Gang Tapes
Dir: Adam Ripp
Urbanworld Films
How about this? Middle-aged Jew makes it his job to make a fake fly-on-the-wall documentary about LA gangs. If you fancy some toe-curling freestyle rap sessions with your fake drive by shootings and "imagine it's your moms that grieves" sentimentality then you've come to the right place. Wait. What year is it? 1987? Even my grandmother knows the ins and outs of the LA gang scene and she's dead. So why are we reviewing this? Oh I know... the "making of" documentary is amazing! In between scenes where the director's saying things like "I'm only interested in reality here man," you also get to see him cast all these bad urban actors who lie and say they used to gang bang while he mentally jerks off about how tough and amazing the whole experience is. One of them talks about how he was sent to prison for beating somebody up and the director's casting assistant goes "Wow!". Watching this scene, you can feel the goose bumps on her fat rich arm as she congratulates herself for hanging with "real people".
Another bonus is the video from the best-forgotten, tough guy muscle man Latino rapper Chino XL. This is so fucking wrong and "why did anybody sit there in the editing room and go: ‘It's a wrap!'" it makes you feel like you're tripping. The bit where he's driving his Noddy-mobile along the beach with his Tims out of the car while he shadow boxes like a girl to the too-fast beat can actually make you question why you're alive and why you're broke if this piece of shit has money. I know LA is meant to be great if you're a millionaire with access to all the Hollywood Hills private parties where they have Jacuzzis built out of the essence of virgins' labias but if you're not in that circle then it's a place more culturally bereft and sissy than a Norwegian music conference with the guy who plays trombone in Groove Armada holding a seminar on how to network your way into session musicianship when your band gets dropped. Still, that doesn't stop lifestyle magazines reviewing this DVD and saying it's "the real deal", "shocking and graphic". What? Are they written by old ladies? Or just bum-sucking little media studies graduates who sit in meetings for six hours of the day? All lounging round a big fancy table nodding away while the team leader pontificates on the use of sans-serif fonts in the reviews section and then applauding Olly and Dan for their amazing Bill Hicks retrospective.
Oxbow
Music For Adults: A Film About A Band Called Oxbow
Dir: Christian Anthony
Remember the Vice Guide To Getting Beaten Up? (Vice Launch Issue Two). Oxbow's singer Eugene Robinson wrote that. He also got Charles Manson to write a "letter of joy" for our Happiness issue (V1/N1) and interviewed the undercover spy guy for the story on
page 42. See also
www.skullgame.com.
There was a bit of trouble over Eugene getting paid for his work because our last accountant was a self-obsessed body builder with a Napolean complex and so the last time Oxbow played in London, Eugene made a big deal out of calling our editor's name out at the gig and threatening to rape and kill him.
Thing was, Eugene had actually met the editor before the gig and they'd agreed he'd be paid on the night so either he's really paranoid or he thought that by threatening to kill him from the stage everybody would think his band were scarier than they actually are. Anyway, the point is that behind all the drooling, cock grabbing, strangulation and power blues violence, the guys in Oxbow are all really nice, gentlemanly types and that's pretty much the slightly gay message the director of this DVD is trying to get across. The live footage is all good though.
JACK STEEL
