FORGOTTEN GEMS: 1995’s “BAD COMPANY”

Three things come to mind watching Bad Company Laurence Fishburne, Ellen Barkin, and style. In many other cases , for other films this would not be a good sign, it would be a weakness, here it most certainly meant as a compliment. Bad Company carries itself through its less than two hour run time on the near visible steam wafting off its two leads, its warm summer cool, and rapid fire dialogue delivered with the kind of sterilized precision one might see in an operating room..a very stylised, and well decorated operated room, where the doctor plays Jazz to set the proper mood for his work. The movie introduces us to Nelson Crowe (Fishburne) a CIA man disavowed by the agency under a cloud of suspicion. It s precisely what got him ousted from that agency that interest Vic Grimes the creator of a corrupt firm that offers it's services in corporate espionage to the highest bidder. Grimes number two is Margaret Wells (Barkin) who instantly takes to Grimes and has other machinations of her own. What ensues is a deadly game of Cat, Mouse, and Bigger Cat in a room full of rocking chairs. The movie in some regard is a bit too detached, disavowing any real vulnerable emotion in a vacuum tight seal of unflappability, but man is it fun to watch it's two stars skulk, slither, circle, and screw each other. Denzel got all the press, attention, and adulation during the 90's , but while Washington is and was certainly his own category, so too was one Laurence Fishburne. For a guy who had carved out iconic roles in films like “Boyz n the Hood”, “Deep Cover”, and eventually What's Love Got to do with it, and “The Matrix”, Fishburne does not seem to conjure the same sort of magical recognition that Denzel's name does. Watching this movie, I was reminded of the sheer heights and depths of Fishburne’s sexiness, his charisma, his singular ability to give you a whole mood with a very simple non-descript action. Watch Laurence Fishburne sit on a couch..

Stand in an Elevator…

Admire Ellen Barkin 's leg..

Doesn't matter what it is Fishburne is doing, he is oozing self contained composure. His dialogue is terse and concise, and he imbues it with exactly the kind of direct efficacy and command needed. His enunciation is as close to perfect as one might get, and it is not simply for his own benefit as an actor. He performs the task of aiding in the creation of this near inscrutable character. It's tempting to say Fishburne carries the film alone, he's magnetic and charming enough to have been able to, but fortunately for all of us Ellen Barkin is also in this movie, and she is also quite able to carry the film. This is the equivalent of having LeBron James, and Anthony Davis, or better yet the big three in Boston seeing as though Frank Langella and a host of natural character actors like Michael Beach, Gia Carides, Spalding Gray, and Daniel Hugh Kelly fill out the rest of the cast wonderfully.

Barkin is a sneering, smirking, glaring force of nature. She is like pretty much everyone in the film ruthless, calculating and acting wise she is divine. She is both threatening, and supremely attractive, not just attractive in the sense that she looks good (tho she does) but as in the pure quality of attracting others, it’s easy to believe that despite what she is, people want to be in love with her, and around her. When she's not a cat, she's , snake, when not a snake, she's a lion. There's always something brewing under her eyes. Something deadly, but undeniably distant, and yet close, and there is a confidence and swagger that is the perfect compliment to Fishburne. Her character Margaret Wells never says as much , but it is clear from what Barkin gives us, Wells feels cheated, passed over, and deserving of all the things men around her have denied her, or refused to acknowledge on a full level in her. She walks around like she owns the place because she fully believes she can and should, and nothing the audience is shown nothing that proves otherwise. Barkin provides maybe the film's two best acting moments in the movie with neither featuring a single word. The first when the reality of a misdeed comes crashing down on her. We know this because Barkins face tells us in a muted, layered, complex, and compelling reaction that ends with a crooked smile that hints at both her devastation, and her determination.

The other comes when just as Wells seems to have gotten what she wanted, but before she can even settle into achievement of her life long pursuit, she is hit with the news she is in fact under the thumb of yet another man. Barkin’s reaction is indicative of everything she set up from the beginning. She grates underneath her skin, her chin goes down, she inhales deeply, and her eyes nearly burn a hole in the table. A beat…She then composes herself, and looks forward. Barely containing her anger, but containing it nonetheless, she swallows the ash, and then.

Barkin and Fishburne's chemistry and skill permeate, and elevate this movie, but they or the rest it's top-notch cast are far from its sole delight. Director Damian Harris (son of actor Richard Harris) punctuates his actors performances with the films stylized aesthetic, pace, and imagery. The movie is dark, and it settles but is rarely still. It broods, but the color palette, lighting and pacing make it pop. The mood and tone is cynical and straight forward but delightfully off color and funny . The movie is the rare 90’s political thriller that doesn't feature a good guy, or slink away from its own amoral world building. It's has a bevy of wonderful characterizations, and is wonderfully diverse without being heavy handed or forced. There's a black man, and a white woman, who while the movie never overtly speaks to the precarious nature of their identities within that world, it is nonetheless present and implied especially in the case of Barkin. Two gay males (one Black one White) in Hugh Kelly's Les, and Michael Beach's Tod Stapp. The parts are not thorough explorations of the interiority of their lives, but truthfully no one in this movie is. Though Michael Beach’s Stapp is especially derided and berated based purely on his sexual orientation by homophobic superiors, (and Im on the fence as to whether thats realistic or unnecessary and also realistic) the movie itself does nothing to support the characterization, and gives him a full voice. It doesn't sanctify of martyr him or Les, nor does it condense them. They are as amoral, conniving, and detached as almost anyone else in the movie, and they are definitely as cool. They survive the entire film, and Beach gets the last word over his former employers. Gia Carides's “Julie Ames” would in another film be a banal trope about gold diggers, but here though obviously no saint, (sleeping with a married man) she is what comes closest to the movies morality. She doesn't want the bribe offered to her lover, and her relationship with him isn't downplayed to justify the actions of our antagonists in protagonists clothing. it's a real and flawed relationship in a movie about a spectrum of people that goes from deeply flawed to detestable. This is what l love most about Bad Company. It lives up unapologetically to its title. The movie is as detached from emotion as its characters are from morality, but with its moral compass still attached. It is a moral film that isn't righteous. This den of immorality is cool, and sexy, and slick, but it is never once enviable or desirable in the sense that you want to be around these people for any prolonged amount of time. These are death dealers, cruel nasty, and despicable folk that use sex, charm, and deceit as currency. The film isn't interested in whether they deserve their fates as much as it is the natural progression towards them. It's exactly what you expect out of a political thriller, and some of what you don't. Sexy, smart, twisty, and sharp, and revolting at the same time. A showcase for the talents of its ensemble, and the best of political noir that deserves a revisiting.

The Radical Existence of Queen and Slim

In the opening of Audre Lorde's Zami she speaks of a black woman whom she admired when she was a child. A woman who strolled the streets with her hair unkempt, her stomach on full display , her joy undimmed. It's a beautiful example of isolated black freedom in the midst of a detailed and exhaustive commentary of the macro oppression of black folk in America. The same can be said of Lena Waithe's and Melina Matsoukas's film “Queen and Slim”. The central political focus of the film is not the black resistance as a whole, or black martyrdom, but an isolated tale of two people finding their own freedom from the daily reduction of black lives by living their lives on their own terms despite their impending doom. Phenomenal cosmic power in an itty bitty living space. It is supremely well acted, well shot, photographed and written, and it's ultimate message is one I received with relish and glee.

There has been much talk of comparison around the film. The most oft repeated being “Bonnie and Clyde”, though “Thelma and Louise” and “Set it Off” also readily come to mind - but the film or at least the quote from a film that first came to my mind after watching Queen and Slim was from Ridley Scott's Gladiator, “What we do in life, echoes in eternity”. Despite the chasm of difference between those two films, the matter at the heart of the both in my mind, is not how best to die, but how best to live. Gladiator from under the weight of one type of oppression, Queen and Slim from under the weight of a more modern, and layered form of oppression. The fates of the protagonist in each of these films are not nearly as important as the way they live, and I wonder how much of our own real reductive and restrictive lives in this nation play a role in the reduction of the power of this film to hinging on their fate. From the moment of the event that sets the film in motion, the two protagonists are on a journey of self discovery, and bonding that is as graceful, organic, and honest as any film about love, (and more to the point black love) has ever been. The resistance in the film is not one of physical or political actualization, but one of self realization and an expressive defiance of the shackles of blackness in America. Shackles put in the place by the consuming nature of white supremacy, and the stifling nature of black existence from under it. Throughout the movie we see both. As the police state drags a net around them, and as black folk respond to their plight in both positive and negative fashion. Meanwhile all Queen and Slim really want to do is just live for themselves in both the most literal and figurative fashion. Their desire not to die is the focus of the first quarter of the movie, and extends itself naturally as more of a underlying motivation as it continues, while the figurative living becomes the thrust of the second half. This portion of the film becomes about the two learning how to do as much without worrying about the consequences of such behavior. We watch them stop by a night club for some impromptu dancing, ride horses, and hang outside moving vehicles. We also watch them heal old wounds, resolve issues they were previously afraid , or too stuck in the quagmire of a fatalistic existence to deal with.

The nature of their situation, the near inevitability of their destiny awakens “Queen and Slim” to a sense of urgency about life they previously could not see. For lack of better words They have nothing to lose, so they're willing to risk everything. Their senses are heightened, and their focus is tightened. Their resistance, or their form of fight back is the way they decide to live regardless of possible outcomes. In Yamamoto Tsunetomos “Hagakure” there is a quote about life and death that I think ultimately applies best to the resistance of Queen and Slim.

“If a warrior is not unattached to life and death, he will be of no use whatsoever. The saying that “All abilities come from one mind” sounds as though it has to do with sentient matters, but it is in fact a matter of being unattached to life and death. With such non-attachment one can accomplish any feat.
”

— Yamamoto Tsunetomo -Hagakure

It is easy to mistake this sort of approach and attitude with a macabre fetishization or fascination with death when in fact it is the opposite. In setting ones mind to making peace with the looming shadow of death, one is able to best live ..

“If by setting one’s heart right every morning and evening, one is able to live as though his body were already dead, he gains freedom in the Way.”

— Yamamoto Tsunetomo -Hagakure

“Freedom in the way” …. Freedom. Three quarters of the way through the film Queen and Slim end up on a sort of guided tour with a young boy from town who admires them and what he feels they're doing. While talking with them, he says something to the effect of “don't worry you'll make it, but even if you don't it will be okay because you'll be immortal”. It's important to note two things about this boys words in the context of the film and it's message, because there are some who have identified this as the gist of the movie to which I disagree in part. I say in part because if you only use the latter half of what he said, you're taking his own zealous misinterpretation of what it is Queen and Slim are accomplishing and what they desire as the thrust of the narrative, when it is merely a response to what is the actual narrative. It's a response to the daily marginalization endured by black folk in America and a hyper-reaction by an immature mind to a display of freedom rarely if ever seen before by black people. Hearing this young boy, and watching his reaction which is rooted in his own misconceptions about rebellion, I couldn't help but think on Ernest Dickerson's 1992 film “Juice”. Tupac's character “Bishop” is similarly a young black male who is tired of the daily compression of his life, and rather than watching real life “Outlaws” as does the boy from Queen and Slim he watches James Cagney's Cody Jarrett in “White Heat” and has a very similar reading of what it is he's seeing…

For Bishop, and for the young boy, freedom is found in the ultimate control, in power in glory. Control of one's own destiny, or one's own narrative. Immortality, Glory, these are about being remembered, being seen, and for those of us who feel the burden of life as a black person in this country may be predetermined and destined as one of little value, it's a way to have an impact, to upend the order of things. But that is not what our two protagonists are seeking. Queen and Slim have a burning desire for freedom as do many of us, but it is much more isolated, and it concerns itself with how best to live while accepting the ever present possibility of death, not with immortality, revenge, glory, or how best to die. Though these things undoubtedly have places where they intersect, they are not one in the same. The proof of this is everything Queen and Slim do afterwards. This is not “Bonnie and Clyde”, “Set it Off”, “Natural Born Killers”, or “Thelma and Louise”. They are not on an larceny filled road trip to a poetic destiny over the grand canyon, or on a socio-political revenge spree on corporate marginalization by way of banks, or even a psychopathic bloodlusty whirlwind across state lines, they are two people connecting as the world burns around them, thus the love scene that coincides with the political rally put together on their behalf. In those other movies each one of them keeps pushing the line further and further along the way. They, (like the boy) were hurdling their bodies towards immortality. In Queen and Slim they are merely trying to live their best life with a pure hope that they will make it to Cuba and live full lives there, (something they mention over and over again) while learning to make peace with the specter of death. The movie is about learning to live , not exist, but LIVE while fighting oppression. It's resistance is found in the rebellious nature of refusing to be confined to anxiety, anger, malcontention, repression, and respectability.

When we meet them they are on a rather awkward Tinder date, that seems merely okay, much like their existence up to that point. They live their lives for others , to (like so many of us) be an example that distinguishes itself from so many tropes and attitudes about us and sometimes by us. Slim doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, and attends the same diner regularly because it is black owned. He exists but he doesn't live. He holds it in, he denies himself certain joys because he feels such things impair not only his senses and responses, but his armor. Slims lives his life as a protection from and against the very thing that happens to him anyway under white supremacy. Such is the feeling that all to often arises from being black in America. Queen is no different in that regard. She denies herself time to enjoy things, to fully realize people, to be average at things, or even bad at it. She is filled with a righteous anger (which she puts into her work as a defense lawyer) and an acute eye for red flags and danger, but has no idea when it is safe to let her guard down. This is justified by the reality of being black, and a woman in America, but it is not living. I've often thought of marginalization as an existing in a state of righteous paranoia. Paranoia being defined as delusions of persecution, the righteous being in front of it making it justifiable by way of a history of actual persecutions. Some of us know this feeling all too well even if we don't consciously recognize it. We are in a constant state of hyper-preparedness and alertness that leave us unable to truly live in the moment, to allow for all the variations in behavior, perception, and outcome that are possible because doing so is a risk in an already risk filled existence. The triggering event in the movie is like a snapped finger after a long trance. It wakes them up to all they have been missing, and their sense of the moment and of time becomes heightened. All the quicksand, the murk, the cobwebs, and caked on dust of a frail, and cold existence begin to shake themselves free, and warmth slowly but surely makes its way into the film which Matsoukas and cinematographer Tat Radcliffe highlight with increasingly textured and open shots as the film goes along. Queen opens herself up. She shares the weight and the wounds of her life with family, and to her mother, and to Goddess, and to Slim. She shares the burden, learns to take chances, and most importantly to enjoy the moment, irrespective of the presence of death in her life , of her mother, of her client, and now of herself. Slim takes a drink, smokes some weed, rides a horse. He begins to open himself up to vulnerability, to being less armored, and to take chances, and risks. The presence of death, the shadowy gnarled fingers of white supremacy are ever present in black lives. Despite our best efforts, they are always there, and our responses to it are fragmented and many, as this movie depicts to some degree. Despite the best efforts of the protagonists in this film when we are introduced to them, both white supremacy and death nearly snatched each of their lives, and in the aftermath they learned how to live fuller expression of their lives out from under, rather than just exist within it. Their fates, the varying responses to their plight, their resistance, were not of their own making, and it is not the movies intention to guide them there to make a point. These were simply the outgrowth of their own bold defiance. Thusly Queen and Slim becomes not a destination movie, but a movie about the journey. Not a meditation on black death, but an instruction on, and inspiration of what black life, black love, can look like free. It's an extension of any black persons desire (and especially artists) to be free from what is expected, or even from having to do what isn't expected. Queen and Slim is not about being ultra realistic, if it was, there would be fewer people helping them, more scenes with cops in them. It's not only a political movie either, though the politics of black lives are present nonetheless. It's not about shocking us, or disavowing us, it is a film that just wants to tell a story of two people who find each other in the world and despite all that goes on around them and all that has happened to them - decide to hold on to each other and let go of the rest, giving us an adventure, a thriller, a love story, that expresses both fantasy and reality, imagining a radical existence for it's protagonists that transcends tragedy and struggle, rather than just living in and meditating in it and on it.

"Gotta Be Who You Are in This World: The One Scene in "The Irishman" that REALLY Struck Me

Martin Scorcese’s “The Irishman” feels like a movie whose full value won’t be able to be ascertained until a few years from its actual release. Maybe one of those films in a directors catalogue which may grow a following, or lose it, after the years allow revisitation from fresh eyes, and new minds by a new generation. Upon my first viewing it felt about 45 mins too long, and nowhere near as memorable as past efforts by the famed director. The dialogue didn’t have the crackle that former films did, the direction didn’t have the fury, and the roles though still quite skillfully acted felt all too familiar. As a meditation on growing old, and the passage of time and death, it felt tepid, and lacking in revelation. Ive heard about these people before, I’ve seen notes on the fragility of life, and the whisper of death, and without saying anything I could cling to that provides a fresh perspective beyond Scorcese’s own catalogue, I was only moved in starts and fits. Nevertheless as an actor, and as an audience member, there were a couple of scenes really hit me in Scorcese's latest, some involved the still lacking storyline with Sheeran’s (Robert DeNiro) daughter (Ana Paquin), the other was a punch in the gut scene involving Pesci asking Sheeran to commit a crushing betrayal, but but no scene more-so than one that took place about three quarters of the way through the film. At this point Pacino’s Hoffa is beginning to come undone. In a fascinating combination of righteous indignation, unflappable principality, and enormous ego, he refuses to heed the man-made winds of change. Told time and time again he’s walking upon very thin ice under which murderous intent lies, he refuses to walk even a shade lighter. It’s the kind of behavior that infuriates audience members, and characters alike, (though we rarely ask why?). For me it was partly because of my affinity for the character. Recognizing Hoffa’s stubborn resistance as not only the preamble of death , or the most glaring flaw of the character to someone who in fact now wants him to live despite his egregious sins, but also as the inevitability of time and the futility of resistance to its grip that applies to us all. It is a bit of Spinoza’s determinism, where the necessity of our nature brings about the self actualization, or in this case manifestation of our our own fate. what was going to happen was always going to happen by way of our own distinctive nature. The scene in question takes place in a commemorative event for Robert DeNiro’s Frank Sheeran. He invites Hoffa (Pacino) there out of sincere love and fealty for a man he feels mentored him in some way, but as tensions build between Hoffa and the Mafia - Sheeran (himself involved in organized crime) along with Russell Bufalino (Joe Pesci as good as ever) are left to play peacemakers. When Bufalino’s attempt to corral Hoffa fails miserably, Sheeran attempts one last time to get Hoffa to fall in line. When innuendo doesn’t work Sheeran makes it clear that Hoffa’s life itself will be the price… Pacino's reaction is the ultimate encapsulation of Spinoza’s determinism .

When Pacino looks into another direction its almost as if he looks into the abyss and peers into his fate as he says “They wouldn’t dare”. There's a bit of recognition there. Pacino’s eyes betray a profound sense of conflict. A small battle that lasts all of a few milliseconds before the skirmish is concluded and one side is declared the winner. The side that was always going to win, the side of him that knows him best, his nature. In that one moment is a bit of fear, doubt and then a realization "I know , but what can you do?" There's sadness, and a tragic resolve, and as frustrated as it may have made me, it was principled, and subsequently it is both honorable , and foolhardy. The intersection of frustration, inevitability, and rebellion, and recklessness in Pacino’s reaction is transmitted from actor the scene to viewer like a cold. Where our planes meet is in our own inescapable slavery to our compunctions, wills, and ultimate make -up, with respect to very specific deviations, we are who we are, and the mutual realization of that is the power of the scene and of Pacino’s deeply stratified performance. It is one of the few moments for me, where actors, writer, director, even lighting converge and intertwine conspiring to elevate the film to the peak of its lofty intentions, and it’s also a heartbreaking portrayal of how the best of ourselves is often also our worst even as a audience members.

Donnie Brasco: The Gangster Film You Needed.

If you were to ask me to make a list of the all time greatest gangster films I'd run off The Godfather pt II, Goodfellas, The Public Enemy, and Donnie Brasco. Mike Newell's film - based on the true story of FBI agent Joe Pistone's infiltration of the Bonnano mafia family , under the alias of Donnie Brasco - doubles as one of the great undercover films largely because of its nuanced look at what the work would do to anyone, and because it features one of Johnny Depps finest performances as said undercover agent. But while I think what it has to say about that particular work has been said or done before in films like The Departed, and Deep Cover. What it has to say about life in organized crime, how it depicts that life, is something we hadn't really seen before, and not much after. I may actually watch other films of the genre more ( Scarface, White Heat, Casino, and of course two of the three Godfather's) but while I don't watch it as much as those films, I feel very passionately that what Brasco manages to do that almost no other gangster film has done this well, is make these people, this life seem completely unattractive (which is saying a lot considering how handsome Johnny Depp is in it). It doesn't normalize the racism, violence, and paranoia, it makes it look very normie, cumbersome, mediocre. It doesn't have any of the feel of a winning formula (even if for a time) one can siphon off from other films in the genre. This not to say its the mission of those films to do so, but rather there is something to say in talking about the place characters like Vito, Michael, Sam Rothstein, Tony Montana, and Tommy DeVito have occupied in hyper-masculine circles ( such as Hip Hop). If the gangster film (intentionally or not) made the environment and people look like a 300 dollar pair of slacks, Donnie Brasco puts them in “Dad” jeans. Crews and bosses seem petty, tacky and cheap. Prone to bouts of furious delusions of grandeur they stomp about town carrying out heinous acts for no other reason than percieved disrespect. This about actual disparaging, or defamatory remarks made over a shoe shine job when one was a kid. In one scene Donnie, (Johnny Depp) Sonny Black, (Michael Madsen) and his gang viciously beat up an Asian restaurant employee merely doing his job in a bathroom and it's not the cooled honorific hate in other gangster movies where they say things like “Give the drugs to the niggers their animals anyway” which is more distant, and less visceral, and mostly about them and their staunch belief in their own supposedly superior ethics than their hatred, - it's a messy, cruel, up close hot blooded bit of nasty raw racism that a cop uses to get out of being found out because even though he doesn't know to what degree, he knows it's the button to press to get the desired effect.

The violence and the politics are made to look messy, to look like hard work, to look like stress, because, (along with the also underrated Road to Perdition), Donnie Brasco is a gangster film for and about the working class, that remains about the working class. While it's counterparts are significantly about an expressway out of the blue collar life. It is not the cops and robbers film that is The Untouchables. Pistone is not Elliot Ness, a straight laced do- gooder dedicated to his job out of a moral superiority (for that matter neither was the actual Ness). Director Mike Newell’s film is neither a total indictment of the path, nor a rousing accidental exaltation of gangsterdom, merely a stern, gripping, stare into the bare face of that life, and it all starts with it's penetrative look at it's central character Lefty Ruggiero.

Ruggiero is a bit of everything to this film. He is it's conscious. It's reckoning, it's soul. Lefty is not only undercover Detective Joe Pistone’s way into the heart of the mafia, but our way into the heart of the movies central themes. Understanding what makes Lefty different from anything else we've seen from a crime syndicate figure on film is key to understanding why the film is different from anything we've seen in crime syndicate films. Up until this movie, the American gangster on film is one of the purest of white American male fantasies on screen. Although they were usually anti-establishment, anti- authority figures, the gangster would still none-the-less be the flip side of a mirror image of the establishment hard-working American who rises to the top by way of ethics, attitude, ingenuity, and talent. That they functioned outside the purview of the law did little to disrupt the institutional philosophy, it just made them a whole lot more interesting, and desirable. Up until Donnie Brasco these men we're presented largely as reliable narrators of their own rise to power. How they saw themselves was exactly in essence how we were going to see them. They were men of indomitable wills, they were tough, intelligent, and ladies men. They lived lavishly from goon to kingpin and along their rise to power came to enjoy the best of things. Though all of the great films of the genre would also interrogate the underside of the fantasy, they would also engage in portions of it. The Scarface movies showcased their lust for power, Godfather romanticized their codes of honor, Goodfellas the brotherhood. They were all tragic figures, but the tragedy was the fall of the empire, or that none of it was ever real in the first place. Then comes Lefty Ruggiero, and Brasco where the tragedy is futility, of these men's lives, of Donnie Brasco's work. All of this to get out of a lifestyle (working class) that for the most part they are still in. There is no rise to power for Lefty, his gang, or his protege in Brasco. No honor or true sense of brotherhood amongst these theives. They are all willing to berate, betray or kill one another for a dream which will never be realized for any of them. Their lust for power is not attractive, or ambitious, but ugly and small. It is not a story of rise and fall by way of strength and weakness, but simply an ongoing tale of mediocrity and ruin, and Lefty is at the center of all of it. There are no tailored three piece suits, and gorgeous lapels and colors as in Casino, but hideous track suits, and mismatch outerwear. There are no palatial villas, stately mansions, or even quaint track homes, merely small cramped apartments with tacky furniture. Lefty is not an avatar for white alpha male potency and supremacy, but the sad sack reality of an average moe scraping and scratching for a seat at the table. He is a hypochondriac, and a liar, not particularly smart or ingenous, and prone to overstating his importance. He is also a loving father, an at least a decent husband, and a loyal friend, not as an act but as a character trait. It's maybe Pacino's most sympathetic and pathetic role since Panic in Needle Park and Dog Day Afternoon. There's his patent sadness round the eyes, less posture, but always posturing. There is a scene maybe Midway through the film that exemplifies all of this where Lefty is in the hospital anxiously awaiting word on the condition of his son, an addict who has OD'd. As Lefty begins to emote just a little over his son, he begins to show sincere signs of guilt, of recognition, of vulnerability, and you can tell his son is a source of deep pain for Lefty but you don't know exactly how much until suddenly, Pacino lets out this gut wrenching whimper. It’s not long and he immediately composes himself, but it's a level of being right there in that exact place, in that exact emotion that has a degree of difficulty for an actor on the same level as Denzel's single tear in Glory, and it's indicative of the kind of lived in acting Pacino commits to the entire movie.

Pacino plays Lefty as a small man, with a bigger heart than he lets on. A character with traits that resemble a loyal dog with a mixture of bite and bark, who chooses to bark more than bite. One who doesn't have much heft, but likes to throw his weight around, and Pacino makes it a literal part of physicality. He tosses weight from one side of his body to the other while walking, and talking. His constant anxiety is transmitted into Pacino's many repetitions. Chain smoking cigarettes, appearing ready to ash a cigarette, but returning to his mouth as if by compulsion. Repeating words and sentences, rhetorical questions repeated at least twice. A quarter turn in the hospital hallway directly followed by another. A longing look to the boss for some form of acknowledgement, directly followed by another, like someone checking the mailbox twice for that important piece of mail they've been waiting on...

Ultimately what becomes vital to understanding Pacino's Ruggiero is nothing other than existing in the current state of perpetual unease in the American economy. Lefty is not a trumped up , souped up Lamborghini version of a champagne drenched masculine fairy tale. He's the Toyota Camry and stale beer reality. He's a hump, who all his life carried other peoples water in hopes that one day he'd be swimming in his own pool, looking into his own mansion filled with people that respect and revere him as the top dawg. He blinked and it was twilight, and there he was relatively in the same place he began. All the death all the lies, the hard, herd work, and the indoctrination for what? There is a scene later in the movie where he and Donnie are in the car discussing the death of Nicky (Bruno Kirby) a former associate and friend whom Lefty murdered with the okay of his boss over a completely unconfirmed suspicion. In yet another bit of astoundingly layered acting by Pacino we watch the doubt, realization, creep into his conscious, break down his defenses, and set the timer for implosion of his whole life, plunging into chaos, right before he cuts the blue wire and returns to his ordered world.

The tragedy of Donnie Brasco and Lefty Ruggiero, is that they are both acutely aware that they are just spokes on a wheel, and that both of them want out , but are held prisoner by their own convictions, and belief in the systems they perform from within. They believe them because they can't afford not to. In a physical sense, but even moreso a psychological. If the fantasy, the dream of each of their piece of America isn't real , then what is it all for? The alternative is far too depressing, far too morose, and it's both part of the films power, and what makes it a hard watch. The film credits roll, and though Donnie Brasco isn't beguiling us, it isn't selling us, it ain't even preaching to us, it feels punishing merely existing in its “too close for comfort” realm of plainness. A somber meditation on loyalty, code, and the illusory nature of the American dream , where it's protagonist is no hero, and it's antagonist no villain, nor the reverse. They're merely humps carrying the load of other people's success to and from them on their way to their own fates, much like the rest of us. What this makes Donnie Brasco in effect is almost repellent. The movie bucks a long-standing understanding of what audiences are supposed to expect from the genre by creating a film that is less a movie about ascension, than detention. The movie is not the realization of potential, but the holding back of by various external forces and self impediment. Lefty Ruggiero is not a manifestation of a particular desire in us for affirmation of our mobility in the increasingly narrow margins of society, but a confirmation of our worst fears, that it may all be for naught. The movie is in a state of flux, of anxiety, and unease about it's characters, their relationships, and ultimately the ending. What is Pistone doing this for? Putting himself through this for? Lefty's lies, cause Pistone to consider his own. Lefty's sins his own. Pistone's minor rebellions and revolts against upper management are not merely a matter of the undercover work wearing on him, but the image of himself and his job becoming more and more visible for what it is. Lefty and Joe are both on the same journey of existential, saddening self discovery, and it makes their friendship one of poetic melancholy , and the movie an ice cold slap of water to the face in the midst of a deep sleep. It is an enjoyable, quotable, and sometimes even funny movie, but also the sobering reality of what it feels like to be a gangster in a world where missteps very likely mean death, and in that light is not the gangster film we wanted, but the gangster film we needed.

Joker: "The Killing Joke"

I went into Joker admittedly wary of the entire “controversy” around Todd Phillip's film. The whole thing seemed sensationalized as a ploy to create a weighty buzz around the film that would make it as close as possible to can’t miss box office. To a great extent I still believe that, but before I actually watched the film I genuinely had no idea what to expect going in. Did any of what I had read have any validity? Was the movie a rallying cry for incels? Or was it a brilliant misunderstood movie, with a message too unsettling to be heard just yet? Having now seen it, I have been converted (somewhat) to the group of critics who find the movies messaging to be problematic, though I’m still not sure future viewings might unveil the latter. I had to let the movie sit with me awhile, talk it over with family members before I discovered what it was that made the movie it so hard for me to just give the movie the unencumbered praise I was clearly ready to give Joaquin Phoenix’s performance. Ultimately I was reminded of a Dave Chapelle sketch, and something he said during the intro. Just before he begins the wildly outrageous "Dave Chapelle Story” I remember Chapelle remarking he would be afraid to write his own story because in essence he would be an unreliable narrator, and the temptation to embellish would be too great, and I found exactly in that moment what had been bothering me. In essence this was the almost inevitable folly of telling a story almost completely from the Joker's point of view. The movie wasn’t just unsettling because it took on the hard task of asking us to empathize with, and weigh the contributing factors to a murderous malcontent, it was unsettling because there was an invaluable piece missing from the execution of said task that invited an audience to not only empathize with the facts of what and who society marginalizes, or the nature of loneliness and outsidership, but to empathize with the fabrications and extremities of the Joker's behavior. What the movie did well was forcefully connect us to a person none of us wishes to be connected to through the universally recognizable devastation and frustration of being unseen, unheard, and unable to connect. What the movie omits is the line between us and him, by way of a nebulous, muddy line between what is real in the movie , and what is in the Joker's head. One could claim that many of the events that happen in the movie (it being told from the Joker’s own violently delusional point of view) are delusions, one major storyline is clearly revealed as just that, but therein lies the rub. You can make a movie like Inception and be unclear in the end about whether the whole thing is just a continuous dream , because at the end whether or not Cobb is choosing to live within his own self delusion really only effects Cobb. Being willfully ambiguous about the Joker's delusions effects the world around him and subsequently invites the audience to endear itself to a character who in no way is a hero or a reliable narrator. If you show people lionizing the Joker at the end of a movie, and the audience is left unsure as to whether he was really carted straight to the station or whether the city turned upside down as the result of a revolution started by a psychopath, (and especially if you’re saying that it happened exactly that way as a result of the superficial connection between the Joker and the rest of functioning society) you're (in the strictest sense of these words) not doing it right.

I could go on illustrating what struck me as problematic about the framing, and what I think they got wrong, but I always prefer the approach of illustrating a misstep by showing what it looks like when it’s done right. Another memorable cinematic character The Joker has a lot in common with is Anton Chigur from the Cohen brothers masterpiece "No Country for Old Men". These are two men who metaphorically represent a sort of apocalypse, an end to things as we know it. They are chilling, intimidating and unnerving precisely because they have psychopathic tendencies that can't be reigned in or anticipated by any consensus on logic or reason, because they live in a world so far outside the constraints and constructs of society, they function a lot more as a force rather than an being. They have their own sense of rules and extremely unique coding, and they're only predictability is that they are unpredictable. If you listen to other characters discuss them, you can see the bridge in the similar way in which they are described, and the complimentary construction in the similar way in which they discuss their disdain for "rules" in these two scenes. First the description of each by ancillary characters ...

Uploaded by W&H on 2018-08-18.

One, out of many, great lines from The Dark Knight. Alfred Pennyworth: [...] with respect Master Wayne, perhaps this is a man you don't fully understand either. A long time ago, I was in Burma, my friends and I were working for the local government.

And then in their own voice on rules...

Anton follows Carson to his hotel room.

The Dark Knight Blu-ray 2008

Though the Joker in the Dark Knight is clearly a different approach, it’s not entirely different, just more removed than this film, and the point I'm setting up is that though these characters are clearly very similar, one movie (Two if you include the Dark Knight) understands it's character (Chigur) and lives in the truth of the character, so that it is impossible to associate in any way Anton with righteousness, or justice. Anton makes his decisions in a way that cannot be found appealing, or imaginable, the discomfort we feel when he is around is from the injection of chaos that the film continuously honors. The Joker on the other hand, has very little integrity regarding the chaotic frequency the Joker lives on. Phoenix’s performance provides the consistent element of surprise, but for all intensive purposes the movie functions with the straightforward A to B arc of a superhero movie. A linear set of happenings congregate and aggregate to help form and create what we will come to know as the Joker. The film plays fast and loose with the reality of what someone of that disposition would act like to make a more sympathetic character under the ideologically fair stance that these people aren't just born they are also made, but without confronting the things that bring about the extremes in their behavior. Forget his glaring whiteness in this very multicultural world, what about his narcissism? The movie makes out as if DeNiro’s late night host is an unnecessarily cruel dream crusher because it never disengages us from the Joker’s perspective. It never confronts in any meaningful way the facts that Arthur is in fact adamant about his ability to do something he is clearly not talented in, that he skips steps, and more importantly doesn’t even like it. This is not Tommy Wiseau, this is (as the movie’s own creators told us time and time again) Travis Bickle. His stalking of a woman is not played for it’s terrifying truth, we get none of the existential dread we got watching Chigur stalk victims because we see it only from the Jokers perspective. Zazie Beetz is never truly allowed to be a full being, to challenge for reasons that also have to do with plot device. The movie (Intentionally or not) continues on this way, skipping, dancing, laughing well past the line of superficial connection between the audience, society at large in the film, and the Joker, to one that would have us believe this is just a broken men just like one of us, just pushed a little further. It is disingenuous, and a dismal fabrication, indeed typical of someone like the Joker, but one that should have been better addressed during the actual film. Many of us believe we have been shoved to the margins to the point we might break, many of us fight back. Many of us deal with mental health, and those that deal with the deeper more difficult forms also know how society at large seems to care very little about listening to those who do, but most people dealing with either or both don’t go off and commit a trail of heinous crimes. There is a difference between the Joker and marginalized people, the movie (in the name of telling a story true to the nature of the Joker’s identity) just isn’t interested in drawing any. The danger of this position is not that it would invite or incite others to commit similar crimes under the guise of victimhood, but that it backs their claims without any formidable counterbalance. This is why I'm not sure of the efficacy of, and find myself baffled by the somewhat new trend of telling stories completely from the villains point of view. On it's face it's an absurd approach , and if it's not approached in the spirit of that absurdity, with other characters with some version of significant roles to bounce the signal off and echo back the true essence sound and meaning of their reprehensible actions then it becomes too easy to mistake their spoiled fruit as food for thought.

I think it's okay and even important to sympathize with the social incongruities that make or mold the Joker, or any terrible human being fictional or otherwise, maybe even his/their rage, but when his actions can at all be taken for righteous retribution?

As a vehicle for an actor (especially one of Joaquins talents) Joker is once in a lifetime. It's an intriguing idea that maybe works better as a one man show on Broadway, but as a film? It's far too isolated, and to make things worse, the better the performance the more likely it is that the audience is going to empathize, and sympathize with the narrative that drives him. Villains need heroes as a counterbalance to call them on their bullshit as much if not much more than heroes need villains to reflect on theirs. If not heroes in the sense of meta humans, or insanely rich but complex men or women, then in the type of heroism, and courage exhibited in a humble but straight-talking and intelligent wife like Kelly MacDonald's Karla Jean in “No Country for Old Men”. Or in long suffering sons like Russell Harvard's grown up H.W. Plainview in "There Will Be Blood", hell even another villain like Paul Dano's Eli Sunday can be a potent mirror from which evil can reflect and be reflected upon by the audience. But Phillip's Joker has none of these . None of which could be reliable because the movie is told so singularly from his perspective. So that if he says he let a person go because "They were always nice to him", or that he didn't murder his next door neighbor, or that a black woman rather unnecessarily and more to the point unbelievably told him to stop playing with her child on the bus , we are at the very least asked to believe it's plausible that these things actually happened, because there is no one to challenge any of it who doesn't have their own challenge rebuffed by their own membership in the very system the movie has compelled the audience to take umbrage with. This is not moral complexity it's negligence. If one were looking for what moral complexity should look like on film as well as the need for counterbalances, this scene from David Fincher's "Seven". would be a fine example..

SEVEN : http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114369 (© Warner Bros) SPOILER AHEAD! This 8 minute scene of mostly dialogue has three main functions. At this point in the movie, in the beginning of act three, after the previous story twists, our expectations of what is to come are already well set up.

The scene begins with the question "Who are you really?" setting up the psychological impetus of the scene as a complex unraveling of who John Doe is. The scene is full of moral complexity, but John Doe is not going to get to tell his story unchallenged. While we may sympathize with some things John says, and even a few of his attitudes, the counterbalance of both Pitt' straightforward assessment and especially Morgan Freeman's acute observations ensure it's impossible to leave that theater feeling anything but that this guy is the absolute worst. He's impotent, fragile, weak, and pathetic, a tragic figure in some sense yes , but nonetheless gross. Thinking of the difference in these films and their effect , or rather the effectiveness of their portrayals I'm reminded of one of Sommerset's observations in Seven...

“If you were chosen, that is by a higher power. If your hand was forced, seems strange to me that you would get such enjoyment out of it. You enjoyed torturing those people, this doesn’t seem in keeping with martyrdom” - Sommerset (Morgan Freeman) in Seven”

Within the context of the film this is the actual unmasking of John Doe, and of Phillip’s film. It's the equivalent of the Scooby Doo teens pulling the the hood off of the episodes perpetrator. From that point on all illusions are put aside and the villain explains exactly who he is, and the audience sees him for exactly what he is, not what he wishes us to see. Sommerset in that way has also provides us with a revelation that we never really get to see or hear in the Joker which is that this is not some martyr who kills only out of furious passion those who have wronged him. His targets conveniently all disagreeable, and unsympathetic bullies, this is a killer, a megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur, and that should've been the the ultimate resolution of Joker . It should've ended with him confronting that reality, and maybe then evading it as in Nolan's Memento - not with him being lionized in the midst of a revolution followed by him running through the Halls of an asylum after an allusion to him possibly killing a worker in an interview. I for one absolutely believe you can make movies about psychopaths, and killers, and all sorts of villainy. Mary Harron made one of the best ever in American Psycho with it's unabashedly scornful portrait of materialism, and greed as psychopathy, that embraces the very absurdity of its position as aforementioned, BUT you can't make movies ABOUT psychopaths if you catch my drift. If you don't make clear the actual motivations behind this kind of extreme behavior beyond Mental health, and victimization, then your setting up the stigmatizing of one group , and the validation of bullies and tyrants. Though I don’t know this makes The Joker a bad film, - despite my feelings about it's messaging I actually think driven by Joaquin's performance, and a long overdue interrogation of our framework around Batman and his family it's a pretty damn good movie, - but it does make the controversy and the debate around this film real , and deserved. The Joker gets to tell his own deranged story without interruption, or opposition to an audience willing and ready to listen, and while movies don't make us do anything , they do often color, inform, and help crystallize our philosophies, or ideological views. Given that realization it makes clear the responsibility of the filmmaker to tell stories that don't back ideologies that will help convince already lost, confused, and possibly deranged audience members of their own righteousness, and even if Joker doesn't necessarily defend a skewered perspective, it doesn't upend it either. Subjectivity is a killing joke in the context of heinous criminality, not in any corporeal sense as it relates to film, but in the essence of the moral drive of your film. You can make Bad Lieutenant, but not subjectively contemptible Bad Lieutenant, there is no place for subjectivity, or a lack of clarity in contempt around heinous acts of wanton violence, not in real life or on film.

The Disappearance of Diahann Carroll

Its crazy because when I heard, or rather read and then heard, because the words became so deafeningly loud in my head - “Diahann Carroll has died” , My mind began instantly searching for something beyond the obligatory “Oh My God” you'd think..I'd think that as my mind turned over all my retrospective files on this woman’s career, I would immediately envision her sturdy brilliance in "Claudine" or maybe her part in one of my favorite dance numbers ever in Carmen Jones ( and that one eyebrow), let me not forget her role as Whitley’s mother Marion (in which she she basically played a version of Lynn Whitfield’s Matriarch that added her own unique flavor ) or her extremely memorable work in Robert Townsend's The Five Heartbeats playing a version of herself so committed she nearly tears through the silver screen in every scene…

Funeral scene

But it wasn’t any of those roles that came to mind, in fact Diahann almost ceased to exist, and when I called for her in their stead, in her stead, the first image in my mind was of Elzora - Carroll’s small, but immensely effective and affective role in Kasi Lemmons " Eve's Bayou". Upon reflecting about it further it becomes easier for me to see why this stood out to me first. It’s soulful, its complex, its involves the best elements of transformation which are neither cheap or exploitive. Contextually Carroll's Witch is the underside of this black Haven. The embodied ghost of still disenfranchised members of families left behind or rolled over by privileged racist whites, and ambitious African-Americans who had the right amount of color, resolve, ruthlessness, or all of the above to climb out of their social dungeons. Physically Diahann Carroll brings revelation outside the margins of the scene, just as much as she does in scene. On one side she is Diahann Carroll Queen of elegance, unrivaled put togetherness, and “You Tried it” energy. On the netherside of that she is almost completely hidden by white make-up, strands of unkempt silver hair, and a mask of concrete surliness. Eve’s Bayou allows her to slink back into a side of her that largely went unexplored before it. She moves differently, as if each appendage has to cut though weighted space to get to where it's going. When you watch closely you see she has moments where she seems to have spells where she's lost herself, her bearings, her thoughts, and then she just returns. In this scene as well as later with Jurnee Smollet’s Eve, she is callous, but also warm, and Carroll turns it on and off in screen with such intuitive and adept understanding of when the one energy is needed over the other she creates an integral bit of mortar that glues the various bricks of southern life that form the gothic and loving house of memory and loss Lemmons built. Every choice she made in that film supported a comprehensive whole….

Eve's Bayou movie clips: http://j.mp/1e6PYl0 BUY THE MOVIE: http://j.mp/1e6PYkS Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: Elzora (Diahann Carroll) upsets Mozelle (Debbi Morgan) when she reads her fortune and predicts more death. FILM DESCRIPTION: A young girl learns some difficult lessons about truth, love, and fidelity in this critically-acclaimed Southern gothic drama.

It’s a link to a forgotten figure in black communes, the wise woman or witch. Elzora is a tie to pre- christian practices of black peoples, and to the strength, power, and position these women held within those communities. What Carroll gives her is her sense of gravitas, and a regality, that belies a sense of past ancestral grandeur. What she sacrifices in the embers of this visually striking portrayal is the grandiosity that served as the inertia for so may of her other roles. It is this exact sacrifice of what powers your mega wattage as a star to the gods of thespians, that makes you more than just a star. Once you can make your Clark Kent every bit as powerful and resonant as your superman, well you’re in the most elite company of actors. This is why I love this role so much, it was so much in so little. It was an underdog role for an underdog character whom was made powerful both by the implicit nature of the script and by the explicit nature of Carroll’s performance. It was representative of all Carroll was capable of, of all she could do, of all many black women could do, but especially those with her raw and exceptional talents. She did just about everything you could do in an industry where so many do so little, if anything at all. She had an impact that couldn’t be argued, through it was sufficiently less than she deserved. In a way Carroll was the Queen that is both clearly in power, and yet under duress, and under-served, who is gone now resting in that very power. Extending her roots, raising the ground for future actors, (and black actresses especially) to stand toe to toe with their rightful peers.

Revisit: 1990's Close-Up, "You Can't Always Get What You Want"

What is performance without cultivation, and curation of environment? What is life without the cultivation, and curation of environment? Can an actor be an actor without the help of an audience willing to go along with our minor deception? Abbas Kiarostami's “Close -Up” is exactly that, a minor deception, and a close up on a subject that seems small from a distance as was oft repeated and alluded to throughout the film, but a subject that when the focus was lessened and tightened revealed a great well of emotional depth, societal angst, and the very heart of filmmaking. Ali Sabzian is amongst the most interesting subjects ever placed in front of a camera. A seemingly simple character with seemingly simple motivations , who opens a wide range of philosophical questions about identity, and identification. A poetic soul who exemplifies a potent, and urgent truth about ability, and opportunity. Listening to him talk about the dilemma and difficulty he faced playing his idol Mohsen Makhmalbaf not in the abstract, but in crushing detail of his abject poverty I am reminded of the quote from "The Streisand Effect" episode of "Atlanta" where Donald Glover’s “Earn” poignantly says "Poor people don't have time for investments, because poor people are too busy trying not to be poor".

Uploaded by ThaiMurphys on 2016-09-23.

Alongside its stirring illustration of socio economic impediments, and disenfranchisement, it is what Ali Sabzian reveals about the nature of acting, as it relates to the cultivation of experience that permeates the relationship between actor and audience - that underscores the brilliance of this film. In the court scene which functions as the beating heart of this film, Ali points out that the family he deceived, helped provide the tools by which he, his performance, (and indeed the confidence in it) was developed, and encouraged. In essence, he points out that the more they believed, the more he too believed, demonstrating with humble but almost divine clarity the co-dependant relationship between audience and player, artist and patron, failure and success. Sabzian's words and story are also representative of both the reality and the over-simplified myth of meritocracy as a pure by-product of preparation and opportunity, when the truth belies a much more complex relationship. As Ali seizes his opportunity, his audience becomes vital to the success of his role and his scheme. Their belief is swelled by his passion, his dedication, his knowledge, and so Ali begins to leave the ground on the wind they provide beneath his wings, BUT as he does, the odds of successfully negotiating , and shirking all the well constructed social and aesthetic weights (appearance, finances, shame) that pave the way out of poverty weigh him back down, swallow him up, and spit him back out to where he began. Watching Ali’s story, it’s not hard to come by the conclusion that success (like a good caper) comes by way of a mutual deception similar to the premise put forth by the film “The Prestige” ( an audience willing to be deceived) , a confidence in that deception, and some well timed breaks . Ali fakes it, and he does it well because in a way he had been preparing for this his whole life. When an opportunity does present itself through happenstance, Ali didn't hesitate, he lept, almost involuntarily to take advantage, but it was only a matter of time considering all he didn't have. Ali’s lack of resources, and the limiting will of the players to provide a genuine opportunity. Once they discover what amounts to merely a label, a construct of Ali's identity, the play morphs from daring story of an ingenous, but desperate scheme to realize ones dream, to a ticking clock story set to eventually alarm the audience to deflate a promising balloon filled with human will and passion. After all disingenuous scheme that it was, as the director points out in court for all intensive purposes, Ali is an actor, if not a director. The only ingredients missing from a fully realized reality of his art are those out of Ali's control, the belief, of others, the finance. Every single production of art done through distribution is the result of a community of believers, and fellow role players who believe. Without them what your left with is what society might deem delusion, or even worse and more stigmatizing, poor mental health. What close-up reveals with it's penetrative gaze is the limitations of passion, ingenuity, hustle, and potential in society for any man or woman. The frustration of the impoverished artist is both the nearness and the distance of opportunity. It is the mirage of the oasis always just out of grasp. Sabzian can only have his dream for so long as the audience is willing to uphold his fantasy. He is a have -not, and while a few very fortunate players may "play" their way to success, it is largely inaccessible due to the constant molestation of chance, class, and in other situations sex, and race. In this is the tragedy of the play . The dreamers whose dreams are deferred, as much by his or their own failings as the many of society. The members of the Ahankhah family , who themselves struggle with the chasm between passion and opportunity (The Older brother is an engineer who ends up running a bread factory ) cannot abide his deception, nor believe his passions because they're pride is hurt by the fact that they ever believed in this man. He is a hustler to them, by their own estimation this is somehow vastly different from how a a “real director” would behave. There was a physical identity theft here, and yet it can be argued this is part of Ali's identity. Ali is both who he says he is and not who he says he is. No one including maybe even Kiarostami is willing to engage on any real level with the artist, to indulge him in his “play” a brechtian meta tragedy on identity and desire. In the end Ali is given some flowers, a bike ride, and a memory of just how close he came to realizing his potential. Close up, goes in to go out, and what it captures at the point of convergence is a paradox that breaks down the convenient conventions of unfettered access by way of will, and determination, for all his desire, his ingenuity, and willingness, Sabzian would end up hawking dvd’s in a subway station. And one has to find themselves asking why did no one give this man one opportunity, one chance to prove his worth. A production assistant, a tiny role, or even a scholarship? How far might he have have flown? Would he have crashed? I’m reminded of the great Rolling Stones song, You can’t always get what you want, but if you try SOMETIMES, you MIGHT find, you get what you need.

If I was to a curate of cinematic double feature of the themes at play I'd play Close -Up alongside Trading Places, a brilliant comedy that consecrates the philosophy that for a falsification of identity to become a reality, the advantaged must play along. Because the Dukes create and endorse the fantasy of Billy Ray Valentine it becomes reality, and once they decide to disengage the parameters and circumstances that affirm Billy Ray's natural talents , the play ceases until another fabrication and deception unseats them from their position. Ultimately Trading Places broadcasts a similar paradox, the fragility of identity, or identification. Both Valentine and the Duke's are in essence criminals, but the willingness of society to play along determines the difference in outcomes. These films through different lenses and focus, illuminate the illusory distance and proximity of success and accomplishment. Simply put these films masterfully remind us of the crucial aspect of all theater, a play is not a play without the willingness of both players, and audience to go along with the fantasy as described by those who have the means to create.

A Place in The Sun: The Desperate Cowers.

"SINKING DESPERATION" That's what I would title this scene from 1951's "A PLACE IN THE SUN ". I say that metaphorical boat capsized long before the physical one lunged itself and them into the achingly cold depths of the river. The weight of their hidden desires, longing, and unsatisfied ambitions sunk it, the water just hadn't figured it's way in yet. Shelley Winters packs so much wide-eyed hope and hopelessness into a few looks she makes it as hard for the audience to look at her fully as Montgomery Clift's George Eastman.

Her ambition, want, desire, hope is nowhere near as free as George’s, as a woman it is bottled up everywhere in her body so as not to offend, except her eyes. There she's got a laser beam focused directly on George, burning all the hope, all the want, the pain of being seen for once in that lonely isolated factory , in this lonely town of lopsided privilege, where the men grow, and fulfill promise, and move on, gifting their eyes, their belief, to the Angela Vickers of the world, who seem to have it all, and want even what little happiness you have found. Winters with one look of sad, near pathetic longing burns the disappointment of believing in the promise of the George Eastman’s only then to be altogether tossed away with a baby now in tow with such little regard, by a man who himself is so little as to beg for regard by those who have so little for him, born of nothing more than the idea of who he is. She sees him, and she wants so wantonly for him to see her. Winters with her eyes only, gives one last plea into the darkness of inevitability and futility, asking George to not so much forget what he doesn’t have, as remember what he does. She is delivering her closing argument, in the cause of George Eastman vs the world, presenting her case with modesty that everything might just be okay as long as they the have-nots stick together. “Let’s drift for awhile I’m not afraid of the dark”.

a tense and well played scene in the boat on the lake

The line has double meaning, and it is co-signed by body language, Winters is erect and still in the boat, sure of their trajectory regardless of the direction or quality of the boat. The more unresponsive George is, the more desperate her plea, the more urgent. She begins to lean forward with intent, her hand begin to space apart, her eyes are widening. Winters projects her energy forward, towards George, acute and straining. It's as if Montgomery Clift is Bond asking if Winters expects him to talk , and Winters is yelling out "No Mr Eastman, I expect you to FEEEL!". Except there is no true villain here , and if there is it's most certainly not Winters Alice Tripp. Its Clift’s Eastman, all repression and no accountability, facing downward, and away from Winters, restrained, but reactionary, and impulsive.

So that he throws their boat over with the weight of the indecision expressed in his movement. He tips that boat with his inability to be moved, both emotionally and figuratively. George causes the imbalance, the boat capsizes, and it is Clift’s exactness of expression, the furrowed brow, the downcast eyes, the restless energy, the crumpled, folded nature of each of his stillness, that allows us to believe that this was a crime not of passionate action, but dispassionate inaction. His inability to decide even, as he had decided, to move , even though he desires to be anywhere but here, to speak even though he has so much to say, is the death of Shelley Winters Alice Tripp. Clift is the embodiment of male impotency, death by analysis, all desire, no action, no follow through. It’s hellified, bone-marrow acting done with superb accuracy and intelligence, a supremely well constructed, perfect scene in an extremely flawed movie about extremely flawed characters.

3 Personally LIfe-affirming Quotes from "The Shawshank Redemption"

“Get busy Living or Get Busy Dying”



Get Busy Living or Get Busy Dying, That's Goddamn Right from Shawshank Redemption.

Lyrical by aesthetic, poetic in its simplicity, and powerful because of both, “Get busy living or get busy dying” feels like something that would fit snugly in the smarmy self congratulating mouths of certain gurus of the day . Morgan Freeman's delivery of the line demonstrates the veracity of the saying “It’s not what you say it’s how you say it, and why he's one of the greatest of his generation. His command over his voice implies strength in pliability. It's not a gravelly subwoofer barking out his consonants, and raising his vowels as if trying to command them from death (Tony Robbins I’m looking at you). It’s softer, more as if he is trying to lull his E’s to sleep, with the G nearly falling asleep from being in proximity. He doesn’t state it like so many guru’s as if he’s reading his own plan for one of the greatest heists ever, and he doesn’t necessarily throw it away either. He simply seems to say the words, following the advice of the great Katherine Hepburn to Anthony Hopkins on the set of “The Lion in Winter” …

This segment was aired on the Turner Classic Movies channel. It's Anthony Hopkins' tribute to Katharine Hepburn. The first ten seconds are missing though.

“Don’t act just speak the lines”. Seems like the perfect summation of what makes Morgan’s performance as “Red” in the film so deeply affecting. His words are not affected or even infected with acting. They are simply understood, and spoken in a way that only Morgan could understand and speak them. So that what they are infected with is Morgans lyrical quality. His every-maness which follows in the vein of those before him like Jimmy Stewart, or has as its peer in someone like Tom Hanks. Freeman over his career has had a pinpoint accuracy for finding the barest of truths in a word or a line, and The Shawshank is near or at the top of the list of films where he does so with uncanny consistency. “Get Busy living, or get busy dying”. It is has both the quality of prose, and poetry, of something that implies both closure and finality, and of something more open to interpretation. In my last apartment I was given to posting 3 x 5 index cards with quotes over my walls, doors, and cabinetry. I wanted my apartment to speak to me, to chatter, to whisper in my ear at night those words I felt I needed to hear to become or remain the person I wanted to be in life. This quote from the film was one of only two quotes that wasn’t from a teacher, a friend, a philosopher, or a book (none of which Im proud to say came from that disreputable discipline known as self help). Its power is in understatement. If it’s said with this kind of dramatic implication, or in a way that addresses its power in any way it loses it, like a magical friend that only appears as long as attention is not drawn to it. It is one of the few statements that though drenched in absoluteness, feels applicable to anyone and to everyone without bias. The “living” or the “dying” are left to interpretation. The word that precedes them is busy, and though it clearly implies working at, or through, or on, or all of the above - it too opens itself up to the personal, but you are either doing one, or you are doing the other. There are many cases in my life where either/or doesn’t work for me. Either/Or is simplification, and it’s a kind of power grab, but I wrench my power in life from understanding I am not in ownership or possession of a great deal of things, but my life, and how I choose to frame it, how I choose to see it, is one of those that qualifies as either or. You are either going about the business of living, and especially for oneself, connected to others but through the self , or you are going about the business of dying for oneself, or for others with no connection, or too much connection, slow, or fast, but it is one or the other. That like so much of what comprises absolutism is the power ( and in many cases, but not this one, the weakness) of it… simplicity..”That’s Goddamn right”.

“How Can You Be So Obtuse”

Andy Dufresne, a successful banker, is arrested for the murders of his wife and her lover, and is sentenced to life imprisonment at the Shawshank prison. He becomes the most unconventional prisoner.

I’ve always found myself attracted to anger in film. Anger pretty much in all it’s forms, but indignant , and righteous anger the most. It’s the driving force of attraction in a lot of my favorite scenes and lines from movies. That could be because there is a lot of anger inside me, pent up, unaddressed, unencouraged, but I tend to think it’s not so much the amount as the quality of the anger. When I was a kid, maybe in the seventh grade, I had a geography teacher who couldn’t be bothered to teach. The kind that just hands out cumbersome long form reading assignments from the book while he plops his well worn loafers on top of the desk and commits himself to crossword puzzles, and flirting with the World History teacher next door over a cigarette. I was on the way to school to which there was no bus, because of a racist zoning system which quite skillfully zoned it so every single one of the very few black kids on my block were sent to the very black and latino school in San Bernardino, rather than the white one right around the corner, so my mother had to drive me. The car (a beat up datsun I believe) broke down on the way, and I ended up missing one class and being late for this one. When I arrived, his loafers seemed to spot me from their perch on top of the desk before he did, as they sort of perked up, and then rose from their stationary position as the protectors of the crossword in front of the paper. As his finger motioned me over to his desk, I felt positive I would have no issue here, because obviously what happened could not be helped, and I had the school equivalent of diplomatic immunity by way of a note from my mother. Turns out neither mattered to this, burned out cross between Hitler, and Kevin Nealon. Upon hearing my story of trail and tribulation just trying to make it to a school I shouldn’t have had to make the Indiana Jones map trip to in the first place, he merely raised an eyebrow, and uttered the words “Yeah, you just have to get to school on time, so Im going to have to write you up, and any continuance of this behavior will affect your grade”. A little shook at the word “behavior” I replied, that though I understood that timeliness was important (Obviously, not but a few days before he had read my name off on the perfect attendance list) there was no way I could’ve prevented this. To which he replied in exactly the same tone, with exactly the same facial expression, exactly the same words. The whole thing reminded me of John Malkovich repeatedly stating “It’s beyond my control” in Dangerous Liasons, except that at least had feelings attached despite its blatant cruelty. This was much more like the warden in scene above, bereft of any feeling, any empathy, sympathy, or understanding. My incident wasn’t anywhere near the vicinity of the stakes at play in this scene, but as an adult I seemed to have more run ins with this exact kind of callous indifference to actual circumstance and facts than I ever would’ve cared to have had (especially during my tenure in the military) or even on the phone with bill collectors, or to slumlords in Los Angeles. People who who either by design or by default couldn’t be bothered to in the words of the great Otis Redding try a little tenderness. People who willfully seemed to block out the obvious, to state a rigidly preposterous position due to either unyielding belief in a system, or a desire to hurt. My anger in those times was much like what Tim Robbins so acutely depicted (It may be my favorite bit of acting by Robbins in the role I felt should’ve gotten him an Oscar). Righteous anger, not hateful anger, anger confused and obstructed by a face on the other side that seems either pure in its ignorance, or defiant and destitute of humanity. Andy/Robbins barely raises his voice in this scene until he is dragged away by guards, and even then its more akin to pleading disbelief, and to makes sure he’s being heard, than it is pure unadulterated anger. And I understand it, I identify with it in a way that goes beyond both sympathy and empathy. The words “How can you be so obtuse” attach themselves to, and affirm my flesh, they infiltrate and affirm my spirit, they embody and affirm my pain. When Timothy Robbins/ Andy Dufresne utter those words, I just….get it.

“Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit, and came out clean on the other side”

"Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side. Andy Dufresne, headed for the Pacific. Those of us who knew him best talk about him often. I swear the stuff he pulled. Sometimes it makes me sad, though, Andy being gone.

I could pick any number of words, or sentences from this entire section of the film. Its a small, but profoundly well crafted bit of dialogue, that expertly moves the story along in time, while keeping the integrity of the themes and values at play, and its gorgeously written. “I just miss my friend” chokes me up just thinking about it. It’s so achingly relatable to anybody who has ever lost a really great friend to time, space, or death, and its delivered by Freeman with devastating poignancy, and the same plainness aforementioned. But it’s “Andy Dufresne, who crawled through a river of shit, and came out clean on the other side” that personifies the ultimate message of this film so precisely. Hope…hope that any of us, maybe even all of us, can make it through the yards and yards of muck, grime, and fecal matter life, society leaves behind. That we can survive years in the dark, dragging ourselves up and out of horrible family trauma, poverty, crushingly inept leadership, lack of upward mobility at work, social inequality, and hatred, and come through it all clean, liberated, and possibly stronger. Hope that we can make it through our own shit, ego, entitlement, self degradation, or depreciation, self pity, over compensation, and analyzation, and on and on. In the film the words urgently calls you back to remind you of everything you’ve seen on screen, and off screen. Of all the inhumanity that Andy has had to endure without aide of a montage, so that as you see Andy now in his car , wind blowing through his hair, the same silly smile on his face as was on it when he scored beer for all the men on the roof detail, (another impossibly well written scene and moment) it reminds you that of the power of his resolve, and that he did it all with his humanity in tact. It reminds me that I can do the same. I shouldn’t have to , but nonetheless I can. It’s about endurance. Not the kind that makes you an inactive spectator in your own life, waiting on your piece of “pie in the sky” as Malcolm X would so often allude to. But the active kind. The kind that allows you to endure while you act. Andy had a plan, and he worked at it, and he adapted, and he endured, and he never gave up hope to cynicism, and pessimism. Yeah.. “Andy Dufesne, who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side”.

Revisit: 48 HRS is a Masterpiece.

A farm midday sits in the middle of the frame, tanning itself in the heat of a quiet afternoon. The first few notes of music that become so vital to the lure, and the subsequent lore of this film are still searching for their rhythm. As of right now they're just disparate sounds, not quite yet working in unison, much like the two men around whom the rest of this story will concern itself. Horses graze, workers work near a railroad track, as a vehicle used for either repair or construction of a train passes by. The frame clears, save for dust, the notes of music begin to pick up beginning with a two count, and the words "48 hrs" flash across the screen. The memorable opening to this film could feel somewhat disconnected from the rest , it doesn't signal the setting , or the main themes at play, but it does signal us to its inspirations, as well as its intentions. The Western, Kurosawa, Don Siegel. The weather, the landscape, the elements, and even the musical cues are clues as to this films muses, and the ingredients that converge to form its greatness. So too does its overt overtures to plainness, in structure, tone, and character. Like the genre it most closely resembles, (The Western before it became a sub genre of it's own) 48 hrs makes it bones on characters, and set up, and the settlement myth of the lawman..not necessarily by making them complicated, or misunderstood, more-so by making them interesting, resourceful, and consistent . One interdependent on the other. The setup is clear right from the opening, maybe even from the title itself, resembling its cinematic antecedent High Noon. We are introduced to the bad guys first. Both through exposition and most impressively through action. We will come to know Albert Ganz, and Billy Bear are audacious and care little for the law because its takes both to commit to an armed prison breakout in broad daylight. If we doubted it still, they further the notion by murdering a friend on a park bench in the city, again in broad daylight. The reveal of this murder is the first of this films many brilliant story telling decisions. Ganz is on a pay phone casually setting up an escort for himself, while Billy sits reading a paper next to a man who appears to be asleep on a park bench. Hill and the camera do not seize the opportunity to provide detail, this is purposeful. It is noticeable that something is off, and if the audience chooses to focus on the man on the bench , one might for instance take note of his hands laying so incredibly limp as to imply next to no bones, but again the casualty of both of the men involved would delay any real conclusion as to the nature of this mans predicament. Billy gets up from his relaxed position on the bench, asks for his own escort through Ganz. Ganz gives a name that is not his own, and he and Billy calmly walk away. The camera now pans back to the bench where it is clearly revealed (“Henry Wong” we will be told later) , is indeed dead. It a scene with no exposition as to the nature of these men, that provides exactly that kind of insight into their psyche. It is also a callback to the trope of the lawless wild west of which the movie is set (San Francisco no less) where the outlaws commit murder callously and without remorse, where a man can be left for dead right where he sits. Next we are introduced to Nick Nolte's Jack Kates who provides subtle exposition as to the nature of performing law in this town. Waking up with his girlfriend in bed, an argument immediately ensues over the nature of their relationship status, (law men in precarious relationships with women in film was by now a cliche ), but it is his comment about it being a "crummy day" the day not having even started that gives insight as to at the very least Kate's feelings about the state of law enforcement in this town. We will find out later it's not just a feeling , it will in fact be a crummy day for Kates. The shootout at the Walden is the introduction of good to evil, ethics to psychopathic nihilism, its overly simplified, leaning heavily in the direction of the law, but in that simplicity it finds its complexity (take for instance the hostage scene involving another cop). Kates decision to try and stale the inevitable is both an example in context of the impoverished nature of trying to play fair with people who have no interest in doing so, but out of context of the film its deployed as “copaganda” a way to tell the audience cops have to be cruel because its a cruel world. It has alot more questions and is alot less strident than its predecessor “Don Siegel's San Francisco classic “Dirty Harry”. Cinematically it is expert crafting of an action sequence, and a continuation of the films western themes. Outlaws, lawmen, prostitution, violence, courage, and moral dilemma. The last of which is personified in Kates choice between dropping his gun, and taking the shot, ( a decision which will impact the ending of the film, and infer Kates rather small learning curve).

I decided to re-upload this scene from the movie without it being split into two parts. All rights reserved to Paramount Pictures.

You don’t know Jack.

Jack Kates and thusly Nick Nolte's performance loom large over the makeup, feel, and resonance of the movie despite the larger than life appearance of Eddie Murphy as Reggie Hammond. In this way the film resembles "The Man who shot Liberty Valance " not so much in where the two main players were at this point in their careers, but in the false perception that might easily be arrived at without careful analysis that one person out shined the other, (Stewart over Wayne, or Murphy over Nolte ) or that the film belongs to one or the other. Kates ideologically walks a line between the kind of lawmen emphasized in Anthony Mann films - the more thoughtful and complex, and those in Ford, more resolute and simple (although not without their own complexity). Kates feels remorseful about his role in violence and abuse of the people around him in ways that never occurred to many of the typical John Wayne characters in Ford films like Rio Bravo, (another western to which this film shares genetic traits with which was made as a direct repudiation of the themes on High Noon ) again, furthering the idea that Jack Kate's is a fusion of the two. Nolte for his part embodies much of Wayne's straightforward earnestness, and like Wayne cuts a similarly imposing figure with as much charisma, and even a comparable gait. It’s an actor in a movie star’s apparel type performance. Nolte unlike his cinematic alter ego in the movie is also a fantastic listener, and I mean fantastic when I say fantastic. Working with a newcomer to the discipline of acting could not have been easy, even more-so one so prone to bouts of furious improvisation, and yet when one pays close attention Nolte is acutely attuned to every last word, and his spot on reactions in the most honest and authentic spirit of who and what Kates represents is a testament to it. Especially as it pertains to cutting off or interrupting another actors dialogue. A key component in creating realism in conversation, as well as establishing chemistry. Nolte expresses this skill best in the dialogue between Kates and Hammond as Hammond complains about hunger, and later in his refusal to admit he is holding back information that would be key to Noltes investigation outside of "Torchy's " Nolte cuts off Murphy in ways so natural and organic it's hard to tell whether there was actual written dialogue or if this was pure improvisation either of which would be extremely impressive. Nolte's abrupt disruptions are also key to deciphering his portrayal of Kates. Kates, at least in his own mind considers himself a simple man, someone not far from the space Popeye Doyle occupied in The French Connection. . He likes it cut and dry, brevity is his calling card, so of course he’s not going to be into Hammonds long winded bullshit. Equally important to Kates character as is Nolte's performance of it, is improvisation. He won’t break the rules but hes not against bending them, or forgetting them, especially in the moment. There is a scene that takes place in the police station as Kates comes back from the shootout at the Hotel. One officer in particular continues to deride and berate Kates about his ego, and goes too far when he implies Kates doesn't care about the loss of his fellow cops. Kates immediately forgets himself and Nolte again shows a flair for brilliant timing and preternatural instincts for making a moment feel organic. I've watched him fly up from that chair several times and it's as difficult to time as Bryson Tiller's last "Don't" in the song titled the same. It is a moment indicative of just how deeply Nolte understands and gets his character, and the improvisation, as his code of ethics regarding police work that allows him to give Hammond back his money are as part and parcel to the bonding of Kates and Hammond as Nolte's own skill at improvisation and ability to give is to the chemistry of he and Murphy in the film.

Torchy’s.

Torchy's is an iconic , landmark moment in film that serves as the centerpiece of 48 hrs and the foundation of one of the most storied careers in American movies. There are several factors that play into what makes the scene so legendary; the stakes, the racial overtones and tensions being addressed, the set design, the characters, and most importantly and obviously Eddie Murphy. The stakes are clear and made in the moments before and uncharacteristically after the scene takes place so that it sets up what goes on inside via the conversation that precedes the scene. These stakes are inter-stitched with the racial tension. 48 hrs is a ticking clock movie, so time is of the essence and for both Kates and Hammond, it’s important something come of this scene and we the audience are now on notice. Whether for Murphy’s insatiable libido, his money, or Kates case. The racial tension is the obstacle, and again is infused in yet another factor.. the set design. Torchy's is a movie bar that actually looks and feels like a place you might find in real life. That is in sharp contrast to most movie bars or clubs which feel overly dressed and exaggerated in anything ranging from attendance to dressing. Take for instance "Club Hell" in another Buddy cop film I love, “Bad Boys”. That club is built more like a theme park than a club. It looks far too costly to cover its overhead, has too much going on, is ridiculously crowded for a place of its size, and it's far too lavish for its targeted crowd and themes (The fish tank feels particularly preposterous).

Thank you for watching please leave a like, share and hit that SUBSCRIBE button! Bad Boys (1995) Storyline: Two hip detectives protect a witness to a murder while investigating a case of stolen heroin from the evidence storage room from their police precinct. Directed by: Michael Bay Produced by: Jerry Bruckheimer Lucas Foster Bruce S.

Torchy's on the other hand is just right, the female dancer maybe the most garish and outlandish but she still doesn't feel completely out of the question in a place such as this. The design is impeccable from the confederate flag, (even the quantity feels fair and not exaggerated) to the sign outside, to the bar itself. The people and their reactions are classic, from the bar tender (played to uncanny perfection by frequent Hill player Peter Jason) to the understandable idiot who tries to flee the scene because he’s on parole, to the redneck who mouths off to Eddie. These people (Especially Jason) feel genuine, even as template caricatures, a balance incredibly hard to pull off. Then finally there is Eddie. What he is about to do feels now like going back and watching one of the greatest pitchers ever pitch a no hitter in their first outing. No one’s touching him in this scene, they can’t get a read on what he’s throwing, every remark finds a different speed, a different touch. He shows a remarkable amount of control, and follow through, with a variety of retorts, and comebacks as pitches. The curveball:

“You said bullshit and experience is all it takes right? Come on in and experience some of my bullshit.”

The Sinker (A pitch designed to take the power away from the batter, resulting in a hit that never quite leaves the ground, ) :

“Hammond: “I’d like something to drink, preferably some vodka.

Bartender: “Best have a (beat) Black Russian.
Hammond: (mock laughter) “Black Russian, (taps another patron) You hear what he said? Black Russian, that’s a funny joke, I get it I’m black” No, that’s, that’s funny. No i’d just rather have plain old vodka” ”

The joke is dead on arrival, but more importantly Murphy’s sly sarcasm, and wit, drains the power of both the insult and the insulter. This is the ultimate theme, and power of the entire scene. This is followed up rather quickly by the change-up:

“Hammond: You know, as long as we standing here talking and being all friendly. Im looking for a (pulls out badge) good ol boy by the name of Billy Bear. I was wondering if you might be able to help me find him?

Bartender: (Clearly disinterested in helping) “Never heard of him.”


Hammond: “Never heard of him before? Never heard of Billy Bear huh? (Takes shot) Looky here, (immediate change in tone, throws now empty shot glass through a near by mirror, grabs bartender by collar) Fuckin heard of him now man?
Hammond”

The fastball, Murphy’s most reliable, commentary, wit, sarcasm that comes at you so fast you can’t hit back:

“Hammond: (searches patron, finds wad of cash) “You loaded here. Where the fuck did you get this?”

Patron: “Tax Refund.”

Hammond: “Bullshit, too fuckin stupid to have a job”

Hill for his part makes sure to capture the reactions to Murphy’s brilliant use of a steady stream of weaponized wit, and vulgar profanity in this bar filled with white people that as Kates remarked earlier “Would cut your black ass right up”. Hill’s most brilliant move though was understanding and knowing that this was the time to take the pin off of Eddie. I don’t know for sure because there’s not much out there about the construction of this scene, but this does not feel like a scene that was directed in any way that doesn’t have to do with technical aspects. Acting-wise, more-so than any part of this film this scene feels the most hands off, which is a direction technique in and of itself. Something people from Wyler to Scorcese have repeatedly alluded to in their work. It’s a credit to both Hill and Nolte who both had the task of turning a first time actor with NO background in acting into a credible actor, and a credit to Murphy’s natural instinct, star power ,and willingness to be schooled, and molded. The fact that the scene never for a moment derails from its call to action, and its sense of urgency to make way for Murphy’s comedic brilliance, while feeling so improvised, is a combination of conscious direction, generous acting by Nolte, and impeccable timing by Murphy. Exemplified in the cut to Nick Nolte knocking down a patron thereby returning the scene for a moment to its objective. Nolte’s almost meta line delivery “Some of us citizens are behind you all the way Officer” is apropos, indeed this scene feels like both Hill and Nolte had Murphy’s back in a collaborative effort to construct a great scene and by proxy a great movie.

Uploaded by TheREALJackael on 2014-04-20.

Stay in your lane.

This has been said repeatedly in reference to many films, but knowing exactly what kind of movie you want to be, and maybe more importantly properly guessing what kind of movie you have on your hands is a cinematic superpower. Any detectable amount of confusion or unsureity as to the identity, or what it is you can or can’t pull off and it hurts your film in degrees that vary depending on the amount of confidence in a bad idea, or the lack of confidence in a good one. I think Hill knew exactly what he wanted 48hrs to be and because he chose correctly the film is a masterpiece of its genre. One in which it partially reinvents, creates, and firmly establishes the genres, and themes it borrows from. It reinvented and invigorated the western. It is in fact quite comparably a modern western, replacing the angst of the sanctioned violence of an immoral white western expansion into indigenous territory and replacing it with the angst of the expansion of the modern city landscape. It establishes the capabilities, and themes of the modern action flick, and it created a sub genre of its own in the buddy cop film, which would continue to be imitated years later. It also knows itself socio-politically. What's so fundamentally righteous rather than right about 48 hrs approach to race, class, the struggle between right and good - is its unwillingness to to approach anything nearing an answers. It understands that it is not that movie, and yet its unafraid to deal in good faith with what the conflict clearly suggest is going on here. What's shockingly gratifying about the Torchy's scene for instance is how much it backs ideologically much of what Hammond implies, while never appearing to fully back him. When Hammond suggests that the police are sanctioned bullies , who get away with a lot because they are backed by the state, not because they are actually bad asses, Torchy's then becomes a controlled experiment of Hammond’s hypothesis. And though narratively Hill doesn’t come down on a side, he doesn’t intervene, and the dots connect themselves. It's a very interesting turn of the screw to watch Murphy berate, bully, and terrorize white folk in a way that mirrors perfectly the kind of callous and cruel behavior exhibited by cops daily in black neighborhoods. It’s the cinematic extension of the slap in “In the Heat of the night”. I’m your worst nightmare a n****a with a badge” is the poignant cover page of an angry black manifesto. But maybe the films best exhibition of its deft handling of race , and where not to go is near the end of the film when Kates and Hammond make possibly the closest argument anyone can have that they are anything but inconvenient partners….

“Kates: “ You Know I...Well, nigger, and watermelon, I didn’t mean that stuff. I was just doing my job, keeping you down.”

Hammond: “Yeah, well doing your job don’t explain everything Jack.”

Kates: “Yeah you’re right”

This is not closure, it is not an answer, it is a beginning. Throughout all they have been through in this movie this is Kates and Hammond actually introducing themselves to one another, Kates especially. It’s a truce, a cease fire in lieu of a moment of mutual respect. Kates and Hammond are no more friends after this than Colonel Saito, and Lt Colonel Nicholson are after drinks in “The Bridge over the River Kwai. The difference being their goals align a great deal more. The authenticity of Kates , both for better and worse, the lack of humility in the face of anyone, but especially white people from Hammond, is an example of something much more significant than buddies in a cop film, and much more sophisticated than some sense of closure between a racist and a classically trained black musician on a road trip (The Green Book Im looking at you). It is a masterpiece of that genre (Action/ Buddy Cop), and unless you commit to the idea that any one category or genre of movies is inherently less than another is it not then a masterpiece of cinema? The movie has no fat, there is not a scene I would throw away. Though the story is familiar (a dubious criticism to make if not expounded upon because most stories in film are familiar especially at this point.) It finds so much of its own rhythm and personality that it feels new and at the very least unique even now after all its copies. It’s rare that films are so unique, that that uniqueness is what makes us fall in love with them, its usually in the approach that we find love. Besides that, sometimes the sum of a films parts are so great , it too is a classic by committee. Hill’s direction is great, the acting (mostly by men) is outstanding, from its two stars to James Remar as Ganz, (I could write a separate piece as to his importance to this film, and his wonderful brand of acting) Landham, and David Patrick Kelly ( a firebrand of a character actor , and a frequent Hill contributor), and James Horner’s Jazz infused score is as wild, gritty and meticulous as the movie itself. It’s not the smooth and seamless score that Lalo Schafrin’s built into “Bullit”, it has much in common with its star Eddie Murphy - its boisterous, and prone to improvisation which caused the potential for distraction, and incongruency, but again like Murphy ends up becoming a star in the film. The way it goes beat for beat with the beats in the film, complimenting, providing its own exposition, informing, while sounding like a impromptu jam session of the some awfully great performers is magical. Watch the subway scene and take note how it does all of the above…

All rights reserved to Paramount Pictures.

How many elements in a film have to be classic, before it is held up as a classic itself. I know fully well that if some pop culture magazine decides to do a countdown of the greatest “Action” films of all time, or if someone brings up the buddy cop genre that 48 hrs will be at or around the top of the mentions. I ask why that would come at the expense of serious academic thought about what went into making this film so monumentous in the memories of the average american, and so thoroughly copied and mimicked years after it had its time in the sun. In a time where good to great pure action films of which John Wick is almost the only game in town that qualify as either good or great, this year it may serve us to reinvigorate public interest in genres like Fantasy, Action, (and to a lesser extent Horror, and Sci-Fi, one who never really left, but is still frequently underrated, and the other which is not as popular, but generally received a little better when it is. ) There is a power in the deep simplicity of 48hrs, from its story to its relationships, and how organically they're built in arresting, and convincing truth. In establishing how a director can prove that the most interesting stories dont always have to come from someone who so passionately wants to be right, and of course in dissecting what a star being born looks like in black, and 48 hrs provides all of that and more. The film presents expert craftsmanship of the story it tells, and excels in just about every fashion that isn’t tied to the actual plot. It gives the audience exactly what we want, while never dumbing itself down, because the film knows exactly where it wants to be, and hones its art from that position. It brings together the sensibilities of the artist, and the financier as did the films it borrows so clearly from, and therein lies its strength, beauty, and legitimate sense of humor. A cinematic classic well worth revisiting, and reappraising for its full value.

We Need Mr. Smith Goes to Washington Now More than Ever.

When I first watched Mr Smith Goes to Washington, Frank Capra’s seminal classic, (it now dawns on me) I was biased against it from the outset. I had heard about this film , about its sentimentality, its optimism, and moral fortitude and I wanted to laugh considering what I knew not only about the time it was made in, but about Stewart's political leanings, and of the the slave holding, sometimes rapist creators of the documents the movie so lovingly upholds, and beholds. I barely made it through my first viewing, in fact it could barely be called a viewing as it was more like a court hearing where one side has already clearly made up its mind. I rolled my eyes at the statements about Lincoln, and audibly guffawed at wide eyed ridiculousness of the final scene. My cynicism, my embattled realism and infatuation with realism wouldn't allow me to appreciate any part of this fantasy, a particularly white one at that. I don't know if it was age, the softening that can happen over multiple viewings, or the age in which we live in, (my belief right now is all of the above, but especially the latter ) but this last viewing rocked me. I didn't lose any of the frustration or contempt for the pancake batter whiteness of its aesthetics, from the marble of Washington to the privileged obliviousness and superficiality of some of its claims, I just gained appreciation for its characterization of what Dr Cornel West calls "Prophetic fire" in Jeffrey Smith, and for its imagination. Its willingness to engage in the fantasy of things never before seen. Strategies which have no basis in precedent or known reality. In a lecture available on YouTube titled "How does Change Happen" Angela Davis articulates the connection between imagination and grand social movements, and combats the idea that because things in essence have not changed over the years, that resistance and the work done was futile. That one should find themselves discouraged and disenchanted by the seeing futility..

From radical rebel to university professor, Angela Davis has dedicated her life to social activism. In this talk, Angela Davis reflects on her successes and shares her insights on the strategies for change that have made -- and will make -- history.

This time I made the connection, this is the very heart of Mr Smith. It is not merely wide eyed naivety, and white liberal sentimentality, but it is fantasy, the best kind. The kind the conjures and kindles in the audience a fire , an angry fire that given the right amount of open minded air, can consume the entirety of the viewing experience with the want to go out and yell, to fight, to act. It's as much a fantasy as the idea of America set apart from the reality. The importance of Mr. Smith goes to Washington In any era and especially in this time and space we exist in is its message that the fantasy is as important as the actuality. That America is both the ideas that formed it, and continue to elude it, and the reality that made it what it is. Jeffrey Smith's idea of America is a fantasy, and he is an idealistic bull in a China shop that runs head long into the reality of a wall of Pragmatic cynics and thugs that almost break him in two as they promised they would.

Re-watching the movie this time around, I arrived at the scene where Jefferson watches his beloved mentor, his shining knight, Joseph Paine betray him, and I’m reminded of Angela’s warning against the idea of change as purely the result of any one individual, especially as a leader . Stewart conjures up a man so understandably heart broken I feel almost ashamed I was so blinded by my own version of cynicism I missed the poetic beauty, and furious vigor of this performance. By the time he arrived at the Lincoln memorial head so low he almost resembles a man half into a somersault, face in hands, sitting on the baggage he brought with him crying, I was a mess myself. I don't know if it was age, the softening that can happen over multiple viewings, or the age in which we live in, (my belief right now is the latter ) but this last viewing rocked me. I thought about President Obama's promise, and the audacity of hope, and also of all the ways he fell short, and then of the crushing finality of the night we found out Trump had won, and Jefferson Smith was no longer the silly bright eyed, bushy tailed white idealist who should've known better , he was all of us who hadn't completely given ourselves over to cynicism, avarice, hyper individualism, and apathy. Especially those who had given themselves over the cotton candy optimism of Obama's presidency. Maybe many of the rest of us wanted to weep, but instead quickly fought back our tears, stiffened up our necks , and signed ourselves over to the devils of pride, cynicism, and pragmatism. We looked down at those bewildered, unmoved, and told them frankly "This was always America", as if there was nothing else to believe but that, and only that. We in many ways were right, and righteous even, but we weren’t anymore whole than they, and we weren’t seeing the whole picture. We were right just like Jean Arthur’s Clarissa Saunders was right when warned Jefferson Smith to go back home, that he would be broken by these men, and she didn't want to watch it, but like Clarissa we just wanted to protect ourselves from the same. After all that's what cynicism, and sarcasm are best at..protecting us from vulnerability. The shame of feeling fooled, the pain of being hurt, but what we forgot as Clarissa had somewhere along the way, and as Jefferson had for a moment, (until he was reminded of it by Clarissa who was reminded of it by him) is that there is nothing wrong the audacity of hope, the primacy of optimism over skepticism and cynicism. That just because we find out Obama, our black Claude Rains was actually a weathered practitioner of pragmatic ideologies that sustain the status quo, doesn't mean we need toss out his hope with the dirty bath water of neoliberal politics. It doesn't mean that every time somebody brings up the greatest, and most high flying of American ideals to say or remind us what America isn't supposed to be about , that we must shoot them down with the mortar shells of what America is, or always was, because it's only a half truth. America is both, always has been. The ideal, the fantasy of America is every bit as important as the reality because if we never had the former, and the collective Jefferson Smith's who had faith in the promise of America despite the continued deference of the dream, and despite evidence to the contrary we wouldn’t have made near any of the progress we have. We have to stop insisting people who are willing to fight, wear the exact same armor as us. Jefferson Smith is no soft peddling coddler of injustice or even unfairness merely because he believes in the dream. He's out there punching out journalists for their mockery of the profession, and literally standing up to corporate bullies like Taylor, literally, the difference is what's underneath it all...”A little bit of plain ordinary kindness, and a little looking out for the other guy too”....

Lost causes

Ultimately when I found in this revisitation of Frank Capra’s beloved classic is the same love many others had found before me . I found three of the greatest performances in American film history. James Stewart as a dandelion beautiful and fragile, but susceptible to a the violent winds of indifference crashing against his extremities, and then as a whirlwind himself of frustration, righteous anger, and indignation. When he yells out "I will not yield!" I shook with relatability rather than a callous sarcasm that snapped back "about damn time". It’s a no holds barred, all encompassing impassioned performance that embodies the physical, and mental, as well as the spiritual. I seen Jean Arthur right there with him, dealing out searing, rattling téte-a-téte sarcasm with multiple beats that hung in the unspooled spaces of my mind well after they were said before being crashed into by the next. I saw her transforming to a woman bustling with fervent renewed, revitalized energy rooted in pure hope, so that when she was praying that Jefferson would be able to make it through the final hurrah, it was embedded in a sincerity so rare I forgot she was acting. And finally I saw Claude Rains as Senator Paine serving up one of the most complex villains (If he could be called such ) I've ever seen. He reminded me of cinematic folk like Jack Vincennes from LA Confidential, or even Aaron Eckhart from the Dark Knight , charming, noble, with vicious undercurrents. Men who lost their nobility running into the same walls of futility as the Jeffersons of the world, all the more engraving in my mind the importance of Jefferson Smiths, and more importantly of hope. I found Hope, incorrigible, and defiant, I found optimism in its most sincere form, righteous anger, great camera shots, and the ethos of what it could be to be an american if we dream big enough, without feeling the least bit corny or dated...

Jimmy Stewart's moving speech at the end of Frank Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes To Washington".

Men and Women and all other Identifiable folk who go to bat for the lost causes should be the last to give up on kindness, or as Dr. Cornel West said sweetness in the struggle, nor imagination, or fantasy, not only on art but in our everyday lives. Capra and Lewis R. Foster before him imagined a scenario where someone would stand up to the machine, in the belly and seat of its power, and win and win big, and we need to see that, we need to be reminded of it, because as Angela Davis said, many movements started as just that a fantasy, a dream. Because after all the lost causes aren't only the people, but the ideas that in truth helped to shape this country. The native American as much as the bill of rights. The African, Asian, and Latin American, the gay, lesbian, queer, and Bi, as much as the constitution. Mr. Smith is a reminder of the best of us, the highest of our goals, which may never be attained, but should always be reached and fought for with passion anger and of course kindness. It's okay to want that, it's okay to believe in that, and it's damn sure okay to fight for that. I don't know that TCM added this to their programming because it felt so apropos of the moment, the age of Trump, but I do know that I like so many others know to forge on for those that are the least of us.. what I hope I learned, and continue to carry with me is to continue to fight and feel invigorated by the ideals that represent the most within us. I don't know if it was age, the softening that can happen over multiple viewings, or the age in which we live in, (my belief right now is all of the above, but especially the latter ) but this last viewing of Mr Smith Goes to Washington rocked me, because I needed it now more than ever.

The enigma of 1993's "The Fugitive"

What is the fugitive? It's not purely a thriller, though it’s not purely an action piece either. It’s not what you would typically label an intentional blockbuster, (though it did in fact become one) and despite its greatness it hasn’t procured the same kind of indelibility, or credibility amongst cinephiles the prestige of the sum of its parts (Like Tommy Lee Jones’s performance, or the presence of a great score from James Newton Howard ) might otherwise demand. ..

After arriving at the scene of the crash, Deputy Gerard (Tommy Lee Jones) and the other Marshals take over the local operations. 'The Fugitive'; A film by Andrew Davis. Starring: Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward, Joe Pantoliano, Julianne Moore, Jeroen Krabbe & Andreas Katsulas.

The Fugitive was accidentally ingeniously released in August of 1993. I say that because it’s release date, as well as its chosen director say alot about what the studios saw for this movie considering. August, that last month of summer usually carved out as a make shift parking lot for Hollywood clunkers and ne’er do well vehicles, gave it more than enough time to be free of the megaton fallout of Jurassic Park. Most viewers having sufficiently punched the ticket on somewhere between their third and fortieth viewings. Director Andrew Davis was a safe choice to lead such a film.. talented, but not TOO talented, tested but not yet cynical, the kind with ideas, but not ones so big they may potentially ruin your studios year. Having mastered the art of the slightly over mid-budgeted action film, in movies like Above the Law and Under Siege, Davis showed a soft touch with actors, a deft understanding of story, and a workman like precision. High expectations for this movie would’ve been in the 150 mil range, as mostly it was meant to be the kind of movie it came out with and would end up spawning ( a sort of middle tier thriller)…

1993 was somewhat of a beginning of the decade long obsession with mid budgeted thrillers with mega movie stars, of which The Fugitive is arguably the best of. 93’ saw Sidney Lumet’s stylish ode to Hitchock “Guilty as Sin”, Sydney Pollack’s The Firm, and “Malice” one of Aaron Sorkin’s earliest works on film.

The Fugitive’s ( and to be the fair The Firm also) influence on on the marketplace could be felt not only by the career paths of Jones and Ford in the 90’s (which seemed to be a decade long extension of these same two characters), but by the repetition of the formula - journeyman director, big stars, extremely similar budget around the thirty to forty million range. Some of these exact attributes function as contributors to what may have made The Fugitive disinteresting as a consistent topic of cinema. The film in certain ways wants to be a working class depiction of a city, an under the radar punch the clock film. One that celebrates it’s hard working denizen’s as well as its well-to-do. It features some explicit, and implicit commentary on corporate greed, and it has a diverse its cast, but this is all mostly superficial, as is any attempt at style or signature. The commentary is obvious, and lacks any teeth, never mind it being in short supply, the diversity is only in existence, (the characters of color have very little to say, and don’t particularly add anything to the movie besides background), and the final act of the this film doesn’t say much, doesn’t commit to much, and isn’t much to look at. Take for instance “Heat” Michael Mann’s cops and robbers masterpiece. There are similarities here…A dogged cop after his man, a final act that consists of the cop locating his man because he goes after the man who wronged him. They take place in very different cities , yet the goal is the same; that the city itself be a character in the film. And yet these two final scenes are worlds apart as it concerns truth, style, and power…

The ending of the film Heat.

The Clarity of purpose, the lack of sound, save for the deafening screech of the planes, light and shadow, we are not telegraphed the ending, the playing field is even, the elements around the conceptualization of the scene see to that. Then there are choices, speeding up DeNiro’s death, the cuts, the close ups, the wide shots, and they all play integral parts to creating the tension. …

Director: Andrew Davis Cast: Harrison Ford, Tommy Lee Jones, Sela Ward, Joe Pantoliano, Andreas Katsulas, Jeroen Krabbé

Here Davis telegraphs the ending as does the script, the placement and chosen order lets us no who is where. When you’re in a wide open field and some how it feels more precarious than a cramped laundry room its a problem of vision and execution. It not the location, its the choices that hamper the effectiveness of the scene. Nothing fits narratively, including why Jones character would go on like that knowing that the other guy is in the same room. It gives away his location,and puts him in unnecessary danger. It’s meant for us the audience to feel relief, which is the exact opposite of what we should be feeling , and its filmed the same way. The laundry scene would be infinitely more impactful, and nerve racking if each player moved in silence, letting the sound, and the feel of the laundry room be a background player, maybe even allowing Ford’s character who in actuality would be most likely to make such a mistake given how desperate he is to prove himself, give away his position by one way or another. The removal of the cuffs scene could be so much more powerful if it was the first time we find out Jones knows.

His role in the 1993 film- The Fugitive

Nevertheless while its cinematic aspirations, and ambition, may be up for debate, and hard to pin down, that’s kind of part of its lasting charm. The Fugitive is almost artful in its ability to avoid any kind of conceit or big idea about itself. Its willingness to just let us the audience go on this noir-ish emotional thrill ride, with nothing other than the emotion tied to our collective insistence that this man be given justice as our propulsion is what gives it such power.. If it had any high concept as its bedding, it is of the power of pitting any one person(s) pushed to the brink will up against the will of the people, the city. The will of one man to make a profit, and another to bring about his own straightforward idea of justice. Unlike Heat in which the audience can almost feel an almost existential dread bound to the disappointment of knowing both these men can’t win, so that one of these extremely well liked characters faces inevitable doom, the Fugitive has no shame in its game about fan service. It wants to give us what we want, the satisfaction of seeing neither of these men “lose”, and thus the impetus of the cuffs scene. Jones’s Gerard got his man, and his justice, Ford’s Kimble his freedom and respect. I mean his wife is still dead but , one thing at a time here.

The film features two of the best performances by both of these actors. Ford the quintessential every man, the perfect guy to root for in any movie. Appropriately vulnerable, but not a leaky faucet. Believable as both a man of action, and a patsy, because he’s bone deep sincere. There’s a scene in which a then unknown Jane Lynch gives Ford the clue that breaks the case for him. The realization in his eyes, the limited amount of time he dwells on it, and the re-committal afterwards are all examples of Fords unique skill set, and why its so singularly his role. ..Alec Baldwin, Michael Douglas (both incredible actors, and both whom were considered) reek of upper class, and would have been a turn off to the necessary interchangeability needed, because in essence this is a stripping down of superficial reminders of Kimble as a symbol of his class, you need someone who believably looks like he can comfortably do and play to the artifice of both…

Tommy Lee Jones as Gerard is one of the great grumps in movie history. Ornery , moody, and deadpan, he defines himself by his job as his job defines him, and while Ford’s character has to strip down his class, Jones’s Gerard is already dressed as a symbol of the white working class anti hero. Dedicated, plain speaking, honest to a fault, over worked, and probably a bit resentful. What Jones does so well throughout the film is cut straight through every scene. Gerard never has to think long, or very hard. He knows he’s right ( a dangerous trait ) and he values time so he will cut through to the objective. If I were to summarize him I would use the words of Harvey Kietel's Winston Wolfe “If he's curt with you ,it’s because time is a factor, he talks fast and he thinks fast, and he needs you to act fast”. He's a pit bull, loyal, loving and attentive when they want to be, but if they lock their teeth into something or someone…God help you. What Lee brings to Gerard is his erratic speeding train whizzing by you style of acting, typical in his 90's run and evident in films like Blown Away , Batman Forever, and Under Siege, backed by a consistency of intention very few actors have. With many actors time is central to getting to the heart of the moment, usually though that means more time, Jones is the rare actor that can find you a genuinely authentic moment, almost seemingly in the moment…

"Where'd he go??!!" "Guy did a Peter Pan right off of this Dam! Right here!! ... BOOM! POW!" So crazy! lol Welcome to JustTheClips and thank you for watching! This is my passion and so I hope you enjoy and want to come back. If you choose to support me, I thank you very much!

At around 2:38 seconds we find one of those exact moments, and you can pair that reaction to packing it in and going home that incredibly sincere “No…no" with many of the reactions in his intro (the very first video above) which he finds some incredibly honest, impactful moment right then and right there. Whether they were improvised or well thought out Jones makes them feel as if the words were Frankenstein's monster imbued with life from a charge that came from the frantic mind of some mad scientist of association. Tommy Lee plays Gerard as a great white hunter charging through the brush of a concrete jungle, cutting through bullshit , ( and many times nuance) to get to his lost city of black and white, right and wrong, and as ugly as this character would be in real life Jones gifts him with an intelligence, warmth, and plainness that feels refreshing enough that despite all his “I don’t cares’ and nearly shootings of friends and innocent men, somehow he comes off as a guy you’d love to have a drink with after this was all over.

The opposing energy of these two, one already a star, the other about to be. The cadre of other identifiably talented character actors and young actors who soon would see their own days in the sun. The pulsating, charging, but patient score from James Newton Howard, three fantastically staged action sequences, David Twohy and Jeb Stuarts cracking script (with it's non-ornate one liners, and superb pacing), are the sum total of an almost perfect summer blockbuster that doesn't feel like blockbuster fare, because the blockbuster elements only have a superficial kinship with its predecessors and antecedents. There are no Ferrari's or fighter jets, no martial arts , no dinosaurs or spaceships. There is shooting, and violence, but very little death. It's two major stars are not young, impossibly in shape, and full of vitality, but middle aged, and in Jones’s case world weary. They don't run very well, or move very fast, and though Ford is actually pretty got damn sexy in the movie, the film is not particularly interested in exploiting his sexual potential. Simultaneously it’s not exactly Oscar fare either. Big, boisterous and loud when it wants to be, it doesn’t carry the self important weight of best picture winners. It lacks a truly great villain and its arguable that the villain is in fact a bad villain due precisely to the scripts unwillingness to bring Dr Charles Nichols out of the darkness until the end in the name of a twist, and then refuse to provide any more meaningful exploration of the motivations behind such a horrid betrayal of a friend. The movie’s lack of the previously mentioned stylistic and authoritative flourishes, and refusal to sit or contemplate its meaning, or a central thesis, made it a minor miracle it was nominated at all. The enigma of The Fugitive is that it's a truly great movie that defies the bourgeois artistic aesthetics of a classic film. No pomp, some pulp, very little style, and very little authority. It knows what it is, and yet its still kind of hard to pin down what it is. It is clearly flawed, and yet almost perfect , it doesn't lend itself to a plethora of think pieces , or revisitation that redefines what it means now. It exist in it's own space, it's own time it's own genre as “The Fugitive”.

Blackening Film History: Friday The Great American Comedy Classic.

I remember it like it was yesterday or maybe a good month ago. The details around it aren't so clear except for one phenomenally inept lapse in judgement and taste. I went to see a double feature of two movies I hadn't seen (now in their second run because we at that time could rarely afford to see a movie in its initial run as a family of nine). The theater was small, cramped, and dingy. The kind where you can smell the breath of the last patron in your seat still hanging in the air because there is no ventilation. The double feature was Sylvester Stallone's “Judge Dredd”, and “Friday”. Understand that by this time Friday was already a cultural phenomenon where it mattered...amongst black people. Whether at work, play, or school you couldn’t go anywhere with out someone quoting a line,with or without context. Amongst black folk at the time, Friday was the kind of movie that would’ve caused a tectonic shift on Black Twitter had it existed. In every and all sense of the word, Friday was an event movie for us, one you had to see it, or be banished to the realm of the obsolete, of the woefully out of the loop, an ignorant 411 leper. But there was me blissful in my ignorance, hardened in my tastes, saying to myself without saying to myself.. “It didn’t matter”. My feeling was “Friday” might turn out alright, but Judge Dredd though!” it was disgraceful, borderline unforgivable, one of my most regrettable moments of poor judgement, and I am not proud of this. I have no clue what white people were doing thinking , or saying about Friday at the time. All my education about their collective input on Friday comes in retrospect, and I still care very little for it- I’ll come back to this later. Amongst the non movie-goer and movie-goer alike in my community Friday only a few months into its birth into the American cinematic lexicon was already knee deep into its journey to ubiquitousness . Then and now the film was in many ways incomparable, while in others it shares distinguishing traits with a great deal of other classic American comedies. Thing is though, I wanted to see Judge Dredd more. Yes I said it, let that sink in for a moment.. I’ll wait , because it's still hasn't sunk in for me yet. I not only wanted to see Judge f***ing Dredd more than Friday, I sincerely thought it would be the better movie….

This the inside of my brain every time I think back to the fact that I would’ve rather watched “Judge Dredd”, than anything really, much less “Friday.”

I remember so acutely the feeling in the pit of my stomach as trailers went on that I wanted this appetizer of Friday to be over as soon as possible so I could get the main course Dredd. A wonky, ridiculous, uneven, over-the-top, if not fun comic book movie about a criminally bad cop in a “distant” future where the police functioned as branches of government . A few minutes later I would legit forget there was a double feature at all. From "You half dead motherf***er" to "And you know this man" Friday was not only quakingly funny, but smart, well directed, and ingeniously played by almost all of its actors. It was a welcome interruption to the trend of hood dramas that portrayed the agonizing and tragic aspects of living in the inner city, the importance of which cannot be overstated not only because of the way it reupholstered, and reconstructed tropes about growing up in the hood, but for its impact on the future of comedy in Hollywood. The 1995 comedy came out on the heels of an explosion of films about the hood, and the scourge of the crack cocaine drug epidemic. From one of my favorite films “New Jack City” to Boyz in the Hood”, “South Central” and “Menace to Society”, these films announced the coming of several important black filmmakers, actors, and actresses, provided scathing and insightful political commentary, and served the important task of informing a country blinded to the violence, suffering, and activism by blacks without aide of whites going on in the hoods of America. Nevertheless these films also had the unintended impact of dehumanizing the more unsavory aspects and role players in our neighborhoods, and reducing them to archetypes of evil. These tropes and characters helped assure racist foreign white eyes (that had no context) of our animalistic nature. Whites (misinterpreting either obliviously or intentionally) were encouraged and emboldened to interfere the only way they seemed to understand, (state sanctioned violence) and those whites who found sympathy would condescendingly paternalize that sympathy, which could be seen in a cinematic call and response that created movies like “Dangerous Minds”. Friday was different, crude, endearing and refreshing, and according to many of the major players involved in its making , this was by design. While previous films had turned crack heads into mortifying zombies, hated, sometimes feared, living in the crevices of the neighborhood on the outskirts of the humanity bereft of any will to eat, converse, connect, Friday gave us “Eazel”, who jokes, hustles, “works” and who is ultimately apart of the patchwork of personality that is any neighborhood. Rather than make him a stain on the neighborhood, the focus on Eazel was in fact on his personality, not his addiction, and other than maybe Bubbles (Andre Royo) from the Wire it is the most humanized version of a homeless addict we’ve seen, and representative of the reality of who these people were to us, in our hoods. In the other films drug dealers were ruthless, and only ruthless. Servants to nihilism, hawks of capitalism, they could care less about their own lives so even less for yours. In the pursuit of money, they were almost entirely lacking of any empathy. They were America’s worst nightmare in Menace to Society, willing to shoot a rising football star with no affiliations over an exchange of words in Boyz in the Hood, or use a small child as a shield in a failed attempt on their life in New Jack City. In Friday “Big Worm” was these things for sure but also a big personality, farcical even. Learning into the need for such folk to be seen and heard, Worm wore his hair relaxed, with rollers, and drove around in a 60 something dreamscicle orange Chevy Impala, and an ice cream truck on daytons. He is a ruthless business man, but he is also a character. He wants smokey to “apply himself,” “doesn’t want to have fuck smokey up” but he will…

Playin' with my money is like playin' with my emotions...

The point being Friday didn’t defend or upend the earned negativity around gang violence or drug dealers, or crack addiction, but it did provide a fuller picture of the black and brown neighborhood, and the role these people play in it. The good and the bad times. The individual, and the community, the dark, and the light hearted. Its authenticity is inextricable from both its success, as well as any of its strengths and weaknesses. Black people understood it all too well. White folk (sometimes imprecisely alluded to as the “mainstream”) I don’t think still quite get Friday. There is no point of reference for them, and if you have no point of reference , no historical or familial context for the brilliance of these characters, the purposeful lack of focus so aptly depicted in what it feels like to just want to get to high, and free your mind in the inner city, you run the risk of mistaking them for some brechtian accumulation of caricatures with no real connection as did Gene Siskel in this small review of Friday…

“For all of the shouting, mugging and rap music, a surprisingly dull comic yarn about a young man (Ice Cube) trying to survive in the ‘hood. Colorful characters abound, but nothing ties them together. I knew the picture was in trouble when its first gag involved an old lady spewing obscenities. ”

— Gene Siskel writing for the Chicago Tribune

Yet Siskel’s words reveal something more problematic about the expectations of black filmmakers, black people, and suffering. Friday is and was not merely a stoner comedy although that is most definitely part of its charm, but it was also not about “surviving in the hood”. Most importantly, why is/was there no space for a movie about black people taking a day off from “surviving”, from preaching, and self important messages to be great? Why can’t/couldn’t we be as “Dazed and Confused” as whites on film? Friday didn’t and doesn’t have to be some meditation on black frustrations in the hood, it was a thoroughly entertaining “day in the life” film featuring top notch characters, (not to be confused with caricatures) a legendary comedic debut, (Chris Tucker) sure direction from a first timer, and brilliant humor. The humor or as my comedic acting teacher called it “The Funny” (Like in the bathroom scene with John Witherspoon’s “Pops” and Ice Cube) is not merely found in the toilet, it was found in the familiar and singularly recognizable way black parents of a certain generation have no respect for boundaries, doors, or space. Embarrassment and time are luxuries for rich people with jobs, and no children. The very specific way many of our parents saw their off-spring (no matter how grown) as children, and as owing them a debt in this world…”I smelt your shit for Twenty Two years, you can smell mines for five minutes”. The joke or gag Siskel references is not simply that an “old lady is spewing obscenities” it is the hypocrisy of the church, and its members, and the sass, seniority and verve of older black women in the community. Beyond the authenticity of its father figures, or matriarchs, and even bullies, Friday is incredibly well put together, and succinct in what by all accounts was a gargantuan undertaking by a first time feature filmmaker. F. Gary Gray managed to reign this plethora of personalities into one film in a way that never felt like it let any actor get too carried away, and take the movie away with them. It is a comedy that through fantastic editing had a crystal clear idea of what it wanted to be and confidently expressed itself as intentionally irreverent, and it was many of Gray’s directorial flourishes that enhanced, and cultivated the viewing experience, and subsequently the indelibility of Friday…

This bottom up view of Smokey’s face after witnessing Redd get knocked out is integral to what makes “You got knocked the fuck out!” so memorable. The joke as a conjured memory itself is seen from an impossible point of view considering the storyteller is Smokey himself, because it is meant for us, as told to us, and upon recollection the punchline is always accompanied by Gary’s distinct manipulation of Tuckers face.

Gray’s choice to speed the scene up as Smokey trips out on PCP laced weed in post is another simple but perceptive instinct that gives insight to what is funny, but also what gives the audience an empathetic sense of what the character is going through.

The approaching of the character Deebo, from the bottom nothing but his feet on the bike bears some resemblance to the sharks fin in Jaws, and with accompanying music is a wonderful bit of parody intentional or not on the Jaws theme as well as the “Imperial march”

Additionally, Gray, Kimberly Hardin, and casting Legend Jaki Brown (in a very particular and acute bit of genius born of necessity, knowledge, and perception) brought together one of the greatest casts in history. I say that with no hyperbole. You’d be hard pressed to name one cast member who isn’t at the very least a perfect fit, if not in the throws of an astoundingly instinctive, intelligent comedic performance, especially the women. It is almost spiritual to watch Anna Marie Horseford embody both a very general and specific kind of black mother. Loving, warm, no nonsense, and direct without being combative. That smooth transition from “She oughta be ashamed of herself looking like that” to Hey Girl!” The ability to communicate what one feels without necessarily communicating what one feels was not only the work of a natural actor, but one who drawed as deeply from from the well of ancestry and tradition of black motherhood, as Denzel did black suffering in his single tear scene in “ Glory. When you hear Horseford yell “Okay” from across the street. It’s the truth in the look she gives in concert with the way the word “okay” trails and shrills itself into befuddled sarcasm, and inaffection that spews comedy gold from about 1:26 to 1:40 mins in…

http://www.taranets.net/movies/friday-1995.html http://www.taranets.net/movies/best-ice-cube-movies.html http://www.taranets.net/movies/best-chris-tucker-movies.html http://www.taranets.net/movies/best-bernie-mac-movies.html a clip from Friday with Kathleen Bradley as Mrs Parker

Of maybe all the great performances in Friday, Angela Means work maybe the most noteworthy. Her interpretation of another character in the arms of addiction, who is yet still a full human being, features the most transferable traits, intelligence, and instincts from the world of comedy to drama. The fact is that Felica has become an icon of comedic cinema, and her entry into the slang lexicon of american pop culture is a representation of that by way of extension from the character Means so finely molded. The “Felicia” Means created, connected to the “Bye” in the popular phrase is inextricable from the terms pejorative nature. It conjures both its mean spirited punch, and its relevance from the memorable nature of the character Means created. Means instincts as an actor are on full display, it's in Felicia's walk - wide, and sloppy, lacking in any grace whatsoever. A subversive walk, it is not meant for the male gaze, and Felicia doesn’t care. Means chosen gait and stride is both psychological, and physical in its intention, it implies not only her lack of desire to perform for men, but also that Felicia has no respect for space....

Felisha asking to borrow smokeys car.

This quote from the actress solidifies both Means’s talent, and intention..

“During the scene where Craig says “Bye, Felisha,” Gary was going to break down the set and do a reverse shot of me. I was supposed to walk up to the porch where Chris and Cube were and face the camera when I spoke to them, like everyone else did. I was like, no. If Felisha is going to invade people’s space, then she is going to invade people’s space. She’s oblivious to personal space and boundaries. I told Gary, “Why don’t we just save a whole hour and let Felisha’s ass just sit down in between them?” Neither Cube or Chris knew I was going to sit down, and when I did Chris wasn’t even acting, he was like, “DAMN!” He was pissed at me. [Laughs.] It made the scene better, and broke up the monotony of everyone coming to the porch. Her sitting down was a moment that we found together. Not that it was that big a deal, but it did save like a good hour, and it created that scene, the three sitting on the porch like that.”

— Angela Means from the "Oral History of Friday"

There is also a clear eyed sincerity in Means creation of Angela that sets it apart from the darty eyed contemptibility of Halle Berry’s “Vivian” in Spike Lee’s “Jungle Fever”. Felicia earnestly sees nothing abnormal about her frequent requests despite their absurdity. In every scene she asks for something more ridiculous than the last, and the cluelessness as to the size and uncouth of her requests is so deeply genuine it becomes part of her charm and as well as her repulsion. Means like all great comedians doesn’t play Felicia for jokes, she plays her for truth even when the set up itself is ridiculous or over the top, and especially when it’s not true…

Neighbors always wanting to borrow stuff.

Paula Jai Parker’s Joi is equally memorable, and equally representative of Jai's dedication to her character. In contrast to Means, Parker went for the large and overt. Both Joi and Felicia take up considerable amounts of space, but whereas the jewel of Mean’s performance is in the subtle details, Parker’s Joi is a great deal more over the top with intention. Partly owing to the traditions of camp, Joi is meant to be not only grandiose , but exaggerated, and hails from the imaginative spectrum of creation as well as the inspired…

“I’d lived in Washington D.C. when I was going to college and I had seen girls that reminded me of Joi. The blonde dookie braids became popular and, Lord, those nails. I did the nails, I created those and put those on. I don’t know where I got that from. I was just young and inspired.”

— Paula Jai Parker from the "Oral History of Friday"

There is deliberateness in her cadence, and in the walk. She means to get where she’s going and she means what she’s saying. Quick to get from point A. to B. whether that’s walking from her car to the porch, or changing moods from sweetness to anger..

What Paula Jai and the rest of the cast are committed to, what they created along with Ice Cube, DJ Pooh, and F. Gary Gray is too big for just the label Cult Classic ( fitting though it is). The label does not encompass this movies impact on American culture at large or American comedy. Friday is the unrecognized but rather obvious antecedent of Judd Apatow films and all their offspring in structure, outlandish characters, and raunch. It is an African American film that captures the rebellious spirit of John Hughes films like “The Breakfast Club, and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”, the aimless youthfulness of “Clerks” or “Slacker” , and the crassness of Animal House or Caddyshack. The only thing that keeps it from being mentioned alongside these films ..whiteness. The weird obsession with finding comparable films that feature black people for black films, white people for white films. This is propelled forth from a “pretty good for a black film” attitude adapted by many connoisseurs, and gatekeepers of film academia and cinephelia, and white people’s disinterest ( and in certain aspects inability) to truly understand the material, the frame of reference, and thusly the craft, and art of what was created. Nevertheless we dont need white folk to validate the indelible nature of this film. The intent of deliberately obtuse people is unimportant here, the legacy of Friday is unimpeachable. Endlessly quotable, fondly remembered, independently created, massively popular with several characters whose names have published quotes in the comedic almanac of american cinema. It is without exception one of the great American comedies, and I will do my part to see it continue its legacy as it should be - a classic worthy of the criterion collection, if not for any other reason than to pay penance for the fact I thought Judge Dredd would be a better f***ing movie.

Ava DuVernay's "When They See Us" is a Masterclass in How to Depict Racists On Screen.

Historically, racism as a subject matter in film and Television has been handled poorly, mostly because racism in our country has been handled so poorly. I think most films on the subject are rote, basic, overly simplistic in their discourse, and in their perspective regarding the large scale implications, and harm, the practice does to a nation and a people as well as to the individual. This is largely because they disconnect the personal from the systemic. What Ava has done so well in her latest addition to Netflix is create a deeply moving, engaging narrative string theory that connects the personal directly to the systemic in a way that doesn't devolve either. By doing so she avoids the caricaturization of racism and its proponents common in film and television of this nature made by other creators (mostly white folk). These efforts by other directors like the Farrelly brother's “The Green Book” whittle down the insidiousness of white supremacy to the work of a couple or a few choice villains rather than a collective effort by a vast spectrum of personalities with varying motivations. This reduction so popular in history books films or series written, helmed and created by white folk commits two sins: it A. allows the actual full breadth and harm of white supremacy to crawl under the legs of these manufactured cartoons and out the back door, and B. Creates poor boring characters ( I SWEAR I BARELY even recall Sam Rockwell’s character in “Three Billboards” for this exact reason, he’s a very well drawn character…for a cartoon). The effect? It creates no call to action, and saves white people from embarrassment and accountability. In a cartoon if a boulder falls on said villain Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner is safe until the next time his death is plotted by Wile E, who has no rhyme no reason to his desire for harm other than the simplified explanation that it is simply in his nature to be so. we gain nothing from this other than the entertainment. In a fashion this has been the way our very real pain, trauma, harm, and hurt has been historically portrayed on screen by whites. A garish cartoon where we watch oppression play out in a variety of schemes by one perpetrator, who is eventually quelled, until the next episode, purely for our entertainment. …

What really stood out to me upon doing or taking an inventory of what moved me so much about the story being told in “When They See Us” was not only Ava's execution in showing micro and macro cause and effect in systemic oppression, but her understanding of these functions and expressions as more than just racism as a motivation in and of itself. It is a body to head one two punch that knocks the audience off its feet and into recovery mode well after the credits run. The character that best embodies just how well and deeply Ava understands these processes and the people in them is Linda Fairstein. Now in order to properly frame what Ava is doing, and how much better it's done, both from a filmmaking and philosophical standpoint I feel I have to show someone who doesn't do it well..the aforementioned Sam Rockwell characterJason Dixon in Martin Mcdonagh's “The Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri".

Now On Digital: http://bit.ly/ThreeBillboardsDigitial Now On Blu-ray & DVD: http://bit.ly/Get3Billboards THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI is a darkly comedic drama from Academy Award® winner Martin McDonagh (IN BRUGES).

I think it's important to note the difference in the introductions of each of these characters and how they align to show the differences in approach. Rockwell's character in the three billboards is alone when we first meet him and his racism is made evident from the very beginning. Two things are being established here 1 he is alone in his racism, which in turn reinforces the childish, (But safe for white people) idea that racism is an individual problem. 2. That this is the beginning of his arc because it is where he starts, so that we are being set up for him to either grow or get his, the former rather insidious because it not only seeks to have us empathize or rather understand his motivations, but to identify with them. Not only that, but from the very beginning the light in which his racism is shown is not taken tonally serious at all. It is again an example of racism played for laughs that completely ignores the widespread ramifications of this mans cruelty, it's not funny. I'm not one of those that thinks that you can't make fun of, or have a laugh at the expense of racist or racism (sometimes its all you can do) but I think that that line is very fine and that the jokes have to come as offerings of levity from a stance that makes clear its depravity systemically as well as interpersonally. For a better example of this kind of line being drawn one can look to the 1999 film “Life” starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence....

Clip from "Life" starring Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence

The scene from Life is clearly from the perspective of those offended, this is in essence what they see. Throughout the movie it makes clear not only the harm to these two men, but black men all over (Interestingly enough both Life and When they see us are about a cruel and injust system that railroads black bodies into dehumanizing life in prison) and the result is a movie that both makes us laugh and cry at the injustice we have endured and prevailed over in our long suffering here on this most desperate island of eternal hope and damnation. Meanwhile back over at the three billboards, when black people are there, and in the vicinity of Rockwell’s or anyone else’s racism the scene is seen from the perspective of the offender, and is drawn to connect us with his point of view. The presence of its black citizens are barely made known, much less any examination of what the effects of a clearly racist police force has had on it's denizen’s. In concert with the centralization of the arc of its very racist cop, it serves the doubly troublesome effect of humanizing (not necessarily harmful in and of itself ) its racist character, and dehumanizing his victims.

Its really hard to find a scene in “The Three Billboards of Ebbing Missouri” that reckons with race in a meaningful way, because its pretty hard to find black people in it from whose point of view we can see it.

Having seen what a bad introduction to a character looks like, what a poorly emphasized arc to a bad character looks like, and subsequently what a poor political stance on a character looks like, we can now see what it looks like when it's done right in Ava's “When They See Us”. The introduction to Linda Fairstein for starters, whom bares a light but superficial resemblance to Rockwell’s Jason Dixon, yet, as vile as Fairstein is, her racism is not cartoonish nor two dimensional. It does not function on auto pilot, or unilaterally without consultation with her ambitions and her sense of justice which acts as a front man for her gross prejudices.

Ava and co writers go beyond platitudes, to create a character whose evil is propelled by layered and multi-dimensional motivations and objectives. It is made implicitly clear if not at time explicitly that in her own mind she is merely seeking justice, and yes maybe she is ambitious an what is wrong with that?” is something she may ask herself when she feels morally compromised. The answer is of course racism . The strength of this depiction lies in the the abilities of Felicity Huffman, and in the storytelling that allows for the cohabitation of her motivations, objectives, and desires along with racism without absolution. Objective, and the selective being seen, being made visible. The first of these objectives is made clear when she finds she body, and subsequently when she doubles down after finding out the timeline doesn't match. As our into is being made this is a woman on the trail of justice, for the bodily, and psychological harm done to another woman. The other quality turned vice (ambition) is in previewed in a scene that declares her rivalry as a prosecutor with another woman. What can be easily implied from that scene alone are the stakes, for her career, what this win means for her outside the context of her prejudice and hate. The racism does not spring from these it meets with them, takes them out to dinner, connects with and then deploys them. When compared to Three Billboard’s Dixon, her arc is inverted. We see at the beginning that she has some semblance remaining humanity, but unlike Dixon the arc does not go upward to then redeem her, and politely sermonize its audience. As the series moves along her humanity is devolving, and the facade of decency crumbling. Fairstein, unlike Dixon is also not alone. She has dozens of people working in concert with her to put these children away. Soldiers in a war on black people and children, and the generational effect of this war is evident in characters like Bobby McCray played with crushing vulnerability by Michael K Williams in a gut wrenching scene between father and son.

Uploaded by SCENE Tv SERIES on 2019-05-31.

The complexity of the tangled web woven by racism trickles right down in the portrayal of even minor characters. Each and every character’s mistake is not simply in service to a plot, and if there is a plot the plot is racism. When they See Us has the facts of the case and yet it still doesn’t move its characters along like chess pieces towards a inevitable destination. Ava as a storyteller gives us the feeling they’re walking there all on their own. The antagonist in her story are not alone, they are legion. They do not simply act and behave as racist because the script tells them to, they have undergirding motives, which makes the racism all that much more real, thicker, heavier in a way that sticks to your bones. When District Attorney Elizabeth Lederer continues along with these convictions there is tension, there is anxiety, and subsequently choice. The purpose of showing Lederer’s tension about the decision in a lesser directors hands would’ve been either to exonerate her or to convict her in the minds of the audience. It is neither here in Ava hands, it is part of the moral complexity of the roles of Individual inaction, self delusion, ambition, and ultimately choice in a racist system. Thusly the overall point being made here is racism as something that eats away at humanity, and individually at our humanity, so that it cannot be eradicated simply by wagging a finger at the Fairstein’s of the world. Ava makes the most reasoned of arguments for either systemic reform or abolishment of the entire enterprise of prison and policing, not by presenting just the facts in a male oriented fashion , but by emotional straight talk that indicts the idea any of it involves reason or logic at all. Almost every decision both the pure and the corrupt , can be broken down to the emotional, and the personal, and thus acts as the driver for systemic. I just don’t think there are many folk behind the camera who could do with this what Ava did, and the ones who have are black (McQueen 12 years a Slave”, Rees “Mudbound”) so let’s take that in for a moment… and please by all means possible watch “When they see us”. It informs us , educates us, indicts others, holds us accountable, exhausts, and hurts us in its narrative integrity, and power.. all the ways in which racism should.

The Bridge on the River Kwai : The Struggle

I really f*** with "The Bridge on the River Kwai". It's this small (by small I mean intimate, and lean in focus) movie with large scope, and its breathtakingly well directed, acted and shot, but it's also a sweeping ode to the cartoonish idea of white superiority and western conservatism. It’s always a fight watching this film, because my one brain is saying what a masterpiece, how epic! This ode to inevitability in the face of the struggle for survival, and will. This performance by Sir Alec Guinness! The movie has several arcs and almost double the acts of most films (if you get technical) and yet it converges them so seamlessly into one sure footed story about futility - its a wonder of cinema. The other brain though, struggles throughout the movie. Beleaguered, and at times almost completely put off by its blatant racism under the guise of a message of the nature of men’s drives. How it conjures up the dream of white superiority with such ease, such effortlessness it almost as if it's a spell, or a dream.

I really fuck with "The Bridge on the River Kwai". It's this small movie with large scope, and its breathtakingly well directed, acted and shot, but it's also a sweeping ode to cartoonish white superiority and western conservatism. Its always a fight watching this film... pic.twitter.com/gGWBQj5Qoo

— I USED THE SAME SOAP YOU DID.. (@Blacknform) May 28, 2019

It is in scenes like this, and in its treatment of Japanese soldiers, and Colonel Saito, (an undignified role given such dignity by a blazing Sessue Hayakawa) that my love for the film becomes anchored in genuine disdain. A constant reminder of the way in which the perception of white as the absolute standard of civilization, humanity and excellence despite evidence to the almost the exact opposite, became a proverbial nail in the crucifixion of equality, and equity in storytelling and narrative in film . One of my goals in writing is to make a point to illuminate the difference in point of view from the perspective of someone who both actively loves these films , (and film in general) but also realizes the legacy and role of movies as a propaganda tool for the idealization of whiteness. To try and place in as much a proper context as I can the importance of how these kinds of narratives and their continued use in cinema and television helped to convince millions of their own imagined inferiority, and conversely the imagined superiority of whiteness is one of my two or so most important motivations to write about film. To shine a light on for instance in this film, the constant use of “these people”, and the underlying impotency of Saito’s character who only achieves some form of second hand admiration by way of defeat, and surrender. To make clear that if you watch this film from another angle its not a reach to say that Saito is a character who we are encouraged to find more pleasurable the more silent he becomes. That he is painted with a broad white brush as inept, that his men are inept, and that his intelligence, and abilities in command, and negotiation are suspect to begin with, and downright child-like in the presence of Guinness’s Nicholson. In short Saito is a paper tiger, and so too are the Japanese in this film.

The Bridge on the River Kwai movie clips: http://j.mp/1Jbb3Mk BUY THE MOVIE: http://amzn.to/vGi4iW Don't miss the HOTTEST NEW TRAILERS: http://bit.ly/1u2y6pr CLIP DESCRIPTION: Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) tries several bribery tactics to convince Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness) to order his officers to work on the construction of the bridge, but Nicholson will have none of it.

When in film school I was forced to watch “Birth of a Nation” and when the final credits rolled and the lights sifted back on slowly shaking me up from that nightmare of a film that made me physically ill - the virulent and crushingly offensive racism in the film was passed off as if it was an insert in a pamphlet about the greatness and importance of its technical contributions to film. I see no world where the advent of close ups and tracking shots trump inciting racial violence, reinvigorating the clan to any extent, or reinforcing stereotypes about blackness that still stand to this day. If anything the discussion around Griffith’s landmark film should discuss its contributions to film as an aside to the damage it did, and it’s narrative wickedness. David Lean’s “Bridge on the River Kwai” as well as his other epic “Lawrence of Arabia” are much less vile, and horrific examples of white supremacy in narrative , but they are examples, and as such the reverence for them should always be tempered by admonishment and acknowledgement of their harm. It makes them no less a feat of cinema, but its benefits are much more far reaching in helping the history of cinema, and its future become much more inclusive, and representative of reality, as well as dream.

The Good died Young in Game of Thrones.

I’ve had a running theory for the longest that If not empirically, at least visually there are a great deal of implications that people have been conditioned to be turned off, suspicious, and disapproving of extremely principled people. Our now very collective reactions to their avatars in film and television have a lot to say about that. My own personal belief is that, that doesn’t have to be. That it's an outgrowth of a systemic imbalance inherent in any system or populous that values profit, status, results, and most importantly power more than its people. Maybe no other show or film points a mirror in that direction more accurately or plainly than HBO’s Game of Thrones. The big themed, fantasy as political theater series allows fans to draw critical lines in the sand about their favorite characters (in much the same way as a soap opera). If you fancy paying attention to all the different theories, and analysis around said characters, it tends to give profound insight into various psychological phenomenon regarding perspective, and where many of us draw boundaries around the value of sticking to ones principles, and morality. People bond to characters they see portions of themselves in, and when their surrogate self is threatened with extinction, then the relative “goodness”; principles, humility, and ethics of said person(s) ( once revered qualities of said characters) become stupidity, naivety, and bitch-assedness.

The way we respond to art or entertainment is a combination of our perception of the art, the artist and ourselves. Whatever limitations (or lack of) to our understanding of the art, or perception of that art is in certain aspects directly related to the limitations of our own perception, the art, or those set in place by the artist. It is no easy task discerning which of these three is most responsible for a failing, or misfire of some art, when the failing itself is relative, but repetition does help. If a number of people claim the David Benoiff and D.B. Weiss version of the author George R.R. Martin’s most revered patriarch Ned Stark was too honest, then it’s at least interesting to ask why? Is this a projection or something encoded into the show? In the case of Game of Thrones both the show and seemingly the books (I haven’t read them) it’s in no small part due to the implied ramifications and values that the writers created within the context of choices Ned made.

Uploaded by Game Of Thrones on 2016-11-30.

Ned’s honor is brought up a great deal of times before and after his death in this regard, and the message is never the cruelty and treachery of those around him, but his own decency as a weight around his own neck, and it exemplifies the crux of my theory. My own personal problem with this is two fold; One, the natural conclusion is then that Ned should want to live more than he should want to be principled. After all, if you take for instance his choice to reveal to Cersei his awareness of her betrayal, and incest, it is not merely to be honest for honesty’s sake. He informs her because he knew exactly what Robert would do if he found out she and Jaimie’s secret while Cersei and all her kinfolk were still in the castle (and obviously see last video for precedent of Robert’s willingness). Making the ethical decision to not want the blood of children on your hands in not naivety, and If your position is that he should’ve kept the secret to himself, your position is also like Roberts.. “F*** them kids”. Considering, who at least one Lannister child turned out to be, and that they would all die anyway, this may not feel like too bad a consequence, but Ned having no way of knowing of Cersei’s tragic prophecy concerning her children it makes it no less troubling and unscrupulous a secret to hold. Ned unlike others, in this show filled to the brim with unconscionable people - held his honor more valuable than his life, it was a righteous decision, not a folly, and one rooted in his own distinct moral code.

Scene from Game of Thrones S01E09 - Baelor Varys comes to Lord Eddard Stark in the dungeons of the Red Keep, to urge him to confess his treason and keep the truth about Joffrey's birth a secret, so that peace may be held in the Seven Kingdoms. "You think my life is some precious thing to me?

This in my mind is my biggest grievance with writers and show-runners David Benoiff , and D.B. Weiss. Benoiff and Weiss, while effective storytellers, made clear a political leaning that anchored itself in the unimaginative ruminations of a libertarian philosopher like Jordan Peterson. The details of the “fantasy” world these men helped bring to life, aided to light their own biases. Ones which cede the highest nobility, intelligence, and worthiness to white men. The kind that acknowledges in rations that the world is a terrible place for the oppressed while tipping its hat to the power elite on their cunning. The kind that left nobles laughing off the idea of democracy, and fairness, giving vitality to the notions of white and male superiority by way of an elaborate game of three card monte that fraudulently implied the possibility maybe someone else, (in this case mostly white women) might be the clear victors, but ultimately circling back to conventional tropes. Pivoting between narrative guided by character and narratives guided by plot, it became increasingly clear a revolution was not to be televised. Game of Thrones could’ve been a show that imagined what a grass roots revolution offset by the death of a good man might look like in a world molded in the still yet to be realized oasis of fantasy. Female warrior dragon riders, black equestrian armies, and various peoples of color in major seats of power like Dorne challenging white supremacy. Instead it was privileged redundancy that feigned at creating fantasy while living plainly in the real world. Tossing proverbial half gnawed bones of acknowledgment of the racism, sexism, and rape culture they themselves unnecessarily created in a fantasy world as meaty commentary. Teasing us with the power and skilled finesse of Dornish warriors, male and female - only to unceremoniously dispatch them in a dungeon of whiteness. We were all deceived by a show who well before the pitfalls of this final season, seemed to be green-lighting rape and trauma underneath the show runners very precarious ideals. Which amounted to slight of hand subversions that ultimately led us back to the world as we know. Boxed into this particular form of ostentatious banality disguised as gritty narrative the audience had very little choice but to, view this “fantasy” from within the narrow margins of their privileged and reductive cynicism. Ultimately the shows great flaw was disingenuously presenting a fantastical world where hope for truly revolutionary ideas like the blind justice of consequence, black people and people of color flourishing under the winds of their own truly unique development, or women garnishing and brandishing power in ways men had never before seen, was the only fantasy.

http://www.gamesrave.com http://amzn.to/HsbXrf = Watch all of Season 1! http://amzn.to/I9MyPw - A Game of Thrones (A Song of Ice and Fire, Book 1) Cersei Lannister chastises Littlefinger (Lord Petyr Baelish) in Season 2 Episode 1 of Game Of Thrones. "Power is Power." she tells him. after being told that Knowledge is Power by Baelish.

Re-visisted D&D have then not created a fantasy but in fact hyperrealism constructed as fantasy. A mirror of our world featuring fantastic elements wherein which the lesson is that no good deed goes unpunished, not that the those in power and their endless machinations ruin a good thing. Ethics, morals, and values should be put aside for the sake of living , politicking, and making sure ones own house survives. I am suddenly reminded of a quote I read from a philosopher I hadn't heard of until then named Callicles who reportedly said "To hell with morality, this has been propounded by the weak to debilitate the power of the strong." Between the villainy of Game of Thrones, and the just, this was an oft repeated theme, and it was rarely effectively challenged in any way. Ned loses a head there, Sansa is raped, so is Dany who listens to Tyrion’s just and fair council and had havoc visited upon her head here, and Jon barely survives everywhere..

game of thrones, season 4, Episode 5 Jon Snow vs Karl Tanner, the Legend of Gin Alley

Having successfully gotten most of us to agree with this premise that the road to hell is not only paved with good intentions, but that good intentions are hell, we must and ask ourselves in essence "are we really about that life". Do we in fact like the values we commonly associate with good people, or do we like the idea of them in ice, without any actual functioning interaction with consequences,and away from our own internal and possibly competing agendas? Do we in fact, maybe a little despise these traits and the consistency of others who allow them to govern them? In real life even I wonder what is the effect on an oppressed population who have been repeatedly exposed to the deaths of ethically staunch and deeply coded folk like Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X? It's worth examining I think our collectively trauma over historical and current sociological crimes. Writers Benoiff and Weiss seem to have by happenstance fell upon creating a landmark television series that acts almost as a sociological litmus test for where our individual tolerance for goodwill and honor lie in a world that SEEMS to constantly berate, and harm us for it, because well …they berated and harmed the characters in theirs and Martin’s world for it. I want to put an emphasis on "seems" in my last sentence, because perspective and bias play large roles in our interpretation of the world and people around us. For example again the "ill fated" Stark decision. Instead of Game of Thrones posing a question, they chose creating a false equivalence between Ned's decision to be honorable, and his death. When in fact it's at least as possible Ned was always gonna die because leaders, and people with immense power wanted him dead. because his ethics, his decency was always a threat. Put another way from another medium of entertainment ..film - why get mad at Serpico for being an honest cop? Instead of the corrupt system that hated him for his honesty? We can look to history for some evidence of the inevitability of danger and harm in our own american history. When Malcolm X split from the nation of Islam over finding out his teacher and leader the “Honorable” Elijah Muhammed was at least morally a fraud, as was the kind of Islam he had fostered, he had actually kept secret the truth of paternal malfeasance that laid bare the truth to himself. yet that in no way guaranteed his survival, they still in fact wanted him dead.

In 1964, the rift between Malcolm X and Elijah Muhammed, founder of the Nation of Islam, would reach a tense peak. In a fiery interview, X revealed a scandalous secret about his one-time ally. From the Series: The Lost Tapes: Malcolm X http://bit.ly/2Dun05T

The danger in setting up and implying that anyone is too honest is that it puts the onus on the victim, (a righteous one worser still) not the people committing the harm. We begin to root for the beauty of power elite, and despise the homeliness of morality. The more you murder, rape, maim, anyone with any sense of a moral compass, while implying that the reasons for their death is directly related to that compass, the more the audience picks up on cues and begins to root for good people to get some sense and throw away some of that pesky virtue and morality. The same is true in the real as in one rooted (half- heartedly even) in fantasy. We thusly begin rooting not for Sansa's strength as a Stark woman , owing to her strong and ever loving mother nor her noble father, but as a Littlefinger acolyte?? For nearly the entirety of the show the series had an interesting intriguing theme of the randomness and inevitability of consequence that wanted so badly to live and breathe. Where who lived and died wasn't determined by audience favorites, mythological determinism, and the usual storytelling devices and tropes, but by small events, competing agendas, chance, and effect. For all his horrible crimes Joffrey's death was as inevitable in this world as Ned's and the actual opening for it was the death of Tywin, but in essence the seal was his marriage to the granddaughter of one Olenna Tyrell aka "The Wrong one". The hound almost died over a misunderstanding and per chance encounter with Brienne. This is the most important offering from the show, and yet the writers and show-runners seemed hell bent on convincing us of the more tired and banal theme of no good deed going unpunished, and the world as "all about cocks" and other such nonsense. This season the writers have Brienne say that Jaime lost his hand trying to save her honor, here again we have cocks and good deeds. But a better interpretation is that Jaime lost his hand because he was being smug, and more importantly because he was hated. His "Lannisterness" his money, his privilege, and his smarmy condescension along with it, put the final nails in his hand's coffin, not standing up for Brienne.

Jaime's attempt at trying to free Brienne and himself backfires spectacularly. Game of Thrones is an American medieval fantasy television series created for HBO by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Based on author George R. R. Martin's best-selling A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels.

This is important for obvious reasons, the most important being you dont end up with a moral of the story that goes "There's a price for doing good, in this case apprehending a rape" . “The world is what we make it” the saying goes, and one place we could start with is in the stories we tell. It's very hard to convince people of the value of morality, justice, virtue, and kindness, when at every turn in storytelling and narrative you try and convince others its directly related to suffering and pain. Worser still and more importantly that it has to be that way. Sometimes people pay for their crimes, sometimes they don't, sometimes taking an ethical stand is less than rewarding and mostly painful, sometimes, maybe most times in some way shape or form it's worth it. Jaime himself found this out, having the favor returned to him by Brienne in the early portion of the final season. Drawing and connecting these threads, whether by happenstance, or intent is where the writers, directors and Benoiff and Weiss were at their best, but at their worst they sold out on "Game of Thrones " as a cynical rote concept of power, and a cliff notes version of relational dynamics that created an audience who learned to root for oppression in the form of majesty, and bemoan the best of us and in us. Because what was created was a completely imagined world where good dies young, so too did the best possibilities for Game of Thrones. Making the promise Game of Thrones once showed of revolutionary television as empty as Daenerys’s own revolution. What Benoiff and Weiss practiced was narrative entrapment. Luring viewers into these two’s own limited conception of freedom, hope, and change to convict the audiences favorite characters, and in some ways indict their own values in the stead of the highest ideals in fantasy. They peddled a view so reductive, it began to limit the audience. A view best summed up as when you play the game of thrones you play to win, or you die. With that as its sort of mantra we were bound to be both disappointed, and beguiled. For me I’m left with one of my favorite quotes from Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown…

“”What the fuck happened to you man, shit your ass used to be beautiful”…”

What the Hell did I just Watch? : Showdown in LIttle Tokyo

I should’ve packed it in when Dolph Lundgren (Seargent Chris Kenner) after running out of bullets to miss people with, “Liu Kanged” over a whole ass Oldsmobile.

Nothing good could come from continuing on this venture. This movie had either peaked, or hit rock bottom, (I’m still unsure of which) and any further exploration was sure to unearth some long forgotten horror…But continue I did. “Little Shop of Horrors” ahem, excuse me, “Showdown in LIttle Tokyo” was a part of the 2nd wave of the Martial arts craze that included Jean Claude Van Damme, and Steven Seagal, and the beginning of Brandon Lee’s career (that thankfully got better from here) it starred Dolph Lundgren when it should’ve starred Lee, and based on my love for all things martial arts, and Lee’s namesake alone I bought this movie on tape when I was a teen.

I should go back in time and whoop my ass.

Nostalgia is a helluva drug, and having not seen this movie since my teens, I was excited to press play on the DVR once I recorded it. I was um….See what I would say is…..What’s really interesting here is…Sometimes…You know?…Look, the movie is a steroid induced fever-dream where Dolph Lundgren is a one man yakuza task force with complete autonomy to do just about anything he wants because? His partner Johnny Murata (Brandon Lee) is ..well..um…see what I would say is…What’s really interesting here is…Sometimes…You know?…Look, he’s now Japanese instead of Chinese (Lee’s actual heritage) so that he can learn about his own culture from Sensei Sergeant Chris Kenner (Lundgren). It’s a buddy cop film , but its on speed so they initially don’t like each other for about t-minus five seconds until orientalist cliche’s bond them together in a relationship built on condescension, repressed homoeroticism, misogyny, paternalism and jokes from the inside of a laffy taffy wrapper.

A quote from the movie "Showdown in Little Tokyo". Brandon Lee changes his opinion about raw fish

If this movie was about black gangs instead of the Yakuza mob I have no doubt this scene would consist of N****’s eating fried chicken around a stripper pole. Thats’ how they understood culture in movies like this. Then there’s the Dolph Lundgren’s Rising Sun jacket that he wears every where because it was obviously half of the movie’s budget, and because the movie never wants you to forget Chris Kenner is in fact Japan. Like he is the country of Japan all by himself. If you want to visit Japan just go hang out with Chris, you’re there. Besides culture master Kenner, there is Seppuku, and Yubitsume (the cutting off of fingers as atonement), and beheadings, (always used prominently as a way of othering other cultures as savage) as well as Kenner’s custom built house of dojoness (an expensive undertaking whose affordability on a cops salary is never explained like most things involving everything in this epic white male fantasy movie). Lee for all of his martial art skill and inherent charm is drained of almost any of it here. The grossly sexist script, sees to it his charm is turned into douchery , and the scripts racist, and condescending white supremacy made it so I’m not sure one couldn’t prove it’s entirely plausible that Lee’s “Murata” is in actuality a figment of Kenner’s imagination, meant to massage his own ego by telling him things like “You have the biggest d**k I’ve ever seen on a man”. Yes that really happens…

From the cult classic "Showdown In Little Tokyo." Brilliantly odd.

We have no idea what Lee does when Lundgren’s Kenner is not around, though judging by the way he talks that might be for the best. No idea what he truly stands for, or of what his identity is outside of being a cop or an accomplished martial-artist. As proof of the writers former jobs as unheralded Hade’s minions Oblivious, and Obscene, they have the line in the script where Murata explains that his Japanese mother made him take martial arts so that he could identify with some aspect of his culture…

When Showdown wasn’t happily travailing in orientalism, and misogyny, it was just being flat out right ridiculous. This film would have worked significantly better as a comedy satire of the excess of american exceptionalism in film. Instead it takes serious scenes where people break their own necks, and where Dolph Lundgren picks up whole cars to use as shields, and backs himself out of a window with the same effort he’d put into walking into a room with an open door…

Showdown in Little Tokyo - A Fully Loaded Savior: Sgt. Kenner (Dolph Lundgren) fights his way into crime lord Yoshida's home to stop Minako Okeya (Tia Carrere) from commiting suicide. BUY THE MOVIE: https://www.fandangonow.com/details/movie/showdown-in-little-tokyo-1991/1MVe02ce3af44069603e6aca68e585764ea?cmp=Movieclips_YT_Description Watch the best Showdown in Little Tokyo scenes & clips: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZbXA4lyCtqobR57g5MPDe9Fns7HCtXbD FILM DESCRIPTION: An American with a Japanese upbringing, Chris Kenner (Dolph Lundgren) is a police officer assigned to the Little Tokyo section of Los Angeles.

I guess even glass was like “My guy that’s Dolph Lundgren, do yourself a favor and BREAK!!”

Showdown in Little Tokyo serves as a wonderful/exacerbating ( I still can’t decide because again..Nostalgia is a helluva drug) tasteless reminder of the fact that no film is apolitical. They are always at the behest of some master(s) and are subject to the master(s) worldview. Even for action movies of the time, this movie is out of pocket, and pumped up on its own drugs of choice, making one narratively irrational choice after another, forgetting plot points, and practically yelling racial epitaphs while claiming it’s actually in love with Japanese culture, but that’s not to say it was alone in this. It’s one of many great examples of just how in love over time whiteness has been with itself, and how long movies served as propaganda in lieu of proof of white superiority. You want to know why people were so incensed at a white man teaching a black man how to eat fried chicken in that “The Coloring book” movie, (a stereotype whites themselves created, because just about everyone loves fried chicken) watch Showdown have its white lead explain the most basic “back of a cereal box” aspects of Japanese culture to a cartoonishly ignorant Johnny Murata, and then at the end of it all have Galactus Drago climb all the way into full on Japanese garb to kick Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa’s ass, cheered on by new girlfriend Tia Carere playing “new girlfriend Tia Carrere”. Okay she has a name but it might as well have been “new girlfriend Tia Carrere”. After getting baby oil all over the very talented, and very much so wasted Tagawa in the midst of their Mortal Kombat (baby oil was the other half of this budget , everyone else was clearly working for coupons from the local Safeway) Lundgren turns to the camera where it is revealed we are now in He-man the movie, and it all makes sense. End credits read…”Now who’s the master?!” ….or at least they might as well have.

Let's See it Again: Sidney Poitier Created a Successful Black Film that Stumbled into doing it Right

Four years deep into the "Blaxploitation" era of Hollywood, Sidney Poitier having conquered as Hollywood's most recognizable black presence sought to make a series of films that would stand apart from the general  themes of the genre. He succeeded and Uptown  Saturday  Night would be the first of what would become a pretty impressive trilogy of action comedy films featuring  both he and Bill Cosby as a pair of modern day Robin hoods of sorts. But it's the sequel to Uptown Saturday Night, "Lets Do it Again" that most deserves to be highlighted as a film.  It's  tighter, funnier, (thanks to some stand out performances ) And it allowed Poitier  to employ himself in a fashion Hollywood had rarely afforded him. A less serious version of himself, to some surprisingly  funny results. The story goes that in trying to find money to help pay for a building that houses a sort of African American lodge/community center, Sidney Poitier (Clyde Williams) and Bill Cosby  ( Billy Foster)  try and rig a boxing match using Clyde's skill as a hypnotist. Trouble ensues from the fact that they are ripping off known gangsters (John Amos, Calvin Lockhart  as Kansas City "Mack" and "Biggie Smalls")   in the middle of a turf war. The film was almost a wholly  black endeavor  written, starring and directed by African  Americans, and the quality is markedly  higher than the normal fare of the time aimed at black audiences. Boosted by (As was par the course for the films of the era ) a companion song that became wildly more well known than its film, and what should've been star turning performances  by the criminally underrated cast. But I believe the principle significance of Let’s Do it Again, is its sense of community both from with and without the margins of the film, as well as its distinctive blockbuster qualities, and its hodgepodge of politics set apart from its siblings in the blaxploitation era.

Community was not a theme common amongst blaxploitation despite the fact that our communities were obviously represented. Thematically films most commonly associated with the era were about loners, rebels,and outlaws. Seeing the people most often depicted as the dregs of even our neighborhoods centered and repackaged as heroes, their sexuality open, and their agency free was revolutionary, but the characters themselves were not revolutionaries. It’s not hard to draw a line between the individualistic politics of some of these on screen personas, and the young black children they influenced at least up to two decades later who would go on to become hip hop’s most prominent artist as can be noted by their constant references in the culture . But Poitier’s “Let’s Do it “Again does not center gangsters, or pimps, or the like though gangsters are in orbit around the central characters. Its central premise is two working class black men trying to help a community center by out hustling the very kind of gangsters at the heart of most blaxploitation, and yet writer Richard Wesley’s script neither glorifies or vilifies gangsterdom, it simply exists. Poitier’s direction highlighted a great deal of the interaction between not only the burgeoning black middle class and the streets , but between the evolving nature of the hustlers as it comes more and more to resemble the politics, and conflicts of the day, cemented in a clash that goes on between the two rival mobs during a sparring session for the boxer at the center of the big hustle “Bootney Farnsworth” (Jimmy Walker)..

(Biggie Smalls) Lockhart and Amos (Kansas City Mac) have it out Old School 70s style!

This particular clash in some ways exemplifies the issues at the core of the film, and parallels the issues on the heart of its director and star Sidney Poitier. Poitier had come under fire from some in the black community from being far too distant from the mindset, and the values of the black community of the time. The respectability politics in both his career, (and on the occasions he spoke politically) felt dated and conservative. The film seems at least in part to be an answer to those questions. It’s Poitier injecting his own politics into the common themes of not only blaxploitation films but black people of the day. Poitier and writer Richard Wesley pronounce and emphasize community throughout the film whether through the lodge or the hustlers, and it lives outside of the films plot in the sense of community between the actors, actors who had very few opportunities to work outside the borders of black filmmaking. As a result, Poitier’s film is a jumble of politics. It has nothing to say about white people and in fact their run ins brief though they may be with the cops are uneventful, and it is the police who help them in the end. It features homophobic slurs, repeatedly exhibits a raunchy male gaze, but outside of Foxy Brown, Cleopatra Jones, and a few others it gives its women (Denise Nicholas, Lee Chamberlain, Talya Ferro) more time and dignity than any other film released during that time. It’s clearly respectable , but the comedic elements, and the writing allows for the co-existence of less reductive forms of black expression. This was in part the point of Cosby’s hiring ( who funny enough at this time was much more in step with the politics of the time )…

Bill Cosby education children black youth

Cosby himself would obviously later become a purveyor of respectability politics himself as well as a vile predator, (but that is another story) his character in the film as well as his wife are portrayed as the opposite of Poitier and his wife. They talk openly of their sex life, and Billy is much more willing than Clyde to dabble in the streets. His presence makes Poitier the straight man in more ways than one, even while Poitier tries to expand his dimensions beyond his common perception to the audience. Poitier’s Clyde, and Cosby’s Billy are not the only intersection and culture clash in the film. If you look at not only the attire but the make-up of these clashing crews its representative of a number of cultural rifts. Kansas City Mack’s crew is entirely black, entirely male, and their dress is conservative, but their behavior, mannerisms, and vernacular is anything but. Biggie Small’s crew is the complete opposite. Their style is loud, full of statement, and a woman serves as his right hand man, but there is bit of refinement to their behavior, and Smalls and his crew are much more articulate, thus the designation of “College Clowns” by Mack. But again the differences here are merely demonstrated to reflect, the ultimate judgement, and subsequently the perception of these hustlers lies not in the interaction between them, but in the resolution of the plot. While most blaxploitation films were concerned with the “man” systemic injustice and white people, Let’s Do it again is intra -communal. The pariah exists not from without but within and if there is judgement and condescension in the film it lies here. It is here that one of the most persistent themes of respectability politics makes itself clear, black peoples problems are not outside the community but within.

Classic scene from "Let's Do It Again" (1975).... http://www.blaxploitationpride.org/ https://www.facebook.com/pages/Blaxploitation-Pride/116353578381580 https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/108732895410564664497/+BlaxploitationprideOrg70s/posts

I think its worth noting that the last statement is implicit in the script but not loudly so. Regardless of our intent our latent feelings, and philosophies come through and materialize in our art. That being said Let’s Do It again is not overtly demeaning of any section of the black community, and its qualities outweigh its political shortcomings. If the Blaxploitation era is put into a vacuum as a somewhat self reliant industry then films like “Cornbread earl and me”,and “Coolie High” were its independent films, “Blacula”, “Three the Hard way”, and the like its wide releases, and “Shaft”, “Foxy Brown”, and “Lets Do it Again” its blockbusters. The difference in production value in Poitier’s comedy from other films of the day is well…night and day even while having a smaller budget. A testament to the drawing power and connections of Sidney Poitier’s involvement, the Costume design, set design, casting , and of course by extension acting are exceptional. Even as a comedy, Lets Do it Again is the best collection of black talent in the era. Poitier and Cosby were obviously heavy hitters, but they are not the best actors in the film by a long shot. That distinction belongs to John Amos, and Calvin Lockhart who absolutely steal this movie from their more well known counterparts. As Kansas City Mack, Amos is big, and boisterous, there is a rhythm to his line delivery, and an underlying spite to his inflection and manner that informs the audience where Mack is from, and why he is so intent on staying in power. Lockhart in a bit of perfect casting carries the natural refinement and confidence needed for his character. He also carries the character in a way that informs the audience of who he is, and juts how ambitious he is. He has two scenes with Poitier where its hard to tell who is the better actor. There was a regal quality to Lockhart that could express itself in multiple forms, here it is deployed as a way to express the desire for Smalls to look as big as he saw himself. Lockhart gives him a similar dignity, and poise as Poitier was known for, and given the opportunity it’s not hard to imagine him having been on the level of a Poitier.

Let's do it again set itself apart from the blaxploitation era by deviation from the formulaic plot devices and usual suspects of criminality, in what by this time had amounted to glorification, and exploitation  of the despair, and bleek realities of black life.  Depicting troublesome aspects of black life in the inner city as heroic, and injecting fantasies  of microcosms of revolution against white supremacy by anti heroes who in  real life would in all likelihood likely to end up in jail or dead .  Let's Do It Again was an indie film modeled after the blockbuster and in the image of films like "The Sting" and "Oceans 11".  A slightly underdressed  heist film that works as both a comedy and an action film,  with  two leads who displayed an uncommon chemistry that gave black audiences their very own Redford/Newman.   Brewing a unique brand of buddy comedy,  (the master thespian and master comedian)  that would later be recreated to wild success in Walter Hill's  48 Hours .  The streamlined writing, colorful improvisation (both behind and in front of the camera), and a litany of talent conspired to create a film as memorable to those who have seen it as its zany characters.  A rare "exploitation" film that doesn't do much exploiting,  and allows itself to have fun at the expense of no one,  but it's own creations. It is not that it’s revolutionary in any sense of character, or overt politics,( because in fact those are all over the place) it’s in its revolutionary blackness without being about blackness. Its a blockbuster black action-comedy independent of much of white gaze in much the same way Boomerang , was and very few comedies made on such a scale have been since. It is a film that is a must see in any library  or collection of film not so much because it is a great film (though it is one of the great comedies of its era) but because  it is a great example and indeed one of the earliest examples of black solidarity, creativity, growth, and skill in film making. And equally as important an unapologetically black film, directed by one of america’s greatest actors, centering black working class people, that only mildly condescends, and doesn’t preach.  And THAT is worth "doing" again and again.

Mo' Better Blues : The Blues of Blaxploitation

"Mo' Better  Blues" ,  underrated  but acclaimed director  Spike Lee's  fourth  film, is both a confident personal ode to the art of jazz and  it's roots  in the African  American  experience, and a personal portrait of the artist and his struggle with mainstream  acceptance. But wait , I said underrated, and I want to expound upon and qualify that statement, even though I really shouldn’t have to. Starting with the fact that I believe that every black director that ever existed is in some way underrated, and definitely those who have arrived to the point that their films received any widespread recognition and/or acclaim. Blackness is in and of itself in America “otherness”, and so too are black achievements. There is no space where black achievement or experience doesn’t live in and unto its own in America, and Hollywood is no outlier here. In fact they’ve been a willing accomplice, through propaganda, and discrimination. This inherent loneliness of blackness in America, is not without its merits, separation can be a great muse for creation, and the need to create, the necessity - the mother of invention, and we all know black people have created, and invented quite a lot here in the wilderness. But any isolation one cannot choose to depart or return from is confinement, it is a prison. Like all prisons, this prison restricts movement, and constricts the soul and in the case of the artist a great deal of things but none with a more insidious effect on the soul than the limitation and restriction of audience, bias, and imposed inferiority. The artist longs for an audience, and beyond the audience, recognition, art for art’s sake is romantic , but mostly a reaction to commercialization and exploitation. It is important here because there is a connection, because Lee’s Film is largely about the struggle of the central character (Bleek Gilliam as played by Denzel Washington) with obsession, and possession. Whether conscious or unconscious, Bleek’s own frustration with this isolation materializes in a drunken conversation between our two main protagonist, Bleek and the other Alpha in the band “Shadow” (Wesley Snipes). In essence Bleek’s argument is born of an obsession with/of possession, (who owns Jazz) and of audience, (who sees it, curates it). Shadow on the other hand exposes Bleek’s own hypocrisy calling out Bleek’s own exploitative actions, as well as his obsession with possession. Bleek rigidly defines the boundaries of the art refusing it and anyone around him any room, any air, any growth. In a way Bleek has become institutionalized. He understands his art only from within the walls of his isolation…

“Bleek: But the jazz, you know if we had to dep… if we had to depend upon black people to eat, we would starve to death! I mean, you’ve been out there, you’re on the bandstand, you look out into the audience, what do you see? You see Japanese, you see, you see West Germans, you see, you know, Slabobic, anything except our people - it makes no sense. It incenses me that our own people don’t realize our own heritage, our own culture, this is our music, man!
Shadow: THAT’S BULLSHIT!
Bleek: Why?
Shadow: [slurred] It’s all bullsh… Everything, everything you just said is bullshit. Out of all the people in the world, you never gave anybody else, and look, I love you like a step-brother, but you never gave nobody else a chance t- to play their own music, you complain about… That’s right, the people don’t come because you grandiose motherfuckers don’t play shit that they like. If you played the shit that they like, then people would come, simple as that.”

Its important to state here that Bleek’s institutionalization, his obsession, even his willingness to exploit his comrades, is a result of an institution, the result of his own exploitation by this institution. The argument betrays an irritation, a dissatisfaction with not only the audience, but exploitation. The first line of dialogue explores an underlying fear, beyond Bleek’s insistence on a puritanical view of jazz. “If we had to depend” implies latently a fear of the hypothetical. Drawn out from there, this hypothetical belies the source, fear of exploitation. Something Bleek and his band already suffer from. The Flatbush Brothers (John and Nicholas Turturro) prey on Giant and Bleek, who in turn prey on their band. The artist wants an audience, but they also want recognition, recognition as a form of both an expressed, and financial acknowledgment for what it is their art does for the club, for what it does for the Flatbush brothers, for what it does for Bleek, and it is in that way Mo’ Better Blues is a stand-in for the plight of the African American artist in America. Where the isolation of the “other” leaves them vulnerable to predators of all sorts, and their own insecurities, narcissism, and ambition betray their own integrity, and their own people.

Interestingly enough the themes of possession and exploitation extend beyond just the band, and the artist and beyond even the borders of the film, to the women of “Mo’ Better Blues”. There's a predictable, but charming love story between protagonist “Bleek Gilliam” and two women (Indigo  and Clark  played by Joi  Lee, and Cynda Williams), but they too are limited by both Bleek’s misogynoir, and the script.  They have no interiority,  little to no agency,  and we mostly only see them through the lens of Bleek Gilliam which impedes upon the success of the tension in the triangle, and the success of the subplot. As Bleek suffers from inside his prison, the women are only granted limited access to him, and them limited access to us. They show up for what amount to conjugal visits, and they are gone, with little or few defining moments , but what they themselves (the actresses) make of it. Bleek treats them as distractions as he exploits not their art, but their bodies, their time, and their love, and the film treats them as more of a distraction from the central story, rather than integral to it. We only become aware of their agency, their interiority (especially in the case of Cynda William’s Clark) as Bleek becomes aware of it. What Clark, or Indigo do while away from Bleek is a mystery save for exposition, until both demand their respect from Bleek in much the same way Bleek and his band mates have demanded respect from their exploiters.

As a Jazz ode this “Mo’ Better Blues” is smooth, confident,  and struggling  to find its way much like it's protagonist Bleek Gilliam.  Lee's direction in collaboration with Bill Lee's score provide a soulful historical subtext around the art of jazz (by then almost lost to an African American audience). His script functions much like jazz itself - mindful interpretation, and mastered craftsmanship,  interrupted by moments of furious improvisation.  While others decried the latter,  I find the improvisation to be some of the most charming portions of the film.   And the lighting,  costuming, and again Bill Lee's score rank among the best in Spike Lee's illustrious filmography. But the greatest achievement of Mo Better Blues, is its portrayal of a black artist, who struggles to break free from the confinement of exploitation, of isolation, and of possession. And so the greatest achievement of Mo” Better Blues is providing a cinematic parallel for the struggle of black achievement in this America. Our first fight as black artist in america was just to be allowed to create, second to have an audience, the third to be recognized, to be seen as equal to, not as axiomatically inferior, while profiting off our innovation, and ingenious. It is the blues of the many a black artist, the blues of our women, and of many marginalized groups in America, and it only gets better with time.

The Inkwell: That One Summer Spent with Just Us.

When I think about the 1995 film "The Inkwell"   I often think about my own adolescent years, and wonder just how important it was to my own growth,  and evolution that I saw a unique “Coming of age” film which featured an entirely black cast,  in the midst of a new black Hollywood Renaissance in the 90's .  That I saw the portrayal of a sweet,  awkward,  lonely young African American boy on a journey of self discovery where nobody dies,  and the worst possible tragedy is the looming possibility of divorce….

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The Inkwell is one of those movies I fight for passionately because it is  underrated,  tender,  and a warm, meandering portrait of an aspect of black life that like Eve's Bayou, (Though not as well executed) examines - from a uniquely black perspective - (a still a highly uncommon sight)  a segment of black culture rarely covered... The black upper middle class.  A film I love watching because the film loves it's characters. These films love their settings, the clothing from their respective periods, and the time and space they occupy.   Both “The Inkwell”, and “Eve’s Bayou” feel like love letters to the periods in which they take place,  and the ways in which black people resolved themselves to make something of their own both in the era in which the movies take place,  and in creation of the art,  and the storytellers who decided these stories were the ones they wanted to tell.  On a couple of small bits of beautiful land, a kind of vacuum of upward black mobility took place all over parts of this country,  creating white flight,  that left these black people with something to call their own.  A space where they could be safe to grow their fortunes and their children adjacent though not necessarily out from under the watchful gaze and influence of white supremacy.  And this tone extends to the viewing experience in both films.

Watching The Inkwell invokes the same type of feeling as that first warm ray of sunlight on your face out from the shade of a tree. There is an ease that pervades the viewing experience and that has a lot to do with director Matty Rich's soft touch behind the camera, Ceci’s costume design, and Terence Blanchard’s score.  Even more than that it feels like a reminder, of simpler times. If at times the movie feels like an extended sitcom, I believe that is a part of its charm. Rich's first feature film "Straight outta Brooklyn" was rougher in almost every single way, from its gritty setting in the inner cities of New York,  to its frank depiction of aimless black youth and minimal production value.  Earnest, and compelling, “Straight Out of Brooklyn” covered similar though not altogether the same ground as the films that would come out that same year and subsequently, like Boyz in the Hood,  and Menace to Society. But “The Inkwell” represented an almost complete pivot, and yet the roughness, the feeling of something that doesn’t aim for perfection is still there.  The Inkwell is warm,  and touching,  sensitive,  and funny.  The production value is represented not in sleek camera angles and upscale violence,  but in outstanding costume design and attention to the details of the era.  It veers off the beaten path and the results aren’t always great, but they are almost always interesting. I remember reading reviews that said the film dragged, and from a technical aspect I see that, but from my heart I found even those uneven spots, like those between a game Morris Chestnut, and A.J. Johnson as a couple teetering on divorce themselves due to Chestnut’s philandering ways, and between Drew’s own parents, and Brenda’s family - (especially a scene involving a tennis match that goes wrong) incredibly endearing or humorous. This film to borrow a phrase from Jim Kelly’s Williams in “Enter the Dragon” is just too busy looking good to be bothered with its defeats. It not only looks good , it feels good, and it feels good because of the love put in it, which permeates every aspect from cinematography to the casting and by extension the performances.  Watching these sterling,  delightful,  vibrant performances from actors whose opportunities to inhabit characters such as these were few and far between was, and is a joy unto itself that pays off in different ways every time I watch.   Joe Morton's bristles with his patent expository anger as a lost revolutionary who had been left behind in a movement that no longer has the same motor.  Suzanne Douglas's  Brenda, a woman unseen and under acknowledged by her mother,  her sister,  and of course her husband is an anchor to the films heart, as such Douglas brings a toughness similar to that of a reed in the wind. The actress has a similar skill-set to Angela Bassett, and like most of this cast was criminally under used in her career.  Larenz Tate heartwarmingly embodies a young black male trying to find his place in a world where he doesn't identify with the ready made pockets of existence that  exists for black people and in this case black men.  Tate made quite the pivot here as an actor himself,   showing off an impressive range coming from his explosive,  and menacing role as O-Dawg in Menace to Society.  Everything from his gait,  to his beats in delivery morphs to code the audience to the vast chasm between experience that exist between the two characters.  Turning that same kinetic energy on its head from terror to endearment….

At Inkwell Beach, summer's never been so much fun! It's a time and a place where cool clothes, hot music, and good friends turn a dull family trip into the summertime vacation of a lifetime! Critics everywhere praised THE INKWELL -- the hot comedy treat that delivers outrageous summertime fun and good time entertainment, all set to an irresistible soundtrack!

But Tate is not alone, from Jada Pinkett's broken ballerina to Glynn Turman's scene stealing pompous, indignant, black Republican ,  or Vanessa Bell Calloway as Brenda's buoyant,  but sometimes mean spirited sister, the actors turned in performances that in collusion with Matty Rich's direction,  and Trey Ellis (who later distanced himself from the project due to creative differences) and Paris Qualles script romanticize-  in both the best and worst ways possible-  a time,  and segment of black life in America.    I could go on a diatribe about each one of these actors at length.  All black actors whose careers we're never as full and consistent as their talent and dedication demanded.  Gathered here to tell a story centered around a people whose story has never been as fully and consistently told as its humanity and dedication demanded. The actors are allowed free reign, as Rich himself allows for scenes and camera work that feels alot more like extemporization, than preparation, even when sometimes some reigning in might've helped.  The many subplots are mostly underdeveloped and resolved in the same way you might find in a popular sitcom,  but the power of the movie is not in its technical proficiency,  or scope,  or its use of language.  It's in the story that's being told,  who it's being told about,  and the love with which it's being told. It's in Terence Blanchard's score which feels like the musical version of a comforting talk with a parent.   Or the costume design, and its appreciation for the multi-faceted nature of black hair, without condescension, and our dress without the superficiality of blatant appeals to nostalgia.  This isn't always a recipe for success,  but in the case of stories you've never been introduced to before this is often enough.  The Inkwell is a lot like a summer vacation, in that it feels too short, and full of missed opportunities,  but it also feels freeing,  and refreshing,  and is usually always remembered fondly in the leaving.   The Inkwell was and is also a vacation from the dominance of whiteness in the domain of film.   A vacation from the implicit denial of the importance of black contributions to the Americana.  A vacation away from the implicit characterizations of black men as inherently dangerous,  and menacing,  and of black women as laborious nannies. It was a vacation from Hollywood’s myopic focus on black long-suffering. It took me back to weekends over my cousins house thinking of nothing but swimming pools, girls, and staying up late.  Drew’s awkwardness is lingered on , but not punitively. A message so many black men who refuse to let go of their own ungraceful youth won’t stop doing to themselves. It doesn’t vilify or demonize Jada Pinkett’s young Lauren, it empathizes and understands her, as so many black men refuse to do with the young women of their past. There is no scene where Drew gets back at her, or a scene where she realizes what she’s missing out on, (a wish fulfillment fantasy of so many boys growing up and as grown ups) because the vital portion of Drew’s coming of age is learning how to cope properly with heartache, and disappointment rather than “Burning his own house down”. This learning curve is aided by a subplot where Drew - a young black male attends therapy, at the urging of his Aunt, and Mother. And that Therapy is rooted in black tradition, and spirituality. The resulting scenes between he and the therapist (Phyllis Yvonne Stickney as Dr. Wade) are so tender, so indelibly sweet, I tear up at the mere conjuring of them in my mind. Its a message, so poignant and unique I still have not seen the like in black film and it was worlds apart from its cinematic peers of the time.

The Inkwell is as Roger Ebert once put it, (in one of the few good reviews it received) "An innocent comic fantasy". The only shame of it being that these types of fantasies be they for women,  or other  groups within the wide spectrum of marginalization- are some near 25 years later still being told so sparingly. Which I think adds to the fond warmth and glow of the inkwell all these years later. It is black film about us, for us, that speaks to us and not at us. A film that opened up the dark room of black cinema at the time and allowed some light in. Allowing us to forget for a couple of hours the violent and oppressive abuse of inner city life under white hegemonic structures, and remember beaches, sunlight, hormones, and Marvin Gaye. Places where we created with our own loving hands a haven for ourselves. In the winter of black life in America for me, cinematically “The Inkwell” was about an escape. A summer spent with just us.