dave chappelle's block party

Screengrab's Favorite Movies About Music: Non-Fiction Edition (Part Seven)

Hayden Childs' Favorites:

DAVE CHAPPELLE’S BLOCK PARTY (2005)

Dave Chappelle has a notoriously wary view of the trappings of fame. He walked away from his successful sketch show when he was afraid that he was empowering racists, rather than mocking them out of existence. He’s turned down his share of movie roles. After he went all Bartleby on his show, he had a bit of a reputation as an angry man, perhaps too angry for the bulk of his fans. However, in this project, Chappelle turns all of that suspicion into positive energy. He shares his wealth and fortune by hosting a huge block party in Brooklyn with performances by his favorite hip-hop artists, and what’s more, he is going to fly in as many people from where he lives in Yellow Springs, Ohio as he possibly can. Supposedly inspired by the positive vibes of Wattstax (where Memphis’ Stax Records hosted a big party in Watts in 1972), Chappelle’s Little Party That Could is actually quite a bit more fun. In Wattstax, the fear of violence kept the audience at a distance, up in the bleachers of a football stadium with a whole football field between the performers and fans. In one scene, Rufus Thomas encourages the crowd to leap the fence and take the field, but as soon as the song is over, he has to send them back up into the bleachers. Chappelle has no distance; his crowd is right up at the stage with Kanye West, Mos Def, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, The Roots, and the Fugees. In his fictional films, Michel Gondry typically takes a magical-reality view of the world, weaving dreams with real life. Here, he makes real life progress with the gossamer ease of dreamlife. Is it fun? Hell, yeah.

Dear Santa: Cinematic Comebacks We’d Most Like To See (Part Three)

SHERYL LEE

Lee was originally cast as the face (and corpse) of bewitching, self-destructive prom queen Laura Palmer on the equally bewitching and self-destructive TV classic Twin Peaks, yet David Lynch was so captivated by the actress that he created a recurring role for her on the show (as Laura’s doomed cousin Maddie), then later placed her at the center of the feature-length Peaks prequel, Fire Walk With Me, a critically-scorned movie that made Lee (and her iconic character) seem, to many, like a guest who’d overstayed her welcome. And yet, even if you’re one of the haters who viewed the film as an unnecessary, self-indulgent folly (rather than an undervalued masterpiece), take another look at Lee’s performance: yes, she gobbles like a turkey at one point (a moment frequently and too easily mocked), but she also commits herself to the role of an abuse victim on the brink of madness with the kind of frightening, vulnerable intensity that would have earned praise and awards buzz if not for the small screen (and Log Lady) associations. Since her fifteen minutes of fame (and undeserved ridicule), Lee has largely flown beneath the radar in projects more interested in her capacity for physical (rather than emotional) nakedness onscreen, but even so there have been some diamonds in the rough: the innocent in This World, Then The Fireworks, the innocent turned deadly in John Carpenter’s Vampires and, most notably (if least interestingly), in her almost comeback roll as the German girlfriend in Backbeat. Lately, Lee’s found a home back on television (most recently on Dirty Sexy Money...remind me to set my Tivo!), but I’d be fascinated to see what she’d bring to a meaty film role now that she’s been seasoned with all these extra years of rejection, experience and wisdom.

America the Beautiful: 15 Movies That Show What's Right With U.S. (Part Three)

YOUNG MR. LINCOLN (1939)

One of the most famous lines from any John Ford movie is, "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend." Not great advice for a reporter, but Ford got away with in this picture, which isn't a straight biopic but a romantic fantasy about the pre-fame Abraham Lincoln (Henry Fonda) as we'd like to imagine it. The movie's script does have a basis in history: the story is built around a murder trial that young Abe took on as a fledgling lawyer. The movie uses this set-up to provide Fonda with the chance to show Lincoln demonstrating his folksy sagacity, his humor, his basic decency and the canniness that would make him a successful politician, but in embryonic form, as a young leading man learning the ropes on his way to becoming a legend. He may not know, as we know, that he's the great Abraham Lincoln. But as we see him figuring out that he has that in him, the movie elevates patriotic corn to the level of folk poetry.