Joe’s Review
Melvin Van Peebles was a creative rebel. His film “Watermelon Man”, about a white business executive who wakes up one morning in his suburban home to find he’s suddenly become black, disquieted studio executives even though the film was considered mild racial satire by most movie critics when it was released in 1970. Hoping to make a film of social significance with something real to say about racial politics and oppression in America as the ’70’s were starting, Van Peebles hit upon an idea for an action drama about a street hustler who undergoes a political awakening, takes on a group of corrupt, racist cops and makes a clean getaway while making plans for grander revenge. Considered too inflammatory for the major (and minor) studios, Van Peebles’ dream project nearly died at birth, but it lived to become the biggest grossing independent film of the decade and a significant landmark in the progress of black cinema in America. Now, over 30 years later, Van Peebles’ son, actor/writer and director Mario, has crafted a fascinating look back at the creation of “Sweet Sweetback’s BadddAsssss Song”. “Bad Ass” delivers a fast-paced, vibrant and thought provoking look behind the scenes atthe struggle to bring “Sweet Sweetback” to the screen. (more…)

Bill’s Review
What begins as a docudrama following a little-known chapter of film history becomes most effective as an homage and thank you note to the filmmaker’s father. Director Mario Van Peebles (New Jack City, Posse) looks to father Melvin’s life for the subject matter of Baadasssss! (I had to count the number of s’s on screen to ensure accuracy), a movie about the making of Sweet Sweetback’s Baad Asssss Song. And although a step backward for proper spelling, the movie is considered the forerunner of blaxploitation. And Van Peebles the younger is almost a good enough actor and director to make you think the original is worth the homage. But much like Ed Wood, you have a very good movie about a well-intentioned filmmaker who produced a very, vvery, vvvery baad movie (see Melvin, two can play at that game—and where does it stoppp?). (more…)

Bill’s Review

For anyone who doubts that we are well into the summer blockbuster season in which each weekend will see the release of some new visual effects-laden popcorn chomper, we have the opening of The Day After Tomorrow. This disaster movie from the folks that gave us Independence Day and Godzilla masquerades as an environmental social action call to arms, but its call to stop global warming is a far runner-up to its snapshot view of the state of computer-generated special effects. Its primary purpose is to separate you from as much of your money as it can manage. If you have any doubts of the movie’s true nature, keep this in mind: A movie that warns of world-wide disaster due to man’s inaction on global warming and takes merciless jabs at the current administration is a movie funded by and prominently displaying the corporate siblings of 20th Century Fox and the News Corp. That is correct. Loyal Republican Rupert Murdoch underwrites this pro-ecology, anti-Bush movie. I am reminded of a quote by the second funniest Marx Brother, Karl, who said that a capitalist will sell you the cream pie that you hit him in the face with… or something like that. (more…)

Mean Girls

Directed by Mark S. Waters

Being mean nationwide 4/23/2004

A few years back, a Washington-area writer named Rosalind Wiseman authored a sociological study/cautionary tale entitled Queen Bees and Wannabes detailing the treatment that teenage girls deliver and endure towards and from their peers—much to the satisfaction of misogynists everywhere (cue chorus of “I told you sos”). Longtime writer and co-host of the fake news on Saturday Night Live, Tina Fey makes a terrific debut as the writer-producer of Mean Girls, a lively high school girls comedy spun off from Wiseman’s words.

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