Synopsis
Richard Roundtree cuts a startlingly new and powerful heroic figure as John Shaft, "the cat who won't cop out, when there's danger all about" in Gordon Parks' seminal action film, Shaft. John Shaft is a black private eye with a small office near Times Square. On his way there one day, he gets pumped for information by Lt. Victor Androzzi (Charles Cioffi), a friend of his on the police force, about something big going down in Harlem involving black crime kingpin Bumpy Jonas (Moses Gunn). Shaft can't help him and leaves, only to just miss being waylaid by two of Bumpy's strong-arm men at his office, one of whom ends up dead on the pavement eight floors or so below. Squeezed by the cops, who are holding a potential manslaughter arrest over his head, Shaft contacts Bumpy, who reveals that his teenage daughter, whom he's always kept away from his business, has been kidnapped. There's been no ransom demand and no clue as to who did it, and he wants Shaft to find the culprits, insisting that he start with a group of Harlem-based black militants led by Shaft's onetime friend Ben Buford (Christopher St. John). No sooner does he find Buford, holed up in a decaying part of Harlem, however, than his friend's comrades are mowed down by submachine gun fire, and Shaft and Buford barely escape. With Shaft angry and out for blood, everyone is forced to come clean -- Bumpy knows that it's the Mafia that kidnapped his daughter, as they want in on the Harlem drug trade that he controls; they're holding her somewhere else outside of Harlem, where his men are no good to him, which is why he wanted Shaft to hook up with Buford. Androzzi tells Shaft that a dozen Mob trigger men from out of town have been spotted in Greenwich Village. He doesn't know why they're there, but he does know that if fighting breaks out between Bumpy's men and the Mafia, it's going to look like a race war, and the whole city could erupt. Shaft doesn't like the way he's been manipulated, but he sees Androzzi's point -- he links the trigger men to the kidnapping and finds the girl, but loses her again, getting shot in the process. Even though he's wounded, Shaft heads for a final confrontation with the kidnappers, supported by Ben's friends in an armed assault on the building where they're holed up.
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Movie News
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Welles shafted again?
Madeleine Stowe star of the remake of Orson Welles The Magnificent Ambersons has expressed her dismay over the outcome of the project
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EXTRA: 'Shaft' Gets Dot.com Shaft
HOLLYWOOD, May 25, 2000 - Imagine you're the Paramount promo person in charge of the studio's official "Shaft" Web site. Then imagine you try to register the no-brainer URL -- www.shaft.com. Now envision (bare with us here) your frustration in finding that you've been beaten to the punch. Not only is the URL registered, but it's been taken by, ahem, The Ultimate Penis and Parts Resource Center, which is exclusively dedicated to the fine techniques of penile enlargement.
Oops.
This experience is not uncommon in the crowded cyber real-estate market. And with more and more Web sites springing up on the Net, fewer of the so-called "good" and/or "cool" dot.com names are available. To movie studios, the URL shortage means execs have to be more creative -- no more with the tagging a dot.com (or, sometimes, a dot.net) at the end of a movie title.
"Of course, our first ch
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FORECAST: Is 'Brockovich' Gonna Get Shafted?
SANTA MONICA, Calif., April 6, 2000 -- As the box-office turns: Is Julia Roberts still the best thing going? Or will Samuel L. Jackson open up a can of whoop-you-know-what and knock her off her pedestal? This weekend, four new movies hit theaters nationwide ("Rules of Engagement," "Black and White," "Ready To Rumble" and "Return to Me") but experts think that only "Rules," starring Jackson and Tommy Lee Jones, has the cojones to kick Julia's box-office butt and end the three-weekend-long reign of "Erin Brockovich."
"I think it's gonna be tight for No. 1," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box-office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations Co.
Here's a look at the new players:
"Rules of Engagement" RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (See the trailer) The skinny: Samuel L. Jackson is a military man wrongfully court-martialed for murder; Tommy Lee Jones is his gruff lawyer
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EXTRA: Castrating 'Shaft' ?
HOLLYWOOD, June 9, 2000 – OK, let's get the cliché out of the way: "Who's the Black private dick that's a sex machine to all the chicks?" If you answered "Shaft," well, you're only half right.
Because in the new "Shaft" (opening next Friday), Samuel L. Jackson doesn't get any booty.
Sure, there's some lovemaking going on during the opening credits, and there's one scene where Jackson (as the titular Black private dick) picks up a female bartender by asking if she wants him to hold her, or to give her the "L.D." (and we're guessing that's not code for cheap long-distance rates).
But when you recall that the original Shaft, Richard Roundtree, went to bed with at least two women in his three "Shaft" movies (and yes, you saw him in the sack with the chicks) -- including sexy Vonetta McGee and the woman who propositioned him by asking, "How long is your phallus?" -- J