2020 ERNIE LADD BLACK HISTORY MONTH

[Curt McGirt]

I think the first time I saw any part of New Jack City was when Nino somehow descended from the rafters in that big fight scene and it was forever burned in my mind as kinda cheesy from then on. I actually knew it more for the Nino Brown quote in an Immortal Technique song than from the actual movie but pretty sure I've seen all of it in bits and pieces over the years. Why I haven't sat down and watched the whole thing baffles me. 

This movie reminds me of another movie that I am probably gonna review to help out Rippa. 

[J.T.]

Nino Brown is the villain you pull for at the beginning and then hope he goes down in flames by the end of the movie.

"Sit yo' five dolla ass down before I make change," and "We about to sing this fool a lullaby. (Rock a bye, baby!)" are still a part of my lexicon.

Edited February 28, 2020 by J.T.

[odessasteps]

 

[Curt McGirt]

Haha, funny coincidence you posting that...

Edited February 28, 2020 by Curt McGirt

[RIPPA]

TUPAC: RESURRECTION (Lauren Lazin, 2003)

(Note: Full Documentary is available on Youtube)

IMDB : ROTTEN TOMATOES (78%/90%)

SELECTED BY: @Curt McGirt

This did the rounds on Showtime recently so I DVR'd it. Nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary, it tells the story of Tupac's life in his own words from beyond the grave. Whether you love or hate him, this will give you a greater appreciation for the artist that Tupac was. It doesn't gloss over the crimes he was involved with and lets him explain them. After having seen Biggie and Tupac, the Suge Knight doc (talk about a portrait of a sociopath...) and now this, I'd have to say it's the best portrait of the '90s rap world out of the three and right up there with the Wu Tang miniseries. 

REVIEWED BY: @Execproducer

My assignment was Tupac: Resurrection (2003). Having never seen it before and being aware of some of the post-death mythology as well as the downplaying or outright denial of some of the negative aspects of his life, I approached it with mild trepidation. Having allusions to Christ in the title and knowing the involvement of his mother, Afeni Shakur, didn't exactly ease my concerns. I can now report that, for the most part, I was pleasantly surprised. Directed by Lauren Lazin, a documentarian often specializing in music related films, it is a fine piece of craftsmanship.
 
Starting with his end in Las Vegas, Tupac himself provides the narration from beyond the grave as the film goes from the end to the beginning and back. It is only occasionally noticeable that the narration has been culled from different interviews and it plays against media footage and on-screen interviews with Tupac and others, though to my knowledge, nothing that was specifically shot for this doc.
 
After opening in Vegas with Tupac talking about getting shot ( obviously actually talking about the infamous mugging or supposed hit job in New York) the film settles into your standard timeline piece starting with his early life in New York and Baltimore, being raised around both revolutionaries and criminals, his mother's struggle with drug addiction, his youthful artistic pursuits, moving to California, and his eventual breakthrough with Digital Underground. While this part of the film flies by fairly quickly with minimal attention, it still serves to give you a picture of an extremely bright and talented young man. It certainly leaves you wondering just how much of Tupac's persona was a pose. Even he admits that he wasn't much cut out for the hard life and instead of working for drug dealers, he was sponsored by them. As he states, he didn't have a criminal record until he had a record album.  
 
At this point the film mostly becomes narrator Tupac seemingly reacting to onscreen Tupac and they sometimes contradict each other (most notably when focusing on his sexual assault trial and subsequent prison sentence) but that just further serves to humanize the real Tupac. Humanizing the man seems to be the main objective of this doc and it does much to accomplish that goal. The Tupac we get is often crude, thoughtful, belligerent, naive, wise, strong, hopeful, disdainful, cynical, charitable, paranoid, fatalistic and on and on. 
 
The weakest part of the film is the attempt to articulate the concept of Thug Life. As explained in the film it boils down to Tupac adopting the guise of the people that society has deemed gangstas and thugs and by relating to them in his raps, he can start a conversation that will somehow affect real world change.  Apparently this requires him to go deep undercover and surround himself with bad elements and behave in ways that ultimately draw the attention of law enforcement giving him that record that he did not have until his first record. 
 
The conversation he is attempting to have does not seem to include black women. Despite raps like Brenda's Got a Baby and Keep Ya Head Up, he seems to be mostly speaking to young black males. They should be treating their women better (unless they're bitches and hos) but they are the ones who will make the necessary changes to society. Early in the film he spoke on the sexism his mother faced within the Black Panther movement. By the middle he is stating that it is impossible to tag him with a misogyny label in both his music and his life because he was raised and surrounded by strong black women. After all, some of his best friends are women.   
 
He is at his most cogent when responding to critics of Gangsta Rap, both white and black. There is a particularly powerful scene of him speaking directly to the faces of African-American leaders at some type of summit. And his dismissal of Bob Dole is hilarious.  
 
He is at his most touching when speaking about his mother, Afeni Shakur,  and how far they had come together. It seems most artists have at least one Mama song that usually amounts to filler on an album but like Springsteen's turbulent relationship with his father, Tupac's love and respect for his mom are intricately woven threads in the fabric of his art.   
 
Tupac likes to name drop. A lot. The hard street gangsta he portrays himself as can't hide the excitement of the guy that talks about friendships with Mike Tyson and Madonna or Tony Danza writing him in prison or kicking it with Mickey Rourke. When Mickey has a fight with then-wife Carre Otis, Tupac proudly recounts the relationship advice that he offered to the actor. What was that advice? Pop some bottles of Cristal. She'll come around. 
 
The section on the East Coast-West Coast drama is mercifully brief. Mainly it is Tupac casting seemingly paranoid aspersions towards Biggie and Puffy concerning the New York shooting with the two responding by more or less saying 'This fool is crazy but getting shot will do that to you'.  Conspiracy theories are left for other docs to explore.
 
The songs used in the film, besides Tupac himself, range from Eric B. & Rakim to Stevie Wonder to Don Mclean to Kate Bush. Even the Notorious B.I.G makes an appearance. Well Fucking Done!!
 
When we finally return to Vegas, it culminates in a sad end to a complicated life. Tupac was undeniably great, both poetic and political. Had he lived beyond his 25 years perhaps he would have blossomed into the leader he saw himself as.  But the last video we see of him is surveillance footage from a Vegas hotel of the beat-down of an L.A. Crip by Tupac and his crew, and it was this thuggish behavior that almost certainly led directly to the end of his Thug Life.
 
Highly recommended. 

[Curt McGirt]

I'm glad you received this well because I was fearing a negative response. I know we pick some exploitative films for this project but I wanted to show something that was a little smarter and hopefully eye opening this time. At the same time I didn't want to show something that seemed to glorify someone accused of rape and admittedly (and visibly) violent. It's a complicated film about a complicated person and should be taken as one. 

[Curt McGirt]

Also, glad to see this is in full on Youtube, which it wasn't at the time I picked it (or if it was I must've missed it)

EDIT: Well, nice coincidence -- Tupac: Resurrection is on The Movie Channel right now and is gonna air a couple more times on Thursday, Friday, and Monday. 

EDIT II: Watching this again and what strikes me more than anything was that as much influence as Tupac had, as much as people paid attention to him for good and ill, as much as the police thought he was a threat... this guy was just a kid. He was a fucking baby, in his 20s. And he died before he hit 30. He was practically strangled in his crib to be honest; what a shame.

Edited March 2, 2020 by Curt McGirt

[Execproducer]

On 3/2/2020 at 7:04 AM, Curt McGirt said:

I'm glad you received this well because I was fearing a negative response.

To be honest, that was my second draft. First was much more negative, less towards the film and more towards the star. That is a quandary because Tupac didn't have any control over his portrayal in the film. It is obviously biased in his favor. Yes, all docs have a bias but one can argue that by letting Tupac do the talking they are actually absolving him of bad behavior because while he pays lip service to mistakes and immaturity, it eventually boils down to him taking responsibility for 'being at the wrong place at the wrong time'.   Like, man, he shouldn't have been sleeping in the same room a rape took place (yeah, ok) and damn, he sure regrets going on Yo! MTV Raps and bragging about him and his entourage beating the shit out of Allen Hughes*.

Bullshit. 

As far as his issues with police, compare him with someone like Ice-T who actually had a record before he had a record and thanks to Cop Killer, was at one time legit considered a threat by law enforcement. Yet, somehow, after his success he managed to avoid constant run-ins with police and, you know, committing major crimes, whereas Tupac just couldn't seem to help himself.  

 

Still, as you say, he was a complicated and multi-talented guy and a real artistic loss to the world and there are a ton of lessons to be taken from his story, from a cautionary tale about handling fame to the legit anger towards a corrupt system. 

 

*If that 5-part Tupac docuseries ever actually gets produced, it should really be something.

Edited March 3, 2020 by Execproducer

[supremebve]

On 3/3/2020 at 3:54 AM, Execproducer said:

To be honest, that was my second draft. First was much more negative, less towards the film and more towards the star. That is a quandary because Tupac didn't have any control over his portrayal in the film. It is obviously biased in his favor. Yes, all docs have a bias but one can argue that by letting Tupac do the talking they are actually absolving him of bad behavior because while he pays lip service to mistakes and immaturity, it eventually boils down to him taking responsibility for 'being at the wrong place at the wrong time'.   Like, man, he shouldn't have been sleeping in the same room a rape took place (yeah, ok) and damn, he sure regrets going on Yo! MTV Raps and bragging about him and his entourage beating the shit out of Allen Hughes*.

Bullshit. 

As far as his issues with police, compare him with someone like Ice-T who actually had a record before he had a record and thanks to Cop Killer, was at one time legit considered a threat by law enforcement. Yet, somehow, after his success he managed to avoid constant run-ins with police and, you know, committing major crimes, whereas Tupac just couldn't seem to help himself.  

 

Still, as you say, he was a complicated and multi-talented guy and a real artistic loss to the world and there are a ton of lessons to be taken from his story, from a cautionary tale about handling fame to the legit anger towards a corrupt system. 

 

*If that 5-part Tupac docuseries ever actually gets produced, it should really be something.

Tupac is pretty easily the most fascinating artist of my lifetime all things considered.  Did anyone listen to the Slow Burn podcast season about Biggie and Tupac?  It really illustrates how Tupac was entirely too young, too angry, and too charismatic for him to be going through everything he was going through in his brief life.  He's was like a hurricane that produced so much raw energy that something was going to happen no matter where he made landfall.  I recently read "The Autobiography of Malcolm X," and was amazed by how determined, dedicated, and single-mindedly committed to everything he did in his entire life.  When he was a kid, he was a great student until his racist ass teacher pretty much told him that his dreams would never come true because he was black.  When he turned to a life of crime, he completely dedicated his life to his hustle.  When he went to jail, he was so dedicated to reading and educating himself that he studied the entire dictionary when he realized his vocabulary wasn't large enough to read some of the books he wanted to read.  He was so committed to the Nation of Islam that he went from city to city starting mosques in order to spread the word.  He never took days off, he never relented, and as soon as he learned something better, he dedicated his life to that.  Tupac reminds me of Malcolm X in that way, except he died before the time that Malcolm X decided to study the entire dictionary.  I don't know who or what he would have turned into, but it's extremely sad that he never had the chance to grow into that person.  

[RIPPA]

BONUS REVIEW: DEEP COVER (Dir. Bill Duke, 1992)

Reviewed by @Curt McGirt

Deep Cover opens with someone smoking a crack pipe in slow motion. And then they show a Batman-esque scene of a child watching his junkie father get gunned down for robbing a liquor store, splattering against the car window holding a gun and a fistful of cash. Buckle up cause you're in for a ride.

Scumbag fed Charles Martin Smith next holds a disgustingly racist job application for an undercover cop, who turns out to be Laurence Fishburne, fresh off of Boyz in the Hood and our lead and narrator. Smith introduces him to the hierarchy of the bosses he's targeting and he goes on the hunt. He falls into the circle of crackhead dealer Eddie (the late Roger Guenveur Smith) and midlevel connection David Jason (Jeff Goldblum, eating scenery like french fries) who immediately set him up after Eddie gets popped. After he's arrested by the great Clarence Williams III, David shows up as his lawyer and gets him off because he stood tall. David's boss Felix Barbosa (what a great gangster name) then summarily beats Eddie to death with a fucking pool cue and says the wonderful line "You aughta kill a man sometime, David. It's... liberating." AFTER he asks if Goldblum ever saw anyone die and he says he saw a kid die in a boating accident as a child in a perfectly Goldblum way. 

So, Goldblum is in the business of trying to make a new designer drug and needs $5 million to start production and get out of the coke business. The man is on a roll in this movie. After snorting a big line he quotes the famous "balls and my word" Scarface line and then says "is that two things or three things?" It just goes on from there. Meanwhile Fishburne is cool as a cucumber trying to replace Eddie and surpass his stupidity, gain David's trust, move up the ladder. 

I might as well stop there. This movie shares the existential nature of King of New York and also the nightmare-world grittiness of that film while keeping its heads in the clouds a bit much, like its year-earlier partner New Jack City. There are a ton of unrealistic things that you could pick on -- including an insane car chase escape -- but the seriously great acting and the theme of the film still have a depth and a conscience about the demise of black and brown America under the bootheel of the racist establishment. Everything blows up in Fishburne's face despite his righteousness. It defies its exploitation nature and ends up being a hell of a film; it definitely sucks you in. 

And there is, of course, the title track...

(NSFW and contains spoilers)

[supremebve]

Roger Guenveur Smith is alive.  He also holds the record for playing the most reprehensible light skinned characters in the history of cinema.  

 

 

[Curt McGirt]

I thought he died last year, now I don't know who the hell I was thinking of. It has to be another black character actor from movies of this period. 

[J.T.]

Happy Birthday, Rudy Ray Moore!

[RIPPA]

It feels like another lifetime ago when we did this (even though it was only 6 months ago) but I finally watched Fast Color and so should everyone else