The trailer for “Miles Ahead” hits all the high notes that director-star Don Cheadle told me about his Miles Davis movie before filming started in July 2014.
I can’t wait to see more, but I will. “Miles Ahead,” Cheadle’s directorial debut, is scheduled to arrive in theaters April 1.
--It’s not a “bio picture,” as many keep calling it.
Instead of trying to portray the entire life of Davis, the iconic jazz trumpeter who died in `1999, “Miles Ahead” dramatizes a specific period in 1979. That's when Davis was trying to recover a stolen unreleased recording with the help of Rolling Stone reporter Dave Braden (Ewan McGregor, “Star Wars”) at the end of his self-imposed five-year “silent period” out of the public eye.
--Miles Davis didn’t like the term “jazz.” He called his music “social music.”
--The story flashes back to Davis’s affair from 1956 to 1966 with Frances Taylor (Emayatzy Corinealdi, Amazon’s “Hand of God).
The “Miles Ahead” trailer is just another step in the l-o-n-g, s-l-o-w publicity campaign leading up to a theatrical release April 1. “Miles Ahead” premiered in October at the New York Film Festival, was screened again at the Sundance Film Festival last month.
Grammy- and Oscar-winner Herbie Hancock, who supervised the “Miles Ahead” music, recorded with Davis.
