Recently in Film Category
The Fales Library exhibition that accompanied our recent Lost New York conference will remain on view through November 6. If you're in the area, stop by the Bobst Library (Washington Square South at LaGuardia Place), tell the security desk that you're going to Fales, and head up to the third floor. It's a wonderful exhibit. You can read more about it in this post from earlier in the month.While you're there you can pick up the volume essays that accompanies the exhibit -- not exactly a catalog, the volume takes both the exhibit and the conference theme as a point of departure.
If you aren't able to visit before November 6, you can download a copy of the volume here in PDF format. (The download is approimately 28.5 MB.)
And, for a limited time, readers of this blog can request a complimentary copy of the book itself, which is printed on glossy stock and makes a handsome addition to any library of books about New York. Just send an e-mail with your mailing address to cyrus@ahistoryofnewyork.com.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=0513a152-7572-4b8d-b99d-d07efcc4a880)
We've been big fans of thirteen.org's documentary series The City Concealed since its inception. (If I'm not mistaken, we've featured every one of its episodes on this site, and I think I'm the one who suggested the old Fulton Ferry Hotel to them as a possible site to explore!) We're excited, then, to see another series of documentary shorts from the same production team -- this one focusing on New York people, its hidden workers, rather than on its hidden places.
The debut episode of the new series, New York on the Clock, profiles Gerry Menditto, who's overseen operations on the Cyclone at Coney Island since 1975:
The debut episode of the new series, New York on the Clock, profiles Gerry Menditto, who's overseen operations on the Cyclone at Coney Island since 1975:
New York on the Clock: Coney Island Cyclone Operator from Thirteen.org on Vimeo.
The producers had this to say during a Q&A on the new series:
Q. What challenges did you face in filming the premiere episode in Coney Island?
Daniel Ross: The most challenging part of filming at the Cyclone is deciding what not to film. We had four 32GB memory cards, which can hold about 2 hours of HD video. We spent an hour interviewing Jerry, and then moved on to shooting B roll. There's just an endless amount of visually exciting subjects to shoot in and around Coney Island. We kept having to remind ourselves of what shots took priority because it's so easy to get excited and distracted by all the weird sights.
We can only hope some of the weirdness remains once developers are through with it.
A special shout out to the episode's associate producer, Susannah Herbert, one of our former students from Writing New York!
Bowery Boogie has faithfully covered a sad saga in my neighborhood: the imminent closing of our local video rental store, Cinema Nolita. (Even the Times has chimed in with lamentations.) Formerly in a tiny, exposed-brick sliver of a storefront on Elizabeth, for the last year and a half or so the store has occupied much roomier digs on Mulberry, between Broome and Kenmare. Not quite Nolita, but whatever -- we don't dig real estate broker neologisms anyway, and a store this quaint makes the "Nolita" seem kind of ironic to boot. The new location should have been good for the store, but apparently the customer base didn't expand as much as hoped. They've been in business only for seven years but have the feel of a community mainstay nonetheless, at least for those of us who make several trips there a week. (They have over 8,000 members on record.)
Cinema Nolita is one of the last of a dying breed: a video store that not only still stocks plenty of VHS tapes (much to the delight of my 13-year-old daughter, who has a huge case of technological nostalgia) but has a large and varied DVD collection that leans toward classics and foreign while still covering all the requisite new release bases. Perhaps even more importantly, it's the kind of store where knowledgable employees remember your name and call up your membership before you get to the counter, and where they remember your rental history and taste and may even warn you away from a turkey -- though they'll not sneer at your guilty pleasures or shame you if you have to ask who directed what (since many films are filed by director's last name). They screen cult favorites late on weekend nights, sometimes with directors present, always with cheap beer. Staff members produced hand-made posters for these films to display in the front window.
When Cinema Nolita loses its spot on Mulberry this month -- which seems to be a foregone conclusion -- it will be the first time since the early 1980s that I haven't had a video rental store at least a bike's ride from my house. And though I'm guilty, like many, of shelling out my monthly $16 to Netflix, those little red envelopes have never replaced the need for a local store. Your queue rarely matches your mood, for one thing, or a desire for instant gratification (last night I wanted to see Sherman Alexie's Smoke Signals, for instance, which I brought home on VHS) might not even be able to find fulfillment in streaming options.
And in addition to a knowledgable, friendly, human staff, there are other things Netflix will never replace, just like Amazon -- for all the wonders of one-click used book shopping -- will never completely replace the emotional experience of a bookstore. Browsing. Real time. Handling objects. Reading jacket blurbs. Discovering something you never knew existed, or being reminded of your favorite filmgoing experiences of the past and returning to them on a whim. Overhearing someone else's conversation about what they'll rent, or seeing a bit of something on the store screen while you wait in line, and making a note to check it out later.
Cinema Nolita seems to be about $8K in the hole. The "Store for Rent" sign in the window is down, but I'm taking that to mean the space will have a new tenant soon. The owner and staff had originally announced a fire sale on the collection, but rethought that plan and now hope to keep their library together -- perhaps to find a new space, perhaps a new business model. They want, above all, to maintain a presence in a neighborhood community they've helped to organize.
How to give back? Anthology Film Archives will be hosting a benefit screening, TONIGHT (8/15) at 10 pm, of Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant (1992), starring Harvey Keitel, with Ferrara director present for discussion and Q&A. If this event goes well, we're told, there may be another Ferrara event in store next weekend. $15 donation. "Abel uses the video store as his library," says one store employee. "He's been such an advocate of saving the shop, and he said, 'Anything I can do to help in any way. We've gotta save this shop, you know, man, we've gotta save it.'" She admits Ferrara has been known to keep films out well past their due date, but "by doing these screenings he's essentially paying his late fees."
Anthology Film Archives
32 Second Avenue
New York, NY 10003
(212) 505-5181
Also, on Monday (8/17), neighborhood hotspot Santos Party House will host a musical extravaganza to benefit the store. The Beets and The Virgins will play, followed by an Animal Collective DJ Set featuring Avey Tare, Geologist, and Deakin. $20 donation, doors @ 8 pm.
Santos Party House
100 Lafayette St
New York, NY 10013
(212) 584-5494
PLUS: You can donate to the store directly from its website -- or drop by and drop off a check!
Photo from Bowery Boogie's Flickr pool.
Highdefdigest.com has just posted its review of the new Blu-Ray release of Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing. Apparently the color values have been changed: the yellowish tinge of the original cinematography, intended to suggest the effects of summer heat, has been toned done. But otherwise, they say, it looks terrific.
While you're at highdefdigest.com, check out their review of another New York classic: Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary. The anniversary has also been the occasion for the release of a Ghostbusters videogame made by Atari and featuring the voices of original castmembers Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, and Harold Ramis. It's set in 1991, two years after the film Ghostbusters II. Apparently the game is a wonderful period piece, and it's available for all major platforms. The Wii version has different graphics from the next-gen editions and looks a lot more cartoony.
Here's a trailer:
Has anybody out there played it?
By the way, if you're in the mood for a Ghostbusters pilgrimmage, the firehouse that serves as the gang's headquarters (until it's destroyed when the Ecto-Containment field is turned off by a creep from the EPA) is still there at 14 North Moore Street.
Meanwhile, don't forget the last words of the film, which go to Hudson's character, Winston: "I love this town!"
While you're at highdefdigest.com, check out their review of another New York classic: Ivan Reitman's Ghostbusters, which just celebrated its 25th anniversary. The anniversary has also been the occasion for the release of a Ghostbusters videogame made by Atari and featuring the voices of original castmembers Dan Aykroyd, Ernie Hudson, Bill Murray, and Harold Ramis. It's set in 1991, two years after the film Ghostbusters II. Apparently the game is a wonderful period piece, and it's available for all major platforms. The Wii version has different graphics from the next-gen editions and looks a lot more cartoony.
Here's a trailer:
Has anybody out there played it?
By the way, if you're in the mood for a Ghostbusters pilgrimmage, the firehouse that serves as the gang's headquarters (until it's destroyed when the Ecto-Containment field is turned off by a creep from the EPA) is still there at 14 North Moore Street.
Meanwhile, don't forget the last words of the film, which go to Hudson's character, Winston: "I love this town!"
THIS DAY IN NEW YORK HISTORY
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has declared today to be "Spike Lee Day" in Brooklyn to mark the 20th anniversary of the release of Lee's film Do the Right Thing.
Readers of this blog know that Do the Right Thing is one of the staples of the Writing New York course that Bryan and I have been teaching at NYU since 2003. I wrote a couple of posts about the film here this past spring. The first invited readers to compare the openings of Lee's film and the film that serves as its foil in our course, Woody Allen's Manhattan (1979). The second suggests that the film dramatizes a culture of incivility in which cosmopolitan opportunities fail to be realized.
Brian Lehrer did a segment on the film yesterday on his radio show at WNYC. [You can listen to or download a podcast here.] The segment featured two writers from The Root, an online magazine devoted to African American culture and politics. First, senior writer Kai Wright discussed the impact of the movie twenty years ago and the ways in which the problems it dramatized remain problematic today. Then, political reporter Dayo Olopade talked about what the film signifies for Barack and Michelle Obama, who reportedly saw it on their first date.
The Root has a terrific set of articles devoted to the film's anniversary, including a guide to dressing like it's 1989.
To commemorate the anniversary, Universal has just released a Blu-ray edition of the film. The disc features a new 20th-anniversary documentary and a new audio commentary by Spike Lee. (Click here for an online review of the disc at highdefdiscnews.com. My preferred online highdef reviewing site, highdefdigest.com, hasn't published its evaluation yet.) My copy of the new disc hasn't arrived yet, but I suspect that fans or scholars of the film will still want the wonderful Criterion Edition of the film, which is in standard definition. I'll let you know how the two compare in a later post.
Michael Mann's biopic Dillinger opens this Wednesday. It stars Johnny Dillinger as the celebrity gangster who was gunned down by the FBI after watching ... what film?
Manhattan Melodrama, of course. See last year's post on the film (mentioned also in last Friday's post). Manhattan Melodrama is available from Netflix.
Manhattan Melodrama, of course. See last year's post on the film (mentioned also in last Friday's post). Manhattan Melodrama is available from Netflix.
Very little time to post this week and next as I wrap up two summer courses.
I thought about heading to see the High Line over the weekend, but the coverage at Animal makes me glad I waited. David Byrne's lovely photo of an evening stroll makes me think I'll try it after dark once I eventually make it over there.
Instead, we went to see the new Pelham, probably against better judgment. The beginning was bad, the ending waaaayyy worse, but I tried to enjoy the middle as much as possible, which still wasn't a lot. Running Scared is spot on for a handful of the film's major problems, but for me the worst departure from the original was, in the end, the decision not to keep the contrived Noah's Ark casting of the original. In the new version, there are no New Yorkers. There are a few attempts at ethnic typing -- Travolta is a bit of a bigot who can't stop calling John Turturro a "greaseball," as if Italians remain at the top of the persecuted minority list in the 21st century city. Travolta himself, a Wall St. broker gone bad, seems more calculated to play to Main Street prejudice against Wall St. than to represent anything recognizably related to the city. Instead of city types, even bad movie stereotypes, there's just a bunch of vanilla on a subway train. The passengers have no personality at all. They're just there -- like the rest of us, I suppose -- to be terrorized or eventually stand up and be counted. Let's roll, you know.
It's like a movie version of a movie version of a movie version of New York, where New Yorkness can be signified only by jerky editing or rats in the subway, and where a runaway 6 train somehow gets to Coney Island only moments after crossing the Manhattan Bridge (did I miss something about rerouting?). Characters either love the city or hate it (the mayor starts off hating it -- especially the subway -- but comes to love it, I think); there's no nuanced way of inhabiting it. The low moment in this regard came when suburban-chubby Denzel is being spirited uptown in a helicopter and the pilot says, gesturing to the majestic skyline, something like: "Makes you realize just what it is we're fighting for." A skyline! A view from above! No sense of the value of life on street-level. There are no neighborhood streets in this city -- only towers and freeways and tunnels, and the lower you go the more rats you'll find.
When it ended, a smattering of people in the audience clapped. I imagine they were the same ones who laughed when Travolta said "greaseball" for the fourth time. I also imagine they haven't seen the original. Shame.
I thought about heading to see the High Line over the weekend, but the coverage at Animal makes me glad I waited. David Byrne's lovely photo of an evening stroll makes me think I'll try it after dark once I eventually make it over there.
Instead, we went to see the new Pelham, probably against better judgment. The beginning was bad, the ending waaaayyy worse, but I tried to enjoy the middle as much as possible, which still wasn't a lot. Running Scared is spot on for a handful of the film's major problems, but for me the worst departure from the original was, in the end, the decision not to keep the contrived Noah's Ark casting of the original. In the new version, there are no New Yorkers. There are a few attempts at ethnic typing -- Travolta is a bit of a bigot who can't stop calling John Turturro a "greaseball," as if Italians remain at the top of the persecuted minority list in the 21st century city. Travolta himself, a Wall St. broker gone bad, seems more calculated to play to Main Street prejudice against Wall St. than to represent anything recognizably related to the city. Instead of city types, even bad movie stereotypes, there's just a bunch of vanilla on a subway train. The passengers have no personality at all. They're just there -- like the rest of us, I suppose -- to be terrorized or eventually stand up and be counted. Let's roll, you know.
It's like a movie version of a movie version of a movie version of New York, where New Yorkness can be signified only by jerky editing or rats in the subway, and where a runaway 6 train somehow gets to Coney Island only moments after crossing the Manhattan Bridge (did I miss something about rerouting?). Characters either love the city or hate it (the mayor starts off hating it -- especially the subway -- but comes to love it, I think); there's no nuanced way of inhabiting it. The low moment in this regard came when suburban-chubby Denzel is being spirited uptown in a helicopter and the pilot says, gesturing to the majestic skyline, something like: "Makes you realize just what it is we're fighting for." A skyline! A view from above! No sense of the value of life on street-level. There are no neighborhood streets in this city -- only towers and freeways and tunnels, and the lower you go the more rats you'll find.
When it ended, a smattering of people in the audience clapped. I imagine they were the same ones who laughed when Travolta said "greaseball" for the fourth time. I also imagine they haven't seen the original. Shame.
The posters all over town for the upcoming Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (note the 2009 version uses the numerals rather than the orignal's spelled-out numbers) had Stephanie and me itching to watch the original, which we did the other night. Well worth returning to, though we hope it doesn't deflate the remake too much.So much of the film seemed like a time capsule from the mid-70s, even though (as NYMag notes this week) the mayor's office mandated that the train used in the original be free of the era's ubiquitous subway graffiti. The contents of the time capsule, then? It would include the characters' obsessions with things like women joining the police force or transit union, the now-defunct names of transit companies, the assumption by Matthau's character that visiting Japanese transit officials wouldn't speak a word of English, and above all the array of New York accents.
Whatever happened to the New York accent -- or even to New York accents in the plural? It's possible to live in downtown Manhattan and go for days without talking to someone who speaks like a native New Yorker. You'll hear them in mom and pop shops, or in places like post offices or public schools. But it's not too much a stretch to imagine the old New York accents -- which began to be noticed by observers and represented in print in the late 19th century -- will soon be a thing of the past, thanks mostly to the homogenizing force of global capitalism.
Clearly, the filmmakers in 1974 aimed to make the train hostages a cross-section of New York types, one or two of each, almost like animals chosen for salvation on Noah's Ark. When the film ended and the credits rolled, we saw that the characters had, in fact, been named for the types they were supposed to represent. The list, in part, taken from IMDB:
Anna Berger ... The Mother Gary Bolling ... The Homosexual Carol Cole ... The Secretary Alex Colon ... The Delivery Boy Joe Fields ... The Salesman Mari Gorman ... The Hooker Michael Gorrin ... The Old Man Thomas La Fleur ... The Older Son María Landa ... The Spanish Woman (as Maria Landa) Louise Larabee ... The Alcoholic George Lee Miles ... The Pimp Carolyn Nelson ... Coed #1 Eric O'Hanian ... The Younger Son Lucy Saroyan ... Coed #2 William Snickowski ... The Hippie Barry Snyder ... The W.A.S.P.
A collection of social types, professions, ethnic stereotypes. The old man was an old Jewish man, I think, though he's not listed this way. The Pimp, who was black, might have been listed as the Veteran, since he mentions his service record, and at one point one of the hijackers calls him by the N-word before cracking him across the face with a machine gun, but I suppose they didn't want to type him by the N-word in the credits. It took me a second to figure out what one of the passengers had been The Homosexual. I'll be interested to see what comparable types turn up in the new version. Will the 6 train in 2009 be similarly depicted as a cross-section of the city? If so, how will the writers and directors imagine our social divisions?
Yesterday on The Great Whatsit my friend Tim mentioned a George Carlin record, Occupation: Foole!, which he picked up in a dollar bin. It was recorded in California in 1973, making it roughly the film's contemporary. One of the tracks is called "New York Voices." Who would have thought, at the time, that either it or the original Pelham would wind up serving a documentary function?
A few entries back I posted a short film, 3rd Avenue El, which I'd run across thanks to Bowery Boys. When I first watched it, I noticed at the end a tag indicating the film had been posted to the web by weirdovideo.com, which sounded like something worth checking out. Turns out they do have weirdo videos of all stripes, though I was particularly interested in their archive of vintage New York films. They've got an eclectic selection, ranging from classic Edison shorts, to footage of a dangerous baby elephant being put down at Coney Island, to the trailer for a mid-century meta-porn extravaganza called The Smut Peddler.
One of the most rewarding things I watched (next to The Smut Peddler, of course) was an early-1960s short called How to Live in a City -- a sort of Jane Jacobs-esque brief on behalf of well-designed urban public space. It's clearly coming from a moment when public space in the city is highly contested (though one could argue public space is always highly contested in a city like this). The filmmakers oppose new directions in public and private housing that favor individualism over community: the "private terrace" is a blight on traditional neighborhood life, while the stoop is idealized. There's great footage here of several sites -- Washington Square Park, Mulberry Street during San Gennaro, Seagram Plaza, the MoMA sculpture garden, and long-vanished bocce courts at Houston and Bowery, where old Italian men, we're told, were happily teaching their game to new Puerto Rican immigrants. Now their more fortunate descendants can buy grass-fed beef and dandelion greens at Whole Foods. Enjoy!
One of the most rewarding things I watched (next to The Smut Peddler, of course) was an early-1960s short called How to Live in a City -- a sort of Jane Jacobs-esque brief on behalf of well-designed urban public space. It's clearly coming from a moment when public space in the city is highly contested (though one could argue public space is always highly contested in a city like this). The filmmakers oppose new directions in public and private housing that favor individualism over community: the "private terrace" is a blight on traditional neighborhood life, while the stoop is idealized. There's great footage here of several sites -- Washington Square Park, Mulberry Street during San Gennaro, Seagram Plaza, the MoMA sculpture garden, and long-vanished bocce courts at Houston and Bowery, where old Italian men, we're told, were happily teaching their game to new Puerto Rican immigrants. Now their more fortunate descendants can buy grass-fed beef and dandelion greens at Whole Foods. Enjoy!
So I looked back at last year's Angels post, which I linked to earlier today, and noticed the link had been disabled to the Godspell number "Prepare Ye": an earlier Broadway/Hollywood use of Bethesda Fountain.
Here's another link to the same clip:
And, for good measure, because I know you love cities -- especially this one -- and that you also have a hankering for kitschy religious musicals, I give you another terrific number from the same film adaptation:
Here's another link to the same clip:
And, for good measure, because I know you love cities -- especially this one -- and that you also have a hankering for kitschy religious musicals, I give you another terrific number from the same film adaptation:
