Clockers: Stomach Problems and Drugs in the Projects (Part One)

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/20/10 4:15pm
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Working from a Richard Price novel with the same name, Spike Lee’s Clockers appears to be the proper antecedent to The Wire, which Price had a hand in as well. As with any adaptation, it’d be difficult to aptly compare the film and the book seeing as each is housed within the realm of its own form. A book is not the same thing as a film and vice versa.

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A Christopher Nolan Primer

By msarko on 7/19/10 7:45pm
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At 40 years old, director Christopher Nolan is something of a wunderkind in the industry. With just seven full-length features under his belt, it's fairly stunning how many of them are among the best and most inventive films of the past decade. His most recent movie, the sci-fi noir thriller Inception has been getting almost universally positive reviews, so it looks like Nolan isn't planning on slowing down any time soon. He's got another sequel in his wildly successful reboot of Batman and he's also slated to give the update treatment to the Superman franchise as well. Before diving into Christopher Nolan's world of heroes and the darkest recesses of the human soul, here's a quick jaunt through his body of work.



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Crooklyn: Through the Gaze of bell hooks (Part Two)

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/19/10 6:46am
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Woody Carmichale, the assumed head of the household, enjoys bringing treats – cake, ice cream and candy – home for the kids as well as dumping mountains of sugar into his beverages. Of course, it’d be troublesome to have your husband spend your money on food you don’t think your kids need. But hooks extrapolates that Woody’s tendency towards sweet foods hints at a drug problem, although, she concedes, it’s not shown on screen. hooks doesn’t specify what drug she’s referencing – weed, narcotics or what. But her guessing at Woody’s drug use seems to perpetuate black male stereotypes more than the film denigrates female contributions to the household in black culture.

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Sports Movies That Aren't About Sports

By msarko on 7/18/10 11:14pm
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Sports have been a popular subject in motion pictures ever since the invention of the medium. Some of the first films were about boxers and wrestlers, and many sports movies have garnered Oscar nominations, like Ali and The Natural. Curiously, there are a few really great sports movies out there that aren't really about sports at all. Whether it's because they focus on things related to sports in the periphery or because they just take a different approach to the subject, these films stand out from the rest of the genre.



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Crooklyn: Through the Gaze of bell hooks (Part One)

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/16/10 6:28am
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The vast majority of references herein are from an essay the always thoughtful bell hooks wrote on Crooklyn and can be found here.

On with the show.

As a white guy watching Crooklyn, Spike Lee’s 1994 semi-autobiographical film focused on a family of three boys and a single girl set in – you guessed it – Brooklyn, it’s easy to gloss over the space occupied by women and simply focus on the portrayal of a black family during the seventies. One of the rare positive, or seemingly so, depictions of a black family on film.

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Do & Don't: Philip K. Dick Adapations

By msarko on 7/16/10 2:05am
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Sometimes certain genres, writers, filmmakers and actors have weirdly distributed careers. They'll make a truly great film followed by three really terrible films, or maybe just a good film followed by a few that inspire indifference. The purpose of Do & Don't is to separate the successes from the duds, making a road map of all the places you ought to stop and, just as importantly, all the places you ought to pass by without a second glace. The first artists to get the +/- treatment is author Philip K. Dick, or more specifically those of his works that have been adapted to film.



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Malcolm X: Long-Winded and only Somewhat Edifying (Part Two)

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/15/10 10:32am
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Run time and the material Malcolm X included aside, it marks one of the strongest and most consistent performances Denzel Washington’s ever turned in. There’s not a moment during the entire film, regardless of what Malcolm he’s inhabiting that viewers are conscious of Washington the actor. It’s honestly rather amazing.

The range of tone that the character affects – in early childhood, when Washington is obviously not the actor – while being told he’s smart, but black, so law isn’t an endeavor he should want to pursue, to the time spent working in a kitchen on a train, there’s a wide emotive gap to traverse. And the few actors who ape the character do it perfectly.

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Leap Year is Bland and Forgettable

By sarajean on 7/14/10 9:23am
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What an abysmal waste of Amy Adams, is all I can say.

I was really looking forward to this movie. I don’t know why; I guess after the string of highly enjoyable romantic comedies we had over the past couple of years (Definitely, Maybe, Penelope, PS I Love You, etc.) I was expecting, I don’t know; some sort of quality. And I absolutely adore Amy Adams—in everything from Enchanted to Doubt to Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day—so there was that factor of expectancy as well. (Spoilers ahead.)

But I should’ve known better. Didn’t I suffer through The Proposal, Valentine’s Day, and several other rom-com flops (well, flops in my opinion—many did very well at the box office) this year? Didn’t I already decide that 2010 was not going to be the year of the decent tearjerker, but of the banal, humorless waste of reel?

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Malcolm X: Long-Winded and only Somewhat Edifying (Part One)

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/12/10 4:12pm
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Never having read Malcolm X’s biography, nor being overly familiar with his early life, it’d still be easy to realize Spike Lee was necessitated to edit out significant portions of the man’s real life narrative. The movie was still three hours long.

It’d be impossible to completely portray any single person’s life over the course of a film. Even with Malcolm X’s being truncated by his 1965 assassination, Lee left out some good bits. But that’s the crux of film making: creating a palatable product while still including every necessary element to tell a story.

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Jungle Fever: Race Traitors and One Bedroom Apartments (Part Two)

By cobwebsandstrange on 7/12/10 8:52am
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Along with all the social commentary, Spike Lee’s Jungle Fever is rife with well defined characters – apart from the attempt to render an Italian family in realistic terms.

What’s made clear – but not until pretty far into the movie – is that while white racism is alive and well, but black folks even have to deal with degrees of pigmentation, a concept gone over in School Daze as well. Compounding that are the various characters attempting to explain this instance of jungle fever to their loved ones.

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