Hustle & Flow
awesome film
An unlikely and often dislikable hero, a pimp, struggles to make a new life for himself as a rapper.
He has the gift of the gab and the opening scene is very, very clever introduction to the film that shows him using his powers of persuasion very effectively.
His life and the life of the prositutes is represented as being mundane and miserable and is not glamourised in any way. He's getting older and is not liking himself or his life. He has to continue his hustle to get where he needs to get. In some ways the film resonates with Unforgiven in that the whole issue of getting older, not liking who you used to be but carrying on anyway to try to achieve something better is central to the film.
Once he has a hot demo he has to draw on all his hustling skills (and the film demonstrates masterfully that he does have real skills in this respect) to try to ingratiate himself with hip hop mogul Skinny Black.
No matter how degrading his world and life are, his humiliating encounter with Skinny Black and his sychophantic hangers on, is even worse. I felt his shame and embarrassement as he is treated with derision and contempt. The scene in which he uses his hustling abilities to turn the situation around is portrayed so beautifully that it's a masterpiece of cinema IMO.
I won't spoil the last part of the film but there are several very interesting and unexpected twists and turns.
There's something loving and forgiving about the film and despite its subject matter I found it to be ultimately quite inspirational.
I'm very excited about this film on a number of different levels. The performances very fine, the lighting and cinematorgraphy is beautiful, very clever direction, there are some awesome one liners that had me laughing out loud and any film that can use a lava lamp to move the audience to tears deserves props IMO.
Trailer
here
Is that what it was. I thought it was 
