Valhalla Rising | Movie Review

 

My accelerated movie review of Vahalla Rising:

• Brutality = 10
• Storyline = 5.5
• Plot = 4.5
• Speed (flow) = 4
• Dialogue + 4.5.

"One Eye" is a great character.

The movie was too slow but intriguing enough for me to watch it in its entirety.

The slow pace of VR does at times work well in building intensity.

Overall VR had great potential but the story was mismanaged - defectively directed by Nicolas Winding Refn.

However, I did like the tense contrast of Christianity (erection of crosses) vs. the elusive "primitives" and their marksmen stone-headed arrow archery (the stone-headed arrows rocked! (pun unintended))

More after the jump…

Outside Man: Spike Lee’s Unending Struggle [Excerpts]

Excerpts from September 14, 2008  - Press Release


In “Outside Man: Spike Lee’s Unending Struggle” (p. 52), John Colapinto profiles Spike Lee, Hollywood’s most prominent black director, whose latest movie, “Miracle at St. Anna,” about an all-black unit of the U.S. Army that battled the Nazis during the Italian campaign in the Second World War, will be released later this month. Three of Lee’s prior films, “Do the Right Thing,” “Jungle Fever,” and “Malcolm X,” “have earned him a reputation as a filmmaker obsessed with race,” Colapinto writes. While his first movie, “She’s Gotta Have It,” led some to call Lee “the black Woody Allen” (“How can you say anybody is the black anybody after one film?” Lee asks Colapinto), his third film, “Do the Right Thing,” about a race riot in Brooklyn, “changed the public perception of Lee,” Colapinto writes. “He became a kind of Malcolm X of American cinema… . His subsequent films were controversial even when he did not intend them to be.” “People think I’m this angry black man walking around in a constant state of rage,” Lee tells Colapinto.

Lee speaks with Colapinto about notions of blackness, especially as they concern Barack Obama, who has had to address concerns about whether he is “black enough.” “It’s ignorance,” Lee says. “Here’s the thing. I’m not one of these people who’re going to be defined by the ghetto mentality, that you have to have been shot, have numerous babies from many women, be ignorant, getting high all the time, walking around with pants hanging from your ass—and that’s a black man? I’m not buying that.”

Lee’s critics note that he is quick to accuse others of racist attitudes in their judgments of his films. “The fact that Spike Lee is a talented guy is inarguable,” Stanley Crouch, the African-American cultural critic who has long been one of Lee’s fiercest detractors, says. “But if you make movies as consistently inferior to the movies of a man like Woody Allen or Martin Scorsese and cry ‘racism’ or imply racism, when your movies are not as successful as theirs are—what is that?” Scorsese, for his part, tells Colapinto that he admires Lee. “I always responded to his work as a fresh, original American voice in cinema—mainstream cinema… . When you look at the list of the work that he’s done—films, commercials, documentaries—the nature of the voice that he is in the entertainment industry in America is quite unique.”

Lee says that from the outset he knew that “I had to market myself and market the brand of Spike Lee.” He has a strong sense of whom he considers to be his peers in the film world, as illustrated by his insistence regarding the placement of a poster at a Sony music studio: “Don’t put us next to Judd Apapoe, whatever that guy is,” Lee says, referring to Judd Apatow. “We gotta be next to Spielberg and Williams!”






 

Is It That You Can't Control Your B(itches)?!

ROMANCING THE STONE



The character Passion/Pashen (Pashen - as listed by IMDB) played by Joyce Walker/Joyce Joseph Walker in Willie Dynamite also appeared in Paid In Full as Janet Woods - Ace Woods (played by Wood Harris - portraying Harlem Sugarhill subdivision's own: AZ) mother. In both WD and PIF Joyce J. Walker faces quagmires. J.J. Johnson (born James Louis Johnson) in Indianapolis, Indiana, (January 22, 1924 - February 4, 2001), was a United States jazz trombonist, composer and arranger provides the theme for 'Passion's Dilemma' with his MCA release of the OST (original soundtrack) to Willie Dynamite.

In his early twenties J.J. Johnson developed a remarkable, flawless technique and was the first trombonist to rise to the challenge of bebop music, remaining unchallenged at the forefront of modern jazz throughout his career. He played the instrument at super-rapid clips (a Philadelphia nightclub once billed him, Barnum and Bailey style, as “The Fastest Trombone Player Alive!”), and who, with the great Kai Winding, made the famous “J.J. and Kai” recordings showing that the trombone could indeed be a virtuoso instrument. In 1970 he ceased performing in public for most of 17 years, before a comeback in the late 1980s. From the mid fifties on, he was a perennial polling favorite in jazz circles, even winning Down Beat's "Trombonist of the Year" during years he wasn't active. Voted into Down Beat's Hall of Fame in 1995, J.J. Johnson's recording career spanned 54 years, from 1942 to 1996.
J.J. Johnson has long been regarded as the greatest trombonist of the Post-Swing Era, a pervasive influence on other jazz musicians, and one of jazz's legendary figures.

J.J. Johnson in an interview with Bob Bernotas of the Online Trombone Journal unveils:

Let's talk about that for a while. How did you break into film composing?

Quincy Jones and Lalo Schifrin were very instrumental in prodding me into having a crack at something that I was eating my heart out to try. They reassured me, "J.J., have a go at it. What's the worst that can happen if it doesn't work out for you? It's a tough business, J.J. It's competitive. We don't know what kind of luck you'll have. All we know is, as far as we're concerned, you have what it takes to become a successful film composer and we would strongly urge you to have a crack at it. And we will do what we can to see that you get on the inside by way of having a good agent."

You must have an agent, a film composing agent, not a jazz agent. The film community is a whole 'nother world. And I can say without reservation that early on I also found out that, man, you're in a very racist element here. There are no black film composers doing the likes of Star Wars, doing the likes of E.T., doing the likes of Jurassic Park. There are none, nor will there ever be one. That ain't about to happen!

I was planning to ask you about that. Most of your film credits are for the so-called "blaxploitation" films of that time.

All of them were blaxploitation films.

So you feel that you were pigeon-holed or typecast into these sorts of films?

No question about it. I've had my film composing agent tell me, "J.J., I tried my best to talk this guy into hiring you for the film and the guy says, `Of course I know the name J.J. Johnson, but he's a jazz musician. We don't want jazz in this picture.' And I tried my best to tell him, `But he's not gonna write jazz for your movie. He's gonna write movie music.'"

They have tunnelvision. All they know is, "J.J. Johnson is a jazz musician, so therefore he will write jazz for my movie, and this movie ain't about jazz." So not only are they racist, they have severe cases of tunnelvision. The film production community is a horror show as far as being flexible enough to give a guy a chance at something. I thank God for the one or two cases where I was fortunate enough to work with people who were not of that mindset. That's how I got aboard Buck Rogers in the Twenty-first Century, for TV.

*Romancing the stone - music appreciation - uFaqs (un-frequently asked questions) of "gems"