Euphoria: Fight the Power
Oh, we’re still very much interested in Euphoria here at Shadowplay, those little bits of projected happiness. We’ve just given up NUMBERING them, that’s all. From now on they are free to wander and intermingle.
Simon Kane, AGES AGO, nominated the following:
“It’s all there for me, every possible argument against opening a film with white titles on a black background, and pretty much every argument the ensuing film contains. Angry, funny, sexy, “lo-tec”, kind of hilarious, and then the rest of the film just keeps on running like a classic musical. They haven’t just nicked a hit here. It’s the song that sets everything off. Spike Lee’s career is a total mystery but I love this film. And: “Introducing Rosie Perez”. I’ll say!”
It is rather splendidly dynamic! I think this was the last time I really appreciated a Spike Lee film, sorry, “joint”, although I’ve liked bits of them since. Sometimes his use of music is atrocious, sometimes it’s great.
I must admit I took it against him slightly when I read Rosie Perez say that she was so distressed doing the nude scene that she started crying. Lee’s solution? Tilt down and frame her face out. Charming.
But — she OWNS this title sequence, so something good came out of it all.
April 21, 2008 at 9:30 pm
She certainly does, and Spike has always given her MAJOR props for her work on the film. He said from the moment he met her “I realized that ‘Mookie’ had to have a Puerto Rican grilfriend.”
April 21, 2008 at 10:07 pm
Just looked up what she’s been up to — I guess the Seth Rogan movie will get her seen, but she’s been under the radar for a while. A shame, because she’s UNIQUE.
April 21, 2008 at 11:47 pm
She just scored a big Broadway hit in a revival of The Ritz.
April 22, 2008 at 12:31 am
Oh, wonderful. It could have been written for her (though of course it was written for Rita Moreno). Terrific.
April 22, 2008 at 12:37 am
New Yorker review of The Ritz was less than kind but Rosie came out well I think.
I have a similar impulsive crush on Spike Lee’s Summer of Sam. Maybe it’s the (euphoric) use of The Who’s Baba O’Reilly. Inside Man was an interesting Sydney Lumet-a-like and another great Terence Blanchard score. Pauline Kael described The French Connection as “an exaggerated case of New York” which sums up Spike Lee’s films for me. And he made a fair shot at doing a Richard Price novel the justice it deserves with Clockers.
April 22, 2008 at 8:47 am
Summer of Sam might be my least favourite! The pointless homages to The Fly and suchlike pointed to a filmmaker who wasn’t taking the story seriously, which struck me as kind of obscene, given that people DIED. The idea of a film about the mass hysteria was appealing, but since the protagonists really had nothing to do with the crimes, I felt dramatically stranded. When there was a media fuss about the film, I was initially on Lee’s side…then I saw what he’d DONE.