Word: crooklyn
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Dates: during 1994-1994
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Cinema: A disappointing Crooklyn from Spike...
Spike Lee is better at setting agendas than he is at making movies. The laudable intention behind Crooklyn is, he says, to move beyond "the hip-hop, drug, gangsta-rap, urban-inner-city movies," which he claims constitute "a rut" into which black filmmakers have fallen. He has a point, though some of his competitors' work (for example, The Inkwell) has shown more range than he cares to admit. What he does not have here is a movie that attractively accomplishes his goal...
...albums on his own, and five others with various collaborators, he has developed an expressive style reminiscent of the mid-1960s Miles Davis. He has also distinguished himself by his sideline as one of Hollywood's busiest composers: three movies with Blanchard scores -- Sugar Hill, Inkwell and Crooklyn -- are now playing in theaters...
...urban decay that permeates the story. "These characters pull the trigger at the drop of a hat," says Blanchard, "so a massive score would have overwhelmed the starkness I wanted to convey." In The Inkwell, a coming-of-age comedy set in a beach resort in 1976, and Crooklyn, Spike Lee's drama about family life in 1970s Brooklyn, Blanchard sketches dreamy melodies with strings and piano to emphasize the films' nostalgic undercurrents. "The instruments have to have the right timbre," he says, "to hit the mood you want...