In Contention

Tag: Dead Poets Society

  • CINEJABBER: Drifting along in the same stale shoes

    Catch up with the idea behind these weekend posts here.

    And speaking of the weekend, thank God it’s here.  That’s all I can say.  I’m still pushing through Peter Weir’s catalogue.  Next up: “Dead Poets Society,” which I probably haven’t watched since I owned the VHS.  But more and more, I’m finding that “The Way Back” is more reflective of his early work, and it perhaps has the most in common with “Gallipoli.”

    After that I’m thinking about re-visiting Kurosawa’s work.  Much of the early stuff I’ve never seen, actually, and it’ll be a nice reprieve from Oscar madness during the season.  Boy is that absolutely necessary.

    But I also need to hunker down and finish reading Charles Portis’s “True Grit.” I’m hoping to do something special list-wise around the release of the Coens’ new adaptation and as much as I loathe the first film, I never sat down and read the novel until recently.  It’s a real charmer and easy to see why the Coens were drawn to it’s no-nonsense prose.

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  • “Do or die, Bed-Stuy”

    Do the Right ThingLike others, we’ve been paying mind on these pages to the 20th anniversary of Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing,” a film that now finds itself in the odd position of being both a period piece and a still-resonant state-of-the-nation address. Certainly nothing in the two decades since its release has surpassed it as a study of the intricacies of race relations in modern America. (Even supporters of “Crash” would have to admit that.)

    Anyway, my attention was brought to this beautiful tribute to the film’s legacy in black-interest magazine The Root, in which Kai Wright reflects on what changed — and remained — in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood that the film immortalized:

    Much has changed since 1989, my older neighbors say, but much hasn’t. We’ve got a few coffee shops for hipster art students—black and white alike—but Spike’s Sweet Dick Willie, Coconut and M.L. still set up their own corner cafes. They lounge on paint buckets and tumble out of parked gypsy cabs, interrupting their endless debates only to ogle women young enough to be their daughters.

    It’s hard to imagine a race riot anywhere in New York City these days, let alone Bed-Stuy. Frustrations are more likely to erupt inward—into domestic violence, drug abuse and depression, small beefs that spiral up into shootings. Maybe Spike can make another film about it, and this time Bed-Stuy’s people will actually do the right thing—and take their riot over to Wall Street.

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