Saturday, September 27, 2008

"I'm Sick of All These Motherf*ckin' White People in My Motherf*ckin Neighborhood!"


Neil LaBute has kept a low profile since unleashing the unintentionally hilarious Wicker Man into the world in 2006.

Lakeview Terrace marks his first appearance in the director’s chair since that debacle and though the results are better—how could they not be—LaBute still has a tall order in restoring the credibility he built up in the ‘90s.

Patrick Wilson (Hard Candy) and Kerry Washington (The Last King of Scotland) play an interracial couple who buy their first home in a posh Los Angeles suburb. Samuel L. Jackson is Abel Turner, their strict widower neighbor who objects to such a relationship.
Tensions rise as Abel, an LAPD officer, perpetrates a series of mind games against the couple.

The caveat with movies that have racial issues at their core is it invites lazy filmmaking.
Racial conflict is such a touchy subject that it’s easy to throw together a basic premise, include a racial element, and expect quality results to trickle down.

When filmmakers avoid this entrapment, you get films such as Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing (which also featured Jackson) and Tony Kaye’s American History X. When they don’t, you get Lakeview Terrace.

David Loughery and Howard Korder, who can share equal blame in collaborating on the script, don’t bother to attach much depth to the characters or scenarios.

Despite lots of physical contact, Wilson and Washington’s chemistry is so unnatural that you start to ask, “Why are they together?”

Early confrontations between Wilson and Jackson make for unsettling moments, but as per the usual with uninspired movies, the promise of those scenes are never fully realized.

The issues examined in Do the Right Thing still divide audiences as much today as it did after the film’s 1989 release. Lee took the time to develop the neighborhood setting and its inhabitants into complex entities. Motives and actions aren’t cut and dry, which leads to a shocking conclusion without a clear antagonist.

The minds behind Lakeview Terrace don’t seem interested in such shades of grey. What little character development Jackson’s character gets feels tacked on, and even then, he at no point comes across as a sympathetic character.

It’s difficult to knock Jackson, who once again exhibits his ability to take shoddy material and deliver, at worst, an admirable performance. The energy he brings to most of his roles makes his resume scattered with clunkers forgivable. It’s that intensity that’s converted some of those flicks into cult classics (Snakes on a Plane, anyone?).

But no amount of that classic Samuel L. Jackson bravado can mask that Lakeview Terrace is a generic thriller posing as a relevant piece of social commentary.

** out of *****

Friday, September 26, 2008

Opening with a Bang

Our culture’s universal short attention span doesn’t leave much time for entertainers to get the spotlight on themselves. Lack of quality be damned in the music world, there’s a flood of people ready to take your spot if you don’t wow audiences quick enough.

That’s why a quality opening track on an album is of utmost importance. I don’t consider myself one of those people with ADD tendencies who aren’t going to check out an entire album if the first couple tracks don’t delight the eardrums. But a slam dunk of an opener helps set the tone for the album. If it’s a debut album, it can even set the tone for an artist’s career.

With that in mind, here's the first installment of Opening with a Bang, a series that will look and pick apart some of the most memorable album openers we've enshrined in our album and MP3 collections. Since we’re not stepping out of the hip-hop scene, let’s go with the criteria where “opener” refers to the first actual song on the album. Otherwise, we’d be talking about the best second tracks out there.



50 Cent: "What Up Gangsta" - 50 didn’t need much of an introduction by time his commercial debut Get Rich or Die Tryin’ hit the racks in February 2003. He’d burnt up the mixtape circuit for several years, carving a bit of a niche by verbally attacking several of his peers. Eminem included 50’s single “Wanksta” on the soundtrack for the 2002 8 Mile. And the lead single on Get Rich, “In da Club” had become the song of the young year.

But for those who were still late to the party, Get Rich’s opening song, “What Up Gangsta” shared the anatomy of what would become the blueprint for the majority of Mr. Jackson’s songs: gritty, unapologetic lyrics spread over a tough-as-nails beat. In a way, the song is everything that has prevented 50’s career from evolving. But without the five-plus years of retrospect, this opener remains something of a statement. 50’s trademark delivery of lines such as “They say I walk around like got an "S" on my chest / Naw, that's a semi-auto, and a vest on my chest / I try not to say nothing, the DA might want to play in court / But I'll hunt or duck a nigga down like it's sport” remove any ambiguity for novice listeners just what this New York native is all about.