Monday, November 14, 2005
How "Fitty-ing": A '90s Blast From The Past
Get rich...or die trying to leave the movie theater.
What a nostalgic jolt! A movie with an "urban" theme of young man's coming-of-age in an environment of gang-banging, street crime and fast-living. Rap turns out to be his salvation.
Meanwhile the film draws just the right element for some "caps" to be "busted" and a movie patron is dead.
Is it a "very special episode" of VH1's "I Love the '90s"? Alas, no, it's actually modern day. It's Pennsylvania and it's the premiere week of rapper 50 Cent's "Get Rich or Die Trying." Sadly one of the viewers won't be able to pursue the former option.
Amazingly, the theater even had extra security -- another homage to early '90s inner-city filmgoing experiences. Didn't work.
Pittsburgh City Paper reviewer Brentin Mock saw the movie just hours before the shooting (what the hell was he doing there with his 2 year old? I have no idea...) and declared, "As a person who's a defender of all things hip-hop, I think it's the worst hip-hop movie ever made...This movie comes out and completely reinforces all the stereotypes people had about hip-hop anyway."
Ya think?
Hey, I'm all for "interactivity" in principle, but there is a difference between living the movie experience and dying from the movie experience.
UPDATE: Karol remains Fitty's biggest defender on the right. She links to a UK site identifying the rapper as being down with GWB. Yeah! You know me!
I'm not sure that the White House necessarily will be promoting Fitty's view that "We are both gangsters," though it goes without saying that that notion has a certain resonance in various European and Upper West Side Manhattan salons.
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What a nostalgic jolt! A movie with an "urban" theme of young man's coming-of-age in an environment of gang-banging, street crime and fast-living. Rap turns out to be his salvation.
Meanwhile the film draws just the right element for some "caps" to be "busted" and a movie patron is dead.
Is it a "very special episode" of VH1's "I Love the '90s"? Alas, no, it's actually modern day. It's Pennsylvania and it's the premiere week of rapper 50 Cent's "Get Rich or Die Trying." Sadly one of the viewers won't be able to pursue the former option.
Amazingly, the theater even had extra security -- another homage to early '90s inner-city filmgoing experiences. Didn't work.
Pittsburgh City Paper reviewer Brentin Mock saw the movie just hours before the shooting (what the hell was he doing there with his 2 year old? I have no idea...) and declared, "As a person who's a defender of all things hip-hop, I think it's the worst hip-hop movie ever made...This movie comes out and completely reinforces all the stereotypes people had about hip-hop anyway."
Ya think?
For what it's worth, it did come in second in per-screen average. It's debateable whether it holds up in word of mouth to next week.
On a possibly-related note, the hip-hop thug style is apparently, like, over:
[U]nlike other trends -- hippie chic, punk rebelliousness -- that long ago severed any connection to their origins and became pure aesthetic gestures, hip-hop remains inextricably and problematically linked to its gritty, aggressive beginnings.Hmmm.... Maybe those Los Angeles parents knew whereof they spoke in protesting those billboards advertising the movie. "Fitty" seems to demonstrates the, ahem, downside of "keeping it real."
Hey, I'm all for "interactivity" in principle, but there is a difference between living the movie experience and dying from the movie experience.
UPDATE: Karol remains Fitty's biggest defender on the right. She links to a UK site identifying the rapper as being down with GWB. Yeah! You know me!
I'm not sure that the White House necessarily will be promoting Fitty's view that "We are both gangsters," though it goes without saying that that notion has a certain resonance in various European and Upper West Side Manhattan salons.
