Word: def
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...what may be Waller's very birthplace, esteems the great Fats so highly that he has commissioned a documentary in his honor. Look closely at the lovingly reproduced footage at the beginning of the film and you'll notice some familiar current faces, belonging to Jack Black and Mos Def, among Waller's fellow citizens of the 1920s. It's as if they'd time-traveled to play Woody Allen's Zelig character in an American Masters episode...
...poster is from Blast from the Past, and his stock is just that, since all the films available for rental are videotapes - that obsolescent VHS format, the vinyl of home movie entertainment. DVD, in medium or high definition, is nowhere to be found in his rickety establishment, where Mike (Def) works behind the counter and Jerry (Black) lives in a trailer across the street and spends his time getting in Mr. Fletcher's grayed hair...
...making of these underground movies gives Black a chance to put his usual ham on wry, and for Def to exhibit a gallery of eloquent shrugs. It's also a way for Michel Gondry, the French writer-director who worked with Charlie Kaufman on the Jim Carrey time-slip comedy Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, to bang home his point that all moviemaking, whether a tiny indie film or a Michael Bay extravaganza, are communal enterprises. The whole town not only lines up to rent Mike and Jerry's faux films, they join in their production, serving as extras...
...These traits, joined with his utopian hope for community and self-expression through film and gadgets, characterize the latest effort from Gondry’s fertile imagination. As a result, “Be Kind Rewind” is a uniquely Gondry creation. Jack Black and Mos Def star as two video store clerks, Jerry and Mike. When Jerry accidentally erases the contents of all the videotapes, they resort to “Sweding,” or re-enacting and recording, each of the videos that their customers want to rent. The films are said to be Sweded after...
...Michel Gondry will attest to the French director’s unique artistic vision and the accompanying sense of smarmy humor that vivifies this exchange from his fourth feature film, “Be Kind Rewind.” Its main characters Jerry (Jack Black) and Mike (Mos Def) are arguing over the marketability of their shorter, home-made interpretation of “Rush Hour 2.” The implication is clear: Gondry doesn’t think much of Brett Ratner’s oeuvre. But what does he think of the people who watch...