Excuse me, I was a little hot after reading FreeHuey's review and that hot-headedness is particularly clear in some parts of my response...

>WARNING: If you have not yet
>seen "bamboozled", you might not
>want to read further (I
>STRONGLY recommend you see the
>film, it is very well
>made, contrary to Mr. McGruder's
>assertions...and the acting of the
>entire cast is excellent...I was
>surprised by how well Glover
>acted).

That warning is still in effect....let me make some semi-retractions...


>> It's poorly written, poorly
>>acted, and the subject matter
>>is poorly satirized.
>
>I disagree. I thought there was
>very subtle satire of things
>like Cuba Gooding's Oscar acceptance
>speech (for "Jerry Maguire") and
>I found it clever how
>the malt liquor commercial satirized
>that type of advertising and
>rap "booty" videos at the
>same time.

take particular note of the woman rubbing her behind the shiny new car darn near to the point of orgasm, a pretty effective double-whammy criticism of female objectification and materialism in rap videos, while criticizing the same in malt liquor ads (print, not TV, as those types of images, objectifying women, are usually reserved for malt liquor print ads).

>I'm not
>sure how many satirical films
>you have seen, but that's
>part of the genre...where were
>the 3-D characters in "Hollywood
>Shuffle"?

Might have overstated this a bit. However, I don't think the dramatic acting in "Shuffle" holds a candle to the dramatic acting in "bamboozled". And there were a helluva lot of 2-D characters in "Shuffle".

>> "Corporate
>>Negro" (complete with "Nerd Voice"),
>>"Wigger" exec (complete with slang),
>>"Militant Rap Crew" (complete with
>>headwrap-girl and MC Search), etc.
>
>Those aren't all the characters. The
>militant rap crew, save for
>Mos Def, had very few
>lines, so that's a TERRIBLE
>example.

Let me add, how many films has the wigger exec been a key character?

>>2) The movie seems like it
>>was written by someone who
>>didn't really know how television
>>works and rather than taking
>>a little time to find
>>out
>
>This sounds like your real beef.

Another overstatement. Obviously, that wasn't your real beef. What I mean to say was, this is the beef that I can understand. Yes, the movie simplified (to no end) the process of making a television show. However, that wasn't the point of the film, to show how TV shows get made in excruciating detail, as I said elsewhere in the above post. The point was to satirize the whole idea of black writers pitching to white execs about black material.


>>Speaking of innacuracies - what was
>>up with Mos Def's crew?
>>The "making fun of the
>>pro-black" rappers" stuff would have
>>been brilliant in '90, but
>>it seems Spike ain't listen
>>to rap music since Do
>>The Right Thing came out.
>
>Hence the Master P and Cash
>Money references, right???? You REALLY
>need to go see this
>film again. And if the
>Mau Maus weren't a dead-on
>parody of the Wu-Tang Clan

It is NOT a dead-on parody. This was my biggest misstatement. If it were to be dead-on, they'd have to assign character traits of each Wu member to each Mau Mau member. Instead, I saw it as a general parody, like the whole film...sure, Spike could havc had cross-cut between the film characters' acting coonish and rap video footage, but that's just too obvious. Not to mention causing drama in real life.

You're basically mad at Spike for not doing the movie the way YOU would have. Which, as an artist myself, is a ridiculous basis for an argument against a work of art. It's one thing to say "It would have been better if he did this" and saying "it would have been better if *I* would've done it". The first is constructive criticism, the second is haterism. I'm sure you make enough money off a nationally syndicated comic strip to finance a small independent film. I'd love to see what you would make.

Spread love,

Spirit

http://www.theamphibians.com


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