Spike Lee
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Watch: Effectively, Spike Lee’s Feature-Length Animated Film For NBA 2K16
It’s been a busy year for Spike Lee, whose Da Sweet Blood of Jesus came out earlier this year and who will bookend the year with his Chicago gang violence film Chi-Raq, out December 4. It turns out that his feature film release count for the year is actually three if you put together all the cut scenes for NBA 2K16, which clock in at nearly two hours. Hat-tip to Nick Newman over at The Film Stage for sharing this odd little item. As he notes: It might make sense if Lee took the time to craft 10-20 minutes of generic cut scenes for a […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Oct 30, 2015 -
Five Questions for The Girl is Trouble Director Julius Onah
One of Filmmaker‘s 25 New Faces, Julius Onah sees his first feature, a twisty neo-noir set in the immigrant cultures of Manhattan’s Lower East Side, reach theaters today via eOne. The Girl is Trouble stars Columbus Short (Scandal, and pictured above) along with Wilmer Valderrama, Jesse Spencer and, as the femme fatale, Alicja Bachleda. Spike Lee executive produced this tale involving an innocent DJ drawn into intrigue connecting a missing drug deal to the high-finance world of Wall Street. Below, I ask Onah about working with Spike, the film’s noir references, and a few of the things we talked about […]
by Scott Macaulay on Apr 3, 2015 -
Trailer Watch: Spike Lee’s Vampire Film Da Sweet Blood of Jesus
Here’s the trailer for Spike Lee’s forthcoming, crowdfunded vampire film Da Sweet Blood of Jesus. The trailer for what’s reportedly a close remake of Bill Gunn’s 1973 cult classic Ganja and Hess lets us know that everybody’s addicted to something — “sex, food, drugs, nicotine, alcohol, money, power,” says star Stephen Tyrone Williams. Expect all of that to explode in what’s billed up front as “the newest, hottest Spike Lee joint.” The film hits theaters and iTunes on February 13.
by Vadim Rizov on Dec 2, 2014 -
Filmmakers Launch #BlackoutBlackFriday Day of Activism, Events and Retail Boycott
In the wake of the decision not to prosecute Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown, Fruitvale Station director Ryan Coogler has joined with Selma director and AFFRM founder Ava DuVernay to launch Blackout for Human Rights, “a network committed to ending human rights violations at the hands of public servants.” The group, which includes a number of directors, actors and others, builds on this week’s nationwide protests with events and actions, including today’s #BlackoutBlackFriday. From the group’s Tumblr: About #BlackoutBlackFriday: We ask those who stand with Ferguson, victims of police brutality and us to refrain […]
by Scott Macaulay on Nov 28, 2014 -
Apple’s Beats Music Celebrates Do the Right Thing‘s 25th Anniversary
Revisiting the characters and locations of Spike Lee’s classic, Do The Right Thing 25 Year Anniversary: A Beats Music Experience is a 22-minute short documentary just released under the banner of, yes, Apple’s newly acquired Beats Music. Lee, Danny Aiello, production designer Wynn Thomas and others from the film stroll its Bed-Stuy block, recalling moments, interviewing current residents, and trying to remember just which apartment Rosie Perez lived in. Unlike Lee’s recent Old Boy, it’s an official Spike Lee Joint — spirited, not too nostalgic and capped with a block party performance by Public Enemy doing “Fight the Power.” Sadly, […]
by Scott Macaulay on Aug 15, 2014 -
Malcolm X in Dinesh D’Souza’s America: A Dialectical Double-Feature
Cities with active repertory theaters offer options for constructing cross-town do-it-yourself double-features, and a chance this Sunday to follow Malcolm X at BAMcinématek’s Spike Lee retro with Dinesh D’Souza’s America: Imagine the World Without Her seemed too dialectically productive to pass up. The connecting common component turned out to be a compact Malcolm soundbite (“We don’t see any American Dream. We’ve experienced only the American Nightmare!”), recited by Denzel Washington at the end of a longer peroration in Lee’s opening credits and presented as a stand-alone snippet from the real Malcolm in D’Souza’s film. It’s no surprise America ditches the […]
by Vadim Rizov on Jul 8, 2014 -
Advice for Producers, Crowdfunding, the Wu-Tang Clan, Dirty Old New York and More: Sunday Links
Here are some of the articles I’ve read this week that I recommend for your Sunday afternoon reading. “Whose Brooklyn Is It Anyway?” wonders A.O. Scott at the New York Times as he considers Spike Lee’s recent comments on the borough’s gentrification: Every city is simultaneously a seedbed of novelty and a hothouse of nostalgia, and modern New York presents a daily dialectic of progress and loss. As Colson Whitehead notes in “The Colossus of New York,” you become a New Yorker — or perhaps a true resident of any place, whether you were born there or not — when […]
by Scott Macaulay on Mar 30, 2014 -
Trailer Watch: Spike Lee’s Old Boy
So here’s the red band trailer for Spike Lee’s remake of Old Boy, which gives a good insight into the film without being that pushing its red-band status to the extreme. As a fan of Park Chan-wook’s original, I’m not sure this movie is for me — Josh Brolin is a less compelling lead, and as far as I can tell there are few or no discernible deviations from the plot of the 2003 movie. (And that plummy English villain?!) But I’m willing to be convinced otherwise.
by Nick Dawson on Jul 10, 2013 -
“Don’t Go Through The System”: John Singleton Talks in Toronto
John Singleton was raised on silent movies. The 45-year-old director of Boyz in the Hood and the Shaft remake grew up next to the Century Drive-In in Inglewood, California. As a boy, he’d literally peek out his window and watch his heroes Bruce Lee and Billy Jack‘s Tom Laughlin battle on-screen without sound. “The first breast I saw was Pam Grier’s,” Singleton confessed to a rapt audience at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox Tuesday night, hosted by director Clement Virgo as part of the city’s Black History Month celebrations. “Every time I see Pam Grier I tell her, ‘You made me want […]
by Allan Tong on Feb 14, 2013 -
Brooklyn Basics
Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing exploded on the screen in 1989; an energetic, in-your-face portrait of a Brooklyn neighborhood — Bed-Stuy — on the hottest day of the summer as racial tensions boil over. Lee’s third film, it was an instant classic, scoring the writer, director and actor an Academy Award nomination for Best Screenplay. A decade later it was placed in the prestigious National Film Registry of the Library of Congress. Following She’s Gotta Have It and School Daze, the film also cemented in the public’s eye Spike Lee as “Spike Lee,” a bold and savvy showman who […]
by Ava DuVernay on Jul 19, 2012
