Screening Log

This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.

March 2006 activity

Total Log Entries: 87

Total Comments: 44

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Inside Man / USA / 2006

A hugely entertaining heist film, with a refreshingly straightforward plot, excellent characters, and just the right amount of Spike’s snarky class/racial digs. The acting here is what keeps things moving along, with Denzel turning in a particularly brilliant (and near-invisible) performance as a cocky police negotiator who’s neither too smart nor too heroic to be anything less than wholly credible. Clive Owen is also very well-used (charming, hilarious, and frightening), and Jodie Foster has a new career ahead of her playing pursed and pedicured Lizzie Grubman types.

As much as I think that Spike Lee is one of the most underrated directors around, it would seem that straighter genre films fit his skills more than his usual grab-bags, which often attempt too much at once. Here, a fairly simple bank robbery film is the perfect vehicle for a cross-section of present-day New York, leaving plenty of room to riff on racial profiling, PSP’s, cell-phone civics, etc. I can’t think of another director as committed to portraying contemporary reality as Lee is, and certainly none who does it with such ease and style.

by Leo Goldsmith | Source: Universal Pictures 35mm Print
25 Mar 2006 1:21 PM | Comments (18)

Comments / 18 total / Submit Comment

  1. Shape Conor Dunphy / 25 March 2006 / 4:06 PM

    I totally agree with the Grubman allusion. I was wondering what you made of his vulgar mayoral depiction. Bloomberg? Giuliani? Dinkins!?

    Reality is the key with Lee. Sadly I think his meticulous defusions of racial and class tensions that you so graciously point out somehow undermines the tension of the main plot of the bank heist.

    On a more theoretical level I watched the interaction of the bankrobbers and the traumatized victims as a metaphor for the near transparency of evil in today’s society. But like Denzel announced, when something stinks it will eventually out. I guess this is one for the vaults as its elements are so homegrown and lovingly cultivated. Definitely not a stinker. More like something to be swished around a bit.

  2. Bill Conor Devlin / 26 March 2006 / 5:20 PM

    p.s. How about that South East Asian opening theme!

  3. leo / 28 March 2006 / 2:09 PM / URL

    Regarding the mayor, I’m going to guess Bloomberg, just because he seemed very upper crust — no Giuliani he, but a veritable blue-blood.

    The SEA opener is apparently none other than the love theme from the Bollywood film Dil Se, remixed in the closing credits by Panjabi MC. Here are the translated lyrics. Theories as to what the hell this song has to do with a bank robbery (“This ain’t no bank robbery!”) in lower Manhattan are most welcome.

  4. High Conor Dunphy / 28 March 2006 / 7:20 PM

    Happy to see you drew attention to the credits. They are so less seen these days when piracy abounds and the Inside Man can be had from a nameless makeshift shopping emporium by the subway. I wonder what the derby will bring in next weekend at the 2000 + theaters that Inside Man was showng at last weekend.

    Any theories on the working relationship between Mr. Lee and the producer Brian Grazer? I would love to be a watch in Grazer’s pocket. Still curious about the fudged ending of A Beautiful Mind where it is kept quiet that Mr. Nash is not on a pharmacological thing.

    As for the mayoral conclusions, well maybe it is a sly referral to Grazer. Both men share positions of economic dominance in their respective spheres, New York and Hollywood.

    Too bad Bill Cosby didn’t finance this one. The PSP thing would have been a lot more sanitary.

    By the way Terence Blanchard scored the film you would never have known it was him. I only figured out that he scored everything since Mr. Lee’s father married a white woman a couple of days ago.

    Forgive my territorial misgivings. Turns out India is NOT a SEA nation. I just like the sound of South East Asian.

    Loved that Christopherr Plummer! He was a blue-blood.

  5. Humazu / 28 March 2006 / 7:30 PM

    Does anybody know what the entrance music’s name is?

  6. Albert / 28 March 2006 / 7:51 PM

    High Conor Dunphy I can’t stand your writing style. It’s either brilliant, or you’re trying incredibly hard to come across as distinct and all-knowing. Can I ask what you do for a living?

  7. Daring Conor Dunphy / 29 March 2006 / 8:26 PM

    Albert! Your dependence on stale British exclamations like brilliiant makes me wonder if you’re even a real person. Or whether you are some spook! I am at this time unemployed. But I am in training to be a full-time print technologist. If you must know, that is part of my livelihood. I am also a film enthusiast, like you, Albert. But instead of making personal jibes at others’ styles or platitudes I attempt to slide on top for a brief spell and feel the experience grow into a solid, colorful expression or sequence of thought. Now Albert, have you seen the subject of this thread? Or are you merely pecking around for some virtual juice? Quid pro quo, Albert, Quid pro quo.

  8. Dry Conor Dunphy / 29 March 2006 / 8:44 PM

    p.s. Albert, man, don’t get hung up on the British thing. I am sure you are a real person.

  9. Federico Ramirez / 5 April 2006 / 6:19 PM

    Does anybody know the name of the opening theme song? Its very good.

  10. leo / 6 April 2006 / 8:20 AM / URL

    Look up.

  11. popunc / 11 April 2006 / 5:44 PM

    Chaiyya Chaiyya by A.R. Rehman, it’s an India (indian) song.

  12. ando / 17 April 2006 / 3:25 PM

    What’s happened to poor Mr. Lee? This amalgam of a 70s inner-city crime flick, social satire and nouveau-noir doesn’t hold up for long. If he could have cut the thing by half its running time it would have made a great tv pilot. But is there really enough substance here for serious consideration?

  13. Conor Dunphy / 17 April 2006 / 5:32 PM

    I see your point Ando. There is a tendency in Lee to deal in surfaces. But I think we err if we neglect those surfaces if and when we reflect on the picture. Lee paints a monochromatic picture until we see Washington and Plummer portrayed together. Here I believe we see a unique and undeniably powerful dramatic interlogue.

  14. Conor / 17 April 2006 / 5:36 PM

    interlogue should read interplay

  15. Albert / 18 April 2006 / 1:04 AM

    You see.

    You’re trying too hard Conor.

  16. The Nade / 22 August 2006 / 4:49 PM

    Conor is spot on. The rest of you chaps need to learn how to write. Love, Mike Andrews

  17. Albert / 24 August 2006 / 12:19 PM

    Quid pro quo, Nade, quid pro quo.

  18. Juna / 31 August 2006 / 11:00 PM

    The Chaiya Chaiya song is from an Indian movie called Dil Se.Watch the original song and dance from the film at this link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=40lEUkkqh4I

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