Black Snake Moan

[MacGuffin]

Trailer

Release Date: February 23rd, 2007 (wide)

Starring: Samuel L. Jackson, Christina Ricci, Justin Timberlake, John Cothran Jr, Michael Raymond-James

Directed by: Craig Brewer (Hustle & Flow)

Premise: A blues guitarist abandoned by his wife tries to redeem the soul of a girl addicted to sex in a rural town.

[gob]

Sleaze...
The Black Keys are awesome. Samuel L Jackson looks set for a good performance. The last part of the trailer kind of makes this look like some sort of amicable comedy, I was led to believe prior to this trailer that this was a gritty exploitation flick. 

[A Matter Of Chance]

...yes, please. i feel kind of bad about how much i am anticipating this film.

[bonanzataz]

fucking hell, i've been wanting to see that trailer again after i first saw it attached to jackass 2, now i hear it's finally back online, and i click that link and it's dead. this movie looks very good, but the marketing for it seems kinda dumb. they're not putting an official trailer on the internet, what they're doing is having this lame contest where fans can edit their own trailers. but the fan trailers suck and they're all i can find. the official trailer was one of the best i've seen in recent years. i told my friends about the movie, they don't even believe it exists b/c there's no trailer. i have no idea why they would block access to it and only let us see shitty fanboy creations on youtube.

here's the official on youtube.


hey, merry xmas, guys!

[polkablues]

So it's a buddy comedy?  I guess? 

Fuck it, still looks good.

[RegularKarate]

I thought I had already posted my "review" of this, but I can't find it... oh well, this is from my LiveJournal (keep in mind it's written for people who don't know as much about film as you folk):

Black Snake Moan: This is from the director of Hustle and Flow, it stars Sam Jackson and Christina Ricci (both seem to be trying to get back into actually acting and Ricci being extremely naked throughout the film). I liked it for the most part, but it still has the weaknesses that Hustle and Flow has in that the script is kind of weak in parts and a tad cheesy. It may end up being kind of controversial because Sam Jackson tries to cure her of her wicked ways (she sleeps around) by literally chaining her up in his house. It's not as effed up as something like Swept Away (the original), but it does have some questionable ideas about the roles of men and women when it comes to relationships. It also has Justin Timberlake who kind of sucks as an actor (though not as bad as I thought he would).

The thing that I really liked about it was the fact that it did for blues what Hustle and Flow did for hip-hop while not making it an exact replica. The music scenes are just as exciting as in Hustle and Flow (the first time Jackson plugs in an electric guitar is amazing) and the title sequence is super cool.

[MacGuffin]

Timberlake, Ricci, Samuel L. Jackson Spill Secrets Of 'Black Snake Moan'
Actors reveal who was dancing on set — and who was surprisingly professional.
Source: MTV

PARK CITY, Utah — They're three very big stars with three very distinct personalities. From Samuel L. Jackson's icy-cool stare to Justin Timberlake's boy-next-door charm to Christina Ricci's indie-darling goth-girl mystique, you'd probably never expect them to appear in the same movie. As they appeared in the same room for an interview at the Sundance Film Festival, however, the three shared more laughs and memories than a family reunion.

Just before attending the premiere of their sexy Southern drama "Black Snake Moan," the disparate trio dished about drama "Black Snake Moan," the disparate trio dished about chaining people to radiators, their golfing skills and the crucial difference between popping and locking.

MTV: "Black Snake Moan" is a movie about a man (Jackson) who forces redemption on a promiscuous young woman (Ricci) by chaining her to his radiator and keeping her away from her boyfriend (Timberlake). What did you guys find so distinctive about this script?

Samuel L. Jackson: The redemptive quality of the characters, and the journeys that they took that were very genuine, human and Southern gothic. It was something that people hadn't seen before.

Christina Ricci: I really fell in love with the characters. I loved Rae from the moment I read the script, and I just felt so much for her. She's a girl that I've seen before, because of the well-established connection between childhood sexual abuse and wild promiscuity as an adult. And these things aren't really treated as something that needs help. I saw her in a lot of other people — and I loved her, and I wanted to protect her.

Justin Timberlake: I am shameless, was looking for work and performed many sexual favors to get this job. [He laughs.]

Jackson: That'll be written everywhere. That'll be all over the Internet tomorrow.

MTV: Tell me what you expected from the other two coming into it — and then what they were really like.

Ricci: I didn't know what to expect, really. When I was 14, I was obsessed with "Pulp Fiction" and wanted to be Sam Jackson, so I had no idea how badass he was gonna be. I was a little intimidated, but then he liked me, so it was OK. And then Justin just completely surprised me.

Jackson: He was on time, he knew his lines and was willing to subject himself to being number three or four on the cast list. Who knew?

Timberlake: I was obviously intimidated by both of them. But I find it interesting, the perception that comes along with someone like myself, or someone in my field, coming into a film, especially a film like this — indie, a smaller budget. I equally had my own perceptions. I didn't know what to expect from Christina, but I've known Sam. We get along because we're both golf fanatics, and we've played Pro-Ams [competitions] together.

MTV: Who's better?

Timberlake: It depends on what day.

[Jackson gives Timberlake a long stare.]

Timberlake: OK, Sam. [He laughs.]

Jackson: Christina, I knew, was coming with deep commitment. I'd watched her work, and we'd known each other socially; we have the same agent. I expected her to dive into this and be great, and it was a joy to watch her transform and to be able to share that space, trust her and allow her to trust me to do the things we had to do to make this story real. I totally expected Justin to come in and be professional. The great thing about this movie is we were doing it near his home, and he was in a place that was familiar. Even though he's playing a character nowhere near the person he is, he's got a lot of fortitude to come in and show the vulnerability that this character has. Guys always want to be tough in movies. And to come in and break down and have fear — and to share that fear with someone — that's a difficult thing for a guy to do.

Ricci: Yeah, I was really impressed too, that you didn't pick a vanity project.

Timberlake: Oh, I have plenty of vanity projects, sweetheart. [He laughs.]

MTV: And how brave is Christina? Would either one of you guys be willing to do a movie where you'd be chained to a radiator half-naked?

Jackson: I have one of those at home, actually.

Timberlake: Yeah, that's not for you guys to know about. [He laughs.] No, there were some scenes where literally I became enchanted watching Christina in this film. There's so many layers to what she has created in this character.

MTV: Christina, people are calling this the bravest performance of your career. Do you agree?

Ricci: I think so, yeah. It was a lot to take on at first. I'd never been to the South, and this character deals with pain, and she's such a polar opposite of me and how I deal with things. But I had so much sympathy for her that I really wanted to understand her. To be able to understand, to fall into somebody that isn't yourself and fall so deeply ... I gave everything to this performance. I hope it comes across that way.

MTV: Every great movie has to have that one classic scene, whether it's the Titanic flipping over, or Butch and Sundance jumping off the cliff. Pick the one scene in this movie that you can't wait for the world to see.

Ricci: This is purely out of vanity, but the scene in the juke joint where I'm dancing. Because [director] Craig [Brewer] made it look like I can actually dance.

Timberlake: It is pretty iconic. There's a lot of symbolism with the chain to the radiator, and so many iconic scenes with Christina in the film. But for me, it's not every day that you get to hold a gun to Sam Jackson's head ...

Jackson: And get away with it. [He laughs.] I like the scene in the house when she finally convinces me to play [music] for her, and I tell her the story of my wife and we actually perform "Black Snake Moan" in the house. That's a pretty moving moment where we really connect.

MTV: Christina, you dance in this movie, and Sam, you sing in this movie. Did either of you ask Justin for some pointers?

Ricci: I did — and he wouldn't teach me!

Timberlake: We had a little lesson. We had a little hip-hop lesson! She comes up to me on the set, she says, "Justin, will you teach me how to pop and lock?" [He laughs.]

Ricci: Which, apparently, is not a proper term!

Timberlake: So I said, "Well the first thing I need to teach you is that popping and locking are two completely different things." The closest references I could come up with for popping was like, "Beat Street," and the closest thing I could come up with for locking was ["What's Happening!!" character] Rerun! And I think she got the picture. She doesn't need any help from me; she's hot enough in the movie anyway.

MTV: Now that you guys are up here at Sundance, have you been able to ski or snowboard?

Timberlake: That's all I've been doing actually, for the last three days, is snowboarding.

Jackson: And I'm black. So, no. [He laughs.]

[Ghostboy]

I thought this was way better than Hustle & Flow. The two lead performances are amazing, and just about every moment they have together is phenomenal. The Justin Timberlake subplot was hampered more by unecessary character development (!) than bad acting, and the film goes on for about five lame minutes past the most perfect closing shot it could have had, but when it's down to Sam Jackson, Christina Ricci and that radiator, this movie is great.

[MacGuffin]

Back to Memphis, This Time Making the City Moan
Source: New York Times

IF contemporary Memphis has found its Fellini in Craig Brewer, the young director best known for "Hustle & Flow," then the film's composer, Scott Bomar, is its Nino Rota.

Or so Mr. Bomar would explain the collaboration that has now produced a second provocative, music-rich look at suffering and sex on the Mississippi: "Black Snake Moan," scheduled for release this month by Paramount Vantage.

"To me Craig's films are regional the same way Fellini's were about Rome, where it's really the main character in his films," Mr. Bomar said in a recent interview in a Sunset Strip coffee shop. "With Craig I think it's Memphis and the mid-South."

"A lot of the music in Fellini's films is like these ancient folk melodies that Rota incorporated into the score," he continued. "And with 'Black Snake Moan,' and even 'Hustle & Flow,' I looked at it that way. It's like there's music in the air in Memphis. You can just grab it. It's ancient, and it's just a part of the dirt."

Mr. Bomar, 32, may risk the scorn of purists by invoking names as revered as Fellini and his longtime musical associate. But the comparison is perhaps apt in that Bomar and Brewer — they are quickly becoming a joined entity — have insisted to an unusual extent on telling their stories for both the ear and the eye.

"Hustle & Flow," for which Mr. Bomar wrote the score, explored the boisterous world of crunk and won an Oscar for the Three 6 Mafia song "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp."

For "Black Snake Moan" Mr. Bomar wrote original music, supervised vocal performances by the actor Samuel L. Jackson and chose blues recordings from the likes of R. L. Burnside, Jessie Mae Hemphill and the Black Keys: contributions that are likely to help define the movie as surely as Mr. Rota's work marked Fellini's "Amarcord."

In the film a former blues musician turned rural farmer, played by Mr. Jackson, happens on a battered, half-naked young woman, Christina Ricci, and takes it upon himself to nurse her back to health. In an effort to cure the troubled girl of her "sickness," he chains her to his radiator. Eventually both are reborn by their growing spiritual connection. As reflected in the mix of trancelike rural minimalism and throbbing juke-joint blues from Mr. Bomar, the film presents music as salve, as salvation, as exorcism.

In keeping with the film's story Mr. Bomar's score was recorded by a small combo, rather than by a larger orchestra with the swelling strings and obvious emotional punctuations of so much current film music.

"I think one thing missing from a lot of contemporary scores is there's not too many contemporary influences," Mr. Bomar said. "In the '60s jazz was pretty popular, so composers would incorporate jazz into their scores. In this case it's blues that we use."

The music of "Black Snake Moan" — the title comes from a 1920s song by Blind Lemon Jefferson — conjures the world in which the story takes place, a backwoods of the soul where dogs are barking, the moon is high and temptation waits around every corner.

The film opens with archival footage of the musician Son House, found by Mr. Bomar, talking about the elemental nature of blues music, its roots in the raw expression of emotional truths.

Mr. Brewer, the director, said: "I'm really embracing some of that fable tone that blues has. It's a strange world where animals and angels and devils all roll around in the same soil that we do.

"I felt that Son House, right at the beginning, could just let us know that blues is about one thing, and that's what consists between a male and female who are in love. And right there I wanted to bookend for everybody that we're going to tell you a little story."

Mr. Brewer and Mr. Bomar first met at a party at Mr. Brewer's sister-in-law's house in Memphis, where both men live. They immediately bonded over their mutual love of musical arcana and the local rap scene, which led to Mr. Bomar's working on the score to "Hustle & Flow."

Mr. Bomar, who also collects and refurbishes vintage recording equipment, began playing bass for the instrumental R&B group Impala while still in high school and in the late '90s he formed the Bo-Keys with veteran Memphis soul players. So it seemed only natural for him to turn to the drummer Willie Hall and the guitarist Charles (Skip) Pitts from the Bo-Keys while creating the score for "Hustle & Flow."

"They did 'Shaft,' they did 'Truck Turner,' " said Mr. Bomar, referring to two Isaac Hayes blaxploitation movies. "And in 'Kill Bill' Tarantino used some of the score from 'Tough Guys,' and the parts he used were intros to songs that were pretty much Willie Hall and Skip on the high-hat and wah-wah.

"It was like, O.K., I know two musicians who live in my town and played on some of the coolest film scores of all time. They're also two of the most sampled musicians in rap music, so it just totally made sense."

For "Black Snake Moan" Mr. Jackson sought to make his on-screen playing as authentic as possible. Mr. Brewer and Mr. Bomar took him on a three-day car trip through northern Mississippi, meeting local musicians and visiting roadhouses and juke joints. No hand doubles were used during filming, though Mr. Jackson did not play on the recorded backing tracks. He did, however, record all his own vocals, which were produced by Mr. Bomar, including the film's title song and a particularly ribald version of the classic story-song "Stack-o-Lee."

For Mr. Brewer "Black Snake Moan" is another step in the overall project he hopes to bring to fruition.

"I'm trying to do a music series for my state," he said. "It sort of starts from the music and begins to inspire me with images and stories. I really wanted 'Hustle & Flow' to be the rap movie. I tried to write a story that would use it as a soundtrack and capture what I felt was the essence of hip-hop in Memphis. Now I'm doing blues. My next one is outlaw country."

[MacGuffin]

Craig Brewer made one of the most startling film debuts in recent history with Hustle & Flow, which ended up getting two Oscar nominations and winning one for Best Original Song. Instead of waiting for the accolades to roll in Brewer jumped right into his next picture, the southern fried noir-esque Black Snake Moan. Brewer has sidestepped the sophomore slump with this amazingly original picture. Samuel L. Jackson plays Lazarus, a retired blues singer, who's wife recently left him for his brother. Simultaneously Christina Ricci's character of Rae, the local Tennessee nymphomaniac, has just had her boyfriend enlist for the army and is whiling her time away with drugs and lots and lots of meaningless sex. When her boyfriend's best friend attempts to rape her, she fights back but he beats her nearly to death and leaves her on the side of the road. Lazarus finds her and nurses her back to health. But since she is ravenous for sex, he decides to chain her to a radiator until she can control herself.

Daniel Robert Epstein: First of all, did you freak when Three 6 Mafia won the Oscar last year?

Craig Brewer: I was really excited.

DRE:Were you home?

CB:No, I was actually in Los Angeles at the Oscars when they won.

DRE:Oh you went?

CB:Yeah. I think because Terrence [Howard] and Three 6 were nominated for an Oscar. I actually got [CEO of Paramount Pictures] Brad Grey's seats. He said "If it wasn't for Hustle & Flow we wouldn't even be at the Oscars."

DRE:That's nice that you got to go.

CB:Yeah, but I got to be honest with you, when I found out we got nominated I knew we won.

DRE:What makes you say that?

CB:I was so confident. I didn't have some secret inside line. I knew that if that song got nominated that meant that the Academy members couldn't get that song out of their heads.

DRE:Who could?

CB:Yeah and also, I saw all the other films and I heard the music and I really believe that It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp was a functional song. What I mean by that, it wasn't ornamental, it was truly fundamental. I had so many people come up to me saying they didn't like rap but they loved It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp. I keep telling them, "Well, you were there when we made it, you were there watching them create that song in the movie." A lot of people who usually don't give rap a chance, like it better having been there watching them make the song. It's not over some montage. It's not over the closing credits. You're seeing some guy go, "Huh, it's hard out here for a pimp." Then you're seeing some girl sing it over and over again and then it's got a beat to it and then they play it. The audience shares in the joy of the song because they're there watching it be put together. I know when I was first pitching the movie to people in Hollywood I kept saying, "This scene needs to be like the Requiem scene in Amadeus." When he and Salieri are putting that Requiem together and you're hearing one baseline and you hear the sopranos and the arpeggios with the violins coming in. I knew that no one had ever seen that in rap.

DRE:From looking at the posters I thought Black Snake Moan was some sort of sex movie, it does have sex but that's not the focus. Do you feel it is being marketed the right way even though it may draw people in?

CB:It's definitely the way I wanted them to market it. I didn't want some Regarding Henry poster. I didn't want some meditative half lit face of Sam Jackson looking serious and forlorn. This is a movie I want people to have fun with as well as get the message that I'm trying to give. I really found myself inspired by the marketing of the movies that inspired this movie which would be Baby Doll by [Elia] Kazan and A Streetcar Named Desire. There is an obvious hot, sexual tone to those posters that have a respectful nod for camp. I don't want people thinking that I'm actually doing a dark movie because it's not really. It's actually the most moral story that I've ever really told.

DRE:The poster has a real pulp novel cover look to it. Christina has a real Sheena Queen of the Jungle look to her.

CB:Totally. I told them "Please be inspired by Conan the Barbarian and Star Wars." He is a protector. There are a lot of things in the poster that I actually like that nobody really catches onto. One is that she's looking at you and seducing you but he's not looking at you. Also there's a pattern across his chest with the chain that forms a cross. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of the criticism I get is people thinking that the movie's too religious.

DRE:But it's not, he's reflecting off his own life.

CB:Right. But make no mistake, I am making a comment. I live in the red states. I welcome everybody to enjoy the movie and to come to it but in my heart, I'm making movies for the south. The radical concept I'm bringing up is that there's a lot of people out there that call themselves Christians or children of God and I don't think that they really act that way. I think that there's a lot of judgment out there right now and there's a lot of divisiveness and everyone's pissing around their own religious territory. We've lost the Good Samaritan. We've lost seeing someone in need and unconditionally loving them and trying not to judge them.

DRE:Does the kind of nymphomania that Christina's character has exist and where can I meet those women?

CB:I can tell you where to meet them in Memphis.

It's funny because nymphomania doesn't exist. A few people have asked me, "Have you done plenty of research on the state of nymphomania?" [laughs] I always go, "Well, let me first tell you that it's a male fantasy that this girl can't get enough sex." I wanted to take that southern archetype of the out of control horny farmer's daughter that if you just go over on that property she's going to get you. There are examples of that in respected literature like Mayella in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. The black man is essentially on trial for going into her house and helping her move a cabinet and then she pounced on him. I love the book and the movie. My dad told me that when he was growing up in the south that there was just intense fear of black male sexuality amongst white southerners. When Tom Robinson, the guy on trial in To Kill a Mockingbird, gets a guilty verdict it's so obvious that he didn't do anything wrong. I remember my dad saying "They're not sending him to jail because they believe he attacked her. They're sending him to jail because that white woman wanted him." As a kid I remember thinking how wildly unjust that was. But with this movie coming out I'm seeing that that there's this fear of that image.

DRE:Some people brought the misogynist brush for Hustle & Flow. The same thing is going to happen with Black Snake Moan if not more so. How do you respond to that?

CB:I'm hoping that the people who cry misogyny with this movie are going to feel foolish about it a couple of years from now. The definition of misogyny is a hatred towards women. I would challenge anybody to come to the end of this movie and really believe that I have a hatred towards women or even hatred toward this particular woman. If you do anything that has a representation of race or gender and it starts stepping outside a common idea of what they want to represent that race or gender then you're going to find that your character represents the whole race and gender. That gets a little tricky for narratives that have extreme characters. Especially in the south where it seems like all their characters are extreme. I always bring up A Streetcar Named Desire. I always think "Wow, they teach that in high schools and nobody cries misogyny." Not only does Stanley Kowalski get drunk. But he goes into the room where his pregnant wife is dancing to music and with a closed fist punches her in the face and the head repeatedly. But when she gets whisked upstairs and he's screaming her name "Stella, Stella, Stella" she goes downstairs and she fucks that man. We want her to fuck him and even we want to fuck him because he's got this rippling back and his friends tried to sober him up by putting him in the shower so now he's wet. There's all this sexual charged passion that is in these stories that make people uncomfortable but I also think people covet it. I think everybody wants to have some passion in their life that defies all reason and all morals. Where it's like, "Oh I've got to have that woman," or "I've got to have that man" no matter how volatile at times your relationship may be, at least I've experienced that in my 13 years of marriage.

DRE:[laughs] Black Snake Moan and Hustle & Flow have the same production designer, the same cinematographer and I'm sure a lot of the same crew.

CB:Oh yeah and even a lot of the same actors. Bojo the club owner in Black Snake Moan [played by Claude Phillips] is the junkie in Hustle & Flow that gives them the keyboard. The pawn shop owner that's selling the microphone is also the guy at the bar that's giving Justin Timberlake a hard time. So there is a Memphis and Mississippi collection of characters. I'm trying to make like John Ford movies to some extent where I have my own company of people.

DRE:Do you feel Hustle & Flow and Black Snake Moan bookend one another?

CB:Very much so but even more importantly they're part of this series that I'm trying to do. I'm really exploring the music that I've been excited about from my region. That means rap, blues, the next one is country and then there's the soul movie. They're all part of a world and I could definitely see Rae taking a trip into Memphis and rolling around in the same bars and shake joints that Djay [the main character in Hustle & Flow] is bringing his women to. That's more by way of the tone of the music. I don't really try to put music on these stories as if they're just an afterthought or a soundtrack. It's really me saying I want to make a blues movie and what does that mean. That means I need to embrace more of a fabled tone. If you really listen to the blues, it's this extreme world "I'm going to buy me a bulldog and chain it in my front yard and that'll keep my woman from sneaking off at night." R.L. Burnside singing, "I got an ass pocket of whiskey. I got a front pocket of gin. If you don't open your door I'm going to kick that motherfucker in." It's sweaty and it's sexy and it's wrong. That means taboo and that means the blues.

DRE:How did you come up with the look for Christina with the tiny shirt and panties?

CB:The shirt is essentially a Civil War emblem. The Confederate flag going one way and the American flag another way and the crossed revolvers in the front. I'm creating the redneck fantasy down to the Daisy Dukes and the boots. The shirt was very inspired by Flashdance. It's more cropped than Jennifer Beals had in the 80's but I definitely wanted that off the shoulder thing where you think that at any moment if you just blow on Christina the whole thing would just fall down at any moment. But we've been fighting that war across our chest for a while and it's not really racist, it's really between class. It's between people who have and people who don't. Of my relatives in the south that claim that Confederate heritage, whether people agree with it or not, it is the one thing that they have to say, "Hey we're a rebel" but it's also another way of saying, "Hey we don't have money and we need some respect."

DRE:So did Black Snake Moan start with the blues and the characters came later?

CB:Yeah, that's how it always starts. This one started even more strangely that way because I wrote this right after I wrote Hustle & Flow but before I shot Hustle & Flow. So it was actually a reaction to me trying to get Hustle & Flow made. I was experiencing these really terrible anxiety attacks I never had before. My Dad had died of a heart attack at 49 so when it first hit me I really thought I was having a heart attack. Everything was unsure with Hustle & Flow and it was a good three years of trying to get that movie made but a lot of people didn't want to make it with me and they didn't want to make it with Terrence. I didn't have any money. I couldn't keep a job because I was constantly being flown out to LA and sleeping on my producer's couch and my friend's couches. But these attacks were really humbling to me. I really began to question my mortality. I got damn scared and then I just started listening to the blues, which I've listened to since I was 12. But they say that music finds you sometimes in your life and I was hearing the fear in the music but I never listened to the fear. Now I was listening to what was being said by these guys. Then one night I saw this radiator with the chain wrapped around it in my head and this chain yanking against it and making this big sound and then I started trying to figure out what the story was. It's like a detective thing with me. I'll be listening to music in my car and these images will come into in my head and then I have to find out what the story is.

DRE:I read you might do sequels to Hustle & Flow. Are you sure you want to do that?

CB:No, but I know what their stories are. I really want to do this music series first. If I want to go back I can do those. But everybody is always talking about how they wanted to make a black Godfather, as silly as that sounds. But they were always doing it with like drugs and thugs and violence. I was like, if you're looking to do a black Godfather then do it with the music industry. No one has done the arc in a really compelling way of a person who started from nothing and then has to sell the music and sell himself and ultimately get to that place of fame where he may be more ho than pimp.

DRE:Did your wife's clothing designs make it into the movie?

CB:No, she's got it better. She's the muse. It seems like every movie that I do I'm basically exploring my relationship with me and my girl. But don't worry, I'm not Sam Jackson, I'm the crazy girl on the end of the chain but I just can't fit into those Daisy Dukes.

DRE:How did you first find SuicideGirls?

CB:I found it like everybody else found it. A friend called me up and said, "Have you been on SuicideGirls?" What's really great is that now it's turned into a much more accessible website. I like to turn other girls onto it. I tell them that the women are real, but they're aggressive, very self-empowered and sexy as all get out.

[w/o horse]

The tagline is appropriate:  Everything is hotter down south.   It created an atmosphere that elevated its experience.  There's enough deliberate innuendo to suggest that the chain was a metaphor for the cultural isolation the South could be accused of suffering from, and there's enough depicition of the South as culturally backwards to allow the chain to seem within reason.  This held the picture together, and kept it from becoming too sensational.  There's a lot of fun but it takes itself serious enough that I can take it serious too, and it's focused, mostly, on its extreme characters.   It was like if Tennessee Williams had watched a lot of campy genre pics before he wrote Baby Doll. 

[SiliasRuby]

I really enjoyed this film and the proformances done by Ricci and Samuel L Jackson were done very well. The music in the film is the type of music that I love in general.  Samuel L certainly knows how to play the blues. The only parts I felt was a bi weak was Justin. We didn't get to knnow him as much as the other two so I wasn't as invested as I could have been with his character. Overall, one thumb up.

[modage]

saw this last weekend and i really liked it.  i was surprised.  going in, i was trying to balance the AICN hype with the consensus elsewhere which seemed to be "it's awful".  so i wasn't expecting much, but with the premise i still thought it would be worth checking out.  i had really expected with that setup that it would've been done in a much more comical over-the-top way that would've probably worn thin really quickly.  what surprised me was how sincere and heartfelt the movie was.  between this and Hustle and Flow, i really like Craig Brewer.  he's got a great visual eye, the use of music is great (without being distracting) and the sense of place and atmosphere is incredible.  you can FEEL the heat, the dirt, the sense of place in this movie.  it was not filmed on a backlot or in canada and it makes all the difference.  the best thing is that i think he manages to work with some cliche elements in films in a way that makes them seem fresh and interesting.  bring on the country film.

[pumba]

Really awesome, lots of memorable scenes, good tunes, sam jackson yelling "motherfucker" in blues songs...and Craig Brewer really does have a nice visual style. The movie is really nice to look at.

JT was embarassingly bad.