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

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