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2019 ERNIE LADD MEMORIAL BLACK HISTORY MONTH REVIEWS


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THE BLACK GESTAPO (Frost, 1975)

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IMDB

ROTTEN TOMATOES (36% Audience)

 

SELECTED BY: NATE
Come for Lee Frost's (who also directed "Thing with Two Heads") ham-handed social commentary on Lord Acton's "power corrupts" philosophy.  Stay for "Night Court's" Mac castrating a bigot; Quon Le would be so disappointed...


REVIEWED BY: CURT MCGIRT

Hoo boy, figures I'd get this one. Being the purveyor of sleaze that I am I'm actually surprised I haven't seen it yet. 

Okay, so once upon a time, there was such a thing as Nazisploitation, with films like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS, where you had gruesome murders perpetrated by Nazis, usually with a sexual bent to ladle an extra layer of nastiness over top of the proceedings. These films were incredibly perverse and disgusting, and luckily a grindhouse trend that faded quickly in the '70s. At the same time we had the Blaxploitation movement going on, running off the popularity of Shaft with major audiences. Writer/director Lee Frost had had his hands in all the worlds of exploitation including the Nazi stuff with Love Camp 9 up to this point and I guess, being the maverick that he was, saw the possibility in comingling the subgenres and came up with -- dun dun dun! -- THE BLACK GESTAPO. 

Surprisingly, this isn't as rough as it sounds. The plot is centered around a People's Army in Watts that is a Panther-type group that dress like SA officers and are given funds by the local government for social resources. They and the local community are under siege by the mafia, who are more racist yokel than spaghetti-slopping Italian. The mafia are the real creeps here, leaning on numbers runners and pimps and prostitutes and generally being racist assholes. Their boss has no trace of an accent but does sport a hilarious hairpiece that is totally unconvincing. The People's Army is led by two guys, General Ahmed (Rod Perry of S.W.A.T. fame) and Colonel Kojah (Charles P. Robinson -- Mac from Night Court!) who are at odds as to what to do about the mob. Kojah eventually decides to go rogue, drops on a spiffy SS uniform, and takes it to the mafia behind the good-natured Ahmed's back. This leads to the best scene in the movie where he razors the nuts off a mafioso and flushes them down the toilet (!). We don't see much of that, thankfully, and it doesn't get much harder-core from there on. Ahmed finds out that Kojah is now running the prostitution and numbers instead of the mafia and visits Kojah who shuts him out, then later attempts assassination which fails. Ahmed comes back and raids Kojah's private encampment and they have a struggle to the death. This includes a neat multi-barrel gun trap that Ahmed sets up in the bushes to whack out a whole legion of Kojah's black-suited troops. 

Aside from the dress and a couple scenes where they try and equate the tactics and ideology of Kojah with Hitler, there is little comparison to Nazism with the gangsterized People's Army. They're just gangsters is all... but then again, so were the Nazis. If anything they almost seem like avenging angels at first when they take out the mafia, who come off waaaaay waaaaay worse in how they treat everybody except each other. There's not a lot of blood, but plenty of nudity, including a mute Ushii Digard who just shows up to be topless in bed with Mac at one point. Really I was kind of underwhelmed by this one overall. The elements are there for a really, REALLY over the top film, but everything just ends up kinda soft-pedalled overall. It's still got some hilarious dialogue, nuts getting flushed, the hairpiece mobster lamenting moving to the ghetto, and Mac from Night Court chewing the scenery in a role I'm sure he left off of his resume. Happy Black History Month?

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And just for the synergy

GANJA & HESS (Gunn, 1973)

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IMDB

ROTTEN TOMATOES (83% Critics/51% Audience)

 

SELECTED BY CURT MCGIRT

Ganja & Hess is one of the first and best of all black vampire films -- hot, languid, moody, and dark as all get out. You can practically taste the sweat rolling off bodies in the boiling Louisiana heat. Spike Lee remade it as Da Sweet Blood of Jesus but I missed that one (apparently luckily). Stars the late, great Duane Jones of Night of the Living Dead fame, so what's to miss? 

REVIEWED BY: NATE
Ganja & Hess

(USA, 1973; R)

Horror

Kelly/Jordan Enterprises; 110 min

Director: Bill Gunn

Alternate titles: Black Vampire; Double Possession; Black Evil; Blackout: The Moment of Terror; Blood Couple; Vampires of Harlem

Tagline: “Some marriages are made in heaven.  Others are made in hell.”

It comes from having a daughter who’s into every little fad, but, when that chant would start up every time some sinister event was about to occur, I couldn’t help but hear, “Gudetama, Gudetama!”

Anyway, Ganja is one of cinema’s most evil bitches.  And I’m not prone to just haphazardly dropping “bitch” casually, but damn; Ganja is a bitch.  From the first moment we make her acquaintance during the phone call to Dr. Hess, we get the sense that this is not a woman capable of empathy or sympathy.  In fact, the only –pathy she seems capable of is psychopathy, and that’s before Hess turns her into whatever vampire hybrid he has become.

Maybe it’s because I’ve known a “Ganja,” that’s why I was so on-guard about her during the movie.  It was uncomfortable to watch her berate Dr. Hess’ butler, having only been on his estate for one day (although this timeframe could be wrong, as the stream of conscious narrative played fast and loose with the rules of the film’s setting and pacing).  In fact, once Ganja was turned, I knew that Dr. Hess’ butler was not long for the world.  Still, I didn’t prepare me for the final reveal of his fate (presence of flopping dong notwithstanding).  And, if I’m being honest, the story she tells, where she reveals that she’s grown up being “only out for Ganja,” has to be one of cinema’s greatest examples of foreshadowing.  It’s not only in the words, but also in a factor that I missed at first:  Ganja describes the treatment she received from her mother as being the “worst moment of my life.”  This occurs after she finds her husband’s corpse in the freezer of the man with whom she’s been romantically entangled since arriving at his estate looking for her missing husband!  But the “worst moment of [her] life” is when her mother slapped her over some snowball fight misunderstanding.

Duane Jones is fantastic.  How we live in a world where he only has eight film roles is unbelievable.  He kept the movie grounded, which is not an easy task given Bill Gunn’s surreal direction.  I watched this movie over the course of a couple of late nights, and there were moments that I had to rewatch because I wasn’t sure if I’d fallen asleep and dreamed certain set pieces or not.  And not only are you contending with the ethereal quality of the film’s layout, but then Gunn will frame a scene of talking heads, which lends an almost documentary feel to the film, creating a sense of stark reality to the proceedings.  I guess the best way I can describe this feeling is by comparison to the first time I watched Man Bites Dog.

But seriously, who the fuck names their kid “Ganja?”

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Hahaha, that's funny how that worked out.  I had it narrowed down to two people as far as who picked mine, and Curt was one.

I rewatched "Black Gestapo" before I made my pick official, and, in the aftermath of watching "Black Panther", some very unique juxtapositions were going through my brain.

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I really should rewatch Ganja again; the only time I've seen it was on IFC late one weekend night a couple years back. Unfortunately I missed out on a showing at the Art Theater last year in October. J.T. is to blame for me picking it because he mentioned it somewhere on here around the time the project was announced. 

Also didn't know it had so many alternate titles. Vampires of Harlem! 

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HOME OF THE BRAVE (Robson, 1949)

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IMDB

Rotten Tomatoes (80% C/ 63% A)

 

SELECTED BY @Execproducer
My pick is Home of the Brave, a 1949 war film featuring  James Edwards as the lone black soldier involved in a surveying mission on a Pacific island during WWII. Produced by Stanley Kramer and written by Carl Foreman two years before High Noon*, it was adapted from a stage play by Arthur Laurents that originally dealt with anti-Semitism. An earnest  'message film' that is in some ways badly outdated, it still resonates today for Edwards portrayal of what is possibly the first non-stereotypical African-American role in Hollywood history.
 
* Filmed in secrecy due to the subject matter, Home of the Brave's working title was High Noon.*
 
Providing the link for archive.org because the versions available on youtube aren't good.

 
https://archive.org/details/HomeOfTheBrave1949

REVIEWED BY: @S.K.o.S.
Home Of The Brave was made in 1949.  The only name in the cast that was familiar to me was Lloyd Bridges.  When you're watching a 70-year-old movie that deals with racism, there's clearly going to be things in there that are abhorrent by today's standards, but I thought it got enough right that it holds up.

We're in World War II.  A team of five American soldiers is sent on a mission to map a Japanese island so that it can be raided later.  At the start of the movie, the mission has already ended and we see what happened through flashbacks.  So we learn right away that one soldier, named Moss, has ended up with his legs paralyzed, and pretty soon we see that Moss is the only black man in the group.  One of the other guys is named Finch, and what a coincidence, he and Moss went to high school together.  This is the first time they've seen each other since then.  The other three are T.J., Mingo, and Major Robinson, who's leading the mission.  T.J. is pretty much a racist, and Finch gets into a fistfight with him at one point once they're on the island.

Things get interesting when the group is fired upon by some Japanese soldiers.  Mingo gets shot in the arm, but survives.  After the Japanese soldiers are dealt with and the Americans are moving to a new spot on the island, Finch realizes he's misplaced some maps and goes back to get them.  Moss thinks this is a bad idea and follows him, trying to talk Finch out of it.  In the heat of the moment, Finch almost uses a racial slur, ends up calling Moss a "nitwit", but Moss is fully aware of what Finch almost said.  This is surprising because Finch seemed like one of the good guys up until now.  Right after that, Finch finds the maps but gets shot, is badly hurt, and passes the maps to Moss and tells him to take them back himself.  Finch seems to think he can make it back on his own, but he's captured by the Japanese.

Once Moss is back with the group (minus Finch), there's a memorable scene where the group can hear Finch howling in pain close by on the island.  Moss wants to go rescue Finch, but the other soldiers talk him out of it since they figure it's a trap set by the Japanese to lure them in.

The group is ready to leave the island, but Moss still wants to stay in case Finch is able to escape.  The other three soldiers head to the beach while Moss stays in the jungle, and just then Finch does crawl out, to Moss - and dies in Moss' arms.  The rest of the Americans run back to Moss, and it's at this point that Moss finds his legs are paralyzed.  So it's a psychological thing.  Moss' legs are paralyzed because he didn't want to walk away and leave Finch.  (I don't know if "psychological paralysis" is a real thing, but I can cut a 70-year-old movie some slack on this point.)

Like I said, this is all seen in flashbacks, as the paralyzed Moss has been relating this story to a military doctor.  So, first of all, the doctor gives Moss a speech about how we're all the same, black or white.  Moss says that he hears what the doctor is saying, but he doesn't know if he believes it in his heart.  (This is good.  I didn't want to see racism all cleared up after a thirty-second talk from a white guy, and also current wisdom is that we are NOT all the same regardless of race - that's why things like affirmative action are necessary.)  Moss also says that he actually felt glad when Finch was shot, because of the racial slur that Finch was about to use.  The doctor says no, that's not why you felt glad - all soldiers feel glad for a second when another soldier is shot, because they're glad it wasn't them.  But Moss doesn't buy it.

So then, in the worst part of the movie, the doctor tells Moss that the paralysis is all in his head, and he can just get up and walk.  But Moss can't do it.  The doctor tries a couple of times without success, then calls Moss a "dirty [racial slur]" and Moss is so angry that he gets up and walks.  The doctor shakes his head and says "Sometimes there just isn't time to do things the right way."  Okay!

We wrap things up with Moss talking to Mingo, who has lost his arm as a result of that bullet he took.  Mingo also makes reference to the guilty good feeling you get when someone else is shot, and NOW, because he hears it from Mingo as well, Moss buys that it was the reason he felt happy about Finch being shot.  Moss'  final conclusion is that black and white people are different, because of course they are, everyone's different, but they're the same in some ways as well, and that's important too.  I can get on board with that.

Worth noting in passing that I was talking about this movie to someone after I watched it, and they wanted to know how the Japanese soldiers are portrayed.  We never actually see the Japanese soldiers.  We only hear them in one scene.
 

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Quote

what is possibly the first non-stereotypical African-American role in Hollywood history.

Was wondering about this.  I didn't research the movie at all, but basically my only reference point for media anywhere near this old is the original season of Twilight Zone, which was in the late 1950s... and I thought there was something about Rod Serling being among the first to cast African-Americans.  But this was ten years before that.

Also, was expecting this to have been Odessa's pick.

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I love Ganja and Hess.   It is a great vampire story.

Over the years, I have grown to loathe the Blaxploitation elements in Blacula and Scream, Blacula, Scream,, even though both movies hold a special place in my heart, because there are super awesome vampire stories in each production that deserved to be told without the campy elements.  

William Marshall deserved better, but those movies probably wouldn't have gotten made in the first place if they didn't have those Blaxploitation elements.

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BONUS REVIEW: by RIPPA

20 FEET FROM STARDOM (2013)

IMDB

Okay dokey – I fucking LOVE this documentary. When I saw it was on Netflix still I was like “Yeah – I am going to gush insufferably about this to anyone who will listen”.

Basic gist first – as you might be able to gather from the title – the movie is devoted to (in this case) the women who perform as background singers and almost never get recognition or at least years after the fact. Oh just so happen to also primarily be black. 

I remember becoming aware of the movie because one of the younger women featured in the doc – Judith Hill – was a contestant on The Voice at the time and they mentioned that she was featured in a documentary. They had been using the “background singer looking to break out” story line for her so it made sense. Her elimination did not but now you are begging me to go down a Voice rabbit hole that you want no part of. 

Anyway – the documentary won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature and Best Music Film at the Grammys.

Oh yeah – BTW – the music is fucking tremendous. One of the best way to make a documentary that stands the test of time is to base it around timeless music. So while people and times might change, you can always watch for the music.

Now back to the matter at hand – the piece features at least 8 different folks and their journeys. A lot of similar themes flow through their story. Listening to Darlene Love and Merry Clayton (along with plenty of others) talk about having to make it in the music industry while being women AND black is the stuff I am fascinated by. I think by now we are used to hearing this “Hey – come in and save our song and we are going to give all the credit to the male bands”.

There is discussions around the various opinions on what backup dancer singers should represent. Guess what kids – Ike Turner thought all his backup singers where his hos. I am sure you are shocked. Fuck as I was typing this and rewatching parts – it just slammed into me how much Vince McMahon’s feeling towards what women’s role in wrestling should be up until like 90 minutes ago parallels the feelings toward backup singers. I am slow.

My absolute favorite part (and one of my favorite parts in any documentary) is when a pregnant Merry Clayton is called into the studio in the middle of the night because the Rolling Stones wanted a women to make “Gimme Shelter” great. To quote Mike Jagger “Bloody Hell, that’s good”.

There are plenty of “name” musicians – the aforementioned Mick Jagger, Bruce Springsteen, Sting, Stevie Wonder, Sheryl Crow, Bette Midler, etc… - which I appreciated since a lot of the music was originally before my time so whenever I try to learn more about folks I have heard of but maybe didn’t appreciate in context in allows me to make those connections. There was a lot of HOLY SHIT! THEY SANG WITH (Insert person here)!

Everyone is letting their diva flags fly and having a grand old time with it. So so good.

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Just because the trailer for the new new version just came out - let's go with this

SHAFT (Parks, 1971)

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IMDB

ROTTEN TOMATOES (89% C/68% A)

SELECTED BY: @J.H.

REVIEWED BY: @Cliff Hanger

It’s really no wonder this movie started a revolution.

The story is straightforward: PI John Shaft (Richard Roundtree, projecting a seemingly effortless aura of macho cool) gets an unwanted visit from representatives of Harlem’s biggest kingpin, “Bumpy” Jonas. Bumpy’s innocent daughter has been kidnapped, and since he can’t go to the cops he’s paying the best gumshoe in Manhattan to track down militant leader (and Shaft’s former associate) Ben Buford. When it becomes evident that the Italian mafia snatched her as part of a negotiating ploy, Bumpy hires Ben and his men as well. Shaft tracks down the hotel where Marcy is being held, gets in arguments with cops, has a couple one-night stands and plans a raid with the militants to rescue the girl. The end.

First things first: this movie lives and dies on Richard Roundtree as Shaft. He has basically no arc, but he’s always smooth and in-control and he OWNS that shit. Nobody else made much of an impression on me; Vic the cop and Bumpy are decent performances of utterly stock characters, and nobody else seems to do anything that matters or have a point of view. Even Ben Buford sells his Black power group to Bumpy as hired muscle only a day after Bumpy’s men killed five of them, without a word about what his group’s supposed to stand for.

The direction by Gordon Parks is never showy aside from the beautifully-made opening sequence, but it gets the point across and is never bad. One thing I loved about the direction and Urs Ferrer’s cinematography is the weird camera angles required by the decision to shoot entirely on-location. Scenes in office-tower hallways, bodegas etc. look almost like guerilla film as they cram camera crews into spaces never built for them or point the camera through a shop window to film Shaft et al. On the sidewalk outside. We see more of that sort of thing in the age of digital video cameras, but in a 70s movie it’s a little disorienting and exciting.

One thing I found out on research, and am glad I didn’t know before watching the movie, is that Ernest Tidyman’s original novel starred a white detective. The decision by a desperate MGM to hire a black lead and director transformed what could have been just another “men’s adventure” detective story into something utterly unique among major-studio releases; we absolutely would not give a shit about this movie if it hadn’t starred Richard Roundtree at a time when “Black movies” were self-financed and poorly distributed outside the big cities. I keep trying to imagine what it’d be like to be a teenager and see this showing at a local theatre in 71 or 72, and I just can’t. It’s like trying to imagine the experience of reading Silver Age Marvel without having read the things that built on it first.

I’m glad I finally sat down and watched this; it’s as substantial as cotton candy but it’s earned its place in cinema history and just Roundtree’s performance make it a fun way to spend an hour and a half.

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And J.H. reviewed his own movie so

BONUS SHAFT REVIEW!

Shaft seems like a slam dunk for a “Black History Month” pick. It is probably the most referenced Blaxploitation movie in popular media (even getting mentioned as Elaine Benes’ favorite movie in an episode of Seinfeld) and of course being the thing most people associate composer Isaac Hayes with. Now let me be clear that we are talking about the original 1971 film directed by Gordon Parks based on the novel by Ernest Tidyman. Tidyman was a white man and former editor at the New York Times who sold the rights to the film before the novel was even released.  

So, what exactly makes Shaft so good? Why is it important not just as a piece of “Black” culture but popular media as a whole? Is it the music? Is it the action? Is it how compelling Richard Roundtree is in the lead role?

Honestly, it is all these things and the fact that it was actually a very well-made movie. From the opening shot of New York City with the camera trailing up the Times Square area and the row of theaters there (showing actual movies no less). It trails revealing the title of the movie as Isaac Hayes’ iconic “Theme from Shaft” kicks in. Our hero emerges from the subway entrance, walking up from the underground decked out in a long brown leather coat. Right away Richard Roundtree is a figure who looks not only stylish but also handsome and rugged. From this point on the camera follows him as he walks down the street, it is a confident walk, not really a strut but there is just something about Richard Roundtree’s walk that just exude confidence and power. This is John Shaft and even just casually walking down the street and he is not to be trifled with.

That is just the opening shot man, how is that not enough to make want to watch the rest of the movie?

Mind you, it is one hell of a movie. The story is thus, Shaft’ main antagonist, Bumpy Jonas, is in a turf war with the Italian mob. To get the upper hand the Italians kidnap Bumpy’s daughter. Since Bumpy can’t use his own people to locate her he insists on hiring Shaft. He uses shaft at first to get rid of some radicals in Harlem that are giving him trouble (heavily implied to be members of the Black Panther party) leaving only their leader, Ben Buford, as Shaft’s sidekick. So, Shaft ids left having to trust Bumpy, whose daughter was legit kidnapped and not get his own heads hot off by the Italians. Add to this, Shaft also has his friend Lieutenant Vic Androzzi (NYPD) leaning on him for info on the Uptown/Mob war. 

It is a simple story, which is what you need but it isn’t exactly a non-stop thrill ride of an action film. It is, at its core, a detective story where you get to see Shaft actually detect and uncover clues in order to build to the major action scenes. Take the opening for example, Shaft is walking to work and newspaper guy and shoeshine guy let him know that a couple of “Harlem Cats” are looking for him. This sets up the fight in Shaft’s office that also gets us the reveal about Bumpy wanting to parlay with him.  Sure, it ends up with Shaft throwing one of the guys Bumpy sends through a second-floor window but a guy like Shaft can’t be too cautious.

It is the same thing with when Shaft and Bumpy meet and Bumpy tells him about his daughter’s abduction. Sure, Bumpy is lying that he doesn’t know who did it but the longer he can keep Shaft in the dark the more he can use him to eliminate his rivals. That interaction leads to Shaft looking for Ben Buford, which sets up Bumpy’s men ambushing the Black Panther hideout. Logical story points to build the action to set-up the next act. It is the same thing with everything building to the climax, though there is a long stretch of Shaft being a detective followed by shaft a few stretches of Shaft getting it on with the ladies.

Yeah, there is plenty of sex in this movie. Shaft is a man after all, with quite the active libido. Hell getting laid seems to be a more than normal occurrence fir him as he manages to get laid twice during the movie, from different women and while in the middle of a kidnapping investigation. It is always good to have a protagonist who can multi-task I suppose. There are those that have discussed hoe John Shaft’s libidinous masculinity is his way of displaying his own version of Black Power. Sure, or, maybe these people should’ve just listened to the opening song where it clearly asks “Who’s the black private dick that is a sex machine to all the chicks?”

This is how the movie ebbs and flows. Dialogue sets up Shaft doing detective work which sets up the action piece setting up the interludes (i.e. chances for Shaft to get laid) to get us to the next dialogue to get us to Shaft being detective to get the next action set. Rinse, wash repeat 3 times and you’ve got yourself the gist of Shaft. Add to this simple, yet effective, method of storytelling is the music of “the Babymaker” Isaac Hayes in the background. After “Theme from Shaft” my favorite song is “Soulsville” which plays while Shaft is trying to find Ben Buford. We even get an appearance of the one and only Antonio “Huggy Bear” Fargas as one of the guys Shaft is trying to get info from. It is a nice little cameo that makes a kid growing up in the 70s say “Hey! It’s that dude!”.

I really love this movie for so many reasons. It remains the best of the three John Shaft movies (this, Shaft’s Big Score and the almost unwatchable Shaft In Africa make the trilogy, the less we say about the Sam Jackson Shaft movie the better). It is a movie that takes its time to lead you from point A to point Z but moves along at a brisk pace and is never too confusing. It reveals things in a manner that should never leave a viewer bewildered as to what is going on. I’ve left so much out talking about this film. I could spend pages talking about Shaft’s relationship with his cop buddy Vic or how Shaft’s dialogue is never corny. Hell a dissertation could be written about John Shaft as the epitome of not just Black Male virility in the 70s but possibly for all male virility in cinema. I just love this fucking movie so much (I even had it in my list for The Greatest Movies of All Time poll 2 years ago).

Just watch Shaft with a big bucket of popcorn and a cold drink. Enjoy it for the compelling Richard Roundtree. Enjoy it for the action. Enjoy it because it is just a damn good movie!

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I love how James waxed philosophically on Shaft as it he'd been watching some epic length motion picture like Lawrence of Arabia or Ben-Hur.

Shaft and Enter The Dragon are two of the bravest movies that Hollywood ever made as far as casting decisions go. .

 

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While it was super super "obvious" - I am glad Shaft was picked because I feel like a couple of "staples" should get done in the first go around if we are going to establish a new tradition around here

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11 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

When we are done, it will be interesting to see just how many movies featuring the Mob as the main antagonists against the black protagonists, be they cops, private eyes or other criminals.

In that vein, I know that Black Belt Jones, New Jack City, and Cotton Comes To Harlem were three of the picks I considered, but I figured there would be a shit ton of Blaxploitation movies in the queue and someone would probably pick NJC.

I took a different route.

I should've picked Three The Hard Way, but I figured that people would have a helluva time catching up with a copy.

I am elated that Curt picked Ganja & Hess and that the movie is accessible via Vimeo.

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5 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

If I had gone blaxploitation with my pick, I would have wanted to pick either Three the Hard Way or The Human Tornado or maybe Slaughter. But I don’t know about their streaming availability offhand. 

You could right a thesis on the idea of the black revenge fantasy as shown through the Truck Turner or Slaughter movies.

Or you could just put Mafia 3 into your video game console.

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2 minutes ago, J.T. said:

You could right a thesis on the idea of the black revenge fantasy as shown through the Truck Turner or Slaughter movies.

Or you could just put Mafia 3 into your video game console.

Given the papers I used to see at Bowling Green or the Popular Culture Association conferences, I’m sure that has probably been written by now. I mean, I wrote a conference paper on metatext in Sportscenter for goodness sake. :) 

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