Spike Lee's Chi-raq

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/07/magazine/chi-raq-and-the-myth-of-chicago-gang-wars.html?mwrsm=Facebook

i still haven't seen it but fuck this movie

chris x...

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/21305-chi-raq-ost/

i mean kris x...

as in kris ex...

i really need more coffee...

I might rent this, very low expectations. It seems like Spike wanted to make a specific polemic, and Chicago was just a convenient setting.

He should have just set it in Big Made-up City, USA.

But then he wouldn't have that title.

Good point. He should call all his movies Chi-raq and set them all in Chicago.

remember when john sayles made a big made-up city movie about the crumbling of the american dream? i do!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doa7vS0alxc

xp Well except for the ones in New York. Those he should call East of Chi-raq.

Should have called it "Crooklyn."

Lost Angeles

at this point i almost wonder if spike was deliberately trolling chicago's weird inferiority complex w/ new york

Deathtroit

like they can't all be while you were sleeping, you'll survive this second city

gat-lanta

bleed-oria

Would watch all these movies tbh.

Shot-Lanta
Portland, Ore-Gun.
Segattle
Miuzi Weighs a Bos-Ton.
Miuzi, Florida

it's basically if chuck d did a reboot of on the road w/ charles kuralt

san gun-tonio

gun arbor, michigun

the Bed-Stuy of DtRT also has mythical elements

seriously, werent capone n noreaga using fictitious US-middle eastern compounds in the late 90s? or at least calling themselves after dictators and such? whats the difference? rappers have been renaming themselves/their cities/towns after war torn countries for years.

i saw Clockers in Illadelph. the crowd was digging it.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/07/magazine/chi-raq-and-the-myth-of-chicago-gang-wars.html?mwrsm=Facebook

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Monday, December 7, 2015 10:38 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i still haven't seen it but fuck this movie

― Listen to my homeboy Fantano (D-40), Monday, December 7, 2015 10:47 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

do the paragraphs in this article about the spike lee movie have anything to do with the paragraphs in this article which aren't about the spike lee movie

the Bed-Stuy of DtRT also has mythical elements

o fkn rly

sorry if i blew your mind

Amused at how much most people don't even want to pretend to engage with this movie on its own terms.

morbs which is the worst spike lee movie iyo

i haven't seen them all

(i find very few, if any, worse than mediocre)

i find it hard to pick a spike lee movie i'd point and say yeah, that one? that's a bad movie. not even the sperm donor one, for example, which is kind of a huge mess. or the million man march one. or even the minstrel show one.

Girl 6 and Oldboy are the two I'd cite.

Bamboozled I liked alright; way less pedestrian than Malcolm X

The tougher one is how many great films has he made. One or two? Three?

But who's counting?

He's made two great films and a whole bunch of middline-to-bad ones

What's the great one besides do the right thing? (genuine question not snark, only seen about half his films)

bamboozled has acquired an interesting rep, nymag ranked his movies the other day - http://www.vulture.com/2012/08/spike-lee-films-ranked-from-best-to-worst.html - and had it pretty high, and the list wasn't esp idiosyncratic (i'd quibble w/ some of the rankings but there's nothing where i'm like wtf)

"She's Gotta Have It" imo

xp

I guess tbf I would rate Inside Man, 25th Hour and probably Malcolm X as good (as opposed to "middling")

if we're saying great doesn't necessarily equal perfect (and frequently greatness can be tied to that lack of perfection) i'd give him three great (dtrt, x, 25th hour), four maybe five if you include docs.

Malcolm X isn't even in my upper half for Lee films.

Jungle Fever ridiculously too low on that list.

the ones i'd watch again: she's gotta have it, school daze, do the right thing, mo better blues, maaaybe jungle fever, malcolm x, crooklyn, clockers, 4 little girls, he got game, the original kings of comedy, bamboozled, , 25th hour, inside man, when the levees broke, if god is willing and da creek don't rise, bad 25

haven't seen but could imagine watching: she hate me (i think kerry washington might be naked in this), red hook summer, chi-raq, the jim brown doc

i did not like bamboozled at all. maybe i should see it again. i felt like everything before and after the filming of the actual minstrel show was bad. like he just really wanted to film a network minstrel show and everything else was an afterthought. but maybe i was just in a bad mood when i saw it.

The tougher one is how many great films has he made.

"You only need one." - Orson Welles

Never liked He's Gotta Have It aside from the Mars character; some really bad acting and scripting.