THE SYNDROME

ENTERTAINMENT OBSESSION // 2009

Stuff About Lauren...

I'm Lauren. I have two brothers, a crooked spine and I usually read magazines from the back to the front. I don't really know why; it just feels better that way. For a while I thought I'd devote my life to putting things in print (hard news, feature articles, new American fiction) but, about eight years ago, I realized that I've secretly been in love with film all my life. The crooked spine isn't going anywhere. I'm still kinda angry about that.

About the Blog...

I used to be a film critic for a newspaper. I got to immerse myself in entertainment and dissect it for other people. I miss that. Look ... there's other stuff going down on planet Earth that seems a little more life-and-death, but I love film because it taught me how to be a moral human being. Movies were my third parent. So this is why I blog THE SYNDROME.

Master or Menace: Mr Spike Lee

Last month I was finishing up principal photography for a short I've been producing for the last 8 months. In between takes we were critiquing various films, actors and directors. Mark, my DP cited Stop-Loss as the best film of 2007 (if only it had actually been released in '07), I was still bashing Crash and feeling unsure about this year's Coen Brothers landslide. I don't know how we got to it, but eventually the conversation turned to Spike Lee. Mark said, categorically, that Spike Lee's films are racist.

"Damn, could this be true?" The only truth I can currently rely on is that I have only seen 5 Spike Lee joints: Inside Man, 25th Hour, She Hate Me, He Got Game, and Four Little Girls. The rest of Lee's oeuvre is, I'm somewhat ashamed to say, somewhere in my Netflix queue, sandwiched between The Last Waltz and Philadelphia, the latter of which I have already seen.

Since moving Mo' Better and Daze and Do the Right Thing up in the queue is against my personal policy regarding Netflix, the only thing I could think to do as part of this investigation into Spike Lee's polarizing work was to read as much as I possibly could about Spike and the common allegation against him: that his work is racist and filled with bigotry.

I haven't come to any conclusions yet but I'm about to finish this book and I'm beginning to put together a thesis about why my friend Mark is wrong.

Title of Lauren's thesis:

Let's Talk About Tarantino

Got an opinion on Spike Lee? Post it here.

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