Tag Archives: New York City

4 Shots From 4 Films: Special New York Edition

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking!

Today, the Shattered Lens takes a look at New York.  It’s time for….

4 Shots From 4 New York Films

Taxi Driver (1976, dir by Martin Scorsese, DP: Michael Chapman)

The Warriors (1979, dir by Walter Hill, DP: Andrew Laszlo)

Escape From New York (1981, dir by John Carpenter, DP: Dean Cundey)

1990: Bronx Warriors (1982, dir by Enzo G. Castellari, DP: Sergio Salvati)

Music Video of the Day: New York City by Kylie Minogue (2019, dir by ????)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

New York City has inspired many great songs and movies.  Maybe not as many as Paris, or even London for that matter, but still, out of the cities that can be visited on the North American continent, New York City is definitely one of the cultural leaders.  After all, it’s got more of a history than Los Angeles and it’s less corrupt than Chicago.  ALL HAIL NEW YORK!

Of course, I live in Texas and we tend to make a lot of jokes about New York down here.  But we do it out of love.  Or, at the very least, I do.  Of course, the main thing that I love about New York is that everyone’s in a hurry and you don’t have to waste a lot of time being polite.  I like that.  The whole avoiding eye contact thing is a part of what makes New York great, in my honest opinion.

Anyway, this video from Kyle Minogue has a 1970s New York-on-cocaine feel to it.  At least, that’s what I assume New York was like in the disco era.  I’ve only got the movies to go on and Saturday Night Fever always seems like it’s just a few seconds away from showing someone doing a line of coke while John Travolta’s on the dance floor.

What I’m saying here is that there’s a lot that I don’t know for sure.  But I do like New York and I do like dancing and I probably would have had fun in the 70s.

Enjoy!

Film Review: Empire (dir by Andy Warhol and John Palmer)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

“The Empire State Building is a star!” 

— Andy Warhol, reportedly on the night of filming Empire (1964)

On the night of July 24th, 1964, Andy Warhol, John Palmer, Jonas Mekas, Gerald Malanga, Marie Desert, and Henry Romeny gathered in an office on the 41st floor of the Time-Life Building in New York City.

As the sun went down, they pointed a camera out a window and at the Empire State Building, which was the tallest building in the world at that time.  As they filmed, the upper 30 floors of the building were lit up in honor of the opening of the 1964 World’s Fair.  Behind the Empire State Building, the beacon atop the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company tower blinked on and off.  Otherwise, the entire skyline was invisible in the night.

They started filming at 8:06 pm and stopped at 2:42 am.  Projected in slow motion (which was either per Warhol’s specifications or the result of an error on the part of the projectionist, depending on which source you read), the final film — entitled Empire — lasted for 8 hours and five minutes.  Originally, Warhol planned to have voices in the background but ultimately, Empire would be a silent film.  Three times you can very briefly spot the faces of Warhol and the crew reflected in the window of the office.  When the tower’s skylights were eventually switched off, Warhol filmed darkness.

Believe it or not, Empire is available, in its entirety, on YouTube.  I watched about two and a half uninterrupted hours of it, along with skipping to the brief glimpses of Warhol and to the film’s end.  Believe it or not, Empire does have a definite hypnotic power.  When you spend hours staring at the same image, you do start to become fascinated by things like a blinking beacon or the occasional bird flying by the Empire State Building.  (The film was so grainy that I assumed it was a bird.  It could have just as easily been a speck of dust.)  You find yourself thinking about what it would have been like to be in New York in 1964 and to see that one brilliantly lit tower rising high above the city.  The tower does take on a life of its own.

On that night in 1964, there was no bigger star in New York City than the Empire State Building.

 

Quick Review: Premium Rush (Dir. by David Koepp)

Posted on by Leonard Wilson

I have a love / hate relationship with David Koepp.

Loved The Shadow, Stir of Echoes, Angels & Demons, Panic Room, Jurassic Park and The Lost World (even to see him get eaten by a T-Rex while running down a busy street). I hated War of the Worlds (I’m sorry, but there’s no way Justin Chatwin’s character could have made it through that film), Mission: Impossible and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Sometimes he hits the mark, and other times he misses.

Premium Rush falls somewhere in between. I really don’t have a whole lot to say about it. It’s mostly very good, particularly the bike riding scenes, but overall, the story could have been a little stronger and Michael Shannon (to me, anyway) felt really out of place here. It’s one of those movies where you pluck your brain out of your head and place it in the seat next to you. As long as you don’t give the movie too much thought and just enjoy the ride that’s presented to you, you’ll do just fine. At only 90 minutes, it moves very quickly and you’ll find yourself at the end before you really know it. I’ve seen this type of film before with Thomas Michael Donnelly’s Quicksilver, starring Kevin Bacon and 1993’s Airborne, directed by Castle Producer and former X-Files alum, Rob Bowman.

Wilee (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is the best bike messenger around. He’s so good that he rides a ‘fixee’, a bike with no brakes, no sets of gears other than the basics and where the pedals always move (no cruising). Weaving in and out of traffic, he makes his way through each delivery with lots of style. There are these decision points that happily reminded me of both my bike riding times and motorcycle ones where Wilee has to find the next available angle to ride through. Scenes like that help to keep the action moving, when it happens. Premium Rush also showcases some great areas of Manhattan as they travel around. It’s a great looking film in that sense, with low cuts of bike wheels and jumps, but again, you’re either riding through the city and hoping they don’t hit, or you’re off the bike waiting to find out if they’ll jump onto another one again.

Basically, the story is that Wilee is given a special package that he needs to deliver, and a corrupt cop is on his tail, played over the top by Michael Shannon. That’s all there is to it. Get the package where it needs to go. Levitt does well in the film, as does Dania Ramirez and Aasif Mandvi. If there’s anyone in the movie who didn’t quite gel with me, it would be Michael Shannon. Shannon’s a good actor, and he’s not bad here, just really animated. It felt like a role that would have been better suited for Willem Dafoe or someone strange like that. I never felt any kind of fear or even worry when Shannon was around. He came off more like a bumbling crook in a film like Baby’s Day Out”, than someone who really needed what Wilee was carrying.

Koepp is getting better at directing, but some of the writing is a little off. The film suffers from the same problem that Green Lantern had with it’s climax or Tron: Legacy did with some of it’s parts. You have a few scenes where it could have been stronger had things moved in one direction, but then veers off. The impact just isn’t as great. I won’t go into detail on what they are, but for me, I saw a few things that could have been changed (or at least one in particular).

Overall, Premium Rush is a fun film that may get you wanting to ride after seeing it, but just don’t ask a lot of it. Just get your popcorn, sit back and enjoy where it all goes.