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Posts Tagged With ‘ samuel l jackson ’

 

Fight the Power

June 7th, 2020

Why did Mookie throw the trash can? You can see the crowd watching the murder of Radio Raheem at the hands of white cops, their shared looks of horror. Mookie shares the same look, then runs his hands down his face. He’s come to a decision. With deliberate purpose, he walks to a battered trash can, tosses away the lid and the garbage, then lifts up the can.  You can see Mookie break into a run and heave the trash can. It smashes through the window of Sal’s Famous Pizzeria. The look on his face isn’t one of triumph or exultation. It’s exhaustion. 1989 was the year that put Spike Lee on... Read More

Does Whatever A Sequel Can

July 7th, 2019

This review will thoroughly spoil Avengers: Endgame. Proceed at your own risk.  Stan Lee used to talk about “the illusion of change.” It was a concept they used at Marvel Comics, and I imagine it’s still in use today. If you’re a comic book writer for one of the major publishers, you have a very fine line to walk. You need to make it seem as if the life of your character is changing, but have them remain essentially the same. For example, Peter Parker starts off as a geeky high school kid. He has trouble dating. He never has quite enough money to do much of anything. While big-time superheroes... Read More

Higher, Further, Faster

March 10th, 2019

Representation matters. It’s just as important to see some facsimile of yourself at age seven as it is at age 77. It’s a way of shaping your identity, a way of telling the world that you matter. Done right, representation can show you a higher path and provide you with a way to be better. As a kid, my morals were shaped more powerfully and acutely by comics than they ever were by church.* Spider-Man taught me doing the right thing can suck. It can be lonely and painful, but it’s no less the right thing to do. Superman taught me that consideration for others makes the world not only a better... Read More

A Million Shattered Pieces

January 20th, 2019

Movies aren’t for everyone, though people think they are. A bunch of years ago, my wife and I caught the very good film Adaptation in the theaters. If it’s been a minute since you’ve seen or thought about it, Adaptation is about a lonely screenwriter struggling to adapt a book about an orchid thief. It’s got strong performances by Nicolas Cage and Meryl Streep, and a great deal to say about the creative process. Joining us in our cinematic excursion was an Unnamed Member Of Our Extended Family. He’s a great guy, but the film tastes of the aforementioned UMOOEF, as he will be known going... Read More

Superhero Fatigue? Pshaw!

June 17th, 2018
Incredibles 2

I’ve seen Avengers: Infinity War three times. While the fandom of some folks leans toward Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, or Star Wars, I’ve always been a Marvel Zombie. As a small child, I partially learned to read from the comics, and the characters helped me develop what passes for a moral code. But there’s one thing that’s nagged at me ever since Iron Man was released — do these films absolutely have to be live action? Consider the aforementioned Infinity War. According to the Wall Street Journal, the most recent installment in the Marvel Cinematic Universe had a production budget... Read More

The Perfect Laundry Movie

August 27th, 2017

I know, I owe you an explanation. A laundry movie is a film that you can see in the theater, though you probably shouldn’t. Instead, it’s a film that plays in the background while you’re folding laundry, making out, checking social media, or doing essentially anything else. You can check out for a while, but upon hearing a quip or an explosion, your attention can return to the screen and you can easily pick the thread of the story back up. As long as there has been Hollywood, there have been laundry movies. Nobody means to make a laundry movie, it just kinda happens sometimes.... Read More

All Hail the King

March 12th, 2017

Sometimes a giant ape is just a giant ape. Sometimes not. If you’re a filmmaker, the trick to making a memorable creature feature is to make sure your message doesn’t overwhelm your entertainment value. Yes, you can read 1933’s King Kong as a screed about the racist fear of black sexuality. Yes, you can also read 1954’s Godzilla as Japan grappling with their anxiety over nuclear power. But you can also read those two movies as being about: A giant gorilla killing people and wrecking stuff. An atomic lizard killing people and wrecking stuff. Hey, if you’re looking... Read More

All Your Buried Corpses are Now Beginning to Speak

February 5th, 2017

It’s entirely unsurprising that the first casualty of the Revolutionary War was a black man. That would be Crispus Attucks. There is considerable disagreement by historians about his early life, but there’s one thing everybody agrees with. During the evening of March 5, 1770, a disagreement broke out in Boston, regarding the failure of a British officer to pay a barber’s bill. Tensions were running high, and a crowd of civilians starting pelting a company of Redcoats with snowballs. Some witnesses said that Attucks attacked a soldier with a piece of wood, while others claimed... Read More

Nobody Gets Away Clean

January 3rd, 2016

If you’re an aspiring or practicing writer of fiction, there’s one rule you’ve most likely had drilled into your head. You’ll frequently hear this from creative writing instructors and hacky screenwriting books. Your protagonist, or hero, must be likable, in order for the audience to relate to them. This is wrong. The fact is, your protagonist needs to be interesting. That’s it. Robert De Niro’s Jake La Motta in Raging Bull is a roiling sea of violence and sexual confusion. Leonardo DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort in The Wolf Of Wall Street is totally consumed by... Read More

Welcome To The Bullet Ballet

December 6th, 2015

The last day of Tyshawn Lee’s life was November 2, a little over a month ago. His father was a gang member, and he was involved in a beef with a rival gang. It’s unclear to what extent Tyshawn understood this. Odds are, he just cared about the regular things kids care about, like basketball. He was 9 years old. On November 2 of this year, Tyshawn left the home of his grandmother, in broad daylight, and was on the way to a park down the street to shoot some hoops. He was lured into an alley by gang bangers and, in retaliation for a shooting by his father’s gang, he was murdered.... Read More