Baadasssss!
Movie: Baadasssss! (2003)
Watched with: Angelo and my dad
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) is kind of a terrible movie, but it's also kind of brilliant and sublime, motivated by vaguely-defined politics and strange dream logic (thin plot, lots of running around, puctuated by random sex). Melvin Van Peebles knew how to make a conventional movie (and had shortly before, with Watermelon Man, but instead decided to stick it to the man by going awesomely nuts.
Baadasssss! is written by, directed by, and stars Highlander 3 and Jaws 4's Mario Van Peebles as his father (he also portrayed his father's character as a teenager in the opening of the original Sweetback) and tells the story of the shoestring production of that movie. He does a good job of depicting events and people with an immediacy reflecting his personal experience without letting that overshadow the story.
The character Mario speaks little, and is mainly defined by his father.
This couldn't have been an easy movie to make. You have to simultaneously capture the racial atmosphere of 1970s LA, the process of shooting an independent film, the decline of the studio system, and the personalities of the very large cast of characters.
Remarkably, Mario pulls it off, in a movie that turns out to be both illuminating and amusing.
(My biggest problem with the movie was the occasional Star Wars prequel-style bits where something happened that would inspire the making of the movie. I really doubt that one day some babe randomly told Melvin, "You have a sweet sweetback!" and then he made it the opening line of his movie and also the title.
Though I guess it's possible...)
Watched with: Angelo and my dad
Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) is kind of a terrible movie, but it's also kind of brilliant and sublime, motivated by vaguely-defined politics and strange dream logic (thin plot, lots of running around, puctuated by random sex). Melvin Van Peebles knew how to make a conventional movie (and had shortly before, with Watermelon Man, but instead decided to stick it to the man by going awesomely nuts.
Baadasssss! is written by, directed by, and stars Highlander 3 and Jaws 4's Mario Van Peebles as his father (he also portrayed his father's character as a teenager in the opening of the original Sweetback) and tells the story of the shoestring production of that movie. He does a good job of depicting events and people with an immediacy reflecting his personal experience without letting that overshadow the story.
The character Mario speaks little, and is mainly defined by his father.
This couldn't have been an easy movie to make. You have to simultaneously capture the racial atmosphere of 1970s LA, the process of shooting an independent film, the decline of the studio system, and the personalities of the very large cast of characters.
Remarkably, Mario pulls it off, in a movie that turns out to be both illuminating and amusing.
(My biggest problem with the movie was the occasional Star Wars prequel-style bits where something happened that would inspire the making of the movie. I really doubt that one day some babe randomly told Melvin, "You have a sweet sweetback!" and then he made it the opening line of his movie and also the title.
Though I guess it's possible...)
posted by Kane Lynch at
2:27 AM
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