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I used to be driving by means of Berkeley this week, listening to KQED on the radio, when announcer Michelle Henagan began studying a promo for the Amazon Prime film “Sylvie’s Love.”
“It stars Tessa Thompson and . . . .”
Silence. As soon as second. Three seconds. 5 seconds. Nothing. Had I misplaced contact with KQED? Did somebody at KQED mistakenly pull a plug? Discuss your pregnant pause.
Lastly Henagan broke the silence with slowly spoken phrases that vaguely approximated the identify of the male lead within the film: Nnamdi Asomugha.
Asomugha’s identify is a show-stopper of types. His difficult surname is pronounced AH-sem-wah, as most Cal soccer followers know as a result of he was a standout security for the Golden Bears from 1999 by means of 2002 and was a workforce captain as a senior. He then grew to become a two-time All-Professional choice and three-time Professional Bowler in his 13 seasons as an NFL cornerback with the Raiders, Eagles and 49ers. Between 2008 and 2010, many thought-about him the perfect cornerback within the NFL.
Now the 39-year-old Asomugha is a film producer and actor, and his starring position in “Sylvie’s Love” has an opportunity to make him a family identify to of us who don’t comply with Cal or the NFL.
San Francisco Chronicle movie critic Mick LaSalle had the little man sitting up and clapping in his overview, giving it the newspaper’s second-highest ranking for a movie. And he added this about Asomugha:
As for Asomugha, it got here as no shock that he was a profitable soccer participant for years. (He performed at Cal after which within the NFL with the Oakland Raiders, the Philadelphia Eagles and the 49ers earlier than retiring in 2013.) He provides Robert a high quality of quiet certitude: Even when issues aren’t going properly for him, even in moments of doubt, he carries with him the bodily sureness of somebody who is aware of he is excellent at one thing. He has the benefit of realizing he can do one thing very well that most individuals can’t do in any respect.
And the Los Angeles Times’ review by Carlos Aguilar stated this about Asomugha:
Nonetheless, [director Eugene] Ashe bets on the implausible performing that enthralls with its palpable chemistry, a mixture of the stoic and virile flirtatiousness Asomugha brings to his proficient character and the hard-earned willpower of Thompson’s Sylvie, who goes from housewife to tv producer.
Not each critic was as sort, as this lukewarm evaluation by Al Alexander of the Harrisburg, Pa., Patriot-News attests:
That features Asomugha, one of many movie’s producers, whose performing abilities aren’t practically as fluent as his shutdown of the NFL’s greatest vast receivers. To say his readings are clunky is being beneficiant. However God is he a stud; and for the movie’s goal feminine viewers, Asomugha greater than matches the sexual fantasy invoice.
To his credit score, he additionally sells his character’s joys of sax in convincing musical performances overdubbed by dexterous execs.
The film is the story of a love affair that takes place in a seven-year span between 1957 and 1963, the years when the romantic melodramas of Douglas Sirk grew to become common. There may be one primary distinction on this movie – the lovers are Black, a portrayal that merely didn’t exist within the late ‘50s and early ‘60s.
The film provides a dedication on the finish: “To Diahann, Nancy, and Doris” — an homage to Diahann Carroll, Nancy Wilson and Doris Day, who had been stars of this sort of film throughout that period 60 years in the past.
Nevertheless, to Cal alumni, essentially the most intriguing side of the film’s launch might have been Asomugha’s quotes in a San Francisco Chronicle story written by G. Allen Johnson and posted this week:
You is perhaps shocked what he considers “the perfect 4 years of my life.”
“There was no expertise like going to varsity at UC Berkeley,” Asomugha (pronounced AH-sem-wah) stated throughout a video chat with The Chronicle. “There was nothing prefer it. … Simply how a lot you develop being in Berkeley typically, and within the Bay Space, subsequent to San Francisco, subsequent to Oakland. Simply one in all my favourite occasions ever.”
After all, he was a soccer star there, a ok cornerback to be drafted by the Oakland Raiders within the first spherical of the 2003 NFL draft. However that’s not his most lasting reminiscence.
“As a result of we had been so underrepresented on campus as Black folks, we had this factor known as Black Wednesday, the place all the Black college students on campus would get collectively and have, like, a bit of occasion in the midst of campus — a picnic, for instance,” he remembers. “That’s the reminiscence that stands out.”
The film-watching nation might discover ways to pronounce Nnamdi Asomugha’s identify within the close to future.
Listed here are two YouTube interviews given by Tessa Thompson and Nnamdi Asomugha:
And it’s a must to respect the music within the film, together with this 1958 traditional:
Comply with Jake Curtis of Cal Sports activities Report on Twitter: @jakecurtis53
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