Word: spikes
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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...
...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...
Blanchard's movie work began in 1987 when Spike Lee heard one of his albums and asked him to compose the music for School Daze. Blanchard went on to score Lee's next four films and followed those in 1992 with music for Malcolm X, written for a 55-piece orchestra, a big band and a jazz trio--all at different times varying and elaborating a single, stately theme to capture the turbulent flow of Malcolm's life...
Then, with the score knotted at 14, sophomore setter Petey Buletza stuffed a LIU spike attempt all be himself...