DA SWEET BLOOD OF JESUS - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Spike Lee Remakes Glen & Randa

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus (2014)
Dir. Spike Lee
Scr. Lee & Bill Gunn
Starring: Stephen Tyrone Williams, Zaraah Abrahams, Elvis Nolasco, Rami Malek

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If Spike Lee went knocking on Studio doors (maybe even a few smaller companies and/or, God Forbid, a European country or three), I can't for a second believe he'd NOT be financed for Da Sweet Blood of Jesus.

Here's the pitch:

- A contemporary remake of cult horror classic Ganja & Hess.

- A passionate supernatural love-story between two insanely attractive people who are afflicted with a blood-sucking form of vampirism rooted in an ancient African ritual sacrifice blade.

Hess (Stephen Tyrone Williams) is a suave, sexy anthropologist and multi-millionaire African art collector living on a sprawling, gorgeous estate in Martha's Vineyard. Lafayette Hightower (Elvis Nolasco), a colleague from the museum Hess presides over, pops over for a visit, but after some erudite conversation he reveals how mentally unstable he is and stabs Hess with the ages-old sacrificial blade. Hess fights back and kills Hightower, then disposes of the body in his basement freezer. Rich people do things like this.

When Hightower's gorgeous wife Ganja (Zaraah Abrahams) comes a calling in search of her husband, she and Hess hit it off and soon the smouldering turns to a drillin' and a soderin' in the master boudoir. Mmmm, they make some sweet, crazy lovin' and it's not long before they seal their union with marriage.

What Hess doesn't tell Ganja is that he's now a blood-sucking vampire, thanks to being stabbed with the grim Ashanti Blade by her estranged, dead and frozen hubbles. When she discovers the body, she goes a tad bunyip, but Hess calms her down with his mellifluously sexy voice and suggests she join him for eternal life as a vampire. That this offer provides as eternal prongin' with the schwanzen de Hessen, Ganja is prime. Lots more fornicatin', blood suckin' and killin' follows.

Eventually Hess seeks redemption for his actions, in spite of how much fun they've been. Ganja understands, but wants the party to continue. A mutually satisfactory agreement is arrived at.

- That's the long and the short of this pitch, baby. Sex, vampires, lotsa blood, more sex, more killing, more blood and to top this ice cream sundae off with a nice, juicy cherry, there's gonna be some mighty fine lezbo action - all of this shot with Spike's visual aplomb and dappled with cool, young, up-and-coming musical artists for a song score, plus the styling of a Bruce Hornsby jazz score throughout.

So seriously, who wouldn't be financing this movie? Spike could have pieced the dough together tout suite, but no, he made a big deal about not even bothering to try and instead, turned to crowd funding via Kickstarter. Hell, he could have saved up his per diems from his gun-for-hire gig on the dreadful Hollywood remake of Old Boy, but instead, he went cap in hand to his movie-loving fans and raised $1.4 million (USD) in exchange for "perks", but giving him complete ownership of the film and not having to divvy up any shares of the sales, nor, for that matter needing to recoup the cash used to make the film. (One hopes his cap in hand is a "Forty Acres and a Mule" ball cap.)

I wouldn't hold this against Lee if I didn't doubt his belief in not being able to finance the picture through the usual channels. Most of all, I'd especially not hold it against him if his remake of Bill Gunn's classic Ganja & Hess was actually worthy of fan support. Lee's film is slick, to be sure, and his cast is first rate, but given that the movie is an almost blow-by-blow remake with only the most cursory updating (so much so he had to give Gunn a co-writing credit), it's a shame Lee's picture has no discernible tone, none of the mordant wit of the original, none of the genuine creepy-crawly and most of all, bereft of Gunn's strong political, social and historical context. I'm sure Spike thinks his picture is not sans the items that made the original so great, but here's an eye-opener for you, Spike: it is.

His movie isn't bad, but it's no work of art and certainly no classic. That's what Bill Gunn achieved over forty years ago. What you owe yourself, however, is to buy both Ganja & Hess and Lee's soulless remake. Watch them both (Gunn's first, and Lee's second). It'll make for an engaging evening of movie-viewing, though the bottom half of the double bill will definitely be Spike Lee's version.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: **½ Two-and-a-half-stars

Da Sweet Blood of Jesus is available on a gorgeous Anchor Bay/Anchor Bay Entertainment Canada Blu-Ray transfer, sans any extras which might have offered some illumination.

MIKE TYSON: UNDISPUTED TRUTH - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Spike Lee serves up a brilliant document of boxer Mike Tyson's astounding one-man-show.

HBO Films presents Spike Lee's latest Joint, a biographical portrait of boxer "Iron Mike" Tyson via his hit one-man stage production which wends its way through the triumph and turmoil of his storied life.



Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth (2013) ****
Dir. Spike Lee
Starring: Mike Tyson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Most boxers are genuinely great natural story-tellers. So many of them, it seems, spring from tough, colourful, Runyonesque mean streets of various squalid, crime-ridden urban jungles and no matter how punch-drunk they've become, no matter how many decades have passed, they all seem to remember every single detail worth recounting about their rich lives in and out of the ring.

In fact, I've personally never met a boxer who couldn't spin compelling autobiographical yarns. That said, one doesn't need to actually be sitting face-to-face with one of these grand old guys in a booth at some greasy diner to enjoy their tales of glory since there's a wealth of interview material out there with any number of pugilists.

These guys seem to have the hard-wired DNA to recount stirring narrative accounts that are as humorous as they are heartbreaking, as hiply cool as they are harrowing. Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth is a magical thing all unto itself - at least when it comes to documentary portraits of boxing and bluntly, it's impossible to imagine anyone other than the scrappy stylist Spike Lee to so perfectly capture the essence of one of the world's greatest boxing legends.

One of the aspects of Lee's film that was most apparent to me was the notion that its scope and style of presentation was not just the work of a genuine filmmaker (as opposed to the typical camera jockey that captures such events for television), but that it indeed, did not feel like a television special at all, but rather, a bonafide feature film. Like a previous HBO Film, Steven Soderbergh's astonishing Liberace biopic Behind the Candelabra, my immediate response to Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth was just how much I would have loved to see the movie theatrically - in a real movie theatre, with a real audience.

With this film in particular, I was reminded of the terrific tradition in theatrical exhibition of presenting work that can collectively be typified as "concert/live performance films." Unlike classic rock concert films, however, like Gimme Shelter from the Maysles Brothers and Charlotte Zwerin or Monterey Pop by D. A. Pennebaker, Spike Lee's film is more in the tradition of stand-up style concert films like the immortal Richard Pryor: Live in Concert, Eddie Murphy Delirious, but crossed with Jonathan Demme's groundbreaking Spalding Gray monologue masterwork Swimming To Cambodia.

All of these films shared a number of elements with Lee's film. First of all, they were shot before live audiences. Secondly, the stage presentations were conceived with being captured on film. Thirdly, as theatrical feature films, they shared the unique viewing experience wherein the movie audience watched a cinematically rich approach to filming an event that included on-screen audiences responding to the material. Sitting in a huge movie theatre with hundreds of people laughing in unison with audiences reacting to the show on-screen was an experience unique to cinema and one that was so special, so indelible that watching Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth at home, on television with a very small (albeit delightful) audience that included my wife and twelve-year-old daughter made me immediately yearn to have seen this terrific movie (with said wife and child) in a real movie theatre, with real people and a larger-than-life screen.

Lee's mise-en-scene is certainly larger-than-life and this, given the subject, is as it should be and could only be. Mike Tyson was the undisputed heavyweight boxing champion of the world and the youngest man to ever win several coveted titles. Most of his fights were won by completely knocking out his opponents and usually in the first or second round. For many years, he seemed unstoppable, but a series of turbulent personal travails wreaked enough havoc upon him that he did, indeed, start to lose. During one losing bout, Tyson savagely bit off part of his opponent's ear - not once, but twice. Add to this the blight of various domestic disputes, bankruptcy and a rape conviction leading to three years in prison and Tyson has a story as huge as that of any immortal God of Ancient Greece.

Using a series of simple, but evocative lighting effects, still images, film footage and a great music track, Lee shoots Tyson as he sits and struts upon the huge stage like a lion in a cage - his very life forming the bars and the appreciative audience providing the eventual redemption within the tale he weaves. We learn about Tyson's rough childhood - a beloved mother who was a substance abuser and sometime street hooker, an abusive step-father, an irascibly flamboyant pimp as his birth father and a huge juvenile criminal record. Tyson seems thankful for these early years of crime and incarceration, as his time in juvenile detention led to a relationship with a trainer and mentor who promised Tyson that he would indeed groom the lad into becoming the youngest world boxing champ.

Tyson comes across as a plain-spoken orator - an entertainer from the streets of life and the school of hard knocks. He's pretty damn riveting and Lee clearly knows how and where to place the camera - the lens of which that truly, madly and deeply loves the ex-champ. Unfortunately, it's impossible to be completely sold on his redemption - the physically brutality he exacted upon his young wife Robin Givens is avoided in favour of exposing her "gold digging" ways and the manner in which Tyson represents his rape conviction is full of denial and mean-spiritedness towards his victim. Instead, we get a parade of all the celebrities who came to visit him in prison. (Shame on all of them!) These are big hurdles to get over and I'm not sure if most audiences will be able to do so. I suspect, however, that Lee's dazzling direction will indeed keep them watching at the very least.

Ultimately, what the film achieves is not so much myth-making since Lee knows that this ground's already been tread upon (via James Toback's excellent, though surprisingly straightforward feature doc Tyson). Instead, we get "Iron Mike" up close, personal and almost oxymoronically, bigger than life. As the camera scrutinizes the big man, there's no denying that there will be plenty of room for audiences to see what they need or want to see. Most will see a young man from a hellhole, his rise to the top and his rock-bottom crash. We'll see a man in denial and yet, this is what we'll clearly see and believe. Finally, we'll see a man, a human being - one who looks ahead to new beginnings and new challenges.

And for all the achievements and all his fame, he'll still be a thug - a thug who parlayed his gifts as a thug into becoming a much-beloved hero and celebrity - an American Icon.

Only in America. No wonder the country is collapsing.

"Mike Tyson: Undisputed Truth" can be seen on HBO Canada. For info, visit the website HERE.
Playdates in Canada are as follows:
Saturday Nov.16 8:01PM ET / MT
Sunday Nov.17 2:16AM ET / MT
Saturday Nov.30 11:45PM ET / MT
Sunday Dec.8 9:40AM ET / MT
Sunday Dec.8 6:30PM ET / MT

For info on U.S. dates and times, visit HERE.