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The Arts Beat is a weekly deep-dive into Memphis arts, music, dance, theater, fashion, film and events. Keep scrolling for a roundup of the best arts and culture stories from the week. Have a story idea? Send it to eperry@dailymemphian.com.
Craig Brewer boards Snoop Dogg biopic
Memphis director and writer Craig Brewer has a new film project.
Trade publication Deadline reports that Brewer will direct a biopic on Calvin Broadus Jr., aka legendary Long Beach, California, rapper Snoop Dogg.
Deadline also reports that Jonathan Daviss, who stars in the Netflix teen action drama “Outer Banks,” will play the lead role.
According to Deadline, Brewer will revise a script written by Joe Robert Cole.
This is, of course, not Brewer’s first foray into hip-hop.
His 2005 feature film “Hustle & Flow,” centers on a Memphis pimp who is an aspiring rapper. The movie won Sundance Film Festival’s Audience Award and landed the Oscar for Best Original Song for “It’s Hard out Here for a Pimp.”
Brewer also has directed multiple episodes of the TV drama “Empire,” which centers on a hip-hop company.
‘Natchez’ debuts and wins big
Memphis director Suzannah Herbert’s feature documentary “Natchez” had its world premiere this week at the Tribeca Festival in New York. The film is about Natchez, Mississippi.
The festival’s website describes the documentary as a “potent choral portrait of a town reliant on its antebellum past to survive, and how its idiosyncratic citizens navigate — and reflect on — their town’s history and memory.”
The documentary won the 2025 festival award for Best Documentary Feature.
The jury statement reads, in part, “The film’s incisive, razor-sharp craft, its deft navigation of myriad participants without ever losing clarity, its timeliness, its humor, its confrontation of naked racism, yet its refusal to flatten its Mississippian storytellers—however flawed—into easy villains, for being artful, honest, and deeply compassionate, the jury—unanimously and unequivocally—awards a film that brings us hope not for an America that can agree, but one that might understand each other.”
“Natchez” also took home Special Jury Mention for Cinematography in a Documentary Feature (Noah Collier) and Special Jury Mention for Editing in a Documentary Feature (Pablo Proenza).
The film is scheduled to screen at Washington, D.C.’s DC/DOX documentary festival on Friday, June 13.
A discussion following the screening is scheduled to include Herbert and film participant Kathleen Bond, superintendent of the Natchez National Historical Park, among others.
“Natchez” has a final Tribeca screening on Saturday, June 14.
Herbert’s 2019 film “Wrestle,” co-directed with Lauren Belfer, focused on four wrestlers at J.O. Johnson High School in Huntsville, Alabama.
It won many awards at film festivals and was nominated for two 2020 News and Documentary Emmy Awards.
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Top arts and culture stories
‘Lilo & Stitch’ still loves Elvis
One of the plot points of the 2002 Disney cartoon film “Lilo & Stitch” is that the characters named in the title are Elvis Presley fans.
The soundtrack even features several Presley songs.
The live-action version, now in theaters, continues the infatuation.
The new film features a cover of Presley’s song “Burning Love.”
Bruno Mars (who notably worked as an Elvis impersonator while growing up in Hawaii) plays guitar on the song.
The Royal Horns — all Memphians — play on the song.
They include Martin McCain, associate professor of trombone at the University of Memphis, who plays trombone on the song.
Kameron Whalum, also a member of Mars’ Hooligans band, plays trombone; Marc Franklin plays trumpet; Lannie McMillan plays tenor saxophone and Kirk Smothers plays baritone saxophone.
Royal Studios owner Lawrence “Boo” Mitchell is a credited as a recording engineer.
(The soundtrack also features a Japanese language version of “Burning Love” with all the aforementioned musicians.)
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