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"this one-sheet for Dead Girl pretty much gives you the film's spirit, a woman's dead mouth turned into a childish labia joke, which you will either find amusing or disgusting..."

It's both amusing and disgusting, and a fairly brilliant piece of advertising. I'm shocked I've never seen it done before.

Why not put all of this stuff on your Twitter page? It'd make for more interesting reading than seeing it all at once. This is really what Twitter is for, not just a pseudo-RSS feed.

The Twitter challenge for me, Eric, is that I don't use it enough to make it a real stopping point for readers and I don't really want to write in those short bursts all the time... or without taking the time to gain some perspective. Only 2 thoughts in that whole thing are less than 2 hours old...

To answer your two David Carradine questions: yes to both (and the first one is kind of weird).

The words "is anyone really surprised" should be hung up in the closet (no pun intended...seriously) for a while.

Spike Lee has only done ONE truly great film : DO THE RIGHT THING.

INSIDE MAN is a good gun-for-hire movie, but everything else on Lee's resume suggests a bone to pick with...whomever.

Compare Spike Lee's movies with Soderbergh's. Really no comparison. Soderbergh is clearly superior.

I don't mind this style of writing, but David, please consider hard returns between thoughts rather than "..."

Would make it more readable, IMO.

SPIKE LEE FTW BY A MILE. Angry, misanthropic, cynical, reactionary, sometimes borderline insane, but the product of a true flesh and blood maniacal ARTIST.

Everyone here knows I dig Soderbergh a lot and write about his constantly, but they're apples and oranges, like comparing me to Jeff McDouche... One is a rabid blowhard who paints in overwrought broad strokes with legitimate rage, the other has a scientific, sometimes cold rats-in-maze approach combined with a deft light touch.

But Spike Lee = CLOCKERS, 25TH HOUR (single best movie of the current decade in my book), DO THE RIGHT THING, *MALCOLM X*, at least 2/3rds of Jungle Fever, at least 1/3 of Summer of Sam, She Hate Me, Miracle at St. Anna, not to mention his doc work. Even something like Get on the Bus or Girl 6, generally considered to be minor Lee, will have some unsettling or intense moment that stands out.

With Oliver Stone having a slightly off decade, Spike is still looking like the true heir apparent to Scorsese's brand of kinetic personal passion mixed with stellar craft.

I have never agreed with Lex more. I honestly do not understand how any true fan of the art of cinema could suggest DO THE RIGHT THING is Lee's only great film. MALCOLM X definitively belongs in that category as well. And while Lex suggests it is minor Lee, I'd put GET ON THE BUS in there as well. It genuinely captured the spirit of the Million Man March and what attendees felt, as opposed to cynical media stories and jokes about the actual number attending.

I'll chime in here - 25th Hour is pretty terrific.

^^^

Agreed. And Poland hates it. Something about the perceived nonsense of hiding drugs in a couch for a small amount of time.

i, too, rather adore '25th hour' (what the hell's happened to ed norton, who was once a warrior and now just seems a sullen sourpuss husk of his former self?), and in general i prefer spike's mad passion and urban gall to soderb's rather dry, detached sensibility, tho i do find much of soderbergh's work unique and sometimes downright stylish and enthralling

Leah, did you see Norton in Down in the Valley? Decent movie (a little too close to Taxi Driver and not as tight as it could be)... but Norton is excellent in that one.

Also features Evan Rachel WOOD and David Morse.

lex, interesting you should mention 'down in the valley' because i've had my eye out for that one for some time but the last i checked it's just not available here (sometimes we just don't seem to get movies that are available on dvd everywhere else, it's very bizarre). i dig norton so perhaps i should pony up and order a copy from overseas (my dvd player is multizone so that helps), thanks for the tip

I know a lot of people hate it, but I think Lee's Summer of Sam has such a dread-filled, urgent and spot on sense of place. Do the Right Thing and Malcolm X are better films, but Summer of Sam is the only Lee movie I've watched twice.

Camel: I love SOS. One of my favorite Lee films, along with 25th Hour, Malcolm X, Do the Right Thing and the first hour of Bamboozled.

Nothing else, though, has really worked for me.

i like 'summer of sam', tho it loses its way a bit (brody's perf stands out for me). lee excels at depicting urban-sense-of-place, one of the reasons he stand apart, imho

that would be 'stands apart', if i could write proper-like

Re: Dead Girl poster

Actually, it was considered for the 25th re-issue of Lolita (novel)

http://erickert.blogspot.com/2007/04/tip-of-tongue-taking-trip.html

Do the Right Thing is classic. Clockers is absolute shite.

Leah, it could have stood to lose ten minutes or so but I still love it. The Brody/Esposito stuff in enthralling, the bits about the killer himself are so grimy and disturbing, Mira Sorvino's dance, "Baba O'Reilly", etc. The final 30 minutes or so are bloody full on though.

Kris, good call on the first hour of Bamboozled. If he hadn't made it look so ugly and had tidied it up it could have been great. Checking IMDb it tells me that movie was 135minutes. Yikes.

I couldn't agree more with Lex's assessment of 25th Hour. I think it's the best movie of the last ten years and probably the most important one. And Kris is right on the money with Bamboozled. I think Spike has made three absolutely masterpieces - 25th Hour and Do the Right thing - and Jungle Fever is one of them. The use of Stevie Wonder's Living for the City during the scene where Wesley Snipes is looking for his brother in the crackhouse has got to be one of the most amazing uses of music in movie history. And that ending gives me goosebumps every time.

ditto on first hour of bamboozled...and a really attractive print campaign (i actually still have a full set of those one-sheets)....

MALCOLM X is Denzel at his very finest and it's a near epic. I wish it had an intermission. My second favorite Lee be CROOKLYN, a real slice of NY life (minus David Kelly's cracker caricature).

I'll millionth the 25th Hour love. Loved it when I saw it and my feelings have only grown since. The first time I saw it, I was really liking it, but the last 5-10 minutes blindsided me and left me in tears. It's a recent career peak for so many involved.

Lee is fascinating but seems to be going on an every-other pattern for the moment (docs excluded). Summer of Sam is flawed but excellent, followed by Bamboozled which reverses the ratio: doesn't really work but has excellent stuff. Then he does the flat-out amazing 25th Hour, followed by the huge mess She Hate Me (though it's an interesting mess). Then the wonderfully entertaining Inside Man (which is, no, not one of his statement movies, but it's *very* Spike through and through -- a wonderful tribute to NYC that pairs well with the more somber 25th Hour), and then Miracle at St. Anna... which I've had sitting in a Netflix envelope on my desk for over a month now. I meant to see it in theaters, but now I can't find the time/motivation to sit down and watch it. But by most accounts, it's not one of his best.

The point is, his next movie is scheduled to be pretty great!

I don't really see the sense in comparing him to Soderbergh in particular, as they don't have a ton in common apart from productivity (and even there, Soderbergh's got Lee pretty much beat, as he's averaged about one a year for over a decade now). I love them both. Lee seems more analogous, in age and timing, with Oliver Stone.

Re: DP and the Twitter. You've got a nice little Twitter widget on the right side of the front page of the blog. Maybe you could expand that a bit? Display the full Twitter post. You'd have two columns: the left with full posts and the right with quickies. That would save the readers from going to another site, which is a good idea.

Re: Spike Lee. Do The Right Thing is certainly his best movie, and probably also the best "Spike Lee" movie, if you know what I mean. That and 25th Hour are masterpieces. But he also has a huge library of "good to great"-level movies.

Inside Man was such a pleasant surprise.

"Actually, it was considered for the 25th re-issue of Lolita (novel)"

Thanks for the link. Great story.

I have posted this before, elsewhere, but in the unlikely event anyone might be interested:

http://www.movingpictureshow.com/archives/mps25hour.htm

Unfuckingbelievable. A spike lee discussion and NO ONE. Not one fucking 'fan' here brings up one of his best films. HE GOT GAME. Come on people. Talk about his other films fine.. talk about weak pics like CLOCKERS, CROOKLYN and GIRL 6 fine. But GAME is up there with his best work. Not sure why SON OF SAM gets mixed blessings from people here, that film does what very few period films do. Absolutely captures with a precise intensity a moment in time. Its a cracking film.

And DO THE RIGHT THING deserves more love than its getting, again people too young to remember how that film 'felt' when it sizzled screens should shut the fuck up. Its techniques may seem dated and quaint now but that fucking film ROARED like DeNiro in Cape Fear upon release.

GAME is often neglected in discussions about Lee's work but that film and especially that performance by Denzel are defining moments in both their careers.

JBD, re: He Got Game.

I kinda consider HE GOT GAME and SUMMER OF SAM to be sort of a package deal, in that they both have the same notably harsh, ugly, hateful misanthropy. Which SHOULD mean I consider them both to be masterpieces, since that's usually a huge plus with me.

But they're both from Spike's "SEX IS THE MOST EVIL THING EVER, WOMEN ARE BADGERING SHREWS!" era, and both leave a notably unpleasant aftertaste. The Denzel-Ray Allen father/son stuff in HE GOT GAME does a yeoman's job of counteracting all the ugliness and cynicism, and overall the movie works, But it's still one harsh, mean-spirited vision, and Spike certainly doesn't pull any punches with his wholesale CONTEMPT for 99.9% of the people onscreen: the crooked coaches, greedy family members, shrewish hometown girlfriends, white sorority girls (ie, porn chicks), corrupt league guys.

Again, an odd complaint coming from someone like me who actively seeks that stuff out in movies, but in both HE GOT GAME and SOS it's interesting to watch the angry-but-also-humanist director of DTRT, JF, and Mo Better Blues taking a scorched-earth approach to almost all his unlikeable characters, and someone who had a healthy appreciation of good-natured raunch before suddenly filming women and sex like it was some Dantean transgression.

^^ I also think maybe a better actor, or AN actor, could've made the lead character in GAME more sympathetic in his plight. As it is in the movie, Ray Allen does OK... but his unpolished nonactor rawness also makes that character kind of blunt, cruel and uncharismatic, which doesn't help when we're supposed to be rooting for an essentially good kid being tempted by vipers from all sides.

But Malik Sayeed (Belly, Clockers, etc) was my favorite mid-90s DP and while I appreciate he's getting into directing now, his vibrant colors and unusual textures are sorely missed these days.

I think He Got Game is another great Spike Lee movie. But I have to admit, LexG may be on to something. I know that a few black female acquaintances have told me how much they absolutely HATE that movie -- and not just because Denzel hooks up with a white gal. Rather, they were more pissed about the way the son's black girlfriend is depicted.

That's interesting, Joe, because my (white) girlfriend sometimes feels uncomfortable watching Lee's movies because of what she sees as pretty obvious contempt for white women (add to that his obvious dislike of Italian-Americans, which both of us have heavily in our families, and she basically feels like maybe Spike Lee doesn't particularly want her watching his movies, though she does anyway -- and for the record I find the anti-Italian stuff in Summer of Sam kind of hilarious). But maybe it's just women in general (still, isn't Jodie Foster's character in Inside Man called something like "Ms. White?" or am I misremembering?).

I do like He Got Game a lot, actually, and I never thought of it as a particularly mean-spirited movie (or on Lee's spectrum, a particularly anti-woman movie, since most of the characters have pretty unlikable moments). Does Rosario Dawson play the girlfriend in that movie or does she play someone else? In any case, I remember liking that character's no-BS pragmatism, even though it's not particularly soft or lovable or even very nice.

CLOCKERS and INSDIE MAN remain my favorite Spike films (and are oddly the least "Spike Lee Joint" of his work). SUMMER OF SAM and DO THE RIGHT THING are also great.
But SHE HATE ME, GIRL 6, CROOKLYN, SHE'S GOTTA HAVE IT, JUNGLE FEVER, MIRACLE AT ST. ANNA - all of them are almost completely unwatchable to me. And I've given most of them more than a couple of shots.

A minor but particular beef with MALCOM X: The scene where the rows of the faithful all turn their heads like clockwork when whitey looks at them from an upper-story window. Spike should have realized that the amount of coordination and choreograpy it took to pull that shot off was ridiculous as realism and scrapped the whole idea. As it stands, I was expecting them to break out in song from that point forward. I am probably alone in this, judging by the shitty looks I got from audience memebers when that moment made me laugh out loud.

Wow, spelling.

@LexG/Joe - I tend to agree with that analysis as well but it doesn't damper those films at all for me. Loveable misanthrope that I am. GAME echoes GREAT SANTINI for me and cos I got Daddy issues I guess its why both films completely destroy me. But LexG, women can be badgering shrews and I think Lee has portrayed women very balanced across his output. Some films are love letters to women. Where you see mean-spiritedness in those two films I simply see a full and genuine emotional range. And I think to Lee those exaggerated character tics and hyper race traits are akin to Scorsese and his fluid camera and coverage. Its simply directorial signatures. You're dead on about Allen though...

@bmcintire. Unwatchable? Hyperbole much?

The men don't out looking exactly rosy in Summer of Sam, either.

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