Word: shaft
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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NAME: JOHN SINGLETON AGE: 32 OCCUPATION: Shaft director BEST DODGE: "Sam is opinionated, but I respect that." The real cause of on-set tension? "It was our producer, Scott Rudin, that was the big problem...
...WINNER: Titan A.E., which comes out the same day as Shaft...
Shut your mouth! Hide your eyes! In fact, erase your memories! There's nothing "bad" about John Shaft in John Singleton's nephew-of remake of Gordon Parks's 1971 breakthrough movie that defined the blaxploitation genre. Gone is the hard-living, hard-loving vigilante avenger banging on Hollywood's door with the butt of a .45 and challenging its whitewashing of American reality. In his stead we have his focus-group tested nephew, designed to appeal to a much wider audience but stripped, in the process, of his ability to thrill...
...original "Shaft" had the audacity to celebrate black love on the screen in its full sweaty, sensual glory. Shaft was a stud who always left a lady dreamily satisfied even if he had to dash out and fight when she just wanted to be held. And even - horrors! - white women wanted, and got, a piece of that action. His nephew, by contrast, despite a few lines of conversational innuendo, is remarkably sex-starved...
...Jennifer: This was one chaste Shaft. There was nothing cool or sexy about him - and he didn't ever seem to get any! The title sequence has this really sensual series of cuts of a black couple making love, but it might as well have been for a different movie. The original Shaft exuded sexual energy and confidence, but there's nothing in this script that gives you any idea of why these women would want to sleep with him. When he drops that "duty to satisfy the booty" line out of the blue, it's incongruous. Frankly, Samuel Jackson...