Spike Lee's Chi-raq

Written in rhyming couplets, apparently.

https://vimeo.com/144523728

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHdjX9D4_RU

looks absolutely ridiculous ie like a Spike Lee movie

I hope it's pretty much straight to VOD, 'cause it looks really nice, so I want to watch it with the sound off like I do with Michael Mann movies.

Def could not imagine you wanting to hear what black people have to say, even for two hours

oh come on whiney this looks fucking terrible

Looks like a return to his old form to me (not sure I've seen a Lee movie since the Inside Man though...) Love or hate him I certainly wasn't bored by School Daze, Jungle Fever, Do The Right Thing so strikes me might be a good thing.

this looks potentially brilliant, potentially an interesting misfire, we'll see

Members of the City council and city residents have requested that Lee change the name of the film, going as far as to threaten the tax credits that the film maker will receive from the city.[5] "Chi-Raq" is a common endonym of residents of Chicago's South Side, used to describe the area as a war zone due to its high crime rates. Lee later called Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel a "bully" and several Chicago aldermen "bootlickers" for their criticisms.

never change, spike

Rahm is also a bootlicker.

SOUTH SIDE ROUGH RIDE

this looks rad as fuck

I am assuming everybody is familiar with the Aristophanes play that this appears to be a read a read on - which was obv also in verse

very into this idea

yeah man watching that just now w no idea of the lysistrata thing was pretty amazing

yeah this looks great

you all are fucking crazy

this is gonna be on like "she hate me" level of terrible

screenwriter for She Hate Me has two films total to his credit and is best known as a regular Law & Order guest

this one's based on an anti-war play whose rep has been p solid for over 2200 years

feel like we're starting with a little stronger foundation here

This looks like a mess, lysiatrata lift doesnt obviate that. I'll probably watch it. I bet a sympathetic protagonist gets murdered at the end.

Will be surprised if there's more to the lysistrata bits than the basic premise plus a couple clunkily inserted quotations.

Two thumbs up

http://www.journaldugeek.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2015/11/Jacques-Chirac.-007.jpg

Will be surprised if there's more to the lysistrata bits than the basic premise plus a couple clunkily inserted quotations.

Why?

Cuz that's generally his m.o.?

if you say so!

his previous aristophanes adaptations were pretty fast and loose tbf

kinda weirdly stoked for this? dawn from mad men look hot af

you all are fucking crazy

this is gonna be on like "she hate me" level of terrible

― marcos, Wednesday, November 4, 2015 9:15 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why would you say this? like unless you object to the pure theatricality of it why would this trailer be bad to you?

idk what one would expect re 'taking more than the basic premise', i mean, it doesn't have to hew any closer to the source material than, say, 'clueless'

i liked she hate me, tbh

or at least i cracked the fuck up at the protagonist's full length oil of himself as john henry, i don't know how many of the minutes of film either side of that i want to defend

i think it looks brilliant and theatrical. cant wait.

though obv, it could be a complete let down. the premise (which sounds like a film that came out a few years back about women in a village, possibly in the middle east, or central asia, that held sex from their husbands) seems like it could go either way.

not too sure about spike doing choreography though (i.e the assembly scene with all the women in the hall talking about no access or entrance). not too big a fan when spike gets carried away with reinforcing a favoured phrase.

School Daze musical/dance sequences were great IIRC but it's been like twenty years.

you all are fucking crazy

this is gonna be on like "she hate me" level of terrible

― marcos, Wednesday, November 4, 2015 9:15 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

why would you say this? like unless you object to the pure theatricality of it why would this trailer be bad to you?

― call all destroyer, Wednesday, November 4, 2015 11:17 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

okay grand pronouncements based on a 2 minute trailer are not always great but i had the following impressions

1) the "based on an aristophanes play" thing as somehow promising is weird, in spike's hands it just looks super clumsy and corny, anyways "based on a classic greek play" is not inherently interesting to me
2) the theatricality just seems super obnoxious, the "i will deny all rights of access and entrance" scene just looked so ridiculous and embarrassing
3) i think spike is capable of/has achieved greatness in the past but most of spike's films of the past 15-20 years have been terrible, even the good ones have had very bad cringeworthy moments, this makes me immediately skeptical of new spike films
4) samuel l jackson just doing this samuel l jackson caricature thing that is like the same persona as his capital one bank commercials is not appealing to me in 2015
5) fwiw reading tons of chicago folks having immediately negative impressions was a little bit of a red flag to me, again this is just a trailer and this was mostly on twitter along with a few folks i know and trust but idk it did seem relevant

the whole trailer just seemed really hamfisted in general

would love this as a theme song

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

I would expect this to be terrible because Spike Lee's filmography has started to resemble Prince's discography.

Otm

how on earth does that even work

spike lee's filmography has started to resemble prince's discography in that i haven't really paid any attention to either lately

spike lee's filmography has started to resemble prince's discography in that, like prince, spike lee is african-american, albeit while prince makes music, spike lee makes films

spike lee's filmography has started to resemble prince's discography in that white people are secretly relieved they don't have to pretend to like either anymore

"i think spike is capable of/has achieved greatness in the past but most of spike's films of the past 15-20 years have been terrible, even the good ones have had very bad cringeworthy moments, this makes me immediately skeptical of new spike films"

um, bamboozled, inside man, the katrina docs... these are bad? bamboozled is one of his top 5 films.

"samuel l jackson just doing this samuel l jackson caricature thing that is like the same persona as his capital one bank commercials is not appealing to me in 2015"

wrong. this is not sam jackson doing jules again. its sam jackson actually acting well.

rahm emmanuel is a bully and worse. spike lee otm.

i still have time for spike lee films and will always have time for his documentaries, which are wonderful.

"fwiw reading tons of chicago folks having immediately negative impressions was a little bit of a red flag to me, again this is just a trailer and this was mostly on twitter along with a few folks i know and trust but idk it did seem relevant"

Wait which Chicago folks? Rahm Emanuel and his corrupt cronies?

Bamboozled is terrible (I couldn't even finish it - yes I fast-forwarded to the credits sequence), Inside Man is good, I haven't seen the Katrina docs

But he is v inconsistent and has a tendency to sloppiness. I still think Do the Right Thing is the best film of the 80s, and he's got a smattering of good-to-great stuff before and since, but it's clear he prizes immediacy and topicality over coherence and depth, and a lot of his films feel like squandered opportunities more than anything else. I would say the basic connective tissue in the Prince analogy is "great/groundbreaking in the 80s, followed by wildly egocentric and inconsistent decades featuring bids for relevance, the occasional gem, and a lot of crap". I don't think it needs to go much farther than that.

Rahm Emanuel is objectively an awful person, I think we all agree on that.

but anyone who makes so much is bound to be a tad inconsistent... and i would ask what is so bad about prizing immediacy and topicality?

maybe coherence is the price for prizing qualities many other directors do not prize

Wait which Chicago folks? Rahm Emanuel and his corrupt cronies?

― One bad call from barely losing to (Alex in SF), Thursday, November 5, 2015 11:07 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

no i was talking about people from these neighborhoods in chicago who have lost loved ones to violence and weren't crazy about how the trailer was portraying things, i don't really care about rahm emanuel?

inside man was a great heist film with a hamfisted corny ending

do the right thing is fantastic, his best work for sure

I think about it all the time

Does Josh's post affirming what I said mean nothing to you? Do you only accept information that affirms your constant bias that I'm probably wrong about everything ?

Like I feel like I'm trying to chip away at a huge block of ice around your head to get you to understand my point it's very bizarre. Your argument has gone in circles so many times you're trying to argue the point I was making: people already knew about this problem so defending spike's film on "raising awareness" grounds is a flawed argument

have you seen it yet?

The thing about the 'raising awareness' argument is that afaict, Spike Lee never really expressed an interest in doing that?
So saying "This movie is bad at raising awareness of this problem!" at this point, seems to serve as a lazy stand-in for "This movie is exploitative!" -- perhaps because the latter would require a substantial engagement with it as a work of art, while the former thesis can be 'proved' by 1001 facts about things that are not Spike Lee's Chi-Raq

also: lol at accusing Spike Lee of 'getting it wrong' by making his movie be about two big old rival gangs (what is this, West Side Story???) instead of a bunch of decentralized nodes of corner violence... only to promptly turn around and shit on everyone outside of Chicago as 'outsiders' who can't possibly understand that this city has a unique and historically unprecedented culture of violence, & why it would not be susceptible to a thousand-year-old riff on male psychology (SPOILER ALERT: part of the 'meaning' of a work like Lysistrata is that macho cultures like this go extinct)

The thing about the 'raising awareness' argument is that afaict, Spike Lee never really expressed an interest in doing that?
So saying "This movie is bad at raising awareness of this problem!" at this point, seems to serve as a lazy stand-in for "This movie is exploitative!" -- perhaps because the latter would require a substantial engagement with it as a work of art, while the former thesis can be 'proved' by 1001 facts about things that are not Spike Lee's Chi-Raq

― bernard snowy, Monday, December 14, 2015 8:20 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i dont know if you didn't follow this argument or what (lol) but—(although I'm pretty sure he did explicitly say this movie was about raising awareness?)—I was responding to someone in this thread who claimed that criticism of the film was unwarranted bc it was raising alarm bells

an example of the kinds of articles that did not exist in the onion prior to 2012 http://www.theonion.com/article/chicago-introduces-new-citywide-gun-sharing-statio-37797

in august 2012 the onion even PARODIED the rise in coverage of chicago violence/its associated music in this article http://www.theonion.com/article/hot-new-murder-craze-sweeps-chicago-29349

also: lol at accusing Spike Lee of 'getting it wrong' by making his movie be about two big old rival gangs (what is this, West Side Story???) instead of a bunch of decentralized nodes of corner violence... only to promptly turn around and shit on everyone outside of Chicago as 'outsiders' who can't possibly understand that this city has a unique and historically unprecedented culture of violence, & why it would not be susceptible to a thousand-year-old riff on male psychology (SPOILER ALERT: part of the 'meaning' of a work like Lysistrata is that macho cultures like this go extinct)

― bernard snowy, Monday, December 14, 2015 8:24 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

your isolation of this particular macho culture from the macho american culture writ large seems like not the kind of thing spike lee would agree with

I really have no interest in the headless ouroboros of attacking your right to criticize someone else's right to criticize the critics of a movie that, as far as I know, neither of us have seen.

But given your responses throughout this thread, both to other posters and to "the thing itself" (in the rare cases when you seem to be engaging with it), it seems fair to say that you have a lot invested in this narrative of "the media" suddenly getting hip to Chicago violence in the last ~5 years, turning their cameras on it, & exploiting it for their own gain.

Even if we accept this oversimplification as true -- & I do think you're onto something when you talk about e.g. Fox News treating Chicago as a punching bag to be wheeled out regularly in service of the black-on-black-crime 'issue' -- But why not assume that Spike Lee's film is ALSO aware of, and addressed to, the whole fucked-up national media conversation in the background, to which you seem intent on reducing it? Why are you so unwilling to give this particular work the benefit of the doubt? Do you react similarly when a 'controversial' mixtape comes out of Chicago? Or do you listen to it first?

This is an honest question. I know from things you've posted upthread that you are not blind to the ethical issues involving artistic treatment of urban crime, but I think you are being (wait for it) oversensitive here, in your inability to move beyond the knee-jerk defensive posturing of "This movie should have never been made!"

And now, just so you know that all of the above written in good faith, untainted by personal antipathy towards you, I will give that antipathy free rein in this last paragraph, by suggesting that this post upthread:

it's certainly not weird that a white chicagoan who has made a career policing and criticising what is and isn't real black culture might not be interested in seeing a movie that places some of the blame for the violence in chicago on white gentrifiers

― balls, Tuesday, December 8, 2015 10:42 PM (6 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

eh, that last part was unnecessary and I already regret it -- also forgot to mention that in your last post, you are 100% right, and I had no intention to isolate the 'culture' either geographically (it's a Chicago problem!!) or demographically (it's a black youth problem!!) -- as Spike Lee said in the interview where he responded to Chance, it's an American film, a film about guns... which is of course why it could be, and originally was, set in a 'nondescript urban environment'

the last part wasn't as much out of line as it is off the mark, balls has zero idea what hes talking abt

i dont disagree with what you're saying but in my defense the context of this argument was ppl who were—despite not having seen the movie themselves—out of hand dismissive of the film's critics, as if it was impossible that the film could have been a bad idea bc art...i just wanted to set the scale to zero, and suggest that its possible the film could be bad from a political pov, and not just an artistic one

http://pitchfork.com/news/62564-chance-the-rapper-further-slams-spike-lees-chi-raq-sings-donny-hathaways-this-christmas/

During the chat with WGCI's Chicago Morning Takeover, Chance responded to Lee's claims that Chance is biased because his father works for the city's mayor.
"I mean, Spike Lee is saying that 'cause he's promoting a movie. He's trying to make more money," Chance said. "He got his little 15 million from Amazon and his other little bread from Lionsgate and made a movie that was not about Chicago but, you know what I'm saying, manipulated and used Chicago actors and Chicago scenery to push this movie."
He added, "It was an oversimplification of a bigger problem. He wasn't really focusing on the issues of Chicago, it wasn't really about Chicago. To me, it was about this age-old conversation of black on black violence, which is to me some Bill Cosby 'pull up your pants' stuff. I’m just not for it."
He also said, "I was trying to explain to people outside of Chicago that it was marketed to that this isn't a representation of us and we're not rockin' with it."
In the movie, Nick Cannon and Wesley Snipes play two rival gang leaders, whose competition guides a lot of the drama. "The reason why we’re dying isn’t because there's two head gangbangers that are into it," Chance said. "We’re dying because we all have PTSD, you know, post-traumatic stress disorder. Kids as young as seven, and younger than that, have seen people murdered in front of them. So that starts a paranoia in your mind that you're walking around with. When you're walking around and you feel like people are trying to kill you, you shoot when you get scared. That's a problem that even I have. That's a problem that a lot of people suffer. And I feel like he didn't address that. He made it seem like we’re doing it because of gang life, and because our male ego is being compromised when we don't fight. But that’s the smallest form of it."

ppl who were—despite not having seen the movie themselves—

an interesting demographic to consider in light of this thread, eh

Deej, I got around to finishing your post upthread. I respect what you say re contemporary gangsta rap's troubled relationships with the communities it comes from, although I didn't understand the fruits of their labor bit, because I'm not sure what the labor is you're speaking of and why it's sacrosanct.

I also get "Bobby Brady's hero" vibes from talk of teenage grassroots support of gangsta rappers. Like my students think El Chapo Guzman is a wonderfully rakish and wily robber baron who exudes romantic nihilism and buys houses for the poor, in addition to being an astute political thinker and borderline genius engineer, so I've seen enough reality-starved minds, at least in relation to pop culture heroes, to be unsure exactly what teenage support of popular culture really means.

I do agree that criticizing the politics of the movie is fair game; I just don't think a clear distinction has been made between Spike Lee's responsibility and e.g. Mozzy's responsibility, especially when you take into account the style, audience, and personas of the artists.

I still disagree with the Chicago/drill zeitgeist argument, though. 2012 was Chicago's peak for homicide victims (not murder rate). I think it's far more likely that news organizations chased the story of 500 victims in a year rather than the story of violent lyrical content in music. As in the heyday of golden era gangsta rap, violent lyrics make a nice distracting anti-puff piece to hang on real murder trends, but the story of drill is an old story.

NYC-bred friend who is a huge fan of Spike's early-mid period thought this horrible, all complaints on aesthetic grounds: shallow treatment of women, juvenile humor etc.

I wil lse it if NY ever stops clotting my life with unmissable revivals.

*will see

If I were to clumsily work yr notable ilx interest in the various papacies into a pun about unrevivable missals youd no doubt feel picked on so I shall refrain

no idea what you're talking about, sorry

I'm a lapsed Catholic who would like to kill God if he exists, btw

ok missals i get it, you irish and yr humor

That's all, rly

I also get "Bobby Brady's hero" vibes from talk of teenage grassroots support of gangsta rappers. Like my students think El Chapo Guzman is a wonderfully rakish and wily robber baron who exudes romantic nihilism and buys houses for the poor, in addition to being an astute political thinker and borderline genius engineer, so I've seen enough reality-starved minds, at least in relation to pop culture heroes, to be unsure exactly what teenage support of popular culture really means.

Tbc I don't think a populist vote is sacrosanct, I mean ppl still think South Park Mexican the kid fiddler is a political prisoner, and more locally Chicago t33ns are really into this derivative gimmick rapper famous dex who IMO is rotting their brains like junk food---I nonetheless believe gangster rap is a source of good art drawing attention to things in new ways and communicating ideas that do not have a space in or more traditional mediums & art forms...perspectives which are not being expressed in other avenues. Etc

as far as the labor question that's a much bigger q than I'm prepared to answer during a commercial break on my phone on the couch at 11pm

As far as media attention in 2012, agree to disagree. There had been a Chicago murder peak a few years before that and I lived here then too; the noise level wasn't even comparable, IMO.

has anyone actually seen this yet

i'm not sure if it actually exists except as thinkpiece fuel

the mythical fandango tells me it is in fact at theaters in downtown boston but they could be in on the elaborate prank tbh

you show up and it's just 50 bloggers with pens and pads of paper staring at one another

just saw it. i might have weird taste, but i think it's fantastic as just a piece of entertainment, and really a return to form, vis a vis school daze and the early period. bright, colourful, outrageous, ridiculous, joyful. also a total mess, with no characterization of anyone, politics that aren't even facile so much as just incoherent from moment to moment and scene to scene. agree with that review that describes it as the spikiest of spike lee movies. if you have any hope that it could or should be a movie that actually has anything at all to say about the actual conditions in chicago, yeah, you have every right to be angry. it's completely worthless in that regard. even the throwaway bits people say could point to actual conditions (the preacher bit, which was excruciating, and the low-point for me) don't really make sense. but just as like a... thing... and a legit adaption of aristophanes in a major motion picture, its pretty great on its own terms imho. and in a sense, all the cacophonies of different wrong contradictory takes on chicago do sort of give a kaleidoscopic view of what the _conversation_ about it genuinely sounds like.

The part right before the preacher gives his sermon was so super dark comedy that it may have been my favorite part of the movie - just sorta over the top and ultra-grand and ridiculous but also moving or something. Kind of like this in a way (but not really)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBZR-KvKso4

John Cusack chair-dancing in during the performance was o_O

This movie reminded me of Christian Marquand's "Candy", another rough literary adaptation about a beautiful woman's sexual agency.

I loved Wesley Snipes. He used to be such a reliable comedic actor. It's too bad he got bogged down with action movies/tax jail.

Two other movies that came to mind were The Great Beauty and, of course, Romeo + Juliet.

even though it made it even more unrealistic, i liked the theater-set-like staging of some of the scenes, and thought it sort of helped half-keep it in a musical tradition.

I don't think realism was a characteristic Lee was shooting for here. This is an extremely stylized film.

I forgot to mention Felicia Pearson, who is sitting down in most of her scenes because she's too cool to dance.

spikes moralizing weighs this down, it's got such heavy feet for what it's trying to do... it's a freaking stinker but im glad spike got to make something on this scale again, watch Clockers again and your mind boggles at the budget he got to make that with, big crazy german expressionist sets and cinematography

wesley snipes is a genius actor

gone from NYC already except for one theater's 11pm shows

Yeah, but it's streaming on Amazon now.

not the same experience i suspect

Gonna be free with Amazon Prime starting February 5.

now out on Blu-ray etc

did u see this Morbz

not yet

seems weird but I guess popovich screened it for his team and flew in spike (to Cleveland) to talk abt it

This was great! The "Oh Girl" sequence was every bit as awesome as "Straight and Nappy" and "Da Butt" scenes from School Daze (which seems to be the film that comes up the most in discussions of this new one), but on the whole this is a much better film, much more confident and tonally consistent--even some of the initially WTF moments (like the one with the old army guy) end up paying off in a satisfactory way once it becomes clear where Lee is going with them. Samuel l. Jackson's greek chorus bits were delightful--I ended up rewinding and re-watching most of them. And who knew that Mariah's (former, I just learned via Wiki) boy toy could act?

And who knew that Mariah's (former, I just learned via Wiki) boy toy could act?

This wasn't his first movie; Drumline at least is reasonably well-regarded, and he was good in The Killing Room, which I don't think anybody but me saw.

I knew that he was in other things that I hadn't seen, but all I really knew of him before now was that he had released some horrible jokey rap records. He's very good here, though.

I can't fault the ambition of this though it's "uneven" -- some of the broadest comedy in it is really terrible -- but I found the climax extremely moving. The veteran actors, Bassett and Snipes, seem to have found the right note that too much of the other cast didn't or weren't able to.

The script was co-written by the guy who made that Confederate States of America film about a dozen years ago that wasn't well liked, so there's presumably no way to know if his input is "the problem" here, or if Spike's ideas helped or not.

The only comic scene that I thought was really broadly overplayed was the seduction of the General. Glad that you pointed out Bassett, though; she's terrific here, and it had been way too long since I'd seen her in anything.

bassett's so good she embarrasses everyone else

i'm sad spike never got to make that james brown movie with snipes

I never read reviews beforehand (and only skim if I do), so this wasn't at all what I expected. (Something like the more majestic scenes in Jungle Fever and He Got Game, I think.)* I don't like broad comedy--broad anything--so not surprisingly I didn't like this. A few scenes, the one with the general especially (what I always figured Myra Breckinridge would be like), I found embarrassing. First time I've ever flat-out disliked Samuel Jackson.

*Occasionally, it felt like this film was trying to find its way out.

i want to see this again to make sure i gave this a fair shot, but i found a lot of the humour in this just distracting. i know most ppl are going to think its crass for a film with this subject/setting, but even so, yes, i did find it too brash and distracting. it is in many ways the ultimate spike lee movie, in terms of being almost like a culmination of every typical leesian move youve seen over the years, and it does it brilliantly, in terms of being pure auteur shit, as barry jenkins called it, but i think he just overpowers it all in doing that, enforcing his style onto something that doesnt need it. its brilliantly made, but this is a film where removing himself somewhat from the film is what was needed. it needed less spike lee ego, and more about the actual gangs. i think it would benefit from being a stage production actually, more than any other lee film i can think of. but i just wish he never decided to combine lysistrata with the setting/issue of chicago gangs, as the latter wasnt explored how it deserved to have been - this is one time where his habit of dovetailing two separate narratives really could have been dialed back (it was also just too jarring for me, putting comedy up against a serious issue... at least in something like jungle fever, he had two serious narratives running at once). i wish he had just made it in a non specific place, rather than set it somewhere IRL like chicago, as it just set him up to fail somewhat. but im guessing he thought no one would talk about it otherwise!