The Maryland Film Festival confirmed Monday that Wendell Pierce and director Tanya Hamilton would be cohosting two screenings of "Night Catches Us" (2:30 p.m. Friday at the Charles, 9:30 p.m. Saturday at MICA's Brown Center). Hamilton's movie promises to be great news for movieogoers in general and Pierce fans in particular. With a cast that also includes Anthony Mackie and Kerry Washington, Hamilton confronts the complicated legacy of the Black Panthers in a working-class Philadelphia neighborhood.
Pierce has shown time and again that he can suffuse politically-charged material with rich emotion. But he usually does that on HBO. Currently, on "Treme," this Big Easy-born actor is etching a funny, seductive and sometimes wrenching portrait of a jazz musician caught in the riptides of post-Katrina New Orleans. That's Pierce blowing his trombone, above.) It should be a double treat to see him tackle an equally vivid, complex milieu on the big screen -- and to hear him talk about it afterward.
Have you seen Pierce in any movie roles that compare to his work on "Treme" and "The Wire"?