Notorious
George Tillman Jr.’s “Notorious,” a by-the-numbers biopic about the life of Brooklyn rapper Christopher “Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace (1972-1997), is sure to only please the tools of his core fan-base, myself amongst one of them. I was 11 in March 1997 when Biggie Smalls was shot and killed in Los Angeles, California, just seven months after his friend and fellow rap artist Tupac Shakur (1971-1996) was shot and killed in Las Vegas; Tupac died the day after my 11th birthday in 1996.Many thought that their murders were part of the whole East Coast/West Coast rivalry between rap artists during the mid ’90s. Both Big and Tupac became the unlikely martyrs of gangsta rap and the violence that characterizes it. What’s most shameful about that is that over a decade after their deaths, it seems that the hip-hop community has yet to learn a very valuable lesson.But I’m getting off-track. “Notorious” is a well-made and well-acted movie. Unfortunately, however, it’s too by-the-numbers and follows the tried-and-true methods of most biopic storytelling: it glamorizes the life of the character, goes from one success to another, and doesn’t really shed anything new on the person the movie is about. Of course it traces the beginnings of Biggie’s life, from growing up as a bright Catholic school student in Brooklyn raised by his loving mother Voletta Wallace (a perfectly cast Angela Bassett), to his dropping out of school at age 17 to sell crack on the streets to help feed his baby daughter, and his eventual being signed to the then-newly formed Bad Boy Records by his best friend Sean “Puffy” Combs (Derek Luke). The rest, as they say, is history.I also forgot to mention that Jamal Woolard, as Biggie, who is also an aspiring rapper himself, is probably the best thing about this movie. He really captures the essence, and character of Big, and not only does he look like him, but he also talks AND sounds like him. And his skills on the microphone are undeniable as well. He lends some authenticity to the film’s rhyming sessions, rapping to the songs of the real-life Notorious B.I.G., and he pulls it off magnificently. It’s a star-making performance that unfortunately gets overshadowed by too many of the film’s flaws.The script (co-authored by Biggie’s biographer Cheo Hodari Coker) skips from one success to another; that’s the biggest problem with most biopics. Another problem I had was that the portrait of the main character was pretty one-sided. While I personally consider his debut record “Ready to Die” to be one of the most important and significant rap albums ever recorded - it helped return the East Coast rap scene to prominence - I’m not totally certain that he was truly one of the greatest rap artists who ever lived, especially after only two finished recordings. And I really would have liked to have seen more of Big’s friendship with Tupac Shakur (Anthony Mackie), which I felt was one of the most overlooked and tragic aspects of his life during the East Coast/West Coast rivalries. (People often forget that not only were they friends early on, but they were very close friends.)And while I’m quite certain that the sex appeal of Lil’ Kim (Naturi Naughton) is one of the reasons for her success as a rapper, I also feel that one of the reasons she’s here, apparently, is to show A LOT of skin and seem like the biggest, baddest ‘ho in hip-hop (that’s debatable). Big’s relationship with wife Faith Evans (Antonique Smith) was not all that well-developed either, as was Big’s friendship with Puffy, or the cocks of Junior M.A.F.I.A., who he helped to promote along with Lil’ Kim, whom he was carrying on an affair with while still married to Faith. I also would have liked to have seen some of the paranoia and fear that gripped Biggie in the final months of life as well, and a little bit more on the aftermath of his murder.Like I said earlier, I’m a fan of the Notorious B.I.G. myself, and so I’m sure that I’m one of those people that would have liked “Notorious” a lot more. That’s the biggest tragedy about his life and this film. His short life and violent death made him one of the most important, and tragic, figures in hip-hop. I also think it’s a disgrace that not much has been done by law enforcement officials to try to solve his murder, or Tupac’s for that matter, and the questions revolving around the involvement of corrupt police officers in both killings have yet to be followed up in any significant fashion by anyone.I’m not going to be to a clich: I don’t think he was one of the greatest rappers, personally, but the impact of his music on the industry cannot be denied: he helped the East Coast’s rise back to the top of the rap scene in the mid ’90s. As for the movie about his life, on the hand, it could have been better - a lot better.
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XCU: Extreme Close-Up
How was Sean Cunningham’s little-seen XCU, aka Extreme Close-Up, managed to slip through the cracks? News of this film had been circulating through the genre press for quite a while, and expectations were high that it would at last prove to be Cunningham’s return to form, the kind of effective, straight-ahead shocker that initially cemented his reputation as one of horror’s leading shockmeisters. Then while on vacation in Sun Valley, I was lucky enough to find myself at a benefit screening held by Cunningham himself to show off a newly re-edited and re-scored cut of the film. Although such tinkering is usually a sign of trouble, I was surprised to find that the final product defied any dire predictions. In an age when people actually tune in by the millions to watch shows like “The Surreal Life” without irony, XCU’s melding of the prototypical reality show conceit (seven teenage contestants, one house, one week) with a classic slasher film plot (who will survive, and what will be left of them?) feels even more eerily prescient than ever before. A nifty, often clever skewering of that errant cockroach known as “Reality TV,” XCU seems tailor-made for “The Real World” crowd, an audience that still confuses celebrity with notoriety, and fame with infamy.I didn’t know what to make of this film at first. It initially seems to be pandering the same exploitative elements it is rallying against. But if the let’s-kill-them-off-one-by-one setup is initially predictable, especially coming from Cunningham (best known, of course, for launching the slasher craze with Friday the 13th), at last we have a film that dares to take its high concept all the way through to its bloody end. The script by John Vorhaus and Tim Schlattmann is surprisingly sharp and biting, and doesn’t pull punches. Much of the fun of XCU is in the pleasurable uncertainty of never quite knowing who is or are the villains. Is it the producers, the contestants, or the audience itself? Are we ultimately to blame for today’s cult of narcissism when we are the ones who won’t turn the channel? XCU asks some tough, heady questions, but wraps it up in such a seemingly innocuous thriller-parody that it is more than just fun, but deliciously subversive.Shot on digital video, XCU isn’t always slick, and maybe even cheap. But it does have a you- are-there immediacy to its staged antics that is more authentic than the past three seasons of “Survivor” combined. It is nothing new to say that today’s wanna-be reality TV celebrity don’t so much act like themselves as mug for the camera. Which makes them prime fodder for satire. But here, a surprisingly strong cast delivers something important than just effective quasi-documentary, improv style performances: they refuse to condescend to stereotypes. Most impressive is Sarah Chalke, now enjoying a hit with TV’s “Scrubs.” I won’t spoil any of the film’s twists, but let’s just say she gives the story its heart and soul and a nice little reversal. And genre fans will also get a kick out of seeing C. Thomas Howell revel in an atypical role as a slimy producer, and an all grown up Danica (”The Wonder Years”) Kellar as an obsessive lesbian. Now, that’s inspired casting!Many critics have lamented that Cunningham has never truly staked a claim for himself in the genre pantheon alongside such contemporaries as Craven and Carpenter. Maybe XCU will change that. This may be the only film he has ever made where it actually seems like he cares about what happens to his characters. Blame him for Friday the 13th if you want, but in a strange way, XCU allows Cunningham to bring it full circle. Because the ultimate irony in XCU is that, if the teenagers of today’s Camp Crystal Lake were to find themselves on the wrong end of Jason’s machete, they wouldn’t flee in terror. Instead, they would try to push him out of the way to get more screen time.
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