Baz Luhrmann's 'origins of hip-hop' Netflix dramatic series "The Get Down"

...yeah I dunno.

Oh good grief.

I keep seeing music-related series get announced and they all, invariably, sound terrible

Yeah Baz Luhrmann's exactly the guy I'd trust with the South Bronx in the 1970s.

As I've been saying on FB:

Starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Kool DJ Herc and Carey Mulligan as Sylvia Robinson. Special guest star Tobey Maguire as Fab 5 Freddy. Cameo of Rick Rubin as himself, no makeup or change or anything, just being some old weird hairy dude.

SCENE: boardroom. Various AD EXECS are looking bored. "Gentlemen, I have it! We should invent hip-hop!" They then start doing the dougie and singing "Get Low" as arranged for string quartet. DI CAPRIO enters: "Why, what's this?"

/witless

I can't remember, you're bitter about my existence or something, yes?

This is like hiring Christopher Nolan to direct a movie about the rise of disco. No prior demonstration of his sensibilities indicates that he is in any way the appropriate person to tackle the subject.

surely that job should go to whit stillman

idk I kinda wanted to see stillman's movie about rocksteady/ska/reggae

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usv442G6H8A

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/07/arts/television/the-get-down-on-netflix-a-superhero-fable-about-the-birth-of-hip-hop.html?hpw&rref=television&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well

Superhero fable? Luke Cage invented hip hop?

man this has to be the worst collision of words in a thread title ever

"Luke Cage invented hip hop?"

He helped!

i mean he was very inspirational...

http://wetalkpodcasts.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Hero-For-Hire-V1-1-Page-2.jpg

first 5 words of this thread title = nein danke forever

i'm gonna give it a chance. the first episode is movie-length so if i don't like that i can stop right there.

at least spike lee didn't make it. OHHHHHH SNAP!

I'll watch at least the first one but fully expect it to be ridiculous and stupid

TFW five words into a thread title you already are thinking "no thanks."

hahaha xp NV

lol and i basically paraphrased Brad without realising it

I WILL SING PAPI AND YOU CANNOT STOP ME!

i think it helps that i don't hate that guy. i've only seen romeo + juliet which i liked. this will be his 6th movie in a way. he hasn't made that many.

yeah but all the ones after R+J have been terrible

"The way I see it
all of us on this planet
we're on a journey
and it is a mystery"

*jump-cut to Chilly Kids performing Ice Arcade*

i always thought that Australia! looked like a Seinfeld parody of a big-budget epic. never seen it though. like even the poster looks fake. did it have a cool tag-line?

Tim Burton's "origins of goth" Netflix dramatic series "Darker Strokes"

Executive Producer
Nas

this is out now, right?
i am flat out refusing to watch it unless the whole world loves it. Anybody wanna convince me otherwise?

I've given it ~17 minutes and it's really baffling imo. there's so much distracting shit with the attempt at the period setting, which just isn't working at all. hyperactive direction and editing, and every character that's been introduced so far (including ed koch) seems just ridiculously over the top. i don't know what i expected, mind you, but i think i'm good with bailing right here.

Does Jim Broadbent show up and say "theseee are the breaks" in his beleaguered baritone

(x-post)

Same experience.

Some of the photography is stunning and the styling impressive, but wtf is going on with the script - which is largely dire so far.

I wanted to enjoy this but it's too melodramatic!

And somehow totally exhausting to watch

a Baz Luhrmann film product exhausting to watch? surely not

do they ever get around to the hip-hop

You're really gonna wanna watch the whole pilot before making a decision about whether you wanna keep going... The real triumphs of the show are in editing, pacing, music, look, feel, the way sub-plots interact, the way music interacts — all of which pay off big time later in the episode. Don't let the melodrama/wind-up of the first 20-30 minutes turn you off

And also, obviously, the historical details which amplify the fantasy (which I have a lot more to say about, stay tuned)

*remove bookmark from thread*

I think this show is good

^one for the sticker

had to stop with about 30 minutes to go in the premier - it's ... not bad, but not great? Some of the cartoonish disco pimp stylings were too over the top imo, and Jaden Smith is fucking horrible. The music aspects of it are definitely better integrated than they were in Vinyl, and it doesn't seem like it will be nearly as clumsy in the trainspotting/namedropping dept. I liked that it went for capturing the vibe and range of the neighborhood, bit players all making good contributions. But idk where this is going or if it will really make a decent series.

the 1990s rap bit crash into the '70s melodrama soapy bits which crash into into the verité video in a really disorienting and offputting manner. if this were fully gonzo luhrman, i'd like it. if it were truly gritty, i'd like it. if it were about '90s swagger, i'd like it. but it's torn between the three, and a half-dozen lesser styles in a way that seems really disorganized.

it's really only the 90s stuff that bugs me - feels unnecessary, like a sop to Nas

I sometimes wonder if, like how some dads are super hard on their kids because the kid doesn't plan to go into the family business or isn't as talented as their pop or something, Will Smith gets all 'BE MORE CHARISMATIC!' with Jaden.

I think if I prep myself for the melodrama/sappy revisionism of Bronx life in the 70s, I may wind up able to enjoy this.

finished the first ep - Whiney is otm that the last sequence really ties things together. The record serving as a through-line from the opening sequence to the debacle at Les Inferno to the appearance of Flash is very smartly and subtly done, it shows the music mutating. That whole final party scene w Flash and Cowboy and the breakdancing battle is great, lots of attention to detail without being DO YOU SEE about everything (another big failure of Vinyl). And the lead actors are all engaging (Smith excepted) - the Shaolin Fantastic guy has to sell a lot of lines/performance aspects that could very easily have come off stupid and contrived, but he strikes just the right balance imo. The Nas/90s frames are not great, but this was good enough for me to sign on for the rest of it.

http://www.rollingstone.com/tv/features/the-get-down-how-a-tv-show-recreated-the-birth-of-hip-hop-w434654

^ Got rap dork details with Baz, Nelson, Rahiem and Nas. Can't promise my piece is the best, but will definitely be the nerdiest.

gonna ask you and reveal my ignorance, but what *was* that disco record Flash wanted?

It doesn't exist, it's a "Misty Holloway," which is like a fictional portmantaeu of Loleatta Holloway and Minnie Riperton

The fake names of things is one of my favorite little treats, like "Fantastic Four +1" and "Les Inferno" and "Marrakech Star"

It doesn't exist

that was my guess, cuz I didn't recognize it but thought maybe it was just some super-obscure break I didn't know

I was going to check this out until I heard that they dubbed Daveed Diggs' voice with Nas's
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING

it works fine

female lead's singing parts are dubbed as well

it is madness

I was quite keen to watch this till I learnt it was Baz Luhrman, a director whose films I mostly find annoying. Might give it a shot at some point anyway.

So awful. Terrible directing in the first two episodes and the acting, for the most part, is .... ¡Dios Mio! Que mierda.

too many storylines in this, everything that doesn't center on the kids is mostly garbage (altho I am intersmittently enjoying the Unbearable Suaveness of Jimmy Smits segments). The music is great though.

this did not turn out well

I started watching the new episodes and I think I got off the bus at "I almost made out with Debbie Harry in the bathroom at CBGB."

lol

yeah it really goes off the rails, increasingly doubles down on everything that was wrong w the debut ep

why is it so hard to make decent retrospective films about music scenes? Films made contemporaneously with the scenes they're documenting/profiling tend to at least have the redeeming quality of accurately capturing *some* aspects of an era, but backwards-looking biopics and series (like this and Vinyl) are so often terrible. Outside of Todd Haynes, who pulled it off twice imo, I can't really think of anyone who consistently delivers on this front.

24 hour party people is great but yeah there aren't really any others i can think of

yeah that one's good. the semi-detached/ironic and relatively freewheeling nature of 24HPP and the Haynes films feel like the way to go

this is kinda terrible but we watched it anyway

I was actually quite moved by Cadillac's closing monologue, given that his character up to that point had been the worst, laziest caricature of the show.

still haven't seen any of this but i saw baz luhrmann being interviewed at the met gala the other day and i must have missed the news that his brain had been transplanted into the body of a realdoll

he has the smooth, matte-finish look of an auton

this show constantly does the Luhrmann thing where 20 minutes goes by and every second feels like the dramatic climax, over and over, until you are bludgeoned into submission.

not being renewed aka cancelled