You guys must check this out: On My Block Films.

And dig this, from an e-mail I received from Erin Pope who does community outreach for the project:

Neighbors across the 5 boroughs are challenged to create one to five minute short films (narrative or documentary) using only the residents from their block as the cast and crew. We’ve completed some sample videos that you can check out here. I can personally attest to how amazing the experience was. I only knew the neighbors in our building in a head nodding sort of way and after creating our film I’d now consider at least 12 people from my block great friends.

And the crazy thing about living in New York is, you never really know who you’ll meet when you go knocking on the door. Case in point, we shot our film with our neighbors last Saturday and through the process we met a woman who works for Obama. Forward ahead 48 hours later and my husband was meeting The President as he arrived at JFK. I have no doubt about the amazing things that will come out of each and every block’s filmmaking process!

Our goal is to create 50 films (10 from each borough) by Oct. 31st.

This is just too cool. Please enjoy this site and spread the word.

[Photo Credit: Tom Arndt via Je Suis Perdu]

Here’s a bit of inexpensive crudeness from a college buddy.

[Photo Credit: Schmootography]

Matt Moore pitched like Sandy Koufax to start the game tonight, struck out six of the first nine batters he faced. But in the fourth, Alex Rodriguez hit a hard RBI double and Russell Martin followed with a two run double of his own. Funny moment when Rodriguez was batting. A pitch landed in the dirt and Rodriguez waved his arm for Jeter to run to third. It was a gut move and the wrong one. The ball didn’t roll far enough away. Immediately, Rodriguez caught himself and held up his hand. Jeter cracked up, so did Rodriguez and then he cracked the double.

But Hiroki Kuroda couldn’t hold the lead as the Rays tied it 3-3, and then 4-4 after Martin’s solo homer put the Yanks ahead.

The Yanks took the lead for good in the seventh on a throwing error by the second baseman Elliot Johnson. A sacrifice bunt by Jayson Nix put runners at second and third with one out. Infield in, Jeter, who had three hits so far, hit a tapper to second and Johnson threw it away. Both runners scored.

Boone Logan got two outs in the bottom of the inning while Jeter made a nice over-the-shoulder catch to end the inning (came up limping some, too). Then David Robertson and Rafael Soriano shut the damn door.

Final Score: Yanks 6, Rays 4.

Yeah, and the Orioles lost.

It wasn’t easy but it was a win. And for one night we can exhale.

[Photo Credit: Estera Lazowska]

It’s Hiroki as the Yanks look to stop the bleeding with a win. They’ll face a tough pitcher in Matt Moore.

Derek Jeter SS
Nick Swisher RF
Robinson Cano DH
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Russell Martin C
Curtis Granderson CF
Andruw Jones LF
Steve Pearce 1B
Jayson Nix 2B

Never mind the self-pity: LET’S GO YANK-EES!

[Photo Credit: Luca Pierro]

From the man who brought us Everything Is a Remix

Here’s a nice long piece by Bryan Curtis on Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom over at Grantland:

It’s strange when two filmmakers can hardly stand to look at one of their movies. Especially when that film was as lucrative — and, for me, as beautifully sinister — as Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. So when I met George Lucas in December, in advance of the release of Red Tails, I asked why he and Steven Spielberg always seemed to be renouncing it.

“Oh, I’m not renouncing it,” Lucas said. Which is fair enough. Lucas mostly sounds sad when he talks about Temple of Doom. It’s Spielberg who recoils from its heart extraction, its human sacrifice, its monkey-brain buffet. He once told a journalist that Temple of Doom was “too dark, too subterranean, and much too horrific.”

“People say, ‘Why’s it so dark?'” Lucas said. Then he began to explain.

“I was going through a divorce,” Lucas said, “and I was in a really bad mood. So I really wanted to do dark. And Steve then broke up with his girlfriend, and so he was sort of into it, too. That’s where we were at that point in time.”

I always liked Temple of Doom–maybe not as much as P. Kael, who gave it an over-the-top rave (after she panned Raiders)–but I thought it was scary and tense.

Here is a blurb of her review:

In this follow-up to Raiders of the Lost Ark, Steven Spielberg creates an atmosphere of happy disbelief: the more breathtaking and exhilarating the stunts are, the funnier they are. Nobody has ever fused thrills and laughter in quite the way that he does here. Momentum has often been the true-even if not fully acknowledged-subject of movies. Here it’s not merely acknowledged, it’s gloried in. The picture has an exuberant, hurtling-along spirit. Spielberg starts off at full charge in the opening sequence and just keeps going, yet he seems relaxed, and he doesn’t push things to frighten us. The movie relates to Americans’ love of getting in the car and taking off-it’s a breeze. Harrison Ford is the archeologist-adventurer hero; Ke Huy Quan plays his child sidekick Short Round; and Kate Capshaw is the gold-digger heroine. The plot involves them with an odious boy maharajah and with Mola Ram (an anagram for Malomar), the high priest of a cult of Kali worshippers who come right out of the 1939 adventure comedy Gunga Din. This is one of the most sheerly pleasurable physical comedies ever made. A Lucasfilm Production, from a story idea by George Lucas, and a script by Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz. The score by John Williams is too heavy for the tone of the film, and it’s too loud. With Amrish Puri as Mola Ram, and Dan Aykroyd in a half-second joke.

Curtis gets  behind what was up for the filmmaker and why the movie was not beloved like the other Indy movies.

Coolness from Buzzfeed: Famous Album Cover Locations in NYC.

I got people coming out the woodwork calling, e-mailing, and texting me, busting my goddamn balls about the Yankees. Pat Jordan’s on the horn three times a day, cackling like the true sadist that he is.

Hank Waddles called last night too, but to commiserate. He likened watching the Yankees to having a fight with your spouse. One of those bad fights where you try to remember back to when you weren’t fighting and things were easy and happy but can’t. Like when you’ve got the flu and can’t recall being well.

The Wife says to me, “Are you going to be like this all month?”

I say, “Every time they lose.”

What am I going to do with you? That’s what she’s thinking and she’s right.

There is good news, though, and it is this: The Yankees are in first place today.

Every opening I came up with for tonight’s 5-2 loss to the Rays was depressing and cheap. The Yanks have played poorly, blown a big divisional lead and I was ticked. But I stopped myself and tried again. I remembered this isn’t the finish line.

If this collapse coincided with the end of the season, like it did for the Red Sox and Braves last year, then we could thrash and roll about all night. However, there are 27 games left and it’s now a flat-footed tie with Orioles. If they come up short in this sprint, we’ll have plenty of time to hash out why they weren’t good enough this year. In the meantime, maybe they’ll get mad, play well and win.

We don’t know if it will happen that way, and by the look of things, the chances aren’t that great. But it could and we should keep watching and hoping like the fans of the other, less pre-destined, teams.

I didn’t come to this outlook on my own. I woke up this morning to mouse clicks followed by a small voice repeating “Yes!” I figured my son was at the computer checking baseball scores, just down the hall from my room. The problem with that is I knew that the Pirates lost yesterday afternoon and I knew my son knew this, too. I pulled myself out of bed to see what he was celebrating. He sat there dangling his feet and grinning like he just heard about Cookie Crisp cereal. I pulled up over his shoulder and asked him what he was doing.

“Checking out the olden days,” he said. He had clicked all the way back to June. The Pirates won a lot of games in June, so he was thrilled. It didn’t seem pathetic either, like it is when I hole up with Baseball-Reference.com and swaddle myself in past glory each time the Yankees get bounced from the Postseason. I think he just wanted to see the whole picture of the season rather than dwell on their most recent disappointment.

The 2012 Yankee team has access to something better than this. There are some guys that could play better and some guys that could get healthy. If it all happens that way, I think they’re the best team over the last 27 games and I hope their records indicates that. If it doesn’t, well, my son wouldn’t mind if we joined him rooting for the Pirates.

As for the game I have only one thought. After the Yanks went down 3-2 in the third, they sent 21 batters to the plate for the rest of the game. Three over the minimum over the final six innings. I am sure some will credit the Rays pitcher Alex Cobb with grabbing the lead and not letting it go. And some will blame the Yanks hitters for tightening up and failing to execute when they fell behind. I don’t know which is correct, so I hope the Yanks load up on both lead-holding and come-backing for these last 27 games. Find out where the O’s and Rays are shopping.

It’s Fab Five Freddy Garcia and a whole lot of sweaty palms for Yankee fans tonight.

Derek Jeter SS
Curtis Granderson CF
Nick Swisher 1B
Robinson Cano DH
Alex Rodriguez 3B
Raul Ibanez LF
Jayson Nix 2B
Chris Dickerson RF
Chris Stewart C

They are still in first place, though.

Never mind the Pepto: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

We roll along this afternoon and will not mention the Yankees until absolutely necessary.

In the meantime, dig these paintings by Ana Teresa Fernandez.

Over at 70mm, please check out this piece on the shooting of Lawrence of Arabia by my dear friend Mike Fox.

The first date I had with The Wife was at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in January, 2002. Home field advantage I figured. Little did I know that painting and drawing don’t move her. So I took her on a tour and she smiled as I talked and talked. She was probably bored silly and finally she was hungry. Still, she was too polite to stop me and I was so nervous I kept talking.

As she tells it, “You talked until I was limp.”

She has not been back to the MET since. Until this past Saturday. This time we didn’t look at paintings or drawings but we went through the Japanese collection–The Wife loves the Japanese aesthetic. She wasn’t bored and we left before she was starving.

Progress.

A Heppy Ket.

Cloud City at the Roof Garden.

Summer’s Over. Back to work, back to school. Tense baseball games.

We should all have such problems.

[Photo Credit: SophieD]

It’s wasn’t a blow out, the Yankees did not embarrass themselves, but they still found themselves on the losing end of another ballgame at the Trop. The Rays had a few RBI bloops and bleeders that proved to be the difference as they beat the Yankees, 4-3. Alex Rodriguez managed a soft single but didn’t look strong in his first game back, Ichiro Suzuki continues to strikeout and has almost become an automatic out.

Robinson Cano, well let’s just say his lack of pep on certain plays–like the go-ahead single in the eighth–doesn’t not reflect well on him (though on second thought, there is an explanation…)

The Yanks hit the ball hard against James Shields but most of those hard hits were right at defenders. Shields deserves credit too, almost everything he threw was off the plate and he pitched deep into the game. It was a tough-minded performance.

Painful loss, but then again, every loss is painful at this time of year. The Orioles made it hurt but good as they won and now trail the Yanks by just one game.

Tomorrow, the Bombers turn their eyes to Fab Five Freddy Garcia.

Hang tight, they haven’t choked anything away yet, and strap in: this is going to be a wild month.

[Photo Credit: Tomorrow Started; Chris O’Meara/AP]

Or some such thing. What do I know from cards? All I know is that C.C. Sabathia goes against James Shields today and every day is a must-win for the Yanks–and the Rays for that matter. Game is in Tampa, where the Yanks are 2 for their last 10.

Alex is back.

Derek Jeter SS
Nick Swisher 1B
Robinson Cano 2B
Alex Rodriguez DH
Eric Chavez 3B
Raul Ibanez LF
Russell Martin C
Ichiro Suzuki RF
Chris Dickerson CF

Never mind the shpilkes: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Picture Credit: Eduard Bezembinder]

How ’bout some Jimmy Smith to say goodbye to summer…

[Photo Credit: The Absolute Best Photography Posts]

Forget digestion, forget relaxation, forget peanuts, crackerjack and all that “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” good timey horseshit. The Yankees gave their fans all the agita we could handle and then some Sunday afternoon. It began with Phil Hughes, who couldn’t hold a humble 3-1 lead and was rounded off by no hitting, a lousy bullpen, and poor managing.

Hughes coughed up the lead in the sixth when Mark Reynolds–yeah, Tom Brunansky’s left ass cheek–hit his second home run of the day. The first one was a bomb. Second one was no cheapie either.

Jeter, Swisher, Cano, nobody hit on this homestand. Ibanez and Andruw Jones are automatic outs these days. Cano, in particular, looks like he takes at bats off. He shanked a throw in the eighth inning that underscores his lack of concentration.

This was an exasperating loss for the Yanks whose lead over the Orioles is down to two. They haven’t shit the bed yet, there is a long way to go, and plenty of time to stop playing like they were sponsored by Chico’s Bail Bonds, but right now…they stink.

Final Score: Orioles 8, Yanks 3.

[Photo Credit: Jeff Zelevansky/Getty Images]

Yanks lose today, their lead in the American League East shrinks to two and we’re back to bitching. They win, the lead is four and we can digest.

And so it goes in September.

Never mind the speech-making: Let’s Go Yank-ees!

[Photo Credit: Inge Morath via It’s a Long Season]

A little Sunday morning funk fuh ya.

[Photo Via: Oxane]