 years of educating and entertaining children in the U.S. and around the world. Conceived by Joan Ganz Cooney and Lloyd Morrisett, “Sesame Street” premiered in 1969 with wide-eyed optimism and determination to make a difference. Structured on the belief that a children’s TV show could help close an achievement gap in preparation for school, while also teaching about the values of diversity, mutual respect, and empathy, it remains one of the 1960s greatest offerings. Its central messages are about appreciating locality, accepting and valuing difference, and learning how to be a massive bird’s friend when you’re a green trash monster. And yet it teaches these lessons, day in and day out, alongside functional lessons about basic math, spelling, logic, patterns, and a love of music, art, and dance. “Sesame Street” is also honored for its advocacy role in reminding citizens and politicians why public broadcasting is necessary and valuable, challenging us to make a difference and to be good, caring people while we do so.
2018 Children’s/Youth Winner
Steven Universe (Cartoon Network)
On its surface, Rebecca Sugar’s animated series develops a complex mythology centering around the Crystal Gems—“polymorphic sentient rocks” who protect young Steven and his human friends from cosmic threats. But in this earnest fantasy epic and superhero saga, empathy is perhaps the most important superpower, something our real-world human society needs now more than ever.
Barry (HBO Entertainment in association with Alec Berg and Hanarply)
“Saturday Night Live” alum Bill Hader has built a dark comedy off the unlikely premise of a hitman who really wants to be an actor and earnestly pursues his dream under the guidance of his has-been acting teacher played by Henry Winkler. Even as one of the quirkiest and entertaining series on TV, “Barry” asks serious questions about emotional connection, the nature of violence, and the cost of doing whatever it takes to keep a secret.
Hannah Gadsby: Nanette (Netflix)
Comedian Hannah Gadsby makes a major statement about the social costs of laughing at someone, and about what it means to be the brunt of a joke. She brilliantly finds the tragedy in comedy, in the process breaking apart and reconstructing the standup comedy special format. Throughout, she delivers the thunderous message of the destructive power of heteronormativity, toxic masculinity and male sexual violence, and how easily society tolerates each.
Killing Eve (Sid Gentle Films Ltd. for BBC AMERICA)
The tense cat-and-mouse spy thriller—serving as a vehicle for amazing performances by Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer—is also a masterful, playful recalibration of the genre, creating room not just for two women at the helm, but also for women’s interests and circumstances in almost every inch of the plot. Like its psychopathic assassin, Villanelle, it is equal parts terrifying, hilarious, slick, playful, and surprisingly soulful.
Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj (Netflix)
Hasan Minhaj has created the perfect model for engaging his fellow millennials in contemporary politics and public life. With his trademark high-octane energy, the first Indian-American and Muslim late-night host brings a welcome voice to political entertainment television. He’s also bold and fearless, taking on the ruthless Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman just weeks after the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
Pose (Fox 21 Television Studios and FX Productions (FX Networks))
Set in 1980s New York, “Pose” follows the ongoing rivalry between the established House of Abundance and the upstart House of Evangelista in an honest telling of trans and gay people of color at a critical time in history. Presided over by Billy Porter’s Pray Tell, the competition and its delicious melodrama serves as backdrop for the burgeoning LGBTQ community and family, doing important representational work and storytelling both on and off the ballroom floor.
Random Acts of Flyness (HBO Entertainment in association with A24 and MVMT)
Breaking the mold of what we think television is and can be, “Random Acts of Flyness” ponders what it means to be young and black in America and produces a layered, complex experience of wonder, joy, and insight. The series brilliantly assembles black sonic, visual, and literary worlds into a 21st century cut ‘n’ mix of black aesthetic of absurdity, critique, affirmation, and fun. Most importantly, it does so without a preoccupation with white gaze or desire, centering blackness as a complex, productive historical fact and contemporary lived experience rather than a phobic-obsessed reaction to whiteness.
The Americans (Fox 21 Television Studios and FX Productions (FX Networks))
If a great drama series is judged—at least, in part—by the way its story ends, then “The Americans” can easily be counted among the best TV shows in history. Over six seasons, the 1980s-set thriller centered on two Soviet spies deeply undercover as middle-class American parents in a Virginia suburb. In 2018, creators brought the acclaimed story to a masterful conclusion, forcing spies Elizabeth and Philip Jennings to make impossible choices as their carefully constructed lives imploded on multiple fronts.
The End of the F***ing World (Clerkenwell Films/Dominic Buchanan Productions for Channel 4 Television and Netflix)
Teenage angst collides with dark British humor in this series about a self-identified psychopath and a wily high school rebel who seek adventure outside their boring suburban town. Based on a graphic novel by Charles Forsman, the British-American co-production features deeply funny and moving performances by Jessica Lawther and Alex Barden that capture the confusion of adolescence with intelligence and depth. A wonderfully unorthodox coming-of-age story for 21st century realists and hopeless romantics alike.
The Good Place (Universal Television, Fremulon and 3 Arts Entertainment (NBC))
A Peabody nominee last year, Michael Schur’s fantasy-comedy about the afterlife keeps refusing to follow the formulas of broadcast network sitcoms, constantly renegotiating its format as our favorite contemporary morality play. The energies of Kristen Bell, Ted Danson, Jameela Jamil, and D’Arcy Carden, in particular, keep the show moving with virtuosity in every unexpected laboratory from the Good Place to the Bad Place, the afterlife to the Medium Place, and of course, to Earth.