You may remember me raving about Black Dynamite, Michael Jai White’s awesome parody of low-budget 70s Blaxpotation films.
You may be pleased to know that the Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim is doing Black Dynamite: The Animated Series. Click on the link to see the pilot. The show itself is set to premiere in 2012.
Saturday night the SDC crowd watched Black Dynamite for our usual after-dinner movie, and it’s a hoot-and-a-half. A loving and extremely well-crafted satire of 70s Blaxpotation films, Black Dynamite manages to get just about everything pitch-perfect in an ultra-violent, ultra-improbable tale set in a world of big Cadillacs, big guns, and big Afros. Hats off to writer and star Michael Jai White for penning a constantly-entertaining parody where the laughs rarely flag, and also for having a totally bad-ass theme song play every time he enters a room.
The really amazing thing is that, for all the intentionally included boom-mikes, deliberate continuity errors, and obviously fake stunt doubles, the production quality is actually much higher on Black Dynamite than the real Blaxplotation films that inspired it. In particular, White is far better at kung fu than any black star was in the 70s.
In short, there hasn’t been such an awesome send-up of a movie genre since Hot Fuzz (which is still in a league all its own). This came and went so quickly that there’s a good chance you never heard of it, but it’s well worth seeking out.
And here’s the trailer.