January 2007 Archives
Babel-On
--Saw two flicks this weekend: Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu’s Babel (Paramount Vantage, 2006) and Yimou Zhang’s Curse of the Golden Flower (Sony Pictures Classics, 2006). Those of you who follow things like the 64th Annual Golden Globes already know that Babel took home the crown for Best Motion Picture – Drama, beating out Bobby (MGM, 2006), The Departed (Warner Bros., 2006), Little Children (New Line, 2006), and The Queen (Miramax, 2006). Now, I ain’t a certified film critic, but I’ll criticize anything, and lemme say this, Babel was not the one. Granted, I haven’t seen all of the films on this list, word on Sunset was that Bobby was a mess, and I gotta say, director (?!) Emilio Estevez doesn’t inspire the most confidence, and The Queen just ain’t my cup of tea (so to speak). The Departed was a sick film – you can’t mess with Scorsese, and all the hype about the performances of Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio and Alec Baldwin was well-founded. Unfortunately Jack Nicholson’s caricatured character and the story’s all-too-tightly wound twists and turns were a bit too much for me to swallow (not to mention that it was a remake) making this movie a highly polished action adventure that was too close to pulp fiction for me to really get behind it. (I like my gangsta flicks a bit more conflicted.) And Little Children, well, I ain’t even think to see it, but I’m always down for some sexual intrigue and just checking out the trailer makes me think this film may just be messy enough to hold my interest…
But back to the point at hand. Ask me: Babel was retarded. This is a film that’s beautifully made and well-acted but of limited use: if you have a hard time thinking of a world existing beyond your block, go see this movie. The settings – predominantly Morocco, Mexico, and Japan – are a good reminder that there are a million, or make that 6 billion, ways to live your life on this planet. And the majority of the people out there aren’t even thinking about 22s. Only other reason to see this flick: if you have a completely ass-backward grasp of the decision making process. By the third or fourth completely insane decision by one of the film’s main characters (somewhere at about the 2 hour point in a 2 1/2 hour film), I decided that I’ve learned enough from my own bad decisions that I had no need to watch some fictional asshole prove how much of an asshole he could be. And I walked out, which at $11 a ticket I don’t do lightly. This is another case of American audiences/establishment over-hyping a film with some global consciousness simply because we’re so ignorant on the subject that if someone rolls out a globe and points to it we’re all like, oh, damn, the Earth is round. Buy a book, pay attention to the news, and start taking this type of “we’re so aware” crap to task.
As for Curse of the Golden Flower, this was a cool flick that admittedly ain’t for everyone. Before this, Zhang was behind the lens for both Hero (Miramax, 2004) and House of Flying Daggers (Sony Pictures Classics, 2004), and if you saw either of those films, you know what you’re getting with Curse: beautiful, elaborate set pieces, all sorts of Imperial China intrigue, some impressively choreographed slow-mo fight scenes, and massive armies raining arrows and spears and grappling hooks and whatever else onto each other. Curse was a bit heavier on the Chinese metaphors – loyalty to the family, mother and father/state (pretty much in that order) – than the previous two films so there’s a bit more drama and less action. But if you’re down for it, and you still have a soft spot for the Wu-Tang Clan and the Shaw Brothers films that inspired them, you won’t be disappointed.
Back 2 the Basics:
Return to the 36th Chamber of Shaolin (Shaw, 1980)
King
I gotta write today – it’s only right. See, I’m from Memphis, a sleepy city on the banks of the Mississippi that has had a surprising, subtle influence over the nation in which we live today. Talk to people who know me, and they’ll tell you that I won’t shut up about the damn place. But how can I? We all know what it’s like to be from somewhere and to rep that city like it’s the only thing that mattered, sometimes more than life itself – folks get killed over repping sets all too often, as you and I both know. Well, down in Memphis we can claim all sorts of –ish. Some of it is completely bananas (the town was built on cotton money – New York and Chicago banks did business in the M as the white stuff was weighed, traded and then sent upstream, the Confederacy posted up heavy in town, and Nathan Bedford Forest – known Confederate leader and first Grand Wizard of the KKK still has a statue in a public park in the middle of town – WTF?!?!?). And some of it completely integral in everything that we do here (and chances are that you’re about). The legacy of black music in Memphis, hell pop music in general, stretches back so far that there are few American-born tunes tracking today that can’t trace at least one or two notes back to the Bluff City.
But it was the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., while he was staying at the Lorraine Motel supporting a city-wide sanitation worker strike in 1968 that shattered the city’s shaky stability and set race relations aflame.
Even today, damn near everyone in town will tell you that nothing’s been the same since James Earl Ray pulled the trigger. Even folks like myself who weren’t even on our parents’ minds, much less kicking away in mom’s belly, when the shit hit the fan will agree. Today, Memphis is a society built on a foundation of underlying distrust. In terms of day-to-day interaction between the races (and here I mean black and white – the M is one of the most almost exclusively bi-racial towns I’ve ever seen), I can’t think of another city allowing, hell necessitating, more face-to-face time between folks. And yet, the amount of true social mixing between the populations is damn near nil. Folks work together, do business together, acknowledge each other and all that, but hardly ever become friends. You ask me, it’s a tragedy, especially since so much of the distrust is founded on economic inequality. Nothing gets folks riled up like watching one side of the population succeed while the other struggles simply to make it. Then no one likes anyone. That said, time continues to march on. And at some point, somehow, you figure something’s gotta break. Right? Of course, how it breaks, and what that would even look like is beyond me. All the more reason to take the day to honor the legacy of a true leader. No matter your thoughts on MLK, he was walking a road. And if I’ve learned anything in my time it’s that sometimes simply having someone show you how to take that first step is more important than the shape of the journey to come.
Back to the basics:
Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign
Kick Start
And so it begins... I've been writing for so long, it's hard not to think about getting this rolling with a lil bit of an intro or something. So here's the deal: Basically, VIBE runs this. Say what you want, and save all your hate for us, or for me. Whatever. I can take it and it don't really matter. Cause at the end of the day, this space is all ours. There are pretenders, would-bes, wanna-bes, and basically just suckers and has-beens (and all of the above - I'll leave the hyperlinks out), but through it all, VIBE has stayed on the stands, in your homes, cupped in your hands, pasted on your walls, and now plastered all over your screens. It's just how we do. I know, sometimes I can't believe it either.
But lemme take a minute to back off all the bragging and boasting - I do it well, you should hear me liquored up. I did not do this. This thing here. This VIBE thing. I ain't even come close to doing it. Legends have walked through these halls--some I've met, some I've known, some that I've benefited from, hell, some I've beefed with, but all of them I've respected. And I happen to work for one of 'em now - what up, DSW?! (Yeah, call me a brown-noser, whatever, but I tip my hat when it's due, and it's due) Legends have built it, carved a space outta space and created a voice that America has to listen to because it's too costly to ignore. And as we continue to walk one foot in front of the other into whatever it is that lies ahead (and if you've been living in NY this winter, you can't help but feel like what lies ahead ain't a good thing), VIBE's position, it's prominence, it's undeniable importance to the social, political, cultural and corner discourse continues to grow. And that's a great thing. And for the record, it's one that has only minimal to actually do with me. It's more about all you folks out there, the artists, the label folks, the readers, the community, all of you/us who have taken this thing, this culture, this music, this system of beliefs, and buried it deep into our hearts and minds to the point that not having VIBE, not having rap, not having R&B, black pride, white liberal guilt, action, inaction, a chip on your shoulder, a buck against the system mentality every second that we seek to eat the cake off of it - cause being poor ain't ever fresh and only appears glamorous to those that have never tasted it - would mean that meaning itself would cease to exist... well, that's what VIBE is. And so the hat goes off to all that came before and all those that will come down the line.
But... more to the point. America is a hip hop nation (tho shortly I'ma be saying it's a salsa, merengue, reggaeton nation, but I'ma go ahead and claim all that melting pot -ish for all of us right now because without this rap thing those doors wouldn't have already been kicked down to the basement floorboards, ya heard?). And as such, what I'ma seek to deliver to you folks is how that nation, the entire thing, is there for all of us to enjoy and participate in, at the same time that we freak all the folks outside of these walls the f- out. Now granted, I don't have a single illusion about who I am and the opportunities that affords, both because in the circumstances of my birth and my current gig. At the same time, I'ma seek to deliver all the best of the things that this country has to offer you, me and the rest of us, well, mainly cause I like nice things. And if you ain't in the habit of enjoying the finer things in life, well, lemme say this, some addictions ain't such a bad thing.
Everyone still listening? I'm a long-winded motherfucker. Get used to it. Comes with the territory.
So now for the goods. Now, I know I ain't breaking anything all the cool folks ain't already seen, but that doesn't mean I'm not gonna shine a project that's working with some freshness. The good folks over at adidas, and I do mean good folks (what up, Ms. Wise?), are gearing up to drop their 2007 All-Star Vegas kick collections (technically, part of this year's It Takes 5ive campaign), limited runs of adidas built around the tastes and personalities of their five all star endorsers, T-Mac, K.G., C-Billups, Tim Duncan, and Gilbert "Hibachi" Arenas. You get all sorts of goodies here, the All Star on Court Pack, the Vegas Pack, the Superstar Lux Pack, the Vegas Urban Pack, and the East/West Shoes. Some of the highlights:
Billups Vegas Superstars
Billups Vegas Pack
Billups Vegas Urban
Duncan CC Stealth
Arenas Superstars
Arenas Vegas Pack
Garnett Superstars
Duncan Superstars
T-Mac Superstars
T-Mac Urban
Now get your tix ready for Vegas cause some of these runs are only going to be available at Sin City spots during February. As if you needed a reason to go to town.
Back to the Basics:
Go see Children of Men.
Read Cormac McCarthy.
Listen to "F*ck Being Famous"
