I saw Black Dynamite the other night at a midnight screening in the Library theater.  The film was one of the first to be picked up by a distributor at Sundance, and will be coming to a theater near you as a Sony Pictures Classic.   I met the director while waiting in line for Mystery Team and asked him a few questions on camera.  The following clip combines part of that interview with elements from the trailer:  

Created by Scott Sanders and Michael Jai White, Black Dynamite tells the tale of a righteous brother, who’s got kung fu skills and knows just how to please the ladies.   (more…)

One Bad Mother F***er

Gordon Parks was the director of Shaft, making one of the greatest most well known blaxploitation films of all time. Of course the wonderful music provided by Isaac Hayes was the icing on the cake in this crime drama. John Shaft is a slick, smooth, and bad ass private investigator. He is the definition of a ladies man and he doesn’t take lip from nobody no matter the circumstance. 

After Bumby a well known drug dealer and pimp in Harlem sends some men out for Shaft one of them ends up dead and the other in the hospital. After  taking some heat from detective Lebowitz Shaft slides out of the hands of the detective. He knows his rights and makes sure that no one suckers him into giving them up.

He ends up meeting up with Bumby to find out what is really going on. Bumby explains that his daughter has been kidnapped and he wants Shaft to find her. He can’t involve the police or he could end up in jail. So Shaft takes the job and he ends up discovering that the Italian mob was behind the kidnapping because Bumby was taking too much of their business.

Without the help of the law Shaft ends up needing the help of an old friend from the streets. With his help and the help of his men he is able to devise a plan to get the girl out of the hands of the mobsters safely. No one can stop Shaft!

Michael Jai White is Black Dynamite!

Back in the day, films like Shaft, Foxy Brown and Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song styled funkalicious jazzy soundtracks, tough black heroes and heroines and corrupt white cops and politicians. A new genre was born, both celebrating and exploiting black culture, targeting urban African-American audiences with its style and subject matter. Some of the best of these films have become cult favorites, and have influenced new filmmakers such as Quentin Tarantino, whose Jackie Brown was an explicit homage to the genre he’d grown up on and loved.

Shaft was remade in slick Hollywood fashion by John Singleton (Boyz ‘n The Hood) in 2000, featuring Samuel Jackson in the title role. But for the original low budget style and campy flair you had to go to the bargain bin DVD versions, until now.

Scott Sanders’ blacksploitation spoof Black Dynamite premieres this year as one of the “Midnight” films at Sundance. If this trailer is anything to go by, the funky magic and excitement appears to be back. Black Dynamite looks hotter than TNT:
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