Spike Lee: Dud or DUD?!?

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