Spike Lee: Dud or DUD?!?

But on the other hand, I sort of have to admire the fact that he's constantly trying to make epic statements about actual issues, which, when you think of most other filmmakers, is something of a rarity. Surely this has to do with being one of the first major black directors, and feeling a need to do something really massive with that opportunity.

'Coz he's black. And he had two good movies: 'She's Gotta Have It' and 'Do The Right Thing.'

I like Spike Lee a great deal. I might not 100% agree with absolutely everything the man has ever said, wanted to say, or tried to say. Needless to say, he is needed.

In the end though I will see any Spike Lee film even though I know that they may annoy and infuriate me (Bamboozled was hamfisted, satire has to be subtle).

Not in Europe yet, just western Mass. I WILL be in London on Friday, though. Quick thoughts on Spike Lee: the rolling shot sucks and the only time it ever worked was in "Crooklyn". All of his movies are great, including the ones that suck. "Do The Right Thing" and "X" are his most important movies, but "Crooklyn" is far and away his best film to date.

Good God, I'm Litte Lord Anglophile today, aren't I?

And Mira Sorvino? She's the worst actress of our generation, and not particularly attractive to boot. If she wasn't related to Paul - who ain't exactly great himself but better than her at least - she'd be eating out of a fucking dumpster. She's ridiculously awful, whatever he did to her she deserved.

It's all fine & good to strive for social significance, but I'm all for taking a more personal route (instead of tackling the Big Issues and History head-on, epic DeMille style).

I'd defend Mira, but the characters she plays all seem to be the same. At least she's easy on the eyes, and not stupid.

= the real name of 25th hour is "my name is spike lee and i'm a scorsesaholic" but it's STILL better than gangs of new york (not that i've seen GoNY yet)

btw, Spike seriously needs to start playing leads in his films again. Enough of this gratuitous cameo bullshit.

_25th Hour_ is great, BTW.

All of the above.

I happen to think that Spike Lee has some very grebt directorial skillz (the closing scene of Jungle Fever made up for all its unevenness, I thought) but Anthony is completely on the money here.

Joel are we not to speak ill of ppl who have brothers and sisters, is that the deal? gosh I hope not

Actually Anthony I could accuse you of that on just about any thread, but this one was the one I was posting to.

Yes, John, every single woman in every Spike Lee movie is a hooker or has sex with him. But where is the scene in Do the Right Thing where Mookie gets it on with Mother Superior? Or in Crooklyn where Spike the glue-sniffer gets it on with Ms. Woodard (I always forget her name)?

Ally's right that sometimes he seems a bit ADD--my first thought upon seeing one of his films is often, "Stop cutting so much" (not least the hectic opening scene of 25th Hour but he does make of this style more than almost any other contemporary Hollywood filmmaker and he knows how to be patient when he needs to--sometimes.

I'm totally in his fan club.

That "Dead End" shot reminded me of a scene from Cecil B. De Mille's Dynamite, where our hero and heroine and trapped in a coal mine and suddenly spy a box of dynamite: close-up of box of dynamite, labelled "DYNAMITE." Cut to shot of hero and heroine. Heroine exclaims, "Dynamite!" Cut back to close-up of box of dynamite. Hold for 10 seconds. ... Somewhere in the audience, a 3-yr-old shouts, "Enough already!"

his tremendous skills and his glaring weakness are generally all tied up in the same knot i think — he is good at really unexpected things which he then completely distracts you from by some shouty bit of business (that said, rosie perez shouting in do the right thing is just some of the funniest, sexiest acting in cinema)

i love that he LOVES LOVES LOVES new york, and even the "fuck you" mirror monologue in 25th hour — which starts out you think it's a clunkadunk hommage to TWO iconic scenes in taxi driver in one go, and i think also some stuff in raging bull!! — which ultradisses koreans, gays, italians, cops, blacks, old rich ladies, taxi drivers etc etc, is a kind of sweep-of-the-city love poem after all

he's also the only person i can quickly think of who's carried on using godard's cartoon swiftness and kept it political AND funny — this is where he falls down most often (godard too probably) but in 25th hour there one scene (v.late on) which i won't spoil, which is basically just a single photo set-up, that packs SO much into it abt america, and lee and america, and black-and-white in america, and the past and the future. and what could be and what is, and what's stopping what ought to be

(eg tarantino can also to the godard cartoon thing but tarantino's politics never get beyond the immediate circle out into the big city world and public arena blah blah)

25th hr is VERY deft abt exactly all the things lee has previously been very UNdeft abt: esp.what's so pernicious in jungle fever

it's had flak here (in the UK) for the 9-11 stuff being sellotaped clumsily in but i didn't think that at all: it's like it's the current affairs catalyst for spike to acknowledge american possibility and generosity ALSO, even though he's still utterly politcally realistic abt it, not sentimental or bullying

Anthony remains OTM insofar as Spike Lee, whose work I generally like a lot, is something of a sexist. So are a lot of people, I'm not saying "dismiss him!" or anything. But the women he writes are caricatures, and the exceptions you point out draw attention to this rule.

I also found "Get On The Bus" to be an entertaining and uplifting film, albeit with shite music.

And years ago, when I saw "Fight The Power", I liked that too.

So I say that Spike Lee is CLASSIC.

*spoilers*

in the "25th hour" fantasy where Norton sits for a passport photo. There's a shot, held for just four or five seconds but an eternity in this context, of the man running the photo shop. There's something in the countenance and speech of this kindly eccentric (his ears and mouth riddled with studs, suggesting some of kind of Hell's Angel settled down) that's extremely generous, that cuts through the (hilarious) New Yorker's vision of the Rest of the America that is the bulk of that remarkable conclusion. I dunno, the whole sequence and that shot in particular must have been difficult to pull off--without enough little odd bits of business it would've seemed too ludicrous, too vain...with too much detail it would've seemed like a real forking-paths narrative which was NOT the point--but Lee and Benioff did it.

In this film the criticism of the harsh drugs laws is part and parcel with the shots of the WTC site and the backstories of the broker and the school teacher--something like a sum total of America's mistakes and abuses, responsibilities and blindnesses, fissures and reconciliations. I found the WTC stuff moving and totally germane, not least because it would have been this huge FACT that would continue to come 'round and smack the characters in the face. Philip Seymour Hoffman's stunned "whoah" when he sees the site from above felt like the kind of line that risked risked ridicule (for its seriousness/earnestness/"clumsiness") to achieve truth.

The Russian mobsters verged on cartoonish Scorsese territory, and that one scene threatened to make real some of the xenophobia expressed in the monologue. Oh well.

By "Godard's cartoon swiftness" what do you mean exactly?

**That's not the specific shot I meant no, but almost as rich, albeit with difft material. What I meant wz the bi-racial family with kids, plus American Gothic backdrop: but tied in to a lot of what you just said, about generosity and possibility.**

* spoilers over spoilers over spoilers over*

And by Godard's cartoon swiftness, I mean dropping an image like that (or a sequence of them) where everything reads very clearly and swiftly, a whole queue of layers of semiosis (semioses?) that's absolutely precisely achieved. The way you scan and then read them gives you the narrative, the character's take on the narrative, the authorial take on the narrative, and the wider political-historical perspective, not in one go exactly, but in one during-reading sweep of the screen. As in: oh this happened, this is what they thought, haha this is what spike thinks, and this is how it fits into America as a story....

That's not very exact, sorry.

I'm a sucker for those portrait sitting-esque compositions with in their (manufactured) stiffness recall some of the awkwardness of real life, and a lot of its truth in the bargain. Distant Voices, Still Lives is the best example of this I know. (Wondering what you think of that film, Mark.)

Funny how a thread w/the title "Spike Lee: Dud or Dud" has (d)evolved into this! ILE makes me happy today.

And this is remarkable or notable for mainstream American filmmakers in what way?

to be fair i think the score's OK, and norton — while a bit flat yes as per — is far from unwatchable

to be honest i don't understand why any actor living says yes when they find they're playing lead to phillip seymour hoffman's second (or indeed 20th) banana => i believe i wd avidly gaze at a warhol-esque slo-mo epic of PSH cracking a smile slowed down so that it takes 24hrs

Not the worst uillean(sp) pipes of the yea though, they gop to the wandering band in Gangs Of New Yoirk.

Its a pity Zoe Williams didn't think of refering to the ultimate fear of UTBS in the 25th Hour - to reference her Guardian magazine piece. The fear of UTBS and the solution was ridiculous.

(i think fear of having yr teeth bashed out for convenient BigHouse BJs is a justified fear)

do the right thing, obv.

it's a while since I saw it.

...so...ummm..."because there's lots of sexism, we shouldn't fault a talented director for it?" You can't mean that, can you?

On the other hand Lee's need to have wall-to-wall soundtracks does render those moments when he turns it all off poss. more effective (e.g. the beatdown in 25th Hour).

[[Mark the fact that you are proofing anyone's writing makes me happy. Sometimes I worry that my typo-ridden, grammatically dodgy posts betray my editorial incompetence but now I fear not.]]

This to me was a problem during the shouting-at-the-mirror scene in 25th Hour. The music came close to ruining that sequence for me.

(sorry.)

by the way, I agree that this was really weak (as was the whole nightclub sequence in my opinion--I really thought it could have been so much more). But the Scorsese thing is a cheap shot.

I say, para/rephrasing, "Spike Lee's women seem like caricatures."

You say, again I'm para/rephrasing "So are women in other films by other directors."

Do you mean "it's unremarkable in Spike Lee, therefore it's a non-issue"? Do you mean "Spike Lee is being unfairly singled out for something so wholly pervasive that it is, in fact, not remarkable in his work"? Your initial response seems to say "Spike Lee is no more sexist than any other director." Then you get huffy and say "I'm not saying that, but g'head and take it that way." So: restate your position, maybe I'm unclear. Are you not somehow excusing Spike Lee's tendency to caricature women when you point out that lots of other American films do so, too? Rhetorically, I hope you'll grant that it's not unreasonable to think so. "This book is sexist!" "Well, it was written in the 16th century, sexism was somewhat pervasive then." -seems a not-unfair analogue, and the response does seem to attempt to mitigate the trait being decried.

(x-post)

I like Spike a lot, his charms make it very easy for me to overlook his weakness. Mo' Better Blues is great, but I'm a jazz geek.

"This flat scene, appearing at points where other films blast out in plot-solving action, has been subtly cooling off, abstracting itself, with the words coming like little trolley-car pictures passing back and forth across a flattened, neuterised scene."

(haha, hippety-hop => farber goes precog on us, predicts "fight the power" 21 years b4 the fact, despite much time-static)

(what is the timeframe of the final sentence quoted: "this flat scene... has been subtly cooling off..." when? during the 9 years between 1959-68? what a weird thing to say! i love manny farber!)

not the shot on its own, but the entire sequence it's embedded, is in look and speed and content anti-narrative (in terms of the actual narrative): instead it's an interrogation of another story — actually here not as "fiercely inadequate" as jean seberg or lee in other movies — which "abstracts itself" the more you think of it afterwards (into a kind of generous cartoon of Grand American Narrative of Possible Freedom or something), and in fact "cools off" the rest of the story, or rather, contextualises it in a broader way

it's a long way from godardian technique now (and lee was always a long way from godardian politico-tic), so you could say it's spike's own as a device to play with now, but the role of that section — yes yes also a scorseaholic's hommage to last temptation's best known coup — is somewhat like i think what farber is getting at, re godard, in that passage

in other words: you have the story and it clips along, until these bits where the director takes out a flipchart and some coloured magic markers and interrupts the plot proper to bulletpoint "wider" stuff (in breathless, it's actually pre-politico-godard, that's part of farber's specific argument, semi-relevant maybe to 25th hour's "post-political" lee maybe, in an upside-down way but i'm too tired to work that bit out)

*spoilers end spoilers end spoilers end*

Actually Mark that answered my question perfectly.

http://www.depauw.edu/news/story.asp?id=377147461458333

25th Hour

*

Peter Bradshaw
Friday April 25, 2003
The Guardian

Spike Lee's grotesquely macho-sentimental paean to post 9/11 New York City is tagged to the story of Monty - a goateed Edward Norton - spending his last 24 hours in the Big Apple before going to prison for drug-dealing. Why exactly Monty is allowed out when he's such an obvious flight-risk is never explained. (Did they give him bail? Who paid it?)

He bids farewell to his dad James (Brian Cox), girlfriend Naturelle (Rosario Dawson) and two old buddies from the posh school he was once kicked out of: Francis (Barry Pepper) is a Wall Street shark and Philip Seymour Hoffman faxes in his sweaty, nerdish performance as Jacob, a screwed-up teacher perving on his sexy 16-year-old student Mary (Anna Paquin).

Lee's ostentatious setpiece is Norton's howl of non-PC rage lacerating all of NYC's uptight ethnic groups, including the self-righteous blacks: "Slavery was 137 years ago; get over it!". He goes easy, however, on the Irish-American heroes of the fire service. In any case, whatever impact this speech has is entirely cancelled by the final gooey sequence in which Monty imagines these same various representatives of the gorgeous mosaic supportively bidding him farewell, before the ambiguously fantasised cop-out ending.

A turgid, bombastic and outrageously self-satisfied movie.

Was this the critical consensus in Britain? The other Guardian reviewer didn't like it, either.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Samuel Maull

June 4, 2003 | NEW YORK (AP) --

Filmmaker Spike Lee has sued Viacom Inc. over plans to rename its TNN cable channel Spike TV as part of its campaign to attract male viewers.

In court papers filed Tuesday, Lee asked for an injunction against Viacom's use of the name, saying he had never given his consent for it to be used.

"The media description of this change of name, as well as comments made to me and my wife, confirmed what was obvious -- that Spike TV referred to Spike Lee," Lee said in court papers.

The judge directed Viacom to explain why it shouldn't be barred from using the name.

TNN, which bills Spike TV as "the first network for men," said it was "confident that the court will reject any legal claims by Mr. Lee to the popular word and name Spike."

Viacom bought TNN in 2000, and said in April that it would change the channel's name to Spike TV on June 16 in an attempt to increase the number of men in an audience that is already about two-thirds male.

Viacom also owns CBS, Showtime movie channel, VH1, UPN, book publisher Simon & Schuster and other properties.

According to Lee, TNN's president, Albie Hecht, has said the public associates the name "Spike" with Lee.

Lee, whose given name is Shelton Jackson Lee, included in court papers affidavits from people including former Sen. Bill Bradley, and actors Ossie Davis and Ed Norton. The affidavits said the signers had thought of Lee when they heard about Spike TV and some said they believed he had become affiliated with the network.

Lee directed Nike sneaker commercials with Michael Jordan. His movies include "Malcolm X," "Jungle Fever" and "Do the Right Thing."

---

What a top film. I loved the fact that he didn't go over the top with the period stuff; it was just so well observed. Except perhaps for the overwrought punk scenes.

DV mentioned dogs in SL films. The talking dog scene in Summer was fab. Time Out's TV section last week had a go at Lee's 'flights into surrealism' using the talking dog as their clinching example. That's silly. It was a central motif, and I heard afterwards that the voiceover was by Turturro. Ace.

Unlike some on this thread I thought Mira Sorvino was excellent in Summer of Sam, really understated and convincing. Sex in general was so well handled, e.g. Leguizamo's philandering and Brody's Male World adventures and the way this made them relate to their female partners.

Second question: why was that the message for the moment? what made ppl. ready to hear a sanitized, stark (for a city stereotypically "teeming with life" the thing that strikes most about DTRT is how EMPTY the sets feel, how clumsily and few the extras set to walk through scenes, even how TINY the "mob") highlighted vision of "racism will burn us ALL down"? Somehow even the way the film is posed says more about Spike and his situationing of himself, his view of the mechanisms for political change, than about "America" in any sense. He ends with the Malcom and King quotes but its clear he's in the tradtion of a minister of information.

Also, PE as a representation of rap fails on so many levels, the list the DJ gives of heroes and greats captures the absurdity of drawing this line of tradition up through PE perfectly (if unintentially). Also spike fails most fully when he tries to comprehend/convey generative forces for racial animosity from anybody not black. I mean... "my friends make fun of me"? (i suspect this is what mark was getting at with the jungle fever stuff) This also tends to gloss-over/forgive the more subtle and consistent sorts of racial prejudice. (perhaps which partially answers my second question).

the girlfriend was also hot

Ditto. Been years since I've seen DTRT, Crooklyn or Jungle Fever. The words "awesome" and "intense" immediately come to mind. It's sure that Spike's movies will end up in an international movie space capsule to show the future that we DID have passionate filmmakers now and then.

but sterling, what do you mean by "is it TRUE"? "is it an accurate (visual & otherwise) portrayal of life in bed-stuy in 89?" or something else?

besides, spike has always been about juxtaposing different aspects of black culture, the youth/populist culture versus the history/art aspect (i.e. Get on the Bus, all the discussions in Mo' Better Blues, etc.).

*This is for Mohammed Abba.

i watched do the right thing about six months ago because nancy had never seen it and i must say it holds up remarkably better than i expected it to from the last time i saw it as a freshman film student.

Wow. Too right.

The bathroom monologue was even more powerful this time, but the last five-ten minutes wasn't. It was still great, and I was about to cry - but it didn't match the awe I felt the first time I saw it.

(25th Hour really made me wish I could move to NYC again. And a Cool Hand Luke poster.)

the most effective moment emotionally for me was simply the long look at what ebay sellers like to call "black americana" eg: dolls, advertisements, etc. and even that stuff (hugely popular collectables big with wealthy black collectors) would have made an extremely interesting documentary of some sort

some of that stuff made it into that Confederate States of America movie, and was pretty much the only good part of it. Lee had some kind of production role in C.S.A., and I assume he had some hand in including the real history of "black Americana" in the mockumentary. He should totally make an actual documentary about it.

I don't know, CSA's satire was kind of inconsistent--like it wouldn't put its money where its mouth was in terms of racial ideology.

Duds: Mo' Better Blues, Bamboozled

Really the only thing that let that movie down for me was the ending, which kind of went too far for me; everything else was great.

Back in 2003 I said it was his worst movie, but he's made like 9 I haven't seen since or something. And I never saw all of Girl 6.

So, I guess a fast one like the one that was about minstrelry on Chapelle last night is ok though? It's the slow ones that ppl are not responding to?

So I guess you've not watched Mind of Mencia, either.

(Also Carlos Mencia is really fucking odd because he's aggresively unfunny but there is an aspect to what he's saying that strikes my "OTM!" button sometimes; there's an entire routine he does in his standup about being uncomfortable doing a show for an audience full of Down's Syndrome patients that is an extended riff on the idea of "if you can't say something about a group of people to someone from that group of people, the thing you're trying to say is not at joke", a sentiment I agree with but GOD WHY CAN'T YOU BE FUNNY WITH YOUR "JOKES", YOU GIGANTIC BAG OF DOUCHE)

Bamboozled is totally incoherent, it actually made me feel kinda bad for Spike that he had made such an amateurish mess. I didn't even make it all the way to the end for the "payoff".

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.

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 :[

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).

Didn't like that scene at all.

I checked on Best Supporting Actor: Jack Palance. I guess they were focussed on ability to do push-ups. (Jackson wasn't even nominated.)

Ebert would agree with me re: that scene.

Let me give him a call to confirm and I'll get back to you.

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

It's the whole point of the movie. That doesn't involve Jackson.

Ossie Davis may behave eerily like Marvin Gaye's dad in this movie, but IRL, he's definitely going to heaven.

He's not only Marvin Gaye's dad, he's John F. Kennedy!

Not disagreeing that that scene spells out the film's themes--with a pointer, like you're in a classroom. Age-old rule: don't tell, show.

But like I said, it's a cartoon. "Show don't tell" isn't a fair criterion to criticize Spike Lee movies on.

Well, I think cartoon is much too harsh. And I think "show, don't tell" is very applicable to Lee. I used to love his atmospherics--his father's orchestral music would often take care of everything you needed to know. But when his characters would start speechifying, his films would sometimes get bogged down.

Not sure what we're disagreeing about anyway.

And yet once you understand that this is part of what he's getting at, a whole lot of it works.

You seemed to have revived the thread because you like him and didn't think the thread title did him justice. Same here.

I like it more than you do

Not so fast. I didn't say how much I like it. I was surprised while watching it that, even though I was sometimes painfully aware of where the scene or the idea was going, I never stopped watching it, and I regretted having to take bathroom breaks. Spike can be crashingly... thudding... but he does what he does VERY well in this movie.

xp Yeah, I guess we agree on that. :)

I think cartoon is much too harsh

Imagine the same film as a comedy, and you wouldn't say that.

And anyway I didn't mean cartoon as a negative judgement. The Simpsons is a cartoon.

The only disagreement is that you find Jungle Fever a little cartoonish, and I don't--except for that one scene (which I wouldn't call cartoonish, just not necessary).

I haven't liked a narrative film of his since He Got Game (which I think is very underrated)--I've seen maybe half since then. I've really missed the boat on all his acclaimed documentaries; haven't caught up with any of them yet.

One of Spike Lee's main strategies, in all of his movies, is to treat personalities and especially racial identities like they just walked off a cliff and haven't looked down yet.

Will direct an American version of Oldboy.

why? and w/ Josh Brolin

http://www.deadline.com/2011/08/josh-brolin-to-star-in-spike-lees-oldboy-redo-for-mandate/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CX9xKczh4w

I am (guardedly) really hopeful for this. Or, I was really hopeful to it until the really overwrought use of the BLOODS in their CRIMSON SHIRTS. Guessing 'Red Hook' isn't just a place name.

old-school ilx was kind of hilariously racist in a totally unconscious way

man i am not a spike lee fan but preview for red hook summer looks really good

old-school ilx was kind of hilariously racist in a totally unconscious way

^^^^ this

Yes, was.

looks pretty good! Kinda was wondering if he'd given up making features.

this thread is odd to me, mainly b/c i'm usually in perfect agreement w/ Shakey on movies. i wouldn't quite put Spike in the same league as, say, Scorsese or David Lynch ... but perhaps in the same league as Brian DePalma (to wit: a flawed but more-than-competent and always interesting film director who has nonetheless managed to make some damn good movies).

the reviews suggest Red Hook Summer is a spike lee movie

looking forward to this, if cautiously

i wouldn't quite put Spike in the same league as, say, Scorsese or David Lynch ... but perhaps in the same league as Brian DePalma (to wit: a flawed but more-than-competent and always interesting film director who has nonetheless managed to make some damn good movies).

i would definitely agree with this

man i am not a spike lee fan but preview for red hook summer looks really good
― congratulations (n/a), Monday, July 2, 2012 12:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cinematography looks really (purposely?) ugly and overlit at times. "the soap opera effect" as they say.

but story seems promising. lee wrote it himself, which could go either way. he can be real good at thorny moral conflicts, on the other hand holy shit has he made some terrible movies.

somewhere adolph reed has a good essay about spike lee, and i can't seem to find it.

Would watch.

ppl still seriously underrate what a dick he is.

what does that sentence mean, people should rate the fact that he's a dick higher?

anyway, having known people who have worked with/for him, i think his dickness if anything has been overstated.

morbs, from what I hear alfred hitchcock was a pretty big dick, too. he still made good films, no?

AND he didn't lift a trademark 'people-moving' shot from Melvin Van Peebles.

We all know Morbs prefers the old dicks.

*drops plates* HE DIDN'T INVENT A SHOT HE USES A LOT?

I've never said he doesn't occasionally make good films.

any artist who doesn't steal ideas will never amount to anything. but if Spike Lee invited me and the wife over to his crib for dinner and drinks, I'd probably murmur something about deep regrets, if that is any consolation to you. and he is the worst celebrity fan of the Knicks by a country mile.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAKjKn0bKYs

how many times have we had the discussion about separating an artist's personality from their works on ilx? like at least 45,000 times, right?

I rate films based on the niceness of their directors.

I don't, goddammit.

Plus he threw over the Mets for the Yankees in the mid '90s, it doesn't get any fucking lower than that.

he's also making a doc on MJ's "Bad":

http://www.salon.com/2012/07/10/spike_lee_works_on_michael_jackson_documentary/

he should really quit with the docs imho

Conversely, Scorsese should ONLY make docs from now on.

Totally agree

Magill wants to know if Spike's a Devils fan

his first katrina doc was dope. i can't watch his features now though. so schlocky.
xxxp

to be clear, it's not that I think his recent features are so awesome or anything (altho I did like Inside Man), it's that I have to assume making docs is distracting him from making better features... I could be totally wrong of course

good interview http://www.vulture.com/2012/07/spike-lee-on-reality-tv-minstrelsy-and-hollywood.html

to be clear, it's not that I think his recent features are so awesome or anything (altho I did like Inside Man), it's that I have to assume making docs is distracting him from making better features... I could be totally wrong of course

― the alternate vision continues his vision quest! (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, July 10, 2012 4:47 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think if he could be making more features, he would be. i get the impression that financing isnt easy for him to come by these days; i know hes angry with universal for not getting an inside man sequel off the ground

lol @ Spike and Woody both naming their sons "Satchel"

Spike named his daughter Satchel

short for Satchel Mouth?

i think if he could be making more features, he would be. i get the impression that financing isnt easy for him to come by these days; i know hes angry with universal for not getting an inside man sequel off the ground

yeah inside man was overlong (shock of all spike-related shocks) but the good parts were good enough that i'm sad he doesn't get to have much hollywood fun

imagine if he got taking of pelham instead of tony scott

the thing about spike is that he seems very well aware of when he's making stupid unsubstantiated remarks and you can almost hear him hesitating, but then he can't help himself. 80% of the time he makes absolute sense, even if you don't agree with him.

one of things that's long bothered me about him is the way he often (not always) can't seem to accept that he's a rich, privileged dude. in that interview he even suggests that to have a million dollar salary is no big thing, it doesn't make you rich anymore. i'll admit that having a million dollars (esp. when living in NYC) is not what it used to be, but c'mon man-- making that much a year puts you in some fraction of the top 1%, no?

he's kind of michael moore-like in that way, he seems to feel that in order to have credibility when speaking about racism, poverty etc. he has to deny the privileges he's earned over the past few decades.

aside from his katrina documentary, i can't think of any movie he's made since 25th hour that was halfway good. and even 25th hour was, i think, i little overrated. it was good, but not great, and i suspect it was slightly overpraised because it was the first spike lee film in a while not to have at least one really off-putting, embarrassing element in it.

in that interview he even suggests that to have a million dollar salary is no big thing, it doesn't make you rich anymore. i'll admit that having a million dollars (esp. when living in NYC) is not what it used to be, but c'mon man-- making that much a year puts you in some fraction of the top 1%, no?

this is not what he said - he said HAVING a million dollars, not MAKING a million dollars/year. big difference. Having a million dollars does not put you in the 1%, I would bet, probably not even close.

that MJ doc sounds amazing!

the thing about spike is that he seems very well aware of when he's making stupid unsubstantiated remarks and you can almost hear him hesitating, but then he can't help himself.

this would have more weight if he wasn't constantly being misquoted and having words put in his mouth.

or if any other director was under that kind of magnifying glass

man i hated 25th hour & didn't get a lot of the love of it - do people for some reason love ed norton? is it the geography-of-new-york thing? - but there was so much blustery-bullshitty-celtically-scored overlong shit going on. so serious and so dry.

Really disliked it too--and I'm a fan of most everything up to and including He Got Game.

actually really psyched to see what he does with oldboy

He's the one directing it? Really not looking forward to that regardless of the director -- I don't see how the ending doesn't end up neutered.

if there's anyone who reliably stands by a nutzoid ending, it's spike

maybe the dude finds out the truth, clutches the girl, screams "NOOOOOO!!!!" and the film just ends.

I really love He Got Game and definitely see the (very moving) ending of that movie as a precursor to the similarly imaginary or fantastical ending of 25th Hour. He achieves something very special with both of those sequences I think.

I think He Got Game is very strong. (I called it underrated upthread, but it's more like it passed by unnoticed.) Ending's great, opening-credits sequence is one of my favourite.

I wonder if Do the Right Thing led everyone think Spike would be a great social critic kind of director, someone with insight into the complexities of race and class in America. And while I wouldn't want to deny those elements in his movies wholesale I feel like his real strength is a kind of operatic grandeur. Even the Katrina doc is stronger for its righteous anger than any substantial socio-political insight.

I wonder if Do the Right Thing led everyone think Spike would be a great social critic kind of director, someone with insight into the complexities of race and class in America

well, he did make Malcolm X shortly thereafter

which didn't have much of that

*burn*

and Jungle Fever
and Get on the Bus
and Bamboozled
and School Daze
and 4 Little Girls
and Summer of Sam

it's not really rocket science why he would get a reputation as "the dude who makes movies about the complexity of race and class in America"

ugh Jungle Fever is so clumsy. but yeah it's not like this rep is undeserved, he totally pursued it

i didnt say he didnt make movies about race and class but that he doesn't bring to them some deep hardcore analysis...he brings something else (equally valuable, imo) to those discussion.

what is "deep hardcore analysis" in the context of a non-fiction feature film?

I kinda wish Summer of Sam had just been about the Leguizamo and Sorvino characters and dispensed with Adrian Brody altogether.

what is "deep hardcore analysis" in the context of a non-fiction feature film?

it's relative obviously but it would imply for me attempts at things like objectivity--an ant farm approach like The Wire or something like that. this is just my opinion of course, and im trying to think out loud why i like He Got Game so much more than, say, Bamboozled.

like He Got Game doesn't use Aaron Copland music ironically in the service of some marxist take on capitalism and sports, for example. He means it!

the sarcastic rites of appalachian spring

(not to say that the music isn't used to some complex effects in the movie--they're not just ironic or what I'd want to term "critical" ones.)

'he got game' is pretty sweet iirc, rick fox's finest role

'clockers' is imo great

i don't really know why people are looking for "hardcore analysis" in a spike lee film. he's a disciple of martin scorsese, not harun farocki.

and -- a lot of time -- he's really got at what he does.

Do you think that sense of historical moment would diminish if Obama lost?
Maybe. Not to me. But to some.

Do you think if he does lose we will see a black president again anytime soon?
I will be dead before it happens.

Promise?

i gotta say, that's unaccountably mean spirited even by your standards.

hey maybe it's not that Morbius wishes death on Spike Lee but that he just doesn't want another black man to be president for decades. give the guy the benefit of the doubt!

that vulture interview was dope

i've seen all this guy's movies and i don't like maybe two of them?

i just remembered the cbgb scene from summer of sam

iirc it's mohawk and nose ringed out even though the film's set months before the sex pistols album was released

hey maybe it's not that Morbius wishes death on Spike Lee but that he just doesn't want another black man to be president for decades. give the guy the benefit of the doubt!

This is what I thought he was saying, tbh.

I just want ppl to stop asking Spike about politics.

All presidents can go str8 to fucking hell where they belong.

summer of sam is mostly unfortunate.

ya, coulda been great, total mess

I just want ppl to stop asking Spike about politics.

All presidents can go str8 to fucking hell where they belong.

― Pangborn to be Wilde (Dr Morbius), Friday, July 13, 2012 3:17 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i know the joke here is that you're an old man, but intellectually you're like an 8 year old

Morbius is right; perhaps it is you who is the 8 year old

maybe it is, canks.

what I'd save from SOS is Mira Sorvino's "I smelled her pussy juice all over your fucking lips!"

The Dardenne Brothers are dud.

I think u might've said so once or twice

The Dardenne Brothers are dud.

Finally watched Malcolm X and it was...good. The first half definitely rocks; the ace up Lee's sleeve is that, for as much of ppl think of his movies in terms of racial and social issues, he really is a guy who is just in love with the act of filmmaking. A early visual reference to Ace InThe Hole proves that even in the midst of making his Definitive Artistic Statement, his film geek side cannot be contained. Still, it's hard to make the internal politics of the Nation of Islam all that dramatically exciting and the second half drags a bit as a result. I kind of wish Lee's perspective were a bit more searing; he never goes so far as to see religion itself as having ultimately failed him and the plight of the African American, or as being historically complicit and/or ineffectual, it's just this one particular organization that winds up being bad. For a 200 min movie, it's scope ends up feeling strangely limited.

Still, if you haven't seen it you probably should. Not even close to being Lee's best, but lots of good stuff here nonetheless. Also, I miss when Delroy Lindo was in like every movie that came out each year.

so, Red Hook Summer is really, really strange. i was kinda feeling the emotionally generous closing montage until GIANT NEON RAINBOW. wtf?

and what's with the constant call backs, some obvious and some not, to his own films?

anyway, this was ok. the kid acting was atrocious but you learn to roll with it. and he's either saying something complex about religion in the african american community or simply saying that religious authorities are con artists and perverts, which is fine too.

it's a mixed bag, but still his most interesting feature since bamboozled. i saw it with a mostly black baptist audience (i'm assuming, from the way they were clapping and mmhmm-ing along with clarke peters' sermons) - they were REALLY scandalized by the twist. there's a sequence after he gets beaten up that's Pure Spike in the best way

the kids were atrocious, yes. colman domingo was amazing, and nate parker made up for Red Tails. hated The Wire fanservice from isiah whitlock. clarke peters probably deserved more recognition than he got for this performance

what callbacks were you thinking of?

mookie, "do the right thing" in the song lyic, the cop from 25th hour saying "sheeeeit." forgetting some others now.

surprised he didn't bust out some aaron copland!

some of the music sounded p coplandy. did he say sheeeeit in the 25th hour too? i havent seen it since it came out.

man i just couldn't hang with red hook summer. barely finished it. i know it's almost a cliche to say this but i can't believe spike lee has been making features for 30+ years and still makes mistakes like trying to get some kids that have seemingly never acted before to mouth dialogue that amazing theatrical actors can barely pull off. the colman domingo scene was so good that it made me feel like a street moppet pressing his face against a family's window as they sit down for thanksgiving, like "what movie did this scene come from? can i watch this instead?"

the Bad 25 doc was great, btw. has a lot of cool stuff that only spike would have put in, like scorsese and thelma schoonmaker sitting down at an editing bay to look at footage from the Bad video for the first time in 25 years.

@lurie_john
I would like to watch the #knicks on #TNT but they keep cutting to shots of Spike Lee impersonating an orange turtle person.

looool

Wow, the orange and blue get-up and hat he had on last night in support of his Knicks

http://www.sbnation.com/2013/5/7/4310436/spike-lee-reggie-miller-knicks-nba-tnt

It looked brighter on tv

A list he gives to his graduate students. Still not a fan of Driving Miss Daisy.

FOUR Lina Wertmuller films?!

There's a backstory attached, spelled out in the accompanying article--on the same list a month ago he had none.

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/spikelee/the-newest-hottest-spike-lee-joint

What I can tell you is this. I have never made a film like this and it excites me very much. I’m doing a semi-genre film about ADDICTION. These people are ADDICTED to BLOOD. Yet however they are not VAMPIRES. It’s going to be SEXY, HUMOROUS and BLOODY. To me that’s a unique combination.

guessing spike didnt see true blood...

An earlier version of this article was imprecise about Spike Lee’s use of the double-dolly shot in his movies. While Mr. Lee and the cinematographer Ernest Dickerson first used the shot in their 1992 movie, “Mo’ Better Blues,” and have made it a signature of Mr. Lee’s work, they did not create the technique, which has been in use for decades.

I am glad I was saved from logging in to complain. Earliest I know of it is in Melvin van Peebles' Story of a Three-Day Pass (1968).

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/movies/oldboy-reimagines-a-korean-tale-of-revenge.html

dissapointed in title of this thread. just watched bamboozled for the first time (no idea how i missed it until now) and think its up there with his best. maybe THE best. slightly sentimental/tragic montage of minstrel images at the end that i would have put into the credits instead of interrupting damon wayans but damn this was good (made up for the depressingly dreary remake of old boy). also, do the right thing is actually better now than it was back then. i hope his vampire movie is good.

his list of movies for his students to watch is great but a bit too hollywood-focused. id like to think spike watches more non american movies (he probably doesnt though)

An earlier version of this article was imprecise about Spike Lee’s use of the double-dolly shot in his movies. While Mr. Lee and the cinematographer Ernest Dickerson first used the shot in their 1992 movie, “Mo’ Better Blues,” and have made it a signature of Mr. Lee’s work, they did not create the technique, which has been in use for decades.

I am glad I was saved from logging in to complain. Earliest I know of it is in Melvin van Peebles' Story of a Three-Day Pass (1968).

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/movies/oldboy-reimagines-a-korean-tale-of-revenge.html

― eclectic husbandry (Dr Morbius), Monday, 25 November 2013 17:11 (1 month ago) Permalink

and before that, in 1966's "Seconds" directed by John Frankenheimer and shot by james wong howe. and i'm sure we can find it even earlier. nothing is new. except when it is.

oh, and mean streets of course.

yeah, just saw Seconds again this fall

Seconds is the movie Brian Wilson was watching when he had his first big acid freak out, wasn't it?

Seconds is also known for its connection to American songwriter Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys, who was strongly affected by the film during sessions for the concept album Smile. After arriving late to the theater, he appeared to be greeted with the onscreen dialogue, "Come in, Mr. Wilson," believing for some time that the film was directly based on his recent traumatic experiences and intellectual pursuits, going so far as to note that "even the beach was in it, a whole thing about the beach."[8][9] Wilson soon after ceased Smile recording sessions for the next several decades. The movie reportedly frightened him so much that it wouldn't be until 1982's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial that he'd ever visit a movie theater again,[10]

amazing!

wow I remember hearing the anecdote about him freaking out at a movie theater, but not that it was Seconds that was playing! crazy.

when I first saw Seconds and the opening scene my initial thought was that that was where Spike had grabbed the shot from

seconds was a big fav of terrence malick, too, iirc

he watched it right after making days of heaven

Seconds is the movie Brian Wilson was watching when he had his first big acid freak out, wasn't it?

― the "Weird Al" Yankovic of country music (stevie), Friday, January 10, 2014 1:44 AM (15 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is unfortunate, since that's probably the worst possible movie to watch while having a bad LSD trip. themes of lost identity and not being able to trust reality? check. disorienting camerawork? check. sense of sinister conspiracy closing in on you? check. terrifying bacchanal sequence involving naked people cackling and dancing in a pit of grapes? check. brian wilson never stood a chance.

i'd give some money to someone who could find an example of that exact type of shot (where the camera and character are mounted together on a moving platform, giving the uncanny mix of over-the-shoulder framing and subjectivity) in a film earlier than "seconds." there must be an earlier example, even if it's not a film james howe would have seen.

i tend to find that the japanese do everything first (at least after about 1925), just because they seem so willing to play around with form and style... so maybe in some earlier japanese film?

one other thing missing from that wikipedia excerpt regarding wilson: after seeing the movie he became convinced that phil spector was somehow behind the movie "to mess with my mind".

http://blogs.indiewire.com/theplaylist/spike-lees-controversial-chiraq-with-kanye-west-is-a-musical-comedy-plot-details-revealed-20150511

...dude's still got it

first thought was why is Spike making a film about former French pm

Watched Get on the Bus for the first time the other day, and while its last half hour is a little too heavy on the speeches--and a sentimental final-act dramatic turn I saw coming miles away--I really enjoyed it. The performances felt uneven in the opening scenes (the initial discussion between the father and his teenage delinquent son was way too ACT-ING!) but once it got going, everyone settled into their roles nicely. Ossie Davis is always a great, warm presence on screen, but I was most taken with Charles S. Dutton, who on the strength of this film I'm suddenly angry doesn't get better/more prominent roles. Most impressive to me, though, was the presence of a gay black couple and the way that the rest of the characters were forced to react to them. I can't offhand think of something else this popular-ish circa 1996 that was having conversations about this.

Dutton is reliably great, yes.

that movie's p bad tho, ending really ruins it

is there anyone who can compete with spike when it comes to the drop in quality between the first fifteen minutes of his movies and the last fifteen minutes of his movies? Rewatched the Inside Man on HBO the other day, so great most of the way through but, despite recalling the end was protracted, i was still unprepared for just HOW interminable it is

one contender might actually be depalma now that i think about it

Spike is really terrible at endings it's true. Resorts to the laziest cliches way too often (insert Mo Better Blues NOOOOOOOOOO! jpg)

De Palma's got some endings I think are fantastic - Body Double, Carrie, Scarface - despite their drawn-out nature (certainly Scarface seems to go on forever, but with that film excess is the whole point)

yea mo better blues ending was so so so bad

do the right thing among th few exepctions? I just watched it for the second or third time the other day

forgive spelling I'm on my phone

i remember thinking the ending of clockers was ok, but i haven't seen it since it came out. crooklyn's couldn't have been that bad, i just don't remember it.

but school daze, malcolm x, summer of sam, jungle fever are just a few of the ones that end on a "whut"

and yeah depalma's had some really good endings for sure, most of his straight-up stinkers come late in the game

Do the Right Thing is a masterpiece, one of the best films of the 80s. When considered as part of his overall CV it's weird how much it stands out, it's just so much better constructed and executed than p much anything else he's done, not sure what to attribute that to.

yall are thinking of ending of jungle fever w/ the noooo. mo better blues was more in line w/ the endings of clockers and 25th hour, really almost sets the template. i can't begrudge the ending of malcolm x but it weakens the movie for sure imo, reminds me of the ending of schindler's list w/ the director pressing cuz they're not sure they've made a movie up to the gravity/importance of the topic at hand. ending of summer of sam i think is as fine as the rest of the movie, maybe better, think if the movie had been just breslin's 'here's a story of some shit that happened the summer of 77' instead of spike's THE story of the summer of 77 it would've been much better, in retrospect wish that hbo had optioned the bronx is burning instead of espn and gotten spike to direct it. jungle fever could've been an interesting movie about class and the african american community, it touches on so many of those issues, but it would've required a much lighter touch than spike can ever bring.

jungle fever are just a few of the ones that end on a "whut"

ah right duh I was mixing up the Mo Better Blues and Jungle Fever endings I don't even remember the Mo Better Blues one

xp

i can't begrudge the ending of malcolm x but it weakens the movie for sure imo, reminds me of the ending of schindler's list w/ the director pressing cuz they're not sure they've made a movie up to the gravity/importance of the topic at hand.

haha yes otm

good point re summer of sam, also haven't seen that since theaters. remembered the ending being outta nowhere, but def can't argue its WORSE than seeing a line of people in distinctly post-pistols punk gear sneering at cbgbs

never seen Summer of Sam, have seen most of 25th Hour (should get around to the whole thing eventually I suppose).

did anyone even see Girl6? I couldn't make it to the end of Bamboozled even though everyone said the ending was the best part. In context of this thread that ending seems similar to Malcolm X/Schindler's in its sledgehammer-ness.

iirc mo better blues he takes that beating cuz of his manager spike's gambling problems that ruins his lip. heals, time passes, wesley snipes has taken over the band, denzel comes to watch them, fine ass cynda williams sings 'harlem blues', denzel sits in and it's embarrassing and sad - dude can't play anymore. he leaves. 'a love supreme' montage starts, denzel findes joie lee, they marry, have a kid, denzel is teaching him trumpet, neighbor kid comes to the door and asks if denzel's kid can play, denzel let's him out of trumpet practice to go play in a reversal of opening scene when kid denzel couldn't play and had to stay inside to practice trumpet.

the two saddest "director really wants you to know how important this is" endings i can think of are prob nixon, with stone straight up telling you how it important it is in voice-over over the credits, and frost v nixon, where sam rockwell (in character) tells you how important what just happened was in a fake talking head documentary bit

spike's def one of those guys where i've missed like 50% of his movies and on one hand really wanna see them all cuz i think he's underappreciated but also know i'd be in for some frustrating times

'a love supreme' montage starts, denzel findes joie lee, they marry, have a kid, denzel is teaching him trumpet, neighbor kid comes to the door and asks if denzel's kid can play, denzel let's him out of trumpet practice to go play in a reversal of opening scene when kid denzel couldn't play and had to stay inside to practice trumpet.

haha okay yeah this is coming back to me, the out-of-nowhere compression of time etc.

def can't argue its WORSE than seeing a line of people in distinctly post-pistols punk gear sneering at cbgbs this bothered me so much more than turturro dog going 'i want you to KILL'. i remember i had friends at the time who thought sos was spike's best which i'm still like 'hmm...racist?' about. that this 77 nyc punk was jamming to 'baba o'riley' w/ a spike mohawk was a real wtf moment for me.

man maybe I do have to see that

ok so out of mo better, jungle fever, get on the bus, girl 6, he got game, 25th hour, she hate me, miracle at st anna, red hook summer, the oldboy reboot and da sweet blood of jesus, are there any that someone would recommend as being more worthwhile than not if not totally great

lol reMAKE not reboot

prob nixon, with stone straight up telling you how it important it is in voice-over over the credits - lol nixon does something similar to this like every three minutes, there's either newsanchor voiceover doing some sort of exposition to let us know what we need to know about nixon and history or you have actual characters saying to each other or to nixon 'he could've been a great man but for this hole in his heart. this is the tragedy of nixon.' and 'the american ppl may vote for you, but they'll never love you, not like they loved jack kennedy. this is the american tragedy.'

oh yeah if nixon isn't on the screen whoever is on the screen is always talking about him. i just love that its an oscar-bait movie where music plays off the director's acceptance speech before it's over

25th hour is amazing, a notch below do the right thing but at least tied w/ malcolm x imo. if you like basketball i can recommend he got game, if you like the marsalis family i can recommend mo better blues. the other i've either not seen in 25 years (jungle fever), seen some/most? of but not in one sitting (get on the bus, girl 6), or not seen.

turturro dog going 'i want you to KILL'

that shit's amazing /because/ of how ridiculous it is, summer of sam is really good

i think i'm at the point where i like nixon more than jfk, though that might be more cuz i'm more interested in nixon and his admin than the jfk assasination and the lost innocence of the 60s. of course it might just be cuz i've seen jfk way more times and that movie really goes downhill in entertainment value post-sutherland scene whereas nixon just gets drunker and more alone.

get on the bus, he got game and 25th hour are all pretty great out of that list croup, never seen girl 6, red hook summer, oldboy reboot or da sweet blood of jesus

miracle on st. anna is the hottest of garbage, what a waste of some pretty good acting from derek luke and michael ealy

that this 77 nyc punk was jamming to 'baba o'riley' w/ a spike mohawk was a real wtf moment for me.

All punks loved the Who. Didn't think this was weird at all. Spike's a huge Who fan too, though, so maybe he just wanted to shoehorn that in, but I didn't mind it.

lol double-checked and while nixon got four oscar noms (dick and pat, score and - somehow - script), oliver did not get a best director nod. those went to the makers of il postino, babe, dead man walking and leaving las vegas, with mel gibson getting the golden boy for braveheart

i found nixon to be criminally less quotable than jfk, though i did dig the extremely on-the-nose visual metaphors

also tarfumes you're glossing over "w/ a spike mohawk" in that description

oh...ok, yeah, that aspect doesn't make a lot of sense.

kinda feel like he got game and 25th hour actually go up a notch at their ending.

yeah i should see those for sure

mo better blues time compression ending was definitely "whaaaaaaaaaaat" esp when they showed birth scene, gtfo

yeah i think showing a punk jamming out to 'baba o'riley' might've been really astute in another film, sorta puncturing the myth that punk arose from nothing and was completely revolutionary etc, freaks and geeks kinda gets at that where punk was this thing that some rock dudes glommed onto and some rejected. here though it just seemed kinda anachronistic, like spike going 'ok what did punks look like' and coming up w/ some early 80s london punk look and then going 'ok so what's some awesome hard 70's rock this punk would listen to' and then picking who's next cuz he's a who fan. it just reeked of being out of his comfort zone.

i remember inside man being a very enjoyable bank heist popcorn film with kind of an obnoxious "twist" ending

When the BBC did their 100 greatest American movies poll recently, Lee's 25th Hour at 94 was, to me, the most unexpected entry - not seen it, why is this one so special?

http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20150720-the-100-greatest-american-films

tbf to spike, alex cox in sid & nancy also made 77 punk look like an exploited concert in 1981

haha was there actually a birth scene? i was thinking 'ok there had to be more during that montage' but all i could remember was denzel going to joie lee's (was it raining? it was probably raining right?) and then they have a kid and i think they did something to denzel's hair to let us know he's older.

i remember inside man being a very enjoyable bank heist popcorn film with kind of an obnoxious "twist" ending

yeah the end of inside man juuuuuust keeeeeeeps gooooooooing, well after all the tension is gone, even on the second, third viewing i was in disbelief

my only issue w/ inside man is wondering 'wait, how fucking old is christopher plummer supposed to be???'

i like how there's that one dolly shot of denzel zooming forward furiously like spike was worried you'd forget spike was directing

really wish hbo would just be like 'look...' w/ nic pizzalotto and just have rotating directors and writers w/ true detective and let spike and one of the detective novelist guys simon got to shore up his staff w/ the wire to do a season.

spike + richard price could be pretty good

has anyone seen clockers again in the last decade? does it hold up?

caught it on tv not too long ago and crooklyn does

it disappointed me alot at the time (i had ridiculously high expectations), saw it a few years after and thought it was great, haven't seen it in forever but nothing sticks in my memory as something that makes me wary of watching it again (can't say this about some other spike movies i liked well enough at the time).

i actually think FONDLY of the ending - mekhi phifer marveling at the landscape - which is not something one often gets to do with a spike ending

i knew this revive wasn't about Da Sweet Blood of Jesus

(which has some passionate defenders)

i like the movie of clockers, saw it before reading the book - which i love, but has an incredibly annoying subplot that the movie wisely dropped. keitel and phifer are both pretty great in that. lindo is terrifying. also it makes its point sans sledgehammer, not usually spike's forte

actually, the actor who plays errol barnes (plays the father handcuffed to his son in get on the bus) is considerably more frightening than delroy lindo

though i did dig the extremely on-the-nose visual metaphors

it's not a good movie really but the bit where Haldeman and Nixon can't find their way out of the oval office because the doorknobs have been removed is A+ awesome hilarity

I really loved the ending of 25th Hour.

i LOVE crooklyn - spike as glue-sniffer one of his more memorable characters

i also LOVE summer of sam despite its moments of ridiculousness - it's really good at conjuring the fever of that summer, the paranoia, and i feel the side-plot of leguizamo and sorvino and the hedonistic trip to the disco sort of redeems the bizarro punk vista. and jennifer esposito, <3

xxxxx-post: Yeah, I will defend Da Sweet Blood of Jesus. Opening scene is GREAT, an inversion of Fight the Power scene from Do the Right Thing. And while rest of film is very very cheap, melodramatic and uneven, there are some really good scenes in it. It has the look of a soap opera but the camera movements of an old master. It's not 'good', but def worth seeing.

I really enjoyed about 3 or 4 scenes in School Daze--the "Straight and Nappy" number for its audacity, the confrontation with the Samuel L. Jackson-led group for its poignancy, the "Da Butt" scene because its been ages since I've heard that song, and although "enjoy" probably isn't the right word for it, the whole sequence of Lee's character's "initiation" (and its fallout) for the filmmaker's willingness to go all the way in indicting the ugly misogyny of his nastiest character--but it really is kind of a mess. The endless fraternity ritual scenes make their point after about two of them, the staging of the football game, up to and including Ossie Davis's pep talk, is rather stunningly inept, and the final scene almost plays like satire. I'm kind of surprised that it enjoys as solid a reputation as it does.

http://www.rollingstone.com/movies/news/spike-lee-on-his-new-michael-jackson-doc-and-going-after-mtv-20160128?page=4

So are you going to do a doc on Thriller?
That's what I want to do. That's the plan. I've gone on record as saying I'll do it in a second. It's just not all up to me.

There's a lot of rich material to work with — not just the music, but the way that album blew up, the Grammys appearance, the way he broke the color barrier on MTV…
I'm telling you know, if I do end up doing it, I'm going after MTV. I’m sticking both my Air Jordans up their ass, believe me! (Laughs) I wanna clear up the bullshit revisionist history that’s being spread around right now.

What revisionist history, exactly?
That there was no opposition to anyone at MTV playing Michael’s music. Have you seen that David Bowie clip that just resurfaced? No, seriously, have you seen it?

SIDEBAR
David Bowie; MTV Flashback: David Bowie Rips Into MTV for Ignoring Blacks »
I have, yeah. It's amazing.
He’s telling the truth. It's not Spike Lee saying "MTV doesn't play black people," it's David Bowie saying this! Listen to what that guy who's interviewing him is saying, about having a certain demographic and what will play in America, all that. He's just mouthing the party line; those were there talking points of the whole company. All those motherfuckers are full of shit, saying that they opened Michael's videos with open arms!

Who's still saying that? It's pretty much an established fact now that they didn't want to play his videos, or videos by any black artists, at first … are people still disputing that story?
They're still saying they welcomed Michael Jackson with opens arms, yes, and it's bullshit! We have that moment in the Bad doc: [CBS Records CEO] Walter Yetnikoff called up the head of MTV at the time and told him "I'm taking every CBS artist off MTV unless you play this." What's the guy's name? It's Robert something. Google that shit right now. I'll wait.

(One quick Google search later) Robert Pittman.
(yelling) Bob Pittman! That's him! People on the wrong side of history are trying to rewrite history all the time. And I don't care what people are saying now, Bob Pittman and MTV were on the wrong side of history! You don't have to be David Bowie to know that.

he is a fantastic powerful beautiful near- perfect director and regrettably a slightly less fantastic person. fuck you haters.
― ethan, Saturday, August 18, 2001 12:00 AM (14 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't think perfection figures much in his ouevre - some of my favourite movies of his are gallant messes - but i'd second with fantastic, powerful and beautiful

For those of you in London, there will be a month long season celebrating Spike, showing Do the Right Thing, Clockers, Bamboozled, and Inside Man, starting on Jan 11th.

http://www.deptfordcinema.org/event/thats-the-joint-a-spike-lee-season-do-the-right-thing/

My film class watched Bamboozled tonight. I'm guessing Spike doing Network probably sounds like a good idea unless you've actually watched Network recently. The minstrel sequences are painfully grotesque enough to be effective, though. I can't recall the last time I saw anything in a film that was so thoroughly, fascinatingly repellant.

Also, was he consciously doing Dogme here, or is this film just a typically shitty-looking relic of millennial digital filmmaking? Cause this film is butt ugly.

he was consciously doing digital, not necessarily dogme.

i think its possibly his best film.

not saying that it all adds up, that its arguments are all properly followed through, or that its not spike flying off the rails, half out to shock (which often gets the better of him), half simply upset at black stereotypes and treatment by the TV/film industry, but still, what a film.

i think its a minor masterpiece, in my top 5 list of his. kind of a bookend to spike in the 90s.

Good concept, lazy execution, yet utterly memorable

Found the first season of Shark, a James Woods lawyer series from a decade ago, in a dollar-store sale bin. Spike Lee directed the first episode. So-so.

went to see do the right thing at a local theater the other night, first time i'd ever seen it on the big screen. still a hell of a movie. spike himself is wonderful in it. also one of the all-time great opening sequences -- gave me chills p much through the entire thing.

Good concept, lazy execution, yet utterly memorable

could describe so many of his films

though i wouldnt say lazy

more, hasty

agree, solid correction

Went to a screening of Malcolm X at the Lightbox this afternoon. Actual print--probably as good a one as you could hope for, but, sacrilege, I think I'm starting to prefer the beautiful colours of digitized transfers.

Kardinal Offishall introduced the film. Just before he finished, he asked everyone to stand up, make an 'X' with their arms, and make lots of noise so he could film us for Facebook or something. The old white guy on the left who was sort of half-standing and not making an 'X,' that was me. Nothing personal, Kardinal--you just can't get me to do stuff like that.

The movie has been a favourite since I saw it on release, and I like it more and more with every re-viewing. The only thing that stops me from saying Denzel Washington losing the Academy Award to Al Pacino is the single worst pick ever is that I've never seen Scent of a Woman. Delroy Lindo not even getting nominated was a major oversight, although looking at the nominees that year, I guess the only realistic chance he had was David Paymer's spot. (Malcolm going back to look up West Indian Archie is such a sad scene.) I felt like the film was close to flawless today. And the ending, which I considered a little gimmicky in 1992 (but at the same time thinking about it for the next few days), today it moved me as much as the ending of The 400 Blows.

The Scent of a Woman Oscar was compensation for never awarding Pacino during the 70s, and for not awarding Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society three years earlier.

Oh, I know it was a Lifetime Achievement thing. (Don't get the Williams connection...same writer for both films?) Based on what Pacino's done since Scent of a Woman, and based on the clips I've seen, I can make a pretty good guess as to how irredeemably hammy his performance is, but I still wouldn't want to say it was the worst pick ever without having seen it. Not having any desire to, that proclamation will have to remain in limbo.

I love the way Lee weaves Joe Louis, Billie Holiday, Jackie Robinson, and Lionel Hampton into Malcolm X--speaking as someone who's not all that big on musicals, I think the Roseland sequence is incredible. Weirdest bit role that I don't think I'd ever noticed till yesterday: Body Double's Craig Wasson as a television interviewer.

Nah, Scent was just Hollywood's '92 attempt at DPS.

(The '93 version--and I know I'm getting way off topic here--was Mel Gibson's The Man Without a Face. I just read the original novel, which is not only about a possibly-queer teenager, but about the possibly-pedophilic relationship between the kid and the title character. The lengths that Hollywood went to to strain all of this material out of the source material in the service of another inspirational teacher/mentor weepie indicates just how desperate they were for this kind of thing in the wake of DPS.)

Back to X: I seem to remember Siskel and Ebert talking at length at the time about how Spike's badmouthing of the Academy cost the film most of its would-be noms. Given that 4/5 of the '92 Best Picture noms were an especially Oscar-y lot (Unforgiven, Howard's End, Scent of a Woman, A Few Good Men), the critically acclaimed yet decidedly weird The Crying Game probably owe's Spike its nom.

Burned all those bridges over Do the Right Thing, I'm sure. Samuel Jackson getting by-passed for Jungle Fever a year earlier--he won at Cannes, and also with the New York and Chicago film critics--was also a travesty (a word I usually avoid, because I immediately hear it in Woody Allen's voice.)

Decidedly minority opinion, but I think Malcolm X is clearly a greater film than Do the Right Thing. I like Do the Right Thing fine, and I can see why someone would prefer it. I'd say it's similar to a Mean Streets/Raging Bull comparison, or Highway 61/Blood on the Tracks, or countless other such pairings: the earlier work is more audacious, more hyper-kinetic, more what John Lennon said about coming from the sticks and wanting to take over the world, while the later works are more austere and larger in scale. Sometimes, like with Highway 61, it's the earlier work that means more to me; with Malcolm X (and Raging Bull), the later.

Mo' Better Blues is such an odd film. Don't think I'd watched it since it came out but started in on it last night and was struck by how uneven it is tonally, like it was almost assembled at random.

Is the Turturro character as bad I remember it? All I remember is Turturro and Denzel's horrifying bruise at the end. I kind of want to rewatch it and Jungle Fever for all the 80s/90s period stylings.

I only got like 30 minutes in - during which Turturro's barely a character, more like a background stereotype. The setting is really confused - there's all kinds of 90s signifiers in certain scenes (in the clothes, references to Arsenio, etc.) and then (for example) the film cuts to Turturro's office and it looks like it's fucking 1949. And (maybe Jordan feels differently idk) the whole vibe, crowd and especially the music of the club feels *really* rooted in the classic post-bop era, which is also jarring. I actually think the musical sequences are one of the best things about the film, but they feel weirdly anachronistic juxtaposed against everything else. Maybe I'm misremembering the Marsalis era idk. And then iirc there's like a 10-year jump at the end, which would place the film's denouement in... 2000 (ie, the future?) So weird.

it's like Lee wanted to make a film about the jazz scene of the early 60s, but also wanted to shoehorn in all his usual contemporary concerns and just mashed them together really sloppily.

Remember this being the immediate follow-up to Do The Right Thing, having big expectations ahead of it.

All I remember about this movie (which I haven't seen, but have sitting in my PVR) is that there was some minor controversy about Jewish stereotyping that Siskel and Ebert addressed on their show.

Definitely. Unfortunately it's not even close to the quality of DTRT imo.

I would be curious about the opinions of other jazz-heads around here regarding this era. I was just getting into jazz and its history at the time this came out, but my memory of the late 80s/early 90s jazz era was a lot of wrestling with hip-hop, whether it was old-school conservatives like Wynton Marsalis insisting on sticking to the post-bop/Stanley Crouch-approved playbook on the one hand or any of the myriad of rap+jazz collabs that sprang up (Miles Davis + Easy Mo Bee, Guru's Jazzmatazz, the entire "acid jazz" subgenre etc.) on the other. But you get none of that in the film, while the musical stuff and the performances are, I think, great, they also seem like they're beamed in from another era.

xp

the Turturro-as-Jewish-stereotype thing is such a minor aspect of this film, I really dgaf about it.

I haven't seen it in a while, but yeah, the music is basically 3rd-rate '60s Miles Quintet interspersed with 3rd-rate John Coltrane Quartet...so, basically, what Branford Marsalis and his contemporaries had been concerning themselves with in the '80s/early '90s.

"Beamed in from another era" is spot-on. Crouch and the Marsali like to pretend and/or insist nothing happened in the music after Miles' Quintet (despite Crouch's participation in the 1970s NYC loft scene), so I'm sure Branford (and Terence Blanchard) saw this as an opportunity to reinforce to people what the JAZZ is really ABOUT.

was I mixing up my Marsalis' in my previous post? I can never keep the respective modus operandi of Branford and Wynton straight

I had forgotten Branford did the music in this, so duh my bad

nonetheless I do think it's weird that in the film's musical world it's like rap does not even exist. Branford was doing Buckshot LeFonque just a couple years later, for ex.

i remember being really disappointed in this, i too saw it right after Do the Right Thing (years after they each came out) around the time i first started listening to a ton of jazz. it is definitely all over the place tonally, has some great moments and could've been outstanding but also had some horrible cringeworthy moments. that whole birth scene montage at the end was garbage, anytime you are doing a fast-forward to the future thing with a rushing to the hospital crazy birth scene you are entering some dark territory, here it was just an excuse to close with a reprise of that first scene when the boy is practicing his trumpet

been a while though since i've seen it though, maybe 12 or 13 years

i thought the end scene being this opposite mirror image of the first scene with the same dialogue and everything was maybe the only thing half decent about this movie

nonetheless I do think it's weird that in the film's musical world it's like rap does not even exist.

I thought they'd taken a swipe at rap in "Pop Top 40," but I just listened to it again, and nope.

i thought the end scene being this opposite mirror image of the first scene with the same dialogue and everything was maybe the only thing half decent about this movie

it's not a bad framing device but the lead-up to the last scene w the birth and the time-lapse is v wtf

i thought the end scene being this opposite mirror image of the first scene with the same dialogue and everything was maybe the only thing half decent about this movie

― -_- (jim in vancouver), Tuesday, April 4, 2017 3:11 PM (six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yea that was fine, they could've figured out a way to get to that scene more elegantly than the "a love supreme" birth scene

ha exactly xp

oh yeah i agree the lead up to the end scene is bad and weird

Mo' Better Blues was Lee's Mutations, while Jungle Fever was definitely his New Jersey.

Weirdly enough, Girl Six was his Girl Six: The Soundtrack .

Jungle Fever is just legit bad, I think MBB has more redeeming qualities

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TiyDvysp1do

His profile in the NYT Mag two Sundays ago was pretty good.

Still a dick re his Yankee fandom

and there's this

https://www.slantmagazine.com/tv/review/shes-gotta-have-it-season-one

apparently he didn't write any of it? so, promising.

lol I had no idea this was a series and was perplexed at the title showing up in my netflix queue

apparently he didn't write any of it? so, promising.

he wrote the first (based on the film) and last, Cinque and Joie are credited with one each

The first nine episodes had its ups and downs, so typical Spike, and then the finale was one of the worst half hours I've seen in a long time, perhaps in years.

Great music throughout though

Spike Lee on his signature visual flourish: “John David [Washington] was asking every day, ‘When’s it gonna come? When are we gonna do the double dolly shot?’” pic.twitter.com/hRguY5pd0l

— Kyle Buchanan (@kylebuchanan) February 2, 2019

crooklyn is still great (and has a good ending also)

definitely one of his best but still only despite himself. he lingers too long on the insane aspect ratio distortion, a great effect that loses its impact after less than 10 minutes and just becomes distracting. but I like it a lot because the whole movie operates on a magical realist level that he usually reserves for a single scene or moment - the gliding shot being the most obvious example.

tbh -- but i was watching on largescreen TV not in the cinema -- i think losing its impact means it *stops* being a distraction? i.e. after a while your eyes just adjust and you watch normally without really noticing, until we pop back into non-distortion and have to adjust again

after a certain point, I don't think it serves the scenes in VA. certainly the arrival, maybe a couple interactions with the parents, but the pitch of those scenes is pretty even-keeled. it's totally at odds with the distortion, which is so extreme it never really 'disappears,' and while I understand the idea of VA being an alien planet, it's not integrated into the film, which is a consistent problem for SL.

I watched it at home, too.

“I’d just like to say Woody Allen’s a great, great filmmaker, and this cancel thing is not just Woody. And I think that when we look back on it, [we’re] gonna see that, short of killing somebody, I don’t know if you can just erase somebody like they never existed. Woody’s a friend of mine…I know he’s going through it right now.”

I fucking hate the title of this thread.

xp I genuinely despise you

I know you probably think that's hilarious

gonna watch the new film tonight

i watched she's gotta have it the other day, feel like lee's admiration of allen is pretty visible there

summer of sam was kind of fucking awesome, he uses a ton of different styles all pushed to their saturation point and it gives the film this manic, ticking time-bomb energy. there are like two sequences in it that made my jaw drop (orgy scene and the way the camera flips when john leguizamo totally bottoms out on coke and quaaludes)

All of his movies are great, including the ones that suck

this old post feels right to me

all that hustling paid off

Brad otm re Summer of Sam.

New one’s a mess but Delroy Lindo carries it.

summer of sam was kind of fucking awesome, he uses a ton of different styles all pushed to their saturation point and it gives the film this manic, ticking time-bomb energy. there are like two sequences in it that made my jaw drop (orgy scene and the way the camera flips when john leguizamo totally bottoms out on coke and quaaludes)

agreed! it's up there with crooklyn, she's gotta have it and do the right thing in my canon of Spike's greatest

Delroy Lindo certainly gave the best performance in Lee's high-school filmstrip Malcolm X.

Da 5 Bloods must be better than this garbage he released last month:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRRvhO0Chg4

I liked that NY NY short. But...I dunno, Morbs. Maybe watch it?

Yes, the $40 million, 155 minute feature film that was extensively scripted, and rewritten, and shot in multiple formats in three countries, and cross-edited to shift between varying aspect ratios & mixing fictional narrative with montage of archive footage from several decades IS better than a ten-minute home movie thrown together in an afternoon and stuck on youtube

Three minutes, with a loving shot of New Stankee Stadium (aka goombah central).

OOOOOH MULTIPLE FORMATS

your aesthetic criteria are a wonder, sic

Based off a Ctrl+f reading of this thread, Morbs' biggest aesthetic complaint against Spike Lee is that he's a Yankees fan.

Baseball can gtfo forever afaic.

Based on Mookie, he must have some affection for the Mets.

I'm not sure if I have it, but if I do, I'll give Summer of Sam another try. I really disliked it when it came out. About the only memory I still have of it is what seemed like an endless and overwrought climactic scene set to "Won't Get Fooled Again," which--again, dim memory and possibly wrong--was supposed to speak for Adrien Brody's punk character, a miscalculation, to say the least.

Spike infamously switched off the Mets after the mid-late '80s crest. Though he still denies it, despite having a Yankee flag flying above his property on Martha's Fucking Vineyard.

what seemed like an endless and overwrought climactic scene set to "Won't Get Fooled Again"

it was "baba o'riley." i like that scene a lot but it is otherwise exactly as you remember it

There you go--can't trust memory.

despite having a Yankee flag flying above his property on Martha's Fucking Vineyard

Have been there, was going to get married there, will be sure to give that flag a fucking salute next time I'm there.

this is the Spike Fucking Lee thread

lol aspiring elitist bitch xp

hopefully it will be overrun with zombies for your next visit

switching off the TWINS to the Stankees is mo' better pathetic tho, ya got me there

Pulpy but smart, dipping toes into every genre, a few brilliant shots every time out and a generally strong visual language, a wildly overwrought screenwriter who tends to scream in your face when addressing Our Contemporary Society...is Spike Lee the black Sam Fuller?

Jesus Christ what is happening

the part in summer of sam where they’re in the woods arguing and “dancing queen” is playing on the car stereo... Lotta moods

OOOOOH MULTIPLE FORMATS

your aesthetic criteria are a wonder, sic

Those criteria are quantitative, not aesthetic. It's not prima facie ridiculous to imagine that a narrative feature with many years of work put into it might be a better film than a three-minute montage of a phone being pointed out the window of a car, but it might be ridiculous to assume that one of them implies anything about the other, sight unseen.

Three minutes, with a loving shot of New Stankee Stadium (aka goombah central).

Spike infamously switched off the Mets after the mid-late '80s crest. Though he still denies it, despite having a Yankee flag flying

switching off the TWINS to the Stankees is mo' better pathetic tho, ya got me there

these aesthetic criteria of film-making are completely comprehensible, of course.

25th Hour has aged terribly, right?

No

It already had fraught elements in 2002 (PSH and Anna Paquin?); it'd still make my best of the year, mess and all.

Genuinely glad to hear that. I loved it at the time but I've put off re-screening because I didn't to ruin the way I remember it. (And the PSH/Paquin stuff was bad then, yeah)

I couldn't rewatch it. I do remember how unusual and edifying for a film of this length to sustain its jangly energy.

sic, dealing with the antics of Spike Lee the oft-irritating local personality is a separate NYC thing.

otoh he supported Bernie in 2016 so I have to give him that.

Da 5 Bloods is another mess, a worthwhile mess. The allusions to Treasure of the Sierra Madre burden the film, though. The male cast excellent, with Isiah Whitlock Jr. and Norm Lewis as intense as Delroy Lindo. Spike still has no idea how to write and direct a part for a woman, though.

Probably broadly true, but I think Annabella Sciorra is great in Jungle Fever. Lee's sister is good in Do the Right Thing and elsewhere, my recollection is that Theresa Randle is good in Girl 6, and I'm sure there are other good supporting performances here and there. But the most prominent exception is Sciorra, I'd say.

I agree, yeah. And She's All That too.

(... She Hate Me?)

is the criticism I've read re D5B fair, that it mainly works as a band-of-brothers/male bonding story but falls flat as a movie about the war?

It's not about the war.

(It's about people and countries who've been involved in a war, though.)

re: Spike and women, this is a huge thorn in the side of Bamboozled too

alfred's almost certainly referring to she's gotta have it

lol yeah -- brainlock

She’s Gotta Hate All That

She’s Gotta Hate the Stankees

Disagree with Morbs all you want but Yankees/Knicks fan is a perfectly legitimate reason to disdain someone.

Obviously very much want to see this but I also don't have a Netflix account and I don't want one

Saw this tonight

It goes in a bunch of directions but the Treasure of the Sierra Madre gives the movie a fulcrum to leverage all the Vietnam ghosts that needed exorcising. when he goes in he goes IN & it moved me to tears in a number of scenes

Delroy Lindo mvp

and yeah - it’s not really ~about~ the war but about how the country’s inhabitants, the soldiers, the families, the actual land itself hold the scars and or open wounds and become the living manifestations of the war

would have loved more Chadwick Boseman, he was magnetic in ever scene

*every

Delroy Lindo should have one, maybe two Academy Awards already for Malcolm X and Clockers. (Ludicrously not nominated for either.)

Do The Right Thing pretty much the most important American film ever made at this point? and sadly too relevant still

I have no problem with any part of that statement.

as Armond called it, "Spike Lee's good movie"

(true at the time, given his nascent filmography)

can't wait for him to praise Delroy Lindo's "extraordinary distillation of MAGA-era rage" or some shit

lol

well that train is always on time

as Armond called it, "Spike Lee's good movie"

(true at the time, given his nascent filmography)

She's Gotta Have It is great tho

hmmmm no

cept Spike got enriching sneaker ads out of it

Haven’t seen the new movie yet but will be watching this.

Spike Lee will join the American Cinematheque next Sat. June 20th | 5:00 PM PST for a retrospective discussion on his career & his new film DA 5 BLOODS. Moderated by @BarryJenkins. Visit our website to learn more and register for the Free Online Event @SpikeLeeJoint @NetflixFilm pic.twitter.com/L2RBgPK1rT

— American Cinematheque (@am_cinematheque) June 13, 2020

cept Spike got enriching sneaker ads out of it

seems a weird takeaway from such a great film but when has debating you ever been worth the effort

oh and the use of Marvin Gaye throughout Da 5 Bloods was A+

the choice to go with just the isolated vocal “Whats Going On” when Delroy Lindo goes into the jungle alone, killed me

yes

[morbs actually that was a shitty reponse of mine during a tough day, apologies]

Kinda wish I hadn't dumped my Netflix subscription right before this premiered.

stevie, the Mars Blackmon character appeared regularly in a saturation NIKE campaign (with Michael Jordan) before America even knew who Spike was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Blackmon

That seems like an extremely weird characterization of how that happened considering that I was able to learn about She's Gotta Have It via reviews and award hype before the Nike ad campaign in Minnesota without actively seeking information out about it

well you were at least somewhat plugged into indie media, I'm guessing, as many of the TV eyeballs were not.

SGHI grossed $7.1 million off a $175,000 budget, which was a big arthouse hit for Island Pictures, but still not a mainstream breakthrough.

I am pretty sure I heard about the movie via the indie rag Newsweek

Siskel & Ebert's many years encouraging Lee began with their rave for SGHI.

Yeah actually it was the 1-2 David Ansen/Siskel & Ebert reviews that put Lee onto my radar

heh, fair enough! But apparently only a million or fewer people went to see it. I still think the Nike campaign was most people's introduction to him.

(the occasions on which people see films upon reading reviews are infrequent enough to have killed the film critic)

xxp

i don't think it's controversial to suggest that most americans introduction to spike lee was via the nike ads

I learnt about Spike Lee from his ads for tube socks, not sneakers

(probably shown before My Life As A Dog, guessing at what my parents would have taken me to on the same screens around then)

I think that was the trailer for SGHI?

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

Yep. I've still never seen the Nike commercials, but I did have the Fight The Power 12" for about ten years before I finally saw She's Gotta Have It.

"With my man Mars! Mars! Mars! MAWS BLACKMON!"
"Yo, yo, that's Spike Lee, man."

Been misremembering that as "Three for fi' dollars" for 33 years. My gentrifying ears!

what is he saying ?

Just “Three fi’ dollars.” Condense the message, good marketing!

all kinds of fresh fish sold here daily

no word on Armond, but Jeff Wells is in favour:

HE's Own Staggering Genius pic.twitter.com/HjG8edZzMX

— Glenn Kenny (@Glenn__Kenny) June 15, 2020

On that tip, there's a poster over on Criterion Forum who's been keeping receipts on Wells' stupidity which they recently shared in a mammoth post Here (post #367)

he is a Bill Maher-level moron who should be ignored