Posts Tagged ‘Spike Lee’
Monday, June 29th, 2015
SCHOOL DAZE is Spike Lee’s sophomore jointational work, and was never one of my favorites from him. But man, looking back at it now I love its youthful exuberance. Here’s 30 year old Spike having access to the studio’s resources for the first time – he goes from a few actors in apartments in black and white to a huge cast on a college campus. He even has a full-on song and dance number. It’s the first example of what I think is one of his weaknesses: his overreach in tackling too many things at once, creating an unfocused and overstuffed narrative. But in this context that’s kinda charming. He’s really goin for it.
Since DO THE RIGHT THING and MALCOLM X were Lee’s most culturally recognized movies, certain white people pigeonholed him as a guy who only makes movies about white people being racist. Of course that’s not even a complete description of the content of those two movies, let alone applicable to most of his filmography. And joint #2, just like joint #1, I’m pretty sure doesn’t show a single white person in it. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Art Evans, Bill Nunn, Branford Marsalis, college, Darryl Bell, Erik Dellums, fraternities, Giancarlo Esposito, James Bond III, Jasmine Guy, Kadeem Hardison, Kasi Lemmons, Laurence Fishburne, Ossie Davis, Roger Guenveur Smith, Rusty Cundieff, Samuel L. Jackson, Spike Lee, Tisha Campbell, Toni Ann Johnson
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Musical, Reviews | 12 Comments »
Monday, March 23rd, 2015
“A nice lady doesn’t go humping from bed to bed.”
I think the last time I saw SHE’S GOTTA HAVE IT might’ve been in a theater in 1989. I remember when DO THE RIGHT THING came out one of the theaters here did a double feature of this and SCHOOL DAZE. So I was just learning who Spike Lee was and what he was all about.
All this time later it’s kinda crazy to go back to his DIY jointational debut. It’s the work of a young man trying to prove himself, show his style and stretch his budget while also saying something about relationships between men and women. As much as you can anyway when you’re 28 years old.
It’s in black and white. He plays one of the main characters. His sister Joie is in it (which is her doing him a favor, because she gives the most natural performance in the movie). His dad Bill did the score. It’s not about race, and I don’t think there are even any white people in it. And though you could say it started the black film movement that ended up being mostly about gangs and crime (BOYZ N THE HOOD, MENACE II SOCIETY, STRAIGHT OUT OF BROOKLYN) it has no guns or fights in it. (The end credits also boast that there were no drugs or jheri curls in the movie.) (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Lee, Brooklyn, John Canada Terrell, Joie Lee, Raye Dowell, S. Epatha Merkerson, Spike Lee, Tommy Redmond Hicks, Tracy Camilla Johns
Posted in Comedy/Laffs, Drama, Reviews | 1 Comment »
Monday, January 19th, 2015
If you were going to build the prototype for the ultimate man, wouldn’t it pretty much be 1974 Muhammad Ali? He’s a badass, a fighter with style. I don’t even really like boxing that much but I love to watch him dance around, swinging his fists so fast. Even Bruce Lee liked to watch him.
He’s handsome in a manly way. He’s charming, eloquent, and funny as hell. His humor is mostly based around making preposterous boasts… but it’s not some Danny McBride overconfidence thing, because he usually delivers. In this movie there’s an interview where he goes into detail about high speed photography and how one of his punches was proven to take only four one hundredths of a second, like a blink or a camera flash, and all this is setup for him to claim “Now, the minute I hit Sonny Liston, all of those people blinked at that moment, that’s why they didn’t see the punch.” A tall tale, but based on a true, provable incident.
Of equal importance, Ali has integrity of the Stickin It To The Man variety. He didn’t believe in the war so he refused to sign up for selective service, knowing it would endanger his career, reputation and freedom, and he held his head high the whole time. And he was outspoken about racism too. And he was right. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Africa, Albert Maysles, boxing, George Foreman, George Plympton, James Brown, Leon Gast, Muhammad Ali, Norman Mailer, Spike Lee, Taylor Hackford, Zaire
Posted in Documentary, Reviews, Sport | 13 Comments »
Thursday, January 15th, 2015
PANTHER reminded me of one of the few Spike Lee movies I hadn’t seen, the 2001 made-for-cable A HUEY P. NEWTON STORY. When it comes to the Spike Lee Jointography there are three categories. There’s the main ones you think about – DO THE RIGHT THING, MALCOLM X, all the way through his recent OLDBOY remake. And sprinkled in between are the documentaries, often made for cable. They’re less widely seen, of course, but really good, movies like FOUR LITTLE GIRLS and WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE. But even rarer than that there’s the performance films. I gotta admit I haven’t gotten to most of these. PASSING STRANGE was one, that’s a Broadway musical. I did see ORIGINAL KINGS OF COMEDY. That was pretty good.
A HUEY P. NEWTON STORY, A SPIKE LEE JOINT is a filmed version of a one-man show that Roger Guenveur Smith did starting in 1996 at the New York theater where Hair started.
I don’t know if you know who Smith is. He’s gotta be best known for playing Smiley in DO THE RIGHT THING, so I’m sure people walk up to him on the street every day and say “M-M-M-Martin. M-M-M-Malcolm.” He’s actually been in several Spike Lee movies, he was on Oz I guess, he was one of the stars of Steven Soderbergh’s improvised lobbyist drama K-Street on HBO. But also he was the bad guy in Seagal’s MERCENARY FOR JUSTICE.
He’s an actor I’ve always liked, but I could understand if you didn’t. He has a very theatrical style. He’s a character actor but he likes to show off. He always carries around a little stick of scenery in his pocket to chew on. MERCENARY FOR JUSTICE is an example of him getting a little loosey goosey with the accents. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: civil rights, made-for-cable-movies, one man show, performance art, Richard Pryor, Roger Guenveur Smith, Spike Lee
Posted in I don't know, Reviews | 4 Comments »
Monday, June 30th, 2014
Thoughts on DO THE RIGHT THING, 25 years later.
This is still my favorite Spike Lee movie. And I’m a big Spike Lee fan. I mean, I can’t say as big as they get, ’cause I still haven’t seen SHE HATE ME and a couple of the documentaries. I’ve seen everything else though, and I like most of them. I mean – MALCOLM X, CROOKLYN, CLOCKERS, GET ON THE BUS… so many good ones. I know some of you guys are gonna say 25TH HOUR. White people like that one. Including me. I even kinda like GIRL 6. BAMBOOZLED is too much for me though. Or at least at the time it was. Haven’t revisited it. Maybe some day.
I say this because I feel that Spike Lee doesn’t get enough credit as a pioneering and original voice in American cinema. You only see him in the news when he says something stupid, getting mad at Clint for not having enough brothers in his WWII movie or something. I think The Ain’t It Cool News has a social responsibility to mention his name every once in a while just to create the talkback that can remind us how many mush brained racist idiots still exist in the modern world. But there’s not enough discussion of his body of work, his unique style, his influence, his ahead-of-his-timeness. So what if he has a big mouth, if he has a vision to match? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Bill Nunn, Danny Aiello, John Turturro, Martin Lawrence, Ossie Davis, Richard Edson, Robin Harris, Roger Guenveur Smith, Ruby Dee, Spike Lee
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 28 Comments »
Tuesday, December 17th, 2013
Before I talk about the remake of OLDBOY it’s important that I say I liked the original but only saw it one time 8 years ago. Here’s what I wrote about it then.
In the remake directed by Spike Lee and written by Mark Protosevich (THE CELL, I AM LEGEND), Josh Brolin (THRASHIN’) plays a Nick Nolte character named Joe Doucett. He’s an alcoholic, sexually harassing deadbeat dad and advertising asshole who after a long night of drinking, puking and crying in 1993 meets a woman who takes him to a hotel and when he wakes up he realizes she’s not there and there are no windows or doorknobs. One of those hotel conundrums, you know. And this was before Yelp and shit like that so he couldn’t even give them a bad review. Turns out this is not a normal hotel in that you can’t leave. Someone, for some reason, has locked him in this weird prison. Every day they stick a plate of dumplings and a bottle of vodka through a hatch in the door, but they don’t tell him why he’s here.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: American remake, J.J. Perry, James Brolin, Mark Protosevich, Michael Imperioli, remakes, revenge, Samuel L. Jackson, Sharlto Copley, Spike Lee
Posted in Action, Reviews, Thriller | 49 Comments »
Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013
If I were to tell you I watched a movie with characters named Flik Royale, Chazz Morningstar, Blessing Rowe, Deacon Zee, Mother Darling and Bishop Enoch, what would that tell you? That’s right – it was a Spike Lee movie.
(Later we find out that Flik is a nickname and Enoch is an assumed name. Gator Purify didn’t have that luxury.)
RED HOOK SUMMER is the low budget indie movie Lee put out last year, kind of a return to his roots after a couple bigger studio movies, INSIDE MAN and MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA. Spike says it came about when he was talking to James McBride, author of the St. Anna novel, about what they saw as the dire state of black cinema. (I take that to mean “complaining about Tyler Perry movies.”) He had recently bought a digital camera so he asked McBride to write something and they would make it. Together they came up with a story about a middle class Atlanta Kid, maybe 13-14, coming to stay with his estranged grandpa in the Red Hook housing projects of Brooklyn.
(read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: church, Clarke Peters, James McBride, Nate Parker, New York, Spike Lee
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 15 Comments »
Friday, November 28th, 2008
The first actor you see in MALCOLM X is not Denzel Washington, or even a kid playing a young Denzel Washington. It’s Spike Lee getting his shoes shined, then strutting across the street in a zoot suit. As if to say, “Yep, after a long fight to be hired by the producers, struggling to shoot the movie, fighting the studio for the 3 hour running time, gathering donations from black celebrities for completion funds, here I am. Playing Malcolm X’s best friend Shorty. Welcome to my movie.” The audacity makes me laugh, but oh well, it works.
This is by far Lee’s most Serious and Important film, but there’s some fun to be had early on. In his youth Malcolm went to dances, tried to look good and pick up women, and Lee couldn’t resist an epic lindy hop sequence that’s incredible to watch. Hard to believe people used to know how to dance like that. I wonder how many people landed on their heads? (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Denzel Washington, Spike Lee
Posted in Drama, Reviews | 2 Comments »
Wednesday, October 1st, 2008
According to the Rotten Tomatoes, Spike Lee’s new World War II epic has a 27% organic and plump rating (or whatever). In other words it has a lower approval rating than George Bush. Also, by the way, lower than CHRONICLES OF RIDDICK or DAREDEVIL.
I don’t think that’s fair. This movie is WAY better than George Bush. The other thing that’s been unfair is how all the pre-release coverage was about Lee’s alleged feud with Clint Eastwood. The movie is about the Buffalo Soldiers (or “experimental colored brigade” as a white commanding officer calls them in the movie) so some reporter got Lee to say something about there not being enough brothers on the wall in FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS. Then somebody told Clint that Spike said some shit and got Clint to say some shit back and then the two quotes were taken out of context and repeated, so in the IMDb headlines and in the imaginations of movie fans around the world it turned into a battle between Spike and Clint instead of a movie that can stand on its own. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Spike Lee
Posted in Reviews, War | 1 Comment »
Sunday, March 26th, 2006
INSIDE MAN has gotta be Spike Lee’s most mainstream joint ever. It’s a gimmicky bank robber thriller, not the type of story and characters he as a jointmaker is known for. You can go down his entire jointography and he’s never done this type of movie – it’s not as gritty and realistic as CLOCKERS, it’s not as meandering and novelistic as THE 25TH HOUR or SUMMER OF SAM, it’s not something he seems to be as passionate about as say MALCOLM X or the Jackie Robinson movie he’s been talking about doing for about 500 years that now is gonna be a Robert Redford Joint. (Yeah right Robert Redford, you had no idea Spike Lee wanted to do a Jackie Robinson movie. Who would’ve ever known Spike was interested in that sort of thing?)
So it’s not pure 100% grade A Spike Lee Joint which accounts for its lack of greatness, but I think it’s also kind of a good thing for Spike. He’s never made a movie completely lacking in merit (well, I haven’t seen SHE HATE ME yet) but he seems to get less and less focused as he gets older. Maybe doing one mainstream thriller will get him back in the mode of telling a somewhat concise story. I don’t know. (read the rest of this shit…)
Tags: Chiwetel Ejiofor, Clive Owen, Denzel Washington, heists, Spike Lee
Posted in Crime, Drama, Reviews | 5 Comments »
