-thumb-110x110-455795.jpg)
Build Your Own BBQ for Under 10 Bucks!
Video: Police Detain Blogger in Subway Station for Taking Photos
Stadium to the Sea: LA Marathon Releases 2010 Course Map
A Buttermilk Truck Sneak Peek: Red Velvet Pancakes, Hawaiian Bread French Toast & More...
SuperClásico Playoff Series Finale Is Serious Business
Park City, UTAH - Don't worry, Dakota Fanning is safe and sound. She hasn't actually been raped. It's the character in her latest film that gets attacked. And thank goodness, because Fanning is the best thing about the otherwise dreadful Hounddog. Although the film's rape scene, which was filmed when Fanning was all of 12, has been getting so much grief (this morning's Sundance screening in Salt Lake City was greeted with protests), it's the rest of Hounddog that's excruciating to watch. All the lush Southern Gothic landscapes in the world can't save the contrived plot and on-the-nose dialogue that's punctuated at every turn with lugubrious blues tunes and Elvis Presley songs in a sorry attempt to telegraph to the audience every emotion they're supposed to be experiencing. Then there's Hounddog's Magic Negro -- less a character and more a plot device -- which is so thematically ill conceived that it makes Driving Miss Daisy look like Malcolm X.
Set in the rural south in the early or mid-1960s, Hounddog stars Fanning as Lewellen, a precocious 12-year-old girl who lives in a rundown shack with her no account, alcoholic father (David Morse). Between lazy days of swimming in the creek with her best friend Buddy (Cody Hanford) and being berated by her ultra-religious grandmother (an almost unrecognizable Piper Laurie), Lewellen indulges in the forbidden "devil's music," i.e. rock and roll, in specific Elvis tunes. Things go from bad to worse when her father becomes a semi-invalid after being struck by lightning, and the milk delivery boy takes an unseemly interest her. But the actual attack is mercifully brief and about as tastefully handled as a child rape scene can be.
In this and in every other scene Dakota Fanning is spot-on. She seems to have an emotional complexity beyond her years and a preternatural ability to call up and convey complex emotions.
Her co-star Afemo Omilami has the thankless task of playing Charles, the black stable hand, homeopathic doctor and part-time snake charmer whose full-time job seems to be ministering to white folks and dishing up homilies that are equal parts Psych 101 ("Maybe you can take those arms your mother never could wrap around you and wrap them around yourself") and old-timey clichés ("That's how you take something that can kill you, and you change it into something powerful and good").
Upon learning that Lewellen has been raped, Charles roars and angrily flings down a pitchfork (one of the movie's many unintentionally comedic moments), then launches into a pep talk that prompts what is supposed to be the film's catharsis, Lewellen's mournful, a capella version of "Hound Dog." That's the role the Magic Negro is destined for: ennobling everybody around him, in specific the white characters, while remaining obediently in the background. I haven't seen that much threatening black maleness tamed and subverted since Jim Sheridan's In America or perhaps Frank Darabont's The Green Mile.
People who protest Hounddog's rape scene -- aside from forgetting that this is a movie and there are real children being raped and sexually exploited -- are missing the real travesty of the film. Aside from the fact that the screenplay reads like a Southern Gothic version of an ABC Afterschool Special, somebody should inform Hounddog's writer/director/producer, Deborah Kampmeir, that this is the year 2007 and she can stop forcing her African-American actors to do the emotional equivalent of a shuck and jive.
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
If you've ever seen Dakota Fanning on Leno, she actually has complexity as a person outside of her acting. I guess that can easily translate on screen. So why the fuck are we mainstreaming child pornography anyway? I am one of those "all for" artistic expression but isn't there a clear and present danger to children clause?
I think the worst thing we can do is portray children as a vessel for sex -- and worse, incite pathos from a moviegoer through the use of gratuitous child rape -- only to pad our own pockets.
Help me out Elina, am I selling out by making exceptions to artistic expression? I'm all ears on this issue.
You have got to be kidding me you want them to stop this movie or sensor it
OK so you know there is porn, even what i have seen though breifly and i damn sure wasnt looking for children!!! But it seems to me that some of them they could be minors, some young enough to make you want to puke.
However accidental it was that i came upon this site, which scares the hell out of me , you know the feeling ...(backspace or click the red x, )but either way it doesnt make the fact somebody is raping a child or young innocent in real life, for the sake of marketing real porn, and its so sad that there is a market.
I guess for it because if there wasnt it wouldnt be there . So that lets you know that it is something that has been building for a long time ,children being molested and RAPED by family and freinds and strangers.
In the movie it wasnt even done. She turned her head and closed her eyes and squinted and cryed and ACTED .. but thank god it wasnt a real thing happening to her as it is to these poor molested children on the internet.
ok so i say "Dont get me started that this has all come down from the slavery days"( white girl here ) when it was okay to take a young black women and maybe men, if they were sick enough.But when they didnt have them anymore , slaves and young children who werent there own , and they had the appetite already in there head for a younger and unwilling partner, and so they raped there sons and daughters and now it is a generational curse . do you see where it has gotten america. We are paying for the sins of our forefathers. Maybe not the ones who where speaking of God ,but the Depraved deviants is what they were what "we all are."
Priest , fathers , mothers ,lawyers teachers..the list is never ending and you cant always be there with your kids but you hope somebody doesnt betray them in that way or you pray to God . Because you would KILL THEM , the perp or so you think you would,, but the system is protecting THEM somebody needs to fix it so if you touch a child in a way that is sexual you die.Any way why doesn't all of these good for nothings who are trying to stop this movie do something about there own problems in there own community.
first save the children and there are some ways it could be done. They are there and maybe if somebody could stomach looking for a moment at what someone is really going through.No matter how gross and sick it is. At least someone in the police field maybe if they would capture the faces off the web sites that are bad child porn and examine them with those missing children photos ..maybe there would be alot more found children, instead of dead or and abused children.
Oh hell i know i rambled but man it really pisses me off .
wow
I think dakota fanning is the sweetest girl alive. she is so nice to her fellow actors...
Hounddog is the greatest movie of all time.
And anyone who has a problem with it doesn't know what good film is.
Ok, see I haven't seen this movie. But if you don't like how the director did this movie, than oh well. But I would really like to see all of Dakota's movies that are coming out.
~Hanneli~
who gives a dam. dakota is a div and stupid and i hate her to bits. she is the worst actor ever. ive heard that all the movies coming out starring dakota are all going to be rubbish, so dont hold your breath. bibi.
wow i really would want to see a good movie with dakota fanning in it this movie sound so good cant wait to see it!!!!!!
wowzers that was cruel whoever said that all dakotas movies that she is in are rubbish are just jelous i love dakotas movies and scripts you just dont know a good movie when you see one ok!!!
I LOVE DAKOTA FANNING AND SUPPORT EVERYTHING SHE DOSE
When I hear about any young girl being abused I get quite upset. Worse still, we are talking about the adorable Dakota. As an actor her image will always be affected by such a role and I hope she can deal with that ok. I am a huge fan of hers and love her work.
I LOVE DAKOTA FANNING!!
I AM HER NUMBER 1 FAN. MY ROOM WALL PAPER IS DAKOTA FANNING.
U ROCK 4 EVA U GO GIRL. I AM 12 ASWELL U ROCK SO MUCH!!!
Hey Dakota Fanning
WOW!
It s very Good!!!
I think the movie never should have been made. Rape should not be entertainment. And anyone who has suffered rape knows it.
Why not ask Dakota and get her view? I asked Dakota why and she said it was to bring attention to how a person feels and deals with this issue and to make a statement.
She is not harmed in any way and her mother sees to that and what she is trying to do is show what the victim goes through after being violated,how does someone deal with this?
She in no way condones rape or sex or any of the other things people accuse her of and she has a loving mother to protect her at all times.
This was a film Dakota wanted to make to try and help others and to express her hatred of this widespread issue.
Has Dakota ever let her fans down by making any off color films thus far? No and she isn't about to now.
See the film and then make up your mind,you can walk out of the theater anytime it gets to close for comfort,but give this film and Dakota a chance to show how victims really feel!
DJ GATOR