INDEPENDENCE DAY
Independence Day is a 1996 American science fiction action film directed and co-written by Roland Emmerich. The film focuses on disparate groups of people who converge in the Nevada desert in the aftermath of a worldwide attack by an extraterrestrial race of unknown origin. With the other people of the world, they launch a last-ditch counterattack on July 4 — Independence Day in the United States. Now considered to be a significant turning point in the history of the Hollywood blockbuster, the film was released worldwide on July 3, 1996, but began showing on July 2 (the same day the film’s story begins) on limited release as a result of a high level of anticipation among moviegoers. The film grossed over $817.4 million worldwide, becoming the highest-grossing film of 1996 and, briefly, the second-highest-grossing film worldwide of all time. The film won the Academy Award for Best Visual Effects and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Sound Mixing. (More from Wikipedia)
Will Smith parlayed their hit song into a stint on a sitcom called The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and later became one of the biggest movie stars of our time following roles in summer blockbusters like Independence Day (1996) and Men in Black (1997). He is not the only hip hop star to move to the small and/or big screen. Ice Cube, one of the founders of gangsta rap in his group N.W.A., has starred in numerous films in a variety of genres, such as All About the Benjamins, Barbershop, and XXX: State of the Union. Ice-T – whose debut album Rhyme Pays (1987) was “the first hip hop album to carry an explicit content sticker” (according to Wikipedia) – is well-known for his prominent role in the long-running television series, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit.
(September 2016)
