Craig Brewer‘s Song Sung Blue (Focus Features, 12.25), a period musical about a Neil Diamond tribute duo, will be screening soon for Critics Choice members on both coasts.
Before film writers start digging into Diamond’s music and career history and especially his recent, very sad encounter with Parkinson’s disease, let’s get one thing out of the way — the blackface sequence in Richard Fleischer‘s The Jazz Singer, a remake of the 1927 original that starred Al Jolson.
The Fleischer film came out 50 years ago, and even then critics were raising their eyebrows…just leave it there.