Tag Archive
Parade (2009)
On an October 2011 episode of WTF, Marc Maron’s podcast where he interviews other comics, comedian Hannibal Buress talked about his first venture in NY when he was a struggling comic. Buress says then, he was going to as many open mics as he could. But moving from Chicago to follow his dream, he was […]
Roadracers
Whenever there’s a genre parody or ode to a specific era of films, such as Black Dynamite’s mocking of Blaxploitation films or Quentin Tarantino’s Death Proof, the second half of Grindhouse, the danger is that the film might fall into the trap of either being condescending without any particular insight, or so faithful that it […]
He Never Meta Film Reference He Didn’t Like: A Review of Cop Out
The late, great film critic Pauline Kael wrote that “an homage is a plagiarism that your lawyer tells you is not actionable.” Where do you draw that line though? When does gentle chiding and affection turn into parody? Certainly a film like last year’s Black Dynamite made that difficult to determine; because, while it tried […]
The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
Is there any inherent pressure for a director when following up a failure, especially when you’ve made a sequel distributed by a studio that’s known for constantly releasing such fare? In the past few years, Sony has been putting out belated DTV sequels to the most random, unsuccessful movies in their back catalog; such as […]
Style Over Stupid: Vol. 1, Black Dynamite vs. New York, I Love You
I’d imagine it’d be hard to convince someone to give you money for what amounts to a film school exercise. Not so much for the actors who will probably have a ball playacting and indulging their most deliberately childish ideas. Take, for example a movie like Gus Van Sant’s 1998 remake of Psycho, a thoroughly […]
A Podcast with the creators of Black Dynamite, writer/star Michael Jai White and director Scott Sanders
Here’s an interview with the writer/star and the director of the new blaxploitation parody, Black Dynamite, Michael Jai White (Spawn) and Scott Sanders (the review of the movie is here). The topics covered include comparisons to the movie Grindhouse, the political agenda of Black Dynamite, the specificity of the blaxploitation era (as well as the […]