1. I subscribe to the Criterion Channel and right now it offers about 59 movies as a collection entitled, New York Stories. I thought, and I was wrong, that Dog Day Afternoon was a part of this collection and I spent quite a bit of time poking around and satisfying myself that I was wrong. In the course of my poking around, I found other collections of films centered on New York, including one called New York Sounds.
Within this collection, I spotted a forty-five minute film made by Martin Kirchheimer, released in 1981, entitled, Stations of the Elevated. It's a non-narrated documentary featuring graffiti on trains that run above ground in the New York subway system. You might know that a Clean Car Program started in 1984 and that five years later, the system was free of graffiti painted cars. You might also know that to many the graffiti was regarded as a nuisance, at the very least, and as vandalism at its worst.
Martin Kircheimer, however, saw beauty and artistic achievement in the graffiti and this film focuses on pictures of the graffiti intermixed with other kinds of visual creations along the train lines, especially images from billboards. Kircheimer also includes scenes from decimated parts of the city, with special emphasis on abandoned high rises built as project housing.
So, the film juxtaposes the visual aspects of some of NYC, as seen on trains and along the routes of trains. He accompanies these images with music by Charles Mingus and Aretha Franklin.
I didn't visit NYC for the first time until 2012. I have no nostalgic attachment to what the city looked like in the 1960s and 1970s, the city portrayed in this film.
But, for some reason, I seek out movies, both fictional and documentary, that depict this time period in New York City -- movies like The French Connection, Serpico, The Panic in Needle Park, among others. Likewise, when I've visited museums in both New York City and Washington, DC, I've come across video exhibits that were made during this time and I can't get enough of them.
I think it has to do with watching images recorded on film, not recorded digitally, and enjoying the quality of texture of their images.
After watching Kirchmeir's movie, I watched a longer and more traditionally constructed 2019 documentary called, The Hottest August. In it, filmmaker Brett Story traverses the five boroughs of New York City and interviews people in their homes, in parks, in workplaces, on a boat, in bars, on stoops, and other places, asking them to talk about their lives and their thoughts about the future of the USA.
The interviewees touch on their thoughts about climate change, the impact of Hurricane Sandy, racism, social isolation, their anxieties about the future, and a variety of other things. Brett Story's approach was purposeful as she interviewed a variety of people, people without power or wealth, people of many backgrounds and ethnic origins, and they trusted her to speak openly about the present and how they look at the years to come.
Everything else I watched today was a short film, but The Hottest August was a full length documentary, running about 90 minutes or so.
2. If the Braves caught the Astros napping in Game 1 of the World Series, tonight, in Game 2, Houston definitely woke up.
Until Jose Altuve homered in the 7th inning, the Astros scored by keeping the ball in the park with a series of doubles and singles mixed in with a couple of out of character errors by the Braves' defense.
To me, it was a vintage performance by the Astros. Their hitters were disciplined, selective in the pitches they swung at, and weren't trying to blast the ball for a home run on every swing.
I admire this quality in the Astros, particularly in their left fielder Michael Brantley who is among baseball's most efficient and elegant hitters. Over the years, he has developed the skill to, as they say, take what pitchers give him. If they work him away, he can hit pitches to left field. If they pitch him inside, he can pull pitches. He's not all a big home run guy, but can be relied on to not only get on base regularly, but also keep rallies alive and drive in runs. He's among my favorite players in baseball to watch at the plate.
Now the World Series moves to Atlanta for three games. In the first two games, both teams have performed below par in one game and looked nearly unbeatable when they won.
As was true when this series began, I have no idea what to expect next.
All I know is that I enjoy watching both of these teams play a lot, even while keeping in mind those factors that move some fans to refuse to watch either team. I get why that's true and I cannot explain why I both understand what's objectionable regarding both teams and enjoy watching the way they play the game.
3. After the game ended, I returned to the Criterion Channel and explore another New York collection entitled New York Shorts.
In just under six minutes, in his 1953 film entitled, "Daybreak Express", D. A. Pennebaker strings together a series of evocative images shot from inside a train. He edited the images to the movement and rhythms of Duke Ellington's composition of the same name, "Daybreak Express".
Shirley Clarke also created a montage of images. Hers were of New York City's bridges and captured their strength, grace, and beauty in her four minute 1958 short films "Bridges-Go-Round 1" and "Bridges-Go-Round 2". The difference between #1 and #2 was the music soundtrack to each -- the first was electronic music and the second was a jazz score.
The Bowery is street and a neighborhood located in the southern portion of Manhattan.
Its history is long and colorful. For decades the Bowery was known for its dive bars and saloons, houses of prostitution, tattoo parlors, cheap eateries, cheap clothing stores, flop houses, cheap movie houses, and, for fans of music groups like The Talking Heads, the Ramones, Television, Patti Smith, and others, was the location of the famous music venue CBGB.
When Sara Driver's short film, "The Bowery" was released in 1994, the bars and saloons were closed. The Third Avenue El no longer ran above the Bowery. The Bowery was on the verge of being somewhat gentrified.
I watched Driver's nearly eleven minute cinematic postcard of the 1990s Bowery. In a short period of run time, Driver's film captured the variety of the Bowery -- its dereliction, poetry, friendliness, misery, pride, and its physical aspects.
It moved me to want to take my Joseph Mitchell book off the shelf and dive back into it again.
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