Okay, so as I mentioned in my Style Wars post below, I own like every 80’s hip hop movie. This fetish with these old school movies has led to my obsession with the horrible hip hop dance movies that follow in the tradition of Breakin’. Such films as You Got Served, Step Up and the latest in a the line, the soon to be classic Step Up 2.

I saw Step Up 2: The Streets in Richmond, because my friend Barry is the only person on Earth who would consider watching this movie with me. I have seen the last 5 Martin Lawrence movies with him, I saw Drum Line with him, I even saw Kangaroo Jack with him. (Although even Barry refused to watch Soul Plane with me). Anyway, after some convincing I got him to go with me.

The movie was a way better dance movie than Step Up and it might have had the best dancing in a film since You Got Served, but the plot was completely nonsensical and the acting was horrible. The one interesting thing about the film plot wise was that in the great tradition of films like Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, Honey and Fame the film is set up to end in a big talent show/ fundraiser thing. And then, they totally skipped the fundraiser so they could “take it to the streets”. It totally turned the table on traditional dance films and blew my mind…

But the most noticeable thing about the movie was how completely blatanly racist it was. The movie was about a white girl in an “urban” dance crew who then got kicked out and had to start a crew of art school drama queers. Her old crew, the bad guys, were predominately black or latino. Her new crew on the other hand only had two black people, who both were light skinned with straightened hair and were extremely non threatening. The crew also featured a completely stereotyped version of an Asian who during the final scene actually screams “I love America!” One of the major points of conflict is that the main white girl was in some sort or relationship with a black guy at the beginning, but she never actually kissed or touched him, but then she ended stuff with him for an Abercrombie wearing boy band looking motherfucker. Amazing. The makers of this film are appropriating black culture in order to both make money and at the same time undermine that same culture. It is actually pretty impressive. They are literally taking it to the streets.

So, in summary. Bad acting, good dancing, unapologetically racist.

PS. You would get extremely drunk if you took a drink every time a guy took off his shirt for no reason what so ever.

PPS. I just googled “Step Up 2, racism” and I found this article who describes Step Up 2 as “the single most racist movie that will be released by any major American studio in the first 10 years of the twenty-first century”. So I am not alone.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8P9leqyY20&feature=related[/youtube]
Low – Flo Rider Featuring T-Pain (Step Up 2: The Streets Soundtrack)

Jim Jarmusch is one of my favorite directors and one of his regular character actors was New York native, Rockets Redglare. Rockets was a criminal a drug addict and at times weighed more than 600 pounds… he was also adored by many, many people. His friend Luis Fernandez de la Reguera decided to make a documentary about his life called, strangely enough, Rockets Redglare!. The movie mostly consists of Rockets telling insane, fucked up and mostly horribly upsetting stories about his life and interviews with his friends talking about how much they love him and how much they worry about him. Rockets had many many problems, but was also very talented and it killed his friends to see him throw his life away on drugs and alcohol. I think most of us can relate to this story. I have a number of close friends who have wasted their talents because of some sort of addiction. The film is wonderful but pretty hard to get a hold of. The movie was released in 2003 but was not properly distributed which led to a law suit which de la Reguera and Steve Buscemi recently won. De la Reguera died in a motorcycle accident before the suit was settled, but I have heard that Buscemi is going to use the 1.75 million dollar settlement to promote and rerelease the film. If you get a chance to see it, I highly recommend it. It is pretty fucking unbelievable.

To get the trailer below to play, click on it and press the space bar.  Press space again to pause.

[quicktime]http://www.rocketsredglare.tv/rockets.mov[/quicktime]

My friend Teddy uploaded a greatest hits of my friend Ross’ solo music. It is sometimes weird and folky and some time electronic and poppy. Some of this stuff is amazing. Track 2, called 9 Times Out Of 10, is one of my favorite songs of 2005. I think you should download this zip file at once. Click the album cover for more info, track listing, and individual mp3s.

 I just finished watching this Roger Corman directed film called the Intruder. It was made in the middle of the civil rights movement about a man who comes to a small southern town to try to stop the integration of the local high school. The man is played by William Shatner. I have never been a Shatner fan but this was one of his earliest rolls and it has to be one of his best. Considering Corman is best known for making “questionable” B films you have to imagine it is one of his best films too. The whole film was shot on location in the south using locals as actors. None of them had copies of the script and Corman changed their lines every day so know one knew it was a pro-integration film. Once the locals found out what they were doing they kicked Corman out. The local sheriff said he would arrest him if he came back to town but Corman needed one more shot. He didn’t want to get any of his crew in trouble so he went out by himself with a camera and shot the last scene and flew out of town before getting stopped. The most powerful part of the movie is when Shatner gives a rousing speech to the people of the town convincing them to basically start a race riot. Shatner was so brilliant in it that the actual actors got completely riled up and they had to add some extra lines of dialog that never made the film in order to settle the people down. They almost thought it was real. Luckily someone has put the entire scene online. I suggest you rent the movie before watching this scene, but if you don’t think you can dedicate 90 minutes to watching Shatner scream about Jews and blacks then by all means hit play below and watch this amazing scene.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXdgElbKe_w[/youtube]

I saw the new Wes Anderson today and I realized that he has sort of become a parody of himself and I don’t think it is his fault.  There were a bunch of trailers before Darjeeling and they were all films that were completely influenced by Rushmore.  It was sort of amazing.  They all have the hip sound track and the deadpan humor and sort of similar fonts.  The thing is I want to see most of these movies, particularly the new Noah Bambach, but really how many movies can have Spoon on the sound track?  The one I want to see is Juno and it had the friggin Moldy Peaches in the trailer.  When I googled Juno the first thing I found described it as “This years Little Miss Sunshine”, which is just another one of these same Anderson influenced films.  These movies must have a genre title that I am not aware of…. let me know if you have a good name for these films.  Anyway, the point is Anderson’s new film seems to be a retread and it is probably just because his style has been so ripped off.  I enjoyed the film, but I it is not breaking any new ground.  There was a pretty funny Onion article making fun of this… let me see if I can find it.  Yup… Read this.  Also, go see this movie, but watch Hotel Chevalier first.  It is the prequel and is helpful to understanding the film.

One of the thing I thought was most interesting things from Anderson’s last film, The Life Aquatic, was the set design and in Darjeeling the set design was amazing again.  Myspace has a pretty good video about the details of the train that most of the action in the film takes place.

[myspace]http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=18581515[/myspace]

I got the new Kanye today. I was pretty excited about it because of how much I dig his version of Daft Punk’s Stronger. I only had a chance to listen to the CD once, but it seems a bit down tempo for me. It just lacks some energy on most of the tracks. I really liked “Drive Slow” on his last album. It was pretty chill, but I really dug it. This stuff I am not quite feeling as much, but like I said… I only listened to it once. My favorite song is still Stronger. I will let you know after a few listens if my feelings change, but at the moment, I think it is is weakest effort. That being said you should buy it anyway because 50 Cent said he will stop making music and I really just want him to focus on Vitamin Water because 50 Cent’s music is fucking soul less and Vitamin Water is amazing.

Download Kanye West’s Stronger

Growing up I was friends with a lot of skinheads.  And one thing I learned about them was that no matter how not racist they claim to be, they are still not the most PC group you will ever be.  All the funniest racist jokes I know come from my time spent hanging out with a DC skin crew.   This Is Enlgand is about a bunch of skins that are conflicted about race.  The group gets split up between two factions who are both trying to convince a very cute 12 year old boy to join their cause.  The anti-Pakistan skins and the guys who are just trying to get drunk and fuck shit up.

This review is not really going so well right now.  I don’t know why.  I had some ideas here, and now I am just writing poorly.   The last sentence in that paragraph is not even a sentence.  So I think I’ll just make some quick points and go back to sleep.

1. This movie was good and you should see it.
2. The day I saw it I was listening to Jimmy Cliff before I left, then the movie was filled with reggae and ska, and then at a bar later they were playing two-tone ska.  It is just sort of amazing that I listened to that much ska/reggae in one day.
3. My biggest problem with skinheads is that they exist to fight.  The whole thing is about drinking and fighting.
4. Q: What do you call a black guy on a bike? A: Thief.
5. Q: Why are racist jokes so short?  A: So the  dumb  rednecks  who tell them can remember the punchline.

Lastly, my favorite racist joke of all time is:  Q: What do you call a ______ (insert type of people) with a PHD?   A: ______ (insert racial slur for said people).  It is so universal because it works for anyone.  Yay!  And here is some footage of original skins who listen to reggae.  I’m out.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gPZFpWC9o4[/youtube]

I saw King Of Kong because I thought I was going to go see This Is England.  It just wasn’t playing when I thought it was.  I had read about King of Kong and it looked good so I said what the hell and bought a ticket.  Five minutes in when I realized I was going to watch a feature length film about Donkey Kong champions, I had a bit of buyers remorse.  An hour and a half later I had changed my mind.  Not only was there enough material for a feature length movie, but the movie could have been much longer.  The story is about two guys Billy Mitchel, the bad guy, and Steve Wiebe, the good guy.  Mitchel set the Donkey Kong record in 1982 and spent the rest of his life being pretty psyched about it.  He is very cut throat and will do whatever it takes to fuck over Steve Wiebe the challenger.  These guys are so black and white that makes the fourth Rocky movie look gray.  Mitchel is Drago.  My main problem with the film is how much they left out.  I wanted to see more strategy.  I wanted to hear more about other classic games.  I wanted to know more about the federation that keeps records on these games.  Do they cover modern games?  And most importantly I wanted to see more footage of Pac Man, because good Pac Man playing is like 100% more impressive that Donky Kong.  See what I mean?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s82nzkZBaek[/youtube]

Also, when looking up that video, I found this video.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mOq6KzfFiTY[/youtube]

A week or two ago I finished Kiss Me Like A Stranger the autobiography of Gene Wilder.   I meant to talk about this a while ago, but I was out of town and since then I have read two books and started a third and so far it was the best of the 4.  (Although the Truffaut/Hitchcock book was very informative.)  Anyway, the book is clearly very funny, but it also deals a lot with his fucked up child hood and horrible dealings with women.  It is really about the loves in his life and less about the movies that made him a star.   He was a virgin until late at life because he thought God was punishing him and he prayed compulsively constantly for years.  His Gilda Radner stories are extremely touching and his conversations with Mel Brooks are hysterical.  All that aside, I have a very love/hate relationship with Gene Wilder.  Blazing Saddles is probably in my top 10 favorite movies, and if it were not for Wayne’s World being the greatest film of all time, it would probably be my favorite comedy.  That being said, Young Frankenstein is a movie that while I enjoyed as a kid, has become one of my least favorite films of all time.  There is exactly one reason for this:  At least twice a week for the last 12 years some asshole has called my EYE-gor instead of Igor because of Young Frankenstein.  You have no idea how often I have to talk about this fucking movie all because of this one seen.  God dammit Gene.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiEUPvOwsSs[/youtube]