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Posts Tagged ‘Snoop Dogg’

“TAKE ME TO THE RIVER: New Orleans”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on April 22, 2022| 2 Comments »

“TAKE ME TO THE RIVER: NEW ORLEANS”  My rating: B+ (In  theaters)

115 minutes | No MPAA rating

I cannot even count how many times during “Take Me to the River: New Orleans” I found myself literally bawling with pleasure.

Martin Shore’s documentary love letter to Big Easy musicians (it’s a followup to 2014’s “Take Me to the River,” which probed the Memphis sound) may not be encyclopedic (no one movie could hope to encompass the width and breadth of New Orleans’ musical heritage), but it’s pretty damn staggering nonetheless.

I mean, any film that can enthusiastically embrace Irma Thomas, Snoop Dogg, the Neville Brothers, Ani DiFranco and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band (for starters) has got a hell of a reach.

Shore’s approach is simple.  He sets up recording sessions featuring the city’s players — everyone from superstars to working stiffs and even high school students — and lets their creativity run wild. He also revels in pairing music’s elder statesmen with their up-and-coming young counterparts. The results are sublime.

Thus we get blues dowager empress Irma Thomas duetting with Ledisi on “I Wish Someone Would Care.”  The late Dr. John (in one of his last filmed performances) teams with Davell Crawford for “Jock-A-Mo.”  Aaron Neville and the Dirty Dozen Jazz Band rip the place up with the stomping “Street Parade.”  Snoop, G-Eazy and William Bell collaborate on a rap/blues reinterpretation of the classic “Yes We Can Can” (I’ve never cared much for rap, but this number blew me away).

In all there are two dozen performances on display. Not a ringer in the bunch.

And between those there are documentary digressions about the city’s Indian tribes (like the legendary Wild Tchoupitoulas), Preservation Hall,, the second line tradition, the late Allen Touissaint and the continuing fallout from Hurricane Katrina, which displaced scores of musicians, many of whom have been unable to return to Orleans.

Wonderful. Just wonderful.

| Robert W. Butler

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“DOLEMITE IS MY NAME”: “and f**king motherf**krs is my game”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 24, 2019| Leave a Comment »

Eddy Murphy as Rudy Ray Moore

“DOLEMITE IS MY NAME” My rating: B- 

118 minutes | MPAA rating: R

Aside from setting a cinema record for the number of times “motherf**cker” and its variants are uttered, “Dolemite Is My Name” reminds us of why Eddie Murphy remains one of our comedy treasures.

Murphy slips effortlessly into the skin of Rudy Ray Moore, the struggling singer who in the early ’70s reinvented himself with a series of gleefully lewd party albums, then transferred his alter ego “Dolemite” onto the big screen at the height of the blaxploitation craze.

That said, this comedic slice of entertainment history from director Craig Brewer– a white guy whose Afro-centric films include “Hustle and Flow” and “Blacksnake Moan” —  is so slow out of the gate that more than few viewers will be tempted to bail before the picture hits its stride.

In the waning days of the 1960s the middle-aged Rudy Ray, pot-bellied and jowly, managers a record store and desperately tries to peddle his r&b/funk recordings.  His career is going nowhere (and at this point neither is this movie).

Then Rudy Ray latches onto a vociferous homeless guy (Ron Cephas Jones of TV’s “This Is Us”) who in exchange for a pint or two regales him with tales of the comedic folk hero Dolemite, a sort of ghetto Br’er Rabbit who bombastically outsmarts, outfights and outscrews any and all who get in his way.

Moore develops a comedy act in which he dons Afro wig and colorful pimp regalia to portray Dolemite, telling his self-serving stories in rhymed raps of pyrotechnical profanity. Black audiences go crazy for Dolemite; Rudy Ray is soon making a tour of the chitlin’ circuit, selling his LPs out of his car trunk.

(more…)

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