a spike lee joint

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Bamboozled as the default "best Spike Lee that isn't Do the Right Thing."

Not bad! Glad so many movies got at least a vote. And yes, these are basically the correct results.

Bamboozled is due for a rerelease / reappraisal. More relevant than ever.

School Daze... there's a decent 81 minute movie in there, but good lord, two hours? It doesn't feel like a movie, just raw material, some of which is great. I realize it's only his second movie, but's a) stunning that he made this only a year before Do the Right Thing, and b) his primary weaknesses thru his career - pacing & editing & discontinuity - are really exaggerated.

watching CLOCKERS (1995) which i thought i'd seen (maybe cz i read the book) but i'm now thinking didn't

so far (only ten mins in) struck by how it layers languorous autumnal crooklynesque soul into broken projects ugliness (= the sequence of gun-murdered bodies in the opening credits)

the book sent my perhaps unimaginative mind's eye to a much sparer concreted-up lanndscape tbh

Underrated, I think, although Keitel and Turturro's casual banter at the crime scene seems a little forced. Delroy Lindo and Mekhi Phifer are excellent, and the rest of the time Keitel is too.

Thought Clockers suffered from a familiar problem for him, half an hour too long, too many unresolved plot strains that don't really gel. Some great elements (the performances), just felt incongruous, like Jungle Fever or School Daze or She Hate Me.

Clockers was one of those films I remember coming out in the fall of '95 as part of what seemed to be a *lot* of interesting/ambitious movies being released around that time, --->>>or<<<--- ones that at the very least were interesting/amibitious failures (Kids, The Usual Suspects, Seven, To Die For, Strange Days, Get Shorty, Dead Presidents, Leaving Las Vegas, The Doom Generation, Casino, White Man's Burden, Heat, Nixon, Dead Man Walking, 12 Monkeys.) Clockers was one of the ones that was seriously overlooked and underrated, and still is to this day even though it's basically a proto-"Wire." Not sure I'd vote for it, but I might agree w/Alfred's 1-2 and also the high ranking for He Got Game (solid RICK FOX performance!)

― omar little, Wednesday, August 29, 2018 3:00 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Kids, The Usual Suspects, Seven, To Die For, Strange Days, Get Shorty, Dead Presidents, Leaving Las Vegas, The Doom Generation, Casino, White Man's Burden, Heat, Nixon, Dead Man Walking, 12 Monkeys.

oy this is a lot of failures!

― Οὖτις, Wednesday, August 29, 2018 3:11 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Get Shorty and 12 Monkeys were huge box office hits and sound entertainments fwiw

― The Silky Veils of Alfred (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, August 29, 2018 3:21 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

in what universe is Heat a failure

― flappy bird, Wednesday, August 29, 2018 5:14 PM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

sorry just to belatedly clarify there's an "or" in there

anyway Clockers is flawed but it's more overstuffed than it is inept. There's a palpable kind of anger at the criminals, even some fairly justified anger at our central character, while it retains a lot of empathy for him. more than another film might give him. most of the performances are very good or often completely exceptional (Keitel was still operating at his '90s peak level here, a time when he was able to even make City of Industry watchable whenever he was onscreen).

so far (45 mins in) i think it's better than anything on that list that i've seen (not seen = dead pres, doom gen, white mb)!

and also that keitel feels more like he's doing keitel shtick than anyone else feels like they're doing shtick :\ which is not bad obv but doesn;t quite give the cops enough grip to push things on?

Clockers, on my last viewing, generates a sense of dread almost as palpable as DTRT did.

not inept, definitely overstuffed, this is his main problem. overstuffing leaves seams showing. Lindo & Phifer are great but I thought Keitel was sort of phoning it in. then again it's hard to watch him as a detective in anything other than Bad Timing.

as ever with spike i love the colour and in this case also the softly grainy texture

he doesn't find a way to film the trainset stuff that works really

(are there any films with trainsets where the trainset bits are good not bad? track 29 is terrible iirc)

does Sopranos count

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Crk89BHnN3Q/hqdefault.jpg

The Fury (wish I could find the clip online).

Tom n Jerry suck

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4WlJHBVw70

The Fury (wish I could find the clip online).

watched this within the past year but drawing a blank on what yr referring to

The scene where Amy Irving is powering the train mentally and it flies off the track...you can catch a glimpse around 40 seconds in this trailer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bphHHR2aVM0

http://www.midnightonly.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/The-Fury-6.jpg

miniature thread derail

Addams Family has a good trainset bit

me rn in the spike lee thread

pic.twitter.com/8XICVX3yMP

— Perfectly Cut Screams (@AAAAAGGHHHH) January 17, 2020

Took me five minutes to get the derail joke (duh)...Just to keep it going, forgot that in Big Little Lies, Laura Dern's husband obsesses over his train set at a point in their lives where they're going bankrupt, which thoroughly infuriates and exasperates her.

http://media.vanityfair.com/photos/5d2e1b4fefb55400084dd864/master/w_2560%2Cc_limit/Jeffrey-Nordling-Big-Little-Lies.jpg

I think he's convinced they're not really bankrupt because his train set is so valuable.

anyway aside from tiny trains, dread and anger the main constituent element is deep slow sadness

Tom n Jerry suck

I love you Shakey, but get out of here with this nonsense.

NEVER!

(are there any films with trainsets where the trainset bits are good not bad? track 29 is terrible iirc)

https://i.makeagif.com/media/7-20-2015/w7ounj.gif

wow I completely forgot about his train thing. yeah, that along with the strawberry milk, just incongruous elements that really stick out

the strawberry milk is the one big thing i remember from the book -- everyone around strike treats as a bit of a joke, his bit that he commits to, but it's actually how he's nursing the severe bleeding ulcer that hospitalises him (it's the only thing he can eat that makes it hurt less). i remember it well i suspect bcz i *hate* strawberry milkshakes, in fact any milkshakes, so this struck me as a double grim chore (horrible self-medication of horrible condition)

in retrospect i'm not sure how well all the above is conveyed in the film -- i knew it from the book so it didn't need conveying. in the book also part of the sadness is that there's no space in this set-up for someone like who strike "really" is: he has to be a junior gangster bcz what option is there? but he's actually more of a dreamy oddball who in a less pressured world wd be allowed to flourish in very difft directions (which i think the train stuff is kind of signalling, except i'm still unconvinced trainsets can be fitted into most directors' filmable aesthetics -- outside maybe cartoons that can play games with size and speed)

(not sure i ever saw that sopranos ep, the stills don't convince the idea being is pulled off)

I haven’t seen the film but strawberry YooHoo(?) is the first thing I think of when I think of the book yeah

I also think about it a lot wrt my own stomach pain issues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64Ako6ouR3Y

there are some earlier scenes with it too including the one this is taken from lol

https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fd3gqasl9vmjfd8.cloudfront.net%2Fbf74a509-c736-4383-8bd5-28c553a6e652.jpg&f=1&nofb=1

A couple of Zoomcasts my friend and I did on the music in two Spike Lee films:

Jungle Fever: www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUt4OfYeybM
BlacKkKlansman: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZa2UW9_vVs

The second goes back a few months, but I'll post them both.

i feel like this might not hold up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EiYKdK46L5s

the parts that don't hold up are what sunk it in 2004 (I'm assuming): the bizarre Enron style subplot? First of all, no sex comedy should be 140 minutes. he gets SO didactic here especially towards the end. he appears incapable of making a 90 minute movie, which is unfortunate, because his eyes are usually bigger than his stomach. the sex comedy parts are the "best" in this iirc. For sure some casual homophobia typical of the time, again, iirc

We talked about the music in a mix of films here: Malcolm X, The Social Network, McCabe & Mrs. Miller, Our Nixon, and St. Vincent. Malcolm X is my favourite, so I'll post here.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JPO5DH_ZGE