Tuesday, September 26, 2006

Movies I've Seen in the Past two months

Watched:

- Sucker Free City - Spike Lee's best work in the past 7 or so years has been when he's directing something he didn't write. This is really good movie about the interplay of class and race in Hunter's Point in San Francisco. There are some really great performances. This was also the beginning of my crush on Anthony Mackie. I love being shallow.

- Fall of Fujimora - On PBS I watched this documentary about, well, the fall of Fujimora, Peru's Prime Minister in the 1990s. Interesting stuff. I was most drawn to his daughter, who had to handle a lot of political fallout and even become the First Lady, which was kind of odd in a Antigone/Oedpidus way.

- Hustle & Flow - A well directed film, but poorly written (like Crash). I used to laugh while watching Happiness and films like that because I couldn't identify with those suburban white people, but this film gave me the black Southern equivalent. When D Jay's two hos are sitting in thchurch lady's living room, I was squirming. It was uncomfortably close. This shit could be happening next door to me! As for writing, everyone except D Jay was two-note, 2-d characters. They didn't quite have their own arcs. They just changed around with arguably the exception of the white ho.


There's a lot more but I don't want to make another long post. I just finished reading Down These Mean Streets by Piri Thomas. It's good stuff, but I wish I had read it during a "man Child in the Promised Land"/ 1950's protest novel/struggle against segregation biographies period because it would have ffit in real well with those types of books.