Straight Outta Compton - The Motion Picture

Clem: that's why I sit down 15 mins after the advertised start time.

also remember it's the hip-hop world. potential collaborations and reunions tend to happen and blow up in a matter of minutes. N.W.A. almost reunited one other time in the early 2000s (actually released a few singles with Snoop) but then it blew up. Commercially speaking, though, it could have easily worked. They were all only local heroes when N.W.A. first blew up, now three of them were multi-platinum hip hop superstars. A reunion album with Dre's new bag of tricks at the time would have sold mad units. they could have been Wu-Tang before Wu-Tang, keeping the solo careers alive and also the group simultaneously. From a business model, they could have made out like bandits.

Eazy dying obviously put a stop to that - the other problem would have been that Dre, Cube, Eazy arguably didn't need N.W.A. from a career or financial standpoint as much as Ren and Yella did, so it might have been a short-lived reunion at best.

Dre has made clear over the years that he was terrified by what was going on at Death Row (even told a story about an engineer getting his ass beat for rewinding the tape too far), so the thought of him fleeing a new level of discomfort for something familiar and warm isn't too farfetched.

it just kinda blows my mind what Death Row could have become had Suge not run it like a legit gangster. When I was a 13 year old chatting with my friend about Snoop and Dre, none of us would have believed in two-three years, those two would be on their way out, and the label would hit big with a few Pac albums and then fade into obscurity.

I remember the stunned disappointment on "man on the street" folks who were given Doggfather at random for an advance listen. I realize many folks defend the album now (I'm still not a fan), but folks really thought that pop-infused G-Funk of Death Row was a mainstay and it was gone fairly quickly (g-funk as a whole obv has had a much longer lifespan but Dre's brand specifically what I'm referring to obv)

xpost I usually get to the movie in time for previews intentionally. and only go to the least populated theatre cos other moviegoers are the worst.

I think the main issue with the dude playing Dre is that while he looks similar, he looks too young. Dre has had an 'old guy' face since his early 20s.

genuinely surprised at O'Shea Jr's quality. he apparently had a horrible first audition, and one of the hardest things to nail as an inexperienced actor is comic timing, but his delivery during his insult and subsequent dismissal of the poolside interviewer was great.

but 4 theaters showing it, p cool

It's running 3-4 times an hour at the Arclight in LA

clemenza: I was joking on you citing his name. "Who on earth could O'Shea Jackson, Jr.'s father possibly be???!?!¿"

I guess I could see them reuniting to put something on a movie soundtrack, then Dre announcing that they've signed with Aftermath, then never releasing anything else they recorded.

― intheblanks, Sunday, August 16, 2015 6:13 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is essentially what did happen a few years later - there was an NWA 'reunion' song on the Next Friday soundtrack, with Snoop in place of Eazy, but then talking of doing a full album never led anywhere.

Chin Check I think it was

Snoop & Em both wrote for Dre on the Ice Cube / Dr Dre / MC Ren song off Cube's War & Peace vol. 2 album, "Hello."

Yup. God that song mighta been decent if not for Cube's "who gives a shit" attitude on the entire album and the ToeJam and Earl beat from Dre

sic: I just took his name from IMDB when I first posted--still didn't clue in as to who he was, and wouldn't have unless his name had been O'Shea Cube.

Some reaction from Eazy-E's daughter: http://www.bet.com/news/music/2015/08/16/eazy-e-daughter-straight-outta-compton-review.html.

You thought his government name really was Ice Cube?

Because I'm about to blow your mind with some news about Emilio Estevez.

loooool

The poster descriptions of this make me want to see it much more than the trailer, the self-aggrandizing lead-in of which put me off a little (reminds me a lot of these quick-cut musician "documentaries" that have proliferated that are just talking head after talking head saying stuff like "important" and "changed everything" for 90 minutes).

pretty neat piece on Greenspan's, the source of all the sweet vintage threads in the movie

http://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/movies-news-reviews/article31286762.html

I couldn't believe this was on like 4 screens @ my local multiplex. well-timed opening to be against like the man from uncle and idk even what else, some studio head shd get a raise cuz this will make v good dough

i thought this would do well but i was still surprised by HOW well until I remembered that where to care about biggie, you have to care about mid-'90s rap - and be ok with diddy. with nwa, you not only have the nwa period, but chronic and chronic 2001, without even getting into cube. there's like three generations of gangsta rap fans touched on there, and then you have dre as eminem's mentor. so the base of interest is really a lot bigger than notorious.

everything about this was handled better than the biggie movie

This still doesn't have a Danish premiere date, meaning that it's tough to figure out whether or not it even has a distributor, meaning a rumour popped up that it wouldn't get to the country, the rumour growing so loud that a cinema had to tweet, that yup, it did have distributor. Because Universal Pictures distributes it's own films internationally. But mostly release dates coincide, I don't know the last time a blockbuster didn't have a release date here the day it opened in the US.

It makes me think. It is kinda weird, but NWA is probably seen as a niche-concern, more so than Pitch Perfect II and it's ilk. But why? At Danish festivals the kids jump around to King Kunta as well as Trap Queen or Get Low, and it always seems to surprise the organizers, there are always more people than planned for. And the music isn't on the radio, only in niche programs. Why wouldn't kids today, in the age of spotify and the internet, realize that NWA are the forefathers of a lot of the music they love? It's just erased, almost, hiphop is really still the eighties, it's New York, and it's conscious. In the eyes of the tastemakers.

Sorry for derailing the thread.

hiphop is really still the eighties, it's New York, and it's conscious. In the eyes of the tastemakers.

I assume yr speaking specifically of Denmark here

Wesley Morris:

"...so beholden to the appeasement of so many artists and legacies and estates that none of it coheres as a movie.... There’s no point of view—just the masculinized version of the generically entertaining bitchery you find on nighttime soaps. But should the story of five gangsta-rappers from Compton feel this much like Melrose Place?”

http://grantland.com/hollywood-prospectus/straight-outta-compton-review-ice-cube-dr-dre/

based on the worldwide box office for other rap biopics and ice cube movies, guessing scandinavia isn't a primary concern

judging from the info available on box office mojo and imdb, i don't even know if ride along got released in theaters in denmark

i didn't hate ride along

I thought the Morris review was pretty otm.

there's a bit of irony in wondering how a movie about nwa can have such a "psycho-thriller camp" relationship with reality

lol

hiphop is really still the eighties, it's New York, and it's conscious. In the eyes of the tastemakers.

I assume yr speaking specifically of Denmark here

― Οὖτις, 17. august 2015 19:16 (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yup.

And no, Ride Along didn't get a Danish premiere either, and that was Universal as well.

idk what to tell you except that (at this point) that is a v v small sliver of hip hop culture

Frederik, you're probably already aware of this, but there's an online petition to have Universal agree to two unsubtitled screenings in dk http://www.skrivunder.net/nwa_filmen_straight_outta_compton_i_danske_biografer

x-post: He. Yeah, I know that. Denmark is small like that. People sorta like Kendrick, though. And Kanye. But Atlanta, drill, ratchet, that's foreign country. A song like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDLaJm5noSU
which is such a Mike Will copy - a great one at that - is called chopped'n'screwed many places. We're decades behind.

No niels, I didn't know that. I'm guessing that might be why Grand tweeted what they did.

Frederik: "Ik heb geen fuck"--whenever you hear that, it means "I don't give a fuck." I used Google translator.

That's dutch, dude...

Also, now I'm really sorry for derailing the thread. I want to hear more about the film! Looking forward to it.

These are the kind of derails I look forward to.

(xpost) Not only that, but they'd probably be speaking regular old English in a unsubtitled film. I need to think these jokes through.

saw it again last night. still liked it, but have to agree with Veg's take that the last hour is a bit of a slog.

and one thing that drives me nuts is how every simple concept is overexplained.

*Eazy reads FBI letter*

Eazy: You know what? this is a gift!
MC Ren: Yo, what you mean?
Eazy: Bad publicity is good publicity
MC Ren: OHHHHH makes sense!

*Ice Cube hears line referring to him as Benedict Arnold*

Ice Cube: Benedict Arnold? Are they calling me a traitor?
Record Exec: Yes.

*For the last hour, Eazy goes into a coughing fit towards the end of every scene he's in to remind you he's sick*

Whoever's on screen with him: You alright, Eazy?

*scene where Eazy explains no less than three times in five minutes that he's having to downgrade his house due to expenses*

I mean, still enjoyed it but that shit was annoying

lmao

A hospital? What is it?

haha that kind of shit is in a weird way precisely what i'm looking for. like i get wesley morris' point but there's something more triumphant and subversive (or maybe more subverted, in the sense of 'this is how much these guys won this battle') about a by the numbers walk hard type biopic for n.w.a., like even w/ the straight outta meme i could see someone bemoaning that but as someone old enough to remember the 'culture wars' that you'd have companies tweeting 'straight outta arby's' or whatever feels like a marker of victory in a way that dre being a millionaire, anything that tell's the bill o'reillys 'you're right, this isn't yr country anymore' is fine by me even if it's just someone selling curly fries.

i thought this would do well but i was still surprised by HOW well until I remembered that where to care about biggie, you have to care about mid-'90s rap - and be ok with diddy. with nwa, you not only have the nwa period, but chronic and chronic 2001, without even getting into cube. there's like three generations of gangsta rap fans touched on there, and then you have dre as eminem's mentor. so the base of interest is really a lot bigger than notorious.

I think this is part of it, but it was also just the fact that the movie itself looked way better than Notorious. When I saw the Straight Outta Compton trailer two months ago, it looked totally exhilarating. The buzz kept building over the past month in various media sources, then it opened this week to uniformly positive reviews.

some dude said it upthread, but Notorious was a punchline before it even came out.

yeah, i didn't mean to suggest there weren't other factors like that, i just thought the difference in audience base was sorta remarkable.

Also, and I mentioned this upthread, but Universal is the only studio right now doing a good job making and marketing blockbuster movies centered around women and people of color. They've had 7 big hits this year; 5 of those 7 are Pitch Perfect 2, 50 Shades of Grey, Trainwreck, Furious 7, and Straight Outta Compton.

The appeal of these films is of course very broad! It's why they made so much money! I guess the point I'm making is that there's only one studio that actually is using its resources in such a way to make an NWA movie a blockbuster. Other studios would have been too blinkered to make this project the success it ended up being.

honestly you could say universal is the only studio doing a good job of making and marketing movies for adults

or rather, adult-oriented. obv marvel/pixar stuff is big with adults too.

xxxpost - cant imagine dre or cube wanting a reunion in the mid 90s but they did both record natural born killers around 1996 iirc, so im guessing they didnt hate each others guts at that point

yeah, was really curious about the stuff regarding the reunion - in the movie, they actually show Yella playing a track he'd worked on for it, and I was wondering if that was real, or they just invented it (or made concrete something that may have been much more up in the air irl) for the narrative of the movie. Would def be into hearing unreleased NWA stuff!

i think they ran their course tbh. unless they have archive stuff that was never released, im not interested in hearing any new NWA songs, esp if theyre like chin check. also dont know why they need a replacement for eazy - they could just keep going as a trio (plus yella obv)

cant imagine dre or cube wanting a reunion in the mid 90s but they did both record natural born killers around 1996 iirc, so im guessing they didnt hate each others guts at that point

I remember there being press around the time of Eazy's death that they had all reconciled

I really did enjoy watching this movie but it was so superficial and zero-depthy that it felt like people acting out a Wikipedia article. It taught me that a bunch of kids liked making music and then made some music and then got discovered and went on tour and became famous and then also fought sometimes (i.e. the story of virtually every famous band). Where the fuck were Yella or Ren besides appearing on screen simply because they had to be there for the movie to make sense? Where was all the depth and personal relationship stuff and why was so much stuff brought up once but then like never explored again [i.e. NWA not being able to form because some other group would get mad but then forming anyway, Snoop walking in Death Row flagging blue and ppl getting kinda mad but then it never being addressed explain how it was resolved really, etc, etc, etc]

Basically it just made me want to watch a bunch of other documentaries or read a bunch of other stuff to get some insight into what *actually* happened, also HSB hilariously OTM abt oversimplification, like oh here let me just stumble upon the G Thang riff while Snoop just happens to meander downstairs with all of these great lyrics ready to go