Film School: Art of Organized Noize & Iversion

I can't say that I've seen countless documentaries, but with streaming and digital rentals I've gotten the chance to watch more than I typically would otherwise. I still can't quite put my finger on what makes a great documentary, but I can definitely tell when the subject of a documentary is more interesting than the quality of the documentary. The two docs I saw recently, The Art of Organized Noize and Iverson, covered people I wasn't quite old enough to follow properly but whose stories and careers are practically legend. 

The Art of Organized Noize

My experience with OutKast started when I was eleven with Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, and while I still discovered the singles from the previous three albums on my own at a younger age, Organized Noize were not on my radar. I didn't know who they were or that they were responsible for those OutKast albums, but unfortunately they weren't largely celebrated by the media that covered and documented that era as they probably should have been. 

It seemed like they were pretty closely involved with the making of this documentary. Don't get me wrong. I'm glad the story was told. I'm glad it's out and accessible. If they can get a resurgence from it, that's wonderful. I still wish it was directed by someone else. The right people are interviewed and the general story is told. It would have been cool there was more video footage. I'm sure there were tons of photos from the time. There was no focus on Aquemini or Stankonia. What I liked about Michael Rappaport's Tribe doc was that it told a story while presenting a narrative of the present day's tour. The Organized Noize doc had Rico, Sleepy and Ray tell the story from memory, in what looked like only one or two sittings. The music nerd in me wishes there was a bit more detail to it all.

Iverson

My dad never watched basketball or baseball, only football. The NBA wasn't something I even acknowledged until the 6th grade when I went to a school of basketball fans. That was 2002-2003, so I already missed the Lakers - Sixers finals. And I didn't really watch much basketball then anyway. I knew of Iverson from different pop culture references, Sportscenter mentions and NBA Live 2003, which is unfortunate because realizing an athlete's greatness in retrospect is never the same as watching it happen. There was a lot I learned about his life from this doc. I didn't know about the high school arrest or that the Sixers almost traded him the summer before they went to the finals. I feel like the Reebok deal was a bit too overlooked. Those were a huge deal at the time. And I wish there was something about the stories of the crazy money he spent, buying clothes when he reached a city and leaving them at the hotel. Overall, I enjoyed it. 

Film School: Crash Test, Dear White People, Best In Show

Crash Test
Crash Test is a live show at UCB hosted by Paul Scheer and Rob Huebel that usually features your typical UCB names and a bunch of people that also appear in Children's Hospital and the like. Huebel and Scheer took that show, put it on a bus that drove around Los Angeles and taped it for this special that's available for $3.99 on Vimeo On Demand. If you get a chance to check it out, it's pretty funny. If you watch the trailer and read the names on the poster, that's exactly what you're getting. There isn't some game changing twist or special appearance aside from maybe how some of these actors make their entrances. Scheer and Huebel host the show with the audience all on the bus, playing off each other and things they see on the street. They parody Star Maps tours. They give an earpiece to one of the audience members and make him do weird things on Hollywood Boulevard. Tom Lennon and Ben Garant show up as security guards at the Paramount lot. Natasha Legerro does five minutes of stand up. There's nothing cynical to note about any of this. It's fun and enjoyable. Toward the end, Earl Sweatshirt performs a song from the first album, so chances are this was recorded a while ago. The credits show there's another one coming in the near future.

Dear White People
It's hard to watch a trailer for a movie called "Dear White People" done in the way it was for this movie and not think the entire movie isn't literally just a laundry list of dos and don'ts for white people. I've been on a pretty anti-white people stance for some time now, but making that a movie didn't interest me as a moviegoer. It turns out that idea is buried here in what is still a movie with a story and characters (...obviously). The movie part is okay. It probably focuses on too many characters. On one hand doing that establishes how there's no single black identity, but the stories get convoluted and uninteresting, the dialogue at times a little too self-congratulatory. The culmination of the movie, and likely the entire purpose of this movie's existence, shows a fraternity throwing a blackface party with all its white members. During the credits, actual photos of real life events that resemble this one, are shown. The movie, itself, probably isn't that great but the realization that this still is a huge problem even for people aware of the racial climate we're in is a worthwhile one.

Best In Show
I literally knew nothing about this movie and watched it randomly on Labor Day. Best In Show was directed by Christopher Guest and written by Guest and Eugene Levy. It's a mockumentary style movie about a Westminster-style dog show. The movie starts off pretty slow and considering it came out in 2000, it felt very dated, especially 20 or so years after one of Guest's best Spinal Tap. I almost stopped paying attention to it. Once we get to the actual show, I was cracking up. Literally everything the announcer, played by Fred Willard, says is hysterical. There are all sorts of one liners that I could not stop laughing at. When I went to Chicago earlier this year, I went to the Second City theater and they have pictures of all the alumni that went on to do bigger things. Most of the cast of this movie is part of the Second City family. It's just really hard for me to not be bothered by the fact that literally the entire cast is white. And the movie came out in 2000?

Film School: Straight Outta Compton

Straight Outta Compton was way better than it had any business being, but it's hard to leave this movie not having wanted a more focused, darker political film. When I say that the movie is good, I mean that it's well directed with a real budget and talented actors, even Cube's son. Ultimately though the movie was made by, or perhaps even strong armed into the final version by, the people it was based on. Cube, Dre and Eazy's widow Tomica are the movie's executive producers. While those main three are the most significant characters in the story, there's a lot more that went on than what was going to be depicted by these three.

It's the N.W.A. movie, but the group is only the focus of the first third of it. I get that there's more to the story when you get into the solo careers, but it's still the N.W.A. movie. We go pretty quickly from the five loosely knowing each other to "Boyz N Da Hood" to national tour. Compton touches on the members dealings with police (and the subsequent but wholly inaccurate inspiration for "Fuck The Police"), groupies and the FBI letter, but it doesn't focus on what made the group so significant both within hip-hop and in music generally, even without the context of violence in LA. There's a reason that 15 years after the fact twelve-year-old me could bump "Straight Outta Compton" and enjoy it like just came out and feel the aggression within it. That didn't happen when I tried to listen to Public Enemy or KRS or Rakim. The group was bigger than the controversy and the label drama. A great script would have tried to portray this.

My biggest outright issue with the movie is how all the dialogue involved saying the name of the person being addressed. "Come over here, Eazy." "Did you hear this, Dre?" I talk to people all the time. I hardly say their names unless I'm trying to get their attention. My second biggest complain is the amount of daps given in this movie. Write a dope line - daps. Threaten boyfriends of groupies with heavy artillery - daps. Reunite with a former enemy - daps. You'd think the screenwriters ran out of ideas and thought, "Let's have them give daps so we don't have to come up with more words for them to say."

The weirdest twist in this movie is how much it focused on Dre. I've seen pretty much all the interviews done by members of N.W.A., Death Row, Aftermath, what have you. Dre did press but was never really that vocal. As pivotal as he was to the group, he definitely wasn't a frontman. It seemed like more time was spent on his character than Eazy or Cube's. The movie literally ends with him saying he's leaving Suge and then announcing that his label will be called Aftermath. Like, the credits roll right after this. Wtf? This is like when the Lifetime Saved by the Bell movie was actually about Screech. How did we get here? He clearly had his own people punch up the script, but I didn't realize they had to power to do all this.

The movie is probably only 70% accurate -- why is 2Pac recording "Hail Mary" when Dre brings him "California Love"? The way "G Thang" and "Deep Cover" were recorded? Suge wasn't even that scary! A teenager could still walk away from it knowing most of the basic facts. There's just too much to cover even in a 2.5 hour movie. Had it been tighter and darker it would have been a different movie entirely. I guess I'll just hold out for the remake.

Film School: Trainwreck, Ant-Man

Ant-Man
This movie is cool. That's really the highest praise I can give it. Much was made about not necessarily being a superhero movie but rather a heist movie. I mean, it's a heist movie in the sense that at different times in the movie they break into somewhere to steal something. But this isn't Heat or Point Break or *googles heist movies to not just mention Ocean's Eleven*. It definitely has more of the feel of a Marvel movie than a heist movie. I would like to have seen how drastically different Edgar Wright's vision of this movie was. It could have been a cool diversion from all the Avengers tie-ins. But Rudd does a good job. Corey Stoll too. Michael Pena is really great, but something didn't sit right with me that he and T.I. played the dumb criminals.

Trainwreck
I like Amy Schumer. I've enjoyed her standup. I watch her show. I've seen her star rise since that Comedy Central hour, so it didn't really surprise me that Judd Apatow handpicked her as the next project. And, I guess, as a fan it was hard for me to find anything negative in this movie jump out at me because, well, I root for comics to make it to that next level. But when you actually think about it, there are some "huh?" moments in this movie. There's no way Lebron's character was her idea. She clearly knows nothing about sports and that's why Lebron's character hangs out with his doctor. Also, why is Lebron in New York so often during the season? Does he even have time to hang out? He has a family and kids and a ton of obligations. Also if Lebron is already in Cleveland, why is Amar'e still with the Knicks. Basketball logistics aside...
There's an emotional core to this movie that's at the very least enviable. A woman who doesn't want to settle down realizes she's found the right person amidst different tragedies in her life. I'm just not sure that idea was fully developed. What we saw on screen was very much the surface of that idea. This is a weird thing to nitpick about but is she even that much of a trainwreck? She cheats on her boyfriend with a couple different guys, but that's kinda it. Her job seems pretty normal (also, she works at a magazine? a fucking physical magazine in 2015?). Her dad is sick but again, that happens. You could tell Liz Lemon was a mess ten minutes into 30 Rock's pilot. I don't think we ever really get why Bill Hader's character is that special. They like each other, but it's not evident why they need each other. And like all Apatow movies, it was maybe 30 minutes too long and the beginning of the third act completely threw me off. I'd love to see her next movie just to see where she goes with it.

Film School: Spy

The stigma around Melissa McCarthy for people who have only seen Bridesmaids and are maybe slightly aware of Mike & Molly seems to be that she only plays women versions of Paul Blart. That she knows she's big and sort of plays dumb and is only capable of being funny physically. It's amazing how unfair that is. McCarthy is so funny and such a gifted actress. Emotions, facial expressions, sarcasm, physical movements, comedy, drama, she's really good at all of it. Even that last sentence is patronizing. When people were excited at the possibility of women-driven comedies after the success of Bridesmaids and nothing like that really happened, McCarthy happened. This is her second big comedy in two years, and while she's joined by some big names, Spy is essentially her movie. That's the star she has become.

I'll be honest, when I saw the trailer for this movie, with all the big names in it — Jude Law, Statham, Rose Byrne and even McCarthy — and with it being a secret agent parody, I thought it was a kids movie. I had no idea until literally the other day that it was an R-rated comedy. I don't know if that says more about me or how they marketed the movie.

It almost doesn't seem like an R-rated movie. Statham is the only one that uses any bad language and with the exception of a great dick pic joke, it's not until the second half of the movie that the jokes pick up their raunch factor. They clearly spent money on this movie. They film literally all over Europe. I love that a movie that isn't a Fast and Furious sequel or comic book movie got a huge budget like this. I like that an R-rated comedy that doesn't have Rogen or Apatow's name on it received such a push. And this isn't a lead up to some qualifying statement. This is a great movie that's very funny. I enjoyed it very much.

The cast meshes together very well. McCarthy and Miranda Hart, who plays her sidekick and fellow fish out of water, are especially great. The spy parody is almost a genre of its own at this point, but Spy establishes its tone uniquely. It successfully mixes a goofiness with comedy today's need for quick, savvy Veep-style insults. And that we owe to director Paul Fieg. I've enjoyed Feig's past work, but now I'm fully on the bandwagon. He brings the best out of his actors and lets all sorts of minor characters get in on the fun.

By the way, 50 Cent is in this movie. If you've listened to any interview he's done in the last two years, he has mentioned it. He literally only has a two minute concert cameo in which he doesn't even perform a real song. Well, it might have been off Animal Ambition, but those are the same thing to me.

Sci-Fi Today: Ex Machina & Other Space

In an interview with NPR Fresh Air, Paul Feig (Freaks and Geeks, Bridesmaids, the Ghostbusters reboot) claimed that comedy has never really done sci-fi right. The obvious examples, Space Balls and to an extent Tim Allen's Galaxy Quest, were less works of science fiction that were funny as much as they were blatant parodies of stuff that already existed. This inspired him to create the show Other Space out now on Yahoo Screen. To Feig the show could overturn typical sci-fi tropes and in some sense explore the limits of the genre, at least in the form of a single cam comedy. 

His goals seem lofty, but the man's track record sort of allows for this. And this statement probably makes more sense in the wake of the news that he will direct the new Ghostbusters reboot. It's a story about random people fighting ghosts. Let's be honest. There's a lot of creative shit you can do with that. But Feig wrote the initial script for Other Space over 10 years ago (I'm pretty sure he said this anyway), and the only example of doing something different that he brought up in the NPR interview was that aliens didn't have to look like green monsters but that they could resemble humans. 

The show is not some Star Trek parody, but it's basically The Office (Parks & Rec might be a more appropriate comparison) in space and I mean this as the highest compliment. Other Space is very enjoyable and funny, but it's essentially a workplace comedy on a spaceship. Yes, there's a robot and an A.I., but the robot looks like it came from an 80s movie with no CGI budget. There's nothing modern at all about the sci-fi element of the show. 

This brings us to Ex Machina. The wonder in most of our favorite Sci-Fi films stems from an element of impossibility. Star Wars is set in a faraway galaxy, with different species, crazy weapons and magical powers. Terminator, Blade Runner and Back to the Future take place on Earth but in some twisted version of society. They were written during a time when personal computers were barely plausible. Ex Machina is the first film of its kind in the iPhone age that could very well take place in the present day. 

In the movie, Oscar Isaac plays Nathan, a billionaire computer scientist who has developed the most advanced artificial intelligence system known to man. Domhnall Gleeson's Caleb is invited to the research facility to test the A.I. — a robot that looks like a human woman — and decide if its behavior is indistinguishable from that of a human. If the A.I. is as advanced as possible, this means it could feel and emulate human emotion. The movie brings up all sorts of issues regarding morality, trust, deceit, sexuality and manipulation. 

While technology today is still pretty far from what's shown in the movie, it's not hard to imagine a situation like this. Machine learning and artificial intelligence today is already so impressive. Once your imagination starts to run wild, literally anything in this realm is possible. This is what sci-fi today is capable of. You can take today's technology, today's societal worries and today's political problems and flesh all that into a very real story. Not that there isn't room for Star Wars and the like, but this allows for a whole batch of ideas rooted in something modern yet familiar. Other Space is a fine show, and I hope more and more people watch it. It probably works better as it is than it would have been as some as sitcom version of Her, but at the same time, hey maybe there should be a comedy version of Black Mirror. Feig had the right idea to do sci-fi differently because the possibilities now are truly endless.

Straight Outta Compton (Trailer)

No one has really cared for any (theatrical) music biopics released in the last few years. It's not so much that they've been garbage. It's moreso that they're been mediocre, boring even. This happens for two main reasons. One, the artist's estate won't clear the rights for any of the music until they approve of the final cut. That's how we ended up with a PG-13 James Brown movie. Two, these movies don't usually involve top notch talent be it actors, directors or screenwriters.

Which is why I'm still hesitant about Straight Outta Compton even after seeing this trailer. Cube and Dre are the movie's executive producers, and they both have public images they sort of need to uphold. The N.W.A story is obviously an incredible one and an important one, but it does not end well. The entire group splits up and Eazy-E dies of AIDS. And there's so much to cover - the censorship issues, their dominance without radio play, the branding of gangsta rap, invasion of hip-hop into white suburbia, police brutality, LA gang culture, the LA riots, Eazy-E the mastermind, Jerry Heller the thief and eventually the number of careers it spawned. I'd like for the movie to be gritty, to be dark. This trailer is a little too shiny for me. It almost seems like a rags to riches story that cuts off before anything bad happens. And while getting Paul Giamatti to play Heller was a huge win, he's depicted as this mentor and confidante when he's clearly the villain. The still for the YouTube video alone looks so corny. They look like the Backstreet Boys in Raiders gear.

The cast is pretty much all new faces, which could be a really great thing. Of course, Ice Cube casting his own son in the movie is some Jayden Smith shit. The movie is produced by Cube and I get that they're friends, but you really couldn't do better than F. Gary Gray? And the writers haven't been a part of anything noteworthy.

As far as I'm concerned, it's a total loss for this movie if it ends being on the level of Notorious. Hundred bucks says they throw in a beats/headphones joke in there somewhere.

Film School: The Interview, The Hobbit, Top Five

The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies
I really enjoyed Desolation of Smaug when I saw it in theaters. Then when I caught it randomly on cable earlier this year, it was hard for me to sit through. I wasn't exactly rushing to see this one. I get why they did three Hobbit movies, all at three hours long, to sort of parallel the LOTR trilogy, but this was just too much. It was clearly a stretch to make this movie as long as it was. The movie starts in the middle of the action, and the actual battle starts very quickly, but I just felt so detached from all the characters and I forgot who was who that it was hard to root for anyone. And considering it was a Hobbit movie, very little of it had to do with Bilbo. But you don't get a final Peter Jackson movie with an ending, another ending and then ten more minutes of nonsense.

The Interview
You know what? This wasn't that bad. I really didn't like Neighbors. I thought it was such a stupid movie and poorly directed and a waste of great talent. You'd think that would be the case for The Interview. The premise is something literally only Rogen and James Franco could get greenlit. But the first half of this movie is so great. The way Randall Park, who's awesome on Veep, portrays Kim Jong Un is kind of unbelievable. This is important for two reasons. One being Park is a tremendous actor, and I look forward to his new show Fresh Off The Boat. The other being that this is the highest profile casting of an Asian American actor in Hollywood this year, and there are people that probably assumed the part would be played as if it were a South Park character or Mickey Rooney in Breakfast At Tiffany's. There's something so human about the character, and I hope that doesn't go under appreciated. Of course, the second half of the movie rushes to finish, and even I can't believe I'm complaining about the logic of a James Franco movie, but there are some good laughs here.

Top Five
I wanted to really like this movie. If it wasn't for how the movie ended, I'm not sure I would admit to liking it at all. Chris Rock is a wonderful comic. He just isn't the greatest actor. While there are other things wrong with this movie, that stuck out the most to me. I like how the movie was directed. It was clearly influenced by Woody Allen with some Richard Linklater sprinkled in. The gag with Anders Holm was a little strange, and the middle third of the movie got a little too predictable. You've got to love all the cameos though. Seinfeld in the strip club was great.

Rounders
This has been sitting in my Netflix queue for some time now, solely for its cast. I had no idea what it was about, but when the idea of a sequel came up in some podcast I was listening to, I finally got around to watching it. I had some friends get really into poker my senior year of college. I thought they just liked the possibility of winning money, but they were scheduling weekly games, reading up on strategies, studying old world series of poker games — they were really into it. After watching this movie, I realize how stupid it was for me to ever play with people that take the game this seriously. This is a fantastic movie. I think being close to serious poker players (albeit total amateurs) made it that much more interesting. Great performances by not only Damon and Norton but John Malkovich and John Turturro. Not sure that Damon does a sequel at this point in his career, but I'm all for it.

Blue Ruin
Here's a movie I saw on a bunch of year end lists last year. It is a well done movie. I feel like I've seen different variations of the guy gets revenge story or at least the guy who shoots up a storm, but this had a pretty interesting take on the trope with a lead character that didn't know anything about guns or killing people. I'm honestly most proud of myself realizing that the old high school friend with the guns is played by the dude that played Buzz McCallister in the Home Alone movies.

A Trip To Italy
I watched The Trip completely on a whim. I had recently been put on to Steve Coogan's Alan Partridge projects and I didn't know anything about Rob Brydon. It was really great, like the Before Sunrise movies with two close friends that like to do Michael Caine impressions. A Trip To Italy is even better. They play fictional versions of themselves in a way that I wish could be done with American actors we love. More impressions, too.

In A World
I will always appreciate movies that depict odd little occupations and social scenes like this one did. There's a whole crowd of people that I'm sure totally relate to it, but for others it's fun just to discover what it's like. First time director Lake Bell does a fine job. I now officially don't connect her with that awful show How To Make It In America a.k.a Entourage for people that read rap blogs in 2009.

Alan Partridge: Alpha Papa

On a flight to London last summer, I got bored and checked out my flight's poor selection of entertainment options, and the one I ended up enjoying the most was a one-hour mockumentary special called Alan Partridge: Welcome to the Places of My Life. Alan Partridge is a character played by English comedian Steve Coogan, whom after some Wikipedia-ing I realized I knew from the movie Night At The Museum. The special was so funny, I watched it again on my flight back (honestly, I was hoping there were more episodes and also, wtf Virgin, how are there the exact same movie options on flights going both directions?). Obviously he's English, and most Americans' familiarity with modern British comedies are Ricky Gervais and the Simon Pegg Cornetto trilogy. But forget subgenres for a second, this man is blatantly funny and very talented at what he does. That's not to say every Partridge project is a 10 – fuck if I know, I've only seen two – but you get what I'm saying.

Partridge is a (kinda) old, (kinda) clueless radio personality, and Coogan has had several different TV specials involving the character. Alpha Papa was the first project in this Partridge family to be released worldwide theatrically. Oddly enough, I went to the movies while in London (because I got bored, no really) and this movie was playing. Crazy thing is movies there literally cost 18 pounds. That's fucking 30 US dollars! For one ticket! Granted it was a Saturday night and it was easily the nicest movie theater I've ever been in, featuring leather recliners as the seats (literally) and coffee tables in between every two seats to hold the food you can order from the restaurant/snack bar outside. I ended up seeing Kick-Ass 2. Because I loved the original and wanted to, but I also saw a ton of ads for it while traveling in Europe. So much for all that ad money spent though because I was the only person in that giant theater except for this mom and her two teenage kids. It was uncomfortable for all of us and that was even before the movie started – if you've seen the movie, you know what I mean.

Anyway, Alpha Papa is cool. There's definitely some funny parts and it's generally ridiculous in an enjoyable way. It's about a crazy guy taking the radio station hostage, but it's also about corporations coming down on the little man/local radio station. I feel like it could have been funnier if it wasn't targeted at a worldwide audience and it included jokes about Wales and shit (lots of cracks at Irishmen though that I pretended to "that's so true" at), but that's probably slightly insensitive for me to suggest. I also technically wasn't paying so much attention as I just had it on in the background while I finished Byron Crawford's XXL anthology Writin' Dirty: An Anthology. But still, check it out if you get a chance. And if you fly Virgin Atlantic within the next 10 years, that same hour special will probably available as well.

Film School: Neighbors

He's had some duds in the past few years, but Seth Rogen is officially a bankable comedy star. He's not putting up Ferrell and Sandler box office numbers, but he's gotten to the point where his production company releases a movie every summer. He's reliable enough for laughs that even with members of the Apatow family as co-stars in some of his most recent work, he's still the main attraction for most moviegoers. There is just too much wrong with Neighbors for Rogen to save the day this time around.

From the jump, I was confused with the Zac Efron casting. There's no obvious alternative, and that's probably how he got the job, but is he even famous really? The premise of the movie is not that a fraternity moves in next door. It's that the married couple played by Rogen and Rose Byrne don't want to come to terms with the boring lifestyle their newborn daughter has brought. They want to be cool again — if you didn't get this, they literally repeat it four times in the first half hour — and oh by the way, a fraternity moves in next door.

The movie is all jokes. This isn't a bad thing. Good comedies aren't necessarily heartwarming films. It's just that so many of them fall flat in the same way all the "by the hymen of Olivia Newton-John" type jokes did in Anchorman 2. Some of them probably could have been. Hannibal Buress and Jerrod Carmichael are very funny guys, and they weren't used properly. There's a scene where Efron and Dave Franco's characters go back and forth in this non-sense one-up battle. Franco pulls it off. Efron doesn't. If you're directing this (I assume) big budget comedy, shouldn't you realize this?

It's hard to tell when they gave up on the movie. Is it when they decided to throw 10 cameos in the first act? Or was it in the editing room because there are some weird cuts in this movie.

If there's a bright spot, it's that Rogen, the actor, isn't washed up. He's the movie's highlight. He's fat, loveable and knows how to deliver jokes. We saw that in Knocked Up, and we still saw that in This Is The End. Rogen, the idea man and producer and Hollywood big shot and hopeful starmaker, may need to step back and re-evaluate the results from his recent work.