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Fri 08 Aug 2008THE WACKNESS
YOU MIGHT think it's a bit soon to be getting all nostalgic for the mid-1990s, but The Wacknesswallows in that era. Written and directed by Jonathan Levine, whose film school graduation short dealt with a drug-addicted hip-hop DJ, The Wacknessis set is New York in the summer of 1994, the year Levine graduated from high school.
Awash with scratchy samples, the soundtrack features Nas, A Tribe Called Quest, Wu-Tang Clan and R Kelly. There's talk of Notorious BIG, who was still alive, and Kurt Cobain, who had just died. Conversations are peppered with period slanguage, most prominently featuring "dope", a synonym for "cool", and "the wackness", indicating that which is negative.
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