Last week we brought the first trailer for blaxploitation throwback picture Black Dynamite - a pitch perfect recreation of 1970's cult black action pictures like Dolemite - starring an unrecognizable Michael Jai White in the lead role. That trailer left us breathless and now the Dynamite has returned in a new clip that just goes to prove that you should always listen when Dynamite speaks, the man is a font of wisdom. You can see what I mean by checking out the clip below the break in the Twitch Player.
Possibly. I do like the ring of that, but I'm really not sure. How does a culture decay? History would show that all cultures have been decaying, or changing from the very beginning. To quote Gogol Bordello, " There never were any good old days, they are today, they are tomorrow."
While I wish I had been alive during the 60's and 70's purely for the cinema, I'm not sure if we were a more culturally sound nation. The majority of these films are being made by people my age, mid 20's to mid 30's. So these certainly are not being made out of a sense of nostalgia since we were't alive or old enough to remember this by gone era.
It's simply, hipster, elitist pop art where the only point is to take obscure, or long forgotten art & entertainment properties that are clearly out of style and then put them on a pedestial marekting it all as the new cool. This is about the director proving his has "hip" credentials.
That, and most film buffs these days are sheep who conform to the word of the almighty Taintino and Wes Anderson. But maybe it was no different 40 years ago when Godard was spreading his own fundamentalist cinematic creed giving birth to the french new wave.
Indie lovers cry about Hollywood remaking everything and yet our scene is currently oversaturated with this stuff. Is it any different? What makes this cooler than a Hollywood remake of Death Wish or Death Race 2000?
How is more interest in bygone era and Asian cinema a bad thing? Tarantino almost singlehandedly brought HK cinema to the mainstream in the west and woke up an interest in Asian films with Joe Six Pack. I ask again; How is that a bad thing?
We look at Warhol as some genius because he painted copies of pictures of Marilyn Monroe. Roy Lichtenstein copied panels from shitty romance comic books and is put on a pedestal. How is this any different? This is moving pop art. There is no difference other than the canvas.
Seems to me that people are bitching because they are losing the exclusivity of knowing something that Joe Q Public didn't know of before.
QT doesn't have to release the movies himself. He pointed out that there are tons of good stuff out there that people don't know about, he was famous so people took notice. I learned about John Woo and Sonny Chiba through True Romance. Ringo Lam through Reservoir Dogs. Who else was trumping these films other than Tarantino? It became a fad because of his popularity and video companies around the world started to distribute films because people wanted to know what all the fuss was about.
But I don't want to talk about Tarantino, we've gone through this discussion before. I want to ask how it is a bad thing that these filmmakers are seeking inspiration from foreign cinema and older genres?
Pre "Reservoir Dogs", my old film company bought The Killer (at tri Star) and brought Woo to America. No one responded to him initially. People said he was too violent and too melodramatic (precisely.) When Tarrantino's RDogs became trendy at sundance and he started getting high(er) level meetings, he was always speaking to the studio system about HK films etc and his B-movie influences. While my ranting about same earlier did no good, his success lead to easier acceptance of asian films, b-films and b-movie aesthetic. Kudos to him for making people see what was there (and ready to appreciate.) People had been talking about and seeing HK action in Hollyweird for sometime. But appreciation of these flms and shooters was limited to foreign sales folks for quite a while. Difficult to get the establishment to appreciate that which is not identified as 'normal' or 'commercial.'
How much credit he deserves for "promoting" asian and european flicks.
"(it's 3 am here)