Short Movie Reviews: The Pianist and Spike Lee's He Got Game

The Pianist: The most optimistic of the Polanski films, yet still deathly dark and disturbing - I enjoyed the themes of crossing German help in Jewish concentration camps witih Jewish help in German prisoner of war camps, though it still ended up comming across as a typical World War II and Holocaust film, which I hoped it wouldn't be. Some of his musical choices seemed contradictory to his thematics: at the climax of the film, the Polish man is seens playing Chopin (a Polish composer) and the German Nazi playing Beethoven (a German composer), though with his central theme of music as an elevation past humanity, it would make more sense for those two to switch composers.

He Got Game: This film is living proof that even the most horribly acted film can still have meaning - why Spike Lee chose Ray Allen to play the lead role of Jesus Shuttlesworth, we will never know. Ray Allen acts like a zoo-gorilla on steroids. I did enjoy Spike Lee's overall choice of laying the entire Coney Island basketballs scenes to the music of Aaron Copland, but I don't really understand the point - does the music of Copland (a dead white man) somehow epitomize the working class ghetto of aspiring hoop dreams in Coney Island? Or is it just Spike Lee trying to be pseudo-intellectual and originalesque by being the first director to NOT lay a basketball movie in 100% hip hop?

Musical Shoutout for today: This goes to my homeboy, John Craske, who spent a considerable amount of time creating and recording (over his own voice) his own version of Justin Timberlake's "Cry Me A River" - by Johnstin Craskerlake. It's hilarious and well done, so IM me if you want it.