Spike Lee: Dud or DUD?!?

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.

1) Have you watched Mind of Mencia?
2) If you have, have you noticed that a rather significant portion of his jokes are about Mexicans?
3) And, by Mexicans, do you realize I don't mean "Hispanics" but rather specifically "Beaners" and "Wetbacks" and "Mexicans" (Mencia's own words)?

In other words, if you don't have an actual point to make besides vague random accusations of ppl not "understanding" that Mencia himself is not a Mexican (it's not even the dude's real last name. I know! I read boing boing too etc), can you please go back to ranting about Israel?

which is weird, given how no character in the movie raises that. like it was left behind in another draft. because a movie about the insidiousness of that idea might fall down less often than bamboozled does.

(note that apart from the burnt cork the minstrel show in bamboozled is not very similar at all to an actual 1800s minstrel show.) (the videotape at the end suggests that at least someone must have realised that, even if lee didn't.) (or maybe lee did and we're indulging in unproductive readings of the movie.)

one thing i would say, the framing of the shots + the editing = pretty uniformly ugly. compared to the only other two spike lee films i've seen, very much so.

'clockers' has maybe the worst use of music in any film ever.

I loved the shit out of Bamboozled for like three weeks.

Then I watched it again and now I really hate it.

Do The Right Thing, Crooklyn, Clockers, and 25th Hour all CLASSIC though. Summer of Sam, Malcolm X & Inside Man = pretty good.

i'd say the latter

Bobby, do you really have anything to "say"?

Hoos otm, tho i'd add she's got to have it in the former camp, School Daze in the latter camp, and bump Summer Of Sam up to CLASSIC. mark, is Mo Better Blues irredeemable?

MBB is classic!

which mark you askin stevie? me? i haven't seen it since it came out, so redeemability not currently clear to me

He's classic for Do The Right Thing alone, which is a masterpiece and one of the best American films of the 80s.

mark - i seem to remember you noting that it was fatally flawed somewhere, but will give it a try!

I enjoyed Summer Of Sam, but then I would probably enjoy any film that has a talking dog saying "KILL! YOU MUST KILL!" in it, even if the rest of the film was rubbish.