Spike Lee: Dud or DUD?!?

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 :[

But Harold Bloom DOES think Titus is shit!

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

-- da croupier, Monday, August 20, 2007 8:14 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

joke

also yeah i LUV the dolly shot. inside man and she hate me mb make for a good comparison bcz inside man does a lot of the same stuff but i love it for exactly those reasons? like, IM is so awesome bcz of everything stuffed in the margins, the little asides about new york and the cops and that sikh dude. and that stuff mb seemed even realer and cooler because of the dumbass shit it was sandwiched between. she hate me is all over the map and goes on like a million tangents but not much of it actually works, i think i remember liking the scene with john turturro's mafia dude and that's abt it.

well i'm pretty sure ebert didnt think too highly of SHM either, wut r u gettin at dogg

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

i'm sure he thinks of it as some kind of signature move. i don't mind signature moves, but it helps if they're good. that shot has annoyed me in every single film.

he doesn't just think of it as one, it is one.

yeah, i loved inside man but when that shot happened i literally, visibly rolled my eyes. like a 14 year old talking to their mom kind of eye rolling. it just completely broke with everything going on in the movie, it was so distracting!

slocki, ebert or bloom? i hate myself for bringing that example up now

i dont actually remember the shot from inside man but i am never not delighted by its presence :[ i dunno, it is comforting 2 me.

it was denzel mad outside

that sounds like i'm giving some sort of weird weather report

it was when denzel gets really mad and storms over to yell at someone... or something. when he thinks a hostage got killed.

It's one of those familiar tics, like one of Jonathan Demme's actors talking in extreme closeup to the camera.

ok fine, maybe He Got Game is better than I remember. I saw it when it came out and not since. I remember hating the sexing the white girls montage A LOT. it somehow rose above my Spike Lee sexism tolerance threshold.

(disclaimer: Lee's greatness as a filmmaker is not in question in my mind; the title of this thread is madness. and I think he's continued to put out interesting stuff past the point that most critics seem to have written him off, maybe after Malcolm X?) I need to see Inside Man!

alfred it's been a while since i've read bloom on shakespeare (and i've NEVER read titus, to my shame) but i seem to recall that he went back and forth between arguing that titus was brilliant satire and that it was unreadable shit. a bit like his "shakespeare was most assuredly not an anti-semite, but the merchant of venice is a profoundly anti-semitic work" argument. odd guy, really.

yo is it true spike got sonned by a wite kid in a ww2 beef

Heh.

good for clint. spike lee needs to study the phrase "pick and choose your battles."

Shit like this is why I've always personally resented him.

The first Dirty Harry movie seemed pretty racist to me when I was 14 (still love it)

although clint eastwood is a bit of an asshole too, but in a very different way

Clint is/sees himself as his character in "Play Misty for Me" right?

i don't care if you're black, white, purple

not quite classic but hes had his moments (shes gotta have it). though even those, he always somehow manages to make them flawed victories (and he needs to bring in someone specially employed to stop him deciding the ending to his films). i stopped paying attention to spike a while back (summer of sam was good tho, apart from a couple of shoehorned race-related comments - he still hasnt learnt how to wear social commentary lightly) but ive heard the 4 little girls docu is maybe the best thing hes done. the plantation comment was just 'wtf' though.

25th hour was really good too, except the last act.

you mean especially the last act

25th hour's fantastic. the last act is straight out of david benioff's novel, down to daddy brogan's 'go west young man' monologue. crazy that the novel came out in 2000 so ripe for post-9/11 adaptation. the question of how sympathetic or not monty's supposed to be takes on a whole new dimension in light of the events interceding between book and film

The both a yous got the fever

no, indeed

lol at that video title

watched school daze again for the first time in 15 years, and it has some amazing scenes, but oh my god the ending's kind of awful

Is this really the best thread title we have for the man?

I just watched Jungle Fever again. It's an ENORMOUSLY problematic movie. Of all the cartoons he has scripted, this one is maybe the most cartoonish. And yet once you understand that this is part of what he's getting at, a whole lot of it works. (The observant cartoon viewer will understand this quickly; others may need additional Looney Toons therapy.)

There does seem to be a constant in all of his movies: John Turturro, all of his friends, and his entire plot line is totally unnecessary.

Poor Anthony Quinn. I'd feel bad for him, except he clearly did it to himself.

I like it more than you do--clumsy movie, with some of the best moments found in any Spike Lee film. The Sam Jackson stuff is especially strong (have no idea who won supporting actor that year, but he should have). Wesley Snipes and Annabella Sciorra are excellent too. I think the worst scene is the consciousness-raising session with Snipes' wife and her friends.

I think the worst scene is the consciousness-raising session with Snipes' wife and her friends.

Um, that's the best scene (that doesn't involve Jackson, I mean).