You're Nobody ('Til Somebody Films You)

Yes, for those who aren't aware, Hollywood has up and made a Notorious B.I.G. biopic, called Notorious, coming in mid-January. Since day one, I've been torn on whether to anticipate or dread this. On one end, there's some commendable talent involved---actors like Derek Luke and Anthony Mackie, an accomplished veteran named Angela Bassett as Volletta Wallace (Biggie's mom), and one of the screenwriters is a highly-respected journalist, one of my favorite entertainment and hip-hop reporters, actually, named Cheo Hodari Coker. So that's all promising.

But then, there's this....it's a Biggie biopic. Something about "a Biggie biopic" just smells of disaster to my overly-sensitive nostrils. Damn everybody besides Biggie and 2Pac seen in the film is still alive, most still prominent even (Diddy being the prime example). It could be more than jarring to see actors embodying these people on a big screen, though that same issue seems to actually be a saving grace for Oliver Stone's George "Dubya" Bush biopic W. that's on the horizon. So maybe my negative intuition regarding Notorious is a but unfair.

We'll see come January.....but, though, this teaser trailer is doing little to convert to full-on believer status. The beginning portion of it, with the voiceover and still-life imagery, is incredibly cheesy and cheap-looking, like something from a straight-to-DVD offering. And though Jamal "Gravy" Woolard does have the backstory to play Biggie (from Brooklyn, a rapper, bordering on obese), I can't imagine him being that solid of a thespian. He pretty much sucks as a rapper, so that's one strike right off the bat if you ask me.

See for yourselves, as little as there is to see here: