Slate's Dana Stevens has come out with an intriguing review of Craig Brewer's Black Snake Moan, attacking the writer/director for setting up his main characters as moral paragons even though they dole out serious abuse to women. Stevens puzzles over Brewer's moral blind spots: how can he let misogynist violence slide, while wrestling with topics like redemption, guilt and self-worth? For those who haven't seen Black Snake Moan, it's the story of a young, white town slut who is raped and left for dead by the side of the road. An aging black loner finds her, takes her home, and promptly ropes her up with a big, clanking chain, which won't be removed until she's 'cured' of her wicked ways.

"What bullshit," is how Stevens starts the critique. "Can we just start with something very basic here? Chaining someone to your radiator is wrong. Depriving a near-naked and recently assaulted stranger of the most basic physical liberty for days on end is a sick, perverse and cruel thing to do." She also takes note of the movie's oddest motif -- the fact that Ricci's character is prone to falling-on-the-ground nymphomania fits, symptoms of which are "writhing in panties and scratching at one's thighs."

Stevens goes on to recount how much she hated Hustle & Flow, a film in which the aspiring-rapper hero throws a prostitute and her baby out on the street as punishment for back-talk. "I couldn't have given a shit whether he achieved rap fame or not," she says. Cinematical recently interviewed Brewer, and he seemed carefully prepared to dodge the film's controversial elements. When asked about the nymphomania-fit scenes, he would talk about panic attacks. When asked about the film's black-white tension, he claimed it wasn't a subject that interested him, before opening up a bit. Check out our two reviews of the film here and here.

On the surface, Black Snake Moan looks like another riff on the exploitation film genre. You've probably seen the posters or trailers that feature Christina Ricci in chains while Samuel L. Jackson looks stern. However, I saw an entirely different style of trailer before Daddy's Little Girls -- one that downplayed the white-chick-in-chains aspect and instead excerpted more low-key scenes with Jackson's character and his wife, his minister, and so on. And writer-director Craig Brewer says that Black Snake Moan is his "blues" movie in the same way that Hustle & Flow was his "hip-hop" movie. Black Snake Moan is a hybrid of genres, mixing blues music with exploitation-film visuals. The genres combine to tell a story about people struggling to define their place in the world, whether it's through sex or music or the way they relate with a community. The combination should be jarring, but for the most part Brewer manages to pull it off, with the music helping to tie everything together (or chain it all together).

The movie opens on an older couple, Lazarus (Jackson) and his wife, as she quietly but firmly tells him their longtime marriage is over. He rages and eventually alienates himself from his friends and community, finding only partial respite in playing his guitar at home, alone. This in itself might make a pleasant low-concept relationship movie set in the rural South. But the story is entwined with that of Rae (Ricci), whose fiance Ronnie (Justin Timberlake) is leaving town for a military career, and she's scared of what she might do when left alone. Sure enough, Ronnie's barely left town when Rae jumps in bed with the local drug dealer. She hits the town but runs into trouble and is left half-dead on the side of the road ... right in front of Lazarus's house. Suddenly Lazarus is left to deal with a feverish, battered but still sparky young nymphomaniac. That's where those chains come in.

After his breakout film, Hustle & Flow, snagged the coveted Audience Award at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival, writer/director Craig Brewer probably saw more doors swing open for him than most filmmakers will see in a lifetime, but walking through them hasn't meant leaving his beloved state of Tennessee behind. Like Hustle & Flow, the director's follow-up project, Black Snake Moan, is a Tennessee tale about poverty, neglect and a longing for connection that goes beyond geography, age, or race. The film stars Samuel L. Jackson as Lazarus, a poor, aging man who has no solid relationships in his life but does have some life experience and blues-based wisdom to impart, to anyone who will listen. When fate dumps Rae (Christina Ricci), the town hussy, outside of his run-down home on the outskirts of town one night, Lazarus takes it as a sign that he's been tapped on the shoulder to make a difference in someone else's life, and he decides to do just that -- one way or the other.

Cinematical recently spoke with Brewer, in Manhattan to promote the film. We talked about casting and guiding the actors through these difficult roles, about the racial divide that the characters must bridge in order to find common ground with each other, and about avoiding the pressures of a sophomore project that so many are anticipating. There are a few big spoilers lurking somewhere in this interview, so if you'd prefer to go into the film tabula rasa, you've been warned.

How did you direct Ricci through the scenes where she's sort of having a fit, going through 'heat,' writhing around on the ground and oblivious to the world?

CB: The interesting thing about the way Ricci works -- and this is a challenge, but it was a challenge that I ultimately benefited from -- is that we did some rehearsal, but she didn't really want to go full-tilt because she really gives you one-hundred percent of herself between action and cut. She doesn't like any of that to leak away. She gets into a zone that is....honest. She's not 'faking' tears. She gets in pain and she cries. So I said to her, I go 'listen, I don't know what this 'fit' is going to be, but I know it needs to be something. So we talked about my anxiety attacks that I've experienced, and we basically decided that we would break it down into three Def-Cons. There was a Def-Con 1, Def-Con 2 and Def-Con 3.

The first one I knew would be just kind of like a tick that she came up with, which is just kind of like, rubbing her leg with her palm, like the top of her thigh, hard, as if she's really nervous about something. After that, she would just show me. So I said 'let's not even do a rehearsal, let's just roll' and we rolled it and I was like 'let's stay in the zone and let's do it again,' and we would do another set-up. Really, I was just as surprised as the audience to see what she was doing. Boy, was it incredible. It wasn't just sighing and moaning in sexual ecstasy, she really looked like she was in the grip of something that had her, and that she was even experiencing some pain and anguish with it.

In the music business, they say you have your whole life to write your first album ... and six months to write the second. The same goes for film -- after an incendiary feature film debut at Sundance in 2005 with Hustle and Flow, writer-director Craig Brewer returns to the big screen with Black Snake Moan. Like Hustle and Flow, Black Snake Moan has an incredibly simple pitch -- "An older African-American bluesman helps a young white woman deal with her nymphomania. ..." -- and, like Hustle and Flow, Black Snake Moan is about a lot more than what it seems to be about. And yet, Black Snake Moan is a lesser film than Hustle and Flow. It's not that Black Snake Moan is provocatively salacious, but rather that it's poorly structured.

Lazarus (Samuel L. Jackson, looking old and beaten with a mouthful of low-cost dental work) has had better days. His marriage has fallen apart thanks to his wife's affair. He used to play the blues, but now he works a small field in Tennessee and earns spending money from his sales at a local market. Rae (Christina Ricci, whose hair, makeup, wardrobe and demeanor suggest someone on Brewer's production team has seen Elia Kazan's 1956 Southern-sex trash-classic Baby Doll one too many times) is very much in love with her boyfriend Ronnie (Justin Timberlake), but when he leaves to participate in the training for his National Guard posting, Rae's alone. And Rae's not good at being alone. When Ronnie leaves down the driveway, Rae runs after his ride until she collapses in a heap ... and Brewer quick-cuts to Rae bent over a hotel room sink, being used by another man, her hot breath fogging the mirror as she shudders and bucks. Ronnie's been gone for maybe....an hour.

I'm not sure how I feel about Black Snake Moan. I'm not sure how I feel about the new Black Snake Moan trailer. And, I'm definitely not so sure how I feel about a plot that revolves around an old black man who chains a malnourished, beaten-up, sex-crazed white girl to his (furniture? floor? door?) in an attempt to ... save her, I think (and hope). However, I am sure how I feel about writer-director Craig Brewer (Hustle and Flow) -- the man has one heck of a creative eye, not to mention he's arguably one of the most talented up-and-coming filmmakers out there right now.

When we first brought you news of the new Black Snake Moan trailer, it was apparently a leaked version, and subsequently pulled. Now, it's back -- and on the official Black Snake Moan MySpace page -- along with a few other tasty treats like pics, screensavers and what appears to be some sort of quiz, appropriately titled "Are You A Nymph?" And if you thought Christina Ricci was often a bit nutty when it came to her role choices, well you have no idea what you're in store for with Black Snake Moan. The girl is out there. Sex, drugs, bruises, chains and Samuel Jackson dressed to look like the next star of Dateline's To Catch a Predator -- count me in, folks.

Early buzz indicates this will definitely be one to watch over the long, cold, festival-happy winter. I can't see the film being heavily marketed (especially during commercial breaks on Lifetime and Nick Jr.), so you're going to have to get your fix and make your decision based off what you see on sites like Cinematical ... and JoBlo, since they're the ones who pointed me toward the trailer. Thanks, dudes! Pic hits theaters on February 25.

Last week, I posted in a comment on another entry that I am not a fanboy. I still stand by that remark, especially since I'm not a boy. Give me a choice between a comic-book adaptation and an Austin-made indie and I tend to favor the latter. I have a definite weakness for romantic comedy at times. I prefer snappy dialogue over splashy special effects. But I suspect that fewer people than ever will believe that I am not a fanboy (or fangirl, to be fair) after I tell you that I spent last weekend at the 24-hour Austin film marathon known as the Butt-Numb-a-Thon, which is heralded by many as a litmus test for major film geekiness.

The Butt-Numb-a-Thon (BNAT for short) is an annual event organized by Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News. Knowles programs 11 or 12 movies at Alamo Drafthouse Downtown in Austin -- half are interesting vintage films, and half are movies that haven't been released in theaters yet. The lineup is not made public, so everything's a surprise. Sometimes, the directors of the unreleased films show up for a Q&A session, or send video greetings to the BNAT attendees. It's mostly a private event, which always occurs on the weekend of Knowles' birthday, from noon one day to noon(ish) the next. For the most part, prospective attendees have to apply for admission (thousands fill out the application, and the theater seats 200), and Knowles hand-picks the guests. It's a party and film marathon all in one, and many attendees know each other from past BNATs or from the Ain't It Cool talkback forums. However, there are always a few empty seats because of last-minute cancellations, so it's possible to get into the event as a standby. I had a lot of fun waiting unsuccessfully in the standby line last year, and decided to try it again. A lottery is used to select the lucky standby tickets, and miracle of miracles, I was the last one picked.

After surprising lots of folks (including me) with last year's break-out hip hop hit Hustle and Flow, director Craig Brewer and Flow's Oscar nominated star Terrence Howard have decided to pair up once again, this time eying country music as their platform. The duo will get busy for Paramount on a biopic of singer Charley Pride.

The studio recently picked up the life rights for Pride, as well his wife Rozene, with plans to go all Walk the Line on this bad boy. That's right, like Joaquin Phoenix, Howard will perform all of the songs featured himself. (In a rare move, the Academy has gone ahead and nominated him for an Oscar even though production won't begin for at least a year.) At an early age, Pride dabbled in professional baseball before moving to Nashville and falling in love with music. Between 1966 and 1984, 51 of his 54 singles landed in the country top 10. Says Brewer, "When Jackie Robinson broke the barrier, there was a flood of talent that came after him, but Charley was alone." The director will first take on another country-themed flick (Maggie Lynn) before he begins work on the Pride biopic.

Despite the fact that its release was pushed back, at least in part to distance it from Snakes on a Plane (the movie to which its trailer, oddly, is attached), the internet presence of Craig Brewer's Black Snake Moan (AKA That Other Samuel L. Jackson Movie) has slowly been ramping up this week. Among other things, the September issue of Esquire magazine features a short review of the film that, while not exactly glowing, makes it sound just as controversial as its plot -- a young nymphomaniac (Christina Ricci) spends a lot of time "chained half-naked to a radiator" as part of being "cured" by an older bluesman (Jackson) -- suggests. According to the Esquire piece (entitled You Just Can't Look Away), Black Snake Moan "comes as close to exploitation heaven as any studio based film made in the past 20 years. You watch it unfold -- detonate, more like -- with giddy incredulousness, stunned that somebody actually had the guts to put such supercharged images on the screen." Wow. I cannot wait for this thing to hit, and to watch as the public protectors of our cultural morality lose their collective minds in the press.

For a little hint of what's in store (since we have to wait until freakin' February to see the movie now), check out the just-released posters -- you gotta love how Brewer is buying so completely into the flick's exploitation potential.

When release dates are pushed back more than a week or so, I immediately get nervous. Unless the move is into December, so the short-attention-spanned Academy members will remember the film, my assumption is that there's something wrong with the movie, and the distributor is trying to either hide it, or put it up against competition so bad that audiences will have no choice but to see it. In the case of Black Snake Moan, however, I actually buy the explanation for the move: Craig Brewer's potentially controversial follow-up to Hustle & Flow stars Samuel L. Jackson, whose name you can't mention these days without thinking of Snakes on a Plane. Since Black Snake Moan is a reportedly very serious film about "a young nymphomaniac (Christina Ricci) who has to be 'cured' by an older bluesman (Lazarus, played by Jackson)," it's understandable that Paramount would want to distance it from the goofy, badass buzz that's been generated by SOAP.

Though the release of Black Snake Moan has consequently been moved from September 15 (only a month after the SOAP open) to February 17, its trailer will nevertheless be attached to about 1500 prints of that film, which makes one wonder how much distance will actually be achieved. It also makes one wonder what the hell Paramount is thinking. When I see a movie theatrically, I can tell with, say, 90% accuracy if I've made a terrible mistake just by watching the previews that are shown beforehand -- trailers pretty reliably share a tone and audience with the feature to which they're attached. Black Snake Moan and SOAP? Not so freaking much. It's very odd -- Paramount seems to be running from the SOAP connection while simultaneously trying to ride the Jackson buzz to boost the Black Snake Moan. It'll be interesting to see if this has a positive effect on the film's eventually box office; I'm guessing no.

In a post here, I once off-handedly described Craig Brewer's Black Snake Moan as a "potentially explosive" project. Having read the new, short interview with Brewer over at Blackfilm, though, I think it's time to remove the first word from that description. For those of you not aware of the project, it's a story about a young nymphomaniac (Christina Ricci) who has to be "cured" by an older bluesman (Lazarus, played by Samuel L. Jackson). Yeah, that's right. Cover your eyes, far right: nymphomania is coming to the mainstream - and not as comic relief.

Brewer's approach to the project (which he wrote and will direct) is fascinating and, if it works, could result in a film of real depth and complexity. According to the director, his goal is to take "some of the most [stereotypically] sexual and racially charged imagery" and address it with a seriousness that reveals the issues beneath the surface (both of the movie and of our assumptions). In the movie, Lazarus finds Ricci's character essentially on the side of the road, and takes her home to "protect her" from being sexually used by the town. Says Brewer, "Even though you think he has these good intentions in doing what he wants to do, he still wants to control the woman...His woman just left him and he's feeling a little bit...angry and he wants to tell some little run around switch that you can't be doing that shit."

Given the people involved, this movie's got a chance to be something special. Brewer better hope it is, because if the seriousness and sincereity he's hoping for don't come across, it'll just turn into bizarre, vaguely offensive disaster.

[via JoBlo]