Straight Outta Compton - The Motion Picture

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

otm

also it was amusing to see how fucking batshit Death Row was and I really doubt it was embellished all that much

Dee Barnes has published her reflections on the time and film via Gawker

http://gawker.com/heres-whats-missing-from-straight-outta-compton-me-and-1724735910

it just made me want to watch a bunch of other documentaries

there are not really any good docs about LA rap of this period that I know of but let me know if you find some

Is there a way to read Gawker articles without sending them traffic?

Ask someone to copy/paste, I guess. But you really should read it.

Pretty much all biopics are bad and dumb, and it probably doesn't help when two of the subjects of the biopic are also producers.

I am getting less interested in this the more reviews come in

I mean I love the subject matter but I hate biopics so this would have to offer something more than that to grab me and it kinda sounds like it does not

idk the description of that 'that's what a fool believes loggins! that's what...a fool believes. *cue music*' moment has me pretty stoked for whenever i dvr this thing off cable.

If you're still not wanting to click through, perhaps this will help.

F. Gary Gray, the man whose film made $60 million last weekend as it erased my attack from history, was also behind the camera to film the moment that launched that very attack. He was my cameraman for Pump It Up! You may have noticed that Gary has been reluctant to address N.W.A.’s misogyny and Dre’s attack on me in interviews. I think a huge reason that Gary doesn’t want to address it is because then he’d have to explain his part in history. He’s obviously uncomfortable for a reason.

Is there a way to read Gawker articles without sending them traffic?

― Jersey Al (Albert R. Broccoli), Tuesday, August 18, 2015 9:40 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

whole article here: http://pastebin.com/b64dPxKa

xxpost to stevie & shakey

Welcome to Death Row (2001) is p good. Not much abt nwa but lots abt Suge & Dre.

They're rereleasing it ondemand on some cable providers but u can find it on youtube/dailymotion

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

― Οὖτις, Tuesday, August 18, 2015 5:42 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Dre and Cube reconciled fairly quickly. Natural Born Killaz was on the Murder was the Case Soundtrack which came out in 1994.

Wikipedia claims it was originally written for that N.W.A. project but uhhhhhh there's no sourcing for that so idk

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

― Y Kant Max Read (Stevie D(eux)), Tuesday, August 18, 2015 7:52 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahaha I almost listed that example too. Like he's been sitting there frustrated for hours trying to come up with a sine-wave riff and just hits on it at that exact moment? It's like man, you can show them rehearsing it without showing us how you came up with every idea!

Is there a way to read Gawker articles without sending them traffic?

"Hustle and Flow" did a great job of showing process/minutia of building a song in a way that felt organic. A rare example among movies about music as a whole. It's definitely something storytellers don't succeed at. .

You guys are holding this movie to a standard I've never actually seen pulled off in any biopic. I'm sure I might have found things to pick apart in the Brian Wilson movie too, but that's only because I know a lot about it already. As someone who likes NWA, but didn't know a ton about them other than really obvious stuff, I found this movie not only entertaining, but really informative -- ESPECIALLY about how the personalities of Eazy E, Dre and Ice Cube factored into the group forming, performing and eventually disbanding. The acting was really good IMO, believable, and I wouldn't be surprised if Mitchell, in particular, got an Oscar nod (at least for supporting role).

Sure, even to me, it felt like things HAD to have been glossed over, but it's a general audience movie, as much as I've seen I've seen it described as "for fans only". Fans may stand to enjoy it most, but to me it seems like a well-made, relatively in-depth movie for PEOPLE WHO DON'T ALREADY KNOW EVERYTHING. My criticisms of it were that it was about 20 mins too long, the ending was anticlimactic, and the bit about the reunion seemed a bit too-good-to-be-true/convenient for a happy ending (unless it really was true).

Regarding the stuff about Dre's woman-beating -- yes, I've read this many places. I heard there was a 3.5 hour edit of this that may become part of a director's cut, and that was to include more details about Dre's relationships.

lol not likely

Dre's never displayed the requisite humility/contrition/penchant for self-examination that would make him OK scenes in the movie of him being a woman-beating misogynist, I expect it would undermine his character's ability to function as a likable protagonist

I still liked it, I just felt like the movie became decidedly less interesting once they finished the part where Dre left the group. Pacing slowed way down, Cube disappears for far too long, Dre's scenes get broad-strokey, etc.

Regarding the stuff about Dre's woman-beating -- yes, I've read this many places. I heard there was a 3.5 hour edit of this that may become part of a director's cut, and that was to include more details about Dre's relationships.

That seems a touch on the wish-fulfillment side, honestly.

regardless of length, Dee Barnes detail is one that could have (and should have) been included, considering some of the unnecessary stuff that was touched on in the last hour. I got a little annoyed how Dre was portrayed as the "white knight" amongst Death Row, as if he wasn't caught up in it himself for a little while.

Also Dominique, more to the point perhaps, are you SURE you want to dismiss it all that way when the subject of said notorious assault just published an explicit piece referencing that as well as the film's director's involvement?

I found it v lol that Dre came off as the sensitive gentle "just in it for the music" dude

like oooookay