OST: "Krush Groove"

Leonard Pierce — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 20:15:00 GMT

Any conversation about modern music -- and, thus, any conversation about modern movie soundtracks -- has to eventually hit on the topic of hip-hop. That's not so bad when talking about music exclusively, but it can be a minefield when talking about movies, where, with a few exceptions, the music tends to shine while the movies tend to suck. Especially when trying to establish the best of the early hip-hop films, you open up a rather ugly can of worms: do you go with Beat Street, which did such an admirable job in introducing hip-hop culture (including graf art, breakdancing and street style, not just rap music) to the masses? If so, you've picked a soundtrack that was plagued with licensing issues, multiple versions, and a rather noticeable lack of actual hip-hop. Do you select Breakin', which featured a slightly more respectable rap soundtrack, but which was, let's face it, a terrible movie? For our purposes here at the Screengrab, we've decided to go with Krush Groove.

Not that it's going to go on anyone's lists of the best movies of the 1980s. Or the best movies of 1985. Or even the best movies of 1985 involving hip-hop. Krush Groove, as a movie, is as plagued with problems as any other rap movie of its era -- namely, dismal direction and writing (by Michael Schultz and Ralph Farquhar, respectively), a plethora of bad performances, a tendency to overvalue to the musical numbers at the expense of basically everything else, and, of course, the same old 'let's put on a show' plot that served, in one variation or another, as the format for every single hip-hop movie ever until the Fat Boys discovered that it was even easier to just ape the Three Stooges, thus paving the way for the future screen careers of Method Man and Redman. Krush Groove was meant to be a loose, fictionalized adaptation of the rise of Def Jam Records, hip-hop's first mega-successful label; while there's something to be said for the verisimilitude of casting the label's executives, producers and talent as themselves, there's absolutely nothing to be said for a movie in which Russell Simmons is frequently the best actor on screen. Or, for that matter, a movie in which D.M.C. is not the worst actor on screen. While Krush Groove did the world the dubious favor of launching L.L. Cool J's acting career, it also did the world the distinct honor of failing to launch Ronald DeVoe from New Edition's acting career. But before you go and thank Mssrs. Schultz and Farquhar, keep in mind that they also put Rick Rubin in front of a camera for the first time, which, as anyone who has seen his performance as Vic Ferrante in Tougher Than Leather will tell you, is tantamount to a war crime.

Still, there's no disputing that, amongst early hip-hop movies, the soundtrack to Krush Groove shines like the sun. The bland electro-funk of Beat Street and the mild, b-boy-friendly dance-pop of Breakin' simply can't compare to the plethora of talent on display here. Not every single track is a gem (we could do without Force MD's "Tender Love", for example), but for the most part, we're priveleged to hear a hellaciously strong Def Jam roster at the height of their powers. As mediocre as L.L. Cool J was on screen, there's no denying how powerfuly he was on record at only 16 years old; and the rest of the groups are almost as strong. There are some disappointments on the hard-to-find record -- no dedicated Run-D.M.C. track, for example, and some sequencing problems that were never corrected, as the CD version (a big hit at the time it was issued) was never re-released -- but most of these can be rectified by watching the movie, which contains a number of killer singles that aren't on the soundtrack, including Run-D.M.C.'s "King of Rock", the Fat Boys' "Don't You Dog Me", and UTFO's "Pick Up the Pace". Until Def Jam gives the soundtrack a much-deserved reissue, it's worth paying a few extra dollars on eBay or Amazon to pick up the CD, a terrific artifact of hip-hop's first real golden era.

BEST TRACKS: Though it looked as if the Beastie Boys "I'm On It" would be the breakout song here, the underrated Fat Boys, caught just before they went into a huge decline and started doing nothing but novelty remakes, deliver a great jam with "All You Can Eat", which ended up the big hit single from the Krush Groove soundtrack. Kurtis Blow, one of the oldest of the old school rappers, is given a centerpiece here with "If I Ruled the World", and even the non-hip-hop members of the Def Jam roster make admirable showings with Chaka Khan's "Can't Stop the Street" and Sheila E.'s outstanding "Holly Rock". Far and away the best song on the album, though, is the aggressive and totally charismatic performance given by a teenaged L.L. Cool J on "I Can't Live Without My Radio". From the very first verse, he proves why he deserved to become Def Jam's biggest star before he was even 18 years old -- it's a monster of a song that could very well serve as the official anthem of early hip-hop.

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The Rep Report: September 5--10

Phil Nugent — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 20:30:00 GMT

NEW YORK: Anthology Film Archives commences its salute to Jerry Schatzberg tonight with screenings of the director's firat features, the 1970 alienation-fest Puzzle of a Downfall Child (starring Faye Dunway) and the 1971 The Panic in Needle Park, costarring Al Pacino, in his first starring role, and Kitty Winn as a young couple of heroin addicts. Schatzberg, who seems to be more or less retired, had an erratic career, and to his other problems, he'll probably have at least one chance during his personal appearance at this retrospective to patiently explain that, no, he isn't Joel Schumacher. But as a filmmaker he had a broad curiosity about different milieus and kinds of characters, and his pictures have generally had texture and weight. Needle Park retains interest as a deep quaff of '70s New York at its most confoundingly ungovernable, and Schatzberg can boast of having directed Pacino in both his last performance before The Godfather made him a star and the first picture he made afterwards, the 1973 road movie Scarecrow co-starring Gene Hackman. When Schatzberg made the New York-set Street Smart fifteen years after Needle Park, he had to shoot it in Toronto, but once again he helped launch the movie career of a major star, this time someone who'd been working for decades and would turn fifty the year the picture was released: just a couple of years earlier, Morgan Freeman had been reduced to holding down a job on Another World, but his terrifying performance as a pimp who emerges like a monster from the id to turn pampered reporter Christopher Reeve's life into a pretzel earned him his first Academy Award nomination and a long-belated measure of the industry stature he'd long deserved. Also showing: Honeysuckle Rose, a 1980 country music remake of Intermezzo starring Willie Nelson and Dyan Cannon, which introduced Willie's theme song "On the Road Again," and "Reunion," a sadly overlooked 1989 film starring Jason Robards, with a screenplay by Harold Pinter.

Raindance, the British company responsible for the Raindance Film Festival (which opens October 7, by the way), is bringing its educational program to the New York Film Academy. Aspiring filmmakers looking to drop a few bucks towards their futures might want to check out Elliot Grove's "99 MInute Film School" on Tuesday, September 9 and the "Lo to No Budget Filmmaking" seminar on the weekend of September 13 and 14, which bears a recommendation blurb from director Christopher Nolan, whose most recent film, The Dark Knight, has been well-received. This marks the first time the Raindance people's first venture into America, and it might be nice if it wasn't their last, so for God's sake, behave yourselves.

LOS ANGELES: Every Thursday in September, the Silent Movie Theater hosts "Word Is Born: Hip Hop at the Movies, 1979-1984". Included are Hollywood exploitation jobs such as Breakin' and Beat Street, the solid period documentary Style Wars, and on September 25, Beat This! Hip Hop Rarities, winner of this month's Rep Report Award for Promotional Copy That We Have No Intention of Trying to Re-Word: " We've dug even deeper for our closeout night, and we're bringing you some of the rarest cuts in a fantastic mix of rarities from the old-school hip-hop era. Watch them one after the other, obscure odds and ends from the Golden Age, ending with Beat This! A Hip-Hop History! Yup! It’s the history of hip-hop! And it was made in 1984! And it’s all in rhyme! And it’s vocoderized by Afrika Bambaataa! And it’s sci-fi! And it stars BS-ing punk-impresario-turned-double-dutch-promoter Malcolm McLaren in all his patronizing glory! And it was made for Granada TV! And they forced director Dick Fontaine to slip in McLaren against his will, but he couldn’t do anything about it!"

SAN FRANCISCO: Sean McCourt of the Bay Guardian has the dirt on this weekend's Lebowski Fest.

NORTH CAROLINA: The tenth Hi Mom! Film Festival, festuring an international, family-friendly selection of fifty-one animated and live-action shorts, runs this weekend starting tonight, at the Art Center in Carborro. Please note that the outdoor screenings planned for Chapel Hill have been moved indoors due to a "strong threat of rain."

The Screengrab : beat street

OST: "Krush Groove"

The Rep Report: September 5--10