Spike Lee has been one of the most prolific directors ever since he burst onto the scene with 1986 She’s Gotta Have It.  Effortlessly moving from features to shorts to documentaries to television, there is little he cannot do.  However, many still question whether or not Lee deserves to be on the top ten list of greatest directors.  We discuss this and more while exploring his 2001 film A Huey P. Newton Story, a performance film that is adapted from star Roger Guenveur Smith’s one man show about the Black Panther co-founder.  We also take a moment to discuss our short film picks of the week: TV on the Radio’s Nine Types of Light and Randy Yang’s Video.

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Show Notes:

Cohost of Changing Reels, Courtney Small from Cinema Axis, consumes everything cinema from big budget spectacles to small foreign fare. He has contributed pieces to various publications and has been a guest on several film related podcasts. Courtney is also a member of the Online Film Critics Society as well as the Canadian Association of Online Film Critics.

Cohost and Editor of Changing Reels, Andrew Hathaway from Can’t Stop the Movies, is more of a hermit than his charming cohost. He spends what may be seen as an unhealthy amount of time analyzing cinematic fare as light as Magic Mike XXL and as enigmatic as The Midnight Swim. When he’s not taking a deep dive into cinema he’s contributed to books like Thoughts on The Thin Man. The partnership between Andrew and Courtney started through their podcast series on the movies of Denis Villeneuve and blossomed into Changing Reels.

The art for Changing Reels comes commissioned from Seth Gorden, Andrew’s frequent collaborator on Why Video Games and one of the creative minds behind Earnest and Purcell.