I know Aint It Cool News isnt exactly the most trustworthy outlet for information, but has anyone heard anything from their chains about this?

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"It is the opinion of the entire staff the Dexter is criminally insane."

Of course they do. Judging from the "review", it sounds like its main problem is that no one can care about the characters.

Those who are offended by not being able to see this Lion's Gate offering in a theatre will just have hold on to their banger headband colors and wait for it to come to hood (er, I mean home) video. No doubt there it will find its nitch market of all those likeminded "hood" folk that enjoy this brand of "reality" and make Lions Gate some money to boot.

Frank

Gang Tapes seems to me, to be not exactly exploitation (if it did, I'd most certainly be agreeing with the rest of you). It would have been easy to just have these guys ad-lib throughout the whole film ala Blair Witch, but Adam Ripp took the time to have them 'translate' a written script into their vernacular, where he could have just tossed in a bunch of "Yos" and "40s" and called it good enough. Also, it is not just about senseless violence. This is a coming of age story. It's easy to write off an entire subculture, but what about the true innocents who have to survive within it? What about the young children who grow up with it because it's all they've been exposed to? In this movie, we see both sides, loving relationships within this subculture as well as the chaos. This is, by all accounts from those who have seen the film, as close as I'm going to get to understanding short of moving to Compton.
Or Baltimore's Western.
Or Syracuse's East side.
Or...(pick your own metro area here).

Bob
The Old Showman

I appreciate your concern for the morals of the country, but I don't think that judging whether a film meets your standard of morality without first actually seeing it furthers your argument, especially when you make claims that "it is obvious it was made for its shock value...." Sorry, but there is no way for you to make this assumption from reading a review. There is nothing obvious about it, especially since the reviewer can hardly be considered capable of articulating or even understanding the intentions of the director, give the "review" he has written.

There are many serious films, books and even paintings that touch on subjects that are might be personally unpleasant, but reveal part of human nature that we might not approve, yet they remain great works of art. Their validity isn't negated because of the subject matter, and many times it is exactly because of the treatment of the subject matter, as distastful as it may be, makes them important, enduring classics. Even the Bible is rife with stories that focus on aspects of man's immoral behavior. While it sheds light on this behavior, it certainly doesn't advocate it nor does the fact that you can read about adultery, murder, theft of birthrights, infidelity, fornication, etc. in the Bible, make the book "immoral." And in a pluralistic society, one man's immorality very often is another's inspiration. Personally, I find it immoral that certain segments of our society focus only on sexuality as the kingpin of what makes something moral or immoral, yet you rarely hear any complaints from this group about the unrelenting violence that is so pervasive in the media. Hence the old put-down of the MPAA rating system, "Show someone gently caressing a nipple and the film gets an X; show someone cutting the nipple off with a chainsaw, it gets an R."

Suffice to say, the subject of this post was why the film was not picked up by the major chains. There are economic reasons for that that don't seem very mysterious and IMO don't constitute any conspiracy or blacklisting, just the normal economic pressures of the marketplace. As far as the content of the film and the way that content is portrayed, I contend before anyone can go off making moral judgments about it, they need to have seen it first.

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