Spike Lee: Dud or DUD?!?

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.

from dim memory SL is very poor on the relationship between (black) players and (white) audience (inc.esp.jewish clubowners), letting it be ENTIRELY portrayed as predatory and bad faith, which seemed like a cop-out and a misunderstanding (and-plus more than a little reverse-racist, or so the buzz was at the time, from eg nat hentoff)

however i also think i had high regard for the way he got the music on the screen -- but i can't now remember exactly why or how i felt this, only that jazz has generally been lousily served on celluloid and (in some respect) it wasn't here

(i'm encouraged that jordan seems in agreement as he is far more learned jazzwise than me)

he got game is just great though.

so am i still the only one here who saw "She Hate Me"?? i remember wanting to talk abt it when it came out (i wondered if anyone wanted to revisit the "even his bad ones are great" theory) but there wasn't even a thread :[ that was around when he did Sucker Free City and it seemed like Anthony Mackie was going to be his new denzel or something.

also hey mark s is postin again that is kewl 2 me

from dim memory SL is very poor on the relationship between (black) players and (white) audience (inc.esp.jewish clubowners), letting it be ENTIRELY portrayed as predatory and bad faith, which seemed like a cop-out and a misunderstanding (and-plus more than a little reverse-racist, or so the buzz was at the time, from eg nat hentoff)

this is my dim memory too, but I also don't remember it being that large a part of the film (my memory is that there's one or two scenes tops with Turturro...?) More of a minor detail.

he got game is just great though.

this is false.

I kind of wanted to see She Hate Me because Q-Tip!!! but it looked crazy misogynistic. was it?

The Jewish caricatures in MBB actually didn't bother me, because it was pretty accurate about (some) club owners! Over the top, but not out of nowhere.

I had a conversation about MBB the other day b/c my band was playing the title track, which is a total modern standard. Apparently Denzel went way out of his way to memorize every fingering for the the scene where they play that song (and, uh, Wesley Snipes did not).

Yeah, He Got Game is pretty awful.

yeah i think -- courtesy hentoff especially -- there had been a GIANT HUGE DEBATE about those caricatures at the v.voice, which i read before i saw the film (and which coincided maybe with PE's professor griff bein nutz abt similar stuff?)

anyway this froufara is the main thing i now recall about MMB... hence bein very circumspect abt my feelings and responses, which feel very second-hand (ie i'm half-remembering what i WROTE but not much what i SAW OR HEARD) <--- routine writer's problem

hey, mark! welcome back!

a GIANT HUGE DEBATE about those caricatures at the v.voice, which i read before i saw the film (and which coincided maybe with PE's professor griff bein nutz abt similar stuff?)

The PE/Griff thing is a little earlier but yeah Lee's associations with PE and rap generally coming under fire for being anti-semitic (see also: Ice Cube) was all around the same time and probably informed the debate quite a bit.

I kind of wanted to see She Hate Me because Q-Tip!!! but it looked crazy misogynistic. was it?

-- horseshoe, Monday, August 20, 2007 4:12 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Yeah, He Got Game is pretty awful.

-- n/a, Monday, August 20, 2007 4:21 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

RONG

touche

i just saw inside man last night. leaving aside the usual suspects retread of the story, it's lots of fun. but i really wish spike would drop that annoying dolly shot he does where he pulls along a static actor on a cart so it looks like he's zooming through the scene. lame film-school trick, and distracting.

also, yesh, he got game is lousy. there was a good movie to be made there, but he didn't do it.

i really wish spike would drop that annoying dolly shot he does where he pulls along a static actor on a cart so it looks like he's zooming through the scene. lame film-school trick, and distracting.

good god is he still doing this

I quite enjoyed Inside Man – he should sell out more often. The Denzel interrogation scenes were a more polished, extended versions of Harvey Keitel's arias in Clockers.

i love that he still does the actor on the dolly trick.

Me too, I was smiling when it happened in Inside Man, like "aw Spike, don't ever change".

Btw no mention of When the Levees Broke???

that was crazy when he put EVERYONE on the dolly for that one.

is that a joke or an xpost or (plz plz plz) the truth?

I kind of wanted to see She Hate Me because Q-Tip!!! but it looked crazy misogynistic. was it?

-- horseshoe, Monday, August 20, 2007 4:12 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Link

yes! i remember ebert's review pretty well because of how crazy it was, he was like so appalled (or mb just disappointed) by it but wanted so badly to give SL the benefit of the doubt, so he read it as a companion to bamboozled, using the stereotypes abt the virile black man in a sneakier, more 'hollywood' context i guess. i think ebert was coming on a harold-bloom-on-titus tip, he had such a boner for shakespeare but couldn't reconcile it with the play's badness so he just decided its conventionality was part of an elaborate satire

i liked he got game tho, what u got against that :[