Sunday, July 23, 2006

Miami Vice

Last night I watched the three hour Miami Vice Undercover special. It was a treat because almost 20 years later Miami Vice airs on the same network it ran on. This was an excuse to offer a sneak peak to the Miami Vice movie premiering on Friday.

The sneak peak looks great. I've yet to see a Michael Mann production since heat but I really have never seen Michael Mann movie at the show. Michael Mann by the way was an executive producer for Miami Vice and is a movie director of such films as Heat, Collateral, The Insider, and Ali. I really like the look of video in this movie in the sneak peak. I've been convinced that video is the wave of the future. Though I do hope that film won't go totally obsolete.

Let me just add that the stars of Miami Vice The Movie Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell hosted this three hour special. The episode seen was the very first episode of the series and it still looks great. And if this episode was only the start then if there was any indication it was only going to get better.

Monday, July 10, 2006

Boyz N the Hood

Another movie I haven't seen in a while. This is one of those message movies we hear about. This movie is about a group of friends two are fairly decent and the other had spent time in the pen. We start with them very young and then we see them later as a group of teenagers.

There are a number of issues present in this film. Teenage sex, gentrification, gang violence, father & son relationships, to name those that I can easily identify. But there is one issue that I'd like to talk about.

Doughboy (Ice Cube) and Ricky (Morris Chestnutt) are brothers. However, their mother had them by two different fathers. Because Doughboy's father wasn't liked much by his mother she doesn't like Doughboy much. She tells how he won't amount to nothing and he isn't going to be "shit". He talks him down good. When Ricky gets killed near the end she blames Doughboy. It may be as much about his criminal lifestyle but it may just be a symptom of how differently she treats her boys.

The best part of this movie was the relationship between Furious (Laurence Fishburne) and his son Tre (Cuba Gooding, Jr.). At the beginning he was living with his mother but as per a "contractual agreement" he acts up in class and gets sent to live with his father. The idea here is that only a man (preferably his father) can teach a young boy to be a man. The difference between Tre and say Doughboy was that he had a father to teach him some responsibility. And what this kid got from his father showed. Apparently he's the only man raising a child on his block in South Central Los Angeles.

I was astonished to find out on Wikipedia that Boyz N The Hood was deemed culturally significant by the Library of Congress and was selected for preservation in National Film Registery back in 2002. The director John Singleton did an excellent job in this film.

Friday, July 07, 2006

Mississippi Burning

It has been ages since I've seen that movie. The only copy I have is on VHS (I know some of you are thinking...What's that?). Well I've yet to upgrade to DVD for this film which is basically about those three civil rights workers killed near Philadelphia, Mississippi in the 1960s.

Gene Hackman plays an FBI agent who grew up in Mississippi. Willem DaFoe plays an FBI agent who probably never saw a southern state before in his life before he was assigned to the setting of this movie, Jessup County (which doesn't exist, the name of the town was probably changed to protect the innocent). This was something of a thriller but a great period piece.

A lot of what you see is going to upset, hopefully, a great number of you. This is one documentation of the struggle for freedom in a free nation. A people who were free in theory still having to fight for their freedom. The thing is these people were afraid to fight for their freedom. It seems the authorities have a vested interest in supressing the freedom of a certain group of people.

Either way it's great to see the FBI get their men. Some of those guy who were smiling when they got arrested weren't smiling when it was done. When the FBI arrived some of them knew what time it was. Indeed one tried to run. Either way it was one victory in a very interesting era.

BTW, they recently reopened the case and someone did indeed get convicted after almost 40 years. Also I had seen this movie in the theaters. However this cineplex is no longer open, it used to be close to where a movie theater is now on Illinois street in about the Streetorville neighborhood.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

Chuck Norris & Clint Eastwood...

I'm watching a couple of his movies right now on SpikeTV. The moving I'm watching now, Hitman seems more like a Walker, Texas Ranger episode. See this is kind of fun for sure. The movie I saw earlier today, I believe it was Delta Force had him riding to a plane taking off without him but had weapons that James Bond would envy. I was like how implausible is that. He blew up two jeeps in the way of the plane as it taxied down the runway. And none of the passengers on the plane even Lee Marvin seemed to be buckled up for takeoff.

Yesterday I ran into a Clint Eastwood marathon on USA Network. It had movies such as Magnum Force, The Gauntlet, Outlaw Josey Wales, and The Enforcer. The more interesting was The Gauntlet where Clint's character, Shockley, had to take on the mob and their allies in the police to extradite a prostitute who was a key witness in a mob trial back to his town Phoenix, AZ. Long story short the movie wasn't the greatest. It seemed senseless but it wasn't bad but it did read as a Dirty Harry ripoff, even if it was Clint Eastwood. The only difference was that Shockly didn't display Dirty Harry characteristics.

Have a great holiday everyone.