Rocky Manhattan High

Lin-Manuel Miranda's In the Heights musical film adaptation (from Crazy Rich Asians director Jon M. Chu) is admittedly not my usual beat, but it's got two big things working for it, against my usual -- it's got Anthony Ramos in the lead, and hoo boy are we smitten with Anthony Ramos. And second the thing is set in the neighborhood where I live in the real world, and was filmed all over my every-day places...

I keep doing double-takes tonight because all these people tweeting pictures from IN THE HEIGHTS on my timeline; I'm like, "Why is everybody hanging out down the street from me?" That movie's gonna be one of those weird views where I'm too distracted by locations pic.twitter.com/cn2PRp3u5m

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) April 16, 2021

I love my neighborhood with the heat of a thousand suns (especially after spending a good chunk of the past year straight up trapped in it because of the pandemic) and so this paean to it, well once it would've been exciting in a point-and-stare kinda way but honestly, here in 2021, it makes me emotional now. We've been through a lot -- we're still going through it, like all of you are in your places. The difference is my bonded-place is getting a big-budget musical...

... and I'm gonna cherish that shit. (PS I thiiiiink you can see my building in the above shot!)  In the Heights is out on June 11th -- it's also opening the Tribeca Film Festival two days before that with a big screening at the United Palace Theater in Washington Heights, about a ten minute walk from my window! -- and they dropped a couple new trailers this week; here's the main one at this link, but I wanna share the one trailer that's titled "Washington Heights" because... duh, have you been listening to me?

Thursday's Ways Not To Die

Ever since I first saw Dario Argento's 1980 film Inferno -- and we're not talking decades here, because as I admitted here on the site in 2017 I had somehow tricked myself into thinking I'd seen Inferno but I hadn't, not until 2017 anyway -- I have wanted to do one of my "Thursday's Ways Not To Die" posts for this scene in Inferno. The problem is... this scene doesn't make any sense. Which is half the appeal, and ninety-percent of why I love it. A scene not making any sense is when Argento gets his most interesting, usually! But...

... this scene really doesn't make any sense. And to top that off it's hard to tell what's happening half the time because the scene is dark. But I love it so, and we're talking Rat Scenes in movies this week for our "13 Rats of Halloween" series, so I'm gonna try to describe what you're seeing, beforehand, and then just let the images speak for themselves. 

So here's the sort-of gist. Inferno abandons main characters like trash, every few scenes, which is another thing I love about it, but at this point this character seen here standing on crutches in the middle of a Central Park pond is a book dealer, one who has just given our momentary main character the old book that details The Three Mothers mythology (i.e. the mythology behind Argento's films Suspiria, Inferno, and Mother of Tears). After he's done that he has, for some reason, decided to stuff a sack full of cats and to then take this sack of cats to a pond in Central Park to drown them. I said what I said!

I suppose the moon is making everybody crazy, is the idea, but really it's just inexplicable. But the moon does become more important in just a second, because as our nasty cat-drowning friend here does his nasty cat-drowning business, an eclipse happens over New York!

I should add that I also really wanted to do this scene for my (semi-aborted) "City en Scène" series too, where I talk about movie scenes that I think about when I walk around New York, because whenever I walk by this pond in Central Park I think about this scene now, looking for sacks of drowned kitties and swarms of red-eyed flesh-hungry rodents. Oh right. The rats!

The eclipse makes the rats go nuts too, and

of course the man on crutches suddenly falls over...

... and the rats do their business. 

Their dirty ratty business.

The other day when I started this "13 Rats of Halloween" series I said that rats don't bug me too much (not like bugs) but even I'll admit that that drain-pipe swarming with them is a real fucking disgusting sight. Anyway because this is an Argento movie the rats aren't even how this man actually dies. Argento's death scenes have as many twists and turns as a roller-coaster collapsing into the ocean. So the rats are eating the cat-killing bookseller, he's screaming his head off as one does while one is being eaten by rats, when lo - a hero appears!

The large man holding the large knife and slicing up hot dogs in his hot dog truck in the middle of the night in the middle of Central Park hears his cries! What could possibly go wrong? 

"Thank goodness you're here, Mr. Hot Dog Man!"

Inferno (1980)

It's only in typing all of this delightful gibberish out that I realized that Argento manages to get the whole cartoon food chain of animals involved in this scene -- there are Cats (in a sack), there are Mice (well rats but whatever), and there are Dogs (of the between-two-buns hot dog variety). It's basically one of those Tom & Jerry episodes that had the dog in it...

... just Argento-fied. It's all very goofy and I adore it, which is how you can sum up most of my relation to Argento's work. I can't believe I didn't see this film until three years ago! I know people are mixed on this one but it shot right up among my faves -- I really love the way it just keeps killing off its main characters, baton-handing the narrative off and leaving us unbalanced, and I really really love the visuals, which are as neon-wacky as Suspiria's but darker, grimier -- deeply appropriate for a movie mostly set in New York in the 1980s. Any Inferno fans out there?

Hit the jump for links to all of the previous Ways Not To Die...

Quote of the Day

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"And it hit me then that one of the reasons why some people cling to what has vintage status is not because they like things old or marginally dated, which allows them to feel that their personal time and vintage time are magically in sync; rather it’s because the word vintage is just a figure of speech, a metaphor for saying that so many of us don’t really belong here, not in the present, or the past, or the future, but that all of us seek a life that exists simply elsewhere in time, or elsewhere on-screen, and that, not being able to find it, we have all learned to make do with what life throws our way."

What a glorious, glorious gift I've been gifted with today -- Criterion has begun a new series of essays on their website called "First Person" where they invite writers to discuss some of their most memorable film-going experiences, and their very first entry is Call me By Your Name author Andre Aciman talking about the second time he saw Billy Wilder's film The Apartment, in the early 1980s in NYC, and how it inspired him to go for a long walk around the ever-changing city afterwards. The Apartment is one of my favorite movies (and maybe you've heard me talk about Call Me By Your Name once or twice) -- I've even previously written about looking for The Apartment's locations here in this city, and about their disappearance! Anyway Aciman's piece is lovely and made me tear up, go read it.

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City en Scène #6

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"I never saw New York on foot before. Exciting."

You said it, buster. If there's one regular series here at MNPP that I really should've been better about keeping up with during these Quarantine Days it's my "City en Scène" series, which I just began at the start of 2020 in order to celebrate my 20th year living in New York. The thing is... well, every time I thought about doing it I got sad. I got real sad. Too sad.

Being cut off from everything save my own neighborhood -- for the record I live at the top of Washington Heights; basically the northern tip of the island of Manhattan -- for the past two months has only been hard when I have thought about it, and this series makes me think about it. That's its entire point! It's hard to distract yourself from what you're missing when you're writing about all you're now missing. I'd like to say I'm a big enough fella to set aside my own paltry feelings in order to celebrate something bigger than me -- this city I love, this city that's given me so much, this city that's going through a hardship of its own and could use the boost. But just holding it together right now has taken its own delicate balancing act, and every time I've thought about writing these posts I could feel everything wobble. So why am I here today?

Because of all things a movie I think was mostly shot on a sound stage. Dorothy Arzner's 1940 feminist dance classic Dance Girl Dance is being released by Criterion today and the film, which stars Lucille Ball and Maureen O'Hara as two dancers trying to make it in the big city, reminded me of everything I love about New York in the movies. A lot has been said about the film's rediscovery in the 1970s by second-wave feminists (there's a terrific extra on the Criterion disc where critic B. Ruby Rich talks about this) who rightfully latched onto its condemnation of the male gaze -- the film's emotional high point comes when O'Hara gives a lacerating speech to a theater full of lechers -- but it's also just a real good example of a New York Film, in spirit and tone.

They might not make it out of their dance studios very often, and when they do it's pretty clearly rear-screen projection or sound-stages, but Arzner still captures the essence of this place -- the reasons why people come here from all over the world with their dreams folded up in their pockets on little pieces of paper, and the ways the city nourishes us back even when it feels like a canyon of insurmountable brick walls. The walks down empty streets with a person you love, the midday glimmers of light on a tower sixteen stories up that suddenly fall across your face right when you need it. Months of hardscrabble hoofing and humiliations and you look up, up, up, and you just fall in love.

City en Scène #5

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Deep Impact

-- Washington Square Park -- 

I've always loved that old dude who is just sitting reading his newspaper next to the fountain in Washington Square Park as the world ends in Deep Impact. There are worse ways! Anyway I've talked about this many times here on the site, but I've always found great joy in Disaster Movies. You make a Disaster Movie and I'll go see your Disaster Movie and chances are I'll love it, even if I can in theory recognize it as shit. 

They're critical-thinking proof for me -- in fact sometimes the dumber the better. (I'm looking at you, San Andreas.) I suppose I could get some interest insight into myself were I to discuss this misanthropic proclivity with a psychologist, but where's the fun in that? City go boom! 

Anyway I just fell down a hole of watching Disaster Movie clips on YouTube, I suppose you can guess why, and there was a new feeling that came from them today, one that's probably even more disturbing were it analyzed -- one of comfort. Almost serenity. A giant wave obliterating my home, three years into a Trump Presidency, now sounds like a good deal. Seems about right.

City en Scène #4

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Ghostbusters (1984)

-- 4 North Moore St --

As a kid of the 1980s so much of my youth was built on movies set in New York, a booming time for Big City Representation... something I felt cooler about before the worst aspect of that "Greed Is Good" NYC mentality became our current nightmare president slash tormentor. Sigh. Anyway I'd be remiss doing this series, where I'm celebrating my 20th year of surviving this place, if I didn't mention Ivan Reitman's formative flick Ghostbusters at some point. Hell I might end up having to mention it more than once when it comes down to it. An excellent place to start though is with that firehouse the dudes end up buying in Tribeca...

... since it's literally a five minute walk from where I sit every day typing this blog -- where I sit right this second! -- a fact that would've blown my baby brain apart if you'd have shared that info with me as I sat there sipping Ecto Cooler watching The Real Ghostbusters cartoon every Saturday morning. I've been slimed... with awesomeness!
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ONLY IN NEW YORK can you make a Ghostbusters reference and realize a second later that you were standing next to the Ghostbusters firehouse as you did it pic.twitter.com/XvnYuPL9tq

— Jason Adams (@JAMNPP) April 4, 2018

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