Spike Lee: Dud or DUD?!?

The bathroom monologue was even more powerful this time, but the last five-ten minutes wasn't. It was still great, and I was about to cry - but it didn't match the awe I felt the first time I saw it.

(25th Hour really made me wish I could move to NYC again. And a Cool Hand Luke poster.)

the most effective moment emotionally for me was simply the long look at what ebay sellers like to call "black americana" eg: dolls, advertisements, etc. and even that stuff (hugely popular collectables big with wealthy black collectors) would have made an extremely interesting documentary of some sort

some of that stuff made it into that Confederate States of America movie, and was pretty much the only good part of it. Lee had some kind of production role in C.S.A., and I assume he had some hand in including the real history of "black Americana" in the mockumentary. He should totally make an actual documentary about it.

I don't know, CSA's satire was kind of inconsistent--like it wouldn't put its money where its mouth was in terms of racial ideology.

Duds: Mo' Better Blues, Bamboozled

Really the only thing that let that movie down for me was the ending, which kind of went too far for me; everything else was great.

Back in 2003 I said it was his worst movie, but he's made like 9 I haven't seen since or something. And I never saw all of Girl 6.

So, I guess a fast one like the one that was about minstrelry on Chapelle last night is ok though? It's the slow ones that ppl are not responding to?

So I guess you've not watched Mind of Mencia, either.

(Also Carlos Mencia is really fucking odd because he's aggresively unfunny but there is an aspect to what he's saying that strikes my "OTM!" button sometimes; there's an entire routine he does in his standup about being uncomfortable doing a show for an audience full of Down's Syndrome patients that is an extended riff on the idea of "if you can't say something about a group of people to someone from that group of people, the thing you're trying to say is not at joke", a sentiment I agree with but GOD WHY CAN'T YOU BE FUNNY WITH YOUR "JOKES", YOU GIGANTIC BAG OF DOUCHE)

Bamboozled is totally incoherent, it actually made me feel kinda bad for Spike that he had made such an amateurish mess. I didn't even make it all the way to the end for the "payoff".

Stephen Colbert's interview with Julian Bond last night pwnz all, BTW.

I just think there was more to the popularity of minstrelsy than the joy of watching people stand around in blackface. Emmett Miller, Al Jolson, etc - people who were talented but exploiters of a very fucked up culture. The movie kinda missed that (some of the Savion Glover stuff got near it), and gave an out to folks who love all kinds of modern racist shit but would never watch what was on that Mantan show. God help me for quoting him, but Ebert's review gets at the point pretty well ("To satirize black shows on TV, Lee should have stayed closer to what really offends him; I think his fundamental miscalculation was to use blackface itself. He overshoots the mark. Blackface is so blatant, so wounding, so highly charged, that it obscures any point being made by the person wearing it. The makeup is the message."). Admittedly, if you think that white people just eat up any racist shit they can get (which could definitely be argued), then this means nothing.

what an idiot.