New York Is Just Like The Movies
or: New York I Love You But You're Bringing Me MOVIES!!!????
Howdy folks! It’s been a little while since my last newsletter, apologies for that. I’ve just finished up working at a job I had for the last year (as in, I’m freshly unemployed, hmu if u wanna hire me) and I’ve just gotten back from the best trip of my life so I’ve been kinda busy. Normal (perhaps even improved) service will now return.
But let’s talk about that trip! I spent ten days in New York City!! New York is a special city and somewhere I’ve wanted to visit all my life. As with most experiences in the 21st century, my time in New York was coloured by the city’s numerous depictions across media. It truly felt at times like I was standing in a movie, particularly as I walked through Manhattan on my first night there and listened to the traffic and watched the steam rise up through the cracks in the road. I didn’t know that was a real thing.
I won’t bore you with every little thing I did whilst there. I don’t want this to become one of Patty and Selma’s vacation slideshows from The Simpsons. Instead, I’m gonna talk about only the film related stuff I did on my trip. And rest assured, as a film obsessed weirdo there is plenty for me to share.
Museum Of The Moving Image
“The Museum Of The Moving Image” — a series of words so pleasing to me I shiver as I type them. This is extremely my shit. And not only is MOMI dedicated to preserving and displaying remnants of film history, it also houses a permanent exhibition dedicated to the life and creations of Jim Henson — in short, yes, I met Miss Piggy!
MOMI was perhaps the tourist site I was most excited to visit (just check out that goofy grin on my face) but to be quite frank I felt a little underwhelmed by the experience. The Henson exhibit is of course delightful — I’d pay several times the admission fee just to ogle at Kermit The Frog again — but it was sadly quite short. It might be because I’ve recently read Brian Jay Jones’ fantastic biography of Henson but I felt the exhibit only scratched the surface of Henson’s creative legacy. For example, I may have missed it but I don’t recall seeing any mention of his Oscar nominated short film Time Piece who’s fast paced and absurdist editing style would have fitted in brilliantly with the museum’s oeuvre.
Of the other pieces on display, I again felt they were rather shallowly presented. There’s an area dedicated to video games which basically amounts to a hallway of arcade cabinets with no effort to show how games have grown increasingly cinematic as the medium has developed. This also would have been a perfect place to showcase increasing convergence of film and games as evident in the development of ILM’s The Volume soundstage which uses the Unreal video game engine for real time rendering.
For a “Moving Image” museum it was, in my opinion, disappointingly focused on film history (and particularly early film history). I did however greatly enjoy seeing an old school Moviola editing machine in person and an exhibition on gifs is upcoming which sounds very interesting and definitely in line with the Moving Image mission statement.
SPIKE LEE: CREATIVE SOURCES
The Brooklyn Museum hosted an exhibition of director Spike Lee’s personal collection including props from his films, documents, artwork, ephemera and keepsakes.
My personal favourites amongst the collection included a guitar signed by David Byrne, an original Do The Right Thing screenplay, an African National Congress flag signed and dedicated to Spike by Nelson and Winnie Mandela and a bunch of movie posters signed by Steven Spielberg with funny one liners like “Jaws nearly ate me alive!”.
The best part of the exhibit however was when I turned to walk away from a piece on display and quite literally walked into the man himself, Spike Lee. He had recorded a Good Morning America piece about the exhibition earlier that day and was now giving a reporter a guided tour.
I stepped aside, stuttered out a “Sorry Spike” and left him to carry on undisturbed. Most other museumgoers kept a respectful distance and abstained from swarming him for photos and autographs — I guess maybe New Yorkers are used to playing it cool during celebrity sightings.
OPPENHEIMER AT THE LINCOLN SQUARE IMAX
I’ve gotten some funny looks when I’ve told people I went to the cinema while on holiday but it was an important part of my trip for a number of reasons. Chief amongst them being I’d get the opportunity to see the visually and audibly stunning Oppenheimer in its definitive format of 70mm IMAX — or at least that’s what I thought.
My screening was a midday Thursday showing, the final one of Oppenheimer’s short IMAX revival before The Marvels took over IMAX screens later that evening. When the time came for the film to start though, myself and the rest of the crowd were left to sit in silence. The screen was blank, the lights were dimmed and you could feel the anxiety grow amongst the crowd as it grew apparent something was wrong.
A few people started to yell out some jokes — one guy offered to describe the film to everyone since he’d already seen it ten times, another turned the torch light on their phone on and projected shadow puppets onto the screen. Eventually a cinema worker emerged to explain the projectionist was a no show and so a Laser IMAX screening would have to take place instead.
I was a touch disappointed but I drowned my sorrows with a box of Junior Mints and a buttered popcorn (another reason why this was a must do, I was determined to experience the quintessential American cinema experience I’ve seen depicted in media) and enjoyed seeing what in my view is handily the best film of the year on the biggest cinema screen I’ve ever laid eyes on.
CRITERION SALE
Being a Film Twitter obsessive I often feel a little left out when Criterion films are the subject of discussion — they’re just a lot tougher to get over here with a limited amount getting a UK release and the remainder being subject to expensive import duty. So when I learned my trip coincided with the semi-annual Barnes & Noble 50% Criterion Collection sale I was determined to cop a few at a good price and luckily my PlayStation 5 accepts Blu-rays from any region so that posed no obstacle.
In all, I bought eight films, I could (and probably should) have bought more but the store I visited (B&N Union Square) was short a few films I had on my preprepared wishlist such as Soderbergh’s Che.
Of the eight I did buy, I played it safe and bought four which I’ve seen before and love dearly (Hunger, Inside Llewyn Davis, Broadcast News and Do The Right Thing) and four I’ve yet to see but which I’m very excited to check out (Meantime, Day for Night, All That Jazz and Y Tu Mamá También).
Let me know if you guys would be interested in hearing my thoughts on those new-to-me flicks I haven’t gotten around to viewing them yet but will very soon.
GUGGENHEIM
My last topic just so happens to be the last place I visited — I had to head to airport straight after spending a lovely two hours strolling around the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Ordinarily I wouldn’t include my visit to a traditional art gallery in an essay about film related activities but the temporary exhibit currently inhabiting the Guggenheim’s iconic winding atrium showcases some really interesting digital and experimental art which touched on aspects of film and video production.
The title of the exhibition is “Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure At The Edge Of Visibility” and it features works wherein the subject is in some way obscured or their presence is diminished.
My favourite piece was Stephanie Syjuco’s “Total Transparency Filter (Portrait of N)”. The piece features a DACA “Dreamer”, DACA is a federal program which grants undocumented immigrants who arrived to the US as children a temporary and extremely tentative reprieve from deportation. At the time of the photoshoot (2017) DACA was under immense threat of being cancelled by the Trump administration. It was saved then only by a tightly contested Supreme Court decision and is still very much under attack to this day, leaving thousands of young people across America in an extremely precarious position.
The choice to anonymise the photo’s subject speaks both to the dehumanisation marginalised people experience at the hands of callous politicians and the immediate threat these people feel as Trump’s and other far right leaders’ rhetoric continues to stoke the flames of violence and villainise immigrants across the world.
You may recognise the pattern of the cloth covering the subject as the grey and white checkered tile pattern which commonly denotes transparency in visual design software — it’s a clever touch which makes the piece pointedly contemporary and of the digital age.
Fin.
Thanks as always for reading and subscribing folks! Please do like, share or send me some feedback. Sorry I didn’t take too many photos, I’m more of “be in the moment” dude but obviously that doesn’t work so well when you decide to write a blog post later on. Nevertheless, I hope you enjoyed this newsletter and they’ll be another one coming your way soon-ish.
❤️