Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon: The History of Rap
When Jimmy Fallon first started his late night show, I had a feeling that he might just end up being one of the greats. Like, beyond Conan. It sounds crazy, but I think I should just put that out there now so I can say ‘I told you so’ 20 years from now.
This is great on a lot of levels, and is clearly a television show doing a bit that’s meant to go viral online. It’s also troubling. It reminds me of the fact that a lot of North American pop culture is really arts and culture from black folk that got taken and given a lighter face to sell to the wannabe-gangsta kids from the suburbs in order to take it big. This is literally two white guys telling/owning the history of rap, with THE ROOTS playing backup.
As problematic as that is, it’s also part of what makes the clip funny. If it was Jaime Foxx and Will Smith, I might think it was cool but not surprising or particularly forward-able. So when all’s said and done, as long as we can recognize this as a well put-together promo for The Social Network (and a fan-freaking-tastic performance by Jimmy Fallon; performing right along with TImberlake is no small feat), we can all look back on this and laugh. But seriously it’s weird that The Roots are the background in this, even if their instrumentals were perfect.
I’ve been excited for this movie since I heard about the cast (expect plenty of TV spots for it between The Office + 30 Rock in the coming months), and, featuring two of my favourite comedians in terms of Carell & Fey, it’ll be difficult for me to be disappointed.
I can say that this is not at all the kind of film I expected, and it’ll likely be pretty formulaic, but I am there nonetheless.
Some scenes, much like many in last year’s Get Smart look waaaaaay too ‘video’ to me - Stu Maschwitz could explain exactly why in terms of shutter, etc., and I really wish certain DPs could get that figured out for low-light/kinetic situations as it cut’s the look of the budget by about 75%. Happened in District 9 once too, but that was a low-light, smoky, small location with a lot of stress on the production crew already. This is Steve Carell and Tina Fey in an alley.
Enjoy the trailer nonetheless, and let me know what you think
Say what you will about Night at the Museum, Shawn Levy, whatever - but this 20 minute “day in the life” video from MakingOf.com is pretty fascinating to someone like me. I love seeing as much uninterrupted, fly-on-the-wall sort of on-set footage as possible - Peter Jackson’s ‘King Kong Production Diaries’ (now on DVD), Edgar Wright’s ‘Scott Pilgrim’ video blogs, Kevin Smith’s ‘Train Wreck’ behind-the-scenes videos from Clerks 2 - I really can’t ever get enough.
Enjoy.
