Shaft / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer presents ; a Stirling Silliphant, Roger Lewis production ; produced by Joel Freeman ; screenplay by Ernest Tidyman and John D.F. Black ; directed by Gordon Parks.
Edition:
Blu-ray edition.
Publisher:
The Criterion Collection,
Copyright Date:
2022
Description:
1 videodisc (approximately 100 min.) : sound, color ; 4 3/4 in.
Originally released as a motion picture in 1971. Based on the novel by Ernest Tidyman. Wide screen (1.85:1 aspect ratio) Special features include: Alternate uncompressed stereo soundtrack remastered with creative input from Isaac Hayes III; Shaft's big score, the sequel to Shaft; new documentaryfeaturingg Rhea L. Combs, Racquel J. gates, Nelson George and Shana L. Redmond; Soul in Cinema: Filming "Shaft"; Archival interviews with Parks, Isaac Hayes and Richard Roundtree; new program on Hayes's score; new interview with Joseph G. Aulisi; new program on the Black detective featuring Scholar Kinohi Nishikawa and Walter Mosley; A Complicated Man: The "Shaft" legacy; essay by film scholar Amy Abugo Ongiri. Richard Roundtree, Moses Gunn, Charles Cioffi, Christopher St. John, Gwenn Mitchell.
Summary:
While the Black Power movement was reshaping America, trailblazing director Gordon Parks made this groundbreaking blockbuster, which helped launch the blaxploitation era and gave the screen a new kind of badder-than-bad action hero in John Shaft, a streetwise New York City private eye who is as tough with criminals as he is tender with his lovers. After Shaft is recruited to rescue the kidnapped daughter of a Harlem mob boss from Italian gangsters, he finds himself in the middle of a rapidly escalating uptown vs. downtown turf war. A vivid time capsule of seventies Manhattan in all its gritty glory that has inspired sequels and multimedia reboots galore.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.