Miami Vice (Michael Mann, 2006)

[Matt]

I wish they could put footage of this as supplement on the DVD.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Jeffrey Wells over at Hollywood Elsewhere attended a press conference in NYC and tried to address the issues raised in the Slate article with not too much success (big surprise).

[Antoine Doinel]

Indie music bible Pitchforkmedia reports on the soundtrack. I just thank God it doesn't feature that godawful Jay-Z/Linkin Park song used in the trailer.

[Matt]

There aren't any "score" tracks listed (they were mixed with the songs on the Collateral soundtrack) which either means that Mann is going for a way more contemporary soundtrack (bad idea in my opinion) or the score will be released seperately

Wasn't the use of contemporary pop music on the soundtrack pretty much a hallmark of the TV show? I didn't watch it all that much, but I remember an episode with an all-Depeche Mode soundtrack.

We're certainly not thinking about Miami Vice, the kind of film that itself can barely be called cinematic.

Ugh. Pitchfork writers should stick to music criticism. What does that sentence even mean?

[Antoine Doinel]

There aren't any "score" tracks listed (they were mixed with the songs on the Collateral soundtrack) which either means that Mann is going for a way more contemporary soundtrack (bad idea in my opinion) or the score will be released seperately

Wasn't the use of contemporary pop music on the soundtrack pretty much a hallmark of the TV show? I didn't watch it all that much, but I remember an episode with an all-Depeche Mode soundtrack.

I've since edited my post --- but you may very well be right. IMDB doesn't seem to have any major composers/arrangers attached to the film. It will be interesting to see how Mann fits these very contemporary tunes into his movie...

[Antoine Doinel]

Ugh. Pitchfork writers should stick to music criticism. What does that sentence even mean?

Yeah, take it with a huge grain of salt. Their writers are very well known for taking the piss quite often.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

but you may very well be right. IMDB doesn't seem to have any major composers/arrangers attached to the film. It will be interesting to see how Mann fits these very contemporary tunes into his movie...

I coulda swore that I read somewheres that the Rza was credited as the film's overall composer but if that's so none of his work appears on the soundtrack. Of course, Mann has released separate CDs for the scores with The Last of the Mohicans and Ali...

[Antoine Doinel]

Hmm...according to Wikipedia, RZA was initially hired to do the score but was replaced by Organized Noize.

[Andre Jurieu]

That's not actually a bad thing. I've been pretty disappointed with RZA's work lately, but Organized Noise has been doing great work for awhile.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Chud's got a transcription of the press conference that Mann, Farrell, Foxx, Harris and Li all attended in NYC last Friday.

[Antoine Doinel]

With the amount of times Jamie Foxx says "hot", you would think he's Paris Hilton.

[TedW]

And whose culture do you think Paris Hilton is aping when she uses the word "hot" constantly?

[The Invunche]

So hot is a black word now?

[Fletch F. Fletch]

a whackload of clips from the movie

[TedW]

So hot is a black word now?

The way she uses it, yes. Trivial point, perhaps, but Paris travels in a world where Diddy and Foxx and the like are the tastemakers, the arbiters of cool. Her overuse of that word, in that way, mimics them, not the other way around.

[Antoine Doinel]

If you think Diddy is a tastemaker, you are severely out of touch.

[TedW]

I don't really want to get into an argument about this, man. I don't know how old you are or where you're from. But here in America, in youth culture terms, in the world Paris travels in (which is what I said), Diddy (and Jay-Z, and Dr. Dre, and...) is a tastemaker. You don't have to like it, you don't have to "get" it, but it's a fact not really open to debate.

[Antoine Doinel]

I reside in North America and am probably young enough to considered part of the youth culture, but Dr. Dre? Diddy? When was the last time they did anything relevant? Hell, even Jay-Z is retired. I can name at least a half dozen people who are having more of an influence on youth popular culture than they are:

Kanye West
Gwen Stefani
Pharell Williams
Timbaland
Justin Timberlake
50 Cent

And btw, Paris only wishes she traveled in the same orbit as those people. She aspires to it, but is nowhere close. The fact of the matter is she is at best a B-minus-level celebrity (as both "actress" and "singer") who just happens to have some good press people. She is more of a celebrity curiousity than anything else. She's a younger Amanda Lepore.

But I guess my larger point is that "That's hot" is not a phrase "owned" by "black" culture. That's one of more absurd things I've heard in awhile.

[TedW]

I wouldn't dispute the popularity of the names on your list. But Dre remains a, maybe the, premier hip hop producer and Busta's record The Big Bang, on Dre's label, debuted at #1 a few weeks ago. I mean, you even mentioned 50 Cent. And who brought you those hits? Ask Timbaland or Kanye what they think of Dre... in hip hop he commands an extreme level of respect and admiration. His presence looms large in his field. He hasn't gone anywhere and isn't likely to for sometime. Mind you, this discussion isn't about underground influence of the kind that we discuss on this board, it's about pop influence. Moving big numbers, big money. As far as Puff... well, he has shows on MTV, he hosts awards telecasts, his fragrance is the #1 selling cologne in the country, Sean John makes hundreds of millions a year... anecdotally, I see the shit every day on the streets of L.A. On the music front, Bad Boy obviously isn't what it used to be, but everywhere this guy goes and everything he does is followed rapaciously by the media. Puff is relevant, all right. Jay-Z is "retired," yeah okay. That's why I keep seeing him everywhere, in ads for mainstream companies, having a showdown with the guy who makes Cristal (a story which played all over the world), dating the top r&b/pop chick, selling millions of dollars of Roc-a-Wear, hiring Frank Gehry to design the arena for the Nets when they move to Brooklyn, and, oh yeah, running Island/Def Jam.

Anyway, if you think Paris doesn't travel in the same orbit -- the same clubs, in the same cities, on the same boats, the same parties -- you're wrong. She's past aspiring. She's in it, most definitely. You or I may think it ridiculous, but we don't count.

And finally, I didn't say that "that's hot" is owned by black culture. I was responding to the comment that Foxx sounds like Hilton when he says it, which is backwards. If anything, she got that shit from Puff. Youth language and youth slang expressions flow from black people to white people, not the other way around. Always have. That's all I was saying.

Now back to Miami Vice... 'cause writing about these people in anything like a serious way is giving me a headache.

[Antoine Doinel]

I may disagree with you about the influence of certain celebrities on youth culture, but I will definitely agree that writing seriously about them is a waste of virtual ink.

So yes, back to the film!

[Fletch F. Fletch]

the Telegraph has an interview with Mann.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

Variety review

Hollywood Reporter review

[John Cope]

Denby's review in The New Yorker

Fascinating review.

Personally I think it would have been more fun to hear Anthony Lane's thoughts on this but what are you going to do?

[John Cope]

Another great article on Mann and the movie

Includes this gem:

''To me, the clothes, the cars, the buildings -- that wasn't really Miami Vice,'' Mann says. ``That was just the outward manifestation of it. To me, the appeal of the show was an attitude toward how you tell these stories about being undercover -- stories that are extremely emotionally active, very passionate, somewhat serious and don't always have happy endings. Take a look at the first two years of that show: There are some really powerful, tragic endings there.

``That's another way of saying -- and I use this term in a very positive way -- that Miami Vice is emotionally empowered melodrama. That's the core of it to me, although it may not make any sense to anyone else. The attitudes of how the story tells itself is completely cloned from 1984 to right now.''

[Jeff]

My favorite critic, New York magazine's David Edelstein has weighed in with his take. He seems to like it an awful lot, even though he sort of admits that there isn't much going on beneath the highly-polished surface.